Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The Smile “You Will Never Work In Television Again”

I love that Thom Yorke basically waited until people entirely topped asking for him to make straight-ahead rock music to get back to making straight-ahead rock music, and I also love that Jonny Greenwood, the other member of Radiohead anyone would have reasonably expected to be uninterested in making straight-ahead rock music is the one doing it with him. It’s a bit contrary in the way you’d expect them to be, but The Smile also just makes sense as a creative move. It’s not surprising to me that Thom Yorke would want to move away from the more electronic and rhythmically dense music he’s made on his own for a very long time now. It is totally logical to me that Jonny Greenwood, a guy with an aptitude to write and play just about anything would gravitate to the opportunity to focus on bass guitar, the instrument he hasn’t had much opportunity to explore since that’s his brother’s role in Radiohead. And it makes sense that they’d play this with a drummer like Tom Skinner, who plays with more blunt physicality than Radiohead’s Phil Selway.

It’s not hard to imagine “You Will Never Work In Television Again” as a Radiohead song, but to transfer it to that template would likely mean adding some extra layers of sound that would diminish the rough simplicity of the arrangement. You could make the song more dense and louder, but the point is made well enough by Yorke’s frantic guitar and Skinner’s bashed out percussion, with Greenwood lurking behind the din adding subtle contours to the music. Yorke’s vocal lags just behind the beat like he’s chasing the song down and yelling at it as it accelerates away from him. There’s some resemblance to “Bodysnatchers” from In Rainbows and the Bends era b-side “Permanent Midnight,” but for the most part this is a different kind of rock song for Yorke and Greenwood, something that’s more primitive than what they’ve previously attempted but informed by the nuance and complexity of the music they’ve made together and apart over the years.

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Max Changmin “Airplane Mode”

“Airplane Mode” opens in medias res on a verse, the atmosphere around the gently rolling bass line already so thick that it feels like unexpectedly walking into a room full of dry ice fog and dramatic lighting. The particular guitar tones and the starkness of the arrangement remind me a lot of the xx, but with a more overtly pop density of composition – imagine if Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft ditched Jamie xx for Max Martin while still aiming for their familiar hyper-romantic vibe. Max Changmin, a veteran of the K-pop duo TVXQ, sings with light R&B inflections like Justin Timberlake at his most wistful and brings a perfectly calibrated level of cinematic romance to the song. It’s not so much to be overly syrupy, but just enough to feel like a more restrained and tasteful choice to fit into a moment in a rom-com depicting a pained yearning for something that might be lost forever.

Buy it from Amazon.

Blood Red Shoes “Morbid Fascination”

It’s entirely possible that Laura-May Carter’s lyrics in “Morbid Fascination” are coming from a fully autobiographical place, but the scenario strikes me as more of a dark fantasy – finding a recent ex in a bar, sitting beside them in disguise, and hearing them describe you in a very unflattering light from their perspective. There’s a lot of places you can go from this point emotionally, but the industrial glam arrangement – think Garbage, or Goldfrapp, or certain mid-90s PJ Harvey songs – feels bold and brutal, like an armor protecting Carter from the emotional impact. She feels betrayed and angry and wonders if she actually can’t see herself clearly, but mostly the vibe here is “actually, it’s funny.” And part of that is hearing herself portrayed as “someone else,” and part of that is laughing at her own capacity for masochism.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Kodak Black “Love and War”

Pompano Puff and J Gramm’s track for “Love and War” is focused mainly on a melodic percussion figure – a mirimba, maybe? – offset by placid guitar strums. Both parts feel gentle but I like the way the busy melody sits against those slow chord changes, like a touch of anxiety that’s soothed out by a bit of zen calm. Kodak Black’s verses play up a different contrast in expressing genuine romantic interest while still requesting nude videos and offering to send a dick pic when he’s horny. I’m not sure if this is meant to be as funny as it comes off, mainly because I think he’s just speaking plainly about the context he’s experiencing this in, the courtship rituals of his day. The emotion of the song strikes me as rather earnest to the point of being cute, and it just works well as a portrait of a kinda gross young guy who’s caught real feelings for maybe the first time ever.

