Fluxblog
March 14th, 2024 2:34pm

Until The Windows Are Open


Real Estate “Freeze Brain”

Real Estate don’t get groovy too often but on the occasions when they lean into a funkier bass line it suits them rather well. This isn’t to say you’d confuse “Freeze Brain” for funk music – the slinky bass part and tight pocket beat have more of a late 90s down-beat lounge aesthetic along the lines of Air’s first record. It’s a song with a pensive walking vibe that actually starts with lyrics about going on pensive walks, but then expands its emotional scope to be more about trying to find small moments of peace and joy while otherwise sinking into despair. The lyrics settle on at least pretending to be optimistic but I hear a little more faith in Martin Courtney’s voice than that, particularly when his vocal melody bounces off the beat a little.

Buy it from Bandcamp.



March 13th, 2024 10:09pm

All Of The Champagne In California


Yas Reven “WHoO-Oo!”

I like when dance music feels like a producer is playing a little game with you, one where they’re always a few steps ahead of you. “WHoO-Oo!” is one of those, a song that starts out feeling like you’re being led through some kind of funky maze and before you know it the maze feels more like a rollercoaster. Yas Reven keeps the whole thing feeling light and bouncy while carefully managing the big dopamine blast moments, and amps up the playfulness by cutting in vocal parts that sound like the utterances of a happy digital baby.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Ariana Grande “Ordinary Things”

I can’t tell whether the new Ariana Grande record Eternal Sunshine is her pushing a fading Max Martin out of his comfort zone as a musician, or if it’s more like Martin trying to get her type of floaty R&B music into his comfort zone and mostly not getting there. For the most part the songs don’t give me what I like about her music, and they don’t really provide any of his core competencies as the master of Too Big To Fail chart pop either. So it’s no big surprise that the only song on the record I love without reservation is “Ordinary Things,” one of two tracks without a Martin writing credit. This is the kind of Ariana song I like the most – an airy feel, a busy yet nimble melody, low-key sensuality, and the general sensation of getting a contact high off of someone else’s intense infatuation. This is never the sort of song she releases as a single but it’s the thing she’s best at doing, and it’s something that’s simply outside of Martin’s skill set. They aim for this lightness on some other songs on the record but his pop guy mindset resists grace in favor of sledgehammer hooks that distrust an audience’s patience and sensitivity. It just ends up sounding clumsy to me. I’m just glad he didn’t stomp all over this song’s sweet and delicate charms.

Buy it from Amazon.



March 12th, 2024 10:17pm

Something Wants To Eat Us All Alive


Iron & Wine featuring Fiona Apple “All In Good Time”

“All In Good Time” is a new song that’s so warm, familiar, and lived-in that it feels like it has existed for decades. Some of that is stylistic – you could send this back to the 70s and I doubt anyone would think it sounds like the future. But it’s mostly in Fiona Apple’s weathered voice, which invests Sam Beam’s lyrics with the accrued regret and exasperation of decades of getting burned by her own fiery passions. I like the way their voices contrast, her grit and gruffness set in sharp relief by his gentle, steady tenor. They’re singing a story about a relationship through time, and they make it sound like two opposites who’ve attracted each other and have spent ages trying to figure out how that makes sense.

Buy it from Bandcamp.



March 6th, 2024 8:00pm

The Empty Snobbery of Filterworld


A few years ago I wrote about “cultural cartography,” an idea that floated through BuzzFeed during its peak era that boils down to the notion that all forms of content have utility, though a lot of the time the audience decides what that utility will be when and how they share it or make it part of their identity. The New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka’s new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture has a clear and specific utility, which is to reassure people who identify as having an interest in culture that the reason they feel disconnected from or disappointed by contemporary culture is that recommendation algorithms have compromised everything. It’s a book that exists to give people who have minimal active engagement in culture – but still perceive themselves to be tasteful – an easy way to write off contemporary culture completely. Ah, it’s all ruined by The Algorithm! It’s all bland and bad now! It’s a book that gives its readers permission to give up on the arts. 

