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- 😄 petey usa / california review
😄 petey usa / california review
i'm sorry, you're going to be listening to this one on repeat for a *while*
Connor Weir
March 25, 2025
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but first, the news
yes that’s right, news time! a short selection of links to all things going on in the music biz:
more i’ve been listening to
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what did you think of this song? |
contents
hey everyone, this weeks review is going to be a little different because i have done something a little different to what i usually do. that’s a bit vague, let me explain. you see, when i started this newsletter i wanted to do something real particular, that’s why it’s got this clunky name and framework, i was trying to do something really particular. i wanted a way to force myself to like, intentionally listen to music. i wanted listening to music to stop just being a thing that i just kinda vibe my way through numbly and in a detached way because music is really important to me nad i have ambitions of writing lots of my own music too.
i figured if i’m going to get good at writing music, i need to listen to some music too, and do so in a way that forces me to get good at it. hence, newsletter, seemed like a good idea at the time, haven’t been proven wrong yet. anywho, this week, i had a really different experience, and i’d love to replicate it if i can. you see, i found a song last week and i just became, obsessed. actually that’s kind of a lie, i knew of this song a while ago, i’d listened to it for like a year or so and this artist has some bangers that i’d been listening too. that artist is called petey usa, or maybe just petey kinda unclear. the song is called california, i’m nearly certain i’ve talked about it before, but when i say this song got it’s way into my brain. i mena like, it became a part of my personality for a while. so hopefully that will happen to you too because let me tell you, i feel like a better person because of it.
what i like
you know the phrase ‘fake it till you make it’? well, with music, sometimes ‘it’ is what you might find on twitter or similar, where they say something has aura, or something has juice. the idea here is that a song or person or thing feel emotionally connective to other people. this is a song that fakes it till it makes it, but it absolutely has it and doesn’t need to fake. here’s what i mean, the closing few seconds of this song are so powerful.
the yelled gang vocals, the messy and driving percussion, the culmination of the entire runtimes build are beat for beat exactly what’s laid out in the opening bars. when you hear this song for the first time, those bumping synths and lo fi aesthetic give the impression of something that is lesser than the sum of it’s parts, but with enough of a tease and tension to pull you in. letting it hook you, this song sets you off on a track of build and build and build until blammo, you get to those closing moments feeling like you’re just jumped up into the stream of air through the sun roof of a car moving at 70 miles an hour. the songwriting here, the production and achingly powerful performance are those rare moments where slightly amateurish and lo fi execution just land with both feet giving authenticity with a slobbering wet kiss.
i’m obsessed with this song, and that’s some of the reasons why, but also, i think it’s because maybe the oceans do got the only blues i need.
what i don’t like
the only thing i don’t enjoy about this song is that i’m not screaming it in a tiny venue with my best friends
my drunk opinion
and you could be one of those best friends y’know, you’ve got that certain, certain je n’sais quoi, i’ve always said this
my drunk opinion
it’s giving scrappy lcd isn’t it. it is, i know, it’s scrappy pieced together out of drift wood lcd soundsystem if it’s in a van and the van smells a bit but it’s cool! it’s cool, and all. it’s just not refined at all.
i loveeee this artist. they’re a bit bigger than the artists i put on here but not by all that much i don’t think. the album this track is from is an absolute 10/10, and the new stuff they’re coming out with is top tier too. a really interesting thing i didn’t notice until i wrote this is that the music videos for a lot of the singles on this album are wayyyyy older than the main release on dsps. so if you’re a freak like me and love this kinda stuff, you can hear a less refined version right there on the governments own youtube. gov. how neat!
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