New Songs/Videos from Missy Elliott, Emitt Rhodes, Pony Time, and Deep Sea Diver. Three Gems. One Bummer.

Four totally unalike artists unveiled new songs and vids today. Three of them are very good.

Missy Elliott’s “WTF (Where They From)” featuring Pharrell Williams

Like all Missy Elliott’s greatest work, “WTF (Where They From)” sounds simultaneously meticulous and instantaneous. It’s like every beat and every rest was meticulously handcrafted by a staff of 24-hour-a-day rhythm and melody elves AND also like the peerless Ms. Elliott woke up from a nap and was like “oh, yeah, here’s THIS.” It’s her first new song in three years, and her best one in quite a while. If there’s a catchier, better single in the air right now, please don’t tell me because I don’t care.

Emitt Rhodes “Dog On a Chain”
Meanwhile, Emitt Rhodes, the Merry-Go-Round member and McCartneyish solo artist who never got a fair shake in the ‘70s (but now has the zealous cult following that follows commercially neglected Beatlesque songwriters like remora) is back with his first single in 43 years (not available for embedding yet, sorry). Though I was surprised and excited to see Rhodes’s name in my news feed this morning (I’m in the cult mentioned above), “Dog On a Chain” is a not that killer, mid-period Eagles type of number, and I don’t think it’s because of all the guest spots by the usual L.A. session suspects (Jon Brion, Aimee Mann) you’d expect to find on an Emitt Rhodes comeback. There are even more of them—Jason Falkner (though it’s unusual to find him on a record with his former bandmate JB), Nels Cline, Susanna Hoffs, et al—on the forthcoming album, Rainbow Ends, due Feb. 26, but I’m holding out hope that there’ll be more interesting stuff on the LP. (In the meantime, I’ll be WAY more likely to listen to this.)

Pony Time “I Like Your Shoes”

A new video from one of the best records this year, Pony Time’s Rumours 2: The Rumours Are True. As with every element of this band’s presentation, “I Like Your Shoes” makes a virtue of economy, packing more punchy, clever glam-garage swagger into two minutes than most better-funded bands can find in a month. (The look of the video, directed by Seattle’s Marcy Stone-Francois, is said to have been “inspired by” clips of the late Alvin Stardust, but this song is better than anything old Alvy ever did x 1,000, and, as is almost always the case with music videos, “inspired by” is a polite euphemism for “directly copied from.” Still, both the band members (Luke Beetham and Stacy Peck) look great, so mission accomplished!)

Deep Sea Diver “Secrets”

Jessica Dobson’s forthcoming second Deep Sea Diver LP, Secrets, is probably the most eagerly anticipated local release of 2016, at least by me. The Always Waiting EP has never been far from active rotation since its release last year—though I only recently noticed the crypto-Jesus element in the lyrics of the title song, which would normally kill my interest, but if you had seen Dobson lay waste to the Moore Theatre with it, armed only wither voice, guitar, and loop pedal while opening for Television earlier this year, you’d be ready to wait in line for whatever she came up with next, too. “Secrets” is somewhere in between the powerhouse rock of the first DSD record and the more contemplative EP, but the most intriguing element is the slightly hyperactive funk of the bassline. (Funk like “Barbarism Begins at Home,” that is, not like “Brickhouse,” but still…) It’s such a pleasure to find a rock band that can deliver visceral thrills and reward close attention to the details. I’m guessing that by this time next year both “Secrets” and Secrets will be very familiar to everyone.