Author Archive

Vic Mensa “Orange Soda”

I’ve been meaning to post this song for months now, but I’ve found it to be weirdly difficult to write about. “Orange Soda” has a slick, warm groove that feels incredibly comfortable, maybe too comfortable – my mind kinda shuts off when I hear it, and I just go along with the groove without thinking too much about it. Mensa’s performance is fantastic, he has that rare gift of being able to switch between R&B vocals and rapped verses very fluidly, and has roughly the same level of skill for both. I like the melody he brings to his verses, and the way the bass notes seem almost too warm, like being in a room that’s heated a bit too much on a cold day.

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Eminem featuring Kendrick Lamar “Love Game”

Eminem used to mainly be seen as a trolling provocateur, but as he’s aged into a genuine rap legend, the main draw of his music has become his incredible technical prowess. But where a lot of performers fall down a rabbit hole of self-indulgence when they become obsessed with their chops, Eminem actually gets better – I felt like his last two or three albums were too dour and aggro, but his pure joy in crafting and delivering complicated rhyme schemes is the center of The Marshall Mathers LP 2. The music is far more joyful too – there’s a mischievous bounciness to it that his work has been missing since around The Eminem Show in 2002.

“Love Game” is the only track on MMLP2 to feature another rapper, and it makes sense that it’d be Kendrick – not just for the Dr. Dre connection, but for the fact that he’s the only successful young rapper right now who can match Eminem’s skills. Kendrick sounds absolutely thrilled to get the opportunity to share a track with Eminem, and he definitely shows off every trick he’s learned from listening to him over the years. (Unfortunately that includes some creepy cartoonish misogyny, but hey.) There’s a great sense of friendly “oh yeah, top that!” competition on this track, and it brings out the best in both of them.

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M.I.A. “YALA”

If only this song making fun of YOLO was released a year or so ago, right? Not that it’s M.I.A.’s fault, but timing counts for a lot. It’s still a really great and clever song, though: The hooks and beats are squarely in her Arular/Kala sweet spot, and the tag at the end about reincarnation and karma is funny and pointed in a way I think a lot of people have forgotten is actually her default mode as a lyricist. I’m just glad to hear M.I.A. back in action – I wasn’t a fan of her last album, and it was discouraging to see her fall into limbo for several years. I hope that people don’t start to think of her as some retro mid-00s thing.

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Arcade Fire “Normal Person”

It’s funny that Win Butler is self-deprecating about playing rock music at the start of this song because it’s not as though Arcade Fire have ever been a typical rock band. Their “let’s play every instrument at once!!!” aesthetic has a way of burying or de-emphasizing their guitars, to the point that this song is one of the very few in their catalog in which a lead guitar hook is central to the composition. This is certainly the most “normal” rock song they’ve ever done, so I get why he felt the need to be preemptively apologetic about it, and make the lyrics all about being freaked out by conformity. (Never mind that being afraid that playing a straight ahead rock song in 2013 is totally uncool is a very conformist fear.) I can see how the lyrics of this song could really bug someone, but I kinda like them – I think I actually sorta needed a song about the idea of “normal people” in my life right now, and while Win’s sense of irony is heavy-handed, it works well enough once you get into the thick of the song.

I wrote a lot more about Reflektor over here.

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Sky Ferreira “I Blame Myself”

“I Blame Myself” is about dealing with fame, but it’s coming at that topic from a very interesting angle: Not being all that famous, but having to reckon with having an image, career, and reputation of your own making that supersedes what may be your actual self. Ferreira’s lyrics are specific to her own life – the second verse is heavy on biographical detail – but the sentiment is resonant for anyone who has to reconcile the person people expect them to be and who they feel like they are. There’s a lot of anxiety and mixed feelings in this song. She worries about people wanting something from her that she can’t give, she tries to make you understand where she’s coming from, she understands your perspective but resents it all the same, she blames herself. She’s trying to figure out whether she has some advantage in this situation, but you can tell she feels a little powerless. That’s part of why the chorus feels so triumphant – she’s being assertive and taking something back, even if it’s not very effective or meaningful.

