February 26th, 2016 1:24pm
If you pressed me at any point in the past 20 years or so to name the sexiest songs I know, this Helium track is one of the first things that would come to mind. A lot of it is in the bass groove and the thick, strange atmosphere of the recording. Some of it is in Mary Timony’s voice, which switches between this disaffected “cool girl” tone and a breathy, angelic tone. And I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit that a bit of it had to do with the weird mix of anxiety and desperation in it, and the implication that this song could be coming from someone in a literal mental institution. There’s something very damaged and sordid and intense about this song, and that bleakness is kinda sexy to me.
The way Timony says the title phrase sounds very glib, very “whatever.” It could just be mean-spirited flirtation, a cruel parody of pick-up line. I love the way the verses are kinda aimless and dead-eyed, but the emotions become more urgent when the chorus clicks in. She’s basically singing about having a crush on someone you don’t really like and makes you feel bad, but you feel powerless around them and that is calming in some way. She’s indecisive, and unsure about how much agency she has in anything. “Everything that I do makes me want you,” she sings. “Aren’t I supposed to?” It’s not surprising to me now that I connected with this song so much as a teenager – it’s such a great evocation of having no idea what to make of your attraction to other people, and just figuring that all sorts of shitty feelings are just how it’s meant to be.
February 25th, 2016 1:41pm
“Candy Everybody Wants” is an essentially condescending song, but when I was a teenager, I slightly misheard some key lyrics in a way that made it much more so. Each time Natalie Merchant sang “so their minds” I heard “southern minds,” so it turned into this song about how everyone in the south is a hateful rube, and being a New Yorker listening to a band of New Yorkers, I just rolled with that. Thankfully, I was wrong about that.
The song is, in fact, a cheerful parody of cynicism, in which Natalie Merchant sings about a culture that thrives on indulging vice. The main hook is a shrug: “Hey! Give ‘em what they want.” The quasi-Motown arrangement makes it all sound fun and breezy, like the song could literally just be about candy. To further hammer it home, “Candy Everybody Wants” is structured so that it’s basically three different chorus hooks in rotation, because people like hooks, and hey, give ‘em what they want, right?
It’s hard to imagine a song like this being a hit now, or anyone even a little bit like Natalie Merchant being a pop star in this era. Even in a period when the internet media is full of think pieces informed by social justice rhetoric, anyone as Pollyanna-ish, prim, and politically didactic as 10,000 Maniacs-era Merchant would have trouble catching on in the indie world, much less crossing over to the mainstream. (The intro to the video of this song actually includes the phrases “marginalized member of a spectator democracy” and “manufactured consent.”) But I think this song is very relevant right now, as this “hey, let’s shamelessly indulge the worst in people” has become the guiding principle of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, and if we’re being honest, most of the internet economy. Merchant is asking the listener to consider who benefits from vice, and everyone being distracted from the incredibly boring important things in society. But asking is all she’s doing. Everything else is just giving you what you want.
February 24th, 2016 1:39pm
Music is an abstract medium, but “Black Cow” sounds unmistakably like midtown Manhattan, or at least a somewhat romantic notion of it. There’s just something in the sway of it, the architecture of the chords, the way the tones evoke chrome, neon, and concrete. It insinuates classiness and grime in equal measures. It just matches.
The lyrics of “Black Cow” are firmly rooted in Manhattan, and are just as vivid as the sounds. Donald Fagen’s character in this song is a put-upon guy who’s trying to get out of a toxic relationship with some party girl with ambiguous addictions and a lot of other dudes on the side. Or so he says – Fagen’s men are unreliable narrators, and I think we should take it as a given that this dude is insecure and upset. The song is asking you to give him the benefit of the doubt, so let’s just roll with that.
