Squarepusher “K10 Terminus”

I’ve been thinking about how so many of the people we’ve been calling “electronic” producers and artists since the 90s really should’ve been classified as composers from the start. I understand why they weren’t: it’s kind of a lofty term, it’s not very commercial, and early on the most novel selling point was that acts like Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, μ-Ziq, and Autechre were largely working in an electronic mode and making futuristic music. But from this point in history, it’s pretty clear that electronic production was only a means to an end for most acts in this lane, and the game has always been about ambitious composition, not computers and synthesizers.

This is particularly true of Squarepusher, who was asserting himself as a jazz artist working in an “electronic” milieu by the late 90s. Jump ahead nearly 30 years to his new record Kammerkonzert and he’s fully in composer mode – the electronic elements are still there, but the emphasis is on jazz and orchestration. It mostly sounds like film music, but the compositions are so busy and detailed that it’s unlikely any of it could sit easily in the background of a movie. The songs are full of action and implied plot, a drama you can fill out with your own mental footage. The balance of genre is well-calibrated – the potential stuffiness of the chamber music aspect is loosened up by the madcap energy of the jazz elements, and the IDM of it all scrambles expectations and keeps anything from sounding too traditional.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Goose “Good2B”

The jam band format is malleable enough to contain any genre elements a group of players cares to integrate, but the classics in the field have particular inclinations that shape their work – The Grateful Dead favored country and folk, Phish like to get funky. Goose, who have emerged as the top Millennial jam band, generally aim for “alternative” aesthetics. This can make them sound like Radiohead stripped of their bad vibes and uptight discipline, or like if Coldplay got a lot more interesting and experimental. More recently they’ve pushed in a more unexpected direction, drawing on the crisp and bombastic aesthetics of a very Patrick Bateman realm of 80s pop music. It’s a peculiar sound to mix into the jam band stew, in that they need to break the tight structures of that style to open space for jammy excursions. But the cocaine-jolt energy and bright sound suits the band well, and a little bit of intentional cheesiness makes Rick Mitarotonda’s earnest but hackneyed “we’re overwhelmed by too much information!” lyrics go down a lot smoother than if the tone was more serious.

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The Field “Another Day”

“Another Day” is an anomaly in The Field’s catalog: A track with a fully intelligible vocal part; the closest thing to a proper pop song in Axel Willner’s body of work. But it’s not Willner’s voice, and it’s not quite a guest either. The vocal is sourced from Tracklib, a subscription service that provides legally cleared samples. It’s more or less anonymous, and it’s just sort of lucky that he found this vocal part that suited his composition so perfectly. And it seems to be speaking for him, too. Willner’s new record is the product of working through writers block and finding a new sense of purpose in creating music, and the lyrics touch on uncertainty and a fear of not being understood. Like a lot of Field songs, the music for “Another Day” moves in soft circles with a pulsing steadiness that stands in for a beat. It’s comfortable and womb-like, but trapped in a loop. The female voice seems to call in from outside that loop, and despite the angst in her words, there’s something in her tone that conveys compassion, self-possession, and poise.

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No Joy “Big Life Big Leaf”

“Big Life Big Leaf” is a song that’s largely concerned with aging, death, and inevitable natural cycles, but it’s not a downer. It’s bright, it’s up tempo, it’s a psychedelic rush. It’s a song that rejoices in the very fact of being alive and excited for everything that’s possible when you’re still here on Earth. When Jasamine White-Gluz sings “I wish you didn’t have to leave,” it’s less about mourning and more about wanting someone to never leave the party of your life. And so it makes a lot of sense that the song would have to sound like the No Joy version of party music.

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Suki Waterhouse “When I Get Drunk (I Want You Boy)”

The past decade or so has given us a glut of sexy/sad songs by women about lusting for men who treat them terribly, largely taking cues from Lana Del Rey’s prolific work on the subject. “When I Get Drunk (I Want You Boy)” is pretty obviously downstream from Lana, right on down to starting the chorus with a resigned “fuck it…,” but I think Suki Waterhouse is aiming for something a little more earnestly sexy and openly emotional. For one thing, that slinky bass line is too solidly R&B to give the song much ironic distance from its own sexiness. And the melancholy feels more earned than notional. The piano part carries a lot of heartbreak, and there’s a few too many lines giving away the game that the singer actively wants a relationship with this distant and ambivalent man. That note of futility and tragedy makes the song feel sexier – there’s real stakes to this hookup, even if she’s trying not to admit it.

