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.
May 21st, 2013 12:45pm
I have a lot of mixed feelings about Daft Punk’s new album, and for the most part I’m not feeling it, but I have no reservations about loving this song. Yes, I do wish it was faster and I’m holding out for a superior remix, but at the same time, I really appreciate the way this song is like this extended, groovy chill out session before moving on to the full-on party stage. (I assume that when the robots promise that everyone will be “coin’ it right and everybody will be dancing” they are talking about the point in the evening when someone puts on Discovery.) Panda Bear is amazing on this – he’s not doing anything different from what he’s been up to on Animal Collective albums and his solo work, but in terms of melody, he’s at the top of his game, and his earnest boy voice is nicely complemented by the robot vocoder hook.
May 20th, 2013 12:24pm
The key word in the title here is “waiting” – it’s a song about counting down the seconds to see somebody, and the nervous energy that goes into anticipating that moment. The little nuisances along the way to that moment seem like more of a hassle than they would usually, and the excitement is mixed in with a vague fear of disappointment. But despite this tinge of doubt, “All You’re Waiting For” feels like an optimistic, happy song, and it’s not just a matter of a dance beat and bright keyboard tones. This is the good kind of nervous; the feeling just before something you know is good for you is about to happen.
May 16th, 2013 12:34pm
I remember a few weeks ago Ian Cohen tweeting something to the effect of how Devon Welsh of Majical Cloudz could’ve made a killing ghost writing the new Depeche Mode album, and everyone would’ve been better off for it. This stuck in my head, and it surfaces every time I hear this song, which is basically the best Depeche Mode song since the early 90s by a wide margin. Not to sell Welsh short, though: He’s got his own thing going, and so few people are good at this sort of stylish, melodramatic hyper-masculine balladry that it’s always welcome. This is excellent “brooding guy walking through the city in the rain, thinking about his many regrets” music.
May 15th, 2013 11:25am
“Make Me Lovely” is one of those rare, special songs that is both marvelously ambitious and seemingly effortless in its construction. There’s a lot of things coming together here – mannered neo-soul, nuanced orchestration, a touch of jazz, a melodic sensibility somewhere between ’70s Paul McCartney and prime Stevie Wonder. The composition mirrors the epic turmoil of the lyrics, in which Mvula attempts to distance herself from a partner who could not accept her as she is, and tried to make her into something else: “I can’t make you love me / you can’t make me lovely.” The music, with its 20th century glamor, make the declarative lines come across as magical epiphanies, and each time the musical stakes are raised, she sounds closer to a point of being entirely rid of this person who has held her back.
May 14th, 2013 11:58am
A lot of songs that implore the listener to “do something” with their lives can seem awfully smug and self-satisfied, but R.E.M.’s “Get Up” side-steps that trap by making it clear from the start that the singer is addressing himself as much as the audience. The lyrics are intentionally vague about what Michael Stipe wants us all to do, but the basic point is abundantly clear: No matter who we are or what we do, we need to resist the empty comforts of apathy and become active members of society. The song is meant to apply to everyone, whether they are a teenager who needs some kind of permission to pursue a life in the arts or sciences, an office worker who needs the extra push to get involved with local politics, or a member of a pop band who needs to do more than just indulge in hedonism.
As noted by Marcus Gray in his book It Crawled From The South, “Get Up” is essentially a “lullaby in reverse.” The song hops in place like an impatient and excited little kid, and its peppy bubblegum hooks place it among the most joyous and immediately ingratiating songs in the band’s repertoire. It also boasts a rather clever arrangement full of interesting details that aren’t exactly subtle, but fit together without distracting the listener from the tune. The chorus features one of the best examples of the band’s contrary approach to writing lyrics for background vocals — as Michael sings “dreams they complicate my life,” Bill Berry counters him with “dreams they complement my life.” It’s not really an argument, though. Even if the song is an exhortation to action, it acknowledges that our dreams supply us with an essential motivation as long as we don’t get lost within them.
