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Finally: After 35 years, Brian Wilson solves the Smile puzzle, piecing together the fragments that fans have spent the last 3½ decades meticulously researching, speculating over, and attempting to assemble themselves. As the mythical follow-up to Pet Sounds, it delivers, and despite his age, Wilson's voice even sounds fantastic, still carrying the weight of these angelic melodies. | Finally: After 35 years, Brian Wilson solves the Smile puzzle, piecing together the fragments that fans have spent the last 3½ decades meticulously researching, speculating over, and attempting to assemble themselves. As the mythical follow-up to Pet Sounds, it delivers, and despite his age, Wilson's voice even sounds fantastic, still carrying the weight of these angelic melodies. | Brian Wilson: Smile | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8781-smile/ | Smile | I was introduced to the Beach Boys by my dad's copy of Endless Summer. It was a two-record compilation from the mid-70s with all their hits, and for many years, was the only thing I knew about them. My sister also had a copy, so I could listen anytime I wanted. The artwork for Endless Summer featured a painted mural of big Beach Boys heads positioned in wavy jungle grass, and I spent hours looking at their grinning, bearded faces, imagining what kind of magic strangeness they were really up to behind "I Get Around" and "Catch a Wave". Later, I found a book about them, and again saw aged, beaten faces, with lots of hair, tacky, yellow pants and inappropriately overweight grown men. I hadn't even heard Pet Sounds yet, but was convinced these people were sad and interesting. And they usually smiled.
Brian Wilson was the son of a songwriter. He was a naturally creative boy, though also prone to the same sunny interests and obsessions as his friends and cousins. He came of age just as thousands of other kids did at the time, learning that this place really could be the land of the free, home of love, peace, self-discovery and where everyone he cared about lived. He loved music. He still does, though at 61, despite the full mane of hair, he doesn't quite sound or write like the same boy who once scored the perfect soundtrack for an American summer. He was obsessed with George Gershwin and vanilla white harmony groups like The Four Freshman; he gave the world "In My Room" and Pet Sounds in return. Brian Wilson is touring Smile right now, with, they say, an unplugged keyboard and the same stiff onstage demeanor he showed during the "Brian is back" days. But then, performance has never been his bag.
Wilson abandoned Smile, his painstakingly planned follow-up to Pet Sounds, in 1967 because he had a nervous breakdown. He was emotionally unfit to continue. He was 24, only a few years older than I was when I bought my first bootleg copy of the music. If you want to know the precise details about how he broke down, there are dozens of accounts available (including mine here at Pitchfork). The short end of it has to do with drugs, growing pains, a new cast of friends, and a dysfunctional family. Brian had too much of all those things in the mid-60s; working on what was supposed to be the greatest record ever made might not have been the most realistic endeavor. Or maybe it would have been, had he surrounded himself with more understanding people. Or fewer drugs. Or better drugs. Or been able to keep his overbearing dad out of the picture. And on and on and on, until being a fan of the guy is more exhausting than it is rewarding. I really don't blame him for staying in bed for the 70s.
I first heard Smile when I compiled my own version of it. The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations box had just come out, containing the first "officially" sanctioned missing pieces of the album. I, like many amateur Beach Boys historians, used them, along with the best songs from the boots to make ad-hoc masterpieces. I'd read how "Our Prayer" was supposed to go first, and it seemed naturally to segue right into "Heroes & Villains". Then I had to decide which versions to use. I strung together the single mix with the "Cantina" version with "Do You Like Worms" (its cousin), using a complex system of cassette deck editing techniques-- that is, I got really good at using the "pause" button. I put Wilson's solo vocal and piano performance of "Surf's Up" last. It ended my tape on a bittersweet note, which I guessed was in the spirit of what Smile would have been. I was wrong. Sigh. A lot of us were.
Darian Sahanaja was right. Wilson's wife Melinda suggested that Brian take Smile on the road, and Sahanaja, keyboardist and backing vocalist in Wilson's touring band (aka The Wondermints) took up the sizable task of organizing the project. He dumped every Smile song and song-fragment he could find onto his laptop, took them to Wilson's house and watched as Wilson proceeded to phone no less an authority than original lyricist Van Dyke Parks when he needed help remembering lyrics. They hadn't really kept in touch for a few years, but Parks was at Wilson's place within 24 hours-- and would stay for five days-- to settle past scores and finish the lost record.
The trio made subtle changes to the music when necessary, and in the spring, Wilson headed to Studio One at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles to make his record. Just as he'd made the original "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes & Villains" there, Wilson gathered his band, strings and brass to record the tracks, cutting the basic arrangements live while doing the vocals on the same tube consoles his old Beach Boys had.
The end result is a great album, albeit one more lighthearted than its myth would suggest. The music I hear is like round pegs in square holes; it's just as insular and manic-compassionate as "In My Room" or "God Only Knows", but filtered through an amiable resolve. It sounds pleasant and assured, lacking the vulnerable, shy wave of hope drenching the old Beach Boys records. Yet, Wilson's voice sounds great. It's a bit lower, and his inflections have lost some subtlety over the years, but it still carries the weight of those angelic melodies (and when it can't, his band helps him out).
And what of his band? The eight musicians who contributed to recording Smile with Wilson not only live up to the material, but also make possible what could not have been all those years ago. They are not the Beach Boys. There is no Carl Wilson. For better or worse, there is no Mike Love. But there is the music, and all concerned parties should be given some kind of musical amnesty award for managing to avoid the pitfalls of posthumous reworking and re-recording. This is no ghost record or bout of nostalgia. Rather than study the lonely, bittersweet passions of Wilson's youth, it celebrates the return of his muse and his gift to the world in the form of a "teenage symphony to God."
Smile begins, as had been expected since Wilson first discussed the album in 1966, with "Our Prayer", combined with a short piece called "Gee", which is, in actuality, an overture to "Heroes & Villains". The choir-like group harmonies of "Our Prayer" are as beautiful as they had been, originally tacked onto the end of 1969's 20/20, but in this case, reveal only the tip of an incredible iceberg. "Heroes & Villains" begins identically to the 1967 single version, and Wilson's band tackles it with gusto. Wilson's lead vocal sounds markedly gruffer in places, though more telling is his complete lack of hesitation in the phrases. He isn't as sensitive as he used to be, but he makes up for it by nailing every complicated counterpoint line and inner harmony voice.
After moving through the song's "cantina" section, the band segues into "Roll Plymouth Rock", which Smile historians will recognize under its former title, "Do You Like Worms?". The galloping tympani is no less a disorienting force here than it had been originally, but Parks' never-before-tracked lyrics (they are said to have been written during the sessions) suggest a clearer narrative rooted in manifest destiny: "Once upon the Sandwich Isles, the social structure steamed upon Hawaii/ Rock, rock, roll Plymouth Rock roll over." This leads to "Barnyard", replete with animal sounds and more new lyrics about chickens and pigpens. The short, sad take on "You Are My Sunshine" (coupled with "Old Master Painter") precedes the climax of Smile's first third, "Cabin Essence". This is the same version as appeared on 20/20, though in this context is euphoric where it had been unexpected before.
The next section begins with "Wonderful", performed with harpsichord and understated orchestration (the brass, unfortunately, sounds synthesized) and Wilson's original arrangement of vocal harmonies. "Song for Children" emerges straight out of that, though fans will recognize it as the first section of a larger piece, "Child Is Father of the Man". That piece follows, and is more famous as the coda to the title track of 1971's Surf's Up album. Here, it wallows in ominous piano arpeggios and strings before introducing "Surf's Up", performed almost identically to Carl Wilson's 1971 production for the Beach Boys. Brian doesn't take the high harmonies on "brother John" anymore, but his voice is surprisingly nimble. Furthermore, Parks' lyrics, once considered too abstract by Love, now seem perfectly in accord with the surreal Americana of Smile. "Canvas the town and brush the backdrop." "Carriage across the fog-two-step to lamplight cellar tune." "The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne."
The album ends with a suite of Wilson's most idiosyncratic music. "I'm In Great Shape/I Wanna Be Around/Workshop" form a kind of bizarre interlude for Smile, wherein Wilson pumps up the virtues of "eggs and grits" and wanting to be around when "someone breaks your heart," over the strains of saws and drills. Things get odder as it flows in to "Vegetables", performed as a combination of the song from 1967's maligned Smiley Smile and the one heard on the Good Vibrations box. Wilson pulls out the "Mama Says" refrain ("Sleep a lot, eat a lot, brush 'em like crazy") before moving into "On a Holiday". Fans will recognize this from various boots as just "Holiday", but Parks' lyrics (check the sea-chantey rap (?) of, "Not the rum of Carib scum/ It's Port tonight, drink up and come/ Un-weigh the anchor yank and we will party!") are new.
"Wind Chimes" is the same version as first officially appeared on the Good Vibrations box, but like so many others on the album, seems perfectly suited to this context. When the band rips in during the wordless (but for "do-do-do" and "ba-ba-ba") chorus, I strain to hold back cries of glee. I haven't actually succeeded yet. This leads to the infamous "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" (also known as "Fire"), the instrumental Wilson once thought so powerful as to cause fires around his city. It still burns with lysergic intensity, albeit refined and featuring none other than backing harmony vocals cribbed from Smiley Smile's "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter".
Smile ends with "Good Vibrations", suggesting in no uncertain terms that Wilson aims to leave listeners grinning. I'll grin. I'll congratulate him. I won't wonder too much what might have happened had this been released way back when. And I'll let this record fall into the my still-churning impressions of Brian Wilson. Better late than never? Yes. | 2004-09-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2004-09-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Nonesuch | September 28, 2004 | 9 | 1d378e84-96c4-414c-8ffe-5994c74e33f0 | Dominique Leone | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dominique-leone/ | null |
The debut album from Mary Timony's new band is the record of the summer, albeit one that's arrived two months too late—a collection of perfectly lean power-pop tunes that evoke Tom Petty and the Runaways while conjuring the unruly energy of contemporary mid-fi bashers like Thee Oh Sees. | The debut album from Mary Timony's new band is the record of the summer, albeit one that's arrived two months too late—a collection of perfectly lean power-pop tunes that evoke Tom Petty and the Runaways while conjuring the unruly energy of contemporary mid-fi bashers like Thee Oh Sees. | Ex Hex: Rips | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19891-ex-hex-rips/ | Rips | You have to hand it to Ex Hex: they didn’t waste any time. Around this time last fall, the Washington, D.C.-based garage-pop trio, lead by guitarist/singer Mary Timony, had yet to play its first show. The only real evidence of the band’s existence was an early mix of the song “Hot and Cold”, which Timony posted online, then quickly removed. Within a month, the band–which also includes bassist/singer Betsy Wright (Childballads) and drummer Laura Harris (Aquarium, Benjy Ferree)—had joined up with Merge. By spring, “Hot and Cold” had been remixed and released on a three-song single.
And now, only a year in comes Rips, Ex Hex’s debut full-length. It’s the record of the summer, albeit one that's arrived two months too late—a collection of perfectly lean power-pop tunes that evoke Tom Petty and the Runaways while conjuring the unruly energy of contemporary mid-fi bashers like Thee Oh Sees. Rips sounds fine on headphones or at home, but it’s best enjoyed in the car where it’s possible to feel more perfectly tuned into the music’s steady velocity. The production is clean, but not polished, and the performances are tight. It doesn't sound like a record that was made in a hurry.
An active musician since the early ’90s—first in Autoclave, then in Helium, and then as a solo artist—Timony hasn’t gotten her due in the last decade and change. After two solo records—Ex Hex (2005) and The Shapes We Make (2007)—were met with muted reactions, she mostly called it quits on touring, popping up only sporadically in groups like Garland of Hours and Soft Power. In 2010, she joined Wild Flag, a bi-coastal quartet that featured former Sleater-Kinney members Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss, and seemingly caught a second wind. The band released one well-received full length and traveled extensively, but quietly parted ways last fall. Wild Flag was a potentially tough act to follow for Timony, partially because of the band's high visibility, which was given extra charge through the ascendance of Brownstein’s comedy sketch show "Portlandia".
So, it’s heartening to find that Ex Hex is, in a lot of ways, a better band. Wild Flag's membership was split between D.C. and Portland and, perhaps unintentionally, the band's songwriting sometimes seemed to ping-pong between different sensibilities. Timony, Harris, and Wright seem more stylistically attuned to one another—after all, they have a closer geographical relationship, which enables them to practice regularly—and Wright's two contributions to Rips, “How You Got That Girl” and “Radio On”, both slot perfectly into the record's uniform, neo-roller rink vibe.
The songs look back to ’70s radio rock with some amount of yearning, but Rips isn’t purely motivated by retromania. There’s a bit of environmental pressure built into this record: garage rock is adaptive music, where minimum resources can yield maximum impact, and it can thrive where rents are pricey and practice space is in short supply. You can write it with the people who are around, it plays well in a basement and also on a stage, and it’s easy to know when it’s working. If you can remember a garage rock song two minutes after it’s over, then it’s probably a good one.
All the genre demands is excitement, and Rips is definitely exciting. It’s stripped down, fast, and physical; the songs mostly revolve around scrubby, disappointing dudes and their failings, but the message is never maudlin or tragic. Timony spent years speak-singing, performing lyrics in a cool and detached tone that wavered in and out of pitch. But in Ex Hex, she’s developed a more overtly melodic delivery. As a guitarist, she’s playing a bit below her chops, but her solos are tasteful and on point, pitching up the emotional heft of a song once words won't cut it anymore.
Over the years, Timony's own musical style evolved into something fairly distinct, a witchy-sounding and modestly mystical music that bred progressive rock and ’70s British folk with elements of D.C. post-punk. Some of that sound exists in Ex Hex, too, particularly in the modest pace of “Hot and Cold”, but Rips mostly finds the band walking away from Timony's established voice and pushing toward something more direct and energetic*—*embracing the past, but also blowing things up and starting again. | 2014-10-10T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2014-10-10T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | October 10, 2014 | 8.4 | 1d37c75e-34b3-463a-9a21-8d4636660124 | Aaron Leitko | https://pitchfork.com/staff/aaron-leitko/ | null |
The L.A.-based singer-songwriter recorded the first album under his own name from the trenches of chemotherapy and a breakup, but the result is an exercise in gentle vulnerability and winsome grace. | The L.A.-based singer-songwriter recorded the first album under his own name from the trenches of chemotherapy and a breakup, but the result is an exercise in gentle vulnerability and winsome grace. | Ryan Pollie: Ryan Pollie | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ryan-pollie-ryan-pollie/ | Ryan Pollie | Bleomycin is a cancer drug that makes your hair fall out. The songwriter Ryan Pollie opens his self-titled debut album with a gorgeous choral recording named for it. Pollie finished the record in the trenches of chemotherapy, and his opener almost threatens to frame it as something precious. Instead, Ryan Pollie is mostly an exercise in gentle vulnerability.
Up until last year, Pollie was releasing dreamy bedroom pop under the confusingly generic name Los Angeles Police Department, and his songs were often so breezy that they obscured his talent. His first album under his own name feels more direct, and the songs function more like darts than lobs. Ryan Pollie isn’t a sprawling biography as much as a capsule of his cancer, a breakup, his relationship with his parents, and his late 20s. The album ends with another choral piece: his “Saturn Return.” It sounds like something he needed to get out of him.
That all of this comes out as lightly as it does is a testament in part to Pollie’s production, which veers close to inoffensive toe-tapping territory before a well-placed left-field element tilts it askew. His comfort zone is a folky blend of California pop and country, which keeps most of the songs sounding bright. “Get Better Soon” is a quirky Hallmark card of a love song; “Getting Clean” is a tender, almost cloyingly resolute meditation on depression.
Pollie’s voice is thin and pretty and sometimes trembles in his throat, as if it never found a place to hold onto. It can give the effect of offering up a lyric for consideration instead of setting it in stone. On “Only Child” he quips his way through chemo with an obvious comedic timing, but also like someone quietly unraveling. “I’ll try to speak in phrases that sound self-assured,” he sings in a meek, unconvincing lilt. The song chugs forward in playful bursts—there’s a banjo break and a flute cameo—and it functions more like a self-soothing lullaby than a showy diary. “My hair is falling out/My parents are calling now,” he sings.
The plodding piano ballad “Aim Slow” is a more sober, grand-scale meditation on death. It’s an arms-out, open-ended pulse check of a song that lands over and over on Pollie’s tormenting comfort of a refrain: “My God’s insane.” Early on he sings a promise to himself: “This time I will take time to say what I mean.” It’s an obvious thesis for any autobiography, but Pollie performs it with grace, thinking big thoughts about life and simplifying them all in the face of mortality. | 2019-05-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-05-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Anti- | May 17, 2019 | 7.3 | 1d3c2ae7-88b7-4a3a-8755-d51f273b5124 | Jay Balfour | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jay-balfour/ | |
With their ninth studio album, Radiohead move beyond the existential angst that made them music’s preeminent doomsayers, pursuing a more personal—and eternal—form of enlightenment. | With their ninth studio album, Radiohead move beyond the existential angst that made them music’s preeminent doomsayers, pursuing a more personal—and eternal—form of enlightenment. | Radiohead: A Moon Shaped Pool | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21907-a-moon-shaped-pool/ | A Moon Shaped Pool | Radiohead, who titled their ninth studio album A Moon Shaped Pool, have a unique grasp on how easily profundity can slip into banality. Their music is obsessed with the point where great truths harden into platitudes, where pure signal meets wretched noise. In the past, Thom Yorke has sharply peppered his lyrics with everyday cliches to suggest a mind consumed by meaningless data, but on the new album, he largely moves beyond cynicism. He is now considering simpler truths in a heretofore-unexplored register: wonder and amazement. “This goes beyond me, beyond you,” he sings on “Daydreaming.” “We are just happy to serve you.” There is no concealed razor under Yorke’s tongue as he offers this thought, or in the pearly music that surrounds him. It sounds for all the world like the most cloistered and isolated soul in modern rock music opening up and admitting a helplessness far more personal than he’s ever dared. Yorke has flirted with surrender before, and on A Moon Shaped Pool, that submission feels nearly complete.
The album is framed by two older pieces of music that act as gateways to the darker, unfamiliar waters within. Opener “Burn the Witch” has been floating around, in some form or another, since Kid A. “This is a low-flying panic attack,” Yorke announces, explicitly linking to the bad old days of air crashes, iron lungs, and wolves at doors. (In fact, several of the song’s lyrics—“avoid all eye contact,” “cheer at the gallows”—first appeared in the album art to 2003’s anti-Bush polemic Hail to the Thief.) Meanwhile, Jonny Greenwood’s brittle modernist string arrangement reinforces the angst, turning the orchestra into a giant pair of gnashing teeth. It’s a vintage splash of Radiohead stomach acid, a cloud of gnats unleashed in your cranial nerves.
It also feels like an exorcism for what follows: a plunge into something scarier than the military industrial complex, or the insidious nature of propaganda, or human nature’s disturbing tendency towards unquestioning obedience. Yorke separated from his partner of 23 years and the mother to his two children last August, and on “Identikit,” he sings “Broken hearts make it rain” and “When I see you messin’ me around, I don’t want to know.”
That isn’t to say that this is necessarily a “break-up album.” Separations (particularly those involving children) take place in the harsh light of day, with lawyers’ appointments and checklists and logistical arrangements. Radiohead albums are the stuff of dreams and nightmares, and the band retains a healthy resistance to clarity; their music is a maze of signs you can peer into any way you like. Even so, the impact of trauma, a sort of car crash of the soul, is palpable. The music here feels loose and unknotted, broken open in the way you can only be after a tragedy. “There’s a spacecraft blocking out the sky,” Yorke observes on “Decks Dark,” as choral voices pass overhead. The scene is straight from 1997’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” but here Yorke doesn’t sound “uptight.” He sounds utterly drained, as if impending invasion doesn’t concern him at all.
A song title like “Glass Eyes” hints at many of the band’s longstanding morbid preoccupations—the semblance of humanity in something cold and dead, or the violation of the biological body by foreign objects—but the song is a bloodflow of strings straight into the heart. “Hey it’s me, I just got off the train,” Yorke sings, and it’s a strikingly ordinary image: the Paranoid Android himself, picking up the phone and calling someone to tell them he’s just arrived. “I feel this love turn cold,” he confesses as the ballad draws to a close, the phrasing an echo, subconscious or not, of his Kid A sign-off “I’ll see you in the next life.” A throbbing cello appears like a lump in the throat; the song fades away.
Throughout the album, Yorke’s everyday enlightenment is backed by music of expanse and abandon. The guitars sound like pianos, the pianos sound like guitars, and the mixes breathe with pastoral calm. “The Numbers,” a song about the impending apocalypse brought on by climate change, meanders along, its groove as wide as an ocean. Even the malevolent synth wave that passes through “Ful Stop” sounds like a visitor, a momentary darkness rather than a caged spirit. As the song builds, the band works up a coursing groove that will feel familiar to longtime fans, with its interlocking guitars and an arterial bustle of rhythms serving to launch Yorke’s wordless moan. It’s a sound that Radiohead has spent the last decade honing, but the payoff here is deeper and more gratifying than it has been in a while.
The added dimension comes from Yorke, who pumps fresh oxygen into these songs, many of which have existed in sketch-like forms for years. On the lonely folk hymn “Desert Island Disk,” he sings of an epiphanic experience: “The wind rushing ‘round my open heart/An open ravine/In my spirit white.” As a vision of transformation, it feels like the inverse to *Amnesiac’*s “Pyramid Song,” where his only companions were the dead; here, he is “totally alive.”
And then there’s “True Love Waits.” It’s an old song, one that has been around in various forms for over two decades, but unlike “Burn the Witch” or the other teased sketches and scraps that Radiohead diehards pick apart on forums, it’s long been a part of their canon. It appeared on the 2001 live album I Might Be Wrong and, dragged into 2016, feels like a relic from a different geological era. “I’ll drown my beliefs,” Yorke sings, “just don’t leave.” It is the message they leave us with, this very open-hearted song that has always felt like an open wound in their discography, a geyser of feeling erupting out of scorched earth. Its very inclusion is a striking moment of transparency.
The version here is just Yorke and a piano, so reverberant and echo-drenched that it feels like we’ve stuck our heads inside it. Yorke croons tenderly, never opening up into his chest voice. It’s sung to one person this time, not crowds. In its mundane visions of “lollipops and crisps,” the lyrics purposefully skirt doggerel, an acknowledgment that cliches can be, in fact, where all the action is. “I’m not living/I’m just killing time,” the 47-year-old admits. You can write a line like that and set it to music; you can perform it for years in front of adoring millions; you can carry the idea around in your heart and mind. But it might take a lifetime for it to strike, as it does here, with a newfound power. The truth, as always, lies in plain sight, right there in the kicking and the squealing, the panic and the vomit. Some truths just take longer to see than others. | 2016-05-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-05-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | XL | May 11, 2016 | 9.1 | 1d3f3957-f445-46e9-8ae4-987dc009d64c | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | null |
The duo’s refurbished EP gets the typical sequel treatment, with new characters and a glossy finish that makes you miss the gritty original. | The duo’s refurbished EP gets the typical sequel treatment, with new characters and a glossy finish that makes you miss the gritty original. | Denzel Curry / Kenny Beats: Unlocked 1.5 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/denzel-curry-kenny-beats-unlocked-15/ | Unlocked 1.5 | The real Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats cannot come to the phone right now. According to the lore of their last album Unlocked, they are trapped deep in cyberspace while evil doppelgangers roam the world in their stead. It was Bad Denzel and Bad Kenny who “leaked” Unlocked last year. Now, the nefarious rapper and producer duo have roped in unsuspecting collaborators to remix a handful of songs from the record. Unlocked 1.5 presents a selection of seven tracks, reworked by artists like Robert Glasper, Georgia Anne Muldrow, and the Alchemist. Well wrought as they are, some of these additions feel a bit slapped-on. Unlocked is trim and scrappy, but its 1.5 update gets the typical sequel treatment: all-new characters, unnecessary plotlines, and a glossy finish that makes you miss the gritty original.
That 1.5 has too many ideas isn’t an indictment of each one, more so a question of whether or not they all make sense on the same EP. When Denzel and Kenny cut Unlocked, they recorded it over a frenzied three-day period, and the immediacy of that work is captured in the original version—it’s a lean-and-mean little project, all muscle, no fat. The addition of multiple skilled rappers and producers, each introducing their own style, tends to drown out the scruffy charm rather than enhance it. Pianist and producer Robert Glasper outfits “So.Incredible.pkg” with a drifting Tropicália vocal melody and key pulses that recall his work with Flying Lotus and Thundercat. The sound sits distinctly in the neo-jazz world Glasper is a part of (in the goofy trailer for 1.5, Glasper offers to “add a few things” after hearing the album. Kenny responds, “He’s gonna put a saxophone”).
Glasper and Georgia Anne Muldrow’s contributions—the latter on “Track07”—present beautified versions of Denzel and Kenny’s music. The components they impart are gorgeous, particularly Muldrow’s powerful, non-lexical singing, but they don’t feel of a piece with the album as a whole. Verses from British singer-songwriter Arlo Parks—whose voice is particularly light and sweet—feel especially out of place. On its own, “Track07” is a great song, but I wonder if it makes sense within the context of the EP as a whole. On the other hand, Smino’s drowsy verse on “So.Incredible.pkg” is a perfect foil to Denzel’s rasp. (Hearing Smino coyly squeak, “Huh, me? Little old me?” is a delight.)
At worst, some of these remixes defang Denzel a bit—his robust, jagged flow is often cleaned up and glazed over with slick production. Charlie Heat’s rendition of “Take It Back” and Sango’s “Pyro” remix suffer most from this issue. Their add-ons are unmemorable. Though both Glasper and Muldrow’s reworks were distracting, they were distractingly good—Heat and Sango’s offerings aren’t bad, but they don’t enhance the source material. Heat tacks on a soul sample, percussion, and a handful of bells and whistles. Sango smooths out any rough edges in the original. Both crowd the space Denzel once had to really stretch out and flail.
The most effective additions to 1.5 are supplied by veteran producer the Alchemist and Griselda MC Benny the Butcher. Benny’s time on “DIET_1.5” yields the best guest verse on the record, his springy cadence bouncing off Kenny’s aluminum beat like a hard rubber ball. On “‘Cosmic’.m4a,” the Alchemist beefs up the track with warped, bulbous synths and piano measures that sound lifted from a slasher score. Joey Bada$$ dishes out fierce bars on par with Denzel’s vigor, and the song ultimately feels elevated, each new element enhancing Denzel’s presence instead of overpowering it—an upgrade in the truest sense of the word.
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 | Rap | Loma Vista | March 8, 2021 | 6.9 | 1d4314a1-0b3c-4be6-9a3d-880d8118b000 | Madison Bloom | https://pitchfork.com/staff/madison-bloom/ | |
One-man noise-pop project Nathan Williams delivers on his first widely released LP. | One-man noise-pop project Nathan Williams delivers on his first widely released LP. | Wavves: Wavvves | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12783-wavvves/ | Wavvves | Wavves is the one-man noise-pop project of 22-year-old San Diegan Nathan Williams. Since his homemade cassettes and mpfree turbulence started damaging ears last year, Williams has become the focal point of what reads and feels like a maelstrom of chatter. Once something of a left-field mystery, the hype around him has built steadily throughout this young year. Now with drummer and a press photo, Williams has probably played about as many shows as he has songs to be heard. A spate of recent outings in New York a few weeks back had the scene in such a tizzy, The New York Times sent a dispatch to bear witness. And, just a few days later, to capitalize on the swell, his new label expedited the digital release of Wavvves , his second full-length in just four months.
Without delving too deeply into the muck of Williams' proper (and purely self-titled) debut LP, Wavves , it's worth noting that each of his twin long-players share more than just a menu of goths, weeeeeeed, demons, breakers, and vintage skate photography. While his second is the marginally less abrasive, more realized of the two efforts, both feature the same roach-encrusted punk pop. Be it in the opening power chords of "Beach Demon" or "To the Dregs", there's a couple of fried amps' worth of trusted guitar tropes and distortion-- tricks borrowed from the Wipers and Sonic Youth-- enveloping Williams' carbonated choruses. The vocal hooks themselves come fast, usually propelled by titanic drumbeats nicked from 1960s girl group music. It's not immediate--- and hardly the "pop" record that some have characterized it as-- but deep in the froth of highlight "No Hope Kids" lurks more than just a thick dose of teenaged ennui or even volume. There's thrilling evidence of compelling, thoughtful craftsmanship as well.
Wavves' no-fi bent has been compared to No Age's. But while those guys tend to reach far outside of their own feedback for spaces more expansive, Wavves' music feels more insular, self-contained, and unsettling. These aren't shouts from a house party, but from a solitary bedroom. And Wavvves ' outbursts are often tempered and sandwiched between clipped electronics (opener "Rainbow Everywhere" and "Goth Girls") or experimental noise ("Killer Punx, Scary Demons") that help congeal the album as a whole.
As the hubbub surrounding his music and name game began to gather serious cybersteam over the past few months, the San Diego native wisely moved his signature from small-time imprint De Stijl, to the bigger, much more historically distinct Fat Possum. Business measures and consonant gimmicks aside, the hop down South makes perfect aesthetic sense-- this young man is most certainly singing the blues. Hopeless stoner/loner incantations are scattered throughout, though two of the album's most bulletproof moments are also it's most deliciously bleak. Next to the pains of "No Hope Kids" (no car, no friends, no family, no friends, no girl), "So Bored" leaves memorable blisters. It's the record's one slam-dunk earworm, and it's a total bummer. Over three melted chords and his own back-up oooooooh's and aaaaaah's, Williams' moans a mantra that's bled into every track: "I'm sooooo booooored, I'm sooooo boooored." Not for much longer. | 2009-03-04T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2009-03-04T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Fat Possum | March 4, 2009 | 8.1 | 1d43c6a5-a650-48fe-93cd-482a37152296 | David Bevan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/david-bevan/ | null |
This unique African band pals around with the Ex and Tortoise and creates something of an accidental update on Bazombo trance music. | This unique African band pals around with the Ex and Tortoise and creates something of an accidental update on Bazombo trance music. | Konono N°1: Congotronics | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/4596-congotronics/ | Congotronics | It is entirely possible that an amplified, slightly distorted likembe creates the most awesome sound on earth. There's no other sound quite like it, and there's no other band like Konono No. 1, the assemblage of Bazombo musicians, dancers, and singers from Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) that makes the likembe the center of their sound. It's something of an accidental update on Bazombo trance music, and it's thrillingly unique stuff, a torrent of kinetic sound that straddles the line between the traditional and the avant-garde. The likembe is commonly known in the West as a thumb piano, and there are variations of the instrument in different cultures across Africa-- perhaps the most well-known is the mbira, which is used across Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and parts of South Africa. The instrument has a pinging tone that is practically designed by nature to sound awesome with a bit of amp fuzz on it.
Konono employ three electric likembes-- each in a different register-- and the amplification is very makeshift. The band formed in the 1980s to perform its traditional music, but soon found that being heard above the street noise of Kinshasa wasn't a going concern as long as they remained strictly acoustic. Scavenging magnets from car parts, they built their own microphones and pickups, and they augmented their percussion section with hi-hat and assorted scrap metal. Vocal amplification came from a megaphone, and the accidental distortion they drew from the likembes cemented their distinctive sound. Though their music is still traditional in style and content, recent trips to Europe have turned them on to how avant-garde what they're doing is, and they've fallen in with musicians like the Ex, Tortoise, and the Dead C.
Congotronics is actually the second Konono record to receive international distribution-- last year's Lubuaku was a live recording from a European tour-- and it's bound to win them a following amongst noiseniks, experimental music buffs, and open-minded worldbeat fans, though most other people will likely find it merely interesting. The record opens with "Kule Kule" and a reprise of the same, and these tracks stake out the sound of what follows quite precisely. "Kule Kule" is hauntingly subdued, with the three likembe players locking in with each other on a series of choppy riffs and bursts of crazy melody (anyone familiar with the Ex's "Theme From Konono" from last year's Turn will recognize the themes and riffs), while the reprise adds vocals sans megaphone. The four remaining songs all sound as though they were recorded live, and there is in fact some applause between a few of them.
The themes laid out on the introductory songs surface repeatedly over the course of the album, lending it a suite-like feel. "Lufuala Ndonga" comes crashing to an end, and its conclusion becomes the introduction of "Masikulu", on which the frantic chants are swept up in swirling currents of percussion. The most stunning song is the instrumental "Paradiso", which puts the likembe interplay front and center, their distorted, scattershot melodies ricocheting from side-to-side over a thumping backbeat, skittering hi-hat, and some amazing snare work. It's funky in a sort of incidental manner-- obviously meant for dancing-- but hitting on a sort of deep funk rhythmic sensibility without really even trying.
Konono No. 1 are the kind of band that remind us that music still possesses vast wells of untapped potential, and that there's virtually no limit to what can be developed and explored. There's little precedent for a record like Congotronics, even as the music at its core goes back many generations and predates the discovery of electricity by some time. It's important to note that these are not pop songs in any sense of the word-- this is traditional trance music with an electric twist, and should be approached as such. That said, it's among the most fascinating music I've heard and deserves a listen by anyone with even the remotest interest in the possibilities of sound. | 2005-03-16T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2005-03-16T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Global | Crammed Discs | March 16, 2005 | 7.9 | 1d45b750-5a9e-4711-aa3d-3d9b0e2bcde5 | Joe Tangari | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-tangari/ | null |
The fast-rising rappers team for a fun but inconsistent joint album that’s most effective when their verses weave together to feel like one. | The fast-rising rappers team for a fun but inconsistent joint album that’s most effective when their verses weave together to feel like one. | 42 Dugg / EST Gee: Last Ones Left | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/42-dugg-est-gee-last-ones-left/ | Last Ones Left | Longtime Memphis rap emissary Yo Gotti is on a quest to become the next Birdman. And since the days before Juvenile’s 400 Degreez turned Cash Money into a behemoth, the New Orleans-bred bossman has believed in the power of the rap duo: from the Big Tymers to Like Father, Like Son, from Drake and Wayne to Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan as Rich Gang. Birdman’s philosophy seems to be, if you have two hot artists on the same label, put them together and they’ll get even hotter. Yo Gotti appears to have adopted that ideology on his CMG imprint’s latest release Last Ones Left, an occasionally exciting joint album between two fast-rising rappers in Detroit’s 42 Dugg and Louisville’s EST Gee.
Dugg and Gee complement each other well enough: They’re both hugely influenced by rap scenes in the South and Midwest, and they both tell hardened drug-dealing stories that blur the lines between reality and myth. Specifically what works about them as a pair is the way their voices clash, as Dugg’s brash high-pitched delivery, which slightly brings to mind Webbie, ricochets off Gee sounding like a ghost whispering through the walls. The highlights are the tracks where their verses weave together to the point that they feel like one. On “Ice Talk,” Dugg and Gee are in complete sync, building off each other’s last lines every time they pass the mic. I particularly like “Free the Shiners,” when Gee ends on a meditative note about love and Dugg follows with an unhinged and considerably less heartfelt mood change.
The chemistry wanes a bit when the two take on a more traditional verse one, verse two structure. Sometimes, the tonal shifts are off-putting: I tend not to always take Dugg that seriously, meanwhile Gee sounds like he has maybe laughed once in his life and it was at a kid falling off his bike. On the piano-driven “Skcretch Sum,” Dugg’s skittering chirps feel inconsequential while Gee is rattling off cold-blooded nightmares: “We gon’ send him back holding his hat with decompressed lungs/God helped me relax, I throw two back, help my depression.” On “Thump Shit,” Dugg brags about being able to sell literally anything you typically need a prescription for (like the Wolf of Wall Street “sell me this pen” scene but for drugs), but it fits oddly next to Gee rapping about violence with a level of cruelty that is borderline horrorcore. It works on “Everybody Shooters Too,” though. Over one of the best, pummeling Enrgy beats since AK Bandamont’s 2021 tape Soul Controller, Dugg and Gee are in full heat-check mode, culminating in the moment when they rap “They say it’s all for nothing, but I’m going for it, fuck it” in unison. It’s maybe two seconds, but it’s an amazing two seconds.
As the tape goes on, it veers off course from a Dugg and Gee joint album into promotion for the new artists that Gee and Dugg are pushing. I get it, but it feels about as underwhelming as when you’re watching a TV show and they sneak in a backdoor pilot. Still, Last Ones Left holds together despite its inconsistencies. Even if 42 Dugg and EST Gee aren’t the most organic duo, it’s hard not to have fun with two scorching-hot rappers going toe-to-toe. | 2022-04-14T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-04-14T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | CMG / Warlike / Interscope | April 14, 2022 | 7 | 1d48d62c-1836-4a25-85ed-9170c280362c | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
After the discord of The Beatles, the group sought to get back to basics with a rock LP and a film about its creation. This was the eventual result. | After the discord of The Beatles, the group sought to get back to basics with a rock LP and a film about its creation. This was the eventual result. | The Beatles: Let It Be | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13430-let-it-be/ | Let It Be | As the 1960s wound down, so did the Beatles. The symmetry was perfect: youthful energy, optimism, and camaraderie had given over to cynicism, discord, and looking out for number one. As the decade's final year began, the White Album was still riding high on the charts and the Yellow Submarine soundtrack was days away from release. But the Beatles were in serious trouble. Nothing about being in the band was enjoyable or easy. The power vacuum left by the death of manager Brian Epstein a year and a half earlier had never been satisfactorily filled; Apple Corps, the multi-media company started by the band a year earlier, was bleeding money; and toughest of all, the once-Fab Four didn't generally enjoy being in the same room together. All were either married or close to it, closing in on 30, and tremendously weary of all they'd been through.
Paul McCartney, the most devoted of the gang to the notion of the Beatles (Ringo Starr called him the "Beatleaholic"), thought that the group needed a special project to bring it together. Another White Album-style scenario, with the songwriters in the band working alone in separate studios, enlisting each other to serve as a de facto backup band, was bound to fail. Too much good will and trust had been lost. They needed something big they could all submit to. Several ideas were proposed, most involving a return of some kind to live performance: perhaps a live album of new songs or a huge show in a remote place; maybe the band would charter an ocean liner and make an album on it. Ultimately, it was decided that the band would be filmed on a soundstage rehearsing for a show and developing material for a new album-- a document of the Beatles at work. The theme for the project would be back-to-basics, a return of the group as a performing unit, sans overdubs, emphasizing their inherent musicality. Working title: Get Back.
It was an awful idea. First, no one was sure exactly what he was supposed to be doing. Glyn Johns was there, a new presence behind the boards, but he never quite figured out if he was producing or just engineering. Regular producer George Martin was technically on board, but his participation was minimal. While Let It Be was initially meant to be a return to simplicity, Phil Spector's later involvement (he was brought in to "reproduce" the tracks, adding extra voices and instruments to thicken arrangements and remix the record, a decision made without McCartney's input) killed that angle.
Organizational chaos aside, the sessions were painful. We all know what it feels like to be around people we don't like for days on end; if reality television has taught us anything, it's that a camera crew in a room full of such people does nothing to ease tension. The time the Beatles spent recording and filming was described by all as supremely unpleasant, despite a later uptick when they'd returned to finish up at Abbey Road. And when they finished, no one really liked what they'd laid down on tape. So not surprisingly, the essential nature of Let It Be is that it feels incomplete and fragmented; it's a difficult album to peg because the Beatles were never sure themselves what they wanted it to be. So the best way to approach it is as a collection of songs by guys who still were churning out classics with some regularity. It may not succeed on the level of the Beatles' previous albums, but there's enough good material to make it a worthy entry in their canon.
Outside of the title track, there's little here that feels consequential to the Beatles' legacy. The easy acoustic shuffle of the John Lennon and Paul McCartney duet "Two of Us" has appeal, though, as do the prickly rhythmic drive of George Harrison's "For You Blue" and the bubbling Booker T-isms of McCartney's "Get Back". The swampy "I've Got a Feeling", possibly reflecting McCartney's recent interest in Canned Heat, is intriguing because it sounds so classic rock 70s. And Lennon's "Across the Universe", recorded during the White Album sessions and sounding like it was beamed in from somewhere else, has a certain ringing brilliance. For balance, there's "Dig a Pony" and the boogieing "One After 909", the latter actually written by Lennon and McCartney as kids in the fifties. Still, for plenty of good bands, the best of these would be career highlights.
Recorded without joy, set aside for months while a better album was assembled, and finally remixed in a way that enraged one of the band's principals, Let It Be finally saw release in May 1970. But by that point, the Beatles break-up had been official for several weeks. There's since been a live album, compilations, digitization, trolls through the archives, and an ocean of ink spilled about this little band that made it very big. And now there are these CD issues, done beautifully. But there never was a proper reunion, and we can assume that there will never be another Beatles.
[Note: Click here for an overview of the 2009 Beatles reissues, including discussion of the packaging and sound quality.] | 2009-09-10T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2009-09-10T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | EMI | September 10, 2009 | 9.1 | 1d4e7516-9ae9-4ba5-beb1-16c000f30221 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
The artists formerly known as Viet Cong return with a harrowing, ferociously alive rock record that nods to Swans and Echo and the Bunnymen. | The artists formerly known as Viet Cong return with a harrowing, ferociously alive rock record that nods to Swans and Echo and the Bunnymen. | Preoccupations: Preoccupations | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22407-preoccupations/ | Preoccupations | It took seven months for the members of Viet Cong to pick a new band name, but it appears to have been time well spent. On their first album as Preoccupations, they live up to their moniker to an almost scary degree, sounding engrossed in thought to the point of pathological obsession. “With a sense of urgency and unease/Second guessing just about everything” sings Matt Flegel to open the album, in a song called “Anxiety.” Internal stress marks every track, in phrases like “spinning in a vacuum,” “falling into mania,” “so close to exhaustion,” “overwhelmed, and it’s coming from all angles.” By its words alone, Preoccupations reads like fodder for major therapy.
What makes Preoccupations much more than a circular exercise in self-analysis is the vitality of the music. There’s a tense, nervous energy running through all the tracks, which connect to each other like wires that spark electrical currents when they meet. The same could be said of the band’s self-titled album as Viet Cong, which also crackled with highly-concentrated vigor. But there’s something tauter, snappier, and even more melodic about Preoccupations.
Maybe it’s that the group has embraced some of their influences more openly. The first Viet Cong EP included a cover of Bauhaus’ “Dark Entries,” but the ghosts of ’80s post-punk are stronger on Preoccupations. The band seems particularly infatuated with the catchier end of that spectrum: many of these bass-driven, shimmering guitar tunes evoke Echo and the Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs, and Teardrop Explodes. There’s even one super-catchy song, “Stimulation,” that could pass for an early Cure track, albeit updated to fit Preoccupations’ strengths. Its high-speed hooks makes Flegel’s chants of “We’re all dumb inside/All dead inside/All gonna die” sound positively enthusiastic.
Even with tunes as bright as that one, Preoccupations is an intense listen. Flegel’s lyrics are relentlessly dark, laser-focused on heavy, troubling issues. At times, his barks and howls combined with the band’s rhythmic pummeling (one tune is even called “Monotony”) are almost too much to handle, approaching the harrowing feel of early Swans. Take when Flegel sings “You’ve been made irrelevant by a suicide machine/Mechanically modified to muffle out the screams” over the stark percussion of “Forbidden.” But throughout Preoccupations, the music’s sharp jolts make Flegel’s words not moribund but full of life. He’s not sitting in a corner feeling sorry for himself, but fighting hard to shed an emotional straitjacket.
Whether he ever actually breaks out of his shackles is a moot question, but Preoccupations does end with some success on that count. The record’s prettiest tune, “Fever,” closes the album with the semi-triumphant declaration, “You’re not scared/Carry your fever away from here.” Still, the power of Preoccupations lies not in some victory but in the battle. All the wrestling and strife inside these songs are the musical equivalent of blood blasting through veins and nerves raking skin. For Preoccupations, if you’re not struggling, you’re not living. | 2016-09-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Jagjaguwar | September 19, 2016 | 7.9 | 1d532a3d-bb0e-47db-b0e0-efc3c4a8064c | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
The veteran Chicago producer's Planet Mu debut is an album more concerned with footwork's past than its future: it's a loving musical history set on loop. | The veteran Chicago producer's Planet Mu debut is an album more concerned with footwork's past than its future: it's a loving musical history set on loop. | Traxman: Da Mind of Traxman | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16530-the-mind-of-traxman/ | Da Mind of Traxman | Dance music is a futurist's game, and footwork is no different. When the music bubbled up out of Chicago's South and West Sides two years ago, listeners took notice in part because of the undeniable newness of the sound. Since then, conversation has focused on where footwork is going, especially on where forward-thinking artists both here (Sepalcure, Machinedrum) and across the Atlantic (Kuedo, Addison Groove) are taking the sound. Planet Mu releases by Chicago artists like DJ Diamond, DJ Nate, and DJ Roc ensured that the scene's progenitors got their due, but those albums-- especially Diamond's Flight Muzik-- strove for rhythmic and melodic complexity foreign to the scene's established M.O.
Traxman is the latest Chicago artist to record a full-length for Planet Mu. Da Mind of Traxman is notable in part because it's an album more concerned with footwork's past than its future. A godfather of the style, Traxman came up in the 1990s ghetto-house scene and fostered the genre through collaborations, DJ sets, and mixes without building up much of a catalog under his own name. Da Mind of Traxman sounds like its title, the pent-up musings of a veteran spilling onto wax. The conversational powers of footwork shouldn't be underrated: Those whirring vocal samples are a language game waiting to happen, and the genre's unapologetic, unmonitored sampling culture allow it to interact with other musics in ways that house and techno often can't.
Traxman syncs footwork to its Chicago lineage-- juke and house-- but more interestingly to soul, funk, and rock. Opening track "Footworkin on Air" features what sounds like a wooden xylophone competing with a pointillist sequencer and blocky bass. It's as light and frothy as footwork gets, and it has as much to do with Aphex Twin as Dance Mania. Traxman often downplays his drum machines; I get the impression he cares as much about Rhodes pianos as he does 808s. "Itz Crack" and "Rock You" contrast lilting jazz/soul melodies with quick, non-invasive percussion. On the infrequent occasions where he slips into vulgar ghetto-house mantras, he sets them against his weirdest compositions. "Going Wild" (a collaboration with Rashad and AG) is schizophrenic, vacillating between chirpy irritants and half-time bass distensions, all keeping uneasy pace with a wordless, Eastern vocal melody. It sounds like paint flakes off of Flying Lotus' drywall. "1988" pays homage to the sci-fi synth ropes of vintage Detroit techno.
Of course, there's nothing particularly "footwork" about the Dilla-isms of "Lady Dro" or the tin-roof patter of "Sound Filed", but that hardly seems the point. When, on "Lifeeeee Is For Ever", he stirs Prince's organ-backed monologue from "Let's Go Crazy" into a stuttering frenzy, it feels less like album-closing pathos and more like a producer saying, "oh yeah, I forgot, I really love Prince, too." Listening to Da Mind of Traxman is a little like staring at a page of .gif images: Those short, repeating animations have a way of revealing detail. And when they don't it's still comforting to know that they'll spin there in perpetuity. Da Mind of Traxman is Traxman's musical history set on loop, a conversation held in stunted, loving bursts. | 2012-04-23T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2012-04-23T02:00:04.000-04:00 | null | Planet Mu | April 23, 2012 | 7.1 | 1d54bd6d-ae25-4e7b-8626-1ee26ef36384 | Andrew Gaerig | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andrew-gaerig/ | null |
Trent Reznor shuns radio-friendly alt-rock and settles into his role as a cult star, releasing a complex record about a dystopian near-future. | Trent Reznor shuns radio-friendly alt-rock and settles into his role as a cult star, releasing a complex record about a dystopian near-future. | Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10125-year-zero/ | Year Zero | For all his nihilistic tantrums, Trent Reznor always wanted to be loved by as many people as possible. After the multi-platinum bloodletting The Downward Spiral exploded in 1994, the depressive frontman froze, stuck in a drug-addled mindfuck of heightened expectations. And while he took eons deciding whether he wanted to be the next "voice of a generation," a fickle pop zeitgeist passed Nine Inch Nails by. Ten years and just one (insular, commercially toxic) album later, 2005's With Teeth had Reznor turning familiar tricks while desperately groping for the mass adulation of old. But, even by regressive NIN standards, the album was too lock-step, causing die-hards to question their favorite troubled teen trapped inside a 40-year-old brute's body. "A lot of what I've done as Nine Inch Nails has been governed by fear," admitted the singer two years ago, and With Teeth sounded like the product of a man paralyzed by his looming cultural expiration date.
But something clicked while Reznor & co. toured the world over the past couple of years-- he learned to stop worrying about MTV and love the cult. When I saw the band on Long Island last summer, they were riveting, raged, and refreshed. Brutally aggressive yet artfully dramatic, the performance was anything but staid; it got me genuinely excited about NIN for the first time in ages. And apparently, the tour got Reznor amped too. A mere two years after his latest full-length (a mere blip on the NIN timeline) comes Year Zero, a disquieting apocalyptic vision largely recorded on the road. The songs still deal with Reznor's tried-and-true topics-- including the destructive powers of addiction, religion, and authority-- but the record's framework is new. Instead of just chronicling his own fatalistic tendencies, this time Reznor is taking on the entire world's hastening downward spiral.
It's not the most original dystopian yarn. An amalgam of ideas taken from no-future tales like 1984, The Matrix, and The Wall, Year Zero takes place on a scorched earth 15 years from today: The war on terror has escalated into a full-blown fanatical religious struggle, the American people are sedated by government-sanctioned drugs with names like Parepin and Opal, and a violent underground resistance movement is trying to usurp the totalitarian U.S. regime. It's a perfect shitstorm for Reznor to do what he does best: depict ceaseless brutality with the tactless force of a bunker buster.
But instead of leaving it up to the listener to fill in the nameless pronouns and vague themes within Year Zero, he's hired Alternate Reality Game experts to help him concoct a sprawling hypertext scavenger hunt aimed squarely at obsessives. The online game's unabashed intricacies reiterate Reznor's new appreciation for his smaller, devout fanbase: There's no way a casual fan can could hope to keep track of the myriad hidden websites, endless message board speculation, and spectrograph analysis (seriously) required to crack Year Zero's expanded storyboard. Thankfully, none of that knowledge is necessary to enjoy the album's combustible backdrops.
