It’s just a dream
The hands — your hands — which tighten around her neck, a futile effort to stifle the screams
It’s just a dream
The nails digging into your arms, pulling chunks of your flesh with each desperate drag
Those scars won’t be there tomorrow
Because this is just a dream
Of course this is a dream – why else would she have trusted you? Why did she get in the car with a man who just polished off half a plastic handle of rum?
It’s just a dream
But you hate her like it’s real. The way she thrashes like a cornered possum
as if there was ever some sort of life here to be saved.
This is just a dream
It takes a lot longer than you thought it would, but finally she stops kicking. For a moment, every muscle in her body contracts with a strength much greater than yours.
And then the death rattle, a kinetic sigh and everything goes limp
At this moment you’re not even thinking about what you’re going to do with the body
Or what you’re going to do to the body
Because you’ve just had the most powerful sexual release of your entire life
Even better than your fantasies
And why should you be worried about things like that? After all
This is just a dream, it has to be —
But it’s your favorite kind.
Well now that 90% of you have stopped reading, I apologize for the first person, Maniac style kill scene but I do have a point to make. As the hideously tedious Dahmer series on Netflix has become one of its biggest hits ever, the ethics of the true crime genre are under greater scrutiny than ever. I think part of the reason suburban soccer moms throw on murder podcasts during their daily commute is because media has trained us not to see serial killers as exactly what they are — glorified sex offenders, rapists with a murder / control fetish for whom murder is more of a side effect of their other crimes. That point is exactly the message of the book Dark Dreams, a landmark publication by FBI profiler and real life Mindhunter Roy Hazelwood. That makes it all the more ironic that the book which the Dexter series is based on, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, pays homage to it, considering the way it gets Hazelwood’s interpretations exactly wrong.
In the book and the show Dexter, the titular character is portrayed as a person with an irrepressible compulsion just to kill, just..end life. That compulsion is so simple that it can be ‘redirected’ at ‘bad guys’, ultimately making Dexter something of a gore-soaked anti hero. The reason no murderous figure like this has ever actually existed is testament to the fact that this is simply not the nature of these low lives. The urge for true life serial killers is sexual gratification, which can only be fully achieved by incorporating violence and control. While Dexter may basically just be The Punisher, there is absolutely nothing worth emulating or admiring about the real world perpetrators.
Wow that was a scary intro! It’s October didn’t you know. This is once again a bit of a party mix, stretching across a slightly broader range of genres which I hope pays off. To reiterate my intent, I happen to love all of the songs on these mixes and I believe they are all a worthy use of the several minutes each of them takes — but I don’t expect everyone else to. I just ask my listeners to give each song one full play through, and if it’s not for you, boom, skip button.
Mura Masa’s strangely beautiful slomo heads up the mix, with chipmunked vocals overtop an addictive, choppy dubstep style beat. Lil Yachty’s Poland plays next, a truly unique entry into the increasingly overcrowded hip hop space, and the first unequivocal hit for Yachty since 2019. After an unfinished demo leaked to wide acclaim (and, sigh, memery), he capitalized on the unintended boost by releasing the song as is with a higher quality master. The track is about nothing more than Lil Boat bringing lean (Wockhardt, or Wock, is one of the name brand labels for promethazine syrup) with him to the proud nation of Poland. Not exactly known for being a real vocalist, it’s the operatic, Radiohead-like quality to his warbling timber that makes the song so different and appealing. A track this fresh and popular is liable to start a wave in hip hop but honestly, how do you even make another song in this style?
Baby Tate taps 2 Chainz for the breezy, 90’s style club banger Ain’t No Love, a straightforward anthem about getting loose in the club without dudes slobbering all over her. 2 Chainz is in peak form per usual, dropping unapologetic dad raps like “Say you want some sauce / first thing you gotta do is ketchup (catch up)”. Bayli keeps the energy high with her diabolical verse on demon time, the titular track from the aforementioned Mura Masa’s new album. “Know I got a weird vibe” she croons; something about her tonality & flow, as well as Mura Masa’s beat heavy production make the track feel like a very intentional homage to Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom EP.
