Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Beabadoobee “Care”

“Care” has the dynamics of early to mid ’90s alt-rock but has the shiny polish of late ’90s/early ’00s mainstream rock – the vocal tone conveys softness and earnestness rather than aggression and irony, and when the guitar gets crunchy and loud it’s rendered with a styled gloss rather than blunt force. Beabadoobee is aiming for a romanticized Hollywood sound here and nails it, right on down to the vague sense of triumph as the song moves along. The sentiment of this song is extremely teenage – “I’m misunderstood and alienated and none of you actually care about me, but I will get through this!!!” – but it’s real and pure, and the song has just enough self-aware brattiness to it to keep it from getting too self-pitying.

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Young Chris & Wale “Yellow Flag”

Super Miles and DJMoney’s track for “Yellow Flag” is pure mid-’00s chipmunk soul, so reverent to the form that it could slot in seamlessly with early Kanye and Just Blaze tracks, or songs from Ghostface’s peak era as a solo act. This is a huge compliment as far as I’m concerned – originality may be nice, but you can’t argue with effective results when someone absolutely nails genre conventions. Young Chris and Wale trade off verses through “Yellow Flag” like they’re running a relay race, and while the tonality of their voices are fairly similar, there’s a nice contrast between Wale’s wordy delivery and Young Chris’ slower, more relaxed flow.

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Jockstrap “Acid”

“Acid” is, at its essence, a straightforward ballad in the tradition of mid 20th century melodramatic pop, but the arrangement is constantly mutating to the point that the entire track feels a bit deranged. Taylor Skye’s production decisions have the song lunging between clashing tonalities, lending the piece a cartoonish quality. Imagine flipping the channels on a TV and every station is playing the same song with a different kitschy arrangement. Georgia Ellery plays it straight with her vocal, but her high and pretty voice lends another layer of uncanny irony to the song by obscuring her more brutal and grotesque lyrics somewhat in sugary sweetness.

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Pop Smoke “Yea Yea”

Pop Smoke was murdered only a few months ago, he was only 20 years old. His voice on record comes across as much older than that – raspy and weathered, with a cadence that suggests relaxed patience rather than youthful exuberance. “Yea Yea,” from his recently released posthumous major label debut, is a showcase for that loose, unhurried delivery. He raps a lot about luxury, but the most luxurious thing on display is that vocal delivery and how it conveys the absolute confidence of someone who knows he doesn’t have to work too hard to impress anyone. I wouldn’t say he sounds care free here, you can hear traces of stress and strain in his voice and in his words. But when paired with SephGotTheWaves and Hakz Beats’ mellow, guitar-centric track he projects almost a zen “be here now” vibe even when he’s mostly just listing off models of guns in the chorus.

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Vampire Weekend “2021” (Live in St. Augustine, Florida 2019)

Father of the Bride is full of lyrics that have taken on new meanings during the pandemic – “I don’t want to live like this but I don’t wanna die,” “things have never been stranger, things are going to stay strange” – but the track that’s most transformed in the new context is “2021.” The song, just over a minute and a half long, is brief meditation on time and patience. It’s all questions and incomplete thoughts, the space between weighing options and making decisions. The core question – “I could wait a year but I shouldn’t wait three” – changes over the course of the song, the second time Ezra Koenig sings it the second part becomes “couldn’t wait three.” He’s thought about it enough in that space to realize the damage the wait would do to him, but it still doesn’t sound like he’s fully committed to anything else.

The live arrangement of “2021” is quite different, and extends the length of the composition by an extra three minutes that mostly elaborates on the lovely guitar melody that breaks up the more minimal and vibey piano-centric verses. I prefer this version, largely because it focuses on my favorite melodic part and emphasizes the “lost-in-thought” character of the song. The harmonic aspects of the song are much deeper too, and when you move through the instrumental break before reaching the final verse it feels like an emotional journey, as if you’re flash forwarding through entire potential timelines full of good and bad possibilities. Whereas the studio recording is so elliptical it doesn’t suggest any end to a holding pattern, the live version suggests an eventual path out of this purgatory. In a moment when we’re all waiting around to find out what our lives might be like in 2021 for reasons Koenig could have never foreseen, the more hopeful version of the song feels like a gift. The suspense of waiting is excruciating, but it’s not forever.

