Juveniles “Strangers”

Here’s an interesting one: A jubilant yet slightly dour, Tears for Fears-like synth pop song about reconnecting with an old friend after a terrible falling out. This is a pretty good reason to feel jubilant, sure, but I don’t feel like I’ve heard many pop songs specifically about this, and the few that come to mind have a different mood. I quite like how clear-eyed and rational this sounds too – any trace of ill will is long gone, but very much acknowledged and taken seriously. Great guitar solo too – maybe a little corny, but absolutely fitting the tone of the piece without getting all winky-winky about it.

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Jai Paul “Str8 Outta Mumbai”

I wish I could tell whether or not Jai Paul intends for this song to be so lo-fi, or if the tracks on his leaked album sound the way they do because they’re unmastered demos. We’ll see? I certainly hope it’s just an unfinished thing because this song has one of the most imaginative and interesting arrangements of anything I’ve heard in the past year or so, and I just don’t think a vocal take that sounds like it was recorded on a cell phone off of a speaker phone in a large conference room is the best idea. I love the way “Str8 Outta Mumbai” keeps shifting around, tossing out ideas every few bars, sometimes just stopping on a dime to get another one in there. It’s an impatient vibe, for sure, but I whole heartedly believe that this song would be seriously next level if Jai Paul has the patience to take it there.

Lorde “The Love Club”

Lorde is a teenager who sings about being a teenager like an adult. This isn’t just about her voice, it’s about perspective – in a song like “The Love Club,” she’s talking very specifically about the emotional politics of high school cliques, but with some nuance and distance, and perhaps the realization that while you eventually graduate school, these social dynamics are pretty hard to escape in life. Part of the perspective thing has to do with tone – the song feels light and fun, but also emotionally charged. There’s a sense of humor, for sure, but also a sense of real stakes, so the big moments hit and actually mean something rather than just coming off like over-inflated melodrama.

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G-Dragon “MichiGO”

The funny thing about K-Pop’s tendency to mash up Korean and English lyrics is that the result feels a little more strange and alien to me than if they were only singing and rapping in Korean, a language I cannot understand. The style exaggerates the hyperactive quality of G-Dragon’s music in particular, amping up the “a million things coming at you at once, can you possibly process this?” quality of his best songs. I have very little context for anything happening in this song or its astonishingly weird video, but the part of me that wants every song or piece of art to be a puzzle is hooked. Frankly, it is more fun to have no idea what’s really happening here.

!!! “Even When the Water’s Cold”

This is a song about someone else’s self-destructive impulses, and looking on as she gets involved with some horrible guy that everyone warns her against seeing at all. There’s no real judgment on her, which is nice. If anything, it’s a song about observing this sort of thing, and realizing that few of us ever have the self-awareness to really know when we’re throwing ourselves into some dumb situation. It’s always super obvious from a distance, though, and it’s part of how other people’s idea of us can be wildly different from our self-image, in good and bad ways. But the tone of the song isn’t so cheerful – it’s more dark, more seedy, more resigned to the bitter realities of lonely people trying to connect in some sort of way. At the end, he just lays it out: If you’re really looking for love, you gotta put up with the worst things along the way.

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Stephen Malkmus “One More Night”

Can, particularly the version of the band fronted by Damo Suzuki, is one of the best rock acts of all time, but their music almost completely resists being covered. Damo’s voice and cadence is too specific; any attempt to even just sing his parts straight just sounds like you’re doing an impression of him. Also, the music isn’t exactly for beginners. But I’m really impressed by Stephen Malkmus’ cover of Ege Bamyasi in its entirety – it’s extraordinarily faithful, but retains his character as a musician. I remember reading in a magazine, probably Tower’s old in-store publication Pulse, that Ege Bamyasi is one of Malkmus’ all-time favorite records, and he used to regularly fall asleep listening to the record. That kind of intense love comes through in the playing – he’s committed every note to memory, it just flows out of his memory without prompting in, well, the same way all of his albums can just flow freely out of my mind. His version of “One More Night,” arguably the best track on the record, is nearly twice as long, it stretches out on the groove a bit. I can’t blame him – it has one of the most distinctive and evocative grooves I’ve ever heard, it just feels really good to linger on it for a while.