Read the rest of this entry »



March 1st, 2024 4:05pm

High With You


Sly5thAve “Monoxide”

I’m never unhappy to hear music that’s obviously influenced by D’Angelo, much less jumping off from ideas he laid down on Black Messiah. “Monoxide” starts from a similar point as the more gnarly tracks on that record but pushes a little further into jazz territory, with some bits recalling Herbie Hancock in his grandiose space-funk Sextant era or Miles Davis in fusion mode. Sly5thave is demonstrating a high level of both taste and skill here, and while I think it’s a fairly easy game of “spot the influence,” you can hear his distinct character in the disorienting quality of the music. The lyrics are basically just saying “I want to get high with you” over and over, but the music suggests a level of being stoned that would make communicating with someone a little challenging.

Buy it from Bandcamp.



February 29th, 2024 10:04pm

When Trouble Held Me In Its Cruel Smile


Mary Timony “Looking For the Sun”

I hear a lot of English folk psychedelia in the songs on Mary Timony’s new record Untame the Tiger and I think it suits her very well, especially after an extended spell of records with Ex Hex which went for a more blunt new wave minimalism. “Looking For the Sun” is a different sort of minimalism, I suppose, but the scope suggested by her guitar feels much grander than that. She makes the verses feel like an expanse of barren desert, which only makes the brighter chords on the chorus sound more like a burst of sunlight through parting clouds. Like a few other tracks on the record, the lyrics describe a rather bleak state of mind in direct but not unpoetic language. She imagines misery as a bad friend, and misfortune only exacerbating a fear of everyone else. But despite all that the song mostly sounds like an expression of optimism, or at least faith in the light at the end of every tunnel.

Buy it from Bandcamp.



February 28th, 2024 7:06pm

I Think To Myself


Astrid Sonne “Do You Wanna”

In most cases the implication of a song title like “Do You Wanna” is yes, you definitely wanna. You wanna have fun, you wanna have sex, you wanna get high, you wanna be free, etc. Astrid Sonne goes hard in the opposite direction, presenting the question full question – “do you wanna have a baby?” – and then leaving you in anticipation as it hangs in the air and a loud, clipped beat slowly moves you towards her next line. She makes you run through the possibilities in your head. Do you wanna commit to bringing a child into the world, the world we’re in right now? Do you wanna really commit? Do you wanna trust the other person to stick around? Do you wanna disappoint them by declining? Her answer ends up being “I really don’t know,” and she really makes you feel that confusion and uncertainty in your gut.

Buy it from Bandcamp.



February 22nd, 2024 9:14pm

Bring Your Coldness Back


Angelic Milk “Diana Ross”

“Diana Ross” is a song for anyone who’d say that they’d prefer to desire than be desired. Angelic Milk conjure the sound of early 60s girl group pop, but more importantly they tap into that sort of cosmic longing. Sarah Persephona sings about unrequited love like a highly aestheticized ritual, a personal religion in which whoever she’s singing about is the deity. They come to her in dreams, time seems to stretch out indefinitely, and songs from The Little Mermaid and Diana Ross are referenced like hymns. She shows some signs of doubt, but she clings to her faith and it’s quite beautiful.

Buy it from Bandcamp.



February 21st, 2024 7:59pm

The Future Is My Passion


Four Tet “Daydream Repeat”

The first 30 seconds of “Daydream Repeat” go by about as you’d expect from Four Tet, with percussive elements gradually clicking together into an up-tempo groove. Then the noise kicks in. It’s like a screaming vacuum, a massive blade scraping metal, a blast disintegrating everything in its path. It comes and goes through the track like a brutal storm, broken up by sections led by a piano part that sounds very gentle and innocent. The piano is lovely but it’s that digital noise that allures, this sound that’s not quite musical but carries some recognizable humanity to it. It’s like some disruptive furious feeling getting in the way of, but also giving weight to, the more level-headed moments.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Nourished by Time “Hand On Me”

