July 14th, 2023 1:50am
I was trying to figure out exactly why Le Attendent Ana reminds me of Stereolab despite not actually playing music much like anything Stereolab ever produced. I think it comes down to the French accented vocals and their approach to harmony, which are not far off from how Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen sang together in the band’s middle period. Much like Sadier, Margaux Bouchaudon sings with a tone that seems lightly authoritative, sharply erudite, somewhat wry, and sometimes surprisingly warm. They both have a gift for making harshly critical lyrics land in a way that seem sensitive to how they may be received yet are not diluted by a front of false kindness. “Same Old Story” is a tightly wound but very groovy song, more peevish in tone than angry, but not so much that it gets in the way of the music’s more fun and playful qualities. The tone is just ambiguous enough that you could take this as a break up song, a self-directed song about frustration, or kind of a mean flirt.
July 12th, 2023 8:43pm
I first heard “It Must Change” with no context besides being familiar with Anohni and immediately clocked that it was borrowing a lot from Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” As it turns out this is much more than a vibes-based aesthetic choice, and that the record is meant to be something of an echo or continuation of what Gaye was trying to do over 50 years ago. I think this serves Anohni well in that it gives listeners an easy path into her rhetorical goals – Gaye’s sound is relaxed and familiar, but also a music specifically devised to feel conversational and overtly message-based with a weary but not abjectly miserable tone. Anohni’s lyrics tell you what most reasonable people already know – climate change is tipping towards a catastrophic stage, petty hatred and division keep us miserable and unable to make necessary changes. Somehow all that is the sugar on this pill, the bitter part is stated near the end: “We’re not getting out of here, that’s why this is so sad.” She sounds exhausted and exasperated to an extent that the best case scenario is humanity figuring out how to be at peace before everything totally falls apart. So yes, fully agreed: it must change.
July 11th, 2023 9:14pm
“Brittany” is a romantic synth pop song with a hazy atmosphere so thick that it sounds like you could choke on it, like fog from a smoke machine. Glüme presents the title character as a charismatic and wild person who invites obsessive infatuation in the way she influences her to feel more present and alive. There’s hints in the music and lyrics that this won’t last, but the song is permanently frozen in this magical moment where these two women cut loose listening to Lana Del Rey. The most peculiar aspect of this song is the second line – “I like girls but my mom was the one I couldn’t change.” This bit of context connects to the autobiographical elements of the rest of Glüme’s album, which is often about her experience with growing up with a stage mother. But in this song it suggests something a lot more complicated and confusing – like, is she drawn to Brittany because she’s in some way like her mom? Is this some oedipal thing? The whole song feels like it’s swinging between extreme self-awareness and unexamined raw impulse, an awkward but exciting frame of mind.
July 11th, 2023 11:10am
The keyboard drones in “Ugh Ugh” sound like the summer to me, but not necessarily the aspects of summer people usually romanticize in pop music. This feels less “fun in the sun” and more like the zapped, lazy feeling of walking around in oppressive heat and dense humidity. Kaytranada’s track is laid back to the point of feeling lethargic, which pushes Aminé to make his vocal performance as dynamic as possible to keep the music moving. He sounds like a guy who thrives in this sort of weather but can’t understand why everyone else can’t keep up, frequently dipping into a lightly condescending tone through the song as he makes it clear he believes that the scope of his ambitions are far greater than most anyone else’s. Even when he’s borrowing a lot from Lil Wayne’s cadence and vocal tone he sounds fully embodied and totally casual in his confidence.
June 30th, 2023 1:51pm
“Inwood Hill Park” is a snapshot of a relationship in an interesting moment – they’re established enough to have gone through a lot in the past, they’re fresh enough that the passion still runs very strong, but he’s so deep in his head about external stress that he’s reaching out to her in the hope that she can snap him out of it. I think some people might ungenerously look at this as a song about a guy asking for “emotional labor,” but I think the song works because it’s coming from a place of reverence and genuine intimacy. There’s a lot of lyrics in this song that are basically 6lack talking about career anxieties and a desire for artistic growth, and I think to some extent he’s putting those thoughts into a romantic song to convey the sort of trust he has in her. The mood of the music is a little ambiguous, with depressive angst mingling with horniness and a slight standoffishness. He’s so distracted that even the most directly sexual lines are hedged a bit in the phrasing, like when he sings “that pussy is…uh… elite.”
