Rosalía “Milionària”

“Milionària” is the more joyful half of a pop diptych in which the Spanish singer Rosalía parodies materialism and denounces capitalism in a mix of lyrics sung in Catalan, Spanish, and English. This is the parody half, in which she daydreams about outrageous wealth over a joyful beat, and declares that she knows that it is her birthright to become a millionaire. On its own, it would actually be hard to tell that this is actually an anti-capitalist song – this sort of wealth fantasy is so baked into popular music now that it always just seems earnest, and the English refrain “fucking money, man” signals frustration more than bitterness. “Dio$ No$ Libre del Dinero,” the flip of the double-A side single and second half of the music video, is the full reveal of her perspective – translated to English, it’s “may God save us from money.” From dreaming about it, from needing it, from having it. She likens it to poison, and in this context, “Milionària” can be heard as both seduction and intoxication.

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Little Simz “Venom”

“Venom” opens with a discordant string part that sounds like it’s pulled from a horror film score – trilling, agitated, menacing. Little Simz begins her rapid-fire rap within 8 seconds, but the music has already spiked your anxiety levels. Simz’ verses start at a high level of tension and she only amps that up as she goes along, spitting out syllables with dazzling speed and startling precision. Imagine a ninja hurling a handful of throwing stars and each one hitting a specific target at exactly the right spot. Simz’ rage in this song is perfectly calibrated, with each point landing with a deliberate balance of clear-eyed authority and poisonous spite. The most brilliant moment comes about 40 seconds in as her first verse winds up to the key line – “Never giving credit where it’s due ‘cause you don’t like pussy in power…VENOM” – and the strings drop out on the last word, replaced by heavy, crushing percussion.

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Thee Oh Sees “Henchlock”

John Dwyer approaches songwriting in terms of iteration within constraints. There’s a clear dynamic template in place for Thee Oh Sees songs, and while that can seem very specific and limiting, Dwyer somehow finds room for endless variation. “Henchlock” is one of his boldest excursions yet – it’s a song that extends beyond the 20 minute mark with a groove that nods to Can in their Tago Mago phase, but is filled out with horns that sound as though they’ve been yanked out of a James Brown record and a series of organ and synthesizer solos that have more of a ’70s jazz aesthetic. This song could go over simply on the scale of its ambitions, but it’s also one of Dwyer’s finest compositions, packed with enough top-shelf melodies and riffs to keep it interesting well beyond the point where it should probably get a little boring.

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Thom Yorke “Impossible Knots”

Thom Yorke’s non-Radiohead work is often quite good, but has a way of demystifying his assumed genius and reminding us all that every member of Radiohead is crucial in achieving what they have over the past three decades. When Yorke is left to his own devices he tends to stray from straightforward melody and concise structure in favor of pulsing, gradually building electronic compositions that could easily pass for music released on labels like Border Community, Kompakt, and Hyperdub. To my ears, it always sounds like music that the other members of Radiohead might reject for being too derivative of contemporary artists, or aim to edit into tighter and/or more dynamic songs that would move far away from the apparent emotional and compositional goals of the work. It’s music that exists because Yorke is alone and he’s free to let go of familiar strengths and explore less developed elements of his skill set without having to compromise.

Anima, his fifth solo album including his record as Atoms for Peace and his score for the remake of Suspiria, is the point at which working in electronic music is no longer a “less developed element of his skill set.” It’s been 13 years since The Eraser, and nearly 20 years since he first started seriously working within this tradition on Kid A. Whereas The Eraser now feels somewhat tentative in hindsight and still fairly rooted in Radiohead-ness and both Amok and Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes often felt slightly tossed off, Anima sounds like it comes from a place of full confidence. It doesn’t have a “side project” air about it; it feels like a major career statement that is meant to be taken as seriously as any of his Radiohead work.

And yet I am not terribly moved by it. For the most part this is art I appreciate far more than I actively like it, and the song I enjoy the most – “Impossible Knots” – sounds like a late period Radiohead song that just happened to find its way to this record rather than whatever the band does next. To some extent this is purely a matter of what musical ideas get me going at this point in time: I prefer a busier composition, I want more harmony, I would rather a song move between distinct dynamics than subtly build upon small grooves. “Impossible Knots” has wonderfully jittery groove to it, starting with rattling high-hat sounds and the slow thud of its bass drum and moving into a bass line that seems like a line moving through a series of mazes. Yorke sings in his airiest falsetto, but that’s the only part of the composition that feels loose and free, as the synth drones feel weighty and oppressive like excessive humidity on a hot day. The song doesn’t allow for much in the way of cathartic release, but in the larger context of the rigid and dour Anima, it actually does serve as the climax of the record as the penultimate track. And maybe that’s part of why Anima doesn’t fully connect with me at the moment – this is quite enough claustrophobia for me, thank you.