Low on anthemic hooks and heavy on riotous noise breaks, Year Zero finds Reznor waving his digital hardcore flag high. Instead of wallowing in monotonous refrains as he did on With Teeth and parts of The Fragile, Reznor offers Bomb Squad-meets-Merzbow sonic blasts on tracks like "Vessel", "My Violent Heart", and especially the apocalypse-now back-end of "The Great Destroyer"; these fuzz buckets double as yellow caution tape for all "Hurt"-loving passerbys. The album's ever-mutating drums and off-kilter arrangements show this plug-in wonk is still a master programmer. Then there are the words, which remain somewhat less than masterful. But, for every repetitive mention of "down on your knees" submission and corrosive godheads (there are many), Year Zero squeezes out some intriguing ambiguities.
Though it's clear Reznor favors the anti-establishment warriors in his invented battle-earth, he offers multiple sides to the story-- and even some shades of gray between good and evil. There's the torn military man at the center of "The Good Soldier" who's trying to believe his actions are just ("God is on my side/ I keep telling myself"), the apathetic bystander who only asks "can we stop?" when it's too late on "Me, I'm Not", and voices representing god-complex propaganda from both government ("The Greater Good") and anti-government ("My Violent Heart") players. The set-up hides Reznor behind his characters to an extent, but lines like, "Don't try to tell me how some power can corrupt a person/ You haven't had enough to know what it's like," from the broad anti-Bush swipe "Capital G", could also describe the deadening corruption he himself faced by-way-of fame and drugs once upon a time.
In 1996, Reznor told Spin, "The idea of politics is just so uninteresting to me-- I don't believe things can really change. It doesn't matter who's president." Now more mature and sober, he's finally aware of the world around him-- and, not surprisingly, he's not too pleased. While Year Zero gets bogged down in stock themes, 2-D imagery, and the occasional too-long come-down, its cult-ready appeal is pure. The fan-artist communion reaches a peak on the post-doomsday finale, "Zero-Sum", a welcome addition to the lofty tradition of NIN album-closing ballads. "And I guess I just wanted to tell you," says Reznor in a conspiratorial whisper, "As the light starts to fade/ That you are the reason/ That I am not afraid." It's the end of the world as he knows it, and he feels (relatively) fine. | 2007-04-17T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2007-04-17T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Interscope | April 17, 2007 | 6.7 | 1d579e50-e031-41ed-9ad4-3ae0f3c86ebe | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | null |
Working alone with just a nylon-string guitar, Mark Kozelek takes a new tack under his Sun Kil Moon alias. | Working alone with just a nylon-string guitar, Mark Kozelek takes a new tack under his Sun Kil Moon alias. | Sun Kil Moon: Admiral Fell Promises | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14430-admiral-fell-promises/ | Admiral Fell Promises | This is an odd question to be asking in 2010, after he has spent nearly 20 years making music: What makes a Mark Kozelek solo album different from a Sun Kil Moon album? For most of the 2000s, the distinction was more than just words on a jewel-case spine, as he debuted new material under the Sun Kil Moon banner and then reinterpreted it in live or demo settings as a solo artist. Musically, it always sounded like a matter of electric versus acoustic, full-band versus solo guitar, jammy versus intimate. It's the two sides of a man who has turned himself into a cottage industry through his Caldo Verde label, releasing scores of companion EPs and limited-edition live LPs that keep his old songs alive. But the split between Sun Kil Moon and Kozelek has never come across as merely a sales gimmick. Instead, it's a way to document the complex lives of his songs, which are never quite finished but always hold the potential for rebirth and transformation.
With Admiral Fell Promises, his fourth LP as Sun Kil Moon, Kozelek has flipped the script. Instead of downcast Crazy Horse epics like Ghosts of the Great Highway and April-- albums rich with electric tones, roomy arrangements, and landscape-painting lyrics-- this is literally a solo record: just Kozelek alone with a nylon-string guitar. Furthermore, the title track dates all the way back to 2001's White Christmas Live, released under his own name. So this stands as an anomaly within his catalog, not only for its artist credit but also for its music, which finds him wandering into new territory and entertaining new ideas.
On this site last May, Kozelek said he'd been listening to a lot of classical guitar music, specifically name-checking Kaki King and Croatian musician Ana Vidovic. They seem to be the primary inspiration for Admiral Fell Promises, which showcases a classical picking style rather than his usual strumming. Kozelek's playing is supple and nuanced, swift in its fingerings and hypnotic in its repetitions of riffs and phrases. Despite the Nordic muse of the title, opener "Ålesund" possesses a flamenco intensity, as Kozelek adds fluttering fills to the main themes, and on "Australian Winter", he creates an ominous repeating rhythm that plays up the restless tension of the lyrics. If the instrumental codas that cap almost every song become a bit predictable, this style fits his songwriting well, allowing him to punctuate the short verses of "Half Moon Bay" with sympathetic filigrees of sound and to create hidden coves on closer "Bay of Skulls".
As usual, Kozelek's songs are inspired as much by places as by people-- or, perhaps, by places that let him contemplate the people who are no longer around. Mostly those places are in or near San Francisco: Half Moon Bay down the coast, Sam Wong Hotel in Chinatown, the intersection of Third and Seneca. Whether he's watching the city from his window or taking a long, lonely walk along the beach, he sketches out his surroundings in fleeting details, noting the reassuring presence of boats in the bay or gulls overhead before retreating deep into his own memory. "Oh, Catherine drifts again into my mind," he sings on "Sam Wong Hotel". "Freezing the tide, she visits me still." Despite some lyrical clichés and careless redundancies ("Come out from the burning flame" being the most glaring example), Kozelek's songs change mood fluidly, and the contrast between the serene settings and his own tumultuous thoughts raises even the most languid instrumental passages above mere aural wallpaper, lending it the gravity of his best work while giving it a character all its own.
Regardless of how it's credited, Admiral Fell Promises treats music as a retreat, allowing Kozelek to stand apart form the world and nurse his own disappointments. That safe haven, even more than his descriptive songwriting or eloquently downcast vocals, is crucial to his appeal, allowing the listener to slip into his perspectives, to see these vistas through his eyes, and to feel the ache of his regrets. For an artist who's notoriously difficult to pin down, that sense of refuge is remarkable, as is the fact that two decades into his career, Kozelek is still finding new inspirations. | 2010-07-13T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2010-07-13T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Caldo Verde | July 13, 2010 | 7 | 1d609bc1-2c07-43a0-988b-7dcf1650b543 | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
Originally conceived as one part of Robert Wilson's ambitious, avant-garde opera The CIVIL warS, this 1984 work is being issued for the first time on CD, with the addition of eight previously unreleased tracks and dense liner notes by David Byrne himself. | Originally conceived as one part of Robert Wilson's ambitious, avant-garde opera The CIVIL warS, this 1984 work is being issued for the first time on CD, with the addition of eight previously unreleased tracks and dense liner notes by David Byrne himself. | David Byrne: The Knee Plays | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10870-the-knee-plays/ | The Knee Plays | The CIVIL warS: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down was set to be experimental theatre director Robert Wilson's most massive achievement to date. Best known at the time for his 1976 five-hour operatic collaboration with Philip Glass, Einstein on the Beach, Wilson was leading troupes from six countries in the production of CIVIL warS, a 12-hour avant-garde opera that would premiere at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Although Wilson lost funding before staging the full production, several smaller versions of the play were individually performed around the world. "The Knee Plays", the American contribution scored by David Byrne, premiered in Minneapolis in April 1984, and had its vinyl release on avant-jazz label ECM the next year.
"Knee Plays" is Wilson's own term, contrived to describe the connective vignettes that link the larger sections of a production, allowing for set and costume changes. Byrne signed on to produce the interstitials for CIVIL warS, and his subsequent performances have been comprised solely of the adjoining sections, which hold together rather well-- as well as one of Wilson's non-narratives can, at least. Nonesuch's current release of Knee Plays-- for the first time on CD-- adds eight previously unreleased tracks and a dense recollection of the pair's mind-meld by Byrne himself.
In many ways, a collaboration between Byrne and Wilson was perfect. Most obviously, Byrne's work with Twyla Tharp and Jonathan Demme on The Catherine Wheel and Stop Making Sense, respectively, indicated a keen interest in similar sorts of theatre, as well as the ability to pull off a collaboration with often wonderful results. The pair's stylistic and procedural similarities run deep as well: Both Byrne and Wilson had gained reknown by mastering the use of patient, tourettically clipped and repetitive phrases and gestures; they also shared a fascination with antisociality (at times, mental illness) and the mundane realities of everyday life. They even looked similar, in a tall, geekily dashing sort of way.
Originally envisioning a Japanese drum ensemble, Byrne instead opted for music more in the vein of New Orleans' Dirty Dozen Brass Band-- a perfect fit for a play inspired by the Civil War and scored by Byrne, at this point seemingly fascinated by all art with strong cultural resonances. From the opening track, "Tree (Today Is an Important Occasion)" to the quintessentially Byrnian spoken-word closer "In the Future", the music is variously light, dramatic, authoritative, and empathetic. Byrne's ethnomusicological streak in full force, several sections of his score were adapted from traditional music: "In the Upper Room", "Social Studies (The Gift of Sound)", and "Things to Do (I've Tried)" are faithful gospel adaptations, and "Theadora Is Dozing" comes from the Bulgarian folk tradition.
Byrne, like Wilson, treats simple behaviors with the utmost delicacy and curiosity. In the essay included with the Nonesuch re-release, Byrne discusses his decision to accompany the music with narration (by himself, of course) as part of the Dadaist and Surrealist traditions: "None of these (text pieces) was directly related to Bob's 'story' and they were certainly unrelated to the stage action...to 'illustrate' things that are happening on stage with music or text is redundant." Anyone familiar with the liner notes to Stop Making Sense will recognize the narration over "Upper Room", for instance: "Being in the theater is more important than knowing what is going on in the movie." Similarly, "Things to Do" is a numbered to-do list ("Number 25. Putting houses next to bumpy things/ Number 26. Shaking things next to other things"), and both "Tree" and "Social Studies" approach everyday activities from the perspective of a stranger to Western culture. The most successful of these is the original closer "In the Future", on which Byrne shows off his knack at predicting technological and social trends, ending with "In the future there will be so much going on that no one will be able to keep track of it." That statement seems applicable to most any historical era, but who's quibbling? He's right.
The most striking characteristic of The Knee Plays reflects the most overlooked quality shared by Byrne and Wilson. Both artists are deeply invested in appeals to their audiences' most basic human sympathies, yet their approaches are often misunderstood as cold by those who can't meet the work on its own terms. Extracted from its theatrical roots, Byrne's score holds up remarkably well, a testament to his unique vision at the time of its composition-- coming at the end of one of pop music's most fascinating creative streaks. | 2007-12-06T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2007-12-06T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | ECM | December 6, 2007 | 7.5 | 1d60b6da-4f08-44a7-829f-0341857a7da5 | Eric Harvey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-harvey/ | null |
At the turn of the century, Radiohead released two albums that forever altered their identity. Now, Kid A and Amnesiac are reissued as a pair, along with whatever worthy B-sides, alternate versions, and outtakes they can find. | At the turn of the century, Radiohead released two albums that forever altered their identity. Now, Kid A and Amnesiac are reissued as a pair, along with whatever worthy B-sides, alternate versions, and outtakes they can find. | Radiohead: Kid A Mnesia | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/radiohead-kid-a-mnesia/ | Kid A Mnesia | Kid A and Amnesiac, released eight months apart, have always had a big brother/kid brother relationship. They were recorded at the same time, during the same sessions, but Amnesiac inevitably became seen as a repository, the place where the music that wasn’t on Kid A found a home. As a standalone album, its reputation has been unsettled since the minute it was released—in a glowing New Yorker profile that same year, Alex Ross watches them tersely correct a hapless young MTV News reporter who accidentally refers to Amnesiac as the “outtakes.” “Try again,” snapped Phil Selway.
The band separated the two releases because they wanted to avoid releasing a double album, that most tired and bloated of rock-excess beasts. At the time, avoidance of all rock-star gestures had become something of a survival mechanism for the band. They had been touring, more or less continuously, for the past seven years. Six months into the long, punishing tour for OK Computer, Thom Yorke had briefly slipped into catatonia. They were getting more successful, and it felt awful: Watch the 1998 documentary Meeting People Is Easy and you’ll see what rock stardom felt like to Yorke’s nervous system—dull, pointless torture, like being detained for eternity by airport security.
When they began the fitful, labored studio sessions that would produce both Kid A and Amnesiac in late 1999 and 2000, Radiohead knew very little about what they wanted, only that they did not want to be “rock stars” anymore. Their new music, whatever else it might be, must accomplish that singular objective: All rock-band gestures were to be isolated, rooted out, and erased. They wanted to, as the song title had it, disappear completely.
A Radiohead axiom is that whatever the band set out to do, they usually wind up accomplishing the exact opposite. When they went in to record OK Computer, Thom Yorke declared confidently that they were about to make their first “positive” record. And when they released Kid A—the album meant to chart a new course away from the rock-star treadmill—it became their first-ever album to simultaneously top the U.S. and UK charts. Even more than “Creep,” which had only blown up Stateside, Kid A was now their big hit. Eight months later, Amnesiac would reach No. 2. They had gone as far away from guitar-based rock music as they knew how to go, and at the end of it, not only were Radiohead still a rock band, they were a generational one. All roads led back to the arena stage, even their escape route.
In the last five or so years, the band seems to have come to terms with its status—Selway and Ed O’Brien graciously accepted the band’s nomination into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. In 2017, they entered their commemorative re-release phase with OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017, which collected the band’s foundational third album along with its ephemera. Now, they have finally released that long-avoided double album: Kid A Mnesia, which unites the two studio albums, along with whatever worthy B-sides, alternate versions, and outtakes they can find.
Like many of their recent gestures—putting their music on Spotify for fans, years after Yorke memorably dubbed the streaming service “the last desperate fart” in the music industry’s “dying corpse”; releasing hours of their demos for OK Computer after someone hacked their MiniDiscs from the sessions—it feels like an act of both generosity and capitulation. They have long since stopped fighting, but these albums capture the band when the stakes felt mortal; in recording these albums, they were fighting for their lives.
During the recording sessions, the band was frequently aimless, frustrated, certain only that they were accomplishing very little. On the online journal he maintained on Radiohead’s website during the recording sessions, O’Brien worried publicly that the band was steering itself toward oblivion. “It’s taken us seven years to get this sort of freedom, and it’s what we always wanted,” he wrote. “But it could be so easy to fuck it all up.” At times, it seems like every one of them was casting about in different directions, returning with half-cooked pieces of music that nobody else quite knew what to do with. They didn’t know what kind of band they were supposed to become, but they all knew they were tired of the band they were currently in. None of them had one clear, resounding idea for a new direction.
One of the earliest songs they struggled with was “In Limbo,” which layers guitar triplets over straight 4/4 drums, both of which slid off the surface of the underlying 6/4 meter. Rhythmically, it created a featureless expanse with no distinguishing marks, and the song’s pulse resembled ocean waves more than any sort of backbeat. Perhaps in a nod to the song’s maze-like rhythm, perhaps in acknowledgment of the quicksand they felt underneath, they called the demo “Lost at Sea.”
Meanwhile, Jonny Greenwood was fooling around with modular synthesizers, playing patches of radio static and snatches of electronic music records over rudimentary drum machine patterns, searching for a moment of inspiration. Yorke listened to it patiently, and found only 40 seconds of usable material—four refracted synth chords from the American composer Paul Lansky’s computer piece “Mild Un Liese.” The seeds of “Idioteque” were planted.
In all this seeming directionlessness, Radiohead were zeroing in on the most primal essence of their art—sound. Critics at the time knocked Kid A and Amnesiac for seeming half-formed, or sketch-like, but the de-emphasis on things like bridges and middle-eights seemed strategic. The members were seeking textures and tones, spaces expansive and inviting enough that they might stay awhile. In doing so, they reinvented the timbral palette for a rock band.
It was on Kid A and Amnesiac that they became in love with almost recognizable sounds. What was born out of a desire to erase—and Yorke used this word more than once, suggesting a vigorous desire, naming his solo album after this impulse—became an opportunity to transfigure. The standard rock instruments became the ghosts—nothing in Kid A sounds so otherworldly as the guitars, or Yorke’s voice. On “Morning Bell,” Greenwood scraped the strings with a coin to produce keyboard-like sounds.
The disembodied guitar sounds mingled eerily with the ondes Martenot, an instrument Jonny Greenwood mastered after becoming obsessed with the music of French composer Olivier Messiaen. Messiaen employed the ondes Martenot in his celebrated large-scale 1948 work Turangalîla-Symphonie, which generated ecstatic, alien textures from the full orchestra and the early electronic instrument’s disembodied whine. The ondes Martenot is everywhere on these two albums—whining alongside the string section in “How to Disappear Completely,” doubling the guitar and vocals on “Optimistic.” It is deployed as a forbidding chill whenever the textures threaten to get too familiar. Likewise, it’s the non-rock instruments that are allowed to breathe, to exist in a recognizable shape as themselves—a harp glissandi, for instance, or a harmonium, both on “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” or the wailing New Orleans brass band on “Life in a Glass House.” These are the warmest textures on albums that defined digital-age paranoia, and they predate electricity completely.
Kid A was the first Radiohead album released in the harsh light of the Napster era, the dawn of music’s digital age. Because of that, the songs that would come to comprise Amnesiac were already pretty familiar to Radiohead fans who had been trolling P2P servers for new material. Live and demo versions of “Dollars and Cents,” “You and Whose Army?” and “Pyramid Song” were freely traded over Napster, as were a few of the outtakes that didn’t make either album.
This means that none of the bonus material on Kid Amnesiae, the third “bonus” disc accompanying the two studio albums, has the same revelatory quality as the inclusions on OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017. The tracklist is padded out slightly with the isolated string tracks for “Pyramid Song” and “How to Disappear Completely,” as well as a murmured two-minute take on “Morning Bell” that sounds like a rehearsal for the version that appeared on Amnesiac. There is no “I Promise,” no “Lift,” no bolt-from-the-blue alternate history that redefines our understanding of the band that wrote the album material. “Follow Me Around,” which was billed as the big inclusion on this re-release and the “holy grail” for Radiohead fans, is a song that most Radiohead hardcore faithful know extremely well—it was included in a pivotal scene of Meeting People Is Easy.
Another “lost” Radiohead song from these sessions, “Fog,” is a little more intriguing. It was one of those nakedly vulnerable ballads that slipped out of Yorke from time to time, seemingly against his will. The grief-haunted lyrics mingled tenderness and dread—a child, possibly dead, runs forever up and down a hallway, while a luminous fog belches up from the sewers.
They first premiered it at a concert in Israel, where it was known as “Alligators in New York Sewers,” in July 2000. The live version is a simple, arresting two-minute piano ballad. The original studio version, which found its way into the world as one of the B-sides to the “Knives Out” single, preserved this intimacy, but was marred by a slightly out-of-time tambourine and an uncertain-sounding guitar part. The version they include here isn’t as good as either, with overly bright synth patches and a non-committal vocal take. It underscores the trouble that Radiohead have often had with their tender songs. If there is anything comical about the band, it is their distrust of their own instincts to write beautiful songs, and the agony and prolonged discomfort it seems to provoke in them.
If not for this slightly adolescent distrust of prettiness, however, Kid A might never have been born. “It annoys me how pretty my voice is,” Yorke famously griped, and the last 20 years of their music can sometimes be seen as a battle between Yorke’s uglier impulses squaring off against the choirboy lilt of the instrument he’s stuck with.
Yorke’s impulse to deform himself on record, however, led to moments of wild creativity. On Amnesiac’s “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors,” seven years before Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop,” he intentionally mangled his voice with Auto-Tune. As an entire generation of hip-hop performers would go on to do, Yorke mumbled into the machine, allowing the pitch-corrector to randomly assign a key and a melody to his words.
Perhaps no single song encapsulates this mix of aimlessness and invention, the will toward prettiness and the losing war against it, as neatly as “Like Spinning Plates.” In the studio, they were grimacing their way through another demo—the chord progressions were somehow insulting, too obvious. Thom Yorke, always quick with a withering aside for their own material, dubbed it “dodgy Kraftwerk.”
They couldn’t stop messing with it, however. No idea the band generated, no matter how wispy or maddeningly incomplete, seemed to stay away forever. (Yorke apparently wrote the bassline for “The National Anthem” when he was 16, and it sounds like it.) Their song fragments were like sick dogs that wouldn’t stop limping after their masters. So there was Greenwood, messing around with the latest playback of that pretty ballad. Out of boredom, a fit of pique, whatever, he played it backwards.
Yorke, who was nearby, was transfixed. He crossed the room and demanded to hear it again. The track, played backwards, sounded like it was sucking nearby debris inward and pulling everything down with it. Yorke sat down and wrote a new song on top of his upside-down old one. But the backwards/forwards vortex seemed to have inspired a fever. So he sang his own lyrics backwards, on purpose, live. Then he reversed them so we heard them forwards—a subliminal message, just like the hysterical censors told us there would be when we played our records backward. But there it was, floating on the surface like a plastic bottle on the ocean.
That original upside-down song was a pretty ballad called “I Will,” which they would go on to rework, yet another time, and release for 2003’s Hail to the Thief. Radiohead fans have long tried to sync up the two versions themselves, re-reversing “Like Spinning Plates” and laying the vocal take from “I Will” atop it to recreate that “dodgy Kraftwerk” demo that is lost to history.
Kid Amnesiae does not include that original “I Will” demo, which, given the juvenilia and ephemera the band has allowed to see the light of day by now, suggests just how much Yorke must still hate it. The “Like Spinning Plates” version on the bonus disc layers the grand piano arpeggios familiar from the version on I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings atop the backmasked effects of the studio version. Notably, Yorke adds a verse that brings his desire for escape at the time into urgent focus: “Why us? Why not someone else?/The cameras are turning off.” Like Bob Dylan post-motorcycle crash, doing everything he could to discourage the press and his fan’s interest only to increase his enigmatic appeal, Yorke struggled against the straitjacket of his band’s grandness only to feel it pull tighter.
Decades later, the grandness of those sounds is what lingers. This is Radiohead’s ultimate gift as a rock band—the transmutation of sound into sensation, the way an unnerving bit of audio can play upon our nerve endings, up-end us ever so slightly. The searching language of the chorus to “Like Spinning Plates” (“This just feels like…Spinning plates”) nailed the curious, uneasy feeling that sound can give us, and the way those feelings translate into our other senses. It was the indelible sounds they made on Kid A and Amnesiac, more than any of the album’s digital age paranoia or its baleful view of the future, that comprise the band’s enduring legacy. Those sounds break free of anything you might want to attach to them.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-11-05T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-11-04T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | XL | November 5, 2021 | 9.2 | 1d6194fa-54b0-47c8-ab5f-7a3f2a9e605d | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | |
Mild High Club's glam rock-y Timeline on Stones Throw imprint Circle Star isn't a bad record per se, but if this is musical pointillism, then the dots are just too big. | Mild High Club's glam rock-y Timeline on Stones Throw imprint Circle Star isn't a bad record per se, but if this is musical pointillism, then the dots are just too big. | Mild High Club: Timeline | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21185-timeline/ | Timeline | In 2009, the funk maestro Dâm-Funk released Toeachizown on Stones Throw, reinventing his career, and delivering a kick in the ass to a storied label that had floundered after the death of J Dilla in 2006. He also released an odd, anomalous single in the same year, "It's My Life," on the brand new label, Circle Star Records.
Six years later, Circle Star has returned and it's become easier to understand why it exists. In Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton, the documentary about Stones Throw, there's a period during which it seems that the label's founder, Peanut Butter Wolf, has completely lost his interest in hip-hop. As he starts flirting with glam rock, AM radio redux, and other, weirder stuff, the loyal fans of Stones Throw can't understand what's going on. "For all of us frickin' die-hard, hip-hop, b-boy type people, we were just a little confused," the Gaslamp Killer says of the period.
The siloed existence of Circle Star Records is an explicit effort to clear up that confusion. Its artists don't fit neatly into Stones Throw's traditional output, at least when it comes to genre. Alex Brettin, who performs as Mild High Club, is a good example; he's just released Timeline on Circle Star. It's a record full of psychedelic soft rock that draws strongly from White-album era Beatles and T-Rex, with swirls of '80s-indebted synthpop.
Like Dâm-Funk, Brettin is a musician's musician, whose bona fides, for those not familiar with his technical ability, are communicated by his associates: Wire, Ariel Pink, Mac DeMarco. Occasionally, there are strong echoes of Pink and DeMarco on Timeline but Brettin ends up sounding more like their tame cousin. As the artist name suggests with the word "mild," Timeline is largely missing those moments of heightened intensity that make an album memorable. There are nods to the Zombies and Jim Croce; it's uneventfully easy listening all the way through.
The most exciting tracks here have rougher reference points. The undergirding riff on "Rollercoaster Baby", brings out the Marc Bolan in Brettin, making for a slightly more charged experience. On "Undeniable", he confidently assumes the mantle of his psychedelic forebear, Arthur Lee with some fantastic, buzzing guitar work.
Spot the Influence can be a critic's shell game, a way to sort of triangulate a new artist without actually engaging with his or her work. But the fact that Brettin's many reference points are so obvious suggests a problem with the music of Mild High Club: the act's identity is so loose that listeners will have trouble ignoring its artistic antecedents. If this is musical pointillism, then the dots are just too big.
None of this comes as a total surprise. Peanut Butter Wolf has always had a huge admiration for oddball creatives with vast technical ability, and has never seemed concerned with originality, per se. His feeling appears to be that giving talented people room to record is enough; and maybe he's right. After all, nothing about Timeline is bad. It's a pretty strong release for a brand new imprint to build on. But if the same record were released from, say, Stones Throw, we might sigh, and chalk it up to another good-but-not-great album from a label that still hasn't quite figured out a unified new direction. | 2015-10-09T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2015-10-09T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Rock | Circle Star | October 9, 2015 | 6.3 | 1d65801f-71f0-4fb5-bf1a-54fc2dd265cd | Jonah Bromwich | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jonah-bromwich/ | null |
The former Shoreline Mafia member launches his solo career with a concentrated dose of what he does best: rap music for the height of the party. | The former Shoreline Mafia member launches his solo career with a concentrated dose of what he does best: rap music for the height of the party. | OhGeesy: Geezyworld | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ohgeesy-geezyworld/ | Geezyworld | You might know Alejandro Coranza (aka OhGeesy) as a key lieutenant of Shoreline Mafia, the apparently disbanded L.A. group that evolved out of the city’s graffiti scene. Geesy’s raspy flow, master-crafted hooks, and ability to inject melody into every corner of the music was vital in bringing bounce to the collective’s infectious sound. There are no failed experiments on Geezyworld, his debut album. He’s launching his solo career with a concentrated dose of what he does best: rap music for the height of the party. Without his former bandmates diluting him, we’re learning that you can’t have too much of this particular good thing. On the single “Get Fly,” he declares, “I ain’t Scottie Pippen.” The message is obvious: He’s playing second fiddle to nobody.
Geesy is well placed to thrive as a lone star. Geezyworld is a quintessential L.A. rap record—its catchy bars and gummy beats align with the heroes of DJ Mustard-led ratchet music, such as Kamaiyah, RJ, and Cam & China. The crisp, hi-fidelity sound honors the city’s long-standing audiophile-in-chief, Dr. Dre. Geesy is in the tradition of the smooth, rhythmic G-funk era rappers, with Warren G in particular coming to mind. Take “Keeper,” which features a hook and verse courtesy of A Boogie Wit da Hoodie. The programmed bass and prominent snares are as crisp as a freshly printed 100 dollar bill. Geesy’s melodic cadences—his voice hushed, raspy, and always gratifying—blends with the smooth beat into a concoction that’s pure silk on the ear. A lot of the choruses on Geezyworld feel like repurposed bars, which is fine when every rhyme you spit feels like a hook.
Lyrically, Geesy keeps to sticky sex raps and chest-beating braggadocio. His manifesto is pretty much established on “Intro”: Geesy describes lurid encounters, brags about his gun collection and capacity for weed smoking, and signs off with the punctuation, “The world is mine for the taking.” Then comes “Who Else,” an ode to his sexual propensity. It’s reasonable to say that Geesy’s writing could sometimes be sharper. On “Coochie,” the weakest song in the deck, he rhymes “bitch” with “bitch” a lot. But Geesy comes across as a rapper who would rather put words together on instinct than workshop his bars from notebooks. For the most part, that sense of informality serves him well.
The guest spots are well chosen. Evoking the classic fairy tale over Ron-Ron The Producer’s pinging electronic riff, “Big Bad Wolf” predictably sees Geesy share great chemistry with YG, another star who can do sticky Cali rap like it’s nothing. UK rapper Central Cee’s style synthesizes with Geesy beautifully on “Startn Up,” adding a whole different ripple to the record. Recent controversy surrounding DaBaby may suppress the single “Get Fly,” which is a shame for Geesy as the Spanish guitar riffs and booming drums would make an elegant party track for balmy summer nights.
At 11 cuts, Geezyworld is lean, and as an album-making exercise, you could criticize its lack of variety. Yet this narrowing of the lens makes it a better album than Shoreline Mafia’s debut album Mafia Bidness, and solidifies OhGeesy as potentially one of L.A. rap’s next generation stars. His ambition here was to make one kind of song, and he did it extremely well.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-08-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-08-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Atlantic | August 30, 2021 | 7 | 1d674220-8176-448a-a4ff-b6a10d58b2ee | Dean Van Nguyen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dean-van nguyen/ | |
Mgła are the exemplars of Polish black metal. Exercises in Futility, the duo's majestic, nihilistic, and euphoric third full-length, doesn't just set the standard for black metal in their home country, it's one of the finest black metal albums this year. | Mgła are the exemplars of Polish black metal. Exercises in Futility, the duo's majestic, nihilistic, and euphoric third full-length, doesn't just set the standard for black metal in their home country, it's one of the finest black metal albums this year. | Mgła: Exercises in Futility | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21052-mgla-exercises-in-futility/ | Exercises in Futility | Mgła are the exemplars of Polish black metal. They play melodic black metal that isn't immediate in its beauty, though a dark elegance does surface. Groza, which they released in 2008, was a promising debut, and on 2012's With Hearts Toward None they began to come into their own in terms of composition and lyrics. Exercises in Futility, their third full-length, improves upon Hearts' template, with guitarist/vocalist Mikołaj "M." Żentara and drummer Maciej "Darkside" Kowalski delivering their most spirited performances to date. It doesn't just set the standard for black metal in their home country, it's one of the finest black metal albums this year.
As its title implies, Futility is focused on a pessimistic, defeatist worldview. The opening line is "The great truth is there isn't one," a tone-setter if there ever was one. If we're to believe them, Mgła would prefer to be in hell shouting at the devil, not the purgatory of life. As M. laments on "II": "I wish it was classic fire and brimstone/ But clearly there is a very special plan/ Paved with havoc and shattered virtues/ As if there were any other paths." Futility's lyrics are a cut above basic sadboy depressive tropes, especially in a section of "V" masked as an ode to the working class: "Blessed be the tailors, the masks are cut to fit/ Blessed be the woodworkers, the crosses and the gallows/ Blessed be the forgers of iron, and the spikes and the barbwire/ Blessed be the stone cutters, it took a quarry to bury the dreams."
They're lyrics don't offer much hope, but M.'s guitar work suggests anything but failure: his playing draws from metal's wells of depression as well as the affirmative lights that can coexist with it. Mgła are the true heirs to Dissection's style of black metal; the melodies are huge without dipping into the saccharine. Even when M. gets into his nastiest playing, it never feels like he's wading in the tar pits of despair for despair's sake.
Mgła also balance their bursts of nihilistic euphoria with mid-paced sections that show discipline without sacrificing majesty. "II" uses this contrast as a springboard—the slower melody naturally builds into the brighter, faster vortex where hypnotism is a means of getting towards something bigger, not an end unto itself. "V" is another master study in these shifts—the slower sections are their darkest grooves, and when they race off, they run farther and faster than anything on the record. You imagine the duo would hate to be compared to post-rock, but both post-rock and black metal also-rans could stand to learn a lot about dynamics from them. Mgła's emphasis on the mid-paced is one testament to Celtic Frost's continued influence on black metal; it also lets the beauty of the riffs exfoliate, and those who got into black metal for its prettier, more accessible side would find much to appreciate here.
M.'s riffwork puts Mgła above most black metal groups, but it's Darkside's drumming that launches them into a class of their own. His cymbal work is key, bringing with it a formidable delicacy. "II" begins with a drum fill that serves as Darkside's own mini-suite, with the rides and crashes pinging louder than his tom fills. Maybe it's because we're not used to hearing cymbals used so prominently that they resonate this much; Darkside sees his kit as an extension of M.'s melodic prowess and not just an anger-management tool. Where most black metal drummers focus the most energy on bass drums or snares, he transfers that intensity towards guiding cymbals into a nervous dance. On "V", M.'s ecstatic melody becomes a light of rapture with Darkside's touch, elevating what's already seemingly in the heavens. Across Futility, he brings detail you'd expect from a solo project headed by drum-focused multi-instrumentalists like Leviathan or Panopticon.
It's rare to see two players so clearly meant for each other, and Mgła's accomplished performance on Futility transforms the lyrical content into a call to action. Great metal can harness strength from hopelessness; turning that strength into art is a blustering triumph. "The great truth is there isn't one" may be a swift roundhouse, but it's one that it will sober you up to find your own purpose. And on "IV", M. howls "Every empire/ Every nation/ Every tribe/ Thought it would end/ In a bit more decent way," a sentiment that can be applied to more than the collapse of states; it's the radical acceptance that there is no such thing as a clean break. No, Futility doesn't sell you the promise of a better world taken like gummy vitamins. But by offering no promises, it does open you up to take control for yourself, and what's more positive than that? | 2015-10-13T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2015-10-13T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Metal | Northern Heritage / No Solace | October 13, 2015 | 7.8 | 1d6a4d39-08ca-4261-aaec-7e91ca95146a | Andy O'Connor | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-o'connor/ | null |
The intimate, elliptical solo debut from producer and former Vampire Weekender gorgeously traces the stories and sounds of his past. | The intimate, elliptical solo debut from producer and former Vampire Weekender gorgeously traces the stories and sounds of his past. | Rostam: Half-Light | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rostam-half-light/ | Half-Light | While still in college, Rostam Batmanglij was experimenting with the pop and R&B possibilities of Auto-Tune—this was before T-Pain blew up, before 808s and Heartbreak, and way before Bon Iver’s dalliances with the vocal smearing effect. As the producer and musical leader behind Vampire Weekend, he spearheaded a nobrow sound that cheerfully destroyed barriers between genres and borders. Working behind the scenes with chart toppers like Charli XCX and Carly Rae Jepsen over the last few years, he added some idiosyncratic warmth to their songs, further collapsing bygone concepts of mainstream and underground. His personal identity as a queer, first-generation Iranian-American immigrant who came up through the largely straight and white world of indie rock only adds to his rep as a disruptive force for good. For the last decade, he’s offered signposts for artfully postmodern pop music, beckoning others to follow. This is why current vanguards Frank Ocean and Solange invited him to contribute to their most recent game-flipping albums. Rostam is a name you can trust. On Half-Light, that name is front and center for the first time.
Instead of providing another glimpse into smart-pop’s crystal ball, though, the album hovers over the past. He started writing one song more than 10 years ago, and a couple of others were originally released in 2011. There are several loving references to specific locales in Manhattan, though he moved from New York to Los Angeles in 2013. Many of the tracks here could have easily found homes on past projects, either an old album by Vampire Weekend, which he parted ways with last year, or his bubbling 2009 record with Ra Ra Riot’s Wes Miles as Discovery, or his gorgeous collaboration with former Walkmen howler Hamilton Leithauser, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine. In this spirit, Half-Light sometimes plays like an alternate-history greatest hits. Other times, it feels more like a collection of dusty B-sides.
Naturally, the biggest difference between this album and what’s come before is Rostam’s voice. Though he’s an undisputed studio genius, the 33-year-old hasn’t taken up lead vocals on that many recordings thus far. And in contrast to many of the bold and exacting singers he’s previously written with, Rostam’s delivery is often hushed, quivering, devastatingly intimate. There’s a mumbling quality to it that can be charming or cloying—a millennial whoop of one that is at times reminiscent of Chris Martin’s guileless early days. But he uses this tentativeness to his advantage on the twinkling “I Will See You Again” and the album’s ambling title track, where his vocals gingerly stretch out like a morning yawn.
Such a bleary image seems appropriate, since much of Half-Light takes place in a liminal space between night and day, dreams and reality, sex and love, a breakup and what’s next. Rostam invokes various levels of sunlight streaming into apartment windows throughout the record, and it often sounds like he’s not singing to a person, exactly, but rather the formless, dark silhouette of a person who’s just left the room. “Lo and behold, you were here now you’re gone,” he laments on “EOS,” a track that floats and surges like an arena anthem turned inside-out.
As he looks back musically, employing the harpsichord sixteenth notes, string arrangements, and hand-drum rhythms that have become his signature, along with some Middle Eastern flourishes he was exposed to as a child, he’s also remembering certain moments from his personal history. A dramatic autumn morning on 14th Street. Reading The New Yorker in bed while watching a partner paint. Holding someone close while considering the vastness of the ocean. His descriptions of these flashbacks can be elliptical, at times to the point of meaninglessness. But at their best, as on the chugging “Bike Dream,” a song about the bittersweet impossibilities of love, Rostam’s words are just abstract enough, like our most lasting memories.
The album’s naked vulnerabilities, second-guesses, pep talks, coming-of-age tales, and fleeting glimpses of heartache lead up to its final full song, “Gwan.” This is where Rostam moves into the present, offering the kind of wisdom and relief that only time can provide. “Sometimes I laugh when I think about how you know me,” he sings. He’s likely talking about a loved one, but the line could also apply to those who’ve followed his work so far, who got to the end of this worn photobook of an album along with him. Half-Light traces where he’s been so far, a typical theme for any solo debut. This is as understandable as it is slightly frustrating. Because all along, Rostam has never settled for anything close to typical. | 2017-09-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-09-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Nonesuch | September 16, 2017 | 7.2 | 1d6c7dc1-9a0f-4d56-b07a-0ee05efe7fee | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | null |
On his first full-length for Drag City, the SF-based garage rocker slows down but doesn't mellow out while demonstrating growth as a songwriter along the way. | On his first full-length for Drag City, the SF-based garage rocker slows down but doesn't mellow out while demonstrating growth as a songwriter along the way. | Ty Segall: Goodbye Bread | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15557-goodbye-bread/ | Goodbye Bread | Before Ty Segall recorded "Girlfriend", a gem from last year's Melted, he channeled sounds we don't normally associate with humans. Through polluted streams of distorted guitar, you could hear him convulse, spitting wordless sounds as a bubblegum drumbeat took hold. It was evil, it was scary, and it sounded like demons were controlling his organs and limbs. "Girlfriend" was a glorious blast of fuzz, here and gone in just over two minutes. It both demonstrated Segall's gift for economy as well as perfected the tone for his work since he left his Epsilons outfit to make music on his own. But Melted as a whole made loud and clear that he was capable of more than just dishing out hard-charging hooks at blazing speeds. He was uncovering an innate understanding for craft as well.
In Goodbye Bread, his first full-length for Drag City, Segall has embraced singer-songwriter craft wholeheartedly. While garage rock O.G.s like the Troggs and the Stooges continue to be an influence, Segall has turned in a relatively calm effort here, choosing to downshift into slower tempos and cleaner sounds, evoking instead the work of John Lennon, Neil Young, and Marc Bolan. Heavyweights. But what makes Goodbye Bread such a success is that we get an even keener sense of what a Ty Segall song sounds like and what that means. Jay Reatard, whose wild-child persona has often been linked to Segall since the former's passing last year, proved that it takes a little more to stand out in this sphere. The same dark energy that set "Girlfriend" in motion can be heard here in varying forms, whether in the enormous chorus of "My Head Explodes" (a head-bangers delight), the wheelie-popping solo that slices through "Comfortable Home (A True Story)", or the sweaty, shivering verses of "You Make The Sun Fry". Though Goodbye Bread rarely takes a direct route, the thrill becomes much more about the ride from start to finish, than the speed or force of impact.
He achieves this by playing around with notions of pace and structure, as shown by the opening title track. It's a strummy early statement that's altogether very different from what he's shared before. Segall's vocals no longer sound like they're broadcast from the bottom of a well, the guitars are warm and bright, and its melody is vibrant in a very simple, patient manner. "California Commercial" is a basher that plods along happily before taking flight on some tightly coordinated guitar lines in the homestretch. And take a look at the run times here and you'll see some welcome variety, too. At first listen, "I Am With You" seems a bit aimless over its four minutes, but the way Segall transitions from crescendo to detour to crescendo to left turn to mangy solo proves deliciously inventive upon closer listens.
Goodbye Bread is filled with such rich, breathtaking moments, and Segall, who plays every instrument here, sounds as though he's savoring every part of his process. On the slightly creepy "You Make the Sun Fry", there's joy in how he rhymes "love me still" with "your Coupe De Ville." Same goes for the way he locks together the chiming guitar licks that carry "I Can't Feel It" home and the thundrous drum fills that punctuate "My Head Explodes". It sounds like he's having a blast, excited with every sound and riff he finds, even as he slows down to zoom in on the details. | 2011-06-21T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2011-06-21T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Drag City | June 21, 2011 | 8.1 | 1d6d0e9d-c374-4ace-8382-6aaf55b35f10 | David Bevan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/david-bevan/ | null |
The Maryland rapper’s latest is an impossibly dense meditation on race, religion, identity, the cosmos, social media, you name it. It's executed with skill but is often tone deaf and heavy-handed. | The Maryland rapper’s latest is an impossibly dense meditation on race, religion, identity, the cosmos, social media, you name it. It's executed with skill but is often tone deaf and heavy-handed. | Logic: Everybody | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23163-everybody/ | Everybody | The Martian author Andy Weir’s 2009 short story The Egg, originally published online, is a sci-fi tale about rebirth, reciprocity, and evolution. When a man is killed in a car accident, he meets a god-like figure in limbo who tells him of his fate and that he is to be reincarnated. The man subsequently learns that not only is time an illusion, but he is the entire universe, and a continuous sequence of deaths and rebirths is all part of a maturation process: The whole universe is an egg, and when it’s fully grown it’ll ascend to the next level of consciousness.
Maryland rapper Logic’s new album, Everybody, is a strangely faithful adaptation of the short story with an emphasis on the endless cycle of reincarnations that’d eventually—hypothetically—cause everyone to be different incarnations of the same person. He weaves his own struggles with race and religion into a complex, panoramic view of humanity, seeking a unified theory of equality, not just for his mortal coil but for the cosmos. If this seems convoluted that’s because it is: Weir’s story was meant as a fanciful (albeit thoughtful) work of fiction, not an intersectional parable. “Every time you victimized someone you were victimizing yourself,” the short story goes. “Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself.” This is Everybody’s central conceit: We are all the same, and every misdeed hurts the human race equally. Logic gets even more literal in the subtext, drawing parallels between this life force balance and his mixed-race heritage. Herein, an existential crisis unfolds.
Never mind the fact that the concept is completely unoriginal, even on a superficial level; Everybody unravels Weir’s tightly coiled micro universe into a nonsensical sprawl. Give an extremely verbose rapper a heady short story and watch it come undone. It operates on a colossal scale, and yet somehow still ends up being myopic.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, whose last major foray into rap was to wage war with flat Earth truther B.o.B, plays God on Everybody. Logic chooses to name the man in his musical adaptation “Atom,” and when he’s not rapping as Logic, he’s rapping from the perspective of a past life. These winking gestures mixing science and religion are insufferable when paired with meditations on racial inequity and social anxiety, constantly raising the stakes until they mean nothing. Not only is it easy to see the seams in this tangled ideological tapestry, they’re constantly fraying.
Logic’s Everybody is the latest in a string of recent rap releases that consider race and perception—Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN., J. Cole’s 4 Your Eyez Only, and Joey Bada$$’s All-Amerikkkan Bada$$ among them. But unlike those records, which are self-aware and mindful of their surroundings, this is nearly clueless and without subtlety. His raps, even at their most technical, are all empty loops regurgitating predictable talking points, at times mixing messages. Fake deep aphorisms (“Everybody looking for the meaning of life through a cell phone screen!”) share space with half-witted indictments of student loan policies and flex culture. He addresses mental health and wellness on “1-800-273-8255” and “Anziety,” which is admirable, but there are no real revelations or comforts to be found in either. A song like Kendrick Lamar’s “u,” for example, which really bears out the weight of depression and self-doubt, reveals Logic's takes to be entirely without substance.
For a significant portion of the album, Logic stakes a claim to his blackness with receipts, citing his great-grandfather the slave, his cousin Keisha, and saying “nigga” a few times. None of these race raps do anything meaningful. They say very little about the mechanics of racism and they say next to nothing insightful about being black in America. He spends more time denouncing rioters than killer cops on “America.” Trump gets a single bar of disapproval but Kanye gets several for meeting with him. Logic’s calls for civic action seem woefully ignorant to how oppression and white supremacy work—from the role of private prisons and redistricting to stop and frisks. To that end, not once does he consider how being white-passing could skew his perception of what it means to be black. He never even probes what it might mean when people assume that he’s white; either he refuses to engage thoughtfully here or he’s simply irresponsible. This isn’t just lazy, it’s messy. It's the #AllLivesMatter of rap albums.
Aside from its more sociopolitical shortcomings, Everybody refuses to stop and evaluate why it exists in the first place. A lot has been made of Logic’s technical skill, but it can’t really be considered proficiency if it isn’t efficient. Seconds after Killer Mike delivers an impassioned speech on anti-black tyranny (“Confess”), Logic is criticizing web activists and the social media gratification matrix with the nuance of a 4chan thread (“Killing Spree”). “Take It Back” is a six-minute song with only two minutes of raps. Several tracks have long, preachy monologues appended to them. The same verse fragments are continuously rearranged on “AfricAryaN” for no reason, and with winding effect. The song is 12-minutes long.
If you manage to get to the end of “AfricAryaN,” it pans outward to reveal a shared universe where—oh shit—the album’s contents turns out to be merely walking music for the space travelers who dictated the narrative flow on Logic’s last album, The Incredible True Story. The extra layer feels like an even greater slight to the heavy topics discussed within; the further out we venture, the further the issues get pushed into the margins. A final uncredited verse from J. Cole, who is also biracial, unravels the album’s entire cyclical concept: “I’ve been through it before/Can only share with you what I know/To be true, but at the same time, I’ll never be you/And you’ll never be me,” he raps. He seems to know what Logic doesn’t: Equality without identity is merely inactivity. The weight of our experiences shapes us. It is only once we understand why it’s okay to be different that there can be empathy—and change. | 2017-05-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Def Jam | May 12, 2017 | 5.2 | 1d80d627-2c8d-4bd3-9663-6b865e30a891 | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | null |
Nick Cave's schizophrenic and sloppy mid-life crisis project, Grinderman, returns with another album of feral urges and ferocious guitar work. | Nick Cave's schizophrenic and sloppy mid-life crisis project, Grinderman, returns with another album of feral urges and ferocious guitar work. | Grinderman: Grinderman 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14622-grinderman-2/ | Grinderman 2 | What is it about dirty old men, anyway? In 2007, Nick Cave gave up the ghost of youth, declaring an out-and-out midlife crisis with Grinderman, a brilliant, crude, stripped-down quartet. Made up of members of his Bad Seeds, the nascent group's self-titled debut was naked about its grotesqueries, as Cave futzed with a guitar for the first time, wailed about the "No Pussy Blues", and sucked in his gut with hopes of getting laid.
It was an inspired late-career move for the then 50-year-old, invigorating and recalibrating the piano-affixed, doom-saying troubadour. Critics fell over themselves proclaiming the return of the former Birthday Party frontman's skuzzy side. A year later you could hear the punk reverberations in 2008's Bad Seeds album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! But Grinderman, though fierce and often hilarious, weren't exactly a great band. Young bands-- no matter how old-- have to learn new tricks, and this one had to find interesting ways to be messy. Grinderman 2 is a sequel of sorts, but mostly an improvement. The band has widened their sound and sexual pursuits, but also poked around at the edges of decrepitude. What does life look like on the other side of crisis?
Well, it's schizophrenic and sloppy. Those feral urges are still there; consider the album cover's lupine avatar. But Cave and the band-- who typically improvise structure and lyrics-- have kept the themes consistent across nine songs. And they're not terribly different from what interests him on albums with the Bad Seeds: God, Death, and America are gospel. But sexual filialness-- Cave seems to be calling himself "Daddy" and yowling at his child-lover a lot here-- takes an uncomfortable precedence. "Worm Tamer" and "Heathen Child" are almost comically lascivious. "I stick my fingers in your biscuit jar/ And crush all your gingerbread men," he moans, aping Howlin' Wolf on "Kitchenette", one of the album's best songs. And later, "What has that husband of yours ever given to you?/ Oprah Winfrey on a plasma screen." That's a great line, the sort of insinuating thing that might get Cave into bed with a frustrated housewife, but it's also miserably desperate, self-deprecating stuff.
Cave has been leading a full life lately, finishing his second novel in 2009, composing scores for John Hillcoat's films, and writing a few screenplays of his own. But he has rarely been as experimental and unafraid as he is here. The pastoral "Palaces of Montezuma" is a "We Didn't Start the Fire" for heroin addicts, haunted by visions of Miles Davis, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, and "a custard-colored super-dream of Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen." It's unhinged and unerringly beautiful. So often, Cave is wise about the state of it all; he seems to know he's on the wrong side of things-- life, love, fear-- but he won't give up the fight.
Like much of Cave's work, there is an ominous sense of dread always creeping. But unlike previous work, there's a speed and intensity to Grinderman 2 unheard before. From the chugging build of "Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man" through the psych-haze of "Bellringer Blues", there are few opportunities to catch your breath. "Evil" even lurches toward death metal. "What I Know" is a rare and tender respite from the fury; it's a plaintive ballad to precocity, process, and nothing. "Oh I know, yeah I know," Cave intones, never quite revealing what it is. There isn't much to the song-- a stray, buzzing crackle; a far-off wordless melody; a quietly strummed guitar. It's just a simple moment in a savage life. | 2010-09-16T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2010-09-16T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Anti- | September 16, 2010 | 8.1 | 1d81775d-5617-440b-ba18-b6be88c73f54 | Sean Fennessey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sean-fennessey/ | null |
On his debut, the suddenly inescapable singer goes looking for a mashup of Texas rap, pop-punk, and R&B original enough to match his fashion sense. | On his debut, the suddenly inescapable singer goes looking for a mashup of Texas rap, pop-punk, and R&B original enough to match his fashion sense. | Teezo Touchdown: How Do You Sleep at Night? | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/teezo-touchdown-how-do-you-sleep-at-night/ | How Do You Sleep at Night? | On the list of things to know about Beaumont, Texas native Teezo Touchdown, it may take a while before you get to the songs. The nails he wears woven into his braids weigh, supposedly, 15 pounds. His style, composed of leather, denim, football pads, and oversized clothing, has made him a fashion-world favorite, affiliated with Telfar, Marc Jacobs, Moncler, and more. He communicates in odd ways: sticky notes with feel-good messages and announcements, elaborate Instagram skits full of alter egos and zany plots. And the celebrity co-signs keep rolling in: from Janelle Monáe and Madonna; from Tyler, the Creator, who said, “That kid’s an alien in the best way possible”; and from Drake, who was so moved that he broke character in an Instagram post to praise Teezo’s new debut album How Do You Sleep at Night? as “some of the best music ever.”
