No Joy “XO (Adam’s Getting Married)”

One of my favorite things about No Joy is the way they imply dimension in their music. Sounds overlap and move apart like objects moving through space, and the lack of fixed position is disorienting and vaguely frightening. The vocals in “XO” are sometimes buried just behind a wall of distortion, or wailing just out of reach, or incredibly close and intimate. The song has the urgency and dynamics of rock, but the way the textures are cut together reminds me more of film editing than a live band performance. The cutting doesn’t distract from the main melodies – some of the strongest of No Joy’s career, by the way – but it does obscure and abstract the vocals in a way that’s more impressionistic than straightforwardly musical.

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Jamila Woods featuring Donnie Trumpet “Breadcrumbs”

This song seems to make two arguments: First, that memory is a flawed and fragile thing that could slip away from us at any time. Second, that memories are only tether to our shared past and must be considered precious things. Jamila Woods’ perspective skips around a timeline through the song, but the one thought that’s fixed to a future point is the request to leave her a trail of breadcrumbs to guide her back. Back to this moment, back to this feeling, back to this time and place. Back to this very well used Stereolab sample. Back to these lovely trumpet solos from Donnie Trumpet. Back to this feeling of connection with someone new that somehow seems to extend back to the start of her life. Back to a heartbreaking memory of her grandparents that is also so beautiful and kind and pure that it makes you believe in love.

Get the album for free from Jamila Woods’ Soundcloud page.

Sampa the Great “2 4”

The phrase “I had evidence of happiness” keeps poking out of this song like an unexpected thorn. Most of what registers in the vocal is boilerplate rap/dancehall – 2, 4, get on the floor – but the few lines around it build a lot of tension and make everything else about the song feel more defiant than fun. I love the way the chords skip on the beat, and the slowed-down vocals pop in to this threadbare arrangement to add a bit of texture, but go against the grain of the music in this oddly pleasurable way. It’s like moving against a tide, but maybe that’s the idea of the whole song.

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Negative Gemini “Don’t Worry ‘Bout the Fuck I’m Doing”

That title sets you up for something aggressive, right? I can’t say there’s no aggression in this song – that phrase is sung repeatedly, after all – but the anger and frustration is buried beneath a chill facade and a groove that’d be hypnotic if it weren’t quite so loud. It’s the sound of trying to seem like you’re perfectly fine when you’re definitely not, and embracing the idea “living well is the best revenge” when you’re not living well just yet. Negative Gemini sounds like she’s been put on the defense, and that tension suggests a messier and more complicated set of emotions than your average chillwave tune. I hear this and just wonder what the story behind it could be.

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Snoh Aalegra “In Your River”

Snoh Aalegra has a big brassy voice, but it’s only the second most striking thing in this track after the string arrangement, which trills and sweeps and swells like an old Hollywood score compressed into a tight three minutes. As epic as the vocal and strings get, there’s still a huge amount of space in this, similar to the balance of lonely nothingness and glamorous excess you’d find on ‘90s Portishead records. Aalegra’s vocal performance is stuck between here and there as well; she sings about romantic indecision with equal passion for both sides of her internal conflict.

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Maxwell “III”

The rhythm and chords of “III” set up a pattern of light tension and release that moves so quickly that your mind and body barely registers the tightness and only pays attention to the feeling of relief. It’s the perfect tone for a song that ties together feelings of lust and empathy, and addresses someone who is very familiar, but isn’t a romantic conquest just yet. As smooth as this song is, there’s a bit of gruff holler in Maxwell’s voice at points, and it steps up the passion without trampling over the delicate balance in the arrangement. He sounds like a man – a real adult man – and what you get in his vocal performance here is all the confidence that comes with experience, with just a touch of unashamed vulnerability.

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The Avalanches “Harmony”

The Avalanches’ new record is a pretty joyful thing, but it bums me out in that it’s a reminder of how rare and precious thing dense, complex sample-based music has become in this era. You still get some here and there, mainly on records by big money artists like Kanye West and Beyoncé who can afford clearances without any problem. But money and legal issues have made this craft incredibly impractical and ridiculously time consuming, and fashion moved away from the aesthetics of your Prince Pauls, DJ Shadows, Automators, and Avalanches. A lot of Wildflower sounds like it’s been sitting on a shelf for over a decade, but more like a bottle of wine in a cellar than something that wasn’t worth releasing back in the day. “Harmony” weaves together scraps of sunshine pop into something that’s even sunnier than the source material. There’s a lovely weightlessness to the sound of it, as though you’re just strolling around town hearing the bits from the song pass by on the breeze and it’s somehow accidentally gelling into a composition. It’d sound magical in any case, but this sort of music being fairly rare these days only makes it seem more so.

