Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Kanye West “Ghost Town”

“Ghost Town” threads together a series of beautiful moments of vulnerability, but it’s all a bit loose and off-kilter like the ramblings of a sentimental drunk. And like, this is a song where Kanye says he sometimes talks “like I drank all the wine,” so I assume this effect is intentional.

Some of the rawest feelings in the song get outsourced to other vocalists – a heartbreaking quote from “Take Me For A Little While,” a highly emotive John Legend seemingly making up his part on the spot, and an outro section by 070 Shake which is somehow both depressingly bleak and triumphant. These parts bracket West’s own verse in the middle of the track, and it sounds a bit like he’s using them as a sort of protective barrier. West’s voice on his verse has a warmth and shine to it that calls back to his earliest work. He’s half-singing everything, but there’s nothing masking or altering his voice. He sounds…happy. Content. Self-aware. Optimistic that the worst is now behind him. I’m certain he intends this to be an olive branch to the world. I think he’s very sincere, or at least he is on this song.

I have no idea who is playing guitar on this song – there is no official credit for this, but I assume it’s the guy from Francis and the Lights since he’s listed as a contributing producer – but that part is crucial to the success of this song. It’s a loud, emotionally wrenching part, but it’s layered into the composition in such a way that you can feel its effect without paying it much attention. The distorted guitar chords seem to slash around Legend’s yelping, and grind like gears around the “Take Me For A Little While” part. It’s more melodic and poignant during 070 Shake’s sequence, adding both anthemic oomph and a touch of grace. It drops out entirely during West’s verse, further emphasizing this barrier around him and how free and gentle he sounds when he’s on the mic.

Buy it from Amazon.

Stewart Lupton has died at the age of 43. As the singer of Jonathan Fire Eater and the leader of The Child Ballads he was one of the most fascinating and charismatic rock frontmen of the past few decades, but his addictions and erratic behavior kept him from reaching a level of fame commensurate to his talent. His body of officially released material is quite small – a handful of EPs, a few stray singles, and one full album with Jonathan Fire Eater. I was fortunate enough to have produced a radio session that he recorded for PRI’s Fair Game back in 2008, when he was making a comeback with Child Ballads. One of the songs from that session was an adaptation of Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle” which was never officially released. Here it is, along with the copy I wrote for it when I originally posted it a decade ago. It’s beautiful and intense, and I think it’s particularly poignant now in how the lyrics provide some insight into his troubled, complicated life.

Stewart Lupton “Stewart Hassle”

Stewart Lupton has a new strategy: He’s writing new lyrics upon the foundations of respected classics, which is both supremely ballsy, and in line with the folk tradition. “Stewart Hassle” is his variation on Lou Reed’s epic “Street Hassle.” In this recording, he transposes its main theme to acoustic guitar, and replaces Reeds’ “great monologue set to rock” with a personal story about a homecoming, a reckoning, and a lost love. Lupton’s words are stark and colloquial, and linger in a place halfway between wisdom and regret. At the core, it’s a song about wounded pride — Lupton sounds genuinely embarrassed at certain moments, particularly when he explains “I did some things out in the streets / and some things were done to me / and the scariest thing / is just how it looked / the same as it does on the tv.” Throughout, he clings to the remnants of his dignity, and does his best to put his worst days into perspective, but in the end, the most gutting sentiment is expressed with only a slight modification of Reed’s words — “Love has gone away / it’s stripped the rings from my fingers / and there’s nothing left to say / except that I miss you, baby.”

(Originally posted March 27th 2008)

Shawn Mendes “Nervous”

Something about “Nervous” felt very familiar when I first heard it, but I couldn’t quite place it. But then I saw the credits and it all clicked: This song is co-written by Julia Michaels, and the verse melody and lyrics are very similar to her work on Selena Gomez’s “Bad Liar” last year, and Janelle Monáe’s “Make Me Feel” this year. “Nervous,” which was written by Michaels with Shawn Mendes and producer Scott Harris, is expertly composed blue-eyed soul filtered through a very neurotic perspective. Given the similarities between “Nervous,” “Bad Liar,” and “Make Me Feel,” it would seem that Michaels’ talent is in how she can lace raw, vulnerable feelings into big, generous melodic hooks that have more to do with classic ’80s pop by the likes of Madonna, George Michael, and either of the Jacksons than anything that’s been commercially successful over the past decade or so. Mendes is a great vehicle for the Michaels aesthetic – he’s got a terrific vocal range, sings with an obvious joy, and isn’t afraid to dial it back and focus on nuance while delivering those finely detailed lyrics on the verses.

