PUBLIC LISTENING: RITE AID
POST-BANKRUPTCY BANGERS
There is a Rite Aid in North Brooklyn that can barely be called a retail environment. It would be hard to call that shit a retail environment with a straight face. The shelves are barren. Much of the store’s stock is locked up, a tactic that doesn’t seem to be working so well for any national chain. Not a single frozen pizza remains. Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy almost a year ago, but a recent restructuring flipped it into a private company and kept hope alive. It’s unclear what the future holds for this particular location. To judge from the store's inventory, things are not looking great. I spent my Sunday evening hanging out inside, listening to music.
The first thing I did upon entering the Rite Aid was ask an employee if the store was closing. His kind response: “We don’t know.” We were speaking in what was left of the shampoo aisle.
Earlier in the week, I interviewed the writer Emily Witt. She was about to ship out to the 10th edition of Sustain-Release, an intimate techno festival that happens yearly at a campground in the Catskills. Since 2015, my interactions with the larger Brooklyn techno apparatus have been nonexistent, if they existed at all before that. It’s sort of funny that I have spent years researching and obsessing over the techno campout Even Furthur, which took place in the Upper Midwest in the 1990s and is probably most famous for being the site of the first American appearance of Daft Punk, while there has been a contemporary equivalent right under my nose. Despite any stumbling critiques I may or may not have about the larger scene from which the festival emerged—it can often feel both poker-faced and smug—Sustain-Release looks like a proper rave. Lasers shoot through the trees. Instead of engaging with it, though, I have chosen to spend my weekend wandering around a borderline abandoned Rite Aid while listening to a song from an “English girl group that formed on the eighth series of The X Factor.” [Wikipedia]
8:20: Dennis Lloyd “Nevermind”
The Rite Aid’s in a purgatorial state. In one cooler, all that remained were a few containers of Jocko Mölk, a protein shake created by the retired Navy SEAL and current motivational speaker Jocko Willink. Other than two lone Gatoraid-branded water bottles, multiple rows of nearby shelving were empty. I saw a couple of stray Taki’s bags sagging in front of a weathered yellow tackboard. Four bottles of Hidden Valley Ranch, below eye level, lonely as hell.
8:22: Ed Sheeran “American Town”
An Ed Sheeran song I had never heard before. Have I written a single Public Listening that hasn’t included either Ed Sheeran or Maroon 5? Have I already made this observation? How long have I been doing this? I was thinking about a recent error I made on the blog. I wasn’t able to identify that the beat underpinning a song I posted was jacked from an old Soulja Boy cut. Other than a “niche career in music” and a passable knowledge of contemporary rap, rock, and rave, I’m someone with little to show for their life. Even within those pathetically small parameters, I couldn’t remember that the track I was writing about was indeed taken from a Soulja Boy song I had heard before. Why do I care? Sometimes it feels like doing this blog—still framing my life in any way around music—has continued to stunt whatever small, hard-earned personal growth I have been able to achieve over the past nine years.
8:26: Kelly Clarkson “Broken and Beautiful”
Not the worst selection of N/A beers: Corona, Heineken, and Athletic, a faux-craft option whose brewing process has changed the non-alcoholic game. The company will likely get bought by Molson Coors for billions of dollars. I drink maybe one or two a month... They are all I have left… The empty aisles, the pending closure, the fluorescent splay: I felt back in peak pandemic loner mode, loose and open to ideas. A box of frozen soft pretzels called to me.
After an ad for the shingles vaccine, a song played from Feist’s third record. Feist should be a reminder to all of us that ghosts of electroclash are everywhere. She was a backup dancer for Peaches on early tours, and this song was co-produced by Gonazles, another Canadian who played a major role in an era of Berlin music that prized performance and North American attitude over aesthetic austerity. A box of Halloween-branded Peeps—they also started calling to me.
8:33: Pablo Nutini “New Shoes”
With all due respect to the artist Jayson Musson, whose legendary CVS Bangers mix series is somehow over a decade old, drugstore shoppers are now less likely to hear any classic hits as they shop, be they ‘80s rock or yacht rock or “Laid” by James. American retail spaces currently pump out some strange mix of Ed Sheeran, songs that sound like they were made to soundtrack Selling Sunset, and songs that conjure up the demonic spirit of mid-2000s VH1. “New Shoes” sits in the latter category.
8:36: Gotye (Feat. Kimbra) “Somebody That I Used To Know”
A computer voice at the self checkout sounded tinny but audible over this track’s intro. I vividly remember the first time I heard “Somebody That I Used To Know.” It was on my first and only Australian tour, supporting Big Freedia, if you can believe that. I got booked to play at a big festival, and I completely blew it. Feedback freakout ending. Scattered booing.
8:41: Harry Styles Sunflower, Vol. 6
The floors were covered in skidmarks. I was biting a fingernail down to a nub. I was the only customer in the store. One band has been on my mind lately: a group of young New Yorkers called Laundry Day. They are more known for their TikTok presence than their music, an innocuous mix of contemporary funk, soul, and alternative rock. But there is something charming about these kids, who grew up in the city and I am going to guess were in the jazz band at their high school. I’ve never listened to a Laundry Day record. I have, however, watched an entire 20-minute Laundry Day tour documentary in which the band supports Teezo Touchdown in Europe. I have watched a Laundry Day TikTok where they ride Citi Bikes and sing Ed Sheeran songs acapella with Ed Sheeran (we just hit the Sheeran trifecta). Then there is, no doubt, this video. On paper, I shouldn’t give a shit. In reality, I’m rooting for these kids, whose TikToks sometimes read like a parody of Millennial earnestness but whose YouTube videos seem to deliver the actual item—for better or worse.
8:45: Andrelli “Hey There Delilah”
I picked up the box of soft pretzels, but I put them back in the freezer. I walked past a DJ I knew from a different life. We made eye contact but did not acknowledge each other. A “tropical house” remix of “Hey There Delilah” played quietly. I left with nothing.
great read as always x
<3