March 27th, 2013 3:21am
It’s really hard to pull off a song that is this cynical in its depiction of dreary small town life while still being empathetic toward the people who live there. Musgraves sings from the perspective of someone who is eager to get the hell out of town, but fully understands the inertia that keeps people from moving on and potentially finding something at least just a bit better. She can’t help but seem a little disappoint in everyone’s lack of ambition or will to overcome their vices, but she sings with the sadness of someone who has given up on helping people she cares about with stern tough love.
March 26th, 2013 12:19pm
This is a song which is apparently based on the relationship between Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir that asks the listener to cheerfully sing along with the line “hell is other people though,” and I say: Yes. This is a wonderful mixture of breezy melody and slightly unnerving lyrical imagery, with singer Jessica Weiss casually tossing off phrases like “the taste of blood you read about” like it’s all innocent lines from a childhood diary.
March 25th, 2013 1:59am
If this sounds to you like “classic Wire,” it’s because it basically is – this is a new version of “Ally In Exile,” a song from around 1980 that was never completed, but appeared on the live record Document and Eyewitness. But while the structure of it is very 154, the sound is about what you’d expect from Wire since the early 2000s – blunt force, but with a tone so clean and processed that it sounds antiseptic. This approach suits the song very well, because Colin Newman’s voice seems so cold and detached that his lyrics about a spy panicking as his cover is blown that telling the story in the first place seems like an exercise in sadism. But, you know, Wire is like that.
March 22nd, 2013 12:08pm
There’s a lot going for this song purely in terms of texture and sound, but the thing that really makes it is those little wordless whoops Matthew Houck throws in to punctuate his verses. It shakes up the song a little, and makes it clear that he’s having fun even when the arrangement starts to feel slightly static and you start to realize that his lyrics about hooking up are very ambivalent. With just a few little gestures, Houck flips that ambivalence and sense of kinda jogging in place seem just fine, like a rut he doesn’t mind being in. Which is basically the whole point of this, on an emotional level.
March 21st, 2013 11:44am
Alan Braxe makes very sentimental dance music, at least in the sense that he’s always making these tracks that make you feel like you’re remembering some piece of music from your past that you love deeply but can’t quite place. A lot of artists have run with that idea over the past several years, but Braxe pulls this off with a lot of grace, particularly on a track like “Time Machine,” which sticks to a low bpm to make you feel like you’re listening to the most perfect moment from the most perfect prom in history, and living in that moment indefinitely. This evokes such a strong and uncomplicated notion of romance, it just kinda zaps you back to what you thought love and romance should be when you were just a kid.
March 19th, 2013 3:38am
Listen to the bass in this – it’s that Kim Deal rumble roll, but flattened out to evoke the feeling of having all the joy sucked out of your life. Kate Nash sings like she’s gone dead inside, but there’s a slight smirk to her delivery, as if she’s kinda enjoying this bitter, empty feeling in the wake of a relationship going sour. You can hear the hum of her guitar, like it’s lying in wait, and you can feel a catharsis coming but the measures keep going by. When it finally comes, and the distortion kicks in and her voice becomes more emphatic, it doesn’t actually change much. See just comes out and says it too – “It doesn’t matter how loud I play my music, I still feel the same.” That bass line starts to feel like mental block, and what sounded like a smirk before now just sounds like empty spite.
March 18th, 2013 1:59am
We should all try to do something even 1/1000th as great as the middle section of this song, which sounds a sudden flood of anxious thoughts behind held back by blunt guitar riffs and the defiance in Marnie’s voice when she sings “I’m losing hope in my body.” The dynamics in this song are amazing, with the heaviest bits coming after lulls that drag out the anticipation a few beats longer than what you’d expect from a rock song. But that’s the real point of this song – it’s all about steeling yourself for that onslaught of panic, and doing whatever you can to fight back.
