Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Caroline Rose “Feel the Way I Want”

Believing in yourself, allowing yourself to want what you want, and giving yourself person to do and be what you want all requires a leap of faith that can look delusional and arrogant when viewed from any direction. “Feel the Way I Want” plays on that ambiguity, both celebrating its character’s decision to throw herself into her desires and ambitions and looking askance at her, vaguely dubious of whether she can actually follow through on some big talk. But that bit of doubt is mostly just subtext – the synthy bounce of the song conveys a blithe confidence, and Rose sings her choruses with a joyful sincerity and delivers her verses with a touch of weight and tension, rooting her resolutions in a history of conflict and low self-esteem.

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Tara Clerkin Trio “In the Room”

The Tara Clerkin Trio are mostly a jazz group, but their music bleeds into other neighboring territories – vibey electronic music, artsy indie music, psychedelia. “In the Room” starts off slow and pensive with a simple saxophone figure repeating like drawing in steady, calming breaths for about two minutes. After that the song clicks into a mellow percussive groove with a clipped, hypnotic vocal pattern. This shift feels a bit like clouds parting to let in some fresh sunlight after a bit of rain. The pressure changes, the mood lifts. It’s incredibly lovely and calming, and only gets more so as the song drifts out and the percussion dissipates as that original sax pattern gets softer and softer.

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Basia Bulat “Your Girl”

“Your Girl” is a wistful folk-pop song in the tradition of Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs – crisp and clean in structure, but earthy and wholesome in aesthetics. Basia Bulat’s perspective is somewhat ambiguous in this song, shifting between a first-person testimonial about how she’s become hesitant to fall in love after some difficult experiences and choruses in which she’s addressing someone else about how they’ve let down their girl. It could just be that she’s talking to the one who wronged her, but there’s a suggestion of elapsed time. It could be advice to a friend, a warning to an ex that they’re keeping up the same mistakes, or maybe it’s just her reliving the same old traumas. But it’s notably that the song isn’t bitter or angry, just resigned to the seemingly inevitable catastrophes of people getting close to each other.

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Jeff Parker featuring Ruby Parker “Build A Nest”

I will admit to you that I feel a bit corny sharing the only song with vocals on a consistently great and inventive new jazz record, but just listen to this – it’s so lovely and gentle, it seems like it’s radiating warmth and benevolence! The feel of the track is easy going but there’s a slight tension in the groove, a bit of resistance to the call to slow down and enjoy the moment in the lyrics. Ruby Parker, the composer’s daughter, sings a very Dirty Projectors sort of melody with serene tones, as though she’s just moving with the waves of the rhythm. There’s a passive feeling to the song, but only in the sense of learning to calm down, trying to trust the universe, and letting that make you feel free.

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Andy Shauf “Where Are You Judy?”

In the story cycle of Andy Shauf’s new album The Neon Skyline, “Where Are You Judy?” is the inciting incident: Shauf’s lonely barfly discovers his ex-girlfriend is back in town, and gets it in his head that he needs to see her again. You hardly need the other songs on the record to get a complete experience of it – to be honest, given that I like this song more than the others and I prefer not following up on where the character goes from here, I prefer it on its own. Shauf conveys a lot of information with economical language, first sketching out the character’s romantic notion of why his relationship with Judy ended, i.e., that she was enticed away by the possibilities of flashy experiences somewhere else. He fantasizes about her giving him a call, telling him that she got bored of all that, that what she was chasing instead of staying with him was empty. And, by extension, that what they had together…that was fulfilling. The final chorus turns that flash of egocentric optimism inside-out without changing a word. Instead of wondering where she literally is in the moment, he’s flashing back to her lying in bed with him, her mind a million miles away. “Where are you, Judy?”

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Activity “Calls Your Name”

Activity’s forthcoming record Unmask Whoever is one of the best debut records I’ve heard in a long time – a band arriving fully formed after years of its members doing strong work in other groups (Grooms, Field Mouse) and pulling together a set of tasteful influences in interesting and evocative new ways. The band exists in a very Portishead-ish space between electronic music and bleak art rock, with the single “Calls Your Name” leaning a bit more towards sample-based production and a clicking, twitchy paranoia. The music in this song feels tight and claustrophobic but also overtly sexual, like they were making music on the prompt of “erotic panic attack.” The vocals signal a sort of flirty ennui, the guitar and keyboard parts offer subtle melodicism beneath the rhythmic clatter. It’s not even their best song.

