The Flaming Lips featuring Ke$ha and Biz Markie “2012 (You Must Be Upgraded)”

If you had never heard Sleigh Bells but read their most fawning press, you might expect them to sound a like Ke$ha’s song with the Flaming Lips – pop girl vocals, ultra-distorted guitar riffs, loads of energy. That’s basically what’s going on here, but not really, because both Ke$ha and Lips go much further out, landing in a place far removed from the hyperactive metal-dance-pop milieu of Sleigh Bells. Ke$ha pushes her pop-sleaze brat aesthetic to the max, while the Lips push the song off on spooky psychedelic tangents, and mess with the tone of their central riff to the point that it barely sounds like music and registers more like a malfunctioning nuclear reactor alarm. I would be lying if I told you I wouldn’t like this better if it was reined in a bit, but I love the brazen quality of this track – it’s violent, hostile music created by people utterly unafraid to be supremely annoying. Obviously, this isn’t totally new ground for the Flaming Lips, but it’s proof that Ke$ha is willing to get very weird. I can’t see her abandoning straight pop in the near future, but this track gives me some idea of what she’d do if given enough creative capital to truly do whatever she wants.

St. Vincent “Krokodil”

Annie Clark is a ridiculously versatile musician, but increasingly, everyone just wants her to rock out. It’s not so much that her other music is lacking, but rather that when she goes full on rock, she delivers intense, unrestrained performances. For most of her career to date, those rocking moments have been bits of cathartic release in otherwise mannered and finely crafted songs – her material on Actor, in particular, dramatizes the tortured inner world of someone trying to seem calm and composed.

Her new single, released as part of Record Store Day, is the first time Clark has gone off the deep end into full-on heavy rock – “Krokodil,” the a-side, is two and a half minutes of crazed industrial punk with Clark screaming about a Russian synthetic opiate that eats away your flesh, and the b-side, “Grot,” is sinister doom metal laced with a loop of angelic vocals. Both songs are amazing, and leave me desperate for more. This is a great use of the 7″ format – it’s either a quick detour, or a harbinger of things to come. I’m really hoping it’s the latter, and it’s a “Strawberry Fields Forever” b/w “Penny Lane” warming us up for a Sgt. Peppers-worth of heavy pop down the line.

Florence + the Machine featuring Josh Homme “Jackson”

I attended this MTV Unplugged taping a few months ago and had to keep my mouth shut about this Johnny Cash and June Carter cover for a long while. It wasn’t easy! Florence Welch and Josh Homme don’t seem like an obvious pairing, but their voices go together very well, especially as Homme does a pretty reasonable Cash impression. Covering big classics like this can be a thankless task, but I think there’s a lot of charm and heart in this performance, and the singing benefits greatly from the natural reverb of the Angel Orensanz space. You can hear it in the recording – there’s something wonderful about the way those voices fill the room. She really ought to just record everything in a church from here on out.

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Beck “I Only Have Eyes For You”

Beck’s rendition of the Flamingos classic is extremely reverent, and goes a long way to approximate the distinct atmosphere of the original recording. But as much as Beck does to capture that mood, this cover is astonishing mainly for how much of himself he puts into it, and how that part of himself is something we’ve rarely heard from him over the course of his career. This may be the single most beautiful vocal performance of his career to date. The specific adjective that comes to mind is handsome – it’s a particularly masculine sort of beauty; stoic and gentlemanly. He’s always had the capacity for this as a singer, but kept himself at a distance from it in one way or another. Between this recording and his duet with Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Khan on “Let’s Get Lost,” he’s giving us a new version of himself – let’s call it Romance Beck. I would be thrilled if this is where he goes on the next album.

Find out more about the SONG 1 project at Pitchfork.

Action Bronson “Double Breasted”

Action Bronson’s natural vocal timbre and rhyme style closely resemble that of Ghostface Killah, but as he goes along, his quirks become more apparent. The foodie references in the lyrics is the most obvious thing, but I like the very slight rasp in his voice and the way he speeds up his meter at the end of some lines. Bronson is especially interesting in the way he raps about bodies – it’s always vivid and visceral, often in the most literal sense. Sometimes he goes for gross out humor, but whether he’s talking about himself or a woman, there’s this sense that he’s totally comfortable with what bodies are, even if he occasionally hints at some anxiety about his appearance. He’s also good with matching the energy of a track – in this cut, he switches between two different beats within two minutes with tossed-off grace.