Phoenix “S.O.S. In Bel Air”

Thomas Mars once wrote very clear and obvious lyrics, but now his words are an odd, oblique code – there’s a suggestion of context, and some perspective on a conflict, the gist of an emotion. He’s basically telling the listener to give up on trying to connect with exactly what he’s thinking, and to project whatever you need on to the songs. I appreciate this, and that’s certainly what I’ve done with “S.O.S. In Bel Air.” The thing that got me right away was the repetition of “you can’t cross the line but you can’t stop trying” – at first, as an expression of Sisyphean frustration, and more recently, as a struggle with boundaries, both self-imposed, and those created by others.

I recognize and relate to the dynamics of the song too – it’s pretty tense through the bridges, and the “cross the line” bit winds up very tight, a single thought just repeating til it wears out a part of your brain. But that chorus is a relief, with the song at its most relaxed when Mars asks a simple, direct question: “Do you need another one, someone to talk to?” The answer is usually yes.

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Clinic @ Le Poisson Rouge 4/20/2013
Dissolution: The Dream of Bartholomew / Children of Kellogg / Miss You / Tusk / King Kong / IPC Subeditors Dictate Our Youth / Lion Tamer / Porno / Seamless Boogie Woogie, BBC2 10pm (rpt) / Orangutan / See Saw / You / The Return of Evil Bill / 2/4 // Walking With Thee / T.K. / Cement Mixer

Clinic “Porno”

Clinic is one of those bands who are, even by a lot of the people who like them and have stuck with them for over a decade, sorta under-appreciated. To some extent, their consistency is their curse – always good, always interesting, always more or less the same no matter what they actually change about their music. (And they do.) Clinic are an incredibly specific and uncompromising band, and their refusal to budge even a little bit or meet audiences halfway is not a matter of them having no other ideas. Seeing them play live again for the first time in many years, it was clear to me that this is music that is made because these people feel utterly compelled to do so. There’s some kind of spiritual psycho-sexual catharsis going on when they play; it often feels like observing a peculiar, inscrutable occult ceremony.

I got a lot of out of this set, actually more than I would have expected going in. I was particularly blown away by the performance of “Porno,” a song from their very first single in 1998. It’s a creepy, uncomfortable song with a sort of filthy, furtive groove. It’s the most sexual song in their catalog, but it’s not sexy – if anything, it’s the most accurate evocation of sexual frustration in any song I’ve ever heard. It’s all thwarted, unfocused lust blended with feelings of shame and guilt. It’s abstract, but totally precise. They’ve been playing this song for years now; somehow it’s only become more potent with time.

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The Loud Family – Exponential Existential Horror Show

Scott Miller, the singer and songwriter of Loud Family and Game Theory, as well as the author of an excellent book of music criticism called Music: What Happened?, has died. He was a huge talent, and incredibly intelligent and kind. You can get a sense of who he was and what he accomplished in this interview I conducted with him about his book back in 2011. If you’ve never heard his music, you can start with the mix above, which collects my favorite material from his body of work with The Loud Family. If you are interested in Game Theory, his influential ’80s band, that group’s entire catalog is being given away for free on Miller’s official site for the time being. He had a great gift for power pop, and an even greater talent for writing lyrics that were both cerebral and emotional. He went generally ignored or underappreciated for the majority of his career, but it’s not too late to give his work the respect and love it deserves.

Basement Jaxx “Back 2 the Wild”

Miss Emma Lee and Baby Chay’s vocals on “Back 2 the Wild” are gleeful, childish and silly to the point of being almost an aggressive provocation, like they’re just trying to get an uptight listener to be like “ugh, so annoying!” And that’s perfect for this song – vibrant as a day-glo rainbow, bouncy and playful as a million hyperactive puppies. The song is inviting you to a party, basically – or more literally, a wild and guileless state of existence – and tugging on you and begging until you finally just give in. You should.

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Teen “Carolina”

“Carolina” immediately suggests an enormous scale, with a riff that sounds like a big gleaming tower, and a vocal part that, perhaps incongruously, brings to mind a vast canyon. It’s a song with generally good vibes, but there’s an odd, subtle tension to it, like it’s just swaying a bit under the weight of its grand scale and a little nervous just under its blissful, confident surface.

Pre-order it from Insound.

