January 17th, 2023 12:57am
“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.
January 13th, 2023 3:29pm
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.
January 12th, 2023 6:00pm
“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.
January 12th, 2023 3:19am
“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.
January 10th, 2023 10:17pm
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.
January 5th, 2023 5:46pm
“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.
January 3rd, 2023 11:09pm
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.
January 2nd, 2023 3:43pm
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.
December 22nd, 2022 11:45pm
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.
December 21st, 2022 9:55pm
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.
December 20th, 2022 6:50pm
“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.
December 19th, 2022 9:07pm
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.
December 9th, 2022 2:52pm
“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.
December 9th, 2022 2:52am
“Yun” is a tribute to the late South Korean abstract painter Yun Hyong Keun, one that draws on the meditative quality of his works but also takes direct inspiration from his ethos – “he always said ‘be human first’.” I like where RM goes with this idea, letting the notion of being a human ground him as an artist despite his massive success as a crucial member of BTS and coming to the creation of pure hip-hop records from a position of humility and genuine passion. RM seems accutely aware of his outsider status in rap but doesn’t produce or perform with any noticeable insecurity or eagerness to please. He has a natural affinity for the more mellow and spiritual side of rap to the degree Erykah Badu seems totally at home on the track, and his blend of English and Korean lyrics flow together with a relaxed grace rather than seeming awkwardly glued together as a matter of commercial concerns. Despite a lot of pressure, he sounds totally…human.
December 8th, 2022 3:02am
Brakence songs sound like very inventive and glitchy remixes of the most petulant emo boy songs you’ve ever heard – none of the boring off-the-rack musical conventions of that genre but all of the tortured white guy self-pity, if not more somehow. “Argyle” is a breakup song from the perspective of a guy who anyone would be correct to get away from, which seems to be the point, as I think portraying himself as an obnoxious loser is part of the self-flagellation process. There’s no subtext here, just a guy speaking plainly about wanting to die but being “too fucking cowardly to off myself,” and then snidely singing “good luck with your next boyfriend.” It’s interesting to me how his voice and the music conveys a real pain, but he articulates it all in words that invite you to lose empathy for him. But he’s a 21 year old guy, and I can see the worst of myself at that age in this. It’s an extremely 21 year old guy kind of song.
December 7th, 2022 2:03am
Nova Twins sound like a collision of turn-of-the-millennium aesthetics – imagine glossy girly pop commandeering nü-metal riffs, spiked with a bit of crunk and screamo. It’s a synthesis of extremely bold styles that comes out sounding more extreme and bold than its genre components, and you can feel how much fun they’re having making this ultra-catchy cacophony in every moment of every song. “Choose Your Fighter” alternates between bouncy and thrashing energies so effectively that it seems impossible for an audience not to instinctively click into its implied choreography of pogoing and moshing. The lyrics sound like they’re from a video game set in a series of increasingly violent mosh pits, tapping into a bit of real anger but blowing it out into a cartoonish fantasy of cathartic aggression.
December 2nd, 2022 4:56pm
Fiona Apple repeats the chorus of “Paper Bag” three times at the end of the song, each time with significantly different phrasing that maintains the shape of the melody but changes all the emotional emphasis. I doubt she’s ever sung this song the same way twice – she’s the kind of singer who really lives in the moment of any song she’s singing, and that presence in the moment makes all the little instinctive decisions captured in this studio recording all the more precious. She takes on a conversational tone through the verses in large part to sell the ironic humor in the lyrics, but by the time she’s running through these choruses she’s mostly riding the wave of the melody and arrangement, or in some moments ducking it or moving to the side of it. She speeds up, she slows down, she builds to little crescendos but climaxes by delivering the most crucial line as an understated and conspiratorial aside – “but starving…it works.”
“Paper Bag” is a song about having an unrequited crush and knowing in the moment that the person who’s taking up so much space in your mind is a mythologized and romanticized figure who’s only partly the actual person who exists in the world. She’s in love with a story she’s telling herself, and part of that story is in the failure to connect, the distance between them, the inevitability of this not becoming anything real. She gets the drama and excitement of the feeling, but none of the risk of being vulnerable with someone else. You could call it self-sabotage, but she knows what she’s doing and everything is going according to plan. This a lot of why the song feels light and comedic – she’s in on the joke, and knows that the joke is on her.
November 30th, 2022 4:40pm
What does falling in love feel like? According to JVKE it’s like a little bit of melodramatic strings, some major key twinkly piano, and a lot of big blasts of distorted keyboard chords that sound like the affirmative version of a WRONG buzzer on a game show. The melodies is “This Is What Falling In Love Feels Like” fall into a pleasant middle ground between musical theater aesthetics and extremely vague hip-hop adjacent cadences of modern pop, and it’s all packed into a tight two minutes like most music that comes up on social media platforms now. I would not have a problem with this song going on another minute or so but the jingle-ish brevity suits it well, particularly as falling in love can often be a rather fleeting moment.
November 29th, 2022 3:16am
I think when people look back on the early part of this decade one of the key sounds that will spark nostalgia will be this driving, ambiguously melancholy quasi-synthpop style that manifested in mega-hits like The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” Harry Styles’ “As It Was,” The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber’s “Stay,” and Rauw Alejandro’s “Todo de Ti.” The latter is the most interesting of the bunch, mainly because Alejandro grounds this vibe in reggaeton aesthetics and arrived at a mutant sound that was genuinely unique. “Dime Quién???,” from his new follow up record, goes even deeper into this sound, though it’s structurally and tonally closer to actual ‘80s synthpop. You lose maybe 20% of the novelty of “Todo de Ti” but the trade off is a high level of focused craft. This is an absolute nuke of a pop song, it’s the kind of tune that makes you yield to its charms, its emotional gravity, its hooks, its sheer momentum. It’s sung entirely in Spanish but even before checking for an English translation I was picking up on its romantic angst loud and clear. You can just feel this guy’s jealousy and yearning in that chorus, the specifics of it – which involve BeReal, a thing that will really ground this in 2022 for all eternity – are besides the point.
November 24th, 2022 4:07pm
I’ve been wondering for a while why there aren’t more bands just shamelessly imitating Stereolab, particularly as I think artists can do that with relative impunity as Stereolab built their own sound out of shamelessly absorbing and reinterpreting ideas from older records. Dummy clearly is on the right track here – “Mono Retriever” owes a massive debt to the groop circa Mars Audiac Quintet/Refried Ectoplasm, but has enough of their own character and flavor to keep it from feeling like a weak impression. A lot of this comes down to the central voice being masculine and cold, but there’s a different kind of color palette to this. If Stereolab is more like bold primaries, this is a little more muted and blurry, particularly as the song nudges a little closer to shoegaze. Anyway, I’m an easy mark for this. I’ll take more, please.
