Author Archive

Drug Store Romeos “What’s On Your Mind”

Sarah Downey has a soft and delicate voice ideally suited to the dreamy psychedelic music she makes with Drug Store Romeos but that quality in her voice conveys an intense thoughtfulness rather than shyness or a dissociated daze, as is common with this sort of indie rock. “What’s On Your Mind” is an earnest attempt at communication with someone who’s shut down. It’s not a confrontation, and it’s not coming from a place of “are you mad at me?” It’s just an attempt to connect and as much is said in her lyrics as in the instrumental parts, which gradually shifts from spacey parts implying a bit of distance to warmer tones of gentle affection.

Buy it from Drug Store Romeos.

Olivia Rodrigo “Jealousy, Jealousy”

Olivia Rodrigo emerged fully formed this year with one skill most everyone is familiar with by now – an uncanny talent for creating songs so ideally suited to karaoke that her own performances can look like she’s doing karaoke of her own music. Her other skill, a totally unforced aptitude for alt-rock, was not fully apparent until her album Sour came out this past weekend. “Jealousy, Jealousy” is a classic loud/soft/loud alt song filtered through a few decades of genre evolutions – the base structure is Pixies but the skulking bass groove sounds early 00s to me, the dissonant piano more of a post-Radiohead thing, the vocal melody and phrasing are very Lorde. It’s a mishmash, but it all comes together with a casual elegance that keeps the listener focused on the dynamic effect rather than any one component.

Rodrigo’s lyrics about visual social media triggering feelings of inadequacy and envy are particular to the experience of a contemporary teen, but are hardly limited to her demographic. She tries to talk herself out of her own insecurities with lines that sound just like what you might read on an Instagram account devoted to mental health and body image, which I’m not sure is actually meant to come off as ironic. But I think most anyone can pick up on the subtext that Rodrigo – exactly the sort of traditionally beautiful young person with an outrageous level of success that would ordinarily drive other kids mad with jealousy – is feeling this way means there’s no escape from this for anyone besides talking yourself into believing in something else.

Buy it from Amazon.

Audrey Nuna featuring Saba “Top Again”

The sound of “Top Again” feels very rooted in late 90s/early 00s aesthetics – think R&B songs featuring a Ja Rule guest verse but with the murkier vibes of classic RZA production, with a dash of Missy and Timbaland aesthetics – but with the new money optimism replaced with a casual nihilism. Audrey Nuna’s drowsy-yet-soulful phrasing is perfectly suited to her deadpan sense of humor, particularly when she’s contrasting images of a luxury lifestyle and immaculate high fashion with the muck and grime of actually being present in the world. (“Gabbana pants sag in the mosh pit” is a particularly great image.) The chorus is so strong and instantly familiar that I wonder if I’ve actually heard something just like it in a hit before and can’t quite place it. But everything about this song feels like it’s an act of fandom for other songs – when Saba shows up for his rap, it’s as if the song is smirking at you and doing that “whispering to date” joke format – “that’s the guest rapper verse.”

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Shelley FKA DRAM “Remedies”

“Remedies” sounds like it could just be a straight-ahead “baby, I miss you” break up ballad but Shelley’s lyrics layer in comedic details that make the whole situation funny and vivid without undermining the hurt at the core of it. It’s played pretty straight from the start, as the opening verse has him earnestly worrying about how his ex is going to talk about him now that they’re through, but the second verse starts making him seem more silly or pathetic as he commemorates what would’ve been their sixth-month anniversary by getting dinner alone at their “favorite place.” Like, hold on…six months? That’s it? It totally changes how the chorus about “memories” hits the next time it comes around. The best bit is Shelley singing about a rebound date – “she’s nothing like you, and she’s not my type, but she’s a stone-cold dime…or at least tonight!” He delivers that last part as a musical punchline, putting on a loverman bravado he’s already totally deflated.

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Horsey featuring King Krule “Seahorse”

Horsey have not released very much music but going on what they have put out in the past few years it’s safe to say that this collaboration with King Krule is far more like him than it is like them. Krule’s voice and aesthetic is so distinct that it’s like an overpowering ingredient in a dish – you have to adjust everything to suit his presence. In the case of “Seahorse” this means setting a mellow melancholic mood and getting out of his way as he does his usual move of muttered half-spoken lines that gradually build in intensity until it boils over into howling, distraught catharsis. The lyrics seem rooted in the particular claustrophobia, panic, and unrest of 2020 without announcing themselves as topical, favoring abstraction and the sort of raw emotion that doesn’t really need much context. Krule conveys a powerful feeling of disgust in the climax, utterly repulsed by police violence that seems unnecessary in the abstract, but central to the premise of their existence in the first place. But still, there’s a trace of optimism in here – a sense that in this bleak world he’s sketched out, life is still precious and worthwhile.

