Author Archive

Your Old Droog & Tha God Fahim featuring Pharaoh Monch “Slam Dunk Contest”

Your Old Droog has a voice perfect for sort of very NYC-centric rap he specializes in, a surly rasp so worn and weathered that people used to think he was Nas using a pseudonym. With a voice like this, it’s almost like rapping is a calling he couldn’t refuse – like, I’m sure sounding this cool would be a benefit in any walk of life, but it’d still be wasted on most other professions. “Slam Dunk Contest” is a showcase for Droog in shit-talk mode, and his collaborators – rap partner Tha God Fahim, producer Nottz, and guest star Pharoah Monch – shine in their own right, but mostly either put a flattering frame on his flow or complement it with similar energy and intensity. Monch, a legend at this point, really clicks in this context – the Nottz arrangement brings out the villain in him, and he plays the role with a surreal panache.

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Ariana Grande “Main Thing”

“Main Thing” is Ariana Grande doing an extremely Ariana Grande song. It’s Grande in what has become her most natural mode, or maybe more like Grande on autopilot if you don’t want to be generous. The track is vibey but unobtrusive, basically a tonal palette and rhythmic click that gives her some form to work with and plenty of space for her to sing in a way that’s somehow both showy and understated at the same time. Almost all of my favorite Grande songs have her veer into a very specific melodic pattern – a fluttery scale fluorish that typically lands at the end of verses or choruses. If you don’t get what I mean, in this song it’s the way the melody gently speeds up for a sort of curlicue at the end of the first verse: “Been a minute since I tasted something so sweet.” I can’t get enough of that trick, as far as I’m concerned it never fails no matter how many times she does some iteration of it. It flatters her voice, it’s melodically lovely, and it’s perfect in expressing the sort of lusty-infatuation-with-a-tiny-dash-of-nervousness feeling that she does better than most anyone else.

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Cassandra Jenkins “New Bikini”

“New Bikini” is a song in which each refrain has someone suggesting that someone else go into the ocean as a remedy for their problems – “the water, it cures everything.” Cassandra Jenkins sings this with sensitivy but also some degree of ambiguity, as it’s never quite clear how much she’s buying into the advice. She doesn’t come off as skeptical, though. She mostly just sounds like someone open to finding peace in any way she can find it. The music, with its light jazz feel and atmospheric brass, evokes a meditative beach setting. Melancholy, yet very serene. You can almost feel the water in the distance, maybe not something that can provide a true cure to sorrow or illness, but at least something that can offer a connection to nature and a soothing feeling of weightlessness.

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Virginia Wing “Moon Turn Tides”

Merida Richards’ voice is aloof, deadpan, and very English – the sort of speak-sing that’s traditionally always worked so well with artsy post-punk and electronic music. In “Moon Turn Tides” she affects the arch imperiousness of the extraordinarily posh, starting off the song by cautioning the rabble in the audience to not touch anything – “it’s all very, very expensive.” From there on she’s singing about how you don’t belong, that you don’t know what you’re doing, and most hopeful things you hold on to are just a lie. The music emphasizes the feeling of alienation by giving you the indication that it’s a groovy pop song, but the off-kilter rhythms and cold, shrill textures keep it from ever sounding too comfortable or inviting. There’s a lot of pleasure to be found in the song, but it does require some small amount of masochism, and a willingness to play submissive to its cruel, domineering aesthetics.

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Brijean “Softened Thoughts”

The bass in “Softened Thoughts” feels heavy, strong, and thick, a stark contrast with the soft, hazy feel of everything else in the arrangement. It’s like a powerful current at the center of the track and every other sound just flows along with it, and the entire point both musically and lyrically is the pleasure of letting go and moving where it wants to take you. Brijean Murphy sings with a serene but confident vocal tone, sounding a bit like a much less melancholic version of Beach House’s Victoria Legrand. Her words are very romantic and addressed to someone else, but even as the “you” becomes a “we” near the end of the song, the focus is very much on her experience in the moment. She’s “finding new perspectives that feel good,” and that includes taking in everyone and everything around her, but the main point of the song seems clearly stated when she sings “my mind feels renewed.”