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This is the ninth in my series of 1980s survey mixes, which are moving backwards in time from 1989 to the start of the decade. These compilations are designed to give more context to the music of the ‘80s, and give a sense of how various niches and trends overlapped in this cultural moment.

At this point we’re so early in the ’80s that most of the music will still have a distinct ’70s vibe to it, and the songs with strong ’80s aesthetics are totally fresh and forward-thinking in the moment. “Bette Davis Eyes” is a great example of this – it was written and originally recorded in the ’70s and you can hear that in the melody and sentiment, but the synth-heavy arrangement of the Kim Carnes version defines a very particular early ’80s vibe. I’ve never given that song a lot of thought until I realized it came much earlier in the ’80s than I had assumed, and now it strikes me a major turning point in pop music.

Thanks to Paul Cox, Chris Conroy, and Rob Sheffield for their help in compiling this survey. All of the previous mixes in this series can be found on this page. The 1980 survey – the final of this series! – should be ready around the first week of August.

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight” / The Clash “The Magnificent Seven” / Blondie “Rapture” / Tom Tom Club “Genius of Love” / Rick James “Super Freak” / Kim Carnes “Bette Davis Eyes” / Soft Cell “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go?” / Depeche Mode “Just Can’t Get Enough” / The Go-Go’s “Our Lips Are Sealed” / Daryl Hall & John Oates “Kiss On My List” / Squeeze “Tempted” / Rod Stewart “Young Turks” / Olivia Newton-John “Physical” / Prince “Controversy” / Funky Four Plus One “That’s the Joint” / Grandmaster Flash “Adventures on the Wheels of Steel” / Disco Daddy & Captain Rapp “Gigolo Rapp” / The Waitresses “Christmas Wrapping” / ESG “Moody” / Vivien Goldman “Lauderette” / The Specials “Ghost Town”

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Queen & David Bowie “Under Pressure” / Ian Dury & The Seven Seas Players “Spasticus Autisticus” / Bill Withers & Grover Washington Jr “Just the Two of Us” / Boogie Boys with Kool Ski, Kid Delight, and Disco Dave “Rappin’ Ain’t No Thang” / Stars on 45 “Stars on 45 Medley” / Stevie Nicks and Don Henley “Leather and Lace” / The Cars “Shake It Up” / Dead Kennedys “We’ve Got A Bigger Problem Now” / The Gun Club “For the Love of Ivy” / Elvis Costello “Clubland” / Wynton Marsalis “Sister Cheryl” / Muhal Richard Abrams “Du King” / Singers & Players “Devious Woman” / Brian Eno & David Byrne “The Jezebel Spirit” / Steve Winwood “Arc of a Diver” / Genesis “Abacab” / Gang of Four “To Hell with Poverty” / The Police “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” / Kool and the Gang “Take My Heart” / Merles Haggard “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink”

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New Order “Ceremony” / Siouxsie and the Banshees “Spellbound” / The Cure “Primary” / U2 “Gloria” / Echo and the Bunnymen “A Promise” / The Pretenders “Talk of the Town” / Sheena Easton “9 to 5 (Morning Train)” / Kid Creole and the Coconuts “Table Manners” / Fela Kuti “Coffin for Head of State” / Afrika Bambaataa “Jazzy Sensation (Bronx Version)” / Diana Ross “Work That Body” / Yoko Ono “Walking On Thin Ice (Re-Edit)” / King Crimson “Elephant Talk” / DNA “Blonde Red Head” / Glenn Branca “Lesson No. 2” / Penguin Cafe Orchestra “Telephone and Rubber Band” / Lindsey Buckingham “Trouble” / Joe Walsh “A Life of Illusion”

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R.E.M. “Radio Free Europe” / The Au Pairs “We’re So Cool” / The B-52’s “Private Idaho (Party Mix)” / Black Uhuru “Sponji Reggae” / Maximum Joy “Stretch” / Teena Marie “Square Biz” / Donald Byrd “Love Has Come Around” / Patrick Crowley “Menergy” / Pete Shelley “Homosapien” / Van Halen “Unchained” / Mötley Crüe “Live Wire” / The Blasters “Marie Marie” / Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers “The Waiting” / Billy Idol “Dancing with Myself” / The Ramones “The KKK Took My Baby Away” / Minor Threat “Minor Threat” / Black Flag “Rise Above” / Mission of Burma “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” / Stripsearch & Emily XYZ “Hey Kid” / The Minutemen “Search” / Taana Gardner “Heartbeat” / Bee Gees “Paradise” / Juice Newton “Angel of the Morning”

