There is maybe a sense right now that “dubstep” sounds and bass drops feel a bit two years ago, but I think we’ve only scratched the surface of what those sort of dynamics can bring to mainstream pop music. This cut from Kelly Clarkson’s new album picks up where Alex Clare’s hit “Too Close” left off by using the dubstep break in a power ballad the way a rock band would stomp on a distortion pedal for the chorus. The dynamic shift in this song is pretty extreme – the verses are set to strings and synth washes, and there’s no percussion at all until the lead into the chorus. Clarkson’s voice is as powerful and strong as ever on those verses and the bridge, but her voice is broken and scattered on the chorus. This really works for the song, though I wonder what it’d be like to pair this sort of thrilling dynamic shift with her voice at full blast.
The past four Of Montreal albums have basically been a document of the slow, painful dissolution of Kevin Barnes’ marriage, and Aureate Gloom is the record where this fragile relationship finally collapses. It’s not as manic as Skeletal Lamping or as bitter as False Priest, or anguished like Paralytic Stalks or casually cruel like a lot of Lousy with Sylvianbriar. All of those emotions are in the mix on Aureate, but the dominant feelings are relief and regret.
“Like Ashoka’s Inferno of Memory” is the finale of the record, and seemingly of this relationship in general. It moves through several parts, rapidly cycling through feelings of disorientation, spite, rage, condescension, nostalgia, guilt, and self-pity. There are lines in this song that are among the most vicious lyrics Barnes has ever written, which is really saying something given how mean he’s been through the past run of albums. It’s brave for him to put this out there – there’s no vanity in this music, he’s not afraid to make himself appear to be the villain. This song is just as messy and complicated and agonizing as you’d expect the end of a very long relationship to be. The good news is that “Ashoka’s” ends on a fairly upbeat note, with Barnes turning against himself and wondering why “we can’t say nice things to each other,” and seeing the mess he’s made to be something he deserves. We leave him in a place where he knows he’s ruined something that was once good, but he’s finally ready to move on.
I wasn’t a fan of Big Sean in his “appearing as a featured artist on random songs” period, in part because he seemed rather bland to me. Not bad or anything, just like a guy who showed up to the studio like “hi, I’m here to do the rapping.” My estimation of him changed a lot when “I Don’t Fuck with You” came out last year – it’s just an undeniably great song with terrific production and a vocal performance by Sean that’s both emotional and clever in its delivery. There’s a cartoonish quality to his voice that came through in that, and I think it carries through to most of his debut, Dark Sky Paradise.
I really like him on “Outro,” which is basically the requisite song on a rapper’s major label debut where he talks about how cool his life is now that he’s got money, but also how there’s a lot of petty annoyances because he’s got to seem honest and real. I know it sounds cynical to put it that way, but don’t get me wrong – I genuinely love that trope and Big Sean has a great spin on it. His lyrics are solid, but I think this song mainly gets by on charm. He never sounds whiney, just like a guy who’s shrugging off the complications while keeping his head focused on the important stuff – his rhymes, his beats, his girl, feeling grateful for making it work.
Joey Bada$$ is a proud traditionalist – he clearly worships at the altar of Nas, Biggie, DJ Premier, and Wu-Tang, and is striving to keep that ‘90s NYC aesthetic alive. I love that aesthetic, and so Joey’s music has a comfort food quality to it. There’s no surprises, but when it’s done well it’s rich and satisfying in a way that makes you momentarily forget there’s anything else. To some extent this makes me doubt my critical faculties, but then I remember one of my core beliefs as a critic: You can be wrong about the things you dislike, but you’re never wrong about what you enjoy. And how do I not enjoy production that feels so immediately cozy, and a rapper whose style is proficient yet warm and casual? Joey may be a bit conservative compared to some of his contemporaries, but this is a very “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” sort of thing.
What do you do when you want to experience love and have a serious partner, but are absolutely terrified of anything like actual intimacy? That’s the question of this song, which starts off with doubts about ever being “the marrying kind,” and then goes deeper and deeper until it reaches the root of the problem: an inability to trust other people and immense self-loathing.
