“Hello Blue Monday,” is what I should’ve said when I looked out my window this morning. The outlook in Brooklyn is grim. Heaps of slushy, grimy snow are still clinging to the sidewalks and the edges of the curbs. Though this rain we currently have might wash some of it away. It’s the kind of day where it’s almost too hard to drag yourself out of bed and lately we’ve had a glut of days like that in this beautiful city. So what to listen to on a day like today? You could find some audio accompaniment to suit the dour atmosphere you find yourself in. Immersion therapy if you will. Or you could take the aspirational direction and find something that might embody what you want your day to be and how you want to feel.
On any given day, I could go in either direction. But that’s not going to be an issue on this cold February morning as this track by Mux Mool has made up my mind for me. Yeah, I’m going to be a bit grimier today and I don’t have a problem with that.
“Raw Gore” isn’t as bloody as it sounds, but it does open up with just the right amount of menace creeping in with the synth line. Then the drums come in and all of a sudden you feel like the God of Swagger. Eventually it settles into a groove and boom-baps its way to the finish. That’s about it; the few flourishes that show up here and there, like the keyboard part towards the end, only enhance the gritty, hard aesthetic of the song. It’s one of those too-short songs that cries out to be put on repeat again and again and again, either on repeat for an hour or bounding around your head, sound tracking a confidence-building internal monologue.
You can coast to this, you can conqueror to this. Enjoy it however you’d like.