Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Cody ChesnuTT “Don’t Follow Me”

It took Cody ChesnuTT about a decade to write, record and release Landing on a Hundred, but unlike a lot of records with an absurdly long gestation period, the album sounds like it actually benefited from all that time and work. ChesnuTT’s vocal takes are warm and soulful, and sound as if the takes were recorded very quickly and without too much fuss. The music, on the other hand, is very carefully sculpted – every note of it sounds very considered. There’s a lot of restraint to the compositions – even a fairly melodramatic cut like “Don’t Follow Me” is measured, as if he just tinkered around until he found just the right level of cinematic bombast to get the mood across.

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Exitmusic “The Night”

Well, you could certainly trick someone into believing that this is Beach House. But while that band goes for a strange mixture of swoony warmth and aloof self-possession, Exitmusic focus on chillier tones and a more bombastic expression of yearning emotion. “The Night” has a scope to it that practically begs you to describe it as “cinematic,” but you know what? I can’t think of an actual movie that feels anything like this. That said, I can very easily imagine this getting used in a trailer, but that is so not the same thing.

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Tame Impala “Apocalypse Dreams”

People often point out how much Kevin Parker sounds like John Lennon – it’s so obvious that it’s just kinda hard to ignore. But on a musical level he comes a lot closer to Paul McCartney, particularly in his mid to late 70s period, or noted McCartney imitator Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra. His music is a lot richer than anything Lennon did on his own, so some of the thrill is this kinda fanboy “what if?” situation of imagining that you’re hearing what it would’ve sounded like if John and Paul had actually been working together in the mid 70s. And I know putting it all in these terms diminishes Parker somewhat, but seriously, isn’t it compliment enough to suggest he’s working anywhere near the level of those dudes? He has a delightful grasp on melody, especially when it comes to his fluid bass lines, and a clever sense of structure. The musical curveballs of “Apocalypse Dreams” still take me by surprise, though I’ve heard the abrupt smash cut-style transition near the end several times over by now. I love that this song can start off as this sort of LSD-soaked Motown pastiche, but then shift its perspective a few times over. It’s like a pop song presented as a panorama.

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Kate Nash “Fri-end?”

I love that the conflict at the center of this song is so simple: She is upset that her friend has been treating her poorly, and that’s pretty much it. There’s no suggestion of anything deeper, or some kind of subtext. It’s just a direct, relatable feeling invested with a lot of energy and spirit. I’m not totally certain what Nash’s musical inspiration for this could be – she might be reaching back to the 60s and garage rock – but the best bits of this remind me a lot of The B-52’s on songs like “Hero Worship.” It’s a similar mix of being knowingly camp and just a little unhinged.

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Roc Marciano “Flash Gordon”

Roc Marciano is not a flashy rapper. He doesn’t have a big voice, he’s not particularly energetic or magnetic. He is very very good with detail, especially when he’s placed at the center of a slow, sad track. The substance of his stories are pretty stock for rap over the past 20 or so years, but his approach is a bit different – he backs away from big drama, focusing instead on small moments that give you a sense of his characters’ daily lives. In other words, his songs are like little indie movies – relatively quiet, meditative and disarmingly low key.

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Andy Stott “Hatch the Plan”

There’s basically three major elements to this composition: Vocals that approximate the shape and tone of pop music but get layered into a lovely abstraction not unlike what you’d get on one of A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s records, the eerie hum of empty space, and a warm bass pulse locked in with a cold percussive snap. These elements kinda dance around each other, you can imagine them switching positions and swapping partners as the track moves along. The ambient quality is nice enough, but it’s the interplay between the spiraling vocals and the understated but strong groove that pulls me in. This could easily have been just pretty; the bass gives it a physicality and sexiness.

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Titus Andronicus “In A Big City”

I never connected with Titus Andronicus before I heard Local Business, or more specifically, this song. Their older stuff was far too Oberst-y for my taste, and I found myself in the vaguely uncomfortable position of greatly admiring them as people but feeling a little confused about what people were getting out of their music. I haven’t really changed my mind about those early records, but now I totally get the appeal of what Patrick Stickles has been doing all along. “In A Big City” is earnest and a little bratty, a slightly off-kilter anthem about growing up in the shadow of New York City. It’s specifically about being from New Jersey, but it’s close enough to the feelings I’ve had growing up in the Hudson Valley that it resonates with me in a huge way. But still, the Jersey-ness makes it a better song – it’s one thing to look on to The City as an outsider, and another thing to be some sort of underdog pariah. This is a song that draws on the underdog pop cultural mythology of Jersey, and the drama of it hinges on Stickles reckons with the way he is perceived in the context of where he’s from. This song is thrilling because he just owns it, and throws himself into the role of the heroic loser heading off to make his way in the cold, indifferent metropolis just across the river.

