1. Kari Faux – “No Small Talk”
Little Rock’s song of the summer now has a video, and it’s better than any of us could have hoped, like DGainz meets DIS magazine. The fact that I’ve yet to hear this song on the radio here is a complete mystery.
2. Country Florist – “Night Dress”
This is from a new tape, “CF-1,” by Little Rock’s Andrew Morgan (Chinese Girls, Ettiem), aka Country Florist, who went the cassette-only route via Drawing Room Records, which used to be based in Little Rock and is now based in New York. RIYL: Bauhaus, Ultravox, Ariel Pink, listening to the radio and watching TV and dreaming at the same time.
3. Yung Envy – “Stay Away”
Former Pepperboy protege Yung Envy reappeared with this spooky ode to antisocial behavior a few days ago, and it’s brief and pretty good and a huge downer. The best part is that disembodied, echoey voice shouting “far” off in the distance over the hook.
4. Rodney CoLe – “I Luvs It”
The layers of delay and the stop-start, slipstream dreaminess of the whole thing here is impressive. Wish it were longer. There’s a Chance the Rapper quality to the yawps and the jazz chords. Seems like CoLe splits his time between Little Rock and Louisiana, but I think we can claim him all the same.
5. Wasted Colours – “Burn Me Blank”
Wasted Colours is, I think, a loosely Little Rock-based collaboration between Liquid Skulls’ Jimmy Spice and someone else named B. Harris. They released a sort of EP, a pretty good one, earlier this year, but here’s a new track, from that Fayetteville-centric Art Amiss comp that came out on Saturday. After a couple of listens, this is the song that grabbed me the most, just as great post-punk / industrial pop, like The Slits but more immersive.
6. T-Scrill ft. Yung2 – “Ketchup”
Watching this video, you may find yourself wondering, “Does T-Scrill go too far with the ketchup wordplay?” There is the bottle of Hunt’s in an ice bucket as if it were champagne. There is T-Scrill’s t-shirt, which plays off the Heinz logo and says “Ketchup.” During Yung2’s pretty good verse, there’s often just a bottle of Hunt’s perched on the bar next to his face, as if to say, “Don’t forget, this whole thing is about ketchup.”