Author Archive

Guerilla Toss “Happy Me”

The songs on Guerilla Toss’ excellent new record Famously Alive are bright and bold in a way that’s half cathartic and half confrontational, as though they’re daring the listener to embrace a positive mindset in the face of seemingly insurmountable anxiety, despair, and dire external circumstances. Kassie Carlson sings from the point of view of someone actively fighting through all this and has managed to break through to the other side, and is now rushing back to tell everyone else – this can be done! “Happy Me” is the climax of the record and the point where the lyrical theme running through all of it is stated outright over a groove that seems to sparkle and gleam before moving into a more triumphant mode at the end. Guerilla Toss successfully pull off a tightrope walk in this music – one false move and they could fall into a cheerful, saccharine abyss. But they keep the sound just weird enough to avoid a very 00s sort of goofiness, and the lyrics based in dark realities enough to keep it from being just hollow inspirational chatter.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Folly Group “I Raise You (The Price of Your Head)”

To some extent this song feels like a delivery mechanism for catchy get-everyone-in-the-club-screaming-along chorus, but my favorite parts here are actually the verses in which Sean Harper speak-sings a vocal flow that playfully glides around the beat he’s laying down on the drums. Harper’s lyrics come across like a polite and cerebral diss track in which he essentially tears into a sell out performer. The line that really knocks me out is more a sick burn on this person’s audience than anything else – “strange work to consider your finest / that catalyzes such shyness from the spineless.” This song’s dynamics will surely prevent it from ever getting that kind of response – the groove has post-punk twitchiness but krautrock drive and steadiness, and the bit where they stop cold for a second on a Harper singing “the world stops” is a clever way of pulling more of a rap production move in a rock song.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Just Mustard “Still”

“Still” sounds like a love song gone wrong, as though the singer has been knowingly seduced into something quite ominous. The music is horror film by way of post-punk, a soft and innocent-seeming vocal from Katie Ball contrasted with cold industrial beats, eerie ambiance, and a severely distorted guitar part that seems to violently scrape through the surface of the audio image. Ball sounds like she’s sinking into something – I imagine something like the alien bringing men into the black tar in Under the Surface – but is cautiously happy to be succumbing to the experience.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Sales “Moving By Backwards”

Sales’ aesthetic template is essentially the same as that of Beach House – a generally drowsy sound built around the combination of drum machine, spare lead guitar lines that get a lot out of lovely tones, and a female vocalist who tends towards understated phrasing. The key difference, particularly on “Moving By Backwards,” is that Lauren Morgan comes across as a warmer presence in the music than Beach House’s Victoria Legrand, who has more of regal quality of elegant standoffishness. Sales is less dreamy and more overtly sensitive, with the minimalism of the track leaving Morgan’s vulnerable performance sounding particularly exposed. It sounds a bit like taking the core of a shoegaze song and removing all the sound that would normally bury it, but instead of shrinking in shyness Morgan just commits to singing it like she’s staring you right in the eyes.

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Automatic “New Beginning”

Automatic have an energy and attitude that reminds me a lot of what was going on in the earliest phases of this site in the early to mid ‘00s – all those skewed electro-punks with pop know-how and a hedonism driven by nihilism and/or pessimism. You can hear traces of the likes of Chicks On Speed, Le Tigre, Erase Errata, The Rogers Sisters, and Enon in “New Beginning,” but the music feels fresh rather than nostalgic. A lot of this comes down to Automatic’s sophistication in deploying their blunt minimalism, particularly in how judiciously they drop in the synthesizer. The groove is carried entirely by the rhythm section so Izzy Gluadini’s synth is used entirely as a punctuating effect, like this heavily distorted WRONG!!!! buzzer that gets slammed to put the listener on edge. This is a nice contrast with Gluadini’s vocal, which is rather cold and detached as she sings about human desire finding a way to overcome obstacles up to and including total societal breakdown.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Goose “Dripfield”