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Sibille Attar “Hurt Me”

“Hurt Me” is built on the sort of pop breakbeat that’s very hard to come by these days – a sound very rooted in the 90s that as far as I can tell doesn’t seem to get fetishized as much as other aesthetics from the era. The drums evoke a gigantic scale and a vaguely triumphant mood that carries over to the lyrics, in which Sibille Attar declares that someone’s outbursts and passive-aggression can’t hurt her anymore. The use of strings as a counterpoint to the breakbeat – not to mention the lyrical tone – remind me a lot of ‘90s Björk but Attar leans more psychedelic in her aesthetics. Her vocal instincts seem more rooted in rock, particularly the way she seems to push against the groove on the verses.

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Of Montreal “Fingerless Gloves”

“Fingerless Gloves” sounds restless and chaotic, with Kevin Barnes cycling through three different aesthetics – warped hyperpop bounce, macho riff rock, classic fey Of Montreal synthpop – within just the first 30 seconds. It holds together through sheer force of will and a gleeful “fuck it” playfulness, and it makes you feel like you’ve been zapped into the brain of someone who thinks and feels much faster than you do. In terms of the Of Montreal catalog it’s pretty similar to the bonkers energy of Skeletal Lamping, but there’s a different charge to it – less frazzled, more at peace with an identity full of apparent contradictions. There are songs in which ping-ponging through genres and tones is an expression of an unstable state of mind but “Fingerless Gloves” sounds more settled in a sense of identity, and like a statement of pride in being fractured and strange. I mean, check out how triumphant Barnes sounds at the climax, screaming “I FEEL SO SAFE WITH YOU TRASH!!!!” over super-charged video game thrash metal. That’s some maniac joy right there.

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Steady Sun “Truth Is A Needle”

“Truth Is A Needle” feels slow, and not just in a musical sense. It sounds like experiencing time in slow motion and being only half-aware of it, but extremely attuned to the details that would ordinarily fly by. It’s a very stoned piece of music, psychedelic in the most literal way. The vocal melody is the most immediately appealing aspect of the song but the coolest part is the way the drums seem to drop you off to new levels through the piece. It feels like a drop, but not quite a descent – if anything, the gravitational pull seems to get weaker as you move through it.

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Aerial East “Angry Man”

The lyrics of “Angry Man” lay out an emotional dilemma in plain, direct language – knowing you have to move on from a relationship with a negative and angry person who doesn’t treat you well, but wishing you didn’t have to because you do love them and you’re not ready to put in the time and energy necessarily for someone else to truly know you well. Aerial East sings all of this as though she’s addressing her ex but it comes across like a letter never sent, things she has to say in the clearest words possible in order to process these complicated feelings. Her voice is sweet but raw as she sings these words to a melody so gorgeous that it hardly matters she doesn’t break away from it for a chorus or bridge. The song just builds on the theme with a simple beat that has the ambiance of classic Mazzy Star, some lovely understated lead guitar and piano flourishes, and backing vocals that seem to reinforce her as she finds the strength to commit to the decision to move on.

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Lia Ices “Hymn”

Lia Ices’ voice is slightly blurred by reverb in this song, like the audio equivalent of when your finger accidentally smudges the ink as you write with a pen – you can make out the words, but you have to look through that smear for the bolder forms beneath it. I don’t mean to give the impression that this is some sort of shoegaze thing, it’s very much a piano-based singer-songwriter sort of song, but this effect renders Ices’ vocal performance in a way that places all emphasis on the feeling in her tone and phrasing than in her words. It’s a good production decision, one that gives the song a bit of extra ambiance without making it too “vibey” and puts a focus on the raw sentimentality of the music rather than nudge the listener towards a more literal interpretation based on words. If anything the lyrics verify the feeling of the song, which I think anyone can intuit is about a deeply felt love that’s nevertheless tangled up in the complications of life.

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Anchorsong “Tunis Dream”

Anchorsong’s previous records were abstractions rooted in specific places, compositions that were meant to evoke a location in the way that a perfumer designs a scent so you can extrapolate a whole experience from small sensual details. “Tunis Dream” suits the current moment – with world travel off the table, Masaaki Yoshida has turned to evoking that same sense of place from his imagination. As he puts it, this song not meant to represent Tunisia so much as a Tunisia in his mind, and while the difference between him going for “realism” or something more impressionistic is mostly on his side of the music, the track does have a more loose and dreamy quality to it.