Fagen’s lyrics draw a lot out of his characters with only a few careful details. The song starts out with the guy noticing her at Rudy’s, a dive bar in Hell’s Kitchen that actually still exists. She’s high again, and he’s disappointed in her, but he quickly ends up back at her place, where his issues with her are right there on the counter – her little black book, and her “remedies.” I think he’s jealous, sure, but I think the main frustration comes out later in the song: “I’m the one who must make everything right / talk it out till daylight.” He’s exhausted by having to take care of her, and the benefits of that – the sex, really – isn’t the draw that it used to be.
In the chorus, he takes her to a diner and breaks up with her, admitting that he doesn’t care anymore why she’s doing any of this. He’s not angry, just tired and bored. I like that there’s so little contempt for the woman in this song – the worst you get is just weary condescension. I get the impression that even if he thinks she’s being weak or self-destructive, he respects her and kinda wishes he was like her. The whole song is like that shrug older people have to do around the youngish: “Yeah, that all sounds like fun, but I’ve got to be responsible and go to work.” He knows it’s time to call it off when the vicarious thrill of being around a hot young trainwreck is gone.
February 23rd, 2016 4:04am
“Brittle” comes the perspective of someone knows they’re being selfish and petty and have decided to really lean into it, mostly because it’s emotionally honest but partly because they know it’s kinda funny to be so pathetic. A lot of Elvis Costello songs are written with this point of view, and Shayne Carter even kinda sounds like him here. It’s amazing how long it took me to realize that, actually – I’ve known this song well for over 20 years and that only hit me a few weeks ago.
Carter is singing to an ex, and making a dubious case for why they ought to get back together, or something like that. I’m not even sure if this guy even wants that, so much as he wants to make it clear that no one needs it more than him. That’s the exact word he uses – it. The love, the spark, the sex, the feeling of being wanted? Maybe all of it, who can say. He’s ambiguous in the details, but adamant about wanting it, and is off-handedly spiteful about his competition: “Just because another’s words can touch you better / don’t make ‘em measure up to mine.” I love that bit of ego there, because it’s what you do when you’re grasping for any reason to feel better than your rival. Evidence is unnecessary, you just need to believe that you’re better because, well, you’re biased.
The bridge is where the song reveals what’s really going on in this dude’s head, and wrings a bit of soulfulness of it: “Buried deep, there’s a hope that I remain so endless and boundless, you spin when you dream.” All he really wants is to matter to this other person, and he doesn’t care whether it’s good or bad. It’s just to leave a mark, because he doesn’t want to be alone in thinking this was a significant connection. It’s “an eye for an eye,” but for romantic jealousy. And of course this ends on a coy, passive-aggressive note: “Anyway, could be something you’d be best off to consider.”
Yeah, I love this song. And I hate that I see some version of myself in it.
February 22nd, 2016 1:37pm
I’ve only seen Björk perform once, at the Capitol Ballroom in Washington, D.C. in 1998 on the Homogenic tour. I still have some very clear memories of this show, and one of them surfaces every time I hear this song: When she got to the chorus and sang “you can’t handle love,” she would wave her hands, as if to say to the audience – “no no no, YOU can handle love, I’m singing about this other lame dude.” It has always struck me as a very charming and generous gesture.
“5 Years” is about feeling totally exasperated by someone’s fear of commitment, and pitying them for it. I like that as contemptuous as this song gets, it’s rooted in genuine concern for this man: “You’re the one who’s missing out / but you won’t notice til after 5 years / if you live that long! / you will wake up all loveless.” There are a lot of songs, particularly over the past decade and a half, that are brutal and petulant in how they address rejection, and a lot of the time I just think “Well, I can see why that didn’t work out.” But “5 Years” comes from a place of emotional maturity, and it’s less about telling someone how awful they are, and more about being completely disappointed by a person you actually love.
