Hank “Mover Mover Mover”

“Mover Mover Mover” moves briskly from hook to hook in two minutes without feeling at all rushed or busy – if anything, this feels remarkably light for a densely written piece of music. This is basically a bright and chipper song about real estate, one in which constantly changing residences is a neurotic impulse and a nomadic existence seems to be more of a drag than an adventure. There’s an aside in the second verse about an acquaintance who’s apparently flopped out in the house-flipping game, and that guy seems to standing in for everyone else who’s getting screwed one way or another by playing the real estate game. The song zips along like a lost Orange Juice or Josef K number but arrives at no conclusion besides shrugging off its own central question: “Why are you always escaping?”

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Caroline Rose “Miami”

“Miami” is a song in which Caroline Rose takes stock of their recent past, takes some responsibility for certain messes and conflicts, and then tries to figure out how to be pragmatic and move on. It’s a lot of song and it sounds to me like something that was very cathartic to make, but also totally draining.

There are two bits here that stand out to me and elevate it above a lot of similar gut-spiller songs. In the first verse after Rose describes a relationship that went very, very cold they arrive at this conclusion: “You know you never knew my worth / honestly, neither did I.” The first part of that line feels like a cliché now, the kind of therapy/advice language that’s often used in a self-aggrandizing sort of way, but with an important acknowledgment of complicity. It deflates a potentially self-congratulatory line, but also makes it a clear a lesson was actually learned.

The second lyrical idea I like here is that Rose writes about their mother taking issue with a tendency to be glibly miserable – the sort of dark self-pity that drives a lot of online humor – and having to explain that it’s basically a coping mechanism. There’s an interesting emotional push and pull in this, particularly as they feel bad for making their parent worry and feel like their good advice is not heard. By the end of this section there’s a sense that both mother and child are seeing each other clearly – not in some profound way, but in that way where parents and children eventually find themselves on more equal ground as fellow adults.

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MJ Cole feat. Piri and Tommy “Feel It”

I’ve been trying to figure out the x factor in Piri & Tommy’s music that makes it sound so fresh to me despite there not being an obvious element of technical novelty. I think what it comes down to is the way Piri sings in a tone so relaxed and low-key that it neutralizes the frantic quality of jungle and garage bpms without compromising the velocity of the music. It’s like lying down or lounging in a very comfy chair inside a vehicle that’s zooming ahead – you can sense the movement but you’re just chilling within it. “Feel It,” a collaboration with likeminded producer MJ Cole, nudges slightly in the direction house while retaining familiar Tommy programming. In most respects it feels like most everything else the duo has done but Cole brings a different sort of color to the mix, which contrasts nicely with Piri’s voice. This feels literal to me – it’s the musical equivalent of someone showing up with a cool lighting rig and changing the ambiance around something that maintains its form.

Buy it from Beatport.

Claptone and Alison Goldfrapp “Digging Deeper”

Alison Goldfrapp has proven herself to be a versatile singer through her career in Goldfrapp but her voice never feels as fully natural as when it’s paired with synths and a strong beat. In this context, whether it’s on a record like Supernature or on this new collaboration with Claptone, her voice takes on contradictory qualities – airy yet rich, passive yet authoratative, full of warm humanity but robotic in its tonal precision. I love the way her voice conveys a distinct personality while also sounding like it could be a keyboard setting. “Digging Deeper” is a good old fashioned house song and so Goldfrapp runs with the opportunity to give voice to the ecstatic feel of the music. The lyrics are simple and repetitive, it’s all focused on one sentiment – suddenly her life has changed and she feels better, and she’s trying to go as far as she can with this emotional breakthrough. But you’d never need to pay attention to the lyrics to come to that conclusion, she really makes you feel that sensation of newfound freedom in the vocal.

Buy it from Beatport.

Yaeji “For Granted”

Most of Yaeji’s music thus far has been in the mode of house music so it’s interesting to hear her pivot into more of a pop direction, albeit a version of pop that’s very much on her own terms and not far removed from her established aesthetics. “For Granted” is more of an R&B song with an emphasis on groove and melody rather than beat, with production choices that keep the music feeling a little bit skewed and fluttery without getting in the way of her two main vocal hooks. The music sets up a rather pensive vibe and her lyrics follow that feeling by meditating on gratitude – is she appreciating what she has now, is she being thankful to those who help her, is she having a good time? I tend to think that if you’re having these thoughts often, the answer to those questions are probably more often yes than no.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Fever Ray “Carbon Dioxide”

