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Wanted to talk about this album a little because I just bought AG Cook tickets and I am so excited to see him live again. Maybe there is some bias here, but I’m not an actual music journalist so yeah, I’m going with my opinions.
AG Cook is a pioneer to modern electronic music, and laid a lot of groundwork for what is now understood as modern hyperpop. Before hyperpop, it was PC Music, the label made under his creative expertise, housing artists that took on this electronic, avant-garde approach to their music that wasn’t really being seen anywhere else. PC Music was both an actual music label, but also served as a genre title for artists like SOPHIE, Hannah Diamond, Danny L Harle, amongst many. PC Music kind of birthed 100 gecs and a lot of modern ‘hyperpop’ artists.
Britpop is Cook's 3rd studio album having been released in May 2024. Note that a few months prior the official PC Music accounts announced that the label was not going to continue on with releasing music, and would only continue to be around for archival purposes. I could get into maybe why this is the case, but to put it shortly I think that Cook and other high ups involved with PCMus figured that this niche style of music has begun to go mainstream, so they were not necessarily the hub that housed and promoted all of the artists of this style. And sometimes, good things just need to come to an end. PCMus was never the same after the unfortunate passing of SOPHIE, but its resident artists continue to create and release fantastic, boundary-pushing pop music.
Though this whole record, isn’t really Britpop by definition, a genre of the 90s in the UK that was led by the likes of Blur, Oasis, Pulp and Suede - an alternative rock sound that pulled influence from the 1960s sound that was defined by the Beatles. It also was a direct response to the rise in Grunge in the US. Perhaps an electronic approach is a new way of understanding britpop in an even fresher way, when bands in the 90s took from the 60s, now in the 2020s we are taking from the 90s. I think you could argue there’s some of that influence in this record.
This nearly 2 hour long record is noisy in the best ways, dizzying and almost magical. Cook does a great job at building soundscapes, and there are universes that exist within the Britpop album. Some notable tracks is the title track “Britpop” that features vocals from none other that Charli xcx, a longtime collaborator and friend to Cook. (I could write a whole post on their growth and dynamic as a duo. Soon!!) Other tracks that stand out to me was the almost sugary sound of Crescent Sun, which may or may not be my favorite track on the album, despite only being the 5th track of a 24 track album. It builds up beautifully and crescendos in a way that feels fully realized. It was an incredible song to hear live as well, I might add. Some other notable tracks would be Heartache, Serenade, Greatly, Bewitched, and Lucifer. There is definitely a narrative in this album, which is why it is laid out into 3 discs, Past, Present and Future. Starting out with a classic sound expected of Cook or any PCMus adjacent artist, this past sound is something we are familiar with- but it does not feel like it has been overdone. The Present disc shows the most britpop influences, having a very grunge-esque, rock sound to it, using a lot of guitar. The Future disc moves back into a more understood and evolved idea of what Cook's signature sound is, and what the PC Music legacy really is.
In whole this album takes a lot from his previous two albums, but utilizes his signature style in a way that feels much more cohesive as an entire album.
I don’t hesitate to say that AG Cook is one of the greatest producers in our lifetime, and his work is seen across many artists and genres, and his own personal projects prove his status as legendary time and time again. I had the pleasure of catching one of his sets at the SF Electronic/Dance music festival - “Portola” and it was one of the highlights of my weekend. I was super excited to hear he announced a standalone show in San Francisco, I already secured my tickets. If you haven’t listened to any of Cook’s personal projects, I highly recommend it. If you stumbled upon Charli xcx through BRAT, AG Cook is essential listening if you want to dive more into her sonic universe and the people that orbit within it.
Mar 7, 2025
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I'll state it right up front: This is a dad-rock rec.
Try to picture yourself (a theme of this album's third track, "Picture Book") back in 1968: songwriting pairs dominate the UK scene. Lennon/McCartney; Jagger/Richards; Page/Plant. Into this noisy fray saunters the Kinks' Ray Davies, who has had hits earlier in the decade with his group the Kinks that SOUND a lot like to guitar-up-to-eleven frenzy ("You Really Got Me," a number one, was said for years to feature a young Jimmy Page on the solo, until it was debunked) but is now fixated on a sepia-toned sort of quasi-nostalgia that is pivoting his band from England's Hitmakers toward the sort of cult band that would later be cited by Blur's Damon Albarn and Oasis' Noel Gallagher as a seminal source of material and influence (it's hard to imagine "Parklife" or "What's the Story Morning Glory" -- hell, Britpop, period -- without this album and the pathway it created).
