October 27th, 2018 3:20pm
“Has Ended” is about as optimistic as Them Yorke gets – a fantasy about the Western world suddenly snapping out of its drive towards fascism set to music that sounds like a gradually fading hangover. He imagines exploding phones, the forgiveness of the planet itself, and most unrealistically, the fascists feeling any sort of shame. It’s a nice thought, but it says a lot that Yorke can only express it in music that still sounds so bleak and downtrodden. But this is when you have these ideas, right? When you’re so broken the only thing you can do is to imagine being miraculously repaired.
October 24th, 2018 2:18am
“Winter A-Go-Go” is sung from the perspective of someone who is very concerned about a friend who seems to be lost and depressed, but knows there’s not much she can really do other than show them support. This is a perfect song for Georgia Hubley’s singing voice – extremely low key and unassuming, but exceptionally warm and empathetic. The song is an expression of kindness, but also of frustration at how powerless she is to fix the situation beyond being loving and supportive. As the title implies, the sound of the music evokes the beach on the off season, with traces of summery sounds muted by chilly and overcast tones. This is a fairly obscure Yo La Tengo song, but I think it’s one of their best composed pieces of music – Ira Kaplan’s organ solo is particularly inspired, and seems to open up the emotional range of the song before it narrows back down for the final round of the chorus, in which Hubley just seems to shrug: “It’s not an impossible thing to do / I know there’s a better life for you / I can’t keep from wondering.”
October 23rd, 2018 12:26am
The waiting is agony. You see everyone else get the love you want, but it’s somehow so elusive for you. It’s like playing a game rigged against you, and you start to resent it. Maybe you just give up. Maybe you decide love is for everyone but you, and that the best you could hope for is to settle. But you’ve got to listen to the advice of the mother in this song, one of the finest pieces of music ever composed in the United States: You can’t hurry love, you just have to wait. Love don’t come easy.
This is the last thing you want to hear when you feel lost and desperate and lonely, though. And this was a song intended for a young audience – you have no perspective on time when you’re a teenager, or even in your 20s! Diana Ross and the Supremes sing this song with the urgency of a lovesick teen and the unwavering faith of a true believer, anchored by what I consider to be the most exquisitely boppy beat Motown ever produced. “You Can’t Hurry Love” may be secular, but it’s about faith and holding out hope for some divine plan and purpose. The song cycles through melancholy, exasperation, desperation, and hope before landing on a final verse that sounds far more at ease and resolute than the rest of the song. That’s the part – “keep on waiting, anticipating for that soft voice to talk to me at night” – that sounds like a prayer. It’s the part where they truly know this mother’s wisdom is the truth.
October 21st, 2018 10:32pm
Victoria Bergsman sings “Diana Ross” with a drowsy, uncertain tone that’s very far removed from the bold, hyper-confident voice of the song’s namesake. But she knows that, and this isn’t emulation so much as a tribute, or an attempt to connect with a strength and power beyond what you believe you’re capable of. In most cases, this is the actual utility of pop music – it’s a proxy, and a way to understand or channel our feelings into something more beautiful or elegant. Bergsman is referencing “Love Hangover” in particular, which has a smooth, sensual quality that’s quite different from the slightly awkward staccato beat and wobbly sax of this song. But as much as insecurity manifests itself in the music, it also sounds like a shy person speaking up and reaching out. Bergsman gives the chorus everything she’s got, and for me, hearing her sing out with such overwhelming sincerity is more moving than most Ross performances.
That chorus though. “I didn’t know what I feared, but I do know what I feel.” Boy, do I ever know how you feel there, Victoria. She sings it like she’s surprising herself, like she’s only just now understanding how fear can put you out of touch with reality. But feelings? Feelings are usually the truth. Hearing Bergsman repeat “I do know what I feel” at the end of the song gets me in the gut. She’s realizing something, and getting strength from it. Maybe Diana Ross is what brought her to that epiphany, but I don’t really think so.
