Fluxblog
January 31st, 2013 12:55pm

Start A New Year Whenever You Need


Thao and the Get Down Stay Down “City”

The sound of this song seems to spike upward – vertical, like tall buildings. But the real momentum is a jagged lateral movement, like you’re walking around through a city. There’s an aggressive front to the music – harsh guitar tone, big blocky beats, a vocal that borders on being rapped – but I feel like this is a very affectionate (or at least accepting) song about city life. The end point of this song is very positive, with Thao embracing a chance at constant reinvention and revision of how one views themself and their surroundings. That checks out with my experience.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 29th, 2013 12:56pm

Let’s Talk About Gender, Baby


The Knife “Full of Fire”

If you write or talk about music a lot, you end up throwing around a lot of phrases that suggest that a song is warping your mind in some way, but at least in my experience, that’s all hyperbole. I can only think of a few songs that genuinely do something strange to my brain, and seem to hijack my thoughts and physical responses. This new single by The Knife is one of them. It feels like a very convincing simulation of actual insanity. It goes from tense to more tense to almost unbearably tense, and it feels like a vice grip on your mind, crushing your thoughts until it’s just this super-compressed anxiety and dread. As far as I can tell, this is a song about questioning one’s identity and gender, and that’s perfect for this track. It’s as if they’re just trying to show you what it’s like to be unsure of who or what you are, but taken to an extreme, where you just lose your mind from all the pressure.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 28th, 2013 12:31pm

The Discotheque Inside My Mind


Foxygen “Oh Yeah”

Foxygen are in their very early 20s, so it makes sense that their version of ’60s pop music would be mutated by having access to lots of it, but not quite knowing how it all fits together. It’s affectation and style totally unmoored from time and context, and the mishmash ends up sounding way more modern than your typical faux-Stones music. “Oh Yeah,” their finest and funkiest song, is like some explanation of their project overall, as Sam France sings about the amazing and glamourous world inside his mind – artificial and imaginary, but spilling out into his real life whether or not it’s a bummer to everyone around him. Just go with him on this.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 25th, 2013 1:02pm

Home Is Everywhere


Alpine “In the Wild”

I love songs like this, which circle through a set of motifs and melodies that never seems to fully overlap and harmonize. It’s like a form that never becomes entirely solid, a phantom tune you can sense but not grasp. There’s echoes of a lot of familiar things here – Sleater-Kinney circa Hot Rock, Young Marble Giants, Throwing Muses, Cat Power’s “He War,” the literal twin harmonies of School of Seven Bells – but it’s still a tricky thing to pin down. It’s not some copy, and there’s a high level of craft on this, and their entire debut record. It’s interesting stuff because on one level, it’s just very tuneful and accessible, but on the other, it asks your mind to fill in more gaps than you usually get from straightforward pop music.

Get it from the Alpine site.



January 23rd, 2013 12:56pm

Like You’re Oh So Typical


Tegan & Sara “Closer”

Tegan & Sara have written a bunch of really sharp pop songs over the past decade, but this one sounds like the culmination of all time, effort, and creative and technical progress. This is just a wonderfully structured piece of pop songwriting – it piles hooks upon hooks, but with a lot of intelligence about pacing, dynamics, and surprise. The big cathartic moments feel both urgent and inevitable, even if you play the song on repeat and know exactly what’s coming, they hit you like “ahhh yes, thank you for doing that!” The culmination thing goes for the lyrics too – it can be tricky to make lyrics this direct in language and intention seem clever, but they pull it off, and successfully balance out the trappings of a a self-conscious mind with, quite plainly, raging horniness.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 22nd, 2013 3:05am

Where Does That Time Go Before Our Eyes


Yo La Tengo “Stupid Things”

This is a song about realizing that even the dullest moments of your life are precious, and recognizing the value of a longterm partner. Under normal circumstances, this would push my emotional buttons a bit, but knowing that this was almost certainly inspired by Ira Kaplan’s recent health issues, it’s even more intense. He sounds rattled but genuinely happy too, this calm voice in the center of a track that is both serene and oddly pulsing and sterile. The sound of it reminds me of the way a hospital can feel, with this uncomfortable clash of stillness and urgency.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 18th, 2013 12:59pm

All The Trouble Kept Her Inside


Belle & Sebastian “The Blues Are Still Blue”

On a purely melodic level, this is one of the most pleasurable songs I’ve ever encountered. There are runs of notes and phrasing in this, like the “you can put some money on it, you can place a little bet” turn, that just light up my brain with immediate joy. It goes beyond just “oh I like this,” it’s some kind of spontaneous brain chemistry thing. In a catalog full of brilliant melodies and remarkable formal skill, this stands out as one of Stuart Murdoch’s finest compositions – elegantly crafted, but intuitive in its hooks to the point that it may feel a little “dumb.” The lyrics are pretty silly too, which I imagine was either intentional, or Murdoch just surrendering to the tone of the music. There’s just no point in forcing melancholy into something so bright and relaxed.

