March 2nd, 2023 3:13pm
“3 Boys” is a rather retro soul ballad with a more modern lyrical perspective as Omar Apollo sings about struggling to embrace non-monogamy because he’s so hung up on his feelings for Boyfriend #1 that he can’t really appreciate Boyfriends #2 and #3. I’m sure there are people who hear this and hate that this song is basically an ENM guy yearning for monogamy, but the conflict between logical pragmatism and raw emotion is what makes this so heartbreaking. He sounds so frustrated in every part of this situation, including the part where his actual desires conflict with having all the cake and eating it too. He can’t decide whether his feelings and attachment are an annoying inconvenience or the best thing he’s ever experienced.
February 28th, 2023 9:00pm
“Moonlight” doesn’t sound just like Kali Uchis’ breakthrough hit “Telepatia” but it seems pretty obvious that it was written as a next step from the vibe and sound established on that track. Benny Blanco and Cashmere Cat evoke a similar sort of stoned funk but nudge the mood into more overtly romantic territory. This is perfect for Uchis, who moves between a breathy and flirty tone on the chorus and a more bold and sultry tone on the verses. She reminds me a lot of Sade in those parts – self-possessed and sultry, but also keenly aware of how serious and complicated things can get between two people in love. This push and pull between romance as momentary pleasure and source of heavy drama is the core of this song. It’s about 80% laid back sexiness, 20% awareness that the stakes are high.
February 28th, 2023 2:25pm
I’m sure Damon Albarn recruited Bad Bunny for the same reasons he pulls any talented artist into a Gorillaz project – the promise of a fun collaboration, an interesting aesthetic combination, a new energy to pull into the Gorillaz universe. But there’s just no way he didn’t go into making this song knowing that the magnitude of Bad Bunny’s success on streaming was such that this song was almost guaranteed to become one of his most popular songs ever just because Bad Bunny showed up. This song doesn’t have to be all that good, it barely even has to work. But it does work, largely because Albarn’s taste in musical harmony diverges just enough from usual Bad Bunny productions to cast the rapper in a different light, and his Gorillaz-era mix of easy breezy vibes and understated but pervasive melancholy mixes well with Bunny’s blend of vulnerability and bravado. The lyrics center on a metaphor of the sun coming out during a storm, and a lot of what makes this click is they’re both a little bit sun and storm here.
February 23rd, 2023 2:43am
It’s amazing how shameless a lot of artists can be about directly emulating the fairly specific Tame Impala sound, but I never really mind because the songs are usually pretty good. Everything besides the chorus in Cuco’s “Best Disaster” sounds strikingly similar to Tame Impala, to the point I’m certain I would’ve been fooled if it had been presented to be as a new Tame tune. Those marks are nailed but it’s the deviation that makes this song work on Cuco’s terms. The song swings into ballad mode on the chorus and shifts focus to Cuco’s voice, which sounds love-dazed and extremely vulnerable, as though he’d be crushed if you told him “nah” after he sings “this could be your favorite song.” But he also sounds sweet enough that his subsequent invitation to “put the world on pause” and be “the best disaster” together is kinda convincing.
February 20th, 2023 7:00pm
“4am” sounds like it is haunted by the ghost of some half-remembered 80s pop song. Mike Paradinas gives us bits of vocal and keyboards that sound like another song bleeding through his own more modern composition, a bit like radio station signals overlapping. Or maybe it’s more like how beautiful vegetation can grow around broken machinery or architecture, something lovely merging with the form of some busted thing.
I love Skrillex for his energy and because his aesthetic is basically the music equivalent of dousing everything in hot sauce. “RATATA” spins an entirely new song out of a memorable bit of Missy Elliott’s classic “Work It,” which she flips into more of a dancehall toasting vibe to suit Skrillex’s frantic beat. Elliott isn’t a stranger to this kind of tempo but she sounds ferocious and unleashed by Skrillex’s track, like she’s just trying to match his enthusiasm level.
“Badman Sound” is an absolute beast of a track, a mutant bass house/dancehall hybrid built to push a room into frenzy mode. After listening to this many times over I realized my favorite bits were the drum parts that deviated from the thump – a drum fill that sounds like it’s yanked out of a rock record, and a snare build that sounds like 500 drumlines in unison.
February 17th, 2023 12:49pm
I think that if someone had played this for me and told me it was a coulda-been shoulda-been song from the late 90s or early 00s I would have believed it. Crushed are incredibly dialed into the adult contemporary by way of alt-rock aesthetics of that period, particularly in the quasi hip-hop drum programming, ostentatiously laid back bass line, and a clear, bold vocal performance that sounds like someone earnestly channeling Sarah McLachlan or the more restrained side of Alanis Morissette. This may be a pastiche but there’s no wink to it. This is real heart-on-sleeve stuff, a ballad about being given the chance to start again after a break up that embraces the “main character” grandeur of that feeling while being brought down to earth by the casual feel of the groove.
February 16th, 2023 5:21pm
“Don’t Let It Get to You” is built around a soft piano part that seems like an eternal loop of someone pausing and then stepping back, forever trapped in a pensive moment. It’s a song that seems to exist in the space between the aftermath of something and the start of some other, unknown new direction. Andy Shauf keeps the lyrics minimal, mostly setting up the POV of someone getting used to the notion that someone they knew would leave has left, and letting that piano part and occasional synthesizer buzzes carry the feeling of emptiness, light confusion, and vague relief. That buzzing sound is a particularly inspired part of the arrangement – it’s a sharp contrast with the acoustic guitar and piano, and makes the whole song feel more disoriented and lost.