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Cristina “Mamma Mia”

Cristina Monet and August Darnell throw the listener headlong into a world of sparkling fabulousness within the first few seconds of “Mamma Mia,” but they quickly raise the stakes, pushing the song to delirious heights of ecstasy and glamor. Monet’s second album was mainly concerned with portraying its wealthy characters as decadent, miserable creeps, but this is not nearly as dark or cynical. It’s good-hearted fantasy of ritzy elegance, and though the song is knowingly kitschy, its enthusiasm and awe is entirely genuine. This isn’t about money, it’s about limitless pleasure.

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Ludus “Breaking the Rules”

…and this one’s about the limits we place on our pleasure. I’d say that “Breaking The Rules” makes a better case for a combination of romantic commitment and bisexual polyamory better than any song I’ve ever heard, but I can’t think of any other tunes that cover the same lyrical territory, much less anything so cheery and danceable. It’s not pushy or didactic, but rather open-minded, generous, assertive, and eager to balance its pursuit of excitement and expression with stability and a political agenda.

Buy it from Amazon.

(Originally posted 10/12/2007)

Fiona Apple and Blake Mills @ Beacon Theater 10/22/2013
Tipple / The First Taste / Every Single Night / Unworthy (Blake song) / Anything We Want / Curable Disease (Blake song) / Regret / It’ll All Work Out (Blake song) / Not About Love (with Questlove) / Seven (Blake song) / Dull Tool / Don’t Tell Our Friends About Me (Blake song) / Left Alone / I Know / Waltz (Better Than Fine)

Fiona Apple “Regret”

This was by far the most cheerful Fiona Apple performance I’ve ever seen, and that’s really saying something since she performed “I Know,” “Regret,” and “Left Alone,” three of the most agonizing songs in her catalog. Those songs had the appropriate emotional punch, but the dominant feeling through this show was very warm and positive. You could just tell how much she and Blake enjoy playing together, and their camaraderie with the rhythm section. To be honest, Blake’s songs weren’t all that memorable, but they were fine enough in the moment and didn’t distract from Fiona’s material as much as you might expect. They were like bluesy little palette cleansers after the heavy emotions of Fiona’s songs.

“Regret” was the song that really got under my skin last night. That chorus is always gutting, and maybe a bit more so when she’s belting it out in person, but I’m always a little more unnerved by the verses, in which she sings about being gradually poisoned by someone else’s depressive negativity. It’s rattling a bit because I can’t really decide which side of the song I relate to more. I hate to admit that in public, but there it is.

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Anna Calvi “Love of My Life”

Okay, I’m just going to say this first and get it out of the way: Wow, this sounds a lot like PJ Harvey. I don’t say this as a slight on Anna Calvi in any way. Sounding like PJ Harvey is an amazing thing, especially when it’s like Rid of Me/To Bring You My Love-era Polly, and you’ve utterly nailed that raw nerve guitar style, and mastered that sort of nearly-unhinged sexual hysteria. This is actually a little more manic than anything I can remember Polly ever doing – Calvi’s voice has a more desperate tone, and that blunt, pounding chorus is abrupt, like slamming into a wall that drops down out of nowhere.

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Teen Girl Scientist Monthly “Summer Skin”

Teen Girl Scientist Monthly is one of those rare bands that arrives fully formed with a debut album that sounds like it may as well be someone’s greatest hits record. Every song is catchy, well-constructed, and executed with a high level of confidence. If you love energetic indie rock/pop-punk/power pop, you will want to dance and sing along by the time the second chorus hits in most of their songs. “Summer Skin,” the first track and first single, is the best place to start with them. It’s this gleeful, reckless joyride of a song that just zooms at you full speed. The album overall reminds me a bit of The New Pornographers’ debut, and what it felt like to hear that band for the first time, and this song is very much the “Mass Romantic” of the record. It throws you right into the excitement, and the vocals by Morgan Lynch come close to Neko Case’s sassy, authoritative tone.

Buy it from Bandcamp. No, seriously, go buy it.

