June 26th, 2013 11:54am
Lightning Dust’s single “Diamond” has a cool, patient sound to it, but you can hear Amber Webber crack a little as she sings it, like she’s just barely holding back a tidal wave of emotion. She blames her feelings on the chemicals in her brain, and remains stoic when someone apologizes for not being in love with her, but as much as she tries to hold it together and be a rational adult, her sadness and affection bleeds through in every note, lending the song a subtle but powerful drama.
June 25th, 2013 11:20am
I’m not sure how you could make the keyboard and bass in this song scream “STEVIE WONDER!!!” any louder, but I’m not really complaining. This is a good sound for Quadron – right in the center of their retro soul deal, and highly flattering to Coco O’s voice, which actually comes closer to the tonality and phrasing of Stevie and young Michael Jackson than most other female R&B singers. The vocal melody is great, but the main attraction here really is in the musical harmony at the center of the song – the way the keyboards and bass seem to circle around the beat, and the way the string arrangement shifts from the background to the foreground on a dime.
June 24th, 2013 12:34pm
Candy Claws’s new album Ceres & Calypso in the Deep Time Forever feels a little confusing at first, maybe because it seems so strange for a shoegazer album to feel so bright, hopeful, and sorta extroverted. At times the music sounds like Kevin Shields producing Os Mutantes or Burt Bacharach – comfortable, now archaic sounds of luxury and pleasure heard at a distance, like walking around some resort so stoned that you feel like you’re barely there. The album is gorgeous and incredibly clever – I can’t believe no one has thought to make this yet, given how many people have been writing fake My Bloody Valentine records in the time between Loveless and mbv. It could stand to have a bit more bass, though – the soothing effect of this music would probably be doubled if you could really feel some deep, low notes anchoring all that treble.
June 21st, 2013 12:18pm
Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be a rapper who doesn’t produce their own tracks, and how they’re kinda at the mercy of whatever other people come up with, because it’s not as if every producer is tailoring their beats specifically for your technical skills. Beats get shopped around, you know? But this track is such a great showcase for both Schoolboy Q and Kendrick Lamar – you get this mellow but sorta creeping dub bass line, a subtly shifting rhythm, and this keyboard part that’s just slightly menacing. It pushes Schoolboy to really lean up against the beat and shift along with it, while Kendrick reacts against it more, taking it as an occasion to switch up his flow – and even his language – a few times over in just one guest verse. This song is a pleasure on a surface level, but I’m really impressed by it in terms of craft.
June 19th, 2013 11:58am
“Bound 2,” the final track on Yeezus, is the one song on the record that feels like something that could have been on one of his first three albums. It’s also one of the album’s most emotionally knotty cuts – it seems to be, in its own way, a show of affection for Kim Kardashian, but half the lyrics seem either passive-aggressive, dismissive, or openly skeptical about the relationship. But still, somehow, the song feels genuinely sweet. Maybe it’s the self-deprecating tone in West’s voice when he jokes about not remembering how they met, or admitting that he has a terrible track record with women and owning up to his “walking around always mad reputation.” But most of this sweetness comes from the other voices on the track – the hook from Ponderosa Twins Plus One’s “Bound,” the cute Brenda Lee “uh-huh, honey” sample, Charlie Wilson singing “I know you’re tired of loving with nobody to love.” The most vulnerable and sentimental thoughts on Yeezus are sung by other people – he pulls the same trick on “Send It Up,” “New Slaves,” “Hold My Liquor,” and “I’m In It.”
I don’t know if this song is actually about Kim; I’m just kinda guessing that it is. But there’s something in this song that vaguely reminds me of Nirvana’s “All Apologies,” at least in the sense that both songs share this sentiment that boils down to: If you commit to me, I will inevitably poison everything. There’s a lot more guilt and empathy in “All Apologies,” and part of what makes “Bound 2” so odd and difficult to parse is that West seems to want to ruin things. So instead of equating marriage with burial, Kanye thinks of it as a suffocation: “When a real n***a hold you down, you supposed to drown.” This is the core of Kanye, at least on his later albums – a man who is proud of even the things he loathes about himself.
More on Yeezus here.
June 18th, 2013 11:41am
Lorde’s cover of The Replacements’ “Swingin’ Party” is extremely minimalist – aside from some subtle percussion and a keyboard drone, it’s basically a cappella. And though the sad guitar arpeggios are one of the best and most beautiful things about the original, the silence of Lorde’s version is just as moving: The space where there would be a guitar solo is filled with nothing but vague nervous tension, which is exactly right for the sentiment of the song. Lorde’s voice is gorgeous – technically lovely but effortlessly soulful, investing Paul Westerberg’s neurotic, self-loathing, painfully lonely lyrics with a slightly different feeling. Whereas Westerberg can’t help but sound a little pathetic and wounded, Lorde sounds a bit proud – her songs are usually about feeling like an outsider, and this is just a more sad sack version of what she’d write on her own.
