Art Brut “Hooray!”

It’s been quite a while since we heard from our old pal Eddie Argos! “Hooray!,” the opening track from Art Brut’s first record in over seven years, reacquaints us with the Argos shtick – imagine a much friendlier Mark E Smith crossed with a version of Jarvis Cocker without all the sexual charisma. A lovelorn weirdo who shouts clever stuff over uptempo rock, a party band led by the most neurotic guy in the room. Art Brut is the kind of band who will forever be in the shadow of their brilliant debut, mainly because it’s hard to recapture the immediacy and magic of songs like “Good Weekend” and “Modern Art.” But “Hooray!” at least has the right spirit, and leans into deliberate calculation in a way the earlier stuff seemed to lean into inspired improvisation.

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Haley Heyndrickx “Show You A Body”

“Show You A Body” sounds like a light, fragile thing caught in the wind. Moments of stillness are punctuated by fluttery parts that sound like piano keys caught in a sudden gust, like chimes hanging from a ceiling. Haley Heyndrickx matches the tone of the music by singing lyrics about feeling “humbled by breaking down” and alluding to moments of incredible intimacy vulnerability. In some moments it sounds as though she could break down in tears – not necessarily because she is singing about something sad, but more that she’s experienced something profound that she hasn’t fully processed.

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Jeff Tweedy “Bombs Above”

In three short verses “Bombs Above” is an apology, then it’s a shrug, and it ends with a moment of regret. Jeff Tweedy sings it all in a raw, exhausted voice, and when I hear it, I just wish I could look him in the eye and tell him to be easy on himself. But maybe this IS him taking it easy on himself – he does sound like he’s making peace with bad memories, and owning his mistakes and pain in a way that eases his feelings of guilt somewhat. And with this song opening his first proper solo album, he’s demystifying himself by essentially telling his audience – “hey, I’m just a guy, that’s all.” It’s not an act. It’s pure humility.

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Earl Sweatshirt “Shattered Dreams”

Earl Sweatshirt has an odd sort of charisma. He’s mumbly, surly, and standoffish, and unwilling to do much that would traditionally signal star power in rap. But that distant, withholding quality draws you in, and you end up hanging on his words if just to get a handle on what’s going on in his head. He pushes this to an extreme on his new record Some Rap Songs, often sounding like he doesn’t even mean to be rapping, or like we’re hearing something that isn’t totally meant to be heard. “Shattered Dreams” is the abrupt opening of the record, and it feels like you’re immediately dropped into his personal space without warning. He sounds lost in his thoughts, but aware of your presence. He raps like he’s giving you no more information than you deserve.

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Fog Lake “I’ll Be Around”

Fog Lake’s Carousel EP is a post-breakup record that sounds like memories of a relationship that are starting to fade and get replaced by more nostalgic and romanticized versions of the events. The music in “I’ll Be Around” feels like a sample of itself; the main piano part is processed so it sounds like a quote. Aaron Powell’s voice is tinny, fragile, and somewhat buried in the mix. You hear him clearly enough to get the emotion from the melody, but you have to listen a bit closer to pick up all the sad sack details of the lyrics. It’s heartbreaking stuff. This is basically a song about a guy who is accepting that the person he’s in love with doesn’t want him at all, and he’s just throwing himself into loneliness in the hopes that he can…what, become the best at being lonely? This is the sound of a guy who feels lost and defeated, but still feels a very earnest love in vain.

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Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks “Solid Silk”

Stephen Malkmus is the kind of artist who from a distance seems to always be doing his Stephen Malkmus thing, but has actually been constantly growing and evolving for three decades. As he’s aged he’s become more refined. The melodic sensibilities he’s always had have remained the same, but his compositions have become increasingly tidy and intricate. “Solid Silk” represents a new extreme in this regard – the folky melodies are lovely and straightforward but rendered as elegantly as possible in crystalline guitar parts and a string arrangement that seamlessly shifts from smooth elegance to mild melodrama. Up until now, Malkmus has kept the sophistication of his craft hidden in his characteristic looseness and casual swagger, but now he just seems bored by playing it cool. He doesn’t seem to be embarrassed about showing off or letting his guard down emotionally.

“Solid Silk” has no clear narrative, but Malkmus pulls together a set of thoughts and images that indicate a vague, low-key disappointment and discomfort. Romantic moments are revealed as artifice and affectation, money and privilege is depicted as insulating and soul-numbing, and ordinary life is presented as endless, pointless competition. But despite how cynical this all seems, Malkmus’ voice is gentle and slightly bemused. He’s not angry or bitter, just sort of resigned. The song is like an elaborately constructed sigh.