The Dismemberment Plan “No One’s Saying Nothing”

This song has the most provocative opening lines of anything I’ve heard this year: “You hit the space bar enough, cocaine comes out / I really like this computer!” It’s more funny to me because I have a bit of context in my own experience, but also in that I know Travis Morrison has been working for the Huffington Post for years, and I know that the corporate culture there is pretty intense and demanding, to say the very least. The new Dismemberment Plan is pretty much a concept album about working this sort of job, and trying to hold on to some feeling of being a cool, fun person with a life, but slipping further into professionalism and a conventional adult life and being basically okay with it. This song is the best and most effective – partly on a purely melodic level, but also because I really like the way the arrangement is like a weirdly cheerful spin on “Airbag” by Radiohead. From OK Computer to Pretty Good Computer, I guess.

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Pusha T and Kendrick Lamar “Nosetalgia”

Pusha T is great on this song, it’s probably one of the two or three best performances on his entire new album – excellent delivery, sharp wordplay. But despite that, he’s still completely upstaged by Kendrick Lamar on this track. But that’s a given these days, I guess. Kendrick is in a very exciting position lately – he’s in his prime and has achieved some mastery over his craft, but he’s still constantly pushing himself to do little formal experiments. His voice is only getting more expressive, and he’s finding new ways to make words and syllables pop. His verse here is interesting too in that he’s providing an important counterpoint to Pusha’s verse, which is his umpteenth rap about being a crack dealer. Kendrick’s verse flips the perspective drastically, speaking from the perspective of someone who grew up with parents and family members addicted to crack. Pusha’s verse is cause, Kendrick’s is the effect.

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Pearl Jam “Infallible”

Pearl Jam have been essentially the same since around 1998. That’s when their lineup solidified with Matt Cameron as their permanent drummer, and it’s when the band officially dropped out of the mainstream and firmed up their position as a cult act mainly focused on touring. They found a comfortable niche where they could thrive, and then immediately lost all creative ambition. Aside from a few token tracks here and there, they haven’t experimented at all since No Code in 1996, and each album from Yield onward is essentially the same record with different songs. This isn’t to say that the records have been bad – some have been better, some have been worse, and all of them have at least a few very good tracks – but the songwriting settled into a few basic templates and there has been no variation in aesthetic, tone, production style, or songwriting emphasis. Every album is well-rounded in the same predictable way, so you can’t even be like “oh, that’s the folky one, that’s the heavy one, that’s lo-fi one, that’s the double album.” It’s sensible, but also mystifying in that these talented guys seem so hell-bent on sticking to a formula and never stepping outside of their comfort zone.

Lightning Bolt, their new album, is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. The songs range from pretty good to perfectly fine, though I don’t particularly like the new single “Sirens,” which sounds more like a band you’d say sounds like Pearl Jam than Pearl Jam themselves. The big keeper on this one is “Infallible” – it has a nice lurching groove, a bit of color in the bass and keyboards, and a melody that flatters the rich, handsome tone of Eddie Vedder’s voice. His performance here is pretty great, I always love when he filters classic soul affects through his distinct vocal style. It’s funny, he’s actually kind of a hugely underrated rock singer now. But then again, he’s probably not doing enough to showcase his voice in terms of material. It would be more striking to people if put in a slightly different context.

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Cass McCombs “Big Wheel”

This song has the most aggravating fade out I’ve heard in a long time. I get it on a conceptual level: The song keeps going on and on, like the trucker narrator driving off into some infinite horizon, but damn it, I want to stay with it! The lyrics of this song are exceptional – partly because there’s some very vivid and specific images, but mostly because the rambling internal monologue takes some turns that are genuinely surprising. I particularly love when the character starts dissecting the question “what does it mean to be a man?,” and both challenges the idea, and embraces a particular idea of masculinity that gives him a sense of pride and identity.

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Cults “I Can Hardly Make You Mine”

As it turns out, I like Cults a lot more when there’s a bit more momentum to their music. “I Can Hardly Make You Mine” is basically where Motown pop, ’60s garage, and ’90s female-fronted alt-rock meet in a Venn diagram, and it’s a very appealing mixture. A lot of what makes the song work is Madeline Follin’s voice, which can be a bit thin and tinny on other songs, but has a great chirpy yet desperate tone here. Also, that brief solo has a fantastic melody that spirals nicely off the main riff.

