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Tricky featuring Martina Topley-Bird “When We Die”

The very fact that this song exists feels like a miracle. This is the first song Tricky has released featuring Martina Topley-Bird in nearly 20 years, and I think most everyone had just come to assume they simply were never going to work together again. Sure, they played a few shows together to celebrate the anniversary of Maxinquaye, but that seemed to be mostly motivated by money and they have a kid to raise. If you don’t understand why this pairing is special and important, you should read this post from ten years ago in which I wrote about their unique chemistry on Tricky’s first two albums.

The classic Tricky/Martina songs foregrounded their intimacy and let their uncomfortable power dynamic play out on the track. “When We Die” does that too, I suppose, but for a very different effect. They sound very removed from one another, and their voices barely overlap. Tricky’s lyrics suggest that he’s trying to make sense of why their relationship fell apart and figure out what they are meant to be to each other now, but Martina just sounds sad and resigned. There’s no catharsis in this song, and it ends somewhat abruptly with a sense that there’s no resolution to be had here. I’m not sure if they really have more they can do together after this – it feels less like a new beginning and more like the epilogue to a story that ended a long time ago.

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This Is The Kit “Moonshine Freeze”

“Moonshine Freeze” has a witchy feeling to it – some of it is in the odd, foreboding atmosphere of it and its melodic roots in English folk, but it’s mainly in the lyrics, which seem as though they’re outlining some sort of ritual. There’s not that many words to the song, but what’s there is very evocative, and for me suggest a collapse in the perception of time. On one hand you have the chorus, a clapping game for children that Kate Stables recalls from her youth in England, and on the other, you have her speaking about cycles and change and the natural order of things as though she’s looking on her life from the outside. The music moves in circles, but vocal parts begin to overlap, and it’s as though you’re watching cycles of behavior and feelings loop and stack in a time lapse.

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FKJ “Joy”

FKJ’s debut is remarkably slick and sophisticated in its composition, effortlessly sliding between funk, soul, jazz, and house without ever feeling like a series of forced juxtapositions. “Joy” is the climax of the record, and ties together many of the musical threads through the set, while leaning hard on jazz elements in particular. The electric keyboard holds down the groove and sets the tone for soloing, but the horn parts are fabulously emotive as they swing between delicate, pensive phrases and bold, expressive soloing. I know some people have trouble with saxophones and jazz in general, and associate it with either cheesiness or inaccessible meandering, but this track is a particularly good ambassador for both. FKJ sugars the pill of jazz a bit by situating it in this elegant dance track, but lets the solos unfurl with incredible feeling and melodic grace. The vocals in “Joy” are all chopped up samples, and while they’re quite expressive and joyful, it’s just there to accent the beat and frame the leads. Words can just get in the way of a big feeling like this.

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The Lo-Fi’s “Don’t Worry About It”

The Lo-Fi’s is kind of a misleading name for this band. The name sets you up to imagine something fuzzy and distorted, or twee and homemade, but these young dudes mostly make music that feels suave and sleek, with crisp chords and a brisk beat. I saw this band open for Wolf Alice earlier this week and was immediately charmed by them – they have an effortless groove, and come across as very cool without seeming particularly affected. Kaleb Cajas, the dude who sings this song, is especially handsome and magnetic, and sings everything with this low-key “hey, whatever, babe” tone. It seemed like the girls in the room were really feeling it. I wouldn’t be surprised if these guys became a thing.

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Soccer Mommy “Benadryl Dreams”

Practically every bit of this song has a lovely lazy dreamy quality to it, but the part that really gets me is the gentle gear shift in the “it’s always the same thing” refrain. She’s singing about drugging herself to sleep in an attempt to keep her mind of a crush or drifting off into depression, and that moment feels like the exact midpoint between angst and oblivion. It sounds just like the feeling of the drugs kicking in, and the strange pleasure of keeping yourself awake for a little bit as the artificial drowsiness hits you, just to savor the feeling of being exhausted. I should clarify that the music itself isn’t super drowsy – there’s a slight jauntiness to Sophie Allison’s guitar playing and a simple, brisk beat. It’s wonderful summer music – chill in vibe, if not in sentiment.

