Author Archive

Kaytranada featuring PinkPantheress “Snap My Finger”

It took me a few listens to figure out why a bit of the verse melody in this song sounded so incredibly familiar to me, but then it hit me – there’s a melodic turn in the verse that’s just like one of the most memorable parts of Wham’s early 80s classic “Everything She Wants.” I suppose it’s just different enough to justify not giving George Michael a songwriting credit, though I think his estate could easily get it in a post-“Blurred Lines” legal landscape.

Not that I think Kaytranada and PinkPantheress should be giving that sort of credit, per se. “Snap My Finger” is a substantially different song with its own vibe, and I believe borrowing bits from previous songs is part of a tradition of songwriting going back centuries. I’m not even sure PinkPantheress intends to reference “Everything She Wants” here – there’s some shared words in the lyric, but I think this could easily be one of those things when you internalize a melody and then it emerges in something you make later without you consciously realizing it.

For a personal example, when I was 20 I wrote a song with a topline verse melody I realized a few years later was just a lightly modified (read: dumbed down) version of Stevie Wonder’s “Livin’ for the City.” It happens! And this is where taste comes in – I feel silly about not realizing I was lifting from a very famous song, but pleased that I had the sense to borrow from a genius of melody. And that’s the case for “Snap My Finger” – whether it’s intentional or accidental, it’s ultimately flattering to PinkPantheress’ taste that she ended up with snippet of melody as low-key sophisticated as George Michael at his very best.

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Charli XCX “Apple”

Broadly speaking, Charli XCX’s lyrics alternate between a sort of confrontational vapidity and a willingness to be transparent about very ugly feelings. I find a lot of her songs off-putting for this reason, but I respect what she’s doing because it’s such an unguarded approach to writing pop music. It’s a “fuck you, deal with me as I am” mindset that allows for declarations of her own greatness and cultural influence that can dare you to be like “well, actually…” and expressions of insecurity so raw and indulgent that it can be cringe-inducing. Her range as a singer and songwriter is very narrow, and this only underlines the point that you’re listening to a human, and we’re all defined as much by our limitations as our strengths. But not everyone is brave enough to lean into those limitations and flaws and unflattering characteristics. She’s basically a punk rocker working in a pop girl milieu.

I think the most lyrically interesting songs on Brat are the ones where she’s pushing through her own self-involvement to try to understand other people. I hear a lot of insecurity and anxiety in those songs, and a nagging fear that she can’t connect. “Apple,” the most melodically generous song on the record, looks to her parents as a source for her worst impulses. The intriguing thing here isn’t so much that she’s making this connection but in how the catchiest part of the song is when she’s shutting down after coming into conflict with them: “You don’t listen, I leave to the airport the airport the airport the airport.” I don’t think she’s going for this joke necessarily, but it’s very literally fight or flight.

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Magdalena Bay “Death & Romance”

Magdalena Bay started off as a pop duo with darkly humorous lyrics that subverted their form, but with time they’ve become far more comfortable with sincerity. I don’t necessarily see that as an improvement as I’m fine with either approach, but I do think they avoided falling into the trap of every song needing some clever lyrical twist or joke premise. “Death & Romance” is a very dramatic and bombastic composition and they play it as straight as they can, leaning into the white hot emotion evoked by the music rather than pushing against it. A lot of that feeling is conveyed by the fill-heavy live drums, which dials the energy way up and approaches the aesthetic Rich Harrison was going for in the early 00s with songs like “1 Thing” and “Crazy In Love.” Mica Tenenbaum’s vocals are particularly strong – she sings with conviction even in ironic joke mode, but this time around she’s convincingly selling the passion of a love that feels like a matter of life or death.

