I Just Want To Ruin These Sheets, Oh Yeah

Artemas “Southbound”

Artemas seems like a cultural inevitability – of course someone growing up on The Weeknd and the more synth-heavy end of indie music would eventually merge the aesthetics and the result would go over well with a mainstream audience who were immersed in the same music. The last time I wrote about Artemas, the indie X factor was Tame Impala, and this time around it’s more like St Vincent in gnarly electronic rock mode. It’s a great combination, like dark chocolate and raspberries.

The other notable thing about Artemas’ music is that it’s extremely horny stuff, but in a way that strikes me as very porn-brained. The lyrics aren’t particularly demeaning or gross – I’d actually say they’re fairly respectful of the woman being addressed – but his desires seem like they’ve been largely shaped by porn. I’m not reaching here, by the way. He actually sings “just wanna fuck you all night like a porn star” at the end of a verse. There’s a few lines here that give me “Steve Carrell discussing the sand-bag texture of breasts,” but on the whole I don’t think the lyrical perspective is cringe or even unusual. It’s just anthropologically interesting to me, and I suspect we’re going to be hearing a lot more songs in the years to come that are explicitly sexual but seem more rooted in PornHub bookmarks than personal experience.

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