Archive for 2012

Titus Andronicus “In A Big City”

I never connected with Titus Andronicus before I heard Local Business, or more specifically, this song. Their older stuff was far too Oberst-y for my taste, and I found myself in the vaguely uncomfortable position of greatly admiring them as people but feeling a little confused about what people were getting out of their music. I haven’t really changed my mind about those early records, but now I totally get the appeal of what Patrick Stickles has been doing all along. “In A Big City” is earnest and a little bratty, a slightly off-kilter anthem about growing up in the shadow of New York City. It’s specifically about being from New Jersey, but it’s close enough to the feelings I’ve had growing up in the Hudson Valley that it resonates with me in a huge way. But still, the Jersey-ness makes it a better song – it’s one thing to look on to The City as an outsider, and another thing to be some sort of underdog pariah. This is a song that draws on the underdog pop cultural mythology of Jersey, and the drama of it hinges on Stickles reckons with the way he is perceived in the context of where he’s from. This song is thrilling because he just owns it, and throws himself into the role of the heroic loser heading off to make his way in the cold, indifferent metropolis just across the river.

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Mac DeMarco “Annie”

Mac DeMarco’s guitar style is fluid and so consistently melodic that it seems jarring whenever he actually strums a chord. There’s an airy, inviting sound to his songs – a mellow late night vibe that reminds me of a smoothed-out Neil Hagerty or a more restless version of The Clientele. His new album is a pleasure in small doses – it’s all too samey to hold my attention beyond three or four songs at a time – and a good starting point for an artist who will probably make better things down the line. He’s got the melody and the atmosphere but he needs to work on composition and structure. The free-floating quality of his playing may be more compelling with a stronger groove in the rhythm section – you kinda get close to that on “Annie,” which has a nice mid-Seventies vibe to it.

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Mouse on Mars “HYM”

Mouse on Mars are brilliant at taking electronic textures and making them sound incredibly tactile, with sudden shifts and clangs in the music triggering the sensation of velocity or impact. “HYM,” one of the most song-y tracks on WOW, packs enough musical ideas into four minutes to last about half a proper album. The super-compression of the composition may seem like attention deficit disorder, but I take it as both an expression of raw excitement and economical precision. It’s fun to hear these veterans absorb some tricks from dubstep too – it seems a bit sly, but also totally natural. They’ve been on this creative wavelength for a long time now.

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How to Destroy Angels “Ice Age”

This is one of the most surprising pieces of music I’ve come across in a while: It’s basically Trent Reznor and his collaborators taking the raw elements of bluegrass and warping it into minimalist abstraction. The familiar sound is gutted, but the scaffolding of the structure is still there, or at least implied by sounds that reduce the sound of a banjo or a mandolin to something purely percussive. This aspect of the track reminds me a bit of pieces by John Cage and Steve Reich, but as the song progresses, there’s an ambient drag to it that reminds me of Reznor and Atticus Ross’s previous soundtrack work, and also maybe a bit of Terry Riley. But despite all these highbrow comparisons, “Ice Age” is one of the most warmly melodic pieces of music Reznor has ever been involved in; even with the deconstructed arrangement, it’s way more like a Nickel Creek song than it’s unlike it. Everything about this song is a remarkable balancing act.

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Ne-Yo “Cracks In Mr. Perfect”

Ne-Yo has spent most of his career presenting himself as an idealized boyfriend, a fantasy for women and an aspirational figure for straight men. This song has him stepping out of that role and addressing the fact that his actual lived experience is very different from the characters in his songs. The Ne-Yo of “Cracks In Mr. Perfect” is sexually irresponsible and driven mainly by insecurities, whether he’s blowing cash at a club to seem like a player or worrying about other artists who may outshine him. He’s not beating himself up, though. He has a sense of humor about this, and is owning his faults and foibles. The song is just as seductive as anything else he’d record normally, and the candor only makes him more charming.