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Crumb “Side by Side”

The lyrics of “Side by Side” are sung from the perspective of someone who’s changed their life to suit someone else regardless of its negative impact on them. It’s very clear and direct, but the music complicates the sentiment by making the song very emotionally ambiguous. I think a lot of the point here is that we’re listening to a person who hasn’t decided how they feel about the situation they’re in, and any simmering resentment in the lyrics is clouded by their affection for the person they’re addressing and maybe a little bit of self-loathing and guilt. Lila Ramani’s vocal performance mostly conveys ambivalence, but you can hear stronger feelings rise up to the surface through the song. The arrangement and structure is pure Crumb – hazy and zoned out but very brisk and dynamic, all building towards a musical refrain that provides a catharsis that doesn’t contradict the indecisive feeling of the song.

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Apifera “Theodor Marmalade”

The lyrics of “Theodor Marmalade” boil down to a story about a guy who yearns to get away from people, so he embraces a life of isolation that makes him want to be among people again. The grass is always greener, and so on. The character overcorrects to extremes while the music sounds like it’s trying to find balance and equilibrium. The main guitar groove sounds like it’s cautiously tip-toeing through the song, the vocals are just above a whisper, and the percussion moves without any clutter or clatter. This strikes me as the work of a band where everyone involved was probably obsessed with Radiohead’s In Rainbows as a teenager – you get that same sense of space and restraint, but with the drama dialed down a lot.

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Elkka “Right Here”

Here’s one for anyone who loves the energy and urgency of Basement Jaxx in pop diva banger mode and/or is searching for a dance track with the kind of big hearted vulnerability of Robyn at her best. “Right Here” is thrilling and ultra dramatic, the kind of song that feels like it should be soundtracking a crucial cathartic moment. I won’t be at all surprised if this ends up in some tv season finale down the line.

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Metronomy x Pan Amsterdam “Nice Town” (Alain Ogue Remix)

The original mix of “Nice Town” is an enjoyable 80s electro pastiche, and accurate enough that you could probably drop it into a movie and most people would assume it’s something unearthed from an old DJ’s crates. The Alain Ogue remix is also retro 80s but in a way that’s a lot more exciting to my ears – very busy and dynamic, the kind of maximalist mix that’s constantly tossing cool sounds at you. The best bit is the ascending sax sample that enters around 75 seconds in, a perfect little snippet of sound that momentarily relieves tension and adds a dash of sophistication to the track.

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Chappell Roan “Good Luck, Babe!”

Chappell Roan’s primary songwriting partner is Dan Nigro, who’s best known for his work as Olivia Rodrigo’s primary songwriting partner. Roan and Rodrigo have different enough vibes that it wasn’t obvious to me that they had this in common, but knowing they share a collaborator makes their musical similarities come into sharp focus. The main thing I’ve noticed about Rodrigo is that it’s as though all her songs were written with the specific goal of becoming karaoke classics, and covering a range of what makes a great karaoke for different types of singers. Nigro’s work with Roan is on a similar wavelength, but I think the goal is more about creating songs that will crush in live performance. The best tracks on The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess contain a lot of audience participation moments, and they’re typically the most fun parts of the song even if it can verge on sounding like a horny version of Kidz Bop. But in either case, Nigro is crafting very dynamic and theatrical pop rock music that pulls you in and makes you want to become a part of it whether you’re screaming along at a show, singing it at a karaoke bar, or belting it out in the shower.

“Good Luck, Babe!” is more of a shower song. If “Red Wine Supernova,” “Femininomenon,” and “Hot to Go” are transparently oriented towards the stage, this one feels more like it’s aimed at the radio. It’s easy to enjoy at face value – the melodies are strong and the groove is pleasant and Roan’s voice soars without getting distractingly bombastic or shrill. Roan can get silly in her songs but she never undermines or undersells a big feeling, and her vocal range is impressive enough that over the course of “Good Luck, Babe!” she’s pulling from the classic bag of power ballad tricks as well as more understated Kate Bush moves in her higher register. The emotional core of the song is potent and volatile, with lyrics that describe a fraught romantic sidepiece situation with enough specificity to be intriguing but relatable enough that it could totally wreck you if you happened to hear it in passing at a Walgreens in a fragile state. The verses tick-tick-tick, but once she’s crying out “I just want to love someone who calls me baby,” the feelings bomb goes ka-boom.