Hold The Girl is the eponymous track off of Rina Sawayama’s massively disappointing sophomore album. Where her SAWAYAMA record felt like a 49 minute dance party cheekily celebrating excess, glamour, and The 90s, Hold The Girl is deadly earnest, the obvious result of a whole lot of therapy sessions on the part of the artist. While all of that is great for her, it doesn’t make for very interesting (or fun) listening, and should have been left where it belongs in the diary. This title track almost makes it all worth it, though, as Rina belts her ass off in tribute to the little girl she used to be, the one she tried to kill when she got older in an effort to appear cool, nonchalant. This song demonstrates the potential that the album failed to achieve, one where the artist manages to deliver a soaring pop-dance anthem wherein she still pays tribute to herself (in a relatively relatable way) and her personal growth. It’s excellent.
This leads us to Bjork’s Hyperballad, one of the most universally beloved songs of her career, so I won’t expend too many words on it here. I’m including it because this is a reminder of why the world loves this strange, tiny sprite from Reykjavik. Besides her world-beating vocal gifts, her music is also bursting with her very distinct personality, an eternal, artsy optimism. A quiet description of an inexplicable daily ritual of waking up early to throw trash off a cliff builds into a full on dance song, replete with euro-techno beat. It’s a work of genius that no one else on earth is capable of producing. Speaking of oddballs with megawatt voices, Caroline Polachek tries something a little different on Sunset, a really gorgeous pop ballad in the style of flamenco music (think lots of Spanish guitar). Her arresting “oo-ooo-oooo” vocal runs hang around the walls of my head like a ghost – I find myself whistling it constantly because I, obviously, could never hit that vocal register singing along.
curious/furious is my favorite solo track from Willow to date, combining pitchy, pop punk vocals with a handclap beat to create an endlessly catchy tune that could slot easily into just about any set list at a Warped tour. Semi-Charmed Life is on next, a song I’ve come to regard in a much different lens than when I was a child and it played on the radio ad nauseam. At the time I thought of it as flip, kind of an upbeat, womanizing “fuck you” to, uh, the concept of society in general, I guess. The song is, of course, nothing like that, instead being a slice of life track from the perspective of a young, meth-addicted couple desperate to find another way to live. You get the sense that they genuinely love each other but that the drugs create an untraversable distance, sort of like Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly’s characters in Requiem for a Dream, except on uppers. I enjoy the use of musical concepts to describe love as well: “I speak to you like the chorus to the verse / chop another line like a coda with a curse” or “I believe in the faith that grows / and that four right chords could make me cry”.
Too Much is the second Freddie Gibbs track on this mix; he is an artist who is somewhat hit or miss for me, but his newest album $oul $old $eparately really impressed me. He trades verses with Moneybagg Yo at a relentless pace which you figure has to slow down at some point soon but never does. The shit goes off. Rocky Road slows the tempo of the mix down with a CMG posse cut featuring thoughtful, street level verses from every contributor, including guest Kodak Black, who is no stranger to a jail cell. After that we get 90 Proof, a triumphant return for Smino, a rapper who used to feature heavily on just about every playlist I made five or so years ago. It’s a stoney Motown cut in the vein of Childish Gambino’s Awaken, My Love, featuring an energetic verse from elusive superstar J. Cole. Smino’s got a hit with this one, and the face he’s making on the album art is exactly how I would look if I took a shot of anything 90 proof.
Dr. Hook’s (that’s really their name) Sharing The Night Together is unlike anything else on this mix, melding blue eyed R&B with that late 70s soft rock sound. It’s lovely, despite the criminal levels of horniness coming off this thing – I mean it is quite literally about propositioning a stranger at a bar. It’s a sex positive love letter to lonely hearts everywhere, one which I bet you will be singing along with by the second listen.
I’ve got no idea who Tate McRae is, so if she’s some TikTok billionaire that everyone hates or something, just don’t tell me, because I think uh oh is a cool pop tune. I happen to enjoy this brand of spaciously produced bedroom pop, with big hits of bass punctuating the tightly structured track. She details a situationship in which both parties seem to want more, with Tate keeping her distance and preferring to make contact only for sexual encounters when she’s falling down drunk. There is nothing formulaic about the sensational Grenadian / English songstress Shygirl, who pushes the envelope even further with Shlut. Rapping over a pitch black beat, Shygirl embraces her power as a sexual libertine, taking self-love to the next level as she purrs about the ways literally gets off on herself (“I wish I was you / so I could get a piece of me”).
