Fluxblog

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

10/19/18

Kids Grow Up Too Fast

Matthew Dear “Echo”

Matthew Dear’s voice has always had a strange allure – dead-eyed, deadpan, and dead serious all at once. On previous records his voice was like an odd bit of flavor layered over his dark, lurid productions but with Bunny, it’s become the focal point of the music. In “Echo,” he tells a grim story about a young boy speeding from childhood into adulthood not by maturing, but by doing a lot of stuff that’s just not for kids. Dear leans on vocal fry to a comic degree here, digitally nudging it into a grotesque sizzle as his keyboards and clipped drum clicks create an odd unsettling feeling that evokes a druggy drowsiness and the gradual tightening of a mechanical vice.

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10/16/18

To The Utmost Degree

Kurt Vile “Bassackwards”

“Bassackwards” sounds like someone wandering around searching for something but forgetting what they were looking for almost immediately. Even for a Kurt Vile song this is exceptionally stoned and meandering, but it’s also quite lovely in the way it creates a sense of pleasant stasis. Vile seems caught between feelings here – not quite upset, not quite lonely, not quite happy. Everything just is. “This is life and it’s flat,” as Stephen Malkmus once sang. But it’s not bleak – he appreciates friends, he appreciates moments of beauty. And while the music doesn’t go anywhere in particular, it feels good. It feels alive, in the most low key way.

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10/14/18

Your Color Blue Is Grey

Cat Power “In Your Face”

“In Your Face” is a quietly confrontational song in which Chan Marshall sings directly to Americans who are so comfortable and privileged they can’t seriously confront injustice and cruelty, and can only see things in terms of petty grievances. Maybe you’ve heard of these people? Marshall’s voice is sober but obviously heartbroken, and there’s a frustration in her tone – an awareness that her words won’t be heard or heeded by anyone who really needs to pay attention. There’s a feeling of tension through the whole song, mainly in the way a vaguely eerie piano melody circles her voice, but also a bit of patience in the gentle swing of the guitar. Marshall is quite angry, but she expresses it with a meditative grace.

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10/13/18

The Void Is Back And Unblinking

St. Vincent “Hang On Me” (MassEducation Version)

There is a couplet in an old Loud Family song called “Screwed Over By Stylish Introverts” that I think about a lot. It goes:

“You let me know that calling just because I’m lonely is completely rude
You could work this into a lecture to the starving not to beg for food”

This comes to mind any time I feel lonely and miserable and desperate to communicate with someone else. I can think of very few times in my life when I would have felt this way about someone reaching out to me, but it’s what I worry about someone else thinking. Sometimes it’s irrational, but other times it’s not – you can be an imposition, a burden, a drain on empathy, and too dependent on other people’s emotional labor. You can just be a drag.

“Hang On Me,” the opening song on St. Vincent’s Masseducation and the closing song on its stripped-down counterpart MassEducation, is about reaching out to someone in a time of desperation. Annie Clark’s protagonist has some fear about disrupting the person she’s calling or asking for too much, but she’s not about to stop herself – she’s starving, and not too proud to beg for food. The MassEducation arrangement, just piano and vocal, is more effective in getting across the sentiment of the song. Clark’s voice sounds more fragile here, and there’s something in the ambiance of the track that reminds me of the way your eyes start to sting after you’ve been crying for a while. She sings “oh please don’t hang up yet,” and you feel that raw need for connection. Just under the surface of this song there’s a powerful dread – if I need you this much right now, what would I do without you? And if I’m too vulnerable now, will it turn you off to me? Making the call is a calculated risk.

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10/8/18

Daily Secretions From A Poisonous Toad

Electric Six “(It Gets) (A Little) Jumpy”

It seemed to me that Electric Six had been in a bit of a creative rut for their past few records, an understandable result of their intense self-imposed album-and-tour-every-year grind. But their new one, Bride of the Devil, brings them back to a peppier, bolder sound more like their mid-‘00s peak. (Yes, you read that right – I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being the Master and Flashy are their best LPs as far as I’m concerned.)

“Jumpy” is the one that sounds like a hit, or at least a hit in a world in which there was a lot of money behind this band. There’s some superficial similarity to the Pixies in the hard/soft dynamics and the contrast of acoustic guitar and a vaguely Latin lead line, but the chorus soars in a way that’s very particular to Dick Valentine in faux arena rock mode. The lyrics, as ever, are a treat – it’s mostly about a guard dog that’s been trained to kill, and there’s a terrific goof on both Boy George and Radiohead that’s only just a lead up to a very literal “karma is a bitch” punchline.

