The Friday Dispatch
Mae Martin, Zach Schiffman, Aanya Martin, Judeline and more
Mae Martin is looking beyond the laughs
After a wildly successful career as a comic and actor, Mae Martin is redefining their theories of creation and expression through music. In late February, they released I’m A TV, a work they say is some of their most vulnerable and freest work to date.
"It feels like since I was a teenager, I’ve been trying to say the same thing, or find a way to say the same thing, and I hope I never figure out how to say it, because it’s so fun saying it in different ways," Martin says. Much of their work, they explain, has been spent processing their teenage years in one way or another. They see their creative output – Feel Good, their standup, and their new show, Wayward – as all part of the same creative universe, one that’s parsing through themselves and their past to help illuminate their habits and emotional states of the present. And I’m A TV, they say, is part of it, too.
"You can even bare more of yourself in songwriting," Martin explains. "You don’t have to be like, ‘I’m Mae and this thing happened to me and this is how I feel about it.’ You can almost – because there’s a slight veil there – be more vulnerable."
"You have to unlearn the muscle in you that wants to lift people out of that reverie and release the tension with the punch line," they continue. "I had to get over the muscle memory that says if it’s quiet it’s bad. With comedy, you have to be specific and clear about what your point of view is and what you’re trying to say, and the rhythm and structure of it dictates so much. But there’s something really freeing about being able to use metaphor and not have as clear a point of view and people let people project their own shit onto it, because life is so nuanced and complex like that. Sometimes it can’t be distilled into a couple of phrases. You can express it much more clearly by talking around it."
This week, BAMBARA releases Birthmarks. Ghost Mountain’s October Country and Alabaster DePlume's A Blade Because a Blade is Whole are also out now. Bon Iver also unveiled two new tracks from SABLE, fABLE via his 24-hour livestream; HAIM also made a long-awaited return and invoked Nicole Kidman on “Relationships”; and feeble little horse released “This Is Real.”
Desk Notes: Zach Schiffman
Brooklyn-based comedian, writer, and producer Zach Schiffman is Senior Social Media Editor at New York magazine. He co-created The Heart? She Whistles, a satirical take on self-help audiobooks for creatives, and also hosts the new podcast Out of Breath where he goes on a run while his guest is relaxing at home.
“Having two monitors is the only way to live life, and when I don’t have one, I feel like I was hit by a bus. My backgrounds are both Kirchner paintings that I love (don’t think I am esoteric for that - I discovered Kirchner when I was directing a college production of Spring Awakening. It’s not that deep). Please do NOT zoom in to the widget to see what podcasts I listen to… I fear it will not make me look good.
I am always drinking an insane cup of Grady’s cold brew throughout my morning. I need to feel like I am vibrating to do work.
Because I am gay and annoying, I keep my copies of Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat, prominently displayed on my desk. They are collecting dust right now, but in the year after Sondheim died, I was opening them daily. More humiliating: there are tear stains on a few pages.
My AP Press Stylebook is also collecting dust on my desk, but there was a time when I was using it regularly. At my previous job at Tooning Out the News, I became the de facto copy editor for the show’s online presence despite being bad at copy editing. I had regular night terrors about typos. Eventually, I took a copy-editing class online at NYU and got better. I’m not perfect, but hopefully, this newsletter is grammatically sound.
The noise-canceled headphones and reading glasses are hanging from a Promax award. It is not my Promax award. I honestly could not even tell you what a Promax award is. My former colleagues at Full Frontal with Samantha Bee won it. I kept it at my desk when I worked there and would put a clementine in her golden hands every day. When I left that job, I took it with me to be funny. No one cared that I stole it.
I am an iPad kid. I have had one since the very first generation (I used my bar mitzvah money to buy it). I used to have a bigger iPad that I sort of used for actual work - but it ended up being a pain. I switched to an iPad Mini last year and haven’t looked back. It gets most of its use when I am on the subway or on the toilet. Sorry!
I would like to believe I coined the term Desk Gum. I buy sugar-free minty chiclets in bulk and keep them at my desk in a (stupidly fragile) glass container. I have found it a helpful focusing and time management tool. I will chew a piece (or four or five) until the flavour runs out, and then I know I’ve been working on something for about half an hour.”
