November 1st, 2016 2:34am
The melody line in this song and the vocal performance captured on this track are both remarkable, but I find myself obsessing on something relatively minor about the recording: There is something magical about the particular crack of the snare, something I can barely describe. It’s a perfect thwack sound, both precise and blunt. It’s firm and physical, and not at all fussy. It’s in direct contrast with the overt loveliness of the twinkling keyboard part and Ari Lennox’s voice, which has the grace of a jazz singer and the nimbleness of an emcee. It’s the perfect grounding for the song on both a musical and lyrical level, situating a romantic sentiment within something more immediate and tangible.
October 31st, 2016 12:28pm
Salaam Remi imagined No Panty as a party; a physical space to go see mixtape rappers perform live. The party became a group – Nitty Scott, Bodega Bamz, and Joell Ortiz, all NYC rappers of Puerto Rican heritage – and the group made a record, and the record sounds just like a party. Bamz and Ortiz are both great, but these songs are dominated by the raw star power of Scott. The group dynamic reminds me of the Fugees, where you have these two guys who would be the most charismatic rappers on someone else’s track put in de facto supporting roles alongside this extraordinarily expressive and confident female emcee. “Singin’ My Song” is the most immediate cut on a record full of obvious bangers, and lot of that has to do with how joyfully Scott bounces off the beat, and the way her voice bends and twists around the syllables of carefully constructed rhymes that somehow feel totally relaxed and improvised.
October 27th, 2016 11:54am
Lady Gaga is a rocker at heart, and though that was obscured in her earliest, biggest hits, she’s been gradually foregrounding that aspect of her as she’s moved along starting with The Fame Monster. Some people cynically interpret this as Gaga searching for a way to reboot herself for the marketplace, but it’s really just her becoming more herself, and allowing herself the opportunity to try out types of songs – like, say, “Joanne” – that she couldn’t take a risk on when she was dominating the charts with straight-up dance pop. Gaga is at her best when she’s excitedly trying out new looks and sounds, testing the limits of her life, and being a proud freak. At a point, the conformist marketplace of mainstream pop is an unnecessary albatross for her, and being less prominent frees her of creative limitations. Gaga the cult figure isn’t going away, which means Gaga the rock star can finally thrive. This is good, just like how it was a positive development when Kanye West and Beyoncé gave up chasing hits and decided to just do whatever they wanted instead.
“A-Yo,” a collaboration with the veteran songwriter Hillary Lindsay and producer Mark Ronson, is exactly the sort of thing I want from Gaga. It leans into rock music quite a bit – it’s in her voice, it’s in the crunch of the chords, the nods to country, that vaguely Fripp-ish solo that sounds like someone playing a guitar that has neon tube lighting from a dive bar for strings – but the song is produced like a dance pop track. This is a contemporary version of the thing Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna did so well in the ‘80s, which is present pop music as a place where elements of all popular genres merged into something greater than the sum of its parts that welcomed all types of people. As catchy and joyful as “A-Yo” gets, I don’t think it has a chance at uniting people in that way, but I appreciate the gesture and feel like this big tent approach suits the utopian freakiness of Gaga.
October 26th, 2016 12:20pm
This is a song about being surprised by your emotions, and wondering why things you let slide a few years ago now take a greater toll on your psyche. It’s a very being-in-your-early-20s type of song – it’s very rooted to the process of figuring out your own version of being an adult – but the way Julia Steiner sings about feeling restless and distracted is so vivid that it doesn’t really matter how old you are as a listener. That feeling contrasts nicely with the somewhat upbeat tone of the music, dialing down the melodrama but situating the confusion and heavy emotions in a life that is ordinary and decidedly non-awful. It puts a scale on things without dismissing them.
October 25th, 2016 12:47pm
Lance Skiiiwalker’s music has an odd wooziness to it that falls somewhere on a continuum between “way more stoned than you intended to be” and “coming down with a flu.” A lot of his first album, Introverted Intuition, is built around ambient tones, audio scuzz, and beats that seem as though they could collapse or disintegrate at any moment, but by the time you get to “Lover’s Lane” at the end of the record, the sound has gelled into something more sturdy and elegant. The string sample at the center of the song carries a lot of the tune, but it’s still very much about atmosphere – the negative space around the beat, the particular crispness of the snare hits, the way Skiiiwalker’s lover-man vocals feel slightly slow and off-kilter. It’s surprising that there aren’t more songs that conflate romance and disorientation in this way.
