Icona Pop “All Night”

The funny thing about Icona Pop’s debut album is that pretty much every song sounds as though the girls have to stop themselves from breaking into the chorus of “I Love It.” And a lot of the time, I just wish they would. I feel a little conflicted about their songs – I enjoy them just fine on a superficial level, it’s basically the type of excited, vaguely punkish dance pop I’ve been championing for over a decade. But because of that, I know a lot of better songs in that vein, so their songs have to be exceptionally catchy and joyous, like “I Love It” and “All Night,” to fully register with me. It’s also odd that on a record that’s meant to be so rowdy and party-ready can often feel so restrained. They never really go as all-out as Ke$ha, who does a very similar thing but with far more pizazz, bigger hooks, and an utter lack of shame.

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The Juan Maclean “Feel Like Movin'” (Detail)

This track, particularly in its full unedited form, is my favorite non-Disclosure dance song that I’ve heard this year. It’s actually not very far off what Disclosure do – which is to say, it’s basically a platonic ideal of late ’90s/early ’00s dance music, and entirely sidesteps any notions of genre innovation in favor of astonishing craft and the flawless delivery of joyful hooks that make me feel incredibly excited to be alive. Nancy Whang sings on this cut, and she really puts it over the top – she has a way of singing fairly simple melodies and lyrics in a way that somehow balances a smiling earnestness and a slightly deadpan quality. It’s basically that feeling of embracing something you know is silly, and you love it for being silly with all of your heart.

Buy the full version from DFA.

Chvrches “We Sink”

I keep trying to find the right adjective to describe Lauren Mayberry’s voice, but it never comes. The best I can do is mix some metaphors – the treble in her voice is very bright, but also very rounded off. This could be “girlish,” I suppose, but that word seems a bit dismissive, and the connotations of it are at odds with her very forthright cadences. That’s ultimately what makes her very compelling: She seems incredibly assertive even when she’s singing from the perspective of someone involved in self-destructive behavior. “We Sink” is a perfectly example of this – it’s basically a song about being part of a poisonous codependent relationship, and feeling utterly convinced that both sides would not be able to survive apart from one another.

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Deerhunter @ Webster Hall 9/19/2013
Octet / Neon Junkyard / Don’t Cry / Revival / Like New / Desire Lines / Hazel St. / T.H.M. / Rainwater Cassette Exchange / The Missing / Helicopter / Sleepwalking / Back to the Middle / Monomania / Twilight at Carbon Lake // Cover Me (Slowly) / Agoraphobia / He Would Have Laughed

Deerhunter “Neon Junkyard”

I saw the current lineup of Deerhunter play at the Governors Ball festival over the summer and that was quite good, but it was sort of a compromised experience in that I was up to my ankles in sticky mud and, more importantly, Deerhunter is simply not a band that is meant to be seen and heard outdoors in the middle of the afternoon. This show was the ideal way to experience them – in a medium size club with an intense light show that kept the band mostly in silhouette aside from when the strobes were flashing, and you could get a good look at the dress Bradford was wearing. It was very dramatic, and the band played every song a bit more epic than on record – this was particularly noticeable on songs like “Neon Junkyard,” “Don’t Cry,” and “Sleepwalking,” which seemed to expand greatly in terms of implied scale. Even in terms of Deerhunter shows – and I’ve seen many very good ones – this set was particularly powerful and emotional. When I left the venue I thought for a bit about whether there’s any other contemporary band that does art/shoegazer rock nearly as well, and really, there isn’t any competition. We’re lucky to be around in the prime of this band.

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The Field “Cupid’s Head”

The thing I like most about The Field’s music is the way it can feel like moving and being frozen in place at the same time, or like being at the center of some kind of time glitch. Axel Willner’s loops are so brief and tight, like oddly clipped animated gifs of sound, but his arrangements are much less static, slowly shifting around subtle beats, sounds and tones. My favorite of these in “Cupid’s Head” is a droning keyboard part that is buried enough to be nearly subliminal, but is crucial in that it makes the composition bend and curve a bit, and suggests a bit of movement that is removed from the momentum of the loop and beat.

