January 24th, 2018 2:24am
The key moment in “Cute Thing” comes arrives right near the start of it, as Will Toledo extends an offer to “come visit Kansas for a week of debauchery, songs, and high fives and… weird sex.” He mumbles that last part and deliberately buries it in the mix so that it trails off. It’s awkward and honest and earnest and embarrassing, and sets up a song that’s all about fumbling around trying to figure out how to be confident and sexy in a way that doesn’t make you feel like a fool or a fraud. The song is like a “Louie Louie” style garage rock anthem stuffed full of digressions and rambling interludes, which is sort of hilariously self-defeating but also an ideal way of conveying this gawky, nerdy teenage state of mind. How nerdy, you may be wondering? Well, nerdy enough to go on a tangent about trying to work the name of his crush into They Might Be Giants’ “Ana Ng” and name-checking John Linnell with great reverence before ending the song on a supremely angsty section in which he vows to sleep naked next to this guy. What a glorious mess of a song!
January 23rd, 2018 1:39am
Sean Desiree has a rather exquisite and elegant sense of melody, particularly on “You Call Me Cold.” The lyrics touch on anxiety and struggle, but the gentle curves of the tune and Desiree’s vocal delivery conveys a contrasting strength and serenity. Some of this comes down to some very confident decisions in the arrangement – it’s harmonically rich but totally uncluttered, so there’s space in the track to take in the crispness of each snare hit and plucked guitar note. Desiree’s voice is central to the song, but is presented in a slightly softer focus, which adds to the atmosphere of the production.
January 22nd, 2018 2:22am
The new Shins record is exactly the same as the last Shins record, at least in terms of the songs on it. James Mercer approached The Worm’s Heart as a formal challenge, to take the material he wrote for Heartworms and rearrange them to the point that they feel like substantially different songs while retaining their melodies and structure. I appreciate this concept, especially since a lot of artists now tend to think of their songs as being entirely tied to arrangement and production decisions. (I’ve seen far too many acts go through tedious lengths to replicate or replay studio sounds and programming in concert rather than just play a revised arrangement that makes sense on stage.)
I find that my favorites on The Worm’s Heart are also my favorites on Heartworms, and the alternate arrangements haven’t made me enjoy songs I wasn’t super into the first time around. The songs are the songs are the songs. The interesting difference between these two records is that the arrangements on Heartworms are far more consistent with what anyone would expect of The Shins, but the Worm’s Heart versions push in less familiar directions while still essentially sounding like a Shins record. I’m particularly fond of the way the new arrangements for “Painting A Hole” and “Name for You” nod in the direction of synth-heavy goth music, and swaps the band’s default twee psychedelia for a cold, melancholy moodiness. “Painting A Hole” is particularly interesting, as it cycles from bleak folk to channeling The Cure to ending on a spacey instrumental section that wouldn’t be out of place on a Pink Floyd record.
January 18th, 2018 2:06am
The percussion in “Pews” is rather busy and driving, and yet the song overall conveys an odd feeling of status. It’s a bit like jogging in place on a treadmill, or having your life go stagnant while everyone around you is frantic and chaotic. Nadia Hulett sings her parts with the tone of someone who is trying to be clear-headed and serene, but is just starting to betray a repressed impatience and restlessness. The lyrics focus on miscommunication and liminal moments, the bits of life without any focus or definition. It suits the music rather well.
January 17th, 2018 2:36am
Lucy Dacus’ music is direct and personal in a way that can feel vaguely startling and sorta voyeuristic, like you’re reading texts or emails intended for someone who is definitely not you. The lyrics of “Addiction” in particular are so vivid and specific that your mind rushes to fill in the backstory – who’s this person she was intimate with, and what exactly made them drift apart, and what brought them back together in that car? Does she really want to get back together, or is she just torturing herself in the middle of the night? I think this is resonant at any age, but it all sounds so young to me. It’s the angst of not having a lot of personal precedent, and knowing how things go in other people’s lives and in stories but not really knowing how the narratives will form in your own life. You hold out for the patterns of other people’s lives, or rush to conclusions about how things are for you. You can hear her drift towards the latter extreme as this song goes along, with lines that sound like the beginning of self-fulfilling prophecies.