Buy it from Amazon.

A$AP Rocky “Changes”

A$AP Rocky has been arty from the start, but early on he had a way of smuggling strange textures and unlikely samples into songs that passed for mainstream rap. His new record Testing goes much further out into experimental territory – there isn’t anything remotely like a banger, several songs resist form and structure, samples and vocals often overlap like clouds rather than click into rhythms, and everything feels like a woozy audio hallucination.

“Changes,” a song built around a sample of Charles Bradley cover’ of Black Sabbath’s ballad of the same name, swaps a standard verse-chorus-verse form in favor of a three-act structure. The first verse is a homage to Andre 3000’s famous verse from “International Players Anthem,” but flips that tentative ode to monogamy into a story about getting rejected and acting out. The narrative shifts along with the music, with Rocky’s lyrics growing more introspective and self-critical as it goes along. It’s a bittersweet song – he’s obsessing over changes in himself and others, and scrolling through Instagram envying other people who are embracing stability while he feels totally adrift. (Very relatable!)

Buy it from Amazon.

Red Velvet “All Right”

“All Right” is a ruthless pleasure machine designed to smash every joy button in your skull. The melodies are unstoppable earworms, the chords are designed to elicit maximum euphoria. Even by the chipper, hyperactive standards of K-Pop, this song is a lot. And oh god, I LOVE IT. But of course I do: I spent the first decade of this blog chasing this sort of pop high, and will always be a mark for well-constructed joyful dance pop. “All Right” is a hodgepodge of pop tics from the late ’90s and early ’00s – a bit of pop R&B melody on the verses, super-charged Britney on the chorus – with just enough English lyrics sprinkled in to keep it from sounding too alien to Western ears. And having read a translation of the lyrics, I can assure you that you don’t need much more than “ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT!” to grasp the meaning of this song.

Buy it from Amazon.

Pusha T “If You Know You Know”

Kanye West may be going through a… difficult phase… right now, but it’s a huge relief that he’s bounced back as a producer after his dull and uninspired work on The Life of Pablo a few years ago. “If You Know You Know,” the opening track from Pusha T’s new record, is essentially a strutting glam rock song built entirely out of very Kanye sounds culled from obscure samples and expertly programmed beats. The music is dynamic and carefully calibrated so that the cool bits hit with maximum impact, whether it’s the introduction of the keyboard sample about 35 seconds into the track, or how the stuttering staccato vocal sample seems to bounce off of Pusha’s words. Pusha thrives on a track like this – it suits his gloating supervillain vibe, and gives him space to be a bit more playful than usual. His voice always conveys an even balance of cool and cruel, but the way he delivers the title phrase on this track is a new peak: so casually taunting, so glibly dismissive.

Buy it from Amazon.

Chvrches “Graffiti”

Chvrches sound so nervous and frightened on their third album Love Is Dead. About half the songs sound as though they’re trying to appease several constituencies at once – label people, radio programmers, random Spotify listeners, their old indie fans, themselves – and land in a weird space somewhere between the songs that made them popular and the corny, vacant melodrama of radio acts like Imagine Dragons and OneRepublic. Too many of the songs feel overworked and compromised. The songs that work best, like the opening track “Graffiti,” deliver the sort of melodies and synth tones they gave us on their debut album, but cautiously add no new elements.

