alternativeHeadline
stringlengths 2
551
⌀ | description
stringlengths 2
700
⌀ | itemReviewed
stringlengths 6
199
| url
stringlengths 41
209
| headline
stringlengths 1
176
⌀ | reviewBody
stringlengths 1.29k
31.4k
| dateModified
stringlengths 29
29
| datePublished
stringlengths 29
29
| Genre
stringclasses 116
values | Label
stringlengths 1
64
⌀ | Reviewed
stringlengths 11
18
| score
float64 0
10
| id
stringlengths 36
36
| author_name
stringclasses 603
values | author_url
stringclasses 604
values | thumbnailUrl
stringlengths 90
347
⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The shapeshifting producer's latest is a concept album that recalls not only the Afrofuturist tendencies of early techno, but the heady positivity of '90s pop culture, when science fiction trafficked more in sensory manipulation than dystopian paranoia. | The shapeshifting producer's latest is a concept album that recalls not only the Afrofuturist tendencies of early techno, but the heady positivity of '90s pop culture, when science fiction trafficked more in sensory manipulation than dystopian paranoia. | Fhloston Paradigm: The Phoenix | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19499-fhloston-paradigm-the-phoenix/ | The Phoenix | When King Britt's Presents Fhloston Paradigm first appeared on Hyperdub in 2012, it seemed a fairly gritty offering from a producer known mostly for emotive house. But the Philadelphia-born DJ, who got his start touring with Digable Planets, is also something of a shapeshifter: with his “King Britt Presents…” projects, he’s shuffled through a number of styles with seemingly unstoppable energy—he’s mixed classic disco-funk with jazzy chill-out textures under the name Sylk 130; another project consisted entirely of re-mixed vocals from New Orleans gospel singer Sister Gertrude Morgan. One of the threads through this eclectic catalogue is an underlying Afrocentrism; another is Britt’s studied approach to meticulous genre emulation.
His new album, which sees Britt assuming the name Fhloston Paradigm as a full-on alias, revisits and fleshes out the same territory as the EP, which functioned as a kind of alternate soundtrack to Luc Besson’s pop-art sci-fi flick The Fifth Element (the name Fhloston Paradigm itself originated with “Fhloston Paradise,” the futuristic resort Bruce Willis’ character visits in the film.) It’s a concept that recalls not only the Afrofuturist tendencies of early techno, but the heady positivity of '90s pop culture, when science fiction trafficked more in sensory manipulation than dystopian paranoia. Britt carries it off with a sonic precision that can be dazzling, but at times strays into territory that feels blinkered by nostalgia.
The menacing, back-to-basics EP cut “Chasing Rainbows” reappears, and its slowly downshifting melody remains the most memorable earworm here. The rest of The Phoenix distances itself from the gear-grinding analog techno of the EP, applying that track’s mutant-pop gravitas as a schematic for something more dramatic. The production sounds more expensive, and the arrangements more elaborate, with six of the tracks featuring guest vocalists.
As a producer, Britt is in fine form here, and listening to the album on a good pair of headphones reveals truly beautiful details—the expressive drumming on “Letters of Past”, the subtle, woozy dissonance that emerges from the immersive clouds of album closer “Light on Edge”. Surprisingly, Britt’s melodic sense is easier to appreciate on the fully instrumental tracks—see the icy synth lines on the dizzying “Race to the Moon”, an early highlight. By contrast, the sung melodies sound simplistic, and when there are discernible lyrics, they’re more distracting than atmospheric. It’s hard to hear Natasha Kmeto’s appearance on “Light on Edge” without thinking of Fhloston Paradigm’s fantastic, seductive remix of her track “Deeply”, which saw him embellishing around a straightforward vocal line to hypnotic effect.
The pinnacle of the album comes on the nine-minute title track, its mutating rumble of drums and ominous chords anchoring a teased-out jumble of synth notes that eventually emerges as a bee-sting-precise melody. There’s nothing more absorbing on the album, or sweeter on the ears. It’s a massive-sounding elaboration on burnt-out techno, and inventive enough to explain why a somewhat backward-looking project would find a home on Hyperdub, a label that’s always seeking to push dance music into the future.
Unfortunately, the rest of The Phoenix has a tendency towards the anodyne, a flaw that lies more in the languorous composition than the execution. “Tension Remains”, which features operatic vocals from Pia Ercole, sounds like a fairly explicit call-back to Besson’s famous blue-skinned diva, but The Phoenix lacks the narrative quality to make it anything more than an amusing reference. The album is also an hour long—short by film score standards, but for an album with several leisurely ambient stretches, it’s a commitment to sit through. Fhloston Paradigm’s continued association with The Fifth Element makes sense: that film’s vision of the future was more concerned with the surface-level pleasures of gaudy costumes and kinetic choreography than developing a deeper subtext. The Phoenix is a similar beast, simultaneously muscular and fluffy, a well-polished album that sometimes feels perplexingly one-dimensional. | 2014-07-07T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2014-07-07T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Electronic | Hyperdub | July 7, 2014 | 6.7 | 1bcc89ec-451c-439a-bb84-cbddc37afdbc | Abby Garnett | https://pitchfork.com/staff/abby-garnett/ | null |
On her second album, recently reissued for its 20th anniversary, the lone woman of Ruff Ryders took the reins and made the loudest statement of her career. | On her second album, recently reissued for its 20th anniversary, the lone woman of Ruff Ryders took the reins and made the loudest statement of her career. | Eve: Scorpion | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/eve-scorpion/ | Scorpion | Eve’s debut album cover emphasizes her crew’s name and her position in bold type: “Ruff Ryders’ First Lady” looms right above her paw-print chest tattoos. More than just their resident woman, though, she was easily their most versatile member, a hardcore softie adaptable enough to perform beside street cliques like Cash Money or with pop acts like Nelly and Jessica Simpson on a TRL tour. Her range made her marketable, but what Eve really offered for women in rap was proof of dimension. All she wanted for her second album was the freedom to show it.
Though in interviews at the time, Eve danced around calling herself a feminist, Scorpion is one of the most explicit pro-woman declarations in rap. “My goal is to be known as a strong independent woman who stands up for what she believes in, who stands for something other than taking your money or having you pay my bills,” she told XXL in 2001. “I’m Eve, and there’s no man in the world who can ever speak or try and write (for me).” Mass-appeal party records like “Who’s That Girl?” and “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” double and triple as power anthems and kiss-offs that affirm Eve as a multifaceted, enterprising rapper, singer, and pop star with a high emotional IQ. The cover image fittingly blends three shots of Eve: a front-facing, a profile, and a closeup of one eye gazing outward.
Within a few years of her debut, Philly’s self-professed “pitbull in a skirt” had gone double platinum and become only the third female rapper to earn a No. 1 album. She began scoring invites to fashion events like the Chanel boutique opening and invested in stock. She had enough income at then-22 to buy a house for her mom and one for herself: a lavish three-bedroom in New Jersey that was soon occupied by a live-in boyfriend, Steven “Stevie J” Jordan, a member of Bad Boy’s unstoppable Hitmen production squad who’s now better known as a sleazy reality TV player. Eve’s own real-life intersecting conflicts—her work ambitions, love spats, and efforts toward self-sufficiency—exist in equilibrium on the album.
Media celebrated Scorpion as Eve’s declaration of independence; The New York Beacon ran a review under the actual headline “You Go, Girl!” And in fairness, the first half is a total coming-out party amped up by call-and-response records like “Cowboy,” where Eve methodically lists her achievements and lays out future ones. As Swizz Beatz plays hypeman over his typically exuberant production on “Got What You Need,” Eve cautions women to demand more of aspiring ballers, ending her first verse with a shrug: “If he actin’ cheap then, fuck him, you ain’t need that.” Her flow is relentless and newly melodic across the album—she harmonizes and sings most of the hooks, and proves herself more than capable.
The album’s timeless centerpiece, lead single “Who’s That Girl?” starts with a rhythm that evokes Morse Code: nine short horn bleats, the ninth note elongated, then two quick ones, and the cycle repeats before the beat hardens into a vibrant Mardi Gras-style collision of bells and bass, all produced by Teflon. (The deluxe reissue comes with three additional remixes, the best being a dreamy, mellowed-out version by C.L.A.S.) In this one song, Eve raps enough affirmations to adorn a SheEO merch line. The lyrics might sound like empty slogans in a post-girlboss world, but in Eve’s voice, they become smooth mantras. She can fend for herself financially (“Eve want her own cash, fuck what you bought her”), that she has influence (“Power moves is made every day by this thorough bitch”), and the world is her oyster (“Bottom line, my world, my way, any questions?”). In “You Ain’t Gettin’ None,” she entertains lust for a guy while making it clear that the decision to go further is hers. “Should I give in? Ready to open my garage/And let you park in the dark,” she raps, later deciding, “Dinner was lovely, but I really gotta go.”
When Eve brags about writing her own rhymes on “Let Me Blow Ya Mind,” it’s both a boast and a reality check: this is a job, and songwriting earns her royalties. Dr. Dre’s workhorse beat pairs with breezy Scott Storch keys to produce a classic pop-rap earworm. It was Eve’s idea to collaborate with Gwen Stefani, who later said Dre was so hard on her in the studio that she cried afterward. The meta-hit about the power of a hit song somehow only peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 but won the Grammy’s first-ever Rap/Sung Collaboration award, solidifying Eve as a household name. The album reissue adds a summery Stargate remix that underscores how well the original beat amplifies Eve’s swagger.
As always, her music lands firmly on the side of scorned women. Stevie J appears on Scorpion as both a rose and a thorn in her life; he figured prominently in her interviews at the time. (In a Rolling Stone profile in 2001, he gauchely reveals Eve’s spending habits, claiming, “She spent a hundred grand real quick.”) The couple’s on-again, off-again tension manifests in a skit and a breakup anthem, “You Had Me, You Lost Me,” where Eve sounds legitimately fed up as she vents about the audacity of a cheating partner. “You fucked around and played around and now you’re feeling sad,” she croons in the chorus above a dub of herself singing the familiar playground taunt “na-na-na-na.” Ironically, Eve had reunited with Stevie by the time the album dropped, making the song’s heartfelt fury more relatably tragic. The song lives on as a document of her growing pains.
Scorpion’s backend is a collection of boutique collaborations meant to showcase Eve’s range: a laid-back reggae cut featuring Stephen and Damian Marley sits alongside a duet with soul legend Teena Marie about resilience. The records feel like icing on an already decadent cake, but they’re the sum of Eve’s parts that helped her step so fluidly into pop on her own terms. On the crew anthems—a staple on all her albums—labelmates DMX, Drag-On, and The Lox appear as shadows in her journey and risk eclipsing her message even as they line her path toward independence with flowers. Solidarity is nice. But at that point, she didn’t need the backup.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-04-03T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-04-03T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Ruff Ryders / Interscope | April 3, 2021 | 8.3 | 1bd1c52d-e6fd-4b65-8e31-06a4def4663b | Clover Hope | https://pitchfork.com/staff/clover-hope/ | |
null | Relative to the garage-rock outfits with whom they were compared to in the first part of this decade, the Black Keys have more or less stuck with their thing: austerely nostalgic, drums-and-guitar-in-a-dying-industrial-city blues-rock. Singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney have managed to forge a career and five albums out of variations-on-a-theme riffs and stripped-for-parts grooves, outliving almost all of those peers. They lack the audacity of Jack White (in fact, their blues-rock extends more from Midwestern modesty than from self-aware showboating), and the Reigning Sound's Greg Cartwright has a stronger melodic sensibility and more potent lyrical venom. Their limited | Dan Auerbach: Keep It Hid | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12669-keep-it-hid/ | Keep It Hid | Relative to the garage-rock outfits with whom they were compared to in the first part of this decade, the Black Keys have more or less stuck with their thing: austerely nostalgic, drums-and-guitar-in-a-dying-industrial-city blues-rock. Singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney have managed to forge a career and five albums out of variations-on-a-theme riffs and stripped-for-parts grooves, outliving almost all of those peers. They lack the audacity of Jack White (in fact, their blues-rock extends more from Midwestern modesty than from self-aware showboating), and the Reigning Sound's Greg Cartwright has a stronger melodic sensibility and more potent lyrical venom. Their limited range, however, stands in inverse proportion to their sturdy longevity, which always seemed built into their conceptual underpinning, as if the sheer quantity of songs legitimizes their Spartan approach.
But last year's Attack & Release saw the Black Keys' resolve weakening: Auerbach and Carney collaborated with Danger Mouse and wrangled additional players-- including Jessica Lea Mayfield and Carney's uncle Ralph. That the additions of a high-profile producer and programmed beats only augmented rather than expanded their sound was both a bit comical and strangely commendable. You take the Keys out of their basement studio, but you can't take the basement studio out of the Keys. Now Auerbach has made a solo album, and in retrospect, this turn of events seems inevitable: Ostensibly he wanted to escape even momentarily his band's self-imposed restrictions and give vent to his wildest ideas, like having a bass player.
Like Attack & Release, Keep It Hid takes only a few baby steps up the basement stairs. There are plenty of new song shapes and sound textures here, from the softly strummed opener "Trouble Weighs a Ton" to the brief din of "Because I Should" to the Smithsy guitar on "Heartbroken, in Disrepair". A sacred organ drenches "Real Desire" like profane sweat, and "Whispered Words (Pretty Lies)" struts on a Stax rhythm section and a nifty descending melody. "When the Night Comes" ends Side 1 on a quiet note, with soft keyboards and piano decorating some of Auerbach's most tender lyrics to date. Side 2 loses some of Side 1's urgency, as "Mean Monsoon" and especially "When I Left the Room" sound uncharacteristically unfocused.
Nothing here, however, would sound at all out of place if "Black Keys" were written on the jewel case spine. Whether Auerbach should be criticized or credited for his consistency could be debated, but the approach, the mission, and the music here all sound pretty close to what we've heard before from his day-job band. As a Black Keys album, Keep It Hid sounds less detached and distracted than the Danger Mouse collaboration, but lacks the thickfreak sound of their earliest releases and the sharp songwriting of Rubber Factory. Auerbach has written horndog riffs like "I Want Some More" and "Street Walkin'" many times before, and neither is the best of his lot. And no offense to the dependable drumming of Bob Cesare, but these songs lack Carney's crafty, unhinged beats, which work overtime to fill in Keys' songs as much as possible.
The biggest change here might be Auerbach himself, whose vocals have loosened up somewhat since The Big Come Up in 2002. On "Whispered Words (Pretty Lies)" and "My Last Mistake" he actually sounds indistinguishable from John Fogerty-- and the swampy drumbeat on the latter suggests he's aware of it. Rather than put him at the head of a small studio band like this, one wonders how he would sound either as a player in a more democratic unit (much like White in the Raconteurs) or backed by a pre-existing group like Drive-By Truckers, where he might have to work outside of himself to adapt to a communal sound. As it is, the more Auerbach changes things, the more they stay the same. | 2009-02-12T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2009-02-12T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Nonesuch | February 12, 2009 | 6.2 | 1bd3c2c7-29da-444b-abd2-54f5ceff81bf | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
Two versatile hip-hop vets-- each in a nice patch in their tumultuous careers-- combine for a tape of dense lyrics and evocative tracks. Freddie Gibbs guests. | Two versatile hip-hop vets-- each in a nice patch in their tumultuous careers-- combine for a tape of dense lyrics and evocative tracks. Freddie Gibbs guests. | Curren$y: Covert Coup | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15385-covert-coup/ | Covert Coup | One thing about the New Orleans rapper Curren$y: He's adaptable. In a decade-long career, he's played a staggering number of roles: Serving as foot soldier in Master P's fading No Limit empire, standing in Lil Wayne's shadow during that man's historic mid-00s run, striking out on his own and building himself to cult-favorite status on a series of weed-and-sneaker-addled solo mixtapes, inhabiting Ski Beatz' sumptuous psychedelic-soul production on last year's two great Pilot Talk albums. And now that he's established himself as one of the stars of an ascendant Internet-friendly stoner-rap scene, he's giving himself a new challenge, pairing up with the producer Alchemist for the online giveaway Covert Coup.
Alchemist has had a tumultuous career of his own. He's a Beverly Hills native who came to prominence crafting Tunnel anthems for New York roughnecks like Mobb Deep and Jadakiss. These days, he specializes in a broken, warped form of rap production-- classic New York boom-bap refracted through prisms, the loose-and-shaggy Stones Throw cratedigger style turned ominous and bloodthirsty. His tracks for Covert Coup aren't far removed from the stuff he did on Gutter Water, an overlooked 2010 album that found him teaming with the West Coast underground stalwart Oh No, the two of them bouncing their queasiest, most unsettled head-nodders off of each other. On Covert Coup, his decayed guitar loops and creeping drum breaks remind me of the shattered post-apocalyptic New York that Snake Plissken had to escape. It's a different kind of weed-rap, one Curren$y hasn't really tried to do. And yet he slip-slides through it with the charming, effortless ease that's become his trademark. Nothing fazes this guy.
Curren$y's been calling Covert Coup an EP, but it's 10 tracks in 28 minutes, longer than plenty of punk and indie full-lengths I own. The mixtape follows what I guess you'd call the Madvillainy model-- 90-second stretches of dense lyricism, [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| usually without a chorus-- before the rapper fades out and the woozy, evocative track takes over. Curren$y's verses aren't punchline marathons; they're stoned reveries, and it can be riveting to hear him depict certain situations with loose, unhurried narrative precision: "Let the little homey kick it in the auto shop with us/ Long as he can make store runs and keep his mouth shut/ Same way I came up."
As a rapper, Curren$y's greatest asset is his delivery, the way his pinched, nasal Louisiana drawl slithers its way through the track. But he's also great at coming up with sharp, unexpected ways to address standard rap topics. On his weed-smoking capacity: "The toxic air that I'm breathing would leave a average man weakened." On his own charisma: "If you looking for that nigga, I is him/ All eyes in this direction/ A burden and a blessing." On his home life: "White carpets in my Scarface house/ No undergarments on my Scarface spouse." On how high he is right this second: "Playa all Himalaya-ish." His lyrics are full of slick little tricks like these, tiny turns of phrase that sneak up on you after multiple listens but which dazzle in their economy when you parse them out.
A few well-selected guests turn up on Covert Coup, and all of them make strong foils for Curren$y's conversational calm. Freddie Gibbs' focused on-fire double-time on "Scottie Pippen" stands in stark contrast to Curren$y's style, and the two extremes work well together. Alc's just-out-of-prison blood brother Prodigy plays a tough, raspy uncle figure, showing a sense of hardhead style that emerges too rarely on P's own recent online offering, The Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson EP. Curren$y's puff-buddy Smoke DZA breezes right through "Life Instructions". And fellow New Orleans vet Fiend has a great moment on "Blood Sweat and Gears", letting off a couple of lines in a bluesy moan-sing before snapping into an excellent grown-man verse. These guest spots do what they're supposed to do. They don't overwhelm Curren$y or clash with his style; they just bring some new dimensions out of his songs. They're there for chemistry reasons, not name value, and they work great.
Curren$y let Covert Coup out into the world on 4/20, a fun but unnecessary attention-grabbing stunt. There's plenty of zoned-out atmosphere on the tape, but it's a strong, focused, unified piece of work, not just a lava-lamp soundtrack. It stands on its own. | 2011-05-05T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2011-05-05T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rap | Warner Bros. | May 5, 2011 | 7.9 | 1bd5e634-43bd-433e-ae64-2bd112e90f48 | Tom Breihan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tom-breihan/ | null |
With daring lyricism and technical ingenuity, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Brittney Parks’ second album conjures a frenzied energy as emotionally soothing as it is physically crushing. | With daring lyricism and technical ingenuity, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Brittney Parks’ second album conjures a frenzied energy as emotionally soothing as it is physically crushing. | Sudan Archives: Natural Brown Prom Queen | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sudan-archives-natural-brown-prom-queen/ | Natural Brown Prom Queen | Black women artists so rarely receive credit deserved for technical innovation in music-making, outside of vocal talent. Aretha Franklin’s discerning ear for melodies made her a fierce arranger who knew just where to place the instruments that formed the scaffolding of her hits. Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s guitar melded the sonic waves of Delta blues with the amorphous dissonance of a nascent rock sound. Patrice Rushen is a skillful piano player who can add classical notes to an explosive pop moment. Too often, their capacity as instrumentalists, mixers, and curators of sound at a diasporic and deeply intimate level is nudged to the side, the breadth of their accomplishments equated to the range of their voices. Sudan Archives’ work resists this flattening at every turn. Brittney Parks, the Ohio native whose 2019 debut Athena was a vivid introduction to her avant-garde pop, hip-hop, and electronic whimsy, is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist with an inescapable audio imprint. On her second album, Natural Brown Prom Queen, the singer and songwriter dances with herself at her own party, where she also happens to be guest of honor and headlining act. She’s a one-woman band who, across 18 sprawling tracks, transmits a frenzied energy that is as emotionally soothing as it is physically crushing.
“Only bad bitches in my trellis” is the siren call off “Home Maker,” the album’s first track, which turns the communal act of building a homestead into a flirty reminder that those we keep close speak volumes about how we wish ourselves to be perceived. Sudan only hangs with the very best, which makes her equally as striking as the baddest person in her corner. She’s optimistic and still observant, hyper-aware of the doubts and horrors beyond her doorstep. On “NBPQ (Topless),” her lyrics approach self-fragmentation at disorienting speed. Sudan is cynical and forlorn as the song opens, leaning into Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye narrative and longing for her body to resemble those that are most celebrated: “Sometimes I think that if I was light-skinned/Then I would get into all the parties/Win all the Grammys, make the boys happy.” Hitching her vocals on electronic beats held together by sparse violin notes carrying rhythms reminiscent of the Sahel in summer, “NBPQ” plays like a moodboard, the unsettled feel of its instrumentation illustrative of an evolution in process. When her tone shifts on the chorus from despondency to indomitable confidence, so too does the beat, from strained reverie to thumping syncopation, interspersed with insistent claps. When she chants, “I’m not average, I’m not average, I’m not average,” there’s no choice but to believe her.
Midway through the album, the psychedelic road trip anthem “ChevyS10” arrives like a SZA confessional with the gilded heft of a stellar Kanye West presentation. Delivered as a rap that morphs into spoken word, Sudan’s verses pirouette across elongated beats that manipulate her voice so it lands like a robotic interjection from outer space. She reminds you of FKA twigs as she reaches for higher octaves, achieving a sound that is simultaneously ugly and captivating. Her cries to “leave tonight or live and die this way” harken to Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” another plea for a love powerful enough to become an escape. Where they differ is in Sudan’s acknowledgement that, alone or not, she’ll still catch the town in her rearview mirror. Self-preservation, mental and physical, is of paramount concern, and she’s seeking pleasure at her own pace and in the keys of her choosing. “Ciara,” “OMG Britt,” and “Freakalizer” are the vocal equivalent of your most reliable vibrator—they sound good, sweaty, damn near turned on by the sensuality of a private rendezvous. As a trinity preaching a lavish type of self-centered prosperity gospel, this is dance music that invokes the eroticism exuded by a lineage of artists from Donna Summer, Cheryl Lynn, Betty Davis, through Janet Jackson.
Building in the steps of Black women and their sonic architecture, Natural Brown Prom Queen thrives on improvisation, daring lyricism, and technical ingenuity. Sudan’s DIY expertise means she’s attuned to the most minute shifts in her compositions as she records; her trusty Boss RC-20 loop pedal, alongside her ever-present violin, gives her room to indulge and savor. Hearing how the final beats of each song transition into the genesis of another—how the glitching static from “Copycat (Broken Notions)” sets the foundation for the rapturous sermon that kicks off “It’s Already Done,” and how the vibrating strings on “Milk Me” trampoline gracefully into “Yellow Brick Road”—lend each track a heady cinematic drama. Threaded throughout are Sudan’s universal themes: the social currency of beauty, the supreme boredom of the status quo, and the euphoria that accompanies new love. She’s moved by them but she is not beholden to them; on Natural Brown Prom Queen, she rejects all expectations and demands better from herself and everyone listening. | 2022-09-12T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2022-09-12T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Stones Throw | September 12, 2022 | 9 | 1be34566-653b-4007-9c8d-08f1bf0683c2 | Tarisai Ngangura | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tarisai-ngangura/ | |
On his new mixtape, the Flint rapper continues his run as a solid flagbearer for his city’s rap scene. It’s a tight and punchline-driven offering, marred by occasionally stiff delivery. | On his new mixtape, the Flint rapper continues his run as a solid flagbearer for his city’s rap scene. It’s a tight and punchline-driven offering, marred by occasionally stiff delivery. | Babyfxce E: The X Tape | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/babyfxce-the-x-tape/ | The X Tape | In the summer of 2020, the freak show that is Flint’s street rap scene blossomed. Three of the city’s landmark rap songs dropped within the span of a few months, all featuring the scene’s signature blend of depraved, punchline-driven comedy and unorthodox delivery. The tracks in question were YN Jay and Louie Ray’s “Coochie,” Rio Da Yung OG and Louie Ray’s “Movie,” and BFB Da Packman’s team-up with out-of-towner Sada Baby on “Free Joe Exotic.” Just a year later, things started to slow down, as Rio, the nucleus of the movement, began a five-year prison sentence. In the years since, there have been noteworthy tracks and mixtapes here and there, but without its defining star, the scene started to splinter, and its energy floundered.
Enter Babyfxce E. During Flint’s big summer of 2020, he was a freshly minted high school grad who hadn’t yet stepped into a recording booth. Last year, seemingly overnight, he became his hometown’s newest ambassador with a run of singles backed by sharp wisecracks and wordplay. While the bars are colorful, Babyfxce lacks an identifiable vocal presence. The competition is tough: He has to contend with local staples like RMC Mike, who sounds like he gargles whiskey instead of mouthwash, and KrispyLife Kidd, who can always make jaws drop. In a city full of borderline cartoon characters, Babyfxce is a smooth talker. That quality has turned him into a solid flagbearer for the Flint rap sound, as his less abrasive—and by extension less exciting—take on the style is easier for the uptight music world to digest.
On Babyfxce E’s newest project, The X Tape, he leans into that role. It’s tight and barely over 30 minutes, heavy on what made this era of Flint pop: the shit talk. E’s got that down, with an active imagination that produces some twistedly funny one-liners. He cracks jokes at your debt (“I did made more money in this rap shit than your student loans” on “Rich Talking”), and dreams up absurd scenarios where he gets freaky with a pregnant woman and wonders if he just went too deep. (We need to enroll him in a sex ed course, pronto.) He’s at his best when he doesn’t waste too much time on the hook, and locks into a zone where each subsequent punchline amplifies the intensity. The pummeling “Chicken Little” is a good example: As the crackling beat escalates, the bars start flying faster. Or take the 40-yard dash “Hot Outside”; in a thrilling three-second rush toward the end of the song, it feels like his verse is about to end. Instead, he catches his breath and finds a second gear.
The X Tape is missing more moments like that. Too often, punchlines get buried because Babyfxce delivers them as if he’s reading from a teleprompter. It makes you appreciate the power of all of the vocal tics that more established Flint rappers have: their dramatic pauses for emphasis, their way of slipping in and out of tangents, and their ability to turn three or four bars into short, wildly humorous vignettes. In contrast, Babyfxce doesn’t have enough tricks to make bars consistently stand out. On lowlights like “Charge It to the Game” and “Watch Me,” his words fade into the background. There are scenes that could be vivid, as in “Today,” when he shows up to the doctor with a fake cough trying to score drugs. But they don’t end up being very compelling, mostly because he only spends one line on the image. He can be a stiff rapper on occasion, which is the polar opposite of what has made Flint so distinct.
“Flint Flow,” a posse cut which features some of the city’s recent stars, is the loosest Babyfxce E sounds on the entire mixtape. They’re all having fun here: Mike talks out of pocket and Packman makes coke-sniffing sound effects while clowning some girl’s boyfriend. Meanwhile, in his anchor verse, E jokes about how hard Packman sounds, improvising his way through a slip-up by powering through the mistake instead of doing another take. It’s such free spitting that it feels like they’re all in the studio cracking each other up. That no-fucks-given attitude is what Flint rap is all about. | 2023-10-11T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-10-11T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rap | null | October 11, 2023 | 6.5 | 1be8595f-d438-49af-b7e5-a9c17f86b574 | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the 2004 debut from John Legend, one of hip-hop and R&B’s most soulful synergies. | Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the 2004 debut from John Legend, one of hip-hop and R&B’s most soulful synergies. | John Legend: Get Lifted | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/john-legend-get-lifted/ | Get Lifted | Back when Kanye West was clamoring for respect as a rapper, he was also looking to prove himself as a mogul. In 2003, the first artist he signed to his fledgling imprint, Getting Out Our Dreams (aka G.O.O.D Music), was a 25-year-old ex-choirboy named John Stephens, whose demo tape of spare, piano-backed R&B had been getting rejected by multiple labels. Not your typical executive, Kanye was a hitmaker with an ear for narrative tension, naturally drawn to the sinner-saint dichotomy in Stephens’ songwriting. Kanye urged the singer to adopt a nickname friends had been calling him, John Legend, and when introducing his flagship artist at showcases, he would describe Legend’s sound as “spirit music,” contrary to the commercial R&B that West had deemed “popcorn shit.”
Under Kanye’s creative direction, Legend reworked his demo for his debut album Get Lifted, which dropped in December 2004 amid the whirlwind of Usher’s Confessions and with neo-soul on its mainstream decline. The pop world was, at the same time, still pining for throwback singers, and Legend fit the bill: a trained pianist with a new-school edge and a raspy morning voice whose closest peer was Alicia Keys. His music crossed generations while heralding a new era of millennial entanglements. While Legend was making smoldering hymns steeped in love and deception, Kanye was a newly in-demand producer known for mining sped-up samples into classic gems. With Get Lifted, they created one of hip-hop and R&B’s most soulful synergies, split evenly between jubilant Kanye-produced records about infidelity and earnest commitment ballads that telegraphed Legend’s forthcoming evolution from player to family man. The album blazed a trail for its sacrilegious spin on gospel and R&B—you can practically hear the ghost of old Kanye cackling in the background as Legend embraces his most toxic impulses, singing heartily, “You can’t say, I don’t love you/Just because I cheat on you.”
This is John Legend 1.0, with the voice of an angel and a Kanye-sanctioned ego. Get Lifted thrives on the eternal conflict between gospel and secular, perfected by his predecessors like Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, and James Brown who could all, as singer-songwriter Ed Townsend said of Gaye, “sing the Lord’s Prayer, and it would have sexual overtones.” Legend’s debut achieves that unholy matrimony in stretches but prioritizes mischief over emotional complexity, with hints of the latent heartache often buried under male pride. The album’s cockiness is a necessary evil. Like many of his forebears, Legend had the power to make cheating sound too sexy to resist, and where else do you learn the art of sinning than in church?
John Stephens grew up in a musical, churchgoing household in Springfield, Ohio, and started taking piano lessons around age 4. At least twice a week, the family attended El Bethel Temple, where his mother was a Sunday School teacher, and his father sang and played drums in the choir. His grandfather was a minister, and his grandmother an organist. By age 10, John had a regular role as a church pianist. In a 2007 interview, he described the church as an ideal training ground for vocalists, a space where young people could sing on a platform akin to a pop star. “You really get used to performing and working the crowd when you grow up in that setting,” he told Charlie Rose. R&B fans love grieving that today’s singers are so religiously detached that they miss out on the schooling that made voices like Marvin, Aretha, and Whitney seem anointed from the pew. As one blog wrote in 2021, “Jesus had the girls hitting every note, but now they just hit some of them and pray to AutoTune instead.” Legend’s roots gave him the range to be able to testify on a track or luxuriate next to Rick Ross’ affluence raps as effortlessly as he could sing a praise song or float over a soul sample. He has a preacher’s cadence and a handsome grain on his voice that can easily slip into smarm if uncontained.
As a skilled pianist, Legend had the makings of both a star and dream collaborator. He graduated high school early and entered the University of Pennsylvania at 16 as an English major, juggling two jobs: director of his school’s a cappella group, the Counterparts, and of an Afro-Methodist church choir in Scranton, Pennsylvania every Sunday. In his junior year, he landed his first major placement after a friend who’d been singing backup for Lauryn Hill hooked him up with a studio session for Hill’s 1998 solo debut, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Then just 19, Legend wound up playing piano on “Everything Is Everything,” earning a $500 session fee. Four years later, he quit his job as a management consultant to pursue music full-time in New York, where he worked with producer Dave Tozer on recordings like 2001’s Live at Jimmy’s Uptown and 2003’s Solo Sessions Vol. 1: Live at the Knitting Factory and sold the CDs at his shows. That’s when a college roommate, Devon Harris, introduced him to Kanye West, who Legend pinned back then as “just some cousin that made beats as far as I knew.”
Kanye was intent on being much more than that. He felt he was filling a lane in mainstream hip-hop with equally flossy and uplifting rhymes, and he saw Legend as a spiritual counterpart. After Legend signed to G.O.O.D Music in 2003, he earned a cushy slot as a background pianist and vocalist on some of Kanye’s most buttery early productions: JAY-Z’s “Encore,” Alicia Keys’ “You Don’t Know My Name,” Slum Village’s “Selfish.” By then, Legend had already completed most of the songs that would land on Get Lifted, but he needed Kanye’s cosign to get noticed. The College Dropout’s runaway success in 2004 helped Legend land a deal with one of the labels that had previously dismissed him, Columbia. The duo re-recorded his demo tracks and led with the Kanye-produced single “Used to Love U,” a jaunty breakup anthem where Legend sarcastically relents: “Maybe it’s me, maybe I bore you/Maybe Puffy, Jay-Z would all be better for you,” which is something of a complement to Kanye’s subsequent anthem about ambitious women, “Gold Digger.”
On Get Lifted’s first half, Legend embarks on a doomed journey toward fidelity with an impressive four-track run where he moves from deception to remorse in the most chaotically slick fashion. “She Don’t Have to Know” is a tale of two indiscreet cheaters reveling in the threat of being caught: “Damn, it’s so stressful doing the dirt we do/So sad but true,” he sighs over breezy chapel organs. The gleefully catchy “Number One,” which samples the funky 1975 Staple Singers single “Let’s Do It Again,” builds Legend’s jovially-sung lies into a Jenga tower of excuses. “You can’t see all I do to keep you from knowing the things I do,” he sings, before assuring a partner that he wears protection while sleeping around and then swearing to be faithful, accompanied by a festive background choir: “I said it the last time… But this is the last time.” Kanye swoops in with a verse about his own wayward penis: “I tried to jag off/He said, ‘Who is you playing with?’” If the 2004 version of Legend were on a dating show like Too Hot to Handle, he’d be cast as the playboy, pretending to reform while smirking during a confessional. The album’s tone can be so cheeky as to seem affected sometimes, but there’s an overall soothing levity to the project. It helped that Legend’s shallow indiscretions came in witty couplets that painted him as a forgivable anti-hero.
Get Lifted’s latter half transitions from sinner to penitent, with “Ordinary People” as a clear divider. The redemptive, gospel-tinged “I Can Change” opens with a testimonial moan, then the keys and horns drop, and Legend pledges to do evidently challenging things like listening when his partner talks and staying home at night. Snoop Dogg’s recommitment meanwhile requires a river baptism: “Man, it’s cold, I ain’t been clubbing, dranking, or smoking—I’m focused,” Snoop professes. Legend turns the act of being faithful into a cliff-hanger at the end, repeating cynically, “This time I mean it…,” with implied ellipses that suggest otherwise.
The rest of the album pulls back on the guilty pleasures, easing into restraint with stripped-down ballads like “Stay With You,” a sincere slow jam about choosing devotion, produced by Legend’s frequent collaborator, Tozer. But it’s “Ordinary People” that remains Legend’s most immortal tune, a beautiful homage to the reality and suspense of long-term love, set on a misty arrangement of keys. The lyrics are timeless, inspired by Legend’s parents, who remarried 12 years after they divorced. And though the song sounds pre-programmed for Grammy praise (it won in 2005 for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance), Legend sells the conflict with genuine clarity, making it believable that his character could effortlessly evolve over the course of 15 tracks.
It took until his fourth studio album, 2013’s Love in the Future, for Legend to complete his transformation from philandering frog to Prince Charming. He wrote his wedding classic, “All of Me,” as an ode to his then-fiancée new muse Chrissy Teigen, netting him his first No. 1 single. In his 2020 Verzuz battle with Alicia Keys, the two sat back to back behind their respective pianos, and Legend stated the obvious: “A lot of people get married to both of our songs.” Like other prestigious R&B acts, they’ve evolved into artists whose records now soundtrack Oscar films and pander to spouses and former presidents. As Legend moved toward making music for lovers and lounges, mainstream R&B has incidentally shifted away from conventional romance and into the arms of situationships, with women like Jazmine Sullivan, SZA, and Summer Walker leading the way, carrying the spirit of imperfection that fuels Get Lifted.
The John Legend of today is too wholesome an artist to bend the rules of monogamy. He’s a political family man who regularly posts about his two children on Instagram and defends his wife’s social media faux pas. Adult contemporary R&B dooms musicians to the fate of virtuousness that way. A faded portrait now, Get Lifted is Legend is at his most intriguing, singing about being unable to evolve as a man. But so it goes. It’s fun to be reckless until you discover the only thing more enticing than making the same mistake twice is stability. | 2022-03-06T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-03-06T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Good / Sony Urban / Columbia | March 6, 2022 | 8.8 | 1be945ee-0441-4d01-be10-24eac659e5cd | Clover Hope | https://pitchfork.com/staff/clover-hope/ | |
After making an album under the name Happy Birthday, Kyle Thomas returns with a new moniker and sharper songwriting chops, resulting an album that is long on distortion and short on subtlety, but still manages to transcend lo-fi. | After making an album under the name Happy Birthday, Kyle Thomas returns with a new moniker and sharper songwriting chops, resulting an album that is long on distortion and short on subtlety, but still manages to transcend lo-fi. | King Tuff: King Tuff | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16667-king-tuff/ | King Tuff | Even if you don't recognize the name Kyle Thomas, you may know some of his associations. Seth Bogart, better known as Hunx, cites him as his best friend. He was the frontman of stoner-metal outfit Witch, but wasn't the band's best-known member. (That honor goes to the band's drummer and all-around indie-rock hero J Mascis.) He was a part of sprawling Vermont hippie collective Feathers back when you could use the term "freak-folk" without feeling embarrassed for yourself. But to a specific portion of the rock-nerd underworld, Thomas is foremost known as King Tuff, Playground Legend (at least among those who proudly flaunt 3" Burger Records badges on their jean jackets). If that name doesn't ring a bell, here's a quick briefing: His charisma is magnetic, his shows are akin to cheap-beer-soaked tent revivals, he combines the stadium-sized guitar licks of Erik Cartwright with the bratty whine of Eric Cartman, and his solo debut, 2008's Was Dead, was the sort of album most scuzz-loving musicians would incinerate their garages to make.
Though long on distortion and short on subtlety, it would be a stretch to dump Was Dead in the "lo-fi" category. Though Thomas worked on the album completely by himself, it was better-produced (or, if you prefer, recorded less crappily) than modern dirtbag-punk classics like Jay Reatard's Blood Visions and Ty Segall's Melted. It was a record packed to the brim with energy and irresistible hooks, with its best moments ("A Pretty Dress", "Just Strut", "Animal") going a long way to prove why the enthusiasm toward Thomas' solo project is well justified. If you were expecting King Tuff's self-titled sophomore album to be Was Dead 2: The Resurrection, don't hold your breath. This is both a good and bad thing.
Irreverence is paramount to being in a garage-rock band (unless you're, say, Women, there are few things more boring than a garage band that takes themselves too seriously), and Thomas has this in spades. In "Keep on Movin'", he shouts out arcane dance moves and, in his own words, lets his guitar (whose name is Jazijoo) drool. He lets out a comically puny bark in "Stranger". He gives his songs titles like "Loser's Wall" and "Swamp of Love", which sound like landmarks where misfits in the Deep South meet to make out. The album art bears the image of a cartoon bat holding a Gibson guitar and a magic wand. Clichés frowning upon judging a book by its cover need not apply here.
King Tuff's aforementioned cover looks exactly like the kind of decal someone would slap on the bumper of their beaten-to-shit 1976 Camaro, and for the most part, the music sounds perfect for playing inside such a vehicle while attempting to see if it can still hit 80mph. There's the too-appropriately-titled opener "Anthem", carried by a double-neck lead begging to be greeted with devil horn gestures. There's the Lynyrd Skynyrd-esque boogie of "Stranger", the freewheeling and fun "Baby Just Break", and climactic closer "Hit & Run". Album highlight "Bad Thing" is Hunx's Hairdresser Blues spiked with brown liquor, equipped with a supercharged chorus. Completely free of arty abstraction, the good parts of King Tuff were designed with maximum impact in mind.
Unlike most of his contemporaries, Thomas' chief value as a songwriter is his accessibility. While most of his top-shelf contemporaries have wandered out of dive-bar stardom and into the world of indie rock-at-large, they have also drawn a clear line in the sand between themselves and fans who may not be receptive to their sound. Thomas, on the other hand, has no problem meeting those fans in the middle.
At times, this creates problems for the album. Tunes like "Unusual World" and "Evergreen" sound like quieter holdovers from Thomas' 2010 album under the name Happy Birthday, and sound out of place here. Both songs provide breathing room between the album's stompers, but perhaps a bit too much breathing room, to the point where they feel like filler. "Loser's Wall" and "Keep on Movin'" drift at midtempo, leaving you with the feeling that Thomas has written these songs before, only faster and better. One of the many great things about Was Dead was its near-relentless pacing, making it a breeze to listen to over and over again. King Tuff feels like the couch surfer friend you invite to your house party, the one who's often charming and fun but will not leave until every last drop of beer is gone.
For all his mishaps in attempting to broaden his style, the gambit Thomas takes on "Swamp of Love" is the one that pays off. A wistful piano ballad at its core, the song wildly benefits from Thomas' romantic croon and the climax that bookends it. It's actually kind of difficult to imagine this as the kind of song King Tuff had in him. Through all the hits and misses artists go through while expanding their songwriting breadth, surprises this satisfying are why artists step out of their comfort zone in the first place. Even though it's nowhere near as consistently great as Was Dead, it's nice to witness a songwriter like Kyle Thomas treading unfamiliar territory instead of delivering more of the same. It gives hope that his next great album won't sound like his last great album. | 2012-05-29T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2012-05-29T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | Sub Pop | May 29, 2012 | 7.8 | 1bf03062-db31-4e25-b385-2f83e058bbd8 | Martin Douglas | https://pitchfork.com/staff/martin-douglas/ | null |
Mexico City collaborators Mabe Fratti, Camille Mandoki, Gibrana Cervantes, and Concepción Huerta conjure up fluid, freeform chamber improv that feels like the product of a collective mind. | Mexico City collaborators Mabe Fratti, Camille Mandoki, Gibrana Cervantes, and Concepción Huerta conjure up fluid, freeform chamber improv that feels like the product of a collective mind. | Amor Muere: a time to love, a time to die | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/amor-muere-a-time-to-love-a-time-to-die/ | a time to love, a time to die | The music of Mexico City-based collective Amor Muere stretches between dream states and the waking world. The group—comprising cellist and songwriter Mabe Fratti, singer and sound artist Camille Mandoki, violinist Gibrana Cervantes, and electronic musician and tape manipulator Concepción Huerta—built their project on a foundation of friendship and creative collaboration. The four women have been performing live within the local scene for years, sitting in on each other’s sets and participating in a larger-scale multidisciplinary piece written and directed by Mandoki. As Amor Muere (translation: “Love Dies”), they seek free expression within a democratic setting. On their debut album, a time to love, a time to die, they tap into the reaches of their conjoined minds and extract avant-garde compositions grafted from gritty electronic textures, discordant strings, and soaring vocal melodies. Even in their most abstract sketches, each musician retains a distinct fingerprint. But their work also seems hewn by a single set of hands.
To create their debut, Amor Muere expanded and refined material developed over multiple jam sessions in recent years. Some songs highlight the dynamics of texture and silence: The wordless “Shhhhh” captures a frantic, creaking conversation between Fratti’s cello and Cervantes’ violin. The dialogue is sparse at first, but whips into a tangled frenzy as Huerta and Mandoki goad the string players with digital blasts and distorted washes of synthesizer. Fratti sings the lead vocal on “LA,” a sun-dappled counterpart to the moody “Shhhhh” that tracks the interplay between bowed strings and electronic atmospheres. Her tone is mottled but reflective, like slightly smudged glass. “Suave aire sobre la cabeza/Sabe a dónde llegar” (“Soft air over our heads/Knows where to arrive”), she sings. Measuring the impulse of a breeze that drifts naturally yet with seeming purpose, Fratti’s lyrics—steeped in dream logic—might be an ode to improvisation itself.
“LA” shares DNA with Vidrio, a new album Fratti made with Héctor Tosta under the name Titanic. That record is lighter, more traditionally melodic, and relies on Fratti’s delicate, watercolor voice to illuminate the duo’s vibrant, roving jazz compositions. But with Amor Muere, Fratti is free to wander across craggier terrain, and her voice offers a dulcet reprieve from the strange noises she and her bandmates conjure. On “Can We Provoke Reciprocal Reaction,” Fratti’s vocalizations intertwine with Mandoki’s smoky timbre, repeating, “Oh, this life/I want it all again/I faded out,” atop plucked strings and wailing synthesizer. The ambling, circular rhythm mimics the song’s inspiration: a daily walk. Amor Muere treat the quotidian activity with a sense of wonder, peppering the song with springy, metallic, jaw-harp-like noises, injecting a sense of playfulness into the sense of repetitive motion.
Mandoki sings lead on “Love Dies,” the first piece Amor Muere wrote as a group. Her dry, gauzy vocal sounds like it’s creeping up from the earth, coated in a thin veil of soil. Cervantes and Fratti’s keening strings lure Mandoki’s voice upward, into the golden air. The collaborative nature of the music is so instinctual, it often seems like the band is fluidly exchanging complex ideas using only their instruments —as on the 19-minute ambient closer “Violetas y Malvas,” which is among the group’s most freeform compositions. It is so free, in fact, that Fratti and Mandoki unspool nonverbal passages rather than sing intelligible lyrics. But there is no shortage of communication. Whether responding to Huerta’s warped ribbons of tape, or Mandoki’s crackling synth phrases, the members of Amor Muere have crafted a nuanced and seemingly telepathic dialect of their own. | 2023-11-06T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2023-11-06T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Scrawl | November 6, 2023 | 8 | 1bf16a7e-14bb-4b00-9061-99b316deaa8f | Madison Bloom | https://pitchfork.com/staff/madison-bloom/ | |
With renewed confidence, focus, and contentment, Alec Ounsworth delivers a consistently satisfying Clap Your Hands album, the best since their debut. | With renewed confidence, focus, and contentment, Alec Ounsworth delivers a consistently satisfying Clap Your Hands album, the best since their debut. | Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: The Tourist | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22936-the-tourist/ | The Tourist | Since their 2005 debut, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have evolved from being an actual band into being just an idea of one. Once a proper quintet, they’ve gradually shed members over the past decade, and after drummer Sean Greenhalgh bailed following 2014’s Only Run, the group was down to one man clapping—lead singer/songwriter Alec Ounsworth. Of course, Ounsworth has been the band’s creative center since the very beginning, and even though he’s released music under his own name, he’s held onto the Clap Your Hands brand—as much for its obfuscating qualities as recognition value. Always too cryptic and theatrical a raconteur to fit the traditional singer-songwriter mold, Clap Your Hands is Ounsworth’s means of holding up a funhouse mirror to it, through restless, combustible songs as elastic and exaggerated as his voice.
But even though his original band has effectively fallen apart, Ounsworth has some quality Krazy Glue in the form of Dave Fridmann. The producer has a history of stabilizing bands in a state of flux, whether charting the Flaming Lips’ course out of “Jelly”-ville, or promoting himself from Mercury Rev’s bassist to their studio-bound sonic architect in the mid-’90s. Fridmann has worked on two very different Clap Your Hands records, both of which bore the pressure of the band’s circumstances at the time: 2007’s infamously cluttered and blown-out Some Loud Thunder was an unsubtle pin-prick to the inflated anticipation that followed their debut; the deconstructed, discombobulated Only Run captured the sound of a shrinking band trying to figure out where to go next. Like the latter record, The Tourist was self-produced by Ounsworth and mixed by Fridmann, but Only Run’s sense of blank-canvas uncertainty has been replaced with renewed confidence, focus, and contentment.
The result is the most consistently satisfying Clap Your Hands album since their debut. Ounsworth’s once-adversarial songwriting smarts and sonic ambitions are more in sync than ever before, and Fridmann’s lustrous mix ranges between the intimate and the epic. The Tourist furthers Only Run’s predilection for synth-smeared textures, but the songs here feel less like randomized experiments and more purposefully constructed for dramatic effect: “A Chance to Cure” begins in an ambient, after-hours R&B haze but erupts into a blast of psychedelic funk, powered by a hiccupping drumbeat that locks in with Ounsworth’s rap-like repartee; “Down (is where I want to be)” is a delirious disco in the spirit of “Satan Said Dance,” spiked with Eno-esque harmonies and a surprising rock-out climax that transforms it into the first Clap Your Hands song to make you pump your fist.
Ounsworth has said The Tourist was written during a period of personal tumult, and his lyric sheet here is riddled with references to ambulances, drugs, “visiting hours,” and “dark flowers.” But he works through his woes with sly humor. The charming, organ-poked waltz “Unfolding Above Celibate Moon (Lost Angeles Nursery Rhyme)” sees Ounsworth declare, “it’s no good trying to be someone you’re not,” before building a couplet from quotes of the Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” and Broken Social Scene’s “I’m Still Your Fag.” And atop the glistening glide of “Better Off,” he confronts an existential crisis (“It’s better to keep moving/Better just to hold still”) with zen-like bliss, rendering a scene of interpersonal turmoil by cribbing the “hit me with a flower” quip from Lou Reed’s “Vicious.”
In spite of The Tourist’s surface shimmer, Ounsworth still wields his frail voice like a weapon, dramatically punctuating his lines with hysterical tics like someone feigning a fainting episode to get out of an uncomfortable situation. But they’re also natural responses to moments when he’s just too overcome with emotion. The heart-rending “Ambulance Chaser” surges forth like an acoustic complement to “In This Home On Ice,” its fidgety rhythm emblematic of the unsettling medical drama unfolding in Ounsworth’s motor-mouthed lyrics (“There’s a limit to how much I can endure/I’ll take my medicine and you’ll just hope for the worst”).
The revitalizing vigor of The Tourist suggests that whatever troubles were plaguing Ounsworth are now behind him, with the post-punk thrust of “The Vanity of Trying” putting the exclamation point on the album’s liberation philosophy when he exclaims, “We can be whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever we want!” A decade ago, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were a modest, rickety band bearing the albatross of hype; today, they’re an amorphous, musically adventurous entity basking in the freedom of no expectations. | 2017-03-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-03-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Undertow | March 4, 2017 | 7.5 | 1bf34d2e-6dcc-43bb-a0b6-53b3c3aa4603 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
Marissa Nadler's elegant new album is also her most expansive, with production that sharpens old strengths while exposing new ones. | Marissa Nadler's elegant new album is also her most expansive, with production that sharpens old strengths while exposing new ones. | Marissa Nadler: Little Hells | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12813-little-hells/ | Little Hells | The core of Little Hells-- Marissa Nadler's elegiac and elegant fourth album-- is appropriately wedged in the middle: After moving alongside dual Wurlitzers and a theremin throughout opener "Heart Paper Lover", slowly waltzing above a country quartet on "Rosary", and augmenting a dark conversation between a man and his tired wife with industrial-iike programming and synths for "Mary Come Alive", Nadler settles back into her minimal roots for the next four tunes. During those 14 perfect minutes, it's just her voice and finger-picked acoustic guitar, augmented cautiously by piano, organ, and ripples of electronics. Surrounded by little else but her own melancholy, Nadler sums up her career's existential despair: "Ghosts and lovers/ They will haunt you for a while," she sings. And while they do, Little Hells suggests through 10 of Nadler's best songs yet, the sadness will either kill you or keep you going.
Nadler's earlier albums delivered this somberness almost exclusively through songs for acoustic guitar. On those records, her backing musicians seemed intent upon emphasizing the spectral, lost-love tendencies of her words, adding ominous cello shrieks, sinister electric leads, or raggedy lo-fi touches, which found her tagged from the start as a freak-folk artist. As late as her most recent album-- the exquisite breakthrough Songs III: Bird on the Water-- she did little to dispel that categorization, filling the record with archaic language and outsider accompaniment by New England experimentalists like multi-instrumentalist Greg Weeks and cellist Helena Espvall.
At last, Little Hells moves Nadler well beyond easy categories, thanks to a newfound clarity in her words, a compelling link between her songs, and production that sharpens her old strengths wheile brightly exposing new ones. Sonically, her reach is wider and more assured. On "Mary Come Alive", circular drumming, gauzed vocals, and synthetic harmonium suggest the unlikely union of Cocteau Twins and Swans. Meanwhile, "Loner" stacks organ sustains and submerges them beneath Nadler's strum and half-hummed coo. It's like Grouper coming back down the Hill or Valet emerging from the Acid, but more memorable and accessible than both.
But the LP's highlight is still the four-song core that recalls vintage Nadler-- now played, captured, edited, and arranged better than in the past. Her only solo turn here, "Brittle, Crushed & Torn", is crisp and concise, the presentation revealing the strength of the melodies in her bass-heavy picking and the wispy vocals above. "The Whole Is Wide" uses only that voice and Dave Scher's staccato piano march; the simplicity helps the album's most lyrically complex song translate off the page as Nadler intertwines the stories of two women, Sylvia and Laila, who waste their life away in the absence of a man. Nadler swaps first- and third-person pronouns and twists verb tenses, building tension by suggesting that they're both dead or at least headed that way. That time-and-person slipstream is what binds the 10 tracks of Little Hells so well. Nadler mixes images of individuals in various stages of love and loss, often pairing them with imagery of death, decay, and rebirth.
What Nadler's done on Little Hells suggests Antony and the Johnson's work on one of the year's other accomplishments, The Crying Light. Hegarty too alternated between thoughts of giving up, getting out, or fighting back. To do that, he eschewed the guests of I Am a Bird Now, choosing to sing with himself through fascinating harmonies, vocal lines intersecting with one another in unexpected patterns. He also expanded his sound in unexpected directions while refining what he'd always done well-- luxuriously layered arrangements-- through subtlety and tension. Nadler does all of that on Little Hells, and-- like Antony-- she's transcended freak folk as a result. | 2009-03-10T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2009-03-10T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Kemado | March 10, 2009 | 8.3 | 1bf4b1ea-c647-45cf-bcc3-fff5c6cfdccc | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
The Chicago quartet’s debut is well-oiled and worn-in indie rock, played with the precision and confidence typically expected from a band much further along in its career. | The Chicago quartet’s debut is well-oiled and worn-in indie rock, played with the precision and confidence typically expected from a band much further along in its career. | Deeper: Deeper | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/deeper-deeper/ | Deeper | When Deerhunter released their seventh album, Fading Frontier, back in 2015, they capped a decade of genre shape-shifting with a record that sounded resolutely like themselves—a reminder that very few bands had even attempted replicating the band’s post-punk/dream-pop alchemy in the interim. Calgary outfit Women briefly garnered comparisons to Bradford Cox’s band, but following a hiatus and the death of guitarist Christopher Reimer, their regrouping as Preoccupations (fka Viet Cong) swapped hazy guitar tones and tape-hiss atmospherics for noisier, more brittle soundscapes; now, there’s Chicago quartet Deeper, whose short and sweet self-titled debut LP comes closer to evoking Deerhunter’s past-plundering sound than any other band in recent memory.
Despite the chiming guitar interplay splayed across the record, Deeper is not so much the result of a band trying to sound like other people as it is four musicians trying to find a sound that works for them. Deeper’s origins date back to 2014, when the dissolution of a previous iteration of the band resulted in the current members—singer/guitarist Nic Gohl, guitarist Mike Clawson, drummer Shiraz Bhatti, and bassist Drew McBride—holing up in search of a new identity. Clawson recently described the resulting album as “us frantically throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks,” but perhaps that description does Deeper a disservice. This is well-oiled and worn-in indie rock, played with the precision and confidence typically expected from a band much further along in its career.
Not counting the dreamlike centerpiece “Pavement,” most of Deeper moves at a steady speed, Bhatti’s timekeeping and Gohl and Clawson’s six-stringed assault contributing to the record’s just-right 26-minute runtime. Tracked in the band’s recording space and given a slight touch-up by Chicago mastering engineer and scene magnate Dave Vettraino, the record boasts an overall fidelity hovering somewhere between hissy claustrophobia and bracing clarity.
That sonic stasis suits Deeper’s nervy music quite well, especially when they slip into a brief squall of noise on the second half of “Should Be” and flip the chugging build of “Feels” several times over, increasing the intensity with every shift. Gohl’s vocals nicely round out Deeper’s web of sound, acting as a functional instrument and at times lending a distinctly punky attitude; his lyrics lean heavily on snapshot-sized imagery and the occasional evocation of paranoiac doubt, but you don’t have to focus too much on his words to grasp the mood—urgent, yet distinctly overcast—that Deeper conveys.