A very cool synth bass part drops around the 1:40 mark in this song, which retroactively makes the first half of it feel a little hesitant, as though Marcus Brown is biding time waiting for this inevitable groove to kick in. That synth bass changes the way everything else feels in the song – what felt a little off-balance feels less precarious, what felt empty feels full. Brown opens the song singing “Have you never loved somebody, I’ve never tried,” and once the song fills out and the groove is complete, it sounds like he’s finally feeling that love he’s denied himself.

Buy it from Bandcamp.



February 19th, 2024 3:53pm

Sifting Through Centuries


Vampire Weekend “Capricorn”

The first four Vampire Weekend records have a very clean tonal palette, to the point that the debut and Contra in particular can feel a little antiseptic and fussy. That wasn’t a problem, really – that crisp just-so quality was a big part of the group’s personality and felt like a musical manifestation of the faux-preppy vibe they were going for. They started with a polished sound that many bands work their way towards from scrappy beginnings, so it makes some sense that their evolution would follow the reverse trajectory and feel comfortable embracing big loud noises on their fifth record Only God Was Above Us.

This is Vampire Weekend, so when I say “big loud noises,” I don’t mean they just slammed on some distortion pedals and played some riffs. The most discordant elements of the new singles “Capricorn” and “Gen-X Cops” are very tightly controlled and carefully chosen tones that hit very precise marks in the mix. The bursts of what I think are heavily processed keyboards that start midway through “Capricorn” are genuinely surprising and lend a sense of danger and precarity to song that, up until that point, sounds like a pretty standard Ezra Koenig ballad including a piano break that sounds perhaps a little too much like the one from “Step.” (I can’t tell whether that’s an intentional thematic callback, which Koenig is wont to do and makes some sense as both songs are about aging, or if it’s simply a songwriter writing like themselves.)

That noise, which sounds like an oddly sensual version of a BZZZT WRONG button in a game show, doesn’t entirely come out of nowhere. The percussion is presented with an exaggerated room sound that makes the whole song feel like it’s in soft focus. The air feels different in this song relative to previous Vampire recordings – dry and cold, filling a space that’s somehow both more and less claustrophobic. Koenig sounds distant as he sings about someone – a version of himself? – getting older and increasingly frustrated in trying to find answers, or pieces of the past that resonate with his particular place on a timeline. There are no answers in this song but there is some advice: “I know you’re tired of trying, listen clearly – you don’t have to try.” Is that the same as giving up? Not sure, but the music signals so much weariness and potential disaster that it’s at least asking someone to take a break and not be so hard on themselves.

Buy it from Amazon.



February 16th, 2024 4:20pm

Wherever You Are We Are


Atarashii Gakko! “Hello”

The Japanese girl group Atarashii Gakko specialize in extremely high energy tunes with a bratty, punky snarl so it makes sense they’d shine in a song that seems like it was built to be their own version of Le Tigre’s immortal “Deceptacon.” There’s other ingredients in this soup – I hear a little “Burning Up” by Madonna, a touch of the Afrika Bambaata/Johnny Rotten song “World Destruction,” the early Beastie Boys in general – but the thing that puts this over is the attitude in the Atarashii Gakko girls’ vocal delivery. They seem a little cute and flirty, but mostly intimidating and fearless.

Buy it from Amazon.



February 14th, 2024 7:46pm

Let’s Be Messy In The Evenings


Goat Girl “Ride Around”

The guitar parts in “Ride Around” have a sludgy tone and churning rhythm that feels sickly and uncomfortable. The hesistant feel of the percussion only exacerbates that, at some points bringing to mind the kind of cautious movements of someone who feels like they’re about to puke. This is all very unpleasant and probably not the most enticing way to describe a song, but it really works as a vibe and matches the lyrics nicely. If you’re gonna sing “The way it goes, I think you’re kinda gross / me and you, I think we could be close,” it shouldn’t be in a song that goes down easy, right?