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St. Vincent featuring Cate Le Bon “All Born Screaming”

The groove of “All Born Screaming” is twitchy yet smooth, like a musical expression of an existential panic that’s buried deep enough that it doesn’t show up on the surface but is the animating force behind every movement. Annie Clark has been exploring this contrast of internal angst and outward placidity for a long time now, and almost always with some degree of dark humor. The lyrics for this song presents life as a cosmic joke, a sysiphean struggle played as slapstick from the cradle to the grave. The mood of the song is fairly light and as the song reaches its climax, it’s more like a shrug than a catharsis. She’s not letting go of frustration here, and it’s not a denial of desire. It’s mostly just admitting that it’s kinda funny.

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Of Montreal “Yung Hearts Bleed Free”

“Yung Hearts Beat Free” is an overtly horny song with a somewhat lackadaisical energy to it, like we’re just catching Kevin Barnes in a resting state. In other words, this is a lot like Barnes in Skeletal Lamping mode but without the manic freakiness that coursed through nearly every track of that record. This isn’t to say it’s boring in comparison – the groove is top shelf for Of Montreal, and I like how the lyrics declare a lot about who Kevin is and why they’re like that with some degree of certainty. I take this as being above all else a song about aging – for everything you lose to time, you get the opportunity to understand yourself and what drives you. You also get some clarity on the external things that shaped you – when Barnes sings “all of my heroes were drug-addled creeps” and “all of my heroes were sex maniacs” it’s less a point of pride than a statement of fact. It is what it is, and this is the result.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Lip Critic “In the Wawa (Convinced I Am God)”

“In the Wawa (Convinced I Am God)” seems like it should be full-on punk-style satire, and it’s not NOT satire. There’s no way you shout that title phrase and follow it up with “so I’m gonna get any sandwich I want” and have it not be funny. But the velocity of the music and the intensity of the vocals introduce some doubt. Like, maybe he’s right? Maybe he’s seeing the cosmos clearly? Maybe he’s right to get buck wild in this convenience store? It’s the kind of crazy you don’t want to engage with, like the existential stakes of this aggressive weird guy being right about everything are a little too high. Great arrangement, by the way – love the way they build up pressure and momentum, and how the chorus feels like it’s punching down walls.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Audrey Powne “From the Fire”

“From the Fire” is a gorgeous piece of music that’s all the more impressive when you take into account that it’s very much a work of auteurism – Audrey Powne is the composer, the arranger, the producer, the lyricist, the singer, and the trumpet player, and she excels in all of those roles. I’m particularly into the keyboard chords and the trumpet solo, which she openly credits to her love of Herbie Hancock and Roy Hargrove. The lyrics were inspired by the bushfires in Australia back in 2019 and evoke the notion of a cleansing fire and rebirth. With this in mind, the music feels like watching a phoenix slowly emerge from the ashes and then take flight.

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Kamasi Washington featuring BJ the Chicago Kid “Together”

“Together” is something of an outlier in the Kamasi Washington body of work – not an instrumental jazz piece, not a psychedelic epic, and in the context of his new record Fearless Movement, not a rap-adjacent party track. The song, composed by Ryan Porter, is a contemplative R&B ballad with lyrics by Washington and vocalist BJ the Chicago Kid that positions both singing and romantic love as a sort of ongoing spiritual practice. The tone is grey and drowsy but the implied scale of the music feels cosmic, like the music is illustrating the lyric’s notion of “our hearts whirling’ through time and space.” Or more likely, the other way around.

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Andra Day “Maybe Next Time”

“Maybe Next Time” opens Andra Day’s second album with a message to the listener: “Now I wish I could write you an album full of love songs but I can’t seem to get one.” And then she explains herself by getting into her problems with a guy who she describes as being very insecure and defensive. (Her language is more vivid than that.) Her vocal phrasing is smooth even in the busiest parts of the melody – it doesn’t seem like a stretch to guess that Erykah Badu is a formative influence here, it’s a similar flow and tone – and conveys a nuanced blend of irritation, bitterness, relief, and most of all, resignation. Once she’s done airing her grievances midway through the song, she circles back to addressing her audience. Or maybe at that point it’s really just psyching herself up – “maybe next time will be the right time,” and she’ll have all those love songs ready to go.

