Top8 - 09/15/25 - WTSQ 88.1 FM

September 13, 2025 - 10:36 PM

Welcome back to Top8. The world continues to burn. I did a little research, and it looks like the average time for empires to fall is about 60 years, although some are much more and some are much less – that's just how averages work. How much longer do we have? I think we might be relatively near the beginning of the end as far as the empire goes, but it's really hard to say.

Our republic, on the other hand, has been in decline for quite a while now. For most of American history, the average citizen didn't really interact with the Federal government that much. There wasn't much of a "social safety net" beyond what you might receive from your neighbors or family. By the time we got to the Great Depression, we began to see that ad hoc networks were really not cutting it. Old people, widows, or disabled folks were too often uncared for. The working poor weren't getting by. Unemployed people were in desperate straights. The old way of doing things just wasn't cutting it. FDR rolled in and changed all that. People didn't have to go hungry or suffer needlessly in a wealthy nation and we started doing things to change that (And yeah, he was problematic in a lot of ways; i.e., he didn't really treat Black Americans as well as he could have, and he might have pushed the country, against public sentiment, into WW2, etc.) Americans were getting a New Deal from the government. And the deal was that if you worked hard and participated in our democracy, the government would use tax revenue to try and give you and your neighbors a slightly better life. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't nearly enough, but it was a start, and it was more than we had ever done before.

The social and political movements in the 60s expanded this a bit. Thanks to Dr. King, Malcolm X, The Black Panthers, and others, minorities would finish the 60s on much better footing than they entered it. We were far from perfect, but there was, overall, a degree of progress mixed in with a bloody war, nuclear brinksmanship, and a growing backlash from the dumbest and most hateful of us – the American bigots.

Still, we were, at least occasionally, pointed in the direction of becoming a grand place. A country Americans could be proud of. It was imaginable that we'd get there one day. Probably long after all of us were gone, but one day. Taking one tiny step at a time, maybe, just maybe we'd get there.

And then we elected Ronald Reagan. And, honestly, everyone else who came after him, including Bill Clinton with his fucking NAFTA bullshit and Barack Obama and his feckless healthcare piss stain, his bailouts for banks and business, his drone warcrimes.

So here we are, in the last season of the United States of America reality TV show. Along the way we've demonized people we had just begun to enfranchise within recent memory. We've allowed our unions to be gutted by the very workers whose grandfathers and great grand-fathers died for them, we've allowed racial cracks between poor people to be wedged into a chasm of resentment and hatred. After years of waiting for the rich to trickle down on us, we finally said the hell with it, and just elected one of them – an outright fascist.

We sowed the seeds for a storm and now we reap a tornado.

So what else is there to do with the time left? Love the people around you. Be kind. Stubbornly, defiantly, furiously kind. Cry your eyes out. Walk by the river. Eat well. Pray, if that's what you do. Turn up the music. Dance. And smoke em if you got em. The hour is getting late.

They haven't taken music from us, yet. Top8 is what I have to give you today. I hope it's a tiny flicker of light for all of you. Send your flickers to WTSQ.org/contact

Motorbike - Currency

"Currency" by Cincinnati's Motorbike is the kind of noisy, agro punk rock song you put on if you want to floor it and drive too fast and crash your car into a streetlight leaving work for the day and it's raining and and then you have to walk back to work, all hurt and bloody to use the phone (because this was before everyone always had a cellphone) and walk into the building and watch people scream because blood is running down your face like some kind of horror movie and then you comb handfuls of glass out of your hair and worry that you're going to be fired for the crash because the property owner for the office specifically said that they wanted the next person who crashed their car out there to be fired and then for reasons you never understand you're not fired but you still have no car and have to take the bus to work for a long time after that.

Or that might just be me.

Devon Copple - High School

Full disclosure – this performer is a dear friend of mine. It's not that I always feature my friend's music. But I am always aware when it comes out. And if it's good, it's good.

And "High School" is good. I actually wasn't sure the first time. But it's so damned catchy that I listened to it again and again. This is a bop about the struggles of people to survive in a world based on image and often shallow social connections. Young people, the sort that are in high schools, get twisted, chewed up, and spit out by a world of conformity. And the insidious part is that it only works because you end up wanting it yourself. Too often, we get well into adulthood and keep feeling this pressure in one way or another. But it is a fucking bop.

Saya Gray - Shell (of a Man)

The cover art for this record made me expect hyperpop, but this is actually more of a folk-infused indie track. "Shell (of a Man)" has a positively groovy acoustic guitar hook on it. Something here makes me think of Paul Simon by way of FKA twigs.

Andrew Bird - Blood

Somehow, Andrew Bird's album "Mysterious Production of Eggs" is twenty damn years old. The good things about this are that the album is being re-released in a special edition, there's a single from that re-release called "Borrow or Rob" that has the never before released song "Blood" on it, and, perhaps most importantly, we are all closer to the safe haven of death. Anyway, "Blood" is an absolute banger. It's seriously beyond belief that this was never released. It's a sauntering, sweltering summer of a song with a little guitar and a lot of Bird's violin. Also an appropriately odd lyric. This sounds the way that an old fashioned tastes. There's no one like Andrew Bird, and also he could probably hold my hand in the mall.

King Princess - Jaime

Jaime is one of my best friends, and this song mostly does not remind me of them at all. That said, King Princess is on an absolute tear these days. "Jaime" is from the new album "Girl Violence" which is filled with the kind of extremely queer, sonically diverse songs they've made their signature sound. This track is a synthy neo-torch song about a complicated relationship or maybe something that wasn't quite a relationship. I am sure none of you know anything about that sort of thing.

King Princess is the music project of Mikaela Mullaney Straus. They are the kind of queer artist who can almost make you forget that straight people even exist. And with apologies to my straight friends, sometimes I need that.

Marie Davidson - Demolition

Marie Davidson is out here making songs like this and the rest of us are sitting in line at Wendy's waiting for fresh fries to drop. "Demolition" is a slithering synthy disco track with just a little electroclash mixed in. ("Sexy Clown" from the same album, "City of Clowns", goes harder on the electroclash edge.) The lyrics are dark and foreboding and about being pulled to hell by people who "want your data." In the 80s this song would have sounded like nonsense. Today it sounds like a news story.

FACS - Sometimes Only

FACS are a darkly art/post/punk type of band. Find these guys when you're ready to feel like you're about to slip over the event horizon. In fairness I wrote that line because their bio says something about a black hole. I am a disgrace to music journalism.

"Sometimes Only" growls and circles over a distorted bass riff. It's a moody, darkwave-adjacent track that reminds me of The Murder Capital. And it rips.

Lucretia Dalt - Cosa Rara (ft. David Sylvian)

Ok, so I already said that something was "slithering synthy",so I guess I can't say that again until next time when hopefully you've forgotten about it. Anyway, I love this. It reminds me a little of Charlotte Gainsbourg's excellent album "Rest." The track dances over a latin percussion accented by a heavy bass that carries a lot of the song's weight. But that rhythm stays there under everything, holding it together. Then, about 3/4ths of the way in, we get the awesome non sequitur of a much slower spoken word segment by David Sylvian (of the 80's band Japan). This segment seems out of place, but also really works somehow.