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Clinic “Cosmic Radiation”

Clinic’s new album Free Reign contains some of the longest songs of their career, and generally has the vibe of a band stretching out and exploring their grooves. The funny thing is, the best example of them doing that on the album is not even three minutes long. “Cosmic Radiation” has all the feeling of a long jam, but it’s remarkably concise, providing the best twists and turns of an epic without any of the bits where your attention may wander. I wouldn’t mind if it meandered a bit more, actually, but it’s just so much more impressive to see a band so in control of a vibe that they can evoke it perfectly and move on without getting indulgent. There are definitely a lot of bands who could learn a lot from this approach.

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Michael Mayer “Rudi Was A Punk”

Michael Mayer is very out of step with trends in all corners of electronic and dance music right now, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Mantasy, his first album in eight years, sticks to his strengths as a composer – clean sounds, tight structures, vamps, vamps, vamps, vamps. Each track has a distinct character and tone, like a meditation on a memory of a classic groove. Sometimes it’s obvious, and a song riffs on a classic like “Billie Jean.” “Rudi Is A Punk” comes off like a stylish film soundtrack, like some slick, metronomic gloss on James Bond or Mission: Impossible. As with the best Mayer material, the clinical precision of the track is complemented by hooks that are very straightforward and eager to please. That’s the funny thing about Mayer and Kompakt – it all seems so Euro and aloof, but pretty much all of their output can be enjoyed as pop music.

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Beach House “Wild”

It is amazing to me that this song is as gorgeous and graceful as it is despite its rhythm coming mainly from a very flimsy preset pattern. Though it’s consistent through the piece, it’s mostly obscured behind very elegant and deliberate sounds – a very precise and evocative guitar tone, a lovely keyboard drone, Victoria Legrand’s soothing voice. The arrangement is like thick incense haze, when the drum machine is foreground it’s as if the smoke clouds have cleared for a moment. This trick works on a thematic level too: Legrand is singing about a teen taking risks and being “wild” as an escape from the more grim aspects of their family life, but when the sound shifts, it’s like snapping out of the dreamy fantasy and remembering that you’re just some nervous inexperienced kid at heart.

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Wu-Tang Clan “Six Directions of Boxing”

Six out of the nine living members of the Wu-Tang Clan rap on this track, and aside from Ghostface and GZA, it’s the least famous members of the crew. Here’s the thing, though: As the years go by, it’s actually more thrilling to those guys, because where else are you going to get amazing, densely packed verses from an underrated genius like Inspectah Deck? And though Masta Killa and U-God haven’t proven themselves to deliver as album artists, they’ve really come into their own as they’ve aged. Masta Killa in particular has matured a lot over the years – he was just a kid when he dropped a verse on Enter the Wu-Tang, and didn’t truly find his voice until The W. They all shine on this track, though the most fascinating verse comes from the GZA, who dials his energy waaaaay down for a carefully composed allegory about his early days as a rapper.

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Kylie Minogue “Come Into My World (Abbey Road Sessions)”

It’s become a cliché in the internet era to make slow, sad acoustic versions of pop hits for the sake of novelty. Generally speaking, I am not a fan of this, and resent the implication in many cases that the song has been rendered more powerful and substantial by remaking it with tired indie tropes. Kylie Minogue’s Abbey Road Sessions, a new collection of her old hits remade with new arrangements and live instrumentation, could easily fall into this trap but does not. Yes, some of the arrangements are softer and slower, but they don’t compromise the love and joy that is at the heart of her best songs. Instead, Minogue recasts the sentiment, dialing back some elements of what she’s expressing while highlighting others. This version of “Come Into My World” is just as intense and crushed-out as the original dance-pop recording, but she’s conveying a different sort of anticipation. It’s not as overwhelming, but the delicate sound brings out a very compelling, understated desperation in her phrasing.

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Taylor Swift “State of Grace”

I wouldn’t have guessed that Taylor Swift would be better at writing late-period U2 songs than the actual U2, but here we are. The only track on No Line on the Horizon that touches “State of Grace” is the title track, and this is probably a little better. I don’t think Swift should be in any hurry to rush into musical “maturity” – aside from this cut, the best songs on Red embrace her youth – but I’d love to see her continue with songs in this vein in the future because the whole U2 vibe is good for projecting youthful earnestness and yearning with a sense of clear-eyed, adult perspective. Swift’s lyrics are well-matched to this tone, too – she’s basically singing about a feeling of overwhelming clarity upon meeting someone so amazing that she’s automatically knocked out of a complacent understanding of her life.

