June 30th, 2020 11:33pm
Teyana Taylor is clearly living a blessed life – she managed to pull off the late ’90s/early ’00s hat trick of getting Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliott, AND Erykah Badu to all appear on her album. This would be like if Charli XCX got Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, AND Justin Timberlake on her next record, or if Car Seat Headrest got in collaborations with Stephen Malkmus, Beck, AND Thurston Moore on their next one. It’s a staggering achievement in feature-wrangling, and certainly gives the impression that she’s been anointed by these icons.
Even more impressive is that Taylor convinced Badu to essentially make a sequel to one of her most famous and beloved songs, “Next Lifetime,” with her. According to Taylor she heard echoes of “Next Lifetime” in the track and decided to embrace the similarity rather than run away from it, and reached out to Badu for her blessing and to invite her to be involved. (I absolutely love the confidence of this.) There are definitely ways this could be a sort of crass move, but Taylor’s lyrics and performance come from an artistically genuine place – it’s not a tribute to the original so much as it’s in conversation with it. She’s examining the song’s themes of talking yourself out of infidelity despite the temptation of an intense emotional connection from her own angle. Whereas Badu’s original was sung from a position of bittersweet certainty, Taylor sounds more tormented and indecisive. When Badu appears on the track, she’s more in Taylor’s emotional zone – conflicted, and only begrudgingly doing the right thing.
June 30th, 2020 4:29pm
Ego Ella May’s guitar parts in “How Long ‘Til We’re Home” are delicate and subtle, all gentle arpeggios and gorgeous chord strums that seem to glimmer in the empty spaces of the arrangement. The rhythm section is tighter and sounds much more crisp in the mix, allowing the treble parts to be more atmospheric and emotive. May’s vocal part is soulful but subdued, delivering lyrics expressing deep skepticism of the media and cynicism about the direction of society with a sober, matter of fact tone. The calmness of the music seems pointed – it conveys a feeling of resignation and lowered expectations, but still some small amount of faith and optimism even when she sings the words “I’m losing hope” at the end of the chorus.
June 29th, 2020 1:18am
The first two minutes of “Orgone” is slow and pensive, with Georgia Anne Muldrow singing about feeling lost and ill at ease, and dreaming of living in Africa. Her piano chords are halting, but her voice is steady and certain – there is no question in her mind that getting to Africa is the only way she may ever feel complete. The final third of the song is more overtly soulful, starting with her addressing the listener – “I don’t think you heard me” in a sorrowful shout, and climaxing with her wailing “take me back, take me back” like she’s in total agony. It’s a brilliant conclusion to the song, paying off on the abstract ideas of the first section with the raw emotion and urgency of the feeling at the core of it all.
June 25th, 2020 1:56pm
In the mid 2000s, the Norwegian singer Annie – along with the Swedish singer Robyn – laid the groundwork for virtually every beloved “pop star” we have today who struggles to land chart hits while cultivating fawning press and a devoted cult audience. Prior to the ’00s working in “pop” as a genre was a zero sum game – you either had big hits and were legitimate, or you didn’t and were immediately considered a failure and were disrespected and forgotten. The only room for cult fandom in this lane was reserved for import-bin artists like Kylie Minogue or Girls Aloud, who had attained major hits outside the United States. Robyn, whose arc is based on coming back from early chart hits she released as a teen, is a model of underground pop in the way she took control of her career and remade herself as an auteur. Annie, on the other hand, is more like an indie band in stature and reach, and in the way she played straight-ahead pop without ironing out her quirks or artsy influences.
“American Cars,” her first single in over a decade, leaves the bubbly pop of her breakthrough Anniemal to successors like Carly Rae Jepsen and moves in a darker, more atmospheric direction more along the lines of The Chromatics or Bat for Lashes. The ice cold synthesizers are perfectly suited to Annie’s airy, trebly voice. Her lyrics, inspired directly by the David Cronenberg film Crash, are evocative and romantic but the vocal is mixed so in a tonal sense it could just as well be another keyboard part, particularly on the chorus hook. As brilliant as “Chewing Gum” and “I Know UR Girlfriend Hates Me” are, this new aesthetic actually feels more authentically Annie.