DOWNLOAD DISC 5

Duran Duran “Girls on Film” / Lene Lovich “New Toy” / Lizzy Mercier Descloux “Lady O K’Pele” / August Darnell “Christmas On Riverside Drive” / Miles Davis “Shout” / Esther Williams “I’ll Be Your Pleasure (Larry Levan Mix)” / Frankie Smith “Double Dutch Bus” / Marvin Gaye “Heavy Love Affair” / Luther Vandross “Never Too Much” / Lionel Richie & Diana Ross “Endless Love” / Christopher Cross “Arthur’s Theme” / Air Supply “The One That You Love” / John Lennon “Woman” / Rickie Lee Jones “We Belong Together” / Al Jarreau “We’re In This Love Together” / Joan Armatrading “No Love” / The Psychedelic Furs “Pretty In Pink” / Split Enz “History Never Repeats” / Eurythmics “Never Gonna Cry Again” / Jandek “Feathered Drums” / Emmylou Harris “Evangeline” / Rodney Crowell “Shame on the Moon” / Willie Nelson “Angel Flying Too Close To the Ground” / Bob Dylan “The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar” / Shakin’ Stevens “This Ole House” / Def Leppard “Bringing On The Heartbreak” / Loverboy “Working for the Weekend”

DOWNLOAD DISC 6

The Rolling Stones “Start Me Up” / Rick Springfield “Jessie’s Girl” / Journey “Don’t Stop Believin’” / Quarterflash “Harden My Heart” / Smokey Robinson “Being with You” / James ‘Blood’ Umer “Where Did All the Girls Come From?” / The Commodores “Lady” / Quincy Jones “Ai No Corrida” / Meat Loaf featuring Cher “Dead Ringer for Love” / Stiff Little Fingers “Go For It” / Adam and the Ants “Stand and Deliver” / The dBs “She’s Not Worried” / Gary U.S. Bonds “This Little Girl” / X “The Once Over Twice” / Neil Young & Crazy Horse “Shots” / Wipers “Youth of America” / Romeo Void “Myself to Myself” / The Adicts “Hurt” /The Adolescents “Amoeba” / Aneka “Japanese Boy” / Altered Images “Happy Birthday” / Orchestral Manoevres in the Dark “Souvenir” / Pointer Sisters “Slow Hand”

DOWNLOAD DISC 7

Laurie Anderson “O Superman (For Massenet)” / Kraftwerk “Computer Love” / Cybotron “Alleys of Your Mind” / Earth, Wind, and Fire “Let’s Groove” / Funkadelic “The Electric Spanking of War Babies” / Grace Jones “Pull Up to the Bumper” / Kool Kyle “It’s Rockin’ Time” / Material featuring Nona Hendryx “Bustin’ Out” / Electric Light Orchestra “Hold On Tight” / Was (Not Was) “Out Come the Freaks” / Minimal Compact “Statik Dancin’” / Heaven 17 “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang” / Bruce Cockburn “Fascist Architecture” / Rosanne Cash “Seven Year Ache” / Tom Verlaine “There’s A Reason” / Patti Austin “Symphony of Love” / The Blue Nile “I Love This Life” / Comateens “Nightmare” / The Jam “Funeral Pyre” / Joe Dolce “Shaddup You Face”

DOWNLOAD DISC 8

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts “Bad Reputation” / The Replacements “Takin’ A Ride” / Agent Orange “Too Young to Die” / The Lyres “Buried Alive” / The English Beat “Doors of Your Heart” / Eddie Rabbitt “Step by Step” / Alvin Stardust “Pretend” / The Neville Brothers “Fire on the Bayou” / Coati Mundi “Me No Pop I” / Yarbough & Peoples “Don’t Stop the Music” / The Jacksons “Can You Feel It” / Spandau Ballet “Chant No. 1” / The Moody Blues “Gemini Dream” / Klaus Nomi “Total Eclipse” / Central Line “Walking Into Sunshine (Larry Levan mix)” / Dinosaur L “Go Bang!” / Billy Bang Quintet “New York After Dark” / The Manhattan Transfer “Boy From New York City” / David Byrne “What A Day That Was” / TSOL “Silent Scream” / Carl Wilson “What You Gonna Do About Me” / Deniece Williams “Silly”

Margaret Glaspy “Situation”

