Author Archive

Lou Hayter “Wish You Were Mine”

I think a lot of the time the music tells a lyricist what the words should be, in the sense that it’s like putting subtitles on the abstract content of the chords and melodies. “Wish You Were Mine” is a good example in that you’d have to be very contrary to make this something other than a crush song. Everything about the composition and arrangement is powerful current pulling towards that conclusion; you’d need a lot of strength to push against it. You could end up with something interesting that way, sure, but in giving in to that feeling – in pushing everything about the song towards this emotional extreme – Lou Hayter has created something incredibly satisfying and effective. It’s a song with a flawless internal logic, in which everything always adds up to this attraction, and the tinge of sadness in the track comes from being worried that this logic isn’t mutually agreed upon.

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Dijon “Another Baby!”

“Another Baby” is clearly referencing some mid-to-late 80s pop in its structure and production touches – I’m mainly picking up Prince, Jam & Lewis, and Scritti Politti – but the actual sound of the track is a bit warped and inside-out, making it feel more like it’s a dispatch from the future than a retro pastiche. Dijon’s lyrical subject essentially paraphrases the words of one of his obvious touchstones – “if love is good let’s get 2 rammin’” – but with an emphasis on procreation. This only becomes apparent as the song moves along, and the focus shifts from “come on, let’s have sex” to him hard-selling the notion of expanding the family. Maybe I’ve just been listening to the wrong things my whole life but the lyrical conceit here strikes me as somewhat novel, and the execution is just the right balance of sexy and funny. (About 70/30, let’s say.)

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Kaytranada featuring TLC “Do It! (Again!)”

It probably isn’t hard to flip a sample from anything on TLC’s Crazysexcool and end up with a cool song – the source material is top shelf, and just hearing a little snippet of T-Boz’s distinctively smoky voice can carry the vibe of a whole song. But Kaytranada goes far beyond that, reworking some elements from the bridge of “Let’s Do It Again” into an entirely different musical phrase. It makes me very curious what the starting point for chopping this up was. Has he heard this specific potential in the song for 31 years? Was this how he heard it in a dream or something? Was he just screwing around and landed on something sublime? If you know, don’t tell me. It’s more fun for these things to be a little mysterious.

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Q Tha Hero “Hero 4 Hire!”

I’ve listened to a lot of Q Tha Hero recently, and I love everything he’s released so far but struggle to find an angle on his work as a writer. Like, he’s a very good rapper with strong lyrics and excellent taste in production? This is high but totally non-specific praise, and in aesthetic terms, he’s a type of rapper that could exist comfortably anywhere between 1992 and the present. He’s an underground rap traditionalist but not quite retro, though I’d place him much closer to Earl Sweatshirt or Curren$y than, say, J. Cole. He’s the kind of rapper who’d thrive on an Alchemist or Madlib beat, but I’d be more excited for him to land on a more ambitious Tyler the Creator or Kaytranada track. I imagine great things for this guy, but he’s great enough right now as it is, monologuing about trudging through bad vibes but mostly sounding like he’s having a good time.

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Little Simz “Free”

A lot of the Little Simz songs I’ve gravitated to in the past were aggressive and showy; music made by someone eager to show and prove. “Free” is far more relaxed but just as assured. It’s not a love song, but it’s a song about love. There’s an old Wilco song where Jeff Tweedy sings about “making love understandable,” and that’s kinda what Simz is trying to do in the first verse. She presents her philosophy of love, which is largely rooted in humility, kindness, empathy, and patience. In the second half she examines fear, which is presented as the dark opposite of love: “Fear works best when love isn’t close.” Fear closes doors, love brings freedom, and freedom yields creation. She makes an airtight argument, but keeps it chill.