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Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire “Black Mirror”

Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire is a tremendously versatile rapper, as adept with over-the-top raunch and bravado as he is with aggressive political music or more introspective and philosophical work. “Black Mirror” is in the third category, with him reflecting on his childhood in Bed-Stuy, the physical and psychological tortures that Black slaves endured in America, and as he puts it in his own description of the song on Bandcamp, “Black masculinity and the role males play in the growth of younger men.” His performance matches the wistful tone of MadLib’s track, which recuts an old Stylistics track into melancholy abstraction. The second half of the song is a tribute to eXquire’s late uncle, a man he credits with setting him on the course of becoming a rapper. He’s clearly in awe of the man but doesn’t portray him as some untouchable hero but rather as a complicated person who taught him to respect himself and take pride in what he does. This could easily just be pure sentimentality, but eXquire ties together all these thoughts to arrive at a core theme: Pride is important, and it has to be modeled and passed down somehow.

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Drea the Vibe Dealer “Catastrophe”

“Catastrophe” is stacked with the sort of ear-catching bits that someone could sample and extrapolate into another song entirely – the slinky guitar part at the top of the song, the chiming chords at the start of the chorus, the ba-da-boop keyboard sound that punctuates the hook, the slight drag on the beat. Drea the Vibe Dealer is truly dealing in strong vibes here, and this extends to how she records her vocal so her jazzy phrasing slurs slightly in heavy reverb without sacrificing the nuances of her singing. Maybe the best way to put it is that it’s sort of painterly – photorealistic, but smudged and blurred a bit for style.

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Sault “Monsters”

“Monsters” is one of the first songs I’ve heard in 2020 that sounds like it’s offering a new aesthetic direction for the coming decade rather than sounding like something that’s just leftover from the past two years. The combination of sounds in this song are immediately striking – heavy layers of overdriven keyboards contrasted with the sort of crisp, slick groove that’s become Sault producer Inflo’s signature sound, and a vocal that’s so wet with reverb that the song’s straightforward melodic hooks have a ghostly, somewhat uncanny feel. This suits the lyrics very well, rendering spiritual but overtly political BLM-adjacent sentiments with an abrasive edge and a touch of supernatural power. The super-saturated sounds and the clean, dry tones are balanced perfectly in the mix so the opposite textures complement each other rather than clash or lose definition. It takes a lot of skill to make a song feel so raw and blunt, but also sophisticated.

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Jessie Ware “Mirage (Don’t Stop)”

Jessie Ware’s vocal melody in “Mirage” is the same as the verses of Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer,” but that didn’t quite hit me at first – it sounded immediately familiar, but the feeling of this song is very different and the lyrics fake you out a bit by nodding to another famous song from 1983, “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life” by Indeep. Ware’s new songs are referential even when they’re not directly interpolating old hits, and much like Dua Lipa she’s side-stepping declining recent trends in dance music in favor of something that sounds more classic and rooted in disco. But whereas Lipa’s songs have a brighter, bolder pop feel, Ware stays in the “classy” and “adult” pop lane she’s been in for years. She’s more of an aesthete, and excels when she’s curating bits of the past to create a vibe in the moment. “Mirage” conveys a luxurious sensibility; it presents dance pop as an aspirational product rather than a functional commodity good.

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Teyana Taylor featuring Erykah Badu “Lowkey”

Teyana Taylor is clearly living a blessed life – she managed to pull off the late ’90s/early ’00s hat trick of getting Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliott, AND Erykah Badu to all appear on her album. This would be like if Charli XCX got Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, AND Justin Timberlake on her next record, or if Car Seat Headrest got in collaborations with Stephen Malkmus, Beck, AND Thurston Moore on their next one. It’s a staggering achievement in feature-wrangling, and certainly gives the impression that she’s been anointed by these icons.

Even more impressive is that Taylor convinced Badu to essentially make a sequel to one of her most famous and beloved songs, “Next Lifetime,” with her. According to Taylor she heard echoes of “Next Lifetime” in the track and decided to embrace the similarity rather than run away from it, and reached out to Badu for her blessing and to invite her to be involved. (I absolutely love the confidence of this.) There are definitely ways this could be a sort of crass move, but Taylor’s lyrics and performance come from an artistically genuine place – it’s not a tribute to the original so much as it’s in conversation with it. She’s examining the song’s themes of talking yourself out of infidelity despite the temptation of an intense emotional connection from her own angle. Whereas Badu’s original was sung from a position of bittersweet certainty, Taylor sounds more tormented and indecisive. When Badu appears on the track, she’s more in Taylor’s emotional zone – conflicted, and only begrudgingly doing the right thing.

