What’s Been On Your Mind

Rahill “Gone Astray”

I did not listen to Rahill’s debut solo album Flowers At Your Feet until after I had made my Late 90s Sophisticate playlist, a collection of songs that exemplified the largely chill and eclectic music made from a DJ mindset that signaled an upscale crate-digging tastefulness at the end of the 20th century. Rahill, intentionally or not, has made a record that fits into that aesthetic perfectly, embodying a few variations on the sound over the course of 14 tracks. Sometimes it’s in the drum programming, sometimes it’s in the chords and arrangement, sometimes it’s in the vocal affect, but it’s always in her combination of excellent taste and low-key songcraft.

It was unusually difficult to choose one song to feature here but I had to go with “Gone Astray” if just because it’s not enough that she made a song that feels remarkably similar to Broadcast circa The Noise Made By People, but that if this was in fact a Broadcast song it would be among their best. This one reminds me specifically of “You Can Fall” and I love the way it takes that thick atmosphere of ominous mysterious and muted resentment in that music and makes that the emotional baseline for a song about knowing that your relationship is about to end, but not really knowing the why of it yet.

Buy it from Bandcamp.