You’re at a party, tossing drinks back, pretending you know how to dance, and suddenly, the aux is passed to you. A pit grows in your stomach.
“Play something good,” your friend shouts over the speakers, but you can’t quite make out the words. The anxiety starts to works its way up. Your head gets a little foggy. Time slows down to a trickle, and then you begin feel alone, so alone, abandoned in the middle of a vast sea to be violently eaten by the jaws of criticism if you play the wrong thing.
Well, rest easy warriors of summer, because The Knockturnal is launching you a lifeboat with its “Summer Bops,” a weekly column dedicated to saving your ass whenever you need to impress that cute barista with the rare vinyl collection, or need that perfect song to complete that perfect party playlist you stayed up till 4am curating.
If David Byrne scored a John Hughes movie, the theme song would be something akin to Greenwave Beth’s “Make Up,” a sly, danceable track perfectly tailored to those with avant-garde sensibilities and a penchant for anything New Order. Self-described as a “musical risk,” they are the furthest thing away from sonic austerity, the kind of band whose unsettling lyricism might confuse you momentarily; then, hit you over the head with a romantic profundity, leading to ever stranger, yet whimsical directions. Powered by the Sydney-based duo Charles Rushforth and Will Blackburn, Greenwave Beth is the perfect marriage of comedy and menace, delivering astonishingly simplistic, synth-fueled tracks that will get stuck in your head until the end of summer.
Artwork via author