To Teezo’s credit, he doesn’t deny that up until now, his fusion of Texas rap, nostalgic pop-punk, and funky R&B paired with clever and memeable music videos (in the clip for the sleepy acoustic guitar ballad “I’m Just a Fan,” he stands surrounded by portable fans and spins his arms while nails tinkle like windchimes) has come secondary to everything else. “No one really knew me for the music, and music, to me, is my foundation,” the 30 year old said in an interview. How Do You Sleep at Night? is a debut tasked with making music the point, rather than a brand extension. He attempts this by imitating Weezer rap-rock, The Love Below soul, and 2000s pop radio, a genre mash-up that isn’t as offbeat as it wants to be. Most of all, it’s too sanitized, too impersonal, too cliché, to be a statement.
There’s a Teezo Touchdown snippet that has floated around YouTube and SoundCloud for a while, in which he sing-raps on a beat that could have been on Finally Rich: “Meeting with my PR team/They tellin’ me to keep it clean/No more songs about sex and codeine.” Luckily for them, How Do You Sleep at Night? has the edge of the Jonas Brothers. When he does sing about sex on “UUHH,” it’s uncomfortable. Not because it’s subliminal—some of the sexiest songs of all time get there without straight-up admitting I want to fuck—but because it’s as if he’s confused about how sex is supposed to work, like he might giggle if you said “dick.” The most angsty he gets is “Daddy Mama Drama,” where he hurls bleeped-out “I fucking hate you”s at his parents. On “Mood Swings,” he tries to open up about his inner blues on some played-out funk (just listen to the Victoria Monét album instead), but undercuts it with an overly cutesy hook that features the “weees” you would hear pushing a child on a swing. The lyrics are hard-hitting, too: “It seems when I step out of my dreams/Everything melts like ice cream.” Sure.
What Teezo has going for him is an elastic singing voice that slides nicely into the R&B lane. His melodies are shaky and occasionally crack, but the imperfections feel so much rawer than his sterilized pop and rock adventures. His speak-sing glide on “I Don’t Think U C Me” is smooth as hell, channeling a little of that Brent Faiyaz sauce. If you can get through the miserably upbeat first half of “Too Easy,” the breakdown into smoky coos with chatter of missed DMs feels like a sweeter homage to those old Drake R&B switch-ups. The stretched-out falsetto of “You Thought” is catchier than any of the softball pop hooks. Too bad his rapping feels like an afterthought: In the past he has called Lil’ Flip “dang near my favorite rapper” and has invoked Speaker Knockerz on a throwaway single, which is way more interesting than acting like Sum 41 is cool.
It’s clear that, like Lil Yachty’s psych-rock experiment Let’s Start Here. (which Teezo featured on), How Do You Sleep at Night? is targeted at young teenagers hearing certain sounds and experiencing certain emotions for the first time. Yet his feelings are so timid: never that sad, or that mad. In moments when the emotions could possibly get more difficult he censors them, prioritizing his image. “Impossible,” produced by Justin Raisen and SADPONY (who also contributed to Yachty’s album), is a guitar-driven believe-in-yourself anthem where Teezo lays out uplifting anecdotes: What if Basquiat didn’t paint because his parents said not to, or if Ali stopped boxing because he lost? On “Familiarity,” he croons about ignoring parental doubts to chase a dream. Why is he describing life like a Disney sports movie? It’s all so simplified, not only selling short teeangers’ ability to handle more complex emotions (hello, Olivia Rodrigo) but making Teezo look like a generic corporate vessel, genre-hopping to distract from the hollowness. | 2023-09-13T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-09-13T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Not Fit for Society / RCA | September 13, 2023 | 5.3 | 1d842996-33d0-43b8-989b-eff24546bd9c | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500708300c361fe1f460ef3/1:1/w_3000,h_3000,c_limit/Teezo%20Touchdown-%20How%20Do%20You%20Sleep%20at%20Night |
The restless singer-songwriter’s wanderlust leads him to find poetic beauty in the country’s ugly truths, even as he confronts the idea that there’s more at stake than ever. | The restless singer-songwriter’s wanderlust leads him to find poetic beauty in the country’s ugly truths, even as he confronts the idea that there’s more at stake than ever. | Peter Oren: Anthropocene | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/peter-oren-anthropocene/ | Anthropocene | Peter Oren aces first impressions. On each of the two albums he has released during the past two years, the young singer-songwriter with a voice like polished oak and an obsession with life on the road has started off with some stunning traveler’s snapshot, a poignant clipping cut from his weathered scrapbook.
In 2016, for the promising debut Living by the Light, Oren detailed a one-night stand spent beneath the stars of the mystic Olympic Peninsula, where the mountains melt into the sea. He met a fellow traveler on the shore, fell hard and fast, then moved alone down Highway 101. Likewise, the sometimes-staggering Anthropocene, Oren’s first for the esteemed Western Vinyl, begins with a temporary break in motion. He’s fighting for a summer night’s sleep in the back of a pickup truck at a rest stop in middle America, when he gives up and hits the road well before dawn. By headlight, he ponders declarative religious billboards and hyperbolic late-night radio, his eyes fatigued from white-line fever until roadside crosses become “blades unsheathed/And stabbed into a back.” “Burden of Proof” is a masterful moment, a “Turn the Page” reprise fueled by absolute existential despair.
Though born in Indiana, Oren seems to have spent much of his adult life in a state of self-selecting exile, writing songs that reflect time spent beneath bridges or deep in the woods, apart from society even when not away from it. Like kindred spirit Julie Byrne, Oren uses his travels as a way to understand his own place in the world. For a songwriter who marvels at the sights of his country while fretting about its fate, then, “Burden of Proof” is a perfect opening gambit, finding poetically rendered beauty in ugly truth. Also like Byrne, Oren’s voice is so compelling that you can lose track of what he’s saying. Dignified and proud like later Bill Callahan, but with the rough Midwestern edge of Justin Vernon during his folk-rock salad days, Oren’s voice is a miracle of mixed feelings—brooding but sensitive, tired but resolute, exasperated but energized.
That voice is deservedly the musical centerpiece of Anthropocene, a record that, like its predecessor, is given flesh by a wide cast of accomplished collaborators, such as Wilco drummer and tasteful producer Ken Coomer and flashy Sturgill Simpson guitarist Laur Joamets. They muster moaning cosmic country during “Canary in a Mine,” a subtle send-up of industrial labor, and crackling country rock during the softly sneering “Chain of Command.” It’s a backdrop that’s more functional than imaginative, an open canvas simply suited to Oren’s voice.
Though Living by the Light brimmed with the poignant details and keen analysis of an opinionated storyteller, Oren seemed judgmental and even snide during its most jejune moments. He lampooned the flag-flying Tea Partier, the business class, and those who have chosen subdivision safety—soft targets for an obviously sharp mind, who seemed to be roaming the country to confirm his opinions more than test them. On Anthropocene, however, Oren has started to ask harder questions of himself and his own relationship to a society that, in his estimation, is teetering on collapse.
The title track presents a mission statement of sorts, as Oren wonders what exactly he’s supposed to do as the world falls apart. He mentions the possibilities of revolutionary action and idyllic escape but lands on a less self-serving question: “Where do I need to be?” The clenched-jaw “Throw Down” is a call to arms for a budding revolutionary, a plea to “make your grandkids proud” by getting off the sidelines and into the fray of what will become history, to wield “Maalox and Molotovs” as needed. It seems he’s trying to convince himself, too—to remind himself that there’s more at stake these days than the wanderlust of nights spent beneath the stars. “How long will we wait for change?/How long will we wait in vain?” he repeats over a growling electric guitar, the exasperation in his voice suggesting he has no answer.
For nine songs, Oren examines the idea of end times from multiple angles. For him, the anguish of a failed relationship (“River and Stone”) is part and parcel with environmental ruin (“New Gardens”) and imperial conquests (“Falling Water”). They all stem from human fallibility, from our collective need to own something else. For the finale, however, he throws up his hands and confesses that all his pondering and poetry and deep singing is too little, too late. “So welcome to this record/And goodbye to this world” he croons, mournful strings slipping like a noose around his notes. “May a new one soon unfurl.” It is a moment of abject sadness, but there’s a glimmer of hope implicit in the pessimism: If we’re all fucked anyway, you just do the best you can, whether that’s inciting a revolution or merely making a record that wishes for one. | 2017-11-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-11-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Western Vinyl | November 8, 2017 | 7.1 | 1d845f04-ce94-4464-96db-71e174e9f581 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
null | Conceptually, Max Richter's *The Blue Notebooks*\-- German-born composer mixes contemporary classical compositions with electronic elements in a dreamscapy journalogue featuring excerpts from Kafka's *The Blue Octavo Notebooks* as narrated by Tilda Swinton-- reads like a relentlessly precious endeavor, as new age music for grad students, the sort of record that sagely pats you on the back for being smart enough to seek it out. And yet in practice, despite the fact that it is exactly as outlined above, Kafka quotes and all, there is absolutely nothing exclusive or contrived-feeling about it. In fact, not only is Richter's second album one | Max Richter: The Blue Notebooks | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6917-the-blue-notebooks/ | The Blue Notebooks | Conceptually, Max Richter's The Blue Notebooks-- German-born composer mixes contemporary classical compositions with electronic elements in a dreamscapy journalogue featuring excerpts from Kafka's The Blue Octavo Notebooks as narrated by Tilda Swinton-- reads like a relentlessly precious endeavor, as new age music for grad students, the sort of record that sagely pats you on the back for being smart enough to seek it out. And yet in practice, despite the fact that it is exactly as outlined above, Kafka quotes and all, there is absolutely nothing exclusive or contrived-feeling about it. In fact, not only is Richter's second album one of the finest of the last six months, it is also one of the most affecting and universal contemporary classical records in recent memory.
But how to describe music that relies so completely on seeming familiar? Richter may fancy himself in a class with Philip Glass, Brian Eno and Steve Reich (indeed, his hyperattenuated sense of minimalism owes to all three), but unlike his influences, he's not remotely interested in subverting the traditional rules of composition. Short of one very beautiful moment that plunges an electronic sublow bassline into a deep sea of harpsichords and violas (see: the literally perfect "Shadow Journal"), there is nothing here to suggest that Richter is concerned with anything other than melody and economy. It's a formula he singlemindedly exploits with staggering effectiveness for the balance of the album's 40+ minutes.
Constituted mainly of sparse pieces that lean on string quartets and pianos in equal measure, The Blue Notebooks is a case study in direct, minor-key melody. Each of the piano pieces "Horizon Variations", "Vladimir's Blues" and "Written in the Sky" establish strong melodic motifs in under two minutes, all the while resisting additional orchestration. Elsewhere, Richter's string suites are similarly striking; "On the Nature of Daylight" coaxes a stunning rise out of gently provincial arrangements while the comparatively epic penultimate track "The Trees" boasts an extended introductory sequence for what is probably the album's closest brush with grandiosity. Richter's slightly less traditional pieces also resound; both the underwater choral hymnal "Iconography" and the stately organ piece "Organum" echo the spiritual ambience that characterized his work for Future Sound of London.
If, however, there is one piece that fires The Blue Notebooks off into the stratosphere, it's the aforementioned "Shadow Journal". Featuring a lone viola, some burbling electronics, a harpsichord and a subterranean bassline, it establishes a simple, keening melody and then gently pulls it wide, like warm string taffy, across its eight minutes. The fourth track on the record, it is nonetheless its centerpiece, and on a larger scale, possibly a gigantic beacon for composers searching for useful ways to introduce dance music's visceral, body-jarring qualities into the classical sphere.
But make no mistake, this is not Richter's electronic/classical crossover, nor it is really his concept record. In fact, with songs that similarly forgo the temptations of complexity and choice so as to preserve their core ideas, it's perhaps better thought of as his four-track demo, his lo-fi recording jaunt. It's Max Richter testing himself to see what he can produce under restraint. Turns out it's more than he might have otherwise. | 2004-07-01T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2004-07-01T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Experimental | FatCat | July 1, 2004 | 8.7 | 1d8692c2-752d-4dce-8b91-4607d425e8f4 | Mark Pytlik | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-pytlik/ | null |
Blending technical metal and hardcore, the ambitious DEP try to avoid being pulled in too many stylistic directions. | Blending technical metal and hardcore, the ambitious DEP try to avoid being pulled in too many stylistic directions. | The Dillinger Escape Plan: Option Paralysis | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14201-option-paralysis/ | Option Paralysis | Technical metal and hardcore scratch very different itches, despite sharing many of the same root-level obsessions (speed, aggression, you know the drill). One's fixated on a maniacal instrumental proficiency; the other strips rock down to a core of primitive blare. Dillinger Escape Plan's 1999 debut, Calculating Infinity, was a game-changing (and copycat-spawning) album because DEP excelled at both halves of the equation. Not the easiest thing to manage. DEP spun arrangements to shame metal's biggest control freaks, but executed them with a raw energy that suggested the whole thing might splutter into instrument-flinging chaos at any second.
So it goes on the typically overwhelming (in many senses) Option Paralysis, but as with the band's previous two albums, the new one's not entirely successful. Unlike the frighteningly focused Infinity, DEP's 21st century records pull in too many stylistic directions, sometimes to the detriment of what the band does best. Infinity was unrepeatable. Radical lineup shifts-- and the restlessness common to genre-mixers-- meant a change in direction was inevitable. 2004's Miss Machine and 2007's Ire Works offered an ever-broadening sound that kinda-sorta skirted crossover-friendliness, a sometimes awkward mash of traditional, melodic rock and hideous shrieking and bashing. Option Paralysis continues in that vein for better or worse.
When DEP stick to the sound they perfected on Infinity, they're the only mathcore band left standing that still matters, and there are plenty of blinding moments on Option Paralysis. For instance the way "Good Neighbor" shifts unexpectedly and almost imperceptibly mid-song, from jagged spasms of ultra-tricky death metal drumming to thundering, straight-ahead, old-school hardcore. You're left fumbling to figure out how the hell the band pulled it off and too jacked-up on adrenaline to really care. That's the draw of DEP at their best. They certainly provide enough brain-scrambling fodder for the count-the-time-changes crowd. In two and a half minutes, "Endless Endings" cuts from power metal histrionics to funk-metal groove to grindcore splatter with a fluidity that sounds like DEP's playing with samples rather than playing in real time.
But sudden eruptions of emotive crooning feel out of place. The icky mix of cocktail piano and emo melodrama on "Widower" is a major offender. It's not just that the inevitable math-y freakout derails the song's sense of momentum. It's also that DEP's notion of what constitutes "pop" is so damn corny. Forget Faith No More, the most frequent point of comparison. Without Mike Patton's sense of the absurd to undercut the pomp, this shit sounds like Foreigner with an affinity for blast beats. DEP don't need to worry about "softening up" or (gack) "selling out." They need to worry about the fact that 3/4ths of Option Paralysis is astounding and 1/4th is plain cringeworthy. They might be better off sticking to the devil they know, rather than trying to become the first tech-math-metal-core-whatever band to land on Now That's What I Call Music. | 2010-05-03T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2010-05-03T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Metal | Season of Mist | May 3, 2010 | 7.2 | 1d899a75-e091-4532-aa1a-297a0765b0b6 | Jess Harvell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jess-harvell/ | null |
The Memphis rap duo reunites for an impressive sequel that’s as natural and effortless as an old friendship. | The Memphis rap duo reunites for an impressive sequel that’s as natural and effortless as an old friendship. | Young Dolph / Key Glock: Dum and Dummer 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/young-dolph-key-glock-dum-and-dummer-2/ | Dum and Dummer 2 | Like any writing partnership or wrestling tag-team, rap duos are tacit strategic agreements as much as they are a genuine collaboration. An 8Ball & MJG or Method Man & Redman is once-in-a-generation; it can be hard not to focus exclusively on yourself in an industry that’s so often driven and defined by individualist hustle. When Young Dolph and Key Glock united for 2019’s Dum and Dummer—more of a rigorous sparring match than the goofball antics its titular nod to Harry & Lloyd might indicate—it could have just been a one-off affair, a notch in the belt of a trap veteran and a boost to the resumé of an upstart, but its sequel, Dum and Dummer 2, solidifies the Memphis rappers as one of the most in-sync alliances in the genre today.
Young Dolph cut his teeth during the peak of DatPiff and LiveMixtapes, DJ Holliday and Trap-A-Holics, when physical street mixtapes were still a somewhat substantial economy for Southern rappers—an affiliate of the 1017 universe, Dolph owed more to Gucci Mane than Three 6 Mafia or other mainstream Memphis artists. His persona is both dealer and consumer, a single-minded distributor of product and mover of weight who is also an unapologetic stoner, minus the drug-rug, bongwater-soaked corniness of a Wiz Khalifa. Dolph is slick, sarcastic, and charismatic, a consummate professional who could blow dense clouds but still keep a clear head, like Gordon Gekko if he got down with grass. Over time, he’s developed not just as a business executive but as a frequently heartfelt songwriter and social commentator, like on 2018’s “Black Queen,” a piano ballad about his mother.
On “Somethin’ Else,” Dolph compares his reign in Memphis to the rule of the controversial revolutionary and political theorist Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Most famously the inspiration for the moniker of New York MC Tragedy Khadafi, he’s even something of a thought leader—when XXXTentacion died, Waka Flocka Flame posted a screenshot of their final text exchanges, which included Waka texting X a PDF of Qaddafi’s Mao-inspired The Green Book. Like so many revolutionaries of the Global South, Qaddafi was despised in the West and eventually deposed because he fought to build a nation that could support itself instead of being subject to an empire. It may seem a stretch, but the comparison isn’t entirely unearned; while pretty much every other rapper of Dolph’s stature and weight class is a vassal of the major label machine, the self-crowned King of Memphis runs his own Paper Route Empire on independent terms.
Dolph was shouldered with the responsibility of providing for his younger siblings as a teenager, his singular dedication to the game driven by the knowledge that others depended on him. That sense of family shows in Dolph’s relationship with Glock, who’s just a little over a decade his junior—the hook of “RAIN RAIN” feels like the now not-quite-young Dolph bestowing his wisdom. Their collaboration could have just been Dolph taking the new generation under his wing, but Glock isn’t just shadowing big brother at work. The duo has equal ownership in their company; both tapes are evenly distributed between duets and solo tracks. Dolph has more of a boisterous cartoonishness to his voice while Glock’s has a dry-ice edge, but the two effortlessly weave in and out of each other’s flows on tracks like “Buddy Love,” riffing and finishing each other’s sentences.
“Aspen” is a euphoric paean to bag-getting, with twinkling keys and organ swells accompanying Dolph’s reminisces of a luxurious vacation in the land of legalization. His ad-libs are boastful and hilarious but also informative—he gleefully shouts out “Aspen (Colorado)” and “Aston (Martin),” just in case you weren’t sure. Dolph has worked for the right to relax, but Key Glock is still knives-out and carving out a reputation, pledging allegiance to a cut-throat life on “In GLOCK we trust”: “Even way before Corona, we been masked up.” Glock and Dolph repeat the last word of lines on “Penguins” with a razor-sharp exactness, mimicking the driving drums that undergird the beats.
The production, largely handled by Paper Route Empire righthand man Bandplay, is tastefully decadent. Ethereal and angelic voices wait in the wings of “What u see is what u get,” and laser blasts appropriately attack the beat of the video game-themed “Cheat Code.” Bandplay’s beats are always sturdy, driven by slabs of bass and menacing piano loops, but he’s stylistically adept even if the foundations are often built from shared elements.
While the first Dum and Dummer drew from the Farrelly Brothers, this album’s cover looks to the brain-dead law-breaking of Beavis and Butt-Head as inspiration. Dolph & Glock fashion themselves in the image of pop culture dunces even if at the same time they’re poised, extravagant, and immaculate—there’s a casualness to their rapport and respective flows that never announces itself too much. For all their boasts and success, they’re still stoners stuck in the couch cushions, puff-puff-passing bars back and forth as easily as they share the blunt. Neither rapper bogarts their moment; Dolph is confident enough in his reign that he’s comfortable ceding some of his territory to a padawan, and Glock is secure enough in his own skillset to go toe-to-toe with someone whose music he likely grew up on. Smokers might be known for overstaying their welcome, but even at 20 tracks, you feel like you could hang out with Dolph and Glock even longer; Dum & Dummer 2 is as effortless as an old friendship.
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 | Paper Route Empire | March 31, 2021 | 7.5 | 1d8e5c67-a609-4191-bb01-37fe5ff6fb57 | Nadine Smith | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nadine-smith/ | |
Instead of nerding out or having any kind of fun, a host of pop stars turn in a dour, stone-faced compilation inspired by the ubiquitous fantasy saga. | Instead of nerding out or having any kind of fun, a host of pop stars turn in a dour, stone-faced compilation inspired by the ubiquitous fantasy saga. | Various Artists: For the Throne (Music Inspired by the HBO Series Game of Thrones) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-for-the-throne-music-inspired-by-the-hbo-series-game-of-thrones/ | For the Throne (Music Inspired by the HBO Series Game of Thrones) | “Game of Thrones” has a way of turning everyday citizens into dragon-repping dweebs who, for instance, wouldn’t think twice about dropping serious coin in order to shout “bum-bum ba-da bum-bum” in a basketball arena while an orchestra plays the TV show’s theme song. Untold thousands did just that across the last few years, as part of the continent-spanning “Game of Thrones” Live Concert Experience tour (tagline: “MUSIC IS COMING”). Even rappers, indie rockers, and pop stars who hinge their careers on being cooly above-it-all aren’t immune. Since the fantasy saga first aired in 2011, everyone from the National to Big Boi to Ed Sheeran has pledged their fealty in some form or another.
With For the Throne—which includes 14 songs inspired by “Game of Thrones,” none featured in the actual show—a host of additional musicians from across the pop spectrum add their names to that list. But instead of using this synergistic platform to have a little fun with the bloodiest, horniest, soapiest epic of our time, For the Throne is annoyingly dour and stone-faced. If this album were a character on “Game of Thrones,” it would be unceremoniously stabbed to death within five minutes.
For the Throne was steered in large part by Grammy-nominated hitmaker Ricky Reed, who served as an executive producer and helped write and record more than half of the album. Known for his work with acts like Maroon 5, Meghan Trainor, and Phantogram, Reed has proven himself in the music industry by churning out the sort of bright, soul-adjacent pop that so often serves as ambient capitalist lube. He’s an odd fit for a project based on “Game of Thrones,” a show defined by existential dread, gallows humor, and the canny subversion of mythic tropes. But he’s also musically amenable to his surroundings. So most of For the Throne ends up in a greyscale dead zone, sounding like a simulacra of moodiness to be algorithmically filtered in with all the other sad pop currently weighing down charts and playlists.
This means country-pop star Maren Morris and dance-pop star Ellie Goulding are miscast as brooders wallowing about sold souls and hollow crowns. (For a more believably ominous recent hit about the spectre of absolute queendom, try Billie Eilish’s “you should see me in a crown.”) Reed has marginally better luck when he works in some slick soul touches on sync-core faves X Ambassadors’ “Baptize Me,” which also highlights guest vocalist Jacob Banks’ deep rasp, and “X Factor” winner James Arthur’s barn-stomp ballad “From the Grave,” though both would likely make more sense in a reboot of Disney’s Sword in the Stone than the incest-laden, quasi-medieval apocalypse allegory at hand. “From the Grave” is a long-distance love song seemingly sung from the perspective of Jon Snow, the reluctant hero who was once magically resurrected. But it’s actually more fun to think of lines like “Bury me and lock me in/I’ll find a way to rise again” as something growled out by a skeletal wight, the evil zombies of the “Thrones” universe. Undead flesh eaters have feelings too, right?
In an interview with Billboard, Reed mentioned that he purposefully didn’t include too many obvious references to “Thrones” on the album. “These artists are all cool and they don’t want to say corny shit,” he said. “They want to make songs that stand on their own.” One problem: Pretty much all of these songs do not stand on their own. Also, the whole idea of an album inspired by “Game of Thrones” is inherently goofy—so why not really own it by showing off your Westerosian bona fides?! On this front, credit is due to Joey Bada$$, who lets his nerd flag fly on the A$AP Rocky collaboration “Too Many Gods” with footnote-friendly bars including, “Playing with fire but I’m no Targaryen,” and, “Bit the flow harder than Valyrian Steel.” (The lines could have found a place in Coldplay’s “Game of Thrones: The Musical” send-up from 2015, which is entirely more enjoyable than this album.) The Weeknd tries to trace Jon Snow’s plight in a limp, fake-Yeezus-style track with SZA and Travis Scott, “Power Is Power,” but his verse ultimately comes off more like just another huffy ode to the singer’s own pop star persecution complex. Elsewhere, the songs on For the Throne are so vague that you have to wonder if certain artists have ever even sat through one full episode of the show.
There are moments when the music here comes close to matching the shadowy “Game of Thrones” mood millions have fallen for. “Me Traicionaste,” by the strikingly original Spanish singer Rosalía, offers a dark, piercing sensuality. The song could feasibly soundtrack a murderous betrayal in a Dornish brothel, though its spell is ruined by a pointless, 18-second verse from Peruvian singer A.Chal, who barges in with: “I take my time when I see her coming/I poke her face, but it’s no cards.” The late emo-rap icon Lil Peep, who was apparently a big “Thrones” fan, delivers a deranged hook that lives up to the show’s unflinching violence. “Stick that needle in my eye, just lost my peace of mind,” he bleats, sounding like one of teenage assassin Arya Stark’s pitiful victims. But these moments are rare, and they only serve to highlight what this strange artifact of monoculture runoff could have been. | 2019-04-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-04-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Columbia / HBO | April 29, 2019 | 3.7 | 1d8fb110-542a-4d96-807c-b6595562508e | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | |
Often in doom, the impulse can be to turn up and drown out, treating the song mostly as a reason for amplifier massages. On their third album, the fascinating Salt Lake City band SubRosa—two violins, three vocalists, bass, drums, and guitar—are more meticulous than that, treating each number like its own opera. | Often in doom, the impulse can be to turn up and drown out, treating the song mostly as a reason for amplifier massages. On their third album, the fascinating Salt Lake City band SubRosa—two violins, three vocalists, bass, drums, and guitar—are more meticulous than that, treating each number like its own opera. | SubRosa: More Constant Than the Gods | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18395-subrosa-more-constant-than-the-gods/ | More Constant Than the Gods | “Fat of the Ram”—the pugnacious and swirling fourth track on the new album from fascinating Salt Lake City doom metal band SubRosa—is a folk song. Never mind the weighty guitars that hang like thick shadows or the forceful drums that punch through them. Forget the enraged voices that bellow the lyrics and the slide guitar line that closes tight like a noose, too. Instead, listen to what Rebecca Vernon has to sing: She sets a scene of accepted and quiet suffering, where lakes go septic and unhappiness gets swept under the rug. Dreams are dreamt only in the privacy of homes and otherwise suppressed. The rich lords expect to be left alone, to be given time to “anoint themselves in their finest.” Vernon ends with a glimpse of possible redemption, a Plato’s Cave moment where the narrator intuits life outside of the town’s shadowy desolation. This is the lament of a layperson holding onto the distant promise of hope, a tune not unlike one that Harry Smith might’ve collected.
This isn’t surprising for SubRosa. On 2011’s No Help for the Mighty Ones, the band covered the morose, damned-to-hell Scottish ballad “The House Carpenter”, a song Vernon admits she first heard through Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. But that was just an eerie a cappella interpretation. “Fat of the Ram”, like the rest of More Constant than the Gods, is an exceptionally articulated full-band assault, arranged to give each song and story beneath it maximum impact. Often in doom, the impulse can be to turn up and drown out, treating the song mostly as a reason for amplifier massages. (To wit, see the recent Windhand LP, Soma.) This quintet—two violins, three vocalists, bass, drums and Vernon’s wonderful guitar—are much more meticulous than that, treating each number like its own opera rather than an excuse for an onslaught. Combined with Vernon’s uncommonly keen ear for hooks (however dark-hearted they may be) and the band’s grand sense of dynamics, that approach keeps More Constant than the Gods moving throughout its 68 minutes. It’s too active and involving to become a slog or a bore. Instead, it’s one of the year’s most exhilarating heavy metal records.
The members of SubRosa seem to understand these songs and what Vernon is trying to communicate with them, as if she workshopped the lyrics in front of them. The playing is never too deep or too wide, always moving in service of her meaning. The irritation and insurrection written into “Fat of the Ram”, for instance, shows up in the music, with its start-and-stop lashes of sound directed at the blindly content townsfolk and their scheming leaders. “Everywhere I look/ all I see is famine,” Vernon sings at one point, her voice suddenly downshifting into droll scorn. The music slows into a formless blur behind her, underlining the desperation in her observation. It’s Leadbelly kicked forward several decades. Likewise, “The Usher” opens with a duet above a twinkling bed of noise, Vernon trading lines with the gentle-voiced Jason McFarland as a violin etches curlicues against the din. The band finally lunges forward in unison, affixing their heaviness to a surprisingly forward tempo. This is a love song to the dark and to mortality, so SubRosa afford it a sinister romanticism. Bright violin leads peeking out through the down-tuned glumness, and the feeling is terrifying but warm.
The spirit doesn’t dovetail with the song only in these epics. Each of Constant’s six tracks either ignores or approaches the 10-minute mark, except for the seven-minute “Cosey Mo”, practically making it a radio single. SubRosa lend the tale of immortal grievances and obsessions appropriate drama. The strings are essential here. In the chorus, the violins of Sarah Pendleton and Kim Pack surge behind the guitars and vocals, helping to brand the refrain into memory. During a slinking little midsection, they trace pizzicato patterns around the gathering storm of Vernon’s voice. Finally, as the coda crests, they mirror and then fight against Vernon’s riff, reflecting the unresolved tension of the song’s quest to avenge or at least vindicate a death. Though “Cosey Mo” is the record’s shortest and most immediate song, it’s not the only one capable of planting a hook. “Affliction” turns its imprecation into an indelible if understated chorus. “Ghosts of a Dead Empire”, a send-up of missions for purity and perfection, doesn’t necessarily have a refrain, but its conclusion is memorable and haunting. Vernon’s tune moves evenly with the blown-out riff, matched by harmonies and the emphatic wallop of the rhythm section. It’s a moment of post-metal triumph, with splendor and volume spiraling into one radiant climax.
SubRosa’s first two albums were strong testaments from a doom band with an interesting lineup and manifest interests outside of metal. On More Constant than the Gods, they’ve not only managed to synthesize those enthusiasms but to do so while this strange tangle of musicians works together—unselfishly and with complete subservience to the bigger picture of song, statement, and album. There’s folk storytelling and alt-rock worthy choruses, doom intensity and classical grandeur. It’s hard not to be caught up in the incredible power of SubRosa’s sounds and the wide-screen permanence of their songs. | 2013-10-21T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2013-10-21T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Rock | Profound Lore | October 21, 2013 | 8.3 | 1d928f75-8cbc-449b-b9d4-156096b34b56 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
Though they are on the garage-rock-leaning Siltbreeze imprint, Blues Control opt for a more expansive blend of instrumental, machine-tinged psychedelic rock. | Though they are on the garage-rock-leaning Siltbreeze imprint, Blues Control opt for a more expansive blend of instrumental, machine-tinged psychedelic rock. | Blues Control: Local Flavor | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13272-local-flavor/ | Local Flavor | One of the many scuzzy-sounding bands toiling in and around New York City at the moment, Blues Control is the Queens-based duo of Russ Waterhouse and Lea Cho. Unlike most of their peers operating in some form of lo-fi punk, Blues Control have their sights on a more expansive sound, a kind of homespun blend of instrumental, machine-tinged psychedelic rock. Though stylistically dissimilar, they do share these acts' affinity for stripped-down, hissy sonics, making the band a sensible fit at boutique noise-pop imprint Siltbreeze. Local Flavor, their second full-length and first for the label, is an ambitious offering, a half-hour ride through murky textures built from electronics and traditional instrumentation.
Blues Control are not a pop band (far from it, in fact), and they don't seem especially concerned about hooks or melody. While the four songs on Local Flavor-- which strung together, comprise one gradually expanding instrumental piece-- may not find much of an audience outside of committed fans of noise and drone, the album's grainy assemblage of submerged mood music could represent a welcome addition to the latter's record collection.
Local Flavor's tracks are built simply, usually on a foundation of Cho's keyboards or a modest drum-machine pitter-patter, on top of which Waterhouse embellishes with expressive guitar playing and additional electronics. With trumpet assistance from recent It Guy Kurt Vile, opener "Good Morning" is the most straightforward track, a lo-fi reimagining of the sludgy psych-rock perfected by Californians Comets on Fire, but it's the slower, dub-tinged pieces here that work best. The album's two best cuts are its last-- the gurgling "Tangier" and extended outro "On Through the Night"-- and on these Cho and Waterhouse home in on a dark, disquieting tone. Here, the music sounds like it's bubbling up from and evil underground, a burial place that holds the secrets of past atrocities.
Though they succeed in sketching these gloomy portraits, there's a detachment about these songs that feels at odds with their other aim, which is creating a feeling of druggy ambience. The best ambient music envelops its listener, and Local Flavor ultimately lacks that sense of inhabitability. (I will say that I find this true of most guitar acts attempting a similar style; this music is difficult to build organically-- part of the reason so many of the finest ambient records are electronic.) It does seem Blues Control might benefit from grander sonics, since it's even harder to make something truly hum out of basic instrumentation. Still, in a scene with too much overlap, one has to commend the band for working far outside the status quo, even if Local Flavor feels like an album that a few will love and a larger majority will find head-scratchingly opaque. | 2009-07-24T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2009-07-24T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rock | Siltbreeze | July 24, 2009 | 6.4 | 1d93d962-7ac9-475b-a412-6bde9c8b91f7 | Joe Colly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-colly/ | null |
On Horse Feathers’ sixth album, their introverted persona has thawed, revealing a surprising affinity for the joy of Stax-era and country-fried soul. | On Horse Feathers’ sixth album, their introverted persona has thawed, revealing a surprising affinity for the joy of Stax-era and country-fried soul. | Horse Feathers: Appreciation | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/horse-feathers-appreciation/ | Appreciation | Slowly, glacially, Horse Feathers’ music has turned outward. What began as Oregon songwriter Justin Ringle and violinist Peter Broderick’s hermetic take on Appalachian folk eventually blossomed out with the addition of a larger string ensemble. It became the quintessential sound of the band. Yet even when the group lightened the mood with electric guitars and lively percussion on 2014’s So It Is With Us, it was hard to shake the feeling that they were still singing primarily to themselves. But on Appreciation, Horse Feathers’ sixth full-length, that introverted persona has thawed, revealing a surprising affinity for the joy of both Stax-era soul and the country-fried sound of Doug Sahm and the Flying Burrito Brothers. While the looser grooves can deflate the tension, they also frame Ringle’s world-weariness in terms that are directed, finally, at us.
Horse Feathers’ transition to a full band is by no means novel among the folk revivalists who got their start in the aughts; Steve Gunn, Vetiver, and Devendra Banhart have followed similar trajectories. Yet unlike those artists, Horse Feathers have undergone a grand re-shuffling as well as an expansion. While the strings sometimes flutter a bit listlessly, they generally compliment J. Tom Hnatow’s basslines and Robby Cosenza’s spritely percussion. On single “Don't Mean to Pry,” violins arc overhead, reinforcing Cosenza’s lithe patterns. Later, standout track “Faultline Wall” utilizes glissandos with similar economy, accentuating the song’s underlying menace.
What’s most intriguing about Appreciation is just how well the fulsome songs suit Ringle’s voice. The jauntier the tune, the more he embraces a more sensual approach to his singing: We get flashes of John Fogerty, Sturgill Simpson’s rebel yell and, nestled in the melodies of “Born in Love,” a fully unexpected oooh that would make Josh Tillman proud. For the first time, he sounds like he’s actually having fun.
That doesn’t mean that he has abandoned his trademark cynicism. The strongest songs on Appreciation expand on the Springsteen-style populism that has long lurked in Ringle’s music. Songs here ring out with accounts of economic disenfranchisement and helplessness: “It’s not the drinking, but the worry that does you in,” he sings in the opening track, “Without Applause.” “Faultline Wall” delivers a bleak tale of the environmental and occupational hazards of mining and “Evictions” sums up the nightmare of West Coast gentrification, yet does so over a smoky waltz that leaves us unsure what mood Ringle is shooting for. Though the extroverted mood throughout Appreciation can feel a bit unsteady, closing track “On the Rise” drops the drums in favor of a string-centric arrangement that is, once again, quintessential Horse Feathers. But Justin Ringle delivers its optimistic titular lyric with newfound assertiveness; as a result, although deeply personal, it could just as easily allude to the unexpected success his band has found by finally embracing their own accessibility. | 2018-05-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-05-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Kill Rock Stars | May 9, 2018 | 7.1 | 1d96e36b-686a-4d7b-af08-821cf8c2189d | Max Savage Levenson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/max-savage levenson/ | |
The Baton Rouge-based rapper Boosie returns from a jail sentence he began in 2010 with a new deal with Atlantic and his sixth studio album. Touch Down 2 Cause Hell is unremittingly intense, proving Boosie isn't content to rest on his reputation as a modern-day southern rap legend. | The Baton Rouge-based rapper Boosie returns from a jail sentence he began in 2010 with a new deal with Atlantic and his sixth studio album. Touch Down 2 Cause Hell is unremittingly intense, proving Boosie isn't content to rest on his reputation as a modern-day southern rap legend. | Boosie Badazz: Touch Down 2 Cause Hell | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20670-touch-down-2-cause-hell/ | Touch Down 2 Cause Hell | Torrence "Boosie Badazz" Hatch is a Southern rap legend. Everyone seeking to understand the current rap landscape should know this. After his cousin Young Bleed (yup, the "How Ya Do Dat" Young Bleed of No Limit Records fame) helped him sign with the late Pimp C's Trill Entertainment in 2001, Boosie released a series of mixtapes and albums that set his career on fire. Through the combination of his unique voice (imagine a frog on helium getting bear-hugged by a bodybuilder), his gargantuan output, his so-raw-it's-kinda-uncomfortable level of honesty, and his never-ending traditional chitlin' circuit tour of small town clubs and hood spots, he amassed the (some would say blasphemous) moniker of the "Tupac of the South." His legacy is heard in everyone from Meek Mill to Starlito to fellow Baton Rouge resident Kevin Gates, despite being only 32 years of age. This is the man who helped popularize the term "ratchet", for God's sake. (Seahawks fans, take note: He's also responsible for making "Beast Mode" a thing, a fact that Marshawn Lynch readily admits.)
Boosie went to jail in 2010 facing first-degree murder and conspiracy charges, and after a brief fear that he might be sentenced to death, he finished up his sentence early last year. He returned to a new world, where mundane things like iPhone tech seemed foreign and new. After his Life After Deathrow mixtape in October, he's back with his sixth studio album, a new deal with Atlantic Records, and a renewed vigor.
A rapper with that pedigree could have phoned in this record, content to rest on his reputation. Instead, Touch Down 2 Cause Hell is unremittingly intense from the cover image to the sharpened guest appearances. The established stars who appear on this record—T.I., Jeezy, and Rick Ross—manage to sound better than they have in years ("Spoil You", "Mercy on My Soul" and "Drop Top Music", respectively), all flawlessly executing that whole effortlessly charismatic "I'm happy, sex is pretty nice, and money is great" thing that they do. Boosie also scores appearances from younger voices like J. Cole, Young Thug, and Rich Homie Quan (aka The Artists Formerly Known as Rich Gang) who all appear, with middling results. Not surprisingly, longtime collaborator and former Trill Ent. labelmate Webbie appears, and listeners new to Boosie can get a taste of their raunchy chemistry, which powered projects like 2003's classic album Ghetto Stories and street hits like "On That Level".
In a way, the album plays out like a classic gangster-movie script. A man serves some time, comes home, and proceeds to restore his world to the way things were before he went away. Boosie jumps in with vigor, opening the album with a brief "Minor setback for a major comeback" line before absolutely rapping his ass off on the Black Metaphor-produced "Intro - Get 'Em Boosie". After the reintroduction, he lays waste to the pretenders who have popped up while he was in jail (on "No Juice" and "Hip Hop Hooray"), laments those who are no longer here (on the Keyshia Cole-assisted "Black Heaven"), opines on love ("She Don't Love Me"), and even manages to have some fun. For the most part, though, it's all business.
The record isn't the home run Boosie probably needs. It could stand to be trimmed a bit and while the producers—a mostly solid lineup of London on Da Track, Kane Beatz, J Reid and fellow Louisianans Kenoe (Nicki's "Beez in the Trap") and Mouse on tha Track (the longtime Boosie/Webbie collaborator who made "Wipe Me Down")—all put in decent work, nothing leaps out or creates any urgency, which is troubling since the last thing Boosie—a man who managed to avoid the popular-sound ambulance chase that comes with a long-term major rap career— wants to do after so many years away is waste any time. | 2015-06-12T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2015-06-12T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rap | Atlantic / Trill Entertainment | June 12, 2015 | 7.4 | 1d9a4910-b5f0-4918-aa0a-493b07915554 | Ernest Wilkins | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ernest-wilkins/ | null |
Almost 22 years after My Bloody Valentine's last album, Kevin Shields has completed this stunning followup. What My Bloody Valentine have done is take the precise toolkit of Loveless and made another album with it, one that is stranger and darker and even harder to pin down. | Almost 22 years after My Bloody Valentine's last album, Kevin Shields has completed this stunning followup. What My Bloody Valentine have done is take the precise toolkit of Loveless and made another album with it, one that is stranger and darker and even harder to pin down. | My Bloody Valentine: m b v | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17726-mbv/ | m b v | "When can we hear some new material?," someone asked Kevin Shields in an AOL chat interview published by the San Francisco zine Cool Beans!. "Definitely sometime this year or I'm dead..." he answered, later driving the point home with, "I really am dead if I don't get my record out this year. Nobody's threatening me, BTW I just have to."
That chat took place exactly 16 years ago tomorrow and Kevin Shields is still alive. And now, almost 22 years after My Bloody Valentine's last album, Loveless, we finally have that record. For those of us whose relationship to music and maybe even the act of hearing has been changed by Loveless, it's hard to believe. I'd grown comfortable with the idea that there would never be another My Bloody Valentine album. Even as recently as two months ago, I figured it would never happen. "But he said it was mastered," people said to me. The last time a master of an MBV album was completed it took four years for it to come out. And that was music that had already been released. An alleged master of a new release? Plenty of time to pull the plug. But no, it happened, by surprise, last Saturday night. And many 403 errors later, we finally have this thing on our hard drives. mbv. 2013. This Is Our Bloody Valentine.
Like a few people I know, I was initially afraid to listen, but there was no need to be. My Bloody Valentine have taken the precise toolkit of Loveless-- layered Fender Jaguar guitars made woozy through pedals and tremolo, hushed androgynous vocals way down in the mix-- and made another album with it, one that is stranger and darker and even harder to pin down. Where Loveless felt effortless, mbv strains, pushing at its boundaries with a sense of pensive gloom. If the guy spending all those years in the studio felt trapped by the experience, like the walls might be closing in and that he was dead if he didn't finish, the music here reflects it. mbv is an album of density with very little air or light. But it doesn't forgo the human touches that have made this band so special.
The nine-song mbv can be divided into thirds and the first three-song section, consisting of "She Found Now", "Only Tomorrow", and "Who Sees You", finds Shields exploring the untapped textural possibilities of the guitar. The last several years have been bad ones for the instrument. In independent music circles, the guitar has become synonymous with regression, a symbol used to evoke something from the past. And that might seem at first equally true here, since the tone of Shields' guitar is so clearly connected to the sounds he pioneered two decades ago. But no one believes more deeply than Kevin Shields in the expressive power of the processed guitar, and the music here turns out to be more about feeling than style.
"She Found Now" is an opener of daring subtlety, a ballad in the vein of "Sometimes" that consists mostly of deep strumming and Shields' singing in a tone near a whisper. There's a bit of percussion, a few more layers of distortion, but no announcement of anything earth-shattering or even particularly different. It's My Bloody Valentine making the kind of noises they invented and perfected. As the chords cycle through in the following "Only Tomorrow", Shields sets up a situation where the repetition and familiarity lulls you into a kind of trance and small gestures hit with great force. On "Only Tomorrow" that spine-tingling moment is a dead simple screeching high-end refrain that repeats toward the end, while on the following "Who Sees You", it's a section halfway through where a rush of trebly chords coats the entire song in another layer of textured fuzz. When it comes to Shields and guitars, the small details do a tremendous amount of work.
The second trio of songs feature the lead vocals of My Bloody Valentine singer/guitarist Bilinda Butcher. The push and pull of her singing next to Shields' is, along with the wavy "glide guitar" effect, My Bloody Valentine's other defining characteristic. Their voices are the essence of the the band's strangely androgynous and non-specific sensuality. "Is This and Yes" is just Butcher's voice and an unusual organ pattern that hangs in space at the end of the progression and never resolves itself; "New You" is the only track on the record that sounds even remotely like a single, and it shows that Shields' melodic impulses have not left him.
In another sense, "New You" points out how much has changed since MBV last released a full-length. In 1991, they were still a pop band, the kind that made videos and appeared on magazine covers and were on a fashionable record label. As such, there was at least some pressure for them to fit in, for their music to have context in the popular music landscape. So they released singles and probably hoped they'd become hits. Even if "Soon" had, as Brian Eno stated at the time, set a "new standard," that didn't change that fact that it was in fact still pop. But those days are gone. My Bloody Valentine fit in exactly nowhere and the commercial expectations of a release like mbv are minimal. Whatever the cause, mbv is the weirdest album My Bloody Valentine have made by some margin. Some of the record's otherworldly quality is up to frequency range. There's very little on this album in the treble range but there's endless detail in the bass and mid, which makes the record feel more closed in and insular. But some of it is in the arc of the record.
Through the 1990s Kevin Shields often talked about jungle, what it meant to him, and how some of the ideas behind it were making their way into a new My Bloody Valentine album. He was not alone in this, but mixing drum'n'bass' whooshing walls of percussion with oceanic shoegaze seemed a natural pairing (it was so natural, in fact, that artists like Third Eye Foundation beat Shields to the punch). Whether or not the final three songs on mbv are related to Shields' experiments of that time, on mbv, where Shields presumably had time to make the drum parts he wanted, it's clear that he doesn't really hear percussion the way most of us do. Drums are mostly distant, often muddy, serving as an underpinning or textural contrast to the guitar instead of driving the rhythm on their own. In this sense they mirror the 8-bit snatches of sound caught by crude samplers in the 90s. But since Isn't Anything, drums have been down on the list of concerns for MBV, which is one way the final third is so surprising and ultimately powerful.
"In Another Way", another Butcher lead, begins to tilt the balance between noise and melodic beauty as the tempo increases, and by the following instrumental "Nothing Is" the mood has changed considerably. A track of heavy bass drums and pounding guitar, it feels militaristic and even a touch grim, with just faint glimmers of beauty inside the barrage. And then by the final "Wonder 2" the album has become something else. This is MBV's version of an album-closing "L.A. Blues"-like Stooges freak-out, where they stop worrying about structure and fill every inch of tape with noise. The heavy flanging evokes choppers buzzing overhead, and somehow, through it all, there are wispy voices, buried and being shoved around by the din. It's a disquieting end. Where Loveless, despite its complexity, sounded as natural as breathing, mbv sounds like the product of great effort, of meticulous work to get every sound in place. And that exertion is especially apparent in the final third, as Shields tries and ultimately succeeds in taking the project somewhere it's never gone. All this work gives mbv its own quality, simultaneously intimate and detached.
Like its predecessor, mbv feels like an album in part about love, but it approaches the grandest of human emotions from an unusual angle. Kurt Cobain, another iconic songwriter of the 1990s who never got a chance to grow old and figure out how to maintain his creativity in the wake of game-changing masterpieces, had a song called "Aneurysm" and it had a refrain that went, "Love you so much, makes me sick." That's how My Bloody Valentine's deeply destabilizing queasiness, amplified here to a frightening degree, has always struck me: There's a rush of feeling inside their music so intense it creates a kind of paralysis. Music swirls and moves in and out of phase, voices float by, half memory and half anticipation, and you're never quite sure how all the parts fit together. You get lost in it, and if you're wired a certain way that mixture of desire and confusion is easy to map on to the wider world. For 22 years, the only way to get there was through Loveless and its associated EPs; now there's another path, one many of us never expected to find. That it's this successful in spite of it all is something we never had a right to expect. | 2013-02-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2013-02-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental / Rock | self-released | February 6, 2013 | 9.1 | 1d9ba763-17c7-4b55-80e5-cf36a40650f1 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | |
The restless R&B auteur offers one of her most captivating statements, a deeply spiritual collection produced by Madlib. | The restless R&B auteur offers one of her most captivating statements, a deeply spiritual collection produced by Madlib. | Georgia Anne Muldrow: Seeds | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16416-georgia-anne-muldrow-seeds/ | Seeds | If you're given the task of trying to parse all the guises, collaborations, phases, and detours of Georgia Anne Muldrow's relatively young, relentless career as a singer and composer, well, good luck. This is an artist whose spirit of independence has scattered her presence over as many contexts as her psychedelic, jazz-inflected neo-soul sensibility can carry her-- an R&B auteur with a 24/7 omnipresence. You might've heard her on a Stones Throw compilation, or building the lush melodic backbone of Mos Def's The Ecstatic track "Roses", or forming a mutual-muse partnership with the off-kilter but sincere g-funk crooner Dudley Perkins, or sweetening up albums by Oddisee or Shawn Lee or Oh No. If you're lucky, you've pulled up a couple of her albums, weathering occasional bouts of formative inconsistency to savor the Nina Simone-indebted gems off releases like Kings Ballad or Owed to Mama Rickie. Defining her solely through any individual one of those works is clearly incomplete, but taking in the big picture of her output reveals more about her restless creative evolution than any easy synopsis.