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Vince Staples featuring Kenrick Lamar, Kućka, Sophie, and Flume “Yeah Right”

Vince Staples’ Big Fish Theory has a constant jittery energy, with mostly EDM-identified producers delivering tracks that accentuate the anxiety and paranoia in his verses, and situate his rapping in somewhat alien musical territory. It’s a very adventurous record, and sounds at least a year or two ahead of the curve. Maybe that’s why Staples always sounds a bit impatient on the mic – he’s moving at his own speed and waiting for everyone else to catch up. That said, it’s not much of a surprise that Kendrick Lamar sounds entirely comfortable on “Yeah Right,” one of the most out-there and interesting tracks on the record. He’s a remarkably adaptable rapper, and seems to approach every feature as a technical challenge. He and Staples are in synch here, both picking at rap tropes with a critical eye and a high degree of self-awareness. They both seem to be wondering what a rapper should or could be, and considering what parts of the tradition to keep, what to leave behind, and what clichés they don’t mind embracing.

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Jay-Z “The Story of OJ”

Interesting how Jay-Z’s discography since the late ‘90s ping-pongs back and forth between good albums and weak albums. It’s a clear pattern at this point. I have no theory about this, but I would offer that this suggests that he’s an artist who thrives when he’s got something to say. He’s certainly got something to say on 4:44. Sure, yes, some of that is an admission of guilt and shame for cheating on his wife. That was expected, and gets the attention because people always care about celebrity gossip. But that’s just a bit of what he’s saying on the record, and even that is tied in to a deeper meditation on what’s been driving him all his life, this burning need to elevate his station.

“The Story of OJ” hits this head-on; the reality that no matter how successful he is, he’s still black, and that’s always going to be a barrier. He’s addressed this before – with contempt on Watch the Throne, and with a touch of bemusement on Magna Carta Holy Grail – but now he sounds entirely resigned and exhausted. This is, for me, a more interesting contrast with Beyoncé’s Lemonade than the he said/she said angle – there’s an optimism in her “the future is female” call for solidarity and action on a track like “Formation,” but all you hear on “OJ” is realism and pessimism blurring until they’re totally indistinguishable. Jay-Z was always a guy with a cynical view of humanity, and he doesn’t sound pleased to discover he was right to feel that way.

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Washed Out “So Hard to Say Goodbye”

An interesting thing about Washed Out is that the entire project – mostly music, but now also a “visual album” that goes along with the new record Mister Mellow – is seemingly designed to have its deepest resonance when you’re not fully paying attention to it. Ernest Greene is an expert at setting up a seductive vibe, but the music itself resists close attention. It’s like the music has a force field that deflects everything and bounces you back towards a groove, a feeling, an aesthetic. I get the sense that a lot of music that recedes into the background is made by artists who would actually like you to pay more attention, but this sounds like the work of a guy who wants nothing more than to blend into your good times. It’s the music a shy, anxious introvert makes to please chill, outgoing extroverts.

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Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks “Gardenia” / The Mountain Goats “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” / The Long Blondes “Too Clever By Half” / Robyn “Be Mine!” / Goldfrapp “A&E” / Olga Bell “Videotape” / White Hinterland “Dreaming of the Plum Trees” / Yelle “Tristesse/Joie” / Au Revoir Simone “Through the Backyards” / Ted Leo “Bottle of Buckie” / The Slits “Love Und Romance” / Maxi Geil & Playcolt “Makin’ Love in the Sunshine” / Dirty Projectors “Rise Above” / James Rabbit “George Gershwin” / Childballads “Stuart Hassle” / The National “Start A War” / Silje Nes “Dizzy Street” / Bob Mould “Hardly Getting Over It” / Dean & Britta “Strange”

This is a collection of songs from live sessions recorded for the public radio show Fair Game back in 2008. I was a writer and producer on the show, and produced the music segments. Don’t let the word “producer” fool you – all the serious recording work was done by the engineer, which was almost always John DeLore. I did the booking though, which I think is pretty obvious if you know anything about my tastes in the mid to late 2000s. There’s a few acts here who rarely if ever got any attention outside of Fluxblog.

A few notes:

• All of these tracks are from sessions that generally included 3-5 songs. (Robyn and Goldfrapp were exceptions, they only did two songs in their sessions.)

• Yes, that Olga Bell track is a cover of Radiohead. That was still a pretty new song at the time, so it was a bold choice for a fairly unknown artist at the time on a national radio broadcast.

• The piano that you here in many of these sessions is a gorgeous old Steinway grand piano. You could always tell that keyboard players were really excited to get to get a chance to play it.

• My favorite moment in any of the sessions we did is in the James Rabbit recording here, when Tyler improvises a funny story in the middle of the song. You could see that the rest of the band weren’t sure where he was going, but they played along really well. There is one moment where he gestured to one of the female members of the band to sing after mentioning Meredith Monk, and after she shook her head, the piano player did it for her. “George Gershwin” is already a joyous song, but this bit just makes it feel even more magical and alive. It’s a shame everyone ignored this band; they were really special.