Overall, the record proves that Deeper have a solid grasp on one specific sound: guitar-centric indie rock with few frills or extroverted gestures to be found. As far as debuts go, its singularity of vision is commendable, but there are moments in which Deeper risks sounding a little samey. Opener “Pink Showers” and penultimate track “Taxi” hew closely to each other in terms of riffage and structure, but the album’s brevity moots most charges of homogeneousness. It’ll be interesting to see whether Deeper are able to establish a stronger sense of personality in their music going forward. Doing so will be necessary; the kind of music they make doesn’t always stand out to less discerning ears, a challenge many indie-rock bands past and present have faced while developing their own sound. For now, though, Deeper stands as a promising rock record possessing the kind of heat-drunk gloom that’s easy to blare on repeat after your air conditioner breaks down. | 2018-06-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-06-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Fire Talk | June 4, 2018 | 6.9 | 1c0301de-d025-4b56-a738-cb4606e4d664 | Larry Fitzmaurice | https://pitchfork.com/staff/larry-fitzmaurice/ | |
The most exciting strain of dance music the past 18 months, UK funky-- an offshoot of UK garage and grime-- finally gets a sprawling, solid introduction. | The most exciting strain of dance music the past 18 months, UK funky-- an offshoot of UK garage and grime-- finally gets a sprawling, solid introduction. | Ministry of Sound: The Sound of UK Funky | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13243-the-sound-of-uk-funky/ | The Sound of UK Funky | UK funky has been the most exciting thing in dance music the past 18 months or so, but it nonetheless remains a tricky thing to pin down. After all, what is UK funky other than house music produced by Londoners? Sure, it's house produced by refugees from UK garage and grime looking to have a good time while bringing their sonic and stylistic baggage with them: But, well, so what? It's still just house, isn't it? But UK funky is both "just house" in its most conventional sense and also "other than house" in pretty much every manner that is worth pursuing. It's house at the point where house becomes rave, R&B, rap, dancehall, soca, and, a lot of the time, just manic percussion. But also, a lot of the time, just house.
All of which makes packaging this emerging genre a difficult proposition: UK Funky is like a magic eye picture, its startling multi-genre topography invisible to the naked eye until you discover, perhaps by accident, the right perspective from which to observe it. For many listeners, myself included, the right perspective was provided by the imposition of the MC. On a good radio set-- mixing fast and loose from one track to next, treating full-blown songs like they're functionalist riddims-- the MC confirms that the closest fit for funky's sensibility is dancehall: hence the obsessive focus on dance crazes, the trash'n'treasure opportunism of its sonic eclecticism, and, most importantly, the unlikely balancing act of its covalent relationship between vocal and groove, mouth and body.
In its overdue attempt to come to grips with UK funky, the Ministry of Sound stable was never going to allow an MC to spoil proceedings, if only because this might alienate listeners expecting a more conventional take on "funky house." Partly as a result, this slick 3xCD collection cannot capture the ravey excitement of a the best funky radio shows (so search, if you can, Mak 10 and MC Shantie's set for Deja Vu FM). But these reservations aside, Ministry of Sound Presents the Sound of UK Funky is about as good as anyone reasonably could have hoped.
Well, nearly: the mostly great first disc courtesy of Pioneer can drift into tepid territory at times, keen to remind you [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| of the music's roots in the more polite end of U.S. house. But the second and third discs, mixed by Footloose and Supa D respectively, are mostly spectacular. Of the two, Supa D gets the lion's share of current scene anthems, from Crazy Cousinz's peerless xylophone workout "Inflation" to the hyperactive electro-dancehall of Perempay & Dee's "Buss It" to the rippling but rough bongo fetishism of Fr3e's "Tribal Skank" (spoilt somewhat by the addition of a perfunctory and uninspired vocal). But if Supa D's set is strongest track-for-track, Footloose's set is the more enjoyable by a small margin, perhaps because it edges closer to portraying UK funky in its absolute best light.
Put this down to the irrepressible energy of Footloose's mixing, the way he impatiently jumps from one track to the next, or teases out transitions to create hybrid tracks where competing rhythms jut into one another like rotor blades. It also seems to be mixed slightly faster, giving snare-heavy tunes like Crazy Cousinz's remix of Kid Cudi vs Crookers' "Day 'N' Nite" or Tru's remix of Karizma's "Darqness" a steroidal muscularity they might lack at a more stately tempo. Funky's stumbling but cheerful rhythms seem primed to soundtrack alcohol consumption rather than drug use, but at their manic best these selections latch onto that fleeting moment at the very beginning of drunkenness, when enthusiasm and adrenalin bring on a rush of energy that's as dangerous as it is enjoyable.
What Footloose and Supa D's sets share is an almost perverse attraction to the genre's extremities: both take a childish delight in jumping from sweet vocal tunes to menacing percussive numbers and back again. So Footloose switches from the hyper-intense rave-soca of his remix of Brasstooth's "Celebrate Life" into the slinky Latin swish of Delio D'Cruz vs KCAT's "Get Off The Wall", all high-pitched vocals and shiveringly delicate beats, while Supa D overlays the sly R&B of L.A. Cartier's "Call Me" with a full minute of overbearing, clanking tribal drums from Bakongo's "Bambara".
But UK funky isn't solely about this kind of outer-edge gymnastics. Rounding out Supa D's disc, the driving piano stomp and yearning, ghostly male vocals of Fuzzy Logik's "The Way You Move" offer a simple, moving love letter to classicist early house, while closer "I Feel" by Nat-Mor is simply timeless, delectable vocal garage, its lush groove and stirring diva chorus temporarily making "other than house" seem like a pointless destination. It's not, but UK funky's fetish for transformation isn't pursued at the expense of remembering its origins, and the resulting conflation of past, present, and future offers the best of all possible worlds. | 2009-07-07T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2009-07-07T02:00:01.000-04:00 | null | Ministry of Sound | July 7, 2009 | 8 | 1c069cf0-ba8f-416c-a091-1db99ea89c80 | Tim Finney | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tim-finney/ | null |
They share a label and lo-fi bent with groups like Vivian Girls, but Woods focus on a more pastoral and rustic vein of songcraft to beautiful effect. | They share a label and lo-fi bent with groups like Vivian Girls, but Woods focus on a more pastoral and rustic vein of songcraft to beautiful effect. | Woods: Songs of Shame | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12837-songs-of-shame/ | Songs of Shame | Like many Woodsist Records alums-- the NYC-based label has also recently issued records by Vivian Girls, Wavves, Crystal Stilts, and Sic Alps-- Woods have spent much of their time together quickly earning respect and fans in underground rock circles. Unlike those previously mentioned groups, however, they've done it by exploring a more pastoral and rustic vein of songcraft rather than loft-ready noise. On their three previous albums-- released in limited editions on a variety of formats across a choice selection of micro-labels-- Woods created a distinctive blend of spooky campfire folk, lo-fi rock, homemade tape collages, and other noisy interludes, all anchored by deceptively sturdy melodies.
Woods' latest album, Songs of Shame, is their most cohesive collection, and it's not only quickly lifted them to front of the Woodsist crew but positioned them to be the group that appeals to those who've previously been uninterested in the 2008-09 crop of lo-fi. As with the best lo-fi albums, Songs of Shame performs some sleight-of-hand by sounding private and homespun yet also not just accessible but immediately lovable. Along the way, Woods can evoke any number of their lo-fi ancestors, from early Guided by Voices to the murkier depths of the Siltbreeze or Flying Nun back catalogs, but they're still able to retain their own immediately recognizable off-kilter character.
The group is centered primarily on the duo of Jeremy Earl (proprietor of Fuck It Tapes) and Jarvis Taveniere (Meneguar, Wooden Wand) and they've designed this record through an affinity for home recording and its attendant cassette culture. As befits an act with a somewhat befuddling discography, many of the recordings on Songs of Shame first appeared last fall on the tour cassette Some Shame. But even for the select few who've heard that release, these tracks have lost none of their charm. On the melodic "Down This Road" or "Born to Lose", Earl's vocals have a strange, slightly unhinged pitch, sounding something like a muffled Neil Young. Drums clatter in the distance as though buried behind drywall, and G. Lucas Crane occasionally adds discreet tape effects to the din. Meanwhile, forceful guitar solos zoom unpredictably in and out of the frame, hazily recalling a time when it seemed every band boasted at least one avid J Mascis aficionado.
Of course, it wouldn't be a Woods album without a few surprises. The most glaring example is the nine-minute guitar jam "September With Pete", which features a cameo from Magik Markers' Pete Nolan. Although the piece is solid and less jarring than some of Woods' past noise experiments, its position early on the LP somewhat dulls the album's momentum. Equally unexpected is another Some Shame holdover, a faithful cover of Graham Nash's "Military Madness", an earnest anti-war ditty that in Woods' hands sounds like Nash and Young strumming away in the treehouse while Crosby and Stills are forced to wait out in the car.
Mirroring the wistful tone of "Military Madness", the album closes with an especially potent trio of songs: "Rain On", "Gypsy Hand", and "Where and What Are You?". The melancholic "Rain On" in particular is a near-perfect dusky gem, underlining the album's subtle themes of loss and disaffection. Despite Woods' humble production values and their fondness for living room ambiance, Songs of Shame has that almost subliminal ability to make one want to move in to listen more closely. And once you've been drawn in for a good listen, it becomes difficult not to want to come back for many more. | 2009-04-24T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2009-04-24T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Shrimper / Woodsist | April 24, 2009 | 8.3 | 1c11db67-dc8b-4b3e-a7a3-4934f82c9a22 | Matthew Murphy | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-murphy/ | null |
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno’s glam-rock, art-school masterpiece. | Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno’s glam-rock, art-school masterpiece. | Roxy Music: For Your Pleasure | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/roxy-music-for-your-pleasure/ | For Your Pleasure | Roxy Music singer and mastermind Bryan Ferry grew up in the sooty industrial North. His father tended to pit horses in the local mine in Washington, where the glum employment options for men were the mine or the steel factory. Roxy Music keyboardist and troublemaker Brian Eno grew up in rural eastern England, where his dad worked as a postman and augmented his meager salary by repairing clocks on the side. Both Ferry and Eno felt rat-trapped by an impermeable class system, perpetuating privilege for the wealthy legacy students at Eton and Harrow. Neither could have afforded college if not for England’s post-war education reforms.
Yes, the great flowering of British rock in the 1960s began, obscurely, with the 1944 Education Act. England’s schools had withered, due to years of German bombs in World War II, evacuations of children, and general neglect; a study found Dickensian conditions in village schools, more than half of which still used buckets as lavatories. Among the Education Act’s extensive reforms, two had impacts for the working class no one could have anticipated: Students were required to stay in school until they were 15 and school fees were eliminated, making British education free to all.
As part of this scheme, the Ministry of Education accredited more regional art schools and greatly loosened entry requirements. By the late 1950s, those schools had become havens for misfits, truants, and strays, financed by local and government grants available to anyone who could hold a paintbrush. Art school was “somewhere they put you if they can’t put you anywhere else,” Keith Richards (who studied graphic design at Sidcup Art College after being expelled from his secondary school) told Rolling Stone in 1971. Chris Dreja of the Yardbirds later classified his fellow art students as “buffoons and social drop-outs.”
Art schools were unruly outposts of free thinking, free drinking, and liberation. A few years ago, the artist Roy Ascott, whose students included Brian Eno and Pete Townshend, told me, “It was very releasing for students to come out of their horrific bourgeois backgrounds into an art school where they could fuck and drink and smoke.” And also learn to play guitar, all under a government subsidy.
Collectively, these schools had a transformative effect on England’s rock music. From the time the Beatles released their first UK single, “Love Me Do,” in October 1962 to the summer of 1973 when Queen and 10cc released their debut albums, nearly every significant English band had at least one member who’d gone to art school: the Beatles, the Who, the Kinks, the Yardbirds, the Animals, the Jeff Beck Group, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Deep Purple, and Roxy Music, plus David Bowie and Eric Clapton. Of these artists, Roxy Music is the one that most directly translated the radical, emancipating ideas of art-school into pop music. And For Your Pleasure, released in 1973, is their most art-school album, as well as their greatest.
During an unsuccessful, dispiriting U.S. tour for Roxy’s debut album the previous year, they shared a few bills with Humble Pie, whose up-tempo boogie incited Ferry to write For Your Pleasure’s most raucous songs, “Do the Strand” (the album’s lone single) and “Editions of You,” models for the ferocity of punk rock. Both songs pledge themselves to the moment: “In modern times, the modern way,” Ferry trills in the latter, and in the former, which opens the album, he begins, “There’s a new sensation.” In “Editions of You,” a song about the beauty of pining for someone long gone, Ferry builds a chilly metaphor for love out of mechanical reproduction and Andy Warhol’s silkscreened paintings.
Ferry had studied at Newcastle University under England’s preeminent Pop Art painter and theorist, Richard Hamilton, who compelled his students to consider fashion, pop music, industrial design, TV, comic books, and other dismissed aspects of lowbrow culture. Hamilton was working largely in collages, most famously in his 1956 work, “Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?” where he uses images of American consumerism, clipped from magazines. Hamilton regarded a painting, not as a canvas, but a mood board, an array of inspirations and goals that could as easily clash as blend together. Ferry applied this idea to Roxy’s music, which careened across the past and into what still feels like the future. “Editions of You” jump-cuts from Andy Mackay’s 1950s R&B sax invocations to a madcap, pitch-bending synthesizer solo by Eno, who torques the synth’s frequency control to create what he later approvingly termed “quite unpalatable noises.”
Hamilton’s influence was so significant that he later, a bit grandly, called Ferry “my greatest creation.” The most tangible residue of his influence is “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” Ferry’s macabre, hilarious love song to a blowup sex doll, referring back to Hamilton’s “Just what is it...?” collage. The song is a two-part essay about interiors and illusions—there are glimpses of modern sophistication, but behind it, only horror. “But what goes on?/What to do there?/Better pray there,” Ferry sings, gazing in awe at a mansion. Then the façade cracks. After three minutes of transfixing melodrama and funereal organ, the music stops asymmetrically on the one, and Phil Manzanera takes a staggered guitar solo, chalked with distortion, shaking with vibrato, and phase-shifted through Eno’s signature electronic treatments. Perhaps, the song implies, the modern way is not the best way.
In a 1960 lecture, Hamilton said, “In its efforts to gain and hold the affections of the mass audience, a product must aim to project an image of desirability as strong as any Hollywood star. It must have gloss and glamor...” Everything is a product, he believed, including fine art. So Roxy Music was one of the first groups who understood that music is a product in need of a package, a mission that began with their carefully constructed album covers, which are like advertisements for the male gaze. For Your Pleasure was released as a gleaming gatefold, in a blue-black hue, showing a statuesque model (Amanda Lear) in tight black leather, walking a panther, silhouetted by a gleaming urban skyline, while a smiling Ferry, dressed like a chauffeur, waits next to a limo. It was an enthralling, modern image of desirability, danger, sexual satisfaction, and luxe living, a tableau as posed and planned as a fashion magazine spread of Helmut Newton photos. Like a lot of rock, the cover offers adolescents a misleading fantasy of what adult life is like.
Throughout the album, the band is puffed up with ideas, and desperate to make an impression. Ferry summarizes his passions for artifice and postmodern thought in manifestos: “Part false, part true, like anything/We present ourselves,” he sings in a theatrical baritone that recalls, at various times, Noël Coward and Dracula. For Your Pleasure is happily pretentious and self-involved, the juncture where glam and prog meet with the greatest degree of success. Glam steals from prog’s song lengths and love of soloing, and prog swipes glam’s exclamation marks and sex appeal.
Ferry was drawn to the anxious, feminine side of R&B, evident on the album’s most retro moment, “Beauty Queen,” which the band bookends into a salmagundi of a song, complete with tempo changes navigated by stalwart drummer Paul Thompson. Ferry is dumping a woman who has “swimming pool eyes,” but it sounds more like he’s pitching woo. He lavishes her with purple praise, promises she’ll be fine without him, and carefully lathers his words with his heaviest Scott Walker vibrato. Ferry, with his fondness for dualities, uses theatricality and even camp to prove his sincerity, implying that everything make-believe is also real, and vice versa.
For Your Pleasure’s two longest songs, “The Bogus Man” and the album-closing title track, leave plenty of time for Eno’s deviations. This first sketches out a musical design for trance, years ahead of it, with a long, minimalist break that confirms Eno’s mantra, “Repetition is a form of change.” Each instrument mutates, minutely transmogrified, on some mysterious cycle. On “For Your Pleasure,” Ferry makes only a brief vocal appearance. Over the last four and a half minutes, producer Chris Thomas and Eno are playing the recording studio as though it’s an instrument, conducting the song at a mixing board, and building a panoramic disorientation. They add more echo on the electric piano, more reverb on the guitar, phasing, tremolo, the drums slip away, and it gently becomes hazy and puzzling: Chopped-up bits of “Chance Meeting” from Roxy’s first album come in—Roxy are sampling themselves—then Judi Dench murmurs, “You don’t ask why,” and almost randomly, la fin. An album that began with Ferry’s request for your attention ends with Eno placing you in the strange new world you were promised. A new sensation has delivered new sensations of arousal and uncertainty.
Roxy aimed for a melding of American R&B and avant-garde European traditions (Mackay’s oboe on “For Your Pleasure” sounds like the last thing you’d hear before bees stung you to death). You don’t hear a struggle between Ferry and Eno, just two guys with similar ideas and a band juiced on its early success and acclaim, trying to get farther from earth while still holding on to the Marvelettes and the Shirelles. The playing is so adept and surprising, and Thompson and Manzanera do such strong jobs of grounding the music’s outlandish shifts, that you only slowly realize none of the album’s eight songs has a chorus.
A few months after For Your Pleasure was released, Eno left the band, quitting before he could be fired, and starting an unparalleled career as a solo artist and producer. Bryan and Brian were incompatible. Ferry was a neurotic—Woody Allen trapped in the body of Cary Grant—while Eno was a disruptor. In interviews, Ferry withdrew like a turtle; Eno excelled at them, and talked fluidly about Marshall McLuhan, Steve Reich, or his ample pornography collection. Eno most avidly pursued the band’s androgynous style, and dressed like he was Quentin Crisp’s glam nephew (leopard print top, ostrich feather jacket, bondage choker, turquoise eye shadow). Out of the chute, he was a cult hero, and Ferry grew tired of hearing punters yell “EEEEEE-NO!” in the middle of ballads, or seeing Eno credited as his co-equal.
The music had no immediate impact in the U.S., where it grazed the album chart at number 193. The band’s two-album deal with Warner Bros. had expired and the label happily left them go. American audiences, Ferry told a British interviewer, “are literally the dumbest in the world, bar none.”
But in England, it was the album of the moment, and Roxy returned to TV’s Old Grey Whistle Test, where Whispering Bob Harris, a stodgy presenter who was still stuck in the ’60s, sneered at them, as he had the previous year as well, dismissing them as great packaging with no substance.
The notion that style and substance were contradictory was a holdover from the ’60s, and it’s one that has never gone away, revived periodically by fans and critics who long for seeming authenticity. Years later, those Roxy TV appearances would start to feel almost as significant as the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Harris’ contempt was recommendation enough for lots of kids, of myriad genders and sexualities, who would soon come to Roxy shows dressed in sparkling tunics, glowing frocks, and immaculate dinner jackets, boys and girls both in drag. But glamor and self-invention were only part of the aftereffect: Within the next few years, plenty of future punks and new wavers went on to art school, where they immediately started acting, dressing, and playing like Roxy Music.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-10-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-10-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Island | October 13, 2019 | 9.5 | 1c14477b-7281-4c22-985f-dbb1595495c9 | Rob Tannenbaum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rob-tannenbaum/ | |
For almost two decades, Dawn Richard has been increasingly beholden to nothing but her own satisfaction as an independent artist. Her sixth album is a decadent testament to her maturation. | For almost two decades, Dawn Richard has been increasingly beholden to nothing but her own satisfaction as an independent artist. Her sixth album is a decadent testament to her maturation. | Dawn Richard: Second Line: An Electro Revival | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dawn-second-line-an-electro-revival/ | Second Line: An Electro Revival | From her 2005 debut Been a While to her singing competition days on Making the Band 3, Dawn Richard has been making music for almost 20 years. After her pop group Danity Kane’s dissolution in 2009, she was the only member not let go from her contract with Bad Boy, where all five members had been originally signed. That same year, she joined Diddy-Dirty Money alongside the group’s namesake and singer/songwriter Kalenna Harper. In less than two years, they recorded an album, Last Train to Paris, plus two mixtapes before going the route of DK and disbanding in 2012. Since then, Richard’s trajectory as an independent artist has involved balancing artistic freedom alongside financial restraints. Her sixth album Second Line is a testament to her musical maturation.
With its 16 tracks that blur the lines between song, spoken word, and short stories, Second Line is a continuation of an avant-garde musicality born from the place Richard calls home and where she returned after her pop career stalled. Conceptually, the album takes from the New Orleans tradition of parade revelers gathering to dance, mourn, or celebrate. Whatever the occasion, music is constant, and so is the idea of being an individual within the crowd—you move as a unit while keeping your own pace. Jazz is the most known accompaniment; and yet in a Second Line, you’ll also hear an eclectic fusion of funk, hip-hop, soul, and blues.
Second Line is a synth-heavy record that makes liberal use of frequency and vocal modulations, evoking very human insecurities with the steady manipulations of modern tech. The album is couched in house beats, a geographically malleable force that can transport you to a club in New Orleans, a party in Johannesburg, or a beach in Salvador. It could work as a companion piece to Solange’s 2019 album When I Get Home, in the way it connects threads of Black migration that first brought travelers to New Orleans. Aside from their meditations on belonging, both artists’ solo careers expanded the limits of what it means to be a Black woman bending multiple genres. “Nostalgia” is light on lyrics yet brimming with cleverly arranged melodies and Richard’s voice freely bouncing over the beats. “Bussifame” goes from grime to R&B to the unmistakable sounds of percussion rooted in the familiar rhythms of the Black diaspora, all in less than five minutes. On “Pressure,” her voice hangs over a heavy bass intro that builds into a danceable midpoint. “Oh, I really think it’s time/For us to bump and grind/Ride the pony Ginuwine,” she croons.
A little-known fact about Richard is that she has a deep passion for anime (the name Danity Kane came from an anime character she drew), with its empowered female characters who are as lethal as they are tender-hearted. But rarely are they Black, as her album cover depicts, yet that has not deterred Richard’s love for the art form; it’s instead compelled her to lend her efforts to animation via her work with Adult Swim. All this to say that the absence of Black faces and Black women in spaces that interest her has not stopped Richard from going in headfirst. Like other Black women who didn’t plan on being pioneers, she’s become part of the genesis out of a sheer need to not be boxed in.
Throughout Second Line, a female narrator pops in to converse with Richard. It’s only on “Mornin | Streetlights” that we realize the woman is her mother. When asked how many times she’s been in love, her mother responds, “One time. Your father.” Richard’s tone is languorous on this two-sided track—on the first half, “Mornin,” her mood is sensual, Urban Hang Suite-reminiscent; on “Streetlights,” it’s moody, dark, and pounding. Her choice to transition from the early sunny outlook of “Mornin” to the overcast end of “Streetlights” is, like the rest of the album, a gesture towards the range of human emotions.
Love stories are often sentimental, but they’re also turbulent—sometimes all at once, with the same person. “Le Petit Morte” takes Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” and turns the already mournful composition into a ballad for the brokenhearted. “I’ve been battered and bruised/I’m too good to be this used,” Richard offers as a lamentation. It’s not just about asking to be treated nicely; it costs infinitely less to be nice than it does to be good. Niceness is transactional, where goodness is labor. It’s that under-appreciated emotional exertion that Richard harnesses on the song to express love and survival after pain.
Scattered through the album, these intermissions are as vocally revelatory as her longer singles. “Voodoo” and “Pilot” are held together by the agility in her tone that goes from low, steady rhymes to soaring pop intros. Their presence highlights that Richard was luxurious with her time when making the record. She would not be rushed, she’d slow down if the mood called for it, and she’d muse for 58 seconds if the moment was ripe for reflection. The beats are decadent, but so too are the liberties she takes as an independent artist beholden to nothing but her own satisfaction.
Richard continues to make music that bears a resemblance to multi-faceted artists like Justine Skye and Teyana Taylor. All three have been signed to record labels run by men who’ve not quite figured out how to best support some of the most talented artists on their rosters. Whenever Skye drops new music, fans decry the lack of promotion, and Taylor has walked away from the industry after vocalizing frustration over the label’s treatment of her and getting “little to no real push from the ‘machine.’” That “machine” is the music industry and all its flexible conventions in many ways but archaic in others. When it comes to the latter, it’s artists like Richard, whose music cannot be easily packaged or defined, that fall victim to the stagnant framework. But on Second Line, she’s choosing to do it the NOLA way, making her own rhythms and moving at her own pace.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-05-03T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-04-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Merge | May 3, 2021 | 8 | 1c14e29a-6f12-4931-bed5-6834314911c1 | Tarisai Ngangura | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tarisai-ngangura/ | |
Stevie Knipe’s third LP builds layered arrangements and a renewed sense of confidence without sacrificing the earnest, confessional vulnerability of their songwriting. | Stevie Knipe’s third LP builds layered arrangements and a renewed sense of confidence without sacrificing the earnest, confessional vulnerability of their songwriting. | Adult Mom: Driver | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/adult-mom-driver/ | Driver | To drive is to be in control while accepting there is nothing you can control. On Adult Mom’s Driver, self-doubt almost sends Stevie Knipe spinning out in the aftermath of a breakup. But with wry, intimate lyrics and jangly electric guitar, they wrest back control to celebrate small, precious triumphs amid the trauma of everyday life. The effect is both cathartic and dazzling, like the high you feel on your way out of a really good therapy session.
Knipe writes lyrics so honest they border on awkward, capturing the often embarrassing everyday minutiae of depression and soul-crushing capitalism. “I am isolating, I get my communication/From an overdue hospital bill,” they sing softly on “Breathing,” over phased synthesizer and Olivia Battell’s staccato drum beat, before Allegra Eidinger’s guitar interrupts and Knipe calls up a wistful soprano that brings to mind Imogen Heap’s “Goodnight and Go.” Their revealing lyrics establish trust: They’re not trying to come off as anything but totally honest.
A knack for storytelling that feels real, even when it’s unflattering, is the cornerstone of Adult Mom’s music. If their first album, 2015’s Momentary Lapse of Happily, was intimate as a dorm-room performance, Driver feels bigger, like it’s performed from a stage. Knipes uses the emotional force of their suffering to propel expansive, layered arrangements that make room for head-bobbing melodies, chilly synths, and guitar solos. Even “Passenger,” a cozy, melancholy ballad whose guitar strums and close harmonies recall First Aid Kit, has a sense of urgency.
Regaining control is rarely a linear path; it comes with ugly setbacks, which Knipe articulates with the cathartic levity of the dog who says “this is fine.” That levity is perhaps best exemplified in the surfy daze of “Dancing”: “I’m dancing to/The song I crashed my car to,” they sing, a Russian doll of a lyric that opens to reveal trauma within triumph, joy within tragedy. “Sober” addresses an ex-lover with trademark candor: “The only thing that I’ve done/This month is drink beer and masturbate, and ignore phone calls from you/What else am I supposed to do.” A jaunty drum-machine beat and minimal keys provide a canvas for Knipe’s clear vocals, which glide easily from speaking to singing, giving the song a confessional quality. It ends with a victory that hits like a punchline: “Now I don’t even think of you when I am sober.”
“Adam” notches another victory: making it to the other side of anxieties around queerness. On “Told Ya So,” from Momentary Lapse of Happily, Knipe sounded more tentative, setting lyrics about shame and self-acceptance to understated rhythm guitar. On “Adam,” they turn the dial up, punctuating the song with juicy, Guitar Hero-worthy riffs. “I see the girl I want to kiss/But I’m not sure if she wants to kiss/But at least I can ask without feeling like shit,” they sing, with a nervousness and excitement that seemingly allows them to fit 30 syllables into one breath.
Regaining agency amid heartbreak, depression, and loneliness is often messy, and just when it feels like you’re finally on your way, you trip and fall. But coming back to yourself doesn’t have to mean remaking your whole life; healing happens both in celebrating the triumphs—like asking the girl if she wants to kiss, or not drinking the beer—and in cataloguing the messiness. Driver succeeds because Knipe is able to do both.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-03-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-03-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Epitaph | March 8, 2021 | 7.3 | 1c1bed9f-89c0-4902-abf5-a51d89c39c74 | Sophia June | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sophia-june/ | |
The R&B star has described the Rated R sessions as "theraputic," and the vitriolic, rough, raw end product is about as brutal as you'd expect. | The R&B star has described the Rated R sessions as "theraputic," and the vitriolic, rough, raw end product is about as brutal as you'd expect. | Rihanna: Rated R | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13740-rated-r/ | Rated R | There was an exact moment when Rihanna stopped being a milquetoast pop automaton and started to establish a persona unto herself. It wasn't "Umbrella"; however ubiquitous, that megasmash's most meaningful and believable utterances-- "ella, ella, eh, eh, eh"-- meant nothing. It wasn't February 8, 2009, when Chris Brown beat her with enough force to warrant a 50-yard, three-year restraining order; though that incident and its aftermath informs most of Rated R. And it wasn't her piercing, uncomfortable, and ultimately valiant interview with Diane Sawyer, where she embraced her role as de facto domestic violence spokesperson with a level-headed understanding far beyond her 21 years.
On 2008's no. 1 single "Take a Bow", Rihanna blew off a philandering numbskull and delivered her most realistic performance to date. When she scoffed "please" at the whimpering chump 43 seconds into the track, she officially put the ice queen routine behind her and entered the realm of full-blooded pop stars. (Her newly severe, emo-boy-esque haircut seen in the song's video did not hurt, either.) "Take a Bow" was witty, funny, and as full of attitude as kiss offs come, and Rihanna definitely sounded like she was having fun with the imagined breakup. Fallouts mark Rated R as well, though they are decidedly heavier. Over the course of the album, Rihanna puts a revolver to her temple on "Russian Roulette", recalls "white outlines" on "Cold Case Love", and even threatens to crash head-on into a boyfriend on "Fire Bomb"-- not exactly the most politically correct metaphor in the age of IEDs, but it does get her point across. In a recent interview, Rihanna described the Rated R recording sessions as "theraputic," and the vitriolic, rough, raw end product is about as brutal as you'd expect.
The brutality comes in two modes: sentimentally self-lacerating and superhero defiance. The bulletproof guise is good for the record's high point on "Hard", a strutting statement of power bolstered by a roiling undertow of a beat from "Umbrella" producer Tricky Stewart. "Brilliant/ Resilient/ Fan mail from 27 million," huffs Rihanna, slyly acknowledging the need for such an anthem while justifying its existence. The similarly chest-thumping "Rockstar 101" and "G4L" are harder to justify considering their mindless boasts and torpid production. The more melodramatic fare is also mixed. For every "Fire Bomb"-- a stunningly overzealous power ballad Pink would blow shit up for-- there's something like the actually-quite-dim "Stupid in Love" or the lost-in-translation lesbian farce "Te Amo", both of which aim for Almodóvar but end up closer to Telemundo.
The ballads also suffer due to the fact that they require singing-- which still isn't Rihanna's forte (tellingly, aforementioned highlight "Hard" is a near-rap with single-syllable "yeahs" for a hook). The strumming "Photographs" comes replete with teary-eyed remembrances ("all I've got are these photographs") and a hint of poignant anachronism-- after all, most photos are a "delete" button away from nothingness nowadays. On the track, Rihanna is more wounded than ever, her voice offering as-yet-unheard levels of tenderness. Then, just as her sorrow peaks, the track is sunk by an infuriatingly tone-deaf and goofy verse from producer will.i.am, who can be a real asshole. It's a frustrating moment from an album pockmarked with them.
Like its lyrical themes, Rated R's tones are decidedly darker than anything Rihanna's done; notably, UK dubstep producers Chase & Status provide production on a few tracks, marking a U.S. pop breakthrough for the bass-riddled genre. Specifically, the undercooked-yet-alluring "Wait Your Turn" shows promise for future dubstep crossovers, and the loping style matches Rihanna's dourness for better and worse (see: the cartoonish tough-chick clunker "G4L"). Canned rock flourishes turn "Rockstar 101" [ft. Slash], "Russian Roulette", and "The Last Song" into instantly-dated missteps from a bygone era when a Slash feature was cool. The Stargate-produced "Rude Boy" is the flightiest thing here, a club trifle that would fit snugly on 2007's Good Girl Gone Bad. It also trumps much of the album's "riskier" material.
Talking about Rated R in a promo interview, Rihanna said, "Anybody can make a hit, but I wanted a real album." Such is the flawed logic of a newly legal drinker who has known only skyrocketing commercial success. While the singer is trying to accentuate her individuality and independence with this album, the "dark" and/or "mature" LP is nothing new-- from Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope to Christina Aguilera's Stripped to Kelly Clarkson's My December, the rebel record is now a de rigeur coming-of-age maneuver. Based on Rated R, Rihanna's artistic aspirations are currently loftier than her abilities. Then again, her tenacity in the face of the unimaginable public humiliation this year is beyond brave. For a while, Rihanna lacked a compelling narrative but couldn't yawn without hitting the Top 10. Now her story is overflowing, but her songs aren't sticking as they once did. Not just anybody can make a hit, and no one can make hits all the time. | 2009-12-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2009-12-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Def Jam | December 2, 2009 | 6.1 | 1c1f7725-4d22-4a1b-9ded-055844cb838f | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | null |
The New Mexico musician’s second album has no shouts, no sudden guitar outbursts, no startling tom thwacks. Instead, she layers arrangements so thick it feels like you could lie down in them. | The New Mexico musician’s second album has no shouts, no sudden guitar outbursts, no startling tom thwacks. Instead, she layers arrangements so thick it feels like you could lie down in them. | Heather Trost: Petrichor | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/heather-trost-petrichor/ | Petrichor | The second solo album by the New Mexico musician Heather Trost is composed largely of overlapping synthesizers, sumptuous bands of them that glow like Rothko paintings. Out of this undulating field of sound, her cool voice emerges, often near-swallowed by the arrangements so that you don’t hear as much as overhear her. Trost has played violin in Beirut, and she’s one-half of the trad-folk duo A Hawk and a Hacksaw with her husband (and Neutral Milk Hotel drummer) Jeremy Barnes, but her solo work seems to arrive from someplace entirely separate—late-’90s Chicago, maybe, around the post-rock boom, circa Stereolab’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup.
There are no surface-piercing noises on Petrichor—no shouts, no sudden guitar outbursts, no startling tom thwacks. All of the edges are rounded, smooth, all the colors bright, evoking in their curves the kind modernist structures designed to lull rather than stimulate your senses—picture a long, empty airport terminal. The priority is the glossy, lulling surface, and listening to it occasionally replicates the pleasant dissociative tingle of transatlantic travel.
Trost sings evenly and with an appealing clarity but little emotion, letting her voice tangle with the various layers of sound until it’s just another signal on the switchboard. Over the two-note chime of opening track “Let It In,” she chants the title quietly in singsong thirds, sounding more like someone singing under their breath to themselves than someone trying to communicate with the outside world. The melody wanders in intriguingly wayward paths, but the song never reaches out its hand, despite the title. Like Kevin Parker, Trost seems to wander around inside the cavernous confines of her own music like its sole inhabitant, a pair of fat headphones insulating her from the clamor of the outside world.
Also like Parker, she has a stunning ear for arrangements, and on Petrichor she specializes in the kind that are so many layers deep it feels like you could lie down in them. With its buzzing psychedelic guitar tones and rolling drums, “Love It Grows” initially sounds like a pretty straightforward Jefferson Airplane homage. But Trost thickens the arrangement with so many moving parts that by the end it’s less song than labyrinth, containing three or four possible versions of itself. You could follow a different melody line each time through.
As she did on her first album, she offers a Harry Nilsson cover. On 2017’s Agistri, it was “Me and My Arrow,” from 1970’s The Point! Here, it is a rendition of “Jump Into the Fire,” from 1971’s Nilsson Schmilsson. “Jump Into the Fire” has been covered many times, and is a naturally boisterous song—the original is nearly overwhelmed by a solo from two drum kits that sounds like the sky has opened up and started raining shoes. Trost turns its wild-eyed attack into a sleepy pulse, Nilsson’s frantic vocal take into a jump-rope melody. In her version, the words “you’ll never be free” sound almost comforting, a reminder that there are truths more eternal than our own desires. Trost’s music radiates this sort of impersonal benevolence, and the further she retreats into her lush, impenetrable arrangements, the more you want to follow her.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-01-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-01-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country / Rock / Pop/R&B | Third Man | January 13, 2021 | 7.2 | 1c23084a-8036-4714-88ff-0513ca445848 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | |
Steve Gunn and John Truscinski's first album as a duo touches on folk, psych, raga, and rock, turning each into hypnotic guitar pieces. | Steve Gunn and John Truscinski's first album as a duo touches on folk, psych, raga, and rock, turning each into hypnotic guitar pieces. | Gunn-Truscinski Duo: Sand City | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15003-sand-city/ | Sand City | Sand City is Steve Gunn and John Truscinski's first album as a duo, but it sounds like they've been playing together for a while. Technically, they have-- both are members of the New York outfit GHQ, alongside Pete Nolan of Magik Markers and Marcia Bassett of Double Leopards. But their two-man guitar-drums project has been going only for about a year. In that short time, they've honed a remarkably confident, open sound. They mix touches of folk, psych, raga, and rock into hypnotic pieces that straddle the line between improvisation and songcraft.
None of that should be a surprise to anyone familiar with Gunn, whose 2009 solo album, Boerum Palace, was a masterwork of guitar exploration. Flying through finger-picked blues, country twang, and wiry electric essays, Gunn mined many traditions while adding a new touch to each. It would be tempting to guess that record's diversity was a product of doing it himself, but Sand City shows his wide-ranging style can also mesh tightly with a collaborator. On all four tracks, his string wizardy snakes through and wraps around Truscinski's drumming, as if the two had discovered a secret ability to silently trade thoughts and rhyme ideas.
Calling their conversations telepathic might be overdoing it, but there is a magic, almost psychic quality to these songs. Maybe it's just the way the duo approaches raga, with a loose, intuitive sense that's somewhere between Jack Rose's solo mediations (themselves inspired by John Fahey) and the Sun City Girls' reverent adoptions of Eastern melodies. The best example is the album's longest track, the 13-minute "Wythe Raag", which starts like a sunrise over a temple, gradually building to a sonic epiphany. As Gunn's electric guitar climbs up Truscinski's mallet-heavy steps, I'm reminded of John Coltrane and Rashied Ali's intertwining prayers on their 1967 LP, Interstellar Space. It's obviously way too early to put this pair in that class, but the fact that they even bring such reference points to mind is impressive.
Either way, reducing Sand City to comparisons or influences is unfair. Gunn and Truscinki's conversations, like any good musical dialogue, are marked primarily by the unique idiosyncrasies of their particular speech. It will be interesting to see where they take their discussion next-- Sand City is only 31 minutes long, and you get the sense that the pair could make reams more music like this without repeating themselves much, if at all. | 2011-01-24T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2011-01-24T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Experimental | Three Lobed | January 24, 2011 | 7.4 | 1c23236d-5e7e-47f3-b919-b67deb6b2c6e | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
Two years after Goblin, the Odd Future ringleader returns with an album heavy on gorgeous beats and a lyrical focus that takes aim at the band's critics and the trappings of fame. | Two years after Goblin, the Odd Future ringleader returns with an album heavy on gorgeous beats and a lyrical focus that takes aim at the band's critics and the trappings of fame. | Tyler, the Creator: Wolf | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17805-tyler-the-creator-wolf/ | Wolf | Odd Future ringleader Tyler, the Creator has a rap persona pitched between shock-riddled misanthropy and confessional reflection; he’s preoccupied with his own press and he uses his music as a vent for anger and frustration. His debut album, Bastard, was filled with sharp darts for rap blogs who wouldn’t post his music, while his sophomore album, Goblin, wanted desparately to prove Odd Future was worth all their sudden hype. In the two years since Goblin’s release, Earl Sweatshirt returned from Samoan exile, Frank Ocean opened up about his sexuality in a heartfelt Tumblr note and released the Grammy Award winning Channel Orange, and Tyler unveiled "Loiter Squad", an absurdist late night sketch comedy show. As a group, Odd Future embarked on a series of tours that connected them with an expanding base of teenagers and outcasts even as they drew fire from LGBT advocates, women’s groups, and a music press none too amused by the macabre content of their lyrics. A lot has changed, and now Tyler returns with Wolf.
Where Goblin felt like an attempt to shoehorn the whole of Odd Future’s nihilist aesthetic into a single album, Wolf pulls back the curtain and reveal the talented introvert behind the music. The first thing to go is the bratty punk fury of earlier material. The insurgent bravado of “Radicals”, “Sandwitches”, and “French” is scaled back, replaced by songs that flip the conventions of his songwriting inside out. The songs about women are earnest where they used to carry murder ballads’ air of ill intent. Drugs come up, but we also hear about a remorseful dealer surveying the havoc he’s caused and a man having a mercilessly terrible time while high. Wolf is still the balancing act between gruff cynicism and juvenilia that we’ve come to expect from Odd Future (especially on “Pigs”, a bleak radio play about exacting revenge on bullies), but these songs are more three-dimensional. Tyler’s more likely to aim for melody instead of menace.
Wolf as a whole also sounds gorgeous, and that even goes for the bruisers. The polyrhythmic hi-hats of the madcap posse cut “Trashwang” eventually give pause to a piano bridge, and the blustery lead single “Domo 23” gets a bump from a boisterous horn section. Foreboding numbers like “Rusty” (a lush reimagining of 1990s RZA production) and the nightmarish, tribal “Cowboy” are declawed by rich textures and melodicism. “Answer” sets Tyler’s longing for his late grandmother and absentee father to a bright guitar figure and shimmering organs. “48”’s crack epidemic reminiscence is adorned with elegant pianos, string stabs, tasteful guitar, and spoken word interludes from Nas. Tyler’s pet sounds are dark melodies hammered out on wonky synths and clattering breakbeats but here they come padded with embellishments that give Wolf a cinematic breadth. The album is pretty, but beguilingly so.
There’s something not quite right, though, and it’s not just Tyler’s gritty basso profundo cutting through every melodic flourish. Pacing is one problem. Wolf reprises the winding sprawl of Goblin, hitting its stride on a series of midtempo cuts on the front and back ends but losing steam on a midsection that places too many of its longest and slowest songs back-to-back. “PartyIsntOver/Campfire/Bimmer” marries three unrelated fragments in a manner not unlike Domo Genesis’ Rolling Papers, whose passages of short vignettes gave it an off-the-cuff feel. But the pieces here don’t hang together, and “Bimmer” is too fleeting of a payoff for the uphill trudge it takes to get there. After that, there’s the lengthy “IFHY” (“I fucking hate you,” natch.), a bit of Neptunes worship so adroit that its plinking synths and jazzy chord changes give way to a falsettoed coda from Pharrell himself. (The Stereolab-channeling“Campfire” similarly summons that band’s Laetitia Sadier for a guest vocal.) Later on, the sedate acid jazz of “Treehome95” and the closing comedown “Lone” are inexplicably split up by the shrill M.I.A. send-up “Tamale”. Wolf is full of good songs but in the wrong order.
Still, not all of the depressive sluggishness can be blamed on sequencing. Tyler makes very clear that he doesn’t enjoy the trappings of fame. The album is shot through with harsh words for critics, sheepish venue owners, puritanical parents, and groups who’ve picketed Odd Future shows. But if he’s surrounded by detractors, he only has himself to blame. He was bound to be taken for a ne’er do well by a mainstream public who first spotted him in a video eating a roach and hanging himself, to be read for a homophobe after filling his records and tweets with offensive slurs. Tyler should know that we don’t get to control the ways our words are interpreted when they leave our mouths to filter out into the universe, and we certainly don’t get to be coarse or crass without blowback. Over the length of the album, the defensive can become grating, and Wolf’s rebuttals are pointless anyhow. By now, you either like Odd Future and have figured out a mental workaround to reconcile their more troubling tendencies with their obvious talent, in which case this stuff is moot, or you don’t, and this acrimonious self-defense is ill-suited to win you over.
With Wolf, Tyler, the Creator displays a radical growth as a producer, composer and arranger, even if, as a rapper, he’s still up to some of the same antics. Still, the album contains a few of the best songs he’s ever written. “48” is a wonder, “Answer” and “Lone” delve into deeply personal matters with poise, and “Rusty” is one of the most arresting lyrical performances on the record if you can see past the self-serving chest-beating. It’s a big screen rendering of the Neptunes-meet-Stevie-Wonder-in-a-microwave quality of Tyler’s earlier works, the sound of a creative mind coming into the possession of the proper means to carry out its ideas. At its best, Wolf manages to make the inroads toward accessibility that Goblin wouldn’t and pulls it off without sacrificing too much of Tyler’s refreshing capriciousness. When the album isn’t busy telling us that we ought to like it more, it’s delivering reasons why we actually should. | 2013-04-01T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2013-04-01T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Odd Future | April 1, 2013 | 7.8 | 1c24392f-9461-4e83-a8f2-07ef23faf1ff | Craig Jenkins | https://pitchfork.com/staff/craig-jenkins/ | null |
On the follow-up to 2018’s astonishing Double Negative, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk push deeper into abstraction, finding fresh angles on the themes that have animated them since the beginning. | On the follow-up to 2018’s astonishing Double Negative, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk push deeper into abstraction, finding fresh angles on the themes that have animated them since the beginning. | Low: Hey What | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/low-hey-what/ | HEY WHAT | Cast away most of what you have, and whatever’s left will mean that much more. This principle was evident in Low’s music from the beginning, when they made records out of mere whispers of guitar and percussion, and it’s still there 27 years later on HEY WHAT, their 13th album, made in large part of roaring electronic noise. The two human voices at the center are a little deeper and rounder at the edges than they used to be, but they otherwise haven’t changed much. Nor has Low’s attunement to the way the crackling particularities of any given sound, shorn of excess and beheld with close attention, can convey feeling beyond words. Once, that meant a crisp chord hanging in an empty room. Now, there’s no longer an easy external referent for the space their music occupies. HEY WHAT is more like a surge of information through a corroded terminal, or an electrical storm in the cavern between two earbuds.
It’s difficult to address HEY WHAT without first mentioning Double Negative, its predecessor. That album landed with the force of revelation in 2018, a clear career highlight for a band that’s never made a bad album. Working closely with producer BJ Burton, who returns for HEY WHAT, Low remade themselves in the image of a dying supercomputer, digitally mangling their own performances until the distortion was as central to the album’s effect as the songs themselves. It was conversant with the vanguards of electronic, pop, and hip-hop production, fields that have long since abandoned any fealty to the way sounds are supposed to behave in real-world acoustic environments. Its jagged slabs of bass reminded me, in a surprisingly direct way, of the shredded low end of Kanye’s Yeezus, or XXXTentacion’s “Look at Me!” Those records harnessed the unruliness of digital malfunction, made it palatable and even satisfying by tethering it to familiar forms; a kick-drum sound, no matter how blown out, still generally performed the expected role of a kick drum. Without undermining the compositions of co-founders Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, Double Negative aspired toward further abstraction, allowing its ashen pixellations to shape the music on their own terms, as gestures unto themselves. It was the closest a rock album has come in recent memory to sounding completely new.
If Double Negative was a thrilling and uncertain expedition, bringing an alien landscape into focus for the first time, HEY WHAT demonstrates Low’s newfound mastery of the terrain. After a whirling free-tempo introduction, opener “White Horses” settles into a clipped staccato pulse, providing brittle accompaniment for Sparhawk and Parker’s harmonizing about the inevitable cruelty of love. By the second verse, the pulse has grown into something huge and menacing, pushing the singers more urgently than before. “Days Like These” makes a series of abrupt transitions between crystalline unaccompanied singing and voices that have been crushed nearly beyond recognition, drawing up the tension with each hard cut. “It isn’t something you can choose between,” Sparhawk and Parker sing, with the first half of the line clean and the second half distorted, a reminder that darkness and light are inseparable. This sort of precisely controlled drama distinguishes HEY WHAT from Double Negative, as if Low were creating a language in the dark on the previous album and are now using it to write a high-wire thriller.
At times, Low seem to tack back toward the tight songcraft of an album like 2005’s The Great Destroyer, directing HEY WHAT’s strange vocabulary toward the same visceral ends that they once reached with power chords and cymbal crashes. But the story isn’t so simple. HEY WHAT also maintains and deepens Double Negative’s exploration of sustained ambience, with long stretches devoted to the repetition of a single word, or the slow decay of a keyboard line. Even moments like these are not exactly unprecedented for Low, who were already including passages of quietly hypnotic instrumental churn on their debut. Low’s new idiom may have seemed like an aberration on Double Negative, but HEY WHAT’s refinements make it clear that they are still finding fresh angles on the same themes that have animated them since the beginning: using minimalism to express the entwined pairing of intimacy and loneliness, searching for meaning in the rubble after a departure too catastrophic to address by name.
Sparhawk has spoken of his desire to offer listeners tension without release in Low’s music. One route to that idea might involve continuous motion without a goal in mind, a recognition of deep and complicated truth in the old adage that the journey is more important than the destination. HEY WHAT expresses something similar with its final track, “The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off).” After 42 minutes of organized chaos, the duo finally offers the slamming catharsis of a rock backbeat, the album’s first. Everything about this moment—the swelling feedback, the heart-tugging chord changes—suggests a grand release. But as soon as it arrives, it begins to recede. The clouds gather, the harmonies cycle uneasily; the drums cut out, then back in, then out for good. “It must be wearing off,” Parker and Sparhawk sing together, and the promise of salvation at the end of the road flickers again out of view.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-09-10T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-09-10T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sub Pop | September 10, 2021 | 8.4 | 1c254ece-89c5-4b25-8599-d72e58a43710 | Andy Cush | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-cush/ | |
After some nebulous false starts, the former hardcore band has finally found space to carve their own lane in the crowded field of ’80s-indebted groups. | After some nebulous false starts, the former hardcore band has finally found space to carve their own lane in the crowded field of ’80s-indebted groups. | Ceremony: In the Spirit World Now | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ceremony-in-the-spirit-world-now/ | In the Spirit World Now | As each new album takes them further from their powerviolence days, former hardcore outfit Ceremony recognize the pitfalls of genre pivots. On 2012’s Zoo, they toyed with garage rock; on 2015’s The L-Shaped Man, they indulged explicit Joy Division hero worship. They are also sick of hearing about how they don’t sound punk anymore and would appreciate if you could please shut up about it. (“Not reflecting on the evolution of the band is what keeps us motivated,” guitarist Anthony Anzaldo said in a press release.)
If The L-Shaped Man was Ceremony‘s first attempt to channel not only the spirit, but also the sound of their idols—the band takes their name from one of Ian Curtis’ final songs—then In the Spirit World Now is their first foray into New Order territory. The guitars remain, but new wave synthesizers take center stage. Mileage will vary depending on your affinity for post-punk and motorik-esque beats, but after some nebulous false starts, the group has finally found space to begin carving their own lane in the crowded field of ’80s-indebted groups.
Ceremony are hell-bent on not making the same record twice, and when they make good on that promise, it’s easy to forget that they were once a hardcore band. Lead single “Turn Away the Bad Thing,” with its gleaming dream-pop interlude, is a cathartic highlight with a mysterious turn from an uncredited female guest vocalist. In a different vein, “Presaging the End” finds Anzaldo flexing his adoration of Prince with a crispy funk line that would have been unfathomable four years ago. In the Spirit World Now would benefit from more of these experiments, especially in its amorphous second half.
Instead, the album is defined mostly by squiggly synthesizers. At best, they add much-needed texture, serving as a backbone for some of the catchier songs. At worst—as on the title track—they sit so high in the mix that they're a distraction. More than half of the songs here were written with synth as a lead instrument, but those arrangements don’t always translate to memorable music, and the electronics sometimes feel like an afterthought.
Nevertheless, frontman Ross Farrar sounds far more exciting behind the mic than he did on The L-Shaped Man. The Curtis imitation is gone; over the course of 32 minutes, Farrar delivers the sort of shouty double-tracking you might expect from Parquet Courts, and even sneers like Alex Turner. While his laconic verses about free will and desire can seem like free association, they’re still his most fun since fan favorite Rohnert Park. For that, he’s indebted to young alt-rock guru Will Yip, who handled production, helped to guide Farrar’s voice, and contributed some melody ideas.
Ironically, Farrar’s most captivating words aren’t sung, but rather spoken by the American poet Brooks Haxton, who oversaw the completion of Farrar’s poetry MFA at Syracuse University last year. Afterwards, Farrar asked his mentor to lend him his voice. Three dry readings of stanzas from Farrar’s poem “California Jungle Dream States End” paint a more vivid image than most of his lyrics, which can feel clipped and sometimes lose their impact as the rest of his band chug along listlessly. “Love saying, without you even less, as I felt my will jettisoned, a thing out in the street,” Hoxton intones near the end of the record.
For the first time in some time, Ceremony are mingling their shifting influences in a way that rarely feels like an attempt to rebottle the magic of their forebears. But the fact remains that most of what happens on In the Spirit World Now has been done before. Anyone can play some chromatic riffs or make synths squawk. This band knows how to break new ground, yet they sound as though they’re trying to summon songs that will miraculously slot in with their old material. It’s a balancing act that’s holding them back.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-08-31T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-08-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Relapse | August 31, 2019 | 6.3 | 1c26c2e9-c52d-416d-a536-467373baa75c | Noah Yoo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/noah-yoo/ | |
Building on the full-band work of 2007's The Shepherd's Dog, Sam Beam's latest is in some ways even more ambitious than its predecessor. | Building on the full-band work of 2007's The Shepherd's Dog, Sam Beam's latest is in some ways even more ambitious than its predecessor. | Iron & Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15033-kiss-each-other-clean/ | Kiss Each Other Clean | On 2007's The Shepherd's Dog, Sam Beam reinvented Iron & Wine, building out the whisper-quiet acoustic songs he'd made his name on into a strange and mysterious soundworld, using a full band and mastering the art of multitracking his own voice. It's tempting to think that the hard work was done there-- Beam established a new approach and made a great album in the process-- but Kiss Each Other Clean, the full-band follow-up, is in some ways even more ambitious than its predecessor. He's reaching in a few new directions here, pushing himself hard as a singer, and taking risks, some of which pan out and a few of which don't.
Broadly, Beam at this point is writing by far the most assertive melodies of his career. Not the best, necessarily, but the boldest and most forcefully phrased. Even the song that most clearly ties back to The Shepherd's Dog, album centerpiece "Rabbit Will Run", has a melody that's quite different from anything he's done before. "Rabbit Will Run" is an easy highlight-- the arrangement is fantastically detailed, driven by a heavily layered rhythm track that bubbles with hypnotic thumb piano, and balanced by sections where the rhythm drops out, leaving Beam's voice hovering over a strange mix of sounds that might be a chopped-up pan flute arranged into a loop. The guitar sounds like an old-fashioned modem. It's a weirdly intoxicating mix that exemplifies the imagination Beam brings to bear on his fuller sound-- he's not just putting some drums and bass behind his guitar and voice.
Some of his bolder decisions carry mixed results. Beam brings in a horn section on "Big Burned Hand" and "Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me", and it works well on the latter, the album's seven-minute closer. The horns are arranged loosely, responding a bit to the Tinariwen-ish guitar phrase that opens the song and pulling it into territory somewhere near Charles Mingus' "Haitian Fight Song". The horn scrum is nicely offset by Beam's layered, tight self-harmonies on the chorus, and it's also complemented by the ragged lead guitar part. On "Big Burned Hand", though, the honking sax is used as a device to try and make the song funky, and it's not a look Beam's really figured out yet-- it lumbers along for four minutes and is the one song where Beam's risks yield no reward.
The more elemental and important change, though, is how Beam sings these songs. On "Glad Man Singing", his voice is still a soft instrument, but he's really projecting, both on the lead and the backing harmonies he layers in behind himself. On "Me and Lazarus", he reverts to the unique whisper-plus-falsetto layering technique he perfected on The Shepherd's Dog and "Woman King", and as signature sounds go, it's a good one that sounds even more distinct when he contrasts it with the other approaches. There are places on the album where the mix of rhythm and electric piano reminds me of Still Crazy After All These Years-era Paul Simon, a writer whose scope is reminiscent of what Beam is now trying to bring to his work.
Kiss Each Other Clean isn't quite on the level of The Shepherd's Dog in terms of overall unity of vision. Oddly, even with Beam's generally bolder singing, it's also not quite as immediately striking. These songs are generally not the type to grab you right away, but there's enough mystery and melody there to call you back. It's an album that takes its time seeping in, and it's ultimately worth putting in the close listening that reveals its many details and delights. | 2011-01-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2011-01-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | 4AD / Warner Bros. | January 25, 2011 | 7.7 | 1c33465d-5ab1-48e7-8f2a-d0187a2ec8d2 | Joe Tangari | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-tangari/ | null |
The L.A. rapper’s latest is comforting if not entirely exciting. It finds Q and host of guests in a good place with nothing to prove. | The L.A. rapper’s latest is comforting if not entirely exciting. It finds Q and host of guests in a good place with nothing to prove. | Schoolboy Q: CrasH Talk | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/schoolboy-q-crash-talk/ | CrasH Talk | Schoolboy Q has been branded a hip-hop party animal, though now the party is less “weed and brews” and more wine and cheese. In rap, few things are feared like turning 30 years old, but Q is 32 and embracing his Saturn Return—he hits the golf course daily and deserves rap’s father of the year trophy. He is in the midst of a less extreme Snoop Dogg-like transition: once a premier voice in gangsta rap and now a West Coast uncle beloved by all generations. CrasH Talk is the L.A. rapper’s first album since 2016’s Blank Face LP, and as he’s currently in a good place with nothing to prove, it’s an upbeat entry into the music of his 30s.