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Sebadoh “Love You Here”

There are very particular emotions and circumstances that I associate with Sebadoh – passive-aggression, sexual confusion, romantic confusion, excruciating unrequited love, humiliation. So it’s interesting to hear the band return and circle back to the general aesthetic of their Bakesale/Harmacy period and for Lou Barlow to be in a very different place in his life. Lou’s new songs are mainly about trying to keep a marriage alive, a topic that has both less and far greater stakes than his old material. “Love You Here” is basically a song about missing his family on the road, and there’s lots of those, but the core emotion isn’t sentimentality or lovesickness, but rather ambivalence and guilt. The song seems to swing on a pendulum but never settles – it’s just this steady fear of taking a risk that may sow the seeds of eventual disaster.

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Mazzy Star “In the Kingdom”

Mazzy Star went away for about 16 years, and now they’re back and they’ve picked up exactly where they left off. They sound like they always did, but they don’t sound even slightly dated. This is partly because their gorgeous, drowsy, sexy music feels like it exists slightly outside of time and fashion. But on the other hand, fashion caught up with them – all of their music, from the early ’90s on through the songs on the new Seasons of Your Day, sound very fresh and in line with stoned, atmospheric indie of the past half decade. “In the Kingdom,” the opening track from Seasons, bridges the gap between the band’s past and our present – it’s anchored by an organ part that brings to mind the gauzy sound of Beach House, but despite that, it’s pure Mazzy Star: Hope Sandoval’s voice is soft and sultry, and David Roback plays robust, rounded melodies on his guitar. Whereas Beach House has a cold, brittle sound, Mazzy Star can’t help themselves but to invest every moment of their music with a warm, gentle humanity.

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Elvis Costello and The Roots “Sugar Won’t Work”

The funny thing about listening to Elvis Costello’s album with The Roots is that in a lot of ways, it’s not that much different from what he’s done with The Impostors in the past decade on The Delivery Man and Momofuku. The Roots mainly just draw out the R&B influences in Costello’s songwriting and bring them to a natural, obvious conclusion. It doesn’t reinvent anything about Costello, but it does give him a little jolt. That might be more exciting if the album didn’t feel so crisp and immaculate – Questlove’s aesthetic as a drummer and producer is so relentlessly in the pocket that it can make groovy songs seem stiff and airtight. Costello is already a guy who keeps his songs neat and tidy, so this just pushes everything to an extreme of fastidious professionalism that is arguably at odds with the spirit of the material. This isn’t a totally bad thing – I can certainly appreciate this aesthetic on its own terms – and some of the cuts benefit from this extremely classy sound. “Sugar Don’t Work,” for example, benefits from this kinda roguish, sneaking groove seamlessly transitioning into a smooth, airy chorus. It’s elegant, but just a little rough.

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Sleigh Bells “Bitter Rivals”

I love the way so many Sleigh Bells songs have this strange tonal clash between this aggressive optimistic force and a strong current of depressive self-loathing. It’s like two sides of a mind at war with each other, but the positive, assertive side always wins. “Bitter Rivals” sounds like Derek and Alexis blasting out the lingering bad vibes from the Reign of Terror era through sheer force of will. The song is very forceful, but it’s not nearly as LOUD as their older songs. But the vocals are much higher up in the mix, and I think that’s thematically important: The main thing you get out of this song is the two of them shouting down defeatist feelings – “BE NOT AFRAID, BE NOT AFRAID, BE NOT!” The chorus is like an uneasy truce between the positive and negative sides of the mind: “You are my bitter rival, but I need you for survival.”

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Goldfrapp “Alvar”

Goldfrapp have gone back and forth between sleek electro glam pop and quiet, sad, folky music for over a decade now. The pendulum has swung back to the dark, slow side of things on Tales of Us, but the tone is different – whereas 7th Tree felt airy and pastoral, this record is almost relentlessly dark and portentous. There’s a cinematic quality to the sound, which makes sense since much of it was intended to be paired with films by Alison’s partner Lisa Gunning. But regardless, it’s hard to listen to a song like “Alvar” without feeling like you’re somewhere in the middle of a bleak, terrifying movie. It’s tense without feeling claustrophobic, but the wide open negative space and general absence of percussion makes the music feel creepy in different ways. You know that cliche, “it’s quiet…almost too quiet?” It’s like that.