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Lee Ranaldo and the Dust “Key-Hole”

The most interesting thing about the three principle songwriters of Sonic Youth splitting off to do their own thing is hearing their personal aesthetics and skill sets in isolation, and having that inform the way I hear the music they made as a group. It’s also intriguing to hear what they do when left to their own devices at this point in their career, and how the three picked very different paths – Thurston being more or less creatively stagnant yet obviously invigorated by playing with a stripped-down punkish band, Kim going for an ultra-arty record bordering on primal scream therapy, and Lee going off to put his own spin on folk rock without a care in the world as to whether anyone thinks it’s cool. But while I think some people look at what Lee is doing as being regressive or retro, he’s actually the one of the three who is pushing what Sonic Youth was doing over the past decade or so in another direction. There isn’t much on his second album with The Dust, Last Night on Earth, that is far off from where Sonic Youth were on A Thousand Leaves or Murray Street.

I really do wish that “Key-Hole” could’ve been a Sonic Youth song. It’s actually sort of surprising that it’s not – maybe it’s the particular type of dramatic tension and release, maybe it’s because Steve Shelley is on drums, maybe it’s because the guitar interplay isn’t far off from what Thurston would’ve done around Lee’s parts. But I can also hear the things that probably wouldn’t have made it into a Sonic Youth piece – there are elements of “classic rock” that I think would’ve been roughed up a bit more to keep it from seeming too traditional. But I’m glad that it wasn’t – I like that it’s clean and groovy, I love when it slips into these gorgeous, tranquil sections. The song drifts along, then seems to get picked up on gusts and waves. The emotion of it follows suit, but the core of it is that mellow drift, and Lee singing a couplet in the middle that rings very true: “Let’s make the best of a bad situation / try to define love any way we can.”

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Gems “Medusa”

I have, over the past decade, become very skeptical about EPs and stray hype tracks for new artists – it’s most often the only songs the artist has ever made, and I’ve lost a lot of patience for hearing people work through the basics of songwriting. This song by Gems, though, is why I shouldn’t be so lazy or cynical. “Medusa” is a remarkably sophisticated pop song, and the band seems to have arrived fully formed in terms of character and aesthetics. The center of the song is Lindsay Pitts’ vocal performance, which effortlessly glides from a seductive midrange up to ecstatic high notes in a way that reminds me a bit of Alison Goldfrapp. But I’m just as interested as what is on the periphery – the foggy atmosphere, the arrival of a proper smoothly articulated guitar solo, the male backing vocals that are surprising at first but then become an important contrast to Pitts’ lead.

Visit the Gems website.

Grass House “The Colours in the Light May Obscure”

To my ears, Grass House is basically like The National if they were actually British, a bit jauntier, and had a far more melodic and colorful lead guitarist. So, yeah, I like them a lot more. It’s a little unfair to cast them in this light, but that “poetic deep voiced gentleman” thing is there, even if they don’t completely surrender to a dour vibe. My favorite thing in this song is certainly that lead guitar refrain, and the way it comes off as towering and grand, but also somewhat sly and knowing. It turns the entire song on its side, and somehow makes the vocals seem a bit more rakish.

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of Montreal “Belle Glade Missionaries”

I’ve been starting to feel weird about how much I relate to a lot of Kevin Barnes’ lyrics, particularly as he’s been moving in this increasingly venomous direction over the course of the past three of Montreal albums. Lousy with Sylvianbriar dials back the spite from where he left off on Paralytic Stalks, but he kinda had to walk it back from there – that record goes so far into the depths of spite and despair that the only way to top it would be to literally record a nervous breakdown. Lousy is a something of a course-correcting album – it’s a little brighter, the songs are tighter and more traditional. The influence of Prince and Sly on the past several albums has been replaced by Bob Dylan. Dylan-ness serves him well – the music is far more relaxed, but gives him a familiar framework to write songs that obliquely eviscerate someone, or maybe sometimes himself.

“Belle Glade Missionaries” is my favorite, maybe because it’s so amusing in its bitterness and exotic detail. I mean, this is a song in which Kevin mocks someone for being overly concerned with the popularity of their naked GIFs and then sinks the knife deeper by telling them that “their friends don’t give a shit and view your fugues with amusement.” The stuff that really sinks in for me, though, are the more cynical and fatalistic lines. You know, like the one about how there are no victims to the evils of the world, only participants. Or the line which kinda sums up all of his recent music: “Still, there’s a value in things unpleasant.”