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Death Grips “I’ve Seen Footage”

Death Grips make music that sounds like what could have happened if punk and hard rock influences had not almost entirely vanished from hip-hop music by the late Eighties. It’s not “rap rock” as came to know it, but rather something that seems native to hip-hop, but builds on the energy and aggression of punk. “I’ve Seen Footage” is a cousin to many great songs – Gold Chains’ punk-rap lost classic “Rock the Parti,” Afrika Bambaataa and John Lydon’s “World Destruction,” Salt N Pepa’s “Push It,” Basement Jaxx’s aggro masterpiece “Where’s Your Head At?” – but there’s something wonderfully specific to its charms. A lot of it is in the word “footage,” which is spat out with great force, and sort of assaults the listener with its ambiguity. The tone is conspiratorial – you’re in the know, or you’re left wondering what the hell this crazy footage is. This much is clear: It’s probably not puppy stuff on YouTube.

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Japandroids “The House That Heaven Built”

I resisted Japandroids at first and lumped them in with a crop of rather uninspiring bands, but I snapped out of that this weekend. I was initially put off by Brian King’s thick, blocky distorted chords but I’ve come around to understanding the appeal: Everything with this band is overheated and super charged, and the blare is half the point. But not so much that it drowns everything out – King’s voice is loud and clear at the center of this, and he sings his words like they’re the most important thing in his world. The key line comes at the end of the chorus: “If they try to slow you down / tell ’em all they can go to hell.” The song is ecstatically defiant in general, but that moment signals both triumph and freedom. It’s the sound of a guy realizing that he has successfully demolished the boundaries that held him back mostly because he’s just stopped investing in ideas that held him back.

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Kraftwerk @ Museum of Modern Art 4/12/2012

Trans Europe Express / Europe Endless / The Hall of Mirrors / Showroom Dummies / Autobahn / Radioactivity / The Robots / The Model / The Man-Machine / Numbers / Computer World / Computer Love / Home Computer / Tour De France / Planet of Vision / Boing Boom Tschak / Techno Pop / Musique Non Stop

Kraftwerk “Europe Endless”

1. This night was billed as a Trans Europe Express show, but as you can see from the setlist above, the performance was in fact a career retrospective with an emphasis on TEE at the start of the show. Still, I’m very glad that I caught this night of the MoMA residency, as “Europe Endless” and “The Hall of Mirrors” are almost certainly unique to this program and they are two of my favorite songs in their catalog. So I lucked out: This set includes every Kraftwerk song that I would hope to see them play.

2. The visual presentation of the show was very impressive and crucial to the performance. The images, largely adapted from the band’s packaging and assorted iconography, emphasized the music’s thematic and structural conceits. The former is in some ways unnecessary – Kraftwerk is an act that overtly states its thematic content – but the latter was more interesting and revealing. The images accompanying “Trans Europe Express” and “Autobahn” are very literal in presenting a journey along train tracks and highway pavement, but the contours and repetitive lines mirror the shape of the composition. Less obviously, the sounds in “Radioactivity” correlate to the representation of the atom or the stark, terrifying beauty of the universal radioactive hazard symbol. The visuals highlight the group’s modernist approach – even if this wasn’t being spelled out quite so literally, it’s easy to understand how the sound itself is an impression of, and a comment on, the subject of 20th century scientific innovation and its impact on daily life.

3. Kraftwerk may clearly state their premises, but the meaning of their work can be rather ambiguous. The songs on the topic of transportation seem to exist without any particular judgment – there is a sense of “this just is” about them, and a genuine appreciation of structure, design and efficiency. The selections from The Man-Machine and Computer World – and most especially The Mix version of “Radioactivity” – contemplate the hazards of scientific progress, but come off as almost alarmingly neutral in tone. The program is mostly chronological, which highlights a thematic arc, as they shift from straight modernism to something a bit darker and more implicitly critical to the meta commentary of “Planet of Vision” and the cuts from Electric Cafe a.k.a. Techno Pop, which are essentially electronic songs about electronic music. This is where the music just sort of dissolves into itself – it’s easy to understand why they essentially never moved on from that phase. It’s the end of the line, and here, the end of the show.