Seeds is another left-field deviation in Muldrow's career: it's one of her most captivating and immediate front-to-back statements of purpose as a singer, but it's also the first album where she's handed over all the production duties to somebody else. That this somebody else is Madlib is a good hook, and his most prominent R&B production job prior to this one-- two excellent songs on Erykah Badu's New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War-- makes for an optimistic precedent. It's one he fills with a relatively understated smoothness, rolling out his more classic-soul-influenced side to subtle effect. This isn't the Madlib of Firesign Theatre clips, damaged-filmstrip horns, and resin-caked surface hiss; it's the one that put the buttery Stacy Epps feature "Eye" on Madvillainy and rode the bliss of Roy Ayers' slow jam "DC City" on Quasimoto's "Seasons Change". The beats on Seeds are characteristically weathered, peppered with abrupt truncated loops and instilled with a familiar sense of hard-wrought excavation. But they still come at you head-on with no tricks or punchlines, whether they lift cues from stretched-taut funk ("Kali Yuga") or sleek vintage drum machine R&B ("Best Love"). They help make the album click, but they don't take over the spotlight.
That gives Muldrow a comfortable space to do what makes her so compelling: grab a simple phrase, mull it over, turn it into a mantra-like refrain, and bend it from every melodic angle she can find. Seeds has a wide theme of existential reflection-- hoping for a better environment for our children (the environmentally conscious title track), wondering how our legacies will be remembered ("Wind"), and finding a sense of communal identity and pride through the birth of a child ("The Birth of Petey Wheatstraw"). It's deeply spiritual, not in some superficial hippy-dip way, but in the sense of someone working through profound ideas of worry and praise. She's an evocative wordsmith when she wants to be, like when she's referring to the state of hesitant apprehension as "kneecap jelly" in the resilient self-sufficiency anthem of the same name. But taking a simple observation or a plain truth and breathing her own life into it makes her lyrics a solid means to a stronger end, simple sayings ("you and me, we can make a difference if we try"; "original man divine") given a third (and fourth) dimension through her voice. She lets slip a few slyly showoffy vocal tricks, like the simultaneously full-throated and quiet interjections of a couple mid-chorus cathartic screams in "Kali Yuga", that fall somewhere between the paired thrills of "because I want to" and "because I can." And through the refined multi-tracking that boosts her signal, there's this dense, rich, self-call-and-response room-of-mirrors trickery that amplifies the recursive contemplation of her words and the open emotions behind them. If it seems like she's in love with the sound of her own voice, hey, why not? It's easy to love. | 2012-03-28T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2012-03-28T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | SomeOthaShip Connect | March 28, 2012 | 7.9 | 1da7004f-7c1e-48b0-8646-e370a9e732f2 | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
Featuring members of Blood Incantation, the avant-garde black metal band blends industrial and electronic elements into a seamless whole. | Featuring members of Blood Incantation, the avant-garde black metal band blends industrial and electronic elements into a seamless whole. | Lykotonon: *Promethean Pathology * | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lykotonon-promethean-pathology/ | Promethean Pathology | Throughout its four decades of existence, black metal has had a tense relationship with technology. The genre’s principal obsessions have always been the world, the flesh, and the devil—a medieval ideology to match its medieval aesthetics, with little apparent interest in the trappings of modernity. A typical black metal photo shoot features a band standing deep in the forest, miles from the decadence of civilization. Even the production quality of much of the genre’s foundational work seems to suggest a suspicion of machines; in black metal doctrine, a ragged, hissing four-track recording is more richly prized than a cleanly articulated mix.
By rejecting that technophobic lineage, the digitized assault of Denver’s Lykotonon isn’t just refreshing—it’s transgressive. On their debut album, Promethean Pathology, they splice the instinctual atavism of black metal with cold industrial rhythms and pulsing electronics. There’s precedent for this blend of genres, most notably on the self-titled Thorns album from 2001. That project, led by onetime Mayhem guitarist Snorre Ruch, transformed second-wave black metal into something you might hear at 4 a.m. in a goth club. In the early ’90s, Ruch was as committed to the insular Norwegian scene as anybody, but by the new millennium he had developed an interest in electronic instrumentation and an ear for the dance floor.
Lykotonon push the sound Ruch pioneered on Thorns even further from black metal’s core, letting their industrial and electronic impulses take over entire songs. The glitchy, wobbling “Apeiron” is ostensibly an interlude, wedged between the crushing “Wrested From Solace” and “Psychosocratic,” but the sheer seismic weight it throws around in its scant two minutes helps it transcend that status. Two tracks later, “The Primal Principle” emerges from a cloud of woozy electronics to deliver a kind of industrial black metal highlight reel: robotic vocoder, skittering percussion, mechanized guitar riffing, a distorted Altered States sample, and other assorted bleeps and bloops.
Elsewhere on the album, Lykotonon let their more traditional black metal side reign. “The Apocryphal Self” is a fiery epic with towering, melodic riffs, while “That Which Stares in Kind” builds to a lightless climax of blasting drums and depraved, howling vocals. Both songs offer plenty of synths and samples, but they play a supporting role whenever flesh-and-blood terror takes center stage. Too often, bands who look outside this genre to augment their sound write black metal songs and then tack on the foreign elements like Halloween-store cobwebs. Whether they’re the main event or a cannily deployed counterpoint, the industrial and electronic components on Promethean Pathology always feel thoroughly incorporated.
The musicians in Lykotonon perform pseudonymously, but they’ve confirmed that they share members with fellow Colorado heavy hitters Wayfarer, Stormkeep, and Blood Incantation. The Blood Incantation connection makes immediate sense, especially considering their recent analog synth-based ambient release, Timewave Zero. The erstwhile death metallers are no strangers to the vast worlds of sound and texture that become available to a heavy band when they engage with the broader world of electronic music. Lykotonon have picked up the torch and used it to light a path into the digital beyond. | 2022-12-05T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-12-05T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Metal | Profound Lore | December 5, 2022 | 7.3 | 1da7a0b8-60db-434f-b1c6-bea5b1f96cb6 | Brad Sanders | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brad-sanders/ | |
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 Byrds’ 1968 album, the best and most cohesive project from a classic rock band in constant flux with the changing times. | 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 Byrds’ 1968 album, the best and most cohesive project from a classic rock band in constant flux with the changing times. | The Byrds: The Notorious Byrd Brothers | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-byrds-the-notorious-byrd-brothers/ | The Notorious Byrd Brothers | As darkness fell across the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, David Crosby decided it was time to get real about the Kennedy assassination. Over the course of his three years playing guitar with the Byrds, Crosby had fallen in with the emergent counterculture of the 1960s, transforming from a clean-cut Beatles lookalike into a mustachioed, long-haired, acid-dropping proselytizer of free love. He’d become a true believer in a pop artist’s ability to shift public attitudes toward a groovier equilibrium; decades later, he would earnestly claim that the Woodstock music festival—which he hated to be asked about but never failed to talk about—was the first falling domino that led to the end of the Vietnam War.
Stepping toward the microphone before the Byrds could launch into “He Was a Friend of Mine”—a traditional folk song that they’d reinterpreted to lament the late JFK—Crosby snuck in a conspiratorial spiel about the real killers on that Dallas afternoon. “When President Kennedy was killed, he was not killed by one man,” he declared, to a somewhat confused audience. “He was shot from a number of different directions, by different guns. The story has been suppressed, witnesses have been killed, and this is your country, ladies and gentlemen.”
Eventually, Crosby’s theory would be supported by a slow trickle of government documents, the work of Oliver Stone and Don DeLillo, and several podcasts recommended by your dad. At that moment, though, his bandmates were mortified. Privately, Byrds leader and guitarist Roger McGuinn agreed there was something to the conspiracy, but he believed the best way for a musician to promote their political ideas was through their music, not by harshing the vibe on stage. The next day, Crosby filled in for an absent Neil Young during Buffalo Springfield’s set, deepening his band’s suspicion that he was growing sick of the Byrds. When everyone reconvened the next month to start work on their next album, it wasn’t long before Crosby instigated another petty fight—the latest in a long, long string of petty fights—forcing McGuinn and bassist Chris Hillman to conclude that change was necessary. After becoming one of the biggest bands in America, the Byrds were beginning to sputter commercially; creatively, they couldn’t get on the same page. The first order of business, clearly, was getting rid of the guy who was writing way too many songs about threesomes. About the day he was officially fired, Crosby would remember nearly a decade later that “Roger and Chris drove up in a pair of Porsches and said that I was crazy, impossible to work with, an ego-manic—all of which is partly true—that I sang shitty, wrote terrible songs, made horrible sounds, and that they would do much better without me.”
Just two years earlier, the Byrds—composed initially of McGuinn, Crosby, Hillman, singer/songwriter Gene Clark, and drummer Michael Clarke—had achieved instant fame by becoming the first American act to marry the fizzy energy of the Beatles and the British Invasion with the reverential harmonies of the folkies. Their debut single, an electrified version of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” had shot to No. 1 on the charts and placed them at the center of the Hollywood scene, where they held court for celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Jane Fonda at the buzzy Los Angeles night club Ciro’s. The appellation “folk rock” was instantly coined by Billboard to describe their sound, built around a catalog that drew from the works of Dylan and Pete Seeger, and the way McGuinn seemed to evoke the bloom of spring with every strum of his 12-string Rickenbacker guitar. They also connected on another important, primordial level: being very cool. “Not to be too shallow, but they also were just the best-dressed band around,” Tom Petty once wrote for Rolling Stone. “They had those great clothes and hairdos. That counted for something even then.” Michael Clarke had been recruited for his resemblance to Brian Jones, which overruled the fact that he didn’t own a drum kit.
But musical trends moved lightning fast during this period, and by the time Crosby was fired in 1967, the Byrds already seemed like yesterday’s news. (An essay on the back cover of a Greatest Hits LP, released that summer, noted that their impact had come “three or four generations ago.”) Their Los Angeles fanbase had gravitated toward the Doors, who openly embraced the carnal extravagance of sex and drugs that was at inherent odds with the Byrds’ utopian invocation of sex and drugs—so much that singer Jim Morrison was unafraid to literally take his penis out at concerts. They’d worn out their repertoire of Dylan covers, which were especially redundant now that Dylan himself had gone electric and begun to reject his entire folkie mythology. Gene Clark had quit in 1966, defeated by his fear of flying. And now that the mobs of adoring women were beginning to shrink, Michael Clarke—who had never become that great of a drummer—seemed to have a foot out of the door.
The Summer of Love was over, and winter approached. The revolutionary aspirations of the political left, and the bohemian idealism of the hippies, had not transformed the American people. Soon, the electorate would turn away from the Great Society imagined by Lyndon B. Johnson and toward the paranoid indulgences of the Nixonites. And though it remained unpopular, the government would further commit to the morally catastrophic Vietnam War, sacrificing thousands more American and Vietnamese lives for the false cause of anti-communism.
This darkening mood, coupled with the band’s search for clarity, would fuel the Byrds’ fifth and best album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers. The recording had started not long after the Monterey debacle, with Crosby, not yet fired, angling more intensely for his songs to take precedence. Crosby was the resident enfant terrible, the LA-born son of an Oscar-winning cinematographer who’d given up a child for adoption in his early 20s. He wore a perpetually knowing smirk that, even in his babyfaced years, seemed to telegraph his interest in walking on the wild side—a self-fulfilling prophecy that would bear out over the next several decades as he went to jail for cocaine possession, became a sperm donor to Melissa Etheridge and her partner, and tweeted a lot about his sex life. Though he was a born provocateur, he had a natural instinct for constructing angelic harmony vocals, magnifying his bandmates’ austere voices into a powerful choir. At the same time, he’d grown into a more bullish songwriter, thrusting his songs onto the band’s LPs whether or not anyone else liked them. (Everyone hated the interminable “Mind Gardens,” from their fourth album Younger Than Yesterday, which is really saying something considering how much acid they were taking.)
Regardless of his conspicuous personal shortcomings, Crosby was the most attuned to how the kids were processing the fissures spreading throughout polite society, a perspective he increasingly inhabited in his songwriting. One of the many new songs he’d written for the band was “Tribal Gathering,” inspired by a jam-packed hippie festival called the Easter Sunday Love-In at Los Angeles’ Elysian Park, where he crooned about vibing with a faceless crowd of free spirits over a swinging jazz beat from Michael Clarke. Hillman had stepped up as a backing vocalist after Gene Clark left the band, and he sang in a bluegrassy baritone better suited for low harmonies, lending an air of perfumed mystery to Crosby’s wandering lyrics. As McGuinn scribbles off some languid guitar leads over the chorus, the rhythm section suddenly roars into a thick groove, conjuring the jet engine rumble of a potent trip. The Byrds rarely made explicit reference to illegal substances in their lyrics, but they were often stoned; they’d actually purchased their own Winnebago RV for touring, so they could smoke pot while traveling between shows. Though they couldn’t say it out loud given the social stigma, they made music to take drugs to, and much of The Notorious Byrd Brothers zips with the airy energy found after lighting up a joint on a bright day.
Crosby also brought in a song called “Draft Morning,” which McGuinn and Hillman agreed was the best of his tracks. After pushing him out they decided to record it anyway, but because they couldn’t exactly remember the lyrics they improvised their own verses and didn’t even write a chorus. Though they kept his credit, Crosby was understandably pissed off when it showed up on the record; still, it’s the most beautiful song he ever contributed to the Byrds. As McGuinn and Hillman chose to finish it off, “Draft Morning” is cinematic in its telling of a soldier ambling through the Vietnam jungle, the sun hot on his face, anticipating the moment he’ll have to break the tranquil morning and kill an enemy combatant. Michael Clarke, who’d managed to get it together for the session, opens up with a crescendo of cymbal crashes that give way to a serene arrangement, guided by Hillman’s loping basslines and McGuinn’s high, keening vocals. The peaceful atmosphere is interrupted by a cacophony of skronking instrumentation, meant to simulate the horrors of combat, contributed by a chaotic improvisational troupe from the radical Los Angeles scene called the Firesign Theatre. The anti-war movement would become a fixture of late-’60s pop music, but the Byrds’ take isn’t gimmicky or confrontational; it reaches for rare empathy with the occupying soldier, statistically likely to be a confused teenager conscripted into fighting and dying for an unethical war.
While Crosby was still in the band, he was pointedly irate over the idea that the Byrds might record material by outside writers, as they had on all their records, since he was coming up with his best work. When producer Gary Usher floated the idea of trying out some songs by the Brill Building songwriting duo Gerry Goffin and Carole King, he was the one member who refused outright, dismissing them as pop schmaltz. With respect to the late Crosby’s ego, he was completely off the mark. By 1967, Goffin and King had spent nearly a decade writing dozens of hit singles that perfectly articulated the inner lives of millions of American listeners. “Goin’ Back” was first recorded in 1966 as a slow, orchestral ballad by Dusty Springfield—perhaps that’s why Crosby balked, but the underlying songwriting was remarkably flexible. After the Byrds reentered the studio without the irascible guitarist, they stripped down the stately arrangement and enlisted pedal steel expert Orville “Red” Rhodes to add a touch of pastoral twang.
McGuinn was an unusually grounded bandleader, a devout Christian who in his mid-20s had already rejected the excesses of rock’n’roll, and embraced family life. Unlike rock contemporaries such as Lennon, Jagger, and Morrison, he was not a forceful singer—he possessed a tender, kind voice that seemed to glide for miles with the softest push. His emotional instincts were contemplative, a sensibility that fueled the anti-war and pro-nature songs they were gravitating toward. On Younger Than Yesterday, they’d been coaxed by management into recording a serviceable but uninspiring cover of Dylan’s “My Back Pages,” a defiant song about rejecting the strident beliefs of adulthood and embracing more elemental truths about life. Now, they strummed a similar guitar pattern, pitched downward ever so subtly as if to communicate their matured understanding of what this rediscovery process actually entailed, to open their take on King and Goffin’s song: “I think I’m returning to/The days when I was young enough to know the truth.”
While thematically similar, “My Back Pages” is flecked with anger and defiance. The Byrds were more temperamentally aligned with Goffin and King’s lyrics, which reach for subtle revelations: They look backwards in order to move forward, and they find a fuller appreciation of life in the here and now. “Thinking young and growing older is no sin/And I can play the game of life to win,” McGuinn sings, his voice wistful and forlorn, as if he’s unlocked something profound about how to approach the future while also coming to terms with how much time has already gone by. There’s a gentle, dreamy momentum to his and Hillman’s playing, and as they sing about tapping into this reservoir of youthful perspective, their voices flower into a gorgeous la-la-la harmony, levitating their earthly concerns toward the heavenly unknown.
By the band’s own account, Gary Usher was the first producer who seemed interested in nudging them toward new artistic frontiers, rather than generating as much material as they could. (Their first four albums had been released in a blistering 20-month stretch.) With so many band members coming and going—Gene Clark even returned for a brief spell, only to disappear just as fast—the producer was empowered to experiment as much as possible. He employed some neat studio tricks, like connecting two eight-track recording machines so that the band could double the instrumentation and effects on any given song. For “Artificial Energy,” the crackling opener about the perils of taking speed, he ran McGuinn and Hillman’s vocals through a Leslie organ speaker in order to make them vibrate, as the Beatles had done on “Tomorrow Never Knows”; you can feel the nerves and jitters of the lyrics, which describe the miserable experience of being way too stoned on an airplane. He pushed them to futz more with the Moog synthesizer, a then-novel piece of equipment used heavily on the hallucinatory “Space Odyssey,” where McGuinn, inspired by an Arthur C. Clarke story, fantasizes about taking a trip to the stars.
By the time the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in May of 1967, rock bands had begun to conceive of their albums as unified statements rather than a collection of disparate singles, and Usher’s best idea concerned the sequencing. Much of The Notorious Byrd Brothers feels like one unending track, as the middle section was edited so that each song would flow directly into the next with no pause. The cosmic frippery of “Natural Harmony,” Hillman’s one solo contribution, is suddenly brought to earth by the opening cymbals of “Draft Morning,” whose meditative outro slowly breaks into the jaunty pace of “Wasn’t Born to Follow,” another Goffin-King song.
Though this wasn’t necessarily their intention, it takes on the shape of a concept record about one man’s journey to find authentic meaning within tumultuous times: He embraces the wonder of nature and love, only to be sent into war, which disrupts his inner peace and makes him realize he isn’t meant to take orders about how to live his life. Maybe he’ll go back to taking speed; maybe he’ll exit society, and move to a commune. But after the band freaks out in the middle of “Wasn’t Born to Follow,” they settle back into a pleasant rhythm as McGuinn sings about the many astonishing things—the sacred mountains, the glowing moon, the clear and jeweled waters—that he’d like to see while he’s still alive. As he’s imagining all this, a door slams shut and our imaginary narrator doubles back to catch a plane to London on “Get to You,” ready to recommit to love rather than roam the world alone. Hal Blaine, a fixture during these sessions, undergirds McGuinn’s affecting vocal performance with an insistent 5/4 drum beat that builds a sense of anticipation, as if our traveler is watching the clock tick down at the airport, waiting for the moment he’ll soar through the skies.
The album’s most transformative moment happens midway through “Change Is Now,” where McGuinn—whose playing had become increasingly influenced by John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar, the latter of whom he would introduce to George Harrison—uncorks a wonderfully psychedelic guitar solo that sounds like some strange thing trying to break free from a chrysalis. This hard-won triumph is immediately followed by the galloping “Old John Robertson,” which is notable for a bunch of reasons: Crosby, not Hillman, plays a nimble bassline; the momentum is abruptly broken by an interlude of strings, the first the Byrds had intentionally deployed them on record; Gary Usher slapped a flange effect on the second half of the song, which in layman’s terms made everything sound real spacey and weird. But “Old John Robertson,” whose storybook lyrics describe an aging cowboy that everyone makes fun of, also just sounds free, coming after that transformative chrysalis moment. They pursue spiritual enlightenment on “Change Is Now”; unburdened of their woes and faced with miles of metaphorical hills and fields, they begin to sprint as though the day might never end.
Upon release in January 1968, The Notorious Byrd Brothers was well-received by critics; Robert Christgau called it “simply the best album the Byrds have ever recorded.” It failed to halt their commercial freefall, however, nor did it provide a measure of clarity about the band’s future. After entering the studio as a four-piece, they exited as the duo of McGuinn and Hillman, having decided to fire Michael Clarke due to his technical and personal inconsistency. (In the end, he’d played on just five of the record’s 11 songs.) They started planning a quick follow-up, one that McGuinn intended to encompass the evolution of American music: folk and bluegrass, psychedelia and jazz, country-western and rock’n’roll, and the nascent electronic sound they’d explored with Gary Usher. Working in an era when rock was not yet an endlessly commodified, billion-dollar industry, McGuinn could never pick just one identity or sound for the Byrds. But while they were recruiting new members, they fell in with a charismatic 21-year-old named Gram Parsons, who shortly convinced the band to go all-in on country.
Inspired by Dylan once again, they moved down to Nashville in the spring of 1968 to record Sweetheart of the Rodeo, an artistic masterpiece but total chart failure that was not only reviled by the country establishment, but further distanced themselves from the hip rock scene. Not long after, Hillman would join Parsons in forming the Flying Burrito Brothers, leaving McGuinn behind as the only original member. The reconstituted Byrds carried on for a few more years, morphing into a lean country-rock live act and cranking out a handful of OK-to-forgettable albums—one of which included the theme song for the groundbreaking New Hollywood film Easy Rider, in which actors Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda respectively based their wayward protagonists on Crosby and McGuinn. Finally, in 1973, the original members would reunite for what turned out to be a dismal self-titled record—produced by Crosby, who provided the exact level of behind-the-boards stability and maturity you might expect—before calling it quits for good, less than a decade after releasing “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
But something lived on, beyond their own discography: What McGuinn would offhandedly call “the jingle-jangle thing” influenced a gigantic family tree of artists topped by superstars like Tom Petty and R.E.M., and stretching all the way to 21st-century bands like Beach Fossils and the Clientele. (Peter Buck’s playing seems so obviously beholden to McGuinn that an extraordinarily inconsequential claim to make after drinking two beers is that without the Byrds, the entirety of college rock—and, from it, indie rock—wouldn’t exist.) The Byrds themselves, though, would be relatively muted presences in contemporary pop culture. Gene Clark and Michael Clarke would both die young in the early 1990s, permanently foreclosing the possibility of any more reunions of the original lineup. Crosby, who died earlier this year, would become far more associated with the supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, his legal troubles, and his Twitter account. McGuinn and Hillman released many more records, and are even active on social media, but their new work doesn’t garner much mainstream attention, and hasn’t in a long time.
Perhaps that’s a facile and clinical way to think about art—to judge it by the amount of press coverage, tweets, and Spotify monthly listeners—but as culture has continued to cannibalize nostalgia for classic rock bands, it feels notable that the Byrds themselves haven’t benefited from the same wave of retroactive goodwill. You can float your own guesses why, but here are some: They never rocked as hard; they never had a cool logo; they never had one singular frontman who developed a cult of personality; their shifting sound made it difficult for them to become an easily reducible brand to later generations; they lacked one mammoth single to endure across eras of rock radio and pop culture soundtrack placements like “Stairway to Heaven” or “Won’t Get Fooled Again”; their interpersonal drama was too uncontroversial (even Crosby admits he was a giant jerk, and Hillman and McGuinn seem to agree on how everything else went down); the records were too aesthetically indebted to the 1960s, and just don’t sound as good to modern ears.
But the ease with which McGuinn and Hillman appear to have welcomed their trajectories raises another question: Well, who cares? More meaningful than any made-up benchmarks of success is their embrace of change—not only in the way they shuffled through musical styles, but in life itself. Despite all of the adventurous and fascinating work that followed, their defining statement is from the early years, when they were still packing the room at Ciro’s. In 1959, Pete Seeger had taken a verse from the Book of Ecclesiastes and turned it into a ruminative folk song. “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” which got the full-blown folk-rock treatment from the Byrds into something both upbeat and introspective, is still moving in its sincerity and its call for genuine reflection about the passage of time. It’s a message that resonates through the band’s winding, open-hearted catalog and a lesson that came into clear focus on The Notorious Byrd Brothers. There is a season for all things—a time to be born, and a time to die—and accepting this can give you the confidence to move through the world and all its insurmountable realities, open-eyed and unafraid about what comes next.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this review misidentified producer Gary Usher as Greg Usher in one instance. It also credited Hal Blaine as the drummer on “Tribal Gethering,” It was Michael Clarke. | 2023-04-23T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-04-23T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Columbia | April 23, 2023 | 9.1 | 1daf0a4c-bc11-4b95-844c-79478eb7f9aa | Jeremy Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jeremy-gordon/ | |
Never did Kate Bush sound more grounded, more in control of her songwriting than on her sixth album from 1989, featuring stories that play out like intimate vignettes rather than fantastical fairy tales. | Never did Kate Bush sound more grounded, more in control of her songwriting than on her sixth album from 1989, featuring stories that play out like intimate vignettes rather than fantastical fairy tales. | Kate Bush: The Sensual World | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kate-bush-the-sensual-world/ | The Sensual World | Kate Bush had already set Molly Bloom’s breathless soliloquy from the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses to music when she discovered she couldn’t use it. Without his estate’s permission, and after his grandson snubbed her requests for a year, she rewrote it in her own words. By the time she’d finished, the title track to Kate Bush’s sixth album wasn’t just Molly’s memory of an erotic frisson: It was the sound of her busting out of her prison, her coming-of-age transformed into a coming-off-the-page.
It might seem like an uncanny echo of her debut single—another literary character overcome by desire, fantasizing about rolling around in fields—but Bush wasn’t the same singer who’d loaded the gothic romance of “Wuthering Heights” with the life-and-death fervor of teenage lust. “Someone said in your teens, you get the physical puberty, and between 28 and 32, mental puberty,” she said in 1989. “It does make you feel differently.”
The Sensual World is not a work of po-faced realism or post-Neverland dowdiness. Bush sings about falling in love with a computer, dressing up as a firework, and dancing with a dictator. She’s still in thrall to love, lust, loneliness, passion, pain, and pleasure. And she’s still fond of strange noises; listen closely to the title track and you might hear her brother, Paddy, swishing a fishing rod through the air.
But she’d never sounded more grounded than she did on these 10 songs, most of which are about regular people in regular messes, not disturbed governesses, paranoid Russian wives or terrified fetuses. It was, she said, her most honest, personal album, and its stories play out like intimate vignettes rather than fantastical fairy tales. Unlike the otherworldly synth-pop-prog she pioneered on 1985’s Hounds of Love, she used her beloved Fairlight CMI to produce lusher, mellow textures, complemented by the warm, earthy thrum of Irish folk instruments and the pretty violins and violas of England’s classical bad boy, Nigel Kennedy. Even the album’s artwork depicted a less playful, more serious Bush than the one who’d fondled Harry Houdini on 1982’s The Dreaming and cuddled dogs on Hounds of Love.
There’s no Hounds-style grand narrative thread on The Sensual World. Bush likened it to a volume of short stories, with its subjects frequently wrestling with who they were, who they are, and who they want to be. She was able to pour some of her own frustrations into these knotty tussles: She found it more difficult than ever to write songs, couldn’t work out what she wanted them to say, and hit roadblock after roadblock. The 12 months she spent pestering Joyce’s grandson were surpassed by the maddening two years she spent on “Love and Anger,” which, fittingly, finds her tormented by an old trauma she can’t bring herself to talk about. But by the end, she banishes the evil spirits by leading her band in something that sounds like a raucous exorcism, chanting, “Don’t ever think you can’t change the past and the future” over squalling guitars.
Even its most surreal songs are rooted in self-examination. “Heads We’re Dancing” seems like a dark joke—a young girl is charmed on to the dancefloor by a man she later learns is Adolf Hitler—but poses a troubling question: What does it say about you, if you couldn’t see through the devil’s disguise? Its discordant, skronky rhythms make it feel like a formal ball taking place in a fever dream, and Bush’s voice grows increasingly panicky as she realizes how badly she’s been duped. As far-fetched as its premise was, its inspiration lay close to home: A family friend had told Bush how shaken they’d been after they’d taken a shine to a dashing stranger at a dinner party, only to find out they’d been chatting to Robert Oppenheimer.
It’s more fanciful than most of The Sensual World’s little secrets. To hear someone recall formative childhood truths (the lush grandeur of “Reaching Out”) and lingering romantic pipedreams (the longing of “Never Be Mine”) is like being given a reel of their memory tapes and discovering what makes them tick. On “The Fog,” she’s paralyzed by fear until she remembers the childhood swimming lessons her father gave her, his voice cutting through the misty harps like an old ghost. Relationships on the album can be sticky and thorny. “Between a Man and a Woman” is half-dangerous and half-sultry, its snaking rhythms mirroring the round-in-circles squabbling of a couple. When a third party tries to interfere, they’re told to back off. This time, unlike on “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” there’s no point wishing for a helping hand from God.
But if there are no miracles, there are at least songs that sound like them. For “Rocket’s Tail,” Bush enlisted the help of Trio Bulgarka, who she fell in love with after hearing them on a tape Paddy gave her. The three Bulgarian women didn’t speak English and had no idea what they were singing about, but it didn’t matter. They sound more like mystics during its a capella first half, and when it eventually blows up into a glammy stomper with Dave Gilmour’s electric guitar caterwauling like a Catherine wheel, their vocals still come out on top: cackling like gleeful witches, whooping like they’re watching sparks explode in the night sky. Its weird, wonderful magic offered a simple message: Life is short, so enjoy moments of pleasure before they fizzle out.
Perhaps that’s why there are glimmers of hope even in the album’s most desperate circumstances. “Deeper Understanding” is a bleak sci-fi tale about a lonely person who turns to their computer for comfort, and in doing so isolates themselves even more. But while there’s an icy chill to the verses, Trio Bulgarka imbue the computer’s voice with golden warmth. Bush wanted it to sound like the “visitation of angels,” and hearing the chorus is like being wrapped in a celestial hug. She pulls off a similar trick on “This Woman’s Work,” which she wrote for John Hughes’ film She’s Having a Baby, although her vivid, devastating interpretation of its script has taken on a far greater life of its own. It captures a moment of crisis: a man about to be walloped with the sledgehammer of parental responsibilities, frozen by terror as he waits for his pregnant wife outside the delivery room, his brain a messy spiral of regrets and guilty thoughts. Yet Bush softens the song’s building panic attack with soft musical touches so it rushes and swirls like a dream, even as reality becomes a waking nightmare. “It’s the point where has to grow up,” said Bush. “He’d been such a wally.”
She didn’t need to prove her own steeliness to anyone, especially the male journalists who patronized her and harped on her childishness as a way of cutting her down to size. Instead, The Sensual World is the sound of someone deciding for themselves what growing up and grown-up pop should be, without being beholden to anyone else’s tedious definitions. It gave her a new template for the next two decades, inspiring both the smooth, stylish art-rock of 1993’s The Red Shoes and the picturesque beauty of 2005’s Aerial. Like Molly Bloom, Bush had set herself free into a world that wasn’t mundane, but alive with new, fertile possibility. | 2019-01-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-01-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | EMI | January 19, 2019 | 9.4 | 1daf4638-aace-4cd7-bbe7-892e5a65565c | Ben Hewitt | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-hewitt/ | |
Upon its release in 1977, Rumours, now reissued as a 4xCD/DVD/LP box set featuring live recordings, alternate mixes, and studio outtakes, became the fastest selling LP of all time, moving 800,000 copies per week at its height. Its success made Fleetwood Mac a cultural phenomenon and also set a template for pop with a gleaming surface that has something complicated, desperate, and dark resonating underneath. | Upon its release in 1977, Rumours, now reissued as a 4xCD/DVD/LP box set featuring live recordings, alternate mixes, and studio outtakes, became the fastest selling LP of all time, moving 800,000 copies per week at its height. Its success made Fleetwood Mac a cultural phenomenon and also set a template for pop with a gleaming surface that has something complicated, desperate, and dark resonating underneath. | Fleetwood Mac: Rumours | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17499-rumours/ | Rumours | Fleetwood Mac's Rumours would never be just an album. Upon its release in 1977, it became the fastest-selling LP of all time, moving 800,000 copies per week at its height, and its success made Fleetwood Mac a cultural phenomenon. The million-dollar record that took a year and untold grams to complete became a totem of 1970s excess, rock'n'roll at its most gloriously indulgent. It was also a bellwether of glimmering Californian possibility, the permissiveness and entitlement of the 70s done up in heavy harmonies. By the time it was made, the personal freedoms endowed by the social upheaval of the 60s had unspooled into unfettered hedonism. As such, it plays like a reaping: a finely polished post-hippie fallout, unaware that the twilight hour of the free love era was fixing and there would be no going back. In 1976, there was no knowledge of AIDS, Reagan had just left the governor's manse, and people still thought of cocaine as non-addictive and strictly recreational. Rumours is a product of that moment and it serves as a yardstick by which we measure just how 70s the 70s were.
And then there's the album's influence. Though it was seen as punk's very inverse, Rumours has enjoyed a long trickle-down of influence starting from the alt-rock-era embrace via Billy Corgan and Courtney Love to the harmonies and choogling of Bonnie "Prince" Billy and the earthier end of Beach House. Rumours set a template for pop with a gleaming surface that has something complicated, desperate, and dark resonating underneath.
Setting aside the weight of history, listening to Rumours is an easy pleasure. Records with singles that never go away tend to evoke nostalgia for the time when the music soundtracked your life; in this case, you could've never owned a copy of it and still know almost every song. When you make an album this big, your craft is, by default, accessibility. But this wasn't generic pabulum. It was personal. Anyone could find a piece of themselves within these songs of love and loss.
Two years prior to recording Rumours, though, Fleetwood Mac was approximately nowhere. In order to re-establish the group's flagging stateside reputation, in early 1974 Fleetwood Mac's drummer and band patriarch, Mick Fleetwood, keyboardist/singer Christine McVie, and her husband, bassist John McVie, moved from England to Los Angeles. The quartet was then helmed by their fifth and least-dazzling guitarist, the American Bob Welch. Not long after the band's British faction had relocated, Welch quit the band. Around the same time Mick Fleetwood was introduced to the work of local duo, Buckingham Nicks, who'd just been dropped by Polydor. The drummer was enchanted by Lindsey Buckingham's guitar work and Nicks' complete package, and when Welch quit, he offered them a spot in the band outright.
The group, essentially a new band under an old name, quickly cut 1975's self-titled Fleetwood Mac, an assemblage of Christine McVie's songs and tracks Buckingham and Nicks had intended for their second album, including the eventual smash "Rhiannon". It was a huge seller in its own right and they were now a priority act given considerable resources. But by the time they booked two months at Record Plant in Sausalito to record the follow-up, the band's personal bonds were frayed, there was serious resentment and constant drama. Nicks had just broken up with Buckingham after six years of domestic and creative partnership. Fleetwood's wife was divorcing him, and the McVies were separated and no longer speaking.
While Fleetwood Mac was a bit of a mash-up of existing work, Lindsey Buckingham effectively commandeered the band for Rumours, giving their sound a radio-ready facelift. He redirected John McVie and Fleetwood's playing from blues past towards the pop now. Fleetwood Mac wanted hits and gave the wheel to Buckingham, a deft craftsman with a vision for what the album had to become.
He opens the record with the libidinous "Second Hand News", inspired by the redemption Buckingham was finding in new women, post-Stevie. It was the album's first single and also perhaps the most euphoric ode to rebound chicks ever written. Buckingham's "bow-bow-bow-doot-doo-diddley-doot" is corny, but it works along with the percussion track (Buckingham played the seat of an office chair after Fleetwood was unable to properly replicate a beat a la the Bee Gees' "Jive Talkin'"). Like "Second Hand News", Buckingham's "Go Your Own Way" is upbeat but totally fuck-you. He croons "shackin' up is all you wanna do,"-- accusing an ex-lover of being a wanton slut on a song where his ex-lover harmonizes on the hook. Save for "Never Going Back Again," (a vintage Buckingham Nicks composition brought in to replace Stevie's too-long "Silver Springs") Buckingham's songs are turnabout as fairplay with lithe guitar glissando on top.
"Second Hand News" is followed by a twist-of-the-knife Stevie-showpiece, "Dreams", a gauzy ballad about what she'd had and what she'd lost with Buckingham. It was written during one of the days where Nicks wasn't needed for tracking. She wrote the song in a few minutes, recorded it onto a cassette, and returned to the studio and demanded the band listen to it. It was a simple ballad that would be finessed into the album's jewel; the quiet vamp laced with laconic Leslie-speaker vibrato and spooky warmth allow Nicks to draw an exquisite sketch of loneliness. "Dreams" would become Fleetwood Mac's only #1 hit.
Though Fleetwood Mac was always the sum of its parts, Nicks was something special both in terms of the band and in rock history. She helped establish a feminine vernacular that was (still) in league with the cock rock of the 70s but didn't present as a diametric vulnerability; it was not innocent. While Janis Joplin and Grace Slick had been rock's most iconic heroines at the tail-end of the 60s, they were very much trying to keep up with boys in their world; Nicks was creating a new space. And Fleetwood Mac was still very much an anomaly, unique in being a rock band fronted by two women who were writing their own material, with Nicks presenting as the girliest bad girl rock'n'roll had seen since Ronnie Spector. She took the stage baring a tambourine festooned with lengths of lavender ribbon; people said she was a witch.
Like her male rock'n'roll peers, Nicks sang songs about the intractable power of a woman (her first hit, "Rhiannon") and used women as a metaphor ("Gold Dust Woman"), but her approach was different. At the time of Rumours' release, she maintained that the latter song was about groupies who would scowl at her and Christine but light up when the guys appeared. She later confessed that it was about cocaine getting the best of her. In 1976, coke was the mise of the scene-- to admit you were growing weary would have been gauche. Nicks' husky voice made it sound like she'd lived and her lyrics-- of pathos, independence, and getting played-- certainly backed it up. She seemed like a real woman-- easy to identify with, but with mystery and a natural glamour worth aspiring to.
It's almost easy to miss Christine McVie for all of Nicks' mystique. McVie had been in the band for years, but never at the helm. Her songs "You Make Lovin' Fun" and "Don't Stop" are pure pep. "Songbird" starts as a plaintive ode of fealty and how total her devotion-- until the sad tell of "And I wish you all the love in the world/ But most of all I wish it from myself," (an especially heart-wrenching line given that McVie's not quite ex-husband was dragging a rebound model chick to the sessions and Christine was sneaking around with a member of the crew). She didn't hate her husband, she adored him, she wished it could work but after years of being in the Mac together, she knew better. Throughout, McVie's songwriting is pure and direct, irrepressibly sweet. "Oh Daddy", a song she wrote about Mick Fleetwood's pending divorce is melancholy but ultimately maintains its dignity. McVie, with typical British reserve, confessed she preferred to leave the bleakness and poesy to her dear friend Stevie.
As much feminine energy as Rumours wields, the album's magic is in its balance: male and female, British blues versus American rock'n'roll, lightness and dark, love and disgust, sorrow and elation, ballads and anthems, McVie's sweetness against Nicks' grit. They were a democratic band where each player raised the stakes of the whole. The addition of Buckingham and Nicks and McVie's new prominence kicked John McVie's bass playing loose from its blues mooring and forced him towards simpler, more buoyant pop. Fleetwood's playing itself is just godhead, with effortless little fills, light but thunderous, and his placement impeccable throughout. The ominous, insistent kick on the first half on "The Chain", for example, colors the song as much as the quiver of disgust in Buckingham's voice when he spits "never."
In the liner notes to the deluxe Rumours 4xCD/DVD/LP box set, Buckingham describes the album-making process as "organic." Rumours is anything but, and that is part of its genius-- it's so flawless it feels far from nature. It is more like a peak human feat of Olympic-level studio craft. It was made better by its myopia and brutal circumstances: the wounded pride of a recently dumped Buckingham, the new hit of "Rhiannon", goading Nicks to fight for inclusion of her own songs, Christine McVie attempting to salve her heart with "Songbird." That Fleetwood Mac had become the biggest record Warner Bros. had ever released while the band was making Rumours allowed for an impossibly long tether for them to dick around and correct the next album until it was immaculate.
Given the standalone nature of Rumours, it's difficult to argue that any other part of the box set is necessary. The live recordings of the Rumours tour are fine, lively even (perhaps owing to Fleetwood rationing a Heineken cap of coke to each band member to power performances). Only a handful of tracks on the two discs of the sessions outtakes lend any greater understanding of the process behind it. One is "Dreams (Take 2)", which is just Nicks voice, some burbling organ, and rough rhythm guitar gives an appreciation of her fundamental talent as well as Buckingham's ability to transform it; it makes the case for how much they needed each other. Another is "Second Hand News (Early Take)", which features Buckingham mumbling lyrics so as not to incense Nicks. The alternate mixes and takes (more phaser! Less Dobro! Take 22!), by the time you make it to disc four, just underscore the fact that Rumours did not hatch as a pristine whole. One does not need three variously funky articulations of Christine's burning "Keep Me There" to comprehend this.
Nevertheless, it is difficult not to buy into the mythology of Rumours both as an album and pop culture artifact: a flawless record pulled from the wreckage of real lives. As one of classic rock's foundational albums, it holds up better than any other commercial smash of that ilk (Hotel California, certainly). We can now use it as a kind of nostalgic benchmark-- that they don't make groups like that anymore, that there is no rock band so palatable that it could be the best-selling album in the U.S. for 31 weeks. Things work differently now. Examined from that angle, Rumours was not exactly a game changer, it was merely perfect. | 2013-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2013-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Rhino / Warner Bros. | February 8, 2013 | 10 | 1db3a253-6c55-4212-a133-7b7c94748573 | Jessica Hopper | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jessica-hopper/ | null |
Armed with a diverse bag of tricks, the 25-year-old L.A. singer offers some of the best R&B of the year on these three fearless EPs. | Armed with a diverse bag of tricks, the 25-year-old L.A. singer offers some of the best R&B of the year on these three fearless EPs. | Miguel: Art Dealer Chic, Vols. 1-3 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16571-art-dealer-chic-vols-1-3/ | Art Dealer Chic, Vols. 1-3 | For much of the past decade, contemporary male R&B has been the genre of the calling card, of familiar songwriting perspectives, sounds, and vocal tics being plumbed by prolific auteurs until a song is unmistakable even on first listen. But the fall in popularity and prolificacy of stalwarts like R. Kelly, The-Dream, and Ne-Yo has dovetailed with R&B's embrace of-- or forced marriage to-- David Guetta's brand of house music, which in turn has elevated safe and malleable singers like Usher and Chris Brown above the genre itself. Even Trey Songz, the current male R&B star who has seen a rise in popularity despite foregoing a move towards dance music, is oppressively vanilla. The niche has been filled partly by rappers like Drake and J. Cole, who let their love of R&B and songwriting seep deep into their music, with the former, of course, often singing himself.
If there's any light in the tunnel, it isn't coming (yet, at least) from artists like the Weeknd and Frank Ocean, both of whom have presented singular points of view, but have only flirted with the radio and are still regarded by mainstream audiences as curios. But there is Miguel, a 25-year-old Los Angeles native who is currently a minor pop star trying to prove his staying power. He isn't a callback, though, to guys like Kelly or The-Dream, who, at least temporarily, reworked the lexicon of R&B. In fact, the most unique and magnetic thing about Miguel's music is how hard it is to pin down, and just how deep and diverse his bag of tricks seems to be. This became starkly obvious on three fantastic singles (released across summer 2010 and spring 2011) from his debut album. "All I Want Is You", the lead, was dark and dusty in a way that recalled when hip-hop and R&B started to approach each other in the 1990s; "Sure Thing", its follow-up and his biggest hit to date, nodded at neo-soul without losing its modernity; and "Quickie" refixed reggae into something distinctly post-coital.
The key with Miguel's music is that nothing comes off as an experiment. Instead, he leaves you with the impression that he loves music and exploring his own mind equally. It's an approach that is refreshingly uncynical, and he carries it over to Art Dealer Chic, his recently released series of EPs. The three volumes comprise nine songs and just about 30 minutes of music, and despite a total throwaway track and two others that he reprises from earlier mixtapes, they contain some of the best R&B music of the year, as well as further evidence that the man with no calling card isn't about to get lost in the shuffle anytime soon. Across the releases he's lovestruck, horny, self-centered, insecure, apocalyptic, and suspicious, and he impressively traverses almost enough sonic territory to match (although Prince does loom large).
Let's hit the showstoppers first. "Adorn", the lead track off volume one, has the slink, sheen, and falsetto of the 1980s, but it's the way in which Miguel cuts through the grinding, whirring bass with radiant backing vocals that makes the song so beguiling. At just over two minutes it's a straight rush of endorphins. Then there's "Arch n Point" and "...ALL", the first two tracks from volume two, which encroach a bit on the Weeknd's cornering of dark, conflicted R&B. The former is the project's sexiest song, with Miguel imagining fishnets and bottle service. It's built on stacked, heavy guitars that he softly ratchets up in intensity toward a subtle climax that indicates a confidence in his own songwriting (a more unsure artist probably would've unleashed an ill-advised solo). "...ALL" is Miguel's take on clubby R&B, but instead of opting for the meathead bleat of Dr. Luke, he dips into organ-house as he finally turns his pen on himself, singing about his thirst for sucess, then questioning whether he's selfish before finally concluding, "fuck it, everybody's selfish."
Volume three doesn't quite scrape those heights, but it shows that Miguel can retain his singularity even when he's at his most referential. "Party Life" is a rather overt homage to Prince's "1999", but the track is constructed and sung in a way that acknowledges the Purple One fandom without donning a white blouse. There's also "Candles in the Sun, Blowin' in the Wind", a political, Marvin Gaye-ish track that wins out over its slight hamhandedness by using the vocabulary of hip-hop and approaching something like political corruption in the first place. The third volume, like the other two, contains one track that isn't up to snuff, and it's only that forgettable one-third that drags the entire collection down.
But the highs here are very high, and in whetting the appetite for his presumably forthcoming sophomore album, Miguel has maybe inadvertently set expectations sky-high. But if there's anyone who can handle it, it's this guy. While his peers are mostly either shamelessly chasing trends or burrowing deep underground, Miguel is straddling the line with songwriting that achieves singularity through its unpredictability. On "…ALL" he belts, "I ain't afraid to fail/ Can't you tell?" and very rarely do you see an artist sum up his or her own appeal so succinctly. Everyone in the major-label music business is scared as hell of failing; Art Dealer Chic is what happens when you're not. What a breath of fresh air. | 2012-05-02T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2012-05-02T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | self-released | May 2, 2012 | 7.8 | 1db76fd2-edb3-49ec-86b1-d22e316f7fb1 | Jordan Sargent | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jordan-sargent/ | null |
This promising project from Toronto is indebted to the atmospheric dream pop of Atlas Sound but manages to carve out its own identity. | This promising project from Toronto is indebted to the atmospheric dream pop of Atlas Sound but manages to carve out its own identity. | Foxes in Fiction: Swung From the Branches | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14385-swung-from-the-branches/ | Swung From the Branches | While people were waiting anxiously for Merriweather Post Pavilion to leak at end of 2008, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound encouraged people to channel their anticipation into creativity. "My advice to those who are so desperate for AC's album to leak is to pick up instruments and make your own version of what you would want it to sound like," he said on his blog. I think Cox might find a kindred spirit in Toronto's Warren Hildebrand, who records as Foxes in Fiction. Not only was Swung From the Branches initially released only on cassette, but with its narcotized indie pop cast and song titles like "15 Ativan (Song for Erika)", "Operating Room", and "Visiting Hours", it almost seems like Hildebrand was making the follow-up to Logos he couldn't wait for.
If Hildebrand learned anything from Cox, it's that it's good to err on the side of generosity. His MySpace page gives an origin story for every track from Swung From the Branches, and the tape itself is a monster to get through-- 22 tracks, 71 minutes, and sequenced more like a hard drive dump than a cohesive first statement. In fact, for the first 20 minutes, you might think Foxes in Fiction were strictly a drone act. It's all pretty (if undistinguished) major-key swells broken up by crumbled drums redolent of Boards of Canada at their most downtempo ("Coffee Cups That Won't Break Down") and culminating in "8/29/91", a seven-minute backdrop for a rambling Bukowksi soliloquy that is somewhat at odds with what is otherwise an hour of almost exclusively serene sounds.
In a vacuum, the static-laced "Mialectric" wouldn't signify a noise-to-signal transition, but within the context of Branches, it's the first sign of the dreamy, lo-fi looped pop that subtly breaks Branches wide open. At first, the reverence in Hildebrand's more traditionally structured pieces can be tough to overlook-- amongst others, the downy prom nighter "Snow Angels" and "Jimi Bleachball" have near-exact DNA matches in certain Deerhunter and Atlas Sound songs. But while his loops have a certain sonic cohesion, ranging in timbre from hollowed synths to springy guitar, the difference lies in their scale and intent. Both "To Go Home" and "Memory Pools" trigger a hypnotic stasis, but the former feels borne of staring into the sun, the latter at a pinwheel. "New Panic Cure" and "15 Ativan (Song for Erika)" also work as two interpretations of the same idea: both find footing into two chords and Hildebrand's washed-out vocals, but the slow-motion arpeggios make "Cure"'s waltz sound of unsettling sedation, whereas the flickering African guitar figure in "15 Ativan" lends a strange optimism into a story of failed overdose.
