Author Archive

Ty Segall “Break A Guitar”

There has been no shortage of dudes drawing on Black Sabbath riffs over the past – oh, hmm, 40 years or so? – but a lot of the time, it’s just aimless sludgy riffage without much charm. Ty Segall does it right by keeping that sort of heaviness and bombast connected to the more delicate and tuneful aspects of psychedelia. In his hands, the riffs don’t just sound like the lumbering thuds of a giant, but are nimble like a musclebound football player who moves with an unexpected speed and grace. Segall is never breaking any new ground, but he’s always refining approaches to things other musicians do quite lazily, and he makes rock that some might write off as retro feel fresh though sheer force of will and vitality.

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Gabriel Garzón-Montano “Sour Mango”

Gabriel Garzón-Montano’s melodies are bold and immediately charming, but rendered in layers of muted pastel tones that keep a relatively busy song like “Sour Mango” from feeling too rich and heavy. There’s a nice feeling of weightlessness in this song, with the vocal and instrumental harmonies hovering around a crisp beat that keeps a steady groove but feels more like scaffolding for melody. Garzón-Montano’s voice is soulful but not showy – it’s the most vibrant aspect of the song, but doesn’t overwhelm the low-key, relaxed feeling of the overall track. I’m particularly fond of the vaguely siren-like keyboard part that carries through the piece as a crucial part of the harmony and serves as a nearly subliminal hook that sticks around in my head after the song’s over.

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Japandroids “Arc of Bar”

“Arc of Bar” is a skyscraper of a song, building upwards towards the heavens with each verse as if the band was on a solemn mission to go get a beer with God Himself. A lot of beers. This is the most epic drinking song I have ever heard, and maybe the only one I’ve encountered that makes drinking booze seem like some kind of defiant, heroic duty. Brian King’s verses are wordy and deliberately grandiose, but the chorus is exactly the sort of cathartic, mindless bombast Japandroids does best: “Yeah yeaaaah! / YEAH YEAH!!!” This is seven minutes of theatrical rock music designed to make people go wild at a concert, and is such a convincing advertisement for inebriation that it’s a huge boon to the bartenders at every venue this band plays for the rest of the career. But as much as this song sets up a good time, it’s lost and confused and tortured at its core. It’s constantly grasping upwards at something – grace, glory, redemption? – but never getting a hold of anything. So it just keeps going higher and higher until it inevitably falls down.

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Delicate Steve “Nightlife”

Delicate Steve plays guitar like a lead singer, so it works out nicely that there’s no singer in his band. His lead parts carry the central melody of the tunes, but even if it works as a substitution for a traditional rock singer, it doesn’t necessarily feel like one. Steve’s parts are highly expressive and instantly memorable, and frankly, convey a lot more personality than most indie rock singers. The songs on This Is Steve are so catchy and well-composed that they’d probably be hits if they had singing in place of Steve’s leads, but they’d lose a significant amount of charm, and distract from the colorful, idealized alternate reality suggested by the music. “Nightlife” in particular sounds like some better, more cheerful world where seemingly disparate elements from twangy rock and reggae blend together seamlessly and it’s totally chill and casual.

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Foxygen “Avalon”

If you are a musician skilled in mimicry, glam rock is your friend. There’s never any need to be authentic, and you’re only limited by a lack of shame and/or a lack of funds. Foxygen gave up on shame years ago, and now they’ve got the budget to back themselves up with a large orchestra, so you’d better believe they went well over the top on their new record. “Avalon” is gloriously artificial, bouncing around between ‘70s touchstones both unimpeachably cool (Bowie) and perennially tacky (Meat Loaf), and like, actual musical theater. This is theatrical rock that sounds like it aspires to actually becoming gleefully dorky Broadway razzle-dazzle, as though the record won’t be truly finished until it’s a jukebox musical. It’s all kinda-sorta a joke – on some level they’re goofing on musical tropes as much as they’re embracing them, and I am certain you’re meant to smile and go “wow, they really did that!” when you listen. But there’s no way you invest this much time and craft and personality into something you think is bullshit, unless bullshit is your absolute favorite thing in the world. And with these guys, I think that could be true.

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The xx “Say Something Loving”

The xx have become significantly less minimalist on their new album I See You, integrating the samples and muted dance music aesthetics of Jamie xx’s solo material while still sounding exactly like the xx. The shift isn’t drastic – pretty much all of this still can be described as “minimal” compared to most other things and the music still is all about creating a powerful sense of intimacy. Romy and Oliver, both openly queer in real life, still sound like a very intense straight couple when they sing to each other. But the sound is brighter, less static. The world implied in their songs feels a lot bigger than just the two of them in close quarters.

