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Girlpool “Alone at the Show”

There’s really not a lot of lyrics in this song, but it’s such a vivid sketch of a girl with a crush on a guy in a band. It sounds like an exciting situation but it’s actually pretty ordinary, and Girlpool does a great job of making it clear how accessible and normal this guy is despite seeming cool and somewhat unattainable – like, he’s telling stories about his mom as he walks her to her car. Not glamorous, but definitely a guy you fall for.

Buy it from The Le Sigh.

Erase Errata “Watch Your Language”

Erase Errata: The other amazing all-female punk band that returned from a looooooong hiatus with an excellent, vital new record this week. I hate that they are so overshadowed, but that was always the case – even when they got some attention, it wasn’t all that much. Erase Errata haven’t been entirely gone since they released the wonderful and highly underrated Nightlife in 2006 – there were a couple singles, and Jenny Hoyston has released some solo work along the way – but the version of the band that exists today sounds like one that’s made a few evolutionary leaps while they were out of the spotlight. Hoyston in particular has become a far more impressive guitarist, and has developed a lot of interesting textures for her choppy post-punk rhythm style. “Watch Your Language” is all harsh mechanical tones, and reminds me of the severity of early ‘00s Wire, and even a bit of Tom Morello’s style in Rage Against the Machine. This quasi-industrial aesthetic suits Erase Errata very well, and complements the seriousness of Hoyston’s lyrics and stern vocal affect.

Buy it from Amazon.

Kindness featuring Robyn “Who Do You Love?”

I really wasn’t feeling Robyn’s work with Royksopp last year, not because it was in any way bad, but because it just sorta predictable and dull to me. A lot of that has to do with the production style, which was very beat heavy and air tight – it just felt very overbearing and unfun to me in a way the best Robyn songs do not. This collaboration with the producer Kindness is very much in the opposite direction. There’s a lot of negative space in this arrangement, and the song moves in this stop/start pattern that mirrors the unsure tone of the lyrics. The music implies a lot of space but an intimate scale, and this does a lot of favors for Robyn’s voice and her lyrics – she always excels at getting across the subtleties of rather ordinary relationship drama. Here she’s singing about struggling to make a true romantic connection, and you can hear the frustration in her voice. She wants a transformative emotional reaction, but it’s not happening. But she’s there, fighting through that numbness to find a true, meaningful feeling and it’s beautiful.

Buy it from Amazon.

Sleater-Kinney “Hey Darling”

It makes some sense that the song on No Cities to Love that feels the most like a classic Sleater-Kinney song, or a least something that would’ve fit in perfectly well on Dig Me Out or The Hot Rock, is also the song that’s a message addressed to all the old fans who had to live without them for a decade. Corin Tucker is a bit apologetic for letting people down, but definitely not for any actual decisions she made – “the situation was justified,” and it absolutely was. Playing live is fun but touring is a grind, and it’s not compatible with being a mother, or at least it isn’t without a huge support system. This isn’t the song where the stress and burden of motherhood is addressed – that’s the opening song “Price Tag,” which sung is from the perspective of a cash-strapped single mom – but it’s definitely a song that comes from the other side of that experience. There’s certainly a maternal quality in the way she phrases the sentiment of the song, and explains her reasons for backing away. I think a lot of the passionate spark to this song, and the record in general, comes out of being so excited to do this thing again after walking away from it for totally mature and responsible reasons. Tucker never had to write a song explaining herself and she definitely didn’t need to apologize for her band’s hiatus, but I think No Cities to Love gains something from this transparency, and I’d rather hear this come from her directly rather than read this sentiment into the subtext.

Buy it from Amazon.

