Content Nausea No. 85: Homo Sapien
What a time to be alive / A TV set in the fridge / A voice that recites the news / And leaves out the gloomy bits
Welcome to the 85th edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 84 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
I can string together most of what happened 10 years ago yesterday thanks to both my memory and my erratic, indulgent posting on Instagram (and my records spreadsheet): It was a Monday; I woke up at Anna’s in Ridgewood Queens; I drank a tequila sunrise; I went to the Apple Store on West 14th Street in Manhattan because something I can’t remember came up with my MacBook; someone had typed ‘fringe swimsuit’ into the search bar on MSN dot com on the computer I sat at while I was waiting; I bought At Echo Lake by Woods at Co-Op 87; a torrential downpour hit while I was waiting for the M train in Ridgewood; I was served at Manhattan Inn (probably a dark & stormy?) and it kept raining; Anna and I ventured up to Calyer Street in Greenpoint to see DIIV play “an intimate live performance” at Insound(!) the night before Oshin came out; afterward, we went on Haley’s roof.
(That weekend was also when we became friends with Anastassia, went to FMLY Fest at Shea and went to Governor’s Ball.)
((12 years ago yesterday is the first time I saw Cloud Nothings live, but who’s counting?))
Anyway, that’s a lot. But today is Oshin’s 10th anniversary, and it finished 2012 as my album of the year, so I figured it’s worth some reflection. Plus, it’s just funny to remember DIIV’s Moment In Time in Brooklyn music.
DIIV re-released Oshin over the weekend in a deluxe edition that cost $50 that I didn’t want to pay for (I got my copy in 2012 when I pre-ordered it so I could go to the Insound performance), and one of the selling points — besides a bunch of demos that did begin to pique my interest — was extended liner notes that featured reflections from the band members. I believe I wrote it before in this space, but I can’t think of a band from that era that people might want to hear from less that this one. It didn’t end well for most of them.
More interesting than the additional tracks on the re-released edition of Oshin are that DIIV and Captured Tracks packaged the three singles that came out in 2011 and early 2012 together into a box set. It’s a great collection of six songs. “Sometime” and “Human,” which made it onto Oshin, are obviously strong songs — “Sometime” was prime Facebook status material — but “Corvalis,” “Big Joke” and, to a lesser extent, “Geist” hold up just as well.
It’s funny to listen to these songs now and think about how much I grew to love them over the final bits of 2011 and into 2012. Given Z. Cole Smith’s association with Beach Fossils, Anna and I dismissed DIIV (then, Dive) as a Beach Fossils rip-off and just sort of let the band exist in the background. We felt “Big Joke” was a fitting song title for the band. In hindsight, songs like “Sometime” sound more like what Beach Fossils would become rather than what Beach Fossils already was.
I think the clincher for DIIV were the live shows. The first time we saw them was right before Christmas in 2011 when they played 285 Kent with The Babies and Widowspeak (stacked bill!) and it caught our attention enough that we went to see them the next week at Big Snow. Then, we saw them at 3 or 4 a.m. on New Year’s Day at 285 at a show that had an open vodka bar. Good times.
But those shows truly rocked, and it was clear that they were a charismatic (though often glowering) band. It was also clear that they weren’t Beach Fossils. There was a darker element at play in the music — one that became fitting for that summer.
I don’t remember too much too much about the specifics of the show at Insound. It was a small crowd in kind of a weird room to see a show, but the sound was good and the energy was there. In running through the album yesterday and today, I think it holds up. The singles are great, but “Past Lives,” “How Long Have You Known” and “Follow” — I had posted a screenshot of this song playing on my phone to the grid and called it a “perfect song” or something along those lines — are three of the better songs to come out that year. “How Long Have You Known” has an understated urgency to it. “Wait” is beautiful. “Doused” was known as “the dark song” until we knew it was called, and it’s a cathartic closer.
DIIV certainly fits into the category of band that was kind of an acquired taste at the time and where you have to add the “say what you want about them, but…” caveat, but I think it’s hard to deny Oshin as a great album. There’s obviously an element of heavy nostalgia here, given that it soundtracked a pretty degenerate summer, but when I was hating on this band at 19, I didn’t think it should still hold up at 30.
Some content I wrote this week
Ranked the football games this fall, along with the quarterbacks and the running backs.
8 breakout candidates for this fall.
Some content I listened to this week
I saw two shows last weekend — Motion City Soundtrack at The Fillmore Philadelphia, Frank Turner at The Fillmore Silver Spring — and both were really good. Commit This To Memory by Motion City Soundtrack holds up. Finally seeing Frank was more cathartic than I expected.
The 062k22 playlist is good.
I was driving last weekend and had the stray thought, “Dang, they really let the Arctic Monkeys name an album Suck It and See a couple years ago,” so I decided to listen to it.
New Wonder Years single is good, along with this Pitchfork piece on the band. (imo bringing a book to give to your interview subject is kind of cringe, but 10:04 was one of the best books I read last year, so I can’t be too mad?)
Shouts out to the Frass Green boys, I miss you.
Some content I read this week
I wrapped up On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong and A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan — truly a wild one — last week, and I finished How To Be Normal by Phil Christman this morning. How To Be Normal was a great collection, and I marked so many passages to come back to:
There is no future in normalcy, in our little attempts that we make at building a home in this world from statistics and routines and habits. Our only home is each other.
I am trying to get a book pile for July vacations in order, so if you have any suggestions, let me know.
On Friday’s news: Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker and Jack Mirkinson in Discourse Blog.
What happens when the strategy fails? What is the reason exactly to have waited this long? What happens when we are faced with a complete erosion of our right to be whole in the eyes of the law, and the same politicians who have failed us again and again ask for our votes? When do we stop begging the people in power to listen to us, and force them to?
Tyler Kepner on The Relief Room in The York Times.
Maya on summer.
Andrew Liu on Steph Curry and the Warriors in n+1:
I joked to friends that these losses bothered me so much because they forced me to confront my own mortality. I thought it was miraculous that the Warriors had made it this far, but I was sure that they would lose by the third round at latest, closing the book on their dynasty. I was reminded, absurdly, of my own aging process in the intervening years: graying hair, parenthood, professional advances and setbacks. My life had unfolded in predictable ways in my thirties, both good and bad, but this only further stressed me out that the passage of time would be impossible to stop. But so long as Curry, Thompson, and Green continued running around the court and wreaking havoc with their unique chaotic synergy, I could still pretend there was time left to accomplish everything I—we, everyone—once hoped to.
Samantha Leach on Chris Black in Men’s Health.
Hannah Seidlitz on Kevin Morby in The New Yorker:
“You can look at an old photograph, and you’re in the future, so it’s easy for you to judge it,” he said, gazing at a painting of a nun in ecstasy. “But it’s almost like the person in the photograph is laughing back at you. Like, ‘You think you’re above being captured, because you’re breathing. But you don’t know how quickly it’s all gonna go by.’ ”
Drew Millard on LIV Golf (which I still don’t completely grasp) in Dirt.
A.J. Daulerio in The Small Bow.
Doug Glanville on Tim Anderson in Andscape.
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
Thank you for reading the 85th edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
The sensual touch of glass
So smooth on the fingertips
The erotic quality of
Not feeling meaningless
Reflecting a lovely gaze
Commanding and amorous
A matte-finished wishing well
Seductive and glamorous
—D.G.