“Say Something Loving” is about finding love again after being starved for affection for a long time, and the conflict between feeling happy and grateful for this good fortune, and terrified that you’ll screw it up somehow. “I wasn’t patient to meet you,” Oliver sings. “Am I too needy, am I too eager?” They articulate these anxieties but don’t let those feelings overtake the song, keeping the emphasis on the warmth and affection. They evoke a specific moment a lot of us have experienced: Getting exactly what we want but spoiling it by thinking the whole time about how it’s going to go away.

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Joan of Arc “This Must Be the Placenta”

Tim Kinsella is very playful in his approach to lyrics, and seems to layer his work with sly references to music, literature, and art both obscure and famous as if to make it all a code for someone nearly as clever and tasteful as himself to crack. But it doesn’t stop there. Kinsella has a gift for juxtaposing vividly strange phrases with lines that start out like self-aware jokes but have an agonizing emotional resonance. You get all of that in “This Must Be the Placenta” on top of a track that manages to feel wobbly and seasick despite a steady, in-the-pocket groove. There’s a lot of great lines in this one, but the one that really sticks with me is “I’ve had a 26-year-old girlfriend since the day I turned 11.” It’s funny, but also so strange and provocative as it sits in my mind and I try to unpack that thought. I like to think that it’s not the same girlfriend, but that his desires have shifted from aspirational maturity and yearning for maternal attention to looking for an equal to wanting to reverse the original dynamic. Another phrase that gets repeated is “all along unknowingly I acted out the plan,” and in light of that, the “26-year-old girlfriend” bit seems more like a joke he’s barely in on.

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Alexander F “Soft Coffins”

“Soft Coffin” is a song that does its best to be kind and reassuring to some anxious, depressive person, but doesn’t seem to actually understand what this person is going through. It’s sympathy and love, but not exactly empathy. And while that’s not ideal, it’s something I think all of us feel from time to time when someone we care about is hurting themselves one way or another and we just want them to stop and to acknowledge they are loved. Alexander F’s song has the hallmarks of an uplifting arena rock song but the underpinnings of something more uncertain and twitchy, and the lyrics spike sweet sentiments with jokes to mitigate the tension and to keep it from being prescriptive. It sounds like a very recognizable mix of kindness and awkwardness and exasperation.

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Chavez “Blank in the Blaze”

Chavez songs share a similar formal logic in which tension is introduced and then doubled or tripled before it is released. Matt Sweeney and Clay Tarver’s guitars on the new song “Blank in the Blaze” alternate between melodic part that tighten up like coils of metal wire or riffs that clench up like fists. The approach is exactly the same as when they more regularly produced music 20 years ago; this could easily be an outtake from Ride the Fader. There are some bands who could come back after a long hiatus and end up feeling different, but it makes sense that Chavez would snap into their distinctive groove, since the band emerged from a set of clear formal rules and restraints. And all of those rules are there just to make sure that you get exactly what’s at the end of “Blank”: a soaring sensation of triumph tempered by a feeling of exhaustion and lost.

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Run the Jewels “Call Ticketron”

Run the Jewels have been great from the start, but I think it’s taken them a bit to transition from “project” to full-time collaborators. The intensity and chemistry has always been there, but Killer Mike and El-P sound emboldened by the realization that RTJ has becoming the defining work of their long careers, and seem thrilled to give the people what they want. These are guys who’ve built their reputations on projecting confidence, but they’ve never seemed as sure of themselves as they do on these new songs. It must help to know when you’re writing songs exactly how excited people will be to hear them, and what will make people lose their shit when you perform live. “Call Ticketron” is one of the songs that seems built specifically for the live show – there’s the “l-l-l-live from the Garden” refrain, sure, but it’s more in the way the track contrasts its vast negative space with a rhythm that tightens up a lot before releasing the tension. El-P and Mike switch up their approaches to the beat through the song, with the former lurking around it at the start, and the latter ratcheting up the tension in his last verse by packing in the syllables and leaning into internal rhyme.

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Nine Inch Nails “Burning Bright (Field on Fire)”

Trent Reznor approaches record formats like a painter – some works are large canvasses, others are diptychs or murals, and a few here and there are miniatures. Not the Actual Events is in the latter category along with Broken and the first How to Destroy Angels EP. As with those previous small scale works, it’s a complete thought with a distinctive aesthetic. The songs have the raw garage punk urgency of The Slip, but it’s far more cluttered and abrasive, and mostly avoids the melody and harmony at the core of even Reznor’s heaviest music.