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Olivia Rodrigo “Expectations”

“Expectations” is the result of a songwriting dream team at the height of their powers: an A+ melody from pop topline queen Amy Allen, a typically bold structure and meticulous arrangement by Dan Nigro, and the lyrical POV and effortless charisma of Olivia Rodrigo.

Musically it’s a slight shift for Rodrigo, moving into early 80s new wave territory rather than 90s alt-rock/00s pop-punk, but it’s the same effervescent energy that brings out the best in her voice and persona. But it’s right in the sweet spot for Nigro, as he’s basically pulling in tricks he developed in his collaborations with Chappell Roan. There’s more than a little “Hot to Go” and “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” in this song, but Rodrigo’s personality is so strong that it’s not necessarily the first thing you’d notice upon hearing it.

There’s a clear continuity from Guts tracks like “Bad Idea, Right?” and “Get Him Back!” to “Expectations” both lyrically and musically, though there’s an obvious uptick in maturity. But that’s kinda the entire point of the song – Rodrigo is growing up, learning, and wanting more for herself and asking more from the men who want to be with her. She’s not necessarily holding herself up as a wholesome role model, but there’s a lot of positive lessons embedded in this god tier ultra-bop.

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Tomora “Ring the Alarm”

Tomora is a collaboration between the Norwegian indie pop singer Aurora and Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers. It’s an interesting combination that pushes both artists to unexpected extremes, mostly resulting in harsher and more abrasive music than either typically creates. “Ring the Alarm” is particularly bold, a clanging ultra-urgent banger that dials up the intensity on Rowlands’ usual Chemical Brothers tricks and nudges Aurora fully out of her ethereal comfort zone and into wilder Slits/Siouxsie-ish post-punk territory.

Buy it from Tomora.

Jeane “Emotional Baby”

This song is self-deprecating, but only up to a point. Jazz Johnston sings about being emotional and irrational and being a feeler with real big feelings, but it’s all delivered in a cool, calm, and collected tone. As the song glides along on a lightly bouncing alt-rock groove it becomes increasingly clear that she’s lightly taunting the listener and questioning their assumptions about how she lives. And by the end, she’s openly confronting and judging anyone who feels threatened by her feelings: “ain’t it so sad that you can’t contain someone so emotional?” She flips the supposed weakness into a strength, or even a sort of superpower.

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Interpol “This Mirror Weighs A Ton”

Interpol is a band that works within very narrow aesthetic constraints, so the most exciting thing they can do 25 years into their career is move to the outer boundaries of their style. “This Mirror Weighs A Ton” is as far out as they’ve ever ventured from their agitated, tightly-wound default sound, but even when they lean this much on soothing atmosphere and gentle rhythm, the music is still immediately identifiable as Interpol. The vibe may be different but the palette remains dark and high contrast, and shift towards more open space in the music places greater emphasis on Paul Banks’ distinctive nasal vocal tone. But even that is softer here, and the peevish quality that comes up in a lot of Interpol songs is swapped out for something that sounds like compassion without warmth.

If anything about Interpol is immutable, it’s apparently the peculiar syntax of Banks’ lyrics: “This mirror weighs a ton but at least we act sudden / all the words are gone / but the radios in your head still speak the arcane to the out there.” I’ve spent enough time with Interpol to find this very charming. Banks’ imagery and turns of phrase are evocative, and I feel like I get what he’s laying out even if the lines get sketchy. And frankly, I’ll take strange words that flow with a melody over grammatically sound and over-written phrases stuffed awkwardly into a meter any day of the week.