Björk’s performance on this track is so wonderfully expressive, especially as it goes along and she puts this guttural growl into emphasis words: “I’m so BORRRRRED with COWAAAARRRDS!!!” I love the way she refuses to blame herself for this guy’s fears and flaws, and how the song is just her impatiently waiting for someone to get on her level. Like most of the songs on Homogenic, the track juxtaposes lovely strings with deliberately ugly electronic noise that sounds jagged and violent, and this mirrors the feeling of lyrics and vocal perfectly – simultaneously gracefully serene and furious. By the end of the song, she’s demanding to know what’s so scary about love, and daring him to give it a shot. It’s so emotionally raw, but it’s also as self-possessed and self-respecting as a “baby, come back!” sentiment can get in a pop song.
February 19th, 2016 1:39pm
“Kiss Them for Me” is a song about the life and death of Jayne Mansfield, full of specific references to her career and public persona. But more than that, it’s a song about glamor that can give the listener a contact high sensation of glamorousness. The music, which pulls in elements of bhangra, hip-hop, dance music, and orchestral pop, has a slick, trebly tone that feels like being sucked into a fantasy world where everything is gleaming and perfect. It’s like every beat and note is coated in glitter.
A lot of Siouxsie’s music and art is in some way about embracing forms of glamor, and creating an alternate reality for yourself. I’ve never felt like this was an option for me, given the circumstances of my body and life, but when I listen to “Kiss Them for Me,” I am grateful to feel it vicariously. Which is funny, because the song itself is doing the same thing, about a woman who willed herself into this glamorous life. Maybe glamor is really just some idea of a life that’s more beautiful than your own, and claiming a part of it for yourself. You need to be defiant. I’m too willing to accept my lot, but people like Jayne and Siouxsie aren’t, so they remake themselves and the world around them. Even Jayne’s gruesome car crash death, which Siouxsie sings about in the fourth verse, becomes lovely and romantic.
“Kiss Them for Me” is one of those songs in which the best hook is not the chorus itself, but rather the pre-chorus – “nothing or no one will ever make me let you down.” The melody on this part is just glorious, and I love the way it seems to ascend dramatically up to the proper chorus, as if that’s some other physical plane. I imagine that it’s like walking up a staircase to a terrace overlooking some incredible view of a city, and looking down at everything, feeling like you’re truly someone special.
February 18th, 2016 1:16pm
This is a track from Daryl Hall’s Sacred Songs, which he made in collaboration with Robert Fripp in 1977 shortly after Fripp worked with David Bowie on ”Heroes”, but was shelved by Hall’s label RCA until 1980 because they figured it was too uncommercial. That last bit is confusing to me because even with Fripp’s atmospheric guitar parts, it’s a fairly straightforward pop-soul record, and the late ‘70s is clearly the time when it would’ve had the greatest commercial impact. At this point in Hall’s career, he’d only had a few hits with John Oates – “Rich Girl” in 1976, “Sara Smile” in 1975, and “She’s Gone” in 1973. He wasn’t quite as defined as he would be in the ‘80s, when the duo had a string of major hits between 1980 and 1982. “Something In 4/4 Time” sounds like a hit to me, so I wonder what RCA didn’t like about it. Was it too rock for an artist who had been previously sold as a soul singer? Was it too meta?
It’s definitely meta. Hall’s lyrics are specifically about trying to appease a record label while holding on to his identity. “You’re selling yourself and it’s a matter of fact,” he sings. “Your love is your life and your life is your act.” He’s being very transparent and self-aware here, but also quite idealistic. The verses start out rather cynical and pragmatic, but he always come to the conclusion that he can only succeed by being himself, and by being truly passionate. Hall’s vocal sounds very confident and optimistic, and you only really get a sense of his doubt on the breakdown, when Fripp plays a solo that contrasts Hall by seeming a bit cold and distant. Fripp makes his guitar seem analytical somehow, like something taking in all of Hall’s data and figuring out what it all means. When it snaps back to the soulful, cheerful hook about knowing you’ve got to make something people can relate to, it’s like Fripp’s guitar has decided that it agrees.