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Gena Rose Bruce “Angel Face”

“Angel Face” is a song about unrequited love, but it’s sung from the perspective of someone who has clearly moved on from being heartbroken about it to a state of bitter acceptance. It’s not an angry song but there’s certainly some resentment in Gena Rose Bruce’s voice as she sings about the object of her desire feeling like “God’s gift to the world,” and while they could be just as arrogant and egotistical as she’s making them out to be, it might just be a matter of her taking them off a pedestal she put them on while she was caught up in infatuation. The composition of the track is brilliant in the way it gradually builds from just a mildly nervous pulse and her fragile, lovely voice up to a sort of muted rock catharsis at the end. In that final sequence she repeats a very familiar line from pop history – “I can’t make you love me” – and her phrasing strips out the usual pathos and replaces it with a cold resolve, like she’s finally just killing the feeling forever.

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Hatchie “Unwanted Guest”

Hatchie is an artist whose music always sounds so familiar that it can feel like she’s deliberately trying to give the listener a “deja vu” sensation. Is she lifting a melody and texture from a specific old shoegaze or goth song from the late 80s/early 90s, or is it just generally sorta that vibe? My knowledge isn’t deep enough to go full “trainspotter” on her, but I do appreciate her attention to detail and dynamics. “Unwanted Guest” is her best song to date, and not coincidentally, it’s also her most dramatic. There’s a very Cure sort of bombast to this one – the suggestion of vast scale and enormous noise, but glossy and refined in its tonality. Her voice reminds me a lot of Siouxsie her, mostly in timbre but also in her confidence and authority in how she sings the verses. The most musically exciting bit of the song reminds me a little of Siouxsie too – the ascending melodic hook “put me on your list of hearts to haunt” somewhat echoes the similarly glorious “nothing or no one will ever make me let you down” refrain of “Kiss Them for Me.”

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Crumb “Ghostride”

“Ghostride” is a slow, gentle, hazy song about living in a daze. Lila Ramani sings about feeling stuck “on automatic” and being reminded she’s alive by mundane stimulation in the back of a car. She’s passively going along with moving from place to place, but her mind is either somewhere else or entirely turned off, depending on the moment. There’s a bit of sadness and introspection, but it’s mostly just a pleasant sort of disassociation. The sound of the song is psychedelic, but without a lot the usual atmospheric signifiers of that vibe – it’s like the ambience has been cut out entirely in favor of a dry, clean, uncanny recording aesthetic.

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Kate Bollinger “I Don’t Wanna Lose”

“I Don’t Wanna Lose” has a light, easy-going feel to it, but under the seeming tranquility of the music is a tangle of confusion, fear, and insecurity. Kate Bollinger confronts all of this with modesty and self-deprecating wit – “so what if it’s all my decisions / or my indecision / oh, I just can’t pick one” – but doesn’t deny herself the weight of her emotions. Given the tone of her words and the graceful and relaxed tone of her arrangement, the anxiety at the heart of the song is placed in a greater context. There, but ultimately at scale with the rest of her life, and what’s around her. It’s like a coping mechanism set to music, like she’s carefully guiding herself through a maze of emotion to get to the desired point: “I just wanna win.”

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Sir Babygirl “Cheerleader”

“Cheerleader” is a very charged word, one that evokes a lot of overlapping anxieties about status, conformity, femininity, commodification of teen girls, and how Hollywood has packaged teen archetypes for generations. Kelsie Hogue gleefully dives into all of that in this bombastic and melodramatic pop song, but adds a few extra layers of angst by centering it on latent homoerotic desire and a fraught frenemy relationship between two girls. Hogue sings the song with a touch of irony – you’re certainly meant to hear it in the context of previous iterations of teen pop culture artifacts, and she’s aware of the heightened emotion of the characters. But even still, the level of commitment in the lyrics and vocal performance make it clear that this is coming from a very raw emotional place that’s only just getting filtered through glossiness, camp, and archetypes.

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Miss World “I Found A Girl”

As Miss World creates more music and videos, it’s clear to me that she’s a true auteur who is gradually creating her own distinctive aesthetic and iconography out of kitschy elements of the past and present. She’s kinda like the Anna Biller of indie rock, building fun but cleverly pointed art that on the surface comes off as frivolous because she’s mostly making references to junk culture made for women and the less glamorous elements of the internet.