June 25th, 2020 12:40am
Roy Ayers’ collaboration with Adriane Younge and Shaheed Muhammed is true to the progressive jazz/funk Ayers made in the ’70s, but isn’t a full-on retro thing. The sound is rooted in the present and in Young and Muhammed’s established polished neo-soul aesthetic, but they’re not afraid to nod in the direction of Ayer’s classics. “Synchronize Vibration,” the opening track of the new record, feels like a deliberate sequel of sorts to Ayer’s most famous song “Everybody Loves the Sunshine.” You can hear echoes of the song in the lyrics and melody, but most importantly in the cool psychedelic haze of the arrangement. The keyboards and strings feel like shifting overlapping clouds, gentle and gradual in their movements but always in communication with the groove. It’s very particular sort of atmosphere, one that’s been imitated through the years but it seems that only Ayers himself can nail it.
June 23rd, 2020 3:00pm
AceMo and MoMa Ready’s music is fast and joyfully frantic, calling back to ’90s house and techno aesthetics while carving out their own hyper-charged niche. “Hidden Memory” is, relative to a lot of their material, a more mellow number. The emphasis is placed on atmosphere and the “aura” of the samples, so even when the programmed beats get into drum and base BPMs it’s more vibey than physical. There’s a wonderful sense of space within this composition – wide open and airy but still dense with detail, implying a massive scale observed from a distance. Along with the title, this piece suggests some profound moment of connection with something that was once thought lost. There’s a powerful feeling of hope in this music, as though it’s possible to bring the lost things back.
June 23rd, 2020 2:25am
The verses of “False Prophet,” but most especially the fourth, contain lyrical sentiments that are pretty common themes in rap: performance of a grandiose persona, declarations of greatness and theatrical disdain for rivals, boasts about street knowledge and underworld associations. The music is jacked from a rare 1954 blues b-side by Billy “The Kid” Emerson – not an unusual move for blues or folk, but another echo of a genre initially built on samples. I don’t think Dylan is necessarily trying to draw a direct comparison to rap here, but he’s certainly aware of the lineage, and the larger process of art as a tradition and communicative medium. He insinuates a lot in his lyrics and arrangement choices, and I think one of those things here is nudging the listener to hear a historical through line. Formats and styles come and go, but a lot of creative impulses don’t really change much through time.
“False Prophet” is playful and sly, and you can hear the delight in the gravelly remains of his voice when he hits each of his punchlines. He’s lived in this version of his voice long enough to have mastered its limited range, so he’s surprisingly nimble and nuanced in the phrasing of every line of this song. He’s always been the singing equivalent of a character actor, but Very Old Man Dylan voice has a different weight to it, even when compared to the Somewhat Less Old Man Dylan of his late ’90s/early ’00s run of albums. He’s keenly aware of when this voice sounds profound and when it sounds funny, and this song is the perfect vehicle for playing to both strengths. You can always hear the jokes in this one coming as the music rolls up to the punctuation of the riff, but the deeper lines mostly hit you when you’re off balance.
June 18th, 2020 11:30pm
Sonic Youth’s records have a way of reflecting the environments in which they were made – Confusion Is Sex and Sister evoke different angles on the gritty Manhattan of the ’80s, Experimental Jet Set Trash and No Star is a snapshot of downtown Manhattan just as a new wave of gentrification set in, and Murray Street and Sonic Nurse have an open and pastoral feel that made sense given that half the band had moved out to Western Massachusetts.
Washing Machine, released in 1995 only a year after Experimental Jet Set, covers similar ground but it conjures up very different weather. Whereas Experimental Jet Set sounds like overcast skies and cramped subways, Washing Machine feels like walking around the city on a gorgeous sunny day. The guitar tones are clean and bright, and the music feels light and spacious, largely because there’s very little bass guitar on the record. The classic Sonic Youth tension and noise is still there to signify the city-ness of it all, but the palette brings out the beauty of the place rather than the grime.