This is a painfully honest song, and Colleen Green holds nothing back – it’s stark and cold and brutal, and it’s actually kinda scary to listen to it. She sings “I don’t wanna think about it, it’s too scary” in the first refrain, but that’s before she even gets to the really painful stuff. But she can’t stop thinking about it, and it’s just like those times when you can’t fall asleep and your mind just starts running through disaster scenarios and picking apart everything you hate about yourself. It’s a mental scab you can’t stop picking at.
The final verse is the one that really resonates for me. I hate how much I relate to that last verse. I’m kinda ashamed to admit this in public – I worry about you listening to it and then knowing a bit too much about my personal issues. But then, I think this song applies to sooooooo many people, including many people in long term relationships. It’s hard to connect with people in a deep and meaningful way, and almost impossible if you’re unwilling to let your guard down because you want to protect yourself, or protect other people from what you hate about yourself. I think a lot about letting go and letting other people in, but once that urge to keep people away gets entrenched in your mind, it starts to feel like a survival instinct. The real question of this song is basically – is it worth surviving to live like this?
I’ve been getting sent PR emails about bands for a third of my life now, and I’m very used to publicists saying their artists sound something like some pre-existing well-regarded band. In the case of Never Young, I saw that they were compared to Fugazi, and I reflexively scoffed: Haha, no one is gonna sound like Fugazi! But here’s the crazy thing: Never Young actually DOES sound a little like Fugazi. You can hear it in the way the riffs crash violently into the beat, and the drums hit with a physical force that you don’t find in all that much rock music from the past decade or so. (Even the stuff that’s meant to be heavy.) You can hear it in the way this dude sings, which clearly aspires to Guy Picciotto’s nakedly emotional shouts and slurs.
This is definitely music that belongs to the same lineage, but Never Young are true to the spirit of Fugazi and Dischord by being themselves too. There’s a very particular ugly metallic clang to their guitar tone, and they favor a mix that’s more about blasting your ears out than just offering a dry document of a band in a room. They also like shifting into a trebly, angelic tone, and while they’re hardly the first band to have a slashing, screaming sound smash right into something more lovely and ethereal, they’re certainly the best I’ve heard do it in many years.
I love the way this song feels like some kind of ritual to purge someone from your mind. Yannick Ilunga leads a call and response that spirals around a very simple beat, recognizing this person’s power over him and realizing that whatever they had, good or bad, is poisonous now. I’m extrapolating, though – there’s no particular conclusion here, and at least half the point of the song is the way the vocal and music moves in circles. It intensifies and builds, but it never leaves a tight orbit.
A while back, maybe ten years ago, I came to realize that my favorite dance music wasn’t 100% danceable. I mean, yes, you ~can~ dance to it, but it’s not the sort of blunt force beats that will always slay at actual dance clubs. The thing I love is a sort of highly dynamic, super-charged pop music that signals a very sleek and confident sexuality. I’m looking for songs that have all the melody of pop, but pushed to a point where the very sound of the music forces an immediate physical response. This track from Etienne de Crécy’s Super Discount 3 is a fine example of this – it’s an incredibly smooth song, and about as chill as a song can be while also being quite hyperactive. There’s a hint of doubt in the vocal, but the overall sound is so suave and certain. It’s aspirational pop music.
Cat Harris-White and Stas Irons’ best skill as a duo is their ability to convey strength, ideology, and sometimes anger in a way that feels kind, empathetic, and maternal. There’s a powerful message embedded in this – we don’t need to become harsh and brutal to speak out against terrible things, and approaching the world with affection and patience is not automatically a position of weakness. Their music always feels like a warm embrace that engulfs your whole being – maybe it’s the deep bass, or the way their melodies seem to circle and loop, but it feels so gentle and reassuring.
This track by Budgie & Samiyam is a gorgeous frame for Earl Sweatshirt’s older, richer voice – the tone is classy, sophisticated ‘70s soul, but warped just enough to feel surreal and slightly shabby. The shift into the sliced vocal loop midway through is a brilliant touch, and I’m always a sucker for rap songs that switch the beat up in the middle. Earl’s performance is understated, but his lyrics are as strong as ever, but now they hit with the authority of a dude who is finally out of his teens.