Not the Actual Events is a deliberate mess; it’s a calculated replica of a chaotic state of mind. It starts off with a punk song that cuts out just as it starts to accelerate, as if the song just crashed into a wall, and then lurches though a middle section that sounds lost, desperate, and confused. Reznor and Atticus Ross go wild with texture – there’s a lot of clashing and overlapping planes of sound, and stuff that sounds like Joy Division strangling My Bloody Valentine guitar parts to death. Reznor’s voice is present through the whole thing, but it’s often obscured or nearly incoherent as he recites lyrics that are closer to free verse than his usual rhythmic and melodic cadences. The themes aren’t far off from where he was last time around on Hesitation Marks – he’s afraid of backsliding into old habits and destroying the life he’s built, and overwhelmed with paranoia about a world in decline. It all ends with a sort of thwarted catharsis in which Reznor finds the strength and clarity to push back against all of this anxiety, and he gives himself some space for a clear, relatively calm vocal melody to cut through the blaring guitar. But in the same song where he’s singing about being forgiven and free, he’s telling himself “you’re not really what you know you are.” It doesn’t feel like a victory.

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Welcome to the ’90s, dude.

This is the first in the 1990s survey mix series, which will come out monthly in chronological order through this year. It’s important for the ‘90s to be presented in order, because the story of music in that decade is basically a trilogy in which each act ends in tragedy – the suicide of Kurt Cobain, the murders of Tupac and Biggie, and the toxic masculinity run rampant at Woodstock ’99.

In this framework, 1990 is like a prologue in which we watch the 1980s shift into the 1990s with a great deal of innocence and optimism. 1990 is a peculiar year with a distinct aesthetic that is almost entirely abandoned by 1992. It’s as though at some point in 1989, everyone was sent a memo “hey, this is what the ‘90s is gonna sound like” and then by spring of 1991, another memo went out telling people to scrap all that and go in another direction. Anyway, enjoy immersing yourself in the first draft of the ‘90s. It’s pretty fun for the most part, and it starts off with Mariah Carey showing up out of nowhere and changing the course of pop music forever.

Thanks to Paul Cox, Rob Sheffield, Sean T. Collins, and Chris Conroy for their valuable assistance in putting this set together!

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

Mariah Carey “Vision of Love” / Wilson Phillips “Hold On” / Madonna “Vogue” / Deee-Lite “Groove Is In the Heart” / George Michael “Freedom ’90” / The Black Crowes “Hard to Handle” / Tevin Campbell “Round and Round” / Janet Jackson “Escapade” / INXS “Disappear” / Depeche Mode “Enjoy the Silence” / Sinead O’Connor “Nothing Compares 2 U” / My Bloody Valentine “Soon” / Nine Inch Nails “Sin” / Enigma “Sadeness Pt 1” / Bell Biv DeVoe “Poison” / C&C Music Factory “Gonna Make You Sweat” / Happy Mondays “Step On” / Primal Scream “Come Together” / Maxi Priest “Close to You” / Ralph Tresvant “Sensitivity” / Queensryche “Silent Lucidity”

DOWNLOAD DISC 2

LL Cool J “Mama Said Knock You Out” / Public Enemy “911 Is A Joke” / MC Hammer “U Can’t Touch This” / Morrissey “Piccadilly Palare” / Garth Brooks “Friends In Low Places” / Concrete Blonde “Joey” / The La’s “There She Goes” / The B-52’s “Roam” / Aerosmith “Janie’s Got A Gun” / Alannah Myles “Black Velvet” / Heart “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” / Suzanne Vega & DNA “Tom’s Diner” / Lisa Stansfield “All Around the World” / Snap! “The Power” / Adamski “Killer” / Soho “Hippychick” / 808 State “Pacific 202” / The Cure “Never Enough” / The Soup Dragons “I’m Free” / The Stone Roses “One Love” / Ride “Vapour Trail” / Cocteau Twins “Iceblink Luck” / Roxette “It Must Have Been Love” / Go West “The King of Wishful Thinking” / Celine Dion “Where Does My Heart Beat Now”

DOWNLOAD DISC 3

Jane’s Addiction “Been Caught Stealing” / Pixies “Dig for Fire” / Sonic Youth “Kool Thing” / Fugazi “Repeater” / A Tribe Called Quest “Bonita Applebum” / Keith Sweat “Make You Sweat” / Salt-N-Pepa “Let’s Talk About Sex” / Roxanne Shante “Brothers Ain’t Shit” / Vanilla Ice “Ice Ice Baby” / Consolidated “Product” / The KLF “What Time Is Love?” / Black Box “I Don’t Know Anybody Else” / Neneh Cherry “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” / Stevie B “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” / Julee Cruise “Falling” / Yo La Tengo “Oklahoma, USA” / Clint Black “Loving Blind” / Emmylou Harris “Tougher Than the Rest” / King Missile “Jesus Was Way Cool” / Buffalo Tom “Skeleton Key” / Mudhoney “Hate the Police” / World Party “Way Down Now” / Winger “Can’t Get Enuff” / Nelson “Love and Affection” / Phish “Bouncing Around the Room” / Prefab Sprout “Wild Horses” / Everything But the Girl “Driving”