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Boards of Canada “Father and Son”

This is my best attempt to summarize the themes of Boards of Canada’s fifth full-length album Inferno after less than a week of obsessive listening: It’s broadly about how most people can sense the existence of some sort of God, but trying to understand what God is takes them in very different directions – scientific rationalization, all manner of religious devotion, fascistic cult behavior, occult philosophy, apocalyptic dread, psychedelic exploration, overt rejection of God. There’s no thesis or argument, there’s no plot or moralization. I think of it as an abstracted audio documentary, a collage of vignettes and references to moments and ideas that fit together intuitively but deliberately avoids a statement. What statement could there possibly be? The point is not knowing.

“Father and Son” is the track that pulled me in first, and I heard it without any context for its sample sources or the broader concepts of the record. I was inititally responding to it in purely musical ways, fixating on the drum programming and eerie keyboard tone, the odd musicality of how Mike Sandison had edited the vocal samples, and the fascinating intonations of the people speaking in the samples. Sandison has long had a great ear for surreal vocal clips – go back to “Aquarius” for a mind-bending utterance of the word “orange” – and there’s some peculiar magic to these voices, one very stern but warm, and the other so sheepish, but both imbued with a very American strain of wholesomeness.

The source of this dialogue was revealed rather quickly, as Boards of Canada listeners are apparently very talented audio detectives. It’s an exerpt from a 1971 Man Alive documentary called The Jesus Trip, which investigates the Children of God cult in its early days. It’s from a sequence in which a man visits his son at the cult’s compound and attempts to reason with him, with some hope of bringing him back home. It’s a heartbreaking scene in which a very stoic mid-20th century father tactfully speaks to a hippy son who has been programmed to turn against him.

The line that jumped out at me when I was approaching this purely as audio – “I really don’t think so” – is gutting in context. The father asks his son if, based on how he’s lived and raised his family, he has acted as a man who’s accepted Christ in his heart. The younger man responds “I really don’t think so” with a sort of wormy tone. You can hear uncertainty in his voice, but it’s nothing to do with his judgment, which seems entirely sincere. There’s an obvious weakness in this man, a deference to outside forces. He’s eager to have the answers provided to him, particularly in this confrontation. He doesn’t have to think, and he doesn’t really need to stand up to his father. He can just defer to the text and shrug.

The audio doesn’t play this scene straight. It’s chopped up, phrases are slightly bent to melody, and it’s cut with more mysterious and garbled vocal samples. These parts, which often sound demonic, are crucial to the musicality and the unsettling tone. Even with a throughline of conversation, that narrative is tipped off-kilter and contrasted with seemingly unrelated commentary and phrases that are difficult to make out through the filtering. You’re mostly hearing two men who feel sure about what they’re saying, but it’s presented in a context where nothing seems solid or certain.

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Car Seat Headrest “1937 State Park” (Joe’s Story Version)

Car Seat Headrest have re-recorded “1937 State Park” along with the rest of Teens of Denial (give or take a few songs), so I should follow suit and write a new post about that song, right? Not exactly a tall order given that it’s one of my top favorite songs from the 2010s.

I’m a little surprised by my emotional response in my original post from May 2016. I was identifying a lot more with the character in the song, and being a little hard on a past version of myself I don’t remember so clearly today.

It also captures the feeling of being a particularly cynical and depressive sort of teenage boy, right on down to the line about avoiding graveyards because they’re a cliché of his “death-obsessed generation,” which is funny to me because I was exactly the sort of teen to extrapolate way too much from random people I knew just to find new ways to be snobby as an excuse to opt out of social situations. “Ah, I hate my generation, so obsessed with death!” Sure, dude! Whatever. Meanwhile you’re the guy singing about feeling a pressure to commit minor crimes so you can act out a “live fast, die young” narrative.

Now the song strikes me as more obviously comedic, a portrait of a depressed teenager who’s fantasizing about how he’ll be remembered after he dies young. He’s dreaming of being a Kurt Cobain type figure, but doesn’t seem particularly interested in the part where you write songs and play in a band. It’s just a daydream about wanting to be thought of as cool in retrospect, and awkwardly willing his life to match the narrative beats of a young punk tragedy. (“I can’t commit to a crime to commit, I need to get one done for the biography.”)

The kid in this song – presumably the Joe character who’s positioned as the protagonist in other songs on the record – is so recognizable and poignant. He’s at a stage of youth where emotions run hot, and ideas are big but not fully formed. Being perceived matters more at this time than being understood, and being understood feels impossible. But of course anyone with any sort of perspective understands what’s going on in their head.