Karin Dreijer has one of the most distinct and fascinating voices I’ve encountered, and that’s before even factoring in their frequent use of effects to warp and disguise it. But even when pushed to the most perverse extremes Dreijer is always recognizable, mainly for their particular cadences and inflections. They don’t even need digital processing to sound odd and uncanny, but it’s a big part of Dreijer’s art in The Knife and Fever Ray – it’s an audio version of masks, costumes, inhabiting characters. “Carbon Dioxide” is a relatively straight forward dance pop number that doesn’t get too wild with vocal manipulation but it still clicks in large part because Dreijer’s base timbre feels so alien and uncanny. The lyrics position infatuation and lust as something a little uncomfortable and grotesque, but in a way that only makes it hotter. It’s about an attraction that’s visceral and shameless, a situation where the line “hold my heart while falling” hits as both an expression of overpowering emotion but also a literal gory fantasy.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

U.S. Girls “Futures Bet”

People saying that they don’t want to have children because of how bleak the future seems to them is a cliché these days, usually expressed with an off-the-rack Millennial internet quip like “gestures wildy at everything.” “Futures Bet” is something of a rejoinder to that mindset, a song that’s dubious of human extinction occurring on any conceivable timeline and reckons that humans in any period will be hazy on the past but always searching for some reason why they’re here. Remy shrugs this off in the chorus – “this is just life.” I’m inclined to side with this point of view, particularly as the most hysterical scorched earth visions of the future come from people who’d somehow been led to believe that they would live an entire lifetime in a world without tumult and catastrophes. That’s not life! Remy sings her lyrics in a warm and soothing tone with the pleasant inflections of 80s pop. She sounds reassuring, but she’s not trying to delude anyone. She’s just trying to remind you, us, her kids, whoever, that there is usually a balance of happiness and pain through life in any historical moment.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Eaves Wilder “I Stole Your Jumper”

“I Stole Your Jumper” is so generous with melodies and sharp in its dynamics that it comes out sounding like a series of escalating hooks with only just a little bit of connective tissue. Eaves Wilder’s lyrics follow a melodic thread that weaves through the chords, starting out by laying out an airtight case for why she’s broken up with someone, but once the song picks up momentum she’s tearing them apart and fantasizing about them being humiliated. The song indulges in a lot of presumably well-earned bitterness and anger, but she brings it down to earth by telling us the only revenge they’ve had – besides writing this song – was stealing one of their sweaters. It’s definitely a petty thing to do, but in the context of these lyrics it’s something that self-effacingly shows us the limits of her rage IRL, but also lets us know that she’s not quite as vicious as she’s letting on.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Belle & Sebastian “Will I Tell You A Secret”

Most of the songs on Belle & Sebastian’s Late Developers are sunny and sleek up-tempo numbers but “Will I Tell You A Secret” is an outlier, a short and relatively unadorned folk pop song that’s much closer to the band’s early style. The arrangement is very direct and simple, mostly acoustic guitar, harpsichord, and Stuart Murdoch’s voice focused sharply on articulating a melody so beautifully shaped that it sounds immediately familiar, as though it’s been with us for hundreds of years. (Maybe it has?) The lyrics return to a frequent Murdoch theme – addressing someone you’ve once had a romantic relationship with but over the years the relationship became more of a close friendship. As ever Murdoch approaches this with kindness and grace rather than bitterness or disappointment, but there is a melancholy to this song however much he tries to obscure it with gratitude and a generosity of spirit. He’s lamenting something that’s been lost – a child that was never born, and a void in his life where their casual intimacy used to be.

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Nighttime “When the Wind is Blowing”

“When the Wind is Blowing” is a pastoral folk song first and foremost but the most interesting parts of the arrangement are when the musicians of Nighttime emulate the sound and feeling of wind. They’re not going for a stormy sort of wind but more like a stiff breeze passing through the night, something that lightly rustles up the trees and messes up your hair. Eva Louise Goodman’s voice sounds a bit dour but also fairly serene as she sings about the night landscape with low-key awe and humility. She looks around and sees life mid-cycle, noting her place in it, and opening herself up to where the winds of life may send her.

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The New Pornographers “Really Really Light”

“Really Really Light” is something of a novelty in The New Pornographers catalog as one of very few songs co-written by Carl Newman and Dan Bejar, and is all the more intriguing in that Newman built the song around a Bejar chorus. I didn’t know this before I heard it and once I had that bit of information this was tremendously obvious – that bend of the melody around “my heart’s just like a feather” is extremely him, to the point that I feel like I’ve already heard him sing this somewhere before. They’re both playing against type and meeting in the middle here – Bejar supplying the pretty harmonized chorus, Newman building verses around an oddly shaped riff that seems to cut diagonally through the rhythm so everything feels slightly lopsided and disorienting. The verse lyrics by Newman are typically opaque and mostly signal an uneasy ambivalence, but that chorus is like deliberately opting into a “head empty, just vibes” mindset as Newman and Neko Case aim for something effortlessly lovely and, yes… really really light.

Buy it from The New Pornographers.

