March 29th, 2018 12:33am
This song could stop cold after 7 seconds and still be great just for the incredibly deadpan way Smoke DZA says “It’s a really fucking cool era we in” in the intro. The verse itself is not quite so bitter and ironic – he’s mostly just having fun with wordplay and referencing other rappers. (He graciously nods to Scarface, whose “Guess Who’s Back” is the basis for this track.) The Joey Bada$$ verse is where this song really kicks in. Bada$$ has always been a guy who wears his ’90s NYC rap influences on his sleeve, but this is a good example of how he’s evolved. I mean, he’s still very rooted in that aesthetic, but his voice has a more lived-in quality to it and he sounds much more relaxed and far less self-conscious.
March 27th, 2018 3:15am
This is what Alison Wonderland said about this song when she debuted it on Twitter a few weeks ago: “NO IS ABOUT FAKE PEOPLE WHO ENABLE, TELLING U YES ALL THE TIME BUT I WILL ALWAYS BE REAL W U”
It’s just funny to me to think about how there’s a whole generation of people for whom a major running theme of popular music is dealing with “fake friends.” And like, hey, this is a real thing, especially when you’re young and attractive and people want a piece of you. But it’s also a narrative that’s very appealing to narcissists, and a sentiment that feels petty and defensive even when it’s straining for sincerity – or as Wonderland put it there “I WILL ALWAYS BE REAL W U.” But hey, I grew up with a disproportionate number of popular songs about washing pain away and I doubt anyone my age has unrealistic expectations of showers today.
At least in terms of composition and sound, “No” is very much of its moment, and clearly designed for maximum radio play. But that’s fine, as it’s a particularly strong specimen of post-EDM pop, right on down to its quasi tropical vibe and chopped up wordless vocal hook. And as much as I goofed on the lyrical premise of this song, Alison Wonderland sounds sincere and genuinely wounded by people who’ve betrayed her trust. There’s a solemnity to this chorus, the sort of intense oath you make when you’re extremely young and earnest, and there’s a beauty in that even if someone my age can’t help but be cynical about it.
March 25th, 2018 10:22pm
I’ve been following Bob Pollard and Guided by Voices since my conversion to Pollard fandom in the late ’90s, but over the past five or six years, I’ve had a hard time keeping up with Bob’s pace. I check in with pretty much every record, but I don’t always find the connection I’m looking for. I don’t want to say that Bob has been uninspired, but I will say that some of what he’s been up to hasn’t really inspired me.
So it’s nice to find some straight-up GBV gems on Space Gun, a record that really takes advantage of the fact that Doug Gillard is back in the band. Gillard is by far my favorite Pollard collaborator, and his guitar playing brings both swagger and harmonic grace to his songs. “Colonel Paper” is more on the swagger end of things, with a big chunky riff that reminds of what Pollard and Gillard were up to during the Speak Kindly/Isolation Drills/Universal Truths era – inarguably a high point of the sprawling GBV discography. The lyrics are good, too: It’s a bit of surreal gross-out humor from Pollard, as he describes some weirdo eating cigarettes and trash straight out of the can.
March 23rd, 2018 1:19am
“Silhouette Dreams” is lush but not gaudy, and indicates a luxurious vibe by varying slick, smooth tones and textures without letting them get cluttered in the mix. For the most part, he lets you focus on one at a time – a slow, gorgeous run of bass notes; a tight vocal harmony; a few moments of cymbals being hit so delicately they evoke light shimmering on crystals. I hear all of this in very visual terms – in some ways it’s deliberate cinematic, but in others it’s more like architecture or fashion design. A lot of the transitions in this sound to me like they’re cut diagonally, and the bass parts feel like bold, thick, elegantly curved lines.
March 22nd, 2018 1:28am
The overwhelming majority of XXXTENTACION’s second proper album ? is written and produced by a young producer named John Cunningham. Cunningham’s tracks are brilliant – very of the moment in some ways, but several steps ahead of the curve in others. His tonal palette is like contrasting ice and snow with neon lights, and while he’s firmly rooting his emcee in trap and Soundcloud rap, there’s a substantial amount of rock and IDM influences in the mix. “Moonlight” leans further to the latter end of things, with Cunningham playfully bending and smearing notes in a melodic keyboard hook that frames an XXXTENTACION vocal that’s casually catchy and nakedly emotional in a way that reminds me a lot of Lil Uzi Vert’s brilliant “XO Tour Llif3” from last year. It’s the sort of thing that’s technically a rap song, but sounds more like it’s pushing into some strange and ambiguous new space.