I think this recording of “1937 State Park” is superior to the original version, and that’s true of the other more rocking songs that have been remade for this revised album. The band have played these songs many times over and have found subtle ways to improve the dynamics without many substantial differences to the music. It’s the same thing, but with maybe 20% more punch to it.

Will Toledo’s vocal is very close to the original take but a little more confident in his phrase, a tiny bit bolder when he sings out. I imagine this song feels different to him in his early 30s, with a lot more distance from being a teen. He sounds dialed into the extremes in this recording – the wry parts slightly more dry in tone, but he sounds more wounded and discouraged as he sings the chorus. The first time around the emotions seemed to fall on an even plane, but there’s more of a sharp contrast between the parts that are cringe for humorous effect and the parts that are connecting with genuine shame.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Meghan Dowlen “New Shoes”

Imagine a version of St. Vincent that retains Annie Clark’s gift for melody, tightly controlled theatrical vocals, and taste for sleek aesthetics, but instead of a guitar virtuoso, it’s an extremely gifted bassist. A bassist who is clearly well acquainted with the intersections of new wave and funk in the early 80s, and has probably spent a lot of time thinking about “Funkytown” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” and ESG and anything Tina Weymouth ever played on.

That’s pretty much what I’m hearing in Meghan Dowlen’s record Dizzy Spell, though there’s other distinctive things going on with it. For one thing, it sounds remarkably clean and precise. There’s nothing padding out or thickening the sounds, nothing to take your ear off the primary elements: bass, vocals, percussion, and dryly recorded bursts of guitar and saxophone for color. I had to acclimate to it a bit – you get so used to songs being filled out with subtle sounds that something this trim and tight can feel slightly alien.

But I think that’s part of the point – to be funky and fun and somewhat relaxed, but also a little uncanny and raw. “New Shoes” often sounds like what I imagine a lot of disco era Michael Jackson music would be like if you got Quincy Jones to silence half the tracks on the mixing board. Which is to say, I think this might strike some people as “unfinished,” but only if you’re not meeting Dowlen on her own terms.

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Fundido featuring Emma Dufaux “Get A Grip”

This is a new single out on DFA, which is a good thing, as it would be extremely weird if any other label released it. Like, in genre terms, this is a DFA song. Everything about this song is dialed in precisely to “DFA.” You like the particular snap of a DFA records beat? You like a tasteful yet caustic DFA synth tone? You like a cool, disaffected DFA type singer? You’ll like “Get A Grip.” Simple as that.

As much as this conforms to expectations, it’s not all rote and cookie cutter. I like vocalist Emma Dufaux’s tossed-off attitude as she semi-raps lyrics about setting a guy up to succeed and then knocking him down and out of her way. It’s not really bitter or mean-spirited – she just sounds competitive and a little conniving, in a fun way.

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Meg Stalter “Prettiest Girl In America”

It’s not unusual for a comedian to make a novelty pop song, but it’s not common for those songs to succeed as both comedy and music. If anything, Meg Stalter’s debut single “The Prettiest Girl In America” works better as a song than as a joke. The premise is definitely funny, but it hits hard enough as a genuine dance pop banger that the irony and punchlines are besides the point. I mean, Charli XCX is funny too, you know? A lot of pop music is funny, and Meg fits right in.

Buy it from Amazon.

Olof Dreijer featuring Toya Delazy “Makwande”

I think that even if you heard this not knowing Olof Dreijer was one half of The Knife, you’d still intuit that he had something to do with it, even if just in an “obvious influence” sort of way. It’s mostly in the tonal palette, which is very much a return to Dreijer’s ultra-bright keyboards in the Deep Cuts era. But it’s also in the perverse approach to pop – the hooks are warped, the shape feels slightly off, the rap feels like it’s laid diagonally against the beat. The best part is in how Dreijer stutters a snyth riff so it sounds like it’s getting bent by digital interference. I’ve heard a lot of variations on that general notion, but rarely has it sounded so naturally funky.