Mark Ronson featuring Kevin Parker “Leaving Los Feliz”

There’s a point in “Leaving Los Feliz” where Tame Impala singer Kevin Parker – in character as a jaded guy hanging out at a party for rich hipsters in Los Angeles – says that he’s pretending to shoot a documentary in his head of what’s going on around him. And to some extent, that’s what a lot of the Uptown Special record feels like – all these wealthy, cool, glamorous dudes reporting on what it’s like in their world. The lyrics for this song, and most everything else on the record, were written by Michael Chabon, and he does a great job of balancing out a novelist’s instinct for evocative detail with the economy necessary to get across an idea in the limited space of a pop song. We get just enough information to have a very specific idea of who this guy is and who he’s with, and just enough to understand that he’s being an unreliable narrator, and deluding himself if he thinks he’s ever going to willfully abandon this lifestyle.

Buy it from Amazon.

Extraordinaire featuring Killer Mike “What You Said”

Now that I’ve heard this I just wonder why it took so long for there to be a Southern rap track built around the faux-Terry Riley synthesizer intro of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” It works very well, especially because Extraordinaire left in the more squiggly part of the melody as a periodic fill rather than going with a straight loop. Killer Mike sounds great on this because Killer Mike sounds great on pretty much anything, but Extraordinaire’s own verse is what makes this song shine – he sounds ambitious and hungry, very eager to prove that he belongs there with Mike, and not just as the guy making the beat behind the scenes.

Buy it from iTunes.

of Montreal “Empyrean Abattoir”

If you’re just going on his music, it’s hard to imagine that there’s much time when Kevin Barnes ~isn’t~ being the ultimate manic depressive intellectual queen bitch of the universe. The past couple Of Montreal records were odd, transitional works – most of Paralytic Stalks sounds like an actual nervous breakdown set to music, while Lousy with Sylvianbriar seemed to me like a self-conscious regressive move. The thing that really sticks out to me about those records is just how vicious Barnes gets. He’d let that kind of aggression out before, but there are points on those albums where his anger is so raw that it feels like something we shouldn’t be hearing. The worst parts of me related to this stuff a lot, and I have complicated feelings about that.

Aureate Gloom is the first record Barnes has made since his marriage ended. Given the emotional horror zone of the past four OM albums, it’s hard to imagine how it survived that long. I’ve only heard the two songs that have been pushed as singles so far, but it’s not anywhere near as hysterical as what I had expected. “Empyrean Abattoir” has some frantic tangents, but it feels somewhat grounded to me. There’s a hostility here, but it’s tamped down. Whereas a lot of OM songs feel like they’re coming from a place of immediate overwhelming emotion, this sounds more like where you end up after you’ve exhausted your mind thinking about something for too long. There’s a touch of defeat in his voice, but also some relief that something has run its course.

Buy it from Amazon.

Panda Bear “Boys Latin”

I love the way Panda Bear will focus on melody and harmony to the extent that the sheer sound of it will make his lyrics nearly illegible, as if the words are only there for architectural reasons. The chorus of “Boys Latin” is all about that cycle of notes, and the way they fall just out of phase with all that reverb. He does a version of this trick a lot on Meets the Grim Reaper, and it has this lovely ghost-like effect – the harmony is like a mirage, and it disrupts a sense of “gravity” in the music so the track feels completely weightless. The song has more of a center in the second refrain in the middle of the piece, but that’s where the mood shifts from a sort of joyful prayer to a vague sense of dread, as he sings about sensing the arrival of depressive feelings. In this context, it’s as though the chorus is there as a defense to ward off the bad vibes.

Buy it from Amazon.

Rae Sremmurd featuring Jace of Two-9 “Unlock the Swag”

This is pure dumb fun. This is the kind of song where I could write about it in great detail but you’d never really get a sense of it because you just need to hear the sound of these guys’ voices. It’s all in the way they bend the pronunciation of words, and how excited they seem to be spitting out every line. You can hear their raw, unguarded enthusiasm right there on the track. They are not jaded, and they are not overly calculated. It’s the real thing, and it’s wonderful and silly and unapologetically weird. I can’t listen to this without tapping into their pure joy. I hope this becomes a hit, because it wouldn’t hurt for everyone to unlock the swag in 2015.