Buy it from Bandcamp.



February 13th, 2024 6:26pm

Looking For Others Wearing Really Big Shirts


Cheekface “The Fringe”

Cheekface is a godsend for anyone out there who misses Cake, or ever wished Calvin Johnson had made a late 70s/early 80s style power-pop record, or wanted to know what a hybrid of They Might Be Giants and Talking Heads might be like. But despite aesthetic similarities to some very specific artists of previous generations, Cheekface has their own personality. A lot of that comes down to the way they mix and match the recognizable elements, like they simply found a new way to style that droll Johnson/John McCrea vocal affect into a fresh new outfit. The personality also comes through in Greg Katz’s lyrical fixation on recognizable hipster archetypes as they manifest in the present day – a frustrated guy deciding to make himself a local character in a town full of surveillance cameras, guys who are frustrated that their friends “getting square,” dudes who are “dispassionately vaping” while watering plants, and in the case of “The Fringe,” an artist who seems to be motivated to create unappealing art to gain some clout. The jokes are pretty good, but the replay value is a direct result of the band taking structure and arrangement very seriously.

Buy it from Bandcamp.



February 12th, 2024 7:37pm

Gotta Commit To The Curse


Yungatita “Pick At Your Face”

“Pick At Your Face” sounds bright and bratty and effortless as Yungatita seem to tumble through a series of very strong melodies. It’s a song about feeling listless, ugly, and disheveled, but more in a “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t ya kill me” way than a “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here” way. The band go big and bold on the chorus, but also very cutesy – as 90s-coded as this gets, the backing vocals have a post-Kidz Bop quality that’s much more in line with strains of 2000s indie that aren’t particularly cool at the moment. But you know, songs this good have a way of changing minds about aesthetic choices that are a little cringe at face value.

Buy it from Bandcamp.



February 9th, 2024 12:24pm

I’m Above You Now


Unessential Oils “Distrust the Magician”

I didn’t really notice there was singing on “Distrust the Magician” until I’d heard it a few times, mainly because it’s so easy to zone out and get lost in the song’s groove and heavy vibe that a lot of the details and structure gets blurry. That’s sort of the point, though closer attention to individual components of the arrangement is rewarded, particularly if you’re focusing in on the lead guitar or the pulsing keyboard drone filling in the background. The performance feels lose and at least partially improvised but the palette is very considered and precise – guitar tones that sound light and lovely but also gritty and grey, percussion with just the right level of dry crispiness, a mix that feels spacious but allows the guitar parts to overlap into a lattice with a very tasteful density.

Buy it from Secret City Records.



February 7th, 2024 1:48am

It’s Not Pathetic If You Don’t Get Caught


Liquid Mike “Small Giants”

Liquid Mike’s new record sounds like a musical stew made from ingredients exclusively sourced from a CD bin marked “$4 used alternative,” but the element of their style that grabbed me is how much of the vocal and lead guitar melodies remind me specifically of Matthew Sweet. But you know, if Matthew Sweet was more of a dirtbag delinquent? I have no idea whether or not the members of this band even listen to Sweet, but that Sweet-ness is a touch of harmonic polish that levels up the more straight ahead pop-punk aspects of a song like “Small Giants.” It suits the lyrics well too, amping up the golden sunny nostalgia of a song that romanticizes being a young loser.

Buy it from Bandcamp.