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Smerz “Spring Summer”

I think there’s a tendency to approach brief, minimal, open-ended songs like this as though they’re unfinished sketches, which I think misses the point. It’s supposed to feel off-kilter and unresolved, because that’s the central feeling to convey. And people feel this way all the time in life! The lyrics to “Spring Summer” are very ambiguous in tone, and it’s hard to tell exactly how annoyed or aggrieved the singer is about an apparent situationship. I’m sure someone else could snap right into this feeling, but from my point of view, it’s an intriguing bit of voyeurism.

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ISTA “Crusher”

In the Dune mythos, “fear is the mind-killer.” But what kills fear? ISTA have an answer: “love is the fear crusher.” “Crusher” is sunny and unapologetically corny in its messaging, so much so that I think it loops around to non-corny. The sound is buzzy and super saturated, applying a very mid -90s alt-rock palette to a specifically mid-00s style of cheery alt-rock energy. There’s no way to express something like this without being earnest, but being earnest doesn’t mean you’re being naive and dopey, especially not in an era as fearful and loveless as the one we’re in at the moment.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Spacemoth “Do We Exist”

“Do We Exist?” moves along on a boppy bass line that’s a center of gravity for all the psychedelic keyboard and guitar parts that swirl around it. It’s a tether for Maryam Qudus’ voice as well as she sings lyrics that loop around to answer one phrase and then contradict another. It’s a clever approach, signaling both confusing and a humble willingness to be wrong. There’s no definitive answers about the nature of reality to be found here, but I do get the sense that she’s rejecting the notion that we’re actually all alone in this world.

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RIP Magic “Screwdark”

There are moments in “Screwdark” that sound like three DJ Shadows DJing at each other like the Spider-Man meme, or someone trying to Zaireeka the entire Mo Wax catalog. It’s a loud and cluttered sound, but the style is bold and the groove is definitely there. The half muttered, half rapped vocals are mixed so low that you could miss them entirely, but I like the Shy Ronnie vibe in the context of this stylish cacophony.

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April + Vista “Very Bad News”

April + Vista are basically an R&B band filtered through the aesthetics of the second half of Radiohead’s discography. This may seem odd in the abstract, but in practice it highlights how much oddball R&B was already in that music, and how cool it’d be if Erykah Badu actually worked with Jonny Greenwood. “Very Bad News” is groovy yet grim, and particularly indebted to the ominous orchestration of Greenwood after he’d spent some time writing film scores.

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Chenayder “Wonder”

Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life” and the DNA remix of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” were formative pop experiences for me as a kid, so of course I’m a mark for this song, which has a very similar beat to the former and melodically interpolates the latter. Vega gets a songwriting credit here, which strikes me as overcautious – it’s not quite the same tune, and I suspect Chenayder landed on this melodic flow coincidentally. She’s certainly going for a different feeling as she sings about a torturous unrequited love. Her words are a little more bleak than her delivery, but how upsetting can you be when you stack harmonies this beautifully?

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Isaiah Rashad “M.O.M.”

Have you ever eaten something familiar – a sandwich, a pasta dish, a salad – but there was some ingredient that popped more than usual? Like you’ve tasted a lot of basil in your life, but you’ve suddenly encountered the best basil? Something ordinary becomes something unexpected and magical. The full culinary potential of basil is revealed to you, but it’s not clear why that is. Is it a superior, fresher variety of basil? Did the chef do something to the basil? And if so, why doesn’t everyone do that?

This is how I feel about the snare in “M.O.M.,” which my body and mind immediately clocked as a better, crisper, more kinetic snare hit. I’ve heard so much snare in my life, but Isaiah Rashad along with producers Hollywood Cole, KTC, and Julian Sinfonia found a way to make one of the foundational elements of popular music more beautiful and effective.

I have very limited technical knowledge of how beats in modern pop music are created and engineered, but I happen to know someone with a lot of expertise on this topic: Nick Sylvester, veteran music critic, drummer, label owner, and full-time record producer. I asked him to demystify this snare sound for me.

“The drum sample sounds like it leans on the bottom snare mic a little more to pick up the sizzle of the snares on the bottom head a little more,” he told me. “It has a little more top end, which is how it cuts through so nicely, which is the crispness you’re hearing. A lot of snare samples sound like this but what’s so special here is that the top end of the music is uncluttered, which lets the snare ring out a little more, so there’s no masking.”