DOWNLOAD DISC 4

Paul Simon “The Obvious Child” / Alice In Chains “Man in the Box” / Nirvana “Sliver” / The Breeders “Iris” / Lush “Sweetness and Light” / Mazzy Star “Holah” / The Sundays “Here’s Where the Story Ends” / Blake Babies “I’ll Take Anything” / Cinderella “Shelter Me” / Billy Idol “Cradle of Love” / Los Lobos “I Walk Alone” / Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians “Black and Blue” / Heavenly “Escort Crash on Marston Street” / Aztec Camera “Good Morning Britain” / Teenage Fanclub “Everything Flows” / The Simpsons “Do the Bartman” / Tony! Toni! Toné! “Feels Good” / Brand Nubian “Feels So Good” / Ice Cube “Who’s the Mack?” / Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. “Psyko Funk” / Dr. Alban “No Coke” / Cud “Magic (Farsley Mix)” / Betty Boo “Where Are You Baby?” / Nikki “Notice Me” / Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “The Ship Song”

DOWNLOAD DISC 5

N.W.A. “100 Miles and Runnin’” / Above the Law “Murder Rap” / Pantera “Cowboys from Hell” / KMFDM “Godlike” / Iggy Pop “Candy” / Poison “Unskinny Bop” / Mother Love Bone “Stardog Champion” / Warrant “Cherry Pie” / Indigo Girls “Welcome Me” / Bongwater “Talent Is A Vampire” / Guy “Wanna Get With U” / Too Short “Short But Funky” / Johnny Gill “Rub You the Right Way” / Beats International “Dub Be Good To Me” / The Orb “Little Fluffy Clouds” / Adrian Belew “Young Lions” / The Chills “Heavenly Pop Hit” / The Charlatans “The Only One I Know” /Bailter Space “Fish Eye” / Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine “Sheriff Fatman” / New Kids on the Block “Step by Step” / The Pooh Sticks “Radio Ready” / Mecca Normal “Water Cuts My Hands” / Inspiral Carpets “This Is How It Feels” / Prince “Thieves in the Temple”

DOWNLOAD DISC 6

MC 900 Ft. Jesus “UFO’s Are Real” / Big Daddy Kane “It’s Hard Being the Kane” / Monie Love “Monie in the Middle” / EPMD “Gold Digger” / Digital Underground “The Humpty Dance” / Eric B. and Rakim “Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em” / Youssou N’Dour “Toxiques” / Whitney Houston “I’m Your Baby Tonight” / Meat Beat Manifesto “Genocide” / Nitzer Ebb “Fun to be Had” / Boogie Down Productions “Love’s Gonna Get’cha (Material Love)” / DC Talk “Nu Thang” / Brian Eno & John Cale “One Word” / Dead Can Dance “The Song of the Sibyl” / His Name Is Alive “How Ghosts Affect Relationships” / Lloyd Cole “Downtown” / They Might Be Giants “Birdhouse In Your Soul” / The Bats “Smoking Her Wings” / The Replacements “Merry Go Round” / Dwight Yoakum “You’re the One” / Straitjacket Fits “Down In Splendour” / The Lemonheads “Stove” / The Flaming Lips “Take Meta Mars” / Pavement “Perfect Depth” / Sun City Girls “Space Prophet Dogon”

DOWNLOAD DISC 7

AC/DC “Thunderstruck” / Neil Young & Crazy Horse “Fuckin’ Up” / Jon Bon Jovi “Blaze of Glory” / Reba McEntire “Fancy” / Uncle Tupelo “No Depression” / Rosanne Cash “What We Really Want” / Cowboy Junkies “Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning” / Bob Dylan “Born In Time” / Hothouse Flowers “Give It Up” / Midnight Oil “Blue Sky Mine” / Rod Stewart “Downtown Train” / Cher “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” / Elton John “Club at the End of the Street” / Kylie Minogue “Better the Devil You Know” / Rob N’ Raz featuring Leila K “Got to Get” / 2 In A Room “Wiggle It” / Technotronic “Get Up” / Intelligent Hoodlum “Black & Proud” / X-Clan “Raise the Flag” / YZ “Tower with the Power” / Pop Will Eat Itself “Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina” / The Lightning Seeds “Pure” / The Clean “Draw(in)g to a (W)hole” / McCarthy “And Tomorrow the Stock Exchange Will be the Human Race” / Manic Street Preachers “New Art Riot” / Social Distortion “Ball and Chain”