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Ego Ella May “How Long ‘Til We’re Home”

Ego Ella May’s guitar parts in “How Long ‘Til We’re Home” are delicate and subtle, all gentle arpeggios and gorgeous chord strums that seem to glimmer in the empty spaces of the arrangement. The rhythm section is tighter and sounds much more crisp in the mix, allowing the treble parts to be more atmospheric and emotive. May’s vocal part is soulful but subdued, delivering lyrics expressing deep skepticism of the media and cynicism about the direction of society with a sober, matter of fact tone. The calmness of the music seems pointed – it conveys a feeling of resignation and lowered expectations, but still some small amount of faith and optimism even when she sings the words “I’m losing hope” at the end of the chorus.

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Jyoti “Orgone”

The first two minutes of “Orgone” is slow and pensive, with Georgia Anne Muldrow singing about feeling lost and ill at ease, and dreaming of living in Africa. Her piano chords are halting, but her voice is steady and certain – there is no question in her mind that getting to Africa is the only way she may ever feel complete. The final third of the song is more overtly soulful, starting with her addressing the listener – “I don’t think you heard me” in a sorrowful shout, and climaxing with her wailing “take me back, take me back” like she’s in total agony. It’s a brilliant conclusion to the song, paying off on the abstract ideas of the first section with the raw emotion and urgency of the feeling at the core of it all.

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Annie “American Cars”

In the mid 2000s, the Norwegian singer Annie – along with the Swedish singer Robyn – laid the groundwork for virtually every beloved “pop star” we have today who struggles to land chart hits while cultivating fawning press and a devoted cult audience. Prior to the ’00s working in “pop” as a genre was a zero sum game – you either had big hits and were legitimate, or you didn’t and were immediately considered a failure and were disrespected and forgotten. The only room for cult fandom in this lane was reserved for import-bin artists like Kylie Minogue or Girls Aloud, who had attained major hits outside the United States. Robyn, whose arc is based on coming back from early chart hits she released as a teen, is a model of underground pop in the way she took control of her career and remade herself as an auteur. Annie, on the other hand, is more like an indie band in stature and reach, and in the way she played straight-ahead pop without ironing out her quirks or artsy influences.

“American Cars,” her first single in over a decade, leaves the bubbly pop of her breakthrough Anniemal to successors like Carly Rae Jepsen and moves in a darker, more atmospheric direction more along the lines of The Chromatics or Bat for Lashes. The ice cold synthesizers are perfectly suited to Annie’s airy, trebly voice. Her lyrics, inspired directly by the David Cronenberg film Crash, are evocative and romantic but the vocal is mixed so in a tonal sense it could just as well be another keyboard part, particularly on the chorus hook. As brilliant as “Chewing Gum” and “I Know UR Girlfriend Hates Me” are, this new aesthetic actually feels more authentically Annie.

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Roy Ayers, Adrian Younge, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad “Synchronize Vibration”

Roy Ayers’ collaboration with Adriane Younge and Shaheed Muhammed is true to the progressive jazz/funk Ayers made in the ’70s, but isn’t a full-on retro thing. The sound is rooted in the present and in Young and Muhammed’s established polished neo-soul aesthetic, but they’re not afraid to nod in the direction of Ayer’s classics. “Synchronize Vibration,” the opening track of the new record, feels like a deliberate sequel of sorts to Ayer’s most famous song “Everybody Loves the Sunshine.” You can hear echoes of the song in the lyrics and melody, but most importantly in the cool psychedelic haze of the arrangement. The keyboards and strings feel like shifting overlapping clouds, gentle and gradual in their movements but always in communication with the groove. It’s very particular sort of atmosphere, one that’s been imitated through the years but it seems that only Ayers himself can nail it.

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AceMoMa “Hidden Memory”

AceMo and MoMa Ready’s music is fast and joyfully frantic, calling back to ’90s house and techno aesthetics while carving out their own hyper-charged niche. “Hidden Memory” is, relative to a lot of their material, a more mellow number. The emphasis is placed on atmosphere and the “aura” of the samples, so even when the programmed beats get into drum and base BPMs it’s more vibey than physical. There’s a wonderful sense of space within this composition – wide open and airy but still dense with detail, implying a massive scale observed from a distance. Along with the title, this piece suggests some profound moment of connection with something that was once thought lost. There’s a powerful feeling of hope in this music, as though it’s possible to bring the lost things back.