4. One important thing about seeing Kraftwerk live as opposed to listening to the recordings is that you are confronted with the human element of their music. Four men are on stage doing who knows what, but they are there. The most striking thing about their presence is watching Ralf Hütter as he sings. He is as cold and aloof as you would expect, but it’s impossible not to reckon with his age – he’s in his mid-60s – and the very sound of his voice, which is often quite stunning and beautiful in a sort of severe, Germanic way. (See also: Nico.) Kraftwerk are mostly known today for being influential and innovative in electronic music, but in watching this show it’s obvious how crucial Hütter’s voice is in the success of this music. It’s not just that he brings humanity to this mechanical, sterile music – there really is something magnetic and engimatic about his rather low key persona.

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Pulp @ Radio City Music Hall 4/11/2012

Do You Remember the First Time? / Monday Morning / Razzamatazz / Pencil Skirt / Something Changed / Disco 2000 / Sorted For E’s and Wizz / F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E. / I Spy / Babies / Underwear / This Is Hardcore / Sunrise / Bar Italia / Common People // Like A Friend / Bad Cover Version / Mis-Shapes

Both of these Pulp shows were outstanding, but I enjoyed this one a bit more. The setlist was mostly the same, but ever so slightly better: I was thrilled for “Bad Cover Version,” and though I adore “Party Hard,” “Mis-Shapes” is a far more exciting and satisfying grand finale. I think I was more keyed into the showmanship on the first night, but this show was more about connecting with the sentiment of the songs, though I’m somewhat embarrassed to mention which in particular resonated most deeply. (Ugly emotions and bad memories!) “Common People” was phenomenal; exactly as righteous and cathartic as you would want it to be, though the Radio City audience couldn’t quite muster the sort of sublime communal singalong you see in footage from European festivals.

Pulp “Bar Italia”

“Bar Italia” has long been one of my top favorite Pulp songs. I mentioned yesterday that I briefly met Jarvis in 1998. I can’t remember all the details of the meeting, though I recall shaking his enormous hand and asking if the band might play “Bar Italia” when they hit New York. He said they’d stopped playing it, and that he wasn’t quite certain why. I remember being surprised by this: If you have a song like “Bar Italia,” why wouldn’t you play it? It’s one of the best ending songs I can think of; the climax is so dramatic and satisfying without getting melodramatic. Over the past two nights it was very nice to see that I was right about how well it would play out on stage.

“Bar Italia” perfectly captures the mood and feeling of a particular moment that is seldom dramatized in song, but is familiar to most people who have spent time engaged with music and youth culture. It’s the time after the party, the show, the rave, the whatever. The night is quite literally over, and you’re shutting down and slowly shuffling home as the rest of the world starts the day. Cocker addresses a companion, and this is pretty crucial to why the song is so moving: It’s a shared moment, and there’s a special sort of intimacy on display here between these people as they transition from addled to hungover to finally crashing out somewhere. Cocker finds the grace in this situation, and in the end, as the song rises up in wobbly triumph, he and the band underline the main point of Different Class, i.e., there can be great life-affirming beauty in the sordid and the shabby.

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Pulp @ Radio City Music Hall 4/10/2012

Do You Remember the First Time? / Mis-Shapes / Razzmatazz / Pencil Skirt / Something Changed / Disco 2000 / Sorted For E’s and Wizz / F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E. / I Spy / Babies / Underwear / This Is Hardcore / Sunrise / Bar Italia / Common People // Like A Friend / Live Bed Show / Party Hard

Unlike a majority of people attending this concert, I had seen Pulp three times before this show: A full gig at Hammerstein Ballroom in June of 1998, and earlier that week, a brief set at the Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, D.C. followed by another three-song set with the band opening for Radiohead at an impromptu club show. (This happened! And Michael Stipe was there, and sang “Lucky” with Radiohead and an a cappella number on his own! And I met Jarvis afterward! This is a cherished memory.) I felt guilty, but maybe also a bit cheated: There was no way I was going to come away from this one with the thrill of having seen Jarvis and company at long last, even if it has been a long time since they’ve played together on U.S. soil. I do remember the first time, and the memories are still quite vivid!

Jarvis is a bit older now, but he still has it. He’s an extraordinary performer, in part because he’s such a specific character, and he’s so fully comfortable in his skin. I think the very best rock stars are the people who impose their quirks on to the role rather than conform to the expectations of the job. He created his own archetype, but he belongs in a pantheon of the great oddball rock gods alongside Michael Stipe, David Byrne, Elvis Costello, Stephen Malkmus, Black Francis and James Murphy. Watching him in action is inspiring – his sort of confidence seems somehow attainable, whereas more traditional rock, pop and rap stars make it seem impossible and superhuman. Even in his biggest anthems – “Mis-Shapes” and “Common People,” both of which presage the sentiment of the Occupy movement by nearly two decades – Cocker is at a human scale even as the music soars. Extremely lanky, yeah, but human scale.

