Fluxblog
March 23rd, 2015 12:18pm

How Can Something So Free Feel So Rehearsed


Grimes featuring Bleachers “Entropy”

This is a very interesting time for Grimes – she’s pushing herself to write full-on pop music and figuring out different ways of doing that while retaining her sense of identity, but it’s still very unclear where she’s going to end up when she puts out another full-length record. I’m glad she’s making some of this process transparent to her audience. That’s a wise move, because if she’s moving in a different direction it at least prepares everyone for the shift. But if she doesn’t change that much after all, an outlier song like “Entropy” still gets to be out there, because it’s far too good to just throw away. This is her second collaboration with Jack Antonoff from Bleachers and Fun, and just hearing it, you can get a sense of the chemistry they have. They’re both artists who find a lot of inspiration in big tent pop from the ‘80s and ‘90s but have a solid footing in the present day, and I think that overlap in taste makes her feel comfortable enough to write and sing in a way that’s more direct and unapologetically pop than when she’s on her own. Unlike a lot of Visions, she’s not obscuring her hooks with cool sounds and textures – “Entropy” is very minimal and mostly focused on simple acoustic guitar, so all the emphasis is placed on her voice. I’m not sure if this is a sound she’ll want to do all the time, but I think her ability to make this work and for it to still very much read as a Grimes song is something that will make her music better going forward. She sounds very confident, and that confidence is going to serve her well.

Buy it from Amazon.

RSS Feed for this postNo Responses.


©2008 Fluxblog
Site by Ryan Catbird