March 21st, 2018 3:08am
It was not immediately obvious to me that the vocals in this song are not sampled and looped, but are live and unique to the record. That’s mostly because Katalyst’s production is so rooted in sample-based rap that this felt more like a DJ record to me, or like an early to mid-00s Kanye track where the rapping just never seems to happen. Steve Spacek’s vocal here is fabulous, and clearly authentically soulful enough for me to assume his performance was pulled from a vintage ’60s or ’70s release. But it’s not just about simulating an old vibe – his vocal is very moving, particularly in how wounded and lost he sounds.
March 20th, 2018 3:11am
I try to avoid describing artists’ work by saying it’s like another more famous act’s work as much as I can, mostly because I think it’s lazy and sorta insulting. So with that in mind, please understand that when I say that Videotapemusic reminds me a lot of The Avalanches, I don’t mean that in a vague “recommended if you like” way, or that I think “Hot Pants in the Summercamp” is just a cheap emulation of Since I Left You. But this certainly has the smooth and luxurious party vibe of that record, and it’s an elegantly composed collage of samples, so yes, The Avalanches. Honestly, I’m sure Videotapemusic would be flattered to be favorably compared to them. Anyway, if you’re planning some kind of fancy party near a swimming pool in Los Angeles or Miami, please consider putting this on your playlist.
March 19th, 2018 1:34am
This piece was recorded by Peter Zummo with Arthur Russell, Bill Ruyle and Mustafa Ahmed in 1984, but has been shelved and unreleased until now. The music was recorded live to tape, and is partially improvised – or “an exercise in spontaneous arrangement,” as Zummo put it. The music mostly moves around a bouncy melodic hook played on marimba, and the driving force in the track mainly comes from Russell’s amplified cello, which is just as expressive whether he’s playing rhythmic or lead parts. Zummo himself plays trombone, and his leads are particularly vibrant and sassy. I love the way this all comes together in a way that’s somehow both joyful and contemplative.
March 16th, 2018 12:28am
“Last Girl” is an essentially self-deprecating song about feeling insecure because you feel like you’re vastly inferior to your boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, but I like that it doesn’t quite tip over into self-loathing. It’s never really about this guy, or even herself so much as it’s about how much she admires this other girl. The way she sings about her – and the way the song has this bright, springy melody – it sounds a lot more like a crush song about her than this guy they’ve both dated. Envy is a theme that runs through nearly all of the songs on Soccer Mommy’s Clean, but it’s never this petty sort of jealousy. It’s more about her trying to figure out what she wants to be. This song reminds me a bit of when Thom Yorke sings “I want to be someone else or I’ll explode” in “Talk Show Host.” It’s the same sort of feeling, but Sophie Allison just has a really specific person in mind.
March 14th, 2018 2:47am
The last time I featured Zizi Raimondi on this site just two months ago, she was doing a sleepy indie rock tune called “Folly Dolly” in which she was somehow both Lou Reed and Nico, and everyone else in The Velvet Underground for that matter. This time around it’s a completely different thing. “SUPAfresh” is a spacey funk song that falls somewhere in the space between the aesthetics of Grimes on her Visions album and the weirder edge of early 1980s New York art disco, like Arthur Russell, ZE Records stuff, and Madonna’s first few singles. It’s a major stylistic leap, but also the same thing in a different way – there’s this drowsy sexy vibe in both, and a high level of craft that feels very casual.
“SUPAfresh” is from an entire 19 track album called Bye Bye Club that’s all in the same aesthetic territory – groovy and zonked out and horny and vaguely sad. Her lyrics fixate on lust and intimacy, and how both feed into emotional mind games. It’s a very evocative and engaging record, and the feeling of her compositions conveys a lot more than her words. “SUPAfresh” is particularly sensual – the bass groove is incredible, and she layers on vocal harmonies and bright keyboard parts with remarkable grace. Everything seems to float elegantly in the negative space above that bass part.
