Embrace her, embrace them, embrace yourself

Battisti bangers

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To kick off this week, I have to flag an all-time great tweet that deservedly went viral, and had me in stitches. It sent me down a memory hole of NME tours from days of yore. I’m quite convinced that I saw Crime Down By a Third supported by Peace in Northern Ireland and More Students Than Ever at the Brighton Dome in 2005:

Toby Db @tobyfrombath

Indie bands naming themselves 2002-2008:

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Secondly, I’ve given it a plug in this letter already, but I’m still stuck on Office Culture’s excellent new LP “Big Time Things”, a couple of whose standout tracks, including the title cut, I don’t feel would be out of place on one of the great sophisti-pop records like, say, Prefab Sprout’s “Jordan: The Comeback”. (As anyone who’s been within earshot of me evangelizing the gospel of Prefab Sprout will know, that’s high praise.)

Anyway, Office Culture’s Instagram account posted a story this week linking to a terrific song, “Abbracciala Abbracciali Abbracciati”, released in 1974 by the Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Battisti (1943-1998). I hadn’t heard it before, and was struck by how its sonically skeletal opening moments prefigure the eerie, tenebrous chill of Pulp’s “This is Hardcore”, before it opens up into something sweepingly optimistic, Latin-flavored, and more emotionally in line with the English translation of its title: “Embrace Her, Embrace Them, Embrace Yourself”.

My own introduction to Battisti’s music came when I was wolfing down steak in a Brooklyn restaurant a few years back, and heard something so blissfully smooth yet so achingly romantic emanating from the speakers that I had to put down my knife and fork, and reach for my phone to Shazam. It was 1978’s “Prendila Così”, it sounds like this, and it’s this week’s second quick rec:

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Lastly, I’d like to recommend Aftersun, the superb feature debut by Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells, which hits US theaters this week courtesy of A24. Taking place across a few days at a budget Turkish holiday resort in the mid-1990s, the film follows the fraught and tender relationship between a young, 30-year-old father (Paul Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter (Frankie Corio).

It’s unusual to see a first film that feels so fully realized and confident, and I found watching it to be an extremely moving and rewarding experience. It’s beautifully acted, smartly edited, and stylistically rich and expansive without ever feeling overcooked. Without wishing to sound too Film Studies 101, Aftersun is an exemplary instance of utilizing film language to evoke interior thought and feeling. I saw it back in May at the Cannes Film Festival, and it’s really stuck with me

Aftersun also has a carefully selected, era-specific soundtrack (an important thing for me!) that transported me to the period, and no doubt afforded the film an extra personal resonance. (It should come with some sort of sense memory trigger warning for people who haven't been exposed to the once-ubiquitous Catatonia in over two decades.) Gazing upon Wells’ skillful evocations of awkward holiday resort flirtations, I briefly experienced the surreal feeling of being mentally plunged back into the Alton Towers hotel resort in Stoke-on-Trent in 1997, where 12-year-old me was vibing off “Alright” by Jamiroquai (sadly not on on the Aftersun soundtrack), and buying my first little tube of aftershave—“Player”, I believe it was called—from the restroom vending machine. Powerful, elemental stuff!

Until next week!

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