December 13th, 2013 1:37pm
When I listen to Saint Pepsi I just wonder if this guy got sick of waiting around for another Avalanches record and just decided to make an Avalanches album himself. It’s the same aesthetic basically, but he pushes it a little further into disco and ’80s kitsch, and it’s just so warm and joyful. “Better” is especially great – it reminds me a little of August Darnell stuff from the ’70s, it has that really luxurious and hedonistic vibe to it. But not hedonistic in the sleazy way, you know? It’s just like someone’s vision of the perfect party.
December 12th, 2013 1:43pm
I have a real weakness for songs like this, which sound a bit like a few pop songs played at once. It mostly lines up, but I actually really enjoy the parts where it sounds like this whole thing could collapse under the weight of doing too much simultaneously. It all feels just a bit off and wrong, especially when the keyboards or beats seem to jump out ahead of the vocals. It’s a little like My Bloody Valentine that way – it’s like you’re hearing the song inside-out, or from a reversed perspective.
December 10th, 2013 1:25pm
I love how this song, even before you get to the lyrics, just radiates this vibe of kindness and generosity. I feel like it’s not that hard for music to convey love or lust, but genuine kindness is a bit more tricky. “Dreams” is basically someone trying to be supportive of someone they care about, and pushing them to go out and do what they most want to do, but recognizing that the world is harsh and difficult, especially to those with pure feelings and strong hopes. That seems a little trite in print, but it really doesn’t in this song — Wet add shades of feeling that keep it from sounding like something you just say to someone to make them feel better.
December 9th, 2013 12:52pm
I’ve wondered in the past what a purely American version of Jarvis Cocker would be like, and I think this song may actually be it. The resemblance is there on a musical level – there’s a similar spin on ’80s rock aesthetics, and the melody is very much something Cocker would sing. (In fact, at some points it reminds me specifically of “The Night Minnie Timperly Died.”) But beyond that, I think Will Sheff and Cocker are kindred spirits in the way they write lyrics – they use very vivid and specific language but their reference points are fairly low brow, and there’s a strong identification with what could be considered unremarkable losers who don’t even have the quiet dignity of a romanticized working class. There’s a different kind of romance here, and it’s more to do with standing up and fighting to give your life meaning. Sheff sings this song like a call to arms, and the stakes are basically – this all means something, or it doesn’t. And the thought of all the pain and indignity being for nothing is too much to handle.
December 6th, 2013 1:21pm
Maybe you didn’t know this, but One Direction’s new album has a lot of power pop on it. As in, this particular song sounds like it could be a song that Alex Chilton forgot to record with Big Star, and that the general dynamics of the album is far more like a Sloan record than anything you’ve ever associated with a boy band. This is awesome in that it sort of automatically makes One Direction the most popular rock band of 2013, and that it’s nice to see someone actually make rock music relevant to this generation of teenagers. It’s not just the gesture of this that is cool – “Little Black Dress” and a few other tracks on Midnight Memories are genuinely fantastic rock tunes, and deliver the kind of unashamed bubblegum hooks and riffs that it seems like most actual rock bands these days shy away from. I’d be pretty happy to hear this sort of thing come back in style, and not just with boy bands.
December 5th, 2013 1:32pm
Jessy Lanza’s debut album Pull My Hair Back is the kind of excellent record that can be easy to ignore – it’s extremely low key and a bit chilly, and though it’s full of very pleasing melodic parts, it doesn’t really cross over into the realm of “catchy.” Most of it feels like a very aloof late ’90s/early ’00s R&B record, with Lanza singing over tracks by the Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan that are always moving, but feel as though they progress in slow motion. “5785021” is particularly great – she’s basically imploring someone to call her, and she shifts between being sweet, funny, and a little desperate in a way that feels entirely natural.
December 3rd, 2013 1:01pm
Tim Hecker’s new record steps away from the rotting, melting treated sounds of his most recent works in favor of exceptionally eerie live instrumentation. “Virginal I” reminds me a lot of Steve Reich – the piano performance seems to collapses over itself as parts fall out of phase, and synthesizers overtake the foreground of the piece. It’s disorienting, but also quite beautiful.
The Range remind me of a lot of late ’90s IDM – clearly indebted to dance music and hip-hop, but built to rework elements of that music for solitary, introverted experiences. “Loftmane” feels particularly insular: It’s like getting lost in some mental groove, and everything feels safe and warm. It has the pensive quality of the slower tracks on DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing…, but it’s all filtered through the more abstracted electronic glitches of, say, Autechre or Aphex Twin.
December 2nd, 2013 1:22pm
I suppose the best way I can describe this song is by asking this question: What if TLC were from the early to mid 80s, were waaaay more smooth, and all three of them sung and rapped in Korean? I have a decent idea of what this song is about from reading translations of the lyrics, but it’s sort of unnecessary – the melody and bounce of this is all you really need to dial into a very good and specific lovey-dovey feeling. This song may have the best chorus I can’t sing along to all year.