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Mac DeMarco “Annie”

Mac DeMarco’s guitar style is fluid and so consistently melodic that it seems jarring whenever he actually strums a chord. There’s an airy, inviting sound to his songs – a mellow late night vibe that reminds me of a smoothed-out Neil Hagerty or a more restless version of The Clientele. His new album is a pleasure in small doses – it’s all too samey to hold my attention beyond three or four songs at a time – and a good starting point for an artist who will probably make better things down the line. He’s got the melody and the atmosphere but he needs to work on composition and structure. The free-floating quality of his playing may be more compelling with a stronger groove in the rhythm section – you kinda get close to that on “Annie,” which has a nice mid-Seventies vibe to it.

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Mouse on Mars “HYM”

Mouse on Mars are brilliant at taking electronic textures and making them sound incredibly tactile, with sudden shifts and clangs in the music triggering the sensation of velocity or impact. “HYM,” one of the most song-y tracks on WOW, packs enough musical ideas into four minutes to last about half a proper album. The super-compression of the composition may seem like attention deficit disorder, but I take it as both an expression of raw excitement and economical precision. It’s fun to hear these veterans absorb some tricks from dubstep too – it seems a bit sly, but also totally natural. They’ve been on this creative wavelength for a long time now.

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How to Destroy Angels “Ice Age”

This is one of the most surprising pieces of music I’ve come across in a while: It’s basically Trent Reznor and his collaborators taking the raw elements of bluegrass and warping it into minimalist abstraction. The familiar sound is gutted, but the scaffolding of the structure is still there, or at least implied by sounds that reduce the sound of a banjo or a mandolin to something purely percussive. This aspect of the track reminds me a bit of pieces by John Cage and Steve Reich, but as the song progresses, there’s an ambient drag to it that reminds me of Reznor and Atticus Ross’s previous soundtrack work, and also maybe a bit of Terry Riley. But despite all these highbrow comparisons, “Ice Age” is one of the most warmly melodic pieces of music Reznor has ever been involved in; even with the deconstructed arrangement, it’s way more like a Nickel Creek song than it’s unlike it. Everything about this song is a remarkable balancing act.

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Ne-Yo “Cracks In Mr. Perfect”

Ne-Yo has spent most of his career presenting himself as an idealized boyfriend, a fantasy for women and an aspirational figure for straight men. This song has him stepping out of that role and addressing the fact that his actual lived experience is very different from the characters in his songs. The Ne-Yo of “Cracks In Mr. Perfect” is sexually irresponsible and driven mainly by insecurities, whether he’s blowing cash at a club to seem like a player or worrying about other artists who may outshine him. He’s not beating himself up, though. He has a sense of humor about this, and is owning his faults and foibles. The song is just as seductive as anything else he’d record normally, and the candor only makes him more charming.

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Clinic “Cosmic Radiation”

Clinic’s new album Free Reign contains some of the longest songs of their career, and generally has the vibe of a band stretching out and exploring their grooves. The funny thing is, the best example of them doing that on the album is not even three minutes long. “Cosmic Radiation” has all the feeling of a long jam, but it’s remarkably concise, providing the best twists and turns of an epic without any of the bits where your attention may wander. I wouldn’t mind if it meandered a bit more, actually, but it’s just so much more impressive to see a band so in control of a vibe that they can evoke it perfectly and move on without getting indulgent. There are definitely a lot of bands who could learn a lot from this approach.

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Michael Mayer “Rudi Was A Punk”

Michael Mayer is very out of step with trends in all corners of electronic and dance music right now, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Mantasy, his first album in eight years, sticks to his strengths as a composer – clean sounds, tight structures, vamps, vamps, vamps, vamps. Each track has a distinct character and tone, like a meditation on a memory of a classic groove. Sometimes it’s obvious, and a song riffs on a classic like “Billie Jean.” “Rudi Is A Punk” comes off like a stylish film soundtrack, like some slick, metronomic gloss on James Bond or Mission: Impossible. As with the best Mayer material, the clinical precision of the track is complemented by hooks that are very straightforward and eager to please. That’s the funny thing about Mayer and Kompakt – it all seems so Euro and aloof, but pretty much all of their output can be enjoyed as pop music.

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Beach House “Wild”

It is amazing to me that this song is as gorgeous and graceful as it is despite its rhythm coming mainly from a very flimsy preset pattern. Though it’s consistent through the piece, it’s mostly obscured behind very elegant and deliberate sounds – a very precise and evocative guitar tone, a lovely keyboard drone, Victoria Legrand’s soothing voice. The arrangement is like thick incense haze, when the drum machine is foreground it’s as if the smoke clouds have cleared for a moment. This trick works on a thematic level too: Legrand is singing about a teen taking risks and being “wild” as an escape from the more grim aspects of their family life, but when the sound shifts, it’s like snapping out of the dreamy fantasy and remembering that you’re just some nervous inexperienced kid at heart.