Buy it from Amazon.

Belle & Sebastian “The Rollercoaster Ride”

I have known this song for nearly 15 years now and only just recently occurred to me that there is a huge irony in using “the rollercoaster ride” as the refrain and title of this song. The mood is still and gentle, it sounds like a slow rainy day and that’s before you notice the lyrics about the rain. It’s a song about misfit introverts who’d rather stay in; the image of the rollercoaster represents all that makes them uncomfortable in the outside world. Murdoch’s empathy runs so strong in this song, the verses sketch out personalities and predicaments, and the music feels like a big kind hug for each of the subjects.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 17th, 2013 12:48pm

You Go All The Way To Being Brutal


Belle & Sebastian “Lazy Line Painter Jane”

The characters in Stuart Murdoch’s songs are very vivid and interesting, but also sort of pointedly mundane and down to earth. The protagonist of “Lazy Line Painter Jane” is playing at being a sort of sexy antihero, but it isn’t quite working because it’s just too obvious that her promiscuity is more to do with loneliness than a libertine spirit, and her caustic sense of humor is just a way of distancing herself from other people. It wouldn’t take much for this song to seem judgmental, but it’s actually quite warm, and it’s clear that Murdoch has a genuine affection and respect for this woman. She’s the kind of person that you know is kind of a mess, but you’re rooting for them.

Buy it from Amazon.

Belle & Sebastian “Song for Sunshine”

“Song for Sunshine” is by some distance the best song in the Belle & Sebastian song that was not penned by Stuart Murdoch, though I should say that Stevie Jackson has written other fine songs, like “Chickfactor” and “The Wrong Girl.” Stevie has a good ear for melody, but he’s only a modest singer, which hobbles his material somewhat. “Song for Sunshine” works in large part because it takes advantage of the full vocal force of the band, and lets Murdoch carry much of the harmony without having him take a lead. The song is a 70s funk pastiche in the vein of Parliament/Funkadelic and Stevie Wonder, but it’s not about an ass-shaking sort of funk. This is more a post-hippie gospel funk – generous with melody and harmony, and with an incredibly kind-hearted lyrical message about accepting one’s blessings in life.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 16th, 2013 12:57pm

The Free Ride Of Grace


Belle & Sebastian “The Ghost of Rockschool”

“The Ghost of Rockschool” is such a strange and misleading title for this song, I can’t help but imagine that Stuart Murdoch went with it because it distracts the listener a bit from some plainly religious lyrics about his relationship with God. But as clear as that is, the song takes some odd tangents. It starts off with the idea of the “free ride of grace,” which is this very Protestant notion that grace is a gift from God, but shifts to what I suppose is a vision of his own afterlife, and some sort of psychedelic experience. He also sings about a woman with “no soul to discern” who “was put there to tempt you like the perfume of flowers.” This is pretty harsh, but all the same, she seems to be the reason he’s seeing God in everything around him, and why he’s turning to his faith. There’s no reconciliation of this conflict in the song, it’s just left to the grace of God as the song builds to a gorgeous, gentle crescendo.

Buy it from Amazon.

Belle & Sebastian “Woman’s Realm”

This one is like listening in on a series of conversations, or looking in on a series of scenes, and piecing together a story. I’ve always taken this as a dialogue between a sad sack guy and some troubled girl, and them both trying to figure out whether they should make a go of things, or just kinda…do not much at all. Both sides are in some in-between space – he’s cleaning up after a party, she’s on a late night train – but their minds are the future, and hoping for some proper situation. Is it “a boy, a girl, and a rendezvous”? An “interesting way of life”? Or, the path of least resistance, “deny yourself the benefits of being alive”?

Buy it from Amazon.