Pulp “This Is Hardcore”

Pulp has been closing out most of their shows on this extended reunion tour with a dramatic sequence of songs that goes like so: “This Is Hardcore” as a XXX dark night of the soul, “Sunrise” as a glimmer of hope just in the distance, “Bar Italia” as the come down and hangover, and “Common People” as the climax and resolution. This is a very effective and evocative set, but I was particularly moved by the performance of “Hardcore,” which seemed less menacing and sexy than the album version, and a lot more desperate and lonely. It’s a song about someone trying to will sexual fantasies based on shallow objectification into reality and finding the resulting action hollow and lacking, and though it certainly resonates today, I found myself wondering what this song would be if it were written more recently. What is “This Is Hardcore” in the era of internet pornography? Does it go to a more transgressive place, and does that place leave him even more empty?

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Damien Jurado “Maraqopa”

A lot of producers can do “atmosphere,” but Richard Swift goes a step further, engineering tracks to evoke a strong sensation of physical presence. As in, you listen and feel as those you’re in the same space as the performer and instruments, but in a more intimate way than being a spectator at a concert. This approach is ideal for Damien Jurado, who would shrink in a large sound, or recede into the background if given a one-size-fits-all production job. Swift goes heavy on room sound ambiance and what comes like a natural spacing between instruments – I am not clear on his techniques, but I suspect he’s using binaural microphone placement to get the “3D sound” – and, in effect, Jurado seems to be magnified. He and his instruments sound like something you can reach out and touch, or glance at across the room. The backing vocals exaggerate the effect, with an echo that could be just down the hall from everything else.

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Matt LeMay “Compare and Contrast”

“Compare and Contrast” owes something to a long lineage of heart-on-sleeve power pop tunes, but to my ears, it mainly sounds like the best Matthew Sweet song in nearly two decades. LeMay’s song has a light, breezy tone, but the sentiment is fraught with emotion as he attempts to negotiate his way through a dissolving relationship while feeling a bit worried that he’s complicating matters by saying too much. The lyrics are great at conveying the singer’s hyper-awareness, especially when he seems trapped in his head at the very worst moments: “I tried not to watch as affection drained out of your eyes.” There are some absolutely gutting bits in this, but remarkably, it doesn’t shake off the easy springtime feeling of the music. At points, LeMay’s own solos seem to tell him, “Hey, relax, it wasn’t meant to be.”

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Dirty Projectors “Gun Has No Trigger”

David Longstreth’s compositions on previous Dirty Projectors releases, particularly on Bitte Orca and The Getty Address, were immediately dazzling things that shook the listener with unusual approaches to rhythm and harmony, so it’s understandable that some people would come to “Gun Has No Trigger” and feel a bit ho-hum about its low-key simplicity. Longstreth’s voice is the focal point of this composition, and his particular, somewhat peculiar phrasing and tone is so essential to the piece that the song might not even work with a different singer. Or it’d work much differently, anyway: The melody is very strong and dramatic, moving along through verses that rise with an accusing tone toward a climactic moment in which the lyrics reveal a contrasting anticlimax.

The celebration of the 10th anniversary of this site continues on with this collection of the best and most notable music of 2004. As I was immersed in this music, I noticed that most everything here has a very clean sound and a vibrant, super-saturated tone. At the time, the site was bright yellow with a rainbow logo, which makes perfect sense for that period – everything just seemed very colorful. This set features a great deal of amazing songs by underground pop acts who basically bubbled up and then disappeared – one hit wonders from an an alternate universe. Keep this in mind if you listen to a version of this on Spotify or Rdio – a very large chunk of this set will not be available on those platforms.

The survey mixes for 2002, 2003, 2010 and 2011 are still up. Check in on May 1st for a look back on 2005.

