Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Despair”

Karen O is iconic because she’s so good at projecting this badass, arty tough girl vibe, but she’s a great pop singer because she knows how and when to drop that pose and be vulnerable. Not just, “I’m going to sing a ballad now,” but like, truly wounded and shaken, raw nerve emotion. “Despair,” the big ballad on their fourth album, is a return to “Maps” territory, but it’s not a love song. It’s a little more powerful than that, somehow – she’s singing about years of pain and neuroses, and how it’s all been manageable through a powerful connection to someone else. This is her saying, basically – I could not make it without you. This is love, but it’s beyond romance. It’s something crucial, and there’s no other way of getting through – or even appreciating – that consuming feeling of despair.

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Fleetwood Mac @ Madison Square Garden 4/8/2013
Second Hand News / The Chain / Dreams / Sad Angel / Rhiannon / Not That Funny / Tusk / Sisters of the Moon / Sara / Big Love / Landslide / Never Going Back Again / Without You / Gypsy / Eyes of the World / Gold Dust Woman / I’m So Afraid / Stand Back / Go Your Own Way // World Turning / Don’t Stop /// Silver Springs / Say Goodbye

1. It’s hard not to notice that Stevie Nicks’ voice has deteriorated a lot with age, but Lindsey Buckingham’s voice has maybe actually improved. Stevie has the natural star power, so she doesn’t have to work the audience as much as Lindsey, who seems far more eager to please. He’s a hammy guy with a huge amount of energy, and he throws everything he’s got into every song.

2. Lindsey is a fascinating figure to me because he subverts so many expectations of male rock stars – he isn’t macho, he isn’t androgynous, he isn’t aloof, he isn’t glamorous, he isn’t some walking riddle. He doesn’t map on to any archetype, though he’s got some things in common with contemporaries like Jackson Browne and James Taylor. He’s an obvious control freak who has written some of the most passive-aggressive music I have ever encountered, and that may sound like a diss, but it’s not. Lindsey’s songs are powerful because he’s always trying to negotiate his way through romantic problems because he’s such a big believer in LOVE, and respects his partner too much to not make everything a dialogue.

Fleetwood Mac “Say Goodbye”

3. Fleetwood Mac are all about selling you on their story. The newer or more obscure songs in this set were introduced in the context of Stevie and Lindsey’s grand romance, which ended nearly 40 years ago. This has been a big part of their show for years, and it’s sorta fascinating to watch them play out these very rehearsed sentimental moments sprinkled through the set. The one that rang most true was at the end, as Lindsey introduced the Say You Will song “Say Goodbye” as a number about finding closure with Stevie after many, many years. It’s a pensive acoustic ballad, more like his recent solo work than classic Mac, and while the sentiment is very direct, its emotions are as tangled as its busy arpeggiated notes. Most people break up and move on. But imagine having to form an even closer connection after your relationship is through, and your past relationship being crucial to your greatest artistic successes together. And that success keeps you together, and that success makes you constantly revisit these moments from the past. Lindsey Buckingham has been married for years, but he knows damn well that when he’s gone, that relationship will get at best second billing to his epic drama with Stevie. It’s a strange thing to reckon with.

4. Also, so much Tusk! I was so happy with that Tusk section of the setlist. And “Second Hand News” and “Dreams” and “Eyes of the World,” and the new song “Sad Angel” was really good too, sorta like “I Don’t Want to Know.” I wish I could have enjoyed “Landslide” more, but it’s hard when you’re surrounded by tone deaf grandpas groaning the words loudly out of time.

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The Knife “Wrap Your Arms Around Me”

“Wrap Your Arms Around Me” is one of the most unsettling songs about romance and lust I’ve ever heard, partly because its sound implies being crushed by an enormous weight, and mostly because the singer’s urge for affection is reduced to biological imperatives and social status. There is nothing idealistic here, nothing lofty or emotional, nothing we’d recognize from how pop culture frames any of this. Instead, we have Karin Dreijer Andersson’s raw voice singing dryly about “the urge for penetration,” and making the common hope of “feel love and build a house with you” seem completely detached, like a set of computer commands. The line that really gives me shivers is the repeated lyric “free the unborn child at the castle,” which…I’m not sure if I really need to explain why that sounds so disturbing, right? It is precisely where this song tips from an uncomfortably bleak vision of sex to a nightmare about procreation.

FYI, I wrote a big thing about The Knife’s new album over here.

