Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Peter Zummo “Song II: Left; On The Beat—Variations”

This piece was recorded by Peter Zummo with Arthur Russell, Bill Ruyle and Mustafa Ahmed in 1984, but has been shelved and unreleased until now. The music was recorded live to tape, and is partially improvised – or “an exercise in spontaneous arrangement,” as Zummo put it. The music mostly moves around a bouncy melodic hook played on marimba, and the driving force in the track mainly comes from Russell’s amplified cello, which is just as expressive whether he’s playing rhythmic or lead parts. Zummo himself plays trombone, and his leads are particularly vibrant and sassy. I love the way this all comes together in a way that’s somehow both joyful and contemplative.

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Soccer Mommy “Last Girl”

“Last Girl” is an essentially self-deprecating song about feeling insecure because you feel like you’re vastly inferior to your boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, but I like that it doesn’t quite tip over into self-loathing. It’s never really about this guy, or even herself so much as it’s about how much she admires this other girl. The way she sings about her – and the way the song has this bright, springy melody – it sounds a lot more like a crush song about her than this guy they’ve both dated. Envy is a theme that runs through nearly all of the songs on Soccer Mommy’s Clean, but it’s never this petty sort of jealousy. It’s more about her trying to figure out what she wants to be. This song reminds me a bit of when Thom Yorke sings “I want to be someone else or I’ll explode” in “Talk Show Host.” It’s the same sort of feeling, but Sophie Allison just has a really specific person in mind.

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Zizi Raimondi “SUPAfresh”

The last time I featured Zizi Raimondi on this site just two months ago, she was doing a sleepy indie rock tune called “Folly Dolly” in which she was somehow both Lou Reed and Nico, and everyone else in The Velvet Underground for that matter. This time around it’s a completely different thing. “SUPAfresh” is a spacey funk song that falls somewhere in the space between the aesthetics of Grimes on her Visions album and the weirder edge of early 1980s New York art disco, like Arthur Russell, ZE Records stuff, and Madonna’s first few singles. It’s a major stylistic leap, but also the same thing in a different way – there’s this drowsy sexy vibe in both, and a high level of craft that feels very casual.

“SUPAfresh” is from an entire 19 track album called Bye Bye Club that’s all in the same aesthetic territory – groovy and zonked out and horny and vaguely sad. Her lyrics fixate on lust and intimacy, and how both feed into emotional mind games. It’s a very evocative and engaging record, and the feeling of her compositions conveys a lot more than her words. “SUPAfresh” is particularly sensual – the bass groove is incredible, and she layers on vocal harmonies and bright keyboard parts with remarkable grace. Everything seems to float elegantly in the negative space above that bass part.

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Yo La Tengo “Polynesia #1”

The new Yo La Tengo record is full of negative space, which makes it feel loose and airy, but also empty and hollow. The sounds they choose feel deliberate but instinctive, the way a cartoonist can suggest a great deal of character and detail with carefully place lines on a white page. The lead guitar part in “Polynesia #1” sounds like a line curving through the song, angular but not jagged. Georgia Hubley’s vocal is typically soft and gentle, but not in way that signals passivity. She sounds forthright and purposeful, like someone doing what they have to do to maintain a peaceful and relaxed state of mind. Her tone is like a bit of gestural shading that casts the clean lines of the guitar in relief.

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Lake Ruth “Julia’s Call”

Lake Ruth work in a relatively straight forward rock-pop paradigm, but their songs rarely if ever include choruses. It’s as if the shape of their compositions reject the convention – any time one of their songs feels like it could shift gears into chorus mode, the music moves in another direction, though not necessarily in a jarring or musically unsatisfying way. It’s more like they’ve always got a different idea of how to resolve a sound or build on a rhythm. The songs are always in motion, and the consistently prefer melodic instrumental motifs to vocal hooks.

This has an interesting impact on the lyrics. Since there’s no structure forcing Allison Brice to reiterate phrases, the words scan as actual poetry and convey complete thoughts. In the case of “Julia’s Call,” it’s a meditation on someone’s restlessness and eagerness to give up on their life and start again with people who aren’t aware of their baggage. Brice sees this as a delusional and self-destructive impulse, but has some empathy for her character. Or maybe it’s just pity?

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The Breeders “Walking With A Killer”

“Walking With A Killer” is sung from the perspective of a girl who gets murdered by the end of the song, but it’s not a particularly scary song. A bit uneasy, sure, but the feeling of it is mostly quite calm and the lyrics describe the situation with a serene clarity. Her killing is presented as a sort of cosmic inevitability, this thing that she’s somehow aware of in spite of herself. “I didn’t know it was my night to die,” Kim Deal sings in a guileless tone at the top of her vocal range, “but it really was.” It’s unnerving, but also strangely beautiful.