Pusha T’s style has always been well-suited to this sort of bare bones minimalism. It’s like cooking something with a distinct, highly nuanced flavor – you don’t want to drown it out by adding too many other elements. You want to showcase the character of the thing, and highlight nuances with subtle additions that frame rather than obscure the flavor. Pusha isn’t breaking any ground for himself – to keep going with that analogy, it’s more like a carrot just being a carrot, or a really excellent example of a carrot – but Mike Will’s production reminds you of how menacing and seductive his voice can be. The punchlines in the verses land perfectly, you can sense how carefully he controls the weight of each syllable, and you hang on his every word.
October 24th, 2016 12:52pm
A lot of hip-hop love songs spoil the mood with random crude lyrics, but “Next to You” never falls into that trap, which is usually just a way to avoid seeming too vulnerable and soft on the track. This song is as sincere as it gets, with both Jeremih and Twista coming across as guys trying very hard to be courteous gentlemen. It’s sweet and generous without getting corny or undermining its sexuality. The key thing here is respect – Twista’s densely packed lines are assertive but not aggressive, and deeply respectful of this woman’s body and mind, as well as her personal boundaries. It’s all genuinely romantic, and that’s before you even factor in the chords and melodies lifted from Rose Royce’s 1976 hit “I Wanna Get Next to You,” which makes everything sound warm and gentle as well as smooth and seductive.
October 21st, 2016 12:57pm
Saba and Noname are speaking a lot of truth in this song about systemic racism – he’s mainly focused on a legal system set up to get as many black kids in jail as possible, and she’s talking about gentrification, a comparatively subtle method to the same end of pushing non-affluent black people out of cities. This could be shrill, but it’s not, even a little bit. Both performances are very nuanced – Saba more on a lyrical level, as he expresses frustration without shrinking the problem down so it loses its complexity. His depiction of Chicago isn’t particularly sentimental, but he’s heavily invested in the place and keeps his details vivid and specific. This isn’t just any city, it’s his city. Noname has a similar approach, but her cadence and delivery add another layer of depth. She has a gift for communicating volumes of emotional detail in subtle inflections and sighs, so even a familiar riff on gentrification feels fresh if just for how many mixed emotions and variations on exasperation and grief get packed into just a few lines.
October 20th, 2016 3:49am
Anderson Paak has a dilemma: He’s got a girlfriend, but you see, everywhere he goes, sexy women are trying to seduce him! I, uhhhh, can’t relate, but he does manage to make me feel sympathetic to his plight by sounding completely sincere in his desire to stay faithful and not give in to fleeting temptation. Paak sounds overwhelmed and bewildered, like he never imagined being in this position, and afraid that he’ll fuck up something good in a moment of weakness. Knxwledge’s track is built around a sweet, sentimental string sample that emphasizes the kindness in Paak’s voice. It reminds me of how a lot of producers frame Ghostface’s verses, right on down to the quick silent pauses that magnify some nuance of phrasing to the point that it feels like a big dramatic gesture in context.
October 19th, 2016 11:56am
Being a fan of Andre 3000 in the post-Outkast era means collecting a lot of tracks he appears on in which the gulf of quality between him and the headlining artist is quite vast. It can make a rapper look bad in comparison – $ilkMoney isn’t a bad rapper at all, but when he’s contrasted with Andre, his lyrics seem undisciplined and shallow. The sentiment of his words are kinda cringe-inducing too, with him basically just talking about how quickly he gets rid of women after fucking them. Andre picks up the general theme and takes it to a much different place, telling a vivid sex fantasy about being a criminal in federal court and getting seduced by a deputy, and that spinning out into a very dramatic scenario. $ilkMoney barely sounds like he likes sex or women, but Andre’s lyrics convey a deep respect for women and an overwhelming horniness on par with Prince at his dirtiest.
