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.
September 29th, 2016 2:47pm
Fudge is Prefuse 73’s hip-hop project with rapper Michael Christmas, and a lot of the thrill of it is hearing Prefuse bend his eccentricities as a composer into the consistent rhythmic frame of rap. If you’ve ever heard Prefuse 73’s music, a track like “Young Vet” will be very recognizable as his work – there’s just something about the way he chops up sound that’s like an audio fingerprint. He gives Christmas just enough stable measures to rap over, but the sound shifts a lot more than a typical rap track, and Christmas often seems like he’s being pushed into shaky ground. But he’s totally game, and his performances through the record, but especially here on “Young Vet,” sound fresh and fearless.
September 27th, 2016 2:44pm
Purling Hiss’ early stuff gave me the impression that they weren’t particularly interested in writing song-y songs, and were more about foregrounding the scuzzy surface of lo-fi garage rock. I don’t think that music worked very well, in large part because form is pretty important to that genre, and without it you lose the momentum that makes it exciting. I wonder if they came to that conclusion, because their new music is very structured and dynamic, and clearly built for thrills. All the sounds in “Fever” sound very hot – it’s all in the red so it’s hot in production terms, but also in vibe, because it feels like getting blasted with sunlight in a heatwave. But it’s the sort of too-hot that makes you feel extra alive, and everything about the song and the performances conveys reckless fun.
September 26th, 2016 3:40am
Julia Jacklin isn’t breaking the mold with anything about the melody, structure, or style of this song, but everything about this song is executed with a seemingly tossed-off elegance that impresses the hell out of me. It’s a bit like how you wouldn’t criticize gorgeous handwriting because the person holding the pen was using the letters and words and sentence structure of a language, you know? This song is all about the contours of the melody, and how it sways gently between its changes, and the way Jacklin’s voice tips from sweet to sardonic and back again within two lines. I’m especially fond of this very Peter Buck-ish bit getting towards the end, but then, of course I’m going to be a mark for anything with a passing similarity to “Strange Currencies.”
September 24th, 2016 7:39pm
Rostam Batmanglij is a great collaborator for Hamilton Leithauser for a lot of reasons, but primarily because he has such a great grasp on exactly what makes Leithauser such an interesting and distinct performer. In “Rough Going,” Batmanglij taps into my favorite aspect of his work with The Walkmen, a bleary-eyed late night drunken vibe, and pushes that to a theatrical extreme. The song sounds like it was written, arranged, and recorded on the spot in some ancient dive bar around 2 AM. Like a lot of the best studio recordings, it evokes a feeling of improvisation and immediacy despite being calculated and artificially constructed by design. I’d love to know just how much of this is live in a room, though – it feels so loose and Leithauser sounds so present in the moment and totally connected to the swing of the beat. The sax solo is wonderful too, and sounds completely off-the-cuff in the best way, like the sax player just happened to be in the room and decided to jump in when the moment was right.
September 22nd, 2016 2:46am
The “my life is pretty great now that I’ve got a lot of money!!!” song is a staple of hip-hop, and a lot of rappers can sound like they’re crossing something off a to-do list when they make theirs, but D.R.A.M. really goes at the trope with gusto on “Cash Machine.” There’s so much joy in the sound of this – the bright notes of the piano hook, the cheeriness when he breaks into sing-song, the zippiness of his punchlines – that some of the more mean-spirited lines are softened a bit by context. Is this fundamentally a song about a guy lording it over other people for making more money and leaning into petty grudges? Yes, of course. Is this one of the best feel-good rap tracks of the year? Also yes!
“Good Day” is another “YES I AM FINALLY RICH!” moment-of-triumph song, but as much as Lil Yachty is expressing jubilation in his lyrics, there’s a vague melancholy in his voice that kinda tilts the song in an unexpected direction. Is that a note of doubt? A lingering paranoia? A fear that this is only a passing moment of reprieve from economic hardship? Is Lil Yachty just one of those dudes who can’t help but sound like a sad robot when he gets AutoTuned? I feel for the guy and genuinely want his good day to last.