• Getting the chance to meet Ari Up at The Slits session was a great experience. She was such a larger than life character, but also incredibly generous and kind to everyone around her. I remember getting this “oh my GOD” jolt when they started playing “Love Und Romance,” which is my favorite Slits song. I didn’t expect them to play any oldies at this session.

• The Childballads song has never been officially released, which is a shame. It’s based on “Street Hassle” by Lou Reed, but Stuart Lupton rewrote all the lyrics to be about his own life. It’s a heartbreaker.

• The Robyn and Long Blondes sessions were never actually aired because the show was abruptly canceled.

Matthew Dear “Modafinil Blues”

Matthew Dear sings “Modafinil Blues” like a man who is extremely distressed but trying very hard to keep that feeling under the surface. His words are bleak yet oblique, suggesting some catastrophe is imminent or already underway. There’s a sense of grim inevitability in the music, like you’re caught in an undertow that felt like a gentle pull at first but is now dragging you down along with everything else around you. The most intriguing thing about this song is the way it falls into some ambiguous space between goth romanticism of sorrow and a far less sentimental depiction of grey, flat depression. It’s mostly erring on the side of the former, but the most resonant moments convey the latter.

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Liars “Cred Woes”

“Cred Woes” is built on the steady thud of an electronic beat, but the overall production feels wobbly and unstable, as if it could just crash or collapse at any moment. This is partly achieved by introducing musical elements that seem to fizzle out before they get a chance to resolve as they would in a more typical song. There’s a guitar solo that starts off about a minute into the track that sounds as though they shrugged and went “oh, never mind” after plucking out five notes. A minute later there’s a jaunty guitar riff that sounds as though they considered turning the song into “My Sharona” but then opted out of that too. I love these little moments because they indicate a conventional rock moves while the song itself lurches forward like a robot with bad wiring. Angus Andrew’s vocal performance adds to the effect by projecting a glib arrogance, like he doesn’t even know he’s riding this doomed machine.

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This is the seventh in the 1990s survey mix series, which will come out monthly in chronological order through this year. You can find the previous mixes here. I think of the music of the ‘90s as a trilogy in which each act ends in tragedy – the suicide of Kurt Cobain, the murders of 2Pac and Biggie, and the disaster of Woodstock ’99. This survey brings us to the end of the 2nd act, though Biggie was not killed until early March of the following year.

1996 is an interesting transitional year! I’ll break it down into some bullet points for you.

• 1996 is the beginning of what I call “the eclectic ’90s,” in which mixing up genres and getting into random nostalgic sub-genres like swing music was a major virtue. (This is peak mix tape era, so that is a big reason for this shift in values.) Beck’s Odelay is a perfect example of this aesthetic, it was very much the center of the zeitgeist in this year, and that’s why “Where It’s At” opens this survey.

• This is the point at which the press and music industry tries to make “electronica” a thing, and though that feels a bit silly in retrospect, the prime movers here – The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Prodigy, Underworld – are all excellent. This is also the cultural peak for trip-hop, and a major year for Tricky, who actually has two tracks in this set. (The Nearly God song is also a Tricky production.) 1996 is also more or less the starting point for jungle/drum and bass, which we’ll get a lot more of in the next couple surveys.

• This is the peak of the East Coast/West Coast rivalry in hip-hop culture, and the emergence of Sean “Puffy” Combs as the dominant force in rap. But there’s a lot of major things happening in rap outside of the Death Row vs. Bad Boy situation – the release of major classics by the Fugees and Outkast, the reinvention of Kool Keith as Dr. Octagon, the commercial crossover of No Limit, the continuing renaissance of RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan in advance of Wu-Tang Forever, the breakthrough of instrumental hip-hop on DJ Shadow’s Entroducing. It’s also a key year for women in rap, with Lauryn Hill, Lil Kim, Foxy Brown, and Missy Elliott all moving to the center of mainstream rap.

• 1996 is also ground zero for the neo-soul movement, with D’Angelo building on the success of his debut alongside the debuts of Maxwell and Erykah Badu. (“On & On” was released near the end of the year, her first album comes out in 1997 and will also be featured there with a different song.)

• We’re at the tail end of the Britpop boom, and this survey is packed full of what I’d consider to be Britpop also-rans.

• This year is the beginning of what I’d consider the second wave of ‘90s indie rock, with Belle & Sebastian, Sleater-Kinney, Modest Mouse, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Cat Power all emerging to push that scene into the late ’90s and early ’00s. “Post-rock” is becoming a thing too, thanks to Tortoise, Mogwai, and Gastr del Sol.