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King Krule @ Bowery Ballroom 9/9/2013
Has This Hit? / Ceiling / Bleak Bake / Ocean Bed / Grey Scale / A Lizard State / Krokodile / The Noose of Jah City / Baby Blue / Out Getting Ribs / Easy Easy // Rock Bottom

King Krule “Easy Easy” (Radio 1 Session)

In all the images I’d seen of Archy Marshall before I saw King Krule for the first time last night, he seemed sorta gawky and awkward. It seemed amazing and odd that a voice so adult and weathered was coming from a kid like that. But in person, at least last night, it was not incongruous at all. He was a stylish, graceful presence, and almost frighteningly intense. He sings with an urgency and investment that’s hard to fake – it’s one of those things where you can just tell that he’s tapping into something raw and painful. He’s like Fiona Apple in this way. She’s rooted in jazz and early R&B too, and an approach to singing that is all about varying phrasing with their feeling in the moment. His band is similar. They’re incredibly sharp but very loose, gliding around Marshall’s songs getting in his way. It’s all very fluid, and the raw sound of it is just gorgeous.

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Ariana Grande “Honeymoon Avenue”

Wow, this is just an exquisitely crafted pop song. The raw songwriting is fantastic – I love the way it cycles through three discrete hooks as the chorus escalates – but the arrangement really puts it over the top. It’s one of those songs where there’s always something new to catch your ear or change the dynamic, but it’s restrained enough so that it’s not overwhelming or obnoxious. It’s also not especially weird – there are some very interesting and unusual structural choices, but the producers knew exactly where the song ought to be direct and conventional. Ariana Grande’s performance is excellent too – she sings like a baby Mariah in the best possible way, with a voice that can effortlessly hit ecstatic heights, but is nuanced enough to get across a lot of emotional shading in phrasing lines that would otherwise be sort of banal.

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Janelle Monaé “Dance Apocalyptic”

I can see how Janelle Monaé’s commitment to her sci-fi android mythology could wear thin for a lot of people, but it’s a very malleable metaphorical construct for her, and it’s always pretty easy to glean the meaning and spirit of her songs without having to really buy into it. “Dance Apocalyptic” is a perfect example – it’s a joyful song about needing a fun, cathartic release, and you can really just take it at face value and have an amazing time with it. But the android stuff adds a touch of darkness to the song, and sets up this idea that the character is this simulation of a person who doesn’t even know they are a robot, and that’s why nothing tastes right, nothing feels right. You’re not uptight; you’re just a robot. But robots can be reprogrammed!

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The Last Hurrah “Lonely Whistle Call”

The Last Hurrah are one of the best folk acts in the world right now, but they’re sort of willfully obscure – as far as I can tell, the band does not perform live, and they insist on releasing their albums as one long track, with each song melting together as a continuous suite. “Lonely Whistle Call” is the first proper song on The Beauty of Fake, their second album, and a relatively mellow cut in a suite that becomes more elaborate and strange as its characters make their way around the world, through to Europe to India to Japan to Hawaii. The music shifts in character to suit the locales, but HP Gunderson’s tangle arpeggios and Heidi Goodbye’s cheerful, bemused voice tie it all together. I actually feel a little bad pulling this song out of context – really, a lot of the fun of The Last Hurrah’s music is just getting swept up in the momentum of the music and going along for the ride.

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Bat for Lashes @ Webster Hall 8/30/2013
Lilies / What’s A Girl To Do? / Glass / Traveling Woman / Oh Yeah / All Your Gold / Marilyn / Horse & I / Siren Song / Sleep Alone / Rest Your Head / A Wall / The Haunted Man / Laura // Winter Fields / Daniel

Bat for Lashes “Marilyn”

Natasha Khan is a very theatrical performer who has clearly given a lot of thought to the way she moves on stage. She is not overly mannered, but she has a lot of deliberate moves, and has loosely choreographed all the major setpieces of her show for maximum drama. This is saying a lot, since Bat for Lashes songs tend to be extremely dramatic to begin with – every song is basically some kind of romantic epic. She’s hyper feminine on stage, but also has this sort of mystical affect that is sometimes vaguely androgynous. It’s all very beautiful but not overtly sexual – she is focused so much on emotion and drama that the sexuality of her music is strongly implied more than it is displayed.

“Marilyn” was one of the high points of the set, and a moment where Khan’s stage craft crossed over with her subject matter. The song is about a relationship so intense and dramatic that it feels unreal, like something out of a classic film, and it makes her feel as though she’s become an archetype – “a Marilyn.” Khan has written other songs about becoming another person through love, but this one is less dark than her exploration of her character Pearl on Two Suns. This isn’t about negating yourself, but more like feeling enhanced by romance. In this way, it’s like the ultimate Bat for Lashes song.