January 15th, 2013 5:37am

The Only Freedom That You’ll Ever Really Know


Belle & Sebastian “I Don’t Love Anyone”

The words of this song are from one point of view, but the perspective of the song is from another. The words are what you say and think when you embrace loneliness and feel fine with the walls you put up between yourself and everyone else. You tell yourself that you don’t feel anything, and you’re happy to be alone. You might not even be lying to yourself about that. Stuart is singing those words from the other side of that mentality, and with a joy and humor that reveals how flimsy those walls really are, and how easy it can be to just knock them down and get on with your life.

Buy it from Amazon.

Belle & Sebastian “If You Find Yourself Caught In Love”

It’s funny how Belle & Sebastian lyrics can often be overtly Christian in their themes and reference points, but they’re rarely pegged as a Christian Band. I think this is because Stuart Murdoch is never dogmatic, and always conversational in tone, and his faith is presented as just something that informs the world view of his stories. “If You Find Yourself Caught In Love” is as didactic as he ever gets, but it’s still this breezy song in which he’s mostly just telling the listener to either be thankful for the love they have in their life, or to take charge and find it for themselves. There’s a digression where he condemns war and brutality, but it’s just taking a simple message and increasing the stakes. The lines about surrending one’s will to God can be a bit much for a nonbeliever, but at its heart, the song is really just paraphrasing a far more famous tune: “All you need is love / Love is all you need.”

Buy it from Amazon.



January 14th, 2013 4:18am

Kissing Just For Practice


Belle & Sebastian “Seeing Other People”

This is the first Belle & Sebastian song that I loved, and the second that I ever heard after “The Stars of Track and Field,” which immediately precedes it on If You’re Feeling Sinister. I bought the record in late 1996 or early 1997, I can’t quite recall when or how, but I was an early adopter based on something I read, either in Spin or CMJ. I bought a lot of stuff back then based on good buzz in print, which is strange to think about now – I mean, when was the last time you went out of your way to spend $18 on a CD of music you’ve never heard because someone in a magazine wrote a short blurb saying that it was good? I imagine that for a lot of the younger people reading this that has never happened once in their life.

At the time I first heard Sinister, it was absolutely unlike anything else in my record collection. The sound of the music was familiar, but just outside my frame of reference. It sounded smart and exotic and delicate and comfy and just a bit pervy, and the melodies were incredible. I’m not sure if I would’ve placed it at the time, but the piano part in “Seeing Other People” was an echo of Vince Guaraldi’s music for the Peanuts cartoons, but the lyrics seemed to flash forward to what could be those characters’ awkward, possibly homosexual fumblings in late adolescence. The specific experiences described in the song, of “kissing just for practice” and taking a lover “for a dirty weekend,” was never much to do with my own life, but this bittersweet song about these two people who can’t sort out the meaning of their intimate relationship resonated with me then, and still does today.

Buy it from Amazon.

Belle & Sebastian “Slow Graffiti”

“Listen Johnny, you’re like a mother to the girl you’ve fallen for, and you’re still falling.” That line stings. If it was sung from the first person, it’d be a pathetic “friend zone” whine, but this is coming from someone on the outside looking in. From their perspective, it’s a sad scene – some self-destructive woman who can’t help but to take advantage of some hapless man’s kindness, but is in no position to return it. But he doesn’t seem to care about that, since her drama lends some urgency to his otherwise boring life. Murdoch’s tone is sympathetic, but his concern is less for this guy’s broken heart and more for his lack of dignity.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 11th, 2013 1:00pm

Let’s Pretend


Hospitality @ Bowery Ballroom 1/11/2013
Eighth Avenue / The Right Profession / Friends of Friends / Going Out / Betty Wang / Nightingale / Experience / Liberal Arts / Sleepover / Julie / The Birthday / The Drift / Monkey / All Day Today // Half An Apple / Argonauts

Hospitality “Sleepover”

The musicians in Hospitality have a level of skill and craft that isn’t tremendously obvious to the casual listener, and so they’ve very easy to underrate or overlook. They’ve all got chops but play together seamlessly rather than showboat, putting the songs at the forefront. More often than not, this approach yields better bands and better songs, but I don’t think many people come away from Hospitality’s debut thinking mostly about the harmonic structure and rhythmic interplay in their songs. It took me a solid year to really grasp what they’re doing in this music and get beyond the “this sounds a little like…” game, and it took seeing them in concert to get a handle on their dynamic. The album is recorded very plainly, but it somehow obscures the flashier elements of their songs. There’s more drama to their sound in concert, particularly in the new songs, which rock with more flair and sometimes approach a Television-like grandeur. This is exactly the right direction for them – less twee, more assertive and epic. It was already right there, it’s just a matter of what’s being emphasized.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 10th, 2013 1:03pm