Lee Ranaldo sings on two Washing Machine songs – “Skip Tracer” and “Saucer-Like” – and his lyrics directly address living in the city. In a sense they are two sides of a thematic coin, with “Skip Tracer” written from the perspective of a New Yorker who feels out of place anywhere else – “L.A. is more confusing now than anywhere I’ve ever been to, I’m from New York City, breathe it out and let it in” – and “Saucer-Like” is more about drifting along in Manhattan and embracing the joy to be had in feeling small in this grand and densely populated place.
A lot of writing about New York tends to be about someone feeling as though the city and its people are encroaching on them in some way, like it’s this external pressure sapping their energy and driving them mad. “Saucer-Like” is the opposite, in which internal anxieties dissolve just by going out into the world and watching so much life go on all around you. “I’m having a wonderful vision of the city today,” he sings during the bridge, observing the landscape and architecture, and boats coming into docks along the coast. He sounds so grounded and grateful to be “just a little free,” and fully present in his surroundings while lost in his thoughts.
June 17th, 2020 2:17pm
Fat Albert Einstein’s track for “Leopards” feels unsteady and wild, it feels like you’re knowingly walking into dangerous territory. A lot of that is just that it’s built on a foundation of tinny hi-hat patter that signals anxiety and structural fragility, but it’s also in the way the main organ riff seems to lunge out menacingly and how the bass line seems to lurk around the beat rather than groove. The rappers in Armand Hammer take slightly different approaches to the beat: Billy Woods’ verse expands on the environment evoked by the track by fixating on specific scenery and grounding his story in Flatbush, Brooklyn before shifting into more overtly horrific imagery. Elucid’s verse leans into the unstable feel, packing his lines with quick-cut images like Ghostface, but letting his performance fall out of the groove as the music gets woozy.
June 16th, 2020 7:03pm
Shamir Bailey’s guitar parts on “On My Own” remind me how Pixies songs could feel raw and brutish but also graceful and gleaming at the same time. Bailey’s lyrics do a similar thing, where he’s pushing through dark and lonely feelings towards a softer, more self-accepting state of mind. The point, at least in this song, is that this is all a continuum, and the rough defines the smooth. The most powerful parts of the song are when his voice conveys vulnerability and triumph in equal measure, as if to underline that the vulnerability kinda IS the triumph here.
June 15th, 2020 3:05pm
The tensions in “Hailey” are constantly shifting around Marques Martin’s lyrics, suggesting an emotional context of anxiety and fear that’s often in stark contrast with the confidence – or affected nonchalance – of his words. Martin’s arrangement is dynamic and thoughtful, giving space for more relaxing or neutral moments and rendering some of the more nervous sections with subtlety and nuance rather than going with full-on claustrophobic dread. The overall effect of the song is a very vivid portrait of a young man sorting through a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings. There’s ego and obsession, genuine affection and snarky dismissiveness, and layers of different sorts of fear overlapping with joy and a sincere desire to be vulnerable.
June 11th, 2020 2:17pm
The Alchemist’s arrangement for “Something to Rap About” reshapes David T. Walker’s smooth and elegant instrumental “On Love” into something that sounds even more sleek and luxurious, or as Tyler the Creator describes it as he enters the track, “this sounds like the boat I haven’t bought yet.” Both Tyler and Freddie Gibbs take the relaxed, dreamy, and opulent tone of the music as a starting point for exploring the idea of success, with Gibbs focusing mainly on the economic pitfalls of actually having money and just wanting to “live to 93 and see the old me” and Tyler writing about dealing with other people’s resentment of his achievements. The latter rapper’s raspy monotone contrasts nicely with Walker’s crisp chords, and it’s hard not to be charmed by the bit at the end where he boasts about getting the verse down in one take but apologizes for mispronouncing Mykonos.
June 10th, 2020 8:05pm
Terrace Martin packs a lot into just over three minutes with “Pig Feet” – radio drama, nods to jazz and fusion, dive-bombing guitars, rapid-fire raps from Denzel Curry and Daylyt that sound as thought they’re charging at the heavy drums rather than riding the flow of the beat. It’s dense but incredibly focused and direct, laying out the immediate aftermath of racist police brutality in the skit sequences and the ongoing psychological impact of this being a day-to-day reality in Curry and Daylyt’s verses. Curry thrives on tracks that allow him to be forceful and bold, and on this one his words pop off with a righteous indignation that gives voice to rage while Kamasi Washington’s sax articulates mourning and despair in contrast. Daylyt’s verse is more nimble and wordy like Inspectah Deck or Talib Kweli in their ’90s prime, and pushes through the pain towards a defiant optimism by the end of the track.
