We should take it where we can get it, I guess!
I am so many, many years past knowing how to find new music. Once upon a time I was loitering in the hemp-and-drugrugs store at the mall and asked the cashier what the album was that was playing; boom, I found The Suicide Machines. A friend I had a crush on gave me a mix tape, one side Dave Matthews Band and the other side Metallica; ninth grade was sorted. I listened to the radio all the time, and the radio played the kind of music I liked. I went to concerts and bought the opening band's CD.
Those years are long gone. Since then I've found music I like on mixes from friends who have the music-finding skills I lack (first CDs, then playlists sent via link), or Pandora stations, or Spotify playlists. But mostly nowadays I listen to albums that I loved when I was 22-28 (I've been revising my book to Psapp and rainfall relaxation videos on youtube). That is, whenever I can actually choose the music in the car. "Raffi! Raffi!" someone shouts from the backseat. "Big Beluga!" he objects, when the original Baby Beluga comes on (that's "Little Beluga") instead of the 40th Anniversary special recording Raffi made with Yo-Yo Ma early in the pandemic (which, by the by, has a beautiful new verse added for "grown-up belugas" that I strongly recommend listening to if you grew up on Raffi and could use a bit of his love).
So it's a big deal when I find a new-to-me band to love, which I have done this week. The band is Custard, and I have no idea how well-known they are, especially outside of Australia. They seem to have been big (ish?) in the late 90s—peak time for when my taste in music coalesced!—but they've got new albums all the way up to last year. The first song of theirs I heard sounded to me like Pavement meets Talking Heads. (Tanner said a song I played for him sounded like The Fratellis, but that aspect of their music feels to me more like a touch of the B-52s.) I have no idea how to describe music! But I find it really hard to get into new music these days, even new albums from bands I love, so this feels wonderful.
But it also feels weird and pathetic because the reason I found out about Custard is that their lead singer, David McCormack, does the voice for the dad on my favorite kids cartoon.
Yeah, he's Bluey's dad. I'm listening to Bluey's dad's band.
My parenting corner of the internet was abuzz yesterday with this Vulture article about Bluey. Title: "How Bluey Became the Best Kids’ Show of Our Time." Verdict: correct! Bluey is wonderful, an Australian cartoon in seven-minute episodes that are whimsical, sweet, and actually truly funny, to me, an adult watching them instead of scrolling her phone while her toddler chills out. (I also appreciate that it doesn't have the shitty CGI animation style that's an epidemic in children's programming these days.) I absolutely love Bluey more than Miles does. He'll abide it if he's in the right mood (tired enough, probably), but he prefers old episodes of Bob the Builder (I impose the oldness there, the stop-motion so much more charming than, again, new CGI bullshit) and youtube compilations of garbage trucks... picking up garbage. A couple weeks ago, my in-laws and I watched two episodes of Bluey while he was napping. It's so good.
In a nice bit of symmetry, we found Bluey because of its music—Tanner put on some kids' playlist, and a song from Bluey: The Album came on. And it was so charming! Mostly instrumental, lovely to listen to, with little interjections of dialogue from the show, like "The creek is beautiful!" or "I slipped on my beans!" And it somehow pulled Miles out of the Sesame Street black hole he was stuck in, musically, at the time. And then we checked out the show and it's so charming and funny and lovely. I started evangelizing to all the parents of toddlers I knew.
He doesn't *not* look like he fronted an indie band in the 90s.
Parents who love Bluey tend to be fanatical about it—partly because it's so good unto itself for our kids, but partly, I think, because we just really enjoy watching it ourselves! So the comments when someone shared the Vulture article in a facebook group were effusive. And one mom said: If it isn’t mentioned, the voice of Bandit is a really popular musician from a band Custard who made quirky indie music in the 90s and your kids will absolutely LOVE hearing Bandit sing!!!
Miles doesn't really care about hearing Bandit sing, but it turns out, I do! The music hits a sweet spot for me, weird and familiar and new. But hearing Bluey's dad singing there makes me feel like I'm witnessing something illicit, in on a secret I wasn't supposed to know.
The summer after I finished grad school I got a gig working as a research assistant for a musician who was writing a book. I biked to his apartment a couple days a week and transcribed as he read from his travel journals, or talked with him about a sticky point in the story he was trying to tell. For a while I held off from listening to his music, the same way I avoided reading my professors' writing. But then his band released a new album, and was getting ready to tour. I listened. I liked it! Tanner and I went to see them play at the Bell House. And it was fun—I felt like an insider, the show was good—but, aha, this is what it was: It was like running into your elementary school teacher at the supermarket. Seeing them out of your context, in a place that isn't private at all but you can tell is meant to be private from you. The musician on that stage was the same guy whose living room I'd been hanging out in, but his voice was pitched a little lower, he held himself differently—of course he did! But I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't something I was supposed to see.
Listening to Custard has a shade of that same feeling. Bluey's dad has a band! He sings love songs! He sings, "I called my baby a piece of shit / She hated it, I hated it / Funny thing is now we both feel fine." Scandalous.
The fact is that part of what I like about Custard is McCormack's voice. Not because it sounds like Bluey's dad—it's a voice I like. A little scratchy, a little rough, absolutely not singery but lovely to listen to. It's music I would've loved when I knew how to love new music. And he doesn't really sound like Bluey's dad when he sings. But also he does. And I probably like that, too.
Thank you for reading! Please pardon any typos or sentences that fade out half-way, they're what let me send this out free and weekly. If you enjoyed this newsletter and want to share it, or were forwarded this edition and want to subscribe, the link is tinyletter.com/jaimealyse. You can also follow me on twitter here, and when my book is done and ready to be preordered this is where I will tell you about that.