DOWNLOAD DISC 8

Big Audio Dynamite II “Change of Atmosphere” / Jesus Jones “Real Real Real” / Pet Shop Boys “The End of the World” / En Vogue “Hold On” / Kid N Play “Funhouse” / Calloway “I Wanna Be Rich” / Yngwie Malmsteen “Making Love” / Anthrax “Got the Time” / The Jesus Lizard “Killer McHann” / Helmet “Repetition” / The Fatima Mansions “Look What I Stole for Us, Darling” / Prong “Lost and Found” / Flotsam and Jetsam “Deviation” / Bob Mould “It’s Too Late” / The Boo Radleys “Eleanor Everything” / Superchunk “Sick to Move” / Big Dipper “Love Barge” / L7 “Shove” / Afghan Whigs “Retarded” / Bad Religion “21st Century (Digital Boy)” / The Posies “Suddenly Mary” / Traveling Wilburys “She’s My Baby” / Mary Chapin Carpenter “Down at the Twist and Shout” / The Beautiful South “A Little Time” / The Cannanes “Vivienne” / Björk “Gling Gló” / James Ingram “I Don’t Have the Heart” / Michael Bolton “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You” / Bette Midler “From A Distance”

George Michael “Praying for Time”

“Praying for Time” is a song from 26 years ago, but its lyrics are extremely resonant in this rather dire time we’re entering at the end of 2016. George Michael is singing about a world in which empathy is in very short supply, but fear and greed is rampant, and there’s this pervasive feeling of dread because it seems clear that the worst is yet to come. But again, this song is 26 years old – it’s always been this way. And there’s some hope in that, because it shows us that there’s a future, even if that future is full of the same human failings that have plagued us for centuries. The chorus is about just that: “It’s hard to love, there’s so much to hate / Hanging on to hope when there is no hope to speak of.” George Michael had no answers, and wasn’t trying to tell anyone things would be OK. But he was imploring everyone to make an effort to be kind, and to lift up those who need help, and to make the best of what time we have left. I don’t think he was asking for too much.

Buy it from Amazon.

George Michael “I Want Your Sex (Part One)”

If you’re in your late 30s or early 40s, you almost certainly heard this song on the radio or MTV as a kid around your parents and felt super awkward about it, even if you didn’t really know what sex was. I remember it being an “after hours” thing on pop radio at some point in the late ‘80s, but then, if I was listening to “after hours” pop radio when I was, like, 8 years old and it was probably around 9:00 at night, then what exactly was the point?

“I Want Your Sex” is one of the most musically and lyrically radical major pop hits of the 1980s; a sex-positive funk tune that shifts seamlessly between minimalism and maximalism, and effortlessly conveys a supremely horny vibe on a purely musical level. George Michael was running with ideas that Prince had introduced circa 1999 and refined with “Kiss,” which was a hit a little bit before this track was recorded, but his feeling is very different – confident and unabashedly sexual, but considerably more frustrated. The entire song is George Michael laying out a very persuasive and respectful case for why you should have sex with him. He’s basically saying “Hey, I’m so HORNY I’m gonna BURST but no pressure, OK, sex is a beautiful thing and I respect you and need your consent and want you to have a great time.” The miracle of this song is that it’s kind and generous and loving, but also makes you feel the urgency of George Michael’s raging boner. The sweet-talking is totally sincere, but so is this guy’s powerful urge to fuck, and so you get this song that’s seductive, sweet, and comical all at the same time.

Buy it from Amazon.

Kool Keith and Kutmasta Kurt “Your Mom Is My Wife”

Kool Keith was on such a hot streak in the late ‘90s that he was somehow willing to throw a song as excellent and immediately appealing as “Your Mom Is My Wife” in a vault for 20 years. I have no idea why this track was scrapped back then – maybe Keith had second thoughts about releasing a song in which he condescendingly treats the then-current generation of rappers like his literal sons and demands homage and respect. (Hip-hop itself is the mother, obviously.) But regardless of his motives at the time, the song has aged very well. So well, in fact, that I didn’t realize it wasn’t a brand new tune the first few times I heard it, and only discovered its origin upon Googling it in advance of writing about it. The lyrics are even funnier now that Keith is old enough to be the actual father of many contemporary rappers, though it is pretty amusing to think that this old man routine was coming from a dude who was about 33 at the time it was recorded.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

The 1975 “Love Me”

One of the negative effects of having made the 1980s survey set is that my tolerance for people saying that some recent music sounds like “the ‘80s” when it does not is very low. This is typically just a lazy way of saying “this sounds like upbeat pop music” or “this has a keyboard on it,” and is almost always something that is written and produced in a very contemporary way. The 1975’s “Love Me” is the rare song from the recent past that genuinely sounds like “the ‘80s” on a structural level – the music could easily pass for mid-‘80s INXS, and there’s a lot of Scritti Politti and Nile Rodgers in it too. But beyond that, Matthew Healy looks and sounds like the second coming of Michael Hutchence, and is the first major rock star in ages to really lean into being overtly sexual and self-objectifying. Healy’s performance in the video for “Love Me” is magnetic and highly entertaining – he’s overflowing with personality, and clearly gets off on preening around in this very cheeky way. There’s a bit of young Robert Smith in his hair and makeup, and a touch of Mick Jagger in his “I’m having a laugh, come party with me” vibe. What’s particularly wonderful about “Love Me” and The 1975 is that as much as it’s all connecting to excellent elements of older music that’s been more or less lost for a few generations, it all still sounds very of this moment. Their aesthetics and concerns are fresh, it’s just the template that’s familiar.