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Wu-Tang Clan “Six Directions of Boxing”

Six out of the nine living members of the Wu-Tang Clan rap on this track, and aside from Ghostface and GZA, it’s the least famous members of the crew. Here’s the thing, though: As the years go by, it’s actually more thrilling to those guys, because where else are you going to get amazing, densely packed verses from an underrated genius like Inspectah Deck? And though Masta Killa and U-God haven’t proven themselves to deliver as album artists, they’ve really come into their own as they’ve aged. Masta Killa in particular has matured a lot over the years – he was just a kid when he dropped a verse on Enter the Wu-Tang, and didn’t truly find his voice until The W. They all shine on this track, though the most fascinating verse comes from the GZA, who dials his energy waaaaay down for a carefully composed allegory about his early days as a rapper.

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Kylie Minogue “Come Into My World (Abbey Road Sessions)”

It’s become a cliché in the internet era to make slow, sad acoustic versions of pop hits for the sake of novelty. Generally speaking, I am not a fan of this, and resent the implication in many cases that the song has been rendered more powerful and substantial by remaking it with tired indie tropes. Kylie Minogue’s Abbey Road Sessions, a new collection of her old hits remade with new arrangements and live instrumentation, could easily fall into this trap but does not. Yes, some of the arrangements are softer and slower, but they don’t compromise the love and joy that is at the heart of her best songs. Instead, Minogue recasts the sentiment, dialing back some elements of what she’s expressing while highlighting others. This version of “Come Into My World” is just as intense and crushed-out as the original dance-pop recording, but she’s conveying a different sort of anticipation. It’s not as overwhelming, but the delicate sound brings out a very compelling, understated desperation in her phrasing.

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Taylor Swift “State of Grace”

I wouldn’t have guessed that Taylor Swift would be better at writing late-period U2 songs than the actual U2, but here we are. The only track on No Line on the Horizon that touches “State of Grace” is the title track, and this is probably a little better. I don’t think Swift should be in any hurry to rush into musical “maturity” – aside from this cut, the best songs on Red embrace her youth – but I’d love to see her continue with songs in this vein in the future because the whole U2 vibe is good for projecting youthful earnestness and yearning with a sense of clear-eyed, adult perspective. Swift’s lyrics are well-matched to this tone, too – she’s basically singing about a feeling of overwhelming clarity upon meeting someone so amazing that she’s automatically knocked out of a complacent understanding of her life.

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Bat For Lashes “Oh Yeah”

It is an awful thing to feel stuck and uninspired, as if your inner life has all gone blank. You feel the absence in your mind, but you don’t know how to fill it. “Oh Yeah” is sung from the perspective of a woman who feels this lack, and she’s desperately hoping for a quick fix. “I’m looking for a lover to climb inside,” Natasha Khan sings, her voice rising up with an optimistic yearning. “Waiting like a flower to open wide, I’m in bloom!” From the first verse, she sings about feeling alive, echoing the climax of “Lilies,” a song with more or less the same narrative at the start of the record. But “Oh Yeah!” is more sexual and less ambiguous. She’s unlocked something in her mind and body, and the song communicates her desire to act on this personal breakthrough.

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Kendrick Lamar “Bitch, Dant Kill My Vibe”

There are a lot of songs about “haters” out there, probably way too many, and most of them are expressions of clueless bullshit narcissism and flagrant insecurity. “Bitch, Dant Kill My Vibe” is an outlier, though, a song from the perspective of a sensitive creative person who seems legitimately afraid that jealous and unimaginative people may prevent him from making his art on his own terms. There are some threatening lines in the verses, but the tone of the track is subdued and melancholy. You can pick up on the introverted tone from the first chords, and he makes it explicit early on: “Sometimes I need to be alone.” Even one of the most aggressive parts of the song – “hide your feelings, hide your feelings” – comes off as self-directed before you get to the next line about threatening to steal a dude’s woman. It’s an emotionally complicated song, you can feel Lamar cycle through moments of doubt and cynicism as he struggles to hold on to his belief in his talent and vision.

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Godspeed You! Black Emperor “We Drift Like Worried Fire (Detail)”

I feel like a horrible butcher for bringing this down to just a five minute excerpt, but I can’t justify giving away a 20 minute piece of music that is nearly one half of an album. If you like what you hear, please buy this record and listen to the composition in its entirety.

I never liked that Godspeed relied on using bits of speech on their older records. In some cases it was a nice bit of texture, but it too often felt like the band was forcing contextual parameters on music that was otherwise abstract. They’ve almost entirely tossed that out on their new record, and the compositions are better for it. You don’t need any sort of nudging to get sucked into the world of this music, it’s obvious from the start that they’re evoking a desolate landscape. From there, it’s up to interpretation. It makes sense to hear this as a representation of a world after every system fails us, or perhaps as an escape from a spoiled, crumbling society. What I get out of this, particularly in the valleys of “Worried Fire,” is the feeling of being alone in a vast empty space. And it’s a bit of freedom, yes, but for me, it’s even more a sense of loneliness and vulnerability. As if the cosmos is bearing down upon me, like a boot about to come down to carelessly crush a bug on the ground.

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