8 Tracks: Go back to those gold sounds

8 Tracks is your antidote to the algorithm. Each week, NPR Music producer Lars Gotrich, with the help of his colleagues, makes connections between sounds across time. A slightly different version of this column originally ran in the NPR Music newsletter.

In high school, I’d Sharpie my favorite bands’ logos in notebooks, decipher lyrics line by line, memorize riffs and strategically place songs on mixtapes. There’d be this feeling that those bands understood whatever was going on in my life — during that volatile teenage mixture of hormones, shame and uncertainty — generally expressed through music that was loud, fast, sad or some combination of the three.

And then, inevitably, by the next album or tour, the most ambitious of them moved on… to a different sound, look or theme. Maybe there’s less of the old stuff in the set list. As a teen with an undeveloped brain — not to mention a burgeoning music critic — there’d be a sense of betrayal. How could you not make more of the thing that is meaningful to ME, specifically?

But when I fell in love with Starflyer 59, I quickly learned that the SoCal rock band never settled in. By the time Silver and Gold — two gorgeously heavy shoegaze bummers released in 1994 and 1995, respectively — hit my CD player, its primary songwriter, Jason Martin, had already moved on to doo-wop-drenched hard rock (Americana) and dreamy Britpop (The Fashion Focus). Over the years, that restlessness — underscored by sturdy songcraft — never really let up. Martin, in so many ways, taught me how to trust the artistic process because, as I’ve learned interviewing him, he makes a point not to repeat himself.

Gold, in particular, is a record that regularly makes lists of all-time greatest shoegaze albums. It’s moody and metallic, yet textured and melted. Its surf licks and doo-wop melodies somehow comingle with Deep Purple riffs. The shoegaze scene never made a record like it then or since. “I don’t know what the hell I was doing on that thing,” Martin told me during one of our recent chats. “But listening back, it’s almost like you’re listening back to a different person.”

The title of Starflyer 59’s 17th album, Lust for Gold, out Friday, Aug. 16, is less of a wink and more of a wistful reflection. Martin’s nostalgic melancholy — always existential, but with a ho-hum-ness that’s become unassumingly poetic — comes up against the shoegaze sound that first defined him. And, like many musicians entering their third or fourth decade, there’s both a tenderness toward and a forlornness that reconsiders the past self. The first single from Lust for Gold leads off this edition of 8 Tracks. And, in keeping with the theme, here are a handful and a half of artists revisiting old bands, former sounds and beloved songs — stream the playlist while you read along.

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Starflyer 59, “909”

By his own admission, Martin has always had a touch of the blues. Even when he’d rip a triumphant guitar solo, there’d always be a hint of sadness lurking behind just about every Starflyer 59 song. So when he bends his guitar strings to sound like an air raid siren over a barrage of blisteringly heavy shoegaze chords, that familiar feeling comes back — a warm blanket of distortion to drown out the world. On “909,” he looks back on the best days of his life with longing and headbanging riffage; Martin’s voice, now deeper with age, gives his ennui a gothic gravitas. That “different person” Martin revisits feels less lonely with the band assembled, featuring longtime compatriots as well as Martin’s son Charlie on drums, where the past still resonates but allows space to create new memories.

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Smashing Pumpkins, “Who Goes There”

Billy Corgan says that the new album, Aghori Mhori Mei, was written to see if “our ways of making music circa 1990-1996 would still inspire something revelatory.” For those who have missed the Smashing Pumpkins fuzz, there is something satisfying about this old alchemy of Corgan, James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin, even if, at times, the metallic riffs lend themselves to a detuned déjà vu. But then there’s “Who Goes There.” No chugga-chugga riffs, no rat-a-tat snare — just a three-minute pop song dressed up as heartland rocker ballad… and another track worthy of my underrated Smashing Pumpkins playlist (Spotify, Tidal).

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LL Cool J, “Passion”

On this Herbie Hancock-sampled beat by Q-Tip, LL Cool J sounds just as hungry now as when he made his debut at 16. LL shouts out his contemporaries — not to mention (lovingly) challenges André 3000 to get back in the rap game — and his accomplishments (“For references, check Smithsonian” is a sophisticated flex). But most of all, you can hear the smile in his swagger. When an artist revisits their younger self, the person staring back at them can intimidate or inspire; LL sees that kid in the Kangol hat and wants to show him the world he’s made.

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The Softies, “I Said What I Said”

Ever heard a harmony and just sighed? More than anything, I’m just happy to hear Rose Melberg and Jen Sbragia sing together again. The twee-pop duo — just two voices, two electric guitars — remains true to all versions of themselves on their first album as The Softies in 24 years. “I Said What I Said” is the kind of breakup song that comes with distance and wisdom, but offers a hug to the person who “needed something to only be mine.”

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Loren Connors & David Grubbs, “The Pacific School”

More than two decades since Arborvitae, this pair of experimentalists don’t so much rejoin but rewire a tense-but-tender dynamic. Unlike their previous recording, Loren Connors and David Grubbs don’t keep to their corners of electric guitar and piano, but let their sensitivities guide these improvisations on the duo’s new album, Evening Air. “The Pacific School,” at times, feels like one of Erik Satie‘s gentle Gymnopédies, yet gives the sensation of fog folding over asphalt.

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Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Tong Poo”

In the fall of 2022, months before he died from cancer, Ryuichi Sakamoto played one last concert. The Japanese composer took a look at his decades in music as an electronic pop pioneer, producer, film scorer and ambient musician to present a stark and stunning portrait. “Tong Poo” has lived many lives: on his debut with the Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1978; as recorded by his wife, Akiko Yano; re-arranged for Japanese fashion designer Junya Watanabe. Like much of his posthumous album, Opus, this version strips away everything but the melody on piano; there is quiet reflection, but also moments where the song’s whimsy can’t help but leap through Sakamoto’s fingers.

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The Jesus Lizard, “Hide & Seek”

Look, it takes a lot to be The Jesus Lizard. The ’90s noise rockers have reunited here and there to tour, but saddling back up to the studio requires a certain level of unhinged, yet eerily clear-eyed energy. Rack, out Sept. 13, is more than up to the task: It’s loud, obnoxious and perverse, but occasionally pile-driven by what could be considered a pop song. “Hide & Seek” throbs and gobs like snot-nosed punk, but dares you to scream along to its snaggle-toothed chorus.

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Karate, “Silence, Sound”

Were my group of friends the only ones who called Karate’s intricately nerdy indie rock “fake jazz”? We meant it as a compliment, but the joke was always on us: Karate’s members were trained at Berklee and, over time, got punks into John Coltrane and Steely Dan (well, I never got into the Dan). The Boston trio has released two songs from the band’s first album in two decades, Make It Fit: the lean and aerobic “Defendants” and “Silence, Sound.” The latter, in particular, captures what made Karate so unique toward the end of its first run: time signature shifts snuck into unexpected pockets, a guitar-bass-drums dynamic equally at home at a jazz club or a basement show and, most importantly, an emotionally resonant performance that permeates every movement.

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