February 17th, 2016 1:16pm
Annie Lennox is doing her best to warn people off of love in this song, hard-selling the addictive and destructive side-effects of falling in love the way you might advise someone to stay away from crack or heroin. She is so insistent and specific about what it does to you that at some point it feels like a reverse psychology ploy – why yes, I would like to be distorted and deranged and wrenched up and left like a zombie! It sounds a lot more interesting than this totally blah life I’ve got going at the moment.
Dave Stewart’s track is built around this steady pulse that feels overtly sexual, but also paranoid and anxious. It sounds like the obsession Lennox is singing about, suggesting a one track mind that’s plagued by doubt and guilt. There’s flashes of delicacy and loveliness, and Lennox’s voice is often totally gorgeous, but it mostly sounds dark and lurid, like getting inside the mind of someone kinda gross and scary. And I think that’s the point here – you’re supposed to see yourself in this feeling, and recognize how icky and damaged it is. This isn’t really about “love,” of course – love isn’t like this at all – but it’s a very accurate depiction of something it’s often confused with.
February 16th, 2016 12:22am
If you’re only familiar with Peter Gabriel’s most popular work – “In Your Eyes,” “Sledgehammer,” “Don’t Give Up,” “Games Without Frontiers,” “Biko” – it may come as a surprise that he actually rocked at one point in the late ‘70s. It was certainly a revelation to me, anyway.
“Modern Love” was released on Gabriel’s first solo album in 1977, which came out a few years after he departed from Genesis after touring for their definitive prog masterwork The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I suppose some of that record ~rocks~, but certainly not in the lusty, thrusting, straightforward way that “Modern Love” rocks. It’s hard to imagine that this song wasn’t directly influenced by Led Zeppelin – the main riff feels very Houses of the Holy/Physical Graffiti-era Jimmy Page to me, and those records came out only a few years before this was recorded. The guitar part – played by Robert Fripp, of course! – is offset by an organ part that nods in the general direction of soul music. This all suits Gabriel’s voice very well, so it’s a shame he didn’t really explore this sound more after the late ‘70s.
Gabriel’s vocal performance is about as raw and passionate as he ever got on tape. He’s howling, he’s shouting, he’s rasping like he’s all tapped out but can’t stop going. There’s a lot of self-deprecating humor in this song, with him portraying himself as this grand romantic fool while dropping witty lines about Venus, Lady Godiva, and the Mona Lisa. This is basically a song about being exasperated by sexual frustration, and while that could be played straight, it’s a lot more sympathetic as a farce.
February 15th, 2016 3:00pm
It’s funny to me that David Bowie recorded three albums in a row with Brian Eno, but waited until the record after that run was completed to make “Up the Hill Backwards,” basically his own version of an Eno rock song. It’s there in the melody, in the affect on Bowie’s vocal performance, and that solo from Robert Fripp. It’s there in the sentiment of the lyrics too, which approach complicated emotions from a cold, logical perspective without losing touch with humanity.
“Up the Hill Backwards” was written in the aftermath of Bowie’s divorce from his first wife, and he acknowledges the feeling of adjusting to a new status quo at the top of the song: “The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom and the possibilities it seems to offer.” It’s a peculiar turn of phrase, but very evocative. The language is so passive and indecisive, and the construction of the line emphasizes the “vacuum” rather than the freedom or possibilities. The melody seems vaguely upbeat, but paired with the lyric, you get the sense that any optimism in the song has been arrived at by a process of elimination. (“Well, I don’t feel miserable or angry or scared, so I must be feeling OK.”)
The rest of the song is like he’s talking himself out of having an ego. “It’s got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it,” he sings in the refrain, seeming a bit like he’s overcompensating for being self-centered and narcissistic in the past. After all, if this is in fact about his divorce, it has something to do with him, right? The passive voice continues through the song, with Bowie singing about the world moving on regardless of what happens to him or anyone else and sounding rather calmed by the notion that nothing really matters, including the difficulties ahead of him.