Boom Bap Mixed With New Raps


A$AP Rocky “LVL”

A$AP Rocky is, above all other things, an aesthete and a fashion maven, so it should come as no surprise that he has excellent taste in rap production. On his proper record, Long.Live.A$AP, this ranges from sinister, cinematic RZA-isms, chopped and skrewed vocals and rugged-yet-glossy cuts by Hit-Boy to trendier moves like collaborating with Skrillex. On a purely musical level, the most impressive cut is “LVL,” a Clams Casino production that takes the abstracted CD-skipping sound of The Field and finesses it into a viable rap track without sacrificing any of its ambient qualities. A$AP’s technical skill is most obvious in a track like this, where the beat is almost subliminal and his voice carries the rhythm rather than rides it. He varies his cadence and pitch brilliantly, keeping his parts stable but dynamic as the track shifts between sections that come off like slightly different stages of being stoned out of your mind. As with the rest of the record, though, A$AP’s lyrics are the weak point – if he’s so forward-thinking about tracks and thoughtful about his flow, why are his words nearly always sorta banal? There’s nothing bad about his lyrics, it’s just rap boilerplate as opposed to something more distinctive. It’s not a problem for the music, but it’s just a question it’s hard to avoid when this aspect of his craft seems stunted in comparison to everything else he does.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 8th, 2013 1:22pm

This Suit Of Lights


U2 “Gone”

U2’s Pop is a very good record but most people don’t know that because the band totally bungled its marketing by insisting that it was a dance record about frivolous modern excesses when it is, in fact, a fairly grim record about dying faith and self-recrimination that happens to have a lot of electronic textures. It’s of a piece with the band’s ’90s material, not some weird attempt to be the Chemical Brothers or something. On top of that, they stubbornly refused to do themselves a favor and release “Gone,” the most obvious hit on the album, as a single, though they put out six singles from the record. I promise you that in an alternate universe, U2 released “Gone” as the first single from Pop and the record did twice as well.

“Gone” would’ve been the conservative choice for a single in that it’s the only soaring arena rock song on the record. U2 wanted to present themselves as ahead of the curve at this moment in time, but they misunderstood that moment, and went against their own interests both in terms of the market, and in accurately representing the tone of their album. “Discotheque,” the actual first single from Pop, is a good song buried in a mess of confused production choices, and its fairly dark lyrical themes are lost in the cognitive dissonance of picturing the guy who sang “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “Pride (In the Name of Love)” hanging around at a dance club. “Gone” rather directly cuts to the heart of Pop, and is probably one of the most brutally honest things Bono has ever written. This is Bono’s meditation on fame, and it’s way more nuanced than you might expect from a guy who embraces his station as rock royalty more than anyone else of his generation. It’s mainly about feeling guilty – for getting “so much for so little,” for betraying people he loves by abusing his privilege, for losing touch with his true self. There’s no conclusion to these ideas, all of the catharsis comes in the music, which builds to a glorious peak and cuts off. It’s a big neurotic freak out that basically ends when he loses energy.

I like to think of this as the bitter conclusion of an arc of three excellent U2 songs with a similar musical tone and lyrical theme. Bono creates the image of the disaffected rock star in “The Fly,” addresses the cost of living in that persona in “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” and burns it all down and walks away from it in “Gone.”

Buy it from Amazon.



January 7th, 2013 1:07pm

It Came Tumbling Down


La Big Vic “All That Heaven Allows”

The feeling of La Big Vic’s second album Cold War is not far off from that of Destroyer’s masterpiece Kaputt, but whereas Dan Bejar’s voice can’t help but magnify the ironies and aesthetic tensions at the heart of the music, Emilie Friedlander’s vocals are way more ambiguous. She’s the first singer I’ve ever encountered who splits the difference between Nico/Mary Timony/Liz Phair cool-indie-girl phrasing and Mariah Carey-ish melisma. She doesn’t come close to Mariah’s range or technique, but she does approximate one of her most recognizable tricks – an airy, wordless, trebly squeal that signifies a sort of ecstasy – and pushes it to hazy abstraction. (Grimes does this too sometimes.) I’m not sure if there really is an “irony” in La Big Vic’s music – everyone involved is far too young to be inclined to want to in any way distance themselves from this sort of purely pleasurable sound like the ultra-Gen X Bejar – but there’s a slight unease through the record. The best I can describe it is that it’s like the feeling of going to a really nice place and feeling too poor or underdressed to feel comfortable, even if the point of the place is to be extremely comfortable.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 3rd, 2013 1:21pm