Goose are a jam band in both practice and cultural context but “Dripfield,” the title track of their forthcoming third record, doesn’t really sound like anything you’d reasonably expect from that world regardless of whether you have positive or negative associations with it. “Dripfield” sounds more like the work of a band rooted a general post-Radiohead lane of alt-rock, a song that would sit comfortably alongside the likes of Sigur Ros, My Morning Jacket, TV on the Radio, Muse, or Coldplay at their most adventurous. If you told me this was produced by Brian Eno, I’d believe it – it certainly has the feel of when he applies his aesthetic vision to striving, searching, epic rock music. If you’re looking for the jam band elements you can find them, mostly towards the end of the song when the tension breaks and a bright guitar solo feels like it absolutely could head off into a more improvisational direction but instead settles into a gently decelerating outro. I’m very curious to see where Goose go with this – if they keep moving into this type of rock while maintaining the philosophies and concert structures of jam band music they would be exploring very new musical territory. Like, I don’t think anyone was ever wondering what it’d be like if U2 and Phish could somehow be the same band, but this is making a good case for what that might be like.

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Belle & Sebastian “Unnecessary Drama”

Part of the long term charm of Belle & Sebastian’s body of work is the way they seem to deliberately operate at a 20-30 year lag from musical trends, gradually picking up new sounds to integrate once they feel sufficiently old and nostalgic. In the case of “Unnecessary Drama” they’ve caught up with rock dynamics of the early 2000s, which is ironic since they actually existed at that time and sounded nothing like this. Or at least the core rhythm section didn’t – aside from the core groove and the particular sound of the bass, this feels very much like a Belle & Sebastian song, though the punch of the chorus combined with the harmonic approach actually brings them closer to Twin Cinema era New Pornographers. (I saw them play shows with The New Pornographers in 2005! The slow drip of influence, maybe.)

“Unnecessary Drama” is one of the most interesting post-pandemic songs I’ve encountered, largely because unlike most artists’ impulse to approach the subject matter from a place of expressing anxiety and dread, Stuart Murdoch focuses more on the need to face the situation and figure out a way to thrive in it. This is a very Murdoch point of view – even before the pandemic, large chunks of his body of work dealt with basically the same situation of pushing towards joy and human connection through personal issues and chronic illness. Murdoch is never patronizing in doing this either – in this song he really puts a lot of the focus on the difficulties and nuisances, and all the possible mistakes that can be made along the way. But the song is asking you, even if this is your “so-called life,” what else are you going to do if not actually live it?

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Kate Bollinger “Who Am I But Someone”

Kate Bollinger’s music often feels very light, both in the sense of weightlessness and illumination. This is a lot of the appeal of her music, which mostly feels like it was created specifically to sound wonderful on a breezy spring afternoon. But it’s also a little ironic as Bollinger’s lyrics are consistently very neurotic, not so much that she seems cripplingly neurotic, but definitely like someone who overthinks a lot of things and is prone to getting deep in existential thought spirals. “Who Am I But Someone” is more in the latter category, a song in which Bollinger sounds fairly serene as she considers why she feels stuck in repetitive self-defeating behaviors. “Who am I but someone who will resign to the comforts of who I always was” is definitely a sentiment I can relate to, but I’m intrigued by how even the more depressive lines are expressed as if in a state of total emotional equilibrium. She’s not coming at this from a state of angst, it’s more like half meditative half analytical. She’s singing about inertia, but she sounds like someone who’s identified a problem and is actually fixing it through cognitive behavior therapy pop music.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Earthgang featuring JID and J Cole “Waterboyz”

Daoud, Phoelix, and Groove’s arrangement for “Waterboyz” is slinky but off-kilter, mostly built around the contrast of a busy bass line and something that sounds like a guitar sample pitched up to the tonality of a sitar. The percussion and keyboards shift around through the piece, framing each rapper’s voice a little differently while keeping a steady verse/chorus/verse structure and consistent feel. While this is a posse cut with guest features the most memorable parts here are definitely Johnny Venus’ chorus and bridge parts – there’s a fun, playful tone to his vocal, and he plays off the producers’ syncopation rather than just flow along with it.

Buy it from Amazon.

Denzel Curry featuring Slowthai “Zatoichi”

“Zatoichi” moves fast and then much faster, shifting gears into a drum and bass chorus in which Slowthai’s rapid-fire rhymes are blasted out in the mix so his voice hits more like ambient noise than rapped bars. The track, produced by Powers Pleasant and Jonnywood, is an energetic vehicle for Denzel Curry’s aggressive vocal performance but there’s a dreamy atmosphere that runs through it that softens the impact a bit. There’s a bit of wordless R&B vocal – a sample, actual backing vocals, I don’t know – that adds a touch of pathos to the music as it overlaps with Curry’s rap, suggesting a sadness lingering beneath his bravado.