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Four Tet “Baby”

Over the past decade or so Kieran Hebden has emerged as the master of the chopped and decontextualized vocal sample. His approach is both melodic and painterly, applying snippets of voice to the area of the song with both precise intention and gestural grace. He’s never trying to hide the nature of what he’s doing – you can always tell it’s cut up and digitally edited – but the sound is never about the process, it’s entirely about feeling and abstraction. “Baby,” a new song made in collaboration with the singer Ellie Goulding, is a particularly strong iteration on his usual formula and adds an unusual dimension to a Four Tet song in allowing the listener to recognize and fixate on the voice of a pop star. It feels slightly transgressive to separate a pop vocal from clarity and meaning, and to reduce Goulding to just the particular sound of her voice. In doing this Hebden highlights the best aspects of Goulding – the specific brightness of her tone, the way she often sounds like she’s grasping for something, the way she sounds like she’s pushing herself through painful feelings. In framing her voice like this, he’s presenting a very flattering portrait of her as a singer.

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Dreamville & Ari Lennox “Bussit”

Ari Lennox sings sexy, sensual R&B songs with the authoritative cadence of a rapper. Her phrasing is so bold and direct that even her most vulnerable or submissive lyrics can come across like statements or commands. This works particularly well on “Bussit,” a slow jam in which Lennox is taking control of a relationship that’s been hot but a little ambiguous. “You scared of love, but fuck your fear,” she sings in the first verse, not allowing any room for negotiation. The sentiment of this song would probably feel sinister coming from a man, but in this context, it’s a woman who knows what she wants doing her best to cut through a man’s bullshit and anxiety. I suppose this song is an ultimatum, but she’s mostly just asking him to get over himself and commit to something he actually cares about.

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Pearl Jam “Dance of the Clairvoyants”

Over the past two decades Pearl Jam shifted fully over to a jam band model in which the live show – and recordings of the live shows – was the primary focus of everything they did, and new studio albums were sporadically made as a way of bringing new songs into the setlist and having a peg for launching big tours. They only released four albums in this time, which is quite a drop from their frantic pace of writing and recording through the ‘90s. The records have their moments but feel very formulaic, as though the band identified a set of song archetypes they had to iterate on in order to fill out a sequencing arc that was pretty much the same every time. (2002’s overlong Riot Act is an outlier in this respect, but the tracks on the subsequent albums are interchangeable in production style and musical function.)

So with this in mind, “Dance of the Clairvoyants,” the first single from the forthcoming record Gigaton, is quite a surprise. “Dance” doesn’t sound quite like anything the band has ever done – it has prominent synths, a groove that encourages awkward dancing, and a vocal by Eddie Vedder that verges on a full-on David Byrne impression. It’s dark, but also sort of cheeky. (Near the end Vedder sings “I know the boys wanna grow their dicks and fix and file things.”) Even if the description of this seems potentially horrible, it all clicks together very nicely and sounds genuinely inspired. The band seem motivated to push themselves musically and Vedder is clearly inspired by the bleakness of contemporary politics and the oncoming disasters of climate change. His rich baritone is well suited to doomsaying, and when he sings a line like “the past is the present and the future’s no more” it comes out sounding like a prophecy rather than paranoia.

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J-Felix featuring Andrew Ashong “Mind Up”

“Mind Up” is a very restrained and low-key funk track – always groovy, but so uncluttered and relaxed in its pace that it seems to glide by on a light breeze. There is a physicality in the track, particularly in that extra-crisp snare sound, but the emphasis of this track is on the way Andrew Ashong’s vocal floats through the ample negative space. Ashong has a great voice for funk – a bit of rasp, a touch of treble, a pinched delivery on the more rhythmic lines – and he sings lyrics about chasing ambitions that might ordinarily come off as a little trite with subtle shades of doubt and bitterness that ground the words in harsh reality and a sincere generosity of spirit.

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Ultraísta “Tin King”

Ultraísta is a trio featuring Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, the prolific session drummer Joey Waronker, and singer Laura Bettinson. It’s important to note this upfront because it explains a lot about the music – for one, it immediate answers the question of how this random band has a drummer who is working up to the level of style and technical sophistication you hear on this track. It also makes sense of how much this sounds like Radiohead, and in far more subtle ways than you’d usually get from an artist emulating that band. Godrich, who has effectively been a sixth member of the band from OK Computer onwards and also collaborates with Thom Yorke on his solo records, has understandably absorbed the aesthetics of that band over the years. But the interesting thing about hearing him as a musician cut off from all of them is getting the sense of how HIS aesthetics may have formed theirs as well. “Tin King” is a remarkable composition, particularly in the way Waronker’s busy percussion plays off a jumpy bass riff and a keyboard part that resembles Yorke’s Rhodes parts on “Everything In Its Right Place.” Bennington’s voice comes at a clipped rhythm, like she’s constantly chasing to keep up with Waronker, and her tone suggests a strange contrast of exasperation and serenity. Her melody isn’t far off from what Yorke might sing if he was on the track, but it’s not a problem. Any resemblance to Radiohead here is both logical and flattering: If this was in fact one of their compositions, it’d be among the better songs from this stage of their career.

