April 16th, 2020 12:22am
When I write about songs sung in languages I cannot understand I generally try to find an English translation. This is helpful in getting the idea of the song, but it can do a weird thing in my brain where my understanding of the song is at a remove from my experience of it – in this case, it’s also in knowing the translation has some really interesting phrases but not being sure if it’s accurate. “They say I’ve been tricked because I’m stupidly good-hearted” naturally goes along with the title, which is sung in English, but I like the implication that being “good-hearted” is linked with stupidity, and how that makes the overwhelming sugary tone of the song seem a bit hectoring. Later in the song she sings something to the effect of “I feel like I’m the protagonist in a movie,” and I like the way that reinforces the notion that the “Sweet Talker” is a straight-up villain. There’s a real teen emotional logic to this song, where a relatively minor drama is blown out in scale, and results in an extreme shift from naiveté to cynicism.
April 14th, 2020 2:17am
“The Garbage Men” has a sort of shabby grandeur to it, particularly in the contrast of the unrestrained clattering percussion and a sampled horn loop that’s like a very rough approximation of a sentimental string arrangement from an old Hollywood film. It sounds like a guy stumbling around drunk through a big melodramatic moment, and maybe it’s only melodramatic in his own mind. Hamilton Leithauser’s voice is perfect for this vibe, especially when he really leans into his yowl, and his lyrics sketch out the perspective of a guy who’s down on his luck but wisely sticks to evocative details over laying out a specific plot. The main thing here is just understanding his feeling – unwilling to surrender too much pride, resentful of the haves, and fearing he’s on the edge of fully becoming a have-not.
April 13th, 2020 1:46pm
The Strokes is the type of act where the aesthetic premise is always the same – electronic music but played with rock instruments as rock songs – but the approach and execution changes. The interesting thing about their new record The New Abnormal is how that high concept, which was fairly subtle at the start of their career, has become foregrounded to the point where some of the songs just sound like techno without rock and roll obfuscation. “The Adults Are Talking” doesn’t go quite that far, but the precise click of the percussion and clacking of the trebly guitar notes is exaggeratedly robotic, even for them. The more notable shift in this song is in Julian Casablancas’ vocal, which sound remarkably relaxed and smooth for a guy who sounds somewhat distressed most of the time. The more subtle and seductive tone suits him well, particularly in a song that simmers rather than burns.
April 10th, 2020 1:55pm
Laura Marling sings with tone that suggests total clarity of mind, as though it would be a waste of her time to write from a perspective of uncertainty. “Strange Girl” is a character sketch of a young woman struggling to get by in a harsh economy that’s rigged against her, and while Marling conveys a lot of warmth and affection for her, she avoids romanticizing her or indulging her vanities. “Please don’t bullshit me,” she sings at the end of the third verse, her voice shifting from soft to blunt to emphasize the “shit” syllable. She’s not trying to call her out, but rather just get across that she doesn’t need to work so hard to get her empathy. The song is easy going and loose, and subtle in its graces – the structure is pretty straight forward and doesn’t offer much flair until near the end where she offers two different lovely bridges in a row before falling back into the chorus.
April 9th, 2020 1:33pm
The first time I heard this song I had no idea who it was by, and was legitimately shocked to discover it was the singer of Paramore, a band I’ve never had any affection for in either their emo phase or their pivot to boppy pop a few years ago. Whereas the songs Williams recorded with that band tended towards sledgehammer dynamics and guitar/keyboard tones I can only describe as “overwhelmingly corporate,” this new single has a more delicate feel and a very “120 Minutes” atmosphere. I hear traces of Siouxsie, Throwing Muses, The Cure, and early Björk in this, but also a lot of Radiohead circa In Rainbows. The shift in aesthetic suits Williams well, and the more pensive tone and loose groove give space for greater lyrical nuance and subtle harmonies with the members of Boygenius, who guest on the track. I’m particularly fond of the way all four singers hit the fourth utterance of “roses” or “lotus” in the chorus, with the unusual emphasis making the melody pop out more than it would otherwise.
April 7th, 2020 11:53pm
The last time I wrote about this artist she was a mysterious and extremely prolific Bandcamp artist called Zizi Raimondi, but sometime recently she eliminated all her Bandcamp presence and rebranded as Kamilita. She’s still prolific, has put a lot of energy into her visual aesthetic on Instagram and YouTube, and is somehow even more mysterious now. “Can U” is one of her best experiments with dance music to date – she gives you a good thumping beat, but surrounds it with a dizzying array of vocal and keyboard harmonies that seem to spin out of it in circles around the downbeat like a spider web. The lyrics take a sort of banal phrase – “can you get into the zone?” – and nudges it towards a philosophical abstraction. Like, what IS the zone, man? How can you truly get IN it? Why is she in the zone, but I am not? When her voice shifts towards angelic high notes similar to peak Alison Goldfrapp, it’s just far too pretty and graceful not to feel sort of profound.