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Grace Ives “Loose”

I was a little surprised to see that this new Grace Ives single is released by Universal Music Group given the scrappy Bandcamp indie nature of her previous record. But on a musical level it makes sense – a lot of the appeal of her music is how it sounds like someone from a more indie/punk background reworking modern pop aesthetics to suit her, rather than the other way around. “Loose” sounds like a logical step forward for her, full of the nervous energy and sharp dynamics of her last record, but a little smoother and more confident in presenting a big chorus. Ives’ lyrics here fixate on stress and a desperate need to alleviate it, but the angst seems less focused on the immediate concerns of being broke or worrying that you’re not good enough and more on the question of whether this is ever going to end. Like, are you on the verge of getting to a better position in life, or is this just how it’s going to be?

Buy it from Amazon.

Raveena “Kathy Left 4 Kathmandu”

“Kathy Left 4 Kathmandu” presents as a laid-back vacation type of song, breezy and bright and sung with a soft, inviting voice. But that’s all just sugaring the pill as Raveena’s lyrics describe an earnest but clueless “rich hippie” girl who wants to consume an exotic Eastern culture to make herself feel better. It’s covering very similar ground as the Mike White show White Lotus, but whereas that series placed the narrative emphasis on the affluent tourists the point of view here is firmly on the Kathmandu citizen who’s grinning and facillitating Kathy’s Eat Pray Love fantasy while looking down on her and just trying to get her money. The spite isn’t that well hidden but the vibe stays mellow, even when the keyboards fizz and flutter a bit like a slightly malfunctioning hologram.

Buy it from Amazon.

Foxes “Growing on Me”

“Growing on Me” starts off with a tone halfway between the euphoria-chasing bopping of Carly Rae Jepsen and the very particular wholesome energy of Maggie Rogers, and honestly, that odd little pop cocktail would be enough to be appealing and interesting to me. The song gets genuinely surprising as it shifts gears into the chorus and moves into a guitar riff that seems to slash and grind backwards against the beat, adding unexpected tension to an otherwise light song and serving as an unusual contrast with Foxes’ bright tone and optimistic sentiment. But then it makes some thematic sense – she’s saying someone has grown on her and she was afraid to admit it, and that riff feels like the resistance she had to move through to get to this more open-hearted feeling.

Buy it from Amazon.

Mura Masa & Lil Uzi Vert & PinkPantheress featuring Shygirl “Bbycakes”

I’m not sure I get the major label logic of officially listing Shygirl as the featured artist on this song when she sings about as much as Lil Uzi Vert and PinkPantheress on this Mura Masa track, I suppose it’s because she sings the most memorable part of the hook? In any case, as much as this probably looks like a pile up of random young artists this song feels remarkably organic and effortlessly catchy. I’m sure you could argue a lot about where this lands in genre terms, but I think broadly this is a pleasing intersection of Lil Uzi Vert’s melodic singsong style and a post-PC Music/hyperpop aesthetic that’s like an uncanny valley version of pop for weird digital children. As in a lot of hyperpop music the childlike affect gets subverted by adult concerns – in this case, a suggestion that all three singers are chafing against the restrictions of monogamy and negotiating some kind of polycule situation.

Buy it from Amazon.

Melody’s Echo Chamber “Looking Backward”

“Looking Backwards” has the aesthetics and feel of modern dissociation wave psychedelia but the groove of classic Motown. This gives the song a powerful sensation of forward momentum but also a dazed feeling, like you’re just careening into a pleasant void. Melody Prochet’s lyrics get a bit obscured on account of her thin, high voice blurring into the treble but the lines that hit the ear clearly suggest a cosmic approach to processing a break up. There’s a wave of disappointment cresting through this track, but the primary emotion is closer to acceptance.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Drama “Monte Carlo”