But for all of Branches' compositional charms, its main draw is something that almost exists outside of the music. Some feel that information overload has robbed the music-making process of mystery, but do you want artists or magicians? Hildebrand is as transparent as it gets. As a lyricist, he prefers function over poetry, but you can find poetry on his Blogger page as well his own mixtapes filled with songs from the exact type of artists you'd expect (Bibio, Benoît Pioulard). And that's the greatest strength of Branches-- it short-circuits the feeling-out process you're used to from new artists and communicates its creator's view of the world directly. It's not always thrilling, but it's consistently absorbing, and for over an hour, you really do get an idea of what's going on in Hildebrand's head. I get the feeling we'll be hearing a lot more of it. | 2010-06-30T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2010-06-30T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Moodgadget | June 30, 2010 | 7.3 | 1db7ca64-07ff-4a87-b2c9-3248d9c8340e | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
Given a leg up by Roc Marciano, the veteran rapper returns with his own take on classic, streetwise East Coast rap: tales of nefarious business delivered in painstaking, and often chilling, detail. | Given a leg up by Roc Marciano, the veteran rapper returns with his own take on classic, streetwise East Coast rap: tales of nefarious business delivered in painstaking, and often chilling, detail. | Knowledge the Pirate: Flintlock | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/knowledge-the-pirate-flintlock/ | Flintlock | Calling yourself the “first gangster to rap over Neptunes beats” is a bold claim—but it’s just one in a series of industry boasts Knowledge the Pirate has amassed in an under-the-radar career that goes back to the 1990s. The rapper, who splits his time between Harlem, Philadelphia, and New Jersey, was originally discovered by Will Smith’s de facto bodyguard, Charlie Mack, in a rap battle. He was flown to Hollywood to attend the Jack the Rapper industry convention, where he impressed new jack swing pioneer Teddy Riley and signed a short-lived deal with Interscope. Knowledge moved on to rhyming over early beats by Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo before Clipse became the Neptunes’ dope boys of choice; he also notched up ghostwriting credits on Will Smith’s Born to Reign. Throughout his musical moves, Knowledge maintained his street reputation, which allowed him to later brag, “I’m a real street dude. I’m not really bullshitting. I took Biggie Smalls’ girl.” But despite having his talent noticed by influential names, Knowledge grew impatient and distanced himself from the music world.
During this hiatus, Knowledge struck up a friendship with Roc Marciano, who persuaded him to pick up the mic again and offered him guest spots on his albums. Roc is now enshrined as the figurehead of a revered strain of East Coast hip-hop that layers shadowy, backstreet vignettes over quietly menacing, soul-sampling production, and it’s this canon of contemporary thug-rap mood music that Knowledge’s long-coming debut, Flintlock, adds to. Roc handles a third of the production duties himself—along with dropping a guest verse on the celebratory, almost gloating “Cant Get Enough”—and the rest comes courtesy of in-camp allies Elemnt and Mushroom Jesus. Together, they create a grainy, soul-saturated backdrop that complements Knowledge’s gravel-voiced dispatches from the crime world.
Knowledge’s declarative style is key to Flintlock’s appeal. He’s like a beat reporter: There is no room in his lyrics for overly tricksy wordplay or abstract ambiguity, just the cold restatement of facts detailing various nefarious and often brutal situations. If Roc Marciano is the slick-talking one in the room, Knowledge is the guy who very clearly warns everyone else what will happen if things do not go precisely to plan. There’s an ellipsis of violence in the steady tone of his voice even when he’s not documenting specific acts of retribution.
Case in point: “Wrinkled Feathers” is bedded by an Elemnt beat that mixes sinewy organ lines with flashes of guitar twangs as Knowledge introduces himself, “Hand on my nine while I’m taking these orders.” He proceeds to deliver the latest report: “So many died swimming in these waters/They found that nigga last night, body parts stuffed in the storage/Now his team is stagnant and dormant/When they seen it on the news that that nigga was a government informant.” Going forward, Knowledge mandates his team carry out background checks before striking up new business relationships. It’s a logical solution to a dramatic scenario.
The absence of gangsterized flights of fancy stamps Flintlock with an authentic feel. The understated way Knowledge relays tales of firearms and contraband—and alludes to the morals of the hustling game—heightens the tension. On the bluesy “Beers, Bullets & Bloodshed” he shows a keen eye for sketching a crime scene. A pit stop at a bar unravels to reveal a “musketeer over there standing on the stairs”; the young guns sitting at the back of the bar swigging vodka, we learn, are plotting to “knock ’em out they rocking chairs.” The nervy setup unfurls like a camera slowly panning to illuminate the scenario in painstaking detail. It’s this steady, mature hand that ultimately defines Flintlock—and gives credence to the potential that the Neptunes and Teddy Riley saw all those years ago. | 2018-08-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-08-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Treasure Chest Entertainment | August 16, 2018 | 7.1 | 1db86b1a-dce5-491a-8c16-1ee714e2b5ba | Phillip Mlynar | https://pitchfork.com/staff/phillip-mlynar/ | |
The Chicago rapper’s second album is a transcendent coming-of-age tale built around cosmic jazz and neo-soul, delivered by a woman deeply invested in her interiority and that of the world around her. | The Chicago rapper’s second album is a transcendent coming-of-age tale built around cosmic jazz and neo-soul, delivered by a woman deeply invested in her interiority and that of the world around her. | Noname: Room 25 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/noname-room-25/ | Room 25 | If Noname’s 2016 debut Telefone was the musings of a young woman trying to write her way into a sense of place and self, then Room 25 is the blazing soliloquy that spills out after putting the pen down to live a life. Almost immediately, we’re met with one of the greatest lines of the year: “My pussy teachin’ ninth-grade English/My pussy wrote a thesis on colonialism.” It goes on, a modern coming-of-age tale, the now 27-year-old rapper examining her triumphs and shortcomings with sharp commentary. Acutely aware of her fallibility as both subject and narrator, she avoids falling into the trap of painting a blemish-free portrait of herself. And it's this sincerity that allows her music to connect: cheap perfection may go down easy, but sitting with the truth is transcendent.
Reared in Chicago's poetry community, Fatimah Warner’s flows are less breakneck spitter and more delicate spoken word—soothing but imbued with purpose, soft but commanding. On Room 25, she enlists fellow Chicagoan and frequent collaborator Phoelix, whose resonant live production bathes Noname's lyrics in a haze of cosmic jazz and smooth neo-soul. When she raps “Somebody hit D'Angelo/I think I need him for this one” on the vulnerable “Don't Forget About Me,” it solidifies the connection between generations of organic, mindful, black music: Room 25 is the stylistic lovechild of Common’s Like Water for Chocolate and Erykah Badu’s Mama's Gun—genre-marrying albums as transformative for listeners as they were the artists that created them.
With this record, Noname takes a metamorphic period in her life and shapes it into music. She details the courage of allowing a lover to trace the geography of her body and the heartbreak that followed; the gratification of realizing of a dream and the responsibilities that came with it. She is an enigma parading as an open book, and the details she chooses to divulge seem to hide as much as they reveal. But in the absence of oversharing, there is something universal in her work. She fashions herself an everywoman, and her words become scripture for simply moving through it.
On the charged “Blaxploitation,” she takes the broken politics of the country to task in a flurry of multisyllabic rhymes. She opens her verse breathlessly: “Penny proud, penny petty, pissing off Betty the boop,” the consonants falling on top of each other. The production, a looping confection of funky drums and bass, is the kind of beat that is constructed for the sole purpose of showcasing how Noname can punish it into submission. Quotes from ’70s films Dolemite and The Spook Who Sat by the Door surround her on either side. Along with the more mellow “Prayer Song,” it is the most explicitly political moment on an album that is powered more by subtle observation than outright attacks. She seems to smile and wink through lines, sometimes belying the gravity of them. “I’m struggling to simmer down, maybe I'm an insomni-black,” she suggests, her voice sounding like she just delivered the punchline of a joke that wasn’t really a joke.
But Noname isn’t laying claim to any “woke” labels just yet. She can do the bravado thing with the best of them or take off her cool and catch an orgasm or two. Her multitudes give her depth—something real for us to latch on to. “Ace” is a good ol’ fashioned victory lap for a trio of Chicago rappers who, over the past few years, have seen their star power continue to grow; Smino's soulful vocals on the hook bend the track towards R&B, while Noname and Saba snap back with verses celebrating their personal successes and that of other artists coming from their hometown.
The sunny “Montego Bae” also stands out as one of only a few truly lighthearted moments on an album of humble prayers and solemn reflection. Chicago singer Ravyn Lenae's voice flutters atop the keys, percussion, and low end, as she and Noname fantasize about a Caribbean fling. Evidence of Noname's sexual awakening is on proud display here: “I know my nigga like me, I know he cook his curry spicy/I know he eat me like I'm wifey, you know my hotel over-pricey/So he gon' fuck me like I'm Oprah.” Still, the sting of heartbreak lingers. Sometimes it comes out as fiery barbs (as on “Self”) and sometimes it’s more matter-of-fact. “I know you never loved me but I fucked you anyway/I guess a bitch like to gamble, I guess a bitch like to lonely,” she confesses on the radiant “Window.”
Through the existential dread of “Don't Forget About Me,” she grapples with immortality and the feeling that some demons follow you no matter where you go: “Welcome to Beverly Hills/Welcome to Vicodin, I took the pills/I think they save lives.” What is pain is also affirmation—her best and only proof that we are not alone in the dark. And in the album’s final minutes, she finds some semblance of peace. She is reborn on the guitar and piano-laden track “no name,” clear-eyed and steady, exposing the things that make her unbreakable and reminding us that after a tumultuous year on the road and a personal transformation, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.
Noname doesn't exist in contrast to other popular women rappers or to the narratives of violence that have plagued her hometown. She's not interested in exceptionalism, only in her interiority and that of the world around her. And Room 25 reconciles expectation with result, the choice of others versus self. It's the kind of album you make when a new place and a fragile heart threatens to unravel you and when you inevitably cobble back together the pieces that, it turns out, were never lost. She relieves herself of the need to answer her own tough questions—about her career, her relationships, about who she is as a person—and allows herself a gentle acceptance. Room 25 is quarter-life crisis turned breakthrough, a balm through which Noname offers a taste of the simple sort of heaven that she's still searching for herself. | 2018-09-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-09-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | self-released | September 19, 2018 | 8.6 | 1dbedaf5-44aa-4ea4-b68f-88c70b8e5f24 | Briana Younger | https://pitchfork.com/staff/briana-younger/ | |
The New Jersey rapper returns with a supreme sense of confidence. He glides effortlessly over grainy beats, putting his skill for meandering but meticulous raps on full display. | The New Jersey rapper returns with a supreme sense of confidence. He glides effortlessly over grainy beats, putting his skill for meandering but meticulous raps on full display. | Mach-Hommy: #RICHAXXHAITIAN | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mach-hommy-richaxxhaitian/ | #RICHAXXHAITIAN | Mach-Hommy has accomplished a rare form of anonymity in the digital age. He’s rarely seen without a mask or Haitian flag bandana adorning his face, plus it’s borderline impossible to find his government name online. But even in candid moments, he keeps his cards close. Mach’s virtual listening event for #RICHAXXHAITIAN, which was designed to welcome listeners into his world, felt shrouded in intentional secrecy: A pair of streams that ran the album once, with no fast-forwarding or rewinding available, no lyrics provided, and buffering and skipping to be expected. The brand of confidentiality he’s built as part of his public persona—marked by a refusal to explain himself, instead letting his knowledge and skill say it all—is akin to a tenured professor who is allergic to slowing down as they blister through lectures. Only if you engage with the material with attention and care will the image of Mach become a little clearer.
#RICHAXXHAITIAN is Mach’s first solo venture in nearly three years, since the critically acclaimed Pray for Haiti and Balens Cho (Hot Candles) dropped in 2021. The list of collaborators is packed with familiar faces: Fellow underground darlings, like Sadhugold, Conductor Williams, and Quelle Chris, help out on production duties, while Tha God Fahim, Your Old Droog, and other guests contribute verses. But the close-knit circle doesn’t mean Mach needs to rely on old tricks; instead, he’s thrillingly meticulous, putting his talent for daisy-chaining raps and concepts on full display. #RICHAXXHAITIAN is his most expansive project since 2016’s HBO (Haitian Body Odor); it’s an opus executed with a level of precision that’s come to be expected of the prolific rapper.
Mach has cemented himself as a shapeshifter, contorting his voice to rap, sing, and glide over the grainy surface of his beats. And while #RICHAXXHAITIAN is a quintessential Mach-Hommy project—the mixing makes his words garble through the muddiness as if they’re hazy memories, similar to previous records—the production landscape is vast enough to evoke all of his vocal personalities. The percussive crashes and soothing scales from the hands of pianist Georgia Anne Muldrow create the perfect foil for Mach’s morose bars on “Sonje.” His crooning against the accordion on “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” the storybook piano loops of the Quelle Chris-composed “Copy Cold,” and the trudging drums of “Antonomasia” are perfect for headphones on a sub-zero day in Newark in 1997. All register as adventures born out of ease and supreme confidence.
His meandering style turns his verses into close reading exercises. Mach’s raps are effective because of his trilateral approach: The man possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of cultural touchstones, an innate sense of timing that catches the listener off-balance, and a gallows humor that is ripe for comical punchlines. Even if some seem unspectacular in a vacuum (“Flip you on the track like Tyshawn Jones,” he spits with delight to open “Padon,” and “blue cheese” bars on “Gorgon Zoe Lan”), the precision and detail with which he strings the references together is one of his strongest artistic gifts. When you recognize the wordplay hidden in the depths of “Antonomasia,” or lose yourself in the parallelism of “Guggenheim Jeune,” you’ll realize that Mach is a master manipulator of structure. Like a virtuoso of martial arts, his flurries of bars are not aimless swings or lucky punches—but pinpoint jabs that land harder with every hit.
Across its 17 tracks and 47 minutes, #RICHAXXHAITIAN feels like the closest to a biographical work for Mach-Hommy. That’s not to say the album is rife with sordid details and tell-all tales. His signature caginess and opacity remain; personal histories are contained to topics already known to fans, like his immigration journey from Port-au-Prince to New Jersey. As on previous projects, he’ll launch into Kreyòl without a lick of concern about the potential need for translation. But the choice causes his more forthright statements and vignettes to land with more vigor, especially when he delivers them with a bristling rancor. There are hooks about the International Monetary Fund and interludes about how the scourge of late-stage capitalism is keeping Haiti from achieving revolutionary change. When Mach spits, “White phosphorus fell on civilians in Gaza/Troglodytes squadron yelling epithets in a jogger,” with ferocity on “POLITickle,” it lands with the impact of an expanding bullet. A particular line rings in your ears on “Lon Lon,” as his rambling brushes against the angelic flute of the 1970 Archie Whitewater sample; it’s a proclamation of who Mach is and why he does this: “I’m not your token Nigger boy rapping/I’m a charming-ass composer.”
For long stretches of its runtime, #RICHAXXHAITIAN cruises around like a victory lap, for better or for worse. Mach spars with Roc Marciano, Tha God Fahim, and Black Thought, the legendary emcees blistering over sample loops stride-for-stride, as if their chemistry sliders are turned up to the max. The album is not without missteps, like a regrettable Your Old Droog verse on “Empty Spaces” and a Kaytranada-produced single that would have been better as a loosie. But enough peaks overcome the project’s shallow valleys. Take the finale, “Holy ___,” with its lush choral arrangements and decadent orchestral strings, which feel like a biblical exaltation of his journey as an artist and adherence to the values that have allowed him to retain his soul. Mach departs with final pieces of wisdom about the realities of the streets he grew up in, sneaking in a sly qualifier: “Just an observation from a Haitian teaching all the Yanks,” he raps. It arrives with an aimless shrug, as if Mach holds all the truths you may need. He doesn’t care about what direction you believe his sound should go into, or if you’re convinced about the gospel he’s doling out—the moment his voice hits your eardrum, he will command your full attention. | 2024-05-23T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2024-05-23T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Mach-Hommy | May 23, 2024 | 8 | 1dc2d1af-781a-42a3-ae25-e187961e6216 | Matthew Ritchie | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ritchie/ | |
The London band's new record appears to be an exercise in propaganda for their combined health: Alluding to the bond between the band's members and having reached the fourth LP in their catalog, Four feels like revisionist history in action. | The London band's new record appears to be an exercise in propaganda for their combined health: Alluding to the bond between the band's members and having reached the fourth LP in their catalog, Four feels like revisionist history in action. | Bloc Party: Four | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16944-four/ | Four | The smart money says the title of Bloc Party's new album is a reference to the fact that it's the fourth album made by the original four members. Less likely is the possibility that it's also an acknowledgement of the four contentious years that have passed since their last LP, Intimacy, which included rumors that the band was breaking up or even considering moving on without Kele Okereke. The implicit solidarity pledge makes sense since the bulk of Four is built from the same elements as 2005's Silent Alarm, by far their most popular album-- sharp, pugilistic dual-guitar interplay, Okereke's S.O.S. vocal mannerisms, a jittery human rhythm section rather than a drum machine. But everyone appears to have lost a slight but significant step over the past seven years, and Four conveys the experience of watching an athlete reliant on explosive physicality realize that his body is betraying him.
Take "He Begins to Lie" and "Team A", the sort of Bloc Party songs that once could have stopped and cut on a dime but now just awkwardly slam into the chorus. Too often on Four, Okereke and Russell Lissack forgo serrated guitar hooks for blunt grunge riffing, and the rhythm section has become a wholly reactive entity, unable to push a song if and when the melodies fail. While Okereke's voice is recorded curiously low and subject to numerous filters throughout Four, he's still "got it" to an extent: His unhinged belting saves the otherwise unmemorable "3x3", and a spirited "we can feel it in our bones!" cuts through the plodding "Kettling". But otherwise, the effort's there without the inspiration, and when he peppers his lyrics with hashtag hopefuls like "snitches get stitches," "the empire never ended," "let me show you how we do in my hood," and "you can be the one percent if you wanna!" his sloganeering morphs into something closer to non sequitur.
But even if they don't have the physical stamina to properly recreate Silent Alarm, that's no reason to hold them back. Bloc Party started to prove that they were becoming more adept at being lovers than fighters, and past highlights such as "I Still Remember", "Blue Light", and "Signs" were gushing love songs as spirited and gripping as their ones about gas prices and such. While Four is just about there rather than noticeably bad most of the time, any suspicion that its biggest crime is not being as good as Silent Alarm can be quelled by the utterly dumbfounding "We Are Not Good People" and "Coliseum", which respectively find Bloc Party breaking their rusty cage and running to touch, peel, and stand at the intersection of MTV "Unplugged" and "Headbanger's Ball". There's nothing wrong with finding new influences, but it's unfathomable that these were two of the best 12 songs they came up with over the span of an Olympiad. That said, they are the only times where Bloc Party actually sound like they're having as much fun as they want you to think they are.
It's all unconvincing because out of the post-punk Class of 05, Bloc Party were the ones voted "most likely to succeed" while the likes of Futureheads and Maximo Park were actually out partying. Bloc Party's 2007 album *A Weekend in the City *was personally revealing, sonically bold, and sorely underappreciated, and while Intimacy was rushed and not particularly strong, it at least had a sense of direction. Combined with Okereke's actual dance-focused solo album The Boxer and his work with Hercules and Love Affair, it's clear Silent Alarm was a launching pad, not a nest. Maybe that's the message of this record's best song: "V.A.L.I.S." describes the kind of man you hate to see your ex with, one that plays by the rules and has things figured out. Okereke tellingly admits before Four's sole effortlessly catchy hook: "He's not the real me." It's ultimately debatable whether or not Four is the "real" Bloc Party, but revisionist history isn't supposed to be a duller version of the real thing. | 2012-08-15T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-08-15T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Frenchkiss | August 15, 2012 | 4.9 | 1dc878b1-fa3b-4d8e-a447-cf889851ee1a | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
The rising Oakland rapper and the Connecticut-raised beatmaker team up for a short and ridiculously fun tape about football, talking shit, pimping, and more football. | The rising Oakland rapper and the Connecticut-raised beatmaker team up for a short and ridiculously fun tape about football, talking shit, pimping, and more football. | ALLBLACK / Kenny Beats: 2 Minute Drills EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/allblack-kenny-beats-2-minute-drills-ep/ | 2 Minute Drills EP | Not everyone can discover new ways to say they’re going to beat somebody’s ass, but Oakland’s ALLBLACK never has an issue. There’s a point on 2 Minute Drills, his collaborative project with the inescapable Kenny Beats, where ALLBLACK is fed up with the haters in his DMs and aggressively sends out this threat: “Stay the fuck out of my DMs and quit stalkin’ my page/Before my kids Whip and Nae Nae on your fuckin’ face.” The visual of ALLBLACK not caring enough to handle the business himself, but sticking his kids on his critics, to hit moves from a Silentó music video on their dome, is the type of creativity that makes rap threats a treasure. And while 2 Minute Drills isn’t about ALLBLACK sending shots, the line is indicative of a rapper taking standard Bay Area hip-hop and making it all his own.
Bay Area pimping raps go back to the days of Too $hort (and beyond), and similar to the West Coast legend, ALLBLACK comes from the world of pimping, beginning when he was just a teenager. But ALLBLACK never glorifies it and rarely spits about it outright. On 2 Minute Drills, he uses football analogies to speak about his experiences as a pimp. It’s a heavy topic that ALLBLACK doesn’t shy away from throughout the eight brief tracks, and the darkness is offset by ALLBLACK’s charismatic personality and Kenny Beats’ instrumentals that are ready for the next Marshawn Lynch touchdown celebration.
Every song on 2 Minute Drills, hovers, naturally, around the two-minute mark, as ALLBLACK enters, gets to the point, and then is out. He never stays on one topic for long, and behind his onslaught of football references is a gruff and animated flow, with his closest parallel being the absurdity of Detroit’s Sada Baby (the Oakland-Detroit connection is storied). ALLBLACK hardly wastes a second on the project. After some simple football metaphors, he gets to “3 Point Stance,” where Kenny Beats captures the Bay Area bounce and ALLBLACK wrestles with a moral dilemma. He doesn’t valorize the practice of pimping, but defends it as a hustle, saying, “Ass clapping, thank you appreciate it/Word to bitches that really out here bag chasin’.” He even criticizes others on their high horse, “Talk down to a stripper, but you on the Gram naked.” It’s an inner-conflict that ALLBLACK works out in the span of 119 seconds on a track tailor-made for West Coast strip clubs. But he never gets too preachy, always circling back to his belligerent ad-libs, the ones that keep everything here in the fun realm of ridiculousness.
ALLBLACK is having a moment that radiates so much star power he even overshadows the impact of Kenny Beats. The Connecticut-raised producer’s latest transformation is as a Bay Area beat wizard. He can drop in instrumentals that incorporate the snaps and funky melody made for cruising down the sizzling streets of Oakland like “76 Buccaneers.” Then he’ll switch it up and let his hi-hats rattle for a function-starter like “Weigh Ins.” But when the project is finished it’s all about ALLBLACK, who raps, walks, and emits the energy of a Bay Area star. Just stay out him his DMs if you aren’t talking sweet. | 2018-11-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-11-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Play Runners Association / D.O.T.S. / Empire | November 19, 2018 | 7.4 | 1dcd9997-b8ef-4f06-8150-743a999f5015 | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
This box set collects remastered versions of Scott Walker's first five solo albums. For those who know Walker's music through his avant-garde material from the last 20 years, these highly arranged and orchestrated pop records seems to come from another world. But the dark and strange themes were already there. | This box set collects remastered versions of Scott Walker's first five solo albums. For those who know Walker's music through his avant-garde material from the last 20 years, these highly arranged and orchestrated pop records seems to come from another world. But the dark and strange themes were already there. | Scott Walker: Scott: The Collection 1967-1970 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18088-scott-walker-scott-walker-the-collection-1967-1970/ | Scott: The Collection 1967-1970 | The story of the singer Scott Walker is typically split into three parts. The first is of his brief career with the melancholy orchestral-pop group the Walker Brothers, who for a couple of years in the mid-1960s were famous enough to be a front-cover concern on Tiger Beat magazine and have their car overturned by fans while they were still sitting in it. Walker quickly became uncomfortable with this, and in 1967 went solo with four theatrical and increasingly dark albums, all called Scott. "GOING SOLO IN A MONASTERY!" a headline in Melody Maker read-- a monastery Walker had to leave because fans started banging on the door looking for him.
The Scott albums-- now remastered and collected into a box set with 1970's 'Til The Band Comes In-- are the fulcrum of Walker's career: You can hear where he'd been, and in retrospect, where he was going; his third act was emerging after 20 years of almost total silence with Tilt, The Drift, and Bish Bosch, released between 1997 and 2012. Walker's latter-day albums are fearless and violent, featuring wailing donkeys, moans, scrapes, and famously, the sound of someone punching meat. They seem to have been written in another language entirely.
The Scott albums, however, remain part of a tradition of highly arranged, rock-free music that valued old songs over new sounds and professionalism over innovation. "I don't wanna see my fans walking around like drugged zombies," Walker told a journalist around the time Scott came out in 1967, a rejection of the psychedelic culture prevalent at the time. Instead, he embraced conventionally gorgeous, string-heavy music targeted at housewives and elderly people. At the same time, he fell headlong into existentialist literature and European art-house cinema. He appeared on variety shows, and remained either at or near the top of the charts. He also developed a pitch-black sense of humor, and in his rich, mocking baritone explored songs about Soviet dictators and the spiritual poverty of men who only feel human in the company of whores.
"Jackie", the single released in advance of Scott 2, was banned by the BBC. When the album came out, it went to Number 1. It remains the first recorded instance of the hyphenated adjective "stupid-ass" that I can think of. By 1969 Walker was writing epics about Ingmar Bergman movies featuring dissonant choir arrangements and trumpets blowing through canyons of reverb. Around this time he was also given his own television show, where he performed all your toe-tapping and heart-rending favorites in black sunglasses, without smiling.
This is the Scott Walker of the late 1960s: As passionately invested in covers of Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra hits as in singing the word "gonorrhea"; voted "Mr. Valentine" by Disc & Music Echo the same year he released a song about a young man routinely raped by military officers. His best performances convey the deep tragedy of their subjects while managing to laugh at them with a cruelty and indifference available to only the most total of douchebags.
The essential contrast in his late-60s albums is between easy-listening music and forbiddingly difficult subject matter. It's a dichotomy that has always made Walker seem more like an outsider artist than a mainstream one. It's also fodder for a case that Walker was "subversive," an accolade for alternative-music fans who, especially now, can recast him as some kind of mole inside the machine, exposing the innocent people of Britain to material that would make their middle-class spines shiver. This isn't untrue. But it also smoothes over the fact that the Scott albums are different pieces of music that leave different impressions. Any attempt to lump them together is more a matter of laziness or historical convenience than anything else. If you look at the credits from Scott onward, what you see, essentially, is Walker taking over the show: on Scott, he wrote three songs among its 12, the rest covers; by Scott 4, he wrote them all.
Walker's choice of covers essentially falls into two camps: Easygoing heartbreak music and songs by the Belgian writer Jacques Brel. The latter's impact on Walker can't be understated: Walker covered him nine times on his first three albums, and some of the most elegant expressions of Walker's romantic but poisoned worldview are his. Take "The Girls and the Dogs", from Scott 2, a psychopathically chipper song about how men are longing, women are fickle, and dogs are lucky to not care either way. "The dogs, well you know the dogs, they lift up a leg as they see it end/ The dogs, well you know the dogs, and maybe that's why they're man's best friend," goes the refrain. "And yet," Walker sings toward the end, "it's because of the girls, when they've knocked us about and our tears want to shout/ That we kick the dogs out." Over the course of about 10 seconds, his voice hardens from drippy sympathy to resolute meanness, and as the song fades out, he defers to a choir of trombones that sound like they wandered out of a burlesque show. In essence: The world is a monochromatically cruel place, so ha ha ha, fuck it.
Walker's own songs are more ambiguous. From Scott 2, "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg" tells the story of a deflated husband who finds his peace of mind wandering thorugh the red-light district at night. "Leave it all behind me," he sings, sailing away on a tide of violins. "Screaming kids on my knee and the telly swallowing me/ And the neighbors shouting next door/ And the subway trembling the rollerskate floor." Like good satire, Jacques Brel's songs cue you to laugh then startle you with reality. Walker puts you in the uncomfortable position of wondering whether to laugh in the first place, or to just lean back and allow these characters a glory that eludes them in their own lives.
Then there are songs like the simple, country-influenced "Duchess", from Scott 4. The same singer who rejected psychedelia started writing the kind of impressionistic lyrics whose nonsense is more penetrating than anything more literal could be. "It's your shiftless flesh and your old-girl's grace," he sighs. "It's your young girl's face that I'm breathing." In both sound and lyric, Walker's music became more and more evocative, leaving behind the easy gratification of his earlier albums for broad, cinematic arrangements and stories that end not on punch lines, but question marks.
There are defenders of 1970's 'Til The Band Comes In. I am not one of them, and for what it's worth, neither was Walker. Reportedly puzzled by the fact that his audience wasn't interested in dense songs about hookers and child abuse, he made the humble mistake of trying to will himself back to popularity. It has redeeming moments-- like the eulogistic "Joe"-- but not many. Its worst songs are embarrassing: In an irony Walker could probably appreciate in time, he'd become one of the gloriously desperate people he'd sung about only a year or two earlier.
For anyone who hasn't heard Scott Walker before, the prospect of buying a five-album box set like The Collection is ridiculous. For fans that already own these albums, it's absurd. The recordings are, of course, "remastered," which I can discern only in fleeting moments. And unlike the now out-of-print In Five Easy Pieces, whose discs were organized by theme, The Collection goes for a straightforward archival treatment, with a nice selection of period interviews and a beautifully synthesized essay by Rob Young, an editor at British experimental-music magazine The Wire.
It is ultimately yet another example of a record company attempting to re-brand material still available to consumers. Walker is a cult artist, more obscure than he ever was in the late 1960s but also more intensely beloved. You can almost hear the saliva of marketing teams hitting conference-room desks at the prospect of issuing 180-gram gatefold vinyl. Still, there are worse artists to focus the effort on. In a 2008 interview with the Guardian, Walker blamed some of his ugly output in the 1970s on label pressures to "stay in the game"-- a convenient story coming from an artist, but if there's any truth to it, The Collection is a simple but elegant way of repaying some of the debt. | 2013-06-20T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2013-06-20T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | null | June 20, 2013 | 8.7 | 1dd3f038-4481-44e0-ba2a-a1f01f02811e | Mike Powell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mike-powell/ | null |
This collaboration between L.A. producer Adrian Younge's soul-steeped live band and Ghostface Killah tells the story of Tony Starks, an enforcer for the DeLuca crime family, who's murdered by his former employers after striking out on his own. | This collaboration between L.A. producer Adrian Younge's soul-steeped live band and Ghostface Killah tells the story of Tony Starks, an enforcer for the DeLuca crime family, who's murdered by his former employers after striking out on his own. | Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge: Twelve Reasons to Die | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17872-ghostface-killah-adrian-younge-twelve-reasons-to-die/ | Twelve Reasons to Die | When I saw Ghostface perform with Adrian Younge at SXSW last month, it seemed like the two hadn't figured each other out at all. Younge's band would launch into thrilling versions of classics like "Buck 50", then lurch to a halt while Younge demanded we pay our respects. Ghostface stood by, looking bewildered and clearly just wanting to rap. After several false starts, Younge asked Ghostface if he wanted to rap over vinyl; "I'll do anything you want," Ghostface said, somewhat plaintively. Nonetheless, the team-up between the two soul-steeped musicians seemed sound on paper, and I remained optimistic that they would eventually lock into a groove.
They might yet still-- judging from their performance on Fallon recently, they've already hit a new plateau*.* And Twelve Reasons to Die, their collaborative album, has a crazy-promising conceptual framework; playing off of Ghostface's well-worn persona, it tells the story of Tony Starks, an enforcer for the DeLuca crime family, who is murdered by his former employers after striking out on his own. His remains are melted in vinyl and pressed into a dozen LPs that, when played, resurrect him as the Ghostface Killah, a force for revenge incarnate. Ghostface has unparalleled storytelling instincts; he might be the best, most colorful storyteller rap has ever seen. The prospect of him letting his imagination pour itself into the album's four-color-panel universe is enticing. Adrian Younge's band is incredible, rifling through psychedelic soul, Stax, spaghetti western, and more.
And yet Twelve Reasons feels, frustratingly, like a really good idea from extremely talented people that needed more time. Ghostface's lyrics, for one, are uncharacteristically flat and literal, narrating the story's turns in clunky exposition like "I declare war/ War on the DeLucas" and "I want mothers and sons/ I want to murder they daughters/ Revenge, all I see is blood in my eyes/ Like the rise of your worst nightmare, come alive." There are livewire lines scattered here and there, but Ghost sounded more alive, and packed more Tony Starks mojo, into the low-stakes pre-holiday-rush Wu-Block project and his verse for Cruel Summer's "New God Flow" than he does into most of Twelve Reasons. And even for a project specifically intended to lovingly burnish Ghost's mythology, there are so many bald Wu-Tang references -- "Too many enemies is out there, son, trying to bring the ruckus," he says on ("Enemies All Around Me")," making "swarm of killer bees" references on "Rise of the Ghostface Killah" and the very next song-- that it grows distracting.
Still, Ghostface sounds incredible over Adrian Younge's band, which fits him like a custom-designed Starksmobile. "Revenge Is Sweet" opens with high voices singing wheezily over a murky, gutted snare tick and piano, channeling the enervated atmosphere of Sly Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On before Ghost rips into the track. "Rise of the Black Suits" and "Beware of the Stare" both expertly mimic the texture of RZA loops while warming up the music's edges with cinematic touches: The howling backup singers are the aural equivalent of slow-mo widescreen. On "The Sure Shot, Pts. 1 & 2", the drummer tosses off tight, showy fills without pushing against Ghost's voice, while dirty transistor-amp guitars honk nastily in the background. Sometimes live bands can swallow a rapper with over-enthusiasm, but Younge and his crew stay restrained.
Their chemistry is so apparent that it's a shame the final product isn't better. It reminds me of Freeway's The Stimulus Package, another seemingly can't-miss proposition from two phenomenal talents that fell just short. Like a lot of what Ghost has done in the past few years-- Apollo Kids, The Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City, and Wu-Massacre-- Twelve Reasons to Die basically feels like a victim of haste. Ghostface has kept up a fiendish pace even this late into his career, but at this stage, his dogged clip is hurting his output. Now that he and Younge have had some rehearsal time, at least the live show for this record is almost certain to be phenomenal. And there are more than enough positive moments here to make the pairing feel worth that effort. In the end, Twelve Reasons is generous comfort food for Ghost's fanbase, a group slowly being whittled away by time and creeping indifference. | 2013-04-18T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2013-04-18T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Wax Poetics | April 18, 2013 | 7.4 | 1dd62de0-4286-457b-b7af-36a36a3d272c | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | null |
The minimal dub-techno landscapes that Jacob Long makes as Earthen Sea carry a sense of refinement and grace. Each element of his Kranky debut is radiant. | The minimal dub-techno landscapes that Jacob Long makes as Earthen Sea carry a sense of refinement and grace. Each element of his Kranky debut is radiant. | Earthen Sea: An Act of Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22896-earthen-sea-an-act-of-love/ | An Act of Love | It’s rare to have any vocals appear on of the fog-enshrouded landscapes that Jacob Long devises as Earthen Sea. But earlier this month, Long cleared out his hard drive with A Serious Thing, a nine-track compilation of tracks recorded in the past three years (with all proceeds going to the International Refugee Assistance Project, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the National Lawyers Guild). Less than a minute in, the voice of firebrand gay Harlem intellectual James Baldwin emerges from the mists and speaks of the crucial role of dreamers in their respective societies. “The poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us,” Baldwin said. “Soldiers don’t, statesmen don’t, priests don’t, union leaders don’t. Only the poets.”
And while there are no words and no voices that appear on An Act of Love, Long’s debut for Kranky, that poet’s search for an undeniable truth powers the eight breathtaking tracks that appear here. A hardcore veteran who’s played in D.C. bands like Amalgamation and Black Eyes, Long later played bass in the adventurous punk act Mi Ami. Over time, that trio mutated from art-rock towards the sounds of Chicago house and Jamaican dub, soon splintering into three separate electronic acts: drummer Damon Palermo became Magic Touch and guitarist Daniel Martin-McCormick became Ital.
Long himself took the foundations of dub as the starting point for his next iteration, Earthen Sea. Much like the godfathers of minimal techno—Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus, Vladislav Delay circa Multila, the entire Chain Reaction roster—Long realized there was sublimity to be had in endless reverb, delay, and its sonic residue. And with 2014’s Mirage, released on Martin-McCormick’s Lovers Rock label, Earthen Sea’s aesthetic solidified. An Act of Love is a continuation of that effort, though there’s a feeling of refinement and awareness that gives each element here a heightened radiance. Even in the buzzing static and air organ chords that comprise beatless opener “The Present Mist,” there’s a sense of grace, of deep breaths being drawn musically that makes it standout from other ambient noise of its ilk.
Earthen Sea makes minimal dub techno, but while Long’s components are suggestive of dance music—especially the 707 that drives most of the tracks—the context for each programmed hit seems to not be a packed club. Rather, Earthen Sea could soundtrack a depopulated metropolis, each beat bouncing off of concrete. A squelchy kick drives “About That Time” and other elements wash in: a canned clap, a tapped ride cymbal, a piano line as contemplative and sonorous as that of Harold Budd. But underneath all of that is a gloriously slow swell of white noise, which rises and falls like an incoming tide and is mesmerizing in and of itself.
The muffled “Apparent Lushness” sounds as if it was recorded four feet underwater, its pretty melody reminiscent of something off of Jürgen Müller’s Science of the Sea, shining through the ripples. It segues into the centerpiece “Exuberant Burning,” with Long taking a flare of feedback and making it arc across the sky like a vapor trail. A bass throbs along with the beat, and these elements all hover in place before Long adds live drums and cymbals, and moves the track forward again. A sound not unlike the distant roar of passing cars on a highway comes up, giving the track an uncanny sense of space.
After a brief interlude, the album peaks with the muscular kick of “The Flats 1975,” breaking out of the noirish mood of the previous tracks and offering up a sense of much-needed physical release. In the press materials for the album, Long noted that the months leading up to the recording of An Act of Love were “the most emotionally difficult and stressful year in my life,” which might be a sentiment shared by most people in the calendar year of 2016. But despite the darkness that intrudes in on the album—from the inky cover to the gloaming sounds within to the despairing environment in which it now enters our present day—there’s nevertheless a small kernel of hope to be gleaned. Long goes on to discuss the inspiration he got from empty city streets in the dead of night and the realization that regardless there are still people all around, as well as “the openness and possibilities that [they] can bring.” While Long only uses a steady beat and some deeply resonant chords to convey this revelation, he nevertheless moves like a poet to unearth that heartening sense of truth here. | 2017-02-21T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-02-21T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Kranky | February 21, 2017 | 8.1 | 1dd67672-f421-4bc7-a660-79e069d0074e | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
Announced just two months ago, the Radiohead frontman's modest solo debut hits stores this week. | Announced just two months ago, the Radiohead frontman's modest solo debut hits stores this week. | Thom Yorke: The Eraser | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9183-the-eraser/ | The Eraser | No band of the last 15 years has seen its individual players revered to the same extent as Radiohead's. Whether or not you subscribe to the church of the blinking bear, it's hard to argue against the incredible good fortune that's seen them blossom from the nebbish and resoundingly ordinary young group On a Friday. While Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood will always stand at stage center, you barely need 10 minutes with a Radiohead record to understand how readily the band shifts its weight from one member to another; so strong are their individual voices as musicians that you can practically hear the pistons moving underneath their songs.
But we're coming up on seven albums now, each one of them (if you believe the soundbites) an utterly excruciating process. That, combined with Yorke's headstrong affinity for laptop music and his MP3 era-friendly motto of expediency, has pried the door open for a solo quickie. So, on the heels of the news that Radiohead's vaunted seventh full-length wouldn't be ready any time soon, Yorke carpet-bombed fans in May by announcing The Eraser.
That was a little over seven weeks ago, and you can be sure the window between name and release was purposely kept small so as to mitigate against the weight of expectation. We know this because, for all their No Logo sloganeering, Radiohead have never been afraid to deploy a marketing juggernaut to herald their imminent return. If the message being transmitted here is a modest one, it's because The Eraser is a modest record. Contrary to some of the band's prior releases (and, perhaps, their legacy), it's not an attempt to remake the wheel, but rather, pretty much exactly the kind of thing you'd expect Yorke to make in his bedroom-- glitchy, sour, feminine, brooding, imperfect. It's also strikingly beautiful and thuddingly boring in maddeningly equal measure.
Let's start with the good stuff: Opener "The Eraser" rests on a hiccuping piano sample, a bubblebath of bloops and some gently insistent vocal acrobatics. "The more you try to erase me/ The more that I appear," sings Yorke, in the first of the album's many lines that could just as easily be about environmental crises as personal. Next up is the skittering "Analyse", which marries a twinkling piano lead to a breakbeat made of crushed glass. Lyrically, Yorke is in solid form, singing about algebra, candles in the city, and "no light in the dark." He's not nearly as sharp on the sleepy-eyed "Atoms for Peace" (how's this for a clanger: "Peel all your layers off/ I want to eat your artichoke heart"), but it provides some of the album's most serene moments, wherein he sets his falsetto against a wall of discordant keyboard drones to gorgeously vertiginous effect. Better still is the closer "Cymbal Rush", which comes off as "The Gloaming"'s moonstruck cousin. A wash of digital burbles and woozy drones, the song's second half relents to a set of galloping piano chords and complex rhythm tracks, making it, from a producerly standpoint, the most accomplished thing here.
Where The Eraser sags is in the middle, with tracks 3-5 falling particularly flat. Like too many of Radiohead's new songs, they contain a single weak idea dragged on interminably. "The Clock" is a tuneless clatter of insect noises and acoustic guitars that never changes course; "Black Swan" is a swampbucket "I Might Be Wrong" retread that barely even flaps its wings (nevermind gets off the ground); and the horrorshow talkie "Skip Divided", with its cursory arrangements and total absence of melody, feels like second-rate performance poetry.
On a smaller scale, the problems afflicting these tracks afflict the album as a whole; even allowing for the better-crafted songs, there's little-to-no dynamic range on The Eraser. As a listening experience, it's claustrophobic and compressed, and with rare exception, offers little in the way of wide open space. What little breathing room there is usually comes courtesy of Yorke's vocal, and while it's nice to see him once again testing the limits of what he can do naturally with his voice, it might not be enough to save the record for some.
The word 'gray' will be used to describe The Eraser, and with good reason-- unless you're predisposed to loving everything Yorke sets his voice against, you mind fight this an oppressively dreary affair. My totally catty suggestion: Don't bother with this unless you've already worn out the grooves on Jonny Greenwood's much less-heralded but completely brilliant Bodysong soundtrack. Or maybe, if you're really jonesing, set up two stereos and play both solo records at once, Zaireeka-style. I wouldn't be surprised at all if that worked. | 2006-07-10T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2006-07-10T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | XL | July 10, 2006 | 6.6 | 1dd7307f-3868-41fc-abd2-94f64e7b3436 | Mark Pytlik | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-pytlik/ | null |
Dev Hynes’ fourth album as Blood Orange focuses on black depression, sketching his anxious alt-pop, progressive R&B, indie hip-hop, downtempo rock, and spacey chillwave into a minimalist emulsion. | Dev Hynes’ fourth album as Blood Orange focuses on black depression, sketching his anxious alt-pop, progressive R&B, indie hip-hop, downtempo rock, and spacey chillwave into a minimalist emulsion. | Blood Orange: Negro Swan | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/blood-orange-negro-swan/ | Negro Swan | In his captivating book Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland, Australian scholar Rod Giblett traces a cultural history of the slender, waterborne bird. Black swans have long been prized by indigenous communities for their exotic, improbable beauty. European colonizers, however, tended to malign the birds as evil, ugly, and unwelcome, simply due to their color. Delicate and fierce, fetishized and rebuked, black swans live at the intersections: they’re both/and, more than one given thing at any given time.
On his fourth studio album as Blood Orange, musical polymath Devonté Hynes explores the comforts and complications of living a life as both/and—of being treated, to borrow from Thelonious Monk, as an ugly beauty. Negro Swan captures the scattershot, jittery, anxious, blissed-out-depressive feeling of what it’s like to be a marginalized person at a toxic and retrograde moment in global culture and politics. “No one wants to be the Negro Swan,” he laments on “Charcoal Baby.” “No one wants to be the odd one out at times…/Can you break sometimes?” Hynes goes for the anachronistic “Negro” to suggest the history of racial abjection—just like the phrase “Charcoal Baby” evokes 19th-century blackface performers who used burnt cork, or charcoal, to darken their faces for white audiences. The album’s cover photo, shot by the designer-photographer Ana Kraš, drives home the ugly beauty idea: A black man perches on a car windowpane, rocking a white, studded do-rag, eyeshadow, and wings on his back.
Negro Swan’s world-weary opening track “Orlando” offers a 21st-century update on those tragic politics of deflation and depletion. Hynes’ production goes for pretty, sprightly textures: sampled street sounds, twinkling electric piano, chicken-cluck wah-wah guitar, and a mid-tempo funky shuffle beat. As if to alert us to sudden danger, a dancehall-style alarm goes off (alarms are a recurring motif on the album). Sounding like a quivering Curtis Mayfield, Hynes falsetto-croons the hook, “First kiss was the floor,” a blood-chilling reflection about being bullied/bashed as a child on a school bus.
Like most of the tracks on Negro Swan, “Orlando” isn’t content to be just one thing. As the hook arrives, the song abruptly morphs into a pensive guitar vamp, and we’re treated to an interlude with trans activist Janet Mock, riffing about the value of “doing too much” in a culture that doesn’t allow marginalized people to truly excel at much of anything. Mock shows up on five of Negro Swan’s 16 tracks: Fly-on-the-wall interludes constituted from bits of their recorded conversations, Mock’s spoken-word commentaries provide a voice-of-wisdom presence throughout. They also confirm the album’s central conceit: how people of color and queers manage trauma in a racist, heteronormative culture, even as we pursue alternative models of kinship that ensure our liberation.
Hynes has said that Negro Swan is about black depression as well as his own tumultuous childhood in England. Besides “Orlando,” glum, detuned “Dagenham Dream” also explores the ins and outs of his earliest memories (the title refers to a scrappy neighborhood in East London); and on foreboding "Nappy Wonder,” featuring cellist and singer Kelsey Lu, Hynes reminisces about former days in Barking (another East London town) over doodling piano, reversed guitar riffs, and drum and bass that irregularly drop in and out of the track. Fusing together alt-pop, progressive R&B, indie hip-hop, downtempo rock, and spacey chillwave into a minimalist emulsion, Negro Swan can be jumpy and hard to pin down. You get the sense that Hynes would have it no other way.
In fact, Hynes’ entire career (oscillating between bands, solo ventures, aliases, side projects, auteur experimentalism, work-for-hire pop, etc.) has been about multiplicity and blurring categorizations. His last release, 2016’s Freetown Sound, ventured far afield, musing on his immigrant parents’ lives and merging political activism with melancholia for late 1980s queer NYC life. Hynes has long made good as an in-demand alternative pop producer for starlets like Carly Rae Jepsen and Solange; and more recently, he’s had unexpected collaborations with A$AP Rocky, Girlpool, and Philip Glass. Negro Swan’s unpredictable guest list is a testament to Hynes’ curatorial savvy: The album features Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, Colombian-Canadian vocalist Tei Shi, NYC vocalist Ian Isiah, alt-soul singer Georgia Anne Muldrow, actress Amandla Stenberg, as well Kindness’ Adam Bainbridge, Diana Gordon, and others.
Though multi-instrumentalist producers are often lone-wolf figures, Hynes’ collaborative spirit confirms that he’s most interested in a communal “we” approach to making music. He also strives for a similar pluralism in his approach to gender. In the seven years since he first appeared under the Blood Orange alias, non-normative Hynes (who identifies as not gay, but not straight) pushes back against machismo and male power in an effort to diversify stylistic representations of black masculinity. In fact, he might be the key figure connecting the black polymath template (think of other Renaissance men like Smokey Robinson, Babyface, Pharrell Williams, Tyler, the Creator, etc.) to contemporary identity struggles around sexual fluidity and anti-racism. Negro Swan’s insistence on the politics of indeterminate identity especially resonates against the backdrop of a 2018 MAGA political climate in which collective anxieties—impacted by political and economic insecurity and public officials’ gaslighting tactics—have gone through the roof.
Despite its thematic focus on anxiety—or maybe because of it—Negro Swan is a drifty, loose, dissociated affair. Adrenaline-pounding dance beats like the ones found on Freetown Sound’s propulsive “Best to You” or “E.V.P.” don’t show up here. Instead, the album sounds more like a downcast mixtape constituted from helter-skelter sounds, sketched-out musical ideas, and conversation fragments. (Hynes has described his aesthetic as open tabs on a browser; that is certainly the case here). Ambient, blunted “Vulture Baby” taps into a vintage psychedelic soul sound; but at only one minute and 15 seconds, it’s here and gone. “Chewing Gum” centers on a languorous ’80s pop melody and a chugging hip-hop beat before turning the spotlight to A$AP Rocky and Memphis’ Project Pat rapping about pussy and dick. Negro Swan’s cauldron of abstract soundscapes, melancholic drift, and disjointed musical ideas will frustrate those looking for more structured pop, and it will enliven others who can respect the slapdash, bricolage aesthetic as a key element in Hynes’ creative master plan.
Hynes always racks up realness points for not being afraid to come off uncool. His skittish singing doesn’t have a lot of power, but its gawky delicateness feels modest and palpably intimate. Negro Swan leans on inspirational, self-help messages—standing in your truth, coming out of darkness into light—that could have come off as mawkish or gauche in lesser hands. “Holy Will,” one of the album’s left-curve highlights, happens to be a winning, deconstructed take on the Clark Sisters’ gospel “Center of Thy Will.” And album closer “Smoke” centers around a lyric—“The sun comes in/My heart fulfills within”—that makes Negro Swan a far less pessimistic affair than much of the bleak R&B that’s ruled the airwaves and streaming services for the last decade. For a project focused on fragility that asks the question, “Can you break sometimes?” the album closes on a blissful note that dreams of wholeness.
Slippery and cryptic, Negro Swan blurs boundaries between the finished and the unfinished; between focused deliberation and thrown-together spontaneity; between fly-on-the-wall conversations and self-contained songs; between indie experimentalism and overground pop; between insider and outsider, black and white, straight and gay, trans and cis; between taxing depletion and invigorating replenishment. Dev Hynes remains an unfettered black man making whatever the fuck music comes into his head. Given that his artistic ideas affirm the power of community, kinship, and therapeutic healing in the midst of grim, dark times, his adventures in musical freedom remain a sublime political act. | 2018-08-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-08-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Domino | August 24, 2018 | 7.6 | 1dd7f035-9a88-43ff-a04c-8ca9713f3147 | Jason King | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jason-king/ | |
On his third album, the 26-year-old Afrobeats phenom grapples with newfound fame and attempts to trade his loverboy reputation for the role of suave rock star. | On his third album, the 26-year-old Afrobeats phenom grapples with newfound fame and attempts to trade his loverboy reputation for the role of suave rock star. | Fireboy DML: Playboy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fireboy-dml-playboy/ | Playboy | As a young college student exploring his sound, Fireboy DML wasn’t sure how to stand out in the vibes-saturated Afrobeats scene, but he knew one thing: “I want to be a fucking superstar.” Once a nerdy kid who rarely ventured beyond school, church, and home, the Nigerian pop singer now finds himself at the forefront of the globalization of Afrobeats. The first Afrobeats artist to perform on the BET Awards mainstage, he’s made a name for himself as an Afropop ambassador in the age of virality and snippets. On his latest album, Playboy, the 26-year-old grapples with newfound fame and attempts to shed his characteristic loverboy reputation as he leans into a Starboy-esque cool-guy persona. The formerly earnest Fireboy sporadically peeks through while the newborn star parties, seduces, and manifests success, not just for himself but for his entire continent.