It feels strange that I haven’t heard more songs about resenting unsolicited advice in all these years. Margaret Glaspy’s guitar parts in “Situation” are wiry and tense, and seem to tangle around the melody like string becoming a knot. She doesn’t sing so much as spit out her words, and the lines are blunt, confrontational, and completely unambiguous: “You don’t know my situation / we’ve had at most one conversation / you haven’t got a clue / so don’t tell me what to do.” It’s a perfect little dagger of a song aimed at the neck of some condescending even if potentially well-meaning person who doesn’t have the self-awareness to realize how insulting they’re being. When I hear it, I wonder how often I’ve been that person, and feel guilty for it. I can’t imagine what this song must feel like for the person Glaspy wrote it about. You just know they’ve heard it and felt the sting of recognition, right?

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Pip Blom “Truth”

There’s a part of my brain that hears Pip Blom’s songs and starts running a scan of my memory to figure out where I’ve heard her rhythms and chord progressions before. It’s all Alt-Rock 101 stuff, so it’s like — is that “Polly”? is that “Song 2”? is that some PJ Harvey thing? But this doesn’t get in the way of Blom’s songs, which all have immediate earworm hooks that benefit greatly from the blunt force of these simple chords. There’s a physicality to this music that you get from all the best ‘90s rock – she makes you feel the gestures and movements of playing the guitar, the impact of a snare hit, the raw sensation in your throat you get from using your voice the “wrong” way. She puts you right inside the anxiety of the song, and keeps her language as blunt as the rhythm so all the lust, confusion, self-doubt, and resentment in the lyrics are delivered to you entirely undiluted.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Melkbelly “Elk Mountain”

Melkbelly is remarkably fully formed for a band with only a couple singles out: a very defined guitar aesthetic; good melodies; a strong sense of urgency in everything they’ve produced. Guitar parts in Melkbelly songs are constantly moving – snaking around the beat, scraping against the groove, making hairpin turns just after you’ve settled into a rhythm. “Elk Mountain” does all of those things and more in four minutes, setting up a tension at odds with the vocal, which is basically a one-sided stoned conversation with some weirdo kid named Rusty. The details of the lyrics are surreal and unsettling, but sorta deadpan and matter-of-fact. By the end, she’s singing in this soft wordless angelic tone, and it’s hard to remember exactly how you got there because everything else went by in a blur.

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Jay Som “I Think You’re Alright”

“I Think You’re Alright” stars off in a way that does not signal in any way that a good guitar solo will come later on, and when it does come it’s slightly startling even after hearing it a few times over. It feels small and intimate in a way that doesn’t often result in wordless catharsis, but the decision to switch gears like that at the end is satisfying and refreshing. It also feels right as the aftermath of lyrics that express great affection for someone, but seems to be dialing things back every step of the way to avoid sappiness and vulnerability. She’s laying out a fantasy of love and intimacy, but it’s full of fucked-up bits, and the “I love you” is downgraded to “I think you’re alright.” That solo lets loose all the buried feelings. It’s not especially graceful, but it’s exactly right. If only we could just blurt out wordless feelings in regular life, right?

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Amy O “Canteen”

“Canteen” sounds cheerful but also a bit nervous, as though every beat and melodic turn in it is guided by a quiet ever-present anxiety. Amy O’s lyrics call back to childhood – the very first line is “elementary school was a breeze” – but that sentimental imagery is laced through a song that otherwise deals with some ill-defined relationship that’s both enticing and terrifying. She sings about how “love is a spider,” and she’s getting stuck in this person’s web, and while that metaphor isn’t exactly obscure, the way she uses it makes everything about having a body and emotions seem icky and alien. But it is kinda weird to just be passive, right? To just give yourself over to someone else’s whims, and not really know what to expect from moment to moment.

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Angelic Milk “Rebel Black”

Angelic Milk is music made by a Russian teen who seems to be obsessed with a romanticized concept of the angst-ridden American teenager. There’s several layers of irony to their project, but it’s not enough to obscure a genuine feeling. “Rebel Black” is built out of references, but they’re largely gestures to feelings in other songs and movies, not direct swipes from anything in particular. It’s more about what it’s like to imagine moments in your life the way they might be told in a movie, and willing your life to be more like that grander, more sentimental version of the experience. Edit out the boring parts, punch up the dramatic bits, and make everyone and everything much prettier, but keep things just raw enough to feel convincing.