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10/5/18

Make Romance

Molly Burch “Wild”

“Wild” is an expression of low-key envy, with Molly Burch observing another woman and wishing that she could be anywhere near as confident and uninhibited as she appears to be. Burch declares that it’s her “nature to be guarded,” and that may be true, but she sings the song with a theatricality that suggests she’s not nearly the wallflower she thinks she is. Or maybe this is just her mimicking the behavior – a little more vampy and a bit more campy than she might usually be. The song itself sounds light and sensual, and betrays very little of the neuroses on display in the lyrics. The looseness and easygoing loveliness of the tune feels more like it represents the vibe of the woman being observed than the feelings described in Burch’s words.

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10/2/18

That’s How They Do

Public Memory “The Line”

“The Line” will sound immediately familiar to anyone who spent a lot of time listening to the groovy nightmare music coming out of the U.K. at the end of the 1990s – UNKLE, Tricky, Primal Scream, Radiohead, Portishead, etc. It’s the hip-hop beat reconfigured as a death march; the electronic tones that sound like security alarms; the grinding terror and pervasive pre-millennium tension. Robert Toher, the writer and producer of this track, is also the vocalist, and somehow he manages to sound like Portishead’s Beth Gibbons singing through a speaker phone in a conference room. The music is very dystopian, but there’s a feeling through it that things are about to get much worse. Though this evokes music from 20+ years ago, you certainly can’t say that this is retro – this is what the world is like all the time lately, all those Brits just saw the future clearly. Toher is just capturing the mood rather than predicting it.

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9/30/18

Prepare Your Words

Crepes “As You Go”

“As You Go” is a marvel of rock craftsmanship – it’s neat and elegant in its construction, but still has enough physicality to keep it from feeling cold or sterile. Crepes thread a ’60s British Invasion sort of melody through an arrangement that nods towards jazzy rock, the Talking Heads end of new wave, and Tame Impala-ish contemporary psychedelia without ever feeling quite like it belongs in any particular genre. There’s a pleasing fluidity to this song as it progresses, particularly as it shifts into its extended instrumental outro and all the threads resolve before an unexpected guitar solo finale.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

9/24/18

Held In Place With Wire And Lace

Metric “Love You Back”

Emily Haines has always been so good at conveying self possession, emotional clarity, and determination. There’s a sharpness to her songs – her language is almost always declarative, her lyrics are very often critical in nature. Even when she’s expressing sorrow, she sounds like someone who has made up her mind.

“Love You Back,” from the new Metric record, is very much about feeling sure of something. She’s singing about deciding to move from trauma and aggravation, and to not give in to what is holding her back. The music is heavy, bold, and firm, giving shape to her defiant tone. That’s part of why the chorus is so striking and startling: “I wanna love you back so bad.” It’s a bit of a plot twist, really – what is she really singing about her? Is this always about a relationship, or is this more about a sort of radical love and forgiveness? There’s some ambiguity there, but it’s presented with such certainty, and a confrontational kind of joy.

Buy it from Amazon.

9/21/18

A Jaw Full Of Gum

Magic Potion “Shock Proof”

Magic Potion sound so casual it’s vaguely surprising the songs even hold together, as if the players might all drift apart musically at any moment, or the drummer might literally get up and walk away to get a beer or something. It takes some effort and intention to sound this chilled out! “Shock Proof” ambles along with a weird grace, and Gustaf Montelius sings the song with a slightly bewildered tone. He seems so guileless and sweet, like everything he sees is at least a little bit fascinating to him. It’s a good vibe, and it has a way of skewing your senses to match their pace and perspective. They bring you into their world, and you just stroll along with them.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

9/19/18

The Darkness, The Deepness

Lana Del Rey “Mariners Apartment Complex”

Can you save someone you love from depression? That’s the idea behind “Mariners Apartment Complex,” a country rock ballad in which Lana Del Rey offers support and guidance to a man who mistakenly believes her to be as miserable and messed up as he is. She tries to give him perspective, she tries to show him the bright side of life. She tells him that she believes that people can change and that life can get better. She’s so earnest and sweet in this song, but also grounded and mature. She’s not offering any sort of false hope, and this isn’t really an expression of romantic love. It’s just pure compassion, and in the context of Lana’s body of work, a signal to the audience that she’s moved on from some of the darker feelings from her earlier records. The wistful vibe of the song and the firm, frank tone of her voice indicate that she doesn’t have any illusions of what’s going on here – she knows she can only help him so much, and that there probably isn’t much future to this relationship. But she truly cares, and she makes you care too.