Buy it from Amazon.

D’Angelo and the Vanguard “Another Life”

Every time I listen to Black Messiah I think about how unlikely and amazing it is that a record that was fussed over for soooooo long could possibly feel so loose and spontaneous. This really comes out in “Another Life,” which unfolds with such a graceful ease that you hardly notice that’s a very well-built composition. Like a lot of Black Messiah, there’s something about the way D’Angelo doles out negative space that makes it feel as though the notes are hanging in the air. I strongly recommend listening to this record on good speakers – it sounds fine on headphones, but I think this music was definitely designed to be felt in a space. It’s the kind of music that has an affect on the air in the room.

The sound and feeling of the music is so pleasurable and evocative that it took me a while to even pay attention to the words he’s singing. Before I did that, my impression was that it was a spiritual song of some kind – maybe something about a love that transcends life and death. As it turns out, it’s mostly about desire, and D’Angelo imagining what it’d be like to be with someone he’s fallen for but hasn’t even kissed yet. It’s an overwhelming romantic song, and I don’t think I was wrong to sense a spiritual vibe here. There’s an implication of fate here – “in another life, I bet you were my girl” – but also an implication that this is a desire that’s more than physical or emotional. He makes it feel cosmic, or religious, or magical. That’s certainly the way he makes it sound when he’s shredding those high notes at the climax like he’s Prince on “The Beautiful Ones.”

Buy it from Amazon.

Pulp “I Love Life (Live)”

“I Love Life” is a rare and special song, the sort that makes a case for living that is unsentimental and bluntly logical: What else are you going to do? It’s the only thing you’ve got, really. The lyrics deliberately avoid the simple and the saccharine, and that makes it even more affecting, as there are certain truths that just sound better coming from a cynic. Jarvis Cocker is gentle but forthright, and though he is speaking for himself, it comes out sounding like advice for everyone. It starts with a feeling of resignation — “mum and dad have sentenced you to life” — but as it builds, the tone becomes increasingly defiant, til at the end Cocker sounds as though he is literally fighting for his life. The point here isn’t to hold on, but to endure and survive. If there’s any triumph to be had, it’s simply to overcome anything that tries to knock you down and take you out.

Buy it from Amazon. Originally published 7/23/2009.

Sonic Youth “Skip Tracer”

“Skip Tracer” starts off as a story about watching a band – specifically Mecca Normal, if you’re into trivia – but ends with a sequence in which the song slows down for a moment of fragility before zooming off into the future. It’s very sci-fi; it sounds like travel, and the song seems to burn out upon reaching its apparent destination. Right before that moment of disintegration, Lee Ranaldo shouts out: “HELLO 2015! HELLO 2015!” It was 20 years in the future from the moment the album came out. I’ve known this song for 20 years, and even up until pretty recently, it always sounded like the far future to me. But here we are, on the edge of 2015. This song about the future is about to become a song entirely set in the past.

Lee makes 2015 sound like a good place, maybe. He sounds nervous and thrilled when he shouts it out, and the moments leading up to it feel like a sci-fi prayer leading into a moment of acceptance: “Borrowed and never returned: emotions, books, outlooks on life.” I’ve always loved this song in part because I’ve always had the conviction that the future was always going to be a better place than right now. Maybe part of the reason I’ve connected with the “HELLO 2015” section is because I wish I could just zoom off into the future, to speed ahead to some place in time that’s more exciting and advanced than where I am at the moment. I know a lot of people are scared of the future, but I can’t relate to that feeling at all. Twenty years ago, I wanted to shout “HELLO 2015,” and as the calendar turns to the actual 2015, I just think, “HELLO 2035! HELLO 2055! HELLO 2075!”

Buy it from Amazon.