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The Flaming Lips “Sun Blows Up Today”

This is The Flaming Lips’ “YOLO” song: Three minutes of joyful, pogoing festival pop with lyrics about the whole world getting together to enjoy the spectacular destruction of the sun, and the world. Wayne Coyne has spent most of his adult life thinking about spectacle and communal activity, and this is the logical conclusion to that thread, to think of literally the spectacle to end all spectacles. But unlike The Terror, the album this song is connected to but does not technically appear on, this is a cheerful and direct piece of music, not something stewing in dread and bad vibes. I suppose there’s some irony to it, but then again, maybe not – Coyne is absolutely the sort of person to greet the end of the world with open arms as long as it’s a good, trippy show.

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Fol Chen “A Tourist Town”

Fol Chen began messing around with dense, electronic pop with “Cable TV” on their debut album, and back then, it was kind of an outlier song for them. Now they’re doing that stuff full time, and their third album, The False Alarms, is like 10 variations on that theme – a clinical deconstruction of Minneapolis funk and early Timbaland, with lyrics that present a fairly mundane existence in evocative detail. There’s a few meta conceits here, and it works – there’s always an implication that the music is an interpretation of the pop songs you encounter everywhere or remember from your past, and it’s all a part of how everyday experiences are shaped. “A Tourist Town,” the best track, filters this sort of bewildered narrative about travel and drinking too much through sounds that sets up expectations for fun and relaxation, but also encourages that state of mind.

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Tyler, the Creator featuring Hodgy Beats “Jamba”

If Tyler isn’t acting out or being a troll, he’s sorta uncomfortably self-absorbed and overly concerned with what his fans think of him. But that’s just how it goes with that personality type – you’re either putting up a front and playing a character, or revealing the least appealing aspects of yourself when it’s time to let your guard down. I don’t mind Tyler being neurotic – sometimes it’s pretty compelling, like on “Colossus,” where he’s freaked out about being mobbed by fans – but he’s just a lot more fun when he’s goofing around. “Jamba” is playful and sly, and I kinda love hearing this straight-edge kid fantasize about having a bad time smoking weed with his friends. I recognize a lot of what I was like as a teen in this song, and honestly, that’s a super rare thing for me.

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Iron & Wine “Grace for Saints and Ramblers”

I never cared for Iron & Wine’s sad acoustic songs, and will probably always have a bit of residual distaste for that end of their catalog – that stuff was popular at a time when I was distancing myself from anything that struck me as overly dreary or straining for woodsy authenticity, and it’s hard to shake off ingrained biases from nearly a decade ago. But I really like Sam Beam’s more recent work – he’s blossomed into a sophisticated songwriter with an effortless command of melody and a taste for arrangements that borrow from the best of 70s lite FM and folk pop. “Grace for Saints and Ramblers” isn’t far off in tone or style from the best cuts from 2011′s Kiss Each Other Clean, but it feels brighter, looser, and more cheerful. It reminds me a bit of when Elton John would bring in elements of Philly soul and Motown on songs like “Philadelphia Freedom” and “Grey Seal,” and I’m very fond of how the clutter of imagery and references in the verses is cleared away for the chorus, “it all came down to you and I.”

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Telekinesis “Empathetic People”

Michael Benjamin Lerner does pretty much everything in Telekinesis, but he’s a drummer first and foremost, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that the percussion is often the most expressive element of his compositions. Listen to “Empathetic People” – the riffs and hooks are up front, but that passionate, insistent beat is what makes it feel urgent and emotional, not the guitar tone or his gentle tenor voice. He can’t help but sound sweet and even-keeled as a singer, so his drumming brings out the emotional urgency in his songs, especially the ones that are so firmly rooted in anxiety.

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Kacey Musgraves “Merry Go ‘Round”

It’s really hard to pull off a song that is this cynical in its depiction of dreary small town life while still being empathetic toward the people who live there. Musgraves sings from the perspective of someone who is eager to get the hell out of town, but fully understands the inertia that keeps people from moving on and potentially finding something at least just a bit better. She can’t help but seem a little disappoint in everyone’s lack of ambition or will to overcome their vices, but she sings with the sadness of someone who has given up on helping people she cares about with stern tough love.

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Fear of Men “Ritual Confession”

This is a song which is apparently based on the relationship between Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir that asks the listener to cheerfully sing along with the line “hell is other people though,” and I say: Yes. This is a wonderful mixture of breezy melody and slightly unnerving lyrical imagery, with singer Jessica Weiss casually tossing off phrases like “the taste of blood you read about” like it’s all innocent lines from a childhood diary.

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