The recognition-seeking hunger found throughout his earlier releases is absent on CrasH Talk, a side effect of Q becoming secure with his position in hip-hop. His main concern is making bass-heavy anthems that can trickle out of cars as they roll through the L.A. streets. Q has always sprinkled a few songs into his albums with the purpose of soundtracking a summer day party, like the fun but unessential real estate flex “Floating.” But he’s at his best when he gets in touch with his L.A. roots and recruits the breezy melody of Ty Dolla $ign and the jackass charisma of YG (“You said I hit it raw, you lyin’/You said I ate them drawers, you lyin’”), he makes a bouncy track that should have Cali residents hitting their most refined “Bust Down” dance.
Thankfully, Q doesn’t completely abandon the reflective rhymes that showcase his unconventional ability to balance humor and pain. On “Tales,” his vivid imagery remains sharp, rejuvenated by gritty drums and menacing piano: “Before Instagram, we gram first the month/Before the gates on our block, we in the front/Before I called you my friend, we shot the ones.” And on “Black Folk,” Q lets us know that despite the fact that he’s become rap’s boozy but wise older relative, he continues to battle his inner demons.
But it’s the trust that Q’s tight-knit label TDE has in him that allows him the space to make both the songs playing from that place with the overpriced hot dogs on the beach boardwalk and coming of age street tales. That freedom also gives him the opportunity to experiment with collaborations that look like they belong on a fake tracklist. Atlanta’s own Lil Baby sounds happy to be here, upping the pace on his delivery over Cardo and Johnny Juliano’s strings. And 6LACK’s crooning fits with the jazzy piano on “Drunk,” a song made for the late night, final drops from the wine bottle hours of a dinner party. Q’s collaborative missteps surprisingly come from the features that make the most sense. On “CHopstix, ” Travis Scott sends Q a file he must’ve found on his laptop in the folder titled “Rodeo Sessions” and Kid Cudi continues to cash nostalgia checks on “Dangerous.”
CrasH Talk might not have the mean-mugging raps of Blank Face LP or the weed-infused smoker anthems of Habits & Contradictions, but it’s comforting, like diving into the fifth or sixth season of your favorite network sitcom. It’s a credit to the likability of Schoolboy Q’s persona that you just want to spend time with his stories and continue to see him get a win, or at least par the course. | 2019-04-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-04-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Top Dawg Entertainment / Interscope | April 30, 2019 | 6.7 | 1c359f0d-0845-4eee-817f-4cfe1c7fceea | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
Instead of a triumphant, post-prison redemption tale, T.I.'s latest is yet another introspective work. Kanye West, Drake, Eminem, and Scarface guest. | Instead of a triumphant, post-prison redemption tale, T.I.'s latest is yet another introspective work. Kanye West, Drake, Eminem, and Scarface guest. | T.I.: No Mercy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14923-no-mercy/ | No Mercy | Originally, No Mercy was going to be called King Uncaged. Its cover was going to feature T.I., in front of a stark white background, sunk deep into a wicker throne, a lion standing by his side. King Uncaged, an album we'll now presumably never hear, was to be Tip's first after he completed almost a year in prison, finishing up a gun sentence that could've sent him away for a whole lot longer. This was supposed to be the final triumphant chapter in Tip's redemption story, and everybody loves shit like that. Instead, life intervened. A Los Angeles traffic stop led to a drug arrest and a parole violation, and now T.I. is headed right back to prison for another 11 months. So No Mercy is a confused muddle, some of the material presumably recorded before the arrest and some of it after. It's called No Mercy presumably because King Recaged wasn't catchy enough, and the album cover seems to be T.I. either wiping away a tear or punching himself in the face. Given how the album turned out, the face-punch is exactly the right gesture.
T.I. sounds best when he's in dominant form, tossing punchlines at inferior rappers from a great height. His best tracks come with a sense of inevitability; you know, from the first moment you hear them, that they're going to boom out of passing cars for months to come. "What You Know" worked like that. "Rubber Band Man" worked like that. Even "Whatever You Like" worked like that. Absolutely nothing on No Mercy works like that. Simply put, introspection does not work for T.I. At this point, he has nothing thought-provoking left to say about his gun arrest or its aftermath, and it's no fun whatsoever to hear him say "I'm only human" or "Apologies to the fans" for the millionth time. But No Mercy is his third straight album of halfassed introspection. The things that were boring or simplistic about his forced humility have only gotten worse. On No Mercy, he sounds absolutely sapped of energy. And that's rough; nobody plays the ferocious livewire better.
The last time Tip made an album like this, he was just about to head off to prison, and he scored the biggest hit of his career with the maudlin but catchy "Live Your Life". Here, he tries to repeat that success, roping in a wide and dazzling cast of collaborators to chase a commercial hit that he sounds too depleted to actually score. No Mercy, I'm almost positive, is the first album to feature contributions from both Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin and Houston rap O.G. Scarface. The assembled list of guests and contributors is just nuts: Kanye West, Eminem, Drake, Christina Aguilera, Dr. Luke, the Neptunes. But too often, this amazing assemblage of talents seems to want to make introspective Flo Rida tracks-- and, worse, they fail at it. "Big Picture" has an emaciated synth-rap track so tinny that I can barely believe DJ Toomp produced it. The-Dream has never sounded more like Chester Bennington than he does on the ill-advised crunch-rock title track. And album closer "Castle Walls" is downright insulting-- Tip wallowing in his rich-guy sorrows as a wave of gloopy Europop keyboard washes over him. "Everyone thinks I have it all, but it's so empty living behind these castle walls," Christina Aguilera sings on the hook. Yeah, that must be really tough. My sympathies, rich people.
Throughout No Mercy, Tip remains an absolutely impeccable rapper, delivering even his lamest pieces of self-help nothingness in masterful clumps of singsong cadence and slurry double-time bounce. I get the impression that he could still absolutely rip a track to shreds if he could only get himself excited about the prospect. And every so often, No Mercy crackles to life, and we hear flashes of the rap hero Tip could still be. "Amazing", for instance, finds the Neptunes taking it back to 2002, delivering the sort of chilly minimalist computer-funk that they never make anymore, and Tip just dives into those chasms of empty space with the assurance of an old pro (Pharrell gets the best punchline, though: "That dark blue shit? Y'all niggas been had/ My diamonds rainbowed like they registered for GLAAD."). And "I Can't Help It" is a blaring, menacing gangsta-rap crawl that gives Tip a chance to just attack in a way he rarely lets himself anymore. But a quick guest appearance on "Strip" highlights everything that's wrong with even the album's best moments. T.I.'s exuberant protege Young Dro careens onto the track with the sort of joyous virtuosity that T.I. used to display. Maybe he'll show it again. Not for at least another 11 months, though. | 2010-12-10T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2010-12-10T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rap | Atlantic | December 10, 2010 | 5.5 | 1c36c3b3-1b6e-47d7-a47d-c624450fc197 | Tom Breihan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tom-breihan/ | null |
Drawn from the deep catalog of Jamaica’s legendary Studio One, every song on this new compilation is a bonafide classic, underscoring the connection between spacious rocksteady music and U.S. soul. | Drawn from the deep catalog of Jamaica’s legendary Studio One, every song on this new compilation is a bonafide classic, underscoring the connection between spacious rocksteady music and U.S. soul. | Various Artists: Studio One Rocksteady 2: The Soul of Young Jamaica | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22742-studio-one-rocksteady-2-the-soul-of-young-jamaica/ | Studio One Rocksteady 2: The Soul of Young Jamaica | Rounding out the sound of Jamaica—alongside mento, ska, reggae, dancehall, and dub—rocksteady is one of the many genres born on the island. Providing the link between the swift bounce of ska and the slower throb of reggae, the reduced speed of rocksteady music means there is more space between the beats for organ flourishes, horn solos, smooth singing, and experimentation. On the new Studio One Rockstead**y compilation, every song is a bonafide classic, drawing from the deep late-’60s/early-’70s catalog of Kingston producer Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd’s legendary Studio One during the height of his powers.
In the context of street-dance, when huge stacks of speakers emit a range of rocksteady tunes, there’s usually an accompanying U.S. soul selection. The two styles work well together, and Studio One Rocksteady 2 shows just how, underlining the influence of soul music on the mid-1960s Jamaican genre. As historian Steve Barrow writes in the liner notes, “many of the tracks on this set could easily be considered as yet another regional style of American soul music.” Case in point: the mournful horn solo in Delroy Wilson’s “Riding for a Fall,” a cover of song from the Atlanta vocal group the Tams, which matches the original’s message of relationship disappointment and pushes the melancholy even more.
Many of the singers and instrumentalists on Rocksteady 2 can also claim the pedigree of the equally legendary Alpha Boys’ School: Vin Gordon on trombone during “Change Your Style,” for example, and Karl “Cannonball” Bryan fronting Cannon & the Soul Vendors on “Bad Treatment.” The collection provides early evidence of John Holt’s talents, from his “Strange Things” performance, to his vocal duties as the Paragons, to exhorting a lover over hooliganism on “Change Your Style.” Rocksteady 2 also demonstrates the enduring popularity Jamaican sounds: Alton Ellis’ “I’m Still in Love With You” remains a dancehall classic thanks to Sean Paul and Sasha’s early-’00s cover. It’s well known that Studio One instrumental rhythms (referred to as “riddims”) have been used over and over again, and many originated as rocksteady standards.
Rocksteady is a perfect music for swaying and slow dancing; it’s no wonder that folks will still couple up for tunes like Hortense and Alton Ellis’ “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” another gem here. It’s also Hortense’s pure tone that makes the collection’s opening track—a version of Chicago soul singer Billy Stewart’s “Sitting in the Park”—as pleasant an experience to listen to as, well, sitting in the park on a warm day. (Just don’t concentrate too hard on the lyrics, which describe what it’s like to be left waiting.)
Breathing a different type of life into American soul, rocksteady also opened the door to the reggae of the ’70s: the bouncy lyrics and keys of “Rub Up Push Up” point directly towards later reggae. Every February, it’s officially Reggae Month in Jamaica, with a jam-packed schedule of events emphasizing the country’s striking cultural richness. A focus on reggae requires shedding some light on rocksteady, and Studio One Rocksteady 2 is a vivid celebration. | 2017-02-14T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-02-14T01:00:00.000-05:00 | null | Soul Jazz | February 14, 2017 | 8.4 | 1c3c7c85-e47d-4f56-9a95-dadf06032ce0 | Erin MacLeod | https://pitchfork.com/staff/erin-macleod/ | null |
On its third LP, the Boston post-hardcore band completes a thematic trilogy about grief, depression, and the determination to move forward in the face of loss. | On its third LP, the Boston post-hardcore band completes a thematic trilogy about grief, depression, and the determination to move forward in the face of loss. | Fiddlehead: Death Is Nothing to Us | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fiddlehead-death-is-nothing-to-us/ | Death Is Nothing to Us | An inevitable part of the grieving process is realizing that you’re not, in fact, done grieving. Have Heart frontman and hardcore lifer Pat Flynn lost his dad, a Vietnam veteran and high-school English teacher, in 2010. When witnessing his mother’s enduring grief became too heavy, Flynn worked through the secondhand struggle with Springtime and Blind, the 2018 debut album by his post-hardcore band Fiddlehead. Flynn welcomed his own child into the world shortly afterward, and he confronted the cruelty of entering fatherhood in the absence of his own dad on 2021’s Between the Richness. Now Fiddlehead’s third studio album, Death Is Nothing to Us, completes a thematic trilogy on grief, depression, and fighting to move forward.
A high-school history teacher by day and poetry disciple by night, Flynn is keenly aware of how long it takes to process life events, but he also knows better than to romanticize depression. On Death Is Nothing to Us, he comes face to face with the denial stage of grief and works to both acknowledge and overcome it. Grounded by drummer Shawn Costa and bassist Nick Hinsch’s pounding rhythm section, Flynn yells about sleeping away the pain, leaning on friends, and the desire to burn in effigy. While attending Catholic middle school, Flynn was occasionally pulled from class to serve as an altar boy at unattended day funerals, his knees digging into the stiff carpet while contemplating a life forgotten. At his most reflective, he seems to channel that experience here. Yet for all that gloom, Flynn always checks himself. On “Sullenboy,” he refuses to cede control to those “depressive Irish genes” in the name of his two toddlers. “Their day is young and their future’s wide, and I’ll die before I don’t help them rise,” he swears.
Flynn centers the album around the intersection of isolation and togetherness. On “True Hardcore (II),” he sings of the hardcore scene’s ability to unify: “Deeply depressed kids seeking art to mean more than a gathering of friends.” Both that song and “The Woes” reach their emotional peaks by inviting other artists—Angel Du$t’s Justice Tripp and 108’s Kate-08, respectively—to sing along, emphasizing both a shared feeling of loss and a community’s ability to soothe. Flynn peppers his other lyrics with lines borrowed from poets like W.B. Yeats and peers like Alex G, Infest, and the Cranberries. In its openness to outside influence, Death Is Nothing to Us reads like a thank-you note to those who helped Flynn clear away the fog of mourning.
Fiddlehead’s most emo trait has long been the way the band surges evocatively beneath Flynn’s singing. Guitarists Alex Henery and Alex Dow are deeply in tune with him this go around, utilizing the space for two guitars to duel and collaborate in equal measure. From the double-tracked slides on “The Woes” to the dense riffs of “Welcome to the Situation,” they play off one another with precision. During raucous opener “The Deathlife,” Costa fires off creative fills with a cool-headed humility that’s come to define his drumming style. Fiddlehead have never sounded more gargantuan than on “Fifteen to Infinity,” a tender love song that soars with the blissed-out tones of a shoegaze opus. Whereas the band’s previous albums opted for immediate hooks and overarching heaviness, Death Is Nothing to Us scales back. These songs are measured and warm, prioritizing nimble bass and guitar work that’s more reminiscent of Lungfish than Drug Church. Flynn himself sounds softer around the edges, too, his singing voice now just as strong as his scream.
Death never loses its power, but Flynn isn’t so fearful of it anymore. If anything, 13 years after his dad’s unexpected passing, he has learned how to accept it: confront it head on. “I feel the fear,” Flynn yells on “Sullenboy.” “So face it all and watch it, see it, feel it grow.” Fiddlehead are so in sync across the entirety of Death Is Nothing to Us that Flynn’s pain transforms from something personal into a shared catharsis felt by all. That’s especially apparent on closer “Going to Die,” a liberating anthem of defiance that crashes through joyous riffs. “I just can’t trade all the richness of life,” Flynn declares, freedom ringing in his voice. Looping, overlapping lines—“See you on the other side” and “I know I will, but I don’t wanna die”—end the song by cutting off abruptly, leaving a wall of silence. It’s Fiddlehead offering a proposal: get busy living or get busy dying. They sound relieved to know their choice. | 2023-08-25T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-08-25T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Run for Cover | August 25, 2023 | 7.6 | 1c475ccb-3bd7-4b7e-8535-5d0ef719f846 | Nina Corcoran | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nina-corcoran/ | |
On a new double album from his indie-pop project, Fucked Up guitarist Ben Cook cycles through dozens of styles without losing sight of the primacy of the song. | On a new double album from his indie-pop project, Fucked Up guitarist Ben Cook cycles through dozens of styles without losing sight of the primacy of the song. | Young Guv: GUV II | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/young-guv-guv-ii/ | GUV II | There are lots of reasons to release a double album, whether it’s to accommodate a rock opera, showcase discrete aesthetics, or spotlight the contributions of principal members. And then there’s the more prosaic rationale: You’ve simply written too many uncuttable songs. That’s the situation Ben Cook found himself in when he relocated from his Toronto hometown to Brooklyn in 2017 to devote more time to Young Guv—the solo guise he assumes when he’s not fronting hardcore scrappers No Warning or playing guitar for art-punk visionaries Fucked Up. On his own, Cook has indulged his love of pop music in all its forms, evoking both Robert Pollard’s human-jukebox acumen and Ariel Pink’s sense of mischief. These days, Cook is also mirroring their prodigious productivity: Young Guv’s most recent work was originally envisioned as a 20-song album, before Cook’s new label home, Run for Cover, convinced him to spread 17 of them over two separate releases, Use Your Illusion-style.
Last August’s GUV I shone a bright light on Cook’s power-pop skills, presenting eight songs that basked in the eternal afterglow of Chris Bell-era Big Star and all the great Teenage Fanclub tunes cast in their image. GUV II, by contrast, treats that pristine sound not as an end goal but as a springboard into a collection that’s far more adventurous. You can sense the shift about three minutes into the opening “She’s A Fantasy,” when the song’s radiant Byrdsian shimmer slowly dissolves into an extended psychedelic fadeout awash in smeared harmonies and clanging percussion, as if to provide an instant snapshot of rock ‘n’ roll’s mid-’60s shift from innocence to transgression.
From there, GUV II cycles through dramatically different styles—from sleek ‘80s dance-pop to lo-fi chillwave balladry—like an indecisive H&M shopper who’s rolled the entire sales rack into the change room. But the whiplash is diminished by the fact that Cook essentially traffics in one kind of song—the sort of doe-eyed, lovestruck laments that sound just as urgent and aching when couched in a Matthew Sweet bubble-grunge rave-up (“Try Not to Hang on So Hard”) as in an acoustic-plucked yacht-rock reverie set adrift on waves of Kaputt-ian sax (“Caught Lookin’”).
Cook’s mercurial, childlike voice can recall Gene Ween’s more winsome turns, but his flights of fancy are rarely delivered with a wink or smirk. As an artist who came of age amid the stylistic rigidity of hardcore, Cook nails the fine points of genre (see: the silken organ tones of ’70s soul-pop throwback “Can I Luv U in My Own Way,” or the liquid funk guitars of the dreamy, Toro y Moi-worthy jam “Trying to Decide”). But he also understands that genre, and the factionalized identities we build around them, are ultimately secondary to the sanctity of the song. And on GUV II, no song is more blessed than “Can I Just Call U,” a hit of Lemonheads-flavored alt-candy that peaks with a swoon-inducing surge of overlapping choruses (featuring guest vocalist Aurora Shields in the Juliana Hatfield role). Though its title is written in text-speak, “Can I Just Call U” finds Cook longing to hear his paramour’s actual voice over the phone—“The way you make the words sound, the silence in between, and the fading of a scene.” He’s hardly the first artist to bemoan a life spent “looking at a screen,” but that sort of sentiment puts the rest of the record into stark relief: like the Luddite lover pining for old-school communication in a digital world, GUV II is the sound of a pop classicist forging his own singular path in a post-everything era. | 2019-10-31T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-10-31T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Run for Cover | October 31, 2019 | 7.7 | 1c49fae6-1656-4597-b1e1-74070a59accf | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
Six albums into their envious career, Blur have finally found a sound to match their name. I'm sure the ... | Six albums into their envious career, Blur have finally found a sound to match their name. I'm sure the ... | Blur: 13 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/831-13/ | 13 | Six albums into their envious career, Blur have finally found a sound to match their name. I'm sure the name initially came from the donut- stuffed mouth of Virgin A&R; reps who feared selling a band called "Seymour" to the Teens UK. "Blur" fits the mold of the monosyllabic, schwa- voweled noun system of Brit-rock nomenclature-- Pulp, Bush, Lush, Suede. Now, after nearly a decade, Blur have grown comfortable with their image and talents. From now on, it's their mission to make ears and speakers uncomfortable. With producer William Orbit spreading gobs of digital fuzz, guitar wash, and deep- space bleeps in heavy strokes with William De Kooning- esque glee, the tracks on 13 bounce between studio walls, planets, and effects pedals until slowly unraveling and releasing with mercurian flashes and cherubic keyboard. It all... well... blurs.
The more Guitar God status fans and critics throw on Graham Coxon, the more Coxon attempts to vigorously destroy such notions with feedback, drilling, and controlled crust, which in turn just makes the fans and critics swoon even more. From the wandering melodies that twang and fall apart in "Tender" to the tongue- in- cheek metal- solo, vacuum theremin freakout, and surf- boogie ending in "Bugman," to the crescendoing strums of "1992," Coxon drops creative brain- blowers all over 13. Yet, the album sounds nothing like the band's last self- titled LP. These days, Coxon's guitars are manipulated to sound unlike guitars. Plus, layers of organs and loops balance out the intoxicating mix. But it's Orbit's UFO studio tricks make 13 a much more cohesive and consistant record than the eponymous LP.
Despite Graham Coxon's fingerprints, 13 is Damon Albarn's record from start to finish. From the opening epic, "Tender," in which Albarn delivers the line "Love's the greatest thing that we have" with a sarcastic croon after admiting that his heart screwed up his life, to the beautiful, stripped closer, "No Distance Left to Run," in which he sighs with resignation, "It's over/ You don't need to tell me/ I hope you're with someone who makes you feel safe in your sleep," Albarn opens his veins over 13's DAT tapes. Sort of. On "Swamp Song," though, he goes all Iggy Pop, grabbing the mic with sass and pose. And "B.L.U.R.E.M.I." could be a Brainiac song, the closest tune here to attaining the backlashed "Whoo-Hoo!"
Despite all the knob- twiddling and pedal- kicking, 13 contains several surprisingly subtle songs. "Trim Tramm" bobs along to quiet chords before kicking in the jets, and "Mellow Song" lets dainty moon- cocktail piano lines and hollow chimes swirl around lovely acoustic plucking. Each song is unique, yet fits perfectly into the overall hungover, psychedelic, 2001 mood. Once again, Blur has kept one step ahead of expectations (well, okay, they didn't with The Great Escape, but that was still a great record) and continued to impress. In a way, Blur is one of the last big old- school "album" bands, a band more concerned with their entire career than radio singles, more concerned with "album" than "song." The Beatles made a dozen albums in the '60s and continually progressed. The reason why is simple: when a band is really, really good, they consistently make good records. Duh. | 1999-03-23T01:00:08.000-05:00 | 1999-03-23T01:00:08.000-05:00 | Rock | Virgin | March 23, 1999 | 9.1 | 1c4c74a6-23be-4e20-b973-41fe2862db21 | Brent DiCrescenzo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brent-dicrescenzo/ | null |
On their studio debut, these frenzied improvisers tap the ecstasy and explosiveness of their onstage chemistry while capturing their ideas and enthusiasms in vivid, glorious detail. | On their studio debut, these frenzied improvisers tap the ecstasy and explosiveness of their onstage chemistry while capturing their ideas and enthusiasms in vivid, glorious detail. | Chris Corsano / Bill Orcutt: Brace Up! | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/chris-corsano-bill-orcutt-brace-up/ | null | Less than a minute into Brace Up!, the guitarist Bill Orcutt and drummer Chris Corsano call a temporary truce. The pair have been locked in a tussle for 50 seconds, with Orcutt jabbing a guitar tone like rusted but somehow sharpened steel violently into Corsano’s unrelenting cavalcade. So Orcutt stops, letting his amp whimper as Corsano dances inside the beat. Someone in the studio yells out in giddy adoration. Seconds later, they’re back at it, Orcutt turning the sparring contest into a battle of attrition by strumming the same note until they both collapse, as though slipping on a puddle of shared sweat. Those hoots and hollers and temporary feelings of sudden exhaustion are minor but telling details throughout Brace Up!, the studio debut for this long-running instrumental tandem. Only two tracks here were captured in front of a crowd, but they help make these dozen tangles—and the whole album, really—feel like one meticulous live recording, an onstage exhortation unmitigated by pre-production plans or post-production tweaks. In its ecstasy, Brace Up! feels instantaneous.
You have ample reason to assume Brace Up! is a complete live album. During the last five years, Orcutt and Corsano have released a red-hot streak of onstage documents, from ultra-limited singles and cassettes to two full-length compendiums that strung together assorted highlights into knotty wholes. And outside of this partnership, both prolific improvisers have a reputation for gripping live releases: Many of the essential memento mori of Harry Pussy, Orcutt’s band that dispatched rock’n‘roll into noisy oblivion, are captured concerts. Corsano has issued sets with saxophone maverick Evan Parker and a gripping trio alongside cellist Okkyung Lee and guitarist Bill Nace. Brace Up! takes care to preserve that first-take feeling, from the way Orcutt’s squeals and whoops suggest a crowd urging them ahead to the methodical arcs in momentum. When they finally relax, for instance, after a mid-album sequence of four explosive tracks, each lasting less than 90 seconds, it feels like they are responding to you, the listener, in real time.
But this two-day studio session in Brussels allowed them to capture their ideas in high definition, so that the intricacy and involvement of what they’re doing is unmistakable. More often than not, it is astounding. As Orcutt shouts and squeals along with his splintering quasi-riff during “Amp vs. Drum,” Corsano surrounds every guitar note with a seeming orchestra of drums. During “Clapton’s Complaint,” Orcutt seems out to prove he can outpace everyone, shredding for 36 seconds not like Clapton’s foil but instead like the anti-Yngwie. “The Secret Engine of History” is a more finessed take on Lightning Bolt’s brand of melee, the duo picking its way through dense briars rather than just mowing them down. Recalling the collaborations of Steve Gunn and John Truscinski, “Love and Open Windows” is a simmering blues meditation that constantly threatens to explode. But they always pull back, a tempestuous tease stuck on repeat. Together, Orcutt and Corsano have never sounded so vivid and motivated, propelled by an energy that feels like true collaborative joy.
Apart from the duo’s technical aplomb and contagious enthusiasm, the real wonder of Brace Up! is just how visually evocative these dozen songs can be. Close your eyes and let your mind adjust to the high-velocity interplay, as though you were stepping into the summer sun after a nap in the shade. The combined force and speed of “Bargain Sounds” conjures an image of, say, Shaquille O’Neal moving at a greyhound’s pace. During “Double Bind,” Orcutt and Corsano constantly zip past one another, the guitar inching its nose ahead only to fall behind again; it’s like watching twin sports cars race down mountainside curves, shooting across double-yellow lines to take the lead. Halting and circular, “Love and Open Windows” is the feeling of waiting for a fever to break, the pounding in your head all-consuming no matter what you do; during the last minute, it finally subsides, and both Orcutt and Corsano seem to step back with sighs of relief.
This is jarring music, no doubt, that delights in the sculpture of cacophony and the control of chaos. But that sensation of staring into the din and being able to extract something from it, of allowing it to take your mind somewhere that neither you nor this duo intended, is both an endless reward and a rarefied goal for such seemingly splenetic music. These aren’t soundtrack baubles or pastoral pleasantries, built with the intention of framing a scene or inducing an unambiguous mood. But they do it, anyway, even if the images are as fleeting as these frenetic jams. | 2018-12-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-12-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Jazz / Experimental | Palilalia | December 6, 2018 | 8 | 1c4ed50f-897f-4ee5-a386-fb6eeeb9a8c2 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
Singles and splits documented a band’s between-albums evolution during the 1990s. These compilations, remastered and reissued, document that process for one of the era’s most innovative groups. | Singles and splits documented a band’s between-albums evolution during the 1990s. These compilations, remastered and reissued, document that process for one of the era’s most innovative groups. | Stereolab: Switched On / Refried Ectoplasm / Aluminum Tunes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/stereolab-switched-on-refried-ectoplasm-aluminum-tunes/ | Switched On / Refried Ectoplasm / Aluminum Tunes | In the 1990s, being an indie fan required a deep familiarity with the blank tape. Much of a band’s activity took place on singles, EPs, compilations, and other formats extraneous to the long-playing studio album. For die-hard listeners, that meant compiling miscellany on cassette and sequencing it into a form that didn’t require hours crouched over a turntable, changing records every few songs—an early form of today’s playlisting.
Chief among the groups helping fuel the decade’s sales of Maxell XLIIs and TDK SA90s were Stereolab. The UK band’s first decade played out like a game of hide-and-seek across scattered black (and yellow, pink, clear, and marbled) discs: 7"s, 10"s, flexi-discs, split singles, tour-only souvenirs, oddball one-offs. Throughout the ’90s, Stereolab averaged a new album every 15 months. But as they evolved from the jangle and crunch of lo-fi indie pop to a knottier amalgam of krautrock and easy listening, much of their development happened between albums.
Keeping up with the band could require a significant cash outlay, though they made good on their Marxist ethos by intermittently compiling all that material for the masses who didn’t have $60 for a rare Nurse With Wound collaboration in its reflective silver sleeve. To revisit those anthologies—1992’s Switched On, 1995’s Refried Ectoplasm, and 1998’s Aluminum Tunes, all newly reissued through the group’s own Duophonic UHF Disks—is to retrace the development of one of the era’s most creatively dynamic bands.
Switched On is the simplest of the three. Released in the fall of 1992, five months after Stereolab’s introductory album, Peng!, it compiles Stereolab’s first three singles from 1991—Super-Electric, Stunning Debut Album, and Super 45. The band was still a tidy quartet: drummer Joe Dilworth (of th’ Faith Healers), bassist Martin Kean (formerly of the Chills), multi-instrumentalist Tim Gane, and Laetitia Sadier singing sweetly in French and English about topics plucked from a grad student’s dog-eared textbooks. The band’s sound was fuzzier than it would soon become, brimming with stompbox abuse and two-chord rave-ups; the drums and guitars of “Brittle” and “Contact” are but a stone’s throw from shoegaze. Even then, the outlines of their sound, and the roadmap to their future, were fully realized in intricate detail.
In the first three tracks here, Stereolab leap from the thrillingly linear and hard-charging “Super-Electric” to the more wistful, Farfisa-powered “Doubt” to the shuffling study in vocal counterpoint, “Au Grand Jour’.” On the eight-and-a-half minute “Contact,” they morph from a demure shimmer to the kind of airplane-roar climax that made their early concerts so exciting and deafening. And though Sadier’s dulcet voice seems to float, her lyrics—easy to miss by ear, but impossible to forget once you’ve deciphered them—are prescient. “Is it enough to show/How the nightmare works/So the people will wake up/Is it enough?” she sings during “Doubt.” The observation feels more apropos than ever now: What is doubt if not the defining quality of the post-truth political era?
In 1993, Stereolab shifted into overdrive, releasing three major works before 1994 was up. The Groop Played “Space Age Batchelor Pad Music” is a mini-LP with a dreamy mood. Their sophomore album, Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements, is heavier than its predecessor. Mars Audiac Quintet, their third, is the crown jewel of their early, motorik phase. Released 11 months after Mars, the collection Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Volume 2) captures the run-up to that peak.
Stereolab are clearly testing the proportions of their sound, balancing the rough, the smooth, and the sly. “Harmonium”—a 1992 single by the power trio of Gane, Sadier, and Dilworth—is a grinding slab of maximalist minimalism in full Suicide mode. “Lo Boob Oscillator,” a 1993 Sub Pop single by a six-piece, marries crisp 1960s pop hooks to metronomic drumming and coruscating drones. They’re sometimes refreshingly straightforward here. On “Revox,” they pummel away, channeling their live intensity through chords that shift up and down, like the gearbox of a sports car hugging mountainous curves. “Revox” reveals the outlines of an increasingly raw sound and shows signs of growing lyrical daring, too. The sweet ba-ba-ba harmonies are actually a series of French verbs: “To pine/To quiver/To die/To moan … To suffer/To sleep/To appear/To vomit.”
But Refried Ectoplasm also documents Stereolab at their experimental best. The 14-minute “Animal or Vegetable [A Wonderful Wooden Reason...],” a collaboration with British avant-garde trickster Nurse With Wound, begins with several minutes of backmasked vocals. It veers into dirge-like psychedelic stomp before ending with an explosion of haywire musique concrète—gunfire, barnyard animals, rehearsal tapes spit out by a malfunctioning machine.
The biggest shift of Stereolab’s career came after Mars Audiac Quintet, as the band fully embraced unusual time signatures, ultra-vivid production, and the record-collector winks that distinguished 1996’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup and 1997’s Dots and Loops. This is the ground covered by 1998’s sprawling Aluminum Tunes, which collects music from 1994 until 1997. The 25-track set begins with the six-song Music for the Amorphous Body Center EP, created as the complement to an exhibition by the sculptor Charles Long. If amoebas could dance, they’d waltz to this burbling, squelching suite. “Iron Man,” an exotica-inspired and breakbeat-driven single from 1997, is the better indication of where they were headed. The wordless vocal samples and elastic pedal steel are kitschy and cartoonish, while the rolling drums suggest the extent to which the group was keeping an eye on what the era’s DJs were doing. There are two more explicit nods to DJ culture in the compilation’s two remixes.
Not everything here is essential, of course; an anthology sourced from 7" B-sides will, by definition, contain some filler. My personal C100 of Stereolab rarities would not include “One Note Samba / Surfboard,” their flute-laced collab with Herbie Mann. But Aluminum Tunes’ best songs, like the unexpectedly lovely “One Small Step,” rank among their best material, period. And “Speedy Car,” a 5/4 escapade with Afrobeat touches that cycles endlessly upward, offers teasing hints at paths not taken.
It’s in these mutations, so close to but so far from Stereolab’s album material, where it becomes clear why fans could be so obsessive about tracking down these rarities as they trickled out, one 7" at a time—and why, somewhere along the line, even the nice-price anthologies themselves became collectors’ items. With the band’s sneakily seductive protest music feeling more necessary than ever, now’s the perfect time for these reissues. | 2018-10-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-10-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | null | October 6, 2018 | 7.7 | 1c4f0d37-a131-4964-a537-aebc2bcdd6eb | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
Fela: Vinyl Box Set 3 collects seven recently reissued Fela Kuti LPs selected by Brian Eno, one of Kuti's most eloquently spoken champions. There are really no bad Fela Kuti records, so a boxed set isn’t a bad way to absorb his music. | Fela: Vinyl Box Set 3 collects seven recently reissued Fela Kuti LPs selected by Brian Eno, one of Kuti's most eloquently spoken champions. There are really no bad Fela Kuti records, so a boxed set isn’t a bad way to absorb his music. | Fela Kuti: London Scene/Shakara/Gentleman/Afrodisiac/Zombie/Upside Down/I.T.T. | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19772-fela-kuti-london-sceneshakaragentlemanafrodisiaczombieupside-downitt/ | London Scene/Shakara/Gentleman/Afrodisiac/Zombie/Upside Down/I.T.T. | Brian Eno bought his first Fela Kuti LP in September of 1973. It was Afrodisiac, a record the Nigerian bandleader had cut in London with his group, Africa '70, the previous year. In the liner notes that accompany *Fela: Vinyl Box Set 3—*which collects seven recently reissued Kuti LPs that he selected–Eno writes that, at the time, he “didn’t really get” polyrhythmic music. He changed his mind. “I remember the first time I listened and how dazzled I was by the groove and rhythmic complexity,” he writes. “My friend Robert Wyatt called it ‘Jazz from another planet’ -and suddenly I thought I understood the point of jazz, until then an almost alien music to me.”
A few years later, in 1977, Eno played Afrodisiac for Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. Eventually he would collaborate with the band on its album Remain in Light, a record that drew heavy inspiration from African music. Amid the bonus tracks included on the Talking Heads’ Brick boxed set, there’s an unfinished outtake called “Fela’s Riff”. The introductory phrase of the track–which is really not much more than a half realized jam session–subtly mimic the ping-ponging brass figures of Kuti’s composition, “Alu Jon Jonki Jon”, the opening track on Afrodisiac. All this is to say: Brian Eno was, and is, a big Fela Kuti fan.
For a lot of people, Eno would turn out to be an important conduit to Kuti’s music, whether via his work on Remain in Light or its companion releases, The Catherine Wheel and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. And while he wasn’t Kuti’s only celebrity champion, he was among the most eloquently spoken. Over the next several decades, his support would steer countless rock bands, experimental artists, and dance producers toward Kuti. The significance of that music—now the subject of documentary films, Broadway musicals, and books—is well established. A Nigerian musician and political dissident, Kuti released dozens of records throughout the ’70s and ’80s that merged strains of jazz, funk, and African traditional music.
And with the possible exception of 1984’s Army Arrangement, there are really no bad Fela Kuti records. So, a boxed set isn’t a bad way to absorb his music. There’s not a lot of filler to wade through. The titles that Eno has picked for Vinyl Box Set 3 are drawn mostly from Kuti’s early ’70s output, including Shakara (1972), Fela’s London Scene (1972), and Gentleman (1971). Afrodisiac is included, as well as three highlights from the later part of the decade, Zombie (1976), Upside Down (1976), and I.T.T. (1980).
It’s a lot to digest. However, by lining up a number of releases–one 15-30 minute composition after another–it’s easier to get a sense of the dramatic evolution that Kuti’s music underwent throughout the decade. On the collections’ earliest works—Fela’s London Scene, Shakara—the influence of Western jazz and R&B music is clearer. In subsequent records, the key elements of Fela’s Afrobeat sound—the call-and-response vocals, the interlocking tenor and rhythm guitar parts, for instance—become more commonplace. The compositions get longer, more ambitious, and more hypnotic, and the music’s trajectory is mirrored in the LP cover art; gradually, traditional photograph-oriented designs give way to dense multi-colored illustrations. The jacket of London Scene wouldn’t seem out of place next to any number of early ’70s jazz records. I.T.T., with its grotesque caricatures and quasi-psychedelic color-palate, is from another planet entirely.
Eno’s contributions to the liner notes are thought provoking, but they’re also fairly slight—just a few hundred words of text that provide a handful of anecdotes and a touch of context. As a musician, producer, and conceptual thinker, Eno was a major presence in the music world at a moment when the ’60s vision of rock and roll was gradually slipping away as a dominant force and punk, hip-hop and disco were emerging. The set might have benefited—at least on Eno’s end—from a more substantial reflection on how Kuti’s music was perceived within the context of that time.
Though, maybe it’s obvious that there wasn’t a lot out there like it. The innovations that Kuti’s music generated are easy to take for granted now, but in the context of the mid-to-late ’70s—a decade heavy with, though not necessarily defined by, blues rock—Kuti’s band must have sounded pretty revelatory. The music is constantly moving and mutating, but is also conveys a sense of stasis. Unlike jazz, the songs aren’t shaped by chord changes or modulations, but the gradual accumulation and subtraction of melodic and rhythmic gestures. The bass might hover on a single note or riff for an entire song. The steady crack of the snare, which helps to give rock music its steady push and pull, is constantly shifted and shuffled around. “It rolls, rocks, and snaps and makes you moves,” writes Eno, speaking about drummer Tony Allen’s rhythms. “And yet it isn’t ever very regular—it’s hard to isolate the part that Tony Allen is playing because he’s constantly moving around it.”
The length of the compositions is also worth noting. One Kuti record might be made up of a single, highly repetitious sitcom-length composition. Where fusion jazz worked in similar chunks of time, it involved sprawl and spaciousness. Kuti’s music is taught and tight, even when it’s drifting past the 20-minute mark. Listening to it demands a different type of attention—one less concerned with events like verses and choruses and more attuned gradual build-ups and changes in density. It’s hard to think of anything comparable at the time, save for the rolling, burbling, and highly repetitive synthesizer compositions being made by German krautrock acts like Neu!, Kraftwerk, and Ashra (some of which were also Eno associates).
Contemporary Afrobeat ensembles seem to have largely ditched these super-extended songs, at least on record, likely because they run so completely contrary to the marketing and promotional methods of contemporary music. Certainly, this also applied in the ’70s, which required singles that could fuel radio play and, ultimately, sales. That’s definitely a fight that Fela won; eventually, the record labels just built bigger boxes to put it in. | 2014-10-02T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2014-10-02T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Global | null | October 2, 2014 | 8.6 | 1c5885d8-762d-497f-8be1-2d4dd8137bb3 | Aaron Leitko | https://pitchfork.com/staff/aaron-leitko/ | null |
Speedy Ortiz's four-song EP keeps runtimes tight and choruses front-and-center, pulling in some of Major Arcana's looser ends without sacrificing the fall-apart charm. The band still worship at the altar of early 90s indie—Pavement, Helium, and Archers of Loaf are their holy trinity—but frontwoman Sadie Dupuis has emerged as a distinctive voice. | Speedy Ortiz's four-song EP keeps runtimes tight and choruses front-and-center, pulling in some of Major Arcana's looser ends without sacrificing the fall-apart charm. The band still worship at the altar of early 90s indie—Pavement, Helium, and Archers of Loaf are their holy trinity—but frontwoman Sadie Dupuis has emerged as a distinctive voice. | Speedy Ortiz: Real Hair EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18935-speedy-ortiz-real-hair-ep/ | Real Hair EP | "Well, it's not what you think," Sadie Dupuis sings a few seconds into "American Horror", kicking off Speedy Ortiz's new four-song EP, Real Hair. A lot of Speedy Ortiz songs seem to start this way, somewhere between a snicker and a shrug, like Dupuis just showed up late for class in snowboots and a swimcap. Throughout Real Hair, Dupuis keeps finding herself in some awfully precarious positions: sleepless on "American Horror", falling "for a bonebag" on "Oxygal", falling—or is it not falling—for a "bad news" waiter on "Shine Theory." But, whatever comes their way, on Real Hair, the increasingly confident Speedy Ortiz seem more than capable of figuring something out.
From the start, Speedy Ortiz have fared best in the margins. Their rangy, slack-happy music is prone to wandering, but they never drift so far as to leave the hook behind. Bassist Darl Ferm and drummer Mike Falcone have tightened up tighter, while Dupuis and Matt Robidoux's dualing guitars are still perched on the precipice of stringent and slipshod. And these songs are just lousy with melody; there's distortion everywhere, but the occasional dissonance of Major Arcana's given way to a heady, fuzzed-out whoosh. As a lyricist, Dupuis is every bit as fond of the inscrutable left turn as the defense-stripping full-reveal, and the distance between the two is often a couple syllables at best. And she's a chatty, candid, elastic vocalist, taking each syllable as it comes. Dupuis, Master's candidate and Malkmus stan, is a student of words: not just what they mean, but how those meanings intersect. You can skim through Real Hair, taking pleasure in its intricate guitar fuzzbombing and the curious pleasures of Dupuis' language: peep "someone who sleeps with her neck in reverse," or try and guess at how she plans to "coax the pretty waiter from his restaurant." Dig in deeper, though, and Dupuis' tangled lines slowly start to unravel.
Real Hair keeps its runtimes tight and its choruses front-and-center, pulling in some of Major Arcana's looser ends without sacrificing its fall-apart charms. Everything Speedy Ortiz do well—willful sloppiness, keep-'em-guessing lyricism, and Dupuis' sharp, knowing singing—seems turned up a couple notches on opener "American Horror". As Dupuis and Matt Robidoux pile one spiny guitar atop another, "Horror" slides from a conversational verse into a stompbox-detonating chorus. "Trust me just to my own feet," Dupuis pleads mid-explosion, "and keep me here for a whole week." You can get yourself stuck puzzling out the glue and web full of bees Dupuis sings of on "Horror", but once they punch into that chorus of "baby, you look so crazy," ambiguity's pretty much out the window. Sure enough, "Oxygal" turns up the inscrutability a few clicks. "Oxygal" is Real Hair at its most Frankensteinian, a stop-and-chop verse and woozily desperate chorus that don't seem to belong in the same tune. When it works, there's a gawky, black Chucks-and-tux elegance to Speedy Ortiz' carefully calamitous songcraft, but the jittery "Oxygal" stumbles around a bit too much to ever quite find its footing.
Over shaggy "Cut Your Hair" guitars, "Everything's Bigger" finds Dupuis connecting the dots between a lion, several sets of twins, the slipperiness of regional dialects, and a quick sojourn to the Green Mountain state. It's an odd one, for sure; these red herrings and unplanned asides give Dupuis' songs a certain spontaneity, like she's working them out in real time and keeps throwing in extra embellishments to mess with you. But Dupuis isn't just jamming a bunch of words together to fill stanzas; she's clearly trying to elucidate her points while offering something a little more interesting than a point-by-point. And, for all its misdirection, "Bigger" eventually just comes right out with it: "it's hard to keep a dialect when you keep changing where you come from," Dupuis sings, a hint of bile creeping in.
Musically, Speedy Ortiz still worship at the altar of early 90s indie: Pavement, Helium, Archers of Loaf, their holy trinity. But Dupuis has emerged as a distinctive voice: funny, sharp, ever-so-slightly neurotic, with a tendency to trail off. You've gotta take personality where you can get it in indie rock these days, but by reasserting her own peculiarities—and casting aspersions at those who'd change theirs to suit a scenario—Dupuis just makes herself seem more, well, herself, going through some shit, but certainly never cowering to it.Dupuis has called Major Arcana "kind of a breakup jam," framing Real Hair's deep-digging as being more about getting her own shit together. Spindly closer "Shine Theory" presents Dupuis with what, on paper, appears to be a perfectly acceptable suitor. Still, she passes; "I wanna want him so bad," she tells herself, "but I don't recognize the charms that he has." Though self-examination quickly turns to self-deprecation—as Dupuis puts her own charms under scrutiny—"Shine Theory" is hardly self-pitying; when it's over, you picture Dupuis shrugging, throwing her books in her bag, and leaving the "pretty waiter" to his other tables.
It's tempting to paint Speedy Ortiz as more than they are: not just a very good band on their own terms, but an antidote to the mushmouthed, low-personality murmur blanketing much of circa-2014 indie rock. Though they seem a tad too casual for savior-types, it's hard to miss the things they're doing right. Real Hair takes the gloriously sloppy, haphazardly intricate Speedy Ortiz of Major Arcana and turns it bite-size, sharpening the focus without sanding off the edges. These songs are easy to like, but they're even better when you lean in close. And Dupuis—as a singer and lyricist alike—is only getting more precise and more peculiar. She isn't especially "confessional," but she certainly puts it all out there; these songs unwind like a long, aimless phone call with an old friend, rife with in-jokes, strange segueways, and the occasional moment of clarity. And, simply from a bookkeeping standpoint, dropping an EP in the winter dead zone, some nine months after your debut LP, is about as smart a way as any to keep your name on people's lips. When that EP's as good as Real Hair? All the better. | 2014-02-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2014-02-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Carpark | February 12, 2014 | 7.6 | 1c5932fd-c89a-43e3-856a-010a01b84abf | Paul Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-thompson/ | null |
Brooklyn band offers a skyscraping blend of the ambient and the anthemic, a record that swings for the bleachers at a time when it's fashionable to bunt. | Brooklyn band offers a skyscraping blend of the ambient and the anthemic, a record that swings for the bleachers at a time when it's fashionable to bunt. | The Antlers: Hospice | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13196-hospice/ | Hospice | Who could've guessed that SNMNMNM were ahead of the curve? In 2009, you kind of need to know some C++ just to talk about bands. The trend began in dreamy California, which gave us the skuzzy-sweet Nodzzz and Wavves, and then migrated as far as Nebraska (UUVVWWZ) and Glasgow (Dananananaykroyd). Meanwhile, in serious Brooklyn, the Antlers were quietly working on a coincidental antithesis to this fad. Hospice answers silliness with solemnity, jitters with nerve. Their band name simply describes their music: a delicately branching instrument of force.
Not that the Antlers are startlingly original-- they're just swinging for the bleachers at a time when it seems fashionable to bunt, or put your forehead on the bat and spin until you get dizzy. Their widescreen sentimentality comes with an equally familiar back-story. You remember the Bon Iver beat: Sad, bearded dude emerges from self-imposed exile with batch of urgently intimate songs; recruits band; self-releases album that earns surprise web-buzz and gets picked up by venerable indie label. Well, the Antlers used to be the solo project of Peter Silberman, who wrote Hospice while emerging from a period of "social isolation." During the bedroom recording process, two guest musicians (drummer Michael Lerner and multi-instrumentalist Darby Cicci) became permanent members. They self-released Hospice in March, and Frenchkiss picked it up after web- and NPR-praise helped sell out its first pressing.
The Antlers' skyscraping blend of the ambient and the anthemic is a far cry from Bon Iver's subtle folksiness, but Silberman and Justin Vernon emerged from their traumas seeming equally scoured and eager to reconnect. Hospice is bereft of irony and cynicism, as befits a rather ghastly narrative that feels, perhaps deceptively, autobiographical. Centered around a relationship with a terminally ill child, and evocatively spun from eerie hospital scenery, snippets of conversations with doctors, terrifying dreams, and the periodic intrusions of Sylvia Plath, it becomes a broad meditation on guilt, duty, mortality, and hope in the face of hopelessness. The emotional payload, while artfully couched, is fervent and bleeding. Silberman's affecting earnestness, not to mention his sweet voice, allows him to pull off lines like, "All the while I know we're fucked/ And not getting un-fucked soon," while sounding more prayerful than cynical.
Given the bluster of the music and its fixation on death and illness (not to mention Silberman's creaky diction and fluttery falsetto), it's impossible not to be reminded of Arcade Fire's Funeral. You could even fix Hospice's precedent a bit earlier-- its starry atmosphere and bludgeoning tenderness evoke Cursive's Domestica with a pop-noise sheen. Like these groups, the Antlers plumb that elusive place where the personally specific becomes universal. They achieve this by keeping the human frailty of the singer intact while inflating his feelings to mythological proportions. You can imagine Silberman, in his isolation, growing world-sized and full; how the emotional forces he grappled with came to seem meteorological.
This sense of the boundary between self and world-at-large collapsing permeates Hospice. The lyrics cover shades of emotion from despairing persistence ("Kettering") to desperate joy (the 21st-birthday fantasia "Bear"); the music tells the same story, through quicksilver currents of tension and tranquility. "Sylvia" alternates between acute frailty and Queen-caliber bravado, guided by the sort of gnarled electronic line the Antlers love (see also the monotonous buzz whipping around the corners of chipper guitar chords on "Two"). But what’s really great is how these modulations of weight are integrated into an album-long sweep, with crescendos nested inside decrescendos, coiling surges inside lengthy unwinding passages. It's as vast and empathetic as loneliness itself, a generous framework through which Silberman can show us almost everything: The tiny figure on the horizon and his huge shadow on the mountain, the extreme weathers roiling about him at once symbolic and real. | 2009-08-04T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2009-08-04T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rock | Frenchkiss | August 4, 2009 | 8.5 | 1c5f8e33-26b8-400d-8561-5a3447f17d6c | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | null |
Jack Cooper’s vision as a songwriter and bandleader comes into focus on the most cohesive album of his career: a fantasyland hybrid of elegant folk rock and understated free jazz. | Jack Cooper’s vision as a songwriter and bandleader comes into focus on the most cohesive album of his career: a fantasyland hybrid of elegant folk rock and understated free jazz. | Modern Nature: Island of Noise | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/modern-nature-island-of-noise/ | Island of Noise | In another era, Island of Noise—the all-absorbing, ever-patient new album by amorphous British band Modern Nature—might have been a major-label debut. After all, the project’s mastermind, Jack Cooper, sports the sort of impressive résumé that lends itself to upward mobility, from his time in two buzzy rock bands to his more recent stint in the alluring and elliptical Ultimate Painting. Modern Nature’s first album, 2019’s How to Live, seemed poised for a breakthrough, too, with its orchestral angularity suggesting a bright new spot along the line connecting Talk Talk to Radiohead.
The initial release of Island of Noise late last year had mid-’90s major-label energy, too: Before it appeared digitally in late January, the album saw life as an intricately illustrated box set containing an alternate instrumental album dubbed Island of Silence (both LPs were pressed on recycled vinyl), with a sheet of stickers and a dense book featuring responses to its 10 tracks from the likes of popular science scribe Merlin Sheldrake and culture critic Richard King. It has the gravity of a profound statement, a major production. You can imagine J. Spaceman—for an alt-rock moment, the prince of such audacious spectacle—nodding approvingly at the ambition.
Island of Noise, though, is a testament not to old bloated budgets but to Cooper’s vision, rapidly coming into focus as the leader of a band whose lineup shifts with every project. (Ultimate Painting, he has lamented, was too easy, because he only wrote half the songs.) It is the best, most cohesive album of his career, the product of a widening topical scope and a refined instrumental approach. These pieces unfurl as a fantasyland hybrid of elegant folk rock and understated free jazz, framed by Cooper but animated by an ad hoc wrecking crew of improvisers that includes fabled circular-breathing powerhouse Evan Parker and textural, imaginative violist Alison Cotton.
As a lyricist and singer, Cooper creates a fragmented and prismatic microcosm of our own world, so that we can contemplate our crises—environmental devastation, relentless racism, caustic religion—with critical remove. Beautiful but sad, eerie but tender, Island of Noise feels like a sublime stopover between OK Computer and Kid A, or between the eccentric British folk of the early ’70s and the austere Chicago post-rock of the ’90s. Its songs are subtly overstuffed, brimming with layers of luxurious melody and imaginative variation.
Cooper was revisiting The Tempest—one of Shakespeare’s final plays and an expansive synthesis of many of his preferred themes—when he encountered a new mantra: “Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,” which he scrawled on his workshop walls. Cooper also borrowed The Tempest’s situational conceit, in which a gale casts a ship onto some unknown and distant island. What would we see about ourselves with this “new beginning” on this “holy island,” he asks above ascendant horns and strings on “Dunes,” if we had the chance? His crew survives the opening instrumental, “Tempest,” where Parker’s fluttering saxophone captures the anxiety of mortal terror while the rest of the band offers a preemptive dirge. They begin again on “some brave new morning.”
The relief is temporary. Natural disasters, unchecked development, and weaponized gods all arrive in “Performance,” the island idyll corrupted after only five minutes despite the hope that “there’s heaven in those hills.” (Cooper slyly borrows language from The Tempest here, buttressing his own images with the Bard’s while nodding to the way old problems stick around.) The island dwellers break nature and turn to religion to excuse their destruction during “Masque,” the horns howling a forlorn duet in response. Finally, on “Spell,” they murder those who dissent in an admixture of fear, ignorance, and rage. “The orchestra are tuning/Every string, every wire,” Cooper gently sings, mourning our longtime habit of cheering collective persecution, from the fatal fights of the Colosseum to the mindless faceoffs of cable news.
Recorded in London in the fall of 2020 during a brief reprieve from lockdown restrictions, Cooper’s assemblage of musicians indulges his troubled worldview without overstating it. Paired with fellow saxophonist Jeff Tobias, of modern American freak team Sunwatchers, Parker has rarely balanced beauty and edge so well in his long career. He captures nervousness, then lets it sublimate like a sunset. And the brilliant rhythm section of Jim Wallis and John Edwards swing then skitter, dance then march. They map Cooper’s moods with the precision of a stethoscope. Cooper coos when he sings about this troubled little world; the band responds with quiet aggression, scoring these catastrophes with careful restraint—a Greek chorus with the volume down.
Island of Noise can seem inscrutable at times. Cooper is a fine lyricist, capable of turning mundane things like thunderstorms and rainbows into exquisite snippets of poetry. Still, he often makes his narratives cryptic, his feelings ambiguous. I’ve listened to Island of Noise a few dozen times, and I always walk away somewhere different on the continuum between horror and hope. Is this island a new beginning or an old ending, an opportunity to right wrongs or simply repeat them?
Cooper leans into such questions during “Build,” the magnificent finale where his little improvisational orchestra renders an ellipsis with exclamation marks. “Do you see it? Do you see it?” he demands in a steady register as the band lashes out wildly, at last. But he never says what it actually is—the future or the past, the cataclysm or the salvation? That’s up to you to decide, all of Island of Noise seems to suggest—and soon.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2022-01-31T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-01-31T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock / Experimental | Bella Union | January 31, 2022 | 7.8 | 1c628cf5-5a64-4a8a-9e56-248ec0a3c847 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
The pop singer-songwriter’s debut album leans on alluring and woozy R&B and hip-hop, yet the music forgoes most of the memorable hook-writing that Starrah has made her name on. | The pop singer-songwriter’s debut album leans on alluring and woozy R&B and hip-hop, yet the music forgoes most of the memorable hook-writing that Starrah has made her name on. | Starrah: The Longest Interlude | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/starrah-the-longest-interlude/ | The Longest Interlude | For six years, A-list talent of every stripe has called on the enigmatic singer-songwriter Starrah for her Midas touch. The artist born Brittany Hazzard has lent her pen to many Top 10 mainstays and three No. 1 hits, including rap juggernauts and inescapable pop confections. It’s a skill Starrah attributes to her empathetic nature when collaborating with other artists: “I can pretty much put myself in that person’s shoes and write, if necessary for them, from their perspective,” she explained, which allows her to tease out a sense of vulnerability from superstars through deft genre-bridging between hip-hop, pop, and R&B.
A question that lingers after a bulletproof hit parade: What does it look like when Starrah steps into the spotlight herself? Following a brief collaborative EP with Diplo in 2017, the Delaware native provides a more definitive answer with her official debut, The Longest Interlude. The album focuses on woozy R&B and hip-hop to frame dispatches from a volatile love life, never straying too far from the downcast tone. The reflective setting suits the through-line, yet the music forgoes most of the memorable hook-writing that Starrah has made her name on.
Make no mistake, Starrah continues to be an intriguing rapper, finding pockets of rhythm that send the mind spinning. She often uses a slick patina of Auto-Tune, leaning into empty space and stretching out her vowels for emphasis. On the infatuated “Love Mania,” she adopts a melodic, feathery tone that dances against new wave guitar from Weeknd member Patrick Greenaway. The album’s upbeat track, “Love Mania,” captures vivid imagery of cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway, with Starrah’s chirping delivery easily carrying the song’s high-on-love ecstasy. Earlier, on “Made for You,” Starrah’s percussive, onomatopoeic imitation of a buzzing phone (put on vibrate so she can focus on her lover) sounds as nostalgic as the mood of the song around it.
