Blog post 11
Ren G, Bad Bunny, Sipper, Starcleaner Reunion, Kareem Rahma
Charlie here. Thanks to everyone who came to see We Take Manhattan DJ all night at Le Bain the Friday before last. There are now 1,700 of you reading this blog, awesome. If you’re new here, I talk about concerts/events I’ve been to recently, and I do write-ups of songs. I mostly write about NYC music, often new releases, but I occasionally look farther afield at stuff from elsewhere. Use the comments to let me know any songs I should listen to! And stay tuned for future We Take Manhattan party announcements.
Blog time. I’ve been mostly taking it easy and not going out when I’m not DJing, but recently I went to I <3 Rockstars, the vinyl party at Studio 151 above Nublu. And boy, am I glad I did. The party started out very low-key because it was so unbelievably cold out. I was talking to Lucas and Johnny in the corner, when a group entering the room caught my eye. “Guys, I hate to interrupt,” I said, “but Beck just walked in.” If you know me at all, you probably know that Beck is my favorite artist. One of the highlights of my recent life was seeing him play a career-spanning set at Madison Square Garden in September 2023, then going to the afterparty at The Mulberry where he and his band played a whole other set in a basement. It was totally packed and cramped and awesome; I was standing in the front row so close to Justin Meldal-Johnsen that I kept having to dodge the head of his bass. I even got to request a song, off Midnite Vultures of course. Also Jon Hamm got up and sang a few songs? Wild night.
Okay back to Studio 151 in January, where new memories were being made: Beck had just arrived with Broadway playwright (and The Sweet East actor!) Jeremy O. Harris. Sid Simons finished his DJ set and Jaie Gon took over, with several great choices that I was Shazaming until I remembered I could just go up to the booth and ask Jaie what wax he was spinning. Later, I happened to be chilling outside as Beck was leaving. I shook his hand and said something insane like “glad to see you out on the scene.” After returning to the cozy upstairs, I re-met Jeremy (we were on the same season of Subway Takes), who was super friendly. One of those nights where you’re really glad you ended up going out. Walked back to the L with a big grin on my face, in spite of freezing my ass off.
Time to talk about tracks. It’s somehow taken me until this 11th blog post to realize I can embed Spotify players, so now you can more easily listen along if you’re reading in the Substack app. Or if you’re a Good Person and you use a different way of listening to music online, do that.
“Cherry Bye Bye” - Ren G
I didn’t really notice this song when the former Club Eat singer released her great solo mixtape Miss 24/7 in October. But after watching Ren perform it at our Le Bain party on Friday, now the chorus is totally stuck in my head. Produced by Bamster, whose name I recognize from his work with Babymorocco.
“BAILE INoLVIDABLE” - Bad Bunny
An unforgettable dance, indeed. Feels a little strange to be writing about one of the biggest songs in the world, but Bad Bunny is one of the few pop stars being genuinely playful with production. The GF has been playing this album non-stop and I can’t really complain, she’s got great music taste. This is maybe the best track on the album, but if you want a dancefloor banger, listen to “NUEVAYoL.” “WELTiTA” is also great, coolest bass I’ve heard in a while. Was hard to choose just one!
“drop” - Sipper
Don’t know how I haven’t written about this track yet. Joey’s doing a really interesting thing online where he’s trying to beat the algorithms at their own game. On Spotify, he’s releasing songs under multiple different aliases. Primarily there’s Sipper, which has a feel-good indie rock track from 2021 called “Dance in Room Song” at the top of its page with 22 million plays. But once he released this dance track “drop” last year, it seemed like he might have realized that putting out songs in totally different musical genres wasn’t doing him any favors with the algorithm. But even if you’re a singles artist, who wants to let an algo dictate what music you make? Rather than limit himself, Joey simply started releasing different tracks under different names, sometimes tagging multiple artist profiles on the same release, and sometimes only having one of his names on there. Primarily there’s Sipper, but now there’s also sipper2, sippersippersipper, and most recently: vocalist (a moniker which seems to exist for releasing his jungle tracks). The multiplicity of artist names is like an Uno reverse of Spotify’s tactic (exposed by Liz Pelly) of driving streams to fake artist profiles for artists that don’t actually exist. But here, all of the iterations of Sipper are created by a living breathing musician. The strategy dovetails with TikTok, where Joey plays multiple characters on multiple accounts: he plays himself, of course, but he also takes the role of, for example, a fan who is surprised that this artist Sipper has released a song that sounds totally different than the one that got them listening in the first place. It’s all very clever, and it could be cringe, but it’s justified by the fact that Joey happens to be musically talented, and even more importantly, he’s highly prolific.
“Plein Air” - Starcleaner Reunion
Listened to this band because the vocalist is featured on the new EZ Company song that I wrote about last time. This track is my favorite; it really reminds me of these two projects from a few years ago in the late 20-teens with a similar feel: Furrows and Olden Yolk. In that it’s got an unusual but catchy melody, laid back acoustic guitar with electric counterpoint at key moments, but also drums that provide sufficient forward propulsion.
“New Year New York” - Kareem Rahma + Tiny Gun
Leaving you with a love letter to NYC. Anthemic chorus with specific bars name-checked in the verses by the self-described “mid-30s sucker left on Avenue A” star of Subway Takes backed by his rock ‘n’ roll crew. If you’ve ever considered moving to LA, play this.
That’s all for now!
Charlie