I’m on record as being ambivalent about streaming services and algorithmic discovery. The commodification of art is bad for artists and sets up perverse incentives, and the general abuses of the VC-driven, growth-at-all costs mindset are inimical to good art. That being said, it is pretty rad that I can remember a band I heard once and liked, Google “japanese math rock tri something”, be reminded that it was Tricot, and then go on Spotify and immediately hear most of their music.
Twenty years ago, a similar quest would have required at least one tedious conversation with a record store attendant who would have tried sell me instead on smoking a bowl and listening to “Lateralus” on repeat.
Noise in music comes in many different flavors, and one of my favorite is the din and clatter than comes from a band that loves playing together and has decided to just make a cool fucking racket. Tricot are so clearly having a great time on “18,19”. The frenetic, blistering drums and guitar punches sound like friendly chatter. The chaos and clatter is perfectly paced and the dreamy half-time sections feel like they’re there to give the listener a break. The unbothered, floating vocals are the icing on the top.
The intricacies of what gets referred to as “math rock” are somewhat beyond me. I’ve done enough music theory to know that the math embedded in music itself will only get you so far. At some point you have to accept that 3/4 is not halftime 6/8. But “math rock” seems at times to be a label applied to any bad that’s figured out that there are other, irreducible fractions. I think what I like specifically about Tricot is that if there is intentional oddity here, it’s artfully covered over in a garish blanket of mayhem. If this is Math Rock, then it’s definitely Chaos Theory.
“As for therapy, I have done many different kinds, after, for years, resisting the idea as creativity-killing and self-indulgent: I’ve tried regular talk therapy, CBT for anxiety, Jungian therapy for growing up, and twice-a-week visits to a Freudian psychiatrist to talk about my dad. Sometimes it seemed helpful, sometimes it felt like a waste of time. Mostly it felt like a near-invisible remedy, like taking vitamins; you mostly had to believe, Yes, I do feel better when I’m taking vitamin D.”
This essay by Sheila Heti in Granta leveled me. It is, nominally, about psychedelic-supported therapy, something that I have a passing interest in. Really, it’s about reality and self-conception and much more. I can’t really do it justice. It also convinced me, tangentially, to change how I write these weekly dispatches.
When I started this column, one of the purposes was as a structured way to force myself back into writing about music (and art more generally), something that I loved doing twenty years ago. I gave myself a thin frame of rules and a structure. Over time, that structure has, at times, made it hard and unpleasant to actually write. I think I’ll enjoy this whole process more (and therefore write better) if I cast that structure aside.
I’ve been a little fatigued of memoir of late (we seem to be in veritable memoir bubble), but Heti makes it feel like something different. This piece really is about psychedelics through her own experiences, but her own experiences serve the grander point. It’s a bit of an emotional inversion from the usual memoir essay schtick (that I’ve myself been guilty of) of “here’s a tiny inciting incident and here’s three thousand words about what that incident means about my life”.
Heti uses her own experiences and her life to demonstrate and demystify (even when she’s talking about Gods) what is in many ways an ineffable experience. In that regard, it reminds me of Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception. A deeply personal, but rigorous-as-possible account from someone who is skilled in conveying deep and complex human experiences.