A lot of the reason I make these survey mixes is to prove to myself and others that there’s no such thing as a “bad year” for music. This seems very necessary in 2014, a year in which music culture felt scattered or uninspired, and there were few – if any – major zeitgeist-defining albums. I’ve found a lot of other publications’ efforts to recap the year to be rather dismal, and they just seem to perpetuate the feeling that this was an “off” year. But that’s not true, and it’s never true. I feel confident that this survey is a strong argument that plenty of excellent music came out this year. It’s not a matter of the music not being good, it’s about how much harder it is to form consensus about anything these days.

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

The New Pornographers “Dancehall Domine” / Taylor Swift “Blank Space” / A.G. Cook featuring Hannah Diamond “Keri Baby” / GFOTY “Don’t Wanna/Let’s Do It” / Skrillex “Stranger” / TV on the Radio “Careful You” / White Hinterland “Sickle No Sword” / D’angelo and the Vanguard “The Charade” / J. Cole “Apparently” / Spoon “Inside Out” / Lana Del Rey “Shades of Cool” / Ty Segall “The Singer” / The Oh Sees “Encrypted Bounce” / One Direction “Steal My Girl” / Ximena Sariñana “Sin Ti No Puede Estar Tan Mal” / MNEK “Every Little Word” / Tink featuring Jeremih “Don’t Tell Nobody” / Pearls Negras “Pensando em Voce” / 2NE1 “멘붕 MTBD (CL Solo)”

DOWNLOAD DISC 2

Kate Tempest “Marshall Law” / The Roots “Understand” / Run the Jewels featuring Gangsta Boo “Love Again (Akinyele Back)” / Against Me! “Unconditional Love” / Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks “Shibboleth” / Dum Dum Girls “Too True To Be Good” / Frankie Cosmos “Art School” / A Sunny Day In Glasgow “Crushin’” / Eno & Hyde “Time To Waste It” / Sinkane “Omdurman” / Clipping “Work Work” / SBTRKT featuring Ezra Koenig “New Dorp, New York” / Freddie Gibbs & MadLib “Shame” / Jeezy featuring Jay Z “Seen It All” / FKA Twigs “Two Weeks” / Aphex Twin “Minipops 67 (Source Field Mix)” / Liars “Mess On A Mission” / Owen Pallett “The Riverbed” / Mica Levi “Lipstick to Void”

DOWNLOAD DISC 3

Panda Bear “Mr. Noah” / Redinho “Playing with Fire” / Kimbra “Madhouse” / Sophie “Lemonade” / Tune-Yards “Find A New Way” / Deerhoof “Paradise Girls” / 18+ “Crow” / Young Money featuring Tyga, Nicki Minaj, and Lil Wayne “Senile” / Beyoncé “7/11” / St. Vincent “Digital Witness” / Speedy Ortiz “Everything’s Bigger” / Pixies “Greens and Blues” / Foo Fighters “The Feast and the Famine” / The Vaselines “Inky Lies” / Sam Smith “Money On My Mind” / Usher “Good Kisser” / Michael Jackson “Love Never Felt So Good” / Bernhoft “One Way Track” / Tricky featuring Francesca Belmonte “I Had A Dream” / Damon Albarn “Lonely Press Play” / Flying Lotus featuring Kendrick Lamar “Never Catch Me” / Museum of Love “And All the Winners (Fuck You, Buddy)”

DOWNLOAD DISC 4

Real Estate “Had to Hear” / Sloan “Cleopatra” / Ex Hex “How You Got That Girl” / The Voluntary Butler Scheme “Brain Freeze” / Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks “Strange Colores” / Caribou “Silver” / Mr. Twin Sister “Blush” / Ghostface Killah “Love Don’t Live Here No More” / Hyuna “Red” / QT “Hey QT” / Kero Kero Bonito “Sick Beat” / Becky G “Shower” / Rae Sremmurd “No Flex Zone” / ILoveMakonnen featuring Drake “Tuesday” / Future featuring Andre 3000 “Benz Friendz” / KOA “All of My Love” / DJ Snake and Lil Jon “Turn Down for What” / Girl Talk & Freeway featuring Waka Flocka Flame “Tolerated” / Schoolboy Q featuring Jay Rock “Los Awesome” / Tinashe “Aquarius”