John Cale “Night Crawling”

The most interesting aspect of “Night Crawling” to me is how much of the keyboard tones and beat patterns sound like the very early 90s, or maybe drifting out slightly further into mid-90s trip-hop production. I’m not sure whether John Cale was specifically reaching for that feel but it sounds great, particularly in contrast with his weathered voice. His lyrics express a frustration with someone he’s known for a long time and the perspective of his advanced age doesn’t seem to help him get through the confusion and grievance. There’s a lot of disappointment in his voice and in the general feeling of the track, as though the weight and tangle of history has only made things more difficult. Where’s the wisdom, where’s the clarity? In this song every conflict just ends up a stalemate, and everything becomes a game that became tedious many years ago.

Buy it from Domino.

Erasure “Stop!”

“Stop!” is a song about being separated from the one you love, but the music isn’t even slightly melancholic in the way you’d expect with that subject matter. Vince Clarke’s arrangement is extremely bright, bubbly, and full of pep. It’s three minutes of undiluted joy and enthusiasm, with Andy Bell vowing that he and his partner will be reunited and then nothing will ever tear them apart. The energy of the song is in this defiance of circumstance, and in the anticipation of them being together again, which he takes to be a foregone conclusion. He’s basing everything on faith, which makes some contextual sense – given that this is a song by a gay artist in the late 80s, I think there’s a pretty good chance this is really about being separated by death. I’m not sure if Bell intended that – the lyrics nod more in the direction of something less morbid – but I’m sure plenty of his audience interpreted it that way in the moment.

Buy it from Amazon.

Babyface “Whip Appeal”

Babyface’s chord structure in “Whip Appeal” is fairly sophisticated but the main trick of it is in gliding effortlessly between mostly minor chords in the verse to mostly major chords for the chorus. The minor chords don’t signal melancholy in this context, it’s more like moving between an unresolved or complicated feeling into something straightforwardly pleasurable and relaxing. The lyrics basically tell the story of the chords as Babyface sings about a love affair that’s a safe harbor from the stresses and boredoms of ordinary life. He describes this as “the strangest kind of relationship” because their communication is almost entirely sexual, but he’s not complaining. There’s no conflict in this song outside of what he imagines this situation might look like to other people, but he’s just confusing himself. He’s already got it figured out – this affection, this sex, this connection? That’s the important part of his days. Everything else is just filler time. His elation in this song isn’t just about who he’s singing about, it’s the joy and relief of being lucky enough to have this in his life.

Buy it from Amazon.

Lana Del Rey “Buddy’s Rendezvous”

I’m at Buddy’s Rendezvous
Telling the losers and old timers
How good I did with you
They almost believe me, too

I knew this song for the better part of a year before finding out that Buddy’s Rendezvous is a pizzeria in Michigan and not some miserable dive bar in Los Angeles as I had assumed given the context and the song already mentioning Canter’s, which is in LA. This detail changes the song for me. It’s funny but also amps up the pathos, picturing this guy chatting up some old guys eating pizza stings a lot more than if he’s just doing the same thing at a bar after his third well whiskey.

The other thing I didn’t quite pick up on for a while is that this isn’t about a failed romance but rather a song from the perspective of an absent father who’s been released from prison and is trying to reconnect with his daughter who has had some measure of success as a singer in Los Angeles. It’s not some big ironic switcheroo, as Father John Misty’s arrangement, lyrics, and vocal all play the scenario exactly the same as if it was addressed to a long-lost ex, which I don’t think is necessarily meant to be taken as some incestuous thing but more that his regret, lingering possessiveness, and nostalgic affection for her is probably not that different from a bunch of actual exes he could be singing about in other songs. He’s not reaching out because they have a genuine connection – he’s been out of the picture way too long for that – but because he needs her success to validate his existence. At least something good came from him being alive, and he wants to get as close to that feeling of having value as he can.

It was an inspired choice to have Lana Del Rey sing a version of this song. Lana Del Rey and Father John Misty, born only a few years apart, are kindred spirits as songwriters. Their music largely draws on mid 20th century sounds and archetypes but their lyrics are squarely focused on the present tense, and everything in their lyrics that look back to the past is presented with irony as it’s always from someone living in America’s decline reaching for something they think was probably better and more pure. They’re both bitter and damaged but mostly because as romantics they’re always setting themselves up for disappointment. They’re each other’s truest peer and so it’s a treat to hear her interpret one of his songs.

Lana’s presence changes the implied perspective – is this now Lana inhabiting the voice of the daughter, is this her impression of her father’s words? The way she plays it feels more like this is her father imagining his daughter singing his words, but in any case there’s some cold disconnection. It’s only just “her.” I think this might have worked better as a duet with Father John Misty singing the parts that she sings a little too low in her range. Her vocal performance is very good, particularly on the choruses, but I do get the sense that this song was a challenge for her, and the variations in her phrasing were made in large part to just stay in tune and not push her to an uncomfortably high register on the chorus. Misty shows up for backing vocals in the final third of the song and I love hearing them together, particularly as it sounds like he’s the one singing with a ghost, just trying to soothe himself with this idea of her.

