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.
February 20th, 2013 12:46pm
I imagine I wasn’t alone in cycling out of The xx’s second album rather quickly – their music has a very specific utility, and if it doesn’t fit into your life and state of mind at the moment, it’s easy to shrug it off. The circumstances of my life haven’t changed that much in the past few months, but I was curious enough to revisit the album, and was surprised by how much more vibrant it seemed compared to when I first heard it. My earlier impression, based on hearing it about seven or eight times through, was that the music was missing the dramatic tension and subtle dynamic shifts that made their debut compelling, and that it just sounded like a couple of codependents doing nothing but whispering to each other in bed for hours on end.
Coexist does suffer a bit for being so consistently quiet and wispy, but it is dynamic, albeit in extremely subtle ways. The best way to think of it is that the songs represent an emotional landscape rendered with a monochromatic palette. There are no radical shifts, but each slight variation in hue or gesture signals a small change in feeling. This isn’t just musical minimalism, it’s emotional minimalism too – everything is brought down to some small, essential level where everything in the world is shut out except for the intimacy between two people represented by the vocalists.
February 19th, 2013 1:12pm
I used to think of Phoenix as an underdog band, and now they’re the sort of group that can headline major American festivals. This is great, but it’s also sort of risky – their biggest hits came out nearly four years ago, and there’s some chance that people are now overestimating their appeal in 2013. That’s sort of cynical, but it’s a valid concern, so Phoenix really need to come back strong to make this all work. I’m not totally sure if “Entertainment” is the best way to do this – it’s catchy and has a similar “I am living out an awesome scene from a stylish movie” vibe as “1901,” but it has a strange, vaguely uneasy momentum to it. This works on conceptual for the song, which seems to be about Thomas Mars being a passive witness to people getting excited about him, but I can’t help but listen and wish that it would hit with a greater force, and rock without hesitation or ironic distance.
February 18th, 2013 1:10pm
The keyboard sounds in this song are harsh and very high in the mix, to the point that the treble crowds out most of the low end. But despite that, it’s a very graceful piece of music, with the parts rising and crashing like tides against a very busy rhythm. The keyboards have that “laser gun” tonality, but the way this track is arranged, you feel like you’re in the middle of a sci-fi shootout, which just amps up an urgency that would be there in the vocals and beats regardless. Still, there’s something kinda serene at the core of this – some kind of calm and certainty surrounded by chaos.
February 15th, 2013 12:45pm
James Blake spent a lot of his debut album sounding a bit timid, as though he knew how amazing his music became when he added his voice, but he wasn’t sure just how much singing he should be doing. This song, the first single from his second album, has him firmly committing to being a singer, and it’s fantastic. His vocal style is essentially modern R&B, but his tonality and tics reveal traces of indie and goth – there are points in “Retrograde” where he sounds like a strange but wonderful mish-mash of Robert Smith and D’Angelo. Blake’s vocal style has gone more mainstream, but his production aesthetic is still very arty and strange. His use of silent space in tracks is very evocative – is this intimacy, or loneliness? – and he’s good with odd keyboard tones, like the harsh drone that seems to saw its way through the second half of the track.
February 14th, 2013 12:50pm
Jarvis Cocker has released some very good material on his own, but listening to this track – the only thing he has recorded with Pulp since about 2000 – you really hear how important the other members of the band were in terms of getting that proper Pulp vibe. I think the essence of it is just getting a precise balance of crisp, clean sound, and then implying a low-level filth. The best Pulp songs tend to sound both sordid and luxurious, like smut that’s meant to look classy. “After You” has that feeling for sure, and the lyrics follow suit, as Cocker narrates a night out that mingles utter banality with a yearning for utter depravity.
February 12th, 2013 3:33am
This song sounds like the main keyboard riff from Talking Heads’ “Life During Wartime” got lost and took a turn into some sleazy, dangerous neighborhood in an old video game. There’s a great sense of mischief to this piece, as if the band are messing around and looking to see what they can get away with musically and lyrically – I mean, not for nothing, but they’re singing “Satan is Lord” over and over. There’s a dark vibe here, but it’s not totally convincing. It’s not really supposed to be, though – this is a very camp song, and while its core appeal is very physical and urgent, there’s definitely a wink to it.
