Posted on by Rob Jones

Mazzy Star Play “Fade Into You”

Listen to this track by languid Santa Monica lo-fi outfit Mazzy Star. It’s “Fade Into You”, their hit single that features on their 1994 breakthrough album So Tonight That I Might See . This song  remains to be their signature tune, noted for the sleepy, soporific vocal performance by singer Hope Sandoval.

After a decade in the eighties of big glossy production-driven records, a song like this that seems to evoke the spirit of desolate early seventies folk-rock seems like an unlikely formula for success. This approach fit pretty well to the new decade, with a lot of bands then freed up to reference older musical streams after the eighties’ emphasis on hyper-newness and burying the past was over. Even if that’s true, Mazzy Star came by those influences pretty honestly before it was fashionable anyway.

Joining Sandoval in the band was guitarist David Roback, late of Paisley Underground band The Rain Parade and follow-up band Opal, the latter of which Sandoval was also a part. That scene largely ignored (and was ignored by) the mainstream in the eighties, with references to the warm tones of sixties and early seventies psych and folk arenas more so than to the jittery new wave, sparkly dance pop, or bombastic arena rock of the time. So what helped to make this song a sleeper (and sleepy!) hit by the following decade? Just this, I think; everyone loves a mystery.
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Posted on by Rob Jones

The Negro Problem Play “Bleed”

The Negro Problem Joys and ConcernsListen to this track by Los Angeles folk-chamber-pop vehicle with a moniker laced with irony, The Negro Problem. It’s “Bleed”, a key track as taken from their 1999 album Joys & Concerns.

“The band” is more of an artistic vehicle for songwriter Mark Stewart, professionally credited and known as simply “Stew”. Being black in LA, his decision to record music that is inspired by more by Jimmy Webb than by Sly Stone is a rebellion against the undrawn lines of demarcation around who makes what kind of pop music and with whom — specifically if you’re not white.

Yet, Stew is a part of a continuum of music made in that city, most notably by Arthur Lee who made some of the same stylistic moves as Stew over thirty years before. Along these lines, maybe the name of the band isn’t all that ironic after all, or at least not in the way that one might think. That aside, this song is hinting at themes that go beyond all that still, out of the realm of musical divisions and into one of human foibles.
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