• It’s also the year in which much of what is now considered emo began to take shape in various suburbs and midwestern cities in the United States. And hey, Weezer’s Pinkerton came out in this year too.

• It’s the end of the line for grunge as a major cultural force, largely because Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots all implode simultaneously, Pearl Jam officially shifts into “very large cult band” mode, and Screaming Trees just kinda fade away before ever hitting the big time. It’s also the end of R.E.M. as a major presence in pop culture, and the point at which The Smashing Pumpkins become so big that the rest of Billy Corgan’s career ends up feeling like a decline.

Thanks to Rob Sheffield, Sean T. Collins, Dan Kois, Eric Harvey, and especially Paul Cox for their valuable assistance in putting this set together. Thanks to Chappell Ellison for creating this Spotify playlist of the survey, minus about a dozen songs which are not available there.

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Beck “Where It’s At” / Stereolab “Metronomic Underground” / Tricky “Christiansands” / Fugees “Zealots” / Dr. Octagon “Blue Flowers” / Ginuwine “Pony” / Tori Amos “Professional Widow” / Rage Against the Machine “Bulls On Parade” / Chemical Brothers “Setting Sun” / Underworld “Born Slippy .NUXX” / Daft Punk “Da Funk” / Fiona Apple “Criminal” / Pulp “Disco 2000” / Belle & Sebastian “Seeing Other People” / Sleater-Kinney “Anonymous” / Guided by Voices “The Official Iron Men Rally Song” / The Loud Family “Don’t Respond, She Can Tell” / Sheryl Crow “If It Makes You Happy” / Bush “Swallowed” / Stone Temple Pilots “Big Bang Baby” / Imperial Teen “You’re One” / Imperial Drag “Boy Or A Girl” / Weezer “El Scorcho” / Ben Folds Five “Underground” / Spice Girls “Wannabe” / Mariah Carey “Always Be My Baby” / Blackstreet “No Diggity” / 2Pac “California Love” / Busta Rhymes “Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check” / Outkast “Elevators (Me & You)” / UGK “One Day” / DJ Shadow “Midnight In A Perfect World” / Dub Narcotic Sound System featuring Lois Maffeo “Ship to Shore”

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Luscious Jackson “Naked Eye” / The Cardigans “Lovefool” / Jon Spencer Blues Explosion “Can’t’ Stop” / Jay-Z “Ain’t No Nigga” / Junior MAFIA featuring Notorious BIG “Get Money” / Quad City DJs “C’mon N Ride It (The Train)” / Maxwell “Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder)” / Erykah Badu “On & On” / Jamiroquai “Virtual Insanity” / Sneaker Pimps “6 Underground” / Björk “Possibly Maybe” / Aphex Twin “Girl/Boy Song” / Aaliyah “If Your Girl Only Knew” / Ani DiFranco “Shameless” / Alanis Morissette “All I Really Want” / Cat Power “Nude As the News” / Chavez “Unreal Is Here” / Jonathan Fire Eater “The Search for Cherry Red” / Sebadoh “Nothing Like You” / Liz Phair “Six Dick Pimp” / Grant Lee Buffalo “Bethlehem Steel” / R.E.M. featuring Patti Smith “E-Bow the Letter” / The Tragically Hip “Ahead By A Century” / Counting Crows “Have You Seen Me Lately?” / Screaming Trees “All I Know” / Soundgarden “Burden In My Hand” / Pearl Jam “In My Tree” / Disco Inferno “It’s A Kid’s World” / Wilco “Misunderstood” / Lil Kim “No Time” / Foxy Brown “Get Me Home” / Ghostface Killah featuring Mary J Blige “All That I Got Is You”

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Tool “Stinkfist” / The Smashing Pumpkins “Tonight, Tonight” / Oasis “Don’t Look Back In Anger” / Radiohead “Talk Show Host” / Helium “What Institution Are You From?” / Nearly God featuring Neneh Cherry “Together Now” / Lox featuring The Notorious B.I.G. “You’ll See” / Nas “If I Ruled the World” / Geto Boys “The World Is A Ghetto” / Bone Thugs N Harmony “Tha Crossroads” / DJ Spooky “The Terran Invasion of Alpha Centauri 2794” / Silkk the Shockers featuring Master P “The Shocker” / Slum Village “Forth & Back (Remix)” / De La Soul “Itzsoweezee (HOT)” / 311 “All Mixed Up” / Sublime “What I Got” / Pavement “Give It A Day” / Archers of Loaf “Assassination On X-Mas Eve” / Robert Pollard “Psychic Pilot Clocks Out” / The Virgin-Whore Complex “Four Alarm Fire In Lovers’ Lane” / Foo Fighters “Big Me” / Sloan “The Lines You Amend” / Brian Jonestown Massacre “Cold to the Touch” / Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Stagger Lee” / The Prodigy “Firestarter” / Butthole Surfers “Pepper” / Eels “Novocaine for the Soul” / Cibo Matto “Sugar Water” / Primitive Radio Gods “Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand” / Baader Meinhof “There’s Gonna Be An Accident” / Menswear “Being Brave” / Neil Young “Music Arcade” / Jeremy Enigk “Explain” / Modest Mouse “Dramamine” / Smog “Lize” / The Olivia Tremor Control “NYC-25”