March 12th, 2018 11:35pm
The new Yo La Tengo record is full of negative space, which makes it feel loose and airy, but also empty and hollow. The sounds they choose feel deliberate but instinctive, the way a cartoonist can suggest a great deal of character and detail with carefully place lines on a white page. The lead guitar part in “Polynesia #1” sounds like a line curving through the song, angular but not jagged. Georgia Hubley’s vocal is typically soft and gentle, but not in way that signals passivity. She sounds forthright and purposeful, like someone doing what they have to do to maintain a peaceful and relaxed state of mind. Her tone is like a bit of gestural shading that casts the clean lines of the guitar in relief.
March 11th, 2018 11:08pm
Lake Ruth work in a relatively straight forward rock-pop paradigm, but their songs rarely if ever include choruses. It’s as if the shape of their compositions reject the convention – any time one of their songs feels like it could shift gears into chorus mode, the music moves in another direction, though not necessarily in a jarring or musically unsatisfying way. It’s more like they’ve always got a different idea of how to resolve a sound or build on a rhythm. The songs are always in motion, and the consistently prefer melodic instrumental motifs to vocal hooks.
This has an interesting impact on the lyrics. Since there’s no structure forcing Allison Brice to reiterate phrases, the words scan as actual poetry and convey complete thoughts. In the case of “Julia’s Call,” it’s a meditation on someone’s restlessness and eagerness to give up on their life and start again with people who aren’t aware of their baggage. Brice sees this as a delusional and self-destructive impulse, but has some empathy for her character. Or maybe it’s just pity?
March 8th, 2018 12:33pm
“Walking With A Killer” is sung from the perspective of a girl who gets murdered by the end of the song, but it’s not a particularly scary song. A bit uneasy, sure, but the feeling of it is mostly quite calm and the lyrics describe the situation with a serene clarity. Her killing is presented as a sort of cosmic inevitability, this thing that she’s somehow aware of in spite of herself. “I didn’t know it was my night to die,” Kim Deal sings in a guileless tone at the top of her vocal range, “but it really was.” It’s unnerving, but also strangely beautiful.
March 7th, 2018 2:53am
In some ways it feels unfair and dismissive to say that a song like this or a lot of the better Bruno Mars songs of the recent past are “retro.” I think it might be more accurate to say that this sort of funky pop – openly indebted to Prince, Michael and Janet Jackson, and James Brown in particular – is something people always want and can’t get enough of, but it’s just in very short supply. Not just anyone can do this sort of thing. It takes a lot of songwriting magic and expertise, and a performer with an extreme level of charisma because you can’t really pull off working in this zone otherwise. Janelle Monáe has that star power, can come up with a song like this, and we are lucky for it. Truly blessed.
“Make Me Feel” has a Prince groove, but a chorus that nods to Michael Jackson’s best hit single. It’s a song full of bold moves, but that (meta)contextual stuff isn’t as compelling as the actual feeling of it. Monáe’s lyrics and vocal melody are about 25% nervous anticipation, and 75% crushed-out strut. Her lyrics in the past have been a bit more conceptual or guarded, but this is raw, genuine lust. She sounds relaxed and free, and only the tiniest bit anxious about how anyone might perceive her.
March 6th, 2018 1:15am
Margaret Glaspy’s songwriting is rather terse and economical, and I wonder if it’s the result of meticulous editing or a disposition in favor of blunt, effective simplicity. “Before We Were Together” is lean and tight, and moves at an impatient pace that makes her lyrics about finding the nerve to tell off an ex seem all the more urgent. It comes off like a fresh thought, an epiphany she’s having there right in the moment, and the sentiment is basically a second of consideration before spitting it out. Glaspy’s voice fills up a lot of the song, and the way it stands out in the negative space conveys both strength and a lonely isolation.
March 5th, 2018 12:15am
Kevin Barnes’ work has a sort of internal logic in which electronic music and funk roughly correlates to manic hysteria, and more straightforward psychedelic rock loosely translates to either playful innocence or violent catharsis, depending on the tone. I like most everything Barnes makes to some extent, but I’m most attracted to his funky hysteria – Hissing Fauna and Skeletal Lamping are his masterworks, and I’m very fond of the groovier passages on Paralytic Stalks.