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The Julie Ruin “Cookie Road”

I’ve been telling people for a few weeks that the new record by The Julie Ruin is the best top-to-bottom album of Kathleen Hanna’s career, and I stand by that. It’s very consistent in quality, and the songs take all the strengths of Hanna’s old bands and merge them into something that is both familiar and fresh. It’s also extremely fun – like, party rock B-52’s fun. Not that fun would be a new thing for her: Hanna is famous for being a politically active feminist, but her songs over the past two decades have mostly avoided strident didacticism in favor of up-tempo music that makes being a smart, empathetic, socially engaged person seem like a good time, and that you’re invited to the party. It’s all implicitly inclusive, and it fosters a sense that by coming together, we can overcome a lot of horrible things. Social change requires social interaction, you know?

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Julia Holter “Maxim’s II”

Julia Holter’s songs “Maxim’s I” and “Maxim’s II” are inspired by this scene from the 1958 film musical Gigi in which the title character enters a popular restaurant with a famous man and immediately begin to gossip about her.

You don’t really need to see this or know about this to enjoy either song, but I think “Maxim’s II” is improved by having this context in mind. Holter turns the scene inside-out both emotionally and musically, emphasizing the woman’s sense of the scene, and flipping the jovial, bombastic arrangement into this blaring, disorienting haze of horns and percussive clatter. She makes you feel as overwhelmed and excited as the character without altering the scene and making her very aware of how the people around her are responding to her. But you do get the feeling that she’s concerned that all these people are thinking exactly what they’re thinking.

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King Krule “Neptune Estate”

“Neptune Estate” has a distinct feeling, and maybe you recognize it – lonely in the middle of the night, desperate for connection, lost in your head. It’s sexy too, and the lyrics about wanting to feel sexually used intensify that a bit, but also deepen the song’s melancholy feeling. There’s no separation of sex and self-loathing, and trauma just becomes some kind of turn-on. Which makes some sense, because for a lot of people true intimacy is letting someone else know exactly how messed up you are without being afraid.

The sexual and romantic side of “Neptune Estate” seems like a distraction; the main topic of the song is really depression, and living in fear of a totally numb emotional state in which “the brain lives on but the vibes are dead.” He just wants to feel something, to be intimate, to feel a little alive. That’s why he’s pleading with someone to stay with him one more night, that’s why he’s dwelling on things he know will make him miserable, that’s why he sounds so cynical when he asks “Can we lose our emotions and still live well?” The feelings may be too intense to handle, but it’s better than literally nothing.

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Rose Elinor Dougall “Strange Warnings”

It’s funny now for me to look back on Rose Elinor Dougall’s time in the Pipettes because that perky, hyper-assertive music is so far from where she’s gone as a solo artist. As she’s moved along, Dougall’s aesthetic has become increasingly dreamy and ethereal – not to the point of shoegazer-ish abstraction, but with this single she’s at least approaching the spacey formalism of late period Stereolab. “Strange Warnings” doesn’t have that sort of antiseptic, aloof quality though – Dougall puts a lot of heart into her vocals, even if in context she comes off as very shy and the music seems extraordinarily introverted.

Visit the You Records page on Soundcloud.

Unmade Bed “Go the Whole Way”

Unmade Bed is the new band featuring Dorian Cox, the guitarist and lyricist of The Long Blondes, one of the most underrated bands of the past decade. The new group is a natural progression from that body of work – he’s still obsessed with sex and glamor and seediness – but he’s dropped the punk and indie elements almost entirely in favor of fully embracing the dance and disco elements that he was playing with a bit on The Long Blonde’s final album “Couples”. To some extent, he’s responding to his new singer, and casting her in a role appropriate for her style and voice – whereas he typically played Kate Jackson as a bitter, unfaithful femme fatale, Hannah is presented as more of a sexually aggressive vamp type. In both cases, Cox humanizes his archetypes, and puts a lot of emphasis on the insecurities and fears that drive his characters without necessarily judging them. That last part is really crucial – he’s not asking anyone to pity or shame these characters, but to respect their realities and recognize yourself in them.

Visit the Unmade Bed page on Soundcloud.