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Mac Miller “Circles”

There’s a lot of ways Mac Miller’s death at the age of 26 last year is heartbreaking and tragic, but the thing that stings the most if you didn’t actually know him is that he was just finding himself as a vocalist in the year or so before he died. Miller was singing more, and leaning in hard on the raspiness of his voice, and contrasting it with more elegant and organic sounds in collaboration with Jon Brion. In a song like “Circles,” which opens his new posthumous which he was working on with Brion at the time of his death, you can hear him confidently settling into a niche as a prematurely weathered man grappling with his demons and failures with a vocal style that communicated remarkable vulnerability and low-key pathos. In his voice and words you get a poignant mix of resignation to life’s difficulties – and the problems he created for himself – but also a glimmer of hope that he can move beyond all that if only he had some time to set things right and get back on track. Surely I don’t need to belabor the point of why hearing him sing a song expressing that mix of feelings is so heartbreaking to hear now.

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Magdalena Bay “How to Get Physical”

Last year Magdalena Bay released an excellent song called “Only If You Want It” which sounded remarkably like Britney Spears in her prime and pushed the obsessive feelings at the center of many of Spears’ major hits to an absurdist extreme. “How to Get Physical,” from their new EP, does a similar trick – it has the sound and feeling of Kylie Minogue at her early 2000s pinnacle, but swaps out the casual lust and slick confidence of that music with a neurotic insecurity. Mica Tenenbaum’s voice matches the joyful/serene cadences of Minogue, but her lyrics describe a scene of feeling total cluelessness as she tries to figure out how to be seductive while dancing with someone but deciding that it’s for the best if she just lets them take control rather than potentially humiliate herself by making a move. I like the way this song places itself in the gulf between the idealized situations of pop songs and music videos and the actual lived experience of awkward, ordinary fans. How many pop songs have you heard where the vocalist is singing about the freedom of dancing? This is just the opposite, where the hook is a shrugging admission that she’s not “made for dancing” at all, so now what?

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Cable Ties “Sandcastles”

Cable Ties specialize in brute force and velocity, two core values of punk rock that can nevertheless get underserved by bands who simply can’t go very hard. Every element in “Sandcastles” is stark and blunt, and played like they’re trying to bruise you on every impact. That’s all great, but the real draw is in the band’s approach to their vocals, which is like replacing the hot/cold dynamic of Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein with a more intense combo of hot backing vocal by drummer Shauna Boyle and a scalding hot lead by guitarist Jenny McKechnie. It’s a righteous sound for a righteous song, as McKechnie’s lyrics tear into over-militant activists who defeat their own goals with aggressive gatekeeping rather than open-minded coalition building. A good song for this year, obviously.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Selena Gomez “Cut You Off”

“Cut You Off” falls into the same category as a lot of Ariana Grande’s best music: Sophisticated pop music bankrolled by the success of more market-oriented hits. Selena Gomez has great taste in melody – she favors a lot of busy-but-gracefully-light melodic turns, a thing I’m a real sucker for – and she’s shown a consistent interest in understated but stylish use of guitar. This song covers both, along with her draw towards music that conveys a low-key neuroticism. “Cut You Off” is about deciding to fully break it off with someone she’s been with for “1460 days” – so Bieber, then? – while sounding a bit nervous and wishy-washy about actually going through with it.

The distance between the lyrical proclamations and the cautious feel of the music is obviously the whole point here, and the arrangement is a series of contrasts between moments of floaty bliss and gently thudding hesitancy. The guitar solo near the end, performed by co-writer and producer David Pramik, is intriguing in the way it starts off restating the main melody with a touch of bluesy slickness but gets more halting as it goes along, like someone overthinking and getting self-conscious. If the song ended there, you’d be left assuming she backed down from a good idea, but instead it ends by just cutting off. A happy ending, basically.

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Poppy “I Disagree”

Poppy’s gradual shift towards a more abrasive sound has been interesting and only mildly surprising given that even her most bubblegum pop music was rooted in a trolling, “what’s even real, mannnn” questioning of commercial culture and YouTube mediation. But it also makes sense in that the sounds she’s been gravitating to – particularly the nü-metal guitar aesthetics – have only recently become understood as a form of kitsch. “I Disagree” is, on a formal level, basically a Sleigh Bells song with their more AC/DC approach to guitar riffing swapped out for a more Korn/OzzFest vibe. It’s a winning formula, and you really don’t need to pick up on any kind of wink for this to just be effective as an exciting and dynamic piece of music. But all the same, that wink – as well as Poppy’s overt femininity – is crucial for giving those guitar parts a fresh context that highlights everything thrilling about this style while cutting away all the less appealing baggage of sincere hyper-masculine aggression. You could see this is a sort of musical gentrification, particularly in that nü-metal is mostly associated with working class people, but I think what Poppy is doing works and does the original music some favors in retrospect by highlighting the most fun elements and giving those musicians credit for being effective and often deliberately funny.