This is the ideal balance – a very accessible R&B/pop tune with a deeply weird arrangement in which all the music sounds like rubber getting pulled and shaped and bounced off the walls. I can imagine a more conventional remix of this blowing up, but I just want to live in a world where this original mix is what catches on. I am really down for this kind of weird rubbery sound – I genuinely adore this bizarre remix of Justin Bieber’s “Baby” – and I’d really like for this sort of sound to become a thing.
November 27th, 2013 1:15pm
Octo Octa is so good at hitting this midpoint between dreaminess and excited energy – listening to “His Kiss” feels like being awake and totally thrilled in the middle of a particularly great dream. A lot of it comes from his taste in synth tones – everything just sparkles and floats, it’s almost too bright and light and perfect to be real. The vocal loops are great too – “now his kiss, now his kiss…” without filling in the rest of the thought, making you wonder when the kiss is happening, or if it ever does at all.
November 26th, 2013 1:13pm
Charles Bradley’s voice falls somewhere in the gap between a lot of the best male soul singers of all time – a bit of James Brown, a bit of Otis Redding, a bit of Al Green, a bit of Syl Johnson, and on and on. The downside, if there is a real downside to that, is that he can seem more like the idea of a soul singer than a distinct character in his own right. The upside, though, is that his range and mix of influences can be the best of all worlds. I think that’s certainly the case on a cut like “Strictly Reserved for You,” which runs through a lot of tricks and tics to put across this incredibly warm song about wanting to hide away from the world with the one you love. There’s no arrogance to this performance – it’s just a guy with a lot of talent and very little fame pulling out all the stops to convey a simple, sweet feeling.
November 25th, 2013 2:03pm
Factory Floor have a fairly narrow range – all of their songs follow more or less the same template of a repetitive groove that grows increasingly tense and heavy – but they are absolutely brilliant at what they do. “Here Again” is the closest they come to a pop song, partly because the vocals are very prominent, but mainly for the way it keeps adding bits of harmony along the way. The music seems to be gradually rising the whole time – there are bits that feel like you’ve just ascended to a new level, but it just keeps shifting up and up and up. But despite that, at the end of it you seem to be right back where you started without ever really “falling.”
November 22nd, 2013 1:16pm
It is very strange for me to read reviews of Four Tet by dance/electronic music specialists because it seems so much like their entire concept of what Four Tet does is just drastically different from my own. Most of all, it is baffling to me that people can listen to a record like Beautiful Rewind and hear “dance music.” It’s waaaay too slow, there’s not a lot of bass, it’s just far too lost in this cerebral zone. I have trouble picturing even people deliberately going to a Four Tet DJ gig actually dancing to this. But like, that’s fine! I like Four Tet for what it is – expertly made, beautifully layered electronic music with an adventurous approach to rhythm and an excellent ear for vocal loops. This is very introverted music, it’s very good for moments when you’re lost in your head and maybe doing a couple other things at once, but the music is not just in the background. It weaves its way in, and scratches at some emotions that are just under the surface.
November 20th, 2013 1:09pm
It took me a while to get into Danny Brown’s Old, and for a kinda strange reason: It’s all about the same level of quality, so it was hard to pull out a few particular tracks to focus on and digest first. It’s all very good, but nothing exactly screams “I AM THE BEST SONG.” “Dip” certainly sounds like a single, though – it’s definitely the best chorus on the record, and I’m not really into choruses on rap records generally – and it’s a good showcase for the most charmingly obnoxious extreme’s of Brown’s voice. A lot of Brown’s appeal comes down to just the sound of his voice, and the way it whines and snaps around his otherwise pretty basic rhyme schemes. This isn’t to say that he’s not good on technical level – he’s fine – but that he has such an overwhelming charisma that he doesn’t really need to ever impress anyone on that front. I’m happy to just hear this guy go on about molly over a trap beat as long as he’s going all the way with it.
November 19th, 2013 12:49pm
Tricot is a bit unexpected: an all-female math rock band from Japan in 2013. Their songs have all the tightly interlocked guitar patterns and shifting rhythms you’d expect from their genre, but the vocals and lead melodies have a softness that feels just slightly incongruent, but very beautiful. That hyper-feminine quality keeps the music from ever seeming too clinical, even if the execution is so clean and precise that it can sound as if it was created by machines designed to make new Don Caballero songs.
November 18th, 2013 2:47pm
Paul McCartney is so good that a late period record like New, which comes over 30 years past his prime as an artist and is only a little better than his past few solo records, still is drastically better than most every pop-rock album released in the same year. “Queenie Eye,” a cut produced by Paul Epworth, is particularly great and comes off like the sort of McCartney tune that Noel Gallagher has been trying to write since the mid-90s. The amazing – and maybe vexing? – thing about McCartney is how easy it all seems to him, like he’s just been walking around for five decades looking at everyone else and wondering why they don’t get this cosmic secret of pop that he’s just intuitively grasped since he was a teenager. I think a lot of effort went into making “Queenie Eye” sound fantastic, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is what just flows out of McCartney when he’s not even trying too hard. I’m in awe of that sort of thing.