Buy it from Amazon.

Ice Spice “Bikini Bottom”

Ice Spice is striking in the context of the recent vanguard of female rappers led by millennials Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B, who present as larger than life sexual superheroes with aggressive, dominating vocal styles. Ice Spice goes hard in the opposite direction, presenting herself as an extremely cool and attractive ordinary person with a very relaxed vocal presence, like some girl you might actually know or see in passing at the kind of unglamorous parks and bodegas that serve as the backdrop of her music videos. There’s no problem with what Cardi and Megan et al are doing but this feels like interesting counter programming that could also be a sign of a sea change in what the youngest end of the rap audience is looking for, like the shift from hair metal to grunge in the early 90s.

The fact that Ice Spice raps over drill tracks also helps differentiate her, as the production is one more aspect of this that feels removed from a more millennial aesthetic. But it’s her voice that really stands out – her tone is so unbothered and casual that the confidence expressed in her lyrics feel lived-in, not cartoonish. It’s all so matter of fact, it’s all so cool. And coming across as the coolest and hottest person you might now seems more powerful to me than an expensive over the top abstraction of self.

Buy it from Amazon.

NewJeans “Hype Boy”

There are countless songs about having a powerful crush or falling in love, and distributed among the endless variation on this theme across genres and eras you can find all the variations on this basic human experience. It’s a beautiful thing, and part of why I could never be bored with new variations. There’s always new contexts and complications, new ways of mediating experiences, new tools to communicate emotions, new angles on describing how it feels. I like the angles in “Hype Boy,” and the way the song plays around with what “hype” means through the verses and hooks. It’s hype as in hyperactive emotions, it’s hype as in hyperbolic notions about the situation, it’s hype as in this guy’s style, it’s hype as in cheering him on. The music is surprisingly low key for K-Pop and the subject matter. It’s bright and energetic, sure, but the groove is fairly mellow. There’s a cool and collected center to this that conveys a kind of certainty that you don’t always get in songs like this, which typically have some root of desperation in the face of high stakes.

Buy it from Amazon.

Eliza Rose feat. M4A4 “Delectable”

“Delectable” is such a food word, one I’d associate with a restaurant critic or copy associated with food marketing, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard it used in a pop song. It’s an inspired choice in this song – it suggests that Eliza Rose’s desire for the person addressed is not some ordinary lust, but rather the refined taste of a connoisseur. The word also rolls off her tongue so naturally, like these four syllables have always been right there waiting for the right jazzy inflection bouncing off the right UK garage beat. Rose’s phrasing in this song is lovely and delicate and heavily indebted to the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, but her voice has just a touch of house diva punch to it, if just to stand up to the intensity of the groove.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Little Simz “Gorilla”

I didn’t realize that this new Little Simz record was entirely co-written and produced by Inflo of Sault at first, but I did notice the loose and organic sound of the music, which often comes close to the sound The Roots get when approximating studio-centric rap aesthetics as a live band. This is a perfect sound for Simz – the tight pocket sound matches the discipline of her writing and the “live” feel highlights the raw presence of her performances. “Gorilla” has classic rap aesthetics but is skewed by Simz and Inflo’s particular finesse. It sounds a million miles away from most anything else going on in mainstream rap but doesn’t strike me as either contrarian or conservative, just two artists clicking together and feeling totally comfortable in who they are and what they do. It’s defiant yet laid back, and reminds me a bit of how in her prime Lauryn Hill could sound like she was chastising the listener while also conveying that she was entirely above the fray.

Buy it from Amazon.

ITZY “Boys Like You”

“Boys Like You” is an unrelenting juggernaut of sugar-rush pop, a breed of pop single that was ubiquitous in the 2000s but seems almost alien now unless you’re plugged into the K-pop scene that birthed ITZY. At this point in time K-Pop is massively successful in the United States but seems to mostly exist in parallel with mainstream pop, this thing that you can either opt into as an alternative or actively ignore. Given that “Boys Like You” is sung entirely in English it seems deliberately aimed at cracking the American market on its own terms, but the aesthetics of the song do not budge even a little bit to fit in better on the US charts. It’s bright and bold and unafraid to be obnoxious and cutesy, and like a lot of the best K-Pop it reconfigures the sound of 2000s pop culture in a way that makes it feel slightly off, but also super-charged and weaponized. My favorite thing about this one is how it seems to pile on its bratty little hooks like a Jenga tower, and the most thrilling moment is when they sing the title phrase pushing up towards the song’s highest notes and it all seems to wobble slightly for a moment but it never collapses.

Buy it from Amazon.