I suspected the minimalism of the mix was part of it. There’s not a lot of sounds in the mix, and everything is compelling – a perfect pocket of rhythm, Rashad’s vocal popping off the beat, and a keyboard riff with a distinctive understated tone that’s just as beautiful to my ear as that snare. The percussion sounds urgent enough to insist on physical movement, but there’s also a relaxed feel to the track that sets muscles at ease. It’s built for fluid, natural, steady movement.

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Piri “Cosuluvme”

“Cosuluvme” is Piri’s solo debut – as in, she’s singing, she’s writing, she’s producing, it’s all her. The lyrics basically explain how Piri & Tommy broke up, or more specifically, how they broke up as a couple and then as a band. There are some harsh lines directed towards Tommy (“he’s a baby boy, very young for 26”) but it’s not a bitter or mean spirited song. She mostly sounds frustrated with herself for trying to hold on to the relationship for longer than she should have, and eager to move on. And while he certainly added a touch of vaguely jazzy elegance to their songs together, she’s clearly well-equipped to carry on without him.

Buy it from Amazon.

Pearl & The Oysters “Doom Mood”

“Doom Mood” is a breezy bossa nova song, but with a surreal twist. It sounds like it was arranged with dream logic, so all the familiar elements of this sort of song feel slightly off: the guitar and percussion carry a manic, accelerated energy that contrasts with the song’s relaxed vibe, while the overdriven organ is so heavily saturated it evokes the sensation of heavy condensation. It’s not pushed to the point of breaking the mood, but it certainly signals an eccentric point of view.

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The Orielles “Wasp”

The Orielles’ music mostly exists within the aesthetic boundaries of post-punk, but there’s a larger ambition to it that nudges their more recent material closer to film scores, conceptual art, and rock opera. The songs imply grand scale and dramatic arcs without providing a lot of clear cut narrative, though it’s easy to track the feelings. “Wasps” is something of an outlier, as it’s not as wistful or digressive as other tracks on Only You Left, but it’s a crucial bit of tension and catharsis on a record that often sounds like a field recording of a melancholy daydream. The arrangment is gnarled and absurdly tight, very similar to a lot of songs by The Smile. Esmé Hand-Halford sounds serene as she sings lyrics that remind me a lot of the detached, clinical, and observational tone of a lot of Wire’s songs. There’s a dense metaphor to unpack there, but the words that ring out feel very raw and direct: “This is you apart from me,” “Now you see that I can’t forget you.”

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Nine Inch Nails “Parasite (Nine Inch Noize Version)”

Nine Inch Noize is essentially Trent Reznor going back to basics as an electronic/industrial artist, but with the X factor of collaborators he’s picked up along the way – the German producer Boys Noize, his regular partner Atticus Ross, and his wife Mariqueen Maandig. It’s all old songs given a fresh jolt of energy, but the approach varies. “Closer,” “Heresy,” and “Copy Of A” feel different, but the bones of those songs are so strong that the changes amount to a stylish makeover. Others shift more dramatically: “She’s Gone Away” is transformed so much that it feels like an entirely new song, and “Came Back Haunted” has mutated into a full-on dance banger.

The new version of “Parasite” is a revelation. The best elements of the original version from the How to Destroy Angels record are intact – the gently harmonized verse melody, a riff that sounds like it’s played on a chainsaw – but it’s otherwise rebuilt from parts mainly sourced from Boys Noize’s track “Xpress Yourself.” This shifts the genre to dance, but more accurately, it sounds like it should be the soundtrack to a chase sequence in a sci-fi horror movie. It starts out tense, and only gets more frantic once that chainsaw riff comes in, and it’s like suddenly you’re being tailed by a xenomorph and Leatherface. There’s no moment of catharsis or relief, just a burst of adrenaline and an eventual collapse. Maybe you’ve escaped?

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Frog “Je Ne Sais Pas”

There’s an interesting tension here between Frog’s high level of songwriting craft and their gleeful disregard for careerism. On one hand, “Je Ne Sais Pas” sounds like it could be the demo of a lost early 80s Hall & Oates song. On the other, they’re opening the song by singing “I want to fuck / I want to sick your duck.”