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Moonchild featuring Lalah Hathaway “Tell Him”

“Tell Him” feels soft and delicate, but mostly because about trying to maneuver gracefully around tensions. You can feel a bit of anxiety bubble up in the left hand piano notes, but it’s not enough to get in the way of the brighter, more placid chords that set the mood. The vocals by Amber Navran and Lalah Hathaway covers interesting emotional ground – being frustrated in a relationship because verbal communication has been eclipsed by the power of physical intimacy. They’re not unhappy about the sex, but they do feel stifled and disempowered. The best solution they have is to have someone else do the communicating on their behalf, but who knows how well that will go. The song isn’t about telling you how that works out, just letting you linger in this weird space where pleasure and happiness is soured a little by this conundrum.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

The Weeknd “Gasoline”

I love that as The Weeknd drifts out further into the realm of new wave he’s taken on an over the top British affect – in the case of this song, “it’s 5 AM my toime again.” Winking at a previous generation of dour synthpop does more to alleviate a tension in the music than spoil the mood, and starting from this point gives him some runway before getting to the extremely bleak lyrics about reaching out to someone while relapsing and pondering what seems like imminent death. A lot of what he’s singing here could easily come off as maudlin, but the slightly playful tone makes it all go down smoother while suggesting that as dramatic as this is it’s all just a routine to him. This is, after all, the guy whose most famous song is also about being wasted and calling someone at 5 AM because “when I’m fucked up, that’s the real me.”

The music, largely composed by Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never, is a marvel of programming and well selected synth tones. Just as The Weeknd nods to the likes of Level 242 and When In Rome in his vocal without getting too far off from his grounding in modern R&B, Lopatin suggests 80s-ness more than he evokes anything specific from the era. “Gasoline,” like a lot of the songs on Dawn FM, moves The Weeknd from the more overt pastiche of the smash hit “Blinding Lights” towards a more timeless musical expression of decadance in which ’80s synthpop is just one of many spices in the curry.

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Khruangbin & Leon Bridges “B-Side”

Khruangbin and Leon Bridges are very good on their own but complement each other perfectly in collaboration, as though they’re completing an aesthetic circuit. Khruangbin are extraordinary mimics and conjure an Afrobeat sound so expertly that “B-Side” could pass as a lost Fela instrumental, but while they play it straight within that musical template Bridges veers closer to American soul. This is only a minor deviation but is enough to open up the sound to feel more like the center of a Venn diagram where Afrobeat, disco, and Curtis Mayfield could overlap.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Big Thief “Spud Infinity”

Big Thief is a band that has always thrived in capturing a live sound on record. “Spud Infinity” arrives at a point in the group’s trajectory where the sophistication of their songwriting and the casual chemistry of the band members have intersected so that the composition sounds as though it’s magically manifesting in real time. It’s an illusion of spontaneity, sure, but their playing is breezy and loose enough that the ease of it all isn’t the lie. “Spud Infinity” sounds like the band started from the notion of taking the term “cosmic country music” very literally, and writing a country rock song pondering philosophical matters like “what’s it gonna take to free the celestial body?” Adrianne Lenker’s voice and lyrics are playful and thoughtful, grounding questions about one’s significance in the greater scheme of things in colloquialisms and quirky metaphors while soberly advising anyone listening to throw themselves into the moment and express their love plainly to anyone they care about. She’s considering everything that can possibly be on the grandest possible scale, but arriving at the conclusion that what matters most is what’s immediately in front of us.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Madelline “Daffodils”

“Daffodils” starts off as a sort of Lana Del Rey-ish postmodern ballad but within 20 seconds the song starts shifting into very different gears – a bit of Eilish-ish bubblegum industrial, a fair amount of hip-hop through the distorted aesthetic gloss of hyperpop. The song and its arrangement are gleefully chaotic, and Madelline’s lyrics conveys a volatile sense of self that’s swinging wildly between paranoid anger and unapologetic egomania. I’m particularly fond of the way she’s playfully engaging with narcissism in this song, embracing the swaggy highs of genuine self-love while also projecting a coked-up delusional mindset.

Buy it from iTunes.

Arca “Señorita”

“Señorita” is a brutal sort of mutated funk, a track that pulls from many genres but only really sounds like Arca. But like, a fully realized Arca – aggressively sexual and unapologetically self-mythologizing, more song-y than ever while unafraid to throw in a truly abrasive noise break in the middle of a club song. The bulk of the track reminds me of two things that were hot around the same time that I would’ve never thought to conflate – the caustic and clanging electro-punk of Mutsumi, and the staccato rapping style of Missy Elliott.

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JPEGMAFIA “What Kinda Rappin’ Is This?”