October 18th, 2016 12:03pm
The Game’s new record is presented as a musical autobiography, and the music itself quotes iconic rap songs – “Colors,” “The Message,” and “C.R.E.A.M.,” pretty obvious stuff, to the point where I have to question how much of enjoying those particular songs is just clicking into something familiar. But “The Juice” is less about referencing and more about evoking the spirit of a particular era – the early to mid ’90s, when rap was still heavily sample-based but not so dense with them that they became economically infeasible. There’s something very interesting to me about listening to this guy reminisce about the past and the music that shaped him, and then insert himself into that music now as a veteran rapper. He sounds completely at home, but also a little like a time traveler into the recent past.
October 16th, 2016 11:56pm
I suppose we’ve come a long way if a young rapper is saying “I hate my boyfriend” in a song and getting blown by a football player in the video and people aren’t really talking about it. But then again, that might be because it’s getting swept under the rug. I hope that’s not the case, because “Empty” is a warm, thoughtful song in the vein of early Kanye and current Chance, and it’s a window into the mind of a young guy who’s torn up by nostalgia, mixed emotions, and a yearning for romance and connection. It’s a very accessible tune, but a bit strange outside of the matter-of-fact queerness – tuba is used as the primary bass instrument for a whimsical and off balance effect, and the children’s choir that comes in near the end undermines the adolescent angst in a way that feels at least somewhat pointed. The main attraction here is Kevin Abstract’s voice, which conveys a very specific type of young male vulnerability. There are points in this song where he flips from seeming petulant to wounded in a second, and it’s just so heartbreaking and sweet.
October 14th, 2016 12:47pm
In a way, “There Was A Door” is an update and revision of Fugazi’s “Suggestion,” a song about street harassment and a desire to exist in the world without worrying about the attention of potentially threatening men. The crucial difference is that while “Suggestion” was written and performed by men, and had blunt lyrics designed to get through to the dumbest, most aggro guys at a punk show, “There Was A Door” is written by a woman and gets into the nuances of the experience and the emotional toll of living with constant anxiety about it. The lyrics aren’t designed as rhetoric; it’s all about one woman’s thoughts and emotions, and so the words can be a bit scattered or oblique. The second half of the song is more direct and declarative – “all I’ve wanted for the place I live is respect for this vessel I’m in” – and pushes back on men who cannot respect boundaries. (“FAMILY” doesn’t mean you can touch and “JUST JOKING” is not a reason enough for me to not bite but be polite.”) But I like the way it all flows together, from poetic reverie to assertive response. It feels like a direct translation of complicated feelings in song.
The song itself sounds rather bright and cheerful, but has this odd structure that is constantly shifting into higher gears as if the band is too restless and excited to stay in one position for long. The music feels a bit disconnected from the sentiment of the song, and the odd way the words are stuffed into the meter suggests that maybe this is just an arbitrary home for these thoughts. But then, the sound of this is extremely mid-00s, and a ton of artists around that time were all about packing reams of extremely wordy lyrics into pop melodies.
October 12th, 2016 12:26pm
Lee is one of the most ambiguous names – gender neutral, racially vague, no notable associations with any particular era. In the context of this song, in which Dick Valentine gives voice to a jealous man whose girl has been stolen by someone named Lee, the name is deliberately enigmatic. He’s so worked up that you wonder what Lee is all about, but there’s no lyrical details to use as clues. Lee is a void. Everything in the song is either about this guy’s perception of this woman, his rampant paranoia, and his belief that she was something that belonged to him that has been taken away by someone called Lee. It’s pure ridiculous masculine insecurity set to a peppy new wave beat.
October 11th, 2016 2:37am
Kate Tempest adapted her last album, Everybody Down, into a novel. It’s a rare album that could logically make that transition between art forms – Tempest’s lyrics are dense and vivid, and she’s extremely good at detailing the inner lives and complexities of her characters. If anything, the adaptation seems redundant. Her new album, Let Them Eat Chaos, is written and performed in the same style, but if she were to adapt this one into another medium, I’d hope it’d be film. The premise of the record is that it’s all taking place at the same time in the wee hours on a block in South London, and the songs are like a camera panning around and zooming in and rewinding on all the people there. “Ketamine for Breakfast” focuses on Gemma, a woman who may or may not be recovering from addiction, but is at least telling herself that she’s not as bad as she used to be. Tempest drills down into her psyche in just a couple minutes, but a lot of the detail is carried by images and flashes of memory. People describe records as “cinematic” all the time, but this is a rare piece of music that seems directly influenced by the narrative and editing logic of film.