Since the success of 2020’s Apollo, Fireboy DML has embraced the universal appeal of Afrobeats and been welcomed in turn. His jet-setting, snare-punctuated single “Peru” achieved global TikTok fame and caught the attention of Afrobeats admirer and Ghanian flag tattoo enthusiast Ed Sheeran, who hopped on a remix. With megastars like Beyoncé, Drake, and Madonna also tapping into the Afrobeats wave, some critics have been wary of Western musicians taking from the continent, especially while African artists’ contributions often go unrecognized. Assured in the cultural power of Africa, Fireboy DML doesn’t see a reason to gatekeep. “Historical, deeply-rooted genres like hip-hop, Afrobeats, reggae, amapiano, they cannot be taken away,” he insists. “It’s only right that we collaborate, merge cultures and build bridges for the future.”
As if to make up for the time lost chasing elusive women on his 2019 debut Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps, on “Ashawo,” Fireboy DML adopts a laissez-faire approach to love. “If I cheat on you I’m sorry and if you cheat on me no worry,” he seems to assure his lover, but it really sounds like he’s assuring himself. He desperately tries to keep his affections for women on a purely physical level, but his mask slips on “Adore,” a collaboration with Dominican American rapper Euro, and on the smooth, R&B-influenced “Diana,” he can’t help but beg for her not to go. Though it comes at the cost of a Chris Brown feature, “Diana” proves that Fireboy is in his element when he does what he’s been doing since his breakthrough single “Jealous”: yearn. The only woman featured on the album, Jamaican dancehall singer Shenseea, lends her honeyed vocals as the song’s fictional muse.
On the final third of the album, the devastated loverboy is laid to rest and Fireboy the rock star rises from the ashes. The sharp horns paired with a chorus of voices on “Afro Highlife” signal his arrival with his people at his side. The album crescendos on the rousing closing track “Glory,” where Fireboy—still a church boy at heart—thanks God for family, fame, money, and protection from enemies. When he tries to spite his detractors by flaunting material wealth and success, it produces uncharacteristically unoriginal lyrics like, “She feeling the juice/Feeling the sauce/Look at my shoes/Christian Dior.” Even so, there’s something invigorating about the Fireboy who has a chip on his shoulder and wants everyone to know it.
While his earliest work was sprinkled with commentary about Nigerian society, Playboy, like Apollo, is noticeably apolitical. The artist who observed, “I think it was Nina Simone that said that an artist’s duty is to reflect the times,” is nowhere to be found. Instead, Fireboy keeps the affair light-hearted, opting for universal feel-good vibes on his way into the playlists of unfamiliar listeners. “Havin Fun’” captures him at his most carefree: “Me no dey stress anymore/’Cause I’m blessed and I’m young/And the blessings come from God…I’m just having fun.” With fleet-footed beats, breezy woodwinds, and impassioned lines in Yoruba, Fireboy invites the world to the lively sounds of his hometown. | 2022-08-08T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2022-08-05T15:41:41.735-04:00 | Pop/R&B | YBNL Nation / Empire | August 8, 2022 | 7.4 | 1ddaeb5e-323f-4aa7-bbfb-349ca86bd909 | Heven Haile | https://pitchfork.com/staff/heven-haile/ | |
The Philadelphia poet and experimental musician gives voice to implacable rage and impending cataclysm. | The Philadelphia poet and experimental musician gives voice to implacable rage and impending cataclysm. | Moor Mother: Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/moor-mother-analog-fluids-of-sonic-black-holes/ | Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes | The Philadelphia poet and musician Camae Ayewa, as Moor Mother, seems to be on a mission to give form to our collective grief. Death is so big, and Black deaths are rendered so small, that it leaves a remainder, a trace that refuses to simply disappear. It lives within us, it builds, it demands release. Conjuring this rage, ignored but implacable, Moor Mother makes music that feels halfway between necromancy and warning.
In comparison to 2016’s Fetish Bones, Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes, is a refinement. The archival tapes appear again: Moor Mother tracks awaken the spirituals, poems and spoken words of mostly anonymous Black souls as wraiths, primed for revenge. In “Shadowgrams,” she spits, “they have killed our heroes and we forget their names.” These songs are a rejoinder to that erasure, and a proposed antidote to an anti-Black capitalism that insists cultural debts be forgotten.
The sound is as omnivorous as it is unforgiving, produced by Ayewa herself alongside King Britt and noise musician Mental Jewelry, with whom Ayewa collaborated on a joint EP in 2017. The collaborators are largely from Philly, yet Analog Fluids arrives at a moment when, in the cities of the northeast, ideological connections are becoming aesthetic ones. Hardcore, punk, noise and hip-hop are being compressed into a smear. A through-line runs from Philadelphia to New Brunswick and Brooklyn, uniting genres under the boots of unrelenting gentrification, intractable corporate power and unheard anger. Whether rapped or sung, played on digital or analog instruments, the sound is of heads hitting concrete.
Moor Mother is never satisfied to do anything other than confront. Less abrasive textures—strings, a tinny vocal sample, a wandering trumpet—are always distant, and instantly overwhelmed by Moor Mother’s vocal delivery, grim and booming. Her lyrics seethe with revelatory clarity: “I don’t believe in lies, I don’t believe in truth/I need their head as proof,” she seethes on "After Images." Calm arrives only in the closing track “The Passing of Time,” produced by Abstract Black and featuring the sweet vocals of Brazilian singer Juçara Marçal. But over this reverie, Moor Mother recites a steely, bitter truth: “My grandmama, my great-grandmama, my great-great-grandmama, they picked so much cotton they saved the world.”
Ayewa includes Moor Mother in her ongoing collaboration with fellow Philadelphia artist Rasheedah Phillips, Black Quantum Futurism, which Ayewa has called “a new language of healing, memory and justice that can be transmitted and used as a technology.”# Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes, likewise is an afrofuturism, or maybe an afro-inevitability. This is the part of healing that looks into the gaping wounds. “The end is happening and it keeps happening, and you keep looking at the clock as if time ever protected you,” Ayewa says in “Shadowgrams,” and Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes arrives with a presentlessness, existing in a cataclysm that is coming, that is then and now. “Don’t Die,” an excruciating listen, is screamed, wept, and then finally gasped as the song cuts off. Bass creeps, voices moan, wail and shake. The sound is relentless, seasick. Moor Mother reminds us of forces beyond control, that are still out there, waiting.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-11-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-11-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Don Giovanni | November 11, 2019 | 7.7 | 1de2315f-4459-4fa8-985a-7f281d24055b | Adlan Jackson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/adlan-jackson/ | |
Karin Dreijer’s richly detailed third album renders the search for love as something both sensual and alien. | Karin Dreijer’s richly detailed third album renders the search for love as something both sensual and alien. | Fever Ray: Radical Romantics | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fever-ray-radical-romantics/ | Radical Romantics | Listen to Fever Ray and learn to recognize the unrecognizable. On one of their new songs, “Looking for a Ghost,” Karin Dreijer plunks out a tune inspired by Henry Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk,” stacking calliope synths behind the berserk couplet “eating out/like cannibal” and a Bob Marley quote. Then this horny little collage of references slowly assumes shape: In their slyly sincere way, Dreijer is writing a personals ad. “Looking for a person/With a special kind of smile,” it reads. “Teeth like razors/Fingers like spice.” You know, someone who gives you that tingle. Lisbon producer Nídia fits them with a corkscrewing synth and a beat that lurches and jingles. “Looking for a ghost in the midst of life,” Dreijer says, which could almost be a literal complaint about queer dating in one’s forties, and then they wink: “Asking for a friend/Who’s kind of shy.”
Shy or not, we’ve come to know Dreijer better since their days as a shadowy beaked figure alongside their brother Olof in the heady electronic project the Knife. As Fever Ray, they make synth-pop with mucous membrane and muscle memory, writing songs that throw off unlikely hooks (“mustn’t hurry”) and chart new orbital paths around large pop structures. With a title like a college seminar and Dreijer’s signature blend of kink and theory, Radical Romantics is essentially a collection of notes on love. Love—whether sexy, overwhelming, or vengeful—links together the recurring motivations of the Fever Ray catalog: curiosity and exploration, family born and chosen, sexual freedom and pleasure. In the past, perhaps, they have sung about love as something vague and unknowable. Now they go looking.
In the run-up to 2017’s vivid and lustful Plunge, Dreijer talked about their dating experiments with candor that came as a surprise. “I’ve been on Tinder,” they said then, presumably with a glint in their eye. Plunge was no stranger to love but also called it “the final puzzle piece.” Anybody will tell you that to find it, first you must look within. Like many, Dreijer shifted their priorities during the pandemic, saying recently that the past few years provided them space to practice patience. In a modern culture that promotes love as instant gratification—keep swiping—Fever Ray now search elsewhere. Referencing bell hooks’ influential All About Love and Gift From the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s 1955 spiritual bestseller, Dreijer is on an inner quest through a region of adult heartache that’s less often explored.
There are a typically savvy collection of collaborators: Along with Nídia on “Looking for a Ghost,” there’s Olof, whose sorcerous trap doors turn the album’s first four tracks into an unofficial and much-anticipated Knife reunion; English producer Vessel, on the standout “Carbon Dioxide”; Aasthma, the production duo of Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik, on “Tapping Fingers”; and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, whose creeping industrial groans give Dreijer’s reality the weird thrill of fiction. The baleful mood kicks in on “Even It Out,” a small act of cosmic reckoning: “This is for Zacharias/Who bullied my kid in high school/There’s no room for you/And we know where you live!” Dreijer yowls. Where Lydia Tár stoops, Dreijer stands. “I do things methodically,” they sneer, slicing up the word as implied violence: “M-m-m-m-m-methodically.”
Radical Romantics doesn’t have a line like Plunge’s “this country makes it hard to fuck.” It’s slipperier and often slower, working through problems that take longer to solve even as the sky darkens. “Did you hear what they call us?” Dreijer moans on opener “What They Call Us,” a song written from “a very queer perspective.” But we cannot hear the despicable words, only turn to one another anxiously for confirmation that we are not alone yet. Dreijer’s asphyxiating delivery implies danger—the silent alarm or the spreading cloud—but for the moment, love shields us and we proceed through a beat that licks like flames at the heel. Everywhere their words are full of the exquisite caution of experience, as on “Shiver,” where a high pitch shift seems to throw a question into the hands of its recipient: “Can I trust you?”
Sometimes you cannot. Sometimes love is bad for you. Sometimes the fire is too hot and the glove melts at the touch. This is the love of obsession and distraction, like the whining mosquito voice that echoes Dreijer’s words on “Carbon Dioxide”: “Hy-y-y-per focus!” (Later they quote from 1 Corinthians 13, the memorable Bible passage on love: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”) We’ll need new tools to survive, so on the eerie “New Utensils,” they supply practical knowledge of how to build a fire and then the secret techniques, stretching and squeezing like a bellows as they list some of the ways to make love: “Lips/Fists/A mouthful of words.” Love and fire are the two essential human inventions and where we’re going, we’ll need both.
Love is patient but life is short. On Radical Romantics, Dreijer uncovers fresh anxiety about aging and the passage of time, if only because they feel they have so much love left to give: “What if I die with this song inside?” The album concludes with a mystery called “Bottom of the Ocean,” one for the whales, seven minutes of vocal drip-drops and scraping synths that unfold at the mournful pace of underwater footage of the Titanic. Previous Fever Ray albums set such meditative passages somewhere in the middle, so the bookend placement feels somehow deathly. Love is partially unknowable; could it be out of reach? Or, asks Lindbergh in Gift From the Sea, “Is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence?” Here is love, vast as the ocean. Dreijer leaves us there, sinks down and out of sight as we come to rest in the ancestral womb of life, waiting to be born anew. | 2023-03-10T00:03:00.000-05:00 | 2023-03-10T00:03:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Mute | March 10, 2023 | 8.4 | 1de44c00-14ca-4819-98fc-b169ca28a6a3 | Anna Gaca | https://pitchfork.com/staff/anna-gaca/ | |
Self-professed anarchists and DIY devotees jump to a major label with this Butch Vig-produced record. | Self-professed anarchists and DIY devotees jump to a major label with this Butch Vig-produced record. | Against Me!: New Wave | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10443-new-wave/ | New Wave | Against Me!'s Reinventing Axl Rose sounded a bit like the Clash or Billy Bragg on the first take-- hardly polished, ragged, and throaty. AM! filtered folk, country, and reggae through the veneer of anthemic punk rock; with no rhythm section to speak of, their songs shot forward on the rough engine of Tom Gabel's voice and the headlong disorder of the band's ragtag instrumentation. They sounded, basically, like glorified spoken word pieces, set to a tune. The band's refusal to do anything resembling a second take hit a kind of DIY nerve so precisely that within a few months of the record's emergence, it was on its way to becoming No Idea's all-time best-selling release.
This was in 2002. Within a year there were hundreds of bands that sounded like them (check the excellent Plan-It-X label) and skeptics gritted their teeth, recognized a trend when they saw one, and waited for things to pass. Among these skeptics, it turned out, was the band itself. Against Me! saw the end long before most of their fans did-- it didn't help that their most popular song, "Baby, I'm an Anarchist!", was exactly the novelty it appears to be-- and this fact might explain how they ended up, five years later, on a major label, with Butch Vig at the controls, and seeking their third or fourth or tenth new audience in as many years.
For a bunch of self-professed anarchists and DIY devotees, the jump to pop-punk haven and Warped Tour affiliate Fat Wreck Chords only a year after they'd talked thousands of kids into believing what they ostensibly did was about as a jarring and contradictory as it sounds. Two records later, they finished the job of demolishing their own fans' newly learned anti-capitalist ethic by signing to Sire, after making an MTV video and a documentary about how extremely they were courted by besuited guys with way more money to burn than Fat Mike. In a post indie-rock world where the Decemberists and Death Cab for Cutie and even Mastodon were cheered for making the major label leap, Against Me! became the first band of the 21st Century to actually succeed at selling out.
"We can control the medium" are the first words you hear listening to New Wave: "We can control the context of presentation." Fan expectations aside, Against Me! built their sound in reaction to big-chorus guitar-rock, and this track, "New Wave", is almost exactly that: big jangly chorus, vague topicality ("Come on and wash these shores away!"), vocal overdubs by the scores. "No signs of original thought in the mainstream," sings Gabel, and the anxiety is palpable. It's also, as far as these things go, an immaculately stirring song, a sing-a-long on the first pass kind of confection.
This is comfortable territory on the Warped Tour axis, Against Me!'s adopted home. "Trash Unreal" is a Rancid-esque ode about a girl who gets mixed up with the wrong drugs and the wrong guys and the wrong crowd, dances to "Rebel Yell," ages out of the scene, and wakes up a thirty-something junkie. "Americans Abroad" is an anti- cultural imperialism anthem. Tegan of Tegan and Sara guests on "Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart", an emo duet. "White People for Peace" concerns the desire of white people for peace; it's also the first single, and with its "protest songs" refrain you'd have to be a pretty lousy guy not to like it. These are longstanding punk tropes boiled down and Vig-ed up, removed of their typical dirt sheen and bolstered by a couple extra guitar tracks.
Of course, the need to say something is a double-edged sword at this level, where Gabel's tasked with ways of making his standard stiff and excessive syllables-- "East and West could not agree, so their Generals gave call and gathered troops at the border"-- sound like something you'd buy a ticket to see. Earnest self-importance of the Bad Religion school rear-ends latter day Green Day we-are-the-worlditude, and the next thing you know you're shouting "civilian casualties had been a cost that was predetermined/when interviewed for report victims pleaded in frustration" and wondering what the hell happened.
For one thing, who even knows to whom this band is speaking anymore? "Up the Cuts", an agonized look at the failing record industry, is a song nobody thought Against Me! would write. "All the insiders rumor over the decline in sales, all the buzz is happening in the new digital marketplace" Gabel sings, or tries to anyway, and one feels for him. "In MRR, someone asks the question...is the culture now a product that's disposable?" Gabel asks, and on the lyric sheet, though not in the song, "MRR" is followed by a parenthesis: (Maximum Rock and Roll). Against Me! have come a long way indeed, when they need to explain to their audience what they mean by that acronym. And where they've arrived at, even they don't know. As Gabel sings, finishing the track: "All the punks still singing the same song, is there anybody thinking what I am? Is there any other alternative? Are you restless like me?" | 2007-07-23T02:00:05.000-04:00 | 2007-07-23T02:00:05.000-04:00 | Rock | Sire | July 23, 2007 | 5.5 | 1de71e8f-f185-4e4e-81cf-7941e2f8def3 | Pitchfork | null |
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The Scottish trio Chvrches’ debut is a seamless fusion of emotive theatrics, hook-loaded songwriting, and some of the most forward-thinking sonic tricks employed in electronic music right now. There are a dozen world-beating songs here, and The Bones of What You Believe bleeds big-scale ambition from every synthesized pore. | The Scottish trio Chvrches’ debut is a seamless fusion of emotive theatrics, hook-loaded songwriting, and some of the most forward-thinking sonic tricks employed in electronic music right now. There are a dozen world-beating songs here, and The Bones of What You Believe bleeds big-scale ambition from every synthesized pore. | Chvrches: The Bones of What You Believe | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18523-chvrches-the-bones-of-what-you-believe/ | The Bones of What You Believe | For two decades, Glasgow’s indie-pop and dance music scenes have run in parallel, with only a few notable intersections; Chvrches are the latest meeting point. The Scottish trio’s debut LP, The Bones of What You Believe, is a seamless fusion of emotive theatrics, hook-loaded songwriting, and some of the more forward-thinking sonics in electronic music right now. It’s a style that feels very of-the-moment: Chvrches embody what a generation raised on electronic music is looking for in a rock band, taking the danceable textures favored by the Electric Daisy set and applying them to the sweeping songcraft of M83 and Passion Pit.
Unlike those those bands, Chvrches avoid guitars almost entirely, but the hooks on The Bones of What You Believe are indelible regardless of instrumentation, and the sound is immaculate. After Chvrches self-produced the album in band member Iain Cook’s own Glasgow studio, big-deal boards guy Rich Costey (Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine) handled the mixing; his touch gives these tunes the bright clarity they deserve, with plenty of space for funhouse sonic triggers—processed effects, pitched-down vocal samples, frizzy synth-pad textures. Every note sounds clean and sharp, a necessary corrective to the chemical-dipped wooziness that has dominated electronic indie pop in the last few years.
That sense of precision is unusual for a band this new, but Cook and Martin Doherty, who handle the majority of the instrumentation live and on record, are vets of Glasgow’s perpetually fertile indie scene. Cook handled guitars and programming as a member of defunct alt-leaning post-rockers Aereogramme, while Doherty was once a live member of throat-shredding shoegazers the Twilight Sad (who launched into their own synth excursions around the time that Chvrches became a full-time concern). Together they make music that complements distinctive vocalists without overshadowing them.
Heard in the context of Glasgow’s still-strong cottage industry of distinctly masculine anguish-rock bands, the emotional palette of Chvrches’ lead singer Lauren Mayberry is a welcome change of pace. A local-band lifer who once pursued a career in music journalism, Mayberry’s voice is a multifaceted instrument, the emotional kernel in Chvrches’ molecular makeup. She can sound cutting, aching, triumphant, fragile, and weightless, sometimes all at once; on “Lies,” she soars above the chorus’ mountainous build, and her vocal surge rescues the murky techno of “Science/Visions,” the closest thing to a miss on this otherwise rock-solid album.
Even when Mayberry’s at her most powerful, her voice possesses a specific, relatable humanity, which brightens the adolescent glow of her lyrics. (Occasional lead singer Doherty, previously the band’s weak link, makes good enough on his two featured songs, the rippling “Under the Tide” and the prom-dance lushness of “You Caught the Light”). Her words might look overwrought on paper, but when set to the emotive sounds that Chvrches trade in, they sound towering, impassioned, and life-affirming. Depeche Mode, a spiritual antecedent, have a classic song with the refrain “All I ever wanted/All I ever needed/Is here, in my arms”; that kind of emotional directness and simplicity is a hallmark of the songwriting here.
The Bones of What You Believe also shares some of Depeche Mode’s large-scale ambition: The arpeggiated-synth burst that closes “Tether” sounds like it was orchestrated for the optimal turn-all-the-lasers-on-at-once trigger at a live performance, and it’s all the better for it. Throughout, Chvrches’ effortless populism finds them in a long tradition of bands who take a highly personal sense of turmoil and blow it up onto an arena-sized screen. Granted, recent live performances have suggested that they have a ways to go before their concert-conquering potential catches up with the ability they display on record, but such growing pains are normal for a band this new. For now, on record, Chvrches know how to go big on an intimate scale, to remind us of the stuff that keeps us living. | 2013-09-25T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2013-09-25T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Glassnote | September 25, 2013 | 8.5 | 1df16fa0-0695-4b30-910b-b79e8379012b | Larry Fitzmaurice | https://pitchfork.com/staff/larry-fitzmaurice/ | |
The Chicago-based footwork scene gets its first comprehensive compilation, and it serves as a very solid overview of the dance music style. | The Chicago-based footwork scene gets its first comprehensive compilation, and it serves as a very solid overview of the dance music style. | Various Artists: Bangs & Works, Vol. 1: A Chicago Footwork Compilation | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14985-bangs-works-vol-1-a-chicago-footwork-compilation/ | Bangs & Works, Vol. 1: A Chicago Footwork Compilation | Let's be clear: footwork, or footwurk, or footwerk is not blowing up. Not like dubstep or electroclash or hyphy blew up. Footwork is really more of a lit fuse at this point, and one of those painfully slow, Wile E. Coyote-style fuses at that. Roughly, footwork pits sharp, repetitive samples of soul, hip-hop, and reggae against limping, junkyard-dog 808s. It is music composed, at least theoretically, to encourage a specific kind of dancing, but the strangeness of the tracks suggests the producers have ulterior motives. (The dancing looks a bit like breakdancing, but using your arms is discouraged.) Bangs & Works, Vol. 1 is the first widely available compilation of footwork music, released by London-based Planet Mu, whose founder, Mike Paradinas, is relentless in his quest for new sounds.
There is little question why footwork evolved in Chicago: House music birthed the raunchier, uptempo ghetto house (or "juke"), which in turn led to the stripped-for-parts footwork sound. Like ghetto house, tracks usually settle in around 160 bpm; at 140 you've found yourself a ballad. There are hip-hop roots too: the sound's genesis is rooted in RP Boo's "Baby Come On", a track that prominently features an Ol' Dirty Bastard sample (sadly not included here). Other tracks owe a debt to hip-hop's vulgar confidence. Kanye West is said to have been influenced by the scene's early progenitors.
Chicago-based journalist and DJ Dave Quam called footwork "more or less the gum under the shoe of mainstream electronic music," which is a fantastic visual that also speaks to the tuff pliability of the sound. Footwork is not expansive. Unlike, say, house music, which has been refracted into a million directions, Bangs & Works will sound homogenous and alien on first listen (remember back to your first listen to Run the Road or Favela Booty Beats; shit's going to start off a little annoying). Repeated listens will parcel the tracks into three or so basic categories: short, styled dance numbers; novelty tracks; and slyly artful tracks.
Regarding that third category: it's probably fair to say that ghetto house never spawned tracks that sought as obviously to transcend their club context as DJ Elmoe's "Whea Yo Ghost At, Whea Yo Dead Man" or DJ Trouble's "Bangs & Works". Tracks like DJ Roc's "One Blood" and DJ Nate's "Ima Dog" remind me of anyone's first experience with a sampler: They invariably mash a single pad, rhythmically restarting the sample again and again.
The core element of footwork appears to be contrast: between the sharp drums and the melodic samples, between art and novelty. "Ima Dog" pits its ripping, staccato title sample against what sounds like a new age elegy. RP Boo's "Eraser" feigns Armageddon, but its ascendant soul diva exposes it as something more optimistic. DJ Nate's "He Ain't Bout It" mixes banal trash talk with soothing chants. "Jungle Juke" goofily steals from "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", and "Freddy vs. Jason" is a horror-movie mashup.
Footwork seems like it should be a young man's game, but it's not, really. It's been fermenting in Chicago for at least a decade, if not longer, and many of its principals-- RP Boo, DJ Rashad, DJ Roc, DJ Spinn-- are hardly fresh faces. Footwork reminds me spiritually of the blues that artists like Junior Kimbrough used to play: raunchy, fun music that knowingly sacrificed complexity for rhythm (the ramshackle clubs this music was played in: juke joints). And like some strains of blues, footwork appears to be catching on overseas before it finds larger audiences stateside. Bristol-based dubstep producer Addison Groove's "Footcrab", one of the year's dance music smashes, is an obvious homage and would be even if its mantra-like, goofball refrain didn't sound like a G-rated version of DJ Roc's "Fuck Dat".
At this point, it's not worth speculating about the future prospects of the footwork scene. If dubstep and house long ago left the club in search of other musical terrains, footwork is only just peeking out the door. The real promise of Bangs & Works isn't an international footwork movement per se, but a generation of resourceful and creative producers-- heretofore ignored-- redefining dance music for themselves. Here's hoping the size of their audience matches their appetites for the goofy, the melancholy, and the left-field. | 2011-01-12T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2011-01-12T01:00:03.000-05:00 | null | Planet Mu | January 12, 2011 | 8.3 | 1df49f34-380f-4574-acf9-65c5f5fa11ac | Andrew Gaerig | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andrew-gaerig/ | null |
The Dominican producer takes a mischievous, electro-punk approach to genre fusions, mashing up the club, the rave, and the mosh pit. | The Dominican producer takes a mischievous, electro-punk approach to genre fusions, mashing up the club, the rave, and the mosh pit. | Diego Raposo: YO NO ERA ASÍ PERO DE AHORA EN ADELANTE, SÍ | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/diego-raposo-yo-no-era-asi-pero-de-ahora-en-adelante-si/ | Yo No Era Así Pero de Ahora en Adelante, Sí | Dominican multi-instrumentalist Diego Raposo plays with contrast on YO NO ERA ASÍ PERO DE AHORA EN ADELANTE, SÍ. Melding jungle breakbeats, fuzzed-out electric guitar, and frantic bass with melancholy downtempo production, Raposo’s new LP, which he bills as his debut, stands in stark contrast to 2018’s Caribe Express. That mixtape drew more obviously from his Caribbean roots, utilizing congas, dembow riddims, and merengue. On his latest, the question of identity is not so clear-cut: He’s still brandishing the Dominican Republic’s red, white, and blue, but his freak flag flies above them.
The album is built around oscillating moods. Emo club tracks made for perreando y llorando mix freely with hyperactive cuts born for raves and mosh pits; gabber kicks give way to sticky-sweet pop punk. In “NORMAL,” fellow quisqueyano producer yendruy aquinx’s voice piles up in layers of Auto-Tune over lush synths; the energy shifts on “AL CONTRARIO,” where Chile’s AKRIILA belts through Auto-Tune over rapid-fire jungle breaks and alt-rock guitars. Extreme vocal processing is one of Raposo’s signature tools; he strikes a balance between icy digital effects and human warmth as he re-pitches and distorts his guest singers.
Ecuadorian indie-pop singer Kablito’s voice is turned into frothy hyperpop in “QUÉDATE.” Miami electronic upstart MJ Nebreda channels her best neoperreo diva on “EN LA DISCO,” a slow-burning scene-setter that culminates in a slow-motion club throb. In the wistful opener “19.322239, -68.540659,” queer Mexican alt heartthrob Blue Rojo, who worked with Raposo on last year’s playful “NO TE KIERO OLVIDAR,” performs angelic, Arca-esque vocal runs over glitchy electronic flourishes. Despite being just a minute long, the song feels like it could go on forever, so it’s fitting that the title’s coordinates map a point just northeast of Raposo’s native island in the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
The shifts that follow that calm, dulcet introduction show just how mischievous Raposo can be: “EL UNDERGROUND” is a lightning-fast rave anthem that underpins mediopicky’s seductive vocals (“Tengo hambre/Quiero tu sangre/Soy un vampiro/Y tu eres mi carne”) with rapid-fire kick drums; then “A&R” goes from pop-punk to screamo in less than a minute. However much these moments stick out, they fit right in with the album’s Caribbean punk ethos. And while it might seem surprising to hear Raposo making rock music, it shouldn’t: This is the producer who brought to life Venezuelan popetón golden boy Danny Ocean’s drum-heavy reinterpretation of Caracas alt-rock heroes Caramelos de Cianuro’s “Rubia Sol, Morena Luna.”
It’s instructive to compare Raposo’s eclectic album to Data, the producer project that superstar reggaeton beatmaker Tainy put out earlier this year. In that cohesive set, the Puerto Rican Luny Tunes acolyte kept the party going with polished song after polished song. But Raposo, in contrast, takes a willfully patchy approach to the dancefloor. YO NO ERA ASÍ PERO DE AHORA EN ADELANTE, SÍ revels in its inconsistencies: It’s a defiant statement that Spanish-language pop can be anything it wants to be. | 2023-08-29T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-08-29T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Experimental | Gran Vaina | August 29, 2023 | 7.4 | 1df4dc93-c113-4133-90fc-3dd0014d4c78 | E.R. Pulgar | https://pitchfork.com/staff/e.r.-pulgar/ | |
Irish singer James Vincent McMorrow's sophomore effort Post Tropical is an album that seems suited to winter. It features lyrics about “elements of frost” and “cold air” and taut, pensive songs that carry a pristine stillness. | Irish singer James Vincent McMorrow's sophomore effort Post Tropical is an album that seems suited to winter. It features lyrics about “elements of frost” and “cold air” and taut, pensive songs that carry a pristine stillness. | James Vincent McMorrow: Post Tropical | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18895-james-vincent-mcmorrow-post-tropical/ | Post Tropical | There's a shot that crops up often in nature documentaries or early in the third act of movies that focus on a character's personal growth: An icicle slowly melts in tentative drips, or a cluster of pine needles covered in snow suddenly shakes off its crystalline burden. It's a shot that communicates things like “time has passed, slowly but surely” and “the character you're about to see has been through some deep contemplation!” But it works because there is something about the stark calm of late winter that seems to match up with those periodic spells of reflection, the slow, occasional seasons we spend gradually and deliberately healing or learning. They stretch on forever and then are suddenly complete. They feel like a dream.
Irish singer James Vincent McMorrow's sophomore effort Post Tropical is an album that seems suited to such seasons. It's a winter album in ways that go beyond its release date, with lyrics about “elements of frost” and “cold air” and taut, pensive songs that carry a pristine stillness. There are spare, open moments of longing vocals over solitary piano notes and stabs of sunny revelations in the periodic horn arrangements and cymbal crashes. Above all, Post Tropical is pretty. It's also the type of music to grow with for a little while as a personal soundtrack, a companion for a few months that one might fondly check in with from time to time later on.
If the album has that intimacy, it's likely because Post Tropical comes as a more personal turn for McMorrow. His first album, Early In The Morning, was a comforting collection of guitar folk that found unexpected acclaim and commercial success, charting well in several European countries and landing McMorrow high-profile performances on Later... With Jools Holland and elsewhere. But the acoustic guitar wasn't, according to McMorrow, what he intended to stake his career on. Inspired by the rediscovery of an old hard drive full of efforts at recreating N.E.R.D. songs, the resulting departure on Post Tropical is an attempt to channel the spirit of the electronic music, R&B and hip-hop that McMorrow likes to listen to.
In practice, the new bent means mostly swapping out the guitars for pianos and horns and using the occasional swatch of electronic drums. Although it does passingly resemble the low wattage D'Angelo tributes that get passed off on many blogs as R&B, to call Post Tropical that does a disservice to both the genre and the album. McMorrow's falsetto, already impressive, gets pushed to new heights that could call to mind Maxwell but are more likely to inspire comparisons to others in the indie and folk sphere like Bon Iver's Justin Vernon or the Antlers' Pete Silberman, particularly given the lyrical tone and a backing template that might feel at home on projects by either of those acts.
That voice is McMorrow's best tool, confessional and energizing whether he's hitting the unexpected climax of “there's no sense at all” on “Glacier” or using it to construct a plaintive mantra at the end of “Red Dust” with the repeated lyric, “sometimes my hands they don't feel like my own/ I need someone to love I need someone to hold.” The tone is pained, but the effect is both beautiful and comforting throughout, particularly in the way the album's songs often build to a single yearning, repeated phrase, like “I remember my first love” or “there is so little light from the warmth of the sun.”
Lyrically, the material is generally more oriented toward pulling emotions out of specific sounds of syllables than cohering into clear narratives or even realistic images (consider, for instance, that last line, from “Outside, Digging”, which sounds right but actually reverses cause and effect between light and warmth we're used to). The overall effect can be a little bit free associative, and it plays into the album's biggest weakness: While these songs are pretty, they don't really stand out as songs so much as meandering compositions that follow a similar, slow crescendo formula. There's nothing with the immediate structure or dramatic pull of a song like Early in the Morning's “We Don't Eat”.
But if the album does tend to drift rather than deliver hits, the drifting is awfully pleasant and particularly accomplished. Songs like “Cavalier”, “Outside, Digging” and especially “Red Dust”, an arresting blend of 808 drum machines and swirling piano, hit such memorable vocal highs that they feel both instantly familiar and starkly refreshing. At the same time, many of the best moments are more subtle surprises: the keening country guitars that swoop through the background of “The Lakes”, the flitter of clarinet that plays atop the plink of guitars at the end of “All Points”, the gorgeous depth of the low horn notes that build to the climax of “Glacier”. With its deliberate, languorous pleasures, this is an album to live with, settle with and be crisply rejuvenated by. | 2014-01-21T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2014-01-21T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Electronic / Folk/Country | Vagrant | January 21, 2014 | 7.1 | 1dfd2d87-0231-474c-acf4-3b357dd94f9e | Kyle Kramer | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kyle-kramer/ | null |
As the Strokes sound more confused with each new album, Albert Hammond Jr.'s own songwriting has turned more precise and concise. His latest album reasserts the carefree charm and hooky immediacy that’s gotten lost amid the band’s latter-day experimentation. | As the Strokes sound more confused with each new album, Albert Hammond Jr.'s own songwriting has turned more precise and concise. His latest album reasserts the carefree charm and hooky immediacy that’s gotten lost amid the band’s latter-day experimentation. | Albert Hammond Jr.: Momentary Masters | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20847-momentary-masters/ | Momentary Masters | Unlike so many instantly iconic rock phenomena before them, the Strokes didn’t so much turn boring as frustrating. From 2006’s First Impressions of Earth onward, they’ve sounded like a band constantly second-guessing itself—one that knows it has to evolve beyond a signature sound, but unwilling to commit to a direction. That erratic behavior has extended to frontman Julian Casablancas’ sideline pursuits, whether it as a Daft Punk-approved synth-pop singer or polarizing prog-punk provocateur. But the solo career of guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. has emerged as a beaming ray of light poking through these turbulent skies—as his main band sounds more confused with each new album, his own songwriting has turned more precise and concise.
That said, the refinement in Hammond’s work is less a reaction to the Strokes than the result of significant changes in his personal life. In contrast to the art-pop aspirations that fuelled his first two solo albums, Hammond’s 2013 EP, AHJ, was a slight, scrappy four-song affair. But it bore the weight of considerable baggage: he spent much of the record’s press cycle coming clean about going clean, kicking a prolonged addiction to cocaine, heroin, and ketamine he claimed was draining him of $2,000 a week. If AHJ was a tentative toe-dip back into solo recording, Momentary Masters is a confident full-body dive.
Like its predecessor, the new album isn’t afraid to draw comparisons to Hammond’s day job; rather than try to establish an identity separate from the Strokes, it reasserts the carefree charm and hooky immediacy that’s gotten lost amid the band’s latter-day experimentation. And unlike, say, Angles or Comedown Machine, Momentary Masters manages to inject a little funk and finesse into the Strokes’ wiry rock schematic without forcing the issue, interlocking Hammond’s signature, spidery fills with "Tetris"-tight rhythms that will have you double-checking the liner notes to see if Nikolai Fraiture and Fabrizio Moretti were recruited for the record. (They were not—that’s AHJ-era touring bassist Jordan Brooks and drummer Jeremy Gustin doing the yeoman’s work.)
For an album reportedly inspired by Carl Sagan, the 10-song, 36-minute Momentary Masters is remarkably lean and focused. The title refers to the famed astronomer’s description of our infinitesimal standing in the universe at large; it could also scan as a comment on the Strokes’ own experience as one-time hype magnets, and the struggle to stay relevant after the spotlight points somewhere else. "Sometimes, the sun goes behind the clouds/ You’ll forget the warmth that could be found," he laments on the opening "Born Slippy"—not a cover of the Underworld classic, but perhaps an oblique, cautionary evocation of that track’s hedonistic Trainspotting associations. If the song draws from the same well of influences as the Strokes—the chorus is even underpinned by a rewrite of the "Marquee Moon" riff—Hammond forsakes Casablancas’ disaffected cool for a down-to-earth humility befitting of a former next big thing, and the seize-the-day urgency of a recovering addict who no longer takes anything for granted. And just when you think you’ve got a handle on the song’s A/B structure, Hammond introduces subtle but substantial changes—a pointillist guitar-solo breakdown, new variations on the chorus melody—that transform the song’s scale from modest to majestic.
At the outset, Momentary Masters suggests a parallel history for the Strokes if they had signed to DFA instead of RCA, with the louche groove and synthesized disco strings of "Power Hungry" bridging the early-2000s divide between L.E.S. rock dives and Williamsburg warehouse parties. The album even boasts a spiritual successor to "Losing My Edge" in "Losing Touch", though, buoyed by the song’s spirited new-wave sprint and towering chorus, Hammond sounds happy to be leaving hipsterdom behind. That sentiment is reinforced in more plaintive fashion on a drum-machined cover of Bob Dylan’s "Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright", which initially seems like an outlier on the album, but proves to be its thematic centerpiece. Embracing the song’s don’t-look-back sentiment, Hammond blazes through Momentary Masters’ breathless second half with a series of direct-hit power-pop pick-me-ups that channels the guttersnipe grittiness of vintage Strokes—from the double-timed "Modern Age" stomp of "Razors Edge" to the "I Can’t Win" echoes of "Side Boob"—but with a tuneful flamboyance that reminds you Hammond is the biggest Guided by Voices fan in the group. (And, no doubt, Bob Pollard would approve of a nonsensically evocative title like "Drunched in Crumbs".) "Now that we’re not perfect, we have to be good," Hammond sings on "Touché", like someone who’s being extra-careful to not squander their second lease on life, but who’s liberated from the pressures and anxieties that drive one to bad habits in the first place. As the song’s taut rhythmic drive loosens into a gloriously goofy chicken-scratched guitar solo, Hammond reinforces the notion that, while rock'n'roll may be the gateway to a lifetime of vice, it can also be the most effective form of rehab. | 2015-07-29T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2015-07-29T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Vagrant | July 29, 2015 | 7.3 | 1dfd2fd3-2e0e-4c30-8bd0-0bc623989f3d | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
The two rap-and-soul fusionists aim for a retro aesthetic imbued with the intimacy of a basement club; the results are reminiscent of their Harlem Renaissance-inspired Luke Cage soundtrack. | The two rap-and-soul fusionists aim for a retro aesthetic imbued with the intimacy of a basement club; the results are reminiscent of their Harlem Renaissance-inspired Luke Cage soundtrack. | Ali Shaheed Muhammad / Adrian Younge: The Midnight Hour | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ali-shaheed-muhammad-adrian-younge-the-midnight-hour/ | The Midnight Hour | Producers Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge are bonded by a shared optimism. Before linking up on Souls of Mischief’s 2014 album There Is Only Now, Muhammad’s group A Tribe Called Quest gave jazz a shot of hip-hop’s youthful vitality, while Younge molded blaxploitation-era sounds with a psychedelic sheen. They’re different modes that arm themselves with the belief in the historical centrality and regality of black music, which has been a guiding principle in their Harlem Renaissance-inspired work on the soundtrack to the Marvel series Luke Cage. “There are distinguished people. There’s an edginess,” Muhammad said in an interview about the Marvel show. “There’s such a creative pool that’s come out of [Harlem] throughout the decades.”
Divorced from the significance of scoring Marvel’s first live-action black superhero show, The Midnight Hour decontextualizes the retro stylings as simply two friends chilling and creating. The duo’s first album-length collaboration, first conceived five years ago, has more in common with Luke Cage than There Is Only Now. The latter was a more kinetic project that took advantage of Souls of Mischief and Younge’s improvisational leanings. The Midnight Hour is obsessed with creating a small-venue, buttoned-up atmosphere, not unlike the Marvel show’s musical setpieces. There’s a peculiar live intimacy to the production that threads through hollowed-out kick drums and scratchy bass strings—and you can picture Muhammad and Younge dapping themselves up in the process.
The Midnight Hour pivots for the sake of upholding that soulful aesthetic. Take the rework of Luther Vandross’ schmaltzy 1987 cut “So Amazing.” The 1980s radio harmonies and starry keys get updated with a complex rhythm section and bassline that slide into a climax of violins and harp-like strings. Muhammad has touched on modernizing the old-school bops hip-hop has sampled, and it’s clear here that applies to instrumentation as much as attitude. By switching the silk into worn velvet, The Midnight Hour transforms the devotional ode into a cooler shimmy. The Cee-Lo-featuring “Questions” isn’t as indelible as the Kendrick Lamar cut that sampled the duo’s 2013 demo of the song, but reflections like “I’m supernatural/I am strange/Into whom or to what shall I change” still stretch along sweetly here.
Even though it centers on two men connecting over their tastes, The Midnight Hour mostly peaks with the guest vocalists’ performances. Early cut “It’s You” is a two-parter that rises from uproarious low-end percussion (applause included) to an adult-contemporary lovers’ tune, and it’s the humane radiance of Raphael Saadiq’s voice that pulls it together. The album’s most intense moment comes from sometime collaborator Bilal on “Do It Together,” who you’d imagine has his tank top peeking through his shirt as he throws his controlled presence into a histrionic howl at the track’s end. Marsha Ambrosius is more subdued by several degrees on “Don’t Keep Me Waiting,” encapsulating the track’s pleasures in her whisper.
But most of The Midnight Hour rarely captures that same sort of ecstasy. With some exceptions, like the fervorous “Redneph in B Minor”—whose eerie bleats crack open for honeyed strings—Muhammad and Younge too often settle for static jam sessions. They tend to emphasize the bassline throughout the set, but the instrument almost gratingly insists on the same motif: tiptoeing up to the edge of the cliff before descending once again.
By the midway point, The Midnight Hour becomes a bit too insular for the listener to share in its joys. The effect is a little like finding yourself at an exclusive party yet realizing you hardly know the folks who are having a ball with each other. The two musicians have tasked themselves with bridging generational and genre gaps between black music’s multitudes, but The Midnight Hour finds them still fiddling with how to do so. | 2018-06-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-06-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap / Pop/R&B | Linear Labs | June 14, 2018 | 6.7 | 1e016dc7-5c8a-45a0-86f9-aaaa3d7ece09 | Brian Josephs | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-josephs/ | |
The Australian garage rock band gained an adoring cult with the catchy, loud, fuzzy, and frantic songs of their 2012 debut. Three years later, lead singer Shogun might have worked to temper his powerful soul shout and the production is cleaner, but the songs are just as catchy and full of emotion. | The Australian garage rock band gained an adoring cult with the catchy, loud, fuzzy, and frantic songs of their 2012 debut. Three years later, lead singer Shogun might have worked to temper his powerful soul shout and the production is cleaner, but the songs are just as catchy and full of emotion. | Royal Headache: High | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20746-high/ | High | A recent Royal Headache show at the Sydney Opera House got stopped by police. During "Down the Lane", fans crashed the stage en masse, and when the chorus hit, they sang it as hard as they could. The scene became more raucous as the band sped into "Girls", and that's when cops eventually muscled the crowd off stage. A woman who'd eluded the wall of neon-vested officers took the mic and said, "I love you, Shogun." She was speaking to the band's sweaty, shirtless frontman who'd just been singing his heart out, lost somewhere in the mass of bodies.
Royal Headache have earned this beer-slinging, shout-along adulation fair and square. The songs of 2012's Royal Headache were catchy, loud, fuzzy, and frantic, and Shogun's voice has absurd range, plenty of force, and soul. It took three years to follow up on this debut, and with High they waste no time charging back in. On opener "My Own Fantasy", Shogun belts "I used to live in a world of rock'n'roll and tons of girls!" over a chugging, high-power intro. At a glance, it seems he's going through rock-god motions—romanticizing guitar music while extolling the virtues of fucking multiple strangers. Really, though, the song is about that bubble finally bursting—the sudden, cold feeling of loneliness even while fans are singing along and dancing all around you.
If there's an underlying sense of dissatisfaction here, it's safe to assume it might have something to do with the band's emotional state over the past year. In one interview, Shogun said he broke the band up due to their "dysfunctional" dynamic. (It was later clarified that they weren't breaking up after all.) In a statement, he said the whole album is "about someone I don't see anymore." The open wounds of relationship turmoil fuel High. The band are frenzied on "Need You", one of the best songs in their repertoire (buoyed significantly by Gabrielle de Giorgio's organ line). It's a song about professing love to no avail and eventually having those feelings decay into fruitless obsession. On "Another World", Shogun accuses the person he's with of judging him for superficial reasons. Both songs are as melodic and upbeat as anything on their debut.
Shogun labors over his vocals in the recording process, and his care shows. He could easily soul-scream all over the place, but instead he holds off on the high notes until the perfect moment comes around. He simmers calmly while addressing someone running scared from new love on "Wouldn't You Know". He's dismissive and contemptuous on "Garbage". When he does let loose, it's almost disorienting. He belts over and over during "Love Her If I Tried", and just when he appears to be going at full power, he seems to momentarily unhinge his jaw for one enormous, cathartic high note.
They still thrive on adrenaline and huge sing-along choruses, and "High" and "Electric Shock" deliver the dependable goods. They're not just going through the motions, though. "Carolina", with its acoustic underpinnings, is a surprisingly pastoral plea. The hook is indelible, stirring memories of other people singing the words "sweet Caroline". As ever, it's catchy and full of emotion. Royal Headache have taken steps forward since their last album—they’ve cleaned up their production and diversified their songwriting. Ultimately, though, the important bits are intact: the passion, the power, and the hooks that demand being shouted joyfully. | 2015-08-18T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-08-18T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | What's Your Rupture? | August 18, 2015 | 8 | 1e07960f-4f0c-442b-b158-c2f3927e4020 | Evan Minsker | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-minsker/ | null |
The Tokyo jazz-fusion quintet specializes in disorienting twists and turns, offsetting chaos with an unmistakable sense of fun. | The Tokyo jazz-fusion quintet specializes in disorienting twists and turns, offsetting chaos with an unmistakable sense of fun. | De Lorians: De Lorians | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/de-lorians-de-lorians/ | De Lorians | Listening to the debut LP from Tokyo jazz-fusion quintet De Lorians for the first time is like taking a spin on a dark-ride roller coaster. Not just because the 32-minute prog odyssey is full of hairpin turns and inversions: Its transitions unfurl completely unpredictably. Here, 30 seconds of loungey trot offers no refuge from the barrage of sax honking that might rain down by the time you’ve blinked. De Lorians, led by bandleader and multi-instrumentalist Takefumi Ishida, feed on a theory-drunk disrespect for familiar patterns.
The music is calculatedly disorienting, but the assailing squeals of Ishida’s sax or Soya Nogami’s lead guitar should be enough to ensure that you don’t zone out. De Lorians proudly take after the work of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (“Zappa is God among us,” Ishida has said). But where their Mothers favorites like Weasels Ripped My Flesh would wholly commit to jumping across stylistic universes while getting messy with math, De Lorians maintain a few constants—namely, that Ishida’s or Nogami’s instrument is almost always atop the arrangement, appearing to direct the music with total autonomy. By minute two of opener “Daytona,” they play like they’re dancing to their own fantastical, incongruous meter, the rest of the band existing only in their imagination, because how could any other rational human minds follow along to this? At certain points, just trying to measure what time signature or key the band is in can be like grasping water: The moment you think you’ve closed your fingers around it, it’s already slipped through them and running down your forearm.
On “Roccatsu,” Ishida’s slow, despondent vibrato soundtracks a stroll through a shady alley in a noir film, up until it turns a corner, and suddenly this film is 1970s blaxploitation, underscored with muted wicka-chucka funk guitar. “Toumai” ends the album with no fewer than nine movements inside its seven minutes, sequenced as haphazardly as a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Ultimately, there’s a sense of levity in these hard lefts that elevates De Lorians from hostile chaos. That’s where listeners can find payoff. De Lorians arm themselves with fun, from the toy piano that wanders into “Himalia” to the sound effects that crop up throughout, taken from Nogami’s growing collection of environmental recordings from his daily life, like the pop of a soda can or the flick of a lighter.