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T’Pau “Heart and Soul”

“Heart and Soul” overlaps and contrasts two lead vocal parts, both performed by Carol Decker. One part is sort of rapped in a cool voice over a hazy, atmospheric synth-bass groove, and the other is fiery and emotive, like Ann Wilson from Heart in power ballad mode. There’s a subtextual trick here that Sleater-Kinney would further develop and refine a decade later – the colder and more rhythmic voice is more wordy and cerebral, while the warmer, more melodic voice is all unfiltered passion. In this case, it’s the “rational” mind and the “emotional” mind processing the same situation.

Decker is singing about being in love with someone who sends her mixed signals, and while half of her mind is hyper-focused on analyzing the situation, the rest of her is just openly pleading for more love and validation. The part of her that’s overthinking everything is tightly wound and cautious, but she sounds absolutely certain in the chorus. She knows how she feels, she knows what she needs, she knows what she wants this person to say and do. This part seems to burst and cut through the clutter, a pure unedited thought calling out to be felt and understood.

In this song, and in several Sleater-Kinney classics, the message is clear: Don’t trust the overthinking mind. It’s the neurotic part of you that sabotages everything, that fears the worst and makes it come true. It’s the thing in your mind that obsesses on “mixed signals” and then makes you send out your own. The raw emotional part of the song is the truth, and it’s the honest and open communication that makes true love possible. It’s not a mistake that it’s the boldest, loudest part of the song.

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The Internet “Come Over”

Syd’s vocal performance on “Come Over” is low-key but very nuanced – she’s presenting herself as assertive and seductive, but she’s perceptive enough to figure out that her approach just isn’t working. She’s too pushy, or maybe too needy? Or maybe it’s just the wrong night. Maybe she’s reading too much into things. Maybe she’s getting flat-out rejected. She doesn’t verbalize any of that, but you can hear it in her voice when she’s singing even the most forward and confident lines in the song. Syd’s vulnerability is unmistakeable, and it’s nicely contrasted by the Steve Lacy’s rhythm guitar, which is funky in a firm and rigid sort of way. The groove sounds very certain, and as the song goes along and she seems less secure, the tone shifts subtly from seductive to desperate.

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Phosphorescent “Around the Horn”

I have never heard a song that approximates a Neu! “Hallogallo” beat that I have not liked. As far as I a am concerned, there’s just no way to fuck up that krautrock metronomic groove. “Around the Horn” doesn’t even go full Neu! – the pulse is there, but Matthew Houck pushes it in an Americana direction, like Southern rock reconfigured for the Autobahn. The back half of this song is magical, and makes me wonder why no one had ever thought to crossbreed The Band with Kraftwerk. It works surprisingly well, and seems to speed towards an endless horizon while Houck’s vocal seems focused on emotions long gone in the rearview mirror.

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Anderson Paak “Smile/Petty”

“Smile/Petty” is structured like a diptych, with two distinct sections that nevertheless overlap in tone and sentiment. The first half is a rather D’Angelo-ish slow jam, and the second flips that soft funk into something more tense and aggressive. The lyrics don’t shift quite as dramatically. The song is always about a relationship that’s gone bad because neither half of the couple trusts the other, and the difference is mainly in how Anderson Paak’s tone goes from mildly aggrieved to outright confrontational. His voice, as always, is outstanding – rough and raspy, and able to shift seamlessly between R&B and rapped modes without ever making you focus much attention on how he switches it up. It all just flows together.

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Gerard Way “Getting Down the Germs”

Back when My Chemical Romance was a big deal in the mid-00s, I wouldn’t have thought that Gerard Way and I grew up on a lot of the same stuff. For example, he loved Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol so much that he went on to revive the series as a writer at DC Comics, and he clearly was into the weirder end of mainstream alt-rock enough that he’s moved away from melodramatic emo to embrace that aesthetic in his solo material. He could be out there raking in MCR reunion cash, but instead he’s out there doing his best to bring back ‘90s weirdo vibes. “Getting Down the Germs” is a highly tuneful single with an extremely ‘90s chord progression contrasted with a flute solo that seems to come in out of nowhere but manages to feel just right. His voice is very laid back on this song compared to his often hysterical MCR performances, but I definitely prefer him in this surreal, vaguely sinister mode.