October 10th, 2016 3:00am
Max Wonders is still a teenager, but the grit and grain of his voice, not to mention his verbal dexterity, makes him seem a bit older. He definitely comes off as a guy shaped by experience, and while “Utopia” is basically just him trying to get some girl to get involved with him, the context of growing up in Chicago colors every line. I’m particularly interested in the suggestion of class conflict here when he tells her “you don’t know your neighborhood” because her parents moved her out of the city as a baby. “I can show you how we live,” he says, and while he doesn’t hammer the point, it’s a bit like a Chicago version of Pulp’s “Common People.” But instead of harshly judging this girl and condemning her luck and privilege, he’s just trying to share his world.
October 7th, 2016 11:42am
“Day Breaks” sounds like the lull after a storm, in which two people survey the wreckage of their relationship and quietly wonder what to do next. Walk away? Attempt to rebuild? Pretend nothing happened? Crumble and weep? The arrangement is both delicate and melodramatic, respecting the small scale of this domestic unrest while fully respecting the high emotional stakes for the people involved. Norah Jones has achieved a level of success that makes it difficult to describe her as “underrated,” but her vocal performance here is a great example of the kind of presence, nuance, and control that tends to be undervalued in singers, and written off as sort of dull and “mature” in the derogatory sense. But fuck that, this is sophisticated work, and hits its emotional marks with grace and a high level of empathy.
October 6th, 2016 2:27am
The Frightnrs’ Nothing More to Say is a meticulously constructed simulacrum of Studio One rocksteady and dancehall, and honestly, it’d seem a bit unnecessary if not for 1) the fact that they are actually quite good at writing and performing in this style and 2) few people who love this sort of music would be mad to have just a bit more of it in the world. I do question whether the production had to mimic the original Studio One aesthetic this much – it can sometimes feel a bit too studied, or like a wax museum replica of a Sugar Minott record – but again, I love this specific sound and it is incredibly comforting. I literally flipped a coin to decide which of two songs I’d feature here and narrowed that down from a few others, which should give you some idea of the strength of the material. It’s just stupid to resist something that feels so good.
October 5th, 2016 5:02pm
Dr. Something is one of the most unusual things I’ve come across while bouncing around Bandcamp feeds – an indie bedroom/garage recording project that has the bombast and sentimentality of musical theater, but also the deliberate lyrical strangeness and unsettling vibe of art rock. Some of the songs on the Rustic Machinery EP tilt more in one of those directions, and “Companion” is the most overtly theatrical ballad of the set, to the point that it sounds like something that could be from a 1980s Barbra Streisand record. Alison Dennis’ voice may be a bit too much for some people to handle, but the unexpected shifts in arrangement and evocative lyrics about existential misery do a good job of subverting the stuffy, stagey prettiness of her vocal performance.
October 4th, 2016 2:19pm
“Cranes in the Sky” is about all the things you do to distract yourself from pain or anxiety. A lot of it is just living your life, or doing normal activities with a bit more intensity and purpose because you’re pointedly trying to “put yourself out there.” There’s a good balance of specificity and ambiguity in this song – the things she does are vivid, but the depression is very vague, and it’s unclear whether or not she’s actually escaped any of it. But as much as the lyrics express some frustration and a sense of futility, the music conveys a feeling of grace and serenity. It’s not about erasing this dark emotional undertow, it’s about learning how to live with it, and not give in to it.
October 4th, 2016 2:20am
Yung Bae is more DJ than producer. He’s less focused on composition than in digging up excellent obscurities and crafting them into a thrilling collage precisely calibrated to make people happy. He’s got a fantastic aesthetic – very indebted to the nostalgic disco vibes of the first Avalanches record, but with a deeper groove and traces of Japanese and Korean high-gloss hyperactive pop. There’s also a lot fewer samples involved, and as far as I can tell, Yung Bae’s main deal is reworking existing tracks rather than building up tracks from several sources. (This particular track is basically just a remix of Chris Bartley’s “The Sweetest Thing This Side of Heaven” from 1967.) But that’s not a problem, since the dude is so good at sustaining a vibe that makes the world sound like a joyful, exciting, and lovely place for about a half hour at a time. This track is just a fragment of that experience.
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