DOWNLOAD DISC 5

Saint Pepsi “Fiona Coyne (Remix)” / Shamir “On the Regular” / Charli XCX “Breaking Up” / Merchandise “Enemy” / Electric Six “Alone with Your Body” / Camper Van Beethoven “Grasshopper” / Angel Olsen “Hi-Five” / Love Inks “Shoot 100 Panes of Glass” / Wu-Tang Clan “Ruckus in B Minor” / Vince Staples featuring James Fauntleroy “Nate” / Big K.R.I.T. “Mt. Olympus” / Big Sean featuring E40 “I Don’t Fuck with You” / Guided by Voices “Littlest League Possible” / Trash No Star “How Are You” / Perfect Pussy “Big Stars” / Babymetal “Gimme Chocolate!!” / Nick Jonas “Jealous” / Basement Jaxx “What’s the News?” / Hervé and Zebra Katz “Tear the House Up” / G-Dragon X TAEYANG “Good Boy” / Drake “0 to 100/The Catch Up” / Kool A.D. featuring Talib Kweli and Boots Riley “Hickory”

DOWNLOAD DISC 6

TEEN “Rose 4 U” / Swick & Lewis featuring Tkay Maidza “Wishes” / Nicki Minaj “Anaconda” / Prince “This Could Be Us” / James Blake “200 Press” / Jessie Ware “Tough Love” / Todd Terje featuring Bryan Ferry “Johnny and Mary” / Nicholas Krgovich “The Backlot” / Kendrick Lamar “I” / Common “Speak My Piece” / Shabazz Palaces “They Come In Gold” / Chet Faker “Gold” / How to Dress Well “See You Fall” / Andy Stott “Faith In Strangers” / Slow Club “Suffering You, Suffering Me” / Gerard Way “Brother” / Cymbals Eat Guitars “Laramie”

DOWNLOAD DISC 7

Julian Casablancas + The Voidz “Take Me In Your Army” / Interpol “Everything Is Wrong” / Perfume Genius “Queen” / Adult Jazz “Am Gone” / Leon Bridges “Coming Home” / Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars “Uptown Funk” / The Both “The Inevitable Shove” / Phish “The Line” / Mac DeMarco “Passing Out Pieces” / Deers “Trippy Gum” / Girlpool “American Beauty” / Lil B “No Black Person Is Ugly” / Ryn Weaver “OctaHate” / EMA “So Blonde” / Bleachers “You’re Still A Mystery” / Bart Davenport “Dust in the Circuits” / Wild Beasts “A Simple Beautiful Truth” / Ty Dolla $ign featuring Casey Veggies, Twista, and Nate Howard “Work” / DeJ Loaf “Me U & Hennessy” / Nautic “Show”

DOWNLOAD DISC 8

Beck “Wave” / U2 featuring Lykke Li “The Troubles” / Sharon Van Etten “Your Love Is Killing Me” / Young Fathers “Low” / Arca “Thievery” / Azealia Banks “Ice Princess” / Pusha T “Lunch Money” / Lil Wayne “D’Usse” / Snakehips featuring Sinead Harnett “Days with You” / Jenny Lewis “She’s Not Me” / Lydia Loveless “Hurts So Bad” / Mary J. Blige “Therapy” / Meghan Trainor “Dear Future Husband” / Weezer “Back to the Shack” / Veruca Salt “It’s Holy” / Strand of Oaks “Goshen ’97” / Alvvays “Adult Diversion” / Weekend Secret “Tendrils and Vines” / Jack White “Just One Drink” / Eric Church “Like A Wrecking Ball” / The War On Drugs “An Ocean In Between the Waves”