SXSW is upon us, and to remember the week, we’re looking back at the iconic Parking Lot Experiments by The Flaming Lips. These performance art pieces began in 1996, when the band started gathering onlookers in parking lots and give 40 volunteers cassettes to play in unison on their cars’ stereos, as explained in the video above. In 1997, they brought the experiment to SX. The experiments ultimately helped create the band’s four-disc album Zaireeka – which requires four CD players to play in full.
The introduction…
Meet 24-year-old North-London singer/songwriter Aanya Martin, combining the groove and cool of jazz with an indie sensibility.
Describe your sound… Something you’d want to listen to with a bottle of wine.
How you started making music… I used to go to different jams around London when I was 15, which was where I met producers and like minded musicians that I frequently collaborated with. I then attended East ondon Arts and Music where I developed my technical ability and discovered new genres I had never heard of. There, I was lucky enough to meet some of the industry’s leading artists. Up to this day, my band is made up of some of the musicians I shared classes with when I was 17.
Songs that make you feel like yourself… “What a difference a day made,” Dinah Washington; “Roseblood,” Mazzy Star; “Papua New Guinea,” Future Sound of London; “She’s lost control,” Joy Division; “Massive Attack,” Unfinished Sympathy.
What you can’t leave the house without… My headphones and snus.
Best way to spend a Sunday… Depends if I’m hungover or not. But traditionally, Sundays revolve around food and family. Nothing beats a traditional home-made roast, or better yet one of my mums curries. Then a film to digest it all.
Something Old, Something New
Every week, we share recommendations from the Best Fit community — one from the past, another from the present. This week, Best Fit’s Kayleigh Watson on Nourished By Time’s Erotic Probiotic 2 (2023) and Judeline’s Bodhiria (2024).
With a name inspired by cult lo-fi indie band Guided By Voices, as well as a silver-lined mantra for his journey of perseverance as a musician, the diverse sonic palate and fortitude of man-behind-the-moniker Marcus Brown is donned for all to see. A sleeper hit of 2023, Erotic Probiotic 2 by Baltimore’s Nourished By Time is a discovery that sparks a comforting pang of familiarity as much as a thrill of newness. Recorded in his parent’s basement while holding down a job at Whole Foods, Brown’s debut captures his escapism from the mundane and often painful reality of life: a tragic break-up; the politics of being Black in America; modern consumerism; simply longing for “more.” Not that you’d presume it at first glance; the synths cop a spring refined from the crudities of the 80s (though their tone feels more a fever dream than one historically accurate), meanwhile the beats bounce and the rhythms nudge towards a dawn that feels too jubilant to be melancholy. Encapsulating all aforementioned, “Daddy” rides the tide of Brown’s world, cyclically lifting through the hard times and soundtracking the good.
Having found firm fans in international Latin-music superstars Bad Bunny and Rosalía, the bewitching charm of Spain’s Judeline appears one quick to snare. Moving to Madrid from her small Andalusian village as a teen in the pursuit of a career in music, and still only aged 22, Judeline’s debut album Bodhiria is the culmination of a clear vision and inquisitive femininity. “Ethereal,” as a word, is often bandied about in regards to women who sing with whimsical dexterity over dreamy atmospherics, but it is fitting when referring to Judeline. A concept album centring on a woman trapped in a surreal afterlife while waiting for her lover to remember her, Bodhiria – similarly to Erotic Probiotic 2 above – captures the limbo of purgatory and yearning for more. Yet in her respective fantasy, Judeline’s protagonist turns to mysticism to survive, its earthy concoction of flamenco and Arabic influences seamlessly entwined with contemporary R&B and avant-garde electronica. It’s sophisticated, sensual and yes, ethereal: start with “angelA” and “luna roja.”
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists. Leading the selection this week are new tracks from Emmeline and Eaves Wilder, wisp, Hataalii, Léa Sen, Set Dressing, and coverstars florence road.
“I’m not trying to convince a country crowd that they should listen to my music by baiting them with a country song. I just think a lesbian country song is really funny.”