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Girls Against Boys “Super-Fire” / Veruca Salt “I’m Taking Europe with Me” / Korn “A.D.I.D.A.S.” / Marilyn Manson “The Beautiful People” / Alice In Chains “Sludge Factory (Unplugged)” / Hooverphonic “2 Wicky” / Akinyele “Put It In Your Mouth” / DJ Kool “Let Me Clear My Throat” / The Roots “What They Do” / MC Lyte featuring Missy Elliott “Cold Rock A Party (Bad Boy Remix)” / Total featuring Da Brat “No One Else (Puff Daddy Remix)” / Me’Shell Ndegeocello “Leviticus: Faggot” / D’Angelo “Lady” / Donna Lewis “I Love You Always Forever” / Jewel “You Were Meant for Me” / Alison Krauss “Baby Now That I’ve Found You” / Beth Orton “She Cries Your Name” / The Wallflowers “One Headlight” / Clint Black “Like the Rain” / Alan Jackson “Little Bitty” / George Strait “Carried Away” / Archive “Londinium” / Yum Yum “Apiary” / For Squirrels “Mighty K.C.” / Nada Surf “Zen Brain” / Fountains of Wayne “Sink to the Bottom” / Local H “Bound for the Floor” / The Promise Ring “A Picture Postcard” / Afghan Whigs “Honky’s Ladder” / Kula Shaker “Tattva” / OMC “How Bizarre” / Los Del Rio “Macarena” / Dave Matthews Band “Too Much” / R.L. Burnside “Shake ‘Em on Down” / The Make Up “R U A Believer” / Bikini Kill “Capri Pants” / Melt-Banana “It’s In the Pillcase” / Emily’s Sassy Lime “Cadillac Stinger”

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Velocity Girl “Gilded Stars” / Lush “Ladykillers” / Republica “Ready to Go” / Soul Coughing “Super Bon Bon” / Self “So Low” / Tracy Bonham “Mother Mother” / Jill Sobule “I Kissed A Girl” / No Doubt “Don’t Speak” / Manic Street Preachers “A Design for Life” / CJ Bolland “Sugar Is Sweeter” / Orbital “The Box” / Sepultura “Roots Bloody Roots” / Texas is the Reason “Back and to the Left” / Fu Manchu “Regal Begal” / Lifetime “The Boy’s No Good” / At the Drive-In “StarSlight” / New Radiant Storm King “C/Swoon” / Mogwai “Summer” / Mobb Deep “G.O.D. Part III” / A Tribe Called Quest “Phony Rappers” / Bounty Killer “War Face (Remix)” / Boards of Canada “Everything You Do Is A Balloon” / Plug “Drum N Bass for Papa” / RZA featuring Method Man and Cappadonna “Wu Wear, The Garment Renaissance” / Large Professor “Mad Scientist” / Tortoise “The Taut and Tame” / Toni Braxton “Un-Break My Heart” / Patty Griffin “Moses” / Tom Petty “Walls” / Hayden “Bad As They Seem” / The For Carnation “Lmyr, Marshmallow” / Psychic TV “The La La Song” / Bis “Teen C-Power!” / Suicide Machines “No Face” / Goldfinger “Here In Your Bedroom” / Reel Big Fish “Everything Sucks” / Superdrag “Sucked Out” / Supergrass “Going Out” / Sense Field “Outlive the Man” / Down by Law “Independence Day” / The Mountain Goats “Then the Letting Go”