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

Scissor Sisters “Laura” / Kelly Clarkson “Since U Been Gone” / Rilo Kiley “Portions For Foxes” / Charlotte Hatherley “Kim Wilde” / Girls Aloud “Love Machine” / Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris “Yeah!” / Kanye West “School Spirit” / Fiona Apple “Red, Red, Red” (Demo) / Maxi Geil & Playcolt “A Message to My Audience” / Ghostface Killah “Tooken Back” / Belle & Sebastian “Your Cover’s Blown” / Justus Kohncke featuring Meloboy “Frei/Hot Love” / Stazi “Love Is Lethal” / McLusky “She Will Only Bring You Happiness” / Alicia Keys “You Don’t Know My Name (Reggae Mix)” / Phoenix “If It’s Not With You” / Eamon “Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)” / Johnny Boy “You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve” / The Concretes “Diana Ross” / Feist “Mushaboom” (Demo)

DOWNLOAD DISC 2

U2 “Vertigo” / Interpol “Evil” / David Wrench “World War IV” / Mousse T “Is It Cos I’m Cool?” / Madvillain “Money Folder” / Junesex “Gets Close to Mine” / Love Is All “Make Out Fall Out Make Up” / Of Montreal “Vegan In Furs” / Alan Braxe and Fred Falke “Rubicon” / Hot Chip “Bad Luck” / Estelle “1980” / Cam’Ron “Get Down” / Snoop Dogg “Drop It Like It’s Hot” / Dani Siciliano “Walk the Line” / Lady Sovereign “Ch Ching” / Junior Boys “High Come Down” / Method Man and Ghostface Killah “Afterparty” / Cut Copy “Saturdays” / The Go! Team “Ladyflash” / United State of Electronica “La Discoteca”

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Wilco “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” / LCD Soundsystem “Movement” / Saul Williams “Grippo” / Dizzee Rascal “Stand Up Tall” / Death From Above 1979 “Blood On Your Hands” / !!! “Pardon My Freedom” / Tracy and the Plastics “Henrietta” / Heloise and the Savoir Faire Dancers “Odyle” / Gene Serene and John Downfall “Electric Dreams” / Morrissey “First of the Gang to Die” / Franz Ferdinand “Take Me Out” / X-Wife “Eno” / The Rogers Sisters “Freight Elevator” / Shrag “Punk Grammar” / Kelley Polar Quartet “The Rhythm Touch” / Superpitcher “The Long Way” / Frausdots “Soft Light” / Destroyer “It’s Gonna Take An Airplane”

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Animal Collective “Who Could Win A Rabbit” / Joanna Newsom “Inflammatory Writ” / Pixies “Bam Thwock” / Courtney Love “But Julian, I’m A Little Bit Older Than You” / Hilary and Haylie Duff “Our Lips Are Sealed” / Dressy Bessy “The Things That You Say That You Do” / AC Newman “Secretarial” / Janet Jackson “Just A Little While” / Kylie Minogue “I Believe In You” / The Streets “Fit But You Know It” / Masta Killa, RZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Old Man” / Avenue D featuring Cazwell “The Sex That I Need” / George Michael “Freek!” / Ciara featuring Ludacris “Oh” / TV on the Radio “The Wrong Way” / Air “Surfing on a Rocket” / Chungking “We Love You” / Flotation Toy Warning “Popstar Researching Oblivion” / Antibalas “Pay Back Africa” / Soulwax “NY Excuse”

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Mouse on Mars “Mine Is In Yours” / Annie “Chewing Gum” / Armand Van Helden “Hear My Name” / Futon “Gay Boy” / M.I.A. “URAQT” / T.I. “Rubberband Man” / Nina Sky “Move Your Body” / JC Chasez “All Day Long I Dream About Sex” / The Killers “Mr. Brightside” / Les Savy Fav “The Sweat Descends” / Lolita Storm “Dancing with the Ibiza Dogs” / The Long Blondes “Giddy Stratospheres” / Bloc Party “She’s Hearing Voices” / Jason Forrest “10 Amazing Years” / Michael Dracula “Destroy Yourself (Twitch Optimo Mix)” / Sia “Breath Me (Four Tet Remix)” / Wiley “Problems” / R. Kelly “Happy People” / Twista featuring Jamie Foxx and Kanye West “Slow Jamz”

DOWNLOAD DISC 6

Arcade Fire “Wake Up” / The Walkmen “The Rat” / The Chap “Oozing Emotion” / Rework “Not Quite Like Any Other” / Au Revoir Simone “Through the Backyards of Our Neighbors” / R.E.M. “Electron Blue” / Jojo “Leave (Get Out)” / Christina Milian “Dip It Low” / Cocorosie “Butterscotch” / Devendra Banhart “Little Yellow Spider” / Sonic Youth “Unmade Bed” / Green Day “Jesus of Suburbia” / Ted Leo and the Pharmacists “Bleeding Powers” / Modest Mouse “Float On” / Big & Rich “Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy)” / Baby “Free Los Angeles” / J-Kwon “Tipsy” / Björk “Who Is It” / Ryan Adams “Wonderwall” / Iron & Wine “Naked As We Came”