DOWNLOAD DISC 9

Slim Twig “Heavy Splendour” / Thom Yorke “Guess Again!” / Grimes “Go” / Kiesza “Hideaway” / Vic Mensa “Down On My Luck” / Federal Reserve, Cam’ron & A-Trak featuring Juelz Santana “Dipshits” / Katie Rush featuring Samantha Urbani “Dangerous Luv” / Dreamtrak “Odyssey, Pt. 2 (A.G. Cook Remix)” / Parquet Courts “Bodies” / Tacocat “Crimson Wave” / Ariel Pink “Sexual Athletics” / Hospitality “I Miss Your Bones” / Future Islands “Seasons (Waiting On You)” / Sales “Getting It On” / Jessica Pratt “Back, Baby” / Foxygen “How Can You Really” / Yumi Zouma “The Brae” / AJ Davila “Es Verano Ya” / Sunny Day Real Estate “Lipton Witch” / Laetitia Sadier “Quantum Soup”

DOWNLOAD DISC 10

Swans “Screen Shot” / The Smashing Pumpkins “Tiberius” / Broods “Pretty Thing” / ExGF “Idle Hands” / Röyksopp & Robyn “Do It Again” / Yacht “Plastic Soul” / Tove Lo “Like Em Young” / Ariana Grande featuring The Weeknd “Love Me Harder” / Coldplay “A Sky Full of Stars” / Lorde “Yellow Flicker Beat” / Danity Kane “Lemonade” / Miley Cyrus featuring E-40, Juicy J, and Ty Dolla $ign “Fun” / Flo Rida featuring Sage the Gemini “GDFR” / YG featuring Drake “Who Do You Love?” / Afterhours “Sixty-Forty” / Thurston Moore “Forevermore” / Grouper “Clearing” / Sun Kil Moon “I Love My Dad”

Weekend Secret “Tendrils and Vines”

I found this song at the end of a recent episode of WFMU’s Why Oh Why? with Andrea Silenzi. The singer/songwriter, Kelly Reidy, was interviewed about dating in the main segment of the episode, and Silenzi kindly played the show out with this song, and it was one of those things where a song immediately grabs you and feels totally familiar the first you ever hear it. Reidy is very good with melody, and has a very distinctive lyrical style – very neurotic and wordy, but also disarmingly direct and witty. This is only an acoustic demo, and it’s not hard for me to fill out an electric arrangement in my head – it could easily be shifted into more of a rock song with a greater emphasis on that main riff – but I’m just as happy for it to remain this gentle, sweet, intimate thing.

Go to the Weekend Secret page on Soundcloud.

Common “Speak My Piece”

I had no idea Common even put out a record this summer until I started doing research for the forthcoming survey mixes. This happens every time, and it’s one of the reasons I do this sort of thing – for whatever reason, Common’s record wasn’t on my radar, and I don’t remember PR pushing it to me, and I don’t remember anyone I know ever talking about it. And yet, it’s excellent, maybe the best thing he’s ever done. No I.D. produced the entire record, and his often dissonant and glitchy tracks bring out something interesting in Common. The more abrasive sound contrasts nicely with Common’s polished style and warm voice, and the abrasive qualities in the music suits the darker tone of his lyrics, which are mostly concerned with the extreme gang violence in Chicago over the past several years. Common isn’t preachy on the record, but his sorrow is real, and even permeates a relatively cheery and boastful track like “Speak My Piece.” It makes sense that a dark, singular record by an aging rapper might not be the sexiest topic in hip-hop in 2014, but it’s an album that’s worthy of some attention.

Buy it from Amazon.

18+ “Crow”

18+ seem almost a little too cool – the hip-hop minimalism a bit too trendy, the detached and strung-out vibe a bit too affected – but when their shtick works, it really really works. “Crow” sounds like a tougher version of the xx, with the two singers putting up an icy, indifferent front while constantly revealing the vulnerability just under their surfaces. The xx are all about making music that sounds like real intimacy, but this is the sound of two people who are terrified of real connection becoming more intimate than they’re ready to handle. They sound miserable, but sexy.