January 15th, 2018 10:13pm
“Part of the Math” is built around a blaring tone that evokes the aesthetics of a loud, overdriven electric guitar without necessarily sounding like it. Panda Bear has done this trick a few times before, and it’s always interesting to me – familiar and alien all at once; a simultaneous embrace and rejection of traditional rock sounds. The rest of the arrangement falls in the same odd zone, with a steady electronic beat and a straight forward and catchy vocal melody both feeling just slightly off-kilter.
This is a great example of what Animal Collective have always done best: Taking bits of pop and rock music that we take for granted and going “hmmm, is there maybe another way of achieving this effect that’d be more interesting?” YouTube is full of cover versions of AnCo songs that all translate the band’s music back into something more normal, and while that can make a good argument in favor of their songwriting, it also highlights the ways they’re always finding a more distinctive and colorful way of articulating themselves.
It’s worth noting that the lyrics of this song take a rather morbid turn about halfway through, just after Panda chastises someone – I assume himself – for “making it all about your shit.” There isn’t a clear narrative here, but it’s interesting to me that his words because more negative and cryptic just after he denies his own feelings or perspective.
January 14th, 2018 11:58pm
“Your Dog” essentially inverts the sound and sentiment of The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” – moody and pensive rather than aggressive, and bitterly defiant rather than eagerly submissive. Iggy was singing about getting dominated, but he was essentially being a bossy bottom, and in control of a fantasy situation. Sophie Allison is singing about a much more mundane scenario – being in a miserable relationship with a controlling guy who treats you like a prop to occupy his time. The lyrics are direct and unambiguous, the sort of lines you rehearse over and over in your head before actually speaking up for yourself. But even if the verses are bold declarations of independence, the chorus suggests getting out of this won’t be easy – “Forehead kisses break my knees in, leave me crawling back to you.”
January 12th, 2018 2:45am
Merrill Garbus’ catalog follows a trajectory of her access to equipment and collaborators, with each record more polished and professional than the last. And, also, maybe a little less compelling? Her debut was essentially built out of lo-fi digital recordings pieced together in Audacity – perhaps the most ambitious piece of art anyone’s ever used that program to make – and is startling in its textural contrasts and intimate feeling. The follow up, w h o k i l l, added fluid, slinky bass and horns, and while it was recorded more traditionally, it still felt wild and untamed. One of the exciting things to me about these records is that Garbus’s performances and arrangements were raw and unorthodox, but definitely not naive. When I wrote about the second album at Pitchfork, I described her vocal as being like a feral Mariah Carey. I stand by that! Her best work is always in this thrilling space between unhinged feeling and total control.
Fast forward to her fourth album, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, and things are a bit different. The band has stabilized enough so that she’s no longer the only permanent member, and she no longer seems to be limited by instrumental choices or the need to arrange songs so they can be easily performed live by two or three people on stage. You can sense her thrill about this in a lot of the music. “Heart Attack” in particular piles on textural elements rather playfully, but she’s careful not to clutter the beat. I love her vocal on this track – it’s like she’s living out a fantasy of being a house diva, even if the music never fully enters that realm.
That hesitation to fully embrace genre conventions is part of what makes this kind of a strange album to process. It all sounds so transitional, and it’s hard for me to listen to it without feeling like I’m listening to her work. Every moment sounds like a decision, and nothing feels instinctive. Obviously a lot of records, good and bad, are the product of endless editing and overthinking. It’s just that Garbus is someone who has always thrived on impulse and intuition. It’s noticeable when it’s missing.
January 10th, 2018 3:44am
The main guitar part in “Enter Laughing” moves in circular pattern at a relaxed pace, but the mood is more pensive than chill. Despite the clear patterns, there’s never a feeling of resolution, so the music seems to drift along. It’s a bit like convincing yourself that you’re wandering aimlessly while actually pacing in circles. The lyrics follow the form, with Verity Susman singing about wanting to break out of patterns and feeling for not committing to someone or be able to be emotionally available to them. Susman’s voice has an ambiguous quality – she conveys regret and tenderness in some moments, but also an odd neutrality and distance. It’s hard to place this song on an emotional timeline. Is she in the moment, and the opportunity to follow through on this relationship still there? Or is she looking back on something that’s too far back in time to recover? It’s such a wonderfully ambiguous piece of music.