February 5th, 2024 10:16pm

Failure To Commit To The Role


The Last Dinner Party “The Feminine Urge”

The Last Dinner Party sound as though they’ve somehow never heard music besides indie-aligned records from the United Kingdom, like they were bred from childhood to take their place in a lineage of clever, somewhat stuffy bands including The Smiths, Pulp, The Charlatans, Catatonia, Camera Obscura, The Long Blondes, The Pipettes, Florence and the Machine, and so on. They have enough craft and charm to fit into that RIYL list, but thus far I’m having trouble locating something specific to them in their songs. They execute tropes rather well, the lyrics are fairly sharp, and they’re capable of writing a genuinely strong hook like the fluttery ascending melody in the chorus of “The Feminine Urge.” This can be enough, and lord knows plenty of bands working in the same milieu can’t pull any of that off. But I’d like to feel like this band can do more than just effectively reassemble the ideas of other bands.

Buy it from Amazon.



February 1st, 2024 9:20pm

A Machine That Only Brings You Sorrow


Boeckner “Lose”

One of the oldest conventions of this blog is using a line from a song as the title of the post, ideally something abstract and evocative. Sometimes I don’t have a lot to work with, but in the case of “Lose,” it’s like top to bottom cool abstract evocative lines. “Living blind in isolation,” “every star in retrograde,” “this is a city of doorways,” “the vanishing neighbors,” “some Eldritch strange eraser,” and that’s just the first verse. Dan Boeckner built the song to feel like a speeding car, the lyrics feel a little like quick glimpses out the window as you zoom away from somewhere, not necessarily towards someplace in particular. It’s hard to shake how doomed this song feels – everything is crumbling around him, he was bound to lose his love – but Boeckner sings with so much heart and go-for-broke intensity that it overpowers any of his cynical impulses.

Buy it from Sub Pop.



January 31st, 2024 9:04pm

Unbox Paradise


Omni “Plastic Pyramid”

I’m a big fan of songs in which singers interact like they’re talking to each other, particularly when the lyrics aren’t particularly obvious and it’s like listening in on a very strange conversation. That’s the case in “Plastic Pyramid,” a twitchy post-punk song that seems to conflate fast fashion with travel in which Omni’s Philip Frobos trades lines with Izzy Glaudini of Automatic in a listless “are they on a bad date?” tone. (Love the way she seems to audibly roll her eyes at the question “are you hydrated, baby?”) in Glaudini was a terrific choice for this role – she’s always got this droll cool girl quality, but the song allows her to embody boredom, passivity, and vague contempt at different points.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Drahla “Default Parody”

Here’s another post-punk song. I read a tweet today by the English music critic Tom Ewing who was lamenting how post-punk started as a framework for experimentation and pushing beyond genre constraints, but its cyclical revivals treat the sound as a genre like any other. It’s iterative rather than explorative. I think this is a good point, but I don’t think the intentions of the artists who establish a genre ever really factor into how other artists end up playing with their conventions. Every genre convention wasn’t conventional at some point.

Drahla are very good at what they do even if what they do isn’t at all original. I think the post-punk aesthetic is something that’s mostly interesting depending on the energy of the execution, how much musicians throw themselves into the deep end of the sound. “Default Parody” has a cool groove and appealing deadpan vocals, but it clicks mainly because the guitarists sound like they’re having a great time wringing the sickest, most abrasive sounds out of their instruments. Even if a lot of the song feels rigid and mechanical, those guitars make it all sound wild.

Buy it from Bandcamp.



January 30th, 2024 8:21pm

Open To Persuasion


Bullion featuring Carly Rae Jepsen “Rare”

I hear “Rare” in terms of temperature – the bass is at a low simmer, the synth textures and Bullion’s voice have a slight chill. Neither is at an extreme, but the contrast is still quite sharp. His voice and cadence feels very formal and polite to me, he sounds like an introverted and cerebral person trying to reason his way though something quite emotional. Carly Rae Jepsen isn’t that much warmer in tone on this track, but she comes across as more present and down to earth. You get the feeling that she’s trying to acclimate to his vibe, trying to feel things as he feels them. With this in mind I quite like the ambiguity of the chorus – “deep in the heart, deep in the heart” – because it sounds like they’re trying to make love work, but at least one of them has to dig deeper and work harder for it to click.

Buy it from Bandcamp.




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