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9/18/18

Incredible Emptiness In My Body

Noname “Self”

Noname seems so calm when she raps. Her words spill out at a relaxed but deliberate pace, like she’s extemporaneously speaking about something she knows everything about. In the case of “Self,” it’s processing her feelings after breaking up with someone and finding out she’s a lot more confident coming out of the situation than going into it. The track is nearly as chill as her voice – the keyboard parts have a smoothness you’d expect from D’Angelo or Erykah Badu, and the beat is remarkably unhurried and casual for a song that doesn’t even break the two minute mark. Near the end, she starts repeating the word “pussy,” and each time she says she sounds a little more comfortable and empowered by it, like she’s reciting an incantation to make her feel more confident. The song seems to just stop when the change sets in.

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9/14/18

You Won’t Care When You’re Frozen

Oh Sees “Sentient Oona”

John Dwyer is highly committed to the physical thrills of rock music, and builds his songs like they’re meant to be amusement park rides. It’s all in the momentum, the building of tension, the sudden release. He’s always looking for a new spin on the same essential thrills, and these days it’s in a quasi prog-metal milieu – a little more ponderous in spots, and heavier in others, but still a rush when you get to the classic Oh Sees “whoooo!” bits. “Sentient Oona” is all about how the tension in the double-drummer beat and Dwyer’s smooth mellow chords at the start gradually lead up to when it all explodes into a series of crushing riffs. The dude knows what he’s doing.

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9/12/18

How Long Can I Miss You

George Clanton “Make It Forever”

“Make It Forever” sounds like an intriguing midway point between My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and Tears for Fears’ early ‘90s material. I’m not sure if this is something George Clanton was deliberately going for – Loveless seems like a deliberate reference point for his work, but he seems like he may be trying to channel a more general very early ‘90s aesthetic. I like the way the Tears for Fears-ness of this song foregrounds the sort of romanticism and grandeur that would only be implied in MBV’s music. This is a very earnest tune – he’s singing straightforwardly about missing someone and wanting to reunite, and just be together forever after that. Clanton isn’t hedging his bets or playing it cool, and the music echoes the innocence and intensity of his feelings. He’s imagining a perfect moment, and in the music, he’s trying to will it into reality.

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9/11/18

Teen Wolf Teen

Anchorsong “Testimony”

Masaaki Yoshida’s compositions have a neat, orderly structure – if they were physical forms, it’d be a lot of balance and symmetry. Clean lines and smooth surfaces. Not overly rigid and airless, per se, but precise and deliberate. “Testimony” is built upon busy rhythms but still somehow feels quite still and serene. It sounds like calmly moving through a crowded space with a clear mind, taking in the world around you but at a slight intellectual and emotional remove. As the song moves towards its conclusion, the sound gets less and less dense, adding to the feeling of peacefulness and calm.

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9/10/18

A Problem With The Modern World

Spiritualized “The Morning After”

I am not sure how much lyrical continuity Jason Pierce intends to have in his music, but it’s not much of a leap to think that the Jane in “The Morning After” is the same Jane he was addressing in “Hey Jane” on the previous Spiritualized album from 2012. Whereas “Hey Jane” was largely about the singer’s perception of her and her influence on him, “The Morning After” is more of a character study in the style of Lou Reed’s “____ Says” songs. Here we learn that Jane’s from a difficult but affluent family, that she’s unlucky in love, and she’s in terrible health. There’s a lot of affection in the way Pierce writes about Jane, but also a bit of distance – it’s a little like how you might talk about an ex you still have some feelings for, or a once-close friend you’ve fallen out of touch with.

“The Morning After” is a rocker, and while the arrangement has the usual sort of Spiritualized density of instrumentation, there’s a relative lightness to it that stands apart from Pierce’s usual work. A lot of that comes from a groovy lead guitar part that gives the track a stoned ‘60s vibe, but it’s also in the way the music seems to unravel around the time the horns start getting wild and skronky in the final couple minutes. You get a sense of a life falling apart, but it doesn’t sound bleak or heavy. It’s more like a celebration that gets out of hand.