January 9th, 2018 1:45am
The saxophone is central to this song, driving the main melodic hook and contrasting starkly with a bass part that I’m guessing is being played on a synthesizer on a “robot belching” setting. The sax part is strong, but it’s made even better by an extremely dry recording that seems nearly devoid of reverb and is very loud in the mix. It has an uncanny effect – accurate, but unnatural and vaguely alien. It’s perfectly suited to the tone and aesthetic Ty Segall is going for here – heavy and soulful, but slightly off. There’s a grandiosity to it that is relatively new to his body of work, but it’s undercut by the clever and perverse choices in the arrangement and recording.
January 8th, 2018 2:09am
Zizi Raimondi is a bit tricky to figure out. The music on her Bandcamp is all over the place – sleepy indie rock, synth kitsch, extreme lo-fi weirdness, Casio replicas of classical music, and faithful, beautifully sung renditions of jazz standards. And all of this, from the most primitive work to the most accomplished performances and compositions, has been released between late August and last week. This could be years of work being put on the internet in a random order, or maybe it’s the chaotic and eccentric workflow of a very busy and restless talent. I have no clue. But it’s fascinating, and “Folly Dolly,” the A-side of her most recent single, is one of the best and most interesting rock ballads I’ve heard in a while.
“Folly Dolly” is a very Lou Reed sort of song with a gentle groove and lyrics that sketch out a romantic entanglement that hasn’t quite started to tangle just yet. The narrative of the song is ambiguous, with the lyrics shifting between first, second, and third person perspective. Who is this woman she is describing? Who is this person she’s addressing? Raimondi’s breathy, yearning vocal and the shift to first person in the end suggests a frustrated, unrequited love triangle.
January 5th, 2018 3:40am
Every sound in this track is bright and vivid, and neatly placed in the pocket of the drums, which are crisp and prominent in the mix. Every sound, that is, except for Hannes Ferm’s voice, which conveys a lovely melody but is otherwise entirely incomprehensible. This isn’t your standard mumble or the usual bury-the-voice-in-the-mix shoegaze thing. Ferm’s vocal is loud and clear, but smeared and slurred almost as though he’s deliberately trying to make it funny. It amuses me, anyway. It’s like a falsetto pushed into abstraction, or like a plaintive psychedelic ballad sung by the Swedish Chef.
January 5th, 2018 1:56am
Kah-Lo’s vocal on this track is immediately charismatic and interesting – mischievous and fun, but also a bit cold and aloof. The lyrics lay out the plan for a night out, and while fun is factored into it, she’s mostly sketching out a strategy for getting the most out of the men in the room. It’s all very transactional but the way she puts it, it’s all a fun game for her, and plus, there’s dancing. Riton’s track bangs from the start, but it’s constantly shifting and moving and thumping with varying degrees of intensity. He doesn’t really give you the option of resisting the groove. You get yanked into it, and it eventually spits you out. Kinda like the protagonist of the lyrics, eh?
January 4th, 2018 3:57am
I’ve heard a good amount of roots reggae over the past several years, mainly Studio One stuff, but I’m nothing close to an expert. I just have a reasonable frame of reference. And I say that to say this: I have never heard a roots song that sounds quite like this. The melody, chords, and rhythm are all very familiar, but the tone of the keyboards and recording is fresh. There’s a disorienting quality to the keyboard tone straight away, and it pushes the chill feeling of a slow reggae rhythm into something more loopy and dazed. It’s not a radical departure from tradition – this is in many ways retro enough that it could pass as much older, but it’s just off enough so the particular zonked-out vibe feels novel to me.
January 3rd, 2018 2:55am
“The Magnificent Moon” starts off feeling a lot like the more expansive Hot Chip songs – groovy but chill, in the sweet spot between relaxed and precise. But as the song moves along, Mildlife start throwing some curveballs at you – it seems to expand in scope, the bass groove gets more sophisticated, it starts drifting into a groggy solo section. Then around five minutes in, you get the ~real~ shift as the the synths recede and the jazzy guitar chords come in, like something out of Dots and Loops-era Stereolab. I love the particular guitar tone here – so immaculate and understated, this elegant and sexy sound contrasted with synth tones that signals futuristic kitsch. The whole track is built like a journey, and that odd collision of vibes is the highlight of the expedition.