September 21st, 2016 3:36am
I can’t say that I would’ve expected Mac Miller to make one of the tightest, most focused, and musically rich rap records of 2016, but 1) it’s on me that I wrote this guy off for no good reason 2) I’m very glad that he did. “Dang!” sets the tone for The Divine Feminine early on, tapping into a chill, sophisticated quasi-disco aesthetic that reminds me a lot of Beyoncé’s “Blow” while exploring anxiety about an on-and-off relationship Miller sounds desperate to save. (Both songs are very focused on cunnilingus though, so there’s that.) I like the contrast of the smoothness of the sound with the vulnerability of Miller’s words, which are cleverly written but delivered with a slightly mush-mouthed delivery that feels right in this context. The overall feeling of the track is light and perky, which lends an optimistic tone to Miller’s verses. He’s admitting to fucking things up, but it’s easy to get on his side and believe him when he’s making his promises.
September 20th, 2016 12:16pm
My favorite hip-hop is almost always little more than a series of rappers taking turns on a beat, especially if that beat has a creaky, dilapidated aesthetic. Blame the Wu-Tang Clan. All four verses in “Really Doe” are remarkable, and work as good minute-long primers on each rapper’s style. Kendrick shifts his vocal pitch and rhythm midway through his intricate verse; Danny Brown is typically squawky and eccentric; Earl Sweatshirt is gruff and sullen yet slightly smirky. Ab-Soul is the revelation here, maybe because he has the most to prove relative to these other guys who’ve already attained icon status. His verse sounds twice as hungry, and actually outdoes Kendrick’s in terms of wordplay and meticulous attention to technical detail. I particularly love the bit where he mentions Aleister Crowley and “the GOAT” within a few seconds but doesn’t really nudge you in a “see what I did there???” way to notice the play on occult iconography. And that’s the general vibe here – four very technically proficient rappers having fun with the track and refusing to dumb anything down.
September 19th, 2016 12:22pm
I could say that this is a really great soft rock song, but that sounds like I’m making fun of it, right? But it really is, and the quality of it highlights how difficult it can be to write in this mode without getting overly sappy and sentimental, or having the softness of the song completely overwhelm the rock of it. I hear a lot of Matthew Sweet in the melody of “Rushing,” but the arrangement is much more strummy, airy, and overtly romantic than what he’s normally up to. It isn’t just that this song is romantic, it’s unabashedly so, and Matthew Caws sings about falling in love with incredible earnestness. The music makes everything sound crisp and focused and idealized, emphasizing the sense that meeting this person has suddenly shifted this guy’s entire perspective on the world for the better. The lyrics address feeling cynical and closed-off before this moment, and you could paraphrase pretty much all of it as “I was blind, but now I see!”
September 15th, 2016 5:55pm
About two thirds of the way through this song Will Sheff asks “are my eyes now closed or opened?” If songs could have a nut graf, this would be it for “Mary On A Wave.” The music is gentle and soothing, with a chorus that feels cautiously optimistic, but Sheff’s words are uncertain and possibly delusional. I hear it as a song about feeling happy and safe, but worrying that it’s all an illusion. You need to feel a thing, so you manufacture the feeling as a survival instinct. You suffer from emotional anguish, so you self-medicate with love and religion. The sentiment is a bit cynical and pragmatic, but I don’t think that’s in the music. All I hear in the sound of it is empathy and affection.
September 14th, 2016 12:36pm
Isaiah Rashad mainly stays in one lane creatively – raspy, introspective rap over slow beats and melancholy guitar parts. It’s kinda like if Raewkon only ever did stuff like “Heaven & Hell.” This is not a complaint: This is one of my absolute favorite aesthetics for hip-hop, and Rashad is exceptional at it, and very brave in how open he is in rapping about addiction, depression, and failure. Any bits of raw ego on The Sun’s Tirade feel very hard-earned, and the sad vibes are genuinely soulful, not entitled and pouty like Drake. “Brenda” is the most overtly jazzy song on the record, and I love the way the crisp chords and distant sax runs frame his gravely voice with bright, elegant tones. That contrast makes his performance pop, and emphasizes his pride and dignity in the face of hard times.