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8/30/18

Gluten-Free For The Summer

Miss World “Carb Yr Enthusiasm”

Natalie Chahal’s Miss World project is a mash up of Instagram aesthetics, ’90s references, and free-wheeling garage rock. Her lyrics and themes mostly satirize the more vapid aspects of social media and media aimed at women, but she’s doing it from a position of ambivalence – she clearly thinks a lot of this is very fun, but can’t help but smirk at the Kardashians and the way romance and betrayal can exist in the context of, say, Instagram stories. “Carb Yr Enthusiasm” is an aggressive surf rock tune about dieting and “beach bodies,” and it’s so heavy on irony that it almost comes around to not sounding ironic at all. Chahal’s voice is ideal for bitter punk sarcasm – there’s a nasty pinched quality to her delivery that’s a little bit Johnny Rotten and a lot “extremely mean popular girl in a teen drama.” She makes the song work in three ways: it’s a fun rock song, a funny joke, and a pointed critique. Not an easy balance to pull off!

Buy it from Amazon.

8/30/18

The Next Artery

Interpol “If You Really Love Nothing”

Interpol is the kind of band that always sorta sounds the same if you’re not paying much attention, but are nevertheless always making new formal decisions within the context of their clearly defined aesthetic. In the case of “If You Really Love Nothing,” it’s the introduction of a shuffle beat. The swing of the rhythm makes the more familiar elements of their sound feel a bit more fresh, it’s like rearranging the furniture of their sound a bit to give the music a more comfortable sense of feng shui. The usual claustrophobic tone is gone, but the weird bug-eyed tension remains. Paul Banks’ vocal sounds as tightly wound and neurotic as ever, and he seems to be addressing someone – a woman? an audience? the United States? – with a perplexed sort of disgust. He sounds like someone who has just given up hope for recovering a relationship with someone, and is now attempting to justify himself. What a bitter vibe for an unusually light and groovy song for them.

Buy it from Amazon.

8/23/18

Paint It Over

Mitski “Why Didn’t You Stop Me?”

Mitski’s voice is a stumbling block for me. Her compositions, especially on her new record Be the Cowboy, are bold and expressive, and her lyrics are sharp and emotional. Her voice, however, is pleasant but oddly lacking in affect. She undersells every line in a way that makes it hard for me to tell whether she’s being deadpan or emotionally reserved. I’m inclined to believe “Why Didn’t You Stop Me?” is more the former, and we’re meant to take find her indecisive and low-key selfish lyrics to be darkly humorous, probably at her own expense. Her composition, particularly the dramatic keyboard hook and lead guitar parts, carry the feeling of the song and indicate emotional stakes far greater than her vocal would imply. It’s certainly interesting to me to contrast that bombast with a vocal approach that presents a rather distant and cerebral take on raw feelings, but the result is a song I admire far more than I connect with it.

Buy it from Amazon.

8/23/18

How’s Life?

Ariana Grande “Sweetener”

Pop albums take time to make, while pop star relationships tend to burn bright and fast. As a result, it’s easy to approach Ariana Grande’s new album Sweetener as a collection of songs about her intense romance with the comedian Pete Davidson. (There is, of course, a song on the record called “Pete Davidson.”) But many of these songs have been in the works for some time, and “Sweetener” in particular apparently dates back to 2016 when Grande was still involved with Mac Miller. (A lyrical tip-off is the entire verse about enjoying getting head from this lover, and Miller is a guy who proudly rapped “I just eat pussy, other people need food” in his album-length tribute to Grande, The Divine Feminine.)

Fun fact, right? Cool trivia. But I think this context is valuable in understanding where Grande is coming from as a person and as an artist. This is a woman who had her heart set on singing songs that conveyed a joyful, lustful love, regardless of what relationship she was in. She’s chasing a feeling, and trying to capture it in sound, and she absolutely nails it when she works with Pharrell Williams. Williams, one of the great geniuses of modern pop R&B, has an instinctive understanding of what chords and melodies flatter Grande’s voice and persona that most of her other collaborators have lacked. His chord structures float and sparkle around her voice, which is at once bold and sweetly delicate, like Mariah Carey in her youth. The songs sound light and dreamy, like she’s just levitating in a haze of infatuation.

This is the state of mind she wants to be in, like, all the time. Blissful, horny, and removed from stress and the horrors of the world. And whomst among us does not want this? Look at this gif of Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson from earlier this week. Who doesn’t want to feel like Ariana in this moment? Who doesn’t want to have someone look at them the way she looks at Davidson? This is an ideal state!

The idea driving all of this – her life, her songs – is that this is a choice. You have to want it, to chase it, to bring it into your life and cherish it. This is a woman who recently endured a horrific trauma, and made a decision to throw herself into love. She made a record about love rather than the hate and murder and cruelty she witnessed firsthand. She’s singing about her experience, but offering the best advice she can give to anyone else struggling: Find love, embrace love, hold on to it. You need that sweetener.

Buy it from Amazon.


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