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Bat For Lashes “Oh Yeah”

It is an awful thing to feel stuck and uninspired, as if your inner life has all gone blank. You feel the absence in your mind, but you don’t know how to fill it. “Oh Yeah” is sung from the perspective of a woman who feels this lack, and she’s desperately hoping for a quick fix. “I’m looking for a lover to climb inside,” Natasha Khan sings, her voice rising up with an optimistic yearning. “Waiting like a flower to open wide, I’m in bloom!” From the first verse, she sings about feeling alive, echoing the climax of “Lilies,” a song with more or less the same narrative at the start of the record. But “Oh Yeah!” is more sexual and less ambiguous. She’s unlocked something in her mind and body, and the song communicates her desire to act on this personal breakthrough.

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Kendrick Lamar “Bitch, Dant Kill My Vibe”

There are a lot of songs about “haters” out there, probably way too many, and most of them are expressions of clueless bullshit narcissism and flagrant insecurity. “Bitch, Dant Kill My Vibe” is an outlier, though, a song from the perspective of a sensitive creative person who seems legitimately afraid that jealous and unimaginative people may prevent him from making his art on his own terms. There are some threatening lines in the verses, but the tone of the track is subdued and melancholy. You can pick up on the introverted tone from the first chords, and he makes it explicit early on: “Sometimes I need to be alone.” Even one of the most aggressive parts of the song – “hide your feelings, hide your feelings” – comes off as self-directed before you get to the next line about threatening to steal a dude’s woman. It’s an emotionally complicated song, you can feel Lamar cycle through moments of doubt and cynicism as he struggles to hold on to his belief in his talent and vision.

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Godspeed You! Black Emperor “We Drift Like Worried Fire (Detail)”

I feel like a horrible butcher for bringing this down to just a five minute excerpt, but I can’t justify giving away a 20 minute piece of music that is nearly one half of an album. If you like what you hear, please buy this record and listen to the composition in its entirety.

I never liked that Godspeed relied on using bits of speech on their older records. In some cases it was a nice bit of texture, but it too often felt like the band was forcing contextual parameters on music that was otherwise abstract. They’ve almost entirely tossed that out on their new record, and the compositions are better for it. You don’t need any sort of nudging to get sucked into the world of this music, it’s obvious from the start that they’re evoking a desolate landscape. From there, it’s up to interpretation. It makes sense to hear this as a representation of a world after every system fails us, or perhaps as an escape from a spoiled, crumbling society. What I get out of this, particularly in the valleys of “Worried Fire,” is the feeling of being alone in a vast empty space. And it’s a bit of freedom, yes, but for me, it’s even more a sense of loneliness and vulnerability. As if the cosmos is bearing down upon me, like a boot about to come down to carelessly crush a bug on the ground.

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Field Music “Terrapin”

Field Music’s approach to covering this wonderful old Syd Barrett solo song is to essentially toss out most of the elements that made it very Barrett and remodel it as a late period Beatles pastiche. And hey, it worked! I love the dazed-out quality of Barrett’s recording, but the sharp dynamics of the Brewis brothers’ arrangement brings out the best of the song’s melody. You lose some things, sure – “I really love you, and I mean you” comes off better from a man who sounds totally disconnected from reality – but you gain others, like the crisp rhythmic turns and that harmonized middle eight. This is the best kind of cover: The essential appeal is there, but having the song go through another artists’ aesthetic brings out something fresh in the material.