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Jessica Pratt “Get Your Head Out”

Here in the Pitch is one of the best sounding new records I’ve encountered from the past few years. It’s like the audio equivalent of very beautiful black and white photography printed on matte paper so the blacks are especially deep and the grey tones are rich and nuanced. It’s an album where the tonal palette is so carefully selected and the reverb is so precisely calibrated that elements as ordinary as the human voice, an acoustic guitar, or a vintage organ get nudged into painterly abstraction without losing form and function. There’s a poetry to this sound Jessica Pratt and Al Carson have devised that’s very intuitive and in some ways nostalgic but difficult to put into words without resorting to purple prose.

“Get Your Head Out” captivates me in large part because it’s an evocative sensory experience that’s just outside my capacity to describe it. A lot about it feels familiar, but just as much about the recording is either uncanny or triggers a deja-vu effect. Pratt’s composition and vocal performance is clearly rooted in mid-20th century easy listening and I’m pretty sure she and Carson were deliberately aiming for the odd cosmic tonality of mid-century reverb. But despite this old timey quality, the song doesn’t register as a retro pastiche to me. It’s more like reaching back to the music of the past to create an overwhelming romantic atmosphere beyond the boundaries of contemporary fashion, and that’s just as much in the sound of the recording as it is in Pratt’s gorgeous and low-key jazzy vocal melody.

The most mesmerizing element of “Get Your Head Out” is Carson’s organ and mellotron parts, which sound misty or like light reflecting on rippling water at night. Those parts are fairly quiet in the mix, implying a weightlessness relative to Pratt’s voice and guitar. But even those central elements don’t take up too much space in the mix, and the whole song feels light enough to carry on a breeze.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

The Marías “No One Noticed”

“No One Noticed” is a song about contemporary long-distance romance, but one where the lyrical emphasis is placed almost entirely on feeling lonely and desperate for intimacy. There’s a lot of love and affection in María Zardoya’s vocals and in the delicate and dreamy quality of the arrangement, but the emotional undertow of the song is in the awareness that this “virtual connection” is just a temporary solution for her real problem. The music builds up the romance but undercuts it the second half as she considers what would happen if she were to fly to their city: “Hold me, console me, and then I leave without a trace.” That last part cuts deep – not just for confronting the futility head-on, but also in how it sounds like she’s talking herself out of something she needs.

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Broadcast “Colour in the Numbers”

The opening track on Spell Blanket, a collection of demos Broadcast created between 2006 and 2009 for a follow-up to Tender Buttons that never came to be, is a brief recording of Trish Keenan singing a snippet of a hook while walking around outside. It sounds like it’s just come to her in a flash of inspiration, there’s a slight hestitation as she sings some of the words as though she’s figuring out the phrasing as she’s going along. You can hear her steps, you can hear some ambient noise. The song sounds like it would’ve been amazing, perhaps even something career-defining, but this is all we have of it. It’s a trade off, I suppose – a fully realized ballad, or a document of an artist at work and truly being herself not long before she died. I like having this recording, I like feeling close to Trish in this moment. I like hearing her be creative and alive.

Some of the songs on Spell Blanket are more or less fully formed, albeit fairly lo-fi. The lo-fi sound suits the out-of-time quality of Broadcast’s music, making the music sound like it’s from either 60 years ago or 60 years from now. It makes the name of the band seem more literal, like we’re hearing something that was transmitted at some point and recorded for posterity. Keenan’s melodies often sound incredibly old and extremely English, like she was tapped into some Jungian collective unconscious of British folk melodies.

“Colour in the Numbers,” one of the most fully realized tracks on the collection, sounds so familiar that I figure it must be drawing on something I’ve encountered at some point. A traditional melody, something very old or religious? Something from a lost BBC children’s show from the mid 20th century? Is that loop a sample, even if Keenan and James Cargill are the only credited songwriters? In any case, the overdubbed harmonies are a wonderful showcase for Keenan’s distinctive voice. She sounds childlike, she sounds like an adult, she sounds like an android, she sounds like a ghost. She sounds like she knows something, and this is the closest we’ll get to figuring out what it was.

