July 18th, 2013 12:01pm
This new Beck single basically picks up where he left off with Modern Guilt – stiff grooves and a lot of atmosphere, but since Danger Mouse isn’t involved, it doesn’t feel so compressed and stifling. Like a few other songs he’s recorded over the past few years, “I Won’t Be Long” has this dramatic yet low key handsome-voiced sexy vibe going on, and I really appreciate this. There’s not a lot of male artists working in this vein, and that sound really flatters him. It’s funny – I don’t think anyone in the mid-90s would have expected that Beck would grow to become such a nuanced vocalist, but here we are.
July 16th, 2013 11:55am
Speedy Ortiz get pegged as a mid ’90s indie rock throwback, and that’s accurate up to a point, but to get really specific, they’re a lot more like what those musicians got up to long after that glory era. Large chunks of their debut remind me of Mary Timony in those limbo years after her first two solo records but before Wild Flag, and their best song by far, “No Below,” sounds quite a lot like what Stephen Malkmus was up to on Mirror Traffic a few years ago. But where those songs reflect on the seeming stability of adult life, Speedy Ortiz is more concerned with looking back on troubled youth – the song is about an ostracized kid who finds solace in making one true friend. It verges on being totally maudlin, but the subject matter makes a virtue of the slack sway of the music and the wounded tone of the vocals.
July 15th, 2013 12:01pm
Learning that Robin Thicke is a 35-year-old man who has been married for years to a woman he’s been with since he was 16 totally changed my perspective on his music. If you don’t know that, he just seems like this ultra-lascivious guy who is just relentlessly hitting on women. But listening to his music with the assumption that he’s always singing about the same woman, it’s…sorta sweet? He’s just this guy who can’t get enough of his wife, and loves nothing more than to buy underwear for her, and have sex like they just met two weeks ago. This context doesn’t make his music any less lecherous or sleazy too, and that’s great – “Give It 2 U” is an ideal vehicle for some ultra-raunchy lyrics given the way the synth parts throb in this sort of obscene way, but Thicke’s vocals are both ultra-lusty and earnestly romantic. He gives the song a dimension it probably wouldn’t have otherwise.
July 12th, 2013 12:13pm
Belle & Sebastian @ Prospect Park Bandshell 7/11/2013
Judy Is A Dick Slap / I’m A Cuckoo / Another Sunny Day / The Stars of Track and Field / I Want the World to Stop / To Be Myself Completely / Lord Anthony / Funny Little Frog / I Don’t Love Anyone / Piazza, New York Catcher / Your Cover’s Blown / I Didn’t See It Coming / Simple Things / The Boy with the Arab Strap / Legal Man / Judy and the Dream of Horses // Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying / Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie
If you have never seen Belle & Sebastian and only know them by their reputation for being quite soft and sad, you might be surprised to learn that their concerts are quite energetic and fun, and that Stuart Murdoch is an outgoing and natural entertainer. Also, there are more up-tempo Belle & Sebastian songs than fey ballads. This was a delightful show – a nice survey of their body of work, and a very enthusiastic audience, even when the stage wasn’t flooded with girls from the audience on “The Boy with the Arab Strap” and “Legal Man.”
I was thinking when they played “I’m A Cuckoo” about how I can’t think of many other songs about breaking up with someone but trying to remain friends with them, and having to struggle with trying to keep a distance with the change in your relationship, and desperately needing them for emotional support when you’re depressed because you’ve spent so much time with only just them to provide that for you. And then, like, being mindful of boundaries and feeling guilty for crossing them? And trying to be happy, though you feel lonely and adrift? This must happen to people a lot, right? You would think it would be the subject of more songs. (Well, outside of Dear Catastrophe Waitress.)
July 10th, 2013 11:52am
Jay-Z’s most interesting lyrics these days are focused on his frustration with attaining an extraordinarily high level of success, but still feeling shut out from the highest echelons of society. He’s sending a message to everyone coming up behind him: No matter what you do, you’re going to have to confront racism. In this song, he’s talking about making enough money that he can force himself into their community whether they like it or not – rap star gentrification, basically. But once he gets there, he just watches some rich white girl pop star appropriate dance moves from his culture, and all he can do is laugh with bitter condescension.