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Tor “Foxglove”

“Foxglove” has some bass-rattling busy-beat moments but the most memorable parts feel more like an uneventful equilibrium state before and after the more exciting bits. These sections pull me in mainly with the keyboard chords, which have a dazed rhythm similar to that of Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place.” It gives me a very relaxed head-empty feeling, enough so that the threatening vocal sample just sort of washes over me.

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Thee Sacred Souls “It’s Our Love”

“It’s Our Love” is a very ‘60s/‘70s type of soul ballad, and while Thee Sacred Souls don’t shy away from that retro quality they also avoid the trap of trying to fake the aura of a vintage recording. The track doesn’t feel “modern” but it does sound remarkably crisp, presenting the guitar parts and organ drone with a lovely clarity while the drums have just enough “room sound” to give it a very live feel. Josh Lane’s vocals, sung in a high tenor like Smokey Robinson, don’t even show up until 40 seconds into the song but his presence lifts the whole piece up. Not just in the sense of improving the quality, but in that his airy voice and extremely infatuated tone makes the music feel as though it’s levitating.

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Goat Girl “Anxiety Feels”

“Anxiety Feels” addresses panic attacks and feeling ambivalent about taking medication for anxiety, but doesn’t sound anxious at all. It feels more like a medicated state – a gentle, slightly sterile groove and vocals that convey a rational mindset at a distance from more urgent emotions. The arrangement is crisp and clean and neatly detailed, but it’s not cold. There’s a hint of melancholy in the lead guitar and the half-sigh of the vocals, but it’s muted. Or maybe it’s more like dilution – the tone is like the lightest shades of watercolor on the furthest edge of a more saturated hue. The strongest feeling in the song comes through in a wistful refrain – “I find it hard sometimes” – but even that seems a bit hazy and detached, which makes me wonder if the song is more about imagining the medicated state than depicting a lived experience of it.

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Fontaines D.C. “A Hero’s Death (Soulwax Remix)”

This is the sort of remix that puts me in the uncomfortable position of having to point out that I think it’s far better than the original version, to such a degree that I wish Fontaines D.C. would take what Soulwax has done with their song and use it as a model for anything they’d like to make going forward. But what this really comes down to is a question of which sort of “indie” band you preferred in the early to mid 00s – the regular Fontaines D.C. version is somewhere on a British punk spectrum between The Libertines and Art Brut, while Soulwax have been working in a DFA-adjacent punk-funk vein since back in those days. I strongly prefer the latter.

But aside from that aesthetic leaning, I just think Grian Chatten’s voice just sounds much better with a bit of negative space and a more swinging groove. It’s a bit like someone you’re used to seeing dress in rather shlubby clothes show up out of nowhere in an outfit with a more flattering fit. His lyrics boil down to a list of advice, and while in the original they can feel a bit hectoring in the Soulwax version they hit with more warmth and generosity.

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Squid “Narrator”

“Narrator” starts with a premise like “what if LCD Soundsystem were about 40% more unhinged?” and quite frankly that would be more than enough to satisfy me. A crisp tight-pocket groove, a herky-jerky post-punk feel, and a weird shouting nerd? It rarely fails. But as it goes along – and at a little over 8 minutes it really does go along – the song reveals itself to something more in unexpected digressions. There’s a moody arpeggiated guitar sequence with vaguely unsettling spoken vocals by Martha Skye Murphy that feels like the song going sideways into a lateral progression, and then later a part with spiking staccato noise that’s more like passing through a sudden storm. The last chunk of the song cruises out, zooming on beyond cartharsis into some more nebulous sort of resolution.

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Field Music “Orion from the Street”

Peter and David Brewis have been releasing records as Field Music for over 15 years, and in that time a few things about their music has been constant: it’s all erudite and thoughtful, it’s all wonderfully melodic in a very “raised on Paul McCartney” way, and the music is performed and recorded with a clinical precision. Their best songs make the most of their raw skill and stoic formalism, and their more forgettable work strains against the limitations of their apparent repression and uptight musical inclinations.

