The Reluctantly Anti-Brat Summer
Chronic pain kept me from having a brat summer. To cope, I looked for songs that reminded me of the strange duality of feeling physically burnt-out but emotionally energized.
Listen, I was looking forward to turning 40. I really was. But I’ve been at this for half a year now, and it’s complete nonsense. None of you warned me that the warranty on my body was going to run out the second I hit middle age1.
Setting aside the unending existential dread that’s always faintly buzzing behind my eyes just a little bit, 40 isn’t a number that scared me. Something about watching a new generation of college students lose their minds over anti-aging creams and injectables completely disabused me of the notion that this milestone carried with it some magic expiration date.
My mistake was focusing on the self portrait stashed in my attic growing more haggard by the day, and not this actual sack of meat I’ve been neglecting for decades.
The collapse started right on cue. A few leg pains the week before my birthday sent me straight to an overly-eager, shiny new GP who suggested physical therapy, and why not a mammogram as a special treat? Armed with referrals and wondering when they started letting seventeen-year-olds practice medicine unsupervised, I spent the next few months in PT making my pain significantly worse.
My physical therapist said “you should really be better by now,” and sent me to a specialist. The specialist wouldn’t see me without another referral from the GP. The GP gave me an x-ray. I got another mammogram (the first one came back abnormal, but don’t worry; I’m okay). When I finally saw the specialist, they told me I had a herniated disc, though I’d have to get an MRI before they could help. The MRI confirmed the herniated disc. This bought me an appointment for a steroid injection, but not until two months later. In the midst of this, just for fun, my vision started to go blurry (“bad quality tears,” my eye doctor declared). The injection is scheduled for later this week. All of this took six months in toto.
What happened in the last six months, my friends?
Certainly not the dramatic reinvention of an already-iconic hyperpop diva, one who managed to make both a word and a color reach virality beyond even millennial pink, who catapulted an awkward indie kid to stardom, or who gave Gen Z a complete identity crisis.
Certainly not. Because how was I supposed to have a brat summer with a herniated disc?
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What’s worse, I had my chance just before it started. Charli xcx played at Primavera Sound in Barcelona at the end of May, just before Brat dropped, and I was right there. Thunderstorms, my goddamned leg pain after twelve hours on my feet, and a 4am time slot the night before hotel checkout all conspired against me. Bed seemed like the sensible, mature, comfortable decision.
Regrets? I have a few.
Josh Lora (of
) posted a few days ago about how content we’ve all become, at least outwardly, to sit at home scrolling our phones, inverting the expectation that going out is necessary for healthy social standing or even good mental health. Brat summer’s emergence flew in the face of this new normal. What should have given the increasingly antisocial millenial-and-under populace an excuse to get out of their homes and into the club made (many of) them double down instead. Why bother living your own life when others’ are available for free from the comfort of your bed?I am no stranger at all to rotting in bed. In fact, I’m a pro at it. It kind of comes as part of the standard package of neuro-atypicality. But “early” music festival bedtime notwithstanding, I’m actually at a period in my life, post-pandemic malaise, where I’m ready to push myself out of the house as much as possible.
More travel, more shows, more awkward events to meet new people. I’m up for it. My body, though? Not so much.
I’m not proud to admit that the dreaded fear of missing out still occasionally creeps up on me, even at my age. Now, of course, brat summer is kind of over anyway2, and since the literal pain in my ass has kept me from enjoying any club classics, my FOMO has turned to plain MO.
This late in the game, admitting defeat is only natural. What I’ve found myself doing instead, though, is a sort of rebranding. If I could have curated my own summer vibe, leaning into the situation in which I find myself, what music would be on that playlist? What are the songs that would play when I enter the room, creaking and complaining?
I might not be able to dance right now (or bend over, or stay in one position for longer than fifteen minutes at a time), but nobody said I can’t retcon a summer soundtrack of my very own.
It took me a little while to figure out what kind of music provides the best backdrop for the chronic pain summer I’ve ended up having3, but I think I’ve nailed it.
Obviously, it can’t be dance or electronic music. That’s just salt in the wound. Even the kind of sound conducive to moshing or otherwise convulsing wildly in any kind of dance-adjacent movement would be insulting. Head-nodding, I’ll concede, is acceptable.
Neither should it be the kind of depressive, winter music meant to send one further down into a depressive pit. Please set the Radiohead aside.
I’ll remind you also that I am not a literal person, and I’ve already made it clear that I’m a lyrics-second person.