The myriad guest stars who appear on The Longest Interlude stay mostly behind the boards. Nile Rodgers, Skrillex, Boi 1da, and more appear on production, but for all the talent on deck, the album remains mostly inert. The back half especially dips into drippy, spare balladry (“Who Decides War (More Than Words),” “8 Days a Week”) that blends together, even as Starrah pitch-shifts her voice into interesting contours. For all the conflicting emotions she digs through on the record, they become wooden when placed against barely-there backdrops.
Still, the brief songs on The Longest Interlude are just fleshed out enough to avoid seeming like demo leftovers. On one of the album’s best, “Interlude,” Starrah coasts over rolling drums and acoustic guitar to reel off wordplay about an unhealthy romantic cycle: “When I see you it’s over,” she sings, “To you it’s interlude/And we know it’s over.” You can practically hear the shrug in her voice when she trails off the end: “Same shit we always do.” With The Longest Interlude, Starrah seems patently uninterested in the same Billboard-scaling heights as her peers; she would rather ruminate in her own after-hours state of mind, following stormy thoughts wherever they lead.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-03-31T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-03-31T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap / Pop/R&B | Platoon | March 31, 2021 | 6.5 | 1c65a28c-1c44-4e7f-b69e-706f49b6d859 | Eric Torres | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-torres/ | |
In this gripping song cycle, the vocalist-pianist M. Lamar pairs with Liturgy’s Hunter Hunt-Hendrix to explore the tradition of African-American spirituals, mixing ideas from folk, opera, and metal. | In this gripping song cycle, the vocalist-pianist M. Lamar pairs with Liturgy’s Hunter Hunt-Hendrix to explore the tradition of African-American spirituals, mixing ideas from folk, opera, and metal. | M. Lamar / Hunter Hunt-Hendrix: Funeral Doom Spiritual | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22840-funeral-doom-spiritual/ | Funeral Doom Spiritual | In the landmark 1963 book Blues People, a critic and poet then going by the name LeRoi Jones quoted some scholarly writing that placed the “black Christian spiritual” in a tradition of African melody. He also described how songs created by American slaves were “superficially modeled” on white hymns. Despite the mutual influences, Jones argued that “the Negro’s religious music was his original creation, and the spirituals themselves were probably the first completely native American music the slaves made.”
Drawing a line toward 20th century popular music, Jones wrote that the blues “issued directly from the shout, and, of course, the spiritual.” But his more original claim concerned the way each new form reshaped the American mainstream, in turn. According to Jones, this phenomenon demanded of black artists a consistent reinvention of performance styles, in order to avoid the marketplace “overexposure” of past innovations.
With Funeral Doom Spiritual, the male soprano M. Lamar has pulled off another one of these stylistic escapes from all the previous, expected forms. And he has done so in a way that Jones might well have appreciated: by grabbing and juxtaposing vocal-production ideas from folk lamentation, European opera, and contemporary metal. This odd mix isn’t the product of an ironic mindset. Lamar is clearly aware, and respectful, of more typical approaches to the African-American religious songbook—including those by operatic sopranos. Though he also knows that exploration is part of the spiritual tradition, too.
Alongside electronic textures composed by Liturgy frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, Lamar’s vocals and pianism reframe the lyrics to some well-known numbers (such as “Lay This Body Down”). And he ventures some new spirituals, as well. The hour-long song cycle is conceptually coherent and dramatically gripping—especially when Lamar’s singing moves between stark exhalations of doom and soprano lines that are full of vibrato.
The power of this shocking transition is communicated during the album’s overture, “The Demon Rising.” Early on in the track, Hunt-Hendrix’s electronic part supplies steady percussive explosions that amount to a slow beat. Lamar pounds on the low end of a Bosendorfer piano, and sing-sighs in tones of gravelly menace. Then, as Lamar moves up the keyboard, his vocals swoop up in pitch, to the top of his range.
At this point, the singer-pianist still hasn’t uttered a word. Though the work’s emotional progression has been previewed: after starting from a vantage of bleakest desolation, a more beautiful resilience comes into view. But forgetfulness is not part of the journey. Even as it anticipates some form of rebirth, Funeral Doom Spiritual holds fast to an awareness of racial injustice and physical violence.
The lyrics’ potency comes from their broad applicability, across American history. On early listens, I often wondered whether a refrain like “I carry your coffin on my back” was plucked from a vintage spiritual, or from a first-person lament related to a contemporary tragedy. The fact that the question can be asked justifies the pallor that hangs over the album, as well as the more abrasive textures in its electronic arrangement.
While the tempos and harmonies remain fairly static, the arrangements contain subtle shifts that make outsized impacts. On “They Took You From Me,” as Lamar’s voice rises to a peak of indignation (on the word “guilty”), the texture of Hunt-Hendrix’s electronics undergoes a change. What was once a drone now becomes bell-like and sparkling—akin to what might result if Oneohtrix Point Never were to interpret the music of Arvo Pärt. The sense of release, here, works as an ideal sonic accompaniment for the catharsis embedded in Lamar’s judgment, and his casting of a demon’s curse.
Funeral Doom Spiritual also exists as a work for the stage. That ritualized production recently appeared at New York’s Prototype festival, which focuses on new operas (both traditional and experimental in nature). When performed there, the piece featured a string section arranged by Hunt-Hendrix, in addition to Lamar’s singer-pianist role. I thought it was a captivating show—particularly given Lamar’s post-apocalyptic, diva costuming. Still, some of the transitions between songs were ragged. On the album, a few of Hunt-Hendrix’s string harmony ideas have been preserved, most noticeably on the electronic portion of the track “Carrying.” Overall, the studio recording’s more consistent precision makes this version of Spiritual an ideal way to encounter Lamar’s radical innovations. | 2017-02-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-02-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Negrogothic | February 6, 2017 | 7.7 | 1c694e38-bdd9-48ca-9bcd-2acbe6a1dba5 | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | null |
Taking influence from drone, metal, and noise, the latest project from the mercurial Russian producer is a brooding collaborative album that relishes in its own bleakness. | Taking influence from drone, metal, and noise, the latest project from the mercurial Russian producer is a brooding collaborative album that relishes in its own bleakness. | Pavel Milyakov / Yana Pavlova: Wandering | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pavel-milyakov-yana-pavlova-wandering/ | Wandering | Over the past five years, the prolific output of Russian electronic producer Pavel Milyakov has hopscotched between genre and mood: four-on-the-floor techno, palatable indie rock, new age ambient, harsh drone, and collaborations that range from Dirty Beaches’ Alex Zhang Hungtai to avant-saxophonist Bendik Giske. Though produced with care and consideration, Milyakov’s recordings often bear the hallmarks of experimental recklessness, documenting his creative spirit with a sort of diaristic vulnerability. His music often resembles hi-fidelity sketches: expertly produced excursions deliberately left in their nascent state.
On last year’s Blue, Milyakov’s first collaboration with the Ukrainian artist and vocalist Yana Pavlova, the duo improvised a series of blissful performances with funk swagger and rhythmic propulsion. In its catchiest moments, the music inched toward something resembling indie pop. Although the pair continue a similar collaborative process on their latest album, Wandering, the results are much darker. It’s a record of harsh industrial feedback and mournful howls, one that relishes in its own bleakness. Over 10 tracks and 33 minutes, it bangs around in the shadows with hardly a glimmer of light. If Blue was Milyakov and Pavlova’s summer of love, Wandering is its unexpectedly brutal winter.
Culling inspiration from drone, black metal, dub, industrial, and noise, Wandering is fragmented and deconstructed. Its twists and turns are nearly obscured, as songs blur into one another like recurring nightmares. Feedback, pulsing static, harsh rhythms, trigger-delays, vocal chants, and crushing synths ricochet off one another in frenetic conversation. Wandering is committed to its own disquieting world, and its musicians take pleasure in restlessly tinkering within its frameworks. The monotonous atmosphere allows small inflections to cast powerful shadows: A piercing cry gives way to an impossibly sharp gated crash symbol. A flood of delayed feedback slowly rolls in like a rough tide, the silence between shallow waves bringing its own solace.
“Ramified” opens the album with delay-heavy synthetic bagpipes and cavernous, mourning vocals from Pavlova. The song moves at a crawl as warm guitar drones hum like distant thunder, a funeral procession played in reverse. Fluttering synth tones brighten the desolate palette just as the song fades into the drone doom of “Mountains & Woodlands,” where churning guitars, delayed blast beats, and chopped-up tom rolls crash like a hailstorm, recalling early Liturgy in its mechanized approach to corrosive darkness.
Several moments on the album are reimagined versions of songs that appeared in warmer, more amiable renditions on Blue. “Take a While” recasts the dance-pop standout “Strong Willed” as a harrowing drone symphony, with Pavlova chanting its memorable refrain, “Gonna take a while with it/Then you reach for it.” Here, the lyrics take on a narcotic haze, barely recognizable over crash symbols. “Denying” incorporates passages from “Blue Denial,” another toe-tapper from the previous record. But in this version, jackhammer drum fills and fuzzed-out guitars shroud the words. The stuttering feedback is unexpectedly soothing, like a doom-metal sound bath.
After the dissonance of the first half, the album begins to soften. “Rural” brightens the tone with flickering guitar notes and skittering melodies akin to Archie Shepp’s Mama Rose played through Sunn O)))’s gear. “Wandering Fugue,” a late standout, introduces bubbling bit-synth organ trills that shine through the bleakness like laser beams, supplying a brief moment of sweetness as the chirpy synths meld into Pavlova’s wordless coos. These calmer tracks offer respite from the record’s overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. With such a cohesive atmosphere, Wandering lacks some of the finesse and nuance that makes Milyakov’s more eclectic work so striking. Yet like an off-beat horror film, this haunted experiment carries its own charming aura of chaos.
Correction: A previous version of this review incorrectly identified the artist Yana Pavlova as Russian. She is Ukrainian.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2022-01-13T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-01-13T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | psy x | January 13, 2022 | 6.8 | 1c6bc7c1-6e24-4d00-889a-04acb9c7731e | Drew Litowitz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/drew-litowitz/ | |
Following an EP and various singles, the sunny Brooklyn synth-pop duo's full-length debut aims for the heart and the gut. | Following an EP and various singles, the sunny Brooklyn synth-pop duo's full-length debut aims for the heart and the gut. | Tanlines: Mixed Emotions | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16406-tanlines-mixed-emotions/ | Mixed Emotions | "Sometimes I wonder if because I make a lot of jokes here, people might think we don't take our music seriously…" Tweeted Jesse Cohen from his band Tanlines' account earlier this month, in anticipation of the Brooklyn synth-pop duo's debut full-length release, Mixed Emotions. "Simply put, neither Eric [Emm] nor I have ever taken anything in our whole lives more seriously than the work we put into this album," Cohen continued. "It couldn't possibly mean more to us. I don't think I need to be super pretentious for you to know that, but sometimes I just want to say it."
Part of the reason Cohen felt the need to clarify was likely because @Tanlines doesn't look like your typical musician's Twitter feed, focusing more on clever observational jokes rather than self-promotion. In turn, it has gained them more than a few followers who are clearly unaware that the Tanlines account belongs to a working band and not a comedian. Cohen's message contained a surprisingly heartfelt sentiment coming from a handle usually known for material like, "Just had a landline-to-landline conversation #90s." But try as he might to separate his Twitter account from his band's music, the truth is Mixed Emotions and @Tanlines have more in common with each other than Cohen would likely admit. Mixed Emotions contains some truly great tracks that work terrifically as standalone singles, as carefully composed and satisfying as a well-constructed quip, almost always augmented by a good-natured undercurrent of earnest, welcome sentimentality. And while everything in between may feel like a contextually empty @-reply or obligatory retweet, it makes for an uneven listen that still amounts to more than what that ever-present winky-sad emoticon might suggest.
Tanlines are clearly capable of writing great songs. Between a few singles and 2010's Settings EP, we were given a handful of warm, Balearic-tinged tracks with an extra dancefloor-ready boost thanks to Afro-pop and Tropicália detailing. One of the more notable standouts, "Real Life", shows up again on Mixed Emotions, and while its replay value makes its inclusion seem perfectly logical, it does reveal what some might consider to be a strike against the band. There is little denying that Tanlines' sound is, for all intents and purposes, beholden to a place and a time (see: Brooklyn, 2010). With "Real Life" fitting in so well with the rest of the new material, it's pretty clear that Mixed Emotions has been an immersive project, so much so that it uses the same building blocks on which Cohen and Emm propped up the Tanlines project a few years ago.
But being hard on Tanlines for not being progressive is a waste of time when, pretty frequently, the pair is able to use gratifying sonic details, big choruses, and large pop pleasure-center targets, all of which help manage to occasionally hit emotionally rich sweet spots. Opener and lead single "Brothers" is as good a place to start as any, with the amniotic warmth of its bass and New Order-styled synth flourishes. "Brothers" takes its name from the first studio Tanlines ever recorded in, but it also works when translated as a reflection of a friendship over the years. "I'm just the same as I ever been/ But I'm the only one who doesn't notice it," goes the chorus. A lot of Mixed Emotions contains similar thematic elements in its lyrics, full of vague, open-ended questions that seem most applicable for people verging on a mid-mid-life crisis. But because of their opaqeuness, the simplest turns of phrase-- when left open for interpretation-- give the album a sort of emotional adaptability. For such a rhythmically-oriented affair, these smears of melancholy offer necessary balance.
Mixed Emotions aims for the heart and the gut (though aside from "Real Life", not so much the hips, which is a bit disappointing), but in missing easy opportunities to connect with either lies the record's biggest problems. In the way most of these songs are structured, there's a real need for some kind of release, a way to tip things over the edge and open the songs up. You get a wonderfully redemptive feel from tracks like the gigantic, aching "Not the Same", and it's largely because there's some very tangible emotional payoff in the chorus. "All of Me" and the saccharine "Lost Somewhere" both fall victim to simply not being big enough, which is especially hard to overlook when there's evidence that these guys can pull off big. By presenting itself as being a vivid and borderline-anthemic kind of album, you can't help but feel a bit frustrated when the songs fail to make good on the promise. Exemplified by the driving "Green Grass", it means to give you a charge and push you forward, but instead creates the sensation of running in place.
Which is, in some ways, preferable to the songs that never even have a chance to get off the ground. A lot of Mixed Emotion's direct influence lies in a very specific corner of classic rock radio, plucking rather indiscriminately from the Police, Peter Gabriel, and Paul Simon. A number of acts over the past few years have been paid substantial dividends in channeling these names, but Cohen and Emm seem bent on rendering out the most honeyed details, leaving some of these tracks nauseously buoyant. Had they been a bit more inconspicuous with the references (the lovely "Abby" being a nice example), Vitamin D-enriched tracks like "Lost Somewhere" and the unnecessarily stripped-down "Yes Way" wouldn't begin to reek like so much potpourri.
Fortunately, the record's second half really picks things up, with the appealingly straightforward, new romantic-shaded rock track "Rain Delay" and the spatial new wave ballad "Nonesuch" at the close. These tracks don't hit the same highs that "Not the Same" or "Brothers" do, and that's okay. It can be easy to forget that, while you're constantly waiting for that big payoff, most of these songs are really pretty damn good. Tanlines have never had a problem with the set-up, but it's in the delivery where the occasionally falter. | 2012-03-26T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2012-03-26T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic | True Panther | March 26, 2012 | 7.1 | 1c755515-9dc2-4d84-afec-74b495f9999b | Zach Kelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zach-kelly/ | null |
There’s Nothing Wrong With Love, newly reissued on vinyl after being out of print on the format for almost two decades, has come to define a certain strand of indie rock, leaving a cluster of threads picked up by Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, and many more. | There’s Nothing Wrong With Love, newly reissued on vinyl after being out of print on the format for almost two decades, has come to define a certain strand of indie rock, leaving a cluster of threads picked up by Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, and many more. | Built to Spill: There’s Nothing Wrong With Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21096-theres-nothing-wrong-with-love/ | There’s Nothing Wrong With Love | It's May 1994 in Boise, Idaho—one month after the death of Kurt Cobain. Though this town is 500 miles southeast of Seattle, almost an eight-hour drive, that's not so far in this part of the country. You have your car, and everything is spread out, and you're always ready to cover ground when you need to. So despite the distance Boise could conceivably be considered part of the Pacific Northwest, if you stretch the definition a little bit, and the music scene there, such as it is, has some connections to its larger neighboring cities. There's a Boise band called Built to Spill led by Doug Martsch, who used to be in an indie rock band based in Seattle called Treepeople.
Two of the stories in the Pacific Northwest rock scene in the '80s and early '90s are the ramshackle D.I.Y. scene surrounding K Records and of course grunge, which by this time had gone so far overground it was on its way to becoming a cliché. Martsch's songwriting has some parallels with the wide-eyed and playful perspective of indie pop, but his twee impulses are tempered by his epic guitar work, which is not connected to grunge proper but can be traced to one of the scene's influences, J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. Having made one album, 1993's Ultimate Alternative Wavers, Built to Spill return to Seattle to record their follow-up, There's Nothing Wrong With Love, the record that would change everything for the band. "That was the last record when I was able to make music without thinking a lot of people would hear it," Martsch told SPIN in 1999. "It makes a difference. I'd like to think it doesn't matter, but it does."
That relative anonymity, free from the nebulous expectations of what eventually became a sizable fan base, gave Martsch license to write his most personal album. There's Nothing Wrong With Love, newly reissued on vinyl after being out of print on the format for almost two decades, has come to define a certain strand of indie rock, leaving a cluster of threads picked up by Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, and many more. But beyond its influence, it captures a truly original songwriting voice at the exact moment he realized what he had to offer. It's the album as snow globe, a small place where interconnected stories happen and you can get a different perspective on them depending on your vantage point. Built to Spill had some great records ahead of them, but they would never make another album with this level of intimacy.
There's Nothing Wrong With Love finds Martsch on the cusp of true adulthood (his first child was born around the time it was made, and his feelings around that are documented on "Cleo"), but the past is close enough where he sees it with tremendous clarity. The songs highlight the tiny feelings and sensations that have no obvious consequences in the moment but somehow stay with you in every detail. And Martsch has a special talent for pinpointing the tossed-off moments that others might connect to. As a kid, I was excited to learn about the constellations— where they were supposed to be, how the dots were connected, the mythology they represented—but I quickly realized the only one I could make out was the Big Dipper. I spent 20-something years with that meaningless thought pinging in my head, and then I heard a song on this album that started with the words "When I was little someone pointed out to me/ Some constellations but the Big Dipper's all I could see" ("Big Dipper") and suddenly this stray private thought became a shared experience, one wrapped inside an ultra-catchy power pop song.
Nuggets like this, borne of Martsch's keen sense of introspection and emotional generosity, are the lifeblood of There's Nothing Wrong With Love. On "In the Morning" he explores the difficulty of enjoying the present moment when filled with anxiety about the future ("Today is flat beneath the weight of the next day, next day, next day, next day") and how instinct takes over in moments of uncertainty. All the album's hyper-specific lyrical details—and there are many—check out. "Seven Up I touched her thumb, she knew it was me" (from "Twin Falls") might sound impossibly precious from another songwriter, but Martsch always leavens his sweetness with self-aware humor. "My stepfather looks just like David Bowie/ But he hates David Bowie," goes a line in "Distopian Dream Girl", certainly the first time in pop music history that this particular thought has been expressed. Then he follows with "I think Bowie's cool/ I think Lodger rules, my stepdad's a fool," showing just how in touch Martsch is with the feelings of adolescence, those years when you're floating through life, a bundle of nerves, and nothing quite makes sense.
The music and arrangements on the album are every bit the match of the subject matter. Built to Spill showed only hints of the explosive rock machine they'd later become. Acoustic guitar features heavily, a cello saws away in the background, serving as a sort of Greek chorus tracking the emotional arc of a given song's characters. Once in a while, Martsch hits the stomp box and unleashes a noisy solo, the distortion dusting his effortless melodicism with longing. There's plenty of open space, and his voice is much cleaner than it would be later. The sequencing and editing is brilliant, from "In the Morning"'s split-second pause after Martsch yells "Stop!" to the pause between "Twin Falls" and "Some" that makes them seem like one long song. It's a sound that is simultaneously tiny and huge, a keepsake tucked into a pocket that could at any moment magically become the size of a billboard.
With its focus on childhood, the nature of existence, and the search for meaning, it's possible to hear There's Nothing Wrong With Love in the terms of "What if there was another universe in my fingernail?"-style stoner dorm-room philosophy. But Martsch's open heart keeps you on his side. There's real beauty in the fumbling exploration he describes in "Car", a song filled with lines that crystallize what it's like to be an excited-but-frightened kid learning about life in fits and starts: "You'll get the chance to take the world apart/ And figure out how it works." Listening to this album in 2014, another line in the song, "I want to see it when you get stoned on a cloudy breezy desert afternoon," kept bringing me back to the final scene in Richard Linklater's film Boyhood, when the main character we've watched grow through the years takes mushrooms and hikes through a canyon in West Texas, a landscape not unlike parts of Idaho. It reminded me that one reason young people do drugs is because they offer a second chance to see things for the first time. To borrow one last line from "Car", on this album Martsch remembered when he wanted to see "movies of his dreams." For the vast majority of us that wish is never fulfilled, but There's Nothing Wrong With Love is a celebration of the desire itself, the vulnerability that comes with allowing yourself to imagine possibility. | 2015-10-23T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2015-10-23T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sub Pop / Up | October 23, 2015 | 9.3 | 1c82449a-65d0-4cbf-b112-c8e9d9770722 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
The London trio Shopping makes tight, bright, danceable post-punk featuring blunt statements about queer politics and alienation. Their debut, Consumer Complaints, first out on the band's own DIY label in 2013, now sees a proper U.S. release. | The London trio Shopping makes tight, bright, danceable post-punk featuring blunt statements about queer politics and alienation. Their debut, Consumer Complaints, first out on the band's own DIY label in 2013, now sees a proper U.S. release. | Shopping: Consumer Complaints | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20572-consumer-complaints/ | Consumer Complaints | The London trio Shopping makes tight, bright, danceable post-punk that owes much to forebears like A Certain Ratio, Mo-Dettes, and Lucrate Milk, though it never sounds particularly dated or like a carbon-copy, a testament to the group's songwriting abilities. Their debut, Consumer Complaints, was one of the best punk records of 2013 when it was released by the group's DIY label Mïlk Records in November of that year. (Here it sees a U.S. release courtesy of larger longtime UK indie label Fat Cat Records.)
All three members previously played together in the underrated group Covergirl, and all three sing here, though guitarist Rachel Aggs (also of Trash Kit, Golden Grrrls, and scores of other bands) takes lead on most of Shopping’s songs. Overlapping and circling vocal patterns are played to excellent effect, so that the vocals seem less like something that sit on top of the music, and more part of an integrated whole.
Aggs’ trademark guitar style leans on broken and manipulated '60s-style garage riffs—in style and tone, in this band and others, her guitar work is often reminiscent of a less straightforward Holly Golightly/Headcoatees. This is one of the elements that keeps Consumer Complaints’ songs from blurring into one another, though they rarely vary in tempo. All of the songs also have their own structures: there's no verse-chorus-verse or predictable bridge insertion; instead, songs are structured to breathe, blurring into noise where necessary ("Santa Monica Place") or stretching out melodic themes to disco ends ("Get Going"). As a result, no track seems too short or too long; one gets the sense that the songs have been structured only to start where they need to and then were allowed to grow organically into their recorded forms through repeated practice and performance.
The politics on Consumer Complaints are refreshingly more embodied than didactic, mixing blunt statements about the alienation and immediacy necessary to queer desires under capitalism without preaching or feeling heavy-handed. Drummer Andrew Milk has said that Shopping "never discussed having a particular political message at all as a band." This may be yet another reason why Consumer Complaints bubbles with joy without being explicitly joyful and why this collection of songs never feels artificial or forced.
There is no cool plastic sheen meant to signify the post-industrial age over this record, and Shopping’s music doesn’t feel consistently grinding or harsh, though they don’t shy away from dissonance or from breaking melodic motifs. These are warm, human songs, songs that celebrate real power in making the music you want to with your friends on your own terms, songs that celebrate the multifaceted natures of people struggling to make themselves heard via relatively antiquated technology in a sped-up world where human interaction is often mediated through digital simulacra. | 2015-05-28T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2015-05-28T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | FatCat | May 28, 2015 | 7.3 | 1c82d38d-6c77-4c00-ace5-7f96fb0d63e6 | JJ Skolnik | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jj-skolnik/ | null |
The Canadian duo takes a chill, fuzzy-headed left turn but retains the bleak imagery and nuanced production of its best work. | The Canadian duo takes a chill, fuzzy-headed left turn but retains the bleak imagery and nuanced production of its best work. | Freak Heat Waves: Mondo Tempo | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/freak-heat-waves-mondo-tempo/ | Mondo Tempo | In the 13 years that Canada’s Freak Heat Waves have been making music, they have channeled a welter of influences: post-punk, shoegaze, dub, goth, Detroit techno, Japanese synth pop, German prog. Drop the needle at random on one of their records and you might be reminded of Black Dice or Gary Numan, Can or Tones on Tail, Seefeel or Brian Eno. Freak Heat Waves’ music represents not so much a style as a sensibility: druggy, unkempt, and a little bit dangerous, a souped-up ride whose wheels could fall off at any moment.
Until now, there was nothing in Freak Heat Waves’ catalog to suggest that the duo of Steven Lind and Thomas Di Ninno were capable of—much less interested in—making a song like “In a Moment Divine,” the standout on Mondo Tempo, their fifth album. Featuring guest vocals from their longtime friend and collaborator Cindy Lee (aka Pat Flegel, formerly of Women), it’s an almost shockingly sentimental offering from a group that has typically paired lumpy drum machines and oozing synths with a baritone drawl as gnarled and imposing as the trunk of a fallen oak. “In a Moment Divine,” by contrast, begins with a rosy blush of pads before kicking into an easygoing breakbeat house cadence. “The gates of heaven open with your smile,” sings Lee, and no matter how cryptic the details—is it a farewell to a lover? a tribute to a tragic figure?—the song’s emotional valence is unguarded and deeply affecting. Garlanded with production reminiscent of New Order’s Power, Corruption and Lies, Lee’s high, wistful voice is faintly reminiscent of the Pet Shop Boys, but there’s something idiosyncratic about it all—the melancholy silver-screen strings, maybe, or the way the parts feel Scotch-taped together—that transcends pastiche, or even homage. This isn’t the first time that Freak Heat Waves have sounded chill, but it’s the first time they’ve sounded so unabashedly beautiful.
Nothing else on Mondo Tempo quite matches that song’s heart-on-sleeve yearning, but the record nevertheless marks a significant change from their last album, 2020’s Zap the Planet. There, they downshifted into an uneasy strain of downbeat, pairing trip-hop beats and clunky ’80s drum machines with low-key funk and gloopy psychedelia. Although more laid back than its predecessors, Zap the Planet was still smoggy and dank. On Mondo Tempo, the skies clear. Suffused in crisply programmed drum grooves, bluesy vocal samples, and lush synths, the album filters Balearic-beat influences through the slightly shaggy style of house music practiced by Vancouver, BC’s Mood Hut, who put out the record.
“The Time Has Come” opens the album with a jaunty sampled sax riff drizzled over a trim disco-funk groove complete with chicken-scratch guitar. Between dubbed-out breaks and moody bass riff, “How Do We Come Alive” would have been right at home on Mo Wax’s classic Headz compilations. “Endless” bubbles with trance-gate effects, a background vocal sample that Play-era Moby would have killed for, and hard-panned drums that feel like a breakbeat embrace. (It can’t be overstated how funky many of these songs are—with little more than a few subtle bass nudges and some carefully swung snares, their grooves feel tailor-made for the basement-party long haul.) The title track is the apotheosis of their fuzzy-headed retro: The syncopated drum programming suggests a narcoleptic take on new jack swing, the synths would have been right at home on Twin Peaks, and there’s even a sax solo straight out of Blade Runner’s noir imaginary.
However much Mondo Tempo diverges from the group’s previous records, there’s an obvious throughline in the form of Lind’s gravelly, drawn-out vocals, which present him as a kind of Lothario on ludes. It’s not the depth of his register that’s striking so much as its slightly greasy panache. His loamy purr carries an unmistakable hint of menace, and his often unintelligible syllables feel like sleight of hand: The way he draws out his words, you may forget how a line began by the time it finishes. In fact, despite the leisurely grooves, Lind’s lyrics are frequently anything but chill, and have little to do with anything resembling sensual pleasures. “Our time at last, free of the past,” he announces on “The Time Has Come.” Any shades of yearbook-quote optimism quickly curdle as he pushes into more ambiguous terrain: “Is there a method to the wild/A fear to evolve/Does it lead to one setting sun.” Peel back the blissed-out blister pack and dejection swells to fill the hedonistic vacuum. “Are we bound to lose or ruin the mood,” he asks in “How Do We Come Alive,” noting, “There’s an ominous feeling to us.” The perky “Endless” begins optimistically enough, but its meager two lines turn out to be a frighteningly economical accounting of disaster: “I wish that it was endless, spanning lives of plastic/Are we helpless, spinning tires to ashes.”
The more closely you listen to Lind’s lyrics, in fact, the more that Mondo Tempo’s summery quality starts to sound like a bleakly sarcastic joke. The title track locks into an uneasy mantra: “One degree worldwide, one degree worldwide…/Let’s realize it’s a crime/I think it’s a sign that it’s on the rise.” In a season marked by Canadian wildfires, heating oceans, and sweltering temperatures around the globe, deciphering the song’s message isn’t particularly difficult. Such doomsaying lyrics add a provocative dimension to Freak Heat Waves’ baleful take on Balearic, making an already captivating album that much more rewarding to untangle. | 2023-07-12T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-07-12T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Mood Hut | July 12, 2023 | 7.8 | 1c8668c6-f062-4f17-bf99-ab1daae5d553 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit a tacky, mail-order compilation that strangely, almost perfectly encapsulates the class of early-’90s pop-rap. | Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit a tacky, mail-order compilation that strangely, almost perfectly encapsulates the class of early-’90s pop-rap. | Various Artists: *Monsters of Rap * | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-monsters-of-rap/ | Monsters of Rap | “I don’t party and shake my butt,” rapped Ice Cube in 1990. “I leave that to the brothers with the funny haircuts.” At the time, party music was splitting the hip-hop nation down party lines, mainly due to the unprecedented success of Oakland’s insanely gifted dance-rap behemoth M.C. Hammer. He had dominated pop radio and MTV, starred in a Pepsi commercial, garnered a Rolling Stone cover, walked home with two American Music Awards, and had the No. 1 album in the country for an astonishing 21 weeks. He was dissed by The Source, the magazine that served as the most crucial hip-hop information pipeline of the era. But that schism wasn’t always easy to see, especially if you lived in a city where the population was less than, say, 100,000 and your cable package didn’t include the Box.
Ice Cube’s razor-tongued reality rap group N.W.A. lived side by side with Hammer on the playlists of Yo! MTV Raps and in the pages of Word Up! magazine. Between 1987 and 1988, they had played multiple shows on the same bill. 1989 gateway compilations like Priority Records’ Hard Rap or Tommy Boy’s Monster TV Rap Hits simply threw Hammer and N.W.A. together on the type of cassettes you could buy in the Kmart electronics department. In 1990, you could find the post-Cube N.W.A. joining Hammer on the Dr. Dre-produced West Coast Rap All Stars posse cut “We’re All in the Same Gang”: a plea to end gang violence that presented the Parental Advisory faction and the MTV Party to Go faction as a united front. Hammer was given a particularly harsh Gas Face by 3rd Bass, but he received a full-throated defense from Chuck D of Public Enemy, who also toured with Hammer. “That brother’s bad,” Chuck said in 1990. “I know he’s all there. When he says ‘U Can’t Touch This,’ you can’t touch it. To me it’s not just about style, it’s that he’s built a whole environment around him that’s real.” No hard-nosed game-spitter less than Ice Motherfuckin’ T said this on his 1991 rap classic O.G. Original Gangster: “Special shout out is going out to the one and only M.C. Hammer. A lot of people diss you man, they just jealous. Fuck ’em.”
By 1991, Hammer had a 10-times-platinum album under his belt: a feat then unheard of in the rap world. Hammer, however, won the battle but not the war. In the past decade, N.W.A. were immortalized in a blockbuster hagiographic biopic and inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And Hammer—currently an Internet mogul and tech entrepreneur—doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the hip-hop doors he had blown open.
Kurtis Blow had a Sprite commercial, but Hammer had Pepsi sponsor a monster arena tour. Run-D.M.C. went platinum, but Hammer moved Whitney Houston numbers. Beastie Boys conquered rock radio, Hammer conquered radio itself. People derided the way Hammer jacked entire chunks of Rick James and Prince, but Puffy would build an empire off of “Take hits from the ’80s/But do it sound so crazy?” Hammer had a Saturday morning cartoon and dolls like the Beatles or the New Kids on the Block. He wasn’t the first rapper to find success, but he was the first to show that rap’s success wasn’t going to be defined by the limited imaginations of program directors, music video channels, and record labels.
Hammer’s success occurred in the space between Run-D.M.C.’s 1986 and Dr. Dre’s 1993. Run-D.M.C., teaming with Aerosmith for the literal and figurative wall-smashing of “Walk This Way,” proved that rap could work hand in hand with pop music. When “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” hit No. 2, Dr. Dre proved that the most undiluted, uncompromising, unedited rap music was now pop music itself. As far as the music industry was concerned, everything in the six or so years in between was growing pains: What is this new sound that’s already successful beyond our control? And how do we sell it?
No document captures this moment better than Monsters of Rap, a two-disc, 35-track compendium of the once-omnipresent pop crossover sensations that brought hip-hop from the streets to the junior high school dance, including Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Young MC, Tone Loc, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, the Fat Boys, Technotronic, Snap!, C+C Music Factory and more. It was released in 1999 by Razor & Tie, nostalgia-miners who had success early in the decade with the ingratiating Those Fabulous ’70s compilations, and were presently riding high on the hair metal compendium Monsters of Rock. Shortly after the release of Monsters of Rap, Razor & Tie co-founders and producers Craig Balsam and Cliff Chenfeld would unleash the first volume of an ambitious new series named Kidz Bop.
Like its forebears, Monsters of Rap was crass, shameless, cheap-looking, somewhat incoherent and—at $26.99 plus $5.95 shipping and handling—not exactly inexpensive. It has the original version of Black Sheep’s “The Choice Is Yours,” not the iconic remix. Not available in stores, you bought it off the TV like a Shamwow. It sold more than 250,000 units but I could not tell you if I’d actually seen one before I bought a copy off Discogs for $6 to do this review. As compilations go, it’s not exactly comprehensive (a truly exhaustive overview of the ’90s pop-rap bubble would need Biz Markie, Marky Mark, Digital Underground, Kris Kross, and the asshole-era Beasties), but it’s most of the way there. It stands as the most complete compendium of the jiggiest era before the jiggy era.
By 1999, when Monsters of Rap first landed in mailboxes, hip-hop radio had already undergone several genre upheavals and was now fully dominated by JAY-Z’s Roc-A-Fella, Master P’s No Limit, and Birdman’s Cash Money. It caught a tracklist of pop and dance acts at the absolute nadir of coolness: Its artists were too late to make more hit records, and too early for their eventual redemption arcs on VH1 reality shows and I Love the ’90s touring packages. Even beloved names like A Tribe Called Quest and the Pharcyde were sagging in cachet since the world hadn’t caught up to the Dilla beats peppering their latest albums.
Yet in its own unlikely way, Monsters of Rap is as authoritative at capturing a moment as any compilation put out by Rhino or Numero Group. The rap music on here is the equivalent of late-’60s bubblegum rock, radio-ready unit shifters doing the running man on the line between “trite” and “brilliant.” They’re all here: Pop savants, hucksters, true-school legends, fly-by-nights, one-hit-wonders, novelties, new jack swingers, Spanglish spitters, rap-rock crossovers, R&B crossovers, alt-rock crossovers, Eurodance crossovers, hip-house crossovers, Miami bass crossovers, bohos, smooth operators, and more than one questionable Caucasian. The best songs (A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario,” J.J. Fad’s “Supersonic,” a tacked-on addition of Kurtis Blow’s 1980 hit “The Breaks,”) are basically as good as rap music gets. The worst (the cringetastic Fat Boys/Beach Boys crossover episode “Wipeout,” Snow’s reggatta de Canadien blanc “Informer,” Gerardo’s deeply annoying “Rico Suave”) are—at the very least—of some historic import
Love them or loathe them, these songs’ long tail is indisputable. Nicki Minaj turned Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” into the undeniable smash “Anaconda.” As recent as last August, she hit No. 1 with “Super Freaky Girl,” a song that flips the same Rick James song as “U Can’t Touch This.” Daddy Yankee scored a Top 40 hit remaking “Informer” as “Con Calma.” Eminem’s “Rap God” is a TikTok smash thanks to a motormouth tweak of J.J. Fad’s “Supersonic.” One of the most critically acclaimed songs of the last 20 years, M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” does a play on Wreckx-n-Effect’s “Rump Shaker.” And the Monsters of Rap lane for lightweight, fun, pan-demographic novelty-ish crossover raps still exists—Psy, Lizzo, Macklemore, Little Dicky, bbno$, Jack Harlow, Young Gravy, Lil Shordie Scott —except now they explode through viral video challenges. The ethereal wash of “cloud rap” is just a beach that P.M. Dawn tread first in “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss.” Sadboi R&B is just a puddle once crossed by Oran “Juice” Jones on “The Rain.” The reboot to Kid ’N Play’s House Party series was released last Friday.
One of the reasons pop-rap is so derided—both then and now—is because it reliably lays bare the music industry’s worst impulses and endemic biases. The memetic genius of label executives meant that the Fat Boys naturally followed up their successful rap rendition of “Wipeout” with a rap rendition of “The Twist” and a rap rendition of “Louie Louie.” The New Kids on the Block got a hip-hop makeover. Bart Simpson briefly had a rap career. There was an entire album by the animated cat that raps in the Paula Abdul video. The raps on Snap!’s “The Power” only exist because two white Germans wholesale jacked an a capella by Jersey rhyme titan Chill Rob G—then Arista made them re-record it with Turbo B doing Rob’s lines. Both Technotronic and C+C Music Factory were busted for replacing the actual vocalists on their songs with lip-syncing models for their music videos.
The runaway success of white pop-rapper Vanilla Ice has long made him the scapegoat for the music industry’s racist machinations. Yes, “Ice, Ice Baby” does appropriate a Black fraternity chant; yes, he was marketed as a watered-down Elvis-style heartthrob in sequins; yes, his flow can be borderline gibberish (“flow like a harpoon?”). However, “Ice Ice Baby” was not borne of some record label’s calculated Pat Boone scheme: Vanilla Ice came up as a battle rapper playing to Black crowds in Dallas and “Ice, Ice Baby” was a bona fide regional smash released on an independent label and boosted by rap radio.
At their best, the songs on Monsters of Rap were Trojan horses sneaking rap culture writ large into mainstream America. Heavy D (“Now That We Found Love”) would be rightfully remembered as one of the best rhymers of his day even if he hadn’t garnered the pop success that eluded heavyweights like Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap. No true-schooler would question the skills of Sir Mix-A-Lot, Young MC (“Bust a Move”), Positive K (“I Got A Man”), Kid ’N Play, Onyx (“Slam”), 3rd Bass (“Pop Goes the Weasel”), Yo-Yo (“You Can’t Play With My Yo-Yo”), or Black Sheep. While they’re all best known for the one explosive pop single here, they all have at least one stone-cold classic full-length worth seeking out. DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince are best remembered as a squeaky-clean crossover act for preteens, but anyone who bought their 1988 double album He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper off the strength of “Parents Just Don’t Understand” would be treated to pyrotechnic displays of raw hip-hop: Game-changing turntablism from the Philly pioneer that helped popularize the Transformer scratch, bravado displays of beatboxing from Ready Rock C, and an electric throwdown from Union Square that showcases hip-hop’s crowd-rocking live roots.
If Monsters of Rap could be issued or reissued with actual liner notes (instead of an ad for Razor & Tie’s The Rolling Stone Women in Rock Collection), the footnotes would speak volumes about rap’s future. PM Dawn—critically adored in their day and now one of the most underrated groups of a generation—were the first to prove that Black rap artists could skate past the Marky Marks and capture a Hot 100 No. 1. Wreckx-n-Effect’s “Rump Shaker” was the first writing gig for a young Pharrell Williams. A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario” broke a firebrand named Busta Rhymes. 3rd Bass’ MC Serch was the executive producer of a little album called Illmatic. Father MC’s “I’ll Do 4 U” was an early hit for A&R wunderkind Sean “Puffy” Combs and featured background vocals from Mary J. Blige. Prince Markie Dee of the Fat Boys would not only produce “I’ll Do 4 U,” but go on to produce multiple tracks on Blige’s pioneering 1992 R&B smash What’s the 411? And for serious enthusiasts of the butterfly effect: Where would Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Jimmy Iovine be if Interscope didn’t have immediate success with their first release, Gerardo?
Rap spent the 1990s embroiled in various conversations about whether it was better to remain true to the game or lift the whole genre into the opportunities, resources, and wealth provided by the pop universe. The argument is itself laid bare on Monsters of Rap, which sequences “Ice Ice Baby” right next to 3rd Bass’ savage Vanilla Ice diss “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Whether that choice is inspired or chaotic, it’s certainly appropriate to an era where—to paraphrase Dres of Black Sheep—you could get with this and you could get with that. | 2023-01-15T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2023-01-15T00:00:00.000-05:00 | null | Razor & Tie / Universal | January 15, 2023 | 7.5 | 1c874999-fc9a-409f-b9cd-8461ef57c5d9 | Christopher R. Weingarten | https://pitchfork.com/staff/christopher-r. weingarten/ | |
Ed Sheeran has bragged that he wrote seven of his new album’s songs in a combined two and a half hours. It’s easy to believe him. | Ed Sheeran has bragged that he wrote seven of his new album’s songs in a combined two and a half hours. It’s easy to believe him. | Ed Sheeran: - | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ed-sheeran-subtract/ | - (Subtract) | The media entrepreneur Jamal Edwards, Ed Sheeran’s friend and first industry champion, died unexpectedly last year at age 31. Around the same time, Sheeran’s wife, Cherry Seaborn, was diagnosed with a malignant tumor while six months pregnant with their second daughter. As recounted in a new four-part Disney+ docuseries, the child is healthy and Seaborn is cancer-free. But these traumatic events set the emotional tone of Sheeran’s sixth album, -, pronounced “subtract,” which responds to them much like its predecessor, 2021’s =, did to its themes of turning 30 and becoming a parent: with the usual beige palette, generic hooks, and vapid lyrics.
The songs on - are almost uniformly dour, often slow, occasionally drumless. Sheeran’s chief collaborator on the album is the National’s Aaron Dessner, who lends the sort of brooding gravitas that helped restore Taylor Swift to the good graces of Grammy voters. Sheeran’s trusty acoustic guitar is back, joined in a somber yet tasteful array by mopey piano, downcast strings, and a smattering of muted electronics. Now and then there’s a naturalistic scrape of fingers against guitar strings that might have been surprising from an artist of Sheeran’s commercial status before Folklore. But the order of the day is mostly polite and unobtrusive. The ghost of late-’00s indie rock will haunt the dentist’s office.
It’s not Sheeran’s first time singing about death. For the last album, he liked another songwriter’s line about “Visiting Hours in Heaven” so much that he got approval to use it for his own song, a tribute to the late Australian record executive Michael Gudinski. The new record never quite touches such greeting-card levels of sentiment, but that’s partly because its expressions of sadness and resilience are a confused jumble. On the chorus of strings-bedecked acoustic opener “Boat,” Sheeran sings dramatically, “They say that all scars heal, but I know maybe I won’t.” But nobody says that all scars heal—they’re scars.
Obviously Sheeran is not one of the streaming era’s most bankable stars because of his vivid way with metaphors. His four previous arithmetically titled albums updated light Jason Mraz folk-pop and po-faced James Blunt arena rock to keep pace with chart trends and sold 63 million copies worldwide. But his sloppy writing cuts against the earnest presentation on an album that is almost uniformly grave and plodding. It’s welcome to hear a figure of Sheeran’s stature speak out about depression, substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts, as on the heavy-handed “End of Youth.” But a song can have admirable intentions and still leave people rolling their eyes when, like someone misremembering Counting Crows at karaoke, Sheeran sings, “It’s been a long year and we’re not even halfway there.”
Being derivative shouldn’t be a federal case, but it’s still fair game for mockery in the court of public opinion. “Life Goes On” doesn’t earn its blatant ripoff of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” guitar intro with the clunky refrain “Easy come, hard go” (and Emmylou Harris sang those words first). The romantic ballad “Colourblind” fares slightly better—Sheeran brings more concrete detail to a tale of making art with his wife, comparing their love to shades of paint and singing about watching it dry—but the waltzing keys suggest someone has Rihanna’s “Love on the Brain” on theirs. Sheeran has bragged that he wrote seven of the album’s songs in a combined two and a half hours. It’s easy to believe him.
The album does perk up a couple of times, with mixed results. Max Martin co-write “Eyes Closed” armors Sheeran in the Swedish hitmaker’s adamantine hooks. Dusty in Memphis homage “Dusty” discovers a rare moment of joy in the familiar act of sharing a beloved record, and the subtle percussion by Big Thief’s James Krivchenia is a welcome touch. But both songs also speak to Sheeran’s dull familiarity: In court testimony recently, Sheeran explained that the Beatles’ “Let It Be” and Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” are similar enough that you could mash them up together in a live performance; you could sing either of those classics over “Eyes Closed” and “Dusty,” too.
Taken generously, what’s most likable about Sheeran and - is their childlike insistence that, despite all life’s hardships, love will prevail. The songs of grief are almost incoherent, but toward the end of the album, the sparkling “Sycamore” narrates the events of Cherry Seaborn’s cancer diagnosis with utmost clarity. This is not a painstaking documentary, but the worry and the love come across. “It’s scary putting out your sort of deepest, darkest thoughts to the world,” Sheeran says of the album near the start of the docuseries. “Life is unpredictable but life goes on, and you just take it one day at a time,” he says at the end. On the evidence of -, Sheeran’s deepest, darkest thoughts don’t make for great or even simply good songs, but he believes in his business-friendly platitudes with his whole heart. | 2023-05-10T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-05-10T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Atlantic | May 10, 2023 | 3.8 | 1c8fa41f-0bb7-4a03-8957-2108dd0ecc91 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | |
Bolstered again by the louche and ravaged voice of singer Greg Dulli, the latest from the indie rock icons is delightfully stuffed with romance and rancor. | Bolstered again by the louche and ravaged voice of singer Greg Dulli, the latest from the indie rock icons is delightfully stuffed with romance and rancor. | The Afghan Whigs: In Spades | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23162-in-spades/ | In Spades | Back in the 1990s, the Afghan Whigs were way ahead of the curve on what would become two of the most dominant tropes in 21st-century rock’n’roll: an open embrace of R&B on one hand, and widescreen Springsteen-sized epics on the other. And yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find a band today that actually sounds like the Afghan Whigs. Because no band has a frontman quite like Greg Dulli, who possesses such a distinctively raw rasp of a voice and such a particular lyrical POV, the thought of trying to emulate him is probably why artists don’t cover hip-hop songs more often—it feels less like an act of musical homage than intellectual property theft.
And so, even though the Afghan Whigs’ second post-reunion album after 2014’s Do to the Beast bolsters their current six-piece lineup with a small army of string and horn players, the most resounding instrument we hear throughout emanates from Dulli’s ravaged throat. As ever, Dulli spends the majority of In Spades teetering on that shaky precipice where romance turns to rancor, and pillow talk leads to restraining orders. But like a master genre filmmaker, he’s always got a couple of new tricks up his sleeves to keep us on our toes. “Birdland” honors his tradition for slow-burning, cinematic scene-setters, but rather than gently immerse us into his nocturnal netherworld, we’re pushed right in by staccato shocks of harmonium and operatic vocal gasps, like strobe-lit flickers of an image that take you a few moments to process into a fluid moving picture. “We’re coming alive in the cold,” Dulli declares, like a beast reawakened and ready to do damage once again.
Like its 2014 predecessor, In Spades is closer in scope and spirit to Dulli’s other group, the Twilight Singers, than to the Afghan Whigs’ ’90s-era output—which is to be expected given that this reformed line-up is essentially the Twilight Singers with original Whigs bassist John Curley. The branding is pretty much immaterial at this point; what matters really is that Dulli can still pull off his louche lover-man act with conviction—and surprising poignancy. “Copernicus” comes on like cock-rock with an STD, its ugly fuzz riff and pounding backbeat goading its predatory protagonist into action, but then suddenly at the two-minute mark, the song blossoms into a wistful lament for the one who got away. Taking a different route to a similarly fraught destination, “Toy Automatic” is a survey of a shipwrecked relationship that makes you feel like you’re actually standing alongside Dulli on some wind-battered shoreline.
In Spades clocks in at just 10 songs in 36 minutes, but feels as expansive and substantial as a double-album statement. And that’s thanks in large part to coolly paced, multi-sectional songs like “Arabian Heights” and “Light As a Feather,” where Dulli masterfully ratchets up the tension before unleashing his fevered howl at just the right moment (while reminding us that the Whigs are the rare rock band that can pull liberally from ’70s Blaxploitation funk without sounding like they’re making a jokey porno soundtrack). The album’s dramatic arc is completed by two late-game pleas for redemption—though the melodramatic, string-swept closer “Into the Floor” feels like overcompensating in the wake of the devastating piano confessional “I Got Lost,” Dulli’s best ballad since Black Love’s “Faded.” This is a familiar Dulli mind trick: play the bastard for a whole record, and then elicit our sympathies for being such a hopeless fuck-up. Vicious cycles like these are welcome so long as the records turn out as good as this. | 2017-05-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sub Pop | May 5, 2017 | 7.6 | 1c9323b9-c8ff-4560-b3dd-a3e6f35039cc | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
Tim Rutili has spent a quarter century cryptically subverting folk-rock convention. But in these songs—some of his warmest and most welcoming yet—he tells you just how he feels. | Tim Rutili has spent a quarter century cryptically subverting folk-rock convention. But in these songs—some of his warmest and most welcoming yet—he tells you just how he feels. | Califone: Villagers | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/califone-villagers/ | Villagers | Each Califone album has been a madcap second-hand store, a trove of treasures tucked away in some overlooked corner of a busy city. For a quarter century, Tim Rutili’s songs have lined their shelves like cryptic bits of bric-a-brac, with uncanny and sometimes unsettling familiarity. Folk tunes damaged by tape hiss and microtonal bleats, torch songs scarred by wary bon mots and circuit-fried drum machines, power-pop melodies with the plug pulled: Across seven albums, Califone have tempted listeners to pick up these almost ordinary oddities and figure out not only how and why they work but what unites them.
At first glance, villagers may appear uncharacteristically modest, its nine compact tracks too slim for an act that has stuffed some discs with 14 songs and others with 15-minute songs. And there is a certain easiness to much of this material, like the gentle hand-drum drift of lovelorn closer “sweetly” or the horns-and-harmonies peaks of the R&B waltz “comedy.” The curdled noise and vertiginous rhythms have receded, just enough to let a little light peek through the shop’s shaded windows. But at this ostensibly late date, Rutili and a returning cast of longtime Califone collaborators have tapped a newfound efficiency within their shared love of the strange, channeling it into some of the band’s most fetching songs ever. villagers radiates openness and accessibility, maybe more than any other Califone album. But that’s not to say that things don’t get strange.
The title track is telling. In the past, Califone would have ripped open the frame of this angular acoustic blues, filling the space around Rutili’s comfortably worn voice with corroded electronics or strings swiped from the Dream House. But Rutili saunters along undisturbed here, the ringing tones of his open tuning buttressed by Aaron Stern’s supple bass and Rachel Blumberg’s steady shakers. There is a discernible structure, a hummable hook, and even a slide-guitar solo, with Rutili guiding his quartet like some stock folk-rock troubadour.
But listen for the wobbly keyboard line lurking beneath the surface, its warped notes almost mocking the singer as he reflects on youthful ambition, lost now like “a Roxy Music cassette dying in the dashboard sun.” When such idiosyncratic textures appear on villagers, Califone are careful to put them to narrative use, letting them illustrate some central tension. They count in “ox-eye” like a Sunday afternoon shuffle, Rutili practically crooning over reassuring piano and a guitar riff Phil Spector might have favored. But that easy feeling cannot hold for this survey of our darkest inclinations. By song’s end, the nice bits have tensed into a fist, clenching around Rutili’s falsetto until it disappears.
Opener “the habsburg jaw” moves in reverse, starting with a surrealistic loop that stretches the rhythm over a modem-like whirr. But then it gallops ahead, a jangling little number that might have worked on the side stage of some mid-’90s alt-rock shindig. Rutili uses the distinctive oblong facial structure of a ruling European family (a consequence of inbreeding, no less) as a frustrated indictment of dynastic dynamics, and a lament for the ways the mighty but ignorant escape the consequences of their idiocy. After three minutes, one of the band’s catchiest songs ever shifts into a no-wave dance melee, saxes and synths ping-ponging against big bass thuds. It’s an escape hatch from a fight with the impossibly powerful, a private party with no tickets for the rich.
Such indignation is an unexpected delight of villagers. Rutili has often been a coded lyricist, his impressionistic poetry inviting you to tease out meanings different than his own. But here he pulls up his chair to tell you—in broken fragments, film references, and bits of alliterative internal rhyme—how he feels about money, depression, love, nihilism, nostalgia, and posers. He doesn’t sound cynical or jaded, simply frank in a way he’s rarely been. His words reinforce the band’s burgeoning lucidity. “Burn the story,” Rutili sings toward the end of “skunkish,” a gorgeous tune about being on the receiving end of someone else’s disappointment. “Bury the ashes.” It plays like a personal permission slip, a pass between Califone’s past and present.
At this point in Califone’s career, it would be understandable if Rutili turned inward to turn out increasingly abstruse albums, offering inroads only to the long initiated. He has, after all, been at indie rock’s almost-famous precipice for 30 years now. As Red Red Meat, he signed with Sub Pop in the mid-’90s, then started a short-lived band with Modest Mouse. For what are arguably their weakest albums, Califone even linked with the star-making Dead Oceans. An indie-rock lifer at 56, Rutili almost certainly knows the easy on-ramps to success are fading from the rearview.
And that is, in large part, what makes villagers so surprising and gratifying. Despite the vexations Rutili espouses here, these are some of the warmest and most welcoming songs in Califone’s lengthy catalog, postcards meant to lure new visitors to an old landmark. It’s as if Rutili has invited you into his well-kept second-hand shop yet again—only this time, he’s not asking you to clean the dust off and figure out why something is worth keeping. At long last, he’s happy to tell you exactly what it means. | 2023-05-31T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-05-31T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Jealous Butcher | May 31, 2023 | 8.1 | 1c951629-cdc5-49a8-8df2-58b8471f5788 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
The legendary LP from the Swedish hardcore band is given a deluxe reissue with a live album, video, and a documentary. | The legendary LP from the Swedish hardcore band is given a deluxe reissue with a live album, video, and a documentary. | Refused: The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombination in 12 Bursts [Deluxe Edition] | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14330-the-shape-of-punk-to-come-a-chimerical-bombation-in-12-bursts-deluxe-edition/ | The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombination in 12 Bursts [Deluxe Edition] | No band has ever mastered the ominous cymbal tap quite like Refused. On the Swedish hardcore band's final album and masterpiece, David Sandström's shivering tings signal a sort of warning. They usually come right as the band launches from tense, coiled quiet into all-out assault-- or, if they're already in assault mode, from one head-spinning riff to another. Those transitions come up a lot on 1998's The Shape of Punk to Come, and they keep you on your toes. Throughout the record, the band found some platonic ideal of tension-and-release, mutating constantly and pulling in all sorts of vaguely silly genre-leap ideas (chintzy techno beats! jazz breaks!) without altering the fundamental heaviness that they were so great at. It's the sound of a world-class hardcore band deciding that they're done with hardcore, that they want to push their music in all sorts of unexpected directions, and then just ending up with an amazing hardcore album at the end.
The Shape of Punk to Come has always been an album with a certain mystique, from the Ornette Coleman-referencing title (Coleman tweaked the title of a book by H.G. Wells for his LP The Shape of Jazz to Come) to the clouds-gathering whisper of a closing track, "The Apollo Programme Was a Hoax". It's far and away the best thing Refused ever did, and it's also the album that broke Refused up; they could reportedly barely stand each other by the time they got done with the thing. Besides the world-exploding album, Epitaph's new reissue includes all kinds of extras: A furious live album, a documentary, the incredibly pretentious original liner notes, music videos, and footage of the band playing every song on the album in concert. It's a lot to get through, and it's almost all rewarding; you learn, through crystalline recordings and grainy video, that Refused were the type of live band that would slice the top of your skull off.
But what the whole package doesn't offer [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| is a sense of context. For all the bluster of the title, it's not like the album invented angular guitar spazz-outs or prevented punk rock, as a whole, from falling into MySpace-emo hell a few years later (though it is telling that Paramore-- arguably the best of the MySpace emo wave, for whatever that's worth-- liberally quoted Refused's "Liberation Frequency" on their first album). Refused Are Fuckin Dead, the accompanying documentary, is supposed to explain why the band broke up in the wake of this clarion-call album, but it mostly just consists of arted-up landscape shots and ex-band members speaking as vaguely as possible about how much pressure they put on themselves. (Pet peeve: No chyrons to identify who's talking. Come on.) We don't learn what these guys did.