This is the kind of extremely romantic song only a teenage songwriter and performer can truly nail. I swear I mean this without condescension! There is nothing immature or cringe-inducing about this song – it’s just got a purity of feeling and concern about the perception of others that peaks in adolescence, even if it often carries through life. This is basically about being in love and feeling misunderstood by everyone around you, and how that alienation makes that love grow stronger. That “you and me against the world thing” is always going to evoke a powerful feeling in me, but the part of this song that really chokes me up is the way she dismisses all these horrible townies who’ve got her down: “I don’t think they know what love is.” She’s frustrated, but also pities them for it.
Knxwledge’s remixes keep large chunks of his source material intact while absorbing it into his drowsy, stoned aesthetic. This track is made out of Joe Budden’s “Get No Younger,” but the energy level is dialed down pretty drastically. It’s not chopped and screwed – if anything, the music feels like it’s gone in a more psychedelic direction. When you hear this in the context of the full mixtape, it just feels like you’re in some weird mental state where everything sounds and feels a little different. But unlike most scenarios where that happens, you can actually replay and rewind this.
First off, I want to mention that I’ve been writing this site since 2002 and this is maybe the third or fourth time ever that I’ve featured an artist based in the Hudson Valley, which is where I’m from. This is a duo from New Paltz, and much respect to them for being from New Paltz instead of moving down to the city. The Hudson Valley is a pretty smart place to start a band these days – you’ll pay a lot less rent, get more space to practice, live near a lot of cool little arts communities along the Hudson, and still be close enough to play in NYC all the time. Look into it.
“Breathless” might be a pretty different song if Diet Cig lived in NYC rather than New Paltz. Alex Luciano is singing about getting her first apartment and enjoying the freedom of it all, but having the “wow, I’m an adult!” feeling severely undermined by, like, not having a lot of the basic stuff you need for an apartment, like kitchen supplies and shower curtains. This is nothing you can’t fix with a relatively inexpensive visit to Target, but wow, I’m sure a lot of you will recognize this feeling. The part that really gets me is when she’s worried about feeling lonely, and hopes that you’ll come hang out with her and watch The Simpsons with her on the floor. That’s just so sweet and real.
Father John Misty describes his new record as a concept album about someone who just happens to have the same name as himself, and has many of the same life experiences. That’s a very clever way to disrupt any suspicion that it’s a “confessional” singer-songwriter record, even though it basically is. It’s also a great way to distance himself from the parts of the record where he comes across badly, like on this track, where he viciously tears apart the personality of a girl he despises but is fucking anyway. His words are deeply misanthropic, but it seems like the intention of the song is mostly to reflect on “his” misogyny, and wonder just how much of his sexual attraction to her is directly connected to his contempt for her. My read on this is that the character – or the songwriter, whatever – wants to think he’s hooking up with her because he hates himself, but the reality is that he thinks too highly of himself and only gets off on feeling superior to women. In this case, he’s going for low-hanging fruit.
Fleetwood Mac @ Prudential Center, Newark NJ
The Chain / You Make Loving Fun / Dreams / Second Hand News / Rhiannon / Everywhere / I Know I’m Not Wrong / Tusk / Sisters of the Moon / Say You Love Me / Seven Wonders / Big Love / Landslide / Never Going Back Again / Over My Head / Gypsy / Little Lies / Gold Dust Woman / I’m So Afraid / Go Your Own Way // World Turning / Don’t Stop / Silver Springs /// Songbird
I saw Fleetwood Mac two years ago, back when they were touring without Christine McVie, and it was a really great show. This show is part of their first tour with McVie since the late ‘90s, and was definitely better – but how could it not be with all those McVie hits back in the setlist? You really get a sense of how important Christine is to the band when you see them live – she doesn’t have the intense charisma of Stevie Nicks or the wild energy of Lindsey Buckingham, but her more refined and soulful aesthetic balances out the mood. Also, while Stevie’s songs are the most nakedly emotional and Lindsey is the musical genius of the group, Christine is the one with the greatest talent for crafting immaculate pop hooks.