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Master P featuring Silkk the Shocker “Mr. Ice Cream Man” / Xzibit “The Foundation” / Mad Skillz “The Nod Factor” / Shyheim “Shaolin Style” / 112 featuring The Notorious B.I.G. “Only You” / R. Kelly “I Believe I Can Fly” / Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey “One Sweet Day” / Garth Brooks “The Beaches of Cheyenne” / Trisha Yearwood “Believe Me Baby (I Tried)” / Lonestar “No News” / Shania Twain “I’m Outta Here” / Mindy McCready “Guys Do It All the Time” / Patti Smith “Gone Again” / Beautiful South “Rotterdam (Or Anywhere)” / Tracy Lawrence “Time Marches On” / Catatonia “You’ve Got A Lot to Answer For” / Tim McGraw “She Never Lets It Go to Her Heart” / Lambchop “The Man Who Loved Beer” / High Llamas “Checking In, Checking Out” / Silver Jews “How to Rent A Room” / Silkworm “Never Met A Man I Didn’t Like” / The Cure “Mint Car” / Combustible Edison “Short Double Latté” / Lilys “A Nanny In Manhattan” / Porno for Pyros “Porpoise Head” / Stabbing Westward “What Do I Have to Do?” / Gravity Kills “Guilty” / LTJ Bukem “Horizons (Vocal Mix)” / Photek “Titan” / Billie Ray Martin “Deadline for My Memories” / Spain “Untitled #1” / Zumpano “Behind the Beehive” / 16 Horsepower “Black Soul Choir” / Phish “Character Zero” / Nerf Herder “Van Halen” / Braid “Divers” / Bad Religion “A Walk” / Unwritten Law “Denied” / Brainiac “Nothing Ever Changes” / Henry’s Dress “Target Practice” / Neutral Milk Hotel “Song Against Sex” / Palace Music “Arise Therefore”

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Frank Black “The Marsist” / The Amps “Tipp City” / Polvo “Fast Canoe” / Metallica “Hero of the Day” / Refused “Coup D’etat” / Rasputina “Transylvanian Concubine” / Ministry “Reload” / Prong “Rude Awakening” / Future Sound of London “We Have Explosive (Oil Funk Remix)” / KMFDM “Rules” / Type O Negative “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” / Meat Beat Manifesto “Asbestos Lead Asbestos” / Jedi Knights “May the Funk Be With You” / SWV “You’re the One” / Keith Sweat “Twisted” / New Edition “Hit Me Off” / Redman “Smoke Buddah” / Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf “My World Premier” / INI “Fakin’ Jax’” / Bahamadia “True Honey Buns (Dat Freak Shit)” / Joe Henry “Trampoline” / Original Cast of Rent “Seasons of Love” / Backstreet Boys “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)” / Geggy Tah “Whoever You Are” / Los Lobos “Revolution” / Fatboy Slim “Everybody Needs A 303” / Squirrel Nut Zippers “Hell” / The Auteurs “Light Aircraft On Fire” / Remy Zero “Descent” / Luna “Season of the Witch” / Momus “Saved” / The Divine Comedy “Something for the Weekend” / Super Furry Animals “Something 4 the Weekend” / Arab Strap “The First Big Weekend” / Cast “Alright” / Jawbox “Mirrorful” / Jale “Ali” / Versus “Yeah You” / Butterglory “You’ll Never Be (As Good As That)” / Free Kitten “Kitten Bossanova” / Bardo Pond “Tantric Porno” / Gastr del Sol “Our Exquisite Replica of ‘Eternity’” / Dirty Three “Hope” / Rachel’s “Family Portrait”

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Michael Jackson “They Don’t Care About Us” / Fun Lovin’ Criminals “Scooby Snacks” / Everything But the Girl “Wrong (Todd Terry Mix)” / Pet Shop Boys “Se A Vida” / U96 “Heaven” / George Michael “Fastlove” / Madonna “You Must Love Me” / Snoop Dogg “Snoop’s Upside Ya Head” / Shaquille O’Neal featuring The Notorious B.I.G. “Still Can’t Stop the Reign” / Heltah Skeltah “Leflaur Leflah Eshkoshka” / Blahzay Blahzay “Danger” / Smoothe da Hustler “Broken Language” / Cake “The Distance” / Reverend Horton Heat “Big Red Rocket of Love” / Rocket from the Crypt “Born in 69” / The Wonders “That Thing You Do!” / moe. “She Sends Me” / Brooks & Dunn “My Maria” / Lyle Lovett “The Road to Ensenada” / Gin Blossoms “Follow You Down” / The Lemonheads “If I Could Talk I’d Tell You” / Boys Life “All of the Negatives” / Opeth “The Night and the Silent Water (Morningrise)” / His Name Is Alive “Movie” / The Frogs “I’m Evil, Jack” / Rainer Maria “I Love You Too” / The Spinanes “Lines and Lines” / Come “Secret Number” / Boss Hog “I Dig You” / Kustomized “Handcuffs” / Moby “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” / Comet Gain “Last Night” / Unwound “Corpse Pose” / Urusei Yatsura “Pow R Ball” / Ash “Goldfinger” / Dodgy “If You’re Thinking of Me” / The Wrens “Rest Your Head” / D Generation “Frankie” / The Cranberries “Salvation” / Limblifter “Screwed It Up” / East River Pipe “Kill the Action” / Ocean Colour Scene “The Riverboat Song” / The Black Crowes “Blackberry” / Suede “Trash” / Babybird “You’re Gorgeous” / Boyzone “Words” / Guv’ner “She’s Evil” / Longpigs “On and On” / The Verve Pipe “The Freshmen”