“I Found A Girl” is Miss World in curatorial mode. The song was originally performed by an amateur singer called Roye’l on a public access show and spread as a minor video meme back in the early days of YouTube. Miss World’s cover of the song is not devoid of irony – she layers images of herself over the original footage in the video – but it’s very clear that her love for this song is entirely earnest. This is her best vocal performance to date – her timbre is uncannily similar to that of a young Madonna, and that along with the particular tone of the synths makes it sound like it could be a great lost mid-80s Madonna ballad.

The real joy of this recording is in how much she embraces the purity of Roye’l’s song, and sings it like the hit it ought to be. The hook is truly gorgeous, and I feel like my heart is glowing every time I hear her sing the phrase “I found her a girl, her name is Jikokoa!” The subtle tension in her version comes down to a bitter knowledge of how the world can be, and how first loves can go, but singing it all like she’s just trying to will more purity and kind-hearted joy into the world.

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Mabanua featuring Chara “Call On Me” (Knxwledge Remix)

Knxwledge’s remix of this song by the Japanese producer Mabanua is so drastically that it’s surprising to go back to the source material and find something rather boppy and twee. Knxwledge takes the vocal Chara and turns the melody sideways in a deep, humid funk track. His arrangement remakes her breathy performance as an R&B vocal, and brings out a raw sensuality that’s far more Adina Howard or TLC than anything remotely like J-Pop. It’s a cool trick, but also an assertion of Knxwledge’s powerful aesthetic. Listening to this, you get the sense that he could will most any song into his low-key but intensely sexual vibe.

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Ice Cream “Peanut Butter”

Do you ever stumble upon a song and just feel like “geez, were they trying to make me happy, like, me specifically?” Because that’s how this one is for me – it’s like the platonic ideal of the sort of independent pop music I was searching for all the time in the first seven or eight years of this site’s existence. The tunefulness and danceability of pop, but with the edge of rock. But usually in these things, the guitar parts are pretty simple, and sound like riffs presented with scare quotes. The guitar tone on “Peanut Butter” is far more distinctive and interesting – it’s very similar to Robert Fripp, but if Robert Fripp was inclined to do a guest spot on a Peaches song. It adds a touch of shiny glamour to the groove, and contrasts nicely with the emphatic and passionate tone of the vocals, which deliver low-key spiteful lyrics. It sounds raw, but sort of elegant.

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Black Midi “Speedway”

The lyrics of “Speedway” list off structures and spaces, a newly built city viewed both up close and from a distance. It’s the kind of song where the lyrics mostly serve as subtitles for the instrumental – even if there were no vocals, it’d be pretty obvious that this music was a meditation on geometry and structure. The video suggests itself: stark shots of clean new buildings and infrastructure, cut to the song’s abrupt staccato guitar chords and busy percussion. The contrast of those musical elements is the most appealing aspect – it’s like moving through a crowded, bustling space with a calm state of mind, navigating entirely on instinct.

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Adia Victoria “Devil Is A Lie”

“Devil Is A Lie” is a ballad that comes out of both jazz vocal and showtune traditions, but more specifically owes a debt to Fiona Apple and Jon Brion’s synergy of those styles on her second and third records. Adia Victoria doesn’t always work in this lane – her current record often sounds more like blues rock filtered through TV on the Radio vibes – but she ought to do songs like this more often as it really suits her raspy but expressive vocal style. The melody of this song is a delight, and there’s a very appealing low-key hamminess to Victoria’s delivery. Her phrasing is playful, but not so much that she obscures her struggles with temptation or her annoyance with “the stress of always having to be happy all the time.” The sweetness of the tune is undercut by bitterness and acidity, like the musical equivalent of a good dark chocolate.

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The Lonely Island “Focus on the Game”

The vast majority of The Lonely Island’s comedy has been focused on goofing on masculinity, and as they progress through their career their delight in mocking the absurdity of machismo only seems to intensify. In this way, The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience is the pinnacle of their catalog to date – a rap opera visual album about famed steroid abusers José Canseco and Mark McGwire at the peak of their baseball careers in the late 80s. The record isn’t so much about the real life Canseco and McGwire as it is about how the pre-adolescent Lonely Island guys imagined them to be, a fantasy of hyper-masculine success built out of the images and messages they’d internalized from absorbing ’80s culture as children.

The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience is hilarious; the only thing that’s been anywhere near as funny this year is the Lonely Island-produced I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. But it’s also incredibly sad in the way they explore their characters’ loneliness, paranoia, insecurity, and ‘roided-out rage. They’re just enormous two baby men obsessed with winning the love of their distant fathers, and oblivious to how other people are taking advantage of them. They love to objectify women and are obsessed with attaining their notion of male physical perfection, but chafe at being objectified by women.