This really came through when they played her songs from Tango in the Night – “Everywhere” is this perfect balance of effervescent harmonies and soaring melody, while “Little Lies” is this relentless cycle of musical and vocal hooks that’s still quite moody and ethereal. I didn’t quite expect the latter song to be the one that impressed me most in the show, but it just seemed like everyone was especially psyched to be playing it. It’s also the Fleetwood Mac hit that most takes advantage of the band having three distinctive lead singers, as each of them has their own part in the chorus.
The vocal sample at the start of this track sets up the idea of traveling a great distance with Moses promising to lead the Israelites across the desert, and the music follows through by sounding like a journey. The track has a strong sense of lateral progression, and moves through a few distinct phases while keeping a rhythmic thread through the piece. I’m particularly fond of the bit midway through with the slick lead guitar and a bass part that suddenly sounds quite confident. That’s like the part on the arc of a learning curve where you’ve done enough to feel sure of yourself as you move along.
Jessica Pratt’s second album benefits greatly from the way it was mic’d. It sounds like there might have been only one used, or maybe two, but it all comes across like it was recorded live to tape in an apartment. You can really feel a sense of space in the sound, and not only in the faint tape hiss. It feels extremely intimate and remarkably fragile. You can hear little errors in her guitar playing here and there, and at some points, actual warping in the tape. (It’s funny how nostalgic that sound feels now, I almost never hear it but I used to hear it almost every day.) Pratt sounds so totally alone on these songs, and that solitude sets her free – this is very much the sort of record that benefits from the emotional vulnerability a person can have when no one else is around to witness it.
I listened to this A.G. Cook remix of this Charli XCX song before I ever heard the original mix, and going back to that proper version is horrible for me now because it just sounds so slow and lethargic. Cook’s mix keeps the structure of the song almost exactly the same – it’s a fantastically well-written pop tune – but speeds it all up to the manic tempo and childlike timbre of PC Music. I think this really unlocks the song, and emphasizes all the best hooks whereas the original downplays everything. I realize that this is maybe the pop music equivalent of dousing a dish with hot sauce, but I am also a person who will pour hot sauce on most things.
It’s easy to feel trapped in your life if you’ve bought into a story you’ve told yourself since you were very young, and the only way out of it is to write a new story for yourself. Stuart Murdoch’s character in “Play for Today” starts off feeling lonely and isolated, and trapped in a life story he suspects is very dull. This is contrasted with Dee Dee Penny’s character, who seems no less stuck in life, but takes some pleasure in creating a people-pleasing look and persona for herself, and using her imagination to cope with her buried frustration and hostility.
They agree on a few things:
1. life is a secret
2. death is a myth
3. love is a fraud – it’s misunderstood
4. work is a sentence
5. family’s a drag
6. this house is a trap
Very pessimistic indeed. This all takes a turn in the second half of the song, as the music shifts from this upbeat but strangely hollow mid-‘80s New Order pastiche to something like a new wave gospel tune. As the backing vocals chant “author, author!” the two characters meet and begin to write themselves into new roles. Dee Dee’s character prods Stuart’s to let go of his whole “lonely sad king” routine, because it’s doing him no favors, and is smothering her. As the song ends, the two make an effort to live as though they’re a couple in a movie romance, because as Stuart sings, “we’re braver when we’re on the sacred screen.” It’s a happy ending.
I love when artists throw you a real curveball. Like, who knew that the almighty king of chillwave would be a power pop natural, and could effortlessly channel the best of Matthew Sweet, Electric Light Orchestra, and Todd Rundgren? This is a pretty big stylistic leap for Toro Y Moi, but it’s not jarring since the slick aesthetic of his earlier work is applied to this creamy classic rock vibe. He’s definitely aware of the nostalgic quality of this music, and he foregrounds that in the lyrics with a nod to Weezer, references to doodling in the margins of school papers, and the half-joking idea of making “another hit for the teens.”
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