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Girl Group “Shut Your Mouth (Sometimes)”

“Shut Your Mouth (Sometimes)” gets a lot done in under three minutes: Pithy verses describing annoying experiences with obnoxious men sung by four members of the band over a bouncy yet vaguely sinister groove that sounds like a lost Le Tigre banger; a chorus hook that manages to sound biting, funny, and extremely sad all at once; a thumping electro bop outro. Everything about the song is dialed in just right – fun enough to play at a party or get people going at a show, but dark enough to convey the justified paranoia that any of these slights against them could be prelude to much worse indignities and violence.

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Osees “Sneaker”

The “Sneaker” in this song isn’t a running shoe, it’s a demonic trickster figure who distracts you, warps your sense of reality, and makes you lose hope and the will to live. So, an algorithmic feed, right? The song swings between two of the Osees’ core competencies – a polyrhythmic groove with a bobbing bass line that sounds like they’re trying to induce seasickness, and a barking hardcore punk section that’s more like whiplash. When they play this live, the pit will get extra wild.

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Madison McFerrin “Run It Back”

The bones of “Run It Back” are strong enough that I think you could go a lot of ways with the arrangement and end up with something good, but I’m glad Madison McFerrin opted for minimalism. Aside from a bit of well-placed percussion and harmony vocals, it’s pretty much just her voice and a bit of piano. Her voice is strong and forceful, but I think if she was competing with more elements in the mix, it would tip over to a sort of belting/honking that wouldn’t suit the low-key vibe of the lyrics. The way it is here, you get just the right balance of flirtatiousness and decorum. It’s like she’s trying to keep something quiet out of caution, but can’t help raising her voice when she’s overcome by the feeling.

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LSDXOXO featuring Boys Noize and VTSS “Red”

Prince is an extremely influential artist so you can hear traces of him in all sorts of music, but sometimes you hear something like “Red” and it’s really more about emulation than generalized inspiration. The drum machine sound, the synth tones? Unmistakably Prince. The vocal cadence, the lyrical approach? Prince 2 the max. LSDXOXO and crew are clearly tapping into a very purple funk here, and that includes nailing the casual catchiness and lascivious atmosphere of peak-era Prince. But it’s not all retro, or all Prince worship – there’s a modern gloss on the production, a more relaxed vocal tone, and the lyrics are very, very gay.

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Sex Week “Lone Wolf”

“Lone Wolf” is in no way a “retro” thing, but it does bring me back to the refined and romantic atmosphere of a lot of indie music circa 2008-2010, which I documented in this playlist from a few years back. Think of Grizzly Bear, Bat for Lashes, the xx, Wild Beasts, Owen Pallett – artists that were accessible but unapologetically arty and uncompromisingly adult in their emotional tone. Sex Week started off as more of a shoegaze band but have evolved into a more distinctive form – fuzzy and hazy textures traded for a sound that evokes the feeling of cold marble sculpture, vocals far more confident and overtly sensual. The lyrics are more interesting too, exploring the eroticism of predator/prey imagery without spelling out exactly what’s going on or how you should feel about it.

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Confidence Man featuring Jade “Gossip”

“Gossip” is funky and frisky and forceful, and almost certainly directly inspired by Basement Jaxx in their early 2000s pop peak. Confidence Man approximates a similar paradoxical mix of sophistication and blunt rhythmic force, but with more emphasis on a fluid, groovy bass line. Confidence Man vocalist and Janet Planet and guest vocalist Jade, formerly of Little Mix, bring a coy and bratty attitude to the track. The premise is basically “gleefully gossiping on the phone,” and while it feels relevant to culture right now, there’s some turns of phrase that are noticeably retro – “phone ringing off the hook,” for example. It’s interesting how so many 20th century idioms about phones stick around in pop music long after they have much to do with how anyone today uses a phone.

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Sturdyyoungin, Ohthatsmizz, and Zeddy Will “Trippin”

Maybe you can help me figure out something that’s been baffling me for days?