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Sleigh Bells “Rule Number One”

Casey Kasem used to end his Top 40 broadcasts by telling listeners to “keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars.” In other words, be ambitious, but also pragmatic. Alexis Krauss offers a more impatient and aggressive version of that thought in “Rule Number One,” belting out “RIPPING DOWN STARS WHILE I STAND ON MY TOES!!!” over a Derek Miller riff so severely processed that it sounds more like it’s being played on grinding gears instead of guitar strings. I can’t understate how much this moment of the song thrills me – I rewind the bit and play it back all the time, just trying to tap directly into this extraordinary willpower and self-belief.

No contemporary rock band has devoted as much of their energy towards making their music sound AS HYPE AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE, but “Rule Number One” is a new peak for this duo. Krauss used to rely mostly on head voice, but here she’s as brassy and bold as En Vogue circa “Free Your Mind.” Miller’s riffs and beats have the raw energy they’ve always had, but they’re refined and reinforced. They’re both pushing themselves to their limits, and seem defiant in a way they haven’t seen before Treats came out. And that makes sense, right? They’re the underdogs again, and this is a song about breaking yourself, reinventing yourself, and willing yourself into greatness. It’s inspirational as fuck and I can’t get enough of it.

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Mitski “Once More To See You”

“Once More to See You” is built upon the “Be My Baby” beat, an easy signifier of aching romance in pop music. But it’s slowed just enough that you hang on every hit, anticipating something that you know is coming but still somehow feels slightly too far away. That theme carries over to Mitski’s words as she sings about a passionate love that’s being kept secret, and the agony of biding time until they can be alone together again. It’s a very melodramatic sentiment, but the song is rather understated overall, with the strongest feelings expressed in the spaces between words and sounds.

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Beck “Wow”

“Wow” slots into the Odelay/Midnite Vultures/Guero wing of the Beck discography, but it doesn’t feel quite like anything from those records. This song, along with last year’s “Dreams,” finds Beck exploring a vibe that’s so chill that it’s nearly vapid. There’s a void at the center of most of his late period material, and while the sadder songs stare into that void, “Wow” is like diving gracefully into it while wearing comfortable but extremely expensive clothes. A lot of the lyrics here are intentional cliches – “it’s your life / you gotta try to get it right” – but there’s a lot of old school absurdist Beck-isms in the mix too. “Girl in a bikini with the Lamborghini shih tzu” is a silly yet vivid line worthy of Midnite Vultures, but my favorite bit is when he raps “my demon’s on the cell phone to YOUR demons.” It’s a funny image, but it suggests an alienation from his own negative feelings so intense they’re removed from himself. This is Beck’s version of “YOLO” – live your life, do it right, have fun, and distance yourself from all bad vibes.

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Ariana Grande “Moonlight”

Ariana Grande’s major hits tend to be uptempo and sorta blaring, or force her into pairing up with pop rappers who seem arbitrarily selected and artificially forced into the song. I much prefer her in ballad mode, particularly when she aims for nostalgia and innocence, as on “Moonlight.” The song is extremely sweet and sentimental, and though she subverts the old-fashioned qualities of the tune with some contemporary slang, it’s pretty clear that she’s whole-heartedly embracing the naive romance of it all. Grande’s voice is lovely on this, and nicely balanced between straight-forward emoting and nuanced elegance. I like that she opens her new album with this song – other artists might sequence this sort of song at the end, but she’s wise enough to know that this is exactly the sort of showcase for her voice that ought to be your entry point into a record.

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Colleen Green “U Coulda Been An A”

There’s been a lot of Ramones in Colleen Green’s music all along, but lately she’s made Ramones pastiche the focus of her work. The Ramones aesthetic frames her songwriting skills in a very flattering way, particularly in her talent for expressing her complex neuroses very plainly. By tapping into Joey Ramone’s charming guilelessness, she embraces an earnest vulnerability while dialing down some of the darkest feelings on her last album, I Want to Grow Up. She’s not undermining herself so much as putting a more light-hearted spin on her anxieties. “U Coulda Been An A” is all post-breakup angst, but it’s played like a joke: Hey, you coulda made this work, but whatever, buddy! It’s good to have perspective.

Buy it
from Amazon.

Cass McCombs “Opposite House”

The lyrics of “Opposite House” suggest a living situation so narrow and cut off from the outside world that it’s brought on a sort of madness, but the sound of the song feels rather open and airy. There’s an indication that the space in one’s mind can be very different from physical reality, and that can in turn warp your sense of a confined room. To the singer of this song, there’s a whole world in this small home, and his endless time alone gives him plenty of time to figure out a way to bring a love back into his life. It’s all a fantasy, but fantasies can be nice.

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