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Miley Cyrus featuring Future “My Darlin'”

I was trying to figure out what it is about this song’s strangely shifting, asymmetrical arrangement that makes it feel so much more sad than it might if it was played straight, and I realized that it’s because it feels like half of it is missing, and it’s a song about feeling like you can’t survive without a person you are convinced completes you. The music sounds like it’s broken, the Future sounds like he’s part malfunctioning robot, part fading memory. Miley’s voice is strong and strident – if you have any doubts about her actual talent, this song should set you straight. Her phrasing at the climax, when she’s singing “I can’t breathe without you, without you as mine” really hits me in the gut.

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Lorde “Ribs”

I have complicated feelings about hearing a teenager sing “it feels so scary, getting old,” but it’s clear that Lorde is aware of the irony, and connected to the emotional truth of that thought for a teen. “Ribs” is about the odd, awkward transitional stage between being a kid and becoming…well, I guess an older kid. A young adult, let’s say. There’s a push and pull between wanting to move on to something new, and regressing because you don’t want to lose the good parts of being so young and you’re scared of change. “Ribs” works well in part because Lorde allows this feeling, something that is easily dismissed by people as they get older, to be nuanced and ambiguous. It’s all the stuff you forget later on, but the complex feelings about change never really go away.

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I skipped writing about a lot of these in the past couple weeks for whatever reason, but let’s catch up on things.

Phoenix @ Barclays Center 10/2/2013
Entertainment / Lasso / Lisztomania / Long Distance Call / Fences / Rally / The Real Thing / Too Young – Girlfriend / S.O.S. In Bel Air / Run Run Run / Trying To Be Cool – Drakkar Noir / Chloroform / Sunskrupt! / Consolation Prizes / Armistice / 1901 / Countdown / If I Ever Feel Better – Funky Squaredance // Rome / Entertainment (Reprise)

I’ve seen a fair number of Phoenix shows going back to the Alphabetical era, and in all cases those have been gigs in clubs or relatively small-scale venues, so I’ve been very curious to see how their act translates in an arena. It worked pretty well – the audience, particularly the people on the floor, were definitely super excited through the whole show, and they’ve got enough undeniable pop songs that they can play a show that feels like a very satisfying hit parade. Their arena game could use some work, though – better visuals and staging would go a long way, and also some way of shifting the dynamic/momentum around the middle of the show. They mix it up a lot at the end, mainly by having Thomas Mars go out into the audience, and that works really well – he’s not the most wildly charismatic dude, but he makes up for that by being really enthusiastic and willing to physically engage with his fans and the space of whatever venue he’s in. This show ended with him running around half the venue and back through the floor, and getting crowd-surfed back to the stage before inviting at least 150 fans to dance on stage. That was totally exciting, and if they want to keep performing on this level, they should explore more ideas like that which can be peppered throughout the performance.

Tame Impala @ Terminal 5 10/1/2013
Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind? / Solitude Is Bliss / Endors Toi / Apocalypse Dreams / Half Full Glass of Wine / Elephant / Music To Walk Home By / Be Above It / Feels Like We Only Go Backwards / Mind Mischief / Oscilly / Desire Be Desire Go / Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Ben Anything We Could Control

Tame Impala is another band that should invest in some visuals for their live performances – they need to give you something to look at and zone out to, because they’re just sort of dull to look at. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that their groovy psychedelia comes across very well in concert, but it should be noted that they’re good enough to be exciting even when playing at a venue with such horrible sound that they had about as much low end as if they were playing through a clock radio. The bass, so deep and warm on record, just did not have the appropriate volume and resonance, and that was just bullshit.

The Flaming Lips @ Terminal 5 10/1/2013
Look…The Sun Is Rising / The Terror / The W.A.N.D. / Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast / Silver Trembling Hands / Race For The Prize / Try To Explain / Butterfly, How Long It Takes To Die / Turning Violent / A Spoonful Weighs A Ton // Do You Realize??