“Trippin'” is very straightforward, a bubblegum rap song in which three charming young guys flirt with the same pretty girl. It’s as wholesome as a song could possibly be while including the line “I’ma knock the coochie out.” Great chopped up Fergie sample, strong performances by a trio of young rappers, fun energy. It’s super easy to love this song.

That’s the context, here’s my question.

Midway through the song, Zeddy Will drops this verse:

If you tryna stay the weekend, let me know, girl it’s alright
Pretty in the face so you definitely my type
And for that, I’ll book your flight
So where you tryna go?
She said, “Let’s go to Turkey”, say no more, case closed

Turkey? Of all the two syllable destinations on planet earth, why Turkey? Is this totally random, or is there some Gen-Z cultural significance to Turkey beyond it being where guys go to get hair transplants? Why not, say, Toyko or Bali or Paris or Dubai or London or Fiji or Rio?

Is there some kind of Turkish tourism campaign aimed at girls under 20 on TikTok that I’ve never heard about? Is the girl in this song just a big fan of Erdoğan’s far right wing government? Are they big Eric Adams supporters?

It’s such a bizarre choice of destination in 2025, but it is funny to imagine this young dude booking the trip and arriving there with her and just being like….????

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Zeddy Will “Yup and I Do”

And here’s another one from Zeddy Will, all by himself. And once again, it’s an ultra horny song that somehow seems wholesome if just because it’s not misogynistic. There’s nothing profound going on here, it’s just a song about being excited about giving and receiving head. But here’s a positive energy and cool attitude in this music, and it’s not calling attention to being a Very Good Boy relative to anyone else, or it’s not dorky. It’s just flirty, fun, and overflowing with lust.

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Tyler, the Creator “Sugar On My Tongue”

It’s funny how the common use of the word “creator” has shifted so much in the past decade that the name Tyler, The Creator has gone from sounding incredibly pompous to sorta humble. But while he’s definitely matured and mellowed with age, I don’t think he’s even close to humble. This is a guy who takes the notion of being a CREATOR very seriously – he consistently chases big ideas, has an extremely refined palette and aesthetic, and approaches every aspect of everything he does with a meticulous perfectionism.

There’s always a thrill in hearing Tyler play to his core strengths as a rapper with a distinctive rich growly voice, as on “Sticky” from last year,” but he’s often impressive when he steers out of his lane into various strains of R&B, quasi-industrial music, or in the case of “Sugar On My Tongue,” extra-horny 80s electro pop. As always, he fully commits to the bit – the lascivious synths would make Prince proud, the sweaty atmosphere would get a thumbs up from Uncle Luke, and the lewd thrusting beat would come in second place after Salt-N-Pepa in a hot party show.

Buy it from Golfwang.

Clipse “The Birds Don’t Sing”

Pusha T and Malice have been so relentlessly focused on rapping about selling cocaine and presenting themselves as brilliant supervillains through their careers that opening their first album together as Clipse in 16 years with something as vulnerable and true as “The Birds Don’t Sing” is genuinely startling. It’s a song about the brothers losing their father, and under relatively mundane circumstances: They’re middle aged men, their dad gets sick, and he’s suddenly gone. They feel regret about where they left off with him, they reflect on their good fortune of having a good, supportive father. The typical Clipse kayfabe is dropped entirely – don’t worry, they get right back to it as the record goes along – but for this song, all their considerable skill as rappers and lyricists is redirected towards fully being themselves and letting the listener in. I think their dad would be very proud. But of course, he already was. As Malice reveals at the end of his verse, “I love my two sons” was the code to his phone.

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Nine Inch Nails “As Alive As You Need Me to Be”

I’ve never seen either of the Tron movies and it’s unlikely that I’ll watch the forthcoming movie featuring Jared Leto, but I appreciate that Disney is cementing “get an auteur electronic act to do the entire soundtrack” as a defining feature of the franchise – first Wendy Carlos, then Daft Punk, and now Nine Inch Nails. And no, not another “Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross” score – the two of them as full-on, real deal Nine Inch Nails.