Davies was busy wrapping himself in the cloak of the Union Jack, long before this sort of move would have had him branded as National Front (or Morrissey-adjacent). "Village Green Preservation Society" didn't sell much when it was released (it only went gold in 2018) but was notable for its acoustic, singer/songwritery pastoral vibe and a yearning for a return to a Middle England that arguably had never existed. Indeed, the mix of sarcasm and sentimentality that marks the title track ("We are the skyscraper condemnation affiliates/God save Tudor houses, antique tables, and billiards") and other key cuts such as "People Take Pictures of Each Other," "Last of the Steam Powered Trains," the music hall sounds of "Sitting by the Riverside" and "All of My Friends Were There" speak to a love of both the literal village green as well as the metaphorical village green -- many of these mementoes of the past are likely better left behind (which Davies either notes directly or through comparison) but the crank in him just can't resist making the point that a way of life and a slice of history is sliding away before our very eyes.
Davies spent part of 1968 writing satirical numbers for a late-night BBC comedy program, so it's entirely possible that this ironic sensibility (which would inform his writing from that point forward) spilled over into the writing and creation of this album. Earlier songs like "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and "A Well Respected Man" pointed the way toward this endstate but Davies had never sustained it for a full LP. This was a novella about the premature death of England, The Concept and The Empire.
Two contemporaneous non-album tracks -- "Days" and "Wonderboy" -- do as good a job of explaining Davies' motives at the time (a sort of inward and wistful focus on their Britishness, which a five year U.S. performance ban for reasons that remain somewhat vague no doubt also created, by extension) as the album itself, which is nonetheless one of the first extant concept albums ever recorded.
These days, we think of Davies as doing his best work with a quiet, knowing, ironic smile -- this is the album that started his whole downstream career phase as the poet laureate of a quickly-evaporating Albion, which groups like the Libertines (and all their tongue-in-cheek Olde Ways mythmaking) were surely taking note of.
A top-ten all time record for me. All hail the Godfather of Britpop (I'm sure he hates that moniker but it doesn't mean it's not true).
Oct 27, 2024
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Ive been having trouble coming up with the things I want to post on here, but recently a friend sent me an Instagram reel with a song in it that I just couldn’t put my finger on. After asking everyone around me, just playing it over and over it in my mind, I realized it’s “Let’s Go Away for Awhile” by the Beach Boys. One thing led to another and now I want to start doing reviews for classic and new albums-that I like. I don’t want to be a dick.
After more thinking I realized there’s not much new to say about it. The consensus on Pet Sounds is that it’s sonically one of the most impressive albums of its era, and influenced pop in a multitude of ways. Some say it’s what made the Beatles want to start being taken more seriously as artist.
But as someone who grew up in a post Pet Sounds world (very, might I add), it’s hard to draw the connections because pop music is so far away from this sound now. Still, it doesn’t date itself, either in instrumentation, lyricism, composition, or other ways. It feels incredibly fresh, and feels like the biggest pop artist of the current century could decide to make it tomorrow, and it would pop off.
The lyricism is a sort of longing that makes me think of Jeff Buckley, or it might make you think of a first love that you ruined because of inexperience and inability. It’s quite simple, but it’s the idea that he’s saying “all the right things”.
On the other hand, both with the combination of how the instruments and Brian and Carl Wilson (I had to look that up, thought it was just Brian for so long) or Mike Love‘s voices, the album sounds still very impressive. Im not sure I have the vocabulary for it, but both from the quite sparse songs like “Don’t Talk” to the lush ones like “Here Today”, everything feels meticulously constructed to fit the lyrics and where it’s actually placed in the album.
It’s a 10, because of course it’s 10, but it’s important to go back and appreciate why it’s a 10. I enjoyed doing so, even after remembering the songs that made me think of my first girlfriend lol.