Ninety seconds into the tellingly named highlight “A Ship of Mental Health,” a duel breaks out between Nogami’s field recordings and the band. There’s a second or two of sound—laughing, munching, an empty potato-chips bag crinkling—followed by a two-second phrase of music. They go back and forth a few times, as if in dialogue. The effect is similar to a technique used by artists including Steve Reich, the Books, and Charles Spearin, where recorded speech is transcribed and melodies written around its rising and falling pitches. Suddenly, a different kind of sense appears in the motion of De Lorians, one that doesn’t resemble familiar musical patterns so much as it does the accidental rhythms of your lunch break: the tumbling of a canned beverage through a vending machine, or the hesitation in human speech while waiting for processed thought to catch up. On a dizzying debut, it’s De Lorians’ most interesting twist.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-07-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-07-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | Beyond Beyond is Beyond | July 29, 2019 | 7.4 | 1e0eba05-9c25-48ea-876b-534dcde14412 | Steven Arroyo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/steven-arroyo/ | |
At the Drive-In stuck around long enough to have an unequivocal impact and burned out before they could wear out their welcome. Now, without much fanfare, the charismatic El Paso post-hardcore band are reissuing their 1996 debut Acrobatic Tenement and their 2000 swan song Relationship of Command. | At the Drive-In stuck around long enough to have an unequivocal impact and burned out before they could wear out their welcome. Now, without much fanfare, the charismatic El Paso post-hardcore band are reissuing their 1996 debut Acrobatic Tenement and their 2000 swan song Relationship of Command. | At the Drive In: Acrobatic Tenement / Relationship of Command | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17973-at-the-drive-in-acrobatic-tenement-relationship-of-command/ | Acrobatic Tenement / Relationship of Command | If you have any memories of modern rock radio in 2000, I’m guessing they aren’t fond recollections. The dominance of rap-metal, as defined by Limp Bizkit and Korn, was starting to wane ever so slightly, and that had to be a good thing, right? But at its best, rap-metal at least offered something new. Soon, playlists would be flooded with the ironically coined nu-metal, which manifested in the likes of Nickelback, Staind, Godsmack, and Puddle of Mudd, old fashioned grunge bands who imported rap-metal's misogyny, regrettable facial hair, and nothing else. When the pendulum has swung so far in one direction, a correction is likely already underway and this can be exciting for people who see the big picture; but we were still about a year away from the Strokes, White Stripes, Bleed American, Songs for the Deaf, I Get Wet, or anything that offered a reprieve. This gap in time proved perfect for At the Drive-In-- if you caught the video for “One Armed Scissor”, the vocals kinda sounded like Rage Against the Machine, the band sliced and diced like Fugazi, and rocked like hell, but seriously, THOSE AFROS…who the fuck are these guys and where did they come from and how many times is he gonna throw that microphone in the air?
In image, sound, and presentation, At the Drive-In were a fully-formed real deal, a Next Big Thing to most, even though their arrival on rock radio was six years in the making; by the release of Relationship of Command, they'd already accumulated an impressive discography and a live reputation. But the typical music consumer was still relying on MTV, Clear Channel, and Sam Goody as prime conveyers, so El Paso might as well have been the actual middle of nowhere. Less than a year after the release of Relationship, they broke up in a way that resembled a broken bone more than a torn ligament-- nasty and fast, but so clean and unmistakable that you could imagine they might patch things up. Who knows what was expected of ATDI as a commercial entity, but they stuck around long enough to have an unequivocal impact, burned out before they could wear out their welcome, and left a whole lot to explore and a whole to the imagination. And so a year removed from their big Coachella reunion and without much fanfare, At the Drive-In are reissuing their 1996 debut Acrobatic Tenement and their swan song Relationship of Command, the two ends of a compelling arc that foretold both their explosive music and implosive interpersonal relationships.
It stands to reason many ATDI fans discovered their discography in reverse order, and if you take the headfirst dive into Acrobatic Tenement, you’re shocked at how the same people responsible for “One Armed Scissor” sound every bit as naïve and scrawny as you’d expect of a band who named themselves after a Poison lyric. It’s not exactly their Pablo Honey: many early adapters still will vouch for it as their best and most honest record and they sound like a younger version of themselves more than a completely different version.
They more or less had an idea of what they wanted to sound like. Whether it’s the murky, almost clean guitar tone, the dual-frontman vocal interaction or just a tendency to get as strident as possible on the chorus, much of Acrobatic Tenement was on loan from Fugazi and their ilk. Bixler-Zavala’s vocals are likewise fully formed and while his lyrics tend to be a lot more grounded in tangible goods than they were later on, there’s still a lot of decoder-ring jabberwocky; “Initiation” is rumored to be about ATDI groupies, “Ebroglio” documents a friend’s suicide, but even the hardworking commenters at songmeanings.net think most of these tracks are about breakups, a sure sign that they’re out of ideas.
But the most startling aspect of Acrobatic Tenement is its anemic sound*,* which allows you to visualize At the Drive-In at the “Bandcamp with local gigs” phase of their career. It’s meant as a souvenir and possible replacement for their “you had to be there” live show; I use that term in the most literal sense, since even if their exhausting touring regimen is still spoken of in hushed tones, it rarely got them out of the Southwest. And Acrobatic Tenement struggles with the same quandary that faces bands whose live performance far outstrips their songwriting and recording skills: considering that the budget was taken from couch cushions (a rumored $600), why not just, you know, record a live show? I couldn’t imagine Acrobatic Tenement sounding any less slick-- even compared to the brickwalled Relationship of Command, the intended dynamics of “Skips On The Record” and “Schaffino” are rendered theoretical at best, the guitars mostly sound like someone forgot to hit a distortion pedal, and there are several times during the otherwise excellent “Ticklish” where it actually sounds like someone forgot to hit their distortion pedal until midway through a riff.
There are still good songs on Acrobatic Tenement-- “Initiation” and “Star Slight” in particular stand out as strong examples of where post-hardcore was at the time and where At the Drive-In could’ve taken it. But really, the reissue of Acrobatic Tenement is better used as a means of scaling At the Drive-In’s subsequent leaps and bounds-- guitarist/vocalist Jim Ward praised it for its “earnest and pure excitement,” relative to Relationship’s “craftsmanship.” In other words, both artist and listener alike can appreciate Acrobatic Tenement as the record At the Drive-In made because they really didn’t know any better.
What’s interesting about Relationship of Command in retrospect is just how much of it remains etched in 2000. For one thing, it was released on Grand Royal, the Beastie Boys’ boutique label which served as a late-90s booster for cosmopolitan, kitschy, and quirky acts like Bis, Atari Teenage Riot, and Luscious Jackson that mostly strayed far away from alt-rock’s mainstream. Relationship, along with the pre-9/11 vinyl pressing of Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American, was one of Grand Royal’s final releases before it shuttered in 2001 and also one of its most successful, selling over 1 million copies. And most crucially, there was the duo responsible for capturing ATDI’s sound. Relationship of Command was produced by Ross Robinson, nu-metal standard bearer, five-star general in the Loudness Wars, and the very person responsible for many of the records that made Relationship of Command sound so bold by comparison. And much to the band’s eventual regret, Andy Wallace mixed the LP, ensuring it was as juiced-up and steroidal as any number of sluggers restoring the nation’s faith in Major League Baseball at the time.
While guitarist and eventual Mars Volta member Omar Rodriguez-Lopez discredited the mixing of Relationship of Command, it’s hard to argue with Wallace’s decisions because it totally fucking worked. That At the Drive-In could go moonshot for moonshot with the heavy hitters without drastically altering the content of Relationship was its biggest success-- here was a band smuggling in post-hardcore, emo-punk, and math-rock in between whatever MACHINA/Machines of God or Californication single was poppin’ at the time. But if you liked omnidirectional anger, big choruses, and loud guitars*, Relationship of Command* was an album that could easily be taken at face value before the subversive aspects came to the fore.
From the very first seconds of “Arcarsenal”-- the kind of hardcore Pornography that even the Cure couldn’t replicate on their Ross Robinson album-- Relationship of Command grabs you by the collar and does not stop. A lot of the advances they'd made on In/Casino/Out and Vaya-- electronics, Latin percussion, more ambitious song structure-- were simply blown up to scale. Meanwhile, Bixler-Zavala’s cloak and dagger lyricism went even deeper into garbled SpyTech communiqué while becoming unintentionally anthemic or resonant-- “have you ever tasted skin?,” “hypodermic people poking fun at the living,” and of course, “this station is non-operational.”
Make no mistake, Relationship of Command is also ATDI’s best album on account of having its sharpest songwriting, most explosive hooks, and catchiest guitars. Sure, there’s a piano somewhere in the mix, but the windup leading to “I must’ve read a thousand faaaaaaaaces!” on “Arcarsenal” is about the only reprieve you get within the first 15 minutes. The chorus riff of “One Armed Scissor” would’ve been a major hit on Beavis & Butthead’s couch years prior. Bixler-Zavala’s eventual shift towards prog-metal operatics aren’t as much of a surprise in retrospect listening to the belted chorus of “Sleepwalk Capsules.”
But while Relationship of Command is a juggernaut, it’s not invincible. For one thing, you can sense the fissures forming in ATDI’s songwriting team-- the undeniable chorus of “Invalid Litter Dept.” (you know, the “dancing on the corpses’ ashes” song) is necessary to make up for its stilted interjections and even if “Enfilade” is about half as long as a standard Mars Volta song, it packs in every bit as many chintzy production tricks. Iggy Pop shows up to whisper a ransom note at the beginning of "Enfilade" and shows up somewhere indeterminate on "Rolodex Propaganda", because he was available and this was a major label rock album in 2000. Meanwhile, Relationship’s second half anticipates the utilitarian modern rock of Ward’s Sparta; Wallace and ATDI are equally complicit in turning “Quarantined” into a leaden slog and “Cosmonaut” into an undifferentiated flurry of pugilistic guitar.
ATDI’s recorded output appears to have been a parallel to their internal dynamic-- Relationship of Command represented the culmination of everything they’ve done to date, their passions and ambitions given a healthy infusion of money. Their implosion appears to have been the result of the same ol’ rock‘n’roll bullshit often abetted by a healthy infusion of money and subsequent hype, i.e., rumored drug abuse, van accidents, cancelled tours at the worst possible times, “creative differences,” and ultimately the sort of long-standing resentments that inevitably fester when you spend nearly every waking moment of an entire decade with the same five people.
At the Drive-In never made a perfect record, though the bigger questions here have more to do with the actual reissuing than the records themselves. Bearing only a single track of bonus material, it’s tough to imagine what the public gets out of increased availability of what are, by far, the weakest and the most popular At the Drive-In releases. Moreover, the timing just feels unnecessarily cruel. ATDI were so frank about their motivations for a reunion tour in 2012 that you had to take them at their word when they said had no plans to make another album. But that was before the dissolution of Mars Volta, a band that allowed Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez to achieve greater commercial success while simultaneously driving up the nostalgia and cred value of At the Drive-In. What’s stopping them now, other than Omar’s 12-dozen side projects?
And if you do feel invested in rock radio, it’s easy to mope about, thinking, “we sure could use another At the Drive-In.” This is a complaint that rings true on multiple levels: while I have plenty of anecdotal evidence of artists claiming to have been blown away by Relationship of Command as a teen, now that Thursday’s called it quits, the only bands that strike me as bearing any ATDI influence are dudes like Biffy Clyro or Alexisonfire, who are probably even further from the “indie” purview than Mars Volta. Or, maybe the cold administration of At the Drive-In’s legacy is its own sort of command, i.e., “this station is non-operational unless we say so.” They may have once been emo, but no ever said they were romantic. | 2013-04-29T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2013-04-29T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | null | April 29, 2013 | 6.5 | 1e15f8c0-73e6-479e-b95c-3ee6f41ab03f | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
Stevie Wonder’s second legendary album of 1972 contains heartbreaking hits about love and social crisis. Its revolutionary use of the synthesizer humanized the instrument to a degree never heard before. | Stevie Wonder’s second legendary album of 1972 contains heartbreaking hits about love and social crisis. Its revolutionary use of the synthesizer humanized the instrument to a degree never heard before. | Stevie Wonder: Talking Book | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/stevie-wonder-talking-book/ | Talking Book | In 1972, Stevie Wonder released the first two albums in a legendary series of LPs that would affirm the breadth of his talent and his signature sound as a songwriter: Music of My Mind and Talking Book. It’s not that Wonder’s 13 prior Motown recordings failed to show off his unique voice and personality, just that the blind polymath felt unfairly limited by Motown’s need to dictate what he could sing about and how it could be produced. By the end of the 1960s, the recording industry’s system of tightly controlled “hit factories” was losing ground to the more anarchic creativity of the folk-rock, jazz fusion, and singer-songwriter movements. Motown had been calling Wonder a genius since he was 12 years old but seemed afraid to give him the freedom to prove it.
Aside from some pop-R&B singles crafted by in-house production teams serving Black radio’s bottom line, what Berry Gordy wanted from a Stevie Wonder album was inoffensive pop covers and modern standards aimed at the adult crossover market. Ramping up to the glorious suite of original material that would comprise Talking Book were Wonder’s initial attempts to completely control his sound on 1971’s Where I’m Coming From and Music of My Mind. The singer had spent 10 years soaking up musical influences from church, television, radio, and a wide range of other performers before breaking free of the sonic straightjacket Motown imposed on all its artists.
The results were remarkable. Even the titles and cover art of what would become Wonder’s breakaway albums telegraphed his determination to start presenting his own ideas in his own way. The big afro looming above image-projecting sunglasses on Music of My Mind, followed by Wonder wearing African robes and braided cornrows on Talking Book, shows him in a proudly Afrocentric state. Despite physical blindness, he reveals himself to his fans as a seer; despite seeing all races as equal, he won’t ignore how racial and social injustice disproportionately oppress Blacks. Recording new music outside the vintage Motown system while using a revolutionary computerized instrument to do so helped drive these points home. If the Beatles’ music could be, by turns, sexy, spiritual, and political, so could Stevie Wonder.
But before we reassess the tracks on Talking Book, we need to remember what Mr. Steveland Morris would have been hearing on R&B and pop radio between 1969 and 1972. Back then, Black singer-songwriters like Isaac “Black Moses” Hayes, Sly Stone, and fellow Motown rebel Marvin Gaye were iconoclasts who were nonetheless commercially successful. The rising Black Power and anti-Vietnam War movements added a new seriousness and emotional urgency to popular music which the usually conservative radio stations began to embrace. After making scores of hits as a house musician at Stax, Hayes went solo to invent the trippy R&B concept album in 1969, then in 1971 became the first Black composer to win an Oscar with his pop-chart topping soundtrack to the movie Shaft. Sly Stone—a radio DJ, record producer, and bandleader—took the psychedelic funk of the Bay Area to the top of the charts when quirky singles from Dance to the Music (1968), Stand! (1969) and There’s a Riot Goin’ On (1971) achieved heavy rotation on both Black and pop radio.
Then, much to everyone’s surprise, Wonder’s labelmate Marvin Gaye joined this musical revolution in 1971 by defying Motown’s ban on protest material with What’s Going On. Hearing Gaye’s gorgeously orchestrated broadsides against war, pollution, and racism get massive praise and airplay during the repressive Nixon years only increased Wonder’s desire to make equally heartbreaking hits about love and social crisis. When discussing Wonder’s professional evolution, much has been made of his ability to receive millions in royalty earnings (held in trust) and simultaneously renegotiate his elapsed Motown contract when he turned 21. But there was much more involved in Wonder’s evolution from a cute adolescent singing “Fingertips Pt. II” during the closing credits of Annette Funicello’s Muscle Beach Party to the mature artist who debuted “Superstition” while touring with the Rolling Stones in 1972.
Wonder had started touring internationally by age 13. In 1963, after British TV producer Vicki Wickham and pop diva Dusty Springfield saw Wonder perform at a Paris theater, they immediately invited him to England to sing two songs on Wickham’s top-rated music show, Ready, Steady Go! Wonder thereby became the first Motown artist to appear on RSG!, which helped break the Motown sound to millions of British fans. The Rolling Stones were on that same episode, and Mick Jagger remembers chatting about music with a “13 or 14-year-old” Wonder at the TV studio as they waited to perform to a fashionable crowd of dancing teens during the live evening broadcast. Over the years, Wonder befriended many British musicians during his tours, and it was usually a case of mutual admiration. It would have been typically shrewd of Wonder to pay close attention to Jagger, Donovan, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Marc Bolan, and other British stars influenced by American pop music, attentively noticing how they adapted chords and tempos to make various Yankee blues and folk styles their own. Thus, if Wonder’s “Maybe Your Baby” on Talking Book evokes mutated chords and rhythms from Donovan’s “Season of the Witch”—or inserts layered vocal ad libs reminiscent of those Sly Stone used on “Family Affair”—it is only the sincerest form of flattery.
Another aspect of Wonder’s development as a songwriter that is too often glossed over is the contributions of his female collaborators. In the 1960s, Motown stalwart Sylvia Moy co-wrote several of Wonder’s most memorable singles. “I Was Made to Love Her,” “My Cherie Amor,” “I’m Wondering,” and even “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”—the dance tune that reportedly kept Berry Gordy from dropping Wonder after his voice changed—are each marked by Moy’s eloquent turns of phrase and elegant yet emphatic vocal phrasing. What Wonder picked up from Moy and other female artists he admired was a kind of romantic gallantry expressed in genteel, wistful, and contemplative ways. When Wonder and then-wife Syreeta Wright co-wrote all nine tracks on 1971’s Where I’m Coming From, the single “If You Really Love Me” incorporated sudden shifts in tempo, mood, and phrasing that enhanced lyrics describing all the frustrating ups and downs of romance. “I Wanna Talk to You” was Wonder’s first deep exploration of the racial divide, daring to imagine a lyrical confrontation between old Southern whites and modern blacks. An effort was made to match lyrical content with tempos and melodies that would deepen meaning on each track.
Ultimately, this approach to songwriting would suffuse both Wonder’s political and romantic material, letting him insert elements of hippie mysticism, science-fictional speculation, and interdenominational spirituality. On Talking Book, “Big Brother” has Wonder quietly crooning, “You’ve killed all our leaders/I don’t even have to do nothin’ to you/You’ll cause your own country to fall,” over an irresistibly bouncy track of Moog baseline buoyed by cheerful clavinet and harmonica arpeggios. Inspired by George Orwell’s futuristic dystopian novel 1984, “Big Brother” delivers some of Wonder’s harshest observations about Nixon’s America with sophisticated and somehow soothing irony. Similarly, the scenarios of love-gone-wrong addressed in “Tuesday Heartbreak” and “Maybe Your Baby” stand out in terms of how Wonder articulates the painful ambivalence lovers often feel. Throughout “Tuesday,” the singer oscillates between breezy certainty that his love can win her back and his flip resignation to her wanting to leave him for another. In this way, the unavoidable cruelty of unrequited love is effectively juxtaposed against the necessary cruelty of telling someone you’ve found someone else.
During the early 1970s, British bass player and programmer Malcolm Cecil was helping Wonder incorporate the sounds of the Original New Timbral Orchestra (T.O.N.T.O) alongside American engineer Robert Margouleff. Cecil watched Wonder compose songs at different times with both Syreeta Wright and Yvonne Wright (unrelated). Speaking to Chris Williams for Okayplayer in 2019, Cecil recalled, “Yvonne would sit next to him at the piano and whisper words into his ear while he was singing.” Syreeta and Yvonne ended up having two tracks each on Talking Book. All four songs are about the trials of love and as such are amazingly synergistic in sound and mood. Significantly, the ex-wife Syreeta wrote the “I’m movin’ on” songs “Blame It On the Sun” and “Looking for Another Pure Love.” The latter is optimistic with a twist—the title refers to a surprise phone call in the first verse that ends a relationship, leading the singer to seek a replacement. The “pure” in the lyric is an important qualifier because the song’s protagonist—male or female—wants nothing insincere. But the records with Yvonne are about romantic beginnings, not endings. “You’ve Got It Bad Girl” is a cautionary tale about a woman not so sure she should give in to passion.
At this stage of his career, Wonder himself would admit to the press that he preferred writing music to lyrics. While promoting Talking Book in 1973, Wonder proudly confessed to Tony Norman of NME that the album’s No. 1 pop single “Superstition” was “really the first successful tune I’ve written for myself.” The first demo for “Superstition” was a collaboration completed in a single day after starting as a studio jam session between Jeff Beck on drums and Wonder improvising on piano. Wonder intended to write a tune for Beck in exchange for his adding guitar to some studio tracks; he even told Beck he could release his cover of “Superstition” first. But Beck’s subsequent album was delayed, and Berry Gordy insisted that “Superstition” be the lead single for Talking Book in October 1972.
It can be hard to tell the order in which tracks were selected for each of Wonder’s albums between 1971 and 1976 because of how prolific he and his collaborators were in the studio. Cecil and Margouleff typically over-recorded whenever Wonder was around. Days blended into nights for the energetic Stevie, who was exhilarated to have access to the pair’s experimental genius, as well as to the world’s largest (and only) polyphonic analog synthesizer. Working with T.O.N.T.O.’s massive array of Moog, Arp, Oberheim, and other synth modules could be slow and buggy. But it afforded Wonder a level of control over the recording process that was crucial to his getting the sounds in his head onto tape. Also, making his keyboard mimic any instrument known or unknown was a great goad to his imagination. Cecil’s goal of enabling musicians to have complete control of every technological step in the recording process dovetailed perfectly with Wonder’s desire to create music with fresh sounds for a challenging new decade. He’d gotten started by adopting the versatile Hohner clavinet as his signature keyboard. (One can’t overestimate the importance of a memorable and quasi-proprietary keyboard sound to an innovative recording artist. Imagine “96 Tears” without the Farfisa keyboard or “A Whiter Shade of Pale” without the Hammond B3 organ!)
What Talking Book did for synthesizer-based music was humanize it to a greater extent than ever before. How Wonder recorded vocals and analog instruments throughout the album was as important as how he deployed the synthesizers. The tiniest shift in inflection, a whispered aside, or an improvised solo had meaning and purpose. Even the vocal encouragement he gives to Jeff Beck during his guitar solo on “Lookin’ for Another Pure Love” adds focus and soulfulness to the composition. In “Blame It on the Sun,” hearing the naked purity of acoustic piano against the anachronistic harpsichord fills, and the Theremin-flavored pitch of T.O.N.T.O.’s nuanced wail serve to frame Stevie’s lead vocal perfectly. Multi-tracked backup vocals are underscored with skeletal tonal colors that warm them just enough to give an impression of unshed tears. These little sonic surprises happen throughout the album, giving it a lasting sense of intimacy and spontaneity.
The transition from Talking Book to Innervisions felt neither abrupt nor strained because some of the songs on both albums had arisen from the same sessions. Cecil and Margouleff always kept a quarter-inch tape reel running to preserve inspired jam sessions or random demos. That is part of the magic of this period when everything was moving so fast.
Today, most people would agree that what Talking Book did for Wonder was raise public expectations for all his subsequent work. The operatic intensity of downtempo arias like “Blame It on the Sun” or “You and I” were offset by the funky grind of “Maybe Your Baby” and the sardonic playfulness of “Big Brother.” This strategic way of counterbalancing different musical attitudes on the same LP would continue through 1974’s Fulfillingness’ First Finale and 1976’s Songs in the Key of Life. In retrospect, the combination of tunes cherry-picked for the Talking Book package became the artistic standard against which all future albums by Stevie Wonder would be measured. | 2022-02-27T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-02-27T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Tamla | February 27, 2022 | 10 | 1e18a6f9-c442-4317-b59f-e704c84f34ef | Carol Cooper | https://pitchfork.com/staff/carol-cooper/ | |
Ty Segall's T. Rex covers haven't gotten the attention they deserve. Though they were just released as EPs and 7"s, they served as aesthetic stepping stones between Segall's fuzz-pop fury stage (Melted) and the more muted records he would make later. | Ty Segall's T. Rex covers haven't gotten the attention they deserve. Though they were just released as EPs and 7"s, they served as aesthetic stepping stones between Segall's fuzz-pop fury stage (Melted) and the more muted records he would make later. | Ty Segall: Ty Rex | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21295-ty-rex/ | Ty Rex | In any given year, few Record Store Day exclusives are worth the long lines or inflated prices. Sure, a select number of unearthed B-sides and overdue reissues reward the effort, but there's a whole swath of mediocre cover records destined to linger in the leftovers bin. So many of them read as easy cash grabs—not at all essential unless you're a superfan (because really, those are the only people clamoring to own the Foo Fighters' version of "Kids in America"). In 2011, Ty Segall offered an exception to that rule, releasing a covers EP that was worth buying and quietly stood as one of the best entries in his lengthy discography. Just that name alone, Ty Rex, was exciting—the promise that Segall at the top of his game would record a series of Marc Bolan covers. Now, the entire Ty Rex oeuvre is being issued in full (the original EP, its 2013 follow-up 7", and an unreleased bonus track). It's a good thing, too, because these covers demand a bigger audience.
Ty Rex arrived two months before Goodbye Bread, his most paced and subdued statement up to that point. He'd been touring behind Melted's giant-hook singles ("Girlfriend", "Imaginary Person", etc.), and he'd become very good at performing covers. His live sets usually featured his wide-eyed versions of hard rock staples (by Sabbath, AC/DC, and Motörhead, to name a few). His 2010 Daytrotter recording of G.G. Allin's "Don't Talk to Me" was an unhinged star turn. The expected move was for him to bring that same chaos to Ty Rex. But this time around, lizard-brained Segall took a step back. Instead, he showed restraint, recording an aesthetic stepping stone between the fuzz pop fury of Melted and the comparative lethargy of Goodbye Bread.
He didn't just run through the hits, either. It opens with "Fist Heart Mighty Dawn Dart", which appeared on the 1970 Tyrannosaurus Rex album Beard of Stars. Segall slows and steadies the pace, subbing out Micky Finn's Moroccan clay drums for the traditional rock'n'roll kit, and the vocal melody is smoothed out from Bolan's stilted chorus. Segall's groove is even more gradual on his reading of the 1968 track "Salamanda Palaganda", and the restraint gives every whimsical image—the old crones, the night eagles—the opportunity to fully sink in.
There's a posthumously released T. Rex record called Rabbit Fighter: The Alternate Slider, which features demos and acoustic versions of Slider songs. It's Bolan at his most restrained and pared back—proof that his songs were already gold before he slathered on the extra gilding (string sections, layered electric guitar solos, and so on). Ty Rex is also an album-length acknowledgment of Bolan's core strengths. Throughout, Segall plays it straight—the solos are never excessively flashy (sticking close to the originals) and the recording quality is slightly muffled. He never attempts a Bolan impression, either, and he largely forgoes any untethered Slaughterhouse wildness to play up Bolan's melodies, chord progressions, and absurd lyrics. He knows that you don't rewrite Shakespeare, and you don't attempt to outswagger one of rock'n'roll history's most confident heartthrobs.
Of course, it's a Ty Segall record, so he still brings some of that fire. His previously unreleased version of "20th Century Boy" is Ty Rex at its most fuzzy and abrasive, packing the record's most impressive, sky-high guitar solo. But every pound of rock'n'roll aggression is tempered by more withdrawn performances, like the slow burn of "The Motivator", "Cat Black", and "The Slider". That's what the best T. Rex records are like, too—for every "Rip Off", there a "Girl".
Clearly, Segall could do more than one installment of Ty Rex. During his Ty Rex set at Gonerfest 12, people went nuts at just the suggestion of "Bang a Gong". There are several reasons why Segall is well-suited to this material—he's a guitar hero and his voice is in exactly the right register. He's an excellent showman and a rock'n'roll screamer, but he can also emote behind his acoustic guitar. With his thoughtful, deft, and exciting performances, Segall also clearly has a reverence for these songs. As Segall works through Bolan's discography—from the early acoustic stuff to the big tent T. Rex singles—he's offering a convincing invitation to deep dive into Bolan's discography. | 2015-11-30T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2015-11-30T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Goner | November 30, 2015 | 8.1 | 1e1c6de0-0046-4679-9e9c-adb2413b59c4 | Evan Minsker | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-minsker/ | null |
On The Scene Between, Ian Parton has gone back to his original method of composing, recording and producing all of the music himself, save for the vocals, which means he’s purposefully inviting comparisons to Thunder, Lightning, Strike. And yet, the results feel like his most truly songwriterly work yet. | On The Scene Between, Ian Parton has gone back to his original method of composing, recording and producing all of the music himself, save for the vocals, which means he’s purposefully inviting comparisons to Thunder, Lightning, Strike. And yet, the results feel like his most truly songwriterly work yet. | The Go! Team: The Scene Between | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20252-the-scene-between/ | The Scene Between | Located at a midpoint between the Avalanches’ giddy sampledelia and chillwave’s trapped-on-VHS arrested development, the music on the Go! Team’s Thunder, Lightning, Strike was so rich with personality, the guy who actually made it became an afterthought. We talked about car chases, Saturday morning cartoons, or Archie Bell & the Drells; Ian Parton, not so much. Subsequent LPs Proof of Youth and Rolling Blackouts were tasked with proving Parton's project was a viable band rather than a really good idea, and the polite reception of both felt fitting: Both somehow sounded too much like the Go! Team’s debut and not enough like it, unsure of whether to top Thunder, Lightning, Strike or move on.
On The Scene Between, Parton has gone back to his original method of composing, recording and producing all of the music himself, save for the vocals, which means he’s purposefully inviting comparisons to Thunder, Lightning, Strike. And yet, the results feel like his most truly songwriterly work yet. Without context, you’d think the Go! Team of T**he Scene Between were just a jubilant group of British indie pop enthusiasts emerging from their local DIY scene (the fact that they share their name with a Calvin Johnson project doesn't hurt).
His range as a composer, rather than an auteur or producer, has never been more evident. The minty fresh melodies of "What D’You Say?" and "Did You Know?" posit the Go! Team as having more in common with Camera Obscura or Alvvays than any crate-digger. On "Her Last Wave", they’re all of a sudden a dream-pop act. It’s all connected by Parton’s chunky drums and chaotic, buzzing production, roughage to the confectioner's pop.
But it’s a cohesive listen that doesn't quite translate into a cohesive statement of purpose. The presence of three interludes assumes the record is meant to be played in sequence, but the individually strong moments of The Scene Between never communicate with or build off each other enough. Considering it's bookended by its strongest tracks, The Scene Between might actually be a more satisfying listen on shuffle. Still, with Parton aiming to make "delicious, curvy, undeniable, sunshiny songs," you can’t say he missed the mark too often here. "I thought catchy melodies are the hardest thing to do in music," Parton admitted. Perhaps. The more important thing is to connect, and Parton believes the only way to do that is to make sure the power is never, ever off. | 2015-03-23T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2015-03-23T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | Memphis Industries | March 23, 2015 | 7.2 | 1e1e5137-c079-4da6-a426-62f3a81377c3 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
Bronx-bred singer Rahel is currently the lone female artist associated with Camp & Street, a label and collective overseen by New York rapper Le1f. Alkali’s sounds glide into each other, one track after another, and at times it feels like a one-on-one intervention with your friend who’s in need. | Bronx-bred singer Rahel is currently the lone female artist associated with Camp & Street, a label and collective overseen by New York rapper Le1f. Alkali’s sounds glide into each other, one track after another, and at times it feels like a one-on-one intervention with your friend who’s in need. | Rahel: Alkali | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20298-alkali/ | Alkali | Bronx-bred singer Rahel is currently the lone female artist associated with Camp & Street, a label and collective overseen by New York rapper Le1f. To date, the 27-year-old has guest vocals on songs by Le1f ("Star Me" and "Air Max") and rapper/singer DonChristian’s album, Renzo Piano. While her style is hard to grasp from her limited in-house contributions, on Rahel's recently released debut, Alkali, her approach mirrors that of her early '00s pop-R&B predecessors like Nivea, Ashanti and others: passionate vocals, a surgical focus on relationship disappointment and a sometimes foolish urge to hold on to something that’s gone bad long ago.
What initially stands out most about Alkali is its lush production, which in large part comes from The-Drum’s Jeremiah Meece, who’s also credited as an executive producer. While it could have easily fallen into the one-long-song trap that many do when chasing cohesion, Alkali’s sounds glide into each other, one track after another, their R&B fundamentals enhanced by off-kilter elements like the vocal processing that’s sprinkled throughout the album. The tracks are also distinguished by Rahel’s biggest strength on the record: her charm.
Her lyrics may not mirror the en-vogue, complex masochism of the Weeknd and FKA twigs, but her around-the-way girl sentiment resonates nonetheless. Her plainspoken lyrics, coupled with her conversational delivery, make it easy to zero in on her troubles. At times, Alkali feels like a one-on-one intervention with your friend who’s in need. On "Bae" with fellow Camp & Street member DonChristian, Rahel’s patience is running thin with a love interest who’s playing too many games, which perfectly segues into "Restless" where she demands complete honesty. It’s also during a distorted monologue in the latter where a giggly but serious Rahel urges, "Stop frontin’...we grown now." There’s often a seesaw of angst, playfulness and frustration in young relationships, which Rahel illustrates here quite naturally.
Rahel doesn’t spend the entirety of Alkali losing sleep over her uncooperative lover, though. At the midway point is "The Break", where the frustration finally boils over into an "I'm through" proclamation. But, even in her exit, she’s still conflicted and attached: On "The Current", she sings a somewhat false-sounding "we’ll be alright" and "I think we gon' make it."
What’s most interesting about Alkali is how it changes depending on its context. When taken in as a full narrative, the nuances are easy to single out and appreciate, but when removed from context, no track outside of the ones that featured her Camp & Street teammates ("Bae" and "Flutter") stand alone. There’s nothing groundbreaking about the content either. But maybe intricacy isn’t what should matter much for Alkali, an album very much about the heart.
On the album closer "Easy", Rahel brings the narrative to a gratifying conclusion, singing "I feel like keeping what's mine/ 'Cause nothing is worth more than I." After her agony and ever-changing emotions, the affirmation feels hard-won and honest. Wounded and disappointed, Rahel’s resilience, self-analyzation and ability to rid herself of baggage feels like a triumph—and it's one you can feel even if you’re just focusing on the music. | 2015-03-17T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2015-03-17T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | self-released | March 17, 2015 | 6.8 | 1e23e706-98a3-456f-908a-5379a6f4e43d | Lawrence Burney | https://pitchfork.com/staff/lawrence-burney/ | null |
Veering from bubblegum house to shoegaze, the producer and singer captures the intimacy of the dancefloor. | Veering from bubblegum house to shoegaze, the producer and singer captures the intimacy of the dancefloor. | Doss: 4 New Hit Songs | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/doss-4-new-hit-songs/ | 4 New Hit Songs | Who is Doss? The question has popped up repeatedly on internet communities devoted to leftfield club music, but she’s never released much personal information. When she announced 4 New Hit Songs, her first new EP in over seven years, the news read, simply, “It’s the music.” What is known about the New York/Baltimore producer and songwriter is that over the past decade she has occasionally worked as a DJ, released an EP (her 2014 self-titled debut), and made a few remixes. At first glance, 4 New Hit Songs doesn’t offer much more information; its title seems intentionally generic, and its singles were accompanied only by cheekily opaque slogans. Yet, in its own way, 4 New Hit Songs is revealing—an invitation to join Doss as she experiences life’s tribulations and the rapturous realizations that come from navigating hard times.
Despite the fogginess surrounding these songs, they’re clearly Doss’ most personal and intimate to date. 4 New Hit Songs is built with the same forward-thinking sounds that filled her debut: gleaming trance refractions, shards of bubblegum house, and delicate wisps of shoegaze. And though her voice appeared on some of her previous songs, it never rang as clearly or resonated as deeply as it does here. The candy-coated club track “Look” sounds a little like Doss’ old friends and associates at PC Music—but even when it’s buoyant and bright, it feels insular and brooding, too. Over techno drum programming, she mutters about isolation and abandonment, about feeling watched and alone. She repeats the words “on my own” over and over until they begin to sound anxious, the insistence lending weight to a track that might otherwise have floated away with dancefloor euphoria.
Part of the joy of 4 New Hit Songs is in just how much emotion it packs into its few tracks. “Puppy”—a song about rekindling feelings with a lost love—feels desperate yet hopeful, drifting through stormy rave beats as Doss sings in the distance about “holding on.” The title is a reference to a nickname given to her by an ex, a personal touch that mirrors the yearning in her voice. “Strawberry” too is misty and longing, built around an instrumental as breezy and blunted as Slowdive’s more electronic experiments, but it’s also comforting. Its chorus—“maybe this song won’t leave you”—underscores Doss’ slogan: “It’s the music.” In a world that feels overwhelming, maybe you don’t need more than a song to keep you company.
Veering between distance and intimacy, dreamy introspection and extroverted club ecstasy, Doss’ style of dance music is both veiled and vulnerable. And though she holds back on concrete details, the songs are enough—they feel intimate and empathetic, a window into her head from across a crowded dancefloor. It’s a feeling that echoes one of the most enduring appeals of the rave, a place where, for a moment, you can share the same energy as a room full of strangers. You may not know a thing about their lives outside the club, but for the length of a track, you’re all in motion together. This is the feeling 4 New Hit Songs captures vividly.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-05-12T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-05-12T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | LuckyMe | May 12, 2021 | 7.1 | 1e3348b6-5967-4103-92ff-076e4def34b3 | Colin Joyce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-joyce/ | |
After helping David Bowie realize his harrowing final statement Blackstar, saxophonist Donny McCaslin offers a bracing record with two Bowie tunes and a pair of covers of electronic acts. | After helping David Bowie realize his harrowing final statement Blackstar, saxophonist Donny McCaslin offers a bracing record with two Bowie tunes and a pair of covers of electronic acts. | Donny McCaslin: Beyond Now | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22483-beyond-now/ | Beyond Now | Not long after the release of Blackstar, saxophonist Donny McCaslin’s jazz group became internationally famous as the collective that had helped David Bowie create his last triumph in the studio. The flexibility of McCaslin’s playing—as well as that of bassist Tim Lefebvre, drummer Mark Guiliana, and keyboardist Jason Lindner—allowed tracks like “Lazarus” to juggle a variety of moods and textures, without ever straying too far from the underlying motifs.
In the aftermath of Bowie’s death, the band gave interviews about Bowie’s working methods, and also bade him farewell with a set at New York’s fabled Village Vanguard club. That same feeling of tribute anchors this band’s latest studio recording. Aside from playing two Bowie tunes, the set also includes a pair of covers of other electronic acts. Appropriately, the overall sound of Beyond Now leans more heavily into pop sonics than McCaslin’s previous recording with these same players.
It’s an understandable move, though not always a successful one. The first Bowie cover, “A Small Plot of Land,” takes a jazz-tinged track from Bowie’s underrated album Outside, and updates it via the fusion sound found on Blackstar. It’s an able retrofitting of the tune. And guest-vocalist Jeff Taylor does yeoman’s work with the thankless task of standing in for Bowie. Still, not much new is discovered during this approach, and the rendition never moves beyond sounding like the work of a highly skilled cover band. Likewise, interpretations of Deadmau5’s “Coelacanth 1” and Mutemath’s “Remain” sound less like full-throated performances than atmospheric reminders that this is a group with pop crossover potential.
This band’s range is better demonstrated during investigations of McCaslin’s own compositions. His “Bright Abyss” inspires the ensemble’s best collective performance on the album. As the piece moves from a low-key, druggy opening to McCaslin’s bracing tenor saxophone solo, Guiliana’s beat-division skills gradually raise the level of intensity. “Faceplant” has a barnstorming, punk-like energy that shows off several of Lindner’s most imaginative keyboard effects. And the bandleader has lots of room to roam during “Shake Loose” and the title track—moving with dexterity between fluid, fast figures and slurred-sounding passages that contain the occasional bit of multiphonic harshness.
Overall, the half of Beyond Now that focuses on McCaslin’s original material fares far better, and should be sought out by anyone who wants another experience of the invention heard on Blackstar. Together with an effective, emotional reimagining of “Warszawa,” this portion of the album works as a welcome reminder of what they brought to Bowie’s final studio album: Not a facility for impersonating pop formats that were already well established, but rather the ability to create memorable, fresh forms. | 2016-10-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | Motéma | October 28, 2016 | 6.4 | 1e34b750-c5e0-4a86-ad33-99e56e417086 | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | null |
Roberto Lange’s fourth installment in his Island Universe series contains subconscious whisperings that provide a map for the music he’s been making as Helado Negro for the last eight years. | Roberto Lange’s fourth installment in his Island Universe series contains subconscious whisperings that provide a map for the music he’s been making as Helado Negro for the last eight years. | Helado Negro: Island Universe Story Four | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/helado-negro-island-universe-story-four/ | Island Universe Story Four | At the heart of Chinese Philosophy lies the yin and yang, the equal and complementary parts of the Tao, the journey of life. For Roberto Carlos Lange and his Helado Negro project, his multipart Island Universe Story has served as the moon (yin) to his albums’ sun (yang), a “shadow narrative” within his discography that runs parallel to the distinct statements of each album. Placed in this context, they reveal more about the artist than any one work ever could.
Island Universe Story Four’s 11 tracks feel looser and freer than his albums, themselves self-contained worlds that communicate a specific feeling. His last album, 2016’s Private Energy, looked inward to examine his relationship with the world at large. Island Universe Story Four—his first entry in the series in more than four years—appears to reflect an examination of that process, subconscious whisperings that provide a sonic map for the music he’s been making as Helado Negro for the last eight years.
A brilliant beat constructor with a preternatural sense of rhythm, Lange’s compositions tend to be built upon a beat, from which flows the melody. On “Echo 2,” synthesized tones swirl around a steady boom-bap bass and snare, giving the instrumental’s melody an alien vocal inflection. A descending bass line takes center stage on “Glow You,” a beautifully layered work that continuously builds and sheds layers of accompaniment over two minutes. There’s a sense of space in these compositions that reveal each track’s building blocks, and illuminate how the pieces of Lange’s various projects over the years fit together to create Helado Negro—those Epstein beats, the beeps of Boom & Birds, the swirl of OMBRE’s strings, and the sound sculptures he releases under his own name.
And while his instrumentals can certainly stand on their own, Helado Negro songs are most revealing when accompanied by Lange’s rolling baritone. Island Universe Story Four only features two tracks with vocals and lyrics: The lament for a relationship’s end that is “Come Be Me”—originally released as part of Adult Swim’s Singles series—and “Guardar Our Are.” The latter, a Spanglish phrase which translates literally into “Tend Our Are,” was written during the Private Energy sessions. Its lyrics serve as an encryption key to that record’s creation: “Píntame otra vez/que ya llegaron/tus papeles” he sings, which translates to “Paint me again/they’ve arrived, your papers.” It’s as if he views his music as a canvas on which his listeners paint, the artwork inherently incomplete until it’s been shared with others. And that was indeed the process of making Private Energy, which was written, recorded, workshopped on tour, deconstructed and arranged for a massive string ensemble, then reconstructed before a final re-recording and subsequent release.
Lange says he intended this music to feel and sound elastic, a circular composition evocative of the conversation between creator and consumer, or as he says, “The constant feeling of revalidation of what you are working on for yourself and how it bounces back and forth with other folks on this planet or on your block.” It’s also a conversation with his peers; Island Universe Story Four shares sonic lineage with its predecessors, but also with Lange’s contemporaries, such as Four Tet, Mouse on Mars, and Prefuse 73, a close friend and collaborator. The thread that unites them is a proficiency at imbuing electronic music with a human soul, a reminder that behind the boards of all those machines is a beating heart. With each chapter of Lange’s Island Universe Story, its narrator peels back another layer of his skin, revealing an artist driven by compassion, empathy, and humanity’s eternal search for meaning. | 2018-02-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-02-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Rvng Intl. | February 5, 2018 | 7.4 | 1e3c4e92-0ce1-44b7-91d1-16520ef65e8f | Matthew Ismael Ruiz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ismael ruiz/ | |
On the 52-minute vision quest that is their new double LP, the world’s most earnest arena band sound looser than they have in years. | On the 52-minute vision quest that is their new double LP, the world’s most earnest arena band sound looser than they have in years. | Coldplay: Everyday Life | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/coldplay-everyday-life/ | Everyday Life | Chris Martin is backstage at Saturday Night Live discussing the Syrian refugee crisis with a group of teenagers. A few feet away, his longtime bandmate Jonny Buckland briefly drowns out the conversation to check his guitar tone, and Martin outstretches an arm to silence him in a somewhat papal display of intraband passive aggression. Buckland mutes his strings; Martin returns to the teens. “You see all these pictures of young people like you—and a bit older people like us—having to leave their countries,” he says, “and everyone calls them ‘refugees’ instead of just people.” So, he explains, Coldplay’s new song “Orphans” is his attempt to communicate how any of us could be in their position, longing to return to our normal existence. Its walloping chorus goes, “I want to know/When I can go/Back and get drunk with my friends.” Tonight when the cameras roll, Martin instructs the teenagers to dance accordingly, with abandon.
And yet, even by poorly mixed SNL standards, the performance falls flat. The song itself is solid: a style of traditional character-driven folk storytelling and pure pop bliss that Martin has aged gracefully into. And his bandmates—guitarist Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer Will Champion—remain as emphatic and unobtrusive as ever as they lay out his runway. But the very thing Martin asks from the young dancers doesn’t quite ring true. Somewhere amid their joyful choreography, the pro-forma Coldplay anthem, and the humanitarian crisis that inspired it lies a disconnect: After spending two decades trying to transcend the throes of our humdrum existence, how do Coldplay find their place within it?
It’s the challenge they face on their new double album, Everyday Life. The moody 52-minute vision quest is spread over two distinct halves, titled Sunrise and Sunset, giving the band enough space for an unadorned voice memo and a multi-part epic with a two-minute saxophone solo. Some songs are their softest, most understated compositions since their debut, 2000’s Parachutes, while two others feature contributions from ubiquitous pop formalist Max Martin. There’s a sarcastic, seething folk song about gun violence and a deeply earnest ballad called “Daddy,” sung from the perspective of a neglected child. “It’s all about being human,” Martin said in an early interview about the record. “Every day is great and every day is terrible and every day is a blessing.” Yes it’s a cliche, but he also has tears in his eyes while he says it.
Despite its sprawling architecture, the album is one of the band’s most consistent, unified works. The music is filled with other voices: Nigerian vocalist Tiwa Savage, the late qawwali singer Amjad Sabri, Alice Coltrane, Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison, and three generations of Kutis (Fela, Femi, and Made) are credited in the liner notes. While it can feel cluttered at times, overflowing with annotations and footnotes, it rarely feels heavy; the sequencing seems to inhale and exhale with each song, its attempts at arena peaks (“Church,” “Orphans”) followed by moments of mournful ambience. The dynamics help create a sense of space that’s been missing from nearly everything this band has recorded over the past 10 years.
Each of this decade’s Coldplay albums has been packaged as its own (relative) experiment, a direct reaction to its predecessor: the pop one, the sad one, the happy one. And after 2015’s jubilant but uninspired A Head Full of Dreams, the largely somber tone of Everyday Life feels like its own statement: a stark gray palette that makes abundantly clear what’s absent. Without the ghastly, trend-hopping singles that have weighed down their latest releases, my favorite part of the album is also its most unprocessed portion, halfway through Sunset, where the fragments “Èkó,” “Cry Cry Cry,” and “Old Friends” roll into each other like a medley at rehearsal, something they’re just testing out for potential. The melodies don’t always stick, but the performances highlight just how long it’s been since Coldplay sounded like this: a quiet band in a small room, their characteristic enthusiasm drawn from simply making music together.
These unguarded moments make Martin’s lyrics—a sore spot for this band for as long as they’ve existed—easier to forgive. “Èkó” in particular, with its lapping “Bird Song” rhythm, feels so natural and breezy that you forget the chorus reads, “In Africa, the rivers are perfectly deep and beautifully wide.” More fleshed-out political songs like “Trouble in Town,” where the band’s show-stopping climax is juxtaposed with a disturbing recording of police harassment, and “Guns,” where Martin explodes in a chorus how “everything’s gone fucking crazy,” channel similar feelings of urgency. It’s as if he realized his everyman musings would sound more compelling if they were offered as the in-progress thoughts they are.
Accordingly, when it’s time to sum everything up, he finds himself at a loss. The last two tracks on the record, “Champion of the World” and “Everyday Life,” are its most traditional moments, each its own attempt to deliver a happy ending (and possibly a radio hit). “Champion of the World” finds resolution in a few mixed metaphors—a hard-won boxing match, a majestic bicycle ride, a soaring rocket ship—that all dissolve in a twinkling, singalong refrain. “Everyday Life” is less graceful in its ascent. Martin has admitted that the song itself came to him long after the band settled on the album title, and it does feel a bit like a half-filled template. For all its vague gestures toward what it means to be alive right now (“Everyone hurts, everyone cries,” Martin offers), he actually comes closest to nailing it in the opening line: “What in the world are we going to do?” Even if their answers come up short, it’s refreshing to hear Coldplay searching again, with all the rest of us.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-11-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-11-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Parlophone / Atlantic | November 25, 2019 | 6.8 | 1e3c5a5e-61e8-4854-81ee-2c62ddea2085 | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | |
On a visceral new album, the Japanese sound artist blends field recordings with glitches and loops to conjure the push-pull flow of a world in flux. | On a visceral new album, the Japanese sound artist blends field recordings with glitches and loops to conjure the push-pull flow of a world in flux. | Toshiya Tsunoda: Landscape and Voice | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/toshiya-tsunoda-landscape-and-voice/ | Landscape and Voice | The work of Toshiya Tsunoda, the Japanese sound artist widely considered one of the most important field recordists of the past quarter century, is distinguished by its startling precision of thought and sound, united in the belief that our settings are always living, never fixed or frozen in time. In his words: “Place is always moving, like a sleeping cat.” Not content to treat the field recording as a rigid document or abstract sound material, Tsunoda—who has a background in oil painting—prefers to zero in on the complexities of human perception and consciousness. His music positions the “field” as not merely physical but also a subjective mental map created in real time by the listener.
On his latest album, Landscape and Voice, Tsunoda applies a glitching technique—most notably used on 2013’s o kokos tis anixis (Grains of Spring)—that pauses the free passage of time by looping tiny segments of the “field” for varying durations and pairing those grains with short, vowel-like human utterances. Whereas the glitches on Grains of Spring were sometimes so subtle they were unnoticeable, on Landscape and Voice—a 25-minute culmination of Tsunoda’s aesthetic and philosophical research—they take center stage, constantly disrupting the listening experience and making it one of his most visceral works. While many sound artists like Francisco Lopez work along similarly noisy lines, Tsunoda’s work stands alone in its measured, tactical fracturing of reality; here, water, wind, and birdsong are recognizable as such, but they somehow bear traces of the inaudible—air itself, sun and shadow—with a nearly psychedelic intensity.
Opener “At the port” begins almost conventionally, with a gurgling lap of water in the right ear and scattered birdsong arcing from left to center. However, a mere 30 seconds in, the pristine field is shattered by the glitch: A disembodied voice loops “eh” in tandem with the stuttering field recording, and we are thrust into a seemingly artificial space. Tsunoda phases landscape and voice out of sync with one another; the two gradually separate by infinitesimal degrees before the landscape—water dripping from leaves, wind rippling through foliage—comes flooding back. While some of these interruptions are soothing and almost humorous, like the looped boing of droplets halfway through “At the port,” others, like the shrill whistle of sparrows on “In the grass field,” pierce with shocking force. It becomes clear that the human experience is always relational: What we might ignore in one context crashes harshly in another.