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Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire featuring Gucci Mane “Telephuck”

I appreciate that while Mr. Muthfuckin eXquire seems to be going as Mr. MFN eXquire in legit circles these days, he is still inclined to release a single called “Telephuck.” He’s not the type of guy to make a lot of compromises, and he’s at his best when he’s just flagrantly lewd and trashy. His voice and style reminds me of both Method Man and Raekwon, but his personality is far more churlish and hedonistic. The Wu guys always have a touch of seriousness and mystical pretension, but eXquire comes off like a guy who doesn’t want to believe in anything. (I mean, his most famous verse to date peaks when he’s just listing off a bunch of things he doesn’t give a fuck about, all of which pertain to career ambition.) His IDGAF attitude is at home in El-P’s production on this track, which sounds very mechanical and dilapidated even by his usual standards. The music kinda warps the tone of the lyrics – eXquire and Gucci Mane are mainly saying creepy things about sex and women, but the track is so unsexy that it mostly just frames the empty contempt in their voices.

Visit the Mr. Muthfuckin eXquire Bandcamp page.

of Montreal “Sails, Hermaphroditic”

Daughters of Cloud is a collection of rarities and outtakes, but the first half of it is as tonally and thematically consistent as most of Kevin Barnes’ deliberately composed albums. The opening run of tracks are some of his busiest funk tunes; they’re all just a bit too much for any of the past few OM records, but they fit together nicely as a sustained bass-heavy freakout. He was clearly experimenting with persona and perspective in a lot of these cuts, and this just amps up the schizoid quality of the sequencing. It’s a nice complement to Paralytic Stalks from earlier this year – while that record drags the listener through some of the lowest depths of a bipolar mind and the most spiteful moments of a dissolving relationship, Daughters is like a super-fun version of dissociation.

“Sails, Hermaphroditic” is a False Priest outtake, which is kinda obvious in its concision and pinched tonality. (For whatever reason, everything on that record feels a bit too vibrant, like the sonic equivalent of saturated colors that sting your eyes.) Like a lot of songs from that period, it’s very sour and bitchy – I mean, the hook is Barnes saying that if he could change the world, the first thing he’d do is “change the shit out of you.” I’ve been feeling conflicted about this strain of his songwriting – it can be kinda thrilling, but the ugliness of it can get to me. Maybe I recognize too much of that anger and pettiness from my own worst moments?

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A.C. Newman “Do Your Own Time”

Shut Down the Streets didn’t connect with me until I heard it in autumn weather, and then it clicked. I suspect it would click even more if I was up in the Hudson Valley. That’s where Newman resides now, and as a person who grew up there, I can sense the rhythms and resonances of that region in the sound of the record. That’s especially true of “Do Your Own Time,” probably the best track on the album, and a rather atypical composition for him. The vocal melody is in his wheelhouse, but the music falls into a meditative groove that’s far off from his usual power pop rockers and wistful balladry. The flourishes are a bit unexpected too, most especially the guitar solo at the end. It’s odd enough to hear a solo like that on a Newman song, even more surprising for it to have a cool, slick, vaguely jazzy tone.

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Solange “Losing You”

Can you imagine how much it must suck to have to live in the shadow of Beyoncé? Solange can never escape this context, but to her credit, she is not stifled by it. If anything, she’s found a way to flip to her advantage as an artist. Her creative risks are casual, and she can follow her muse without fear of losing her audience or compromising her public persona. She can also express smaller feelings. Whereas everything her sister does ends up being bombastic and intense, Solange is great with nuance and ambiguity. This comes in handy on “Losing You,” in which she nails the feeling of not knowing whether or not she’s upset about her relationship falling apart. You can feel her tip one way or another from line to line and beat to beat, but from a distance, it’s a compelling emotional blur.

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Miguel “Do You…”

Contemporary R&B abounds with some of the goofiest wordplay in all of pop music, and that’s no bad thing. Miguel’s conceit of asking a girl “do you like drugs?” among other questions before flipping the song – both musically and lyrically – to tell her “I’m gonna do you like drugs tonight” is clever but could easily be a mess. He pulls it off mainly because while the lyrics aren’t subtle, the music is, and the dynamic shifts are bold but not jarring. But it’s also a success because of his voice. He makes his intentions very clear from note to note, so you can hear exactly where he knows he’s being silly, and feel when he’s being sincere and open-hearted.

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