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Janelle Monáe “Make Me Feel”

In some ways it feels unfair and dismissive to say that a song like this or a lot of the better Bruno Mars songs of the recent past are “retro.” I think it might be more accurate to say that this sort of funky pop – openly indebted to Prince, Michael and Janet Jackson, and James Brown in particular – is something people always want and can’t get enough of, but it’s just in very short supply. Not just anyone can do this sort of thing. It takes a lot of songwriting magic and expertise, and a performer with an extreme level of charisma because you can’t really pull off working in this zone otherwise. Janelle Monáe has that star power, can come up with a song like this, and we are lucky for it. Truly blessed.

“Make Me Feel” has a Prince groove, but a chorus that nods to Michael Jackson’s best hit single. It’s a song full of bold moves, but that (meta)contextual stuff isn’t as compelling as the actual feeling of it. Monáe’s lyrics and vocal melody are about 25% nervous anticipation, and 75% crushed-out strut. Her lyrics in the past have been a bit more conceptual or guarded, but this is raw, genuine lust. She sounds relaxed and free, and only the tiniest bit anxious about how anyone might perceive her.

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Margaret Glaspy “Before We Were Together”

Margaret Glaspy’s songwriting is rather terse and economical, and I wonder if it’s the result of meticulous editing or a disposition in favor of blunt, effective simplicity. “Before We Were Together” is lean and tight, and moves at an impatient pace that makes her lyrics about finding the nerve to tell off an ex seem all the more urgent. It comes off like a fresh thought, an epiphany she’s having there right in the moment, and the sentiment is basically a second of consideration before spitting it out. Glaspy’s voice fills up a lot of the song, and the way it stands out in the negative space conveys both strength and a lonely isolation.

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Of Montreal “Sophie Calle Private Game/Every Person Is A Pussy, Every Pussy Is A Star!”

Kevin Barnes’ work has a sort of internal logic in which electronic music and funk roughly correlates to manic hysteria, and more straightforward psychedelic rock loosely translates to either playful innocence or violent catharsis, depending on the tone. I like most everything Barnes makes to some extent, but I’m most attracted to his funky hysteria – Hissing Fauna and Skeletal Lamping are his masterworks, and I’m very fond of the groovier passages on Paralytic Stalks.

The new Of Montreal record White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood belongs to this end of the Barnes spectrum, and pushes familiar vibes from Hissing and Skeletal into new, more expansive directions. Barnes has mentioned that one of his inspirations for this set of songs was extended 12″ mixes of songs from the ’80s and ’90s, and I absolutely hear that. It’s not just that the tracks are long, but that the grooves play out at a very leisurely pace, and the digressions feel more like logical destinations for the music than the often sudden jarring shifts of previous Barnes compositions. As a result, this music feels a lot more serene and grounded than usual, even as his lyrics express a lot of paranoia, confusion, and exhaustion.

“Sophie Calle Private Game” is basically a love song – or an infatuation song, or a seduction song, depending on the section. Or maybe it’s really an anxiety song, since so much of it is about trying to make sense of his desires, keeping himself from being too impulsive, and attempting to stay in control of his narrative. The chorus is very funky but fraught with caution and mixed emotions, but the groove eventually mellows out considerably in the last few minutes, where the lyrics move beyond “should we hook up?” to some point after consummation. (“You whispered ‘don’t be vulgar’ while I was making you cum” is quite a lyric, by the way.) This is one of my favorite Barnes tricks – showing the gradual evolution of a relationship over the course of a single song.

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Khalid featuring Swae Lee “The Ways”

Khalid and Swae perform “The Ways” from a position of genuine awe and humility. They’re both swooning for a “power girl” whose strength, beauty, and intelligence inspires them to rise up to her level. It’s a love song where respect and eroticism are tied together, and the power of a woman is not a threat to masculinity. Khalid’s vocal is warm and gentle, and he slips comfortable into the quasi lover’s rock mood of Sounwave and BADBADNOTGOOD’s track. Swae Lee is a revelation here – significantly more mellow and vulnerable than I’ve heard him on Rae Sremmurd songs. He’s very convincing in this lover boy sweetheart mode, both here and on his new solo track “Hurt to Look,” and should definitely continue working in this lane.