I Won’t Give You What You Want


Waxahatchee “Grass Stain”

This song reminds me a lot of Robert Pollard, and I think you will probably play this and think “oh, because it’s lo-fi,” but no, that’s not really it. Pollard has a few different song types he goes back to over and over, and one of those is “brief acoustic ballad about drinking too much and being sad with a strong melody and no chorus.” (Some of his best songs in this vein happen to be on Waved Out.) I’m really fond of this style, and Katie Crutchfield does it really well, finding the perfect balance of languid despair and bright melody. This kind of song really cuts deep for me – there’s a lot of different ways of expressing depression and sadness in music, but the sentiment and tone of this song and lots of Pollard numbers is the closest to how I actually experience these feelings. Maybe not so much the laments about drinking too much, but definitely the circular self-pity and attempts to rationalize irrational relationships.

Buy it from Amazon.



January 1st, 2013 2:20pm

FLUXBLOG 2012 SURVEY MIX


This 10-disc, 191-song mix is a survey of some of the best and most notable music from 2012. In addition to this downloadable survey mix, I have also put together a similar but notably different Spotify/Rdio playlist version for BuzzFeed Music. That version does not include a lot of obscure or unofficially released tracks, and errs on the side of popular hits rather than personal favorites. (So, like, that one has “Call Me Maybe,” while this one has “Tiny Little Bows.”) It also includes music I simply had not heard before the beginning of December.

This is the 11th in the Fluxblog survey anthology series. You can still download 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

Japandroids “Night of Wine and Roses” / Kendrick Lamar “Backseat Freestyle” / Fiona Apple “Anything We Want” / Ellie Goulding “Anything Could Happen” / Carly Rae Jepsen “Tiny Little Bows” / Chairlift “I Belong In Your Arms” / Tame Impala “Apocalypse Dreams” / The Mynabirds “Disaster” / Kanye West featuring 2Chainz, Big Sean and Pusha T “Mercy” / Solange “Losing You” / Schoolboy Q “There He Go” / Grimes “Circumambient” / Wonder Girls (원더걸스) “Like This” / French Montana featuring Drake and Lil Wayne “Pop That” / Le1f “Wut” / Ceremony “Adult” / Sauna Youth “PSI Girls” / Titus Andronicus “In A Big City” / Fun. “Why Am I the One?”

DOWNLOAD DISC 2

Skrillex “Bangarang” / The Smashing Pumpkins “Panopticon” / St. Vincent “Krokodil” / Big K.R.I.T. “4EvaNaDay (Theme)” / THEESatisfaction “Existinct” / Kitty Pryde “Okay Cupid” / Nicki Minaj featuring 2Chainz “Beez in the Trap” / Hyuna Kim “Ice Cream” / Usher “I Care For U” / Divine Fits “Would That Not Be Nice” / Father John Misty “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings” / Norah Jones “Happy Pills” / Melody’s Echo Chamber “Some Time Alone, Alone” / The Mountain Goats “Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1” / Corin Tucker Band “Groundhog Day” / Patti Smith “Banga” / Micachu and the Shapes “Low Dogg” / Bruno Mars “Locked Out of Heaven” / One Direction “Live While We’re Young” / Dirty Projectors “Swing Lo Magellan” / Lavender Diamond “I Don’t Recall” / King Krule “Rock Bottom”

DOWNLOAD DISC 3

The xx “Angels” / Jessie Ware “Still Love Me” / Frank Ocean “Bad Religion” / Passion Pit “Constant Conversations” / Ne-Yo “Cracks In Mr. Perfect” / Meek Mill featuring Drake and Jeremih “Amen” / Major Lazer “Get Free” / Clinic “Cosmic Radiation” / How to Destroy Angels “Ice Age” / Flying Lotus “Phantasm” / Julia Holter “Goddess Eyes II” / Wu-Tang Clan “Six Directions of Boxing” / SHINee “Sherlock” / Opossom “Blue Meanies” / Tennis “Petition” / Joey Bada$$ “World Domination” / Odd Future “Oldie”