The most immediately striking aspect of “As Alive As You Need Me to Be” is how very Nine Inch Nails it sounds. Specifically it’s NIN in Pretty Hate Machine/Year Zero synth-heavy industrial mode, which is something Reznor and Ross haven’t done much over the past 12 years or so. But it doesn’t feel self-conscious or contrived – it’s more like gravitating to core competencies and responding to the demands of that primary synth part on the verses, the part that somehow sounds blood red and incandescent. It wants to be a banger, it wants to be huge and dramatic. Bow down before the riff you serve, you know?

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Fcukers “Play Me”

I highly doubt Fcukers know who I am and there’s zero chance they’re specifically trying to please me with their music, but sometimes it feels like that’s actually what they’re trying to do. “Play Me” is a more dubstep-y iteration of their indie dance aesthetic, which mostly comes down to the funny contrast of Shannon Wise’s shy cool girl shtick and Jackson Walker Lewis’ extremely extroverted production style. I love how the music sounds so ruthless in its efforts to get you to dance, but also so cold and aloof. Instead of canceling out, it ends up sounding playful and flirty.

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Geese “Taxes”

Cameron Winter’s voice can get a bit ugly and awkward and honking, but he sings with so much raw soul and earnest feeling that it becomes beautiful and sometimes totally heartbreaking. There’s no shame in how he performs, only total commitment, so even when he’s expressing totally pathetic feelings he sounds like a man with great dignity. That’s certainly the case in “Taxes,” a song with lyrics so grandiose in its self-pity that at one point he demands to be crucified. The lyrics work because Winter has found the ideal balance of cartoonishness and earnestness, so both the humor and the pathos land just right. And the arrangement does the same thing – meloddramatic, but also bright and crisp and light.

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Dawuna “Love Jaunt”

I don’t know much about Dawuna or how this track was made, but it makes me think of the term “demoitis” – the thing where an artist’s demo is so good that every attempt to fully flesh it out in the studio feels wrong because it’s not capturing what’s already been put down on tape. “Love Jaunt” feels like a home demo in the best sense – low-key, understated, a set of feelings and musical ideas laid down without any fuss. Could this be better as a slicker production? Sure, this has the bones of an excellent R&B song for any era. But I’m not convinced you could improve on what Dawuna conjures here, unless you wanted to drop the “low-key” aspect entirely and then you just have a very different song. I like that the music doesn’t feel uptight, but also that she’s singing quietly enough to make it seem like she’s choosing her words very carefully.

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Fine “I Could”

The component sounds in “I Could” are very familiar after decades of alternative rock – a bass line halfway between Peter Hook and Kim Deal, a high breathy female vocal, miscellaneous layers of off-kilter and/or abrasive guitar – but the feel is kinda strange. This could easily be a lot more plodding and flat, but there’s some swing to it, and some touches of delicacy and sophistication cast in stark relief with elements that are entry-level simplistic. It’s a song that’s somehow both thudding and sensuous.

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Maren Morris “People Still Show Up”

A lot of people think they have a handle on Jack Antonoff’s sound, but for the most part, they’re really just thinking of what he does with Taylor Swift, or clients who likely show up saying “hey, can you give me The Taylor Swift?” Dig a little deeper, and he’s a very odd and versatile artist. He’s a guy who composed Lana Del Rey’s masterpiece “A&W,” figured out how to merge ABBA and Dolly Parton on Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please,” and has transitioned into a strong hip-hop producer on Kendrick Lamar’s GNX. At this point I wouldn’t rule out anything for the guy, particularly as he’s chasing vibes more than following mainstream pop templates.