Fleet Foxes “Mearcstapa”

At some point between Fleet Foxes’ second and third albums, the emphasis of Robin Pecknold’s music shifted from the human voice to the guitar. His voice is still there, ringing out with a lot of echo, but it’s moved from the center of his arrangements to the periphery, like he’s some spectral presence lost in the empty spaces and skeletal structures of the music.

I like the way Pecknold’s music on Crack-Up emphasizes the tactile nature of the instruments. The guitars, bass, cellos, and violins carry melodies and form structures in the music, but they also sound like – well, metal strings. This is both literal and abstract. “Mearcstapa” opens with overlapping guitar parts that sound like wires swaying on a light breeze, evoking in my mind the image of some broken piece of infrastructure in the middle of nowhere. A jazzier guitar part that comes midway through the song is considerably more graceful and conventionally beautiful, but that passage is relatively brief.

You end up back in the same desolate space before drifting out on an ambiguous melody played in rounds by a string section. The composition comes together to feel like some kind of journey, but there’s a strange absence of strong emotion. It reminds me of clinical depression, of feeling like you just can’t access your own feelings and so you just get increasingly numb. That string outro gets under my skin because as much as it announces that something significant has definitely happened, the feeling of it registers as either “now what?” or “so what?”

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Selena Gomez “Bad Liar”

If I’m being honest with you, I really didn’t expect my favorite pop song of 2017 thus far to come from Selena Gomez, a singer who up until just now I’d considered kinda boring and not particularly talented. But here we are, and I’m happy to have been wrong about her.

“Bad Liar” is mainly written by Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter, who’ve worked together on Gomez’s music in the past and have clearly learned the best way to showcase Gomez’s personality is to not crowd her voice and allow space for the nuances in her phrasing to thrive. The Gomez of “Bad Liar” is flustered by her infatuation, and the verses have a low key anxious energy – she’s beating herself up a bit, and making odd references and jokes that are considerably more clever than what you’d reasonably expect from contemporary mainstream pop. The Selena Gomez in this song is a very clearly recognizable person – I’m not sure if it’s Gomez, per se, but it’s an intriguing and relatable character. Gomez’s previous hits with Michaels and Tranter, “Good for You” and “Hands to Myself,” cover similar ground, and convincingly present the singer as the pop star for horny introverts.

Gomez’s phrasing in this song is outstanding, tilting from the dry, understated humor of the verses to a sweet, high hypnotic tone for the chorus. Her voice may seem reedy and thin in other contexts, but here it’s perfectly suited to the melody and structure and conveys just the right balance of lust and neurosis.

And yes, that is the bass line from Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.” It’d be easy for Gomez, Michaels, and Tranter to be lazy and just let that familiar, perfect groove do all the work in the song, but there’s so many strong hooks and interesting moments in “Bad Liar” that it kinda just settles into the background as this twitchy pulse that connects the sentiment of the song to the anxiety pop of 40 years ago.

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Radiohead “Man of War”

I suppose that when you’re in the middle of a creative hot streak as impressive as Radiohead’s in the mid to late ‘90s, you learn to follow your instincts when a good song isn’t quite working they way you’d want it to. But I listen to “Man of War” – this fully fleshed-out, gorgeously produced version recorded circa OK Computer that is featured on the new reissue, or really any other version of the song that’s leaked out over the years, and I’m just baffled as to what the problem could’ve been. It seems to have been mostly an issue of arrangement, as the structure of the song never shifts. And as much as I love this recording, I can understand that restlessness – I’m not crazy about the particular tone on the intro guitar part, for example. But it comes together as one of Radiohead’s darkest, most majestic pieces of music, and features a few of the best melodies the group has ever written. How is that big Jonny Greenwood guitar lick, followed by an orchestral iteration of the same motif, not one of his finest moments? How is Thom Yorke’s strange balance of sexuality, dread, menace, and morbidity in this song not a perfect example of his peculiar and potent charisma as a singer? It’s just incredibly hard to imagine what could have motivated them to keep this song locked up for 20 years, aside from perhaps some bad memories attached to the process of making it. Either way, as a person who rewinded that bit with this song in Meeting People Is Easy many times over, I’m very grateful to finally have this.