DOWNLOAD DISC 4

Bat for Lashes “A Wall” / Icona Pop featuring Charli XCX “I Love It” / Girls Generation “Telepathy” / Mouse on Mars “They Know Your Name” / of Montreal “We Will Commit Wolf Murder” / El-P “Drones Over Brooklyn” / Rihanna “Diamonds” / Scissor Sisters “Baby Come Home” / Hot Chip “Don’t Deny Your Heart” / BigBang “Fantastic Baby” / Flo Rida “I Cry” / Azealia Banks “Jumanji” / Muse “Madness” / Metric “Clone” / Felix “Don’t Look Back (It’s Too Sad)” / The Magnetic Fields “God Wants Us To Wait” / Field Music “A New Town” / Poor Moon “People In Her Mind” / She Does Is Magic “Sing With Me” / Frankie Rose “Gospel/Grace” / Florence and the Machine featuring Josh Homme “Jackson”

DOWNLOAD DISC 5

Ke$ha “Die Young” / Sleigh Bells “Demons” / Death Grips “I’ve Seen Footage” / Miguel “Do You…” / Himanshu “Womyn” / Danny Brown “Grown Up” / David Byrne and St. Vincent “Who” / Calvin Harris and Florence Welch “Sweet Nothing” / Angel Haze “Werkin’ Girls” / Macklemore and Ryan Lewis featuring Mary Lambert “Same Love” / The Weeknd “Echoes of Silence” / Andy Stott “Hatch the Plan” / Alt-J “Tessellate” / Grizzly Bear “Yet Again” / Sam Palladio and Clare Bowen “If I Didn’t Know Better” / Sharon Van Etten “Kevin’s” / Damien Jurado “Maraqopa” / Waxahatchee “Grass Stain” / Swans featuring Karen O “Song For A Warrior” / Blur “Under the Westway” / Bobby Womack “Please Forgive My Heart”

DOWNLOAD DISC 6

Animal Collective “Moonjock” / Taylor Swift “State of Grace” / Matt LeMay “Compare and Contrast” / Guided by Voices “Class Clown Spots A UFO” / Captain Murphy “Children of the Atom” / Liars “No. 1 Against the Rush” / Matthew Dear “Her Fantasy” / The Kills “Dreams” / Lana Del Rey “Born to Die” / Bruce Springsteen “We Take Care Of Our Own” / Dum Dum Girls “Lord Knows” / Jack White “Take Me With You When You Go” / Dexys “You” / R. Kelly “Fool For You” / Jeremih “773 LOVE” / How to Dress Well “& It Was U” / Sky Ferreira “Everything Is Embarrassing” / A$AP Rocky featuring Drake, 2 Chainz and Kendrick Lamar “Fuckin’ Problems” / Action Bronson “Thug Love Story 2012”

DOWNLOAD DISC 7

Godspeed You! Black Emperor “We Drift Like Worried Fire” / Spiritualized “Hey Jane” / First Aid Kit “Emmylou” / Bob Dylan “Narrow Way” / Lee Ranaldo “Off the Wall” / Cat Power “Manhattan” / A.C. Newman “Do Your Own Time” / Hospitality “Eighth Avenue” / Beck “I Only Have Eyes For You” / Nas “A Queen’s Story” / Masta Killa “R U Listening” / Rick Ross featuring Andre 3000 “Sixteen”

DOWNLOAD DISC 8

Psy “Gangnam Style” / Deerhoof “Breakup Songs” / Madonna “I’m Addicted” / King Louie “Val Venis” / Purity Ring “Fineshrine” / Sylver Tongue “Hook You Up” / The Walkmen “Love Is Luck” / The Lumineers “Classy Girls” / The Band Perry “Better Dig Two” / Poliça “I See My Mother” / G-Dragon “CrayOn” / Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti “Is This the Best Spot?” / Ben Folds Five “Michael Praytor, Five Years Later” / Imperial Teen “No Matter What You Say” / Neil Young “Born In Ontario” / Swearin’ “Kenosha” / Kate Nash “Fri-end?” / Hundred Waters “Boreal” / Exitmusic “The Night” / Zebra Katz “Ima Read” / MDNR “Faster Horses” / Avicii vs Nicky Romero “I Could Be the One”