April 6th, 2020 3:01pm
The first time I heard this song was the first time I saw Christina Schneider and Locate S,1 perform live last year, when they were opening for Of Montreal at the Bell House. I was immediately blown away by the verse melody – “women in love, women in airplanes first class” – and went back through Schneider’s catalog desperate to find the song. When she started releasing singles for her new record Personalia, I was frustrated because as fantastic as those songs were, they were not this one. But finally, here it is: “After the Final Rose.”
The melodic part that stuck with me for months is still the highlight of the song for me, but I’m fascinated by how it fits into the overall composition. “After the Final Rose” feels woozy and off-kilter, and as she does in a lot of her songs, Schneider’s melodies connect at odd tangents and flow in unusual, seemingly asymmetrical meters. It’s still basically a pop song with pleasing melodies, but it’s deliberately disorienting. Her voice is calm and vaguely authoritative as she sings lyrics that satirize the reality sow The Bachelor what she’s called “corporate feminism and its lethal effects on romance.” Her vocal tone is perfect for this level of irony – she sounds distant and unemotional, but there’s just enough camp in her phrasing to convey her intent and low-key contempt for the show’s perversion of things she holds dear.
April 2nd, 2020 6:34pm
“Sweet June Nectar” has an an arrangement that offers a steady drip of pleasant surprises, from when it shifts from a blue-eyed soul piano ballad into a more Burt Bacharach-ish space, or when it moves from cinematic strings to an extended scorcher of a guitar solo by Jeff Parker over the extended outro. It’s remarkable how seamlessly this song moves between a casual intimate feel and a more dramatic and epic sense of scale, and how this happens without losing the thread of gentle soulfulness in the vocal performance. I hear a lot of Jeff Buckley in Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon’s voice, in both his tone and phrasing. The white boy soul thing comes very naturally to him, but he doesn’t overdo it. As with everything in this song, the dynamics are perfectly modulated.
March 31st, 2020 9:13pm
When I listen to Dua Lipa’s new record I think about how many people are out there are hanging on to this joyful, bass-heavy disco pop record as a lifeline in a very bleak time. I imagine all the people dancing to this album by themselves, fantasizing about dancing to the songs with other people at parties and clubs and live performances. Then I think about what it’s going to be like when people finally get that opportunity, and the way delayed gratification can heighten experiences. Imagining this catharsis feels sort of cathartic in and of itself, because it forces you to feel optimistic and look forward to something in the future rather than dreading it all.
“Pretty Please” is produced by Ian Kirkpatrick, who previously worked with Lipa on her smash hits “New Rules” and “Don’t Start Now,” plus career highlights by Selena Gomez, Jason Derulo, and frequent co-writer Julia Michaels. Kirkpatrick and Michaels co-wrote this one with Lipa and Caroline Ailin, and it’s a perfect synthesis of their respective aesthetics – sleek, bass-forward, a brisk but vaguely nervous beat, and Michael’s distinctive style of lightly syncopated topline melody. As with Michaels and Kirkpatrick’s previous collaboration on Gomez’s brilliant 2016 single “Bad Liar,” the music sets up a horny/anxious tone that the lyrics follow through on. Lipa’s singing about her inability to play it cool with someone she’s started dating that she’s extremely into, and deciding “fuck it, may as well just be transparent.” The clever move here is that the song doesn’t quite land on that resolution – it starts its story in medias res, and keeps you fully in the moment of her epiphany.
March 31st, 2020 12:23am
Sorry have a similar vocal and musical dynamic as The XX, but whereas that band always conveys an aching romanticism in their crisp minimalism, this group communicates raw feelings bent out of shape by cynicism and complications in their jagged, deliberately clunky minimalism. (I hear echoes of Tom Waits and Micachu in their more broken-sounding arrangements.) “Right Round the Clock” sounds like what would normally be a sexy, strutting song tilted at a strange angle, and the vocal interplay between Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen is deadpan but not so much so that it comes off as a joke. They’re singing about celebrity with a mix of lust and self-loathing – one falls in love with the idea of a mysterious beautiful woman, the other fantasizes about living out her reality. They know it’s hollow and fake, but they can’t help but be seduced by the notion. The best part of the song comes when they swap out the first chorus for another that interpolates Tears for Fears’ maudlin classic “Mad World” with ironic new lyrics: “The dreams in which we’re famous are the best I’ve ever had.”