So here's what I think they did: They synthesized some of the greatest ideas to come out of American hardcore in the 1990s, and gave them just enough production sheen so that they sounded huge. Nation of Ulysses and Born Against were two of Refused's favorite reference points, and you can hear Nation of Ulysses' sloganeering, off-kilter skronk and Born Against's grainy, ferocious all-angles roar all over the album. But neither of those bands ever produced a document as viscerally gripping as The Shape of Punk to Come. That's partly because those bands never cared much for fidelity, whereas you can feel every one of Refused's snare-rolls in your chest. But it's also because Refused were great songwriters.
It's a stretch to link what this band did to Sweden's tradition for popcraft; after all, they weren't working with verse-chorus-verse structures or striving for melodic clarity. But it's pretty amazing how intuitively the members of Refused knew how to put together a hardcore song. Every track holds back at the right moments, explodes at the right moments. "New Noise", now and forever their defining statement, has an intro that lasts more than a minute-- insinuating, building, teasing, drawing back, and then suddenly shooting off out of nowhere. And when it kicks in, singer Dennis Lyxzén screaming, "Can I scream?!" as the guitars blast in behind him, is just a singularly thrilling moment of music. The guitar-crunch frenzy and Ric Flair whoops that follow are monstrous, but it's that intro that sticks with me.
And the album has plenty more moments that annihilate. Lyxzén's yelping, pleading, wailing vocal on "Liberation Frequency". The shockingly pretty quiet bits on "Protest Song '68", right before the fragment-bomb drums rip through. The epic, mournful gypsy violin on "Tannäuser/Derivè". The album absolutely does not sound like the work of a group of dudes who aren't speaking to each other. Rhythmically, all members are locked-in, feeding off each other's energy and authority. (Even without those cymbal taps, you could make a pretty good case for Sandström as the best punk drummer ever; he's on fire throughout.) They also sound like they trust each other enough to allow in potentially dubious ideas, like the cheesy Casio-techno breaks that occasionally pop up. And even those moments work in the context of the album; they're the parts where you get to compose yourself in anticipation of the next onslaught.
Those techno bits underline how over the top The Shape of Punk to Come can get, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. The first lyric on the thing is this awkward-as-fuck line: "I got a bone to pick with capitalism, and a few to break." The title of the song "Deadly Rhythm", it turns out, refers to "the production line." But as hammy as those gestures might be, they also reinforce the album's central theme: Complacency is a creeping, crippling disease, one that every structure of society seeks to encourage, and it's something you have to flail against constantly, every day. As simplistic as that concept might be, it's also a potent one, and it led these guys, screaming in their second language, to make an album as brain-obliterating as this one-- even if it spun them to pieces in the process. | 2010-06-09T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2010-06-09T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Epitaph | June 9, 2010 | 9.4 | 1c96d1e7-4b10-47de-bf1a-2e306e3ef35a | Tom Breihan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tom-breihan/ | null |
Captain of None is the sixth solo album from French multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott. She's still working with her Renaissance-era instrument treble viola da gamba, but is now using it in particularly inventive ways. | Captain of None is the sixth solo album from French multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott. She's still working with her Renaissance-era instrument treble viola da gamba, but is now using it in particularly inventive ways. | Colleen: Captain of None | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20400-captain-of-none/ | Captain of None | Captain of None, the sixth solo album from Colleen (née French multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott), is the product of an unusual series of creative decisions. Her primary instrument is once again a Renaissance-era treble viola da gamba, and she does all she can to extend its conventional range of sounds, drawing direct inspiration from the studio techniques of dub masters Lee "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby for English-language songs featuring her own vocals.
The gut-string viola da gamba first appeared in the mid-15th century and it's seldom heard these days outside of early music ensembles. This general lack of use and natural versatility make the instrument difficult for modern ears to easily identify. When bowed, it can sound like a cello or a modern viola; when plucked or strummed, it can sound like a harp or lute; and when tapped or thumped, it can even sound something like a hammered dulcimer. Schott has made use of all of these techniques at various points, but on earlier albums such as 2007’s Les Ondes Silencieuses, her playing style was more traditional and her compositions more closely centered on post-Baroque chamber music.
On Captain of None, however, Schott casts tradition aside and frequently uses her viola da gamba as a percussion instrument to create impressively rich, dub-inflected basslines. In live performance and on past records, she has used various samples, loops, and delay pedals to layer her voice and instruments back upon themselves. Here, on such tracks as "This Hammer Breaks" she pushes these techniques to a new level of invention, with the strings of her viola refracted beyond all recognition.
In fact, there are times on Captain of None where the album’s architecture is so compelling it's easy to miss the resonance of the songs themselves. But pieces like "I’m Kin" and the title track positively vibrate with melodic ideas, their lyrics filled with oblique little koans ("I’m kin to two stones making fire, I’m kin to melted ice giving water").
The album’s dub influence is felt most strongly on the bass-heavy "Eclipse" or "Salina Stars", which is laced with an Augustus Pablo-style melodica. It’s tricky to make a true dub album without the benefit of an actual rhythm section, but Schott's hands-on production effects of delay and echo slip in and out through these songs like apparitions, projecting a sort of dub silhouette across the armature of the album. It is an impressive feat of reverse engineering, and the way Colleen uses classical acoustic instruments to reconfigure modern idioms recalls Arthur Russell’s cello-driven World of Echo or Hauschka’s house music variations on Salon des Amateurs. Somehow, Schott is able to make these disparate elements feel organic and effortless. | 2015-04-07T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2015-04-07T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Electronic | Thrill Jockey | April 7, 2015 | 7.6 | 1c97161f-9645-4215-84ad-54c792e79272 | Matthew Murphy | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-murphy/ | null |
The Japanese avant-garde pop band strove to create a “sacred ambiance” on their second album, fusing unconventional arrangements with bouncing volleyballs and an eyes-wide air of wonder. | The Japanese avant-garde pop band strove to create a “sacred ambiance” on their second album, fusing unconventional arrangements with bouncing volleyballs and an eyes-wide air of wonder. | After Dinner: Paradise of Replica | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/after-dinner-paradise-of-replica/ | Paradise of Replica | Born from Kansai’s new-wave scene, After Dinner were an ambitious 1980s art-pop group spearheaded by the singer, composer, and sound artist known simply as Haco. She’d been inspired by a slew of different music growing up: the orchestral arrangements in the children’s book and LP series Doremifa Book, film soundtracks and incidental noises emanating from her father’s television set, and various rock bands from the Doors to Young Marble Giants to Art Bears. She attended an Osakan media-art school to learn musique concrète techniques, which would suffuse the colorful tracks on After Dinner’s 1984 debut LP, Glass Tube; there, she married her avant-garde practices with her affection for pop and rock, with tape loops and found-sound collages sitting alongside prim cabaret songs. In the context of 1980s Japan, they had the theatricality of Jun Togawa and the zany eccentricity of Haniwa-chan or Wha-ha-ha, but the experience was more like being trapped in a haunted toy box.
For their second album, 1989’s Paradise of Replica, After Dinner moved toward pop, but Haco’s avant-garde practices still permeate every song. The title track, for example, opens the album with triumphant synths that are layered with whimsical tape manipulations. The phrase “Paradise of Replica,” which Haco majestically recites throughout the song, came from imagining a bird’s-eye view of an island where everything below was fake. The synths’ approximation of resounding horns is apt, but the song still feels like witnessing something extraordinary—the hammered dulcimer and jaw harp that close out the song are spellbinding in a cozy, childlike way.
The title was also an ironic joke regarding Japan’s proclivity for, in Haco’s words, “cop[ying] from other countries” and blending those influences in a distinctly Japanese fashion. That practice holds true across the record, which pulls from a deep well of influences including John Cage’s prepared piano works, Strawberry Switchblade’s buoyant synth pop, and the hauntingly beautiful Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. The result isn’t a direct transposition of those inspirations, but they’re there in the details. Haco’s admiration for Captain Beefheart is audible in the frenetic energy and engine-like guitar revving on both “Kitchen Life” pieces. Her fondness for Nino Rota’s soundtracks is obvious throughout centerpiece “Ironclad Mermaid,” whose sweeping strings carry the same dramatic elegance of something from Federico Fellini’s Amarcord.
For all the moving parts that make up any given After Dinner track, their songwriting always feels meticulously organized and purposeful. “Dancing Twins” is only a minute long, but its use of a bouncing volleyball as an instrument is major: It lends its eyes-as-shooting-stars metaphor a jovial schoolyard air, suggesting a child swept in fantastical daydreams. “A Walnut” is just as magical, as Haco’s operatic vocals and gastronomic lyrics soar above an array of woodwinds, percussion, and flickering synths. It recalls what After Dinner told NME in 1987: “We’re trying to create a sacred ambiance.” Such sacrosanct atmospheres, however, always feel everyday and attainable. Even “KA-NO-PU-SU-NO-HA-KO”—an eight-minute epic which finds Haco tracing her thoughts after seeing an Egyptian mummy at a museum—accomplishes the feat with supple percussion and patient drones. It’s rare that art-pop matches its extravagance with such alluring modesty. In doing so, Paradise of Replica feels like encountering cinematic spectacles in miniature. | 2022-09-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-09-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Aguirre | September 30, 2022 | 8 | 1c972e9d-5f9d-438d-a163-c31fff701ec2 | Joshua Minsoo Kim | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joshua-minsoo kim/ | |
The Smiths' Andy Rourke and Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan team up with producer and singer Olé Korestsky for an album that doesn't lean too much on everyone's bona fides. | The Smiths' Andy Rourke and Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan team up with producer and singer Olé Korestsky for an album that doesn't lean too much on everyone's bona fides. | D.A.R.K.: Science Agrees | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21989-science-agrees/ | Science Agrees | At first glance it might seem unfair that the Smiths' bassist Andy Rourke’s initials are at the center of D.A.R.K.: Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries is only alluded to with the D from her first name and the K represents the last name of Olé Koretsky, a DJ, producer, and singer who had been working with Rourke under the moniker of JETLAG since 2009. Thankfully, D.A.R.K. does not present themselves as a supergroup and the songs on their debut hardly rest on their members’ laurels. But upon close listens to Science Agrees, it will start to make sense why Rourke gets both of his initials right in the middle of the band name.
Although O’Riordan and Koretsky handle all of the vocals, Rourke’s bass is right in the center of the mix throughout the whole album, presented as a lead instrument. It exposes his playing to extra scrutiny and it sometimes sounds dated. It’s not like he’s doing that same old three-note walk up from “Frankly, Mr. Shankly.” It’s more like he’s turning up a little too loud while trying out a new rig at Guitar Center, and proving to anybody within earshot that he knows how to slap. He also digs up a few unlikely influences, and even sounds on occasion like the only other person who could arguably be Manchester’s most famous bassist. But for the most part, Rourke’s playing is tasteful and original, and it’s about time he wasn’t completely overshadowed by Johnny Marr.
Placing this much emphasis on the bass makes the rest of the tracks on the mixer far more subtle. O’Riordan’s voice is underutilized, but she’s not here to belt out “Zombie.” Cranberries fans might be the only group of people who are already fans of Koretsky, whose voice blends with O’Riordan’s in oddly sweet ways. The pair singing together means that a lot of the songs often take on multiple points of view. It’s sometimes like “Don’t You Want Me” if the male character was a morbid creep, like in “Loosen the Noose,” where O’Riordan sings “somebody’s walking close behind me,” and Koretsky later sings, “I found true love six feet below.” “Gunfight” includes both of them singing together, “I remember your eyes, hip to the fact that we’re all gonna die.” They also do a lot of whispered vocals and forlorn deep breathing into the mics.
The album flows well, effortlessly segueing from Achtung Baby-like rock to mechanical new wave like Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys. O’Riordan and Koretsky sing simple lyrics, often repeating the same phrase over and over, allowing alternate meanings to sink in. Another subtle tactic they employ is to differentiate parts of songs by singing different vocal lines over the same chord progressions, finding enchanting new melodies out of a familiar sound. It's the greatest thing that can happen for the three storied musicians in D.A.R.K. | 2016-09-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Cooking Vinyl | September 3, 2016 | 6.2 | 1c9fc99f-d9c2-4a75-bc02-d6751106b01b | Pat Healy | https://pitchfork.com/staff/pat-healy/ | null |
A comeback of sorts, the only actual reunion taking place here is between Billy Corgan and his most famous brand; drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was already involved in both of Corgan's post-Pumpkins projects, and James Iha/D'Arcy preferred to stay in hiding. | A comeback of sorts, the only actual reunion taking place here is between Billy Corgan and his most famous brand; drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was already involved in both of Corgan's post-Pumpkins projects, and James Iha/D'Arcy preferred to stay in hiding. | The Smashing Pumpkins: Zeitgeist | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10409-zeitgeist/ | Zeitgeist | There are many reasons-- cynical, sad, or artistic-- for Billy Corgan to pull the Smashing Pumpkins moniker out of the crawlspace. Corgan has hardly been in hiding since the Pumpkins were dissolved in 2000, making music first with short-lived supergroup Zwan and then under his own name for 2005's TheFutureEmbrace. That latter record's commercial fizzle was abetted by Corgan's newspaper-ad announcement-- on the very day of TheFutureEmbrace's release-- that he was getting the band back together. Of course, the only actual reunion taking place was between Corgan and his most famous brand; drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was already involved in both post-Pumpkins projects, and James Iha/D'Arcy preferred to stay in hiding.
Thus, one couldn't help but feel that the Smashing Pumpkins revival wasn't little more than a calculated move for cash or attention or both. And, unsurprisingly, the strategy worked-- nobody could claim that Zeitgeist or the corresponding tour would have attracted nearly as much attention if the words "Billy Corgan" were at the top of that awful cover art instead of Smashing Pumpkins. But, it's possible, just maybe, that Corgan had artistic reasons for the switchback, genuinely wanting to reclaim the muse that led to his most artistically and commercially successful work, and add to the legacy of his most famous project. Hey, stranger things have happened.
Zeitgeist's replication of that old SP sound is impressive, despite the lack of half the original lineup...it's not like Corgan ever let D'Arcy or Iha do anything in the studio anyway. For a band that was stadium-size right out of the box, it's a return to the band's trademark overdriven and overblown M.O., inflated even further by a few tracks with legendary Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker. Corgan's guitar tone remains utterly unique, folding umpteen overdubs into the razor-sharp solos and grinding chords that are recognizable as his from the first note of "Doomsday Clock". Chamberlin, meanwhile, bashes with the same enthusiasm of his much younger self, helped by production that isn't afraid to push the drums front and center.
I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that it sounds big when compared to the relatively thin, wispy sound of the modern alt-rock competition. Songs like "Doomsday Clock" and "Tarantula" wave the flag of stoner rock like Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult without embarrassment, and could likely pass for Queens of the Stone Age if it wasn't for that characteristic Corgan whine. On the other hand, this hard-rock approach only used to be one aspect of the Pumpkins persona, call it the "Zero" dimension. By focusing only on this portion of the group's character, Corgan misremembers the versatility that launched his band to the A-list: not just guitar-god bludgeoning, but epic psychedelia like "Rhinoceros", fragile pop like "Today," wide-screen symphonics like "Tonight, Tonight", and synth-loop ballads like "1979".
Most of those flavors are suspiciously absent on Zeitgeist, making it far more aggressive than any other record in their catalog-- perhaps a preemptive response to charges of getting old and mellow. Unfortunately, that leaves the record rather homogenous; while Corgan still can pull out a melodic surprise ("7 Shades of Black") or conjure up a dense effects-pedal atmosphere ("That's the Way (My Love Is)"), he lacks for variety. When he tries, the album-closing duo (depending on what chain store you bought the album from, I suppose) of "For God and Country" and "Pomp and Circumstances" are bland reminders of the synthy midtempo blandness that once tripped up Adore. When he stretches, as on the centerpiece "United States," the result has none of the cosmic magnitude of previous 10+-minute Pumpkins epics, instead opting for a turgid, chugging pace and thimble-deep political commentary.
That substitution of political angst for the personal kind is the one nod to maturity on Zeitgeist, though some of the get-happy sloganeering of Zwan persists as well on tracks like "(Come On) Let's Go!" Yet Corgan's serrated voice hasn't dulled with age, and unlike the refreshing heaviness of the band's restored sound, it sounds more and more ridiculous, well along the almost-inevitable march of all iconic rock voices towards self-parody. The disconnect between tortured nasality and lyrical content is never more awkward than on lazy tracks like "Bring the Light", where Corgan is content to merely whine the title with dozens of different inflections, or the chorus of Billys that backs up "Starz".
Of course, nobody wants progression from the Smashing Pumpkins, that's the whole point of manufacturing this reunion in the first place. In that sense, Zeitgeist is interesting as a demonstration that the artist himself is usually not be the best person to play historian for his own career. Given the chance to revisit the good old days, Corgan has unearthed only a portion of the Pumpkins character-- and while that portion is meticulously revived, all the parts left behind remain sorely missed. In the end, it's the one-dimensional approach, not the lack of half the original members, that leaves Smashing Pumpkins Mk. II a cardboard cutout of the real thing-- not the empty ATM-reunion it could have been, but still a ghost of the old band. | 2007-07-09T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2007-07-09T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Reprise | July 9, 2007 | 4.9 | 1ca19e4a-866a-497d-86de-f9ea875982ea | Rob Mitchum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rob- mitchum/ | null |
Timbaland's new mixtape King Stays King is a middling effort from the former pioneer of R&B, rap, and pop. Most disappointingly, it shows him as a beatmaker rather than a full producer. | Timbaland's new mixtape King Stays King is a middling effort from the former pioneer of R&B, rap, and pop. Most disappointingly, it shows him as a beatmaker rather than a full producer. | Timbaland: King Stays King | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21403-king-stays-king/ | King Stays King | At one point, it would have seemed unfathomable that Timbaland would be making a play for relevancy. In the latter part of the '90s, his full-length contributions for Aaliyah, Missy Elliott, and Ginuwine redirected R&B from its increasing reliance on relaxed grooves and hip-hop drums to slick, broken, hi-hat happy rhythms that were playful, sophisticated, and not-infrequently referred to as "futuristic." His work in R&B established him as visionary, and the echoes of his sound are all over today's musical landscape—from Noah "40" Shebib's atmospheric moodiness to the worldwide underground of Soulection's beat scene. Timbaland took many cues from UK electronic soul styles, but he also gave them back: it's impossible to listen to dubstep without hearing Ginuwine's "Pony" in its DNA; it's hard to imagine the UK grime scene without Missy's Da Real World. Timbaland may not have invented any of these styles but he seemed to predict and inspire them all, down to EDM.
If these were his only contributions to music, his new mixtape—King Stays King, released this past Christmas—would make sense. It would be a rehashing of glory days by a once uber-influential musician. But Timbaland's prowess wasn't limited to R&B—he also released major and minor hits for rappers of note and footnote, and ushered pop artists into adulthood while blurring the lines between mature swing and youthful bounce, mainstream and urban. In terms of reach, his only peer of the past 20 years would be maybe Dr. Dre, or Tim's hometown colleague, Pharrell Williams.
But in the past few years, as Dre repolished his laurels and Pharrell refined himself into an inescapable pop force, Timbaland languished as a struggling legacy act, releasing respectably selling, but forgettable solo efforts and attempting to create buzz with his Timbaland Thursdays series. None of this is what anyone saw for Timbaland—at best he would still be a major cultural power; at worst a reclusive genius releasing small, but impactful records that ousted music forward. At the least, he should have been Swizz Beatz—caught up with ventures beyond music but returning occasionally to the table, if only to prove that he still has it. But scoring lowbrow fare like "Empire" and releasing a middling compilation like King Stays King, was not in the trajectory.
There's precious little that's adventurous about this new effort. Blaze Serving's "Where You At!" is darkly bubbling, but leans too heavily on Future's "Fuck Up Some Commas," coming off like a local DJ's remix he plays during his set to take a bathroom break. The album's best number comes from Rico Richie, a rapper perhaps best known for getting arrested when the authorities raided Young Thug's studio. On "Drug Dealer" Timbaland seems to be aping the Neptunes, alternating between a moderately ominous swing and cavernous drums (an interesting turn, considering Tim's brain-melting work on Pusha T's recent Darkest Before Dawn) but Rico, like many of the rappers here, comes through with mostly generic baller boasts tinged with just a hint of creativity: "I flew her out to L.A. for the summer/ And she said she love me, even though a nigga used to hit her cousin/ My niggas say I'm trippin', I'm like, 'Fuck it, I don't need a rubber.'" Even the established stars fail to register above serviceable here. Who wouldn't want to hear the erratic madness of Migos, 2 Chainz' goofy eccentricities, and Young Thug's swallowing and taffy-like yelping on a Timbaland beat? It may be a case of elevated expectations, but all their songs sound relatively straightforward—the raps feeling phoned in, the beats playing catch-up.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment here is that Timbaland comes off as beatmaker instead of a producer. In an era where producers like Mike WiLL Made-It and Metro Boomin cater their sounds around their artists, adding subtle fluctuations, transitions, and progressions to their music (things Timbaland once did so well), most of the tracks here plod straight ahead. The R&B numbers here don't sound like Timbaland; they sound like the modern day sub-Timbaland impressions that get pushed on your Soundcloud playlist via algorithm. It's all functional, but there isn't a single standout performance here.
It can be said that Timbaland hasn't been able to create stars—most of his hits have come courtesy of artists with strong songwriting ability and intrinsic inventiveness. Aside from Missy, Timbaland's most notable collaboration on this front was with Aaliyah—together the two sculptured R&B in their own image. Aaliyah appears here posthumously on "Shakin" and she's in classic form. As always, her delivery dances with a light grace, but the song sounds more like a redundant album cut than a lost gem. While it's great to hear some new classic Aaliyah, hearing not-quite classic Timbaland in 2016 only makes him seem dated. | 2016-01-15T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2016-01-15T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rap | self-released | January 15, 2016 | 5.7 | 1ca3b00c-7788-4c5a-95d4-3d2a67321fb0 | kris ex | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kris-ex/ | null |
The Jamaican vocalists of Sun Araw and M. Geddes Gengras’ Duppy Gun project team with producers from Bristol label Bokeh Versions on a dub mixtape that tests the limits of the genre. | The Jamaican vocalists of Sun Araw and M. Geddes Gengras’ Duppy Gun project team with producers from Bristol label Bokeh Versions on a dub mixtape that tests the limits of the genre. | Duppy Gun: Miro Tape | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/duppy-gun-miro-tape/ | Miro Tape | Cameron Stallones and M. Geddes Gengras conceived the Duppy Gun Productions label following a formative trip to Jamaica. After recording with reggae legends the Congos for the 2012 LP Icon Give Thank, the Los Angeles-based musicians built relationships with a new guard of Jamaican vocalists, including I Jahbar, Early One, and Sikka Rymes. Duppy Gun matches those voices with experimentally minded producers, usually from Stallones’ (aka Sun Araw) and Gengras’ extended circle in the States. The collaboration has grown more rooted over time, with I Jahbar helming the label’s new studio in Jamaica.
For Duppy Gun’s latest release, the vocalists joined forces with dub innovators like Jay Glass Dubs, Abu Ama, and the British Columbia collective Seekersinternational, in pairings facilitated by another like-minded but physically distant label, Bristol’s Bokeh Versions. The result is Miro Tape, two 25-minute sides that edit together 23 tracks (most of them previously unreleased) in the style of a mixtape. It’s a format that suits the project well, offering listeners a concise introduction to the cross-pollinating international network of musicians whose work is often categorized as leftfield dub and dancehall. Submerged in contiguous waters, these diverse compositions achieve a cacophonous flow, with individual authorship—particularly where riddims are concerned—taking a backseat to collaboration.
Duppy Gun has cultivated a reputation for production so outré, it verges on extraterrestrial, and Miro is no exception. The tape begins at a sprint, with the rapid-fire dancehall of “Love Di People,” featuring Sikka Rymes, and “Mad,” with vocals by I Jahbar and Early One. Instrumentals by D/P/I and Butchy Fuego, respectively, match the singers’ pace, peeling out in a barrage of bleating sirens and start-and-stop bass textures. As Miro eases into dubbier territory, the producers’ maximalist approaches to layering converge, to satisfying effect. But an exhilarating sense of unsteadiness continues to reign, both in the murky plateaus that mark transitions between tracks and, sometimes, within the tracks themselves: “Beeki Boy,” for example, which teams I Jahbar with producers Big Flyte & Velkro, sets an odd, stuttering pace beneath a bright, guitar-like riff. The prominence of the vocals fluctuates, giving a dynamic, liquid shape to the sound. Details like these confirm that Duppy Gun tracks are crafted to be heard through headphones as well as sound systems.
Some of Miro is resolutely—and even aggressively—weird; the collaborators often seem less interested in pushing dub forward than in stretching the genre so far that it approaches a different form entirely. But a few tracks, particularly on the more relaxed B-side, glow with reverence for the history they engage: As Ras G and Lopo’s “Whereabouts” flows into I Jahbar and Big Flyte & Velkro’s “Turn Up,” the latter song weighs down its predecessor’s errant laser pulses with a syrupy, almost nostalgic melody. Miro Tape is thrilling in moments like this, when the past and the future smudge together, immersing the listener in sounds defined only by their boundless pliability. | 2018-05-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-05-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Bokeh Versions / Duppy Gun | May 2, 2018 | 7.4 | 1caabc75-5de3-460b-8b3d-a49d5a5659c1 | Thea Ballard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/thea-ballard/ | |
With his third album, the North Carolina rapper J. Cole is certain he’s made his classic; he’ll tell you as much partway through the 15-minute credit roll “Note to Self”. In its quest to canonize, the record eschews both singles and guests: It’s a bold move, and where it floats, it soars, but it flops gloriously when it doesn’t. | With his third album, the North Carolina rapper J. Cole is certain he’s made his classic; he’ll tell you as much partway through the 15-minute credit roll “Note to Self”. In its quest to canonize, the record eschews both singles and guests: It’s a bold move, and where it floats, it soars, but it flops gloriously when it doesn’t. | J. Cole: 2014 Forest Hills Drive | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20054-2014-forest-hills-drive/ | 2014 Forest Hills Drive | J. Cole is a student of hip-hop, the kind who moves to New York to stalk Jay-Z for an opportunity to rap for him, peppers his lyrics with nods to the greats, and pens an apology to Nas when his biggest single comes across as too poppy. Cole is aware of the structure and pace of good rap albums and anxious to apply them to his own music. For his third record, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, he channels the nostalgic self-mythology of Jay-Z’s Black Album. The cover is shot at his childhood home as Eminem did on the Marshall Mathers LP. The tracklist swaps s’s for z’s (“Wet Dreamz”, “A Tale of 2 Citiez”, “Love Yourz”) like 2pac’s All Eyez on Me. With 2014, Cole is certain he’s made his classic; he’ll tell you as much partway through the 15-minute credit roll “Note to Self”, which apes Kanye West’s joyous, candid College Dropout closer “Last Call”. Problem is, Cole hasn’t earned it yet.
J. Cole is a workmanlike MC, a good-natured populist grappling with the ridiculousness of sudden celebrity. He makes passable albums with memorable singles. He’s great at synthesizing everyman relationship woes into terse pop nuggets. He works well with guests; his collaborations with Drake, Missy Elliott, and TLC are highlights in his growing body of work, and he gets along so well with Kendrick Lamar that the duo is rumored to have clandestinely recorded an EP together. In its quest to canonize Cole, 2014 Forest Hills Drive eschews both singles and guests. It’s a block of Cole raps and Cole hooks served mostly over Cole beats. Bold move, and where it floats, it soars, but it flops gloriously when it doesn’t.
The laughable wordplay fails of mixtapes albums past (“My money like a senior, watch it graduate,” “Cole heating up like that leftover lasagna”) are thankfully absent, but Cole isn’t yet sharp enough of a storyteller to carry a full album on his own. “Wet Dreamz” recounts his first time having sex in lurid detail, from lying to a girl about his prowess to looking at porn for pointers to finding out the girl’s been lying, too. It’s relatable but hardly the kind of story you want to hear more than once. “No Role Modelz” parlays a suspicion about a hookup being a golddigger into a tirade about black women lacking respectable public figures, crudely suggesting that “she’s shallow but the pussy deep.” (For all the talk of Cole’s enlightenment he’s a perfect brute when it comes to women, and “No Role Modelz” is something of a tacit admission.) 2014 Forest Hills Drive often plays at a depth it never delivers.
Still, ceding an entire hour to a rapper who works best in short bursts works better here than anyone could’ve expected. “03’ Adolescence” flips the classic rags-to-riches narrative inside out as Cole starts to reminisce about how hard he had it growing up only to get a chin check from a friend whose future isn’t half as bright. “G.O.M.D.”, “Fire Squad”, and “A Tale of 2 Citiez” all flash Cole’s technical excellence, while “Intro”, “Apparently”, and “St. Tropez” emote through his gruff singing voice. The production here is never less than delightful; Cole’s own beats run coyly referential samples through milky instrumental embellishments. “Wet Dreamz” is an adept “Impeach the President” flip, and “St. Tropez” reimagines Mobb Deep’s “Give Up the Goods (Just Step)” as sedate, orchestral R&B.
2014 Forest Hills Drive is Cole planting himself in the pantheon of rap greats, a volley to the spike of Kendrick Lamar’s “Control” verse. He gets more than a little ahead of himself, though, claiming to be better than Slick Rick, LL Cool J, Rakim, and Big Daddy Kane on “January 28th”. Kane and Rakim’s flows were tighter, LL’s swagger is inimitable, and Rick’s stories surge with a purpose nothing in J. Cole’s canon can muster. This self-aggrandizing pageantry is a ultimately bad look on a guy who earns his keep speaking to the struggles of the common man, and these songs work best when they’re not busy telling you how good they think they are. 2014 Forest Hills Drive is a decent album selling itself as great. It wraps itself in the garments of a classic, but you can see that the tailoring is off. | 2014-12-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2014-12-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Columbia / Roc Nation / Dreamville | December 11, 2014 | 6.9 | 1cb1eb15-9955-42b6-9205-0e68ede81b5a | Craig Jenkins | https://pitchfork.com/staff/craig-jenkins/ | null |
After experiments with UK garage, club breaks, and more, the cheerfully chameleonic Atlanta producer turns his attention to dance punk; the results are as mischievous as ever. | After experiments with UK garage, club breaks, and more, the cheerfully chameleonic Atlanta producer turns his attention to dance punk; the results are as mischievous as ever. | Nikki Nair: Snake EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nikki-nair-snake-ep/ | Snake EP | ESG, Liquid Liquid, and LCD Soundsystem; cowbells, scratchy guitars, and hi-hats—we all know how dance punk goes. But what if there was another way? This is the question that Atlanta producer Nikki Nair poses on Snake, having recently turned his attention to rethinking 2-step on his 2023 EP with Hudson Mohawke, Set the Roof.
Collaborations have been a major part of Nair’s work so far; over the past two years, he has worked with everyone from Sam Binga to DJ ADHD—a mark of his flexible charm. Nair’s productions and DJ sets are defined by their eclecticism, swinging from UK garage to trance via IDM and pure pop. His range is admirable, but it makes it hard to pin down exactly who Nikki Nair is. The Snake EP redresses those uncertainties. At six tracks long, it ties with 2020’s Just Reduction as Nair’s longest solo release. More importantly, it is his most personal work yet. His family adopted the snake as their guardian—he calls them “a symbol of my life-force”—and the record’s sound is a homage to the DIY and punk scenes in which he grew up.
Rather than raiding the well-worn dance-punk sound that the Rapture once called home, Nair pays tribute by selectively combining dance and punk tropes. “Worm” joins a ferocious electro-punk beat to a dirt-eating synth motif that sounds like Mr. Oizo gone screamo or Suicide at their most unhinged. “Prowler” has a crudely bedraggled riff worthy of the gnarliest rock deadbeat and a bassline that shrieks like a dubstep dinosaur; and “Snake” is the Prodigy after they’ve blown both studio speakers and label recording budget. Listeners who found the latest Justice album lacking in drama will encounter plenty of roaring filth to satisfy their needs, as will fans of Daft Punk’s rusty, rasping Human After All.
Nair has said that the six tracks on the Snake EP were an outlet for his anger and frustration, which might explain the record’s overblown sound and occasional breakbeat fury. But the songs also reflect confusion and joy, a salmagundi of emotions that helps the EP to breathe beyond the slightly one-dimensional punk smashers at its core.
The opening “Sugar Kingdom” is a contemplative electro number, bass-sprung but sparse and stumbling, to which Nair adds a spookily understated vocal, more gentle lie-down than John Lydon. The result is as fragile as a hummingbird egg. “Catenate,” which closes the EP, maps the improbably excellent overlap between UK garage and the cardigan twee of Sarah Records, a label whose fierce DIY spirit didn’t exactly translate into musical muscle. The lyrics, too, suggest a Field Mice B-side: “You look so fresh/In your brand new dress/I think I’ll drown,” Nair sings, with the amiable angst of someone who has just got his heart broken on Etsy.
In attitude, Snake carries the torch for Blawan’s 2021 and 2023 EPs, Woke Up Right Handed and Dismantled Into Juice, standout records that stripped the carcass of conventional dance music to make a Frankenstein’s monster of scrapyard sound. Nair says that the songs on the Snake EP are “still pretty functional for DJing and stuff” which might be true of the beat-driven thrills of “Snake” or “333333.” But the idiosyncratic shapes of “Worm,” “Sugar Kingdom” and “Catenate” sit somewhere between guaranteed dance-floor hits and DJ self-sabotage, evincing a DGAF spirit that’s punk to the core. | 2024-05-22T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-05-22T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | LuckyMe | May 22, 2024 | 7.7 | 1cb29d11-aca8-4a4f-9508-75c6bc7e9ab2 | Ben Cardew | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-cardew/ | |
On her first Spanish-language LP, the Colombian American singer eclipses crossover appeal with a moody, hopscotch pop take on the boleros, reggaetón, and Latin soul of her youth. | On her first Spanish-language LP, the Colombian American singer eclipses crossover appeal with a moody, hopscotch pop take on the boleros, reggaetón, and Latin soul of her youth. | Kali Uchis: Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) ∞ | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kali-uchis-sin-miedo-del-amor-y-otros-demonios/ | Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) ∞ | At the end of her second album, Kali Uchis invokes an angel, earthside, having strayed from the sky. This divine being, as she depicts it, is unafraid and unburdened of its duties; “A nadie le debo,” Uchis sings. It owes no one—and neither does she.
This epiphany marks Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) ∞, or Without Fear (of Love and Other Demons) ∞, as her most honest work yet. The 26-year-old is a little dreamier, a little bolder, and a lot freer than she was two years ago when she released her genre-roving debut Isolation, a record that cemented her place as pop’s misfit siren. While working on it, though, Uchis felt like she had to “prove” herself to the world, so the polymath corralled a crew of bigwig artists and producers—including Tyler, the Creator, Bootsy Collins, and Gorillaz—to bolster her already singular work.
Fittingly, on Sin Miedo, Uchis dares to trust herself more. She pares down the guest list, opting for feature production by Puerto Rican hitmaker Tainy and a smattering of artists. Her voice, still thick and sultry, looms larger in the mix. And her affinity for jukebox jams sees her turning to the past again—but instead of only containing the funky breaks and trippy jazz stylings that Anglo-market listeners have come to recognize her music for, Uchis sharpens the spotlight on her bilingual, binational Latinx repertoire. She’s consigned her tragic Edie Sedgwick avatar to oblivion; this is Uchis in ’90s mami glam, grown as fuck at her Friday night perreo parties and Saturday morning limpiezas, ready to recover reggaetón and boleros for the new age.
Some of the sweetest flashbacks on Sin Miedo are actually covers of classic tracks, relaunched with pithy little missives worthy of a telenovela script (for what it’s worth, Uchis has always wanted to be a director). On opener “la luna enamorada,” an update of a 1960s bolero once made popular by the Cuban doo-wop group Los Zafiros, Uchis quips, “¿Y tú qué pensaste, que yo me iba a echar a morir?” (“And what did you think, that I was going to roll over and die?”). Uchis even nails a glimmering tribute to the Queen of Latin Soul, La Lupe, plugging her tour-favorite rendition of “Qué te Pedí” in as an interlude. For just under two minutes, Uchis sings with a gauzy gemido, aching with devotion to a selfish lover whose demands remain impossible to meet. Sometimes, even bad bitches get trapped.
But like la gran tirana before her, Uchis remembers the power of a good kiss-off—no matter how heartbreaking it may be. Standout “vaya con dios” evinces this most; the track turns the tender Spanish sendoff “go with God” into a reluctant lover’s exile with all the cinematic grandeur of a 007 theme. “Se que estoy perdiendo,” she admits, “pero el juego no ha concluido.” She knows what she’s losing, but the game isn’t over.
When one lover goes, there’s always a better one standing by—and it’s Uchis herself. While she has brought this kind of confidence into her songs before, Sin Miedo boasts her femme supremacy in ways more pining and authoritative. “Si me vas a hablar háblame con respeto” (“If we are going to talk, talk to me with respect”), she purrs on the indomitably hot “te pongo mal (prendelo),” featuring the steamrolling reggaetón duo Jowell & Randy. It’s a sentiment reggaetonera Ivy Queen made famous years ago on her dancefloor-consent anthem “Quiero Bailar,” but clearly bears reminding, like it does again on lead single “¡aquí yo mando!” Over a nasty bass, Uchis confirms she’s the one calling the shots, while fellow DMV renegade Rico Nasty spits Spanish bars that Uchis helped pen.
This boss moment wouldn’t be the same if Uchis had doubted her instincts. She held steady, even after assuming that her Spanish-language project might alienate some fans. Upon releasing her penultimate track “la luz (Fín)” featuring Latin trap upstart Jhay Cortez as a single in October, she tweeted her stance: “today i drop another song in spanish which i know means another day of disappointment for my english speaking fans who do not wish to make the attempt to listen to music in languages they can’t understand.” Sin Miedo proves it really is their loss.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-11-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-11-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | EMI / Interscope | November 25, 2020 | 7.8 | 1cb398db-1405-4fcd-97d9-3d9c4479302f | Jenzia Burgos | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jenzia-burgos/ | |
On Trash Generator, the Sacramento trio Tera Melos builds on its prodigious mix of post-hardcore and prog, reining-in the chops in service of catchy, harmonically rich songs. | On Trash Generator, the Sacramento trio Tera Melos builds on its prodigious mix of post-hardcore and prog, reining-in the chops in service of catchy, harmonically rich songs. | Tera Melos: Trash Generator | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tera-melos-trash-generator/ | Trash Generator | Prog rock still exerts a profound influence on popular music—perhaps even more so now than in its 1970s heyday. The genre’s modern descendants may not necessarily surround themselves with stacks of keyboards, or emulate the Gandalf-esque fashion sense of Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman. But you can rest assured that there’s prog DNA lurking within vital developments across a slew of contemporary styles. And while prog’s baroque extravagance once clashed with punk ethics and funk grooves, those divisions fell away decades ago, particularly in the post-hardcore universe that gave us Tera Melos.
When Tera Melos started out in the mid-2000s, the Sacramento trio (then a quartet) took a kitchen-sink approach to riffs and time changes that owed no small debt to the tornado-like, ultra-busy style pioneered by hometown predecessors Hella (the outfit that first put Death Grips drummer Zach Hill on the map). But even as Tera Melos grew more adept at cramming their music with whiplash-inducing twists and turns, they simultaneously shifted towards a bigger-picture view of songwriting. On 2013’s X’ed Out, Tera Melos struck a balance between complexity and songcraft that almost always eludes technical bands. X’ed Out also showcased frontman/guitarist Nick Reinhart’s increasing command of melody and hooks. Reinhart, bassist Nathan Latona, and drummer John Clardy had gotten so adept at shoehorning their chops into pop song structures that they were starting to sound more like, say, the Police and Pinback than the experimental/math/heavy/post-hardcore company they kept.
Trash Generator, the follow-up to X’ed Out, continues down the same road, with a guest appearance by Pinback’s Rob Crow for good measure. Much like last time, the new material sees Tera Melos reining-in their prodigious chops in service of tunes that function pretty much as traditional songs. On “Your Friends,” no amount of stutter-stops, extra beats, or audacious drum fills can derail the swaggering groove the band sustains throughout the verse-chorus sections. The song even gives us a glimpse of what it would sound like if the Police’s Andy Summers and Sting were reincarnated as a single person who plays chunky, metallic riffs. Reinhart at once nods to Summers’ watery echo and Sting’s sing-speak phrasing circa Regatta de Blanc.
On “Don’t Say I Know,” Reinhart smoothes a jerking, oddly metered guitar riff out so that the guitarwork itself becomes the song’s hook alongside his already-catchy falsetto vocal, which falls somewhere between Devo, the Beach Boys, and Enon. When Latona thickens his bassline to include deep chords, the effect is dramatic and powerful in a way that Tera Melos’ older material just didn’t leave room for. On the instrumental “GR30A11,” somber piano chords brush up against patches of static fuzz, strewn about like dust bunnies, while Latona noodles on the bass as if playing to an entirely different track.
A sedate, presumably lighthearted attempt at Cecil Taylor’s brand of jazz chaos, “GR30A11” certainly cleanses the pallette with a respite from the album’s assertive, high-energy mood. But “GR30A11,” while fun, also highlights how Tera Melos aren’t arriving at new expressions quite as assuredly as they did on X’ed Out. That’s not to say Trash Generator doesn’t break some new ground for Tera Melos: The horns on “A Universal Gonk” create a smoky atmosphere, and on the whole, the album is the band’s catchiest and most harmonically rich by far. But in its especially open moments—the serene but short-lived intro to “Super Fx,” for example—Trash Generator suggests that Tera Melos would flourish even more if they threw themselves into the ambient end of the pool, which they’ve only stuck their toes in. | 2017-09-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-09-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sargent House | September 1, 2017 | 7.4 | 1cb4bcc3-e45d-4f8e-b427-24fe8241a40c | Saby Reyes-Kulkarni | https://pitchfork.com/staff/saby-reyes-kulkarni/ | null |
After freeing herself from a bad record deal, the multitalented R&B singer celebrates with an effortless LP that fully displays her range. | After freeing herself from a bad record deal, the multitalented R&B singer celebrates with an effortless LP that fully displays her range. | Tinashe: Songs for You | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tinashe-songs-for-you/ | Songs for You | When Tinashe split with long-time record label RCA in February, it seemed like an opportunity for a reset. After the L.A. singer released one of the best R&B debuts of the decade in 2014, she quickly chased it with a run of homogenous singles meant to foment hype for what was an eventually inert follow-up released four drawn-out years later. Many of the problems stemmed from RCA’s rumored and occasionally confirmed meddling, whether selling songs out from under her or arranging awkward guest features and promotion. Tinashe has since publicly celebrated the separation in interviews and on social media, and for good reason: Free from the music industry, the multitalented artist is now able to go in whatever direction she pleases, unburdened by expectations of a radio single or big first-week sales.
Songs for You, Tinashe’s first full-length project released under her own label and management, is a welcome return to form, evoking those moody early mixtapes and 2016’s compelling Nightride while pushing forward. It also stands as a statement of purpose against the industry that fumbled her bag. (She even released the project on a Thursday to “throw a wrench” in those never-ending sales discussions.) Compared to the strain of Joyride, Songs for You feels effortless, drifting between subterranean trap, airy dance-pop, and R&B ballads.
Her floor-fillers are compellingly mutated, full of sharp pivots; if the moving parts can be jarring to follow, they’re never boring. Heatsick lead single “Die a Little Bit” hinges on a numb, head-spinning chorus that strips her best club-ready benders for parts: “Drink, smoke, dance, vibe a little bit,” she and South London rapper Ms Banks recite over spare garage production, adding “Fuck, change, ride, die a little bit.” She spars with a filthy G-Eazy over a hollowed-out beat before moving into an acoustic, two-minute outro that quotes “Midnight Sun,” the mellow centerpiece of her 2013 mixtape Black Water. The reference feels intimate and real, a callback for Tinashe diehards and a reimagining of the phantom-limb sadness that occasionally accompanies the aftermath of a hookup.
Make no mistake: She fully takes time to talk her shit, too. The swanky “Cash Race” and “Link Up,” both Hitmaka productions that revolve around winding beat changes halfway through, are prime showcases for Tinashe’s melodic flow and shrugged-off boasts. The songs were originally meant for a shelved, hip-hop-focused project last summer, but here they instead provide a quick, satisfying glimmer of that bossed-up version of herself, with devilishly opulent lyrics about Brink’s trucks and private flights.
All of these different moods find balance thanks to Tinashe, a rebuke to anyone who thought she couldn’t work in this many different styles. She can embody “Nashe Houdini doing tricks with a saw” on “Link Up” and she can carry the melancholy soul of the hazy 6LACK duet “Touch & Go.” It isn’t fair that it took years of label mishandling to get here, but Tinashe has finally found equilibrium. | 2019-12-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-12-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | self-released | December 4, 2019 | 7.7 | 1cb79dea-0ae1-4244-affd-aaf0959b7e97 | Eric Torres | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-torres/ | |
On her second album, Billie Eilish sings with unsparing honesty about her rapid ascent to stardom and all its accompanying horrors. It’s woozy, effortlessly melodic, and showcases her command over the pop landscape. | On her second album, Billie Eilish sings with unsparing honesty about her rapid ascent to stardom and all its accompanying horrors. It’s woozy, effortlessly melodic, and showcases her command over the pop landscape. | Billie Eilish: Happier Than Ever | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/billie-eilish-happier-than-ever/ | Happier Than Ever | In March of 2020, Billie Eilish began incorporating a short film titled “Not My Responsibility” into her concerts. The shadowy four-minute clip shows Eilish slowly taking off her clothing and submerging into a slick pool of black goop, soundtracked by a spoken-word monologue about the body-shaming she faced as the most visible teenage girl on the planet. Since the release of her offbeat, gothy, Grammy-sweeping debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? one year prior, Eilish had become the media’s new favorite specimen to dissect. Specifically, her body, which Eilish often concealed beneath loud, oversized outfits. Some members of the peanut gallery applauded what they saw as a feminist refusal to be sexualized, a “body positivity” narrative that often bordered on slut-shaming women who choose to dress differently. All Eilish could do was try her best not to let it get to her. “So while I feel your stares, your disapproval or your sigh of relief,” she murmurs on “Not My Responsibility,” “If I lived by them, I’d never be able to move.”
The clip was an imperial mic drop. Unfortunately, “Not My Responsibility” played at only three concerts before the coronavirus outbreak canceled her tour and sent Eilish back home to Los Angeles. Eilish and Finneas—her brother, producer, and co-writer—hadn’t planned to make a record during quarantine. But their mother encouraged them to establish a casual writing routine at Finneas’ home studio—a nice upgrade from their previous workspace, Finneas’ childhood bedroom—and the songs that form Eilish’s second album, Happier Than Ever, naturally started taking shape.
The tears that dampen Eilish’s cheeks on the cover suggest that the album’s title is more a dream than a reality. On Happier Than Ever, the newly bleached-blonde 19-year-old sifts through the rubble of an ascent so life-altering and littered with landmines that her teenage idol, Justin Bieber, once broke down crying with worry for her. From the jump, there’s a palpable sense of longing for simpler times. “Things I once enjoyed just keep me employed now,” she wearily croons on the album opener “Getting Older.”
The reality of a pop star is so inherently surreal that it often borders on fantasy, but Eilish’s music has never worn tiny, rose-tinted sunglasses: Her debut’s frank exploration of mental health, addiction, and self-harm had concerned parents wringing their hands while their children rejoiced at a pop star being weird and depressed just like them. Happier Than Ever is full of admissions, plainly sung, with very little left between the lines. The things Eilish knows now are stalkers roaming her neighborhood, lovers who need to sign nondisclosure agreements, and strangers poring over paparazzi shots of her body. She doesn’t pretend that these problems are relatable, but she does know that they are just more extreme versions of concerns that plague people young and old: anxiety about how people perceive you, a desire to leave your current life behind, a fear that nothing will ever be normal again.
Instead of chasing the nightmarish pop of its predecessor, Happier Than Ever retreats into a softer sound where the flashes of weirdness are subtle but inventive. There’s a lot less trap and a lot more jazz (in one interview, Eilish name-dropped torch-singers like Julie London, Frank Sinatra, and Peggy Lee). On the more subdued moments, Eilish’s soprano, so often overshadowed by low-end distortion, is allowed to breathe. “My Future” luxuriates in a soft silkiness before injecting an optimistic spring into its step. The piano-driven ballad “Halley’s Comet” likens Eilish’s caution about falling in love to the cosmic phenomenon, which notably comes around twice in a lifetime. Much to Finneas’ credit, the atmosphere of these tracks is quietly vast and full of carefully placed flourishes.
Some of Happier Than Ever’s quieter tracks drag—“Everybody Dies”’s dreary grasps at existentialism barely leave an impression. That said, as the beat change on “My Future” shows, Happier Than Ever’s best songs are the ones where Eilish and Finneas allow one small idea to mutate into two or three bigger ones. The loss-of-innocence anthem “Goldwing” begins with Eilish performing a section of composer Gustav Holst’s orchestral translation of the Rig Veda, a canonical Hindu text, and ends as glitchy thumper. A more obvious hit will inevitably be “Oxytocin,” which places Eilish’s famous breathy whispers deep inside the walls of a dark, steamy club. The track starts off sultry, all body rolls, before it turns on a dime and launches itself out a window in a blitz of abrasive synths à la Crystal Castles or early Grimes. The title track, another clear highlight, escalates from a dainty and detached critique of an ex to an eruption of hellfire. “I don’t relate to you, no/’Cause I’d never treat me this shitty,” Eilish roars, multi-tracked over a barrage of blown-out guitars so you know she means it. The barbs grow sharper and sharper—the dude ignored her mom!—until she finally screams, “Just fucking leave me alone.”
Midway through the album, “Not My Responsibility” reappears as a spoken word interlude. The statement packs a smaller punch without the visual accompaniment but sets the tone for the record’s latter half, which directly deals with sex, control, and voyeurism. “OverHeated”—ironically one of the album’s more undercooked songs—expands on “Not My Responsibility”’s woozy ambience and builds it into a thick beat that calls out the paparazzi and social media commentators who objectify her: “Did you really think this is the right thing to do?/Is it news, news to who?/That I really look just like the rest of you.” “Your Power” is more effectively disturbing, blurring the lines between Eilish’s own experiences with older men who exploit young women and those of others. “She was sleeping in your clothes/But now she’s got to get to class…” she murmurs over an acoustic guitar. “…Does it keep you in control/For you to keep her in a cage?” While Eilish’s first album was full of overtly scary thoughts—stapled tongues, monsters under beds, teen suicide—the reality presented on “Your Power” is profoundly more haunting.
The emotional manipulation at the heart of “Your Power” makes Eilish’s choices a few songs later all the more rewarding. On the acoustic guitar closer, “Male Fantasy,” Eilish watches porn to try to distract herself from a breakup only to be confronted with a warped depiction of female pleasure. Bummed out but not defeated, she lets her mind wander until she reaches the wise conclusion: Very little in this world is as cut and dry as it might seem, even her feelings of heartache. Perhaps because so much of the album is bedeviled by forces beyond her control, the best points on Happier Than Ever are the ones like this, where Eilish asserts her agency and self-worth. “I didn’t change my number, I only changed who I believe in,” she saucily dishes early on in the album, a line that should spark a round of applause. “Know I’m supposed to be with someone,” she sings more pensively on “My Future.” “But aren’t I someone?”
Recall, for a minute, the 2020 Grammy Awards. Just before the Album of the Year award was announced, a flustered Eilish—who already had won an armful of statues that evening—mouthed the words, “Please don’t be me.” It was all so much, so fast; she wouldn’t mind one moment out of the spotlight. Happier Than Ever climbs down from the gilded world of fame to offer a candid report from the coming-of-age trenches, where the past is embarrassing, the future feels excruciatingly distant, and the present is simply exhausting. Eilish doesn’t pretend to have it all figured out.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-08-02T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-08-02T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Darkroom / Interscope | August 2, 2021 | 7.6 | 1cb87194-10fe-4579-a791-228b1e79e38e | Quinn Moreland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/quinn-moreland/ | |
Asheville-via-Bhutan gutiarist Tashi Dorji has made a handful of diverse releases in the past decade, mostly on cassette. He and Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny chose tracks from those (and some unreleased tapes) for his first, self-titled LP. There are only six pieces here, but each feels like its own planet. | Asheville-via-Bhutan gutiarist Tashi Dorji has made a handful of diverse releases in the past decade, mostly on cassette. He and Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny chose tracks from those (and some unreleased tapes) for his first, self-titled LP. There are only six pieces here, but each feels like its own planet. | Tashi Dorji: Tashi Dorji | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19531-tashi-dorji-tashi-dorji/ | Tashi Dorji | One fascinating paradox about art is that limits can prove freeing. Narrow your parameters and you might find solutions you wouldn’t have if your choices were infinite. It’s why entire movements have been based on self-imposed restrictions: take the Oulipo group, whose Georges Perec wrote an entire novel without the letter e, or Dogme95, in which directors such as Lars Von Trier and Harmony Korine adhered to rules about hand-held cameras and on-set sound.
It might seem odd to compare those contrivances to the simple act of making solo instrumental guitar music. After all, the form is not exactly unusual, having been around longer than jazz ensembles or rock bands. Still, to play guitar alone is to submit to restrictions—not only in the finite number of sounds you can make, but in what little innovation is still available. So much has been done and so many legends loom large—especially, for anyone picking strings now, the two-headed monster of John Fahey and Derek Bailey—that playing something new seems nearly impossible.
I’m not sure Tashi Dorji has made anything completely new yet, but the range of creative solutions he’s found while trying to avoid the well-worn paths of instrumental guitar music is thrilling. Raised in Bhutan and based in Asheville, N.C. since 2000, Dorji has made a handful of diverse releases in the past decade, mostly on cassette. He and Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny chose tracks from those (and some unreleased tapes) for his first, self-titled LP. There are only six pieces here, but each feels like its own planet. They occupy the same sonic universe but are different enough to suggest Dorji has traversed light years between each.
Dorji covers a lot of ground inside each piece. Often he’ll counter a dizzying cluster of high-speed plucks with subdued phrases and full stops, in the process echoing blues, classical, new age, and idiom-less free improv. As a result, “Improvisation II” feels like a baroque exercise and a spaced-out head rush, while “Still III” is both meditative and hyperactively impulsive. Dorji seems to cram everything he can think of into closer “Sunder”, whose ringing cycles have a hypnotic persistence, like an image you can’t get out of your head no matter how long you close your eyes.
It might sound like Dorji’s playing is so all over the place that it’s jarring—and it can be—but that’s also what makes it unified, because everything on *Tashi Dorji *sounds like the tugging and jostling of a single brain. Each piece is a reactive internal monologue wherein previous pushes echo in later pulls. Follow all the darting notes and you can practically see Dorji’s neurons firing at each other, every one a point or counterpoint in an ongoing argument he’s having with himself.
Of course, not everyone likes to watch a fight, and Dorji’s string-wrangling will likely appeal most to those already inclined to wordless note-battles. From a distance, it might even look like his style is not that much of deviation from the patterns honed by the many storied players who preceded him. But sometimes when you zoom in close enough, you can find infinity inside the infinitesimal, and Dorji has managed to turn what could have merely been small variations into some pretty grand spaces. | 2014-08-13T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2014-08-13T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Experimental | Hermit Hut | August 13, 2014 | 7.1 | 1cbc8907-28b1-413d-b1dd-1d63f06779e1 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
On Yelawolf's major label debut-- featuring guest spots from Eminem, Mystikal, Killer Mike, and Kid Rock, among others-- the Alabama rapper's attempts at crossing over make a potentially great album go off the rails. | On Yelawolf's major label debut-- featuring guest spots from Eminem, Mystikal, Killer Mike, and Kid Rock, among others-- the Alabama rapper's attempts at crossing over make a potentially great album go off the rails. | Yelawolf: Radioactive | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16092-radioactive/ | Radioactive | There's a curious moment at the end of the sixth track on Yelawolf's major-label debut. It's "Throw It Up", one of the album's highlights. After the song ends, there's a skit where Yelawolf and his boss, Eminem, discuss the course of the album. Eminem tells Yelawolf that the album needs songs for women, love songs specifically. Yela, for his part, feigns protest. It's presented as a conversation that any label head might have with an artist, but including it on the album is a bizarre and remarkably cynical move. It's unclear whether it's presented as a warning, an apology, a cop-out, or all three, but it more importantly marks exactly where a potentially great album starts to go off the rails.
The idea of "crossing over" is something almost every rapper at a major label has to deal with. Making songs about, and for, women-- be it about love or dancing-- to gain popularity is a move about as old as the genre itself. For some rappers, it's a seamless transition. For others, it's not. It can be frustrating and dispiriting to watch the formula applied to a career that has yet to take shape, though it's a process everyone more or less knows is coming. It's also a route that can be rejected (a recent obvious example being Odd Future) or navigated deftly ("No Hands" didn't lose Waka Flocka any cred). Or, I guess, one can take the path Yelawolf chose, to lamely act as if you're a prisoner of a system that you chose to enter and make half-assed songs as if sentenced by law.
And with that rehearsed conversation with Eminem about making love songs for women, Yelawolf is trying to absolve himself from the responsibility of about one-third of Radioactive being decidedly half-assed. The middle of the album (featuring hooks from the likes of Priscilla Renea and Fefe Dobson) is far and away the worst music of Yelawolf's career, and he knows it. His rapping is passable, but the beats are leaden and uninspired and the hooks are about as canned as possible. It's hard to imagine what the market for those songs is, really-- I can't imagine that Yelawolf's female fans want to hear him rap about conventional romance, or want to hear a potentially good song about blue-collar American life drowned in a syrupy chorus.