Buy it from Amazon.

Japanese Breakfast “Everybody Wants to Love You”

Everything in “Everybody Wants to Love You” sounds a bit hazy and sparkly at the same time, like camera footage that’s been treated to seem heightened and idealized in post-production. It’s the perfect sound for a song about a crush, and really pulls the listener into this overwhelming optimism and bliss. The lyrics build on that feeling perfectly by focusing on details and little fantasies. There’s a lot of lust in this song, but even more romanticism, and that thing of feeling so excited by possibilities that you can’t stop yourself from constructing perfect moments of sex and love in advance of anything actually happening.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

J. Cole “Ville Mentality”

J. Cole’s massive popularity is a fascinating outlier. He’s not much of a celebrity, he doesn’t make a lot of guest appearances, he has no crossover hits, his style is low-key and very off-trend. He’s essentially very successful counter-programming, a current rapper whose music sounds always sounds like it’s from somewhere between 1997 and 2002 – i.e., what would amount to Classic Hip-Hop for people who would presently be in their late 20s to mid 30s. If you just want the Old Kanye, Cole is for you. If you miss conscious rap but feel like Kendrick is too pretentious, Cole is for you. If you can’t connect with Drake or Future, Cole is for you. If you barely even know YG and Young Thug and Lil Uzi Vert, Cole is your dude. But then, Cole is for anyone who likes rap because Cole makes Default Rap music.

This sounds like I’m damning J. Cole with faint praise, but I think he’s a good rapper and a better producer. Cole’s productions tend to be subtle in their details and melancholy in tone, he’s almost entirely uninterested in bangers or anything you could conceivably dance to. He sticks to this very Nas-like lane, and it suits his voice – never convincingly aggressive or sexy, but highly introspective. “Ville Mentality” is a great example of how he and his collaborators – in this case, Elite and Ron Gilmore – frame Cole’s words with music that feels elegant and cinematic. The track signals Seriousness and Importance but backs away from outright pomposity or heavy-handed sentimentality. It comes out sounding quite tasteful, and emotional on its own terms.

Buy it from Amazon.

Ab-Soul “Threatening Nature”

Ab-Soul’s lyrics are about as densely crafted as they come, but his cadence and flow is loose and conversational, full of asides that deviate from meter without derailing the rhythm. “Threatening Nature” is too carefully written to feel improvised, but he does sound exceptionally casual as he picks at Christian theology, draws inspiration from Aleister Crowley’s philosophy of Thelema, and contrasts the oppression of black people with institutional sexism dating back to the dawn of time. It’s difficult to sum up exactly what he’s saying here – the point is that it’s all complicated and fucked up – but it’s fascinating to get inside this guy’s head and follow his connections. I’m particularly happy with how explicitly feminist this song gets, but I do wish it didn’t come immediately after he drops some homophobic language. It doesn’t wreck the song for me, but it does undermine its message, and fails to make the obvious connection that homophobia is rooted in misogyny.

Buy it from iTunes.

Here’s the 2016 survey, featuring 222 songs from across several genres from the past year. Unlike the 1980s survey mixes, this is not really about giving a historically accurate picture of the year in music – while I think this is representative of 2016, it’s a lot more personal and subjective. This is the most hip-hop/R&B-centric survey I’ve ever made, and there’s also a lot of pretty obscure stuff that I’ve found through my indispensable Bandcamp feed. I hope you find a lot of new things to like in this survey, and come away feeling that despite the fact that music media is increasingly focused on a handful of celebrity artists at the expense of anything else, this has actually been a pretty solid year for music.

Here is a version of this mix as a Spotify playlist for your convenience. It is a bit less listenable without my edits, and is missing 22 songs which aren’t available on streaming services.