June 17th, 2013 3:21am
I was going back and forth on whether or not it was genius or foolish for J. Cole to deliberately release his second album on the same day as Kanye’s Yeezus, but I think I’ve settled on the former. Born Sinner is nowhere in the same league as Yeezus, but it’s still very good, particularly as counter-programming. Cole’s aesthetic is much closer to where Kanye was where he started out, and he could benefit from feeling safe and familiar in the way that Coldplay’s career surged when Radiohead went off to do Kid A, and there were still millions of people who just wanted to hear more “Fake Plastic Trees.” So there’s that, but there’s also something to be said for Cole forcing himself into the conversation, and forcing the audience to reckon with him as a rapper/producer who could become a Kanye-like auteur. There’s definitely some brilliant tracks on Born Sinner, and while Cole is just a pretty-good rapper, he’s got a great ear for samples and tasteful, mid-tempo production.
June 14th, 2013 12:08pm
The thing that really gets me about this song is the way Bradford sings about getting dumped in a way that sounds very fresh and naïve. I’m not sure whether he’s going for that specifically – he’s been open enough about his life experience that I think whatever inspired this probably was a new thing for him – but it perfectly captures the deep confusion and exaggerated agony of having no context for dealing with people in this way. And like, even with experience or cynicism, I think it’s pretty common to regress to this feeling all through life: Why did you leave me? What did you really want from me? What about those things you promised me? Don’t you care about how I feel now? It’s just being human.
June 12th, 2013 12:07pm
It took me a little while to notice that this song is called “Tube Stops and Lonely Hearts” and not “Tube Tops and Lonely Hearts,” which I think would be a much different sort of song. Tube stops is great, though – that context adds a lot to the song, which sounds more and more like someone feeling anxious and tired on the way home, and impatiently waiting to just get home already because the longer they’re stuck in this limbo, the more they’re trapped in their mind as emotions and thoughts and fears spiral around. Annie gets this across very well without going too far – despite the angst, this still has a touch of lightness and sexiness to it.
June 11th, 2013 11:54am
The arrangement here is so subtle, and so brilliant: The core of the song is that lovely, repetitive piano motif, this thing that sounds halfway between a snippet of adult contemporary radio or some new age CD, but as it goes along, these more dissonant and uncomfortable sounds slowly emerge. First it’s like a vague fog, but as the track progresses, it’s like it’s gradually engulfing this beautiful sound. There’s also an odd voice that comes through – calming, but also a little deep and threatening. It’s basically a piece of music that feels like the outside world – or maybe your own inside world – corrupting something lovely and stable.
June 7th, 2013 12:27pm
Is this the most wholesome Wu-Tang song of all time? It must be. But the beautiful thing about this track is that the warmth and friendliness does not seem forced or awkward – this sounds like a bunch of guys in their 40s who are genuinely happy to see each other, and have put a lot of petty stuff behind them. It gets a little corny and maudlin – it’s starting to seem like there’s at least 15 Wu-related songs with a tribute to Ol Dirty Bastard at this point – but it’s sweet, and kinda interesting to hear how the scowls that you could hear through the tape on Enter the Wu-Tang have morphed into pleasant grins 20 years later.
June 5th, 2013 12:21pm
I’d say that this is the best sleaze rock song of the year, but how much competition does it really have, even over the past several years? You can tell how much the band is delighting in the raunchiest of this song’s groove, but at the same time, you can also tell Josh Homme is smirking at his own lyrics. It’s an over the top parody of rock star dirtbag ego, but it’s also a celebration of that particular type of swagger – Homme surely embodies it up to a point. Part of what makes this song work so well is that he knows just how to dig into the listener’s insecurity, and turn even sorta repellant aspects of this into an aspirational status. For example, this is how he describes everyone who isn’t quite so debauched: “Fear is the hand that pulls your strings / a useless toy / pitiful plaything.” “Smooth Sailing” is, in contrast, the joy that comes from not giving a fuck about anything but indulging in your own pleasure.
June 4th, 2013 12:07pm
There’s a lot of guest vocalists on Disclosure’s debut album, but the song that impresses me most, “F for You,” is sung by one of the two members, Howard Lawrence. Lawrence has a natural voice for this sort of house-pop hybrid – smooth and slick, just romantic enough to elevate the vibe without being so flashy that the vocal distracts from the beat. To my ears, Disclosure aren’t really doing much new on this or any other song they’ve made, but they bring a level of craft and overwhelming joy to dance music that’s hard to resist. They remind me a lot of Basement Jaxx, not just in feeling, but in approach to using guests, and composing records that find the perfect middle ground between consistently thrilling DJ set and well-rounded album.