The worst part isn't the songs themselves, but that the album didn't have to go this route. Outside the sagging middle section, the subject matter and production will be nothing new to those familiar with Yela's music; his voice and perspective remain sharp and unique, and he certainly hasn't lost any of his technical skill. The guests (Mystikal, Killer Mike, Three 6 Mafia secret weapon Gangsta Boo) are also otherwise the type of people that should be on a Yelawolf album, rappers from whom he pulls his vocal style or sharp wit, or to whom his fans likely also listen. (There is a frame of a great album here, and in the age of selective iTunes playlisting, maybe the regrettable portion of the album is merely just forgettable.) This isn't Yelawolf's first foray into trying to make pop songs or songs for women, but it's by far his worst. His previous albums-- last year's Trunk Muzik and its repackaged follow-up Trunk Muizk: 0-60-- showcased an ability and an affinity for pop songwriting that could've been fostered and encouraged here instead of being shelved for industry cast-offs.
And then there is "Let's Roll", the song with Kid Rock that unexpectedly shows exactly how the formula can go right. Whether it equals pop success remains to be seen, but it's a collaboration that plays to both artists' strengths. As country boys at heart with an interest in both rap and rock, Yela and Kid Rock are arguably closer kindred spirits than Yela and Eminem, despite the tongue-twisting rapping. "Let's Roll" asks Rock to sing a conventional rap hook over a conventional rap beat, but the crux is in the grittiness and twang that Rock brings to the track, which dovetails perfectly with Yela's imagery of life as a rebel in Alabama. It's an inspired pairing, one that amounts to one of the best songs of Yelawolf's career, and it holds a mirror up to the four or five insipid crossover attempts that come later. | 2011-12-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2011-12-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | DGC / Interscope / Shady / Ghet-O-Vision | December 1, 2011 | 6.5 | 1cbfaa1d-c0c8-4dfe-a9b6-1aa0f65473b3 | Jordan Sargent | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jordan-sargent/ | null |
Emeralds member steps out with a more accessible solo LP that traffics in memory and nostalgia to intriguing effect. | Emeralds member steps out with a more accessible solo LP that traffics in memory and nostalgia to intriguing effect. | Mark McGuire: Living With Yourself | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14758-living-with-yourself/ | Living With Yourself | Alongside his pals in Emeralds, guitarist Mark McGuire makes unhinged music-- a swirling drone that oscillates wildly back and forth and seems to spin off in every direction at once. The focus of his latest solo effort is narrower. Without the synths and electronic elements that intensify Emeralds' swelling noise, Living With Yourself is primarily a guitar record, looser and more accessible than we're used to from McGuire. It also has a clear narrative and conceptual theme: This is an album about youth and memory, family and nostalgia-- it's a deeply personal, even autobiographical work.
McGuire makes this pretty clear right off the bat: the cover art collages photos from his childhood, song titles evoke memory ("Clear the Cobwebs"), and the album is bookended with actual recordings from his youth. Nostalgia is a concept indie music has explored a lot lately, but usually not with this kind of specificity. These are his memories, his family, so as listeners we get this rare voyeuristic peek into an artist's history. Opening cut "The Vast Structure of Recollection" is literally music-as-flashback: It moves between samples from his past and big rushes of ambient noise-- like a memory, it's vivid, then hazy, then gone.
Apart from these samples and a bit of drumming, Living With Yourself is all guitar, and McGuire manages great variety from this one instrument. He loops and multi-tracks his own playing, creating a rich tapestry of ambient swell and electric noise. Standout "Brain Storm (For Erin)" is a good example of his talent for layering: It starts of kind of pointillist with intricate finger plucks, then brings on heavy drones that work as a chorus. The song really moves. Even shorter interludes like "Moving Apart" feature this interwoven quality. Here, McGuire sets out a layer of proggy, almost percussive notes then lets darker mechanical noise bubble up from underneath.
There's no easy genre signifier for this music (the umbrella "experimental" might be best), but ultimately it reminds me of some of my favorite ambient records. Like Gas or Eno, it's very easy to lose yourself in the wash of sound of this album, but it's not drifty or toothless-- there's plenty of color and emotion here too. McGuire also does a good job of laying out a clear arc and holding his listeners' attention. For every epic number like "Recollection", there's a shorter passage that dials back the intensity and lets you catch your breath. Thematically it's as strong an instrumental record as I've heard in a while, this weird glimpse at a stranger's photo album that in the end is surprisingly quite touching. | 2010-10-19T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2010-10-19T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock / Experimental | Editions Mego | October 19, 2010 | 8.2 | 1cc18d0e-85c5-4be6-a795-32a31a5b9085 | Joe Colly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-colly/ | null |
After 2012's spiky, lonely, underrated Anxiety, Ladyhawke returns to '80s-inflected synth-pop on Wild Things. | After 2012's spiky, lonely, underrated Anxiety, Ladyhawke returns to '80s-inflected synth-pop on Wild Things. | Ladyhawke: Wild Things | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21941-wild-things/ | Wild Things | Ladyhawke’s 2012 album, Anxiety was as much a “difficult sophomore album” as one’s likely to hear this decade: On it, New Zealand-born Philippa “Pip” Brown killed the ‘80s buzz of her debut with prickly pop-punk exploring some of the loneliest and least-fun emotions the human brain concocts. For that, it’s underrated. But it’s understandable that Brown would want to retreat from it, as much for its tepid reception as for her reported state of mind while making it. “I’d never done a sober show in my life until last December,” Brown said; years of chasing social anxiety with alcohol gave way to detox and therapy and the pilgrimage to L.A. all early-to-mid-career musicians take eventually; from it emerged a happier person and, consequentially, a happier album. Who can fault that?
Wild Things announces its shinier, almost-perfectly-happy intentions immediately with “A Love Song,” another entry in the long and usually-pretty-great tradition of unabashed pop songs whose self-referential brightness conceals something dark and whose every line—“you’ve opened my eyes to the oldest tale of time,” “you pull me up and tell me how this could end”—works equally well as love or tragedy. Brown repeats the title to the point of insistence, or even defensiveness, like she’s distracting herself from something dark and unspoken. The ambiguity is crucial; so is the exuberant pop rush.
In abandoning the spikier sound of Anxiety for more straightforward synth-pop, though, Ladyhawke returns to one of the most overcrowded genres going, where thousands vie for maybe a few months of syncs and a lifetime of anonymity. Too much of Wild Things is aimed little higher than that – most audibly on “Golden Girl,” on its polite throb to the Lumineers “hey!”s to the synths that suggest pre-ubiquity La Roux to the distressingly ukulele-like line you can almost smell the lemon Pledge on. It raises two questions: A) whether it’s already in an ad, or just sounds like it’s already in one, via Pavlovian association, and B) whether it’s mistagged and actually by Catey “Brooklyn Girls” Shaw.
“Wild Things” suffers the same; its graceful sweep and confessions so plainspoken (“when you’re almost always lonely, you forget to take it slowly”) mean little when they’re in the service of a Where the Wild Things Are allusion that was dead long before its corpse was fireside-tromped over in the past decade by Spike Jonze and Alessia Cara. It sounds well enough like 2016 and its trends, but it barely sounds like Ladyhawke. (Ladyhawke was ahead of these trends, too—synthpop most obviously, but also “Paris Is Burning,” which if it were released today would fit right into the crowd of disco licks and vaguely house-ish beats.) For every inspired touch—the backing-vocal frisson and ABBA-esque sweep to the melody of “Chills”—there’s an underwritten chorus, or a thin arrangement, or a lyrical complication avoided.
Unsurprisingly, Wild Things’ thorniness, however intermittent, is its best strength. “Let It Roll” has a clattery, deliberately crowded arrangement, guitar tremors off a LoneLady track and Brown’s best vocal mode: tensed-throat stress and tamped-down shyness so fully expressed that they come off as rock-star swagger. Likewise, the disco chorus and New Order synth latticework on “Dangerous” aren’t new, but they at least live up to their title, and to Brown’s older material. But there’s not nearly enough of it. There could have been; before Wild Things, Brown scrapped an entire album that, from press indications, probably sounded a lot like Anxiety; neither she nor the people she said heard it was happy with the results, but one wonders if it was really that bad, or just not commercial and crowd-pleasing enough. Wild Things collapses over the strain to be both. | 2016-06-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Polyvinyl | June 11, 2016 | 5.7 | 1cc7c666-85ff-43d0-a43c-c062d182ed29 | Katherine St. Asaph | https://pitchfork.com/staff/katherine-st. asaph/ | null |
On the first new album under her own name since 2012, the Canadian songwriter makes her voice the focus. Her songs feel instantly familiar, like smaller pieces of a timeless story. | On the first new album under her own name since 2012, the Canadian songwriter makes her voice the focus. Her songs feel instantly familiar, like smaller pieces of a timeless story. | Julie Doiron: I Thought of You | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/julie-doiron-i-thought-of-you/ | I Thought of You | A few years ago, when asked to describe her music in one word, Julie Doiron responded, “Life-like.” It’s a perfect choice for a few reasons. Since her 1997 solo debut, the Canadian songwriter has favored sparse settings, minimal overdubs, and no effects on her voice—an atmosphere that conjures the image of a lone figure trudging through snow, cutting the quiet in a calm, dry voice. But Doiron said “life-like” and not just “life,” because her music has an element of surreality: The lyrics—pared-down stories full of I’s and you’s that read more like stage directions than scenes—resemble life in the way a sketch or an outline does, asking to be overlaid with our own imagination to see the full picture.
It’s been nearly a decade since Doiron last released a collection of new songs under her own name, but I Thought of You shows no signs of the long gap. The music is instantly familiar, easy to slot alongside career peaks like 1999’s Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars. Like that album, which paired Doiron with the Ottawa indie rock band, I Thought of You is a collaboration, this time with the adventurous singer-songwriter Daniel Romano. Over the past few years, Romano has tried everything—a prog suite with a member of Tool, a creative reinterpretation of an underrated Bob Dylan record, a thrashy punk bloodletting—but these skeletal country songs return him to his roots. Between the two of them, not a moment feels out of place.
The shadowy nature of Doiron’s music feels particularly suited for collaborations. She leaves room for conversation, pauses for a response. Consider the standout track, “Thought of You”: The lyrics suggest that Doiron has contacted us after an intense period of self-reflection, presenting the findings of her personal inquiry in the form of an apology. “And honestly,” she sings, her voice cracking, “I felt ashamed.” The subject should be heartbreaking, but within Doiron’s narrative, Romano hears something more like a psychedelic Western: It’s not a dark moment of introspection, his lead guitar line suggests—it’s a showdown, all taking place in someone’s mind.
Throughout these songs, Doiron shines as a vocalist. She has remarkable control over her voice, folding simple sentences like origami to reveal surprising detail. She uses no words in “Good Reason” that would feel out of place in a casual text exchange: “home,” “gone,” “coming,” “back.” Yet the way her voice pulls and falters through a line about a lover returning after a long absence—“He had said he was/But he hadn’t said when”—fills in the more poetic details: the narrator’s mixed emotions; the strain the relationship has placed on her; the emotional distance that remains as the physical distance closes.
The thoughtfulness of Doiron’s delivery ties her to an older lineage than the ’90s indie rock scene where she first emerged as a member of the Sub Pop band Eric’s Trip. As she has evolved as a solo artist, Doiron has taken on the quality of a traditional vocalist: She can shift the meaning of a song with just her voice, whether serving as an empathetic foil on Mount Eerie’s Lost Wisdom albums, reinterpreting her own music in Spanish on her Canta en Español releases, or penning songs that feel increasingly like part of a longer, more timeless story.
“Back to the Water,” the closing track, is one such composition. It’s a country-folk song that Doiron plays solo on acoustic guitar, the kind of bold, idiomatic composition that could be sung by anyone, at any point in history. Like much of the album, the lyrics describe a kind of homecoming, although this one is left intentionally ambiguous. Instead of describing the place or her journey back, Doiron simply explains the way she feels when she’s there, how a setting can change her. “I know that there’s a lesson here for me to learn,” she tells us, but earlier in the song she finds a simpler way of expressing it: “It makes me feel like me.” Because if she’s not in motion, trudging ahead and landing somewhere new, then she’s not home yet.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-11-30T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-11-30T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | You’ve Changed | November 30, 2021 | 7.5 | 1cc85125-6cc2-4260-938d-b97ac2284a5a | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | |
Kristin Hersh has been a great many things: the snakecharmer, the Queen Mum of indie rock, Vic Chesnutt's biggest ... | Kristin Hersh has been a great many things: the snakecharmer, the Queen Mum of indie rock, Vic Chesnutt's biggest ... | Kristin Hersh: Sunny Border Blue | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3839-sunny-border-blue/ | Sunny Border Blue | Kristin Hersh has been a great many things: the snakecharmer, the Queen Mum of indie rock, Vic Chesnutt's biggest supporter, and fan-friendly (to a fault). But I like to think of her as a veteran major league pitcher-- though she may slump and streak, she still keeps up the high baseline output that justifies contracts the size of Denmark's gross national product. You get what you pay for, and Hersh is always a bargain.
Sunny Border Blue-- god, is it really her fourth solo full-length already?-- lacks both the expansive, electronic band-backed arrangements of Sky Motel and the too-sparse skeletal sound of Strange Angels. Here, horns, organ, piano and ambient vinyl noise dress up Hersh's guitar-vox-barstool aesthetic nicely and efficiently. Little else is required. No electric rockers to bring down the house. Alas, poor Muses, we knew them well.
Like anyone who spends too much time in the studio over the years, Hersh has logged enough hours tinkering with other instruments to arrive at the point where she can proudly add that liner note to the effect that "all instruments [were] played by" you-know-who. Diminutive, but mom-tough, Hersh casually cusses her way through a baker's dozen songs that are as personal as ever, and far less cryptic than in the past. Her voice remains creaky and pregnant with emotion, matched against her signature bright-toned Collings guitars.
"White Suckers" is representative of this slight reinvention of solo Hersh. Moving from the plodding and fingerpicked verses, the song metamorphasizes with a trumpet player (Kristin?!) shifting into uptempo gear for a California-dreamin' chorus sporting fractured words like: "You come off like a distant moth, aimless and driven." The once-a-disc "'Gazebo Tree' moment" comes early in the album, this time with the sublime "Spain," a hissing crescendo of organ, melody and vowels. The innocuous opening slowly seethes into a classic Kristin barrage, belting out lines like: "Sucking down mother's milk/ Singing my throat away/ It's not an awful secret, you know/ It's just a secret."
A moving cover of Cat Stevens' "Trouble" is a welcome curveball, prompting a little more campfire-style swaying and head-bobbing in the audience than normal (i.e. none). "Ruby," the album's highlight, has an accessible pop elegance. Uplifting, oscillating ooh's lounge amid major key chordal melodies and equestrian drumming. Lyrics shine white-hot with a burning-magnesium bright light: "This baby's like a winter bird/ Raunchy and sweet/ With snowflakes melting in his hair/ The boys are supermen wondering..." Hersh's reputation and strength-- being off-kilter lyricwise and left-field musicwise-- almost feels like a nephew of a song rather than a child of her own. Ah, but there's a saving grace bridge that affords us a few moments of familiar University-ish unpredictability.
The few faults of Sunny Border Blue occur during the rare songs when Hersh goes on autopilot. Put the thumbscrews to me and I'd admit that "Summer Salt" sounds like so much filler. "Candyland" feels non-specific to the record and could have appeared innocuously on any of her solo efforts without seeming invasive. But in the long view, such sniping seems pretty lame when taken in the context of the disc's assets, which are nearly every song.
At this point in her Methuselan career, Hersh has no one left to surpass but herself. That can be challenging enough, given her tendency to meet and exceed expectations with alarming regularity. Anyone familiar with her entire corpus gets the sense that she'd have to work a hell of a lot harder to put out a bad album than a good one. The world is jealous. | 2001-03-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2001-03-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Beggars / 4AD | March 6, 2001 | 8 | 1ccc5ad8-c4e6-46ec-9731-a5da7b3f2169 | John Dark | https://pitchfork.com/staff/john-dark/ | null |
The singer/producer’s debut album splits the difference between proudly rootless and profoundly lost. | The singer/producer’s debut album splits the difference between proudly rootless and profoundly lost. | Lafawndah: Ancestor Boy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lafawndah-ancestor-boy/ | Ancestor Boy | Lafawndah’s music is proudly rootless. The singer and producer’s works are labyrinths of genre and style that teem with trapdoors. Her voice, a lithe contralto dusted with a warm rasp, gives her songs a sensual quality, but she’s more trickster than romantic. “Jungle Exit,” from her debut EP, was written in Spanish, translated to English, then sung in Swahili. That cheeky elusiveness can make her music seem playful, but a wearying pall hangs over her debut album Ancestor Boy. Built from globally sourced strains of pop, ambient, and industrial, the record is rich in resources and poor in spirit.
Released on Lafawndah’s Concordia imprint, Ancestor Boy is intended as a blueprint for wayward artists. “The idea is to create a home for all the orphans of the world,” she has said. “All the artists that don’t sit properly, that are doing things that are challenging, that are not obeying enough of what’s expected of them.” That’s a worthwhile goal, but Lafawndah is no Professor X. Hell, she’s no Emma Frost, either. Lafawndah has no discernible vision or aesthetic: She shrouds songs in signifiers and lets entropy take the wheel.
“Uniform,” the album’s opening track, is a vague statement of iconoclasm. “I would never know, I would never know/Which color, which color/The one they wanna see me in.” She pens narratives within contexts that only she knows, making her storytelling cryptic at best, and gibberish at worst. The title track is so vague and ponderous it could be a church marquee. “Did he come from the water?/Did he come from the sky?/Did he come from the mountains?” she asks. She could be talking about Jesus or Columbus or Optimus Prime. It’s hard to care.
This abstraction wouldn’t be as frustrating if the mood weren’t so grave and self-serious. The production, a polished blend of quaking bass, militant percussion, and blaring drones, is made to shock and awe. It rarely does. Lafawndah’s voice is consistently prominent, leading the compositions along and tempering their volatility. On “Substancia” sirens and warped horns swell to a peak then drop away so Lafawndah can offer toothless threats. “Can’t you tell I got you encircled?” she asks. The synths on “Joseph” quiver with tension, but only pantomime danger. Lafawndah sings of some perilous journey, but the song itself feels about as harrowing as working from home.
The album’s one blip of color is “Tourist,” a lite-dancehall track that takes a jab at exoticism. Lafawndah convincingly embodies the latent colonialism that can underlie tourism. Speaking in first-person, her tourist makes casual observations that reek of unearned intimacy. “I like how you dress and how you braid your hair,” she coos with a treacly smugness. The song ultimately feels like a catfish though. Not only is the trop-house she's mocking low-hanging fruit, but throughout Ancestor Boy, it's never clear where precisely she's coming from, literally or artistically. Her perspective is blandly adrift, tethered to neither a point of origin nor a destination. “I am an island,” she declares on “Blueprint,” attempting to find pride in her singularity. Big mood, little substance. | 2019-03-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-03-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | CONCORDIA | March 27, 2019 | 5.3 | 1ccef170-57cf-404e-acfb-48f476ba111d | Stephen Kearse | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-kearse/ | |
The experimental songwriter abandons the conceptual rigor of her recent albums, collaborating with a handful of jazz musicians on a loose, ambiguous EP where repetition induces a state of déjà vu. | The experimental songwriter abandons the conceptual rigor of her recent albums, collaborating with a handful of jazz musicians on a loose, ambiguous EP where repetition induces a state of déjà vu. | Jenny Hval: The Long Sleep | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jenny-hval-the-long-sleep/ | The Long Sleep | If Jenny Hval’s 2016 album Blood Bitch was a closed fist, then her latest release, The Long Sleep, is an open palm. Unburdened by the rigorous editing an outstanding concept album like Blood Bitch requires, this new EP finds Hval enlisting a handful of jazz musicians to help her break free from the constraints she has previously imposed on her work. Saxophonist Espen Reinertsen gives the record a soft, melodic purr. Kyrre Laastad alternates gracefully between programmed drums and traditional percussion. Norwegian pianist Anja Lauvdal plays with such dignified restraint that the music emanating from her instrument could be the ghost of a more traditional piano performance. Surrounded by talented improvisers, Hval loosens her grip over The Long Sleep and lets the sounds she’s working with roam freely across the mix.
The EP opens, on “Spells,” with Lauvdal gingerly fluttering between notes on an out-of-tune piano. A swell of high-pitched trumpets gradually takes over, constructing a brassy wall of sound. A vibrating synth noise slithers through a crack in the edifice, making room for the sustained notes of a tenor saxophone to follow. “You are your own disco ball,” Hval sings, her glassy vocals buoyed by muted drum tones. “Hovering above you like a comforting reminder, that not even you belong to you.” Her words suggest that detachment from one’s self can bring a sense of peace. By multi-tracking her vocals in the chorus, Hval constructs an infinity mirror of sound, her harmony and melody surrounding the listener like light bouncing off of that disco ball.
Bits from “Spells” reappear unexpectedly throughout the record. “You are your own disco ball” and other familiar lyrics become circular thoughts, bleeding into the next track, “The Dreamer Is Everyone in Her Dream,” and beyond. Listening to The Long Sleep is like existing in a constant state of déjà vu.
Hval’s voice is as high and delicate throughout the EP as the sound a wine glass makes when you wind a wet finger around its rim, and those vocals perfectly complement Lauvdal’s light touch in the opening of “The Dreamer.” The lull is interrupted when the tempo picks up and repetitive incantations couple with incessant clapping as the song crashes into its second half. The arrangement evokes that terrifying moment when a good dream abruptly goes bad. Nightmares are apparently part of this long sleep, too.
At nearly 11 minutes long, the title track is The Long Sleep’s slow-wave stage. Its tonal palette occasionally recalls the whooshing, womb-like noises Matmos used a washing machine to produce on Ultimate Care II, but Hval’s rendering of this trance state is mostly unique.Drones that sound something like lightsabers in battle periodically cut across the track, while her voice reverberates in the background, uttering phrases of which only isolated words are discernible: “distances,” “vast,” “open,” “asleep.” The dream deepens. Sounds reminiscent of a bullfrog’s bassy croak and the twitter of an agitated cicada creep in.
This quasi-natural idyll gives way to speech on the short closing track, “I Want to Tell You Something.” Hval’s words descend upon the song like Sir David Attenborough’s narration in the sweeping opening scenes of a “Planet Earth” episode. “What am I doing here?” she whispers in a voice as soft and light as a moth’s wings. There’s that synthetic vibration from “Spells” again. Every question Hval raises throughout the album goes unanswered, but she offers assurances along the way and in the closing promise: “When I hold you, you will not be awake for long.”
Unclear messages and unspooled melodies break new ground for Hval, and she inhabits it with grace on The Long Sleep. It’s as penetrating a work as Blood Bitch and its predecessor, Apocalypse, girl, but more humble in concept and more suspicious of its own claims. The EP’s comforting antidote to confusion isn’t clarity; it’s ambiguity. More than any unifying theme, what ties the record together is just Hval herself—resting as she dreams up her next step. | 2018-06-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-06-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Sacred Bones | June 4, 2018 | 7.9 | 1cd397fa-0ee6-49e2-9619-266b2b2b1e36 | Abigail Covington | https://pitchfork.com/staff/abigail-covington/ | |
The Philly rapper has evolved into an untouchable pop artist in sound and style. With deliriously good rapping and immaculate production, Uzi makes an event album live up to its name. | The Philly rapper has evolved into an untouchable pop artist in sound and style. With deliriously good rapping and immaculate production, Uzi makes an event album live up to its name. | Lil Uzi Vert: Eternal Atake | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lil-uzi-vert-eternal-atake/ | Eternal Atake | A typical Lil Uzi Vert song boils down to a few core topics: the millions in his bank account, the cars an average person wouldn’t know how to start, jewelry that wouldn’t shine on anyone else, clothing brands that most can’t pronounce, and girls who would never bat an eyelash at someone other than Uzi. But a typical Lil Uzi Vert song also sounds like it was ripped from a harddrive that fell out of the back of a spaceship, all delivered with a medley of influences from the generations that came before him. There’s the spirit of Meek Mill freestyling on Philadelphia street corners, the breakneck pace of G Herbo, the melodic designer-brand fever dream of a True Religion-wearing era Chief Keef, injected slightly with the pint-sized angst of punk-pop heroines like Hayley Williams of Paramore. There’s a reason why the Philly rapper’s leaks and snippets are traded like rare baseball cards in corners of the internet that stream more YouTube than Spotify. There’s nothing else like it.
But in the last two years, Lil Uzi Vert songs have become scarce. Shortly after the release of Luv Is Rage 2, the 2017 album that made Uzi a star, he entered label purgatory. Beginning in January 2018, Uzi began to vaguely hint that his Generation Now label bosses DJ Drama and Don Cannon were preventing him from releasing new music—he only dropped one solo song in 2018. In the meantime, while Uzi beefed with a suicide cult, squared up with Rich the Kid in a coffee shop, had a short-lived retirement, and became a semi-professional Triller dancer, his delayed third album, Eternal Atake, developed a mythical aura. It became known by fans as the Uzi opus forever locked away by greedy label heads, but, if it ever did find its way out into the world, it would be a landmark moment for an entire generation. The expectations were otherworldly.
And somehow, Uzi met those expectations. Eternal Atake is Uzi’s greatest album to date, a scope-defying hour-long epic that couldn’t be made by anyone else. It’s a seamless blend of drill-influenced rapping, melodic crooning, and beats that are aware of hip-hop’s trends, but stretch them to places unimaginable. A high-stakes feat, accomplished through a creative kinship with the Philly production collective Working On Dying and Uzi’s increased attention to detail—in the world of Eternal Atake, every spaced-out sample is just as important as any animated punchline.
Eternal Atake has a loose concept—something about abductions, aliens, and space, alluded to with a few skits and an album trailer—but none of that really matters. The album is 18 Lil Uzi songs about money, the luxury that money buys, the girls attracted to that luxury, and the heartache brought on by those girls, a feeling that has always inspired his music. Except, this time, his detail is richer. Uzi is not just compiling a list of brands; he paints colorful scenes down to the specificity of his Air Forces or a tag on his beanie.
Lil Uzi Vert has never rapped this well. He has always been capable, but much of his breakout mixtapes took a bright and singsongy approach to pair with his lovestruck personality. On “Silly Watch,” Uzi’s pace is relentless: It’s like sitting in the passenger seat while Uzi, head barely over the steering wheel, cruises into triple digits. “She look good, but she wear Fashion Nova/Took her shoppin’, put her right in some Vetements,” says Uzi, like every line is stepping on the one before it. “You Better Move” is similar, as Uzi fires off puns referencing forgotten pop culture tokens from his past—Blue Eyes White Dragon, Zoom, a Microsoft Zune—over a freakish Working On Dying beat, sampling sounds from “Space Cadet 3D Pinball,” which used to come pre-loaded with Windows. Uzi switches flows with ease, takes pauses that feel like a sudden pull of the emergency brake, and finishes every line with a high-pitch squeal that rivals Future on “King’s Dead.”
Uzi and Working On Dying really gel on “POP.” On a beat that sounds like it’s from the dystopian world of The Terminator, Uzi goes on the most intense Soho shopping spree: “I went to the store and got me some Vetements/Pradas and Balenci’, Balenci’, Balenci’,” he says like his voice is near-breaking. He goes on to name the brand “Balenci’” another 15 times, one of the countless unexpected moments that are not over-thought—the maximized version of the Uzi persona. Listening to Uzi rap this free is like watching an Olympic swimmer: He’s flying and I’m exhausted for him.
Eventually, Uzi takes his foot off the gas and weaves a melody in between his bars. “Celebration Station” is near-perfect, as Uzi sings and rolls his Rs: “And I can’t do my dance cause my pants, they from France,” he says, not joking. Then, there’s the delirious ballad “Chrome Heart Tags.” It’s bigger, but Uzi is still rapping about heartache and brands few can afford. The glorious mess of a beat is by Chief Keef, who wields drums that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Flockaveli-era Lux Luger beat paired with vocal samples that make it sound like a nightmare influenced by hallucinogens. Uzi and his producers aren’t reinventing the genre, but reimagining it, blending production and melodies of the last decade in hip-hop, while pushing it forward. At once, it feels like both the past and future.
On Eternal Atake you won’t find any pop songs—even a Backstreet Boys interpolation gets flipped on its head—or any attempts at being a rockstar—it’s a rap album. For a while, in the 2010s, many of Uzi’s SoundCloud peers were fed the nonsense that for a rapper to reach superstardom, they had to break down the genre’s barriers. But that was wrong: Hip-hop is limitless. Lil Uzi Vert made an event album, where the main attraction is flex raps and production that builds on its roots. Not even two years (an eternity in rap) was able to hold back Eternal Atake, an album that will be chased for years to come. | 2020-03-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-03-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Generation Now / Atlantic | March 10, 2020 | 8.4 | 1cd4b07d-f3b1-41e6-87a7-a1f502cfe185 | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
The Toronto jangle-pop duo doesn’t attempt to upset the winning formula established on its 2021 debut; it just executes the same bittersweet moves with even more militaristic precision. | The Toronto jangle-pop duo doesn’t attempt to upset the winning formula established on its 2021 debut; it just executes the same bittersweet moves with even more militaristic precision. | Ducks Ltd.: Harm’s Way | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ducks-ltd-harms-way/ | Harm’s Way | For half a century, jangly guitar pop has been a reliable delivery vehicle for both irrepressible joy and aching melancholy; it’s the musical vantage point from which a sunrise and sunset both look the same. But the songs of Toronto‘s Ducks Ltd. don’t so much deal in simple happy-sound/sad-lyric dichotomies as explore the symbiotic relationship between ennui and urgency. Since debuting in 2019, the duo of Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis has been building a modest but sturdy catalog of songs that communicate the frustration of being stuck—in stagnant relationships, soul-crushing cities, a doomed world—with fleet-footed, blurrily strummed joie de vivre. If McGreevy often sings from the perspective of someone in desperate need of motivation, Ducks Ltd.’s excitable rave-ups function as the musical equivalent of a fitness app prodding him to close his rings for the day.
On their second album, Harm’s Way, McGreevy and fellow guitarist Lewis don’t do much to upset their winning formula; they just execute it with more militaristic precision. On the sprightly “The Main Thing,” McGreevy sings, “I've been sort of staying in my lane/Moving like the eyes in a painting”—a line highly reflective of a band firmly ensconced in its comfort zone, yet open to incremental yet impactful evolutions. For the first time, the musicians decamped from their makeshift basement studio in Toronto and recorded in Chicago, plugging into a local network of collaborators that includes producer Dave Vettraino (Deeper, Melkbelly), Dehd’s Jason Balla, and Ratboys’ Julia Steiner and Marcus Nuccio, among others. Ducks Ltd. remain hitched to a lineage that spans Antipodean ’80s indie greats like the Clean and the Go-Betweens and modern-day torchbearers like Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever; with its twangly guitar lines, picture-postcard scenery, and yearning romanticism, you’d swear “Cathedral City” was some bygone Grant McLennan gem. But the expanded cast helps Ducks Ltd. shake off the hermetic, home-recorded feel of 2021’s Get Bleak EP and its full-length follow-up, Modern Fiction, giving the songs more room to breathe and blossom.
You can measure Ducks Ltd.’s relationship to—and growing distance from—their influences in their choice of railway metaphors: Where the Go-Betweens once wistfully compared unrequited desire to a “Head Full of Steam,” McGreevy renders a doomed partnership as a crash-bound “Train Full of Gasoline,” a song that aptly barrels forward like a runaway locomotive. Pretty much everything else on Harm’s Way is firing at an equally heightened level. The pacing is jacked up, the guitars sparkle brighter, and the harmony-rich choruses soar higher than before, even as the words sting more intensely: “Hollowed Out” is a song about emotional emptiness that will nonetheless fill your heart, while “A Girl, Running” frames its crestfallen portrait of relationship dysfunction and codependency (“She falls apart before me/And then I fall apart right back”) with shimmering guitar fanfare that conjures the giddy Breeders chestnut “Divine Hammer.”
Packing nine songs into 28 fat-free minutes, Ducks Ltd. approach Harm’s Way like a merciless personal trainer: After one mad dash ends, they permit nary a second of rest before initiating another. But they do provide a comedown breather with the closing “Heavy Bag,” where McGreevy and Lewis settle into the acoustic idyll of a rainy-day Belle and Sebastian ballad, before a swell of strings and encroaching cloud of distortion summon the rhythm section for a casual cruise to the finish line. It’s a classic encore move, the sort of gradually ascendant tune where you can imagine McGreevy and Lewis waving goodbye to the crowd as their backing musicians play them off. But coming at the end of a record overflowing with existential malaise and anxious energy, the stress-relieving “Heavy Bag” feels less like a calculated curtain-closer than a necessary act of self-care. | 2024-02-15T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2024-02-15T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Carpark | February 15, 2024 | 7.7 | 1cdbd2f2-be20-48af-88fc-843bc97f19c8 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
A confusing affair, the latest mixtape from the Clipse star features Rick Ross, Kanye West, 50 Cent, and very little effort from anyone. | A confusing affair, the latest mixtape from the Clipse star features Rick Ross, Kanye West, 50 Cent, and very little effort from anyone. | Pusha T: Fear of God | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15277-fear-of-god/ | Fear of God | "Roll With the Winners" was a classic track from Clipse's We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 2 mixtape, but Pusha T, that duo's more visible half, is a whole lot easier to root for when he's losing. From 2004 to 2006, Clipse were down and out, forgotten by their label even though they'd made a hit album, written off by an industry that preferred its crack-sales talk bigger and dumber. And the group responded by making their best music ever, exceeding even their great debut, Lord Willin', with the two Got It 4 Cheap mixtapes and Hell Hath No Fury. On these records, Pusha and older brother Malice projected raw, unbridled animosity rendered in dense, twisty language that showed them to be two of the best writers of their rap generation. But after those displays of hunger, ferocity, and intelligence, they went on autopilot, cranking out a few mixtapes and another album that sounded utterly tapped-out and devoid of inspiration.
A year ago, the group's critical and commercial future looked dim, and Malice embarked on an unexpected religious journey that led him to write a Bible-informed memoir. And all of a sudden, Pusha seems to be closer to stardom than he ever came in the Clipse. Kanye West snapped him up as a solo artist and made him the linchpin of Kanye's G.O.O.D. Music roster. Pusha got to step onstage at the VMAs in a "Miami Vice"-looking dinner jacket and deliver a shattering closing verse on "Runaway", and Kanye made room for Pusha verses in a ton of his G.O.O.D. Friday mp3s. Now Pusha has a label boss who appears to have full faith in him, and that label boss happens to be the most visionary producer in rap today. If ever there was a time for Pusha to make good on all his underdog promise, this is it. Instead, he's given us a mixtape so flat and lazy that I almost don't know why it exists at all.
Fear of God is less than 40 minutes long, and too much of that running time is given over to pointless freestyles over well-circulated tracks, or to tracks so flimsy that they barely exist. This is when Pusha should be establishing himself as a major artist, not freestyling over Soulja Boy's "Speakers Going Hammer". On opening song "My God", Pusha snarls, "Bear witness as I unveil this instant classic," but nothing about the tape suggests that he's interested in making any sort of classic. Pusha has some serious gifts in his favor: a great snarling delivery, a vivid eye for detail, a writer's gift for getting well-trod ideas across in ways nobody could've expected. But too often on Fear of God, he's just filling space with flat, workmanlike rhyme patterns and out-of-gas punchlines: "Money on my mind like my pillow is a vault." "Touch It", in which Pusha and Kanye beg for head, is the weakest Kanye West track in years, complete with a beat that must've been sitting around Kanye's hard drive forever. And on "Open Your Eyes", producer Nottz turns "Bohemian Rhapsody" into pitched-up chipmunk soul, which nobody ever needed to hear. On too much of Fear of God, nobody even seems to be trying.
But when the mixtape does crackle to life, we see a whole other side of the solo rapper Pusha could be. "Raid" has an absolutely vicious piano-driven Neptunes beat and an on-fire cameo from 50 Cent, and Pusha raises his game accordingly, giving his most energetic performance of the mixtape. And on "I Still Wanna", he shares a churning, operatic Rick Ross-type beat with Ross himself, and everyone comes out sounding bloodthirsty. If Pusha had made a whole mixtape of songs like these, it would've been incredible.
Otherwise, though, it's just a confusing affair. On his G.O.O.D. Friday tracks and his My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy verses, Pusha sounded like Kanye had lit a fire up under him; that fire seems nothing but a barely-glowing ember through most of Fear of God. And considering the amount of faith Kanye seems to have in Pusha, I can't understand why he'd do so little to prove Kanye right. At the beginning of his freestyle over Jay-Z's "Can I Live", Pusha says that he's recording at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi. If that's true-- and it might be-- it makes no sense. Pusha shouldn't have to leave his basement to record a "Can I Live" freestyle. And unless that freestyle turns out to be as sharp as what he was doing on We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 2, he shouldn't even be letting us hear it. Right now, I'm just hoping Pusha makes an album strong enough that we can all pretend Fear of God never happened. | 2011-04-06T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2011-04-06T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Re-Up | April 6, 2011 | 5.6 | 1cdddce1-4ab4-4838-8c47-1b62e0656689 | Tom Breihan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tom-breihan/ | null |
The first album in four years (five if you account for the one-year gap it took to cross the Atlantic) from the French dance band draws significantly from the funk, electro, post-punk, synth-pop, and techno movements that stretched across the span of the 1980s. | The first album in four years (five if you account for the one-year gap it took to cross the Atlantic) from the French dance band draws significantly from the funk, electro, post-punk, synth-pop, and techno movements that stretched across the span of the 1980s. | Cassius: 15 Again | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10804-15-again/ | 15 Again | A little personal nostalgia can be a good way for musicians to reconnect with their artistic inspiration-- just listen to Daft Punk's Discovery, a record largely spurred by the feelings the duo got from hearing pop music as children, or the Who coming to terms with their mod youth on Quadrophenia. It so often happens that these trips down memory lane somehow wind up being remarkably in tune with whatever retro-pop movements might be happening at the time, so it might not be too obvious that this kind of motivation is what drives 15 Again, the first album in four years from dance music vets Cassius (five if you account for the one-year gap it took to cross the Atlantic). After all, it's a French house-pop album that draws significantly from the funk, electro, post-punk, synthpop and techno movements that stretched across the span of the 80s-- that's only something you don't hear every day if you avoid anything remotely resembling current dance music.
But here's where 15 Again gets tricky: I couldn't find any specific details as to how old Philippe "Zdar" Cerboneschi or Hubert "Boom Bass" Blanc-Francard actually are. This means that figuring out the exact period of the album's impressionable mid-teen years is a bit elusive, and that's where we get back to that whole span-of-the-80s thing; any record that starts with a goodbye-seventies Italo-disco/new wave jam ("Toop Toop") and crests at the end with a four-song block of Phuture/Derrick May/Orbital-style rave fodder is, if maybe unintentionally, just as effective as a roadmap of dance music's decade-long mutation as it is a "man music was amazing when we were young" look in the rearview.
Maybe more so, since a purer form of nostalgia would do a lot less to disguise or modernize the catalysts that pushed the members of Cassius towards becoming pop musicians. It's easy enough to half-hear the first couple bars of a track on this album and notice the echoes of Paisley Park and the Hacienda, but it's just as easy to streamline this into the present. The acid-house-tinged title track isn't too far off from the kind of rave'n'B that's growing to define the late zero years, only with the breathy, subdued intensity of Gladys Gambie in place of Rihanna. Gambie also sings lead on "Rock Number One", where its Princely electro-soul lushness helps push her voice into an understated version of Chaka Khan, but the production is so spotlessly modern-digital that it sounds as much like 3121 as 1999. And while "This Song" might split a snarling, bass-heavy, handclap-riddled difference between Blondie's "Call Me" and Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus", it also elicits pangs of a somewhat more baffled and recent nostalgia-- hey, remember schaffel?
Interestingly, the further it gets towards the end of the 80s and the core of techno, the less it tries to connect with contemporary pop; "15 Again" aside, the acid house and Detroit techno homages ("Jack Rock"; "Cactus"; "Shame Shame Cherie") are pretty straightforward-- enough to sound like they came from an album without Pharrell Williams on it. (In this case, that'd be a better album-- Pharrell's awkward environmental-apocalypse crooning on "Eye Water" is a low point, and as a remake of 2002's Au Rêve opening cut "Hi Water", a redundant one at that.) But some peoples’ mid-teens are more confusing and more burdened with identity crises than others, and that could be enough to forgive this album’s thematic inconsistency: Cassius aren’t just capturing their own youth, they’re reveling in the youthful days of an entire sound-- on a record that a 15-year-old could enjoy. | 2007-11-06T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2007-11-06T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Electronic | Astralwerks | November 6, 2007 | 7.2 | 1cea4688-6467-4d51-b3f0-4ddc98a2d3d9 | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
On the embattled rapper’s latest EP, Iggy Azalea knows what a good rap song sounds like in the abstract but is simply incapable of making one. | On the embattled rapper’s latest EP, Iggy Azalea knows what a good rap song sounds like in the abstract but is simply incapable of making one. | Iggy Azalea: Survive the Summer EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/iggy-azalea-survive-the-summer-ep/ | Survive the Summer EP | “First things first: I’m the realest,” Iggy Azalea rapped to open her chart-conquering, Grammy-nominated single “Fancy,” through a well-rehearsed “blaccent” over a knockoff DJ Mustard beat. Authenticity was never really her thing, but since a scathing investigation into the careful creation of her pop-rap image by Jezebel’s Clover Hope, in a piece called “The Making and Unmaking of Iggy Azalea,” she’s been unmasked as a poseur infatuated with “super hood shit,” an outsider drawn to rap “caricatures” looking to fulfill her facile American dream.
She got her wish but not without consequence. Becoming rap’s latest Great White Hope left her neck-deep in fierce, ongoing conversations about appropriation, erasure, and realness. (Conversations Miley Cyrus had already been stoking for months before Azalea became the lightning rod.) “Its funny to see people Like Igloo Australia silent when these things happen,” Azealia Banks tweeted when Iggy was silent on Ferguson. “Black Culture is cool, but black issues sure aren’t huh?” She was in a meme war with Snoop Dogg, schooled on rap by Q-Tip, the butt of a “South Park” joke, threatened by Anonymous. And that was all at the height of her popularity.
Iggy Azalea’s debut album, 2014’s The New Classic, wrote checks she couldn’t cash on the front cover, and inside she smushed her Southern-aping flows into EDM beats. It’s taken her four years to release a new project because of how quickly the last one expired. Once touted as a clear heir apparent to Nicki Minaj, her sophomore album, Digital Distortion, is somewhere in label purgatory with Detox. After several false starts, she parted with Def Jam and signed with Island Records. Survive the Summer is the EP of someone too deep in the hole to stop digging. It’s like she’s rapping in a vacuum where none of this has happened. The same boilerplate language used in her songs four years ago is repurposed here, only now she’s even less believable. In these songs, she makes soporific guests Tyga and Wiz Khalifa look like aesthetes and tastemakers.
Azalea is, if nothing else, competent, owed primarily to a keen eye for forgery and a well-practiced routine. She knows what a good rap song should sound like in the abstract, but she is incapable of making one. Her writing is unimaginative yet cocksure, so convinced of its own epicness despite evidence to the contrary, framing her as the same unlikeable blowhard from her most controversial tweets. Few rappers seem to have to work as hard in their raps as she does, and even fewer make stunting feel so completely unglamourous.
Most of Iggy’s raps, dating back to and including “Fancy,” are about how she’s better off than those around her, how lucky someone (anyone, everyone) is to be in her presence, yet she is uninteresting and she comes across as dissatisfied. It’s hard to provoke envy when you’re projecting displeasure and resentment at every turn. When she raps, “I be looking at the stars while my pussy in his face/How the fuck could I fall off? I get 250 just to play,” on “OMG,” she doesn’t even sound like she’s enjoying herself, much less believes her own claim. Her request, on “Hey Iggy,” to “play this in the club” is performed with such animus it’s like she already knows the answer. Given all her haters, and how good she is at pretending, you’d think she could summon some showmanship. But the only thing flimsier on Survive the Summer is her songcraft.
These songs are so derivative that it’s hard not to home in and nitpick every instance where she says or does something absurd. “The Whisper Song”-referencing “Tokyo Snow Trip” is made entirely of tumbling hooks, and each is monotonous: “Rose from the cracks, with the rats and the roaches/Bust a duffle bag open/Hush money in the sofa/Bitch, you know what I’m totin’,” she hisses over and over, as if repeating the words will make them truer. On “Kawasaki,” she raps, “The block is hot, bitch go inside/Barry Sanders tryna juke the truth, we know you lyin’,” and it’s hard to imagine any rapper has been less self-aware. Realness is an elusive concept for Iggy Azalea, who still has no idea who she is in her songs and can’t even feign sincerity. Inside the 16-minutes of raps on Survive the Summer, her caricature feels less real than ever. | 2018-08-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-08-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Rap | Island | August 8, 2018 | 4.3 | 1ceb9f23-5df9-4d7b-a48f-dbe39efd5a8b | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | |
RZA and Interpol's Paul Banks come together for an overwrought pop-rap record either for die-hard fans or for those who think Chris Martin might just the best part of Graduation. | RZA and Interpol's Paul Banks come together for an overwrought pop-rap record either for die-hard fans or for those who think Chris Martin might just the best part of Graduation. | Banks & Steelz: Anything But Words | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22364-anything-but-words/ | Anything But Words | If you squint hard enough, a collaboration between RZA and Interpol’s Paul Banks makes a certain kind of sense. There’s a complementary starkness between Interpol’s icicled post-punk and the hip-hop RZA perfected with Wu-Tang Clan. It’s even possible to imagine Banks’ aura of gloom re-sparking some of the wilder, more macabre impulses of RZA’s Gravediggaz days. At their respective peaks, these two might have created a gnarly, gothic spectacle of a rap record together.
That’s not the record they made because they aren’t those artists anymore. Rather than carry on as the same shadowy figure of those first two Interpol records, Banks has revealed himself to be a pretty normal guy who likes normal guy things: hip-hop, clubs, and the good life in general. He’s covered J Dilla and released a rap mixtape titled Everybody on My Dick Like They Supposed to Be. RZA, meanwhile, has spent much of the last decade softening his image and broadening his horizons beyond rap. He's starring in a biopic about a porn star Venessa Del Rio and did a track with James Blake. Both artists have proven themselves to be richer, more complex figures than they introduced themselves as—and yet, paradoxically, less interesting figures. Each fought to escape the very box in which they did their best work.
Maybe that restlessness is what drew them together. There’s no great story behind their partnership, no unlikely shared acquaintance or serendipitous meet-cute at the backstage of a festival. RZA’s manager suggested the two get together, so they did, and after bonding over noodles and chess they set about recording this extremely workmanlike album as Banks & Steelz (Julian Plenti & Bobby Digital didn’t have the same ring to it, apparently). Banks had been a longtime Wu-Tang fan, of course, while RZA only began to explore Banks’ work after their initial meeting. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he cited not Turn on the Bright Lights or Antics, but rather 2007’s Our Love To Admire as the Interpol album he connected with the most. That’s hardly the consensus pick, but it checks out because it’s the album that mostly closely mirrors the transitional one Wu-Tang put out that year, 8 Diagrams. Both works expanded the group’s templates in ways that, in general, their architects found a lot more rewarding than their fans did.
And so with Anything But Words, both jump on the opportunity to branch out. These sort of rocker/rapper collaborations tend to be lopsided, with one party, usually the rocker, carrying the work load while the other phones it in (anybody interested in seeing this dynamic in action should watch the strangely fascinating making-of documentary for Linkin Park’s Collision Course, which features more footage of the band in the studio waiting for Jay Z to arrive than it does of Jay Z actually in the studio). To their credit, though, Banks and RZA are each so engaged that their project always feels like a true partnership. Banks’ guitars and synths amicably share space with RZA’s tidy beats, and every track judiciously reserves equal space for both voices.
Run The Jewels, the tag-team duo fueled in equal parts by righteousness and friendship, initially feels like the aspirational model here. On opener “Giant” RZA even channels some of Killer Mike’s bulldozer conviction (“Fuck CNN, this is ghetto editorial!” he fumes.) His rhymes still have a disjointed quality that becomes tedious in large exposures—he rarely carries a thought for more than a few bars—but it’s been years since he’s sounded this fired up. For anybody raised on those first few Wu-Tang records, his unmistakable lispy bark will always elicit a Pavlovian endorphin rush.
Banks, however, couldn't sound more out of place. Instead of singing in the focused baritone on Interpol’s first records, he leans on his higher registers, so much so that he even approaches howling, Adam Levine, “Just like animals, animals, like animals oh” territory. It’s as if he set out to make a rap album for people whose favorite part of Graduation was Chris Martin. And since nearly every song rigidly sticks to the same RZA verse/Banks chorus dynamic, all that mewling grows old fast.
Anything But Words’ best moments are the ones offer some relief from that endless back and forth. Kool Keith lends his weird energy to “Sword in the Stone,” a satisfying enough bit of fan service for hip-hop heads who have been waiting for a RZA/Keith team-up, while Florence and the Machine’s Florence Welch capably channels the spirit of contemporary R&B during her guest turn on “Wild Season.”
There are also decent verses from Ghostface Killah, Method Man and Masta Killa, but those outside voices aren’t enough to break up the often cloying monotony of an hour-long record that tries to repackage two cult artists as a mass-appeal pop act. Banks and RZA spent three years on this record, adding layers upon layers to the tracks and polishing them to an arduous sheen, then releasing it with the full backing of a major label. In interviews, they give off the sense that they’re hoping Banks & Steelz becomes something more permanent than just a one-off dalliance. But at some point during that all that tinkering, and all their efforts to mimic the chorus-centric template of Top 40’s tackiest crossover rap, the record lost whatever scrappy charm it might have held. Anything But Words is the rare side project that might have been better off if both parties had cared a little less. | 2016-09-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Warner Bros. | September 10, 2016 | 4.4 | 1cf04290-7eac-4764-9e0b-5eb1019439d0 | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | null |
The group is back from a three-year hiatus with its 13th studio album, Man Plans God Laughs*,* a timely release that repackages classic Public Enemy motifs for a renewed struggle. | The group is back from a three-year hiatus with its 13th studio album, Man Plans God Laughs*,* a timely release that repackages classic Public Enemy motifs for a renewed struggle. | Public Enemy: Man Plans God Laughs | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20846-man-plans-god-laughs/ | Man Plans God Laughs | Earlier this year, Public Enemy's classic 1990 album, Fear of a Black Planet, celebrated its 25th anniversary. Almost 25 years to the day after Chuck D's piercing shouts bookended Radio Raheem getting choked out by the police in front of onlookers in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, Eric Garner suffered the same fate. Since then, the police have killed Michael Brown, John Crawford III, Ezell Ford, Tamir Rice, Rekia Boyd, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and many, many more unarmed black men and women. Public Enemy's message is more relevant now than ever.
Almost on cue, the group is back from a three-year hiatus with its 13th studio album, Man Plans God Laughs, a timely release that repackages classic Public Enemy motifs for a renewed struggle. The group seems revitalized by the current movement and, as a longstanding, outspoken voice for civil rights, anxiously seeks to lend its support in the ongoing fight for black lives—there's even a passing mention of the #BlackLivesMatter campaign. Chuck D is refocused and often sharp, using his strained, but still booming chants to rally allies. When he shouts, "So, it's cool to be black until it's time to be black," on "Mine Again", a song about African pride, it's as much a call-to-action for African-Americans as it is reprimand of cultural appropriators. The two major points of emphasis remain mobilizing the black base and challenging anti-black tyranny. The message is delivered heavy-handedly, but that's always been the group's method; the main difference between Man Plans God Laughs and Public Enemy at its critical best is that the former isn't bracing or forceful in any impactful way. It lacks bite. There's no punch.
Public Enemy's tone has always been angry, confrontational, and conspiratorial, and there's no group in history better equipped to weaponize black nationalism against white supremacy, but here the battle waged is at least partially against a spiritual adversary. The title originates from an old Yiddish proverb—a weird bit of irony for a group that has frequently been accused of anti-Semitism—and the record is lined with similarly out-of-place religious subtext (on "Those Who Know Know Who", Chuck fires subliminal barbs at the devil; there's no sympathy for the same foe in the intro). Scriptural buzzwords like "evil" and "wicked" pop up unexpectedly as descriptors. There's no piety, merely a fixation with "the great Satan", who plays a puppet master figure in the periphery, and this only splits focus and limits the commentary's potency.
Chuck told Rolling Stone that this would be "the most intense Public Enemy record of the century," but 2007's How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul??? was much fiercer and more substantial. Man Plans God Laughs isn't intense; it's concise, and though it can't quite muster up the heavy strikes of other PE projects, it benefits from brevity. Many of the tracks barely clock-in at two minutes, which suits Chuck's fragmenting rap style, Flav's fading wail, and DJ Lord's compact scratching. Things click on all cylinders with the skipping "Lost in Space Music", where Chuck and Flav play up the emcee-hype man dynamic. When given space, like on "Corplantationopoly", the veteran can still be exhilaratingly bullish, rumbling through with weighty appraisals of race politics. But Chuck's voice isn't the same weapon it once was, Flav's ad-libs aren't as timely and his appearances are less waggish, and the shifting rap tide hasn't done the group's traditionalist sensibilities any favors. You can feel the difference.
Man Plans God Laughs is entirely produced by longtime Bomb Squad member G-Wiz—who also produced the majority of How You Sell Soul—and some of his beats slap, particularly "Praise the Loud", which is augmented by DJ Lord scratches. But many others blatantly pander to rap radio, and some are just busy for no reason ("Give Peace a Damn"). Where previous PE releases this century have often sounded dated, this one often sounds forcibly modern, the sonic equivalent of your tech-challenged granddad trying to use Spotify. At one point, Chuck utters the words 'Turnt up brand." "Earthizen" attempts to reimagine the tired alphabet rap concept, but sputters, adding a cringeworthy hook: "The earth without art is just, 'eh'." Even for all its faults, though, this record doesn't lack the distinct, aggressively pro-Black energy that originally made Public Enemy a voice for the oppressed masses. That's what has always been the most important thing at the music's core. The message is still there, the delivery is just less effective now. | 2015-07-27T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-07-27T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Spitdigital | July 27, 2015 | 6.2 | 1cf2e01b-d99e-47f8-9c7d-dbe8e47d0f4b | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | null |
From its humble roots in the Bay Area punk scene to its massive hooks, Dookie has become one of the greatest teenage wasteland albums of any generation. | From its humble roots in the Bay Area punk scene to its massive hooks, Dookie has become one of the greatest teenage wasteland albums of any generation. | Green Day: Dookie | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23226-dookie/ | Dookie | When he was 10 years old, long before he sang about masturbation losing its fun, Billie Joe Armstrong lost himself in music. His father had just died of cancer, and in Rodeo, California, a smallish East Bay suburb next to an oil refinery, Armstrong retreated into MTV, the Beatles, Van Halen, and a Stratocaster knock-off he nicknamed Blue. He grew close to schoolmate Michael Pritchard, who had his own family grief and who introduced Armstrong to British heavy metal giants like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Pritchard later earned the sobriquet Mike Dirnt, for his constant dirnting on bass guitar.
In high school, Armstrong and Dirnt smoked pot and played in a band called Sweet Children, finding their tribe in a tiny clique of DIY punks. By 1988, Sweet Children had their first gig at 924 Gilman Street, the Berkeley punk mecca opened the previous year by Maximumrocknroll zine founder Tim Yohannan, and Armstrong told his waitress mother he wouldn’t be graduating. Sweet Children signed to Lookout Records!, changed their name to Green Day, and put out a pair of rough but promising EPs. They brought in Frank “Tré Cool” Wright, a drummer known equally for his musicianship and his mischievousness, and with their sharply improved LP Kerplunk!, Green Day arrived.
As Kerplunk! landed on shelves in December 1991, Nirvana’s Nevermind zoomed to the top of the album charts. A band with Green Day’s momentum and punk pedigree was obvious bait for the major labels. Still, it was Armstrong’s voice, sneering and congested, that initially put one A&R exec off of Green Day’s demo. Luckily, he passed it to his producing partner, Rob Cavallo, whose father had been Prince’s manager circa Purple Rain and who, despite signing respected L.A. pop-punks the Muffs, was sorely in need of a hit.
He found one. Co-produced by Cavallo and the band themselves, Green Day’s Dookie was released on February 1, 1994. To date, the band’s Warner/Reprise debut has sold more than 16 million copies worldwide. Most of those album buyers probably know nothing about its makers’ humble origins. But that story helps to explain the unique series of balances, between showmanship and disaffection, dogmatic punk ideals and romantic stadium dreams, sweetness and scatology, partying and pain, that have turned Dookie into one of the greatest teenage wasteland albums of any generation. Armstrong’s Dookie guitar? His childhood’s trusty old Blue.
What set Dookie apart from the grunge rock bellowers of its day was Armstrong’s voice, foggy and vaguely unplaceable. “I’m an American guy faking an English accent faking an American accent,” he teased at the time. Though Armstrong’s tone was bratty, his phrasing had that lackadaisical quality that left room for listeners to fill in their own interpretations. On Dookie, Armstrong channeled a lifetime of songcraft obsession into buzzing, hook-crammed tracks that acted like they didn’t give a shit—fashionably then, but also appealingly for the 12-year-old spirit within us all. Maybe they worked so well because, on a compositional and emotional level, they were actually gravely serious. Sometimes singing about the serious stuff in your life—desire, anxiety, identity—feels a lot more weightless done against the backdrop of a dogshit-bombarded illustration of your hometown by East Bay punk fixture Richie Bucher.