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Beginners “Can’t Get Enough”

“Can’t Get Enough” starts off feeling like it’s going to play out like a more scuzzy version of The Ting Tings’ perky but bratty late ‘00s pop but once it gets to where the chorus should hit the song switches gears. Beginners don’t necessarily refuse to give you the chorus you’re set up to hear, but they do put it off while letting the song stumble and grind up before picking up tempo and getting back into another verse. Subverting expectations like this will probably wreck the song’s commercial chances but conceptually it works very well in establishing a song about addiction by showing you upfront what happens when the protagonist song doesn’t get what they’re craving. Once the song kicks back into normal mode Sam Barbera sounds a little manic and messy, like she’s willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants. A lot of pop songs are based on the premise of “I’m addicted!” but even in a metaphorical sense, this takes the notion seriously. The song is ultimately pretty fun, but Barbera doesn’t make the mindset she’s inhabiting seem like a great time.

Buy it from Amazon.

St. Vincent “…At the Holiday Party”

Jack Antonoff plays the drums on “…At the Holiday Party” with a gentle hesitation, as though he’s trying to give the song a support structure while tiptoeing around Annie Clark’s guitar and vocal performance. It adds a lot to the loose, easygoing feel of the song while also mirroring the lyrical conceit in which Clark sings about talking to someone at a party and noticing that beneath their facade of material success they are entirely miserable. The song is so focused on Clark observing and empathizing with this other person that it doesn’t get into her own feelings but I think the arrangement does a lot to fill that in, starting with Antonoff’s percussion conveying some caution and the eventual presence of horns, backing vocals, tambourine, and clavinet projecting love and generosity.

Clark has compared this song to The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and that’s very apt – it’s hardly a clone, but it’s a very similar set of tools and tricks used to get across a reassuring message for someone who’s looking to get out of a hopeless feeling. Jagger and Clark aren’t the type to provide false hope, and unlike the Stones song “Holiday Party” isn’t even offering advice. Clark is just offering some solidarity in letting someone feel seen, understood, and most of all, not judged in a moment of despair.

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Hildegard “Jour 3”

The conventional wisdom now is that anyone under 40 is mortified by the very idea of talking on the phone, but this hasn’t stopped younger people from writing new songs about it, usually inviting someone to call them. This makes sense in that it’s a steady trope of pop songwriting going back many decades, there’s an undeniable romance to it, and that artists working in an audio medium would likely appreciate a communication medium that is also only audio. There’s also just a pleasing musicality to the word “telephone,” whereas any of the words commonly associated with video calls – Skype, Zoom, FaceTime – are all clunky corporate brands.

“Jour 3” is a romantic song about phone calls that includes a melodic phrase hinging on the word “telephone” right there in the first line. The subject matter feels fresh with the context of people mostly avoiding calls now – as Helena Deland suggests the idea of regular phone calls to maintain a regular connection while she’s apart from her partner her phrasing and half-whispered tone makes it sound as though she’s letting them in on a secret. Like, who knew you could just have an intimate conversation with just your voices over a private telephone line? Crazy, right? Deland sounds a little sleepy but also quite playful, while Ouri’s production captures a telephone aesthetic in the abstract with sounds so small and delicate that it’s like you need to press it to your ear to hear it all.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Skrillex and Four Tet featuring Starrah “Butterflies”

Skrillex is not famous for being subtle. His best known tracks are absurdly energetic and loud, and his best remixes are like the audio equivalent of dousing a song with hot sauce. “Butterflies,” a collaboration with Four Tet, doesn’t quite do either of those things but that doesn’t make it disappointing. It’s more like a seamless merger of both producers’ aesthetics that results in a straight-ahead dance banger with a somewhat zoned-out atmosphere and a sophisticated approach to manipulating vocals for melodic and textural effect. I think left to his own devices Four Tet would be much less likely to present Starrah’s vocal as plainly as it sometimes is through this song, but the contrast of his more abstract style and leaving whole chunks of this track to be as straight-ahead pop as one of Skrillex’s songs with Justin Bieber is a more “best of both worlds” than “mild compromise.” There is some hot sauce effect going on here – the track thumps a lot harder than Four Tet would normally, but it’s still relatively restrained by Skrillex standards. I suppose this could be interpreted as “maturity” but I hear it more as Skrillex exploring new ways to go hard to avoid repetition and reliance on gimmick.

Buy it from Beatport.

