NYC Scene Report – MuMu, poptropicaslutz!, & Razor Braids

This week’s NYC Scene Report features MuMu clashing with a neighbor, poptropicaslutz! releasing music just in case the world ends, and Razor Braids with a break up song that’s been years in the making.

* While I’ve been incredibly lucky with neighbors, having some great ones, even I once had someone living below me that drove me insane. I think we’ve all had at least one of those, which is what makes MuMu’s “The Bitch in Me” so relatable.

The NYC-based alt-pop artist went into detail explaining the song, saying, “‘The Bitch in Me’ was inspired by a real person – who shall remain unnamed – whose world revolves around money, and aristocracy. The only thing they’re passionate about is securing the best table at the new Michelin five-star restaurant … she brought out the bitch in me.”

MuMu continued, adding, “What I learned in the process of writing this song was that it’s OK for me to not like everyone. I don’t need to be puking hearts, and farting rainbows all day every day wherever I go. I can get angry, I can be resentful, I can write a bitchy song about my bitchy neighbor and hope to goddess she never hears it.”

Click play on “The Bitch in Me,” and if you have a neighbor that makes you feel the same way, crank it up!

* Long Island-based duo poptropicaslutz! recently released their debut EP just in case the world ends via Epitaph Records, and whether you want to call it hyper-punk, or emo-pop, or some other combination of genres, or words, I think the phrase that describes it best is – really f*cking dope.

Take, for example, the song “this might be our last december,” which features 8485. According to poptropicaslutz! twosome Nick Crawford and Christian Cicillia, the inspiration for the song stemmed from the pandemic. “just in case the world ends is a project that started during the global pandemic, as poptropicaslutz! was forming, and the ‘end of the world’ didn’t seem so farfetched. We thought about what album we’d make if it was our last chance to make one.”

Thankfully, it wasn’t their last chance to make an album, and “this might be our last december” is a song I’d love to hear on every radio station, and on every gym playlist for the entire summer.

* Who among us hasn’t had a messy, or at the very least emotional breakup? If you have your hand up, I just gotta say … seriously? How’d you do it? For the rest of us, Brooklyn-based band Razor Braids have a song that encapsulates the multifaceted feelings that occur during, and immediately after a breakup.

Titled “Kellogg’s,” the band’s Hollye Bynum says the lyrics comes from a very real place. “I wrote these lyrics when I was going through a really tough breakup, and shortly after experiencing a traumatic head injury,” she explains, “It’s one of those moments where you say to yourself, ‘How did I get here?’ Years later during the initial Covid shutdown, I revisited this song when I was far away from my band, and feeling a similar feeling of, ‘What the fuck is going to happen next?’ I think, along with the rest of the world, I was confronted with the realization that shit is out of my hands and ultimately had to learn to lean into that.”

Razor Braids’ Jilly Karande remembers the first time she heard the initial stages of the song, saying, “I had just gone through an unexpectedly shitty breakup, and had so many scary, uncertain feelings both about my personal life, and then the world at large. This song felt like a space where I could at least try and ask all those questions, and maybe in doing so accept that I don't have all the answers.”

Check out “Kellogg’s,” and keep an ear out for more from Razor Braids.


For more of the best of NYC’s indie music scene, come back next Wednesday, and check out the archives for previous columns.

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