JPEGMAFIA has said that he became a rapper because no one wanted to rap on the tracks he built and “What Kinda Rappin’ Is This” is a very good example of a composition which I would imagine as being perplexing to even fairly adventurous vocalists. Like, opening with nearly a minute of a zonked-out drone with chords that seem to slowly stumble through the haze? And then some loop that feels like it belongs on an Animal Collective recording? Once a beat comes in it’s still disorienting, with waves of R&B vocals often blasting over his rap. He’s basically doing a rap equivalent to what Kevin Shields was doing with rock three decades ago – take a familiar genre and flip it inside out so that interesting tones and textures that would fill out a song are pushed into the foreground.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Muna featuring Phoebe Bridgers “Silk Chiffon”

“Silk Chiffon” has a hook so potent – “life’s so fun, life’s so fun, got my miniskirt and my rollerblades on” – that the rest of the song can’t help but feel like it was built around it like a delivery system for this nugget of pop perfection ideally suited to the TikTok era. And it’s not even the chorus! That part of the song brings the music to a cathartic moment but it isn’t quite as memorable, feeling more like a structural inevitability than the best part of the song. But beyond that one incredible hook “Silk Chiffon” has a very specific and recognizable late ‘90s mood, like Sixpence None the Richer or Paula Cole reconfigured into something proudly queer, but also openly neurotic. When Phoebe Bridgers shows up in the second verse of the song it’s almost like she’s going full self-parody as she announces “I’m high and feeling anxious inside the CVS.” It’s a line that’s just as much a knowing wink as it is something recognizably vulnerable and human, and it just makes her declaration of lust and infatuation more poignant. As the song moves along Muna and Bridgers double down on the sappy corniness, making you feel that this sort of goofy joy is very very hard won.

Buy it from Amazon.

Coldplay featuring BTS “My Universe”

Coldplay has maintained commercial relevance for a very long time now, and a lot of that is because the band have worked very hard to maintain their position as one of the world’s most popular rock bands. But anyone can want to do that, the interesting thing about Coldplay is that as they’ve adapted to the whims of the pop market they’ve always sounded exactly like themselves. Some of this comes down to Chris Martin having a pleasant and immediately recognizable voice, but it’s more about how he is a nearly unrivaled expert in writing uplifting and romantic songs that make a listener feel like they’re living in a movie. There’s always going to be a space in pop culture for the sort of feelings Martin evokes, and as it turns out it works just as well in the context of ecstatic festival EDM as it did when they were working the U2 Junior lane.

Teaming up with BTS was a brilliant move both commercially, in that doing a song featuring the K-pop icons was basically a guaranteed hit, and artistically in that there probably is no Western rock band with an aesthetic that could fuse with BTS so seamlessly. “My Universe” is bright and bouncy and overflowing with a very earnest love. This song is the unashamed extreme of the nearly psychotic optimism and melodramatic movie romance that characterizes all their major works. BTS’ presence intensifies the wholesomeness of the song, balancing out Martin’s middle aged corniness with a more youthful guilelessness. It’s sorta miraculous for a song that’s essentially the merger of two powerful corporate brands to sound as devoid of cynicism as this does.

Buy it from Amazon.

Fika and Bambie “Coffee and Clouds”

“Coffee & Clouds” sounds calm and unbothered, like music meant for a tracking shot of someone strolling down a beautiful street on television in a very “life is good!” moment. Bambie’s lyrics complicate the mood without disrupting it – in the verses she’s dissecting her past behavior, but in the chorus she melts into affection and infatuation. There’s bits of this song that sound almost deliriously happy or blissfully content, but she never really shakes off the acute self-awareness. It basically just goes from being really in her head about being in her head, to being in her head and just loving the vibes.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Goya Gumbani & Subculture featuring Pearl de Luna “Valley of Def”

Subculture’s track for “Valley of Def” sounds like a descent into a seedy, sexy underworld with a heavy ambiance that’s equal parts jazzy noir and stoned paranoia. Pearl de Luna’s vocals are purred and slurred in a way that reminds me of Martina Topley-Bird on the early Tricky records, while Goya Gumbani’s verses are rapped with a cautious sort of calm. He doesn’t sound relaxed, but he does sound focused and thoughtful as he seems to navigate his way through terrors from both within and without.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

CLBRKS & Dweeb “Forwhatitsworth”

