Hey so I try to show that I have wide-ranging, even eclectic tastes in music and maybe even pop culture more generally through my reviews in this blog. It’s a way of capturing my thinking at this point in time. That means that sometimes I’ll speak from a place of authority on the book, album, single, movie, or episode I’m reviewing. Sometimes, I just want to record my reaction to one of those cultural artifacts and share it because I’m excited about engaging with it more than passively. This NIKKI NAIR EP is something I’m excited about but don’t have a lot of authority to discuss. I know I’ll find it helpful to wrestle with why I like it as I continue this review. Maybe you’ll find it interesting to read as I grapple with it, too.
At this point in my life, I should know better than to declare that I don’t know the history or style of a genre of music. All of it is at my fingertips. I can learn about scenes and trends with the greatest of ease. Yet, I still don’t know much about what I usually term dance or electronic music. Let’s blame the Spin article from 1996 that popularized the term electronica for people living in the U.S. I can already tell that some of you reading this are having a conniption fit because I am lumping together disparate sounds such as jungle, house, techno, drum & bass, trance, electronic body music, intelligent dance music, etc. into a single mass. I’m sure I would be just as annoyed with someone who reviewed a punk record but couldn’t tell the difference between hardcore, youth crew, powerviolence, d-beat, emo, crossover, and NYHC. Given that I have spent most of my life listening to guitar-forward music, anything that doesn’t feature live players of instruments working together in person falls into the catchall term of electronic. So be it.
You can probably tell that I didn’t hear about NIKKI NAIR from my usual means of learning about music. Admittedly, I have slowed way down over the years in terms of how frequently I keep up with music scenes or new sounds. At the same time, I can’t let myself be someone whose musical tastes are stuck in my teens or my 20s or even my early 30s. That feels gross. Luckily for all of us, Hearing Things exists. Just like Defector arose from the ashes of Deadspin and Aftermath came from Kotaku, Hearing Things is a worker-owned music website that pulls together writers formerly of Pitchfork, Spin, The Fader, and Jezebel, and other sites and zines. It’s an incredible resource and you should support it. I do.
In his review of this EP’s “Smooth,” Ryan Dombal focuses on the title track, with its hook “my brain gets smooth when I think about you.” There’s more to the song than that line, but I think it’s incredible, so let’s hyperfixate on it for a minute. The idea of the smooth brain meme is that one is unable to think about anything in any depth, for any length of time. Scientists and people who have passed high school biology will tell you that the size of the brain is less important than the number of folds or wrinkles it has. So, the common understanding is that a person with a smooth brain has no worries; they are pure id. In reality, it’s less cheerful, but let’s focus on the literary implication here. NIKKI NAIR is saying that thinking about his beloved is enough of a comfort that he has no bad feelings. No bad vibes. Good vibes only. Good wife only. Good wife. Goody. Goody gumdrops. Good, good things. Good. It’s romantic in a childish way. As Homer Simpson once told Marge after a dark night of the soul, the one thing that only he can give her is “complete and utter dependence.” Marge replies, “that’s not a good thing.” It’s not at all. Still, NIKKI NAIR captures that fleeting feeling of pure joy that comes along with contemplating one’s beloved and giving yourself over to them in total devotion.
In a much more mature sense, “IRS Love” speaks of a deeper commitment in a completely absurd way. For most of the song, you hear “I know that you want me / You know that I want you, too / Baby, I just wanna file my taxes with you.” The vocal effects make the chant sound much more childish than it is. Think about some of the other songs you know that have to do with “just wanting” someone or something. Most of those songs are by four dudes from Queens who really liked bubblegum pop. This accidental RAMONES song is incredible. Think about it. Instead of wanting to sniff glue or be someone’s boyfriend, Nair wants to have a stable enough relationship with someone that they’d file taxes together. It’s hardly romantic, but speaks to the kind of closeness and communication that is part of a lasting relationship. Unlike with “Smooth,” there’s a sense that the feelings are reciprocated. As he continues to repeat “just wanna file my taxes with you,” he layers in the lines “going to work I want to walk right into traffic / But I know if I did that then you’d have to file alone.” He’s saying he knows his partner also wants to file taxes with him. It’s mutual. You need the smooth brain moments and the roughness that creates the rough brained wrinkles to make a relationship last. The grooves that NIKKI NAIR puts down on this EP’s tracks are enough to deepen the ones that already exist in your brain, even if you sometimes wish it would just stay smooth.
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