Buy it from Warp Records.

Justice featuring Rimon “Afterimage”

The beauty of Justice’s early material was that it was elegantly crude. They were big and loud and dumb, but also rather thoughtful in their craft. They were masters of artful clipping. Their new record still has some of that going for it, but it’s all much more…tasteful? A little more refined? Or just a little more normal? In any case, a lot of the record sounds like a tribute to the past 25 years or so of French house in general and Alan Braxe in particular. The vibe suits them, especially on a song as ecstatic as “Afterimage.” You know how baking websites will show you how to make a mass produced thing like a Hostess cupcake, and maybe they’ll “elevate” it with fresh ingredients? “Afterimage” is sort of like that, but for filter disco. You get the form, you get the thrill, but that custom vocal instead of a sample? That’s the fancy ganache.

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Anitta “Savage Funk”

It can be so difficult to write about music like this without sounding like a dork. You can play amateur musicologist, but being a nerd about baile funk gets in the way of making it clear that this music is waaaaay more physical than cerebral. Writing about how aggressively horny the song is just makes you sound like a dweeb, a prude, or a lame perv. Just trust me that this one rules, OK? It’s very fun.

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Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross “Yeah x10”

We can always expect Trent Reznor to give a project his all, but who would’ve guessed a movie about a love triangle between three tennis players would inspire him to create some of the best music of his long and impressive career? Reznor and his creative partner Atticus Ross’ score for Luca Gaudagnino’s Challengers is a collection of techno pop bangers that plays up the intense physicality of the film, whether the players are facing each other on the court or entangled in a fraught hotel threesome. The tone is fun and sexy and, crucially, very intense while not particularly serious.

One of my favorite things about Challengers is that at least 15 minutes of the runtime is devoted to the two male leads losing their minds with lust while ogling Zendaya. It’s silly and cartoonish but very effective in showing us that these guys are ultra-horny and bonding over their shared lust for this woman, which turns out to be a step towards openly expressing lust for each other. Reznor and Ross’ score plays up this energy, a musical manifestation of all the adrenaline and pheromones.

“Yeah x10” is to Zendaya’s character what “The Imperial March” is to Darth Vader, a musical theme that immediately conveys everything you need to know about their power and physicality. It’s bombastic, but graceful. It’s flirty, it’s forceful, it’s hyper-focused, it’s meditative. Just as a piece of music, it makes sense that this could fry a dude’s brain and reduce him to nothing but base urges.

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Tatyana “Down Bad”

The lyrics of “Down Bad” are extremely “written in 2023” but the sound is more like something that would’ve appeared on this site back in 2003-2007. It’s right on the edge of electroclash aesthetics, has a pulsing synth groove that resembles at least three LCD Soundsystem songs, and the vocal melody sounds like something that could’ve been on a Sugababes or Girls Aloud record. But despite sounding so much like music from nearly 20 years ago, it doesn’t hit as retro, maybe because technology hasn’t changed so much in that time to signal any sort of obsolescence. The lyrics are pretty standard for pop these days – bitter and cutting lines about a bad relationship steeped in pop psychology, but I really like the way Tatyana sings “falling for you is such a chore” in a taunting sing-song cadence, and how the verse about this person not having a girlfriend for “more than a couple months, maybe a year” is delivered with a mix of pity and dismissiveness.

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Phish “Evolve”

Last summer I went to see Phish and they played this song. The show was part of a week of Phish gigs at Madison Square Garden, and it was pretty easy to get an inexpensive ticket on a whim on the day of the gig. Phish is known for having very intense and obsessive fans, but Phish shows – and “jam band” shows more generally – are perfect for casual listeners. It’s a situation where knowing a lot of songs going in helpful, but also sets you up for disappointment since there’s no telling what the band might play beyond ruling out whatever they played at the few shows. You’re meant to show up and just go along for the ride. It’s like a musical rollercoaster that they make just for you and the people in the room on that night, and then never again. I haven’t seen a lot of Phish shows, but I think that night was a particularly fun musical rollercoaster.