Little Simz featuring Cleo Sol “Woman”

The last two times I featured Little Simz on this site was for songs in which she gave performances that were very fast and fierce, songs that came off like a flex to display what she was capable of as a rapper. “Woman” is a very different mode – slower but not softer, contemplative but still rather intense. The energy shift has a lot to do with her working with Sault producer Inflo and his frequent collaborator Cleo Sol, who both lean towards a 70s-by-way-of-90s-but-now approach to slick yet warm R&B. The combination of Simz’ cadences on this track with Sol’s sung vocals brings the general feel of “Woman” pretty close to where Lauryn Hill was on Miseducation – high praise, obviously, but something that seems less like direct intention of homage and more like a set of shared natural inclinations as musicians.

Buy it from Amazon.

Jessie Ware “Please”

The arrangements of Jessie Ware songs always have two main objectives – set up a strong groove and showcase the way her voice can effortlessly swing from icy cool to red hot. I like Ware’s voice, but I find that the songs she’s done that I like the most don’t rely on it to carry the track. “Please” is a good example – as much as her vocal is the center of the song, my ear is more attracted to the particular tone of the synth bass, the trebly atmosphere that drops in on the chorus, or the fairly subtle funk guitar that fills the space between the first chorus and the second verse. This is a song that’s very eager to, uh… please… but it’s not trying to hammer you with obvious jabs at pleasure centers. It’s a little more delicate and precise, and aims for elegance and sensuality over screaming ecstasy.

Buy it from Amazon.

Sorry “Cigarette Packet”

There’s a lot of songs that simulate an anxious twitchy feeling – I should know, as I have written about hundreds at this point! I remember back in the late 2000s a friend pointing out how often I wrote about anxiety songs and it being a real “wait…he’s right” moment because I’d simply not processed that as a recurring thing and I don’t think I’ve ever self-identified as a particularly anxious person. But in the context of all those songs the twitchy angst of “Cigarette Packet” feels distinct, the throb of it sounds more like it’s signifying withdrawal tremors and strobe lights. Asha Lorenz sounds like her mind is racing but she’s totally bored by it, zooming through a bad night out in her head before it even happens. It’s a bad, sickly vibe but it’s so catchy that it’s a pleasure to hear, which I suppose is the exact right aesthetic for a song about a compulsive need to do something that you know won’t be good for you.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Courting “Popshop!”

“Popshop!” is a song expressing a bone-deep cynicism about the music industry from a band who’ve released a grand total of 7 songs to date. But like, you’d have to be a fool to think otherwise, right? The song is basically having a laugh at the notion that they’re willfully entering this rigged game if just because being a band is fun. Sean Murphy-O’Neill delivers his punchlines with a good-natured tone, coming off more like a clever guy with a wry take than an asshole shooting his mouth off. There’s quips at the expense of others – “if you stream ‘Shape of You’ you’re going straight to hell” and a goof on Belle Delphine selling her bathwater – but most of the humor is at Courting’s expense, since he’s so skeptical about achieving fame and fortune that the loftiest achievable goal in the song is a band outing at a chain British holiday resort.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Burial “Dark Gethsemane”

“Dark Gethsemane” is essentially a rave track but it plays out like cinema, with sequences as scenes moving gradually through escalating climaxes towards a bold and emotional conclusion. It’s an incredible flex, not just in terms of Burial’s technical mastery but in conveying a powerful message without a trace of corny didacticism. The song is always moving so the through line is mostly in the repetition of vocal samples. In the first half the message is “don’t get cynical,” pitched up enough to sound angelic but not change the wounded and weary inflection of the sampled singer. The second half of the piece is built around the phrase “we must shock this nation with the power of love!,” apparently lifted from a church sermon. The repetition here is both artful in iteration and totally blunt in effect, the syllables in SHOCK and POWER and LOVE cracking on impact every time. The velocity picks up in this section but the way Burial ratchets up the intensity still doesn’t quite prepare you for the conclusion. After some blaring horn fanfare the sample is stripped of effects and paired with bludgeoning rock bass line that changes the tone completely. The last minute is brutal but passionate, and earthy in a way that contrasts with the more ethereal qualities of the early portions of the track. It sounds like all the lights have come up, and it’s all suddenly quite immediate and real.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Faye Webster “Cheers”

The songs on Faye Webster’s last album Atlanta Millionaires Club all had a certain lightness to them, a gentle breeziness that came with its pedal steel atmosphere and low-key soul grooves. “Cheers,” the first song released from her follow up, is a hard swerve away from that vibe. Webster remains a warm and lovely presence on vocals, but the music has a nervy, off-balanced feel that’s mostly a result of an overdriven low end that seems to rattle and potentially shatter the more delicate instrumentation layered on top of it. Webster sounds cautious, and in the lyrics she comes off as someone doing her very best to be diplomatic and even-handed as she describes what sounds like a good relationship that’s stuck a rut. Her lyrics are direct and sincere, but she leaves a lot of room for subtext – her phrasing lets slip just enough uncertainty that it’s easy to imagine a parallel comic book thought balloon with an anxious interior monologue like “Uh, I think? Is this good? I want it to be good…but am I settling??”