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Everything Is Recorded featuring Ibeyi, Sampha, Wiki, and Kamasi Washington “Mountains of Gold”

Richard Russell’s album as Everything Is Recorded is essentially a “producer + guests” record, but the way he cycles a set of collaborators through the songs makes it feel much more like the work of a specific, deliberate ensemble than a compilation with a general aesthetic. “Mountains of Gold” is a crucial hub track on the record, with three crucial recurring collaborators – Sampha, Ibeyi, and Kamasi Washington – converging to do their things over the piano vamp from Grace Jones’ version of “Nightclubbing,” and Wiki from Ratking turning up to contribute a rap that ties together the narrative threads of Sampha and Ibeyi’s lyrics. Russell structures the song like a posse track, stringing together these seemingly disparate artists’ parts together so elegantly that they all complement each other perfectly and the composition is balanced and smooth.

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Born Ruffians “Side Tracked”

The main guitar part in “Side Tracked” is a lot more ’70s R&B than most people would expect from Born Ruffians, but it suits them well, particularly as the song is produced by Richard Swift and this vintage vibe is very much his comfort zone. But it’s not a straight pastiche. Rather than do some sort of awkward Dap Tone thing, they take a very British Invasion approach to the vocal melody and harmonies. The chorus is the most plainly beautiful thing this band has produced, and I love the way Luke Lalonde’s voice rises up on “siiiiiide” to drop off abruptly on “tracked” is like this thwarted catharsis in a song about trying to deal with estrangement.

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Caroline Rose “Jeannie Becomes A Mom”

Caroline Rose’s vocals throughout her new record Loner have a distinct and captivating cadence – usually conversational in tone, often a bit wry and funny, always very empathetic and human. That empathy is particularly strong in “Jeannie Becomes A Mom,” a mid-tempo synth pop track with a slick cosmopolitan groove about learning to deal with the limits that get placed on all of our lives. And of course, the harshest limit is time. Rose’s character is young but feels time slipping away rapidly – “the world don’t stop.” I love the way the music relates to the lyrical theme, with the beat seeming to jog in place as the attack on the keyboard hook feels like time clicking away. It’s a pleasant feeling of inertia. Even better is the way Rose sings the “now you’re in real life” refrain with a lot of sympathy but also a touch of frustration and a dash of ambivalence.

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U.S. Girls “Incidental Boogie”

“Incidental Boogie” has the sexy mechanical strut of Goldfrapp in their Black Cherry/Supernature schaffel phase, and without paying much attention it comes off as a sleek funk song about BDSM. If you pay attention… well, it gets a lot more complicated. Remy’s character in the song is a woman who is trying to rationalize being the victim of domestic abuse, and is making her new man out to be a real sweetheart since he leaves no marks so she can go to work without any fuss. This is grim stuff, especially when it’s clear that this woman doesn’t really have a frame of reference aside from this sort of abusive romance, and is conditioned to be bored without it. The verses are at some points genuinely uncomfortable – “Life made no sense without a beating, you see?” – but the chorus offers a glimmer hope in her dawning realization that this sort of thing isn’t really doing much for her.

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Britta Persson “Cliffhanger”

The word “cliffhanger” is never sung in this song, but it’s an appropriate title for a song that’s so ambivalent and unresolved. Britta Persson is singing from the perspective of someone in a relationship that’s seemingly stuck in a pleasant rut and is wondering if there’s a direction and purpose to it, or if they’re just passively following the path of least resistance. It’s hard to say which option she’d prefer, particularly as she seems to distrust her own emotions. She asks herself if she’s “feeling a feeling because it’s a feeling,” and is dismissive of some woman she read about in free magazine, saying she “doesn’t want to be a teenager forever.” But her feelings do get quite strong – she’s rather emphatic when she sings that she’s ready to move on. But after that, the song reverts to the vague emotional space it starts out in.

This is such a vivid portrayal of a state of indecision, and the anguish that comes from fearing that you could be settling for less than what would make you truly happy. And then, the added anxiety of not even knowing what would make you happy in the first place. And of course, a third layer of feeling guilty for wanting more when things are basically fine and you don’t want to hurt your partner. Maybe “cliffhanger” isn’t quite the right word for this. It’s more of a stalemate.

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Note: I wrote about three songs from Britta Persson’s Kill Hollywood Me when it came out 10 years ago. The first post was about “At 7,” the second was about the title track, and the third was my first shot at writing about “Cliffhanger.” I strongly recommend the album, but especially these three magnificent songs.

MGMT “She Works Out Too Much”

“I’m constantly swiping and tapping, it’s never relaxing,” Andrew VanWyngarden sings midway through “She Works Out Too Much.” It would be easy for this to come out sounding shrill and judgmental, but he sounds legitimately bored and exhausted. This song is particular to Instagram, but I think it speaks to something a lot of people have been experiencing with different social platforms in the past two years or so: Is any of this still fun? And what are we getting out of this, besides new ways to feel anxious, insecure, or unsafe?