In the spirit of the spooky season, Monaleo has dropped like a… horror-rap cut (look at that blood soaked cover art) with Body Bag. The bars on here are even more aggressive and violent than usual (“I will kill you and let my cousin do a TikTok on yo grave”), while a bed of John Carpenter (Halloween director and soundtrack composer) style synth notes dot the beat. Monaleo is a pretty unserious person so the song is funny as hell too, with taunts like “I just heard your album / it wasn’t giving what it was supposed to have gave / I could be at my wedding and I still wouldn’t trust the nigga”.
Keep Your Distance and Bow And Say Grace are high energy, straightforward trap cuts that will have you feeling like robbing your neighbor (they deserve it). On My Friends, Ty Dolla $ign finds unexpectedly easy chemistry with gangster rapper Lil Durk on the fun as hell My Friends. As is his wont, Durkio drops bars which are unintentionally hilarious in their honesty (“You wanna fight me cuz I’m sober / bitch you drink too much”) while Ty luxuriates in the lifestyle that comes with being rich, black, and poppin’.
Sabotage is the second track from EST Gee in a three song run, demonstrating his versatility on his excellent new album I Never Felt Nun. Where Bow And Say Grace was a chest thumping drill cut, Sabotage is pure R&B, blessed with a beautiful chorus courtesy of Bryson Tiller. EST Gee isn’t afraid to get a lil nasty (“I don’t trip / I don’t miss / Like when I grabbed your hair and pulled you off the tip”) in his appeal to someone who broke his heart. Next up is Choose A Life, a catchily cynical throwback to synthy, 80s Britpop. In what is most likely a direct reference to the legendary “Choose Life” speech from Trainspotting, artists Wings of Desire detail their dim view of suburban comfortability – “choose a life / get a job / find a wife / fuck it up”.
The “Choose Life” scene in Trainspotting has gotta be the most glorious moment of Ewan Macgregor’s career, right? If you haven’t seen it, fix that.
Finally, Maggie Rogers’ wistful Anywhere With You plays us out. It’s just a beautiful ballad about undemanding, unconditional, unglamorous love, spending quality time together, that sort of thing. Maggie would rather just listen to the wind on a long drive with her lover than to listen to the radio, listening to “that song I’m supposed to know / by some fucking bro”.
🧟♂️🧛♀️ Resurrections Corner 🧛♂️🧟♀️
- Hyperballad. This was included on a playlist maybe 8 years ago, when they were still in an archaic and contextless form.
🤔 😳 Questionable Lyrics Zone 🧐🤨
- “A nigga hate on me / I’ma fuck his favorite baby mama” – EST Gee, Bow And Say Grace. The idea that a man has enough of a series of baby mamas to rank them, and that Gee is going to specifically target their most favorite, is a weird and ice cold threat 🥶
- If Bjork lives at the top of a mountain, who is leaving car parts, bottles and cutlery around for her to throw off the cliff. Is it them? Are they just a big bunch of litterbugs? Perhaps the cliff overlooks a landfill? Need answers. — Bjork, Hyperballad
- “wondering if I’d still love the money / if I ain’t have fame” – Polo G., 9 Lives. Celebrities usually complain that they wish they could have the money without the inability to live as a normal person, so I’m not sure what my boy Polo is saying here
- “Get my money in five ways / I’m in the driveway / diamonds on me like Zimbabwe” – Joony, FYTB. This casual reference to conflict diamond mining takes me out.
👨💻 Stray Observations 📝
- The album art is “Ten of Pentacles” by Micah Ulrich. The card symbolizes solid foundations and satisfaction with life, a trust that the seeds you sow now will yield comfort and stability later. Felt like I was able to sort of sneak a positive message into creepy imagery, in keeping with the season. Did you know: a pentacle is a pentagram INSIDE a circle. You’ll know its just a pentagram if it is not surrounded by a circle. Pentagram + circle = pentacle.
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