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Ari Lennox “No One”

“No One” addresses a very particular 21st century form of loneliness – looking at your phone and wondering why out of 251 contacts, not one of them wants to reach out to you. From the perspective of a depressed extrovert, that can seem like 251 people collectively deciding to reject you when you’re in need. But this isn’t really about 251 people, it’s about just one of them. Ari Lennox sings around that point – she’s trying to distract herself, to vent her frustrations to friends who don’t seem to care, but no matter what she does her thoughts circle back to the one person whose attention she craves the most. Near the end of the song she tries to talk herself into moving on from this fixation, but I don’t believe her. The sound of her voice lacks conviction, and it’s the same bitter melancholy in her tone throughout the song never goes away. If anything, it just gets more intense.

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Mariah Carey “A No No”

Mariah Carey’s new record is stronger and more focused than anything she’s done in a while, largely because she seems like she’s lost interest in chasing trends and just wants to do Mariah Carey Things. “A No No” is the most fun she’s been in ages – energetic, sassy, and utterly ruthless in the way she drags her former manager for the crime of being dumb enough to cross Mariah fucking Carey. She sounds absolutely delighted to spend an entire song being extremely petty, and really chews on catty lines like “Ed Scissorhands, AKA, I cut you off” and “Parlez-vous Francais? I said non / let me translate it, I said NO.” The winding curve of the melody and syncopated beat flatters Carey’s vocal phrasing without having to show off her fading but still highly impressive voice. Even the seemingly random insertion of an old Biggie hook from a Lil Kim song works here – it’s a bit like something she might have had on a “Favorite Disses” vision board and just decided to throw into the song.

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Vince Staples “Don’t Get Chipped”

Vince Staples has spent a lot of his career to date being very fashion-forward and adventurous in his selection of beats and production, but his new record narrows his focus to a contemporary spin on classic Los Angeles rap sounds – Dr. Dre aesthetics filtered through trap, basically. I prefer his more up-tempo EDM-ish work for the most part, but it works very well on FM, particularly in that the lyrics are so rooted in Long Beach that the music serves as a necessary backdrop. It sounds familiar and strange, like visiting a place you used to know that’s changed a lot since you’ve been gone. A feeling of alienation permeates this music, from Staples’ bugged-out tone on down the to jittery drum programming.

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Boygenius “Salt in the Wound”

There’s three singers in Boygenius, and all three are fairly successful singer-songwriters on their own, but the one who intrigues me the most is Lucy Dacus. She’s exceptionally good at conveying the disappointed feelings of a pessimist, and in writing lyrics that sound like the sort of carefully edited complaints of someone who has been having an argument with someone in their head so many times over that it’s been pared their words down to something refined and incredibly sharp. Something in her voice evokes the bright headache-inducing bright grey of overcast skies. “Salt in the Wound,” a breakup song that starts off uncertain but builds to a loud, overtly emotional climax, is a perfect vehicle for her voice. Even still, the presence of Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker is crucial – they enter as the song progresses, and seem like they’ve arrived to show Dacus support while she’s down. That solidarity makes the song feel all the more cathartic – they’re helping her through a mess, and they’re all stronger for it in the end.

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Action Bronson “Prince Charming”

It always feels like damning Action Bronson with faint praise when you point out the obvious thing – that he sounds amazingly similar to Ghostface Killah – but like, let’s be real, sounding like Ghostface Killah is an INCREDIBLE ACHIEVEMENT. And given that Ghostface is much less prolific these days, a song like “Prince Charming” feels like a welcome taste of a flavor that’s largely missing from rap now. Bronson’s Ghostface style extends to his choice of beats, and this Knxledge production has that perfect warm, woozy soul haze vibe that Ghost favored circa The Pretty Toney Album and Fishscale. Anyway, if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with who sounds like the one you love.

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Sonic Youth “Kotton Krown” (Live in Brooklyn, August 12 2011)

Sonic Youth recently released a handful of live recordings on the site Nugs, including the band’s final concert in New York City in 2011. This show, which was performed at the Williamsburg Waterfront, was the last time I would ever see them live, after seeing them perform almost every year between 1995 and then. Going to Sonic Youth shows was a big part of my life in my teens and 20s. The first two shows I ever went to were both Sonic Youth gigs.