“People Still Show Up,” one of a handful of tracks he produced for Maren Morris’ first post-country record, has a peculiar feel to it. It’s aiming for a loose, bluesy energy, but in an intentionally odd and inorganic way. You get it right away – a stiff drum machine, keyboard tones bending wildly, sounding like neon blobs smearing across the stereo image. It’s a really cool sound, and going in this direction with the song is so much more interesting than playing this song very straight with an expected traditional arrangement. It makes sense in the context of Morris’ lyrical POV too, as it’s very much about her getting nudged out of the country space and taking stock of where she’s at. And here she is, in some odd simulacrum of an “authentic” sound, and while she sounds a little befuddled and bemused, she sounds very much at home.

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Chanpan “Luigi’s Mansione”

You probably wouldn’t need the hint in the title to get that this breakbeat lounge song is a tribute to Luigi Mangione. The lyrics don’t mention him by name but it’s obviously about him, and presents him as a persecuted folk hero: “Maybe the hero has fallen / but strength arises in us / one feat of valor and courage / igniting the rage in our heart.” The music is fairly chill and jazzy despite the twitchy beats, but Grace Dumdaw sings her lyrics like someone who’s been broken by cynicism and low expectations but is starting to feel some slight bit of hope.

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Casabalanca Drivers “No Mercy”

The first 48 seconds of “No Mercy” are very smooth, with minimal chiming guitar and a low-key seductive vocal gliding over an elegantly rumbling bass line. The song could’ve stayed in that mode the entire time and it’d be a good time. But no, Casablanca Drivers had to take it further. They had to drop that INSTRUMENTAL BREAK. A keyboard riff that sounds sorta like a heavily treated marimba. A beat and a boom so ruthlessly effective it’d make Justice jealous. It’s an incredible chunk of music that practically demands to be remixed or sampled into something more specifically built for a dance floor, but it also slips so comfortably between these more sexy and atmospheric verse sections. I’m not sure if this song should work, but they make it all so sleek and seamless.

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Animal Collective “Love on the Big Screen”

I’ve noticed that as the Animal Collective guys get older they’ve become more generous about releasing catchy little songs. They’ve always had catchy little songs, but there’s a lot of phases where they’re clearly more interested in more experimental, less structured, and sometimes totally non-melodic music. Maybe they’re less interested in that these days, or perhaps they’ve just become more self-assured as songwriters. I think it’s mostly that they’ve figured out how to have it both ways over the past 10 years. If they’re doing a pop song, they’re never doing it any sort of normal way. It’s always a bit off-kilter, always unusual musical choices, always a little subversive. They’ve fully become who they’ve always been.

“Love on the Big Screen” has the bones of a bashed-out psychedelic garage rock song, but the actual arrangement is much more along the lines of the lo-fi home recordings of R. Stevie Moore or The Cleaners from Venus. (Also worth noting that it starts with the same drum machine loop as The Fiery Furnaces’ “Benton Harbor Blues.”) It’s immediately catchy in a radio jingle sort of way, but even with one of the biggest call-and-response vocal hooks of their 25+ year career, the music feels deliberately untethered and disorienting.

I like what Avey Tare is doing with the lyrics in this one. The premise is big and bold and obvious – love on the big screen isn’t like love in real life – but they push a few steps beyond simply stating a cliched notion. As with a lot of Animal Collective songs before it, it’s a meditation on the practical aspects of love. The lyrics seesaw between grand philosophical statements and expressions of uncertainty. The point being, love contains a lot of contradictions that can’t be flattened into a simple narrative, or a single song. And it’s different for everyone! We can try to capture some of it, but it’s always just a few facets at a time.

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Erika de Casier “Delusional”

“Delusional” is an online dating song that sounds like a love song. Erika de Casier is singing from the perspective of someone approaching a match with a lot of optimism, but also a sensible degree of caution: “I think I’m ready for a new boo / I saw your pictures, is that really you?” The beautiful thing about this song is that even though de Casier expresses skepticism pretty much every step of the way, she’s presenting the point of view of someone who is genuinely hoping to find love. Is she just imagining things, projecting on strangers? Maybe, probably. But you’ve got to visualize success, right?