March 14th, 2013 12:24pm
“Pusher Love Girl” is a corny song comparing a hot girl to drugs, but it’s important to remember that Justin Timberlake, no matter how cool he seems sometimes, is an inherently corny dude. And that’s fine! I think this is the best song he’s ever recorded in part because he’s doing nothing to obscure that, and just taking a simple premise and an appealing melody allllllllllll the way. This song doesn’t need to sound as fancy as it does, it certainly doesn’t need to be extended to 8 minutes, but Timberlake and Timbaland make it work on a moment-to-moment level, giving you a lot of cool little hooks and sounds so it never gets static, and just keeps moving in this breezy, comfortable lateral progression. If you’re going to do slick and deluxe, this is the way to do it. And you could argue that they take the sound of this song very far away from the strung-out junkie conceit in the lyrics, but it’s pretty obvious that these are the sort of drug metaphors a non-junkie would make.
March 13th, 2013 12:29pm
Veronica Falls are almost stubbornly basic on a musical level, with an approach to instrumentation, vocals, and pop song structure firmly rooted in early ’80s English indie rock, but their tunes are often strong enough that their connect-the-dots method of indie pop is totally justified. They are very good dots! In this way, they’re a lot like Dum Dum Girls, where a high level of craft and commitment to an aesthetic trumps what can come across as a very limited artistic imagination. But where Dum Dum Girls shine brightest when singing about a vulnerable, almost uncomfortably pure love, Veronica Falls excels when they navigate a more bleak vision of romance. “If You Still Want Me” is paranoid and confused, with Roxanne Clifford and James Hoare’s voices crossing in a disconnected conversation about whether or not their characters could have any sort of relationship after enduring some sort of trauma. The song conveys a sense of danger, with Clifford singing “if you could have me, would you still want me?” with the dim realization that any answer to that question will be a little terrifying.
March 12th, 2013 12:07pm
I’m not really sure why this song is called “90210,” maybe it’s just some self-effacing way of distracting the listener from noticing that this is actually a rather poignant tune. Annie Hardy is addressing a guy who seems to be doing okay in life, but is actually kind of a wreck – he doesn’t know how to be alive and in the moment, so there’s always a nagging feeling that thing don’t feel right. And that’s a horrible, insidious feeling, especially when you don’t have a frame of reference for how to feel or what to do with yourself aside from planning. Hardy sounds so kind and generous in this song, each melodic twist seems to amp up the empathy. She doesn’t have advice other than “take, take,” which is pretty vague, but seems right: Take what you’ve earned, take what you want, take the love people want to give you even if your instinct is to shut it out.
March 11th, 2013 3:13am
“The Next Day” isn’t a song about death, it’s a song about survival. But survival in this song isn’t a matter of staying alive, but narrowly escaping death at seemingly ever turn. It’s about coming so close to the end that you become convinced that your luck will run out at any moment, and that the world is conspiring to snuff you out. Listen to how easily this song tips from gallows humor to hysteria, with Bowie kinda losing it on the first verse before going back into a defiant, proud chorus where the most triumphant thing he can say is that he’s “not quite dying.” It’s grim, but he sounds so determined to live that every “next day, and the next, and another day” is a joy, if just to spite the reaper.
March 7th, 2013 4:03am
It is sort of amazing to me that more rock music doesn’t sound like this song, because songs like this sound like so much fun to play – very loose and groovy, catchy, a bit heavy. I can barely make out any words in the vocal melody, but the only thing they’re saying that really matters is that “whooooo!” before slamming into the heavy bit. The bass carries a lot of the structure, but the guitar is so incredibly expressive, with little creaks and crackles on the verses, and that really amazing part where the notes sound like little arrows pointing diagonally across the song.
March 6th, 2013 3:54am
Mike Milosh’s voice is extremely feminine; I honestly would not know that he was male were it not for reading press about his album. It’s the main draw of Rhye – gentle, lulling, and overwhelmingly affectionate. It’s also weirdly numbing, like a powerful narcotic that puts a space between yourself and the world. And I assume that in this way they’re evoking an old Roxy Music idea – love is the drug – but sometimes it seems like the record is smothering you with its woozy warmth and aggressive tastefulness. I suppose it’s up to you to decide whether you’re into that – not much of this speaks to where I’m at personally, though “Open” is so gorgeous and sweet that I can’t help but crumble a bit every time I hear it.