I know enough Phish songs to recognize some of the big classics in their repertoire, but not enough to know what they’re playing through most of a set. “Evolve” was one of the songs that really grabbed me in the show, especially when the chorus hook kicks in about halfway through. It’s a warm and generous song, relaxed and easygoing and optimistic to its core. It sounds more like Belle & Sebastian than you’d expect from them. I’d assumed it was an oldie, but it’s actually from a somewhat recent Trey Anastasio solo record, and it’s been rerecorded as the title track of the band’s next album.

Phish studio recordings tend to be pretty dry and matter of fact, like their goal is strictly getting a clean document of the basic structure of a song. That’s basically what you’re getting on this recording. It’s the song, and the song is good, but you don’t get much in the way of improvisational quirks or interesting audio texture. I think this is like how Fugazi would say their albums are the menu and their shows were the meal, but those guys put a lot more into giving their studio output a specific feel. I’m happy to have a nice clean and concise version of “Evolve” that I can post here and include on playlists, but I can’t help but feel the song might be better suited with a more ambitious studio approach. More overtly psychedelic, in one way or another? More room sound, to give a sense of space? Something like that.

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Pearl Jam “Waiting for Stevie”

I’m of two minds about Andrew Watt’s involvement in Pearl Jam’s new record Dark Matter as producer and co-writer. On the one hand, I have yet to be impressed by Watt and find that his collaborations with much older legend-status acts like Ozzy Osbourne, The Rolling Stones, and now both Eddie Vedder solo and Pearl Jam feels like the human equivalent of training an AI on those artists’ material. You don’t get new ideas from a Watt production, you just get something closer to the average listener’s expectations of the artist he’s producing. Watt is a fan surrogate, and I think he’s attractive to major labels who want to get the most commercial potential out of their legacy acts and a flattering presence for artists, who get to work with someone rather worshipful who truly believes in them. It makes sense, but in the case of the Stones it’s notable that the songs on Hackney Diamonds that feel the most rote and formulaic have Watt songwriting credits and the one song that actually captures the band’s specific magic is a pure Jagger/Richards composition.

On the other hand, I was listening to Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament talk about the process of making the album with Watt on Broken Record and it was obvious how much the young producer had done to shake them out of exhausted creative patterns and push them back to more of a full-band collaboration. Gossard in particular sounded like he needed Watt’s enthusiastic confidence in him as a guitarist to get hyped up.

I think their previous album Gigaton is much better album and definitely their best record released after the 90s, but I can see how the process of making that one was more labored and less enjoyable. But on that record I could feel them pushing themselves, and Dark Matter sounds like them writing new iterations of stock Pearl Jam songs, and what I mean by that would be apparent if you flick through every album from Yield onward, which is effectively the same sort of songs sequenced in basically the same way over and over. They can’t capture the magic of Ten or Vs again, but they sure as hell can rewrite Yield forever.

OK, slight backtrack: “Waiting for Stevie” actually does get some of the old Ten magic, if just by pushing the band members towards strengths I think they’ve backed away from to some extent for fear of being too repetitive or veering into self-parody. Vedder’s voice is huge on this song, going full-anthem mode after years of a lot of semi-anthem mode. The main riff resembles Gossard’s parts on both “Black” and “In Hiding,” while the climax and outro brings Mike McCready back to end-of-“Alive” territory. This is indeed exactly what people think Pearl Jam sounds like, but in the best, most reverent way. If anything they’re trying to go bigger than ever here, and borrowing tricks from Soundgarden and Jane’s Addiction to get this song properly mountain-sized. I’m not crazy about the mix – it gets a little too tinny and I’d prefer a more pronounced bass sound like you get on “Breath,” but this is Pearl Jam: there will be dozens of looser, and more probably more energetic live recordings, assuming they don’t give up on it early because they already have to play “Alive” at every show and maybe this is just too similar in function?

Buy it from Amazon.