“Longview,” Dookie’s outstanding first single, smacks of the most extreme disengagement: a title taken from Longview, Washington, where it happened to be played live for the first time; a loping bass line supposedly concocted while Dirnt was tripping on acid; and a theme of shrugging boredom that placed it in the ne’er-do-well pantheon next to “Slack Motherfucker” to “Loser.” Adolescent interest may always be piqued by lyrical references to drugs and jerking off, the way a 5-year-old mainly laughs at the Calvin and Hobbes panels where Calvin is naked or calling Hobbes an “idiot.” But as beer-raising alt-rock goes, this is also exceptionally bleak, with the narrator’s couch-locked wank session transforming into a self-imposed prison where Armstrong semi-decipherably sings, per the liner notes, “You’re fucking breaking.” No motivation? For a high-school dropout hoping to succeed in music, that mental hell sounds like plenty of motivation.
The other singles mix Armstrong’s burgeoning songwriting chops with deceptively lighthearted takes on deeper topics. The opening line, “Do you have the time/To listen to me whine?” is endlessly quotable, but the self-mocking stoner paranoia of the irresistible “Basket Case” was inspired by Armstrong’s anxiety attacks. As late as 1992, Armstrong still had no fixed address, and “Welcome to Paradise” reaches back to those nights crashing at dodgy West Oakland warehouse spaces. It also brashly embodies punk’s trash-is-treasure aesthetic at its most American. But the closest Armstrong came to a pop standard, one that any guitarist who knows four power chords can play at a home and a more established star could likely have made an even bigger hit, was the midtempo “When I Come Around”—a smoldering devotion to the then-estranged lover who would become the mother of Armstrong’s two children. They’re still married.
Elsewhere, the bouncy, brief “Coming Clean” is from the perspective of a confused 17-year-old, uncovering secrets about manhood that his parents can’t fathom; Armstrong has forthrightly related the song to his own youthful questions about bisexuality. “Seventeen and coming clean for the first time/I finally figured out myself for the time,” he declares, in one particularly sublime bit of wordcraft. Teenage angst pays off well: Now he was bored and almost 22. Likewise, the rest of the album tracks often further showed what an accomplished songwriter Armstrong had become. “I declare I don’t care no more,” from breakneck slacker anthem “Burnout,” would be a classic first opener on any album, even though by now we know it contains an element of false bravado. The contrasts that made up the band’s identity also helped elevate Dookie above its shitty name, couching anti-social childishness in whip-smart melodic and lyrical turns. When, on the last proper track, the nuke-invoking “F.O.D.” (short for “fuck off and die”), Armstrong vents, “It’s real and it’s been fun/But was it all real fun,” it’s his Dookie-era way of saying he hopes you had the time of your life.
Critics have been kind to Dookie, but not overwhelmingly so. It’s tempting to wonder how many of these lyrics could’ve been influenced by Robert Christgau’s two-word, two-star Village Voice review of Kerplunk!: “Beats masturbation.” Still, he gave Dookie an A-, and the album made it onto the Voice’s 1994 Pazz & Jop year-end critics’ poll at No. 12. But the backlash against Green Day in the pages of Maximumrocknroll was real and visceral. The June 1994 cover showed a man holding a gun in his mouth with the words, “Major labels: some of your friends are already this fucked,” with Yohannan sniffing inside, “I thought it was oh so touching that MTV decided to interrupt playing Green Day videos to overwhelm us with Nirvana videos on the day of Kobain’s [sic] death.” At Gilman, where major label acts were banned, graffiti on the wall proclaimed, “Billie Joe must die.” So it’s an album many people adore, but like loving the Beatles, proclaiming your adoration for it doesn’t necessarily win you any special recognition. Oh, you were in seventh grade and learned every word of a Green Day album? Duh.
Time has worked on Dookie in strange ways. Most blatantly, the post-grunge alt boom allowed an album like this to exist in the first place. Green Day were masters at pulling stoner humor out of malaise, and that is what the so-called alternative nation needed. One of Dookie’s great light-hearted touches, the image of Ernie from “Sesame Street” on the back cover, has been airbrushed away from later physical editions, ostensibly due to legal concerns. Among the many things streaming has ruined was the old ’90s trick of including hidden tracks on the album buried without notice at the end of the CD, so all digital releases treat Tré Cool’s novelty goof “All By Myself” as its own proper track. The unfortunate “Having a Blast,” about wanting to lash out with a suicide bombing, is understandably absent from most recent Green Day setlists.
Then again, so many of the fights that Dookie started have happily become moot. In 2015, Green Day played their first show at Gilman in 22 years. Whichever Maximumrocknroll readers were mad at Green Day for trying to make it out of their working-class suburban beginnings probably have more adult worries today (the zine, however, hasn’t forgotten). Though Green Day never quite embraced the term pop-punk and certainly didn’t invent it, they were pegged as its popularizers; you could hear their echoes several years ago in records like Wavves’ King of the Beach, but younger pop-punk torchbearers like Joyce Manor, Modern Baseball, or You Blew It! have been more likely to name-check the more tightly genre-fitting Blink-182. In interviews, Armstrong still claims the “punk” mantle, but over the years Green Day emerged as a classic arena-rock band, noted for their pyrotechnics.
These days, Armstrong knows how to fire up crowds by promising them they’ll have a good time. Fans are brought up on stage every night to take their instruments and play a song. A T-shirt cannon is somehow involved. Green Day have matured in all the ways the biggest bands usually mature, and that’s their right. Immature but crafty, punk but pop, American pretending to be English pretending to be, well, whatever, Dookie-era Green Day were, for a time, in a class alone. Call them pathetic, call them what you will. They were all by themselves, and everyone was looking. | 2017-05-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Reprise | May 7, 2017 | 8.7 | 1cf7823c-05bd-43bb-b6d0-2ef55a932491 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | |
No, it's not Illmatic, but here Nasir Jones is again telling stories, attacking the mic, and displaying his virtuosity. | No, it's not Illmatic, but here Nasir Jones is again telling stories, attacking the mic, and displaying his virtuosity. | Nas: Hip Hop Is Dead | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9729-hip-hop-is-dead/ | Hip Hop Is Dead | For all the youngsters and dabblers out there, hip-hop is not dead, so calm down. If anything, hip-hop is deaf. Rappers, bloggers, and fans have become so averse to criticism that the mere title of this album flung them into defensive hysterics. So, Nas' plan worked. People are at least trying to come up with reasons why hip-hop is indeed alive instead of just stealing an album per week and dropping weird science on the internet. He wants us to care again, to think when we listen instead of simply consuming, because his career and the survival of the culture depend on it. Nas couldn't be a pop guy, even with Puff's help. He couldn't write a club song if his life was at stake, which, after "Oochie Wally" it probably should have been. And he certainly isn't going to make any money off his crew (see also: "Oochie Wally"). Nas is a writer, and he needs our attention. He needs us to read lines, between the lines, put it all together. He needs us to give a fuck about the art, the history, and the craft or we won't get what he's saying. Hip-hop isn't dying because Nas hates it; it's dying because not enough people love it. If that sounds corny or offensive, well, there's the rub, and Hip Hop Is Dead is made for you. If you lecture on rap forums all day, post daily pics on your blog of Lil' Wayne kissing people, wonder why we write about hip-hop on this site, or just want to know what the best rapper alive really sounds like, listen to this album.
For everyone else, the standard Nas disclaimer: Hip Hop Is Dead is not Illmatic. Nothing ever will be. Nas and I are roughly the same age, so when his debut came out in 1994, it was a humbling experience for me. I was struggling through term papers while this slightly older dude from Queensbridge was writing the great literature of our generation and collaborating with producers I considered legendary. Pete Rock, Gang Starr's DJ Premier, Tribe's Q-Tip, and Large Professor of Main Source had produced a dozen or more of my favorite albums by the time they worked on Illmatic, and each dropped a gem on Nas, a rookie. (The Black Album was not the dawn of Dream Team production.) AZ, the only guest, got one verse on "Life's a Bitch", a verse so perfect it still haunts him in the same way Illmatic's every verse haunts Nas. It's a flawless album, my personal favorite, and I can listen to it today and not be bored for a second. Unfortunately, every album subsequent to Illmatic contained increasingly longer stretches of boredom, mine and Nas'. Even his recent "comeback" albums (aren't they all?), including the infamous "Ether"-ing of Jay-Z on Stillmatic, were better in theory than in practice-- the go-to criticism of Nas, his poor taste in beats, holding true for every failure. But, he was also getting lazier, less-focused, saying things without thinking and probably smoking way too many blunts. It was largely a lost decade for Nasir Jones.
When Nas signed with Jay-Z's Def Jam, I didn't guffaw. I didn't care. I was happy that Nas was making money, but I didn't believe rumors of a Nas/Premier reunion or the Return of Nasty Nas. It was what it was: a business deal. Whatever that deal promised Nas, though, pays off on Hip Hop Is Dead. He is, in fact, extremely nasty on almost every track, as committed and consistent as he's been in a long time. Beginning with the L.E.S. & Wyldfyer-produced royal rumbler, "Money Over Bullshit", Nas leans into the mic and doesn't fall back until he's said his last word on the a capella "Hope". The two tracks with Kanye West are exceptional for both artists, confirming the chemistry of Late Registration's "We Major" and bracketing the meditative middle of the album. On either side of that soulful stretch are "Black Republican", the fantasy duet with Jay, and "Hustlers", or, Make-a-Wish for the Game. Jay and Nas are so ridiculous on a track together, it's almost depressing that it took this long to happen, and the Godfather II sample is inspired. The Game, in what should be his template, sounds great rapping on a song with the rapper whose name he is dropping, especially when it's Nas, whom the Game most closely resembles. The closeness of their voices actually makes the Game more tolerable by osmosis.
A few of the beats are mediocre, which, again, is Nas' Achilles Heel. But if I'm going to talk negatives, it's really only necessary to mention one song. Will.i.am produced three on the album, and all of them, at least his contribution to them, are decent to good. However, "Who Killed It?", Will's odd nursery-noir beat, is the worst concept song in the history of hip-hop music. Normally, I'm with Nas any time he wants to inhabit a persona or inanimate object, but here he assumes the voice of-- I shit you not-- character actor Edward G. Robinson (kids: think Chief Wiggum). The first time I heard it, I was genuinely shocked. The content is irrelevant. Truly, deeply embarrassing, but that's what the delete key is for, people. Let's hope it was the Black Eyed Pea's idea.
At least Nas is trying again, though. He's pushing himself, and that's what his appeal has always been. He's a virtuoso MC, but it has never been about style over substance or dazzling technique. Don't get me wrong, there are verses on Hip Hop in which he rattles off minute-long torrents with more internal rhymes than Rick Ross had rhymes in toto on his album. But Nas is telling stories again and attacking the mic, and that is what is important. While his successors might impress with intricate wordplay, too often they're just saying what's on their minds instead of getting something off their chests. Maybe that's what Nas means by Hip Hop Is Dead, that the art of rhyme is lost, but he also must accept some of the blame that he liberally places on others. It was his lack of effort, after all, that created a vacuum for others to fill with emptiness.
In the end, Hip Hop Is Dead is the album I'll give to people in 20 years when they ask who Nas was. More than Illmatic, it represents the real Nas-- not the ideal-- the MC with all the skill, all the rhymes, and all the insight who sabotaged himself with bad decisions. There aren't too many here, which is why I'll recommend it. Whether he will revive hip-hop or not is for history to decide; I'm not sure it needs reviving. The need for Nas to play a vital role in whatever happens, though, is something I am sure of, so I'm glad he's back with the living. | 2006-12-15T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2006-12-15T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rap | Def Jam | December 15, 2006 | 7.8 | 1cf7aa6d-748a-49b4-b5a9-f72490400050 | Peter Macia | https://pitchfork.com/staff/peter-macia/ | null |
The fifth album from the Kentucky singer-songwriter is her most intimate record yet, bracing and dense, featuring subtle production touches from Jeff Tweedy. | The fifth album from the Kentucky singer-songwriter is her most intimate record yet, bracing and dense, featuring subtle production touches from Jeff Tweedy. | Joan Shelley: Joan Shelley | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23095-joan-shelley/ | Joan Shelley | When self-titled albums fall later in an artist’s catalogue, they’re usually perceived as statements of intent. Joan Shelley’s comes five solo records into her career at a fairly big moment for the Louisville traditionalist. Following 2014’s Electric Ursa and 2015’s Over and Even, she’s become a songwriter of some renown, yoking country’s lilt and primitive picking to her wise, elegant vocal delivery. Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy enthusiastically accepted her invitation to produce Joan Shelley, her first time working outside of her usual cohort of guitarist and Lomax archivist Nathan Salsburg, and English guitarist James Elkington. They’re both present here, joined by Tweedy’s son, Spencer, on drums. Yet despite banner names all over, Shelley has explained her self-titling as “trying to get away with less… an exercise in understatement.”
Above all, Joan Shelley is intimate. Jeff Tweedy’s production barely makes itself heard—it’s all in the close-mic’d recording, unfussed takes, and dusky atmosphere. Elkington’s arrangements are similarly minimal. Each of these 11 songs starts from acoustic fingerpicking and Shelley’s clear, mature voice, and builds from there, layers of guitar stacked for depth, not impact. The feathery tangle of “We’d Be Home” and the chiming “Even Though” are Joan Shelley at its purest, songs that might breeze by unnoticed if not for her striking vocals and nimble melodies. Across the record, she seems to reckon with a non-committal lover, and the simple backing forces her insistence on her own strength to stand alone. “Yes, I can bear you,” she repeats, “Yes, I can bear it all.” She could just as easily be saying “bury it all,” in a sly allusion to her suppressing her own emotional needs.
The more intriguing parts of Joan Shelley are more keyed into the album’s bittersweet mood, evocative of Fairport Convention and Linda Thompson’s somber turns. The light dims on “If the Storms Never Came,” and Shelley sings at a flinty remove as she appraises someone who’s drawn from domesticity to the darkness. “How could you stand it, how could you stand it,” she asks, pushing into the question as if testing the gait of an old rocking chair. “How could you stand it if the storms never came?” The uneasy tone persists as she reproaches herself for pinning her colors to this person’s unstable mast. The rueful “I Didn’t Know” reaches a pique where it could start kicking up dust, but stays steady and restrained. “Didn’t know I needed him/To twirl me and to watch me spin/I didn’t know/I didn’t know,” she sings, sounding like the much-missed Nina Nastasia.
Shelley repeatedly comes back to these rhetorical flourishes—an approach that clearly feels safer than firm statements, as she clarifies when she asks, “Don’t make me say what this is/Where have we to go once we’ve described it?” on “The Push and Pull.” Yet her questions never obscure her intentions. “I Got What I Wanted” has a skittish outlaw darkness, and a muted electric guitar line that tugs like a clenched jaw. “I got what I wanted/Didn’t I?” she asks again and again, almost trilling the harsh consonants. “I got a good mother/Didn’t I?/And I got a real good father/Didn’t I?” Although she pleads with her lover to recognize her needs, the effect is devastating—as if questioning how she could dare ask for more given what she already has, or deriding her own naivety.
Despite the subtle betrayal at the heart of Joan Shelley, its sweeter moments might hit harder than the obvious darkness. “Isn’t That Enough” is a close duet between Shelley and Salsburg’s guitar that demonstrates the affection of their neighborly porch sessions, and the only song on the record that approaches concrete detail, contrasting images of carefree innocence (“I’ve watched the foal/Roll in clover and steam in cold”) with endless futility: “Oh, when all the red/Could be the wine/We never win the wars/Just see the fights.” But the only moment where Shelley indicts the other party is on “Wild Indifference,” a strange, swooping song that groans and bows like sheet metal in the wind, a low, forlorn accompaniment to her unyielding bemusement. This time-waster isn’t a romantic wanderer, but a self-absorbed myopic. “Ain’t it lonely?” she asks repeatedly, and her curiosity turns to pity.
She presses further: “Can you even see me? Am I coming through?” As far as Joan Shelley goes, the answer is definitively yes. While it’s a quieter record than its predecessors, and her ceaseless questions and lacerating self-doubt would seem like the opposite of asserting an artistic identity, Shelley’s absence of imposition only emphasizes her enviable patience and burgeoning tenderness. | 2017-05-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | No Quarter | May 8, 2017 | 7.6 | 1cf9b3e7-4400-49cb-9106-26014e67fe81 | Laura Snapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/laura-snapes/ | null |
On his debut album under his own name, the artist formerly known as Deadboy captures a cross-section of recent UK dance-music history, spanning 2-step, breaks, sunrise anthems, and dub techno. | On his debut album under his own name, the artist formerly known as Deadboy captures a cross-section of recent UK dance-music history, spanning 2-step, breaks, sunrise anthems, and dub techno. | Al Wootton: Witness | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/al-wootton-witness/ | Witness | First arriving on the UK scene in 2009, Al Wootton notched up a number of underground hits under his Deadboy alias on labels including Numbers and Well Rounded. His floor-focused verve and deft application of cute, catchy R&B samples sounded fresh in the face of dubstep’s increasingly murky (and often moodily masculine) trajectory. Tracks like “If U Want Me” and “U Cheated” borrowed from the blossoming UK funky scene and would be lumped in alongside everything from the ill-fated future-garage revival to the so-called tropical sound. Ultimately, though, they formed part of a shift that helped open up audiences to the experimental approach of dubstep-adjacent artists like Peverelist, 2562, and Martyn, who had taken to dialling up the dub elements in dub techno. It’s this hinterland that Wootton, having retired the Deadboy moniker, explores on his debut LP under his own name, Witness.
Arriving via Trule—Wootton’s own label, which, in its two short years, has established itself as a buy-on-sight imprint—the album is the product of a couple of particularly fertile weeks in his newly established home studio out on England’s East Coast. Moving from digi-dub to burbling garage, breaks, ravey chords, four-to-the-floor sunrise anthems, and, finally, an impeccable dub-techno workout on closer “Cephas,” Witness offers its own chronology of UK club music. The reality isn’t quite that neat a journey, of course, but the ground Wootton manages to cover in just shy of 40 minutes is impressive; that he does so without the music ever feeling forced is more so.
Sometimes, he squeezes this broad sweep into a single track: “Over,” with its melange of plump kicks, incidental synths, and occasional flourish of breakbeats, feels like a microcosm of the album as a whole. Tracks like “Sema” and “Witness” are more singularly focused—the former a gloopy drum’n’bass stepper, the latter swung 2-step—but connect with the rest of the album via Wootton’s signature airy pads that drift from track to track throughout. The lasting impression is of Wootton’s deep attachment to the UK’s ever-evolving electronic underground. With shared club spaces in peril like never before, the record provides an opportune cross-section of the island nation’s rich dance-music history.
It’s ironic that Wootton should produce this ode to UK dance music having decamped from the friction and buzz of the capital to the relatively sleepy environs of Ramsgate—a coastal town on the country’s Eastern shore, probably most famous today for its depressing cameo in the latest season of Top Boy. While for the most part this physical distance is immaterial, Witness does lack one of clubbing’s “What the fuck is this?” moments—the sort of ear-popping tune that makes you screw up your face mid-drinks order and cast a desperate glance at the DJ booth in the vain hope of discovering just what it is you’re hearing. For seasoned dance-music fans, there’s nothing here that won’t already sound in some way familiar. Given the relentless pace of UK dance music’s evolution, this might be taken as a criticism, but it needn’t be: Sometimes it’s fine to have a little more of a good thing. And in that sense, Witness manages the sometimes tricky tussle between healthy microdoses of nostalgia and the rush of the new with magnetic, full-hearted aplomb. | 2020-07-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-07-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | TRULE | July 27, 2020 | 6.9 | 1d018ca6-89c0-4f8f-a5c5-906c43521d60 | Will Pritchard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/will-pritchard/ | |
Following the dissolution of the longstanding Boston power trio in 2020, Carl Shane reassembles the group as a quartet and pushes at the limits of its dense, cantankerous sound. | Following the dissolution of the longstanding Boston power trio in 2020, Carl Shane reassembles the group as a quartet and pushes at the limits of its dense, cantankerous sound. | Kal Marks: My Name Is Hell | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kal-marks-my-name-is-hell/ | My Name Is Hell | Before flaming out in early 2020, Kal Marks shook Boston’s foundations from underground. The 2018 album Universal Care defined the noise-rock trio at its prickly peak; singer-guitarist Carl Shane embodied a proletariat everyman on the brink of collapse, his guttural yowl the sound of a man plunging into a visceral, violent panic. Following the dissolution of the longstanding power trio, the band’s tempestuous fifth album, My Name Is Hell, follows Shane with a newly cast quartet unfurling their dense, cantankerous sound with impudent bravado.
“This might be delusional, but I just feel more like a realist than a pessimist,” Shane told WBUR in 2018, challenging a notion that has loomed over the band since its inception in 2010. “I understand that, most likely, nothing good is going to happen, y’know?” My Name Is Hell vehemently defends this idea: “I know the wrath of God/Like the tracings of my own palms,” he cries on the crunchy trudge of “Ovation,” his voice gritty and hardened. It no longer registers as the Kal Marks of yore, the creature with its back against the wall. Where previous records feel bound by chains in a scrapyard, this album is feral and prowling, coursing with adrenaline.
Shane, now accompanied by Bethlehem Steel’s Christina Puerto on guitar, A Deer A Horse’s Dylan Teggart on drums, and bassist John Russell, used the new lineup to stretch out the group’s proportions, adding layers of ’90s-inspired guitar melodies and loose interplay to a trembling, rhythm-focused sound; the music buzzes with the most harmonic reciprocity his discography has ever seen. Turbulent opener “My Life Is a Freak Show” signals a shift similar to Swans and Harvey Milk following their first few strident releases. The days of wistful violence (Universal Care’s “Fuck That Guy”) are out; the goading curiosity of self and acceptance are in (“My life is a freak show/I got no place to go!”).
Peppy, punky songs like “The Future” and the anthemic “Everybody Hertz” feel more in keeping with former Kal Marks contemporaries like Pile and Krill, groups who fronted the Boston scene during their initial inception. But whereas Kal Marks once presented as the diffident underdog, proudly playing songs often without any tangible melody to grasp onto, the new iteration of the group allows itself more space to stretch out, making bold new harmonic choices as it does. “I’m bored again/I’ve never felt so alone,” Shane confesses on roomy album closer “Bored Again”; in a sparse, airy moment like this, we’re witness to a rare breath unadorned by anger or power, a striking instance of vulnerability that skips like a rock on a pond into lapping cymbal crashes and dual guitar leads.
At the crux of every Kal Marks release is a jaundiced study of humanity. Corporations, politicians, and organized religions are all predators of the working class, the unequivocal antagonists in every story Shane tells. My Name Is Hell is no different, but hearing his wits-end exasperation on the Jesus Lizard-esque “Debt”—“Debt! It’s growing higher, it consumes everything… Debt, you know my name!”—has considerably more juice coming from a tired 35-year-old than a tired 25-year-old. “Gone are the days I used to feel so free,” he blurts on “Shit Town,” a post-hardcore suburban anthem that doubles as one of the album’s most melodic offerings, his tone biting and cold.
My Name Is Hell is a chronicle of fortitude. “Won’t let Hell win,” Shane repeats on the album’s spongy title track, alluding to his closest encounter with his maker. For this band to be suffocated by working-class adulthood would be antithetical to its very purpose. Instead, Shane and company once again face the realities that plague them most. It’s this persistence, this bootstrapping style of trauma management, that cement Kal Marks as the stoic foremen of Boston’s post-hardcore movement. | 2022-08-08T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2022-08-08T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Exploding in Sound | August 8, 2022 | 7.2 | 1d07deb0-23ad-4171-86a9-bd50fef174ad | Charley Ruddell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/charley-ruddell/ | |
Stevie Wonder’s early Motown career hit its peak on 1966’s Up-Tight, cementing his role as someone born to make music not only as a career but as a calling. | Stevie Wonder’s early Motown career hit its peak on 1966’s Up-Tight, cementing his role as someone born to make music not only as a career but as a calling. | Stevie Wonder: Up-Tight | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/stevie-wonder-up-tight/ | Up-Tight | Like the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard, Harlem’s Apollo Theater has its own “Walk of Fame” that displays the names of pioneering Black musicians. Stevie Wonder is one of them, his name carved into a plaque and embedded in the pavement in 2011, nearly 50 years after he first performed there. In 1961, then known as Little Stevie Wonder, he was one of the first child stars in the country to be signed to Motown. When he performed at the Apollo in December of 1962, it was clear that he was following in the footsteps of seasoned performers who had undertaken this necessary rite of passage.
By this time Wonder had already released two albums, A Tribute to Uncle Ray which was made up of Ray Charles compositions, and The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie, and toured across the country, entertaining segregated Black audiences as part of the “Motortown Revue.” Still, Wonder was so nervous during his Apollo debut that he dropped the bongos that he usually used to liven up the crowd in the middle of his performance. Wonder remembers Motown kingpin Berry Gordy chiding him for the fumble, but Wonder was unfazed. “Yeah, but I sang the song real good,” he replied back. It was a moment that proved that if he could keep the show going while on one of the most consequential stages in America, then maybe he could make a career from singing.
Four short years later, after dropping the “Little” from his name, Wonder released 1966’s Up-Tight.
At the time, Up-Tight was positioned as his last-chance album. There was fear among the executives at Motown that once Wonder’s voice matured in puberty, it would lose the crystal-clear clarity that had made him a phenom. It’s hard to fathom the idea that someone in their teens would find themselves fighting to stay relevant, but the music industry’s notoriety for wresting the life out of child stars to market their youth is unfortunately not new. Those who fail are left reeling with little money, and even less support, something Wonder would have observed in the rise and fall of Harlem-born singer Frankie Lymon, whose own transition from beloved child star to struggling adult performer highlighted the dark side of the business. Then just 15-years-old, Wonder had to make the album of his life, crafting recognizable hits and also the sound he hoped to create for the future.
The first track, “Love A Go Go,” is a swooping opener with a bounce and a step befitting a Hitsville release. The percussion and attention-seeking horns introduce the first notes and as the song continues it showcases Wonder as a master of space, able to envision how each instrument should perform as part of a group. There is a hint of hesitation in his vocals when he first comes in, almost as if he’s dipping his toes in uncertain waters, but by the second track, “Hold Me,” he’s confidently jamming aided by a pulsing percussion that builds and recedes at the right moments.
Popular session group The Andantes provide backing vocals on multiple album tracks, and on “I Want My Baby Back,” their harmonizing with Wonder is sublime. Co-written and produced by the dream team behind Motown’s assembly line of hits—Harvey Fuqua, Cornelius Grant, Norman Whitfield, and Eddie Kendricks—we hear Wonder’s notes almost crackling the vinyl, as if his collaborators just told him to let loose in the recording booth. Whitfield was one of the lead architects behind Motown’s distinct musical sensibility, writing songs for Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight and the Pips, along with the Temptations of which Kendricks was the co-founder. By collaborating with Wonder, this duo helped ensure that the album was in the vein of prior hits that had emerged from the label. In the young musician, they recognized and honed a skill and ear for melody that made him singular. They knew how to craft a successful tune, and their involvement showcased Motown’s vested interest in making sure Wonder had all he needed to make an album that would sail across the charts.
The album feeds off the youthfulness of Wonder’s fans. The title track was a meeting of the minds between Wonder and singer-songwriter Sylvia Moy, a key Motown player who convinced Berry Gordy to trust in Wonder’s changing vocals and shifting artistry. The bouncy “Teach Me Tonight” and “Nothing’s Too Good for My Baby” were clearly produced to seamlessly fit a Dreamgirls type of choreography–fast-moving, outstretched arms, swaying hips and flirty glances. and yet for all its exuberance and lightness, there is an unmistakable and potent introspection that emerges on the cover of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin in the Wind.”
With his mentor Clarence Paul next to him, Wonder delivered his first work directly addressing race and inequality, producing a song that carries a heart almost too heavy for a teenager. The song had made Bob Dylan a revered songwriter in mainstream America, and in a tradition evident since the emergence of negro spirituals, Black artists took a known body of work and augmented it with insight and feeling that transmitted the brutality they witnessed and the hopes they carried. During his early days, on breezy tracks like “Hey Harmonica Man” and his rendition of “Dream,” Wonder subtly projected an existence that mimicked a swinging pendulum, constantly moving between episodes of grief and snatches of happiness.
As a young adult, he talked about the experience of creating in a country that for years placed him center stage then asked him to leave through the back-door. His political messaging was subversive enough to confound writers, including the Black journalist Jack Slater, who wrote for the New York Times in 1975 that “Stevie is largely spiritual youth in search of love and purity, while [Bob] Dylan is the bristling bull‐detector and, ironically, the restless, teeth‐gnashing, bad‐ass nigger.” It’s a jarring dissonance that side-stepped Wonder’s Blackness because it was seemingly absent of rage. This was nine years after the release of Up-Tight and after albums such as Where I’m Coming From and Innervisions where tracks like “Heaven Help Us All,” and “He’s Misstra Know-It-All” saw Wonder singing for freedom and holding President Nixon to account.
On the “Blowin in the Wind” cover, he holds listeners with both the cadence of a preacher, and the spirit of a young man finding a way to articulate the experience of being Black—using a celebrated invocation of oppression to make personal an unacknowledged harshness. From his teen years, the artist understood his position as a Black person in America, and moved softly enough that his transgressive art was misconstrued. Yet the music never faltered.
To take a step back and look at the album is to see a community in practice and motion. Wonder’s mentors and collaborators, decades older than the 15 year-old who they had known since he was 11, all brought their very best to make sure the homegrown boy had all he needed to come out on top. He was protected and supported, and it’s likely one of the main reasons he was able to stay focused on his commitment to music while tilling the ground that would birth his still unmade classics. Up-Tight is his album built by a tough-loving community, and Wonder is the artist he is because of those who made room for him to explore, experiment, and soar. | 2022-02-27T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-02-27T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Tamla | February 27, 2022 | 9.5 | 1d09afe4-6c01-46c0-8600-c025d9df4519 | Tarisai Ngangura | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tarisai-ngangura/ | |
The New Jersey rapper RetcH, or RetcHy P, began to gain traction on the indie rap circuit with his soul-chopping 2013 mixtape, Polo Sporting Goods. After doing time in county jail last year, he returns better than he’s ever been on Finesse the World, a sinister segue into his vivid underworld. | The New Jersey rapper RetcH, or RetcHy P, began to gain traction on the indie rap circuit with his soul-chopping 2013 mixtape, Polo Sporting Goods. After doing time in county jail last year, he returns better than he’s ever been on Finesse the World, a sinister segue into his vivid underworld. | RetcH: Finesse the World | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20887-finesse-the-world/ | Finesse the World | On "Disclaimer", the mean-mugging opener to RetcH’s dark Finesse the World mixtape, the New Jersey rapper issues a series of warnings for listeners colored in with pop culture references: "This ain’t no Wale, this ain’t no Makonnen/ This junkie's dying in the stairwell ‘cause the dope is potent." It’s an abrupt introduction, a shoulder check that announces itself with its sudden sting, and it’s a fitting entrance for RetcH, who is best described as a menace. RetcH is a small-time drug dealer, a corner boy passing off product through closed-hand transactions on the block. Dealing opens doors to violent crime and petty larceny. There isn’t any of the chest beating bravado that helped mythologize drug impresarios like Reasonable Doubt-era Jay Z or (to an entirely different extent) Rick Ross. This isn’t glamorous. This is felony possession with intent to distribute. This is "selling smack and tucking bread with your granny." This isn’t Scarface, it’s Pusher.
RetcH, or RetcHy P, first began to gain traction on the indie rap circuit with his soul-chopping 2013 mixtape, Polo Sporting Goods, which was entirely produced by Thelonious Martin. The tape, and especially the brilliantly composed "Special Jim", which was endorsed by Earl Sweatshirt, showcased his colorful storytelling and his angling perspective. RetcH often takes a winding approach to writing that supplements dramatic scene-setting with lesser, more arresting details. He has a keen sense for exactly what makes his stories worth telling—the visceral nature in which he presents them—and he constantly frames his verses like he’s describing a first person shooter to a blind person. But many of the soul samples on Polo Sporting Goods weren’t equipped to fully utilize his skillset. After doing a bid in county last year, RetcHy P returns better than he’s ever been, in his element, on Finesse the World, a super sinister segue into his vivid underworld.
As a proud street urchin, RetcH is a poster boy for Keeping It Real, one who won’t hesitate to snuff a show-off for his jewelry just to laugh about it. On "Still With It", which employs the "fame hasn’t changed me" trope with a twist, he raps, "Still rock polo that I stole on me/ Still fuck up niggas that done told on me." He’s at his best when he unapologetically explores the murky depths of villainy. There were glimpses of it on Polo Sporting Goods, but, as the title implies, that tape had a focus on flair over felonies. With Finesse the World, RetcHy P fully embraces being a scoundrel. This is the darkest he’s ever been, and he rips through ominous productions from noted gloom casters A$AP P on the Boards, H.N.I.C., and Antwon Carrera. There are no moments of reprieve; this is a labyrinth of dark alleyways. Turning the corner just introduces more unscrupulous characters.
Things really heat up on Finesse the World when the beats warp into sonic distillations of evil and RetcH barrels through them with a snarl. On "Affiliation" he locks eyes with his foes, firing literal and figurative shots in all directions over a forbidding, distorted piano riff. He writes engrossing tales about small-time drug trafficking on "Cheap Work", which makes use of its rumbling bass and a wailing train horn sample. RetcH is at his most venomous on the title track over grim production from H.N.I.C., rapping phrases like "Ready to shoot the next thing that's breathing, nigga/ I'm fucking heated, a fucking heathen, policing demons" with real fury. The deeper he crawls inside the sparse, shadowy soundscapes, the better he raps. The tape does have a somewhat singular sound, but RetcH is most at home beneath a cloak of darkness.
Somehow, through all the snarling and terrorizing on Finesse the World, RetcHy P retains his knack for storytelling, penning street epics as captivating as they are chilling. He does some of his best writing on "Amedei Procelana", which finds him posing naked for a sketch artist and dealing during chem class. He does some of his best rapping on the A$AP P-produced "Round Here", where he raps in compact bursts, stressing syllables like he’s trying to rip them. When he spits, "Nigga you could get smoked eating jerked chicken/ In front of everybody and still won't be no witness," the juxtaposition of his phrasing with his cadence almost makes the act seem comical. There’s even a reunion with Thelonious Martin for "Bad Luck", which plays like a wicked outtake from the Polo Sporting Goods sessions. But he really puts it all together on Finesse the World’s most interesting cut, "Product of Da Block", layering an elastic riff with one of his most ferocious flows. He opens the song with a speech that condemns friendliness in rap: "When the fuck did everyone become so friendly… When you see me, don’t even approach me because I ain’t friendly." It only takes one listen for that same malice to become contagious. | 2015-08-14T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2015-08-14T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Rap | self-released | August 14, 2015 | 6.8 | 1d0b81fb-b93a-4974-b57b-3af14566ce8a | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | null |
The Brooklyn singer-songwriter makes being a loser sound lush with textured, self-deprecating songs that land like punchlines. | The Brooklyn singer-songwriter makes being a loser sound lush with textured, self-deprecating songs that land like punchlines. | Katie Von Schleicher: A Little Touch of Schleicher in the Night | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/katie-von-schleicher-a-little-touch-of-schleicher-in-the-night/ | A Little Touch of Schleicher in the Night | On A Little Touch of Schleicher in the Night, Katie von Schleicher is a luckless harlequin on a velvet stage, showcasing an array of indignities against a luxe backdrop of strings and woodwinds. She’s a clown; a loud talker making faux pas; a deadpan underdog. Like Harry Nilsson on A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, she makes being a loser sound lush, teetering between cheeky, aggressively charming pop and dreamy balladry.
The Brooklyn singer-songwriter’s latest album is more acerbic than 2017’s Shitty Hits and 2020’s Consummation, the pay-off, perhaps, of writing classes taken during a lean period without a booking agent or a plan. “Honestly my tight five needs work,” she confesses on opener “Montagnard People,” but the songs here delight like a series of clever, well-timed punchlines. Her candor makes her a protagonist worth rooting for. “When you’re mourning the past/You’ll remember your ass,” she sings, recalling lapsed advice to take nudes while she’s still young and hot. She snoozes the alarm under a heap of pillows and suffers from week-long migraines. “I wear becoming like a burlap sack,” she says on “Elixir.” Somewhere between Faye Webster and Eleanor Friedberger, von Schleicher delivers her sermon from inside a conversation pit, sunk deep while the hubbub transpires a few feet away.
The quips are the album’s most noticeable gems, and they shine all the more inside such atmospheric production. A Little Touch of Schleicher in the Night is an excellent attestation to von Schleicher and collaborator Sam Griffin Owens’ direction: Every song sounds textured and multifaceted, with steady builds and decrescendos that juxtapose joy with the comedown. The arrangements—a menagerie of saxophones, clarinets, and violins with the jaunty bounce of guitar chords—walk a tightrope between the schmaltz of a Herb Alpert record and the evocative swell of Brenda Lee’s “Emotions.” It succeeds as party music, the kind that starts jubilantly and lapses into wine-drunk silence. Although occasionally, like on “Bottle It,” von Schleicher slows down the tempo and risks killing the buzz.
The album is not all joyless rides and parties, surfacing raw anxieties about failure and being left behind. But it finds solace in revelry: “Tonight I’m a dancer/I wanna feel alright/There are a million worries, I know,” she sings on “Elixir.” If time and existentialism comes for us all, the best we can ask for is a picture of our ass at 25 and a pop song on the radio while we languish on a California highway. A Little Touch of Schleicher in the Night gilds indignity with glamor, a winsome paean to shiftlessness and melancholy. | 2023-10-27T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-10-27T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sipsman | October 27, 2023 | 7.5 | 1d0c4e29-749c-480a-aade-99bd3aaa5757 | Linnie Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/linnie-greene/ | |
On his latest, the Long Island MC exults in the kingdom he’s created within underground rap. | On his latest, the Long Island MC exults in the kingdom he’s created within underground rap. | Roc Marciano: Mt. Marci | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/roc-marciano-mt-marci/ | Mt. Marci | Roc Marciano knows his influence looms large over rap and is tired of waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. He’s said as much in interviews and in bars: “What good is the credit if you can’t get it while you alive?,” he growls on “Tom Chambers,” a song from his last studio album Marcielago. Released in 2019, Marcielago is the closest the New York rapper-producer has come to explicitly staking a claim to his legacy on record. The impact of his minimalist production style and surrealist pimp chronicles was an open secret within the modern hip-hop underground and between power players like JAY-Z and ?uestlove alike for years. His foundational 2010 solo debut Marcberg celebrated its 10th anniversary this past May and, following Marcielago’s chest-thumping, long overdue flowers were delivered.
Marciano’s own faith in the value of his art is well-documented. He’s been selling his albums at premium prices through his website since 2017’s Rosebudd’s Revenge, circumventing streaming services for at least two weeks at a time to reap what he sees fit. Mt. Marci, his tenth studio album, is no exception. If Marcielago was the Thanos snap on his decade of underground hip-hop innovation, then Mt. Marci is him celebrating the fruits of his labor the best way he knows how: by putting his head down and continuing to churn out colorful wordplay over finely chopped loops.
Many of the album’s beats sound as though they've been ripped from the deleted scenes of a Melvin Van Peebles film, with Marciano as its slant rhyme-spitting antihero. “Where I’m from, hammers ring/Can’t be mishandling things/I’m not a square but yeah, my hands is clean,” he says on “Baby Powder.” On “Pimps Don’t Wear Rabbits,” he manages to take something as simple as putting on jewelry and make it sound superhuman: “My diamond chain’s a climate changer/I’m playin’ with weather.” The worlds he creates are rich with mise en scene.
Marciano’s humor is underrated. Rap thrives on hyperbole, and while many rappers sell their otherworldly tales with their chests puffed out, Marciano moves in the exact opposite direction. His deadpan delivery makes his metaphors even funnier, like a mob boss stumbling into an open mic night at a comedy club. He doesn’t just cook cocaine well, he came up “scraping the bowl like an eight-year-old.” His sex is so wild it’s only comparable to the GS Boyz’ Stanky Legg dance. He claims his haters play his music in secret like they’re watching porn. Because he never alters the grain of his voice, his jokes slide by without losing the feel of the ceramic bowl or the glow of a computer screen in the dark.
As funny as Marciano can be, his world is still largely a grim one. The close calls and brief flashes of life that dot his songs—images of an addict smoking out of a Country Time lemonade can, glimpses of a father who was “a wino but he was fly tho”—balance his cartoonish eye for detail with pathos. “Two diamond crucifixes I wore for all the times that I’ve been double-crossed,” he remembers over the elegant piano keys of the absurdly titled “Steel Vagina.” Moments like these illuminate the person underneath the white fur and cream-colored suede Yeezys.
Whatever mood Marciano is trying to convey across Mt. Marci, the beats help steady his directorial lens. Per usual, Marciano handles the bulk of the album’s production, crafting all but one-and-a-half of the album’s 16 songs (“Downtown 81” was made by Seattle polymath Jake One and the first half of “Baby Powder” was made by Pro Era stalwart Chuck Strangers). Songs like “Wheat 40s” and “Steel Vagina” are vintage Marci, driven by pristine, barely embellished loops that glimmer with chandelier luster.
As tight as he is within his comfort zone, Marciano experiments to great results. He’s largely abandoned his trademark lack of percussion, with the majority of the songs featuring drums of some sort. “Covid Cough” turns a guitar wail and off-kilter drum patterning into the wonkiest beat he’s ever created, accented by a fiery ScHoolboy Q verse (“I got nothin’ to prove/I sold 20, made 20, I’m in the shadow of who?”) "Wicked Days" is an eerie mass of blips and hums more reflective of Flying Lotus and Death Grips than the grainy mid-’90s aesthetic he usually prefers. Somehow, with little musical direction, Marciano corrals these sounds with nothing but his mid-tempo rasp.
Much like genre-defining artists before him such as stylistic forebear (and album guest) Kool Keith, Roc Marciano lives in his own world; we just visit him there. His claims of mastery over his lane of hip-hop are bolstered by the quality of his songs. His sound is bombastic yet refined, a delicate balancing act inspiring artists both large (Earl Sweatshirt, A$AP Yams) and small (Ka, Stove God Cook$). He’s worked hard over the last decade, and he’s feeling slightly more appreciated for it: “I ran it up without a loan/I guess you could say I’ve come into my own,” he says on the title track. Mt. Marci is a proclamation from a throne of his own creation.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-11-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-11-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Marci Enterprises / Art That Kills | November 24, 2020 | 7.7 | 1d0d1cc2-efc6-479c-b086-a1fcc324783d | Dylan Green | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/ | |
The Mexican-American singer-songwriter harnesses the musical echoes of their ancestors into a gorgeous, dreamlike memory palace. | The Mexican-American singer-songwriter harnesses the musical echoes of their ancestors into a gorgeous, dreamlike memory palace. | Y La Bamba: Lucha | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/y-la-bamba-lucha/ | Lucha | The earliest recordings that Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos made under the name Y La Bamba were stark and immediate by design. The songs on their 2008 debut Alida St. felt captured, not recorded—as if Ramos had grabbed a guitar in a rush before tuning it, balancing a laptop awkwardly on a living room chair so they could hit “record.” The songs in question, and the ecstatic way Ramos’ pleading voice wrapped around them, seemed to be the point; the recordings are just artifacts. Listening to them felt like listening in.
With 2019’s Mujeres, their music began expanding in all directions. Suddenly, the music happened around you, no longer a sound in a room but the room itself, one you could wander around in. Not coincidentally, this was also when Ramos began taking over production duties. They’ve spoken candidly about struggling with impostor syndrome in the studio, but the evidence of their vision is obvious: No one else would have intuited the dimensions, layers, or shadows they find in this music except its creator. It’s rare for a project to discover its full potential 15 years onward, but that seems to be exactly what’s happened with Y La Bamba.
On Lucha, Ramos worked with engineers and producers Coco Hernán Godas and Ryan Neil Oxford to shape their music into a memory palace. The samples resemble hand percussion, and the live congas sound looped. On “Dibujos,” a flute and piccolo are taffy-pulled until they mimic an analog synthesizer, while a high whine on “Collapse” emerges from either a Farfisa organ or a guitar. Their music has never quite sounded this silky, enveloping, or unreal, with familiar sounds consistently warping into unfamiliar shapes. When they invite their old companion Devendra Banhart to join on “Hues,” he sounds utterly submerged inside their world—a wide-eyed Dorothy wandering through Ramos’ self-constructed Oz.
Ramos’ clarion voice, which used to emerge from their songs like a cloud of birds bursting from tree branches, is masked and treated in intriguing ways, so that they often seem to be murmuring from the corner of the mix. This style heightens the sense that Ramos’ music exists in conversation with what they have called “the echoes of my ancestors.” The Spanish lyrics to “Nunca” come from a heartrendingly simple poem written by their mother, expressing the pure desire to protect them from evil and harm. Even if you don’t speak the language, the familial warmth is unmistakable. The cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” has a childhood-memory sense of unreality to it, with pianos and horns curling in the background like a sun-warmed Polaroid.
At the center of this shifting world sits Ramos, a clear-eyed presence whose aching voice is the waveform that steers the music through all of its choppy waters. In the pleading catches of their phrasing, you can hear the music their parents loved—mariachi, corridos, rancheras, música azteca—coursing under the surface. In a recent interview, Ramos talked of their transfixion with mariachi singers when they were young, performers whose voices transmitted emotion purely and simply, as if they were pulling a row of colored scarves from their throats. Singing was a given in their family, as natural as the shift between Spanish and English that happens in Ramos’ songwriting, and in their dreams. “How can you not sing?” Ramos asked, their eyes wide and bewildered. | 2023-05-04T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-05-04T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Tender Loving Empire | May 4, 2023 | 7.8 | 1d0e37df-f120-4369-921a-9de6efd8c49c | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | |
The prismatic, outstanding new album from the Brooklyn singer-songwriter moves gracefully through jazz, R&B, soul, and reggae. It’s a searching and specific exploration of connection, pain, and desire. | The prismatic, outstanding new album from the Brooklyn singer-songwriter moves gracefully through jazz, R&B, soul, and reggae. It’s a searching and specific exploration of connection, pain, and desire. | Yaya Bey: Remember Your North Star | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yaya-bey-remember-your-north-star/ | Remember Your North Star | On Remember Your North Star, the resplendent new album from the Brooklyn singer-songwriter Yaya Bey, scenes of heartache and joy are both glimpsed through a prismatic lens. Bey’s blend of R&B, soul, and jazz is bound together by the specificity of her lyrics, which recount conversational stories of sex and breakups and lend vivid color to her music. Following her breakthrough Madison Tapes LP and introspective The Things I Can’t Take With Me EP, Bey has crystallized her sound into one of the most dazzling albums of the year. The multifaceted music of Remember Your North Star lingers with somatic force, depicting the collision of thoughts, troubles, and desires of a Black woman searching for connection. It’s a powerful statement of purpose that resists easy answers, instead swirling through Bey’s mind as she looks for them herself.
Bey has described Remember Your North Star as a “thesis,” a way to center Black womanhood while working through the misogynoir that occurs in their romantic relationships. “I saw a tweet that said, ‘Black women have never seen healthy love or have been loved in a healthy way,’” she said in a statement. “That’s a deep wound for us. Then I started to think about our responses to that as Black women.” In practice, those ideas manifest in expressionistic songs largely produced by Bey herself that consider the traumas inflicted by misogyny, often by drawing on her own experiences of depression and familial turmoil. Moving through jazz, R&B, soul, and reggae with a dancer’s careful sense of balance, Remember Your North Star’s themes are rooted in the desire to be loved and wanted, with rich, detailed traces of autobiography folded in throughout.
Bey has worked within ideological frameworks before—2016’s The Many Alter-Egos of Trill’eta Brown explored similar ideas, inspired partially by Audre Lorde’s concept of biomythography, a style that merges history, biography, and myth. Remember Your North Star refines that conscientiousness into a sharpened blade. “I am the daughter of a girl/Who could go missing/For seven years/Thirty-one years/And the world wouldn’t skip a beat,” she opens in a scratchy vocal filter on the spoken-word interlude “i’m certain she’s there,” an ode to her mother, landing an instant gut punch on generational trauma. Bey also revisits the soul-crushing grind of working a nine-to-five that she scrutinized on Madison Tapes, picking apart capitalism’s sway over her circumstances. “Ain’t nobody tell me it’d be like this,” she sings in a lilting flow on the mellow “nobody knows,” going on to pin down a recognizable frame of mind for millennials across the country: “I done worked my whole life and I still ain’t rich.”
Bey’s focus on the past adds depth and context to Remember Your North Star’s stories about the relationships in her life today. Vacillating between come-ons and teardowns, her stances are always moving. On the woozy “don’t fucking call me,” as she ruminates on post-breakup loneliness in an airy upper register, she describes a toughened sense of adoration for a challenging lover: “Love you like cooked food, baby, you’s a meal,” her pitch-shifted voice chants, “Only cost a few gray hairs/That’s a steal.” She constantly shifts into different modes of lyrical and vocal expression, each one more poetic and surprising than the last. “keisha” is a masterclass in melody, adopting the swagger of R&B’s greatest shit-talkers while retaining Bey’s coolheaded style. The song’s washed-out guitar melody and drums open up into a sunny beat for the instantly memorable, sprightly chorus: “The pussy so, so good and you still don’t love me,” she sings, braiding confidence and vulnerability into one.
The oscillation between moods reflects Bey’s mind, jumping from one thought to the next as quickly as she changes flows. Even the album’s sparer elements—a looseness of form and structure, the textural and lo-fi production on songs like “street fighter blues” and the dubby “meet me in brooklyn”—are in service of amplifying her words. Bey's approach to creating a thesis is freeform and conversational; she doesn’t hand you a roadmap, instead establishing a mutual trust that her listeners will understand her more deeply than that.
For all of the hardships and complexities she’s working through, Bey also knows there’s no pain without joy. The album expands her scope toward more upbeat production, turning Remember Your North Star into an engaging, shapeshifting listen that places it among other recent R&B albums that pull from neo-soul and hip-hop for experimental spare parts. “Pour Up” takes her to the dancefloor, where she and Washington, D.C. producer DJ Nativesun envision a hedonistic night out with a thick bassline and a thudding beat. She sounds as natural in a raucous setting as she does on the smoky standout “alright,” where her tempestuous modulations attain a dreamy weightlessness. Here, her message snaps into focus, creating a mantra-like salve over breezy, rolling percussion and keys. “Don’t it feel like love is on the way?” Bey ponders, turning the question into a passionate affirmation for Black women in every walk of life. Remember Your North Star assures that working through messy emotions and behaviors—whether inherited or learned—is integral to receiving and giving love. With her deft voice and casual rhythms, Bey makes the process sound freeing. | 2022-06-17T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-06-17T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Big Dada | June 17, 2022 | 8.6 | 1d15ecad-eb82-479e-a77a-0efe48808087 | Eric Torres | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-torres/ | |
The Cutting Edge gathers music Dylan recorded over 14 months for the albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde. These two years are Dylan at his wildest: Later on, he'd have discipline, but this is what he sounded like when he was free. | The Cutting Edge gathers music Dylan recorded over 14 months for the albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde. These two years are Dylan at his wildest: Later on, he'd have discipline, but this is what he sounded like when he was free. | Bob Dylan: The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Volume 12 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21178-the-cutting-edge-1965-1966-the-bootleg-series-volume-12/ | The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Volume 12 | After 2013's Another Self Portrait, and given the continued brilliance of Dylan's bootleg series in general, you start to get the idea that Bob Dylan has alternate versions of damn near every album in his career in the hopper. The Cutting Edge, gathering music Dylan recorded over 14 months in 1965 and 1966, for the albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, does not dispel this notion. The set exists in several editions (2xCD highlights, ultra-limited 18xCD complete, and this set, the deluxe 6xCD edition) and could conceivably be mined to assemble two or three alternate versions of each of those three albums.
Pick a random deep cut like Highway 61's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry", and it appears here in four versions, three of them complete. The five versions of Blonde on Blonde's "Visions of Johanna" total 33 minutes. No fewer than 20 of the tracks are given over to "Like a Rolling Stone", including the various rehearsals, alternate versions, false starts, and tracks highlighting the stems containing individual instruments from the master take. So The Cutting Edge is the last word on obsessive studio documentation designed for rabid superfans. But it also happens to contain an almost unbelievable amount of great music that, broken into more digestible portions, any Bob Dylan fan can appreciate.
During the period covered by this compilation—the transitional, acoustic-leaning folk-rock of Bringing It All Back Home, the gnarled blues-rock of Highway 61, and the Americana fusion of Blonde on Blonde, enabled by producer Bob Johnston and his Nashville session pros—Dylan recorded in a way that has become rare in the era of unlimited tracks and non-destructive editing: He got a band of musicians in a room and recorded live. In a 1985 interview with Bill Flanagan (who also happens to contribute an essay to this set), Dylan claimed, "I don't think I knew you could do an overdub until 1978."
That approach partially explains why this massive trove exists in the first place. With the recent Led Zeppelin reissue sets, we were left mostly with early and alternate mixes as bonuses because the masters were carefully constructed in the studio from fragments. With Bruce Springsteen's ongoing archival series, he's been liberal about recording new instruments and even vocals in the present day to fill in blanks. But Dylan's alternate versions could more accurately be called alternate performances, meaning each one is unique. And given the way he refined and re-worked songs during this period—trying them with just voice and acoustic, adding a full band, changing tempos, time signatures, and lyrics—the different versions can be sharply different in mood and effect.
"She's Your Lover Now", a song recorded during the Blonde on Blonde sessions but not included on that album, is a good case study in what makes this set fascinating. It wasn't included because Dylan was never able to record it properly—it's a complicated song, with some unusual changes and held notes, and he and his band were never able to get through it without mistakes. Eventually Dylan grew frustrated and moved on. But it's easily one of the best songs Dylan had written to that point, meaning it's one of the best songs he's ever written period, an alternately hilarious and pained story of a guy, his ex-girlfriend, and her new boyfriend encountering each other at a party. The title refrain basically amounts to Dylan saying "You deal with it—she's your problem now," and his disdain for the new guy reinforces how much it still hurts, and how he thinks this dude isn't anywhere nearly enough for her ("And you—just what do you do anyway?"). Songs this rich were coming fast and hard for Dylan during this period, and "She's Your Lover Now" is so powerful it's almost a shock to the system when it breaks down after six minutes, a bum note and everyone stops playing, and you are reminded that they were living inside this song and the famously oblique "wild mercury sound" Dylan hoped to conjure at the exact same moment.
One of the main points of Greil Marcus' book on "Like a Rolling Stone" is that the song could have been many things, but what it was owed a lot to chance. Dylan recorded it many times but one take turned out to be the take, and the slight variations in phrasing altered how it was heard forevermore. That quality, of all the possible worlds these new versions suggest, animates the set. What if "Like a Rolling Stone" had been a slow waltz? What if "Leopard-Skin-Pillbox-Hat" was filled with goofy sound effects? What if "Mr. Tambourine Man" had been released in its full band version? (The recording of the latter ends hilariously when Dylan cuts it short and says "The drumming is driving me mad! I'm going out of my brain.") Some of the differences were subtle and some weren't, but the way this music has been pored over in the years since, none are insignificant.
These two years are Dylan at his wildest. He revolutionized popular music lyrics during this period, bringing in surrealism and romanticism as channeled by the Beats and making it work in a pop context. One of the things he inherited from the Beats was a belief in spontaneous writing and trying to take lyrics more as dictation. Which is not to say he didn't revise—he did, and often. But it's always been a mistake to put too much emphasis on the details of these words and what they might "mean." Sometimes they were selected because a turn of phrase was funny, or because Dylan couldn't think of a better rhyme, or sometimes simply because that's what came out. Later on in his writing, he'd have discipline, but this is what he sounded like when he was free.
The structures of these lyrics probably owe something to Dylan's rumored drug experimentation during this period, specifically with marijuana and amphetimines. People on speed use a lot of words and cram them into spaces too small to contain them; they follow digressions and join phrases and ideas that needn't necessarily be joined; the desire to make illogical connections leads, on the one hand, to paranoia—you start to see things that aren't there. But if these tendencies can be channeled just so, they can lead to new structures. "The sun's not yellow, it's chicken" goes one of my favorite lines in "Tombstone Blues" (heard here in a complete alternate take and another partial version). Nouns and adjectives get chopped up and mixed together, the collisions of language leading to Gertrude Stein-like moments where you can feel your brain being rewired.
All of which is to say that the idea of "Dylanology" in the classic sense of decoding these lyrics to undercover what they might "mean"—Who is Mr. Jones? Where is "Desolation Row", what the hell are those jewels and binoculars doing hanging from the head of the mule???—is missing the important point: During this period, language itself was a playground for Dylan. The Cutting Edge is music of the present, but not the '60s present, an eternal present; the songs are about observation and they exist in a place where it's always now, in sound and word.