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

Car Seat Headrest “1937 State Park” / Danny Brown “Dance in the Water” / Beyoncé “Hold Up” / Xenia Rubinos “Lonely Lover” / A Tribe Called Quest “Dis Generation” / Kendrick Lamar “Untitled 06 (06.30.2014)” / Chance the Rapper featuring Lil Wayne and 2 Chains “No Problem” / Sleigh Bells “Rule Number One” / Mac Miller featuring Anderson Paak “Dang!” / Ari Lennox “Night Drive” / Case/Lang/Veirs “Honey and Smoke” / Okkervil River “Mary On A Wave” / Radiohead “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief” / Bat for Lashes “Never Forgive the Angels” / Margaret Glaspy “You and I” / The Scary Jokes “Catabolic Seed” / Noname “Diddy Bop” / 30/70 “Local Knowledge” / Jamila Woods “Breadcrumbs” / Joey Purp featuring Chance the Rapper “Girls @“ / Maxwell “III” / Leapling “Alabaster Snow” / Lucy Dacus “Direct Address” / Speedy Ortiz “Emma O” / Rihanna “Love On the Brain”

DOWNLOAD DISC 2

Anderson Paak “The Bird” / No Panty “Singin’ My Song” / The Avalanches “Harmony” / Andrew Bird “Truth Lies Low” / Bibio “Town & Country” / Cass McCombs “Opposite House” / Zayn “It’s You” / Corinne Bailey Rae “Been to the Moon” / Angelic Milk “Rebel Black” / Lou E “What Do You Do It For?” / Lil Yachty “Good Day” / Big Baby D.R.A.M. “Cash Machine” / Twice “Cheer Up” / Thao and the Get Down Stay Down “Fool Forever” / Miya Folick “Pet Body” / Mannequin Pussy “Romantic” / Kvelertak “1985” / Jay Som “I Think You’re Alright” / Frankie Cosmos “I’m 20” / The Range “Superimpose” / Negative Gemini “Don’t Worry ‘Bout the Fuck I’m Doing” / Sales “Ivy” / Lady Gaga “A-YO” / Beck “Wow” / The Weeknd featuring Daft Punk “Starboy” / A$AP Ferg featuring Skrillex and Crystal Caines “Hungry Ham” / J. Cole “False Prophets (Be Like This)” / Lance Skiiwalker “Lovers Lane”

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DJ Shadow featuring Run the Jewels “Nobody Speak” / Childish Gambino “Have Some Love” / Frank Ocean “Pink + White” / NxWorries “What More Can I Say” / Yung Bae “As Sweet As My Baby” / De La Soul featuring Estelle and Pete Rock “Memory of… (Us)” / Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam “Rough Going (I Won’t Let Up)” / Thee Oh Sees “The Axis” / Hinds “Fat Calmed Kiddos” / Whitney “No Matter Where We Go” / Slow Club “Give Me Some Peace” / White Lung “Demented” / Melkbelly “Elk Mountain” / No Joy “XO (Adam’s Getting Married)” / Underworld “Motorhome” / Animal Collective “Vertical” / Cavern of Anti-Matter “Melody In High Feedback Tones” / Luísa Maita “Fio da Memória” / Flume featuring Vince Staples and Kucka “Smoke and Retribution” / Bullion “Never Is the Change” / Justin Timberlake “Can’t Stop the Feeling” / DNCE “Cake by the Ocean” / The 1975 “Love Me” / Twenty One Pilots “Heathens” / Lake Street Dive “I Don’t Care About You” / Bruno Mars “Perm” / BJ the Chicago Kid featuring Kendrick Lamar “The New Cupid”

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Kanye West featuring Chance the Rapper “Ultralight Beam” / Pusha T “HGTV Freestyle” / Run the Jewels “Talk to Me” / Saba featuring Noname “Church/Liquor Store” / Solange “Cranes in the Sky” / Field Music “The Noisy Days Are Over” / A Giant Dog “Sex & Drugs” / Angel Olsen “Shut Up Kiss Me” / Mitski “Once More to See You” / Ariana Grande “Moonlight” / Esperanza Spalding “Unconditional Love” / Snoh Aalegra “In Your River” / James Blake “Radio Silence” / Anohni “Execution” / Jessy Lanza “It Means I Love You” / EXO “Monster” / Max Wonders “Utopia” / Gaby Moreno “Pale Bright Lights” / Quilt “Hissing My Plea” / Kip McGrath “Clock Hands” / Pinegrove “Old Friends” / Amy O “Canteen” / Katie Dey “Fear O’ the Light” / Drugdealer “Suddenly” / of Montreal “It’s Different for Girls” / Kevin Abstract “Empty” / Massive Attack featuring Tricky and 3D “Take It There” / Tim Hecker “Castrati Stack”