June 30th, 2023 1:20pm
The most appealing thing about Olivia Rodrigo’s music to me is how it always seems as though she and her songwriting partner Dan Nigro are trying to write the next great karaoke staple. If that’s the case they’ve already succeeded a few times over, and I think “Vampire” has a shot too, though I think it’s more of a “for the heads” song than, say, “Drivers License” or “Good 4 U.” The songs have the raw punch of alt-rock but the calculated bombast of musical theater, which turns out to be an incredible vehicle for delivering lyrics that directly express very adolescent forms of anguish. I don’t mean that in a condescending way – the beauty of Rodrigo’s writing is in how she articulates the sort of conflicts, resentments, and heartaches that seem much more enormous and world-shattering at a young age than they do with a bit more time and experience. It’s all exaggerated but totally accurate, and I think for anyone who’s outgrown this mindset the songs provide a way back into those intense young emotions.
“Vampire” is a song about betrayal, but more specifically it’s a classic “now that I’m famous, I can’t trust people” type of song. It’s about blood suckers, fame fuckers, and people who sell you off for parts. It’s a song that will resonate for anyone who worries about “fake friends” regardless of their actual status. The thing that really makes this work is how Rodrigo sounds genuinely hurt and surprised through the whole song, as though she simply never considered the music industry wasn’t built around exactly the sort of relationship she describes in the song. A lot of young musicians will almost preemptively write songs like this, it’s such a part of the standard star narrative, but this is very much coming from a warm and uncalloused heart. She’ll inevitably get to that pragmatic defensiveness later, but this song is like listening to a loss of innocence in real time.
June 28th, 2023 12:55pm
“Long Way Around” is a very 70s sort of song in its arrangement – light country pop with melodramatic yet sort of understated orchestration – but also in its lyrics, which matter-of-factly express the melancholy of the ramblin’ man. Sam Burton sings about a relationship that’s been deferred on account of his wandering with a gentle ambivalence in his voice, as though he’s just starting to realize that he’s been running away from someone who genuinely wants him. The song puts up a front of stoicism but the longing and regret in this music is heavy and unmistakable. The strings carry a lot of this emotional weight but the most endearing element is Burton’s voice, which has a warm, honeyed tone not unlike a young Willie Nelson.
June 26th, 2023 9:09pm
Two big musical swerves happen in the final third of “Bending Hectic.” The first is the arrival of a screeching atonal string section, something you’d expect from Jonny Greenwood in the years since he transitioned into becoming one of the most in-demand film score composers. (In fact, it sounds a lot like what he did for Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.) The second is a burst of heavy grunge guitar, which along with thudding drums and soaring Thom Yorke vocals provides a genuine catharsis for a song that is mostly so delicate and minimal that it sounds as though it could get blown away with a slight breeze. That second part is a wild curveball for Greenwood and Yorke, who I think most anyone would have reasonably assumed were done with this sort of sound sometime during the first Clinton administration. But maybe the feel free to do this sort of thing without the baggage of being called Radiohead, or maybe this is a mode they just wanted to try out with Tom Skinner on drums. But really this is just a logical place for this song to go, a storm following all that eerie stillness.
June 23rd, 2023 4:21pm
In the context of Polly Jean Harvey’s incredible body of work “A Child’s Question, August” falls into an intriguing aesthetic space between the relentless grey atmosphere of Is This Desire? and the ghostly sound of White Chalk. The arrangement is creeky and plodding, as though a series of unrelated mechanical and naturally occuring sounds have magically clicked together into music. Harvey sings near the top of her register on the verses, adapting poetry written in Dorset dialect from Orlam, her recent novel-in-verse. I have not read the book so the greater context is mostly lost on me, but the song is very effective in conveying a mournful tone and a sense that we’re listening to a broken person who’s resigned themselves to a very small life of bleak fatalism. The one flicker of hope in the song is in Harvey and Ben Whishaw invoking Elvis Presely on the chorus, referencing “Love Me Tender,” but approaching the concept of tender love with skepticism. It doesn’t quite crack the cynicism and despair, but it registers just enough to suggest a way out.
