Author Archive

Jean Grae & Quelle Chris “Gold Purple Orange”

Quelle Chris produced this track, and it really knocks me out – the repetition of that creeping bass line, the organ drones and vamps, the flute, the sax, the wordless vocal, the way the high hat sounds a bit off in the mix. It’s like a funky jazz tune that’s been ripped up and flipped sideways, broken and awkward but still retaining some groove and grace. Quelle Chris and Jean Grae’s verses sharply contrast their styles – he’s laid back and sarcastic, she’s more aggressive and technically precise – but mirror each other in structure. They spend the first half of their respective verses meditating on stereotypes and the ways one’s control over their own identity and personal narrative is limited by other people’s perceptions. “You can be the things they say to be and get killed,” as Grae puts it. But regardless of that, their verses reach the same conclusion: “I ain’t gotta be nothing for you but me.”

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Cherophobiac “Unknown Liquid Substance”

“Unknown Liquid Substance” is as cold and creepy as its title implies. The vocals sound aloof, the percussion is a dense churn of electronic clicks, and the piano part has the grim, vaguely hesitant quality of Thom Yorke’s playing on Radiohead songs like “Pyramid Song” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief.” The composition is elegant and pretty, but the mood is all muted anxiety and desperation. The lyrics express an unwanted passivity in terms of what happens within your own body, but then also crave the passivity of not needing to confront or deal with dark realities. The refrain is particularly bleak: “Close your eyes now and pray not to have a choice.”

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Caverns of Anti-Matter “Solarised Sound”

Cave of Anti-Matter make music primarily built around vintage and homemade electronic instruments – drum machines, modular synths, sequencers – and while that is quite compelling, it’s notable that Tim Gane’s guitar is often the most captivating element of their compositions. That’s certainly the case for “Solarised Sound,” a track in which nearly three minutes of expertly crafted syncopated beats and synth parts herald the arrival of a glorious guitar hook that becomes the center of the piece from there on out. I’m a big Stereolab fan going way back, and I would rate this among the very best musical motifs and overall compositions of Gane’s career. Like a lot of his all-time best songs, there’s something about the structure of the piece that sounds literally urban to me, like an entire sprawling city rendered in music.

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No Joy / Sonic Boom “Obsession”

Brian Eno famously described My Bloody Valentine’s “To Here Knows When” as “the vaguest music ever to have been a hit” in the United Kingdom. I love this description, and wish that shoegaze – a meaningless and derisive genre term from the U.K. press – could instead simply be called “vague music.” (Or, if you absolutely must, vaguewave.) Vagueness is more central to this sort of music than the implied shyness of the shoegaze term – it’s music about foregrounding accompaniment but keeping vocals for purely textural and emotional reasons. It’s music about expressing sensation and feelings that would not be adequately serviced by words but still need a vocal presence.

No Joy’s Jasamine White-Gluz is her generation’s finest artist working in this milieu, and over the course of the past three years has zoomed beyond solid entry-level shoegaze rock to master textural juxtapositions and dramatically improve her craft as a writer of melodies and harmonies. No Joy’s 2015 album More Faithful is the breakthrough masterpiece, but her EPs since then have pushed her aesthetic to different extremes – more aggro, more pop, more meditative, more electronic.

Her new collaboration with Sonic Boom is her most far-out experiment yet, with the lead track “Obsession” starting off in a sort of “Blue Monday”-ish indie house music zone before drifting out into a more ambient phase that reminds me of Terry Riley. This music is vague, oh so beautifully vague! The song often sounds like a remix of some other more straightforward tune, with White-Gluz’s vocal parts sounding like they’re just snippets from verses and choruses pasted together into something new. There’s an implication of form and feeling, but that’s about all you really get. The song almost completely dissolves just before the 7 minute mark but then comes back to the original groove, which is somehow both a huge payoff and incredibly disorienting.

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King Tuff “Raindrop Blue”

It’s kinda interesting that King Tuff and Ty Segall somehow both landed on the same specific vibe at about the same time: groovy strut rock with horns and a sharp contrast of dry sounds and bits of unnatural reverb. Great garage rock minds think alike, I suppose. “Raindrop Blue” sounds huge and signals enormous confidence – he’s singing about falling in love with someone in extremely bombastic terms, but he sounds entirely serious and earnest about it. I’m particularly fond of the drum fills in this track, and the way it busts out of a crisp pocket beat for these highly emotive deviations. That’s the song in a nutshell, really – controlled and self-assured enough to put it all out on the line and be unapologetically fabulous.