March 5th, 2013 11:52am
One thing I’ve noticed in a lot of the quasi-R&B music that has become big in indie-ish circles over the past couple years is that the artists all favor elliptical song structures to more standard, fleshed-out compositions. Take this song, for example – it comes across as a pop song, but it’s trimmed down to pretty much the parts you might sing to yourself in the shower, and it’s so repetitive that it might be the only part you remember, or like to sing. There’s something very clever about this – it’s approaching a generally lush pop genre with the crude sensibilities of punk – but I dunno, I favor formalism more and more as I get older. I don’t think this approach works all the time for Autre Ne Veut or for others in his cohort, but it comes together on this song, and intensifies a single emotion rather than dilute it with digressions.
March 4th, 2013 2:00am
If you spend a lot of time listening to a particular artist over time, you become very well acquainted with their default patterns, rhythms, and tones. Thurston Moore’s patterns locked in by the late ’90s; he’s been playing variations on a fairly limited set of themes with Sonic Youth and on his own ever since. This isn’t a complaint, it’s just an observation. I love Sonic Youth so deeply that even the least inspired Moore noodlings and strums will feel warm and inviting to me. I’m a mark for this, make no mistake. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel disappointed by his new band Chelsea Light Moving, and the sense that he’s just sorta jogging in place, and working with musicians who aren’t doing much to push him out of his comfort zone.
Sonic Youth is amazing because the default patterns of each member complement each other so perfectly, but with this band, you get default Moore without that added complexity. I don’t mean this as a slight on the other members of Chelsea Light Moving – they’re perfectly solid players, but listening to the record, I just get the sense that they’re too psyched to be playing with a living legend to actually collaborate with him or challenge him in a meaningful way. So the record ends up sounding pretty good overall, but only really great when they get out of his way and let him be loose and chill on a song like “Heavenmetal,” which probably would’ve been a lot more rigid and a lot less wistful if it had passed through Sonic Youth. The punky stuff doesn’t do as much for me, maybe because it feels more nostalgic than urgent. Hearing Moore sing “be a warrior and love life,” perhaps as advice to himself, seems more true in this moment.
March 1st, 2013 1:39pm
Foxygen’s new album is full of 60s sounds, so I sorta half-expected them to be one of those bands who basically do the rock equivalent of Civil War reenactment on stage. But no! The most compelling aspect of their music is this chaotic element in which all sorts of reference points swirl around, and there’s never a clear center, and that’s the focus of their show. They remind me a lot of Pavement, really – they have the songs and know what they’re doing, but they delight in chaos and just fucking around. Their whole set last night at the Bowery Ballroom was compelling, particularly in watching them flip on a dime from goofy and loose to rather tight and funky. I love this spirit, and it’s so hard to pull off – you need the chops, you need the tunes, you need the sort of easy charisma where people are willing to assume that you’re just this wonderful weirdo and genius flows out of you. It has to be convincingly casual.
February 28th, 2013 4:37am
There’s a common perception that Oasis are dumb and unimaginative, and I suppose a lot of their public behavior and later catalog justifies that judgment. But in the first few years of their career, particularly in the Definitely Maybe period, Noel Gallagher was a very sharp and clever songwriter. He’s good at writing a sticky melody, sure, but his true genius was in crafting a distinct sound that signaled a very working class conception of glam debauchery. The guitar parts on Definitely Maybe put a shoegazer gloss on familiar progressions, which is at once comforting and slightly off-kilter. The guitars always sound a bit too slow for the tempos and Liam Gallagher’s voice is a sneering droooone, which gives each song a potent druggy quality, like you’re hearing everything as musical light trails. This effect is stronger because the songwriting is so solid, so your brain can sense the lag between what you expect from the rock conventions the structures echo and the peculiarities of the execution.