DOWNLOAD DISC 7

The Fiery Furnaces “Chris Michaels” / Nellie McKay “Ding Dong” / Elvis Costello “Monkey to Man” / Say Anything “Every Man Has A Molly” / Art Brut “Formed A Band” / Beats For Beginners “Kill All DJs” / Rachel Stevens “Some Girls” / Revl9n “Walking Machine” / Lil Wayne “Go DJ” / Gretchen Wilson “Redneck Woman” / Loretta Lynn and Jack White “Portland, Oregon” / Guided By Voices “Everybody Thinks I’m A Raincloud (When I’m Not Looking)” / Komeda “Blossom (Got to Get It Out)” / Xiu Xiu “I Luv the Valley OH” / My Chemical Romance “Helena (So Long and Goodnight)” / Clinic “Falstaff” / Nimbus Coleman “Who is the Governess?” / Klang “Help Is On the Way” / Stereolab “Margerine Rock” / Blood on the Wall “On My Mouth” / I Hate You When You’re Pregnant “There Is Stuff in This World”

DOWNLOAD DISC 8

Gwen Stefani “What You Waiting For?” / Erlend Øye “The Black Keys Work” / Bollywood Freaks “Don’t Stop Til You Get to Bollywood” / Dred Prez “Hell Yeah (Pimp the System)” / Prince “Cinnamon Girl” / Dungen “Panda” / Squarepusher “Iambic 9 Poetry” / Regina Spektor “Us” / The Futureheads “Hounds of Love” / Ashlee Simpson “La La” / Mia. “Heroes” / Pet “No Yes No” / Interational Pony “My Mouth (Phony the Punk)” / Slum Village featuring Kanye West and John Legend “Selfish” / Mannie Fresh “Conversation” / Devin the Dude “Briarpatch” / Norah Jones “What Am I to You?” / Sufjan Stevens “The Dress Looks Nice on You” / PJ Harvey “The Desperate Kingdom of Love”

Hundred Waters “Boreal”

“Boreal” ends with singer Nicole Miglis assuring the listener that “a tale is not trite if it’s still being told,” which is oddly defensive, but keeping with the character of the piece. It is, after all, a song centered on a set of lyrics in which a novice traveler explains her reasons for traveling to the tundra. (Long story short, she wants to see a land stripped bare, and draw strength from what can survive the harsh climate.) The music is measured and precise in its contour and texture, like an elaborate panorama of a barren yet beautiful digital wilderness.

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THEESatisfaction “Existinct”

This song plays very well on repeat, mainly because it begins and ends on this elliptical rhythm and just seems to loop back to the start. That suits the tone and theme pretty well, as the words meditate on the past and potential of a relationship without coming to any conclusion. This song is like having your thoughts and emotions travel through an elaborate maze, and the exit is basically right by the entrance.

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Fiona Apple @ Bowery Ballroom 3/26/2012

Fast As You Can / On the Bound / Paper Bag / A Mistake / Anything We Want / Valentine / Sleep to Dream / Extraordinary Machine / Every Single Night / Carrion / Criminal / Across the Universe / It’s Only Make Believe

Nitsuh was right. Fiona Apple, always a great singer, has stepped up her game. After witnessing this performance, it is hard to imagine that any other vocalist alive and working today can match her in this moment when she has merged her existing craft and control with a raw ferocity and power that was held back earlier in her career.

I could hear the difference from the start, as she sang the verses of “Fast As You Can” with a new type of intensity – you could feel the tension in her jaw and neck, her tone was the sound of a cold stare. When she got to the “you’re all I need” part of “On the Bound” was where the new phrasing really kicked in, with her voice shredding as she went on past the soulfulness of the studio recording to unrestrained, mournful frustration. My jaw literally dropped and I felt a sudden, deep concern – not just for her voice, which could easily be damaged from this sort of self abuse, but for her well being, because even if she was just acting out an emotion from over a decade ago, her approach was so method that it registered as pure, unguarded and utterly devastating heartbreak.