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David Bowie “Blackstar” / Vince Staples featuring Kilo Kish “Loco” / Young Thug “Future Swag” / Lil Uzi Vert “Canadian Goose” / Anchorsong “Oriental Suite” / Nicolas Jaar “No” / Motion Graphics “Lense” / Skepta “Lyrics” / YG featuring Nipsey Hussle “FDT” / Fudge “Young Vet” / Kate Tempest “Ketamine for Breakfast” / Tricky “Diving Away” / Blood Orange “Best to You” / Weyes Blood “Do You Need My Love” / Little Scream “Dark Dance” / Kaytranada featuring AlunaGeorge and Goldlink “Together” / Mome “Super Hot Days” / DJ Paypal “No One Else” / Kiiara “Gold” / BTS “Blood, Sweat, and Tears” / DJ Snake featuring Justin Bieber “Let Me Love You” / The Chainsmokers featuring Halsey “Closer” / 21 Savage & Metro Boomin “No Heart” / Future featuring The Weeknd “Low Life” / Relaen “Twines”

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Wilco “Normal American Kids” / Miranda Lambert “Highway Vagabond” / Maren Morris “Drunk Girls Don’t Cry” / Basia Bulat “Long Goodbye” / Against Me! “12:03” / Fascinations Grand Chorus “Welcome” / Magic Potion “Cheddar Lane” / AJJ “American Garbage” / Ratboys “Not Again” / Pip Blom “Truth” / Sunflower Bean “Come On” / Ty Segall “Emotional Mugger/Leopard Priestess” / The Orielles “Jobin” / Wire “Internal Exile” / PJ Harvey “The Community of Hope” / Purling Hiss “Fever” / Japanese Breakfast “Everybody Wants to Love You” / Salami Rose Joe Louis “I Miss You So” / Desiigner featuring Kanye West “Timmy Turner (Remix)” / A$AP Mob featuring A$AP Rocky and Skepta “Put That On My Set” / Ka “That Cold and Lonely” / BADBADNOTGOOD “Speaking Gently” / Bas featuring Cozz “Dopamine” / Kamaiyah “How Does It Feel?” / Drake “One Dance” / Sampa the Great “2 4” / Rae Sremmurd featuring Gucci Mane “Black Beatles” / Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Rings of Saturn” / Andy Stott “Butterflies” / Jenny Hval “Conceptual Romance” / Leonard Cohen “If I Didn’t Have Your Love” / Alexis Taylor “Crying in the Chapel”

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The Game “The Juice” / John Legend featuring Chance the Rapper “Penthouse Floor” / Ab-Soul featuring Da$h “Huey Knew” / The Kills “Whirling Eye” / Wolf Parade “Floating World” / Half Waif “Nest” / Isaiah Rashad “Brenda” / Schoolboy Q featuring Lance Skiiiwalker “Kno Ya Wrong” / DJ Khaled featuring Drake “For Free” / Twista featuring Jeremih “Next to You” / Britney Spears “Private Show” / Teen “All About Us” / Margo Price “Hurtin’ (On the Bottle)” / Nada Surf “Rushing” / Modern Baseball “Everyday” / Field Mouse “The Mirror” / Sheer Mag “Can’t Stop Fighting” / G.L.O.S.S. “Trans Day of Revenge” / Twist “Can’t Wait” / Monomyth “Re: Lease Life (Place 2 Go)” / The Frightnrs “Nothing More to Say” / The Rolling Stones “Everybody Knows About My Good Thing” / Julia Jacklin “Leadlight” / Eleanor Friedberger “Because I Asked You” / Michael Kiwanuka “The Final Frame” / Divine Council featuring Andre 3000 and $ilk Money “Decemba (Remix)” / PARTYNEXTDOOR “Not Nice”

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Sia “Cheap Thrills” / Colleen Green “U Coulda Been An A” / Crying “There Was A Door” / Guided by Voices “Kid On A Ladder” / Paul Simon “Wristband” / The Lonely Island featuring Adam Levine “I’m So Humble” / Aminé “Caroline” / DJ Quik & Problem featuring The Game and Candace Boyd “Rosecrans” / Little Shalimar featuring Bun B, Killer Mike, and Cuz Lightyear “Savage Habits” / Uffe “As Long As It Lasts” / 79.5 “ooo” / OddCouple featuring Joey Purp “Visions” / Kool Keith featuring MF Doom “Super Hero” / Heavy Heart “Teenage Witch” / Electric Six “Lee Did This To Me” / Duck “Lip On The Floor” / Really Big Pinecone “Everybody Needs Friends” / Nap Eyes “Mixer” / Norah Jones “Day Breaks” / Kevin Morby “I Have Been to the Mountain” / Conor Oberst “Till St. Dymphna Kicks Us Out” / Lady Wray “Smilin’” / Tennis “Ladies Don’t Play Guitar” / Tinashe “Company” / Zay Hilfigerrr & Zayion McCall “Juju On That Beat (TZ Anthem)” / Wild Beasts “Alpha Female” / Justice “Fire” / Dr. Something “Companion” / Bon Iver “21 M◊◊N WATER” / Burial “Young Death”