December 29th, 2017 4:33am
Amber Navran’s performance on “Lastaya Love” – not just her vocals, but apparently on every instrument in the arrangement – conveys a gentle, confident serenity that brings to mind Erykah Badu at her most graceful. It’s neo-soul, but with a touch of cosmic jazz to bring out unexpected textures and harmonies. Navran is singing about holding on to dignity and knowing when to walk away from a dead relationship, and her vocal gets across that sort of resolute clarity, but also the raw vulnerable emotion beneath it. When her saxophone solo comes in at the end, it’s a signal of freedom and relief.
December 28th, 2017 11:45pm
It took me about 20 years to realize that this song is probably called “Shutterbug” because it’s a series of snapshots of people in small, pivotal moments. The chorus changes perspective with each iteration – “it’s her thrill” when it’s about a girl on tv who’s “a fool for the last living rock king;” it’s about “your thrill” when she’s addressing her power over a lover; it’s “my thrill” when she flips it to focus on the power they have over her. I love the way the verses build a tension that switches to euphoria at the start of the chorus, but then reverts back to a grinding tension: She can’t change. You can’t change. I can’t change. CHANGE! CHANGE! That last repetition sounds different depending on my mood – sometimes it’s like begging for change, sometimes it’s like cheering it on. Today it just sounds like slamming into a wall, over and over, and hoping each impact breaks through it somehow.
December 28th, 2017 12:54pm
Christine Perfect is the maiden name of Christine McVie from Fleetwood Mac, who is invoked in the first verse of this song in a… not entirely flattering way: “I’m not a Stevie, I’m a Christie McVie / I feel the weight of the world, I find comfort in being second best.” I like this as an assessment of self-esteem – I’m not the cool girl, I’m not the one who gets attention, but I’m still pretty great. Just a more subtle type of great.
This is actually a love song, and it’s pretty direct. She’s singing about her insecurities and issues, but points out that this person she’s in love with makes her better. Just being around them makes her ecstatic. And the song backs that up with the unapologetic catchiness of an old school tv theme song and the restless energy of the most cheerful end of punk rock. The chorus could signal desperation and neediness, but Lemuria plays it more as simple warmth and gratitude, which is very refreshing.
December 27th, 2017 2:29am
The most immediately noticeable thing about “Let’s Make Out” is the way Rakel Mjöll screams the title phrase like an unhinged maniac. It’s a sexy, seductive line that’s delivered with an intensity and aggression on par with Courtney Love on “Violet,” and it’s all the more compelling in that the song opens with her screaming the chorus at this throat-splitting volume. It’s 0 to a million. She shifts into a more flirty vocal on the verses, but the song never really dials down from “sex-crazed frenzy” mode. It all sounds like it’s designed to incite a very horny riot.
December 22nd, 2017 1:35am
“Jesus Was A Cross Maker” is an incredibly elegant bit of songwriting, with a gorgeous melody that rolls out gently over an arrangement that borrows from folk, gospel, and classical music without neatly fitting into any of those categories. The song has been covered many times over, and it’s funny to me how the most notable versions I’ve heard have trouble capturing the simple grace of Judee Sill’s original – Cass Elliot, The Hollies, and Warren Zevon all mess with the structure and lightly mangle the melody to highlight their particular vocal styles, while Frida Hyvönen‘s is faithful to the melody but pushes into a softer, sentimental tone that sacrifices the sober, clear-eyed quality that makes the Sill recordings so compelling.
There’s a lot of emotion in the song, but it’s presented in hindsight, with Sill reflecting on depression and an abusive relationship. The key feeling here is regret, but it’s more about a larger self-destructive tendency than anything in particular – she seems to be putting less blame on this guy, and more on herself for being so easily seduced. The “Jesus was a cross maker” line is brilliant, particularly in how she draws a comparison from this irony to her complicity in her own misery. Was Christ aware that he was building the very thing that would be used to execute him? Did it ever cross his mind that he could end up on one of these things as he made them? Sill has said that she wrote this song while entertaining thoughts of suicide, and died of a drug overdose eight years later. She seemed very aware of the cross she was making for herself.
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