October 19th, 2018 2:35am
Matthew Dear’s voice has always had a strange allure – dead-eyed, deadpan, and dead serious all at once. On previous records his voice was like an odd bit of flavor layered over his dark, lurid productions but with Bunny, it’s become the focal point of the music. In “Echo,” he tells a grim story about a young boy speeding from childhood into adulthood not by maturing, but by doing a lot of stuff that’s just not for kids. Dear leans on vocal fry to a comic degree here, digitally nudging it into a grotesque sizzle as his keyboards and clipped drum clicks create an odd unsettling feeling that evokes a druggy drowsiness and the gradual tightening of a mechanical vice.
October 16th, 2018 2:55am
“Bassackwards” sounds like someone wandering around searching for something but forgetting what they were looking for almost immediately. Even for a Kurt Vile song this is exceptionally stoned and meandering, but it’s also quite lovely in the way it creates a sense of pleasant stasis. Vile seems caught between feelings here – not quite upset, not quite lonely, not quite happy. Everything just is. “This is life and it’s flat,” as Stephen Malkmus once sang. But it’s not bleak – he appreciates friends, he appreciates moments of beauty. And while the music doesn’t go anywhere in particular, it feels good. It feels alive, in the most low key way.
October 14th, 2018 4:05pm
“In Your Face” is a quietly confrontational song in which Chan Marshall sings directly to Americans who are so comfortable and privileged they can’t seriously confront injustice and cruelty, and can only see things in terms of petty grievances. Maybe you’ve heard of these people? Marshall’s voice is sober but obviously heartbroken, and there’s a frustration in her tone – an awareness that her words won’t be heard or heeded by anyone who really needs to pay attention. There’s a feeling of tension through the whole song, mainly in the way a vaguely eerie piano melody circles her voice, but also a bit of patience in the gentle swing of the guitar. Marshall is quite angry, but she expresses it with a meditative grace.
October 13th, 2018 10:16pm
There is a couplet in an old Loud Family song called “Screwed Over By Stylish Introverts” that I think about a lot. It goes:
“You let me know that calling just because I’m lonely is completely rude
You could work this into a lecture to the starving not to beg for food”
This comes to mind any time I feel lonely and miserable and desperate to communicate with someone else. I can think of very few times in my life when I would have felt this way about someone reaching out to me, but it’s what I worry about someone else thinking. Sometimes it’s irrational, but other times it’s not – you can be an imposition, a burden, a drain on empathy, and too dependent on other people’s emotional labor. You can just be a drag.
“Hang On Me,” the opening song on St. Vincent’s Masseducation and the closing song on its stripped-down counterpart MassEducation, is about reaching out to someone in a time of desperation. Annie Clark’s protagonist has some fear about disrupting the person she’s calling or asking for too much, but she’s not about to stop herself – she’s starving, and not too proud to beg for food. The MassEducation arrangement, just piano and vocal, is more effective in getting across the sentiment of the song. Clark’s voice sounds more fragile here, and there’s something in the ambiance of the track that reminds me of the way your eyes start to sting after you’ve been crying for a while. She sings “oh please don’t hang up yet,” and you feel that raw need for connection. Just under the surface of this song there’s a powerful dread – if I need you this much right now, what would I do without you? And if I’m too vulnerable now, will it turn you off to me? Making the call is a calculated risk.
October 11th, 2018 2:56am
“Virginia Plain” is basically Bryan Ferry willing Roxy Music into existence. It’s all magical thinking – he states his desire for success, he imagines a glamorous life, and the song itself makes it all real. Or as real as it could be, anyway. Ferry’s vision of glamour is specific but also quite dream-like and surreal. The lyrics in the second half of the song are like a vision board of cool things and sexy aesthetics; he’s giving us a loose outline of a better world he wants to insinuate himself into or create from scratch.