March 30th, 2020 2:08am
I’ve been waking up with this song in my head a lot in recent weeks, as if my brain was searching for a song in my memory that would be almost too on-the-nose for the circumstances of the world at the moment. The sentiment could not be more clear and sincere, especially from a singer-songwriter who deals so often in irony and dark humor: “You’re all that I have, so please don’t die.” It doesn’t take much effort to ignore the parts of this song that are about someone struggling with addiction and nudge it into something more general about being very afraid of losing someone you love. The chorus, which hangs on a gorgeous melodic turn, is so pure in its emotion. The language is unusually plain and direct for a Father John Misty song, partly to convey an earnest wish, but also to let you linger on how helpless the phrase “please don’t die” sounds. It’s tugging on just a strand of hope, but in a lot of cases, it’s all you can really do.
March 27th, 2020 12:28am
“35.31” sounds like The Dixie Cups version of “Iko Iko” crossed with M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” with lyrics that directly reference OJ Da Juiceman’s “Make the Trap Say Aye.” It’s a song that calls out for annotation, and I’m sure unpacking all the history in the references and musical elements packed into these four minutes would make for a great book. But as deep as this gets, or as bleak as Donald Glover’s lyrics from the perspective of a young drug dealer can be, the song is ultimately a bouncy, joyful bop above all else. The “Iko Iko” vibe suits Glover very well, flattering all the most charming aspects of his voice and giving him a great opportunity to build a glorious dance spectacle around it that would probably invite a lot of annotation too. I get the sense that Glover enjoys being clever, perhaps out of a desire to be taken more seriously, but I think his impulses as an entertainer prevail in a song like this which is so purely musical that the big ideas are all a bonus.
March 26th, 2020 2:21am
When Pearl Jam transitioned into a band that was more invested in live performance than anything else around the early 2000s their records lost a lot of the spark and vitality of their first wave of albums in the ‘90s. Whereas those albums – particularly the first three – have a high stakes do-or-die energy to them, the band settled into familiar patterns and the more stable emotions of grown men with great lives. There’s value in that for sure, but I think anyone who grew up with Pearl Jam in their prime could notice that high drama missing in their music even when they delivered some very strong songs here and there over the past two decades. But now, somehow when the cathartic energy of Pearl Jam feels most necessary, they’ve reconnected with their muse on Gigaton, their most consistently vibrant, tuneful, and emotionally resonant work in years. It’s not much like the robust psychodrama of Ten, but it’s in the spirit of the socially engaged and musically restless energy of Vs. and Vitalogy.
A lot of this comes down to Eddie Vedder feeling freaked out by everything any reasonable person is scared of today – the sense that everything is breaking or broken, that every sort of doom is coming at us at once. He doesn’t get bogged down in topicality – these songs have been gestating for years and are definitely meant to played live for years to come – but they’re rooted in a time and place, and the perspective of someone who’s old enough to have accrued some wisdom but still baffled, confused, and angry.
“Never Destination,” an up-tempo number that feels light and breezy despite the tension at the core of the arrangement, is sung from the point of view of someone struggling with the value of distraction and denial in the face of a crisis. Vedder recognizes the need for it, but he’s skeptical too, spitting out the phrase “more denial!” at the end of the chorus. He’s frustrated but knows he’s just as guilty as anyone in playing “a little trick” on his own mind. I love that he allows for this tangle of sanctimonious anger, guilt, and delusional bliss. It feels very true, especially at this particular moment in time.
March 24th, 2020 4:17pm
In textural terms, “You’ve Got My Number” is a departure for Margaret Glaspy. I’s all harsh electronic textures and robotic funk, like a more aggressive garage rock take on Jimmy Jam and Jerry Lewis’s production style on Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814. But the core of the song is pure Glaspy – elegant melodies that come out sounding casual as she sings them in a light drawl, and lyrics that express a feeling in plain language with asides that allow for conditions and complications. Thematically this one isn’t far off from her breakout single “You & I” in the sense that she’s addressing someone she feels an intense lust for, and laying out the terms of the situation. In both songs there’s an acknowledgment that she has no idea how she’ll feel in the future, and allows for that possibility without stamping out the fire of the feeling in the moment. But whereas the relationship in “You & I” is imbalanced on her side, the tables seem to be turned here, and she’s the one with something to lose. With this in mind, the in-the-red funk feels both persuasive and urgent.
March 23rd, 2020 9:50pm
David Longstreth has a very particular style with melody, to the point that his work is immediately recognizable no matter who is singing. “Overlord” is one of his best tunes, in large part because he doesn’t get in the way of how pleasing the melody is and opted to subvert it lyrically rather than musically. The lyrics, co-written and sung by Maia Friedman, come from the perspective of someone fully on board with a fascist mindset and is sincerely selling their point of view to someone else. The warm and wholesome tone of the arrangement and vocal harmonies aren’t necessarily at odds with the lyrics, but highlight the way the seeming safety of fascism can feel welcoming. That is, until the mask slips, and it all falls apart.