July 9th, 2013 11:48am
If it were up to me, this song would eclipse Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” to be the biggest hit of the summer. I like both of those songs, but they’re just a bit too mellow – I like my summer jams to be more brash and aggressive, and Nicki Minaj’s verses and Ciara’s bold hooks on this track totally hit that sweet spot. Also, in comparison to Daft Punk and Robin Thicke’s songs, which treat women like passive playthings from another universe, this track is all about assertive women doing exactly what they want. And, uh, womping on some girl your ex is dating now, but never mind that.
July 8th, 2013 12:04pm
I know that “sweet” is not a word that suits the music El-P and Killer Mike have been making over the past year or so, but I can’t listen to any of it now without thinking about their partnership as a hip-hop love story in which these two guys who have been kicking around for years finally found a collaborator who truly completes them. Their styles are so simpatico – there share a true reverence for late 80s rap, but their music doesn’t sound dated; they use that old style and aggression for something that sounds sharp, heavy, and fresh today. And maybe that’s because they stand out so much in the context of contemporary rap, and maybe it’s because there’s an anger and cynicism in their voices that rings true in a way that wouldn’t feel as legit coming from younger men. Their age and experience is a benefit, particularly when they rhyme together – there’s a sense, underneath everything, that they’ve both got a second chance to shine in their career, and they’re not taking it for granted.
July 3rd, 2013 11:40am
This is the kind of song Andrew Falkous was put on this earth to write and sing: A hyper-masculine and aggressive tune that is basically about feeling horrible about male privilege while knowing that mindless, natural lust will always get in the way of good intentions. There’s so much guilt, ambivalence, and self-loathing in this song, and the big dumb AC/DC style riff in the first half is pointed self-parody, as if to grudgingly admit “I’m just so bro caveman.”
July 1st, 2013 1:05am
Matt LeMay organized a tribute concert to Scott Miller on Saturday night at Cake Shop in New York City, and I was there to contribute a brief reading of Scott’s brilliant music criticism. There were a lot of performances – AC Newman, Ted Leo, Doug Gillard, Charles from The Wrens, Jennifer O’Connor, Home Blitz, Matt himself – but the one that really stopped me cold was by Will Sheff, which I wasn’t really expecting since I’ve never been into his work. (No disrespect, just not really my thing.)
Sheff performed a cover of “Screwed Over By Stylish Introverts,” which immediately impressed me since it’s always been one of my favorite Miller compositions. His version, stripped of all the odd noises and flourishes of Miller’s studio recording, cut straight to the unbearable sadness of the lyrics. It’s odd, but it never really occurred to me how much of Scott’s lyrics were about depression, even despite the fact that he had songs with titles like “Slit My Wrists” and “Deee-Pression,” and one of his best known tunes has the chorus “I bet you’ve never actually seen a person die of loneliness.” But knowing now just how much he struggled with depression in his life, it’s very hard to get through a couplet like “You let me know that calling just because I’m lonely is completely rude / You could work this into a lecture to the starving not to beg for food.” It’s even worse on me because I recognize that sentiment all too well.
So now the entire Game Theory and Loud Family body of work has this new context for me, and a new resonance. If there’s a thread through all of it, some kind of greater narrative, it’s basically this one immensely articulate and highly cerebral man’s attempt to rationalize the most irrational parts of his mind, and the most agonizing aspects of being alive. A lot of the songs push in other directions, and celebrate both banal and extraordinary parts of life, but even then, he’s incredibly analytical or at some intellectual distance from his subject. I feel like I’ve known people like this in my life, and sometimes I’m the same way. So now I hear these old songs and I feel a sense of recognition, and a deep empathy.
June 27th, 2013 12:21pm
I’d been hearing about Pretty Lights for a while, and knew it some kind of electronic act who headlined a lot of big festivals and had a huge light show, but I was very lazy about actually checking out the music. I think I assumed the worst, and figured it was just generic EDM and the light show was the reason people liked them so much at communal events but didn’t seem to buy their records. So I was surprised when I heard their new album, Color Map of the Sun, and discovered that the music was in fact much more like DJ Shadow circa Endtroducing… than, say, Deadmau5. It’s not a straight copy – you get that general vibe and mishmash of old soul and breakbeats, but it’s rooted in contemporary dance production, so there’s a more electro feel, and occasional bass drops. The album is best heard as a whole, but “Color of My Soul” is the best intro to what Pretty Lights is doing – a bit mysterious, very emotional, and epic in scale.
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.