The song still sounds incredibly stylish and fresh nearly 50 years after its release. I think that mostly comes down to how obviously excited these guys are to be playing the song. Brian Eno plays his synths with the playful glee of a kid breaking rules for the first time, and Phil Manzanera’s guitar parts are loose and gestural, scribbled out with the confidence of someone completely at ease with following their instinct. Ferry’s voice is somehow goofy AND debonair. Everything in “Virginia Plain” sounds like it’s just a bit faster than it should be, like they’re all too excited to get to the next part to take their time. And why shouldn’t they be? They’re all in a hurry to live in the new reality they’re inventing.
October 11th, 2018 1:59am
“Use Once and Destroy” has a violent, churning sound and feels enormous in scope, like a raging storm in the middle of the ocean. Courtney Love’s voice sings with equal parts defiance and despair, vowing to rescue someone she cares about but knows she will almost certainly fail. She’s angry, resentful, and emotionally exhausted. She knows she’s about to hurt herself doing this.
I hear this as a love song. This is devotion and passion on a grand scale, and as difficult and tragic as it is, it seems a bit enviable too. What really gets to me about this song is that the love is so unconditional – she hates the mess they’re in, she hates having to try to clean it up. But she’s willing to give up a lot for them, and is trying to find strength enough for both of them. When you consider Love’s biography, and that she was only a few years out from the suicide of her husband, the song becomes even more agonizing and poignant – is this a fantasy about saving him? Is this the person she wishes she could’ve been for him? Is this really just regret?
October 9th, 2018 2:29am
“Tell Me Now” has such a warm and laid back rocksteady feeling to it that it took me quite a while to notice that Marcia Griffiths is actually singing a sad song. This is basically a song about a woman who knows she’s in a relationship that’s about to end, and she’s just earnestly wanting to hold on just a bit longer. There’s no trace of anger in Griffiths’ voice, just a longing so genuine and pure that I’d always just interpreted lines like “I’d like to kiss you once more” as being about missing someone in the short term, not fearing that you’re about to lose them entirely. This is not to say that Griffiths’ performance is misleading. It’s rather nuanced, and gives us a moment in a breakup where at least one half of the couple feels a genuine affection for the other.
October 8th, 2018 1:11am
It seemed to me that Electric Six had been in a bit of a creative rut for their past few records, an understandable result of their intense self-imposed album-and-tour-every-year grind. But their new one, Bride of the Devil, brings them back to a peppier, bolder sound more like their mid-‘00s peak. (Yes, you read that right – I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being the Master and Flashy are their best LPs as far as I’m concerned.)
“Jumpy” is the one that sounds like a hit, or at least a hit in a world in which there was a lot of money behind this band. There’s some superficial similarity to the Pixies in the hard/soft dynamics and the contrast of acoustic guitar and a vaguely Latin lead line, but the chorus soars in a way that’s very particular to Dick Valentine in faux arena rock mode. The lyrics, as ever, are a treat – it’s mostly about a guard dog that’s been trained to kill, and there’s a terrific goof on both Boy George and Radiohead that’s only just a lead up to a very literal “karma is a bitch” punchline.
October 5th, 2018 2:21am
“Wild” is an expression of low-key envy, with Molly Burch observing another woman and wishing that she could be anywhere near as confident and uninhibited as she appears to be. Burch declares that it’s her “nature to be guarded,” and that may be true, but she sings the song with a theatricality that suggests she’s not nearly the wallflower she thinks she is. Or maybe this is just her mimicking the behavior – a little more vampy and a bit more campy than she might usually be. The song itself sounds light and sensual, and betrays very little of the neuroses on display in the lyrics. The looseness and easygoing loveliness of the tune feels more like it represents the vibe of the woman being observed than the feelings described in Burch’s words.
October 2nd, 2018 10:18pm
“The Line” will sound immediately familiar to anyone who spent a lot of time listening to the groovy nightmare music coming out of the U.K. at the end of the 1990s – UNKLE, Tricky, Primal Scream, Radiohead, Portishead, etc. It’s the hip-hop beat reconfigured as a death march; the electronic tones that sound like security alarms; the grinding terror and pervasive pre-millennium tension. Robert Toher, the writer and producer of this track, is also the vocalist, and somehow he manages to sound like Portishead’s Beth Gibbons singing through a speaker phone in a conference room. The music is very dystopian, but there’s a feeling through it that things are about to get much worse. Though this evokes music from 20+ years ago, you certainly can’t say that this is retro – this is what the world is like all the time lately, all those Brits just saw the future clearly. Toher is just capturing the mood rather than predicting it.