March 19th, 2020 9:04pm
“Go Back” is a smooth R&B song filtered through a restless, genre-bouncing aesthetic that leaves it sounding like everything but also not quite like anything in particular. Their sound is immaculate and lightly funky, sorta like Phoenix in their underrated Alphabetical phase, but there’s a plaintive and sentimental quality that veers closer to mainstream pop. As always, I’m fascinated by the way Korean artists shift between Korean and English lyrics – in this case, the chorus is sung entirely in English but since it’s mostly just the guy singing “where should I go back if I go back?,” you only just get enough to pick up on the general emotional context. I bring this up over and over mainly because I feel like this strategy cuts to the core of how most people hear pop songs: Lyrics are useful for grounding the feeling of a song, but when it comes down to it people mostly just respond to purely musical elements.
March 18th, 2020 10:18pm
“Think I’ll Stay” is warm in melody but ice cold in arrangement, like a Paul McCartney song filtered through the severity of Wire and the palette of Kraftwerk. Westerman’s lyrics suit the ambiguity of the music, with him sketching out a grim scene of someone struggling with chronic pain, but then sort of shrugging that off in the chorus and deciding life is still worthwhile despite the agony. Given the grey tonality and Westerman’s sober, Eno-ish voice it doesn’t sound particularly affirming – at most it’s a sort of neutral cautious optimism. It’s like running life through a cost-benefit analysis and finding out, yeah, it’s still good to be alive.
March 17th, 2020 10:01pm
This is the lady Gaga I love the most – joyous, extremely catchy, and heavily indebted to the pop aesthetics of VERY SPECIFICALLY the late 80s. The last time she hit this mark was on the album Born This Way, particularly on the title track, “Fashion of His Love,” and “The Edge of Glory.” Most people hear the similarities to Blonde Ambition era Madonna, but Gaga goes a lot deeper – I hear Erasure, Debbie Gibson, Roxette, Stacey Q, Belinda Carlisle, T’pau, and late 80s Cher in the mix. As with everything Gaga does it’s the result of internalizing a personal canon and synthesizing it into familiar new things.
“Stupid Love” is a jolt of ecstatic, carefree pop in a moment where escapism has never felt more important. Gaga is no stranger to making supercharged dance records that are engineered to overpower the listener, but this time her repeatedly slamming every joy receptor in your brain with a hammer feels especially welcome. It’s a cliche to say you surrender to a dance song, but it really feels that way here. It’s like she’s force-quitting your brain.
March 16th, 2020 8:59pm
There is a voyeuristic quality to Tennis’ music, in that they are a married couple and Alaina Moore seems to mostly sing autobiographical lyrics about her life with her husband and collaborator Patrick Riley. There’s never anything particularly revealing in the lyrics but a song like “How to Forgive,” which is about letting go of anger built up towards a partner, makes me wonder what it’s like to work in this sort of arrangement. It must be odd to work on a song that’s putting you on blast, right? It’s likely this song was written after a conflict was resolved and a lot of things had already been discussed, but it’s still an interesting form of shared catharsis. I suppose it’s also notable that this is not at all an angry song – the music is deliberately sweet and girlish, as if to sugar the pill of negative emotions, and Moore’s lyrics are mostly just her questioning the logic of dwelling on anger. It’s very very conciliatory, and I wonder if that would be the case if the song was not written and performed with her partner.
March 12th, 2020 3:23pm
“Blueberry Beads” is tightly composed but heavily atmospheric, with John Carroll Kirby leaning hard on sustained piano chords and a constant patter of cymbal hits to evoke a misty haze in the negative space between lower pitched riffs. The feeling of it reminds me a lot of Herbie Hancock on his Sextant record, which aimed for a fusion of spiritual jazz and hard funk. It’s a very cosmic vibe, but there’s also a heavy earthiness to the arrangement, mostly in the way Kirby keeps a very deep and lurching low end. This only ends up exaggerating the brightness of the high notes he plays, so the lead accents pop like lights on a dark skyline.
“Blueberry Faygo” sounds about as colorful and fizzy as its title suggests. Lil Mosey’s chorus is so catchy it borders on sounding like a jingle, and Callan’s track has the bright and joyful sound of early Kanye West productions. This largely comes down to Callan’s very clever use of a sped-up sample from Johnny Gill’s early 90s hit “My My My,” which was produced by LA Reid and Babyface. It’s interesting to hear a Babyface track get the “Chipmunk soul” treatment – it’s not tremendously different in effect from a 60s or 70s R&B cut through this filter, but his particular slickness and smooth chords hits differently. The track feels extra breezy.
Support Me on Ko-fi