November 15th, 2013 1:25pm
I suppose it’s hard to make a song sound more urgent than by making what passes for its central riff sound like a siren blaring just before the meltdown of a nuclear reactor. “Cuts Me In Half” is cold and dead-eyed in the face of catastrophe – the music indicates that something horrible is happening, but the voice is almost too calm, as if he’s just welcoming the chaos. Nick Sylvester produced this record, and it’s another case where I hear his work and just want him to produce all the intense guitar music, or at least whatever Steve Albini can’t get around to doing. His sensibility is very Albini – dry and matter of fact, and very focused on conveying the physicality of playing instruments. You really feel those drum hits in your gut.
November 14th, 2013 1:13pm
I love how corny this song is. It is just unabashedly corny and sentimental and sweet, and the rappers in Rizzle Kicks don’t even try to make it cooler, more macho, more coarse, whatever. It’s just a jazzy hip-hop track about loving someone a lot, and the chorus is sung by Jamie Cullum because, like, why shouldn’t it be? And Cullum plays piano too, and that’s the best part really – it’s such a clean, sparkling sound. It edges up to almost sounding like Christmas music, and I mean that in the best way possible. And like, the sentiment is just right. This is the sort of love that is totally unafraid to seem dorky and sweet and kinda jazzy in a London lounge sort of way.
November 12th, 2013 12:59pm
My Bloody Valentine @ Hammerstein Ballroom 11/11/2013
Sometimes / I Only Said / When You Sleep / New You / You Never Should / Honey Power / Cigarette In Your Bed / Only Tomorrow / Come In Alone / Only Shallow / Thorn / Nothing Much to Lose / Who Sees You / To Here Knows When / Wonder 2 / Soon / Feed Me With Your Kiss / You Made Me Realise
You know what? This My Bloody Valentine show was loud enough to feel the vibrations from the sound, but not loud enough to make my ears ring. Which is kinda perfect, really, because I was a little afraid of dealing with lasting consequences from seeing this show. The performance was excellent and basically what I’d expected it would be, though the most profound moments weren’t totally expected – I knew “New You” and “To Here Knows When” would hit me hard just because those songs both mean quite a bit to me, but the impact of those performances had more to do with unexpected elements of them coming to the foreground. I was far more connected to Kevin Shields’ tremolo guitar chords in “New You” than I usually am when I hear the studio recording, and “To Here Knows When” felt more abstract and layered, like standing in the middle of a sound installation where subtle layers of noise washed over you. “Wonder 2” was the major revelation of the show. I love the studio recording, but it’s even more gorgeous and alien in concert – the busy beats blare until they stop feeling like percussion, and the other sounds shift between lingering drones and stabbing treble. But still, somehow, the vocals were perfectly mixed, just in this pocket of clarity in the midst of all this overwhelming sound.
November 11th, 2013 2:33pm
The first time I truly understood Lady Gaga was after seeing her perform a Monster Ball gig in New Jersey just before Born This Way came out. (So, at this point in time she had both “Born This Way” and “Yoü and I” in the set along with most of her first two records.) This is where the true essence of Gaga’s musical style was most obvious: She’s basically a woman who is doing everything she can to merge dance pop with ’70s/’80s rock. At her best, she is basically Madonna and Axl Rose at the same time. It’s brilliant, and even though it may seem like a weird connection, it makes so much sense. Born This Way was a lot more overt in its rock moves than her new album ARTPOP, but it’s still very much in the mix. To some extent, it’s just inherent to Gaga’s vocal style – there’s some R&B in her voice, but most of her phrasing is very hard rock. “Swine,” one of the best songs on ARTPOP, reminds me of Nine Inch Nails in particular. The lyrical parallels are pretty obvious, but it’s also in the industrial pop style of the music, and her cadences get very Reznor-ish at points. This works for her! I mean, I think she could eventually make a pretty amazing industrial goth record if she felt like it.
My review of ARTPOP is over here, by the way.
November 6th, 2013 1:10pm
Darkside’s album Psychic is one of those records I can’t help but hear and get that “man, I am just never high enough for this sort of thing.” And I don’t mean that in a dismissive way: I really am just never high enough for this sort of thing. But I really appreciate this sort of slick, understated yet epic kind of night music. It’s the sort of thing that sounds good over the stereo if you’re just hanging out in a room for a while at night without too much light, or walking around in the cold air and everything’s lit up by street lamps and signs. It’s all feeling and implication of some sort of vaguely cosmic scene, but it’s hard to say what it is exactly. But you definitely recognize it once you’re in the middle of it.