I personally ran into this wall with Twitter, and have stopped reading and participating in that platform altogether. At first it was because I was tired of constantly checking a timeline that was increasingly packed with paranoia, dread, anguish, and in the worst moments, outright hysteria. But once I stopped reading the stuff, I stopped writing tweets as well. I didn’t anticipate how freeing that would be. Twitter is a platform that rewards anger and negativity, so even my fairly benign presence took on a snippy, aggrieved tone. The platform subtly encouraged my worst impulses, but I’ve found that once I stopped having an outlet and audience for bitchy little thoughts, I stopped having so many bitchy little thoughts. I’m better for it, and so is anyone else. No one needs this from me. No one needs this from the vast majority of people.

But I digress. “She Works Out Too Much” is a very light-hearted song, but it’s coming from a sad and dissatisfied place. The central lyrical conceit is the way it contrasts different meanings of the phrase “work out” – in literal terms, a reference to a girl’s endless workout selfies, and in idiomatic terms, “work out” as in a relationship succeeding or not. VanWyngarden’s lines in the chorus are toothless complaints – “she works out too much” – but that’s answered with a cool, relaxed, and weirdly uncanny female voice calmly intoning “the only reason we didn’t work out is that we didn’t work out enough.” There’s a disconnect here, they’re speaking past each other. It’s a great way of illustrating the point that these two people are not compatible, have totally different ways of engaging with the world, and value different things. I appreciate that this song is not angry or accusing. VanWyngarden sounds disappointed. He just wanted it to all work out.

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Charlotte Day Wilson “Doubt”

“Doubt” has a very restrained and controlled sound, which supports its lyrical sentiment about trying to stop yourself from giving in to your worst romantic impulses for your own good. “I’m done with doubt, I’m done with your game,” Wilson sings at the top of the song, and the slow, steady bass groove underlines her resolve. But given the lush, sexy sound of the track, it’s pretty clear that she knows from the get-go that she can resist the gravitational pull of this person she’s addressing. The key line here is in the chorus – “I’m selfish and dumb for your love.” A fool for love, sure, but selfish…well, that’s intriguing. Selfish to want it? Selfish to need it? Selfish to have these inconvenient feelings in the first place?

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Camila Cabello “Inside Out”

Camila Cabello is charismatic and has a good voice, but I think the major reason she’s been so successful in the past few months is that her songs pivot away from rigid production and nondescript ambiance of so much mid-10s pop music and embrace things like… chords. The piano chords in “Havana” are crucial to the song’s appeal, and they’re not something that just blends into the mix, or signify cheap sentimentality. You’re meant to hang on the sound of them, to feel the groove and the reverb and the slight imperfection of someone playing a piano in a room. It feels alive in a subtle way that makes it seem vibrant in comparison for doing something that in the grand scheme of recorded music is more normal than not. And she does this without selling “authenticity.” It just is, and it makes the more modern elements like the very Rihanna-ish chorus pop a bit more than if it was presented with the same airless production as everything else. “Inside Out,” an album track I have to assume will be issued as a single sometime this year since it has a very “song of the summer” feel to it, does the same trick by contrasting acoustic piano and steel drums with a glossy approach to the vocal production. All signs point to Cabello being just ahead of a stylistic curve, and frankly, I’m relieved.

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Caroline Says “Sweet Home Alabama”

This is not a cover of the famous Lynyrd Skynyrd song, nor is it a piece of music that sounds anything at all like Southern rock. The lyrics of the song address being stuck somewhere – “I used to love this town” – so I figure the song is set in Alabama, and the title is ironic. One way or another, it’s some kind of joke.

This “Sweet Home Alabama” has a hazy, drowsy sound that reminds me a lot of Yo La Tengo when Georgia Hubley is on vocals. The song is built out of looped samples, but as much as the song moves in circles, it’s not entirely static. Subtle vocal harmonies and shifts in keyboard tone give the song shape without breaking its spell or upstaging a low-key lead vocal part that adds a dash of dark humor to its clear-headed introspection.

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Grace Vonderkuhn “Worry”

In all of my time writing about music, one of my highest compliments that I have for a song is that it has a sense of urgency. I loooooove urgency. I love when musicians sound like they are very present in the moment, and when recordings convey a genuine spark of inspiration and emotional (and physical) commitment. I hear that in this song by Grace Vonderkuhn. It’s there in the way her riffs pile on with this enthusiastic and playful “OK, ya like that, how about this?” feeling. It’s there in the way her band bash out the rhythm with a raw energy that makes the song sound like it’s being played faster than usual even if this is the only version of the song I’ve ever heard. This is the sound of a band that’s putting it all on the line, and that just amplifies the anxious sentiment of the song – the nervous energy is there, but so is the triumphant spirit of overcoming it.

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