June 21st, 2023 1:59am
“But Not Kiss” fakes you out within 14 seconds, shifting from angsty lo-fi indie intimacy to grand melodramatic romance as the piano and rhythm kick in. The song is musically and lyrically about that contradiction, the push and pull of wanting someone badly but retreating into a comfort zone of solitude and inaction. Webster spends a lot of the song rationalizing it all away – they’re meant to be but not yet, she doesn’t want to regret anything, she doesn’t want to mess with them if they’re in a good place, on and on. She never sounds like she’s lying to herself, every neurotic thought is deeply felt and her desire not to screw things up is just as strong as her yearning for this other person. It’s all very fraught but extremely lovely, particularly when pedal steel enters the arrangement and seems to glide between the extremes. It’s a very graceful and relaxing sound, and I think in context it feels like the solution to her inner conflict: Let it all go, and just trust the feeling that feels the best.
June 20th, 2023 1:15am
A lot of the chopped up vocal samples in dance music tend to be airy and ethereal, like Four Tet flipping bits of singing into pure sensation – essentially ambient and abstract, but obviously warm and human. Pangaea’s “Installation” goes another way, emphasizing the force and cadence of the vocalist but slicing out syllables so words never form. The result is a dance banger where the vocal exaggerates the impact of the beats, and the song has an aggressive attitude without a trace of context. It’s post-language pop, music that’s about pure feeling and physical sensation that provides a major cathartic rush but doesn’t tell you what that catharsis should be about.
June 15th, 2023 9:18pm
Carrie Courogen wrote an essay this week on her newsletter about the new Jenny Lewis record Joy’all, mostly very frustrated with the banality of Lewis’ lyrics on this album, at least relative to her previous work. Carrie’s a terrific writer and makes some good points, but her piece mainly made me realize how differently I’ve been approaching Lewis over the years. I think she’s written some great lyrics, particularly on the Rilo Kiley album More Adventurous, but that’s just never been a major point of connection for me with her songs. I’m much more interested in how she writes melody and arranges songs, and the main draw has always been the warm, personable quality of her singing. Lewis always sounds like a cool friend, one who has intriguing drama in their life and a lot of good advice for you. I think this is crucial to why she’s developed such a loyal audience, but also explains why someone like Carrie could be put off by her not saying anything very interesting. Sometimes our friends get boring, and you love them still but you lose some active interest until something changes. Sometimes everyone is boring.
I don’t think the song “Joy’all” is boring at all, but again, I’m mainly listening to the bass groove and the vocal melody here. I like the way the bass part feels vaguely sinister, but also fun and flirty. I also like the way it slides very naturally into a much brighter and warmer chorus with deliberately goofy lyrics instructing the listeners to “follow your joy’all.” I think Lewis understood that if she wanted to get across this sort of sentiment the odds were very unlikely she could do it and also sound cool, so she decided to push the goofiness to an extreme where that chorus line rhymes with “not a toy, y’all” and “not a boy, y’all.” It’s silly pop music logic, and this wouldn’t be the first time she’s indulged in that. It’s a winning strategy that embraces the reality that lyrics are often not the point of a song.
June 13th, 2023 9:17pm
It’s not just that “Tears Can Be So Soft” sounds like Portishead, Tricky, and Massive Attack in the mid 90s. Plenty of artists have aimed for that and ended up with songs that were just OK. This song actually nails the stoned groove magic of the Bristol cohort while pushing it in a very different and far more melodramatic direction in the way Chris sings it, splitting the difference between earthy R&B moves and a more theatrical bombast that reminds me of Amy Lee of Evanescence. The lyrics are fairly despondent, lamenting a loss of so many key things in life – family, love, joy – but embracing crying as an act of cleansing catharsis. The vocal is emotionally raw and compelling, but I think the biggest reason this song works is the studio work by rap production legend Mike Dean, who I think brought a lot of nuance to the beat and got just the right ratio of menace, melancholy, and romance out of a central Marvin Gaye sample.
June 11th, 2023 4:01pm
“Freak” sounds like a melange of musically ambitious 90s indie rock – a little bit Chavez, some Built to Spill and Dinosaur Jr, a lot of Helium – but packed very densely into a song that doesn’t even crack the two minute mark. The first few times I listened to this I wasn’t paying very close attention to the lyrics and heard the chorus as “I know you want me to freak,” which feels like a pretty common sentiment for contemporary indie. But no, it’s actually it’s “I know you want me, freak” and the whole song is about lusting for a 6’5” sports star and resenting his tiny little girlfriend. This is so much more interesting to me, much more like something Liz Phair might have written if she had a different type back in her 20s. Lydia Slocum’s words are direct but shielded somewhat by humor, giving the impression that while this probably isn’t going anywhere, she’s more disappointed by that then she’s letting on.