September 13th, 2016 12:30pm
This song feels like an entire noir film compressed into three minutes, with Uffe packing in so many classy-yet-lurid night time signifiers that it’s a wonder the song still has space to feel airy and stark. I’m particularly fond of the piano bits that sound like they’ve been jacked from an old Brubeck record – that aesthetic can’t help but sound a little lighthearted and goofy, but contrasts nicely with the general vibe of vague menace and sleaze.
This song sounds like it’s taking place in the same dark, surreal dream forest as Björk’s classic “Human Behaviour.” But unlike Björk, who sounded like she knew her way around that wilderness, Luísa Maita sounds anxious and lost, like she’s somehow wandered into the deepest reaches of it without any way to turn back. I don’t speak Portuguese so I’m not clear on the lyrics, though I do know the title loosely translates to “memory wire,” which suggests some uneasy connection between the unreliable nature of human memory and the fallibility of data devices.
Twist’s Laura Hermiston has her own version of John Dwyer from Thee Oh Sees’ ecstatic “whoooo!” that signals that his band is about to rock out EVEN HARDER. As she leans into the second chorus she chirps “up!!” in a way that’s incredibly playful and charming, and does a lot to amp up the enthusiasm level of an alt-rock song that’s already pretty upbeat and fun. There’s more chirping later on too, and it brightens everything up. Keep on chirping.
September 12th, 2016 3:23am
It sucks that De La Soul were essentially forced to abandon the dense sample-centric aesthetic of their most famous works because, well, it’s just absurdly expensive and labor-intensive to clear so many samples. But at the same time, it’s good to hear them get pushed out of their comfort zone and avoid outright nostalgia. Like, maybe it’s better that these dudes in their late 40s don’t have the option of the musical equivalent of squeezing into the clothes they wore when they were 23.
“Memory of…(US)” sounds mature in a way that is not a thinly veiled euphemism for boring. It’s a love song from the perspective of adults who’ve been through some shit together and are wondering if it’s possible to get back to the good times. This is really an Estelle song – her delicate, nuanced voice carries the whole thing, and matches the elegance of Pete Rock’s low-key, string-centric production. Posdnuos and Dave’s verses elaborate on Estelle’s lyrics, and allow them to give voice to all the men who’ve messed up a good thing and know it. Their words aren’t 100% apologetic, but they are definitely coming from a place of guilt and regret. They try to explain themselves, but not in a “this will get me off the hook” way. It’s more like feeling embarrassed, and realizing that they’re responsible for sabotaging a good thing.
September 9th, 2016 11:51am
“Twines” is so mellow that it doesn’t totally register at first. At least this was the case for me – the first few times I heard it I picked up on the “warm bath” vibe and enjoyed that, and then the melodies sunk in deeper and deeper with repeated listening. The vocal performance on “Twines” is lovely, but it’s secondary to the gentle glow of the chords and the assertive but laid back snap of the beat. I’m more fond of the solo section of this song, in which a synthesizer and a saxophone get at some feelings that words wouldn’t do justice. I read that this band was aspiring to evoke “the sound of love,” and I think they nailed it. Or more specifically, this is the sound of romance – I just imagine two very graceful people in an elegant place with beautiful lighting. It’s aspirational, you know?
September 7th, 2016 11:41am
Maybe you remember White Williams? They put out one record nearly a decade ago, it was sorta like if The Strokes were also Neu!, or if Devo were also Kraftwerk. Really great vibe, but they basically disappeared and were largely forgotten. Motion Graphics is essentially the second coming of White Williams – same main dude, but with a totally new aesthetic. After a few years of working as a sideman in Co La and Lifted, Joe Williams has evolved into a rather elegant vaporwave composer. The punk elements of White Williams have been phased out, but that nervous physicality is still there in his music in less obvious ways. In “Lense,” it’s present in the bright keyboard chords that seem to splash out dramatically in an otherwise still and tranquil composition. It’s not a violent sound, but it does seem somewhat haphazard and graceless, and counter to his careful, lovely vocal tone through the piece. It doesn’t totally undermine the elegance of the overall song – if anything, that obvious humanity makes it seem more alluring.