This anxiety comes through in the lyrics too. Lauren Mayberry’s voice always sounds bright and confident, but her words fixate on guilt, confusion, and an all-consuming feeling that everything and everyone is doomed. “Graffiti” is about reckoning with the notion that the future has been canceled, and thinking about what that means personally. Suddenly a lot of time feels wasted, and what she expected of her life feels impossible. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to grow old,” she sings. “And now we never will.” There’s a lot of songs about wanting to burn bright in your youth and never get old, but it’s rare to hear a pop song that is disappointed by the idea of only ever being young.

Buy it from Amazon.

Jo Passed “Repair”

The vocals in this song are mostly there for tone and texture – the words are nearly unintelligible, and it’s all at best secondary to the guitar harmonies. The guitars are gorgeous on this track, shifting from tangling arpeggios and psychedelic noodling to bright strokes and a distorted section that hits like a brief tantrum. It’s like a weather system as an indie rock song, with this small, high-pitched voice coming out whenever it seems like the clouds are parting and a bit of sunshine is coming through.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Cuco “Lover Is A Day” (Audiotree Session Version)

Cuco’s original recording of “Lover Is A Day” has a nice, chillwave-y vibe, but the arrangement didn’t quite do justice to the song’s elegant and melancholy lead melody. This version, recorded live for the Audiotree series, has a significantly better arrangement if just by virtue of having a live drummer. Whereas the original version felt a bit flat and static, the drums here gives the song more contour and drama. And really, with this song, the more drama the better – this is a very young sort of breakup song, and its strength lies in how much it dwells in this theatrical sadness and neurotic hand-wringing. Like, this is a song in which the singer feels so broken by this relationship falling apart that he flashes back to simpler times, like when he was 6 years old and watching Star Wars movies. It’s adorable and sweet, but also fundamentally silly.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Joan of Arc “Punk Kid”

I have been following Joan of Arc’s career over the past 20 years or so, and I can say that despite how much they’ve changed from record to record, their new record 1984 is the first time when they’ve changed so much that they’ve become entirely unrecognizable. Everything is different. Tim Kinsella has been replaced on vocals by Melina Ausikaitis, who has a completely different approach to singing and lyric writing. The music is produced and arranged entirely by Nate Kinsella, whose elegant minimalism is a world away from the nervous energy of his brother’s usual work. I don’t quite understand why they’re even calling this record Joan of Arc – it just kinda isn’t, and I think it’s not entirely fair to Ausikaitis to force a comparison between this and anything from the band’s back catalog – but I do see how this radical change and deliberate silencing of the band’s mastermind is a very Joan of Arc move.

Melina Ausikaitis sings blunt, vivid lyrics about mostly bad memories with a disarmingly folksy tone. She sounds raw and vulnerable, which is quite a change for a band that’s always filtered emotions through layers of conceptualism and irony. (Not necessarily a bad thing, I should say.) “Punk Kid” is a story about being an awkward outcast rendered mostly in small details – the bits of youth that somehow stay in your mind fully intact while so much else fades in your memory over time. There’s a wounded pride in Ausikaitis’ voice when she sings “look at me, I’m a real punk kid,” and it’s all the more affecting as the music swells slightly, like the ghost version of a rock anthem.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

TV Girl “7 Days Til Sunday”

TV Girl’s Brad Petering mainly writes songs about dating, with an emphasis on how stories from pop culture influence the way we think about real life romance. “7 Days Til Sunday” is a story of someone who is aiming for whimsical Hollywood romance, but eventually settles for lots of drinking, confused communication, awkward sex, and smoking cigarettes on a roof in New York City. Like, not the worst thing ever and certainly something plenty of people can relate to, but not exactly classic rom-com material. The music nods in the general direction of glossy, sexy vibes but Petering’s vocal undermines that a bit by sounding both melancholy and deadpan. That might not work in some cases, but here it really emphasizes the gulf between the singer’s expectations and his reality.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Nicki Minaj “Chun-Li”

“They need rappers like me!,” Nicki Minaj insists midway through “Chun-Li,” one of the most fierce performances she’s delivered over the past few years. This moment is fascinating to me because this is both a show of swaggering strength and raw vulnerability. She is totally convinced of her value, but finds herself in the position of reminding everyone else. She sounds imperious, exasperated, and exhausted. But she also sounds like someone to prove, and that underdog energy which served her so well up through her breakout performance on Kanye West’s “Monster” is what gives the chorus of this song its charge. A lot of the lyrics in this track boil down to her refusing to let the media or anyone else (re)define her, though she does seem happy to embrace the role of the villain: “They need rappers like me so they can get on their fucking keyboards and make me the bad guy, Chun-Li!” I love the ambiguity of the word “keyboards” – it could be people in the press or on social media, or it can be a producer putting together a track to bring out her darkest, most aggressive side.