The new Of Montreal record White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood belongs to this end of the Barnes spectrum, and pushes familiar vibes from Hissing and Skeletal into new, more expansive directions. Barnes has mentioned that one of his inspirations for this set of songs was extended 12″ mixes of songs from the ’80s and ’90s, and I absolutely hear that. It’s not just that the tracks are long, but that the grooves play out at a very leisurely pace, and the digressions feel more like logical destinations for the music than the often sudden jarring shifts of previous Barnes compositions. As a result, this music feels a lot more serene and grounded than usual, even as his lyrics express a lot of paranoia, confusion, and exhaustion.
“Sophie Calle Private Game” is basically a love song – or an infatuation song, or a seduction song, depending on the section. Or maybe it’s really an anxiety song, since so much of it is about trying to make sense of his desires, keeping himself from being too impulsive, and attempting to stay in control of his narrative. The chorus is very funky but fraught with caution and mixed emotions, but the groove eventually mellows out considerably in the last few minutes, where the lyrics move beyond “should we hook up?” to some point after consummation. (“You whispered ‘don’t be vulgar’ while I was making you cum” is quite a lyric, by the way.) This is one of my favorite Barnes tricks – showing the gradual evolution of a relationship over the course of a single song.
March 1st, 2018 7:33pm
Khalid and Swae perform “The Ways” from a position of genuine awe and humility. They’re both swooning for a “power girl” whose strength, beauty, and intelligence inspires them to rise up to her level. It’s a love song where respect and eroticism are tied together, and the power of a woman is not a threat to masculinity. Khalid’s vocal is warm and gentle, and he slips comfortable into the quasi lover’s rock mood of Sounwave and BADBADNOTGOOD’s track. Swae Lee is a revelation here – significantly more mellow and vulnerable than I’ve heard him on Rae Sremmurd songs. He’s very convincing in this lover boy sweetheart mode, both here and on his new solo track “Hurt to Look,” and should definitely continue working in this lane.
March 1st, 2018 1:17pm
Richard Russell’s album as Everything Is Recorded is essentially a “producer + guests” record, but the way he cycles a set of collaborators through the songs makes it feel much more like the work of a specific, deliberate ensemble than a compilation with a general aesthetic. “Mountains of Gold” is a crucial hub track on the record, with three crucial recurring collaborators – Sampha, Ibeyi, and Kamasi Washington – converging to do their things over the piano vamp from Grace Jones’ version of “Nightclubbing,” and Wiki from Ratking turning up to contribute a rap that ties together the narrative threads of Sampha and Ibeyi’s lyrics. Russell structures the song like a posse track, stringing together these seemingly disparate artists’ parts together so elegantly that they all complement each other perfectly and the composition is balanced and smooth.
February 28th, 2018 1:40am
The main guitar part in “Side Tracked” is a lot more ’70s R&B than most people would expect from Born Ruffians, but it suits them well, particularly as the song is produced by Richard Swift and this vintage vibe is very much his comfort zone. But it’s not a straight pastiche. Rather than do some sort of awkward Dap Tone thing, they take a very British Invasion approach to the vocal melody and harmonies. The chorus is the most plainly beautiful thing this band has produced, and I love the way Luke Lalonde’s voice rises up on “siiiiiide” to drop off abruptly on “tracked” is like this thwarted catharsis in a song about trying to deal with estrangement.
February 26th, 2018 2:14am
Caroline Rose’s vocals throughout her new record Loner have a distinct and captivating cadence – usually conversational in tone, often a bit wry and funny, always very empathetic and human. That empathy is particularly strong in “Jeannie Becomes A Mom,” a mid-tempo synth pop track with a slick cosmopolitan groove about learning to deal with the limits that get placed on all of our lives. And of course, the harshest limit is time. Rose’s character is young but feels time slipping away rapidly – “the world don’t stop.” I love the way the music relates to the lyrical theme, with the beat seeming to jog in place as the attack on the keyboard hook feels like time clicking away. It’s a pleasant feeling of inertia. Even better is the way Rose sings the “now you’re in real life” refrain with a lot of sympathy but also a touch of frustration and a dash of ambivalence.