James Blake “Life Round Here”

Even when he’s singing a fairly straight forward R&B ballad, James Blake can’t help but give every song this vague, elliptical quality. It gives his music a strange quality, like someone who is yearning for a powerful emotional and physical connection, but can never stand to look you in the eye or speak in complete sentences. This is sexy R&B for people with serious social anxiety, or a fear of letting anyone in. “Life Round Here” is about as direct as Blake gets without just covering someone else – Joni Mitchell, Feist – and while I understand the gist of the drama, it’s still like trying to understand an emotional exchange while only seeing only one person’s subtle, pained facial expressions.

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Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Despair”

Karen O is iconic because she’s so good at projecting this badass, arty tough girl vibe, but she’s a great pop singer because she knows how and when to drop that pose and be vulnerable. Not just, “I’m going to sing a ballad now,” but like, truly wounded and shaken, raw nerve emotion. “Despair,” the big ballad on their fourth album, is a return to “Maps” territory, but it’s not a love song. It’s a little more powerful than that, somehow – she’s singing about years of pain and neuroses, and how it’s all been manageable through a powerful connection to someone else. This is her saying, basically – I could not make it without you. This is love, but it’s beyond romance. It’s something crucial, and there’s no other way of getting through – or even appreciating – that consuming feeling of despair.

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Fleetwood Mac @ Madison Square Garden 4/8/2013
Second Hand News / The Chain / Dreams / Sad Angel / Rhiannon / Not That Funny / Tusk / Sisters of the Moon / Sara / Big Love / Landslide / Never Going Back Again / Without You / Gypsy / Eyes of the World / Gold Dust Woman / I’m So Afraid / Stand Back / Go Your Own Way // World Turning / Don’t Stop /// Silver Springs / Say Goodbye

1. It’s hard not to notice that Stevie Nicks’ voice has deteriorated a lot with age, but Lindsey Buckingham’s voice has maybe actually improved. Stevie has the natural star power, so she doesn’t have to work the audience as much as Lindsey, who seems far more eager to please. He’s a hammy guy with a huge amount of energy, and he throws everything he’s got into every song.

2. Lindsey is a fascinating figure to me because he subverts so many expectations of male rock stars – he isn’t macho, he isn’t androgynous, he isn’t aloof, he isn’t glamorous, he isn’t some walking riddle. He doesn’t map on to any archetype, though he’s got some things in common with contemporaries like Jackson Browne and James Taylor. He’s an obvious control freak who has written some of the most passive-aggressive music I have ever encountered, and that may sound like a diss, but it’s not. Lindsey’s songs are powerful because he’s always trying to negotiate his way through romantic problems because he’s such a big believer in LOVE, and respects his partner too much to not make everything a dialogue.

Fleetwood Mac “Say Goodbye”

3. Fleetwood Mac are all about selling you on their story. The newer or more obscure songs in this set were introduced in the context of Stevie and Lindsey’s grand romance, which ended nearly 40 years ago. This has been a big part of their show for years, and it’s sorta fascinating to watch them play out these very rehearsed sentimental moments sprinkled through the set. The one that rang most true was at the end, as Lindsey introduced the Say You Will song “Say Goodbye” as a number about finding closure with Stevie after many, many years. It’s a pensive acoustic ballad, more like his recent solo work than classic Mac, and while the sentiment is very direct, its emotions are as tangled as its busy arpeggiated notes. Most people break up and move on. But imagine having to form an even closer connection after your relationship is through, and your past relationship being crucial to your greatest artistic successes together. And that success keeps you together, and that success makes you constantly revisit these moments from the past. Lindsey Buckingham has been married for years, but he knows damn well that when he’s gone, that relationship will get at best second billing to his epic drama with Stevie. It’s a strange thing to reckon with.

4. Also, so much Tusk! I was so happy with that Tusk section of the setlist. And “Second Hand News” and “Dreams” and “Eyes of the World,” and the new song “Sad Angel” was really good too, sorta like “I Don’t Want to Know.” I wish I could have enjoyed “Landslide” more, but it’s hard when you’re surrounded by tone deaf grandpas groaning the words loudly out of time.