February 11th, 2013 1:39pm
Kevin Shields had a lot of time to dream up new versions of his band over the past two decades, and mbv gives us a chance to hear a bit of all of them, while still holding together perfectly as a coherent, cohesive album-length suite. “New You” is Shield’s version of a pop song, with clear hooks, a bouncing groove, and relatively audible lyrics. But despite that structure, the execution is unmistakably MBV, making it more of an impression of pop than a direct approximation of anything in particular. This is part of why the song is so wonderfully evocative – I hear traces of 20 years of pop and R&B in its rhythms, melodies, and tones, but no real connection to anything specific. It’s a pop song that exists just outside of pop, and outside of time. It is the perfect collision of the new and the familiar, which is why it has such an odd frisson: It manages to be simultaneously thrilling and lulling. I can’t adequately describe what I feel when I hear this, but on a musical level, it’s a lot like déjà vu.
Lyrics are sorta beside the point in My Bloody Valentine songs; Shields primarily writes lines as framework for singing long vowel sounds and for suggesting an emotional or physical context for the music. This is true of “New You” to some extent, but the lyrics that do come through are pretty interesting. Here’s what Belinda Butcher is singing at the conclusion: “What can I say, how can I feel, too? / All kinds of new you.” Every time I hear that, it means something just a bit different. Sometimes the questions sound like an imposition, sometimes they come off like indecision. Is the you the singer, or the person being addressed? Is the idea of a new version of the self good or bad? I’m inclined to hear this as a positive song, and embrace “all kinds of new you” as infinite possibilities for improving your character and outlook on life. But it’s still so open to interpretation. It’s like Shields found a way to make his lyrics as much like a Rorschach blot as the sound of his guitars and synthesizers.
February 7th, 2013 1:03pm
Neither member of Buke and Gase actually plays guitar, but yet, they’re one of the few genuinely interesting new guitar bands to pop up in recent years. Both players are using modified versions of ukelele and bass, but playing them both more or less as you would a guitar, albeit with a different tonality. If you didn’t know this, you’d just assume this was straight up guitar being played by someone thoughtful and clever. They actually remind me a lot of mid ’90s Soundgarden, with their odd tunings, unexpected phrasings, and peculiar meters applied to straight forward pop-rock frameworks. They don’t have a proper drummer so you don’t get that extra layer of complexity or power, but that works out for them – a song like “Houdini Crush” is dense enough, and anything else thrown into the mix would compromise the moments when this feels sorta weightless and misty.
February 5th, 2013 4:29am
I’ve felt weirdly hesitant about Charli XCX and Icona Pop for the past year or so – I like them both, they’re very obviously my sort of thing, but I haven’t embraced them the way I certainly would have in the early days of this site. I think to some extent it’s a matter of songs like “Nuclear Seasons” and “I Love It” not necessarily fitting in with my life at the moment, but mostly that I’m just holding out for an actual body of work to properly assess them as artists. I can love random songs and singles, but I’m not about to invest. Charli XCX seems to be on the verge of something though – there’s a clear aesthetic to her work, a persona is forming. She’s kinda mean, kinda sentimental, kinda mall-goth. This song, her latest single, leans hard on the “mean” side. I mean, this is a song that ends with lines “All alone, you’re dumb / You’re dumb, you messed it up / ha ha ha.” Depending on the circumstances of your life, that’s either gonna be a little exhausting, or totally exhilarating.
February 4th, 2013 1:35pm
Unknown Mortal Orchestra lean hard on room sound in their recordings – mic’ing the space to capture the ambient noise in the studio as they play, a classic trick for getting a live, spontaneous feeling on tape. I love this method, and it’s perfectly suited to their music, which always has a lot of silence between the beats and the notes. “So Good At Being In Trouble,” the closest they’ve come to writing a straight-up old school R&B song, is at least 40% negative space, a groove that leaves you hanging on for every syllable, bass note, and snare hit. There’s a wonderful sense of implied space here, not just in the music, but from the singer and his subject. You can hear it in his voice, and then in the mix – he’s got some distance, he’s moved on.
February 1st, 2013 12:55pm
This song is totally gorgeous and sexy on the surface level, but have you noticed the lyrics? Oooof, so douchey. It’s basically a guy talking about how he can’t decide whether he actually loves this girl, and kinda stringing her along and demanding that she remind him why he should love her. It’s funny, though, how this position seems more reasonable in the context of this song than if, say, it was someone writing it out. You get more context – the sexual connection contrasting with the disconnection and apathy. He doesn’t sound like a guy who doesn’t want to love her, or like he’s trying to mess around with her. He just sounds like he doesn’t have a clue.