February 15th, 2023 12:57pm
The first few times I heard this song with absolutely no context the lyric that jumped out to me was “everybody’s saying we’re in love for what that’s worth,” sung in a vague and inscrutable tone. Is this something that’s so self-evident that it’s boring? Is she unsure of the situation? Is everybody dead wrong? Does she feel any sort of way about this?
A bit later I read that this song was written from the perspective of an AI and I can see how this makes sense. Yuné Pinku’s lyrics sketch out a simulated consciousness that responds to stimuli and has some intentions and imperatives, but doesn’t have much else filling up the spaces between incoming data and pre-coded responses. The character experiences “fun” and “love” as facts and doesn’t interpret much beyond acknowledging “this is happening.” Pinku’s track is like a little dance club snowglobe the AI exists in, singing dance music clichés over the chorus and engaging with existential thoughts like “it’s fake to die, we’re all still alive” like they’re just logic puzzles.
February 9th, 2023 1:42pm
A lot of guitarists let their guitar speak for them in solos but everything Ira Kaplan gets out of his instrument in “Sinatra Drive Breakdown” is like the result of a brutal interrogation. He slaps, slams, batters, and scrapes the thing up. A lot of the sound is just impact, but then he starts to coax more coherent melodies out of the thing. All of this is in contrast with a sedate but slightly tense groove and a demure vocal performance that makes Kaplan’s playing seem all the more unhinged and violent. The overall effect is an odd mix of soothing and abrasive, and the chaos in the guitar becoming a pleasant or at least interesting localized sensation while everything else in the mix numbs you out. It’s thrilling music to zone out to. Yo La Tengo have existed for four decades and this has long been a part of Kaplan’s style but what they achieve here feels special and new, like different aspects of their sound were always on course to finally converge like this.
February 7th, 2023 11:31pm
Kimbra doesn’t work in a funk mode all the time but my favorite music she’s done is almost always in this lane. There’s a fair number of groovy songs on her new record A Reckoning but “LA Type” is the big funk number, louder and heavier than anything else around it. It reminds me a bit of Nikka Costa’s music from the very early 00s – glossy and a little twitchy, essentially a showcase for the biggest and sassiest aspects of her voice. There’s a lot of songs about not being into Los Angeles but I think the tone of this song makes the lyrics click, since there’s a bit of a wink to it that keeps it from being too judgy as she explains to someone she can’t really get into the Hollywood lifestyle. The lyrics are more about the dynamic she has with the person she’s addressing – she doesn’t want to let them down, but she’s still basically rejecting them and their world. The two rap verses at the end are basically rebuttals, with Tommy Raps playing it defensively while Pink Siifu doubles down on exactly the kind of seduction she’s passing up.
February 2nd, 2023 10:43pm
“Pants” is about as catchy as a song can be while also being actively and intentionally disorienting. It mostly sounds like an indie-punk song, something that might have been released on Dischord or Kill Rock Stars years ago, that has some been concussed. Everything wobbles, there’s no straight lines, but there’s still a clear shape and structure to the sound. Another way to put it – imagine a song being planned on an old VCR, but the tracking is way off. In any case it’s a song that feels like trying to drop out of reality but not quite making it all the way out.
February 2nd, 2023 1:36am
A decade ago I would not have guessed that Mac DeMarco would become such an influential guitarist and that basically an entire lane in indie rock would develop largely based on his and Kurt Vile’s respective vibes. But it makes sense to me now – his style is distinct but not tremendously difficult to emulate, and the feel of his music is seductively relaxed and low-key. In retrospect when he first hit it was like “new indie guy archetype just dropped” and a ton of guys threw up their hands like “ooh ooh, he’s like me!”
Five Easy Hot Dogs, his fifth record, is entirely instrumental and that just feels like a natural conclusion to me. It’s basically a travelogue, each song written and recorded on a road trip. It sounds like the soundtrack of a guy drifting along and passing through, no particularly heavy emotions but a lot of undefined wistfulness. Songs like “Chicago” convey a curious mindset, like it’s the music you’d play when you’re checking things out and trying to really click into the groove of some unfamiliar place.
January 30th, 2023 10:19pm
Lil Yachty shifting from trap to post-Tame Impala psychedelia on his new record Let’s Start Here is an odd pivot but it totally works because he’s clearly way into the genre and had the resources to hire on a lot of talented indie artists including Patrick Wimberly formerly of Chairlift, Magdalena Bay, Mac DeMarco, Alex G, and members of Unknown Mortal Orchestra and MGMT. In some ways I’m surprised a major label supported a big swing like this, but I can see how Steve Lacy’s success gave everyone involved some confidence that they were on the right track and if this works out Yachty could become a festival staple. I’m rooting for him!
“Running Out of Time,” like all the best songs on Let’s Start Here, takes the Tame Impala vibe as a starting point for music that ends up heading off in other directions. In this case all the gravity is pulling towards R&B, particularly in the guitar parts that remind me specifically of Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” though I’m not sure if it’s actually the same chords. (Similarly there’s a touch of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Running Away” in the song’s DNA.) Yachty’s voice is limited but he commits to the bit well enough that when he reaches up for higher notes here he at least indicates where someone like Stevie Wonder or Frank Ocean would go with the melody. But it’s hard to imagine singers like that pulling off his drowsy affect here, which suits the spaced-out introversion of the music. As with Lacy on his hit “Bad Habit,” there’s an underdog vulnerability in his performance that makes it all resonate beyond the raw appeal of the groove.
January 27th, 2023 2:58pm
“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?”
January 27th, 2023 12:34am
“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.
January 25th, 2023 8:40pm
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.
January 23rd, 2023 9:46pm
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.
January 20th, 2023 3:47pm
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.
January 20th, 2023 12:26am
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.
January 17th, 2023 11:43pm
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.