“Columbia,” always my favorite on Definitely Maybe, is essentially Noel’s spin on a Manchester “baggy” dance song, but with the beat buried well enough that no one could ever really dance to it. But it’s in there, and it gives the song a subtle, flirtatious swagger. Liam sounds genuinely smitten in this song, and the delirious tone of the music does a great job of selling the part where he sings “this is confusion / am I confusing you?” That part is so very Oasis too – Noel can’t help but insert some dickish line into anything remotely like a love song. There’s almost always some bit where he turns the tables or claims some power over the object of his affection. The most amazing example of this tendency is on the Be Here Now song “The Girl in the Dirty Shirt,” in which he has Liam sing “Would you maybe come dancing with me / because to me it doesn’t matter if your hopes and dreams are shattered.” Like, wow, that’s so mean, and that’s before they both start singing “she knows exactly what she’s worth to me.” It’s interesting to me because Noel phrases it in a way that puts the emphasis on him – “to me, it doesn’t matter…” – and it’s all a part of this bigger project of selling this fantasy of being this sort of spiteful, selfish egomaniac who has transcended the trappings of normal life.
February 26th, 2013 1:03pm
Katie Crutchfield’s songs are deceptively simple, to the point that you can go a while before realizing most of her tunes have no chorus, and are essentially just verses and bridges. “Brother Bryan,” for example, rolls along on a Kim Deal-style bass line, sturdy but not quite steady as she sings a melody that gently winds around those notes like a braid. Her melodies are so sticky that it seems like straight forward pop anyway, and besides, a lot of the point is for the melody to keep you focused on her words. She makes you hang on every line, with each tune coming off like a stream-of-conscious conversation, and you’re both surprised when the metaphors string, or an aside comes across more like a confession.
February 25th, 2013 1:37pm
Am I just going to love every song that vaguely reminds me of The Knife’s “Heartbeats” for the rest of my life? I mean, probably, at least until it starts getting stale. It’s interesting, though – my most favorite aspects of that song never seem to get exported, only just that sparkling arpeggiation and general starry-eyed love-struck tone. I don’t think “Recover” is quite on the same level as Ellie Goulding’s phenomenal “Anything Could Happen” in the faux-Knife stakes, but it’s got a very different character, and is more conventional than either Goulding or The Knife. But that’s not a bad word – I like that “Recover” is so straight forward and generous with its melodies, and love the disarming earnestness of Lauren Mayberry’s voice.
February 21st, 2013 1:09pm
The second album in what I suppose is easiest to just call Thom Yorke’s non-Radiohead body of work is very difficult to pin down. It’s all based on rhythm and groove, but the music is so chilly and cerebral that it negates its own funkiness. And yet you have songs where Yorke is essentially putting his spin on Afrobeat, or taking the essence of late 90s/early 00s Timbaland and filtering it through his distinct brand of ambient self-loathing and melancholy. It’s hard to know what to do with this music – it is, on the whole, much less melodic and hooky than his work with Radiohead, and I can’t imagine many people wanting to dance to it. It does have a certain sexiness to it, but that’s countered by Yorke’s odd insistence of always writing lyrics about complex, passive-aggressive interpersonal turmoil for his most sultry and romantic songs. “Default” has the best groove on the record, but here he is, singing about avoiding someone’s gaze and moaning “I’ve made my bed, I’m lying in it.” It is ridiculous to come to a Yorke record expecting positive vibes, but I do wish he’d avoid some of his usual patterns. And it’s funny – as much as you would think that Yorke working with guys like Flea and Joey Woronker would push him out of his comfort zone, this record and The Eraser before it sound like a guy taking the path of least resistance rather than having his work edited and pushed further by his longtime collaborators. I totally understand why that would be freeing, and I also definitely understand how this music covers some different ground that wouldn’t totally make sense in Radiohead. But still – as good as this music gets, I prefer the broader dynamic range and harmonic sensibility of Radiohead.