June 9th, 2023 2:56pm
“Sun Goes Down” is a remarkable composition that works wonderfully on its own terms, yet more than any piece of music I’ve encountered in the past few years screams out “sample me, remix me, interpolate me!” I can hear in my mind ways other artists could run with John Carroll Kirby’s keyboard parts or the flute counterpoints, to the point that I wonder if on some level he was making this as an invitation to other artists to mess around with the same motifs. Maybe part of that is because Kirby himself is pulling a lot from the past in the melody, tones, and construction here, and I’m just sensing his understanding that music is ultimately about people taking communal ideas and going in their own directions. But even without all that, and if no one ever actually uses this composition as a starting point, “Sun Goes Down” has a magic to it – funky, relaxed, and vaguely regal, like it’s the soundtrack for someone particularly impressive arriving to a backyard party just in time for a glorious sunset.
June 8th, 2023 1:06pm
“Lose My Head” starts speeding out the gate on a chugging groove, setting up a reasonable expectation that the big guitar chords will hit on the chorus like a typical alt/indie/pop-punk sort of song. Alice Phoebe Lou sidesteps that by coasting on the groove and filling the arrangement with delicate piano and atmospheric guitar, which feels like switching to a widescreen framing. The song gets more dense as it rushes forward, but then she flips expectations a second time in just two minutes, letting the energy dissipate and crashing down into a final sequence that’s just piano chords and vocal. The last bit is different enough that it feels more like a medley transition, but Lou makes it feel seamless on an emotional level as it pays off the lyrics and makes the forward momentum of the music end at a satisfying location.
June 8th, 2023 12:09am
“New Years UnResolution” sounds as though L’Rain is trying to zoom all the way out on a feeling in the hope that forcing it into perspective might answer crucial questions such as “why do I feel this way?” and “why do I keep doing things that make me feel this way?” This is extremely pensive dance music, to the point that the groove feels distant. It’s as though the bass and percussion are ground level, but we’re up in the sky with vocal parts slowly moving around like clouds. The lyrics concern a relationship that’s run its course, so much that there’s not much in the lyrics to suggest she’s at all interesting in holding on to anything about it. It’s more of a “what now?” sentiment, with her feeling time whoosh by without her figuring out the answer.
June 6th, 2023 7:52pm
“Barley” sounds to me like a musical grandchild of Sonic Youth’s “Bull in the Heather” – the shakers, the off-kilter minimalism, the deadpan counting vocals. But that’s just part of what’s going on in this peculiar piece of music that somehow works as a pop song despite everything about its arrangement pushing in the opposite direction. There’s pulses of sound that sound like someone hitting a space bar and accidentally pausing the music for a second, a melodic counterpoint that sounds like a detuned police siren, harsh buzzes, clattering drums. Water From Your Eyes turn cacophony into coherent hooks mostly by keeping the emphasis on rhythm. The music rushes forward but Rachel Brown’s voice holds your hand through it, their dry affect making it seem like just another hum-drum day in world of chaos.
June 2nd, 2023 2:57pm
“You Were Right About One Thing” is a 70s-style country rock ballad, but it’s not some off-the-rack pastiche. Christina Schneider tailors the sound precisely, bending it into the distinctive shape of a Locate S,1 song – slightly jagged rhythms, interesting meter choices, and lyrics that approach very emotional subjects with some post-modern distance without diluting the sentiment with heavy irony. This sound works really well for her, I think in part because it’s so immediately pleasing to the ear that it smooths out some of her more contrary impulses as a writer. It’s also just a lovely setting for her voice, which is typically pretty high and sits comfortably with all the treble in the arrangement.
June 1st, 2023 8:46pm
“Leaving the Light” sounds like a grandchild to Time Zone’s “World Destruction,” a cousin to Death Grips’ “I’ve Seen Footage,” and a nephew to at least five great TV on the Radio songs. It’s a very particular merging of punk and early rap aesthetics, a forceful and aggressive rhythmic attack that makes the music sound very athletic, as though you should be grunting “UGH!!!” at the end of each measure. Genesis Owusu has covered similar ground before, notably on a song last year called “Get Inspired,” and it’s a great use of his voice, particularly when he adds a touch of sly wit to the blunt impact of rhythmic shouting. I love the lyrical angle on this one – Owusu is on the run from God Himself, and he’s not willing to slow down or give in. Truly, if you’re going to write a song where you sound like the Hulk about to tear a skyscraper down for fun, why not make your opponent God?