“Monte Carlo” absolutely sparkles with a piano and groove-centric arrangement that sounds like the sort of opulent splendor suggested by the title. Drama, also true to their name, use this as the foundation for a song about romantic angst and hesitation, with Via Rosa singing wistfully about an on-again/off-again with someone everyone warned her about from the start. The song comes together to feel like an aspirational sort of melancholy, an entanglement that’s as fun and exciting as it is emotionally taxing. The song just lets you luxuriate in the sadness, never letting you forget how much of the pain is driven by pleasure.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Piri & Tommy Villiers “Beachin”

“Beachin’” is extremely mellow at a high tempo, a dreamy moonlit ballad set to beats that sound like they’ve been yanked from a Roni Size record from the late 90s. Tommy Villiers’ production is rich with details but feels a lot more breezy than busy, judiciously doling out bass notes and never lets the vibey atmosphere of the lead guitar or keyboard washes thicken into a dense fog. Piri sings with very modern English R&B inflections – a lot of restraint and no showy runs, but with an elegant soulfulness in smaller moments. She fits perfectly in Villiers’ track, matching the tone for the most low-key parts while adding a boldness when the bass and breakbeats really hit.

Buy it from Amazon.

Black Country, New Road “Good Will Hunting”

It’s interesting how Isaac Wood’s vocals in Black Country, New Road songs sound both witholding and nakedly emotional, as though he’s doing his best to be aloof or stoic and he’s just constantly failing. We’re always catching him as the facade shatters, a shy person suddenly thrust into the spotlight of some movie scored by a bunch of people who wholeheartedly embrace the ornate melodrama of 2000s indie rock. “Good Will Hunting” turns a small moment of Wood imagining an idealized future for a relationship that clearly doesn’t have one into something gloriously bombastic in its sentiment. As the music raises the stakes Wood’s imagery gets more over the top and switches film genres entirely, tossing the sweet summers in France of the first verse for imagining the two of them on a burning starship, and an epic separation across the galaxy. And as huge and overblown as the song gets, it never quite loses the thread of this all just being a guy making a lot out of not much at all and basically just torturing himself.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Spoon “Satellite”

“Satellite” is sung from the perspective of someone honoring boundaries set by someone they love but clearly doesn’t love them, and suffering quietly from a distance while insisting “I know I love you more.” Britt Daniel sings this chorus with the full awareness that his love is in vain but he doesn’t care – this isn’t about dignity, this isn’t about reality or possibilities, this is just about the truth as he feels it. It’s not a threat or even an oath to make good on his love, it’s holding on to something pure inside him for a little while longer before it eventually fades away.

This is a fairly old song dating back to around 2014, and one Spoon had seemingly abandoned in the space between They Want My Soul and Hot Thoughts. I’m not sure what the problem was – maybe it just took a while to find the right level of drama and pathos in the arrangement, or perhaps they sensed the song just didn’t fit on Hot Thoughts, or it could be that Daniel needed some space from this sentiment or moment in his life. It’s also possible that he just wasn’t comfortable with using the same “I’m your satellite” lyrical conceit in both this and “Inside Out,” though I like the way the implication feels totally different between the two songs. In “Inside Out,” it’s more about being caught in an attraction so strong he barely can resist it, and in this he’s just this person orbiting someone on the periphery of their life because he can’t let go.

It’s a similar shift in perspective that makes that chorus so different from Karen O singing “wait, they don’t love you like I love you” in “Maps” despite essentially saying the same thing. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs song comes from a place of vulnerability, she’s finding the courage to say something that scares her a little. “I know I love you more” is a statement of pride, it’s coming from a place of refusing to lose when it’s clear the game is over. Daniel makes the song sting by leaning into that pride, and letting you feel it as he dismantles his own romantic delusions.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Kim Petras “Treat Me Like A Slut”

Kim Petras’ new mini-album Slut Pop sounds like the work of someone who has diligently studied The Teaches of Peaches and has now become a master of extremely horny pop in her own right. There’s obviously been no shortage of ultra-sexual music in the past decade but given her age and where she grew up I find it hard to imagine a lot of the cartoonishly vulgar dance pop I anthologized on my Motherfuckers & Fatherfuckers: Horny Hipsters 2000-2010 playlist were not major formative influences for her. She’s certainly tapping into that specific spirit on “Treat Me Like A Slut,” a silly-but-not-joking banger that’s like a fully ascended form of Avenue D.

Buy it from Kim Petras.