“Orion on the Street” is definitely in the former category. It’s a song about death and mourning the loss of someone close, and it’s very much written from the “acceptance” stage of grief. The sorts of messy emotions that would characterize the other stages wouldn’t be the best fit for the Brewis aesthetic, but the brothers are exceptionally well suited to capture the graceful clarity of processing loss and seeing some beauty in someone moving on, even if you’re a bit agnostic on what actually comes next. A sparkly piano part and a very George Harrison-y lead guitar part are the most musically beautiful parts of the song, but the most lovely sentiment comes when they reckon with the notion of the afterlife: “Belief in further lives / separate, but true / if I thought you were anywhere / I would be there too.”

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Arlo Parks “Caroline”

“Caroline” is sung from the perspective of someone observing a dramatic public breakup, the kind of thing that will grab your attention even if you’d prefer to mind your own business. The details of the story aren’t tremendously interesting, the subject of the song is more the empathy and curiosity of the observer, and the way we rush to fill in details when given a scene like this out of context. Arlo Parks sings the song with a restrained and gentle tone over a lattice of arpeggiated guitar and crisp drum hits that recall the ambivalent tone of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes,” expressing a diluted proxy anguish that suggests she’s interpreting what she sees as she does because she’s projecting her own experiences on it.

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Matthew E. White and Lonnie Holley “This Here Jungle of Moderness – Composition 14”

If you go back through Matthew E. White’s body of work you can certainly find parts that are influenced by soul, funk, and jazz, most obviously on a collaborative record with Flo Morrissey that included covers of classics by Roy Ayers Ubiquity and Frank Ocean. But nothing I’ve ever encountered that was made by White suggested he was capable of what he does on Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection, his forthcoming record with Lonnie Holley. Through five extended tracks White and his band tap into the jazz funk fusion of early ‘70s Miles Davis, particularly the vibe conjured in the sessions that yielded Get Up With It, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, and On the Corner.

Relative to Davis’ records it’s stripped down and simplified a lot – there’s fewer musicians in the room, no horns at all – but it’s a strikingly similar energy, one that’s hard to come by. White doesn’t perform on the tracks but rather conducts a group of musicians (mostly on synthesizers or percussion, but also on guitars and piano) through the collisions, tensions, and cathartic noise. Lonnie Holley role on vocals is part star presence and part bystander, and the line between him responding to the music and the music responding to his words can be hard to discern. “This Here Jungle of Moderness/Composition 14” brings out a very stressful sort of funk, where even the grooviest bits evoke a fight-or-flight response. Holley’s voice seems to confront the abstracted danger head on, and the more he sings the less startling the sounds get without necessarily ever subsiding.

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Madlib “Road of the Lonely Ones”

When I first heard about Sound Ancestors I was under the impression that it was a Madlib/Four Tet record, in the sense that Madlib has made collaboritive records in the past with MF Doom, J Dilla, Freddie Gibbs, and Talib Kweli. But no, this is a different sort of collaboration. It’s a body of work created by Madlib, but curated and crafted into an album by Four Tet. This is tremendously interesting to me, mainly because it strikes me as a very humble thing for someone as accomplished as Madlib to do, and a tremendous show of faith and trust in Four Tet. I figure the process here was probably similar to how an editor works with a writer on a big project, and pretty much everyone can benefit from a good editor.

“Road of the Lonely Ones” is essentially a rework of The Ethics’ deep cut “Lost In A Lonely World.” Madlib presents the song in full with all its major elements intact but he layers in percussion and additional textures, bringing a solid groove and more dramatic dynamics to the composition without sacrificing any of the delicate beauty of the original recording. The original seems flat and monochromatic in comparison, like something waiting to eventually be finished. Madlib’s arrangement frames the song’s best qualities for maximum effect, particularly the refrain in which the lead singer sings questions like “Did I ever treat you bad?” and “Where did I go wrong?” over gently plucked guitar chords. The beat drops out to put a spotlight on this moment, accentuating its vulnerability and raw beauty.

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Emanative & Liz Elensky featuring Bed Hadwen “Fall In To Me”

“Fall In To Me” has an intriguing dynamic in which Liz Elensky’s vocal and Ben Hadwen’s tenor sax sound like they’re both attempting to break out of the tense rhythm laid down by Emanative. They move around the stiff groove in different ways. Elensky’s approach is more soulful and zen, like a passive resistance to the oppressive force. Hadwen’s sax is more loose and emotive, at first sneaking around the beat before more obviously reacting against it. I like the way the drama plays out, like the rhythm is trying to capture something about the human spirit that simply cannot be held for long.

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