October 2nd, 2018 2:19am
“Poor Places” is about a very particular lonely state of mind, but the lyrics are all scattered thoughts and images: The sound of his father’s voice trailing off. Bandages, broken jaws, a drunk rock singer, an air-conditioned room at the top of the stairs. There’s moments of desperation, and details that are basically inconsequential but somehow seem essential to getting across the feeling.
And in the middle of all this oblique poetry, Jeff Tweedy sings one line that’s direct and entirely unambiguous: “I really want to see you tonight.” You don’t say that if there’s a real possibility of it happening. It’s the need that is unmet. It’s the help you can’t even really ask for. The guy in “Poor Places” knows he’s a mess, and he knows he needs to be alone. He can’t bring himself to care about anything else. But he’s longing for connection, affection, distraction. He can’t have it.
The ending of “Poor Places” is resignation bleeding into oblivion. He decides to shut out the world, and the song shifts from a delicate and elegant middle section into a graceless thudding rhythm and cacophony. There’s a sample from a numbers station recording, a woman crisply annunciating “yankee…hotel…foxtrot” over and over in a clipped mid-Atlantic accent. She sounds unreal and robotic. It sounds menacing in context, particularly as the thud of the beat becomes more aggressive. It also sounds completely meaningless, like some detail your mind fixates on as everything else falls out of focus. You just stare until your consciousness dissolves.
September 30th, 2018 11:30pm
“As You Go” is a marvel of rock craftsmanship – it’s neat and elegant in its construction, but still has enough physicality to keep it from feeling cold or sterile. Crepes thread a ’60s British Invasion sort of melody through an arrangement that nods towards jazzy rock, the Talking Heads end of new wave, and Tame Impala-ish contemporary psychedelia without ever feeling quite like it belongs in any particular genre. There’s a pleasing fluidity to this song as it progresses, particularly as it shifts into its extended instrumental outro and all the threads resolve before an unexpected guitar solo finale.
September 27th, 2018 1:54am
I have spent two thirds of my life wishing I could be more like Stephen Malkmus. I want his style and grace. I want everything I do to seem loose and casual, but always brilliant and perfectly composed. I want to indicate great emotion and meaning with small gestures and oblique phrases. Wanting to be more like him has served me well in a lot of ways, but it’s an impossible standard. This guy has so much style that it’s wasted.
I don’t think you can fully understand what Pavement was without listening to live recordings, and few of them have been made commercially available. The records present the songs quite well, but on stage there was a strange alchemy in the personalities and far more space for inspired improvisation. This is also where the personality of the drummers asserted themselves – when Gary Young was in the zone (as on the Brixton show included on Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe), he hit with a force and urgency that nudged the band closer to the intensity of Nirvana. Steve West, his replacement, was more relaxed and groovy, and highlighted Malkmus’ fluidity and swing.
You can really hear that in this recording of “Heaven Is A Truck,” which as far as I’m concerned is the definitive version of the song. This take has the chill feeling of the studio recording but it’s a little less plodding. Westy’s pocket here is so loose that it’s baggy, but it’s perfect for the tune – everything just sorta floats along, and the slackness of it all makes my body ease up like I’ve been shot with a muscle relaxant. It’s a quick remedy for a weird mood, which is why I’ve listened to so much of this and other live Pavement tracks over the past few days. You can tell yourself to chill out, but sometimes you need to just induce it.