After more thinking I realized there’s not much new to say about it. The consensus on Pet Sounds is that it’s sonically one of the most impressive albums of its era, and influenced pop in a multitude of ways. Some say it’s what made the Beatles want to start being taken more seriously as artist.
But as someone who grew up in a post Pet Sounds world (very, might I add), it’s hard to draw the connections because pop music is so far away from this sound now. Still, it doesn’t date itself, either in instrumentation, lyricism, composition, or other ways. It feels incredibly fresh, and feels like the biggest pop artist of the current century could decide to make it tomorrow, and it would pop off.
The lyricism is a sort of longing that makes me think of Jeff Buckley, or it might make you think of a first love that you ruined because of inexperience and inability. It’s quite simple, but it’s the idea that he’s saying “all the right things”.
On the other hand, both with the combination of how the instruments and Brian and Carl Wilson (I had to look that up, thought it was just Brian for so long) or Mike Love‘s voices, the album sounds still very impressive. Im not sure I have the vocabulary for it, but both from the quite sparse songs like “Don’t Talk” to the lush ones like “Here Today”, everything feels meticulously constructed to fit the lyrics and where it’s actually placed in the album.
It’s a 10, because of course it’s 10, but it’s important to go back and appreciate why it’s a 10. I enjoyed doing so, even after remembering the songs that made me think of my first girlfriend lol.
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Shameless self promotion alert -- my new book (published by the good folks at HoZac) is officially out on Friday and some of the advance press is now starting to land, which is fun to see. (You can order it here, if you're so inclined: https://hozacrecords.com/product/aifl/)
Our friends at Flood Magazine were among the first to write it up and decided to feature a book about EPs by.... posting a playlist of some of my/contributors' favorite songs from their favorite EPs. Sounds about right!
"His new book An Ideal for Living: A Celebration of the EP, both makes a case for the format’s legitimacy and backs that claim up with a fairly bulletproof top-25 EPs list for every decade dating back to the 1950s. From the Joy Division release referenced in the book’s title to the iconic Simon & Garfunkel collection depicted on the book’s cover and well beyond, duBrowa is intent on helping readers understand the value of these truncated tracklists as being much more than an afterthought in an artist’s oeuvre."
BONUS POINTS FOR THE USE OF THE WORD OEUVRE. :)
May 30, 2024
Top Recs from @shoegazer55
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Not sure why but it has just been a great album to be doing my homework to. I've been using my CD copy for the last few days, and when I finish it I end up just looping it back again. Just a classic, never gets old.
Mar 7, 2025
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❤️im gonna ramble for a second. i have a real distaste for dating apps, but despite this i still don’t delete them. a small part of me thinks it’ll work out in my favor one day. but shoutout the loyal storylikers i’ve gained from failed hinge talking stages hahaha… i have a very loose definition of ‘type’ in terms of physicality, and even then someone physicality is never a deal breaker. usually. i don’t think i am meant to meet people this way. and i think a lot of people also say this so i am not original in this feeling, but i think i need to fall in love with a friend, someone that there is already a baseline compatibility with, a mutual appreciation already there. all the fanfic i read as a kid was a friends to lovers trope! and i think it works for a reason. that being said its scary to become friends with someone and then think your feelings are further than platonic, because now its hard to decipher between what could be deliberately flirty or just like. your standard hang ykno? i still have never successfully deciphered this so i don’t wanna stand on my soapbox and act like i have any real expertise. just thinking out loud. i’ve been kinda lonely recently and everyone around me has been getting into relationships, this venus retrograde is no joke haha. and the added nuance to the lesbian dating experience, ive been feeling more isolated than usual. sorry this one’s a bummer a little!!! maybe i should stick to album / song reviews
Mar 12, 2025
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🍀hello!!!!
im nora, a lot of people know me as nori, and i wanted to start blogging again as a hobby so i thought this could be a cool platform to try out… i enjoy music, live shows, radio, art, and a lot of other things… and i plan to talk about all of it :)
this will also serve as a spot for me to log mixes from my semester-long radio show ‘in your orbit’ and perhaps i’ll post some of my printmaking work here too, maybe talk about it. trying to keep a really relaxed approach to blogging, because it’s supposed to be fun!
thanks for reading <3
Mar 5, 2025