The track is lo-fi and feels artfully unfinished, as though you’re meant to sorta hear a more fleshed-out and polished version of it in your head while listening to the bashed-out piano chords and chintzy synth accompaniment that’s actually on tape. Part of me would love to actually hear a slick recording of the song, but I appreciate the impromptu vibe. This recording has a lot of character, and has that odd 90s slacker confidence: “Hey, I can knock out elegant songs like this any time, it’s easy.”

Once they get the most juvenile lines out of the way, the lyrics shift to a genuinely funny portrait of a loser guy with no game who’s bitter about a woman who’s left him in the dust. What a couplet: “Jen, I’m appalled that you never called / I was passionate, bald, and enthralled.”

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Ruth Garbus “I Think I’m Ready Now”

• I clearly recall the first time I heard I heard “I Think I’m Ready Now.” Ruth Garbus was opening for Fievel Is Glauque at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, and I was immediately pulled in by the song’s “what the hell did she just sing?” opening line: “When I penetrated that man I felt just like a dog.”

• The song is less lurid than you’d expect from that opener. Garbus’ language is vivid and memorable, contrasting vulgar and mundane imagery with a sort of cosmic philosophy. The lyrics are not narrative or didactic, but I think it’s basically a song about shame mixing with pleasure, and indignity as a path to enlightenment. Something like that.

• The arrangement is minimal: No percussion, the emphasis placed almost entirely on Garbus’ voice and tastefully strummed guitar. But there’s some subtle bits of accompaniment, like that lovely little organ flourish after the first line of the third verse, and the understated keyboard drone that harmonizes with her towards the end of the track.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Of Montreal “When”

I say this with the greatest admiration and respect: Kevin Barnes is a messy bitch who lives for drama. Following his career over the long term means you get the highs and lows of his love life as it progresses through stages happiness and despair. He’s exceptionally good at capturing the best and worst feelings in vivid detail, to the extent that the darker records can be very difficult to listen to. The new Of Montreal record finds Barnes in a fairly manic moment – fresh out of a long-term relationship, newly relocated to Brooklyn, and searching for new connections. I initially assumed “When” was about the collapsed relationship because Barnes was singing “I just wanna fuck you again! / when can I fuck you again??” in the chorus and sounding kinda spiteful in the verses. As it turns out, it’s meant to be heard as an expression of extreme neediness in the context of a new relationship, a desperate plea for affection. I suppose this is a kinder vibe than wanting to have sex despite a relationship falling apart, but in either case, it’s Barnes being radically vulnerable and willing to appear pathetic and ugly.

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The Strokes “Going Shopping”

I like a bunch of songs by The Strokes but have never been a big fan, which I think largely comes down to how quickly their recordings wear out my ears with severe compression and narrow dynamic range. I get the appeal of their intricate, treble-heavy arrangements and sing-songy melody, but I can only take it in small doses. “Going Shopping,” the first single from their forthcoming seventh record, is much more to my taste. The tone is warmer and richer, and there’s a more of a casual feel to it. Like, it’s not loose, per se – they’re still doing their signature tight harmonic interplay, but it’s possible to suspend disbelief and think the leads are made up on the spot. I love the guitar tone on the rhythm part in the chorus enough to let the unneccessary AutoTune on Julian Cassablancas’ voice slide. I’d prefer the song without that effect, but I get the appeal of having this uncanny tonality in the middle of a track that otherwise feels so smooth and natural.

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Sofi Tukker featuring J Balvin “Cook”

“Cook” is a song for the body and not the mind. The track is pure adrenaline and sensation. It probably sounds great in a club, but I know it sounds amazing in a gym. That said, I find it kinda funny that the members of Sofi Tukker are singing innocuous lines about cooking up a fun song and wishing a loved one could see how successful they’ve become while J Balvin raps in Spanish about being a nymphomanic rock star/porn star who’s constantly on a mission to bust. And really, it’s the poignant aside that feels out of place – this is absolutely the most appropriate music for rapping about wanting to fuck.

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