The odd neutrality of Bowie’s voice in this is countered by Fripp’s guitar part, which is by far the most expressive element of the song. His solo is very melodic, and starts off with this sort of casual bearing before escalating to this frantic peak that suggests a stronger feeling buried beneath the self-imposed rationality of the song – somewhat ecstatic, and more than a little bit terrified.
February 12th, 2016 1:27pm
A lot of indie acts think they know how to write a jangly, melodic pop tune like this, but focus too much on the jangle and only give you the most basic effort with the melody. Not so with Lou E! There’s a richness to the vocal melody and bass line in “What Do You Do It For?” that could pass as vintage British Invasion – maybe not Lennon/McCartney level, but certainly on par with your better Hollies and Kinks songs. There’s never too much going on at any point in this song, but every moment has some variation on a melodic theme that’s just, well…very pleasing. Everything in this track is aiming for maximum pleasantness, and it achieves that goal with style and grace. Frankly, if this guy is going to be this good, he ought to consider a better name than “Lou E.”
February 11th, 2016 1:40pm
I love the way the mallet instrument being played in this song – marimba, I think? – immediately creates this feeling that you’ve entered some strange and heavily atmospheric place. The rest of the instruments seem to react against that sound and its hypnotizing repetitive beat – the drums fill in the rhythm, and the guitar and keyboard parts kinda bounce off it, like there’s some implied force field. The vocal melody is lovely, and makes great use of Jack Tatum’s wispy, airy voice. There are other Wild Nothing songs where his voice can seem a bit too nondescript, but here it clicks into place rather nicely and fills out a tonal range rather than blending into a haze of treble.
February 10th, 2016 1:32pm
I love the way Milk songs can have this lazy, laid back and spacious feeling to them while also being weirdly overstuffed with sound. There’s bit of guitar and piano overdubbed all over this track like clothes and papers cluttering the floor of a messy room, but it never quite gets in the way of the main vocal melody and guitar hook. All these extra sounds are fairly subtle in the mix, and come together to make this otherwise straight forward indie rock ballad feel off-balance and disorienting. It sounds kinda like walking around drunk in broad daylight, but in “pleasantly stumbling around” way and not a “about to puke or do something embarrassing” way.
February 9th, 2016 2:38pm
“Because I Asked You” has a very loose, casual, and friendly tone, which makes sense for a song in which Eleanor Friedberger is basically listing off a bunch of things that her boyfriend does at her request. She’s not asking for any major sacrifices or significant personality changes, and some of it is kinda silly. There’s a bit of tension, but not much – it’s really just about an adult person knowing they can ask for things, and that there’s a give and take in healthy relationships. It’s pretty easy to go through life accommodating other people without ever realizing that you can ask for things too without seeming needy or demanding. A lot of the time it’s just kinda chill, like in this song.
February 5th, 2016 1:43pm
It’s funny how once particular retro sounds become popular enough, they end up belonging to multiple eras. A few years ago a soul-rock tune like this would’ve seemed like an outlier, but with the massive success of an act like Alabama Shakes, it’s now just a good example of what popular rock music sounds like right now. Not complaining, though! This is a very well-made song from top to bottom, and Rachael Price’s vocals are terrific in conveying a feeling of wounded pride as well as putting on a big theatrical show. This is the type of band that trades on people being like “wow, but the pipes on that singer!,” and Price certainly delivers on that.
February 4th, 2016 4:16am
One of the most distinctive qualities of Tricky’s music is his tendency to have his raspy, muttering vocals shadow a melody sung by a conventionally good singer. In the early days of his career this typically highlighted the ever-shifting dynamic between himself and his singer and real-life partner Martina Topley-Bird – the power play between the singer and the svengali; the older man and the younger woman; the dominant and the submissive. In other cases, like this loose adaptation of an old Porno for Pyros song, it’s more like creating a beautiful proxy for himself. This track makes me think of all the times I’ve ever fantasized about being able to shape-shift into a traditionally attractive body, and what I’d do with that privilege even if I had it for just a little while. I think even in a fantasy scenario like that, it’d be hard to not just be myself with all the hangups and fears I’ve built up from a life of not having that form. This track is like that – as lovely as the voice up front is, the seams are showing. It’s a broken mask.