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Bob Dylan “False Prophet”

The verses of “False Prophet,” but most especially the fourth, contain lyrical sentiments that are pretty common themes in rap: performance of a grandiose persona, declarations of greatness and theatrical disdain for rivals, boasts about street knowledge and underworld associations. The music is jacked from a rare 1954 blues b-side by Billy “The Kid” Emerson – not an unusual move for blues or folk, but another echo of a genre initially built on samples. I don’t think Dylan is necessarily trying to draw a direct comparison to rap here, but he’s certainly aware of the lineage, and the larger process of art as a tradition and communicative medium. He insinuates a lot in his lyrics and arrangement choices, and I think one of those things here is nudging the listener to hear a historical through line. Formats and styles come and go, but a lot of creative impulses don’t really change much through time.

“False Prophet” is playful and sly, and you can hear the delight in the gravelly remains of his voice when he hits each of his punchlines. He’s lived in this version of his voice long enough to have mastered its limited range, so he’s surprisingly nimble and nuanced in the phrasing of every line of this song. He’s always been the singing equivalent of a character actor, but Very Old Man Dylan voice has a different weight to it, even when compared to the Somewhat Less Old Man Dylan of his late ’90s/early ’00s run of albums. He’s keenly aware of when this voice sounds profound and when it sounds funny, and this song is the perfect vehicle for playing to both strengths. You can always hear the jokes in this one coming as the music rolls up to the punctuation of the riff, but the deeper lines mostly hit you when you’re off balance.

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Armand Hammer featuring Nosaj “Leopards”

Fat Albert Einstein’s track for “Leopards” feels unsteady and wild, it feels like you’re knowingly walking into dangerous territory. A lot of that is just that it’s built on a foundation of tinny hi-hat patter that signals anxiety and structural fragility, but it’s also in the way the main organ riff seems to lunge out menacingly and how the bass line seems to lurk around the beat rather than groove. The rappers in Armand Hammer take slightly different approaches to the beat: Billy Woods’ verse expands on the environment evoked by the track by fixating on specific scenery and grounding his story in Flatbush, Brooklyn before shifting into more overtly horrific imagery. Elucid’s verse leans into the unstable feel, packing his lines with quick-cut images like Ghostface, but letting his performance fall out of the groove as the music gets woozy.

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Shamir “On My Own”

Shamir Bailey’s guitar parts on “On My Own” remind me how Pixies songs could feel raw and brutish but also graceful and gleaming at the same time. Bailey’s lyrics do a similar thing, where he’s pushing through dark and lonely feelings towards a softer, more self-accepting state of mind. The point, at least in this song, is that this is all a continuum, and the rough defines the smooth. The most powerful parts of the song are when his voice conveys vulnerability and triumph in equal measure, as if to underline that the vulnerability kinda IS the triumph here.

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Marques Martin “Hailey”

The tensions in “Hailey” are constantly shifting around Marques Martin’s lyrics, suggesting an emotional context of anxiety and fear that’s often in stark contrast with the confidence – or affected nonchalance – of his words. Martin’s arrangement is dynamic and thoughtful, giving space for more relaxing or neutral moments and rendering some of the more nervous sections with subtlety and nuance rather than going with full-on claustrophobic dread. The overall effect of the song is a very vivid portrait of a young man sorting through a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings. There’s ego and obsession, genuine affection and snarky dismissiveness, and layers of different sorts of fear overlapping with joy and a sincere desire to be vulnerable.

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Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist featuring Tyler the Creator “Something to Rap About”

The Alchemist’s arrangement for “Something to Rap About” reshapes David T. Walker’s smooth and elegant instrumental “On Love” into something that sounds even more sleek and luxurious, or as Tyler the Creator describes it as he enters the track, “this sounds like the boat I haven’t bought yet.” Both Tyler and Freddie Gibbs take the relaxed, dreamy, and opulent tone of the music as a starting point for exploring the idea of success, with Gibbs focusing mainly on the economic pitfalls of actually having money and just wanting to “live to 93 and see the old me” and Tyler writing about dealing with other people’s resentment of his achievements. The latter rapper’s raspy monotone contrasts nicely with Walker’s crisp chords, and it’s hard not to be charmed by the bit at the end where he boasts about getting the verse down in one take but apologizes for mispronouncing Mykonos.

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