Buy it from Amazon.

Courtney Barnett “Hopefulessness”

Courtney Barnett’s previous album, her breakthrough, opened with a pair of songs so fast and forceful that it sound like she was breaking through actual walls. Those songs, “Elevator Operator” and “Pedestrian At Best,” are supercharged and overflowing with lyrical details and ideas. There’s a nervous energy driving them, but also a wild confidence. They sound like someone in a manic state.

Barnett’s new album opens with “Hopefullessness,” and it’s pretty much the opposite of all that. The first moments feel hesitant and uneasy, and her guitar part seems to take shape rather reluctantly. The woman who seemed to burst out of nowhere with free-wheeling charm now sounds scared and exhausted. The lyrics come at a much slower pace, and mostly seem like she’s trying to talk her way out of a dark mood. “Your vulnerability, stronger than it seems,” she sings. “You know it’s okay to have a bad day.” The song gradually moves towards a musical catharsis in artful guitar feedback, but the neutral grey mood never really shifts. It just carries over into the other songs, dimming even the most up-tempo numbers. The record itself sounds depressed.

Buy it from Amazon.

Playboi Carti featuring Skepta “Lean 4 Real”

“Lean 4 Real” gives you more or less what you’d expect from a song glorifying getting zonked out on opiates: It’s woozy, warm, repetitive, and mesmerizing. Playboi Carti’s voice is mumbly but magnetic, and Skepta’s verse adds a touch of coherence and focus to a song that’s otherwise oblique and blurry. The thing that really makes this song click is something that it took me a few listens to truly notice – there’s an ambient “crickets” sound going through the entire track. It’s a very odd bit of atmosphere, and makes the song sound like it’s a field recording of a campfire behind a strip club. I’m not sure whether Indigo Child used a recording of actual crickets, or if it’s some other thing, but I love the way it contrasts familiar sounds – the wilderness in summertime and trap beats – so they both sound alien.

Buy it from Amazon.

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks “Difficulties/Let Them Eat Vowels”

Stephen Malkmus approaches lyrics from a very musical perspective – he can be literary and clever here and there, but he’s mostly stringing together words and ideas together purely for their sound. He’s particularly gifted at creating phrases that have an an inexplicable emotional resonance in context, and seem to express a truth far deeper than any literal expression. In “Difficulties,” the phrase is “ROCKS ALL, DEADLINE CHASER!” It comes at the end of each verse, a passionate holler following lyrics about love and companionship that are thoughtful and emotionally intelligent, but cool and reserved. This exclamation is cathartic, but confusing: “ROCKS ALL” evoking freedom and excitement, “DEADLINE CHASER” evoking anxiety and being bogged down by commitments and responsibilities. I think this may be how Malkmus identifies now, and that’s part of why it’s so dramatic in context. He’s admitting to frustration, but saying he’s willing to make sacrifices. Obstacles, difficulties, the lowest lows – it’s all worth the effort.

As “Difficulties” comes to a close it crossfades into a totally different song called “Let Them Eat Vowels.” I don’t think there’s any reason for these songs being conjoined aside from it just sounding really good. The two songs blend together well, but are opposites – the former is earnest and melodramatic, the latter is funky and oblique. It’s all cool phrases and groovy sensation, and though there’s an undefined tension in Malkmus’ voice, it all seems to dissipate as the band coasts out on the groove.

Buy it from Amazon.