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Of Montreal “Polyaneurism”

A very clever thing about “Polyaneurism” is how Kevin Barnes pushes hard on using language that signals a fluency in social media and contemporary slang, and in a way that shows him to be both plugged-in and slightly removed in generational terms. The song is just as much about this tension of staying “with it” as it is about the specifics of entering a relationship with a younger woman on her polyamorous terms. He’s open minded and excited by possibilities but can’t help but feel like maybe he’s internalized too much of the norms of his youth and slightly ashamed of it – “if you want monogamy are you just, like, some basic bitch?” The tone of the song is light and playful in a way that’s very much in line with Barnes’ earlier work but a refreshing change of pace from his more anxious and manic music from over the past decade or so. The silly mood conveys a more relaxed emotional stakes even if he’s clearly deep in love. He’s obviously attracted to her because she represents change and transformation, and he’s just figuring out how to evolve without betraying himself.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Ariana Grande “Get Well Soon” (Live)

I saw Ariana Grande perform over the summer at the Barclays Center and it was one of the most memorable arena shows I’ve been to in recent years, largely because the energy of the overwhelmingly young and female audience was so overwhelming and purely joyful. I’m very glad that Grande’s new live album documenting this tour does a lot to preserve that aspect of the show, including big sing along moments as well as random girls near the front screaming out particular lines and little moments of Grande responding gamely to her fans’ enthusiasm. Grande is such a gifted R&B vocalist that it’s a given she can sing well, so this live album does some crucial work in conveying a casual charm that goes beyond that technical skill and what aspects of her persona would ordinarily make it through to a studio record.

“Get Well Soon” is one of Grande’s finest songs, and it showcases her exceptional taste in melody, her deft vocal skill, and her genuine warmth and empathy. Her lyrics are directed as advice to herself but easily double as kind, generous words to anyone struggling with serious anxiety and mental health. There’s a lot of songs like this now, and I find many of them to be rather shallow or even full-on opportunistic. But this one is the real deal, and given the circumstances of Grande’s life around the time this was being made, it very much came from a real place of sink-or-swim emotional survival instincts. But these are just the lyrics – the music is carrying a deeper, fuller feeling of love and kindness, and you can hear that resonating with people in real time in this recording. Solidarity with the girl in the front row screaming along to “girl what’s wrong with you, come back down!,” by the way.

Buy it from Amazon.

I started making “survey mixes” at the end of the year at the start of this decade, and my approach to anthologizing the year’s music has changed over time. Initially it was all about my favorites, and then there was more of an effort to be as expansive as possible. When I’ve gone back to do previous decades, I’ve tried to be as thorough as I can, which is a little easier with hindsight. This year I’ve been collecting the survey in a rolling playlist in real time, and the result is a playlist of around 1000 songs that’s too much for anyone to reasonably listen to but is also STILL fairly incomplete in my mind. The amount of music produced now is truly staggering and we don’t talk enough about what that volume of material actually means for music culture, especially when the full range and diversity of what’s going on in music is largely ignored by media in favor of celebrity and whoever has serious money behind them. Hopefully these 2019 survey playlists will help you find some things you love that exist outside of all that.

Because the main survey is so large and unwieldy I’ve decided to make three other playlists with specific musical themes in the interest of listenability. The first of which is focused on, loosely speaking, R&B and slow jams. There was a huge amount of excellent music in this vein in 2019 and that chunk of the main survey was one of the things I listened to most frequently.

The second breakout playlist is basically all “indie,” which is defined somewhat loosely – I mean, I have a Taylor Swift song in this one – but I think it all fits together quite nicely.

And finally, here’s just a lot of bangers and bops – up tempo pop, dance music, and rap.

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Kaytranada featuring Kali Uchis “10%”

It’s slightly odd to me that when given this prime Katranada groove – so densely programmed but somehow quite airy! – Kali Uchis wrote a song about behind-the-scenes music industry shenanigans and haggling for cuts, but I guess you gotta write what you know. But still, it’s very incongruous to have this very sensuous composition as the backdrop for a sentiment so sour and score-settling even if she’s probably correct to be demanding her fair share and, of course, there’s more than enough love and sex songs in the world. In this context Uchis’ words start to fit into a more romantic narrative, with “where’s my 10%?” seeming like a more interpersonal audit for attention, effort, and emotional investment.

Buy it from Amazon.