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Smoke DZA featuring Joey Bada$$ “The Mood”

This song could stop cold after 7 seconds and still be great just for the incredibly deadpan way Smoke DZA says “It’s a really fucking cool era we in” in the intro. The verse itself is not quite so bitter and ironic – he’s mostly just having fun with wordplay and referencing other rappers. (He graciously nods to Scarface, whose “Guess Who’s Back” is the basis for this track.) The Joey Bada$$ verse is where this song really kicks in. Bada$$ has always been a guy who wears his ’90s NYC rap influences on his sleeve, but this is a good example of how he’s evolved. I mean, he’s still very rooted in that aesthetic, but his voice has a more lived-in quality to it and he sounds much more relaxed and far less self-conscious.

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Alison Wonderland “No”

This is what Alison Wonderland said about this song when she debuted it on Twitter a few weeks ago: “NO IS ABOUT FAKE PEOPLE WHO ENABLE, TELLING U YES ALL THE TIME BUT I WILL ALWAYS BE REAL W U”

It’s just funny to me to think about how there’s a whole generation of people for whom a major running theme of popular music is dealing with “fake friends.” And like, hey, this is a real thing, especially when you’re young and attractive and people want a piece of you. But it’s also a narrative that’s very appealing to narcissists, and a sentiment that feels petty and defensive even when it’s straining for sincerity – or as Wonderland put it there “I WILL ALWAYS BE REAL W U.” But hey, I grew up with a disproportionate number of popular songs about washing pain away and I doubt anyone my age has unrealistic expectations of showers today.

At least in terms of composition and sound, “No” is very much of its moment, and clearly designed for maximum radio play. But that’s fine, as it’s a particularly strong specimen of post-EDM pop, right on down to its quasi tropical vibe and chopped up wordless vocal hook. And as much as I goofed on the lyrical premise of this song, Alison Wonderland sounds sincere and genuinely wounded by people who’ve betrayed her trust. There’s a solemnity to this chorus, the sort of intense oath you make when you’re extremely young and earnest, and there’s a beauty in that even if someone my age can’t help but be cynical about it.

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Guided by Voices “Colonel Paper”

I’ve been following Bob Pollard and Guided by Voices since my conversion to Pollard fandom in the late ’90s, but over the past five or six years, I’ve had a hard time keeping up with Bob’s pace. I check in with pretty much every record, but I don’t always find the connection I’m looking for. I don’t want to say that Bob has been uninspired, but I will say that some of what he’s been up to hasn’t really inspired me.

So it’s nice to find some straight-up GBV gems on Space Gun, a record that really takes advantage of the fact that Doug Gillard is back in the band. Gillard is by far my favorite Pollard collaborator, and his guitar playing brings both swagger and harmonic grace to his songs. “Colonel Paper” is more on the swagger end of things, with a big chunky riff that reminds of what Pollard and Gillard were up to during the Speak Kindly/Isolation Drills/Universal Truths era – inarguably a high point of the sprawling GBV discography. The lyrics are good, too: It’s a bit of surreal gross-out humor from Pollard, as he describes some weirdo eating cigarettes and trash straight out of the can.

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Adrian Younge & Linear Labs “Silhouette Dreams”

“Silhouette Dreams” is lush but not gaudy, and indicates a luxurious vibe by varying slick, smooth tones and textures without letting them get cluttered in the mix. For the most part, he lets you focus on one at a time – a slow, gorgeous run of bass notes; a tight vocal harmony; a few moments of cymbals being hit so delicately they evoke light shimmering on crystals. I hear all of this in very visual terms – in some ways it’s deliberate cinematic, but in others it’s more like architecture or fashion design. A lot of the transitions in this sound to me like they’re cut diagonally, and the bass parts feel like bold, thick, elegantly curved lines.

