#24: Also vomit
The Next Great American Novelist, Shake the Baby Till the Love Comes Out, The Samuel Jackson Five, Pooh Shiesty, Yo Kinky, Better Oblivion Community Center
The Next Great American Novelist
Maybe it’s on the nose that a band called the Next Great American Novelist has a song called “Gravity’s Rainbow,” but that appears to be the extent of the group’s tropiness. (Not a real word.) Or at least intentional tropiness. (Again, not a real word.) I started googling the song titles from their albums in the event other song titles were literary allusions. The results for “American Queen,” from 2014’s I’ll See You in the Art You Love, included this:
“Right, that’s book one of the New Camelot Trilogy,” you say. I see you know your crotch novels! (That’s what my sister calls them.) The author’s website describes American Queen as “a contemporary reimagining of the legend of King Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot—elegant, carnal, and unforgettable.” Goodreads user Amy is more direct: “Strap on your vibrators, girls. Strap them on RIGHT NOW because you need to be prepared.” Oh, she goes on: “The hot headboard rocking in this book will cause you to go INSANE with need for release. I am not kidding, faithful readers. In-Freaking-Sane.” From what I gathered, the female protagonist ends up in a throuple with the president and vice president, which explains the dude-on-dude GIF on American Queen’s Goodreads page. Actually, I really hope the Next Great American Novelist’s “American Queen” was inspired by this book. Here’s hoping they follow it up with “American Prince” and “American King.”
Shake the Baby Till the Love Comes Out
Reader Stephen Haag recommended this one many moons ago, and when I saw that the duo called their album Growth and Healing Through Bringing Others Down, I immediately regretted not getting to them sooner.
Shake the Baby don’t disappoint with some of their song titles, either, like these from 2018’s In a Pretty Suit: “Mine is Viscera,” “Little Spoon, Big Ego,” and “Also Vomit.” (Also Vomit is currently unclaimed as a band name, so someone grab it.) The band managed to complete a massive tour to support Growth and Healing that wrapped up on March 7, 2020—just under the wire! They’ve kept a low profile since, posting last October, “Please pardon our lack of presence. We’ve been busy daily coping with the world’s conflagrant blaze. We hope you’ve found success in your own daily efforts!” They’re holding out hope that they’ll still get to play this year’s ArcTanGent festival in the UK, which offers a goddamn bounty of awesome band names that will keep this newsletter going for at least a few more months. Such as…
The Samuel Jackson Five
The Proper Name Collision is a classic move when it comes to band monikers, having been well documented during the long run of the Year in Band Names. (See the Faith Hills Have Eyes, Kathleen Turner Overdrive, Tom Cruise Control, etc.) The moniker chosen by this Norwegian post-rock band is so thuddingly obvious, it made me wonder how I haven’t seen it somewhere before. It’s also a pretty discordant choice considering the type of music the Samuel Jackson Five plays, which the group self-describes as “Semi-Instrumental rock with the occasional vocals, a sip of folk, an few bars of electronica, an ounce of 60-70s progressive rock, seasoned with some 90's-00's indie, post and mainstream rock.” (Is that all?) There’s no shouting, though! You can’t name yourselves after Samuel Jackson and not have a lot of shouting! Didn’t you watch Chappelle’s Show?
Pooh Shiesty
Given its position as music’s most popular genre, it’s surprising more hip-hop doesn’t show up more around these parts. Then again, perhaps no other genre is more concerned about the optics of appearing successful, which makes for a relative paucity of goofy monikers. (Anyone heard from Dudu Stinks lately? Exactly.) Taking at look RapCaviar, there’s not a lot to work with: DDG, DaBaby, Rod Wave, Young Dolph, Yung Bleu. Maybe Moneybagg Yo? But hey, YIBN alumni A Boogie Wit da Hoodie and YoungBoy Never Broke Again are on there. Anyway, Pooh Shiesty sounds like the Winnie the Pooh’s scheming alter ego. His Bizarro or Wario, if you will. But Winnie ain’t got stacks like this. Optics.
Yo Kinky
Here I was, hoping for another hip-hop name, but instead wind up with something much more common for BNB. Press release: “The post-pop duo creates music that layers seductive patter lyrics over shimmering angular guitars and drum machines.” Bandcamp: “The two-piece incorporates drum machines and buzzing, squelching keyboards with guitars that alternately shimmer and shake with reverb and delay.” Facebook: “We are a duo that marries drum machines and buzzing keyboards amid a wall of guitars, atop which lay bright & sultry vocals.” Yo Kinky is nothing if not on-message.
Better Oblivion Community Center
Hey, while I’m cleaning out some old entries à la Shake the Baby Till the Love Comes Out, let’s strike off Better Oblivion Community Center, which has been on my list since shortly after they started more than two years ago. Why the lag? More than a year passed between their formation and the start of Band Name Bureau, during which time this side project of Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst got plenty of attention. Then again, “plenty of attention” in the highly fragmented, niche world of indie music hardly makes them a cultural phenomenon. It looks like they’re having a good time together though!
POST-SCRIPTS
Another American Queen reader review: “Utterly absurd, utterly filthy, and utterly fun and smart. If you like smut, like really smutty BDSM smut (light on the SM, this is more control than pain, though there is pain), I recommend this absolutely.” My Kindle always has ads for these kinds of books on its home screen, all of them Fifty Shades of Grey wannabes and all of them part of a series. One that pops up frequently is an installment of a “billionaire cowboy romance” series. Then there’s stuff like this:
REPTILE DYSFUNCTION.
Better Oblivion is really solid, if you haven’t checked them out. I’m also a fan of Shake the Baby’s sludgy, stoner instrumentals.
I mentioned this in the River Butcher bonus edition, but some enterprising soul has posted nearly all of the episodes of A.V. Undercover on YouTube. So many memories. It’s a delightful rabbit hole to fall down, especially if you need a reminder of how charming Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit was.