The music here conjures a feeling of acceleration that couldn't continue—Dylan's songs couldn't get any knottier or more surreal. The album after this one, John Wesley Harding, released in 1968 after Dylan's mysterious motorcycle accident (The Basement Tapes were recorded in between, but not released until 1975), found him heading in the complete opposite direction, stripping everything to the bone and writing with shocking economy and clarity. If everything up until this point had a certain logic to it, the hotshot young folk singer who is growing immensely with each year turns to rock'n'roll, after 1967 Dylan would be impossible to get a handle on. He had many brilliant records ahead of him, but he started to understand the precise value of theater and artifice. Here he was too wild and moving too fast to even figure out how that might work; he was a trickster, as witnessed in his infamous press conferences, but nothing was channeled into a specific direction: It was all blasting outward, in every direction, all at once. | 2015-11-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2015-11-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Columbia / Legacy | November 5, 2015 | 8.7 | 1d1902ce-46a4-4175-80a5-6e73c79afedb | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Nirvana’s transcendent live acoustic album recorded in 1993. | Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Nirvana’s transcendent live acoustic album recorded in 1993. | Nirvana: MTV Unplugged in New York | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nirvana-mtv-unplugged-in-new-york/ | MTV Unplugged in New York | By the time Nirvana recorded their performance for MTV Unplugged in November 1993, they were the biggest band in the world. Not that they looked like it. Dave Grohl in his turtleneck and ponytail, Krist Novoselic wrangling his giant, borrowed bass, Kurt Cobain struggling to act relaxed in a room filled with people who thought he was a prophet.
Of course, that was the point of Unplugged, and, in a way, of Nirvana: Even after Cobain got famous, he tried, often painfully, to seem normal. A month or so after Unplugged was taped, he bought a black Lexus, but was so mortified by it—and mocked so thoroughly by his friends—that he returned it within a day. “This is from our first record,” he mutters before “About a Girl.” “Most people don’t own it.” Never mind the five million people who had bought the one that came next.
Cobain was reportedly miserable before the taping, worried the band didn’t have the grace to pull off something so subtle. “We’re just musically and rhythmically retarded,” he’d told Guitar World in the wake of 1991’s Nevermind. “We play so hard that we can’t tune our guitars fast enough.” As few as 24 hours before Unplugged, he was considering having Dave Grohl sit out because he thought Grohl’s drumming would overpower the rest of the band. For musicians whose sound was so essentially electric, the idea of playing acoustic—or, as it came to pass, in a subdued, semi-amplified state—wasn’t just like going on stage naked, but amputated. Afterward, Cobain reportedly complained to Unplugged programmer Amy Finnerty that the audience must not have liked it because they were so quiet. “Kurt,” she said, “they think you are Jesus Christ.”
MTV had started hosting “Unplugged” in 1989 as a way to package famous artists in comparatively approachable contexts. (The name alone—“Unplugged”—conjured an imagined utopia where music was nothing more than the spontaneous expression of people in a room.) You’d come in, strip down, show your fans the heart bleeding under the armor. Between 1991 and 1993, guests of the show included middlebrow alternative acts like Elvis Costello and R.E.M., legacy artists like Eric Clapton and Paul Simon, and contemporary pop stars like Mariah Carey. A few hair metal bands came through in an attempt to be taken seriously, as though the lust of teenage girls was not serious enough. The day before Nirvana filmed their set, the show’s guest was Duran Duran.
As with all creative endeavors, Cobain seemed eager to strip the charade of its artifice and do something he perceived to be real. At the very least, he hadn’t clawed his way out of Aberdeen, Washington to let Nirvana become Mr. Big. He’d ordered the stage to be decorated with black candles and stargazer lilies, a funereal scheme routinely invoked as a premonition of his suicide, when in actuality it had more to do with his penchant for twisting conventional beauty into something grotesque. A treatment for the “Rape Me” video documented in his diaries called for lilies and orchids—“ya know, vaginal flowers,” Cobain wrote—to be shown blooming and withering in time-lapse, as though incapable of retaining pageant posture for more than a few seconds. Cobain himself regularly appeared in torn dresses and smeared makeup, storming through performances with the fury of a shattered debutante, more Sunset Boulevard than Black Flag. And what were Nirvana’s best songs but demonstrations of how the most corrosive blasts of noise could turn into lullabies fit for a T-Mobile ad? If you buy flowers, you already know: nothing stinks quite like a big, sweet bouquet of lilies.
The setlist, submitted to MTV without concession or explanation, contained six covers and no hits other than “Come As You Are,” a point of contention so contentious that Cobain was still threatening to cancel the performance a day before it taped. (“He did it just to get us worked up,” Finnerty said. “He enjoyed that power.”) Three of the six covers were originally by then-tourmates the Meat Puppets, an Arizona band that, like Nirvana, ventured to create a world that collapsed the distance between brilliant and dumb, ordinary observation—“the sun is gone, but I have a light”—and cosmic insight. The performances are creaky, intimate, eerily temperate for a band known to explode. On first hearing their cover of Leadbelly’s “In the Pines” (here titled, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”), Neil Young reportedly compared Cobain’s voice to a werewolf’s: neither dead nor undead, but beyond. I get it. Unplugged makes me feel like Nirvana could fill my body with arrows and I would still keep walking.
Cobain had been unhappy with Nevermind, at least in retrospect; at one point, he described it as “candy-ass,” at another, he compared it to Mötley Crüe, which, coming from a punk rocker obsessed by humility and authenticity, indicated the presence of a rot so total as to make the host unsalvageable. In Utero, which had only come out a couple of months before Unplugged was recorded, sounded like a corrective to whatever Cobain heard when he listened to Nevermind: brutal, mean, the sound of the puffy, white skin that rises around wet sores. Listening to it now, I can almost smell the turpentine I used to huff after school. Its popularity should’ve made me feel less alone. Instead, it made me feel like stabbing my stepdad and driving his car into a pole, which, when I think about it now, is probably exactly how a 12-year-old is supposed to feel.
The critic Chuck Klosterman called it “guilt rock,” as in rock music one makes because you feel guilty for making something as successful as Nevermind, guilty for reaching across the aisle to the meatheads you hated. But listening to Unplugged—the delicacy of the sound, the brittleness of the performance, the grit of Cobain’s voice—I came to understand that rage finds its anchor in fragility; that Unplugged and In Utero were necessary counterweights to an increasingly polarized creative mind. Where In Utero had validated my anger, Unplugged revealed a place beyond it: steady, understanding, wounded but at peace—less a funeral than the empty, eerily settled feeling one gets after a tantrum.
This is the Nirvana you hear on Unplugged: Not the voice of their generation but a strange holler from old, wet earth, a band who didn’t break with tradition but constellated it in new and intuitive ways. I liked the old blues song (“Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”) because it reminded me that Cobain’s pain wasn’t a new kind of pain and neither was mine, just a realm of feeling people had been passing through forever and one I would eventually pass through too. As a kid—fitful, agitated, outwardly miserable but possessed by a secret hope everything will suddenly change—you dream of something like this, the calm hand on your shoulder telling you not that you should feel better, but that it’s OK to feel bad, that people have felt bad forever, that sometimes feeling bad is enough.
It’s an unsettling legacy. A working title for In Utero was I Hate Myself and Want to Die, a kind of expression that is everywhere now: the sarcasm that preempts genuine pain; the hyperbole that strains to turn suffering into a joke. Killing yourself, the meme. Acting blasé about the heat death of the universe. The idea that we are so acclimated to misery that it becomes boring. “I’ve always felt it was kind of necessary to help out the ‘now generation’ internally destroy the enemy by posing as or using the enemy,” Cobain wrote in his diary. “The Now Generation”: Even in private, Cobain couldn’t escape his cynicism. The deeper tragedy of his story wasn’t his addiction or even his suicide, but the Icarian stubbornness of insisting he could take fame’s bait but dodge its hook—that he actually could destroy the machine from inside. Run that gauntlet enough, and you not only want to name your album I Hate Myself and Want to Die, you hate yourself, and you want to die, and then, a few months later, you do.
In the five months between Unplugged and Cobain’s suicide, Nirvana filmed two more spots for MTV. The first was an interview by Kurt Loder and Finnerty that devolved into Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl destroying an alleged $12,000 worth of hotel furniture—the kind of macho display you wanted Nirvana to be a corrective to, not an example of. A few days later, they played a show in an empty warehouse on Seattle’s Puget Sound, later packaged as Live and Loud. Here was the brutal, incandescent Nirvana again. If Unplugged’s crystallizing moment was Cobain gasping before the last phrase of “In the Pines,” Live and Loud’s was Cobain riding waves of feedback out of “Endless Nameless,” shoving his guitar into a camera and spitting at the lens. He was, by all accounts, in a good mood. And he finally got to play “Rape Me” on MTV.
At the end of Unplugged, between “All Apologies” and “In the Pines,” Cobain tells the story of a man from the Leadbelly estate trying to sell Cobain Leadbelly’s guitar for $500,000. You can hear him stretch the figure out for comic effect, as though anyone, especially someone as knowing as him would be so stupid as to pay a half-million dollars for a collectible guitar. Real punks don’t buy history; they desecrate it.
Still, he couldn’t contain his petulance and self-loathing, adding that he’d asked David Geffen to buy it for him personally, playing the black-sheep son of a rich and endlessly indulgent dad. He’d already practiced this bit once before, in the October 1993 issue of Spin, but with a slightly different punchline, complaining, “I just wish there was some really rich rock star I could borrow the cash from.”
About a month before he shot himself, Cobain bought a 1965 Dodge Dart for $2,500. He didn’t end up driving it much, if at all. It was recently displayed in an exhibition in Ireland called “Growing Up Kurt Cobain,” while the car’s title—State of Washington, VIN number 2155173082—was sold in 2010 at auction, for a winning bid of $640. “The soul is cheap,” Cobain wrote on “Dumb.” Yeah. And the crap is expensive, and in the end almost nothing is priceless. | 2019-02-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-02-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | DGC | February 24, 2019 | 9.5 | 1d1c9147-b14b-44dc-913a-3586016bef80 | Mike Powell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mike-powell/ | |
It's arguably the greatest jazz recording of all time, but this 50th anniversary edition-- which adds a DVD and an extra disc-- comes only 11 years after a wonderfully remastered edition. It's also priced at more than $100-- not exactly the best way to first experience it. | It's arguably the greatest jazz recording of all time, but this 50th anniversary edition-- which adds a DVD and an extra disc-- comes only 11 years after a wonderfully remastered edition. It's also priced at more than $100-- not exactly the best way to first experience it. | Miles Davis: Kind of Blue: 50th Anniversary Edition | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12283-kind-of-blue-50th-anniversary-edition/ | Kind of Blue: 50th Anniversary Edition | Miles Davis's Kind of Blue belongs to that special class of album that everybody treasures immediately and then, over time, goes on to process in his or her own terms. For some, it's a masterpiece so resounding in its effect as to make the rest of "jazz" extraneous (or at least reasonably deferred until some later point when older or more patient). For others, it's a hallmark whose masterpiece status no amount of further exploration could impugn. Either way, everybody likes it. As Q-Tip says on a documentary included with this new 2xCD/DVD 50th-anniversary set, "It's like the Bible-- you just have one in your house."
All of that might make Kind of Blue sound kind of boring, and indeed, part of the album's allure owes to the fact that it is among the least immediately radical paradigm-shifters you're ever likely to hear. As another bit on the DVD tells it, this one from the host of the 1950s TV show "The Robert Herridge Theater", a serious guy in black-and-white, smoking: "There are many ways to tell a story, and what you're listening to now-- the music of Miles Davis-- is one of the ways."
Such matter-of-fact understatement suits Kind of Blue, an album that sounds like it's never been in a good mood it didn't consider fleeting or a bad one it couldn't brood its way out of. When Davis and his band commenced recording in 1959, they settled on a new form of "modal" jazz that called for improvising through scales as opposed to preordained chord changes. And even if that doesn't sound apparent to an untrained musical ear, it's suggested by a spectral sense of wandering-- an ease with uncertainty that comes across in no uncertain terms.
Kind of Blue's rewards get doled out patiently and persistently, from the cool walk of "So What" to the magisterial glide of "Flamenco Sketches". The tracks that fall between-- "Freddie Freeloader", "Blue in Green", and "All Blues"-- cover pretty much everything else. The story of them all is told to good effect in Celebrating a Masterpiece: Kind of Blue, a 55-minute documentary that anchors this new anniversary package-- which also includes a 60-page book and the album on blue vinyl. Nobody with a curious ear has hurt for Kind of Blue-related resources over the years, especially since a remaster in 1997 rescued the sound of it in fantastic fashion. The CD sounds the same in this new package, which pairs Kind of Blue on a disc with an already-released alternate take of "Flamenco Sketches" and nine short false-starts and studio bits, none longer than two minutes. Disc 2 cobbles together six earlier recordings by the players responsible for Kind of Blue: Davis, Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb. The standout is a 17-minute live recording of "So What" played much faster, tighter, and harder than simmering version that went on the finished album.
The DVD features the full 26-minute "Robert Herridge Theater" show supplementing the documentary, which does an admirable job of taking the album itself as its subject. Some of the drama that surrounded the making of it enters in, but for the most part, the film focuses on how the album works and why. Much of it owes to the whole of the band. But then there's Davis-- an inimitable presence who drummer Cobb, still a bit wowed this many years later, describes as sounding "like he was sitting on an iceberg somewhere out in the South Pole, alone."
As an album, Kind of Blue is unimpeachable, the kind of record you look forward to listening to decades down the line. As a reissue, this anniversary package (expensive at $109.98) is nice but less than essential, best for completists or those with good record players to put the new vinyl pressing to good use. | 2008-10-06T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2008-10-06T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Jazz | Columbia Legacy | October 6, 2008 | 6.6 | 1d1d8ab2-625a-49f4-b62f-11db26891f8d | Andy Battaglia | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-battaglia/ | null |
The 23-year-old singer’s careful observations add new profundity to her storytelling. Her second album confirms her place as one of modern R&B’s realest talkers. | The 23-year-old singer’s careful observations add new profundity to her storytelling. Her second album confirms her place as one of modern R&B’s realest talkers. | Mariah the Scientist: Ry Ry World | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mariah-the-scientist-ry-ry-world/ | Ry Ry World | The opening 20 seconds of “RIP,” a beat-switching standout from Mariah the Scientist’s Ry Ry World, feel like a cosmic ascension, pianos and synths glowing like sun-haloed clouds. “I’m speeding on my way home from Eleven,” she sings, a likely reference to the Miami superclub. The beatific vibes are a feint—the song bottoms out for swampy bass and a menacing, pitch-shifted Beach House sample. “I dream to be a fool,” Mariah sneers, as 808s hit with the sting of a slap. “That way you wouldn’t know that I knew what you do.” You can picture her swerving between lanes, glassy-eyed. Unable to kick this boy in the balls, the gas pedal will have to do.
Mariah’s second album confirms her as one of modern R&B’s realest talkers, as well as one of its most vivid storytellers. Her earliest songs began as poems, and there’s an imagistic quality to Ry Ry World’s casual evocations of, say, snow on a sunroof during a trip to Toronto, or the “damage in the brain matter” inflicted by a lover’s mixed messages. Less consistent lyricists would make these lines into centerpieces; for Mariah, they’re scenery.
The careful observations endow Mariah’s storytelling with particular heft. “I want to remind my fans to ‘tell it like it is’ because it helps define your character,” she said in an interview last year. “If you’re gonna be the bad guy, own it.” She commits to the bit with flair. With its pitched-down “Cry Me a River” sample, “Revenge” morphs from a confessional to a murder ballad; Mariah bares emotional wounds before imagining righteous payback. “Tell ’em that in death we’ll meet again,” she sings, voice cracking. “Like it ain’t your blood that’s on my hands.” You could imagine it soundtracking some avant-garde production of Macbeth, but it runs deeper than theater, too. It can be easier to pour out your heart by couching its secrets in hyperbole.
Ry Ry World is concise at just 10 tracks; along with recent projects from serpentwithfeet, Jorja Smith, and Victoria Monét, it’s a refreshing counter to the more bloated releases of major label R&B. At times the brevity is frustrating. With production from Swedish duo Jarami (Frank Ocean’s “Chanel,” “Biking”), the 90-second intro “Impalas & Air Force 1s” feels like a blissed-out drift through a coral reef. It would be welcome at triple the length. The unmemorable “Maybe” slides into watery ambience, and cheap shots at “big booty [...] city girls” don’t add to its likeability. Mariah is at her best when she focuses on her own desires and agency. Over Spanish guitars on the raunchy “Walked In,” she plays feature artist Young Thug at his own game. “Off the Tesla, yes sir,” she instructs, before warning, “None of that cappin’ about booin’ up.”
Fans have long gossiped about Mariah’s past relationship with Lil Yachty; in “Brain,” over a beat that rattles like a pinball in a sewer, she namechecks one of his tours and seems to describe her own depressive episode from the time. “I just/Wanted to escape for sure,” she sings, adding pained backing vocals. “I was/Staring out the big window, but I/Should've locked the bedroom door.” Once she starts it feels like she can’t stop, in a raw, diaristic digression that’s unique to Ry Ry World. You might find yourself replaying the song to let its brutal honesty sink in.
Around the time of her debut, Mariah defined her music as “a summation of my agony.” Recently she updated that description. “It’s more like after agony,” she said. “Maybe it used to hurt, and now it’s just a little scarred.” She traces that evolution in the wonderful “2 You,” a bittersweet ballad produced by DJ Camper, co-architect of at least two of the past decade’s best R&B songs. “I never thought it would go up in flames,” Mariah sings, as her voice breaks through an airy beat built of oohs and aahs. “But look at what we made/Sure was beautiful.” In the video, she performs against a starry backdrop, as if surveying her past with a birds-eye view. Her eyes are wide open, ready to experience it all.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-07-15T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-07-15T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | RCA | July 15, 2021 | 7.3 | 1d1e0cad-76df-4a96-baa3-6f0d0991cd87 | Owen Myers | https://pitchfork.com/staff/owen-myers/ | |
Trading some of their signature groove for a more destabilizing sound, Spoon have created an offbeat, unexpected, but ultimately cerebral record. | Trading some of their signature groove for a more destabilizing sound, Spoon have created an offbeat, unexpected, but ultimately cerebral record. | Spoon: Transference | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13839-transference/ | Transference | Up to this point, Spoon have employed their signature tight pocket grooves as a shorthand for authority, certainty, and swagger. It's one of the most appealing things about the band, and the sound has made even Britt Daniel's most vulnerable moments seem grounded and forthright. They've turned it all inside-out on Transference, subtly shifting the leading signifiers of Spoon-iness just so for a destabilizing effect. Their go-to trick for the first half of the album is to include bits of sound that abruptly cut off, usually sung phrases that drop entirely out of the mix mid-syllable. This may be aggravating for some listeners, but this counterintuitive move makes sense in context, indicating distraction and tongue-tied indecision. This is a perfect example of the group's genius as a studio band: They get very cerebral in arranging their material, but every clever move is entirely in the service of maximizing physical impact and gut-level response. These are not simply recordings of a top-notch rock quartet playing in a room; this is art built to hit precise emotional marks with an impressive balance of off-the-cuff improvisation and rigid discipline.
Though their previous records have opened with stylish, immediately thrilling numbers like "Small Stakes" and "The Beast and Dragon, Adored", Transference begins with "Before Destruction", a pensive slow-burner that's more of a muted prelude than a flashy entrance. We're knocked off-balance from the beginning, and the next few songs sustain a sense of confusion and disorientation. "Is Love Forever?", a jaunty cut that sounds as though Daniel were aiming to write a much dizzier version of Phoenix's "Listzomania", bumps right into "The Mystery Zone", an excellent late-night groover that hits the same sweet spot as older gems like "Don't You Evah" and "I Turn My Camera On". When that track ends suddenly, it's like walking right into a wall before "Who Makes Your Money" has you wobbling along with Daniel in a concussed haze. The album sobers up as it moves along, and the progression always makes a certain emotional sense, but it's ultimately a big pile-up of unorthodox creative decisions. On first pass, Transference seems a bit off, even somewhat sloppy for a band known for keeping things focused and snappy. However, upon closer listening it becomes obvious that these guys have made a meticulously crafted "mess" that conveys the feeling of flailing around and failing in search of meaningful connections.
The name of the album refers to the Freudian concept of unconsciously projecting feelings for one person or thing to another. It's also the term used to describe when a patient develops a romantic attachment to their analyst, mistaking the intimacy of that relationship for actual love. Transference isn't a concept album, but it's not hard to figure out why they might have chosen the title. There's a nagging desperation for "real" love at the core of this record, tangled up in a genuine cluelessness about what it is or how it works. "The Mystery Zone" finds Daniel theorizing about relationships and unknowable fates like a rambling, semi-coherent drunk, stumbling up to big ideas but trailing off or nodding out before saying anything that makes complete sense. "Written in Reverse" seethes with the bitterness of unrequited love, and Daniel's larynx-shredding vocal hits the right note of resentment and resignation as he spits out lines like, "I wanna show you how I love you, but there's nothing there."
Even the most stable tracks seem frustrated or tentative. The gorgeous "Out Go the Lights" sounds as exhausted as it is lovesick, and the scorching "Got Nuffin" confronts neuroses head-on with plucky courage, but also a chugging riff that evokes gut-churning anxiety. It's hardly uncommon for Spoon songs to deal with failed love and thwarted desire, but Daniel has rarely sounded so vulnerable and his feelings have never seemed so unresolved. Some may hear Transference and get the impression that it's an incomplete or uneven work, but its elliptical nature is ultimately the key to its charm. All through the record, Britt Daniel sounds like a guy left hanging by life, waiting around to figure out the answers to all his questions. It wouldn't make sense for him to tell you anything he doesn't know himself.
Though the band produced the album themselves, half of the songs on Transference are presented in their original "demo" form, resulting in unexpected shifts between raw and slick audio textures. Since Daniel and drummer Jim Eno are experienced engineers, almost nothing on the album could rightly be considered lo-fi, but there is a disarming immediacy to these less polished tracks that makes the record as a whole seem very relaxed and informal in comparison to their previous efforts.
"Goodnight Laura", a straightforward ballad on the album's second side, gains a lot from this approach, with an intimate "live" sound that gives the impression that you've accidentally stumbled into a Spoon rehearsal. "Trouble Comes Running" has the opposite effect with its dramatic stereo separations, but the low-key feeling of the recording preserves an energy that may have been flattened with a more full production. Both of these tracks could be considered "minor" Spoon songs, but they reveal just how high the bar has been set for Daniel and company, and how easily their skill can be taken for granted. Following the creative strides made on their last few Merge releases, the only big surprise on Transference is that they've become willing to let their hair down a bit. It can be a bit of a let down if you come in expecting another blockbuster like Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but something of a revelation if you meet them halfway. | 2010-01-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2010-01-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Merge | January 19, 2010 | 7.8 | 1d1fd83e-5437-4bf5-bd58-ac7c14a1dded | Matthew Perpetua | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-perpetua/ | null |
The Sunny Day in Glasgow affiliate steps out with an album of unconventional indie pop that’s brimming with potential. | The Sunny Day in Glasgow affiliate steps out with an album of unconventional indie pop that’s brimming with potential. | Showtime Goma: Smiley Face | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/smiley-face/ | Smiley Face | Jen Goma has been American indie pop’s best kept secret for almost a decade now. Since being recruited into the cult shoegaze collective A Sunny Day in Glasgow in 2009, she has sung with acts such as the Pains of Being Pure at Heart (she featured on a cover of James’ “Laid” on the band’s last EP, and has joined them as a touring member), People Get Ready, and Roman à Clef, a revivalist sophistipop trio with her Sunny Day bandmate Ryan Newmyer and ex-Pains member (and Ice Choir frontman) Kurt Feldman. Her presence has always added a welcome flair to whichever project she joins, and although she has proven herself to be a master collaborator, it seems surprising that she is only now releasing her first solo venture. Under the name Showtime Goma, the Brooklyn musician has snuck signatures from all the bands she’s been a part of over the years into Smiley Face, an album of unconventional pop brimming with potential.
Indie pop, as a genre, typically combines heartfelt earnestness with amateurish technique, as if the musicians involved just stumbled upon the concept of being in a band and decided to give it a go. One of the things that has always set Goma apart from many of her peers is her serious chops—her powerhouse vocals can’t help but be the main attraction in whatever project she finds herself in. She’s much more pop than indie, singing with the kind of crystal-clear focus that you just don’t hear often enough in her line of work. This undeniable charm is what makes Smiley Face both a wildly enjoyable and a slightly frustrating listen. The songs are full of hooks and well constructed, and the album’s DIY take on sun-drenched dream pop suits Goma’s persona perfectly. But the album is packed with so many ideas that Goma herself runs the risk of getting lost in the fray.
This is immediately apparent on the album opener, “Oh Shit”; it's catchy, and it flawlessly showcases Goma’s range from high-pitched belt to throaty snarl, but it has so many starts and stops, and pivots and turns, that you’re left wishing for a good, clean, singalong chorus to sink your teeth into. Not that Showtime Goma should aspire to Top 40 polish—it’s abundantly clear that she seeks to explore the side of pop that privileges sincerity over artifice. But sometimes a little editing goes a long way, and the emotion in a track like “Oh Shit” would be all the more powerful if things were a little more pruned.
That’s not to say that Smiley Face doesn't ultimately benefit from Goma’s ambitious songwriting and ear for experimental production. When the album does successfully harness its erratic energy, the result is lushly layered songs that twinkle with glossy synths and big, sing-along melodies. Lead single “Big Disaster” finds the perfect balance between Goma’s natural pop delivery and the left-of-center vibe the album embodies. Opening with a shimmery guitar riff that could have been lifted from a Katy Perry track circa Teenage Dream, and accompanying that with a fuzzy breakbeat, the track makes striking use of Goma’s clever skills as a lyricist: When she sings, “Wear a sexy mask/Disguise is a beauty too/I feel like a man/Like a proper dude,” she smarly draws a line between gendered concepts like feminine enigma and masculine posturing at the same time as she underlines the song’s tonal duality.
Almost every track on Smiley Face was written with Greg Saunier, the Deerhoof drummer and experimental pop composer, and his fingerprints are all over the record, especially on tracks like “Come and Know Me Better Man,” which rides a demented, not un-Deerhoof-like organ loop and shuffling, funky percussion. In the end, Goma’s collaborative instincts help her to bring it all home. One of Smiley Face's most effective songs is “How R U?”, made with her Sunny Day bandmates Newmyer and Ben Daniels. It’s the big, euphoric payoff that lifts the album into the stratosphere: a bubbling odyssey with a chorus reminiscent of Chairlift at their most joyous, or Carly Rae Jepsen on a subdued comedown. Less than three minutes long, it’s short and sweet, but it encompasses everything that makes Goma such a unique voice in contemporary indie. Smiley Face is a solid effort at finally establishing an artist that has been flying under the radar for way too long. After paying some serious dues, Jen Goma is ready to put her talents front and center. In a word, it’s showtime. | 2017-06-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-06-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | self-released | June 23, 2017 | 6.9 | 1d220e9f-ca88-4044-95eb-7d96fad75f02 | Cameron Cook | https://pitchfork.com/staff/cameron-cook/ | null |
YG pays heartfelt tribute to the late Nipsey Hussle on his latest while still reserving plenty of vitriol for his favorite targets: broke dudes, snitches, broke dudes who also snitch. | YG pays heartfelt tribute to the late Nipsey Hussle on his latest while still reserving plenty of vitriol for his favorite targets: broke dudes, snitches, broke dudes who also snitch. | YG: 4REAL 4REAL | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yg-4real-4real/ | 4REAL 4REAL | In 2015, YG survived a shooting at a Los Angeles studio. His resulting paranoia birthed 2016’s belligerent Still Brazy, and the effects lingered through his last album, 2018’s chest-thumping Stay Dangerous. “I’m the man, bitch, I walk ‘round like I’m bulletproof,” he rapped, sounding like a man possessed. After surviving an attempt on his life, in what he believed to be a set up, his message was clear: He wasn’t going to be caught with his guard down again.
Earlier this year, Nipsey Hussle got shot, too, only he didn’t make it. Nip was a mentor to YG. Despite being in rival gangs, the two rappers formed a bond. They appeared alongside each other representing unity against the evil empire on “FDT.” They’d been planning a joint mixtape together as far back as 2013. After Nipsey’s death, YG pushed the release of his album back out of respect for the fallen, and there’s an inscription in his honor on the cover. In a speech given at Nipsey’s service, which appears as a track on 4REAL 4REAL, YG referred to him as his “brother from the other color” and congratulated him for leaving a lasting legacy and an unbreakable brand before vowing to carry that legacy forward. “The muthafuckin’ marathon continues,” he and Mustard shouted in unison, in keeping with Nip’s decree.
4REAL 4REAL, though dedicated to Nipsey’s memory, doesn’t really expound upon his values. YG doesn’t pick up the financial-freedom mantle. He isn’t really out to educate. He’s a tad too bitter to make something like Victory Lap. Instead, he honors his friend the only way he knows how: by doubling down. That means continuing his War on Snitches and picking up whatever slack remains in representing the West Coast. “Call Dre, Call Snoop, Call Game and Kendrick, too/When you think about the West it’s me and Nip, red and blue,” he raps in the opener, illustrating how diametrically opposed forces can be halves of a whole. If Nipsey was the community organizer, YG is the disruptor.
That said, YG is calmer on 4REAL. Not “calm,” but calmer. Credit Nip’s influence. He still reserves plenty of contempt for his favorite targets: broke dudes, snitches, broke dudes who also snitch—but he makes a concerted effort to sidestep real violence. There are fewer confrontations—“Forward progress, I don’t backtrack/That’s my old life, audible, I’m passed that,” he raps on “Bottle Service.” (He does threaten to put someone in a chokehold, but it stops there, which feels like progress.) The energy goes into the rapping, which is cleaner, clearer, and more focused than it has been in a few years.
Mustard and YG remain perfect partners for each other, two artists who value cutting straight to the point. Mustard makes YG sound sharper and funnier, and YG seems to embolden Mustard’s wildest beats—check out the mariachi horns of “Go Loko.” 4REAL 4REAL doesn’t quite reestablish YG as the album artist of My Krazy Life and Still Brazy, but what it lacks in a satisfying through line it makes up for in highlights. The breezy, feel-good Cali groove of “Do Yo Dance” and the satisfying block anthem “Do Not Disturb,” both of which feature Kamaiyah, are some of his catchiest cuts. On “I Was On the Block,” YG experiments with a spaced-out, off0-kilter Valee-style flow, and it suits him. “Heart 2 Heart” is the kind of gangsta-empowering, buy-back-the-block tutorial that would do Nipsey proud, with Meek Mill turning up to counsel on enduring prison bids. There’s always at least one cringy song on a YG album, in which he needlessly judges some woman’s sexuality (here, it’s “Keshia’s Got a Baby”), but he rectifies this by letting Compton’s Day Sulan close the album with “Her Story.” It’s a move in line with Nipsey’s ethics: pay it forward, help bring other perspectives to light, uplift your community. The marathon continues. | 2019-05-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-05-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Def Jam | May 24, 2019 | 7.2 | 1d252e6e-f8e9-4ad1-86c1-22e84f1d64a6 | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | |
Lorde oversees the soundtrack to the new Hunger Games and the results are frequently great. In addition to a Kanye remix of one of her tracks, artists include Chvrches, Ariana Grande, Tinashe, Bat for Lashes, and Major Lazer. | Lorde oversees the soundtrack to the new Hunger Games and the results are frequently great. In addition to a Kanye remix of one of her tracks, artists include Chvrches, Ariana Grande, Tinashe, Bat for Lashes, and Major Lazer. | Various Artists: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 OST | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19909-various-artists-the-hunger-games-mockingjay-part-1-ost/ | The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 OST | There are few safe choices on Mockingjay, one of the most thrilling soundtracks for a blockbuster film series in recent memory. Much of the record is outfitted with an electronic throb that wouldn’t sound out of place in the clubs of District 1 (the Rich Kids of Instagram in the Hunger Games universe). And, yet, many tracks soar beyond the reasonable expectation of a film soundtrack that would’ve been snapped up by thousands of teenagers even if it were just 81 minutes of off-pitch Mockingjay whistles.
Lorde, who’s gone from complete unknown to holding the reins of one of the world’s biggest movie franchises in just 18 months, has assembled a stable of rising stars like Tinashe, hyper-relevant indie-friendly sensations like Charli XCX and Chvrches, Raury, and more. Tracks like Chvrches' kinetic call-to-arms "Dead Air" and Raury's meditative "Lost Souls" would have been standouts on their respective debuts. They’re standouts here. There are the emotional highs and stripped-down ballads you might expect to color moods of a specific scene, but the whole record crackles with electricity: Those ballads are just as striking as the more pounding cuts like the opener "Meltdown" (Stromae ft. Lorde, Pusha T, Q-Tip and Haim) and Ariana Grande's sky-scraping collaboration with Major Lazer, "All My Love".
Charli XCX connects with Simon Le Bon for the lovely piano ballad "Kingdom", an effortlessly composed song co-written with Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij after the two got drunk at a Miley Cyrus concert. Lorde's cover of Bright Eyes' "Ladder Song" is straightforward, but sweet. Bat for Lashes' contribution, a cover of Son Lux's "Plan the Escape", is a twinkling snowglobe of a song that will almost certainly score a tense moment of Katniss introspection as she mulls over the two hollow clods after her heart (team #SingleKatniss).
After the rustic rock-leaning OST of the first movie, which featured contributions from Arcade Fire, the Decemberists, and Neko Case, the series leans toward electronic pop. Following in the veins of Catching Fire’s OST, Mockingjay moves with the action of a series that began in a hermetically sealed environment before transitioning to a city where every battle has larger implications. Across the board, the songs sound like threads of hope escaping gloomier pasts, echoing the arc of the film's generational heroine. It's no coincidence that, of the 14 songs featured on Mockingjay, 11 feature female vocalists in the foreground. Sure, the lyrical sentiments are often delivered as platitudes—"We’re just a mess of broken people but we love the game!," and so forth—but that's part of the deal when you're working with some populist YA lit poking around well-established archetypes. It’s a big, broad tent for everyone to get lost in.
Though lots of distinctive voices are represented on the soundtrack, one person stands out. "Katniss would be a huge Lorde fan," series star Jennifer Lawrence voiced during the promotional rollout, directly making the connection that the strong, independent Katniss character is an effective muse to the world's most famous teenager. While Lorde's vocals are all over Mockingjay—from the swirling centerpiece "Yellow Flicker Beat" (and its Yeezus-tinted Kanye West rework) to supplementary vocals on "Meltdown" and a hook to the Miguel/Chemical Brothers collaboration "This Is Not a Game"—her presence elevates the project; you can feel the other stars on the soundtrack bringing their A-game out of respect for the project's core vision and passion. Though not everything works on its own (the flat electropop of XO's "Animal" is one dud) Mockingjay adds up to a fun pastiche of modern sounds. In conclusion, three fingers out of five. | 2014-11-18T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2014-11-18T01:00:01.000-05:00 | null | Mercury / Republic | November 18, 2014 | 7.8 | 1d267ad7-260a-4934-8e23-3caf1fbd115b | Corban Goble | https://pitchfork.com/staff/corban-goble/ | null |
Don’t be fooled by the of-the-moment pop sound: The 24-year-old singer’s debut album is the showcase for a refreshingly original perspective. | Don’t be fooled by the of-the-moment pop sound: The 24-year-old singer’s debut album is the showcase for a refreshingly original perspective. | Lolo Zouaï: High Highs to Low Lows | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lolo-zouai-high-highs-to-low-lows/ | High Highs to Low Lows | For Lolo Zouaï, flexing is a matter of authenticity, not fronting. The 24-year old singer’s debut album, High Highs to Low Lows, is full of pop hooks and casual brags, yet Zouaï sounds most proud—and comfortable—when working with the real facts of her life, particularly when they lack glamour. “I can’t wait to really get paid, not just minimum wage,” she sings on the title track, which serves as a mission statement of sorts. “They think it’s all Gucci but it’s 99 cents/I swear.”
The child of French-Algerian immigrants, Zouaï, who sings in both English and French, contributed songwriting last year to H.E.R.’s Grammy-winning self-titled album. Her own music, which she’s released sparingly over the past year, blends the vulnerability of H.E.R.’s lyricism, the hip-hop-adjacent bounce of thank u, next-era Ariana Grande, and the electro-pop experimentation of AlunaGeorge. High Highs to Low Lows, written entirely by Zouaï and produced by her frequent collaborator Stelios Phili (responsible for Young Thug and Elton John’s “High”), is compelling in its movement between sultry, charismatic bops and moody, melancholy slow-burners. Zouaï finished recording the album before signing with RCA, and the record feels genuinely like Zouaï’s own project, each song a vehicle for a different part—sensual, depressed, cocky, homesick, in love—of the same whole.
Keeping with the Grande-embodied, lite-hip-hop wave currently washing over contemporary pop, High Highs to Low Lows incorporates trap bass and brooding synths into an effective, of-the-moment sound. On single “Ride,” Stelios builds a swirling whirlpool of timpani, guitar plucks, claps, and looped yodels to create a coquettish, urgent banger. Highlight “Out the Bottle,” with its faux-rap delivery and candy-coated beat, is a sonic cousin of Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings,” but unlike that song’s hollow boasting, which feels crass and unearned, Zouaï’s joy in simply getting drunk on a plane is contagious and convincing. Several songs, like the bilingual “Moi,” feature outros that turn unexpectedly melodic or drowsily chopped and screwed, as if to hint that even on the poppiest songs, Zouaï and Stelios are giving us only a taste of their full abilities.
For all of the album’s fun—and it really is fun, particularly the PG-13 “Caffeine”—Zouaï excels at looking inward. “Summers in Vegas” recaps the singer’s time with her father, who owned pizza stores outside of Vegas, with vivid precision. “Pour your wine in a red cup/I saw you hide it under the register,” Zouaï sings, somberly. “The desert strip is no place for a kid.” “Desert Rose,” which features the album’s most accomplished songwriting, directly addresses Zouaï’s family in Algeria, who’ve exiled her for leading what they call a life of sin. “‘Inshallah,’ that’s what you say/You think I lost my faith,” she sings, both pained and self-righteous. She finishes with a refrain of “Habibi”—which translates to “my love” in Arabic—effectively pleading for, but not expecting, reconciliation. Sequencing the two songs amid a series of upbeat anthems undercuts their power somewhat, but they nonetheless add color and history to Zouaï’s evolving story, one that she is intent on telling in her own voice.
Zouaï wears her heart on her sleeve, and it sometimes gets in the way; “Here to Stay,” an ode to depression that recalls the mournful guitars of Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” tips the scale away from introspection and toward melodrama. Mostly, though, she stays on the right side of vulnerable, detailing her own peaks and valleys with charisma, wit, and raw introspection. High Highs to Low Lows works because Zouaï feels real and multidimensional: silly, swaggering, sexy, and deeply human. “Don’t take myself too serious/Tough body, soft interior,” she sings on the sun-drenched “Chevy Impala.” It’s a precocious outlook on life: As long as you know yourself and trust the process, Zouaï’s music implies, even the lowest of lows are just stops on the way back up. | 2019-04-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-04-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Keep It on the Lolo / RCA | April 19, 2019 | 7.5 | 1d293eb6-18be-4f29-8898-38865644145b | Jackson Howard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jackson-howard/ | |
Georgia Flipo follows up her viral hit "About You" with a pop debut that hopes to re-bottle the song's charm. | Georgia Flipo follows up her viral hit "About You" with a pop debut that hopes to re-bottle the song's charm. | G Flip: About Us | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/g-flip-about-us/ | About Us | When the Melbourne band EMPRA broke up in 2016, touring drummer Georgia Flipo took it as a signal to start making her own music. She spent the following year isolating herself in her bedroom, eschewing friends and family and emerging with the viral hit “About You” in early 2018. Built around a rumbling synth and cresting with a massive, over-the-top drum fill, the song bore traces of Art Angels-era Grimes and seemed preordained for success, especially paired with its endearingly lo-fi video.
“About You” was an anthem of unspecific longing and indecision: “Just let me go/Give me one more chance, baby,” she pled in the bridge. About Us, her debut album, spends its entirety in this same purgatory. The first lyric of opener “Lover” is effectively the album’s thesis: “I just wanna be your lover/You know that we ain’t friends.” The song revolves around that couplet at a glacial pace, and each time Flip repeats it, her voice grows more ragged. Without any specificity to add color to the troubled relationship in question, though, the song remains shrouded in opacity. A surprising number of other torch songs follow “Lover,” considering the album’s modest 10-track length, and none is more revealing than any other. “Morning” sees Flip pining for the same absent lover but admitting no fault for why that lover might be gone (“I fucked up” is all she reveals). Immediately after is “Waking Up Tomorrow,” which sounds like the same slow piano ballad, just more plaintive and desperate. “Bring Me Home” leads the album’s come-down and is a rewrite of Rihanna and Mikky Ekko’s “Stay.”
Between the fretting love songs are Flip’s more straightforward attempts at crafting viral hits. On “I Am Not Afraid,” she offers up a self-help anthem on the order of Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” and Katy Perry’s “Roar”: “I am not afraid to do this alone/I know that it scares you but I am my own home,” she sings. The piano intro to “Drink Too Much” generates a little excitement with its almost-quote of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” but again succumbs to the plight of non-specificity. It’s a song about losing someone because of your bad habits, but that much is evident from the title alone. “Stupid” tries on the glowering noir-pop production of Banks and Halsey. “Why we always actin’ stupid?/Why we always do this, do this, do this to ourselves?” she asks. But—do what to themselves? Act stupid how? Without more detail, it’s hard to care.
There is one welcome moment of certainty on the album. On “Killing My Time,” G Flip’s voice gains a self-assured edge that’s not present anywhere else. The song opens with a dancehall-inspired beat that simmers in the background as she exclaims: “Leave me baby/Please leave me alone.” It’s perhaps the most definitive statement on the whole album, one made more effective by an infectious hook that echoes “The Middle,” last year’s inescapable collaboration between Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey. “Killing My Time,” with its feeling of resolution, would do well as the album’s penultimate track—a position held instead by “About You.” Structured as it is, the album concludes in largely the same place where it begins. | 2019-09-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-09-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Future Classic | September 6, 2019 | 5.4 | 1d2de0d3-9186-46a4-bc31-79add3a6825c | Colin Lodewick | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-lodewick/ | |
Planet Mu's first Bangs & Works compilation emphasized the Chicago scene's connection to and identification with hip-hop culture. This second, improved 26-song edition emphasizes the city's house roots. | Planet Mu's first Bangs & Works compilation emphasized the Chicago scene's connection to and identification with hip-hop culture. This second, improved 26-song edition emphasizes the city's house roots. | Various Artists: Bangs & Works Vol. 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16033-bangs-and-works-vol-2/ | Bangs & Works Vol. 2 | When the first Bangs & Works compilation was released by Planet Mu last year, it emerged in a climate of controversy and accusations surrounding its authenticity and propriety, with some seeing it as a document of a Chicago scene as viewed by certain UK electronic tastemakers. This time, however, the circumstances feel simpler: Footwork influences and references are the norm for a whole international world of "bass music," and the questions of exploitation and gimmickry seem to have been put to rest, or at least pushed aside. Good timing, too-- the second Bangs & Works is a marked improvement over its predecessor; as if unconcerned with being comprehensively representative to outsiders, its curator, Mike Paradinas, can delve into the very depths of the sound's weirdness.
Part of the reason that footwork proved so fascinating to so many different sectors of dance music simultaneously was its unforgiving extremity: Sonically rough and rhythmically brutal, it laced together latent impulses from jungle, breakcore, and house into something that sounded like mutant hip-hop-- booty house gone berserk. Compatible with so many universes yet still alien enough to be ineffably hip, it was the outsider of music of 2010 that stubbornly fought its way into the conversation. Hip-hop and R&B samples were the theme of the first Bangs & Works, emphasizing the Chicago scene's connection to and identification with hip-hop culture, but the focus on the second has changed. Instead of the staccato vocal clipping and syllabic repetition, you're more likely to hear swerving synths or pounding drums on Bangs & Works 2, a document of the scene that emphasizes its house roots.
The first track sets the mood appropriately: RP Boo's "Heavy Heat" is a stormer of sub-bass and grim horn stabs, nary a vocal to be found outside of Boo's own producer tag drops (a common sound on Bangs & Works 2). There are still tracks with vocals-- rapping on DJ Earl's "Hit Da Bootz", chipmunk crooning on DJ Solo's "What Have You Done", hype-man hypnosis on DJ Roc's "Get Buck Juice"-- but they're the exceptions. Instead we get the lush synth-funk of DJ Rashad & Gant-Man's "Heaven Sent" or the pendulous insanity of DJ T-Why's ear-piercing "Finished". That same producer's "Juice" and tracks from DJ Metro like "Smak My Bitch Up" show how dissociative and trippy footwork can be without sacrificing its crucial danceability-- not that it was ever easy to dance to in the first place.
It's two new-- to Mu, anyway-- producers who run with that weirdness, standing out on the compilation's most progressive moments. Young Smoke provides vivid psychodrama with his string of lush tracks at the compilation's end, like the sparse funk of "Space Muzik Pt. 3", not too far from a Pearson Sound production. But it's Jlin who steals the show early on with "Erotic Heat", all tremulous low-frequency throbs, cracking snares, and drum patterns that snake and writhe with unusual precision. So many footwork producers are content to let their tom-toms skate across a slippery surface of undulating sub-bass, but Jlin's are unusually tactile and exact, little miniature cascades unfolding separately at will. Sharing the same Mortal Kombat sample as DJ MC's "Y Fall" but utilizing it so much more effectively, Jlin proves what makes her particularly special with the swampy psychedelia of "Asylum", harboring some of the hardest and heaviest-hitting percussion of any footwork track released on Planet Mu to date. Jlin's tracks are captivating because she relocates footwork's focus, rendering those bass rumbles even more isolated as she scatters the percussion to far-flung corners of the stereo spectrum. Her tracks show not only footwork's room for experimentation but the raw power that shines through even its weirdest moments.
Just like its older brother, Bangs & Works 2 is an exhausting listen, 80 minutes of intense syncopation spread over 26 dense nuggets. But whether it's the generally higher production values this time around or simply a more agreeable palette, the whole thing feels a little easier to swallow. It's hard not to jump from track to track getting excited with each producer that steps up to the plate, almost enough to override the sometimes slipshod feeling of compilations like these-- and with the newfound thematic coherence, hodgepodge isn't an issue. Paradinas' library of footwork tracks numbers well over 1,500, and he's done an admirable curatorial job of finding some common threads in a sea of cobbled-together mania. No longer dealing with the pressure to bring a new sound to the masses, he's instead coaxed out one of its most curious aspects for a disc of strange musical delicacies likely to appeal as much to footwork fanatics as those looking for new avenues for the avant-garde. | 2011-11-14T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2011-11-14T01:00:01.000-05:00 | null | Planet Mu | November 14, 2011 | 7.8 | 1d30e28e-630e-4057-843e-c898af214763 | Andrew Ryce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andrew-ryce/ | null |
Bill Callahan's first live album, recorded in 2007, is a 2xLP/download set that captures one of this era's best singer-songwriters in amazing form. | Bill Callahan's first live album, recorded in 2007, is a 2xLP/download set that captures one of this era's best singer-songwriters in amazing form. | Bill Callahan: Rough Travel for a Rare Thing | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14135-rough-travel-for-a-rare-thing/ | Rough Travel for a Rare Thing | Bill Callahan's first live album reflects his approach to music. It's a 2xLP set (also available as a download, no CD), and the packaging is minimal-- two slabs of vinyl, no notes, and all credits and recording info are printed on the disc labels. The functional nature of the package says, "The music is what's important here." Callahan kicks off the album by mumbling, "We're gonna get right down to business," and then he and the band-- guitar, bass, drums, violins-- proceed to do just that. It's 2007, they are in a small club in Australia, and Callahan is drawing from a catalog of songs any songwriter would envy. Turned out to be a good night.
Though Woke on a Whalehart, Callahan's first album under his own name after leaving the name Smog behind, was just about to come out when Rough Travel for a Rare Thing was cut, the setlist focuses heavily on his previous full-length, 2005's A River Ain't Too Much to Love. Five of the 11 songs come from that release, with stops at Supper, the "Rock Bottom Riser" single, and Knock Knock along the way. There's one reach back to 1995's Wild Love ("Batheysphere"), and one tune from Whaleheart ("Diamond Dancer"). Heard together, with this band providing lean and effective accompaniment, the songs sound like they belong on a single album. Rough Travel flows. Callahan's voice, having grown richer and deeper over the years, is front and center, putting the focus squarely on the words and the way he phrases them. There's plenty going on there to keep things interesting.
Indeed, Callahan's singing is a model of how much can be done with a limited vocal range. Sometimes he's half-talking and telling stories. Sometimes he's bending lines to put emphasis on certain words. Sometimes he's doing something close to a croon. In every case, his vocals are bound to the lyrics and reflect how he writes. The songs here are on the long side-- six minutes or so on average-- but it's not because Callahan wastes words. He knows when to leave space, and he has a way of making hard, clear images stay in your mind. When he sings a word like "gold" or "river," you see the color and you can feel the water. Three words placed next to each other, like "rock," "bottom," and "riser," the way he sings them, can tell a tiny story on their own, complete with a discernible arc. Performance and arrangements aside, Rough Travel, though not a "greatest hits" kind of set, affirms the authority of Callahan's songwriting. No wonder writers tend to love him.
Though Callahan's focus can come across as remote and stoic, he can also be playful. Take "The Well", for example. Much of the song focuses on the narrator's obsession with a single drop of water clinging to the edge of an old bucket perched at the top of an abandoned well. It's not much to hang a nine-minute song on, but Callahan imbues the image with drama and gets in some funny lines along the way. "Everybody has their own thing that they yell into a well," he sings, one of those lines of his that makes you think, "Yeah, that feels right." And he puts some echo on his voice as he runs down his: a hoot, a "Hello?", and a "Fuck all y'all."
The instrumentation here is mostly acoustic, and the structure of the songs, including the traditional "In the Pines", which Callahan has covered on record and turned into something that feels like his own, lend a stately feel. But the songs are not easily bound to genre. Unlike his label-mate Will Oldham, whose loose rootsiness can lead to music that seems like it's drifting in from the past, Callahan's work seems of its time and makes you aware of the artist behind it. And Rough Travel, though ultimately only for established fans, turns out to be a very good snapshot of where that artist's music stood at the end of the last decade. | 2010-04-16T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2010-04-16T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Drag City | April 16, 2010 | 8.3 | 1d36c7e6-b905-42de-9bef-90288cd5aefe | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
Sadie Switchblade of G.L.O.S.S. steps out with a solo album that touches on the hardcore of her main band and adds elements of country music and acoustic folk. | Sadie Switchblade of G.L.O.S.S. steps out with a solo album that touches on the hardcore of her main band and adds elements of country music and acoustic folk. | Dyke Drama: Up Against the Bricks | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22385-up-against-the-bricks/ | Up Against the Bricks | Sadie Switchblade, the lead singer of the Olympia hardcore band G.L.O.S.S., once framed her side project Dyke Drama as a balancing force to that musical violence. “[It’s] pretty transparent,” she said. “The songs are either about trans girl problems or dykey lesbionic friendships.” The recent G.L.O.S.S. EP Trans Day of Revenge dices seven minutes into five tracks; their riffs taper off like a nail’s sharpened tip. On Up Against the Bricks, Switchblade’s second solo album, anger tends to remain interior, rendering the narrator sardonic in defeat. (“Dyke Drama” can be read as a meaningful shrug.) The closest thing to an anthem here promises: “You can’t count on me/I ain’t no sure thing.” Outside hardcore’s vital extremes, the thrill of materials straining against structure, Switchblade has space enough to pause inside ambivalence.
G.L.O.S.S. is an acronym for “Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit,” and their music is about surviving in a world that believes your existence illegitimate. Dyke Drama songs describe a life lived on top of that, the resigned longing, the bruise you can’t stop touching, the scene of the crying. The title track uses radical iconography to chalk off lost years: “Is it too late for dreaming? To go back to believing?/To push me up against the bricks, grab my skull and kiss my lips?” No longer screaming to keep up, Switchblade’s voice moves between frustration and abandon—the circuit that electrifies so many pop-punk songs. Returning to words over and over, she gives paradoxical shape to a not-quite-relationship: “I don’t wanna stop, I don’t wanna stop/ Wasting my time, wasting my time, on you, on you.” I thought of the character from one Alan Hollinghurst novel who senses “the pleasure flecked with its opposite, with little hurts and contradictions that came to seem as much a part of love as the clear gaze of acceptance.”
Up Against the Bricks may be a solo release, but it also affords Switchblade the chance to place other musicians in her design. The backing vocals are all sung by her roommate Erica Leshon and Joey Seward, and you can hear the close acoustics surrounding them. Harmonies slide almost unconsciously behind and ahead of each other. On “Cis Girls,” a grimacing snapshot of the ornamental status trans women often receive even amidst queer spaces, Leshon’s voice takes over the lyric—one of those girls, one of “those girls, one of those, one of those girls”—as if to ostracize Switchblade from her own song. “Some Days I Load My Gun” considers suicide in disturbingly straightforward terms; imagine “Everybody Hurts” with every gentle consolation drained away, leaving only the crushing weight of the fact. At the end Switchblade is barely still audible, overwhelmed by Seward’s droning organ, a single bright note held until it blinds.
The looseness of bar-band rock pardons drunks and licenses the strange. Dyke Drama can spare the time to develop lyrics like “Day-for-Night,” describing a turbulent family as the kind of scene that film directors correct from morning to twilight. But that organ suggests Switchblade is drawn to other genres entirely. Up Against the Bricks finds her covering “I Just Wanted to See You So Bad,” a song Lucinda Williams recorded for her self-titled 1988 album, and it’s about as reverent as punk gets. (Any irony that attaches to the line “you were staying in a big hotel” must be self-deprecating.) Switchblade rephrases the rueful original in hoarse and frantic cadences, as if she were jabbing elevator buttons out of desperation. Who could lie down and relax with so many doors to listen through? | 2016-09-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Salinas | September 22, 2016 | 7.1 | 1d37002c-65c8-4e58-a970-22f978a65d23 | Chris Randle | https://pitchfork.com/staff/chris-randle/ | null |
If this Indiana soul band’s debut was the party, the strings come out for these songs about heartbreak and the hope in resilience. | If this Indiana soul band’s debut was the party, the strings come out for these songs about heartbreak and the hope in resilience. | Durand Jones & the Indications: American Love Call | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/durand-jones-and-the-indications-american-love-call/ | American Love Call | Soul is likely not the first word that comes to mind when you think of Bloomington, Ind. But that’s where saxophonist Durand Jones moved to attend graduate school in 2012, eventually finding his way into Indiana University’s famed Soul Revue. He reluctantly became one of their singers, and his voice fit the genre like a glove—at turns seductive and provocative, always edged with the rasp of experience. Others took notice: Through the Revue, Jones met the rest of the band that soon became the soul-loving Indications. On their self-titled 2016 debut, his anguished, irresistible croon held the quintet’s deeply funky grooves and fluttering rhythms tight.
If Durand Jones & the Indications was the party, their second album and first since signing to Dead Oceans, American Love Call, is the slow dance. Jones and crew trade their infectious bounce for punch-drunk sway, leaning fully into orchestral soul. Gone are Wilson Pickett’s brash horns, replaced instead with the lush strings of, say, Ben E. King, and backing vocals that conjure the dreamy-eyed woe of the Temptations and the Miracles.
American Love Call doesn’t celebrate love so much as interrogate it. Jones bemoans getting the runaround on “Circles.” The song’s baroque strings and gentle flute evoke the 1970s soul family Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose, but Aaron Frazer’s lilting drums point to Otis Redding and Carla Thomas’ “Tramp,” adding a little flash. On “Walk Away,” Jones fights against confessing his true feelings, even though he knows his silence will mean losing his potential paramour, an outcome that’s just as distressing. For “Listen to Your Heart,” the struggle morphs into advice: “Your heart’s tryna tell you what you already know,” he sings, his voice softening to a scouring whisper. “Tell him that you love him.” A solitary French horn sounds a fanfare—or a warning.
Though the band takes Jones’ name, Frazer leads somber tracks like “Too Many Tears” and “Court of Love” with his Smokey Robinson-esque falsetto. His piercing tone mournfully paints scenes of betrayal. During the latter, which flips marriage’s “long walk down the aisle” into a damning courtroom scene, the band’s distended tempo underscores the song’s pulsing wound, much like the Aaron Neville classic “Tell It Like It Is.”
Soul’s pop structure has often helped facilitate incisive social commentary with widespread appeal, from Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” The Indications give it a go on opener “Morning in America,” a portrait of different struggles across the country, like the Jacksonville junkie waiting on a “prescription for the pain” or Baltimore nurses heading home after a long shift. Jones’ deflated delivery reflects his exhaustion at the central homophone, or that America’s morning has shifted to mourning. Still, the song lacks teeth, as if drifting through the problems. That dearth of vitality speaks to a larger flaw on American Love Call: Where the Indications’ debut looked to update soul and funk with rock and punk elements, these songs spin their wheels in revivalism, doing little to pull this past into the present.
Not everything here ends in heartbreak. During an ode to platonic love, “What I Know About You,” Jones and Frazer share lead duties. Frazer’s airy vocals contrast Jones’ weighted tone, elevating their nod to friendship from the cheek of bromance to a serious love song. “Sometimes when the load gets heavy/We lock arms and we keep it steady,” they sing. The band closes on a similarly hopeful note, the spacious “True Love.” Jones’ vocals parallel John Legend’s sweet promises, and he makes a pledge to himself: Love is worth waiting for, so be patient. Likewise, the band’s ability to translate classic soul for this moment shows promise, but it’s going to take some time. | 2019-03-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-03-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Dead Oceans / Colemine Records | March 5, 2019 | 6.6 | 1d373e15-9d4f-4ce8-9d06-87e446417ffd | Amanda Wicks | https://pitchfork.com/staff/amanda-wicks/ |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.