“Focus on the Game” is the most melancholy song in Bash Brothers, and also probably the most lovely thing they’ve ever made in terms of pure melody. It’s a song about feeling lonely at the top – they’re both isolated and depressed, and terrified that their terrible secret about getting juiced up on steroids will come out and they’ll lose everything. The moment that kills me in this song is near the end where José and Mark’s perspectives overlap, and they address that they’re the only ones who truly understands the other. But this just pushes them apart, as they also realize that they’d be complicit in each other’s downfall. The phrase “you’re the only one who knows what it truly means to bash” shouldn’t be as poignant as it is in this song, but they made it work.

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Father John Misty “Date Night”

Josh Tillman loves to play the heel in his own songs, and he’s exceptionally good at it. He knows what’s up in culture, he’s aware of his reputation, and he knows what he looks like to you. He’s not really that guy, but he’s enough like that guy to satirize it and poke holes in a particular form of bohemian masculinity. His character in “Date Night” is a dangerous but charming creep who’s a little too clueless to be good at manipulating other people. He aspires to be a grifter, but he’s actually the mark – he’s just far too obsessed with creating an image for himself to give much thought into anyone else’s motivations or desires. You get the impression that you could trick this guy into anything if he thought you were cooler than him, or that it would give him some edge. He’s ultimately just a bad date, some goon who’s trying too hard to seem nonchalant, quirky, and impressive, and mostly comes off as a frantic mess. It’s probably not too hard for a guy who gave himself the name “Father John Misty” and carefully crafted a louche “homeless billionaire” look for himself to get into this mindset. But he’s 100% in on the joke even if you’re not.

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Squid “Houseplants”

I can’t claim to know all of the music that’s been coming out over the past few years, but I have screened a LOT of it and one thing I’ve noticed is that it’s very rare to hear anyone younger than 35 really scream these days. I have theories about this, but let’s not get into it. I’m just getting at how to hear a new band with a screaming, hugely expressive singer is a rarity now. It sounds extra unhinged.

Ollie Judge, the drummer and vocalist of Squid, sounds like a fucking maniac on this song. It’s not cookie-monster-vocal machismo or anything you’d typically get out of metal or grunge. It’s more bug-eyed and deranged, and the lyrics are so cryptic and odd that it’s all the more weird and jarring. It’s unsettling to hear a guy screaming “HOUSEPLANTS! HOUSEPLANTS!” like he’s having some sort of episode. The music is essentially punk but there’s bits of krautrock and jazzy skronk in the mix. Given that Judge has some vocal similarity to James Murphy, it comes out sounding like if all of LCD Soundsystem were dosed with bath salts.

This is fantastic and I want more of it.

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Meernaa “Ready to Break”

“Ready to Break” is a very dense and rich piece of music that nevertheless feels loose and light. That’s mostly due to the way the song’s syncopated percussion seems to be at some distance from the keyboard chords and lead lines, with Carly Bond’s emotive voice lingering somewhere in the space between. There’s some interesting twists and turns here – it starts off as an 80s sort of funk pop ballad, but takes off on a tangent for the last couple minutes that sounds like if Robert Fripp and Sheila E sat in on a Janet Jackson song around 1986. There’s a real joy to this music, particularly in the way they seem to utterly delight in the sounds of the chords they choose, and how they pack them into the song with a lot of grace and style.

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Madonna “I Don’t Search, I Find”

Madonna is the most Leo of all pop stars and this may be her most Leo song, a luxurious disco tune about finding a new lover who meets her very high standards, opening with the announcement: “Finally, enough love!” The song exudes confidence and power, but also a deep need to feel confident and powerful. It’s not a song about merely finding love – how ordinary – but selecting someone special and worthy of her desire, and able to give her the exact amount of love she requires.

“I Don’t Search, I Find” was written with the French producer Mirwais, who is best known for collaborating with her on most of Music. They still have a strong connection, but the sound doesn’t really call back to her early to mid ‘00s work so much as her vibe circa Erotica. Given her resistance to nostalgia for her back catalog, I’m sort of surprised this song even exists. But I’m glad it does – this sort of classy house aesthetic is one of her best modes, and as much as I appreciate her pushing herself creatively I’m more excited to hear her do something she can do better than anyone else.

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Katie Dey “Stuck”

“Stuck” is a song that clearly states the anxieties and pains of body dysmorphia. Katie Dey’s lyrics are so direct that it’s sort of unnerving; I know that my empathy goes into overdrive just hearing a line like “I’m constantly scared that we will never speak again.” As plain as the lyrics are, Dey’s arrangement embraces abstraction and metaphor. The song sounds like something delicate and graceful that’s lost in odd ambient sounds, and contrasted with rather harsh percussion. The core of the song sounds like something lovely trying to emerge, and just pushing to the surface without getting free.

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