John V. Variety is an employee of Variety Enterprises and the alien-born host of The John V. Variety Hour, a “psych pop rave-up” from another galaxy that has found syndication on earth in Miami, Berlin, and Brooklyn. His brain is upside down and he’s sustained several concussions, so his idea of pop music is strange and abrasive — but he nevertheless tries, often bursting through the dark gothic pallor with glamorous gleeful explosions and psychedelic surprises, as well as a rotating motley crew of collaborators onstage and off (including, but not limited to: the French-German sound artist Laure Boer, the rapper Big Baby Gandhi, and Jah Jah of Ninjasonik). He often shares his askew thoughts on twitter under @johnvvariety.
November 2024. We pick up on our Talkhouse debut hero John V. Variety — that’s me! Gotcha! Writing is about manipulation! — about five months after the release of john v. variety loves u ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡. It was an EP so wrought with future-shocked clipped up death disco grief, and charged with such chaotic energy, that it glitched on its streaming release and nearly upturned its creators’ summers. I am, at this point, lost and sinking.
Once again, A. Petrov, aka Marcy the Baptist, serves not only as chief collaborator on this — my confessional mutant new-wave clap-boom-bap jam — but as its very catalyst. She was over working on her solo project and had a day out in the city shooting videos. I whined to her about my love life. I uttered something of feeling akin to a “blow up doll on dates with other blow up dolls.” She eyed me. Great, she said, write a fucked up song about that while I’m gone. The challenge enticed me. It’s easy for us; I think we were born on the same lonely planet.
This song is an attempt to make light of my frustration. It’s based on a series of winding riffs and hooks that culminate in a massive key change in the second half, which turns into Anna Donia herself’s monologue of the inevitable fate of all love, set to a series of chords so strange A. wrestled with me over its eerie resolution. I mean it, I argued to her — without the Emin7 it lacks the ambivalence of the song, the idealism slowly falling into defeat.
A. builds percussion, shreds bass and “paper riffs,” and has me re-record every guitar about three times. In a day and night, we are mostly done. Immediately, we start filming the video, running in the cold with an actual blow up doll (my most painful purchase as an artist) clothed in my silk robe. “Ohhh people in Brooklyn don’t care enough about my art,” mocked A., impersonating me. “That’s because you’ve never burned a blow up doll in the street.”
The video, also shot by A., came out great, and I hope a teen puts it on TikTok for us. This song was insanely difficult to mix, to the point where we had to bring in Harmony Pulaski, aka HARMONY’S CUDDLE PARTY as a fixer. She — another one of my favorite songwriters, a genius — did a fantastic job adding dynamics to its punky dash, and her fellow Boston production wiz Dan Thorn made an expert master.
I mean this single to mark something of a growing “band” sound, in which my music is going from its previous unperformable live form and coming back somewhere not quite on, but still closer, to earth. I think of this as a pivot point. A triumph over writer’s block, an anthem against cheap city sex, proof that one can do anything under challenge, and THE SONG OF THE SUMMER. CLAP!
— John V. Variety