February 3rd, 2016 1:43pm
Flume’s arrangement for “Smoke and Retribution” is jagged and unstable, with the beat and pretty much everything else in it reacting against a harsh keyboard part that sputters and bleeps like a malfunctioning alarm. It may be the freshest, most original rap track that I’ve heard in a few years, and the kind of thing that would only come from a hip-hop outsider like Flume. Vince Staples’ verses ground the song, and his emotional performance adds to the extreme dynamic of the track. The contrast gives the impression of someone trying to stay focused in a chaotic world, and the only relaxed moments come when the song shifts into sung parts by Kučka, which quickly shift from introspective to miserably fatalistic.
February 2nd, 2016 3:26am
It was sad to read a bunch of aggregated news items about this song that didn’t even mention why it’d be significant that Tricky would be on this track. I suppose that even though so much popular and cool music today owes a massive debt to the work of Bristol acts like Massive Attack, Tricky, and Portishead, it’s all been more or less written out of the story, and what amounts to a Blue Lines/Protection reunion after more than 20 years is somehow not particularly noteworthy. Deeeep siiiiiigh! I don’t think any topic triggers a “get off my lawn” anger in me more than everyone under 30 having virtually no awareness of Tricky.
“Take It There” doesn’t sound like a reunion. There’s so much overlap in Tricky and Massive Attack’s aesthetics that they sound like they’re lurking around in the space they’ve always been. If anything, that space has become darker and more claustrophobic with time, and more like where Tricky was in the late ‘90s. The low piano chords in this track sound oppressively heavy, like a weight bearing down on the rest of the music that forces the beat to drag. Tricky and 3D rap in the odd way they do – a bit hazy on the rhyming, but just enough on beat to qualify. Their rasps are even deeper than ever, as though whatever darkness they had growing in them in the ‘90s has metastasized. There’s an ascending guitar part in the second half of the track that shakes off some of the weight, but it never stops feeling hopeless.
February 1st, 2016 1:45pm
There are certain types of rock songs that are clearly written to be played live, in which all the dynamic shifts are there to specifically jolt an audience. These kind of songs are most typically found on debut records, which are typically written and workshopped extensively in concert before being recorded, and so it’s not a big surprise that a lot of bands lean on that material for the rest of their careers. (Look at the setlist for most any reunion tour – most acts strongly favor playing the songs from their early years, which they also probably have better memories about, and whatever the last record was before the breakup is either ignored or barely touched.) “Come On” is definitely this sort of song, and is basically a bunch of time-tested moves artfully strung together into a piece of music that seems to just glide by you like a speeding car. The best bit is the rather Peter Buck-ish arpeggio played on the chorus, which contrasts with a chunkier guitar riff and the “right now” vocal hook.
January 29th, 2016 6:04am
Rihanna’s new album has no bangers, an awkward flow, few obvious hits, a spectacularly botched release via Tidal, and a total absence of Kanye West despite him being attached as the record’s “executive producer” up until very recently. But it does have a couple of the best ballads of Rihanna’s career. That’s not the most difficult bar to clear – ballads have never been her strong suit as a pop star – but I’d rate “Love on the Brain” and “Higher” near the top of her catalog in terms of songwriting quality and vocal performance. She pushes herself a bit further on “Higher,” but “Love on the Brain” is the true revelation, with her getting across just the right mix of vulnerability and toughness on an old school soul track. She reminds me of Millie Jackson on these tracks, particularly in how she leans into the low grit of her vocal range, and how a line like “it beats me black and blue but it fucks me so good” echoes Jackson’s incredible 1973 hit “It Hurts So Good.”
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