figaro – All I Know
For a few years now, music fans on the internet have had a new obsession with obscure 80s music. But it’s not just the songs that failed to reach the top of the charts that thrill them. It’s the songs that nobody knows anything about other than that they showed up recorded on someone’s cassette. Or, it can be the songs that sound like they could’ve been global hits but were recorded by some band in a village in Bulgaria.
It’s a new kind of nostalgia, one for a time that most of the listeners didn’t live through or know little about. What makes it even more interesting is the fact that most of these 80s, synth-heavy songs were trying to predict a future that never came. Back in 2024, when each famous band and artist promoted each new release as if launching a campaign to invade Rome, it was fun to have to struggle to find out more about a song.
figaro’s “All I Know” is a pristine piece of vintage-sounding pop music influenced by goth, synth-pop and early MTV culture. When its cogwheels turn smoothest, the song has precisely that quality of a song that should’ve been famous in the 1980s, was robbed of its rightful place in the charts and history books, and now has been rediscovered. It takes considerable talent to add yourself to history like this and “All I Know” is well-produced enough to do that.
Supermodel – Lost Drums
There aren’t many people who genuinely try to get the most out of their lives. However, the vast majority talk about plans and strategies to do just that and encourage an entire industry meant to assist them. There are even fewer trying to make the best of their time not spent awake. While a good portion of our lives is literally spent with our eyes closed, people try to zoom past those hours as if fighting off the spectre of death.
But maybe they are right. Sure, we’d like to imagine that in sleep or in deep meditation, we may find rest, calm, and consolation. There are even some dream enthusiasts who believe that they can train themselves to live entire lifetimes from the moment their head hits the pillow until the moment that they wake. But what if that’s not the case? What if dreams that last forever become merely a summary of all our failures, all our longing, and a distilled, powerful essence of our melancholy?
Supermodel’s “Lost Drums” opens up like a dream filled with endless possibilities and a million ways to gaze up at a never-ending sunset. But quickly, things settle. And when they do, they’re filled with tension, dread, and all-consuming longing. “Lost Drums” is not a song about everything that can happen but about everything that could’ve once happened. It’s beautiful, and you get the sense that it’s painful. And it, most certainly, feels like it could go on forever if nobody is there to wake you up.
