FM WAVES OF THE HEART

The Weakerthans

Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

I bought Reconstruction Site from the CD/trading card/vinyl/comic book store in the city across the bridge, along with Aretha Franklin's greatest hits and a pack of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, and then I lost it in my mom's car for two months, and then I found it, and then I lost it in my room, and then I found it while packing for college, and then I lost it in my college boxes, and finally I found it, listened to it, and became devoutly addicted to John K. Samson and his sad, sort of pathetically intellectual voice. I was homesick, and it felt like the only people who understood what it was like to be from northern Minnesota were me and these guys from Winnipeg, and besides I was reading Foucault and Derrida for the first time and was obsessed with any mention of him, the way kpop fans buy out Rolling Stone when BTS is featured.

I'm not going to claim that The Weakerthans are Gods gift to earth or anything, in fact they are totally, like, just from Winnipeg, but they are from Winnipeg and I love music that's grounded in space. They play that classic northern North American indie folk rock and they sing about, like, snow and trade unions and gray skies and depression and Antarctica, and they can evoke a narrative and experience for all they're worth:

Where a little boy under a table with cake in his hair
Stared at the grown-up feet as they danced and swayed
And his father laughed and talked on the long ride home
And his mother laughed and talked on the long ride home
And he thought about how everyone dies someday
And when tomorrow gets here where will yesterday be
And fell asleep in his brand-new winter coat

Also, The Weakerthans have no less than five different Hard Times satire articles written about them and are mentioned in another four, which frankly they have no business doing. Opinion: We Shouldn't be Comparing Beyonce and Taylor Swift, But How do They Stack Up Against The Weakerthans?

BEST ALBUM: Reconstruction Site
BEST SONGS: "Reconstruction Site," "Plea from a Cat Named Virtue" (and the other two songs in the Virtue trilogy), "One Great City!," "Our Retired Explorer Dines with Michel Foucault"

Against Me! and Laura Jane Grace

When I was about eleven, I inherited the old family
laptop, which weighed as much as an infant and held
the digitized version of ever single CD my father had
ever bought: about 20 days worth of music if listened
straight through. Against Me!'s Transgender Dysphoria
Blues was near the top of iTunes' alphabetical sort,
and the black and white screenprint of a discented
breast was obviously immediately appealing. It's
remained my favorite album in the eight years since,
moving from an mp3 on my iPod to a string of numbers
in Spotify's ether. Please do yourself a favor and listen
to TGDB through: Laura Jane Grace expresses visceral and straight-cut emotions in her lyrics like no artist I've ever listened to. Whenever I listen to it again I'm surprised by the strength of her narrative.

Against Me! was born in the anarchist scene in Gainsville Florida, and through its first few albums (up until New Wave) it was exactly that: an anarcho-punk band from Florida. New Wave in 2010 was their most successful album, my dad's favorite, and their first with a major label. Their mainstream success didn't go over well, and Against Me! never quite recovered their punk credentials-- but, at the same time, New Wave has the song "The Ocean" on it, which is my favorite song of all time:

If I could have chosen where God would hide his heaven
I would wish for it to be in the salt and swell of the ocean
Carried by the currents to all continents' shores
Reaching into the depths where the sun's light has never shone

Against Me! is currently on (probably temporary) hiatus, but Laura Jane Grace hasreleased four solo albums, my favorite of which is Brought to Rot, and I was able to see her perform in Nashville in 2024. She played "Androgynous" by the Replacements live, and there's a performance by her, Joan Jett, and Miley Cyrus on Youtube, which is one of those videos I watched religiously in middle school.

BEST ALBUMS: Transgender Dysphoria Blues (2014), 23 Live Sex Acts (2015), Brought to Rot (2018)

BEST SONGS: "The Ocean," "Osama Bin Laden as the Crucified Christ," "The Acid Test Song," "Baby, I'm an Anarchist," "Fuckmylife666"

Rough surf on the coast
I wish I could have spent the whole day alone
Rough surf on the coast
I wish I could have spent the whole day alone with you
With you
With you

("Transgender Dysphoria Blues" off Transgender Dysophoria Blues (2014)) The title of this webpage, "FM WAVES OF THE HEART" is from the New Wave song "Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart"

The Butchies

The Butchies are queercore... I guess. I mean, there are bands who are unambigiously, unwaveringly queercore: Pansy Division, Athens Boy's Choir, God is my Copilot, Tribe 8 with their iconic "Butch in the Streets, Femme in the Sheets"-- but The Butchies are not one of them. I get why they've been given the label. The moniker "The Butchies" and their integration of dyke jargon (album title: Are We Not Femme) are easy, surface level indications the same way that, in the years of the Harlem renaissance, black poets across America were labeled "Harlem writers" because their poetry spoke from a background different from the white mass culture. This isn't to say that the Butchies don't have a claim to queercore. They were queer, they wrote about loving and fucking and fighting with women, and they were borne of and influential on the movement itself. But the Butchies have none of the provocateur bravado of God is my Copilot or Pansy Division, and their lyrics rarely veer into the sexually explicit nature that's characteristic of queercore.

Instead, their 2004 album Make Yr Life is an authentic, often contemplative album about being a young lesbian, from the shy but urgent attraction in "Send Me You" to the obstinantly defiant declaration of "Tell the Others" (plus, the best Outfield cover you're going to find), conveying the absolutely encompassing, isolating, and intense nature of an adolescent closeted lesbian relationship, without sacrificing the naievity and enthusiasm of the first of everything. When I was seventeen, "17" was my anthem:

I never wanted her like this
I'm running out the door
Gonna see a rock show now gonna be so naive
Smoking fags with fags with fags with fags

The Butchies are what I'm always chasing in punk music: something to nod your head to, lyrics which are understated in the sound mixing but not in the songwriting process, consistent album quality, a female vocalist (and guitarist, and bassist, and drummer...). They had a head start mastering their style, with both Kaia Wilson and Melissa York having cut their teeth in Team Dresch-- another borderline queercore band whose sophomore album, Captain my Captain is referenced in Alison Bechdel's introduction to The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For. At the end of the day, the Butchies aren't polished. They aren't quite queercore. They aren't quite revolutionary. But they are riot grrrl, they are genuine, and they made a few albums that I think are damn good.

ALBUMS: frankly, I don't think you can go wrong here. Make Yr Life is an all-time fav, and personally, I prefer Population 1975 to Are We Not Femme, but that's not the general consensus.
SONGS: "She's so Lovely", "Everything Electrical Will Stay", "Movies Movies", "17", "Eleanor"