Valee & Jeremih “Womp Womp”

Jeremih and Valee both affect a raspy but silky drawl on this track, threading their lascivious lyrics around the contours of a trap track that feels slightly warped. Everything about this song feels a little bit off – there’s something a bit alien about that synth bass line, and these guys somehow manage to make a lot of typical rap tropes sound surreal. Maybe it’s in their cadence, or the way Jeremih’s performance is in this uncanny valley between tough-guy raspiness and his usual feminine falsetto. This is an exceedingly horny song, but it’s also sort of zonked-out and mesmerizing, which subverts a beat and keyboard riff that would probably feel much more aggressive and far less smooth with different rappers.

Buy it from Amazon.

Natalie Prass “Short Court Style”

“Short Court Style” nods in the direction of so many different moments in pop history – there’s traces of late ’70s disco, ’80s freestyle, early ’90s Lisa Stansfield elegant dance pop, the more chill end of the Spice Girls catalog – that it all blurs together into a song that feels both familiar and distinctive. The melodic hooks are bold, but the groove is relaxed – this is a more lived-in sort of love song, it’s not a manic infatuation thing. Natalie Prass is singing about a relationship that has survived ups and downs, and you can hear a lot of pride in her voice. It’s the sound of someone who understands the value of what they have in their life.

Buy it from Amazon.

Arctic Monkeys “Star Treatment”

I have never been particularly interested in The Arctic Monkeys, so it was a genuine surprise to hear their new record Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino and find that they had stripped away everything that bored me about their music – i.e., probably everything about them that endeared them to a mainstream rock crowd – and foregrounded the thing I did like about them, which is Alex Turner’s dry wit and lyrical detail. The band’s new music is like a nephew to Pulp’s louche This Is Hardcore, but with a self-loathing kitschiness in place of that record’s depressive porno anti-glamour. “Star Treatment” has a glitzy sparkle to it, but that’s really just an ironic counterpoint to Turner’s lyrics, which sketch out the mindset of a fading star who seems to be on a weirdly half-hearted self-destructive bender. It’s played as dark comedy, and the punchline is the catchiest bit of the chorus: “So who you gonna call, the martini police?”

I’m sure a lot of people will compare Turner’s vocals on this song to David Bowie, but he actually sounds much more like Royston Langdon from Spacehog, who actually went for a similar sort of glam-lounge hybrid in some parts of their rather underrated 1998 record The Chinese Album. I don’t mean this as any sort of diss, by the way – the tonal similarity is striking, and there’s a warm self-deprecation in both Langdon and Turner’s phrasing you just wouldn’t get from the more icy and aloof Bowie. (It’s also not far off from Scott Weiland in his more cheeky moments.)

Buy it from Amazon.

Saweeetie featuring Kehlani “ICY GRL (Bae Mix)”

This track is charming in at least a dozen ways, but the bit that gets me is just after Kehlani finishes her verse, she excitedly ad libs “check me out, I’m not even a fuckin’ rapper!” And like, damn, maybe she should be? Her verse is solid in terms of lyrics and construction, but her performance is fabulous. The rasp in her voice is perfectly suited to rapping, and her phrasing has a light, playful quality. Saweetie’s voice is a perfect complement, and given how effortless and fun this track sounds, I just wonder: Why don’t these two just become a regular duo? The world could use a new Salt N Pepa.

Buy it from Amazon.

Beach House “Pay No Mind”

It wouldn’t take much to turn “Pay No Mind” into a proper rock power ballad. If you strip away all of the very Beach House-y stylistic elements, that’s pretty much what you’re left with, right on down to the lyrics. And while I’d love to hear someone try that out, it’s just really nice to hear Beach House make such a conventionally lovely song. Victoria Legrand’s vocal performance is typically understated, but Alex Scally’s guitar carries the emotion, effectively selling the romance of her words with a dreamy guitar tone just a few steps removed from Prince on “Purple Rain.” The song doesn’t go for a “Purple Rain” sort of grandeur and melodrama, though – like most any Beach House song, it never moves into another gear and seems to extend a single feeling into one long, meditative moment.

Buy it from Amazon.