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Bedouine “One of These Days”

Azniv Korkejian’s voice has a warm, calm tone that suggests perspective, serenity, and wisdom. Everything in “One of These Days” feels measured, even, and tidy, and I suppose that makes a lot of sense given that the lyrics are about patiently waiting for someone to fully return her romantic interest. There’s no trace of anxiety or fear in this, she sings every word as though she knows that this love is meant to be, and will inevitably fall into place. “If it’s true that I feel more for you than you do for me, it’s funny honey how love has some delay,” she sings, seemingly unshakable in her faith. It’s a beautiful sentiment, and somehow in the moment never seems delusional or creepy, just earnest and pure.

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DJDS featuring Amber Mark and Marco McKinnis “Trees On Fire”

There is a serious glut of “minimalist” music, to the point that the seemingly endless amount of negative space between clicky beats and thin vocals in a wide range of contemporary pop, rap, and indie music has come to feel oppressive and dull. DJDS’ single “Trees On Fire” feels like a step away from this status quo – it’s essentially a euphoric R&S/quasi-house song in the vein of Basement Jaxx – but there’s enough empty air in the arrangement to feel like a half-step removed from 2017 pop rather than a full leap. The song is very much about Marco McKinnis and Amber Mark’s vocals, and they’re big and bold enough to occupy most of the space in the music and direct its momentum. The beat and keyboard parts mostly just frame the vocal and reinforce the shape of the melody. There’s a cool, refreshing feeling to this music, like a blast of air conditioning through hot, humid air. It’s like getting a taste of relief, and the grasping desperately for more.

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Lorde “The Louvre”

I envy the emotional connection people have with this new Lorde record, not necessarily because I feel a deep need to like this particular album more than I do, but because I wish the intense feelings in the music didn’t feel so removed from my life. When I see people talk about how vivid and urgent these lyrics about passionate infatuation and its bitter aftermath feel for them, there’s a part of me that quietly mutters “…must be nice.”

So at this moment in my life, I can only really approach Lorde’s new music in formalist terms. This means I get frustrated with some of the melodies being a bit slight for my taste, and feel actively annoyed that the catchiest song on the record by far – “Loveless” – is reduced to an unfinished sketch tacked to the end of another song. But it also means that I’m intrigued by her unconventional song structures and impressed by her inspired turns of phrase. I’m particularly fond of the pithy, self-effacing way she says “we’re the greatest / they’ll hang us in the Louvre / down the back, but who cares / still the Louvre” – a great punchline in a song that is otherwise no joke at all.

The structure of “The Louvre” feels inverted, with all the momentum and catchy bits happening in the verses, leading up to relatively inert elliptical moments that are technically pre-choruses and choruses on a purely structural level. The lyrics reflect that inversion too, with the chorus “broadcast the boom boom boom and make em all dance to it” completing a poetic thought about anticipation while also feeling like “hey, that’s where this feeling should go, but I need to focus on the moment right now.”

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The Orielles “I Only Bought It for the Bottle”

The first time I featured The Orielles on this site was last year, when they were a tuneful but rather scrappy garage band. They’ve evolved a bit since then – a little glossier, a bit sassier in a very British sort of way, and a lot more focused on rhythm and bass. I’m into the way Andrew Weatherall has remixed them into quasi-DFA punk-funk territory in his versions of their song “Sugar Tastes Like Salt,” but I’m even more fond of the winding melodies in their more recent single “I Only Bought It for the Bottle.” The groove feels off-kilter from the start, and the lead guitar parts spiral around the beat as if they’re trying to induce vertigo. The lyrics are sharp too, implicating themselves in a consumerist obsession with style over substance, but without getting overly righteous about it.

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Phoenix “Tuttifrutti”

The new Phoenix album is meant to be an escapist fantasy, a dreamy European wonderland of a piece with the romanticized luxury of Thomas Mars’ wife Sophia Coppola’s body of work. But just as the surface aesthetic of her films are a front for directionless melancholy, Mars’ words undermine the up tempo summer vibes of his band’s music. “Tuttifrutti” in particular builds up a fantasy of wealth and indulgence just to imagine what it’d be like to tear it apart. There’s a resentful tone in his phrases – “don’t tell the broken hearted ‘that’s what you get’” – but there’s no clear narrative. It’s just a vivid setting and a relatable feeling, and the aesthetic is overpowering enough that the sentiment is relatively subtle.

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