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XXXTENTACION “Moonlight”

The overwhelming majority of XXXTENTACION’s second proper album ? is written and produced by a young producer named John Cunningham. Cunningham’s tracks are brilliant – very of the moment in some ways, but several steps ahead of the curve in others. His tonal palette is like contrasting ice and snow with neon lights, and while he’s firmly rooting his emcee in trap and Soundcloud rap, there’s a substantial amount of rock and IDM influences in the mix. “Moonlight” leans further to the latter end of things, with Cunningham playfully bending and smearing notes in a melodic keyboard hook that frames an XXXTENTACION vocal that’s casually catchy and nakedly emotional in a way that reminds me a lot of Lil Uzi Vert’s brilliant “XO Tour Llif3” from last year. It’s the sort of thing that’s technically a rap song, but sounds more like it’s pushing into some strange and ambiguous new space.

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Space Invadas “Now That I Know”

It was not immediately obvious to me that the vocals in this song are not sampled and looped, but are live and unique to the record. That’s mostly because Katalyst’s production is so rooted in sample-based rap that this felt more like a DJ record to me, or like an early to mid-00s Kanye track where the rapping just never seems to happen. Steve Spacek’s vocal here is fabulous, and clearly authentically soulful enough for me to assume his performance was pulled from a vintage ’60s or ’70s release. But it’s not just about simulating an old vibe – his vocal is very moving, particularly in how wounded and lost he sounds.

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Videotapemusic “Hot Pants in the Summercamp”

I try to avoid describing artists’ work by saying it’s like another more famous act’s work as much as I can, mostly because I think it’s lazy and sorta insulting. So with that in mind, please understand that when I say that Videotapemusic reminds me a lot of The Avalanches, I don’t mean that in a vague “recommended if you like” way, or that I think “Hot Pants in the Summercamp” is just a cheap emulation of Since I Left You. But this certainly has the smooth and luxurious party vibe of that record, and it’s an elegantly composed collage of samples, so yes, The Avalanches. Honestly, I’m sure Videotapemusic would be flattered to be favorably compared to them. Anyway, if you’re planning some kind of fancy party near a swimming pool in Los Angeles or Miami, please consider putting this on your playlist.

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Peter Zummo “Song II: Left; On The Beat—Variations”

This piece was recorded by Peter Zummo with Arthur Russell, Bill Ruyle and Mustafa Ahmed in 1984, but has been shelved and unreleased until now. The music was recorded live to tape, and is partially improvised – or “an exercise in spontaneous arrangement,” as Zummo put it. The music mostly moves around a bouncy melodic hook played on marimba, and the driving force in the track mainly comes from Russell’s amplified cello, which is just as expressive whether he’s playing rhythmic or lead parts. Zummo himself plays trombone, and his leads are particularly vibrant and sassy. I love the way this all comes together in a way that’s somehow both joyful and contemplative.

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Soccer Mommy “Last Girl”

“Last Girl” is an essentially self-deprecating song about feeling insecure because you feel like you’re vastly inferior to your boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, but I like that it doesn’t quite tip over into self-loathing. It’s never really about this guy, or even herself so much as it’s about how much she admires this other girl. The way she sings about her – and the way the song has this bright, springy melody – it sounds a lot more like a crush song about her than this guy they’ve both dated. Envy is a theme that runs through nearly all of the songs on Soccer Mommy’s Clean, but it’s never this petty sort of jealousy. It’s more about her trying to figure out what she wants to be. This song reminds me a bit of when Thom Yorke sings “I want to be someone else or I’ll explode” in “Talk Show Host.” It’s the same sort of feeling, but Sophie Allison just has a really specific person in mind.

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Zizi Raimondi “SUPAfresh”

The last time I featured Zizi Raimondi on this site just two months ago, she was doing a sleepy indie rock tune called “Folly Dolly” in which she was somehow both Lou Reed and Nico, and everyone else in The Velvet Underground for that matter. This time around it’s a completely different thing. “SUPAfresh” is a spacey funk song that falls somewhere in the space between the aesthetics of Grimes on her Visions album and the weirder edge of early 1980s New York art disco, like Arthur Russell, ZE Records stuff, and Madonna’s first few singles. It’s a major stylistic leap, but also the same thing in a different way – there’s this drowsy sexy vibe in both, and a high level of craft that feels very casual.