June 9th, 2020 2:28pm
The best posse cuts make the most of contrasting the voices of every rapper on the track, the way RZA deliberately constructed Wu-Tang songs around vocal timbres like they were instruments in a band. “JU$T” pulls this off beautifully by approaching the same lyric – “look at all these slave masters posing on your dollar” – from three different angles with escalating intensity. Pharrell lays things out in his hook with a cool-headed logic, presenting every “respectable” path towards class mobility as simply buying into the oppressive capitalism of those in power. His voice, always so smooth and chill, sugars the pill a bit, whereas Killer Mike repeats the refrain without diluting the bitterness even a bit. And then when Zach de la Rocha finishes the chorus, it all tips over into vicious unrestrained fury and disgust. It’s a little bit like the galaxy brain meme.
The first two times you hear de la Rocha on the track it’s like a warning, and when he shows up for a full verse at the end his tone shifts expectations. He’s not doing his tension-to-scream move here, but rather adapting his intense presence to the minimalism of the track. He’s a voice of moral clarity expressing uncertainty about the immediate future, sure that something is about to blow up but wary about expecting the sort of revolution he wants. He’s concerned about half-measures – “how can we be the peace when the beast gonna reach for the worst?” – and skeptical of how much anyone is willing to fight. And in the end, he’s cynical about every movement just being turned into a sellable aesthetic, which is something he knows all too well from his career: “The breath in me is weaponry, but for you, it’s just money.”
June 8th, 2020 3:01am
This is one of the most inventive covers I’ve heard in ages. Chad Clark keeps the core of The Pretenders’ song while completely reimagining its arrangement, starting with trading out the original’s incessant nervous shake for a more graceful but dazed tone. He keeps James Honeyman-Scott’s chimey lead guitar part, but whereas the original only foregrounds it towards the end, the Beauty Pill centers it. (I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason this cover exists is because Clark just wanted to explore the possibilities of that melodic motif.) The tension and clatter of the source material is in this version, but it comes out sounding more sparkly and lovely, and Clark’s vocal comes across as sort of wistful and reflective. That’s the key thing, really – even though Chrissie Hynde’s lyrics were always in the past tense, the music made the awkward and scary moments she was describing feel very urgent and present tense. Clark embraces that past tense, sounding a lot more nostalgic than shaken.
June 3rd, 2020 3:42pm
“Nevermind the Enemy” is a song of gleeful schadenfreude, and while that’s not necessarily the most admirable feeling in the world, it can certainly be valid. The context for this song is petty – at this point in his career Eric Bachmann was writing mostly about the record industry and scene politics from the perspective of someone who was both highly competitive and likely to opt out of participating in anything he thought was distasteful or corrupt. It’s extremely smug but in a very fun way, and because he’s so focused on repping for underdogs and losers it’s relatable and inclusive, and always comes across as punching up. In this song, he’s proudly declaring “I found a reason to quit” and is inviting the listener to opt out too. He makes it sound like watching sports – “we can watch their plans fall through,” “never mind your friends ’cause you can make a joke of them.” The music sounds scrappy and energetic, with Bachmann’s distorted riff punctuated by sharp tones that sound like a truck backing up. It’s always made me think of getting in on a joy ride.
June 1st, 2020 4:28pm
If Damon Albarn had written “On Your Own” for Parklife or The Great Escape it could have fit in just fine with the sort of fussy ultra-British arrangements he was using at the time: dial down the garage rock, dial up the music hall. But the arrangement Blur arrived at for the song on their self-titled album is far more inspired, particularly the odd guitar effects that Graham Coxon put on the main riff to make the end of the melodic phrase sound stuttered and broken. Everything in the song sounds like it’s been blasted out just beyond limits, like the band are kids playing too rough with their toys because they’re having too much fun in the moment to show any caution.