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Yaya Bey “Spin Cycle”

Most of our modern rom-coms are more about wealth than they are about romance or comedy, and a lot of our modern R&B songs aren’t that different, with an overt fixation on luxury. And I get it – it’s a fantasy, and material concerns aren’t irrelevant to love or sex. But it’s great to hear a song like “Spin Cycle,” which is specifically about how hard it can be to maintain a loving sexual relationship when one or both people involved is constantly working just to get by.

I didn’t notice the lyrics of “Spin Cycle” right away because I was mostly focusing on the gentle sensuality of its lovers rock groove and Yaya Bey’s beyond-silky vocal tone. The music and lyrics place all emphasis on sexiness and affection, the work situation is presented as an obstacle that can and will be overcome because their love is so strong. After all, people do this all the time. Being stuck on the losing end of capitalism can crush your soul, but love can help you through it.

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Gelli Haha “Normalize”

I was thinking about why it is my brain instinctively characterizes “Normalize” as “heat wave music” and I think it’s mainly because it somewhat resembles Nu Shooz’s freestyle classic “I Can’t Wait.” That song has signified “sweltering urban summer” in a very satisfying way to me since early childhood, when I heard it constantly on New York City radio stations from my home an hour or so away in the suburbs. My brain connects the songs, and so Gelli Haha picks up some of the lazy groovy glamour I’ve long associated with Nu Shooz. It makes me want to walk around the Lower East Side blasting it from a boom box.

It’s easy to focus on the sound of “Normalize” because Haha’s vocals are almost entirely incomprehensible to my ear, though I know it’s all sung in English. She’s conveying a lot of emotion in her performance and that’s just as powerful as the way the song swings, but I try to focus on the words and mostly I’m like “cornucopia???” But still, I think I get exactly what she’s feeling here.

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Emily Allan “Driving”

Emily Allan’s debut album Clanging is best heard in its entirety, if just to bring the scope of her project in focus. A variety pack of electroclash flavors, different angles on a distinctly 2020s sort of absurdist nihilism, multiple explorations of a specifically feminine version of spite and evil, all delivered in an ice cold deadpan. The spiky digital aesthetics and ultra bleak humor remind me of Chicks On Speed in particular, but there’s also something very Mark E. Smith about the way she leans into odd quasi sci-fi imagery (“I wanna be the sex robot in the meatplex”) and intentionally obnoxious percussive language. “Driving” is a good example of this: I immediately loved the broken robot repetition of “next,” but paying close attention reveals some clever wordplay in the blunt force vocal delivery.

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Sofia Kourtesis featuring Daphni “Unidos”

Dan Snaith – who you’d know as both Caribou and Daphni – is a class act. One way I know this is because in the press release for this collaboration with Sofia Kourtesis he makes a point of saying “to be clear, all the good ideas in this track are Sofia’s, I just added some drums and pumped up the arrangement.” I’ll take his word for it, which is pretty easy because I already knew Kourtesis has a brilliant ear for samples and dynamics. “Unidos” is a feel-good track, and in a very pointed and political way. It’s not a subtle piece. It’s designed to spike your endorphins and urge you to fight back against oppressors. It’s encouraging and empowering, and it works even if it’s not strictly meant for your ears.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Pangaea featuring Jazz Alonso “Manía”

I’m sure the seemingly ineffable and intangible thing I love about Pangaea’s production aesthetic can be easily explained by some very technical decision made in some piece of software, but I can try to explain it: Everything bounces just a little ~too~ hard, but there’s grace in that extra bit of force. If you imagine it in terms of color, every color is a bit ~too~ saturated, but not so much that it gets messy and distorted. Everything in a Pangaea track is hyper-real and ultra-vibrant, like it’s dialed into the frequency of a better, more fun universe.

Buy it from Bandcamp.