“SUPAfresh” is from an entire 19 track album called Bye Bye Club that’s all in the same aesthetic territory – groovy and zonked out and horny and vaguely sad. Her lyrics fixate on lust and intimacy, and how both feed into emotional mind games. It’s a very evocative and engaging record, and the feeling of her compositions conveys a lot more than her words. “SUPAfresh” is particularly sensual – the bass groove is incredible, and she layers on vocal harmonies and bright keyboard parts with remarkable grace. Everything seems to float elegantly in the negative space above that bass part.

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Yo La Tengo “Polynesia #1”

The new Yo La Tengo record is full of negative space, which makes it feel loose and airy, but also empty and hollow. The sounds they choose feel deliberate but instinctive, the way a cartoonist can suggest a great deal of character and detail with carefully place lines on a white page. The lead guitar part in “Polynesia #1” sounds like a line curving through the song, angular but not jagged. Georgia Hubley’s vocal is typically soft and gentle, but not in way that signals passivity. She sounds forthright and purposeful, like someone doing what they have to do to maintain a peaceful and relaxed state of mind. Her tone is like a bit of gestural shading that casts the clean lines of the guitar in relief.

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Lake Ruth “Julia’s Call”

Lake Ruth work in a relatively straight forward rock-pop paradigm, but their songs rarely if ever include choruses. It’s as if the shape of their compositions reject the convention – any time one of their songs feels like it could shift gears into chorus mode, the music moves in another direction, though not necessarily in a jarring or musically unsatisfying way. It’s more like they’ve always got a different idea of how to resolve a sound or build on a rhythm. The songs are always in motion, and the consistently prefer melodic instrumental motifs to vocal hooks.

This has an interesting impact on the lyrics. Since there’s no structure forcing Allison Brice to reiterate phrases, the words scan as actual poetry and convey complete thoughts. In the case of “Julia’s Call,” it’s a meditation on someone’s restlessness and eagerness to give up on their life and start again with people who aren’t aware of their baggage. Brice sees this as a delusional and self-destructive impulse, but has some empathy for her character. Or maybe it’s just pity?

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The Breeders “Walking With A Killer”

“Walking With A Killer” is sung from the perspective of a girl who gets murdered by the end of the song, but it’s not a particularly scary song. A bit uneasy, sure, but the feeling of it is mostly quite calm and the lyrics describe the situation with a serene clarity. Her killing is presented as a sort of cosmic inevitability, this thing that she’s somehow aware of in spite of herself. “I didn’t know it was my night to die,” Kim Deal sings in a guileless tone at the top of her vocal range, “but it really was.” It’s unnerving, but also strangely beautiful.

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Janelle Monáe “Make Me Feel”

In some ways it feels unfair and dismissive to say that a song like this or a lot of the better Bruno Mars songs of the recent past are “retro.” I think it might be more accurate to say that this sort of funky pop – openly indebted to Prince, Michael and Janet Jackson, and James Brown in particular – is something people always want and can’t get enough of, but it’s just in very short supply. Not just anyone can do this sort of thing. It takes a lot of songwriting magic and expertise, and a performer with an extreme level of charisma because you can’t really pull off working in this zone otherwise. Janelle Monáe has that star power, can come up with a song like this, and we are lucky for it. Truly blessed.

“Make Me Feel” has a Prince groove, but a chorus that nods to Michael Jackson’s best hit single. It’s a song full of bold moves, but that (meta)contextual stuff isn’t as compelling as the actual feeling of it. Monáe’s lyrics and vocal melody are about 25% nervous anticipation, and 75% crushed-out strut. Her lyrics in the past have been a bit more conceptual or guarded, but this is raw, genuine lust. She sounds relaxed and free, and only the tiniest bit anxious about how anyone might perceive her.

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Margaret Glaspy “Before We Were Together”

Margaret Glaspy’s songwriting is rather terse and economical, and I wonder if it’s the result of meticulous editing or a disposition in favor of blunt, effective simplicity. “Before We Were Together” is lean and tight, and moves at an impatient pace that makes her lyrics about finding the nerve to tell off an ex seem all the more urgent. It comes off like a fresh thought, an epiphany she’s having there right in the moment, and the sentiment is basically a second of consideration before spitting it out. Glaspy’s voice fills up a lot of the song, and the way it stands out in the negative space conveys both strength and a lonely isolation.

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