CLBRKS has an odd and immediately fascinating voice – a clear and obvious English accent, but with the hard nasal honk of New York rapper. In “Forwhatitsworth” he’s framed by the sort of soul samples you’d expect to hear on say, a Ghostface or classic Kanye record, but DWEEB’s production style chops it all up very coarse and uneven. It makes even the most graceful moments feel raw and unstable, so both the music and the vocal end up sounding like a slightly uncanny version of a rap style that’s mostly quite familiar.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Skate Key and Iblss “Rootwork”

The lyrics of “Rootwork” fixate on geography and death, and both overlapping in catastrophes and aftermaths. Skate Key senses ghosts all around him – relatives whose absence reshapes the family dynamic, communities built on the legacies of the long gone, traumas that get passed down from people he could never know. It’s a morbid song but there’s a touch of serenity in Skate Key’s soft rasp, and grace in the way he bows out of the song to let Iblss’ gentle woodwind loop run out for a few measures at the end.

Go to Iblss on Bandcamp.

Kiina “Recall”

“Recall” evokes a vaseline-on-the-lens melodrama in the way it bends and blurs what sounds like a vocal pulled from a mid-20th century ballad – not sure what, probably shouldn’t narc on it either way. It feels both melancholy and placid, particularly as the beat settles in and the music drifts out into jazzy keyboard noodling. It’s more of an interstitial than a full song, but it conveys a lot of feeling in just over a minute.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Keys N Krates featuring Juicy J, Chip, and Marbi “Original Classic”

The most novel aspect of Keys N Krates – they’re a trio including a drummer who play electronic dance music live on stage – is lost on a studio recording where you’re basically just hearing electronic dance music that’s centered on keyboards and samples. But even still, you can feel the difference a live drummer makes even when the snare hits have the tonality of a drum machine. Adam Tune keeps “Original Classic” in a tight pocket but adds a bit of a bounce and relaxed swing to the groove that mellows out the more intense keyboard hook. Juicy J and Chip both lean into expressing a casual confidence in their verses, the former sounding as though he’s just strolling through the song while on vacation.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Lady Wray “Games People Play”

Lady Wray sings “Games People Play” from a bit of a remove, looking on at someone else making the same mistakes she’s already made in youthful relationships with a feeling of resignation – this is just what people do, the “silly shit you do when you’re young.” There’s empathy in the song and warmth in her voice, but more than anything you hear lingering pain in her phrasing and a determination that she won’t be repeating any of this as an adult. The arrangement is full of classic soul moves but there’s a chilliness to the tone, mainly in the trebly lead guitar part that runs through the center of the composition. The reverb is lovely ambiance but emphasizes the aloofness of the song, suggesting a physical and emotional distance between Wray and the music.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Eulajay and Serpentwithfeet “Luvaroq”

As the title suggests “Luvaroq” is heavily indebted to the Lover’s Rock subgenre of reggae, to such an extent that I swear I’ve heard some version of this before but I can’t quite place it. The track is all warm, womb-like bass and tastefully applied bits of treble, like the lead organ part that in context has an effect roughly equivalent to a loosely strung line of Christmas lights. Elujay and Serpentwithfeet trade off vocals, each of them pleading to their love interest to not to dump them. They’re not exactly offering the best arguments for this in their lyrics – Serpentwithfeet in particular seems like he’s kind of a dick to his boyfriend here – but there’s an earnestness in their singing and a gentle purity to the music that makes a strong case in their favor.

Buy it from Amazon.

Blonder “Ice Cream Girl”

Constantine Anastasakis is very good at a very ‘90s alt-rock move of contrasting bright notes with a heavy and burbling low end that makes the whole song feel a bit nauseous. It’s an underrated way of expressing anxiety – a more jittery rhythm feels right for a more high-strung personality, but the sounds in “Ice Cream Girl” are more particular to someone with lower expectations in life and less inclination to want to control everything. Despite the sickly tone the song really works as pop, particularly as Anastasakis’ voices drifts up into falsetto on the sing-songy bridge into the slam-the-fuzzbox chorus.

Buy it from Amazon.

Aminé “Van Gogh”

The keyboards in “Van Gogh” are pitched up to the point that it has the cartoonish plasticy tinkle of children’s music, making the song feel a bit like a perverted lullabye that involves bragging about fucking a girl on a Van Gogh painting. Like a lot of artists in the recent past Aminé is basically singing with rap cadences but unlike fellow travelers like Lil Uzi Vert or Playboi Carti, there’s a pleasing softness in his voice that really sells the flirtatiousness in this particular song. There’s a real himbo energy to this one, just the perspective of a silly dude who wants to party and get laid and he makes it all sound kinda sweet.

Stream it via Aminé.