There is something different about Fiona Apple now, and it seems largely physical in nature. She is still extremely skinny, but now appears buff and wiry, suggesting that she has spent a lot of the past half decade hitting the gym and mastering yoga poses. This physical strength changes the way she moves and carries herself. When I saw her six years ago, she still came across as small and frail, as if she could just float away on a light breeze. That wispiness is gone, replaced by a commanding presence that carries over to her voice, which has become more stern and aggressive. This was most apparent in “Sleep to Dream,” which once seemed like a girl’s fantasy of wielding power over someone who has underestimated and wronged her, but now sounds like a grown woman tapping directly into a righteous fury. Her body language was taut and severe; she looked genuinely intimidating.

The three new songs in her set were outstanding and immediately appealing. “Anything We Want” was particularly exciting, with a taut, highly rhythmic arrangement that reminded me a bit of Spoon’s approach to tension and atmosphere. “Every Single Night” was more wounded and brittle, with a refrain that jacked up the raw nerve intensity of her best work.

Just as the more assertive and despairing moments in her songs were pushed further than before, her gentle, sweet and lovelorn moments were similarly intensified. “Paper Bag” was largely unchanged but somehow more gorgeous; “Extraordinary Machine” retained its whimsy while coming across as more assertive and emphatic. The Beatles and Conway Twitty covers at the end of the set were showcases for the raw beauty of her voice; the former approaching blissful contentedness in its chorus and the latter displaying her mastery over drama and sentimentality.

I would typically include an mp3 of one of Apple’s old songs as part of the custom of this site, but it seems wrong in this case, as her studio recordings don’t capture the essence of what I heard in this set. The songs are all of the highest quality, but her performance was on another level. Aside from the new numbers, I knew all of these selections backwards and forwards, but Apple’s phrasing was so fully in the moment that she could truly surprise me with variations on every line without warping her melodies or changing the character of the song. I desperately want her to release a new live album from this tour. I also want to hear other songs from her catalog sung with her new approach – “I Know,” “Red Red Red,” “Shadowboxer,” “Never Is A Promise,” “Not About Love.” Apple’s song selection seemed very deliberate, though, with some themes about screwing up and moving on recurring through the set. All through the show I found myself wondering what changed for her, what pushed her in this direction. The songs she chose to play may give some hint of what got her to this astonishing new place.

Poor Moon “People In Her Mind”

This is the sort of pop song that practically begs the listener to step back and appreciate it as “songwriting” – the structure and melodic turns signal a neat, impeccable craft that calls attention to itself. It’s a very old school composition, and the lyrics follow the form, as the narrator sings with great empathy about a lonely girl who has come to realize that she is constantly blending into the background. I quite like the lines about how she gets hung up on trying to recall people’s names – there’s an OCD collector impulse going on there, and she seems to be oblivious that her impulse to catalog all these people puts her at a remove from them.

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Bobby Womack “Please Forgive My Heart”

There is a tendency to keep aging singers in their classic context, as if modern influences would pollute and corrupt what was amazing about their voice. Bobby Womack clearly has no interest in treating his distinct voice like a museum piece, at least not since Damon Albarn pulled him out of retirement for two excellent tracks on Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach. His forthcoming album was created with Albarn and XL boss Richard Russell, who previously collaborated with Gil-Scott Heron. Russell seems to be playing a Rick Rubin role in rehabbing the careers of aging legends, but whereas Rubin is inclined to strip things back to a prim sort of simplicity, Russell has pushed Heron and Womack to embrace a more modern sort of minimalism. The stark, slightly sputtering beats and moody keyboards of “Please Forgive My Heart” could just as easily be pulled from a James Blake or Drake record, but this doesn’t sound like the equivalent giving an old man a hipster makeoever. Womack’s voice, a highly emotive and richly human thing, sounds great in the context of cold, synthetic instrumentation. The contrast brings out the best in him, and the minimal approach to the arrangement serves to simply frame his vocal performance rather than distracting from it with too many sounds, or drowning it out in nostalgia.

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Jack White “Love Interruption”

The verses of “Love Interruption” are all about wanting a love that rattles you out of dull routine and forces you out of your comfort zone. Jack White chews on those thoughts in these lines, and spits it all out in the chorus, which disavows this sort of love as a corrupting influence that derails his life. Both sides of the song seem a bit irrational, but what else could it be? This is about yearning for passion and intensity, and reckoning with the reality that being reckless with your emotions is just as likely to bring transcendental thrills or heart-rending disaster. The unspoken point in this song: It’s always worth the risk.

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