(Starting from) MOSQUITOS
Ironically, a rabbit hole of great music
What better time to think about our favourite summer creature than in the dead of winter when there’s none of them around?
Welcome to Starting from _____, the weekly column where I start from a song I like and go exploring for other songs with the same name.
Mosquito by ex-cowboy (2023)
Vibe - the girl next door just said no and you’re deciding how to become a better person for your future love interest, à la mister Darcy, but it’s the 2000s and you don’t have a phone yet. This is all conveyed through quick-cut montage on a Super8 camera, featuring speeding downhill on a bike.
This week’s starting song was indirectly suggested by my Canadian friend Alexis, who saw these guys open for Peanut Butter Telephone and I was hooked from the first seconds of it. Their music has that fuzzy comforting aura to it, like everything is a bit blurred and softened, how I remember my teenage years - still mostly protected from the world, acutely aware of it.
Mosquito Song by Queens of the Stone Age (2002)
Vibe - villain origin story, from a desert town to a carnival town. It was never supposed to go so wrong, but it did.
Swallow and chew / Eat you alive / All of us food that hasn’t died
Something in that line reminded me of Comfortably Numb from Pink Floyd and also of the novel Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica - the kindness muscle in people giving up, replaced with violence.
Check them out @queensofthestoneage
Mosquito by Opus Kink (2019)
Vibe - walking down the street with a heavy step, coolest cat on the block, maybe a villain anthem, like the Godfather but it’s a 1970s Looney Tunes dark comedy.
Their first listed song on Spotify is St Paul of the Tarantulas, which damn, riddle me intrigued. Fabulous vocalist and a heavy beat, I could picture mosh pits to this. If you like AnnenMayKantereit and you don’t mind a more punk nuance to them, you’re in for a fun time.
Check them out @opuskink
The Mosquito by The Doors (1972)
Vibe - You’re in a New Orleans bar and the band starts off kinda goofy, a bit cumbia, and you’re unsure what’s going on, wasn’t this supposed to be a jazz joint, but hey, at least they’re in key and it’s groovy. But then you notice the keys player cracking his knuckles behind the singer and he proceeds to shred the most stank-face-inducing solo you’ve heard in your brief blink on this planet. As you stand there, head bobbing and legs moving, the guitarist picks up the thread and now you have a full conversation happening through you.
I am only 50 years late to the hype around The Doors.
Mosquito - Model/Actriz (2023)
Vibe - the mosquito in your room couldn’t get to you, so he invited his post-punk noise band friends into your bedroom at 2 in the morning and you awake to neon pink strobe lights pulsing through your smashed-in windows and it’s not exactly hell, ‘cause you’re headbanging your way to a slipper.
This was by far the most fun discovery of the bunch, they had me with the badassery of the chorus and the line “with a body count higher than a mosquito”.
Check them out @modelactriz
κουνούπια by Melentini
Vibe - you’ve just opened the door to your empty family home, after years of being away. It’s warm. Something sweet was recently taken out of the oven. Golden light streams through the curtains. There are pictures of you as a baby, as a teenager, as a young adult. You can hear the voices of the neighbours through the walls.
This was my reward for venturing 20 search results down, this beautiful heartfelt brass piece by Berlin-based Melentini.
Follow her @melentini
Mosquito Song by Seun Kuti
Vibe - that one party house down the road that makes you wish you were friends with someone in it
The first 30 seconds will trigger every fight response in your body, but it gets groovy and soon you wanna get up and dance. What I didn’t expect was the legacy contained in singer and saxophone player, Seun Kuti. He’s the youngest son of Afrobeats pioneer and activist Fela Kuti (founder of Africa 70) and grandson of suffragist and Chief Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, MON. A good reminder that music is a catalyst for change.
Follow him @seunkuti
Mosquito by Neelix
Vibe - the friend in the party house that gets you in
One - I don’t listen to whatever the kids call electronic music these days, but I could see myself dancing to this piece of *checks notes* progressive trance. Two - Neelix is apparently a huge deal and I’m willing to believe it for that bass drop alone. Hope they play this next time I go to Berlin.
Check him out @neelixmusic
Mosquitoh by Jazzbois
Vibe - you’re in an underground club in Prague 2014 and you’re not exactly sure why everything is wiggly and wavy and the couch seems to ebb and flow, but you’re cool with it, it’s like the room is a tortilla wrapping cozily around you and you’re spinning with the tunnel in that one super cool shifting-gravity Inception scene.
Last song comes from Budapest jazz trio, Jazzbois, because what do girls want? That’s right, killer basslines.
Check them out @jazzbois