June 3rd, 2013 11:59am
The mood of this song is very precise: A steady, low-grade sadness that slowly but surely downgrades all your hopes and expectations, but never feels too uncomfortable or painful. It sounds like a permanently overcast horizon. It’s a feeling that seems infinite, but doesn’t have to be. You can tell Eleanor knows this in the tone of her voice, but she indulges it anyway, and sings about other people’s struggles with love and low hopes with an aloof sort of empathy. The killer line here, sung in the chorus, is so wise and accurate that it just sort of stings every time I hear it: “Frequent rejection, occasional affection / it’s often offered in the wrong direction.” Maybe that’s not true for everyone, but if you see even a bit of your life in that, it will get under your skin a bit.
May 31st, 2013 12:21pm
Ida No and Glass Candy fake vintage NYC new wave/disco so real, they are beyond fake. Like a great period drama, they get the important details just right but know exactly where to run with artistic license, so their songs don’t just end up sounding like a bunch of scrapped Blondie demos. “The Possessed” is one of the best they’ve ever done – thick with mood and drama, but with just enough of a wink to it to keep it fun and light. That bit of self-awareness doesn’t upend the tension, though – Ida can’t help but make everything she sings seem genuinely ultra-glamorous and romantic.
May 30th, 2013 12:41pm
I saw Liars perform at the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art two weeks ago, but I didn’t write anything about it. It was a pretty amazing show – they played mostly brand new songs, and all of them were instantly powerful and exciting. (I can still very clearly remember the hook of one of the more aggressive numbers – “Fact is fact and fiction’s fiction.”) They performed as an almost entirely electronic act, and all of the new material essentially merges the dramatic, more overtly pop structures of Sisterworld with the icy, electronic textures of WIXIW. It’s exceptional stuff. This song, recently released as a free single, wasn’t performed, but should give you a sense of what they’re up to – that main keyboard riff sounds like metal to me, but it’s rendered like an 8 bit video game soundtrack. But it doesn’t seem cute or nostalgic at all – they manage to make it evoke dread as much as if it was played on a guitar with drop D tuning.
May 29th, 2013 11:49am
I love the way this track seems to just keep moving, as if the words just won’t stop tumbling out of King Krule’s mouth, and the Mount Kimbie guys have to just keep up with him until he runs out of things to say. King Krule’s performance is in some ambiguous space between rapping, toasting, and crooning, but it’s a perfect vehicle for the simple sound of his voice. The song could be twice as long and I’d be thrilled, I just like hearing the way he chews on words. The arrangement is excellent too, matching the twists and turns of the vocals with instrumental ideas that come around each bend – shifts in percussion style, a touch of droning melodica, simple guitar lines that smooth out the contour of the groove.
May 28th, 2013 11:37am
Laura Marling’s fourth album Once I Was An Eagle is one of the best engineered records I’ve heard, particularly for the sort of music it is – there’s only three instruments and one voice throughout, and it’s mostly recorded live, and in a way that makes you feel very aware of every motion, impact, and vibration. This sort of thing gets lost a lot of the time, resulting in records that sound like music rather than the physical act of making it. That’s fine most of the time, but the physicality is essential to Marling’s music – in lesser hands, this stuff might just come off as “pretty” or “rootsy,” and it would distract from the many parts that are violent, or tense, or otherwise visceral and cathartic. The entire album is like a long ritual to cast out painful bits of the past. Sometimes it’s more meditative, but on “Master Hunter,” it’s aggressive – she takes on a numb but powerful persona, and shuts down a depressed man who asks far too much of her: “Is this what you think I do in life when I’m not being used? / You’re not sad, you look for the blues / I have some news: / wrestling the rope from darkness is no fucking life that I would choose.” And just like that, with sharp words and some loud thuds, his memory is practically slain.
May 23rd, 2013 12:55pm
The arrangement for this song is astonishing – you get the intense, sorta uncomfortable intimacy of a typical Scout Niblett song, but the subtle string parts make it feel a lot more epic. It’s not your usual “big bombastic string arrangement” either – for the most part, you get this high, trilling anxious sound that tempers the raw anger of her lyrics with a queasy unease. It’s perfect, because this is pretty much exactly how realizing that you’ve let yourself be fucked over by someone can feel.
May 22nd, 2013 12:08pm
The first thing that comes to mind whenever I hear this song, or this Vår album in general, is overcast skies. It sounds like music made in a place where there is nothing but overcast skies. The vocals are just pained, yearning moans – powerful feelings dulled down to their lowest ebb. It’s the sound of this song that gets me, particularly the repetition of that kind of shrill high tone. It’s not exactly musical, I’m not sure what the sound is. But it goes from seeming like a broken machine to feeling more like some strange beacon cutting through the fog of everything else in the track.
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