No one at the time of this Williamsburg Waterfront show had any idea what was going on within the band, or that there was any chance this gig would be our last opportunity to see them. It was just another outdoor summer Sonic Youth show, and they had no new album to promote. I wrote about this show at the time, and the big deal of it for me was that the setlist was mainly comprised of the few classic live songs I had never seen them perform over the years – “Flower,” “I Love Her All the Time,” “Kill Yr Idols,” “Inhuman,” “Psychic Hearts” – and a few major favorites I was hoping to see again, like “Starfield Road” and “Kotton Krown.” It retrospect the setlist feels like a parting gift to fans like me.

I noticed at the time that the show was heavy on love songs sung by Thurston Moore, and knowing now that he was involved with another woman and his marriage with Kim Gordon was dissolving makes that an uncomfortable thing to think about. Having Kim sing “Kotton Krown,” a duet about the early days of their romance, with him not long after she discovered his betrayal is some serious Fleetwood Mac level mindfuckery. What must this have been like for Kim, hearing Thurston turn a song about her into a song about someone else as she sang along?

The end of Kim and Thurston’s marriage stings for two main reasons: It forced the end of the band, and it spoiled what was for many people including myself an aspirational model for a longterm heterosexual relationship. It’s hard to accept that as cool and feminist as Thurston is, he still fell in love with another woman and cheated on Kim. I’ve had a lot of time to adjust to this, and have come around to a more optimistic view of the situation: Any relationship that lasts for multiple decades should be considered a success, even if it ends with the two people drifting apart. The best elements of their marriage and creative partnership remain inspiring. I still want to be the Thurston Moore to someone’s Kim Gordon, but I’d hope I wouldn’t do what Thurston did towards the end of the marriage.

“Kotton Krown” is one of my favorite love songs. It’s a weird one, for sure, but it’s also mostly very direct and earnest in its language: “Love has come to stay,” “It feels like a wish coming true, it feels like an angel dreaming of you.” Thurston and Kim sing it in unison, like they’re reciting an oath to each other. The music is all about contrasts – the melody is sweet but the tones are harsh and bleak, and the blissful serenity of the verses surround an instrumental section that’s stormy and turbulent. My favorite part of the song is when that instrumental part ends and it snaps back into the verse. There’s a sense of clarity in this moment, and then they sing a line that is inexplicably extremely romantic to me: “New York City is forever kitty / I’m wasted in time and you’re never ready.” I can’t hear this part without feeling a bit of envy. I want to feel like this, and for real. I want to take control of the chemistry and manifest the mystery, and I want to be fading, fading, and celebrating. Whatever this is, whatever feeling they were trying to convey in this song – I want it too.

Buy the full show from Nugs.

Pistol Annies “Got My Name Changed Back”

Miranda Lambert has always been at her best when she’s salty and spiteful, so it’s hardly a shock that she shines very bright on a bitter divorce song like this. She sings about the formalities of going back to her maiden name with a dark sort of glee – clearly very excited about moving on, but also quite aggrieved that she’s had to move on from anything at all. But still, if there’s even a trace of love in this song, I can’t discern it. This is a song for someone who’s truly come to despise someone they used to want to spend their life with, and while it’s all very fun, it’s a mean sort of fun meant to blunt out the pain.

Buy it from Amazon.

H.E.R. “Can’t Help Me”

Gabi Wilson sings “Can’t Help Me” with a cautious tone, delivering lines addressed to a partner in a fracturing relationship with the knowledge that her feelings have to be filtered through careful diplomacy. The music, mostly just a thin line of melody plucked out on an acoustic guitar, feels just as gentle and careful. The song is technically sort of chill, but that’s just the surface – you don’t even need to listen too closely to feel the tension in the background of it all. This sort of song could easily be much angrier, or more defensive, or just flat-out mopey, but Wilson opts for a refreshing maturity. She’s obviously too full of love here to get petty.

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Deerhunter “Death In Midsummer”

“Death In Midsummer” has an unusually crisp sound for Deerhunter, a band more accustomed to an artful soft-focus aesthetic. A lot of this comes down to the way the verses are guided by a taut rhythm and the clean, trebly tone of the harpsichord. The song moves along for nearly three minutes before shifting into a cathartic guitar solo section that sounds like Bradford Cox doing what he can to channel the sci-fi tones of Robert Fripp. It’s a very graceful and confident piece of music, and it moves the band into a more elegant aesthetic while retaining all of the most essential elements of their sound going back to the harsher, more goth tones of Cryptograms and Microcastle. The pace of Cox’s work has slowed down drastically over the years – this new album comes four years after the last one, and this is a guy who put out five full-length albums and an EP in the space of 2008 and 2009 – but if his art is becoming more carefully composed and refined, that’s a fair trade off.

Buy it from Amazon.