The Flaming Lips were the reverse of Tame Impala in this show. Their current staging and lighting is astonishing and great, it’s like checking out a great piece of installation art that just so happens to include a performance by Wayne Coyne and his pals. The music itself was just kinda ok, though, and I say this as a longtime fan of the band. The material from The Terror is sort of dull and listless in concert – the album is interesting as a portrait of a depressed mind, but that doesn’t really translate on stage. Even when the band was playing excellent oldies like “The W.A.N.D.” and “Silver Trembling Hands,” there was this nagging sense that the staging was carrying the show, and that Wayne Coyne was frustrated with the audience not being as amped up as they might have been for previous iterations of their live show.

Atoms For Peace @ Barclays Center 9/27/2013
Before Your Very Eyes… / Default / The Clock / Ingenue / Stuck Together Pieces / Unless / And It Rained All Night / Harrowdown Hill / Dropped / Cymbal Rush // Skip Divided / Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses / Rabbit In Your Headlights / Paperbag Writer / Amok /// Atoms For Peace / Black Swan

This was such a weird show. I’ve seen Radiohead many times in large venues and I know that Thom Yorke has a big persona that can connect on a large level, but everything about this show seemed like him doing everything he could to disrupt all the things that make him and his music connect with people. I think The Eraser and Amok are interesting records and probably a necessary artistic outlet for the sort of ideas that clearly would get vetoed by the other members of Radiohead, and in a mostly abstract intellectual way, I appreciate how he explores small, complicated emotions and tight, complicated rhythmic patterns. But there’s still something odd about watching one of the most talented musicians of the past two decades avoid all of his strengths as an artist. My main take away from this show was that people love Thom Yorke SO MUCH that they’re willing to pay a lot of money to see him play the weakest material of his career with the bass player from Red Hot Chili Peppers. But hey, Flea was the best thing about this show – he has a surprising chemistry with Yorke, and he brought a liveliness, funk, and physicality that kept the show from being overly cerebral.

Vampire Weekend @ Barclays Center 9/20/2013
Cousins / White Sky / Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa / Diane Young / Unbelievers / Holiday / Step / Horchata / Everlasting Arms / Finger Back / California English / A-Punk / Boston (Ladies of Cambridge) / Ya Hey / Don’t Lie / Song 2 / Campus / Oxford Comma / Giving Up The Gun / Obvious Bicycle // Hannah Hunt / One (Blake’s Got A New Face) / Walcott

This show was just so, so, so great. An excellent performance, but more than that, just a generous selection of uniformly excellent songs played with a lot of spark and inspiration for a very enthusiastic audience. I was up in the cheap seats for this one, but I really lucked out in that I was in this section full of young, dance-happy girls who were freaking out over Ezra like he was the intellectual indie version of Justin Bieber. And I guess he is! I would’ve been really into this no matter what, but being right by people who are that psyched up for anything will always improve the experience. Also, oh my god, the alternate guitars-only version of “Don’t Lie” in this set was heart-stopping and I really hope a nice recording of that arrangement turns up before too long.

Solange @ Barclays Center 9/20/2013
I don’t have full notes for this but she definitely played: Lovers In The Parking Lot, Losing You, Stillness Is The Move, and Sandcastle Disco

I like Solange, but wow, she is not suited to playing an arena at all. Her persona is engaging in close quarters, but from a distance, she’s just sort of dull and flat, and that ends up making you realize how much of her material is sort of bland and under-written. The set picked up a bit when she played stronger material like “Stillness Is The Move” and “Losing You,” but her presence doesn’t register from far away. She was trying to get people dancing and moving, and that only made it more awkward – if you have to nag the audience to do that stuff, it just makes it feel weird for everyone.

Sky Ferreira @ Barclays Center 9/20/2013
Boys / 24 Hours / Heavy Metal Heart / I Blame Myself / You’re Not The One / Everything Is Embarrassing

Sky Ferreira made a lot more sense in an arena. She focused on big rock songs from her upcoming album, and the space was perfectly suited to the huge choruses of numbers like “I Blame Myself” and “Heavy Metal Heart.” I’d never heard them before, but they were immediately exciting and felt familiar to me by the second chorus. She’s still sort of awkward, but the material is strong and her voice is confident.