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Alfa Mist featuring Lex Amor “Mind the Gap”

“Mind the Gap” opens with a clip of a train announcement, which makes me imagine Alfa Mist and Lex Amor’s performances as the interior monologues of two exhausted, weary people making their way home from a shift at night. The sort of people you can glance at from across the train and sense the weight on them as they stare off into space or try to rest their eyes in half-sleep. The keyboard and sax parts set a drowsy atmosphere, but it’s Lex Amor’s hushed and delicate voice that really sells the bleary-eyed angst. Her phrasing is remarkably nuanced, sliding seamlessly between rhythm and melody in every line while conveying a thousand shades of hopelessness, anxiety, irritation, and fear in just the tone of her voice before even keying into her actual words.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Hiatus Kaiyote featuring Arthur Verocai “Get Sun”

“Get Sun” is mostly slick, smooth, and easy on the ears. The string arrangement by Arthur Verocai comes in like a warm breeze, the rest of the track settles into a comfortable groove that’s tight enough to provide a danceable structure but loose enough to imply plenty of space to lounge around. Naomi Saalfield’s lead vocal resists the flow of the track in some spots, in some moments seeming to move against the tide of it if just to make it feel more profound when she lets up and glides along with it on the chorus. She’s dramaticizing the notion of the lyrics, which deal with learning to open up to joy, but I get the sense that she was responding to the feeling of the song rather than forcing the music line up conceptually with her words.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Billy Nomates “Petrol Fumes”

“Petrol Fumes” is a song about driving yourself crazy by falling in love and knowing you can’t do anything about it without the very likely possibility of blowing up the whole situation and losing a lot more than you would if you just kept your mouth shut and buried your feelings. This is hardly a novel topic but Tor Maries approaches it with nuance and a vocal performance that’s conveys a simmering lust and low-key nobility rather than communicating misery or self-destruction. The most interesting details Maries drops in the song portray the object of her affection as someone charismatic and popular, someone with a lot of suitors. “Well, I know the world is heavy and everyone seems to want a little piece of you,” she sings with a bit of a sigh, in awe of this person and unable to see herself as a particularly compelling option. The music, which sounds a little like a crossbreeding of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” and “I’m On Fire,” is all quick-paced tension that makes you feel her reach the point of snapping and shooting her shot: “Well, nothing’s ever gonna really be the same right after this…”

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Proper Nouns “Feel Free”

Proper Nouns’ debut album sounds so much like Ted Leo that it’s a little disconcerting, it’s almost like listening to the result of someone deciding to make their own Pharmacists record because it’s been 11 years since The Brutalist Bricks and they ran out of patience. This is not a complaint. I also would like to have a new Pharmacists record, and it’s a remarkable feat to write and perform music that sounds like Leo in style, structure, and content. It’s entirely possible that Proper Nouns songwriter Spencer Compton is not even familiar with Leo’s music, and if that was the case it’d be even more impressive for someone with a very similar voice and melodic sensibility to arrive at similar conclusions. But either way, I feel like it would be dishonest to not note the similarities – it’s both obvious and a major selling point.

Compton reaches for a Leo-esque falsetto on “Feel Free,” but it’s otherwise one of the least Pharmacists-y numbers on the record. The song has the swing of csoul but the rigid crispness of power pop, and a breeziness that contrasts with the neurotic tension of the lyrics without negating it. When the song reaches its climax on the bridge there’s some degree of catharsis – or at least airing of annoyance – and then, interestingly, the song sorta abruptly resolves on the breezy part.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

WheelUP featuring Bembe Segue “Fusion”

The aptly-titled “Fusion” is dense with great sounds and strong hooks and it all adds up to something that commands physical movements, but the part of that really gets me is what Danny Wheeler does with clips of rhythm guitar and blips of keyboards throughout the composition. I love the way it sounds like those parts on another plane from the rest of the track, like something dropped in or superimposed over the more solid whole. There’s a haphazard feel to it, like there’s some degree of raw improvision to these sampled elements – I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Wheeler manipulated them in a loose and gestural way, something deliberately unquantized in a track that’s otherwise quite tight in the bounce of its polyrhythms.

Buy it from Bandcamp.