Buy it from Amazon.

Ximena Sariñana “Sin Ti Puede Estar Tan Mal”

As far as I can tell, this is a song about figuring out what to do with a relationship that’s clearly come to an end. It’s about emotional indecision, and that’s reflected in the sound of it, as the track progresses through a series of tones that starts off feeling like changing your mind, but moves along to moments that feel more like epiphanies. Once you get to that last round of the chorus, there’s a sense of clarity. It might not be an emotional conclusion, but it’s definitely not confused.

Buy it from Amazon.

J. Cole “Hello”

I didn’t expect much from J. Cole’s new album because his last one, Born Sinner, was so awkward – the music wasn’t bad, but his verses oozed a very off-putting level of insecurity and desperation while being mostly focused on him telling you how talented he is. The record was split between chasing radio hits, being a bit too open about his need for approval, and insisting that he’s the next Kanye. This new record, deliberately released with minimal promotion, is the first J. Cole record that sounds like the sort of thing he was talking about on the last one. It’s concise and focused, and seems like the work of an actual uncompromising hip-hop auteur. He’s still very reverent of hip-hop’s history, but this time around he doesn’t seem so self-conscious about it. He’s still boasting, but this time he’s following through. He’s being vulnerable, but not in some staged, phony way. He’s learned how to signal melancholy without it seeming saccharine, and he’s figured out how to slow things down without sounding like he’s trying too hard to be serious. He’s just got the balance right all the way through, and the result is a confident, emotionally powerful rap record that doesn’t just finally make good on his promise, but exceeds expectations at points. He’s gone in hard on a sorta Chance the Rapper-ish sing-rap style on some songs, and that suits him well, and draws out a soulfulness that wasn’t quite there on Born Killer. You hear him on “Hello,” and you don’t even need to pay attention to his words to pick up on that potent mix of regret and self-loathing in his voice. He’s just got it now.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Smashing Pumpkins “Tiberius”

When Billy Corgan announced that Monuments to an Elegy would be a nine-track album of ultra-epic guitar rock, I naturally assumed the songs would all be on the long side. You know, along the lines of stuff like “Soma,” “Hummer,” “Silverfuck,” “Porcelina,” “Thru the Eyes of Ruby,” etc. My hopes were up, for sure. The actual record is a very different thing – out of nowhere, Corgan drops the most concise album of his career. It’s over and out in just over 30 minutes, and the longest song is just a hair over 4 minutes. The songs do have an epic quality, but mostly in terms of bombast and implied scope. “Tiberius” packs a lot into 3 minutes, and it’s not hard to imagine a younger Corgan letting the song expand to at least 5 minutes. There’s a lot of discipline in this record, which is not exactly a form of artistic growth likely to get people excited, especially when you’re known for being the extremely prolific writer of over-the-top alt-rock. I like the super-saturated feeling of “Tiberius” and some of the other tracks on Monuments to an Elegy, but I find the songs sort of exhausting too – there’s an overload of treble that is taxing on the ears. I think Corgan’s voice and style generally does better when given a lot of space to breathe.

Buy it from Amazon.

EXGF “Idle Hands”

This is a wonderfully bratty little song that’s basically like if the girls of Icona Pop shifted their attention towards berating the DJ at a club. It’s funny, there’s never been a shortage of pop songs that praise DJs, but it’s hard to come by a song like this, which is just totally antagonistic and belittling. Like, the gist of the lyrics is “hey asshole, why don’t you do this right for a change, just play what we want and don’t pay attention to us while we’re having a good time.” It’s unreasonable, but like, we’ve all been annoyed by shitty DJs, right? Super relatable.

Buy it from Amazon.