“Heaven Is A Truck” is a California song, and obviously, a driving song. I can’t relate to that, so I’ve always heard it more as a strange sort of love song that’s not really about another person so much as the feeling left in their wake. Malkmus’ words are certain but ambiguous, every other line is about subjective reality. The most evocative line in the song – “I know arks can’t fly, I know that sharks they don’t have wings” – is a declaration of what he does not believe. He sings about a woman with reverence, but it’s unclear whether or not he’s being affectionate. For every line that suggests he knows exactly what’s going on, the tone suggests he hasn’t actually figured out how he feels. So many songs are about processed emotion, but a song like this is more like just letting yourself linger in a feeling before you can start to define it.
September 26th, 2018 3:09am
Songs about being the Other Woman or Other Man are always agonizing, but Jenny Lewis goes the extra mile in “Does He Love You?” by making you gradually realize that she is friends with the wife of the man she’s fallen in love with. Each verse adds another layer of awful emotion – loneliness, then insecurity, then anxiety, then self-delusion, then envy, and then finally, bitter resignation. Lewis always portrays her protagonist as sympathetic; you’re meant to identify with her needs and her rationalizations. All of this is played as melodrama, and the music follows the lyrical arc until there’s a string section scoring the angst-ridden finale like she’s living out the plot of a Hollywood film. The final revelation that this friend of hers doesn’t even really want the life she so badly covets is gutting, particularly as Lewis loses all composure and allows her voice to get as ugly and twisted as the feeling she’s conveying.
September 24th, 2018 11:23pm
Emily Haines has always been so good at conveying self possession, emotional clarity, and determination. There’s a sharpness to her songs – her language is almost always declarative, her lyrics are very often critical in nature. Even when she’s expressing sorrow, she sounds like someone who has made up her mind.
“Love You Back,” from the new Metric record, is very much about feeling sure of something. She’s singing about deciding to move from trauma and aggravation, and to not give in to what is holding her back. The music is heavy, bold, and firm, giving shape to her defiant tone. That’s part of why the chorus is so striking and startling: “I wanna love you back so bad.” It’s a bit of a plot twist, really – what is she really singing about her? Is this always about a relationship, or is this more about a sort of radical love and forgiveness? There’s some ambiguity there, but it’s presented with such certainty, and a confrontational kind of joy.
September 24th, 2018 2:58am
Mercury Rev’s album All Is Dream came out on September 11th, 2001. I was in the city for 9/11, I watched the buildings fall with my own eyes across the river in the loft I shared with seven other people in DUMBO, long before it became the fancy Wealth District it is today. I did not get a copy of All Is Dream until a week or so after its release, and I closely associate the music with going home to the Hudson Valley for a while to… I don’t know, hide? It was a really weird and paranoid time and no one knew what to expect. I guess I needed to be around the river and the mountains and trees I grew up with, that I was so eager to escape the entire time I lived there.
Mercury Rev are from the Hudson Valley too, though further north than where I’m from, up in the Catskills. Their music sounds like home to me, and I closely associate it with the beginning of autumn. This is hard to explain – it’s not any particular musical element, but more the way their aesthetic on their late ‘90s through mid ‘00s material resonates with the vibe of the area. A lot of music conveys a “nature” feeling, and that’s not what this is. It’s about the texture and light, physical space and the history of it all. It sounds like the Hudson Valley the way most Sonic Youth sounds just like whatever version of New York City existed at the time of the recordings. I don’t expect this to make sense to anyone else, but I am certain that on some level this is their intention.
There’s a lot of whimsy and romance in Mercury Rev’s music. Jonathan Donahue has an odd voice, he always sounds kinda like a heroic but very sensitive elf on some sort of quixotic quest. “Nite and Fog” is a sort of skewed love song, it’s about a man who has fallen in love with a woman who he barely understands and knows he cannot please. He feels lost, literally and figuratively. Donahue sings the song with great sincerity, his frustration comes off as sweet and earnest. He does not seems at all angry about not being enough for her, and when he sings “but you want it all” in the chorus, he sounds like he genuinely wishes he could give her everything. It’s funny that a song so melodramatic and grandiose would be above all other things an expression of deep humility.
Support Me on Ko-fi