On “Studies,” Tsunoda centers the glitch, silencing the landscape and only working in short looped phrases. By cycling through these frozen moments in an overtly mechanical way, Tsunoda highlights process versus result, making clear that even in stasis there is motion. The push-pull flow of the music itself communicates this flux: Because “Studies” comes after “At the port,” each glitch conjures glimpses of the unaltered landscape, which rapidly burst and dissipate like flares in the mind. Meanwhile, the percussive vocal repetitions—each of which catches a slice of landscape as if by accident—establish rhythmic patterns that linger in the web of rumbling vehicles, chirping insects, and the disembodied scraping of metal pipes on concrete, encouraging us to make connections between human and nature, subject and object, synthetic and organic. More than simply attuning us to background noise we may have previously ignored, Landscape and Voice reminds us that we are active subjects, shaping the world just as it shapes us. | 2022-06-13T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-06-13T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Black Truffle | June 13, 2022 | 7.6 | 1e41614e-2ca7-43b0-9662-f85d8e657cac | Sunik Kim | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sunik-kim/ | |
The L.A.-based singer and violinist makes her boldest and most fully formed statement yet. | The L.A.-based singer and violinist makes her boldest and most fully formed statement yet. | Sudan Archives: Athena | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sudan-archives-athena/ | Athena | As the Greek myth goes, the goddess Athena sprang fully formed from Zeus’ forehead, wearing a suit of armor. Her purview included wisdom, the arts, wartime strategy, and cities, and she was revered as a model of righteousness and justice; her namesake city endured as a space for exploratory thought and bold ideas. The Ohio-born, Los Angeles-based Sudan Archives is the latest in a centuries-long parade of Athena enthusiasts, christening her first full-length album with the goddess’ name. The songs, her best yet, have the quality of revelation, and the album earns its namesake.
Between her 2017 self-titled EP and last year’s Sink EP, Brittney Parks—the woman behind Sudan Archives—had already exhibited palpable growth as a musician. She one-upped the looping charm of songs like “Come Meh Way” and “Paid” with the rippling lilt of “Nont for Sale” and “Escape.” Those songs now feel more like sketches against Athena. Parks keeps her toolkit of hip-hop beats, millennial R&B gloss, and self-taught fiddling inspired by Sudanese and Ghanaian traditions.
On Athena, she fuses them with even greater acuity, building songs that boast an impressive depth of field. The bass scoops lower, the grooves get deeper and funkier, and the layers of her violin parts give the illusion of a full orchestra. She shares producer credits on most of her songs, joined by Washed Out’s Ernest Greene, Scottish producer Rodaidh McDonald (the XX, King Krule, Sampha) and Paul White, a London-based producer whose credits include work with Open Mike Eagle and Danny Brown. Collectively, these big-deal producers never tip the scales too far in any direction. It’s a testament to Parks’ own vision that she can work with so many producers within a single album and emerge with her singular creative voice intact.
Within her highly synthesized songs, Parks details sumptuous natural imagery in verdant metaphors (“Iceland Moss”), and in her parallels between a youthful relationship and the unorthodox grace of sea birds on “Pelicans in the Summer.” “Glorious” feels like a prime contender for crossover —a guest verse from rapper D-8 comes and goes without any serious impact, but the track builds a stronger case for her secret-weapon capabilities as a hip-hop collaborator.
It’s a rare thrill to be able to hear an artist making leaps and bounds in their work in such a short span of time, to follow along as their explorations get deeper and weirder. Having developed a sound so distinctly her own, Parks has liberated herself from any preset expectations of genre or style. She warns listeners as much on Athena opener “Did You Know,” where her reflections on childhood ambitions to rule the world are muddled by adult insecurities. Her resolution is promising within the context of the song as much as her whole catalog: “At the end of the day, I’mma get my way.”
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-11-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-11-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Stones Throw | November 7, 2019 | 7.7 | 1e438627-0225-44aa-a1f7-7383f0c76c2d | Allison Hussey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/allison-hussey/ | |
The Seattle band’s fourth record, their first for Sub Pop, is forward-thinking pop-punk that successfully—albeit narrowly—manages to dodge the obvious pitfalls. | The Seattle band’s fourth record, their first for Sub Pop, is forward-thinking pop-punk that successfully—albeit narrowly—manages to dodge the obvious pitfalls. | Tacocat: This Mess Is a Place | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tacocat-this-mess-is-a-place/ | This Mess Is a Place | When Tacocat first entered indie rock’s collective consciousness, “pastel goth” and flasks laminated in Lisa Frank stickers were very cool, and “resting bitch face” had yet to become a pop-feminism cliché. The Seattle-based four-piece came up in perhaps the simpler times of the early 2010s. Consistent but not exactly prolific, Tacocat could’ve easily fallen into the trap of sounding like any other unabashedly twee group that ripened in the first half of the decade. Thankfully, This Mess Is a Place, the group’s fourth record and their first for Sub Pop, is a forward-thinking pop-punk that successfully—albeit narrowly—manages to dodge the obvious pitfalls.
On This Mess Is a Place, Tacocat play with a familiar set of girl-group and grunge-rock influences, adding inklings of straight-up pop. Album opener “Hologram” is a sort of Dressy Bessy meets the Marine Girls situation, with goopy, multi-part harmonies and saccharine guitars. The song asks the big questions in life: “How did we come to be so jaded?” and, “Is numb even a feeling?” Instead of answering these profundities with equally anesthetized sonics, the band’s pure indie bubblegum does the exact opposite. If Tacocat feel life is stagnant and stale, their own art might be the antidote.
Tacocat have always encapsulated the kind of cheerfully campy aesthetic that encourages “shoveling yourself out of the shit” on bad days. They make fun music in a time when goofing off seems almost antediluvian, and being earnest is worse. On “New World,” a song as sugary as shotgunned Mountain Dew, Tacocat ask listeners to imagine waking up to beauty, rather than dread. Life might suck, lead vocalist Emily Nokes seems to say, but what if for one day it didn’t? “I woke up today/And all my friends were happy/No one to tell them when to stop,” she sings with an affect that is both wry and daring, as bandmates join in with jaunty rockabilly rhythms. “Rose-Colored Sky” brings Tacocat’s feminist sensibilities to the forefront. Though it sounds unsettlingly cheery, the song roasts the ambivalent rich who get “first prize just to participate,” turning a lazy explanation of millennial malaise back on the real threat: people wholly uninterested in politics so long as the world looks good to them.
That’s not to say Tacocat don’t indulge in fun for fun’s sake, which sometimes makes for surface-level songwriting. “Meet Me at La Palma” is, after all, a song about getting wasted on giant margaritas and dancing “the foxtrot” with someone who just broke an engagement, and there’s not much more to it than that. Tacocat has released songs with similar content throughout the past decade, writing music that’s consistently both sloppy and serious. Sometimes they trust the formula a little too much, and This Mess Is a Place can occasionally feel overly safe. But at other moments, the album radiates sneakily subversive fuck-you attitude. Most of the time, it feels like taking a joyride with four bonafide party experts egging you on as you drunk-text an ex. It’s fun and messy and you might forget it completely by the next day. No regrets, though. | 2019-05-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-05-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sub Pop | May 6, 2019 | 6.9 | 1e45d8dd-995e-4bb0-a508-9d17190bb0e7 | Sophie Kemp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sophie-kemp/ | |
The Icelandic post-rock band's longest-gestating LP abandons both the pop leanings of more recent releases and the volcanic dynamics of their earliest material but still sounds like the work of no other group. | The Icelandic post-rock band's longest-gestating LP abandons both the pop leanings of more recent releases and the volcanic dynamics of their earliest material but still sounds like the work of no other group. | Sigur Rós: Valtari | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16628-sigur-ros-valtari/ | Valtari | Let's start with an understatement: things tend to move quite slowly in the world of Sigur Rós. This is true whether we're talking about the glacial pace of their songs, the glacial pace at which they release them, or their artistic progression. In the 13 years since Ágætis Byrjun became the first and possibly only post-rock crossover record, Sigur Rós have edged closer to actual pop while still maintaining their singular place amongst many consumers' record collections: The band's stamp of approval is pretty much the only way a lot of people are dealing with 10-minute songs or an invented language. It's a tremendous example of a band that's managed to own its lane while making it incrementally wider, and their consistently positive reception gives you the idea that the only way Sigur Rós could make a bad record is if they made one that was wholly unrecognizable as their own. Well, you won't confuse Valtari as being the work of anyone else, if only because their sixth studio album so flattens and narrows Sigur Rós' aesthetic to the point where the title scans as self-parody. "Valtari" is Icelandic for "steamroller," by the way.
"It sounds corny, but when I listen to it, it puts images in my head. I feel like I'm walking up a mountain alone." This is how bassist Georg Holm recently described Valtari to Rolling Stone, and I find that to be interesting on two fronts, the initial being there's a good chance you had no idea that Sigur Rós had a bassist, let alone what his name is. All too ironic that it's perhaps the only time Holm makes any sort of statement on Valtari, which unfortunately gives weight to the unfair perception of Sigur Rós as Jónsi and anonymous conjurers. It's a disappointment and a missed opportunity, since after the release of 2005's vibrant Takk-- still their most diverse and consistently accessible record-- the most interesting music Sigur Rós have made is relative to their implementation of rhythm, culminating with 2008's clodhopping Animal Collective homage "Gobbledigook" and Jónsi's hypercolored solo album, Go. It's debatable whether the rhythm section was jettisoned in the composition stages or whether they're simply rendered immobile under thick layers of orchestral amber. Either way, Valtari forgoes the promising lean toward pop songcraft of their recent LPs and the volcanic dynamics of their earliest material with only pretty vacancy as a replacement.
About two minutes into Valtari, Jónsi's vocals rise out of a brackish pool of strings, choirs, and piano to tease out a melody. About two minutes later, there's a small rupture of distorted bowed guitars and organ, and two minutes after that, it glides to a serene denouement. That describes opener "Êg Anda" and also basically more than half of Valtari, leaving you to fashion highlights out of relativity. The positive side of Valtari's four-year incubation period is evidenced by "Varúð", the way it effortlessly combines waterlogged piano chords and a brassy fanfare. Yet while the cymbal-bashing crescendo it builds toward is the most viscerally rewarding thing here, anyone familiar with the past decade of Sigur Rós has heard it dozens of times.
Which brings me back to "it puts images in my head." The evocative nature of Sigur Rós' music has always been a major draw, but I think the more telling part of Holm's quote is "I feel like I'm walking up a mountain." Indeed, due to Sigur Rós' unwillingness to exert any sort of artistic will on the listener, Valtari feels like work, a trudge, asking for too much by way of demanding nothing concrete. Even the controversially blank () had staunch conviction in its commitment to supernatural ethereality-- not to mention subtly impressive melodies and some of their most unsettling peaks. If you're familiar only with Sigur Rós' studio albums, you might hear Valtari as a maximalist version of ()-- which would essentially negate the entire point of (). Too loud to truly pass for ambient music, yet too invertebrate to accommodate visceral pleasures, Valtari is most often simply there, the passage of time distinguished only by the occasional shift in texture. The drum sounds that close out "Rembihnûtur" are a nice touch and establish a possible connection between Sigur Rós and the likes of Balam Acab, as do the gamelan-like, detuned bells of the title track. But if you get to that point, Jónsi all but disappears on the final two tracks, and consequently, Valtari's tether to sounding like Sigur Rós rather than indistinct audio Calgon.
I suppose it's always worth remembering to review what you got as opposed to what you wanted, and as Jónsi explained to Q magazine, "the music kind of just rolls over you… in a good way." So it can all sound incredibly grumpy to take issue with Valtari for staying in cruise control, no different from criticizing a day at the beach for being too hot. Well, if we're gonna continue down the path of that metaphor for Sigur Rós' longest-gestating record, it's more like the first beach day of the year and you find out you can't go surfing, can't throw a Frisbee, can't start a bonfire, can't even go in the ocean. The problem isn't that Valtari aspires to beauty, even if it's a commonplace, celestial understanding of it. Sigur Rós have proven they can make indelible music that's pretty and unpredictable, pretty and melodic, pretty and unnerving, pretty and inspiring. Valtari wants to be pretty and that's it. | 2012-05-30T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-05-30T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | XL | May 30, 2012 | 6.1 | 1e4905aa-d207-4a76-936d-120d59024c22 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
On Slow Focus, Fuck Buttons' first album in four years, Ben Power and Andy Hung remain devoted to forbidding, elemental sensations. Their slow-moving pieces inspire the kinds of big feelings that double as reminders of our smallness, and they've never sounded this massive before. | On Slow Focus, Fuck Buttons' first album in four years, Ben Power and Andy Hung remain devoted to forbidding, elemental sensations. Their slow-moving pieces inspire the kinds of big feelings that double as reminders of our smallness, and they've never sounded this massive before. | Fuck Buttons: Slow Focus | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18295-fuck-buttons-slow-focus/ | Slow Focus | Benjamin Power and Andrew Hung, the duo behind Fuck Buttons, are restless, inveterate equipment scavengers: They've worked on computer software, on Casio keyboards, on children's toys, on old karaoke machines. In interviews, they come off as eager, curious, and transparent about their process and their gear, but their music is about as approachable as an Egyptian tomb. On Slow Focus, their first album in four years, Fuck Buttons remain devoted to forbidding, elemental sensations, and their slow-moving pieces inspire the kinds of big feelings-- exhilaration, majesty, awe-- that double as reminders of our smallness.
Listening to their progression, from 2008's Street Horrrsing to now, you get the sense of tinkerers building obsessively retooled versions of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, each bigger than the last. (We are the apes in this equation.) They got their start in the noise-rock community, but transcended that niche almost immediately, and their earliest material, some of featuring distorted, screaming vocals, sounds positively quaint in light of what followed. Tarot Sport was so much larger and more ambitious than their debut that it gave them an unlikely career as festival headliners, and a piece of the album ("Surf Solar") snuck its way into Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. Slow Focus feels like a logical endpoint to their journey: Tarot Sport might have gotten them to the Olympics, but they've never sounded this, well, Olympian before.
The difference is apparent from the opening seconds of the nine-minute "Brainfreeze." The massive sounds we hear-- a warped synth figure being pounded into shapes by hammering drums and a pistoning rhythm track-- are lonelier and more remote than anything Fuck Buttons have made before. Tarot Sport, big as it was, gestured vaguely at human bodies, with airy, glittering sounds on "Surf Solar" evoking an outdoor festival or a rave. There are no human bodies left on Slow Focus, just open space and hard surfaces, and the sounds resound for miles in all directions.
Power and Hung self-produced the record, and judging from the results, they should start producing for other acts as well. Every sound on Slow Focus is smooth, polished, and lovingly molded, like a factory-shaped piece of steel. The album's tone is a curious mix of juiced and muted, like Hung and Power have rewired the maximalism of stadium EDM to arrive at the minimalist emptiness of someone like Detroit's Robert Hood. This is perfectionist's music: Dr. Dre, who has been holed up for years vacuuming pathogens off of Detox like dead skin cells from a computer keyboard, might be chasing a sound like this-- deep and resonant and beautifully emptied-out.
The seven tracks tend to move in simple, navigational arcs: Open widescreen on an empty vista, pull back even further. Midway through "Brainfreeze", the synths shift up an octave and widen outward until they slowly swallow the track, a giant space cruiser blotting out the sky. "The Red Wing" begins with percussive pops and adds layers until the percussion all but disappears, a city shrinking to pinprick in a shuttle window. This journey might grow wearying if the textures on the album weren't so fascinating and dimensional; a piece like "Stalker" seems to be operating on six different planes at once, and it's a pleasure just to be able to walk through the space.
The song titles -- "Sentients", "The Red Wing", "Hidden XS"-- are unusually instructive for Fuck Buttons, who normally make a point of avoiding specific cues for their music. But Slow Focus plays like a utopian nightmare of mechanization-- on "Year of the Dog," György Ligeti strings screech beneath a Giorgio Moroder synth, while the first sound on the ten-minute "Stalker" is a bland, lasering synth, like a printer whirring away at a thousand-page document. Slow Focus is pointedly pitiless, inexorable: There are no human feelings here, at least of the squishy kind. If you are fascinated by the people around you the same way you are fascinated by protozoa, you might identify uncomfortably with the world Slow Focus depicts. When at the next TED Conference, a clicker-brandishing, headset-wearing speaker argues that harvesting organs from the rest of the human population is the logical way to progress, "Stalker" will probably be playing on the slideshow.
There has always been menace in Fuck Buttons' music, but it used to exist in balance with lighter, leavening moments, like "Bright Tomorrow" or "The Lisbon Maru". With the exception of the manic, squeegeeing synths that dance through "Prince's Prize", that touch is absent on Slow Focus. It's missed, slightly, but a little humor would have punctured the purity of the world they've built. Power and Hung have made either the year's most introverted party album or the most expansive loner's album; either way, there are few albums this year that offer this much space to get lost in. | 2013-07-22T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2013-07-22T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | ATP | July 22, 2013 | 8.7 | 1e4e2ecd-ddf9-4d2d-a4e1-cdbc8fd9c0d0 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | null |
Double LP Exai is Autechre's eleventh record, and the Manchester duo's longest by a margin of about 40 minutes. As ever, it shows Rob Brown and Sean Booth to be top-notch sonic magpies and brilliant technicians, but it fully justifies their reputation for being poor editors. | Double LP Exai is Autechre's eleventh record, and the Manchester duo's longest by a margin of about 40 minutes. As ever, it shows Rob Brown and Sean Booth to be top-notch sonic magpies and brilliant technicians, but it fully justifies their reputation for being poor editors. | Autechre: Exai | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17691-autechre-exai/ | Exai | Autechre neither make casual music, nor do they make music casually: The English duo of Rob Brown and Sean Booth have released 11 albums under the name in the last 20 years, along with a chain of EPs that have generally been as integral to their evolution as the long-players. All of those albums easily pass the one-hour hurdle; 2008's excellent Quaristice comprised 20 relatively brief tracks cut from hours of extended jamming, but it still clocked in just shy of 74 minutes. In 2010, the two enthusiasts offered a webcast of an exhilarating 12-hour DJ set, pogoing from hip-hop and indie rock to industrial and electronica. (One short and emblematic sequence incorporated Eno and Byrne, RZA, Coil, and Boards of Canada.) A certain charm of Autechre has always been that they love music and they love making music; even at their most clinical, this zeal has remained an inherent premise.
In the last decade, the Manchester duo rewrote their own rules, leaning on the risks of their early works until, by their eighth LP Untilted, it was clear that their intention was no longer simply making bodies move, though that was sometimes a by-product. If Autechre's earliest records were typically classified as intelligent dance music, their later efforts might best be dubbed intelligence-enabled dance music-- with eclectic touchstones absorbed and dissolved, they did whatever they wanted. "I think there's always this competitive freshness that we're trying to achieve," Brown told an interviewer around the time of Quaristice's release. "That's all there is in terms of statement or communication."
But for all their influence, energy and innovation, Autechre have never been very good editors. Their EPs are the length of most bands' albums, while their albums run about as long as short feature films. If you hear an interesting sound or idea from Autechre, you're bound to hear it again and again before a track's end. Despite their creative restlessness, Brown and Booth have never been very good at moving on their music itself. These qualities dovetail to the detriment of Exai, the band's eleventh record-- and, by a margin of about 40 minutes, its longest. Though it's often interesting, Exai is insufferably exhausting, a record imprisoned by the obsessions of those who made it.
Five years ago, in an interview with Pitchfork, Brown said that the possibilities of technology had made music production intimidatingly infinite. A key to productivity, he implied, was setting limits and aims. "You've got to be realistic," he said. "You can sit in front of a computer and have a blank slate and be completely overwhelmed by the possibilities and not get anywhere." Whereas 2010's wonderfully muted and warm Oversteps found a path and followed it, Exai is a behemoth devoid of focus, an album on which the tough decisions about direction and, later, elimination have not been made. There are bass-heavy beaters that suggest the pair's earlier works, and amorphous drone numbers that don't; there are glitchy sprints that chirp, and menacing slogs that haunt. Just one of its 17 tracks doesn't break the four-minute mark, and many slingshot between various sounds and schemes, meaning that the transitions within the album and the songs themselves are weak, if not nonexistent. Pieces shift into bridges that lead nowhere ("T ess xi"), suddenly mix their metaphors and mechanics (the end of "recks on") and wallow in aesthetic indecision (tone-setting opener "FLeure").
There's nothing actually wrong with the sounds on Exai: Though they don't turn many new tricks, Autechre have once again proven to be top-notch sonic magpies and brilliant technicians. "Irlite (get 0)" makes a synthesizer sound like a church organ overrun by the ghosts in the graveyard, while "T ess xi" employs fluorescent soul keyboards as its basic building block. "deco Loc" turns someone's voice inside out, creating beautiful textures and themes from a sound salvaged and forcibly repurposed. The drums splashed over the surface of "Runrepik" suggest sun-warped crunk singles. Its chaser, "spl9", is an industrial crucible where the ruptures of power electronics and the force of dubstep are heated until they ricochet off one another. Brown and Booth are familiar with each other's habits, and wary of them, too. "T ess xi" showcases a sort of rhythmic volleyball between the pair, where several seemingly simple beats tease one another, shifting so as to avoid anything so obvious as a groove. Likewise, "vekoS" ends when its subaquatic beat surrenders slowly to a tide of overwhelming static. On an album of erratic shifts and very few segues, it's a moment of impossible tension.
Arguing that an album offers too much music seems passé at best, entirely irrelevant at worst. Aren't records just old-fashioned methods of assembling information, arbitrary holding tanks for material that could be released in online formats that don't adhere to time limitations or sequencing expectations? Possibly, and perhaps Autechre is once again ahead of a curve that we barely recognize. But that doesn't solve Exai's fundamental problem: Some of its songs deserve to be cut into halves, while others should have been chopped wholesale. With those snips, Exai would be a really good Autechre album that summarizes the various successes of their career in an hour or so. As is, it's as much a frustrating obstacle course as it is a grueling marathon. | 2013-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2013-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Warp | February 19, 2013 | 5.9 | 1e674190-f839-4ca5-9f65-48f0d97016e4 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
Working with John Congleton, the folk trio makes their most personal and energetic statement yet, sacrificing some of their clarion intimacy along the way. | Working with John Congleton, the folk trio makes their most personal and energetic statement yet, sacrificing some of their clarion intimacy along the way. | The Staves: Good Woman | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-staves-good-woman/ | Good Woman | The Staveley-Taylor sisters have spent the past decade gently pushing the musical boundaries of folk. Their debut, Dead & Born & Grown, was traditional, bare-bones, and acoustic, but they started evolving almost immediately. When Justin Vernon took over for 2015’s If I Was, their sound expanded drastically, incorporating synths and more dramatic arrangements on songs like the four-minute mini-epic “Blood I Bled.” Working again with Vernon and BJ Burton on 2017’s The Way Is Read, they expanded even further, collaborating with the contemporary classical group yMusic and interlocking their pristine harmonies with flailing woodwinds and strings.
Good Woman show the sisters pushing even further into the unknown. The music was primarily produced by the Staves after a series of life-changing events, including the loss of their mother, the birth of Emily Staveley-Taylor’s child. and the end of a five-year relationship. The three of them (they call themselves a “three-headed-monster”) began writing about those events, bringing forth songs about undue emotional burdens, controlling exes, and gender roles. Late in the process, they recruited John Congleton, someone whose crunchy, heavy sound (heard on St. Vincent and Sharon Van Etten records) doesn’t quite gel with the Staves. Even though the record often sounds like a battle between the musicians and their engineer, the songs on Good Woman are strong enough to overcome any friction.
Congleton encouraged the trio to write more honestly about their emotions. The Staves could be surprisingly acerbic in the past, but they haven’t bared their feelings on record like they do here. On “Paralysed,” the sisters sing “I used to be/Something you made and admired/I used to be fire, I used to be magic,” and on “Failure,” they internalize the criticisms of an ex before realizing he’s no better. Both these songs show women handling emotional labor while their partners don’t hold themselves accountable. Previous Staves records often seemed to use lyrics as a vehicle for the music, so the specificity is welcome.
Right from the title track, Congleton’s influence is obvious—the dry drum thud used on his Bombay Bicycle Club and Everything Everything records, the distortion from Sharon Van Etten. When Congleton and the Staves line up, it’s on more uptempo songs where the Staves push themselves. “Best Friend” is lovely, euphoric indie pop as earnest as its title. The band has cheekily referred to “Black & White” from If I Was as “the first Staves rock song,” and on this record, they make up for what feels like lost time: even the ballads like “Satisfied” and “Trying” are louder and more extroverted than before.
Unfortunately, that means their usual intimacy goes missing. Ethan Johns brought the minimalism of early Laura Marling records to his Staves sessions, and Vernon hadn’t yet gone for 22, A Million intensity, but Congleton doesn’t adjust his go-for-the-rafters approach. “Careful Kid” kicks off with a wheezing sound effect that dooms the song even before Congleton’s cavernous drums crowd out the chorus. Similarly, “Sparks,” otherwise a highlight, layers on synth pads until it begins to sound like several songs at once. The most disappointing moment on the record is the final version of “Nothing’s Gonna Happen,” which buries a gorgeous demo they released a year ago in too many woodwinds and distorted effects. The backing vocals on “Sparks” repeat “...and I feel it all,” but Congleton does his damndest to obscure a direct connection to those feelings.
The Staves manage to overcome Congleton's production and mixing tics because their voices can cut through anything. Whether they appear on Lucy Rose, Leonard Cohen, or Bruce Hornsby records, their harmonies always stand out. It’s heartening to hear them turn their attention inward; maybe next time, they’ll trust that sound to do its work without the input—or intrusions—from a collaborator.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Nonesuch | February 6, 2021 | 6.9 | 1e6bf58f-64c0-4d2a-9fb5-0f9cb48c83e8 | Hannah Jocelyn | https://pitchfork.com/staff/hannah-jocelyn/ | |
Bastards gathers remixes from Björk's ambitious multi-media project Biophilia, including contributions from Death Grips, Hudson Mohawke, Matthew Herbert, and Omar Souleyman. | Bastards gathers remixes from Björk's ambitious multi-media project Biophilia, including contributions from Death Grips, Hudson Mohawke, Matthew Herbert, and Omar Souleyman. | Björk: Bastards | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17386-bastards/ | Bastards | Björk has earned a certain amount of deference. She released a string of masterpieces that redefined, on a grand scale, what a "pop star" looks and sounds like and how the avant-garde relates to the mainstream, as well as changing our conception of what makes a voice beautiful. Her earlier albums were so good they warped the light around all that has followed; as visible as Björk has become, she's getting harder and harder to see.
Increasingly, her albums reach us as the eye of a storm of extracurricular activities. With all this diversifying, Björk seems on a "post pop-stardom public intellectual" tenure track that brings to mind David Byrne. Starting at around 2007's Volta, her new albums began to feel less like events themselves and more like the musical arm of some broader project. This tendency reached its peak on 2011's Biophilia, an album celebrating the wonders of natural science that was also a series of interactive iPad apps that was also a series of shows at the New York Hall of Science. For me, this was where the signal-to-noise ratio in Björk's work finally, definitively tipped. As a series of ideas, Biophilia was glorious -- fascinating to think about, awe-inspiring in its reach. As an album, it was often turgid, frankly boring, and rarely worth leaving on.
The Biophilia remixes you find on Bastards have been commercially available in other forms for months; they began trickling out shortly after the album was released in a series of 12-inches, released periodically. Bastards represents a capstone on the Biophilia project, but it is also the end of a dizzying breadcrumb-trail of packaging and repackaging. Pity the hardcore Björk fan; like the lifelong Trent Reznor or Radiohead fan, they are faced with an idol whose musical creativity is only matched by their ingenuity in dreaming up new ways to separate their faithful from disposable income.
As a standalone product, Bastards feels distressingly unnecessary. But if you didn't want to scoop up these remixes piecemeal and were waiting for a handy package, it is here for you. They occasionally offer new angles from the somewhat-blocky Biophilia material; the album's three most dynamic songs, "Crystalline", "Virus", and "Mutual Core", receive the most attention. Hudson Mohawke gives "Virus" a gleaming new coat of paint built from of comet-trails synths and massive synthesized horns; it generates the same stonerish awe that anyone who has ever gaped at a planetarium ceiling will recognize.
Death Grips contribute a pair of remixes, one to "Sacrifice" and one to "Thunderbolt", both of which send a shot of bad-coke energy skittering through the material. "Sacrifice"'s margins are filled with mortar-round percussion sounds and sampled snuffling-creature noises, while the glacial church-organ dirge of "Thunderbolt", is given a shot of adrenaline through that brings to mind a New Order song hyperventilating. These New Puritans strip all the elements out from underneath Björk's astonishing vocal take and surround her with drizzly bits of bass, piano, and a mournfully chanting vocal ensemble. Omar Souleyman more or less ditches all the elements that make Björk's songs her own and throws Björk's "Crystalline" vocals over a piece of his signature dabke music, transforming it into Syrian New Wave.
The best remixes here remind that Björk's voice remains an endlessly malleable instrument, capable of mapping itself onto nearly any context. But apart from Hudson Mohawke's luminous "Virus", there are few revelations wrung from this thin material. In 30 tantalizing seconds Matthew Herbert offers us a breath-caught, ecstatic recasting of "Sacrifice", in which the song suddenly feels like an outpouring on the order of "Joga". But it disappears just as quickly as it hits, and Bastards does little to counteract the sensation that latter-day Björk records are more fulfilling to read about than listen to. | 2012-12-11T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2012-12-11T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Electronic / Pop/R&B | One Little Indian | December 11, 2012 | 5.2 | 1e6ffa23-bf7f-49de-bb5b-89f61c063054 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | null |
Earlier this year, a test pressing of a previously unreleased LP by Caustic Window, one of Aphex Twin mastermind Richard James’ many pseudonyms, appeared for sale on Discogs, followed by a crowd-funded release sanctioned by James. The backstory stands as proof of the connectedness of fandom in the digital era, but the music also has its own rewards. | Earlier this year, a test pressing of a previously unreleased LP by Caustic Window, one of Aphex Twin mastermind Richard James’ many pseudonyms, appeared for sale on Discogs, followed by a crowd-funded release sanctioned by James. The backstory stands as proof of the connectedness of fandom in the digital era, but the music also has its own rewards. | Caustic Window: Caustic Window LP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19574-aphex-twin-caustic-window/ | Caustic Window LP | When Richard D. James released 2001’s Drukqs, the last proper Aphex Twin album, it was considered a massive disappointment. The 2xCD set mixed frenetic drill’n’bass tracks with gorgeous Satie-like miniatures for prepared piano, and the feeling at the time was that he’d been here before and done it all better. After 1999’s “Windowlicker”, a landmark track that was both deeply strange and also somehow a pop hit, there was an unspoken dream that James might just might change popular music completely, remake it in his image. Drukqs didn’t come close to fulfilling that promise, but listening to it 13 years later, perhaps not surprisingly, it sounds more interesting than it did at the time. Could this have something to do with it being the last Aphex Twin album? When we heard it in 2001, we had every reason to think that there might be another around the corner in a year or two.
So Drukqs seemed more like a bump in the road, maybe, than an artist coasting for a minute. It wasn’t the last we heard from James—there were the many Analord releases in 2005, some stray tracks, additional work as the Tuss—but James’ unbelievable 10-year run as a creative force mostly ended just after the turn of the millennium. Since we’re still left wondering if and when he’ll make a full return to the world of recorded music, the huge clutch of music he did release seems more classic with each passing day. He’s become something like electronic music’s post-retirement Miles Davis: from the vantage point of the 1980s and later, say, everything Miles released through his 1975 hiatus sounded amazing. An artist who quits can become so revered, what output there is becomes enveloped in a kind of aura, and you start to hear it differently. Tracks that don’t necessarily connect in a big way on their own become understood as an important part of a bigger picture, and its perceived importance grows exponentially.
I mention all this by way of saying that the “new” album by Richard James, the Caustic Window LP, sounds very good, but there’s so much wrapped up in hearing new/old music from him it can be hard to puzzle out. That this set has such a strange genesis also seems appropriate, given James’ very low public profile and long history of “Is this him or someone else?” releases. Earlier this year, a test pressing of a previously unreleased LP by Caustic Window, one of James’ many pseudonyms, originally intended for release on Rephlex, the label he owns with Grant Wilson-Claridge, appeared for sale on Discogs. Members of the We Are the Music Makers forum, an active message board dedicated to electronic music in general and Aphex Twin in particular, persuaded Rephlex to sanction an unusual idea for distributing the music: they would raise money through Kickstarter and those who contributed would get a high-quality digital copy of the record, recorded from a needle-drop of the test pressing. After the project was funded and the music digitized, the test pressing was auctioned on eBay. Some of the money went to the label, some went to charity. But 4,000 people got lossless files of the record from donating, and then of course it leaked. It’s a long way for music to travel in 20 years, and it’d be an interesting story based only on the crowd-funding angle, showing the connectedness of fandom in the digital era. But the music has its own rewards.
It helps to understand where James was in 1994. For the previous three years, he’d been issuing a string of 12"s and EPs under various names, most of which were firmly under the umbrella of acid house and techno. You can find these tracks scattered across the Caustic Window set Compilation, the Aphex Twin collection Classics, the Polygon Window album Surfing on Sine Waves, and the Analogue Bubblebath EPs. In addition to functional dance music, James had also put out Selected Ambient Works 85–92 and, around the time this album would have come out, the legendary Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, so we’re talking about some serious output in just a couple of years.
During the early days, James tended to go to extremes. He made dance music that was often harsh and repetitive and then he made ambient music that was stirring in its simple beauty. He was exploring the edges, figuring out where the boundaries were, and in the second half of the 1990s he figured out how to make it all work together. What’s interesting about the Caustic Window LP, especially relative to the abrasive material collected on Compilation, is that it’s generally measured, never too harsh or too fast and also never especially lyrical. It feels like an album, with tracks that were not singles meant to be heard together. James uses this middle ground as a showcase for his unerring feel for structure and his ability to make electronic tracks there were futuristic but also imbued with personality, where you get a sense of the man behind the controls.
So the highlights here, which include the bouncy electro-cruncher “Mumbly” (later a live staple), the spacious and easily tuneful “Fingertrips”, the salsa-inflected acid house “Squidge in the Fridge”, and the chilled-out and playful neo-trip-hop “Jazzphase”, sound best in the context of the record as a complete listen, with its gradually shifting palette and BPMs. James’ work during this era had a slightly crude, homemade quality that brought it down to earth but also, with its contrasts, served to highlight the overall musicality. If these are not necessarily the prettiest melodies he created, Caustic Window LP is still filled with tunes that work brilliantly as tunes, with memorable chord progressions that move through clearly delineated sections. One of James’ defining qualities is that he’s almost never boring; there’s almost always some element of fascination in his tracks, whether it’s an oddball sample, a weird texture, an impossibly heavy percussion line, or tune that won’t leave your head.
It’s only on the album’s final third that the record takes a sharp turn, as the nice but ultimately too-long mood piece “101 Rainbows (Ambient Mix)” leads into the hyper-distorted “Phlaps” and the blistering acid of “Cunt” and then into a listen-once track of phone pranks. It’s tempting to speculate on how the record would have been received at the time and why it might have been shelved. James was moving fast in those days, so it’s possible that this album felt too much like where he’d been before, especially given the new ground he was breaking with SAW II. By the following year’s I Care Because You Do his sound was again changing rapidly, and the rest of the decade saw him attaining the status of a serious composer. Given all that, Caustic Window LP probably wouldn’t have left a significant mark, and would have been heard as second-tier James. Twenty years later, though, we’re hearing it with that aura, that extra bit of longing that comes from how scarce music from James has become. And in that light, second tier is still very good indeed. | 2014-06-30T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2014-06-30T02:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Rephlex | June 30, 2014 | 8.1 | 1e711545-e626-4c8f-934e-a80529a2f455 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
The Norwegian duo gave up on black metal a long time ago, turning instead to an open-ended interest in the metal they loved as kids: thrash and crust punk, high-flying British metal, and blustery hardcore. It's hard to imagine two middle-aged men having more fun than Darkthrone do on their propulsive sixteenth studio album. | The Norwegian duo gave up on black metal a long time ago, turning instead to an open-ended interest in the metal they loved as kids: thrash and crust punk, high-flying British metal, and blustery hardcore. It's hard to imagine two middle-aged men having more fun than Darkthrone do on their propulsive sixteenth studio album. | Darkthrone: The Underground Resistance | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17642-darkthrone-the-underground-resistance/ | The Underground Resistance | When you think of Darkthrone, you think of fun, right? If you scoffed, guffawed, or simply disagreed, don't worry-- you're safely in the majority. The Norwegian band are best known, of course, for what their 1999 album labeled "ravishing grimness"-- savage, belligerent, and unfiltered black metal, epitomized by a blitz of icy hot classics that started with 1992's A Blaze in the Northern Sky and end, depending upon your stance on Second Wave orthodoxy and eclecticism, sometime just before or after the turn of the millennium. They're the dudes that epitomized ghoulish corpsespaint covers, brandished the credo "True Norwegian Black Metal," and fended off Aryan allegations as Varg Vikernes headed to jail. So, no, maybe fun isn't the first adjective Darkthrone conjures.
But it's hard to imagine two middle-aged men having more fun than Fenriz and Nocturno Culto-- the band's lone multi-instrumentalists, songwriters, and singers for two decades now-- do on The Underground Resistance, their inescapably enthusiastic 16th studio album. Darkthrone long ago gave up on black metal, turning instead to an open-ended and unmitigated interest in recombining the metal they loved as kids: thrash and crust punk, high-flying British metal and blustery hardcore. Those influences were always tucked within Darkthrone's most famous albums, but lately they've given over to them entirely. The simple joy of these influences is the thread that ties together The Underground Resistance, an album about unfit enemies and deserved death that nevertheless delights in its own music-making élan. Darkthrone's already been involved in a movement that revolutionized heavy metal both sonically and stylistically; The Underground Resistance, then, is simply the latest and most propulsive homage to the bands that sparked that revolution for them.
In the early days of Darkthrone, Fenriz didn't give many interviews, or at least he didn't say much in them. These days, though, he writes liner notes in which he conveys his influences and intentions. And his Metal Band of the Week blog advocates for young acts he likes and older acts he thinks went overlooked. He's made up for that early media quiet by seemingly giving interviews to most anyone who has asked. In doing so, he's often surprised journalists with his forthrightness and humor. "Isn't it normal to want to communicate your life's work?” he asked That’s How Kids Die, questioning those surprised by his newfound verbosity. For a guy who once posed in corpsepaint, he sure uses a lot of emoticons and knows a lot about Pink Panther.
But Fenriz rightly insists that there's not a lot of humor in Darkthrone's new music. (With a song sporting a name like "Leave No Cross Unturned", though, there is certainly some.) Still, The Underground Resistance flaunts the sort of vigor you'd expect from old friends out to have a good time: "Dead Early" is a menacing five-minute race that suggests Motörhead loaded on piss and vinegar, while the relentless chug of "Lesser Men" pogoes from circle-pit invocations to head-down, horns-up headbanging. "Valkyrie" begins with a classic doom feint, craggy acoustic guitars introducing a riff that unfurls over cascading drums. They return to that slow burn for the coda, but the middle is all blustery thrash, with Fenriz chasing himself in circles behind the drums while his falsetto peaks above the din. The album's real clincher, "Come Warfare, the Entire Doom", is a series of swivels and sprints, once again teasing doom before harnessing the band’s death metal past in an eight-minute anthem. The aforementioned "Leave No Cross Unturned", the disc's 14-minute finale and the longest song ever in the Darkthrone catalog, confirms the band’s gumption to simply go for anything. They hint at Saxon and Maiden with operatic vocals and an incredibly sharp hook and then at punk with the blissfully simple but successful outro. What’s more, Fenriz and Nocturnal Culto even circle back toward their weighty black metal reputation with the blanket of serrated guitars near the song’s start. A few minutes later, Fenriz howls from some deep abyss. In turn, they leave no relevant idea unturned.
Fenriz and Nocturno Culto own one of the great unimpeachable brands in all of heavy metal, and they've protected it not by limiting it but by letting it expand and fluctuate as need be. Rather than retread what's made them famous, Darkthrone have continually confirmed their status by refusing to kowtow to old expectations. They don't play live, and they don't depend on this band for their income; therefore, they don’t need this band to sound like it did it 1993 so they can cash in on the past rather than risk their image on the present. Amid tides of ceaseless band reunions and reissues that more often than not repeat what we already knew, Darkthrone in 2013 find themselves in an extremely enviable position because they have done exactly what they've wanted. Legends encumbered by being legends, they stick true to the title of The Underground Resistance-- they are two veterans having fun by continuing to play like they're carefree teenage rebels. | 2013-02-25T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2013-02-25T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Metal | Peaceville | February 25, 2013 | 7.4 | 1e743500-0d53-4596-bd45-d29ad8c2c5ba | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
The supposed final chapter in the late country star's career-capping sessions with producer Rick Rubin is released and fashioned as a tearjerker. | The supposed final chapter in the late country star's career-capping sessions with producer Rick Rubin is released and fashioned as a tearjerker. | Johnny Cash: American Recordings VI: Ain't No Grave | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13938-american-recordings-vi-aint-no-grave/ | American Recordings VI: Ain't No Grave | Johnny Cash recorded most of the tracks for the fifth and sixth installments of his American Recordings series between his wife June Carter Cash's death in May 2003 and his own just four months later. He was in poor health, and the effects of Shy-Drager syndrome prevented him from working most days. But when he felt up to it, he recorded; when he felt too weak, he wished he were recording. The able-bodied A Hundred Highways, released in 2006, was the first product of all that working and wishing, and Ain't No Grave is now the second. It doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know about Cash in his final months, nor does it sound like an attempt to re-brand an icon or re-shape a legacy. Instead, it plays like a desperate means of keeping Cash alive just a little longer. As such, it may say more about producer Rick Rubin, who has guided this series for 16 years, than it does about Cash himself.
Rubin comes across as deeply sentimental and fashions Ain't No Grave-- rumored to be the final installment in the series-- as a tearjerker. Listen as Cash ponders the delicate seam separating life from death on his own arrangement of "I Corinthians 15:55". Listen as he reminisces sweetly about life and love on Kris Kristofferson's "For the Good Times". Listen as he realizes he has a long past and little future on Tom Paxton's "Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound". It can be manipulative and obvious: Just the title of "I Don't Hurt Anymore" looms ominously on the tracklist. Cash's weak but determined performance aside, it's meant as a beyond-the-grave pronouncement, a consolation from the afterlife. The song itself was never about heaven. It's about numbness as a salve for heartache, so in this context it feels like a great tune that cannot carry such a heavy conceptual burden. Between that and all the other tracks about mortality, Ain't No Grave has the feel of a séance-- morose and possibly even staged.
And yet, we want to believe. We want Cash to go out on top, with a strong batch of songs created in the interval between hardship and grace. Even so, it's hard not to question some of the choices made in assembling and arranging these new songs. The album begins with its two clumsiest tracks: Cash's vocal is strong on the title track, weaker on Sheryl Crow's "Redemption Day", and here's where Rubin shows his influence over the project. He overloads both with goth-country instrumentation meant to recall "The Man Comes Around" and "God's Gonna Cut You Down", but the nail-in-coffin percussion, the eerie organ, and the blues guitar playing through an old radio all sound like clichés by now. The Old Testament ambience has lost its impact, contrasting sharply with the hands-off approach that defined the first and still best American Recordings album.
When Rubin leaves the fire and brimstone behind, Ain't No Grave picks up considerably, revealing itself as a personal rather than preacherly album. Even in those final days, when his spirit was strong but his voice weak, Cash remained a charismatic and commanding singer, with an easy gravity and a friendly, grandfatherly presence. He draws out the long syllables and sustained vowels of Bob Nolan's "Cool Water" gracefully and even joyfully, and sounds particularly invigorated on Joe "Red" Hayes and Jack Rhodes' "A Satisfied Mind" (given the relative robustness of his voice, the track actually seems like it's from a different session altogether). And of course, it wouldn't be a final American Recordings album without a weepy send-off. No one, not even Cash, could pull off Ed McCurdy's "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" without sounding sappy, and Queen Lili'uokalani's "Aloha Oe" is the studiously unsentimental sentimental send-off we all knew was coming. Ain't No Grave isn't really Cash's farewell as much as it is Rubin's memorial mixtape. | 2010-02-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2010-02-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | American | February 25, 2010 | 5.7 | 1e7efa69-ec3a-48b2-b697-0161f610d9a4 | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
The underground New York rapper's noisy, corroded new mixtape is also uniquely attuned to melody and song structure. It's thoughtful, spiritual, and above all, ambitious. | The underground New York rapper's noisy, corroded new mixtape is also uniquely attuned to melody and song structure. It's thoughtful, spiritual, and above all, ambitious. | Elucid: Valley of Grace | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22980-valley-of-grace/ | Valley of Grace | When he was growing up, Chaz Hall’s parents dragged him to church every Sunday—back-to-back services in the morning, and a third after a brief reprieve at Old Country Buffet. At some point, he started skipping dinner, slinking to the back of the sanctuary, teaching himself how to operate the equipment at the mixing board. Soon he was recording himself, alone in a empty room.
Over the course of the aughts, Hall—aka Elucid—embedded himself in the labyrinthine world of underground rap in New York. His music can be difficult to find: much of it came out under short-lived or one-off artist names, as collaborations with producers, other rappers, or both. But in the past few years, Elucid’s name has come to the forefront, both as a solo artist and as one-half of the duo Armand Hammer, with his Backwoodz Studioz label mate, billy woods.
Elucid’s music can also be difficult, or at least seem unapproachable. It’s full of knotty, dense writing and supremely technical passages. Yet unlike plenty of underground rappers (and major-label artists, for that matter), he’s uniquely attuned to melody and song structure. Even when he breaks convention, his intent seems to be clear; his delivery is an intoxicating blend of the gruff and guttural and something more melodic. His LP from last year, Save Yourself, was a collage of heartbreak and ambition that takes dozens of listens to properly unpack; it grappled with love, gentrification, and the corrosive nature of religious institutions.
His latest work, a half-hour dispatch called Valley of Grace, has songs titled “self care is a revolutionary act” and “strength is admired humanity is denied.” Where Save Yourself was in certain ways inextricable from New York (Elucid has made camp in Brooklyn, Queens, and elsewhere over the last couple of decades), Valley of Grace was written and recorded in Johannesburg and Cape Town, and taps into something more ethereal. It’s thoughtful, considered, and among the most ambitious rap records to come out this year.
“Colonizers corpse,” for example, sounds straightforward and up-tempo, but is written in a way that throws Elucid into a series of scenes where the spiritual stakes keep increasing: at first, roadside vendors are running after escaped chickens with cleavers, later a “gunned-down” child’s soul runs with the same desperation. He ends the song with “Self-appointed poet laureate of the Niggerati/hard copy/I am not my body,” allowing those words to give way to forty seconds of ear-splitting distortion that open the next track before hopping back in: “Watching America burn from distant shores/I learned to walk hot coals before I left the East coast.”
Valley also features some of Elucid’s most adventurous production: see “talk disruptive for me,” which sounds like the climaxes of three different movies played on top of one another. “she’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess,” which accounts for fully one-third of the tape’s running time, flits back and forth between (and occasionally merges) cold, industrial textures with warmer tones, the latter coming via very lo-fi samples.
Along with frequent appraisals of America’s current state and deeply entrenched hypocrisy on race, the topic that Elucid returns to most is the state of his body. From the hot coals under his feet to the “clear and present danger” to his physical form (“no release”), Valley of Grace frequently feels, by its very existence, like an act of defiance. Perhaps he says it best himself: “I’m no prisoner/Your indifference and silence speaks volumes/I pray the wrath of my ancestors surrounds you.” With this record, Elucid has taken sharp, maximalist writing, music that’s very nearly avant-garde, and distilled each down to its core elements. | 2017-03-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-03-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Backwoodz Studioz | March 13, 2017 | 7.5 | 1e86b5d8-2019-4334-9673-72713e8b63e0 | Paul A. Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/ | null |
On its four-track, roughly hour-long debut album, this English band adheres closely to the tension/release kind of post-rock. | On its four-track, roughly hour-long debut album, this English band adheres closely to the tension/release kind of post-rock. | Yndi Halda: Enjoy Eternal Bliss | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10131-enjoy-eternal-bliss/ | Enjoy Eternal Bliss | Consider the branch of post-rock that was more or less introduced by Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai in the late 1990s, and is now practiced by Explosions in the Sky, Mono, and others. This music focuses on songs with slow, spare beginnings that steadily climb to huge crescendos bursting at the seems with guitar strums and, often, violin swells. It's easy to forget just how powerful this stuff sounded on first exposure. All of a sudden the direct and emotionally charged communication of film soundtracks was available from instrumental rock bands. And live, man, with the loud climaxes even louder, it was something to behold.
Still, something strange has happened with this sort of music since. It's almost as if the sense of structure laid out in the late 90s proved to be so winning, bands grew afraid to mess with it. Some do what they can to branch out, such as Mogwai, who on record moved on to other things long ago. But it's strange how predictable this music, which depends partly on surprise for those big moments to resonate, has become.
You could almost compare it to 12-bar blues, where after the second repetition of the first couplet you can feel in your body which chord is coming next; when bands of this ilk stick to the quintessence-- which is most of the time-- you can anticipate every modulation of sound well before it arrives. Here on their debut record, England's Yndi Halda adhere closely to the "classic" form of this kind of post-rock. Over four tracks that average about 15 minutes per, they milk the formula for everything it's worth.
How much is left to milk, and exactly what it's worth at this point, will vary a lot from listener to listener. Suffice to say Yndi Halda generally do this thing pretty well. The production is nice, the crescendos crash, the strings and guitar distortion are impressively loud. It's a well-established form, and they hit their marks. They even add a new wrinkle in the form of wordless vocals that crop up here and there, most notably on the last section of the 17-minute "Dash and Blast". Hearing the mass of voices belting out "Dah-da-dah-du-dah" in time with the guitar melody sounds a bit cheesy when it first hits, but then begins to sound pretty great, in part because it sounds a bit cheesy. The voices are a tad clumsy but in a charming way, which, after all the by-the-book moves in a form that takes itself so seriously, is welcome.
Still, the changes from bar to bar on Enjoy Eternal Bliss are so telegraphed, it's hard to get excited, especially if you've heard a good