May 13th, 2013 11:33am
“I want to know, does it bother you? / the low click of a ticking clock.” Yes, yes it does. Nearly every song on Modern Vampires of the City reckons with the inevitability of time running out, and to be honest with you, it really gets under my skin. Ezra Koenig mentions death a lot, but in some ways, it’s hyperbolic – it’s not about death, it’s about the fear of adulthood, and surrendering the possibilities of youth. Koenig’s characters sense doors closing behind them at every turn, and feel the weight of decisions they might have not considered to be particularly important even just a few years ago. “Don’t Lie” is a love song, really, but the urgency of the romantic feeling is amped up by morbidity – “there’s a headstone right in front of you, and everyone I know.” The feelings are strong, but the character is caught up in the anxious rush to find more experiences, and the fear that making a commitment is a death sentence for their youth.
May 10th, 2013 12:09pm
It’s hard to remember what music was like before chipmunked soul vocals. I mean, I lived through that time, but it’s a haze – just a slightly more drab version of life without this particular surefire path to immediate joy. Bibio is breaking no new ground in “You” – you’re probably familiar with Kanye and Dilla, right? – but the song is glorious all the same, with mellow, slightly out-of-it phases bracketing a sample that just sorta bounces up in the mix. It sounds like a sudden moment of elation after you’ve sorta forgotten what that feels like.
May 9th, 2013 2:53am
I have to get this out of the way first: It is so weird to me that this guy goes by “Chance the Rapper” when his actual real name is Chancellor, which would be a perfectly decent rap name, especially in a world where one of the most popular rappers is called Drake and everyone is totally fine with it. Also, I find it really weird that when people write about him, no one ever seems to compare his voice or style to Lyrics Born from Latyrx. The only way this makes sense is if everyone just wants to pretend Lyrics Born and Latyrx never happened, which is…stupid, c’mon, do you really want to live in a world without “Lady Don’t Tek No”? No. But I really enjoy his voice and flow, and it’s nice to get back to that comfy Kanye-circa-College Dropout vibe, especially since there’s no way in hell Kanye himself is ever going back to that. Maybe it’s just a young sound? A lot of Chance’s mixtape is about reconnecting with an early childhood that was not very long ago, and I guess part of that is capturing this feeling that’s like a very soulful sort of innocence.
May 8th, 2013 2:18am
Deerhunter usually occupies a very dark and lonely emotional space, but “Dream Captain” is kind of an outlier – it’s not a goof or anything, but there’s a touch of levity and humor to its tone and lyrics. But still, despite that, it’s treading familiar thematic ground – Bradford is giving voice to a passive character who desperately wants this powerful alpha male to come along and pull him out of his life. There’s a notable tension between the way he sees himself, and how he imagines this guy, and it all comes out in the song’s funniest and also most resonant line – “I’m a boy-man, and you’re a MAN-MAN!” It’s a self-deprecating joke, but it seems to dig a bit deeper into serious self-loathing, or at least a feeling of frustration about the sort of masculinity he can’t inhabit.
May 7th, 2013 12:20pm
The soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby is overflowing with big name artists and producers, but the best track on it is something of a dark horse. “Where the Wind Blows” is written and produced by veteran R&B songwriter Andrea Martin and sung by Coco O., the vocalist from the Danish R&B group Quadron. It’s a deceptively simple song, with Coco singing a neatly linked chain of hooks built around a snippet of jazz age piano. That sample is our tether to the setting of the film, but also a tip off that our singer is yearning for a sort of glamor and excitement that mostly exists in books, movies, or the past. It sets up a romantic thought that the vocals complete, as she sings craving endless fun, and wanting to make a real connection with someone despite enjoying the freedom of “being more single than anyone.” There’s a touch of sadness to this song, at least in knowing that she’s making impossible demands, but it’s mostly joyful as she essentially pledges herself to hedonism and the pursuit of simple satisfaction.