As with everything else on the record, it’s an expertly built tune dressed up in a carefully crafted simulation of carefree messiness. Coxon is going wild with his tone, but it’s all just-so, and the big shouty sing along chorus feels weirdly spontaneous despite being the crux of the song. The biggest reason this feels so loose and free isn’t entirely because Albarn and Coxon know how to make something sound this way, but mostly because the joy they’re bringing to this music isn’t something that can be faked. “On Your Own” describes tasteless scenes and embarrassing moments, but also expresses the pleasures of letting go of your ego and embracing stupid fun. When Albarn sings “my joy of life is on a roll, and we’ll all be the same in the end because then you’re on your own,” it’s just a more wordy way of saying “YOLO.”
May 31st, 2020 9:52pm
Shudder to Think’s 50,000 B.C. is technically the group’s final album but is nevertheless a transitional work that falls between the odd collision of post-punk and prog rock on their 1994 classic Pony Express Record and the genre-hopping pastiche found on their late ’90s soundtrack work and most of primary songwriter Craig Wedren’s subsequent work outside the band. The prog elements and Wedren’s fascination with fitting his melodies and lyrics into odd meters remain, but it’s all smoothed out into a bright, shiny tunes that foreground the glam rock that was previously buried beneath all the jagged edges of their music.
“Survival,” the most overtly glam song on the record, is built around a slinky melody that makes the most of Wedren’s glorious vocal range and wry attitude. The lyrics allude to his fairly recent experience of surviving cancer without directly announcing it or even necessarily being entirely about that topic. About a quarter of the lyrics are written in Wedren’s abstract absurdist style, but he sings lines like “grease the temple” and “balloons light the lawns” in a way that suggests he has a very precise personal meaning in mind that’s just not for us to know.
The rest of his words sketch out the mood of a man who feels some gratitude for his luck, but also a bewilderment when it comes to what to make of his life in the aftermath. He sounds like he’s attempting to weigh the significance of a lot of things – why he got spared, the value of particular relationships, the prospect of not doing all that much with his new lease on life – and all the scales are broken. I think when it comes down to it, this is a song about shrugging off all the heaviness of meaning and learning to just enjoy the simple pleasures of being alive and getting to write a song, and another one after that.
May 28th, 2020 10:04pm
I wish that Carly Rae Jepsen would or could give her new album a distinct title rather than call it Dedicated Side B, which bashfully suggests the material is not as strong as the music on Dedicated and not worthy of being considered as a record in its own right despite being of roughly equal quality and all her music being relentlessly consistent in style and theme to the point of monomania. This is probably to a large extent a record company decision that allows her to release multiple albums within a particular production and promotion budget, and given the way she talks about her prolific nature might also speak to how she does not differentiate her output beyond “eras” of writing and recording. And while this approach plays into the underdog narrative that drives her career – “her b-sides are better than most pop stars’ album tracks!!!” – I think it is ultimately something that undermines her as an artist. Why not own it more? It’s not as though Radiohead felt compelled to call Amnesiac “Kid A Side B” despite it essentially being outtakes from the sessions for that record released as an album a year later.
“This Is What They Say” certainly fits into the “her b-sides are better than most album tracks” narrative in that it’s definitely in the top percentile of all her work and yet has been lumped in with the supposedly second rate tunes. That said, with Jepsen’s music being so uniform lyrically and musically all matters of differentiation are extremely subjective. How do I actually make a convincing case that this boppy, joyful pop tune about having a mind-consuming crush is better than all her other boppy, joyful pop tunes about having a mind-consuming crush? Her level of craft is always solid but a lot of them do nothing for me, yet I think this one is excellent. You’re just going to have to take my word for it, I guess.
May 27th, 2020 1:46pm
“Waves of Love” reminds me a lot of late ’80s/very early ’90s pop rock aesthetics – think the Divinyls, or Roxette, or Alannah Myles – but with a deliberately retro drum machine beat and the wry playfulness of Elastica. All of that is a great recipe for a song, but the real draw here is the craft more than the particulars of the execution. The melody is terrific and the vocal nails a sultriness that doesn’t tip over into camp, and the arrangement has that sprezzatura thing of being very tidy and well put together while retaining a deliberate casual, quasi-tossed off feel.