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The Knife “Wrap Your Arms Around Me”

“Wrap Your Arms Around Me” is one of the most unsettling songs about romance and lust I’ve ever heard, partly because its sound implies being crushed by an enormous weight, and mostly because the singer’s urge for affection is reduced to biological imperatives and social status. There is nothing idealistic here, nothing lofty or emotional, nothing we’d recognize from how pop culture frames any of this. Instead, we have Karin Dreijer Andersson’s raw voice singing dryly about “the urge for penetration,” and making the common hope of “feel love and build a house with you” seem completely detached, like a set of computer commands. The line that really gives me shivers is the repeated lyric “free the unborn child at the castle,” which…I’m not sure if I really need to explain why that sounds so disturbing, right? It is precisely where this song tips from an uncomfortably bleak vision of sex to a nightmare about procreation.

FYI, I wrote a big thing about The Knife’s new album over here.

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The Flaming Lips “Sun Blows Up Today”

This is The Flaming Lips’ “YOLO” song: Three minutes of joyful, pogoing festival pop with lyrics about the whole world getting together to enjoy the spectacular destruction of the sun, and the world. Wayne Coyne has spent most of his adult life thinking about spectacle and communal activity, and this is the logical conclusion to that thread, to think of literally the spectacle to end all spectacles. But unlike The Terror, the album this song is connected to but does not technically appear on, this is a cheerful and direct piece of music, not something stewing in dread and bad vibes. I suppose there’s some irony to it, but then again, maybe not – Coyne is absolutely the sort of person to greet the end of the world with open arms as long as it’s a good, trippy show.

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Fol Chen “A Tourist Town”

Fol Chen began messing around with dense, electronic pop with “Cable TV” on their debut album, and back then, it was kind of an outlier song for them. Now they’re doing that stuff full time, and their third album, The False Alarms, is like 10 variations on that theme – a clinical deconstruction of Minneapolis funk and early Timbaland, with lyrics that present a fairly mundane existence in evocative detail. There’s a few meta conceits here, and it works – there’s always an implication that the music is an interpretation of the pop songs you encounter everywhere or remember from your past, and it’s all a part of how everyday experiences are shaped. “A Tourist Town,” the best track, filters this sort of bewildered narrative about travel and drinking too much through sounds that sets up expectations for fun and relaxation, but also encourages that state of mind.

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Tyler, the Creator featuring Hodgy Beats “Jamba”

If Tyler isn’t acting out or being a troll, he’s sorta uncomfortably self-absorbed and overly concerned with what his fans think of him. But that’s just how it goes with that personality type – you’re either putting up a front and playing a character, or revealing the least appealing aspects of yourself when it’s time to let your guard down. I don’t mind Tyler being neurotic – sometimes it’s pretty compelling, like on “Colossus,” where he’s freaked out about being mobbed by fans – but he’s just a lot more fun when he’s goofing around. “Jamba” is playful and sly, and I kinda love hearing this straight-edge kid fantasize about having a bad time smoking weed with his friends. I recognize a lot of what I was like as a teen in this song, and honestly, that’s a super rare thing for me.

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Iron & Wine “Grace for Saints and Ramblers”

I never cared for Iron & Wine’s sad acoustic songs, and will probably always have a bit of residual distaste for that end of their catalog – that stuff was popular at a time when I was distancing myself from anything that struck me as overly dreary or straining for woodsy authenticity, and it’s hard to shake off ingrained biases from nearly a decade ago. But I really like Sam Beam’s more recent work – he’s blossomed into a sophisticated songwriter with an effortless command of melody and a taste for arrangements that borrow from the best of 70s lite FM and folk pop. “Grace for Saints and Ramblers” isn’t far off in tone or style from the best cuts from 2011’s Kiss Each Other Clean, but it feels brighter, looser, and more cheerful. It reminds me a bit of when Elton John would bring in elements of Philly soul and Motown on songs like “Philadelphia Freedom” and “Grey Seal,” and I’m very fond of how the clutter of imagery and references in the verses is cleared away for the chorus, “it all came down to you and I.”

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Telekinesis “Empathetic People”

Michael Benjamin Lerner does pretty much everything in Telekinesis, but he’s a drummer first and foremost, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that the percussion is often the most expressive element of his compositions. Listen to “Empathetic People” – the riffs and hooks are up front, but that passionate, insistent beat is what makes it feel urgent and emotional, not the guitar tone or his gentle tenor voice. He can’t help but sound sweet and even-keeled as a singer, so his drumming brings out the emotional urgency in his songs, especially the ones that are so firmly rooted in anxiety.

Buy it from Amazon.