That means I’m generally averse to applying songs to this theme that are too on the nose. Much as I love, say, Mother Mother, Body is unbearably cliche in this context. It’s also quite… bouncy. Twenty-four-year-old me can hang on to it.
Much more fitting are songs that embody a certain duality that mirrors the sense of fragmentation that I’m starting to learn comes part and parcel with feeling constant pain and discomfort in an otherwise still able body.
How’s that for maudlin, right?
The sound I’m after mixes discordant elements. It’s a very soft voice layered over grungy guitars. It’s the push/pull between loud choruses and whispered verses. It’s what would happen if you could hear salty and sweet.4
The ‘90s were rife with these kinds of combinations. Just think of Loveless, or almost any darker shoegaze — whatever doesn’t lean towards dream pop. The Cranberries had a lock on it with “Zombie,” too. Dolores O’Riordan’s singing is so delicate at first, then yields to yodeling on top of distorted guitars. It was a total shock for anyone still expecting “Dreams” or “Linger.”
But nobody blended salty and sweet quite like Poe.
Actually, Poe is who I originally had in mind when I started thinking through this idea. I know I just finished saying how lyrics don’t matter too much to me (it’s more complicated than that, but that’s another point entirely), but her use of irony is too cleverly done. The ditzy little playground snaps and plinking guitar are adorable for about ten seconds before “his head spins around just like the Exorcist.” An eventual crescendo into the absolute meltdown of a chorus is the cherry on top.
I always hesitate to provide examples I’m certain you’re already familiar with, because anything that carries nostalgic weight will be tied with your personal experiences. Such is the beauty of art’s subjectivity. I will say, though, that a lot of shoegaze and even trip hop seems to fit the bill.
As this is New Bands for Old Heads, I’d rather focus mostly on newer music.
I once described SASAMI as a combination of Magnolia-era Aimee Mann with nu-metal. I feel like sharing the entirety of her 2022 release Squeeze here, because this unhinged blend of genres spreads out across the entire record rather than any particular song, but “Need it To Work” feels like the natural midpoint if I’m forced to choose. I found the album incredibly jarring initially, and it’s what ultimately kept it from making my end-of-year list back then, but for the purpose I want it to serve right now, I think it’s perfect.
It makes sense to group feeble little horse in with Tanukichan. The two have a shoegaze foundation in common, though the former leans more alternative and the latter more electronic. Both feature the signature breathy vocals and plenty of heavy distortion, a combination that I find both irresistible and a satisfying contrast of light and dark.
I said I was avoiding depressing winter music, and then practically in the same breath I throw in Porridge Radio? All I can say to that is I make the rules, so I can break them, too. These are the masters of loudquietloud, the arbiters of tension. If I want to feel dramatic, this is the band I turn to. Their recently-announced new record is one of my most anticipated of 2024 (along with
, of course).I’ll close with what seems an obvious choice for a band that does the interplay of soft and hard very well. Wednesday was one of 2023’s most hyped bands (Rat Saw God made at least twelve top ten lists, and four number one slots), so it’s very unlikely that you’re hearing about them for the first time right now. No surprise that they, like every other new band I’ve mentioned here, echo their 1990’s forebears in style and sentiment. I also appreciate their brand of anti-romanticism: “I sat on the stairs with a neverending nosebleed/you were playing Mortal Kombat.” There’s just something that feels more attainable about that right now than doing a little key in the bathroom.
Nobody who knows me personally will ever accuse me of being optimistic. This was never going to be some uplifting tale of perseverance or overcoming adversity. I’m in pain. It sucks. Curating niche playlists helps distract me. There’s not much more to it than that. I hope it helped you find some new music to listen to… or at least a bit of amusement.
Literally everybody warned me about this.
I’ll spare you the tangent into the absurdity of modern trend cycles.
In contrast to rotting in bed summer, which would require an entirely different mood.
I now realize there’s at least one song that fits the musical theme and the literal lyrics that I wanted to avoid: FKA Twigs’ “home with you.”
Reading this and feeling so much solidarity. My summer has also been defined by weird medical stuff. I love being on a platform where we can talk about how messy and weird and confusing and hard being a human is WITH fire music recs.
This is what I needed. Very comforting. Thanks for everything you do ❤️
Fifty-three year old avid music listener and also avid keeping my body in good enough shape to enjoy concerts, reader here for the first time based on the recommendation of Thea.
Thanks for the SASAMI recommendation, just added several songs to my growing Liked List. I'll be back for more recommendations.
But seriously, is there a pair of shoes made for concerts on concrete floors that will save my feet and knees from days of me bitching at them for outing me as old?