DOWNLOAD DISC 9

Kool A.D. “La Piñata” / Mac DeMarco “Annie” / Meyhem Lauren featuring AG Da Coroner, Action Bronson and Despot “Pan Seared Tilapia” / Jaipaul “Jasmine” / AlunaGeorge “Your Drums, Your Love” / Disclosure “Latch” / Todd Terje “Inspector Norse” / Killer Mike “Go!” / Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire featuring Gucci Mane “Telephuck” / Domo Genesis and the Alchemist “Power Ballad” / Ab-Soul featuring Danny Brown “Terrorist Threats” / Cadence Weapon “Loft Party” / Porcelain Raft “Put Me To Sleep” / Lotus Plaza “Monoliths” / Savages “Husbands” / METZ “Wet Blanket” / Future “You Deserve It” / Big Boi featuring A$AP Rocky and Phantogram “Lines” / Gorillaz featuring James Murphy and Andre 3000 “DoYaThing”

DOWNLOAD DISC 10

Beach House “Myth” / Rhye “The Fall” / Cody ChesnuTT “Don’t Follow Me” / T.I. featuring Andre 3000 “Sorry” / Alabama Shakes “Hold On” / Perfume Genius “Hood” / Squeeze “Tommy” / Black Bananas “TV Trouble” / Twin Shadow “Five Seconds” / The Shins “Simple Song” / TNGHT “Higher Ground” / John Talabot featuring Pional “Destiny” / Chief Keef “Love Sosa” / Roc Marciano “Flash Gordon” / Thee Oh Sees “Lupine Dominus” / Baroness “Take My Bones Away” / Chromatics “Kill For Love” / Green Day “Oh Love” / Glen Hansard “High Hope”



December 28th, 2012 1:08pm

The World’s Stripped Of Happiness


Ab-Soul featuring Danny Brown and Jhene Aiko “Terrorist Threats”

I’d want to say that the title of this song is no joke, and that Ab-Soul is dead serious about his radical politics in the lyrics, but it is actually a joke on some level because it’s acknowledging that his call for black gangs to unite against the military is both a pipe dream and something more likely to get dismissed as domestic terrorism than any sort of legit political action. So, it’s just a song, and a really good one, but the frustration and bitterness is real. This actually comes off better in Danny Brown’s verse, which mirrors Ab-Soul’s rhyme schemes but goes off on another more personal tangent about feeling disenfranchised and discouraged by the system.

Buy it from Amazon.



December 27th, 2012 1:03pm

A Glimpse Of The Ninja


Masta Killa “R U Listening”

Masta Killa’s membership in the Wu-Tang Clan has been a mixed blessing for him – yes, he’s a member of the greatest rap group of all time, and a lot of doors have opened because of that affiliation. But he wasn’t fully formed as a rapper in the group’s early days, and only reached full maturity when most casual listeners had tuned out, so his solo work is pretty much only heard by Wu diehards. (If that? I feel like a lot of major Wu fans don’t bother with him.) This is a shame, since he’s an excellent rapper who hasn’t stopped evolving, and I think if he was either a new emcee or a veteran without a huge amount of baggage like Killer Mike or Curren$y, he’d be primed to get a lot more attention. His latest album just came out earlier this month, and while it’s not breaking much ground, it’s firmly in his sweet spot – sad, soulful, grim. His vocals have become a lot more dynamic, stepping away from the nearly monotone inflections of his verses circa The W, and toward a more expressive style that’s closer to that of his mentor, The GZA.

Buy it from Amazon.



December 26th, 2012 12:36pm

Keep My Name Attached To Winning


Meyhem Lauren featuring AG Da Coroner, Action Bronson and Despot “Pan Seared Tilapia”

I would be perfectly happy if all rap was just emcees trading verses over a moody, subtly shifting beat. No choruses, no hooks, just rapping. This is mostly because Wu-Tang was my first great love in hip-hop, and remains the highest standard for rap to me. I can’t imagine it’s much different for Meyhem Lauren and his collaborators on this track. This sounds like the product of full-on worship of the Wu’s mid-90s material, especially RZA’s production on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. Tommy Mas’ track is fantastic – gritty and stark, but flavored mostly by melodic samples that keep the mood playful, but a bit on edge. All four rappers do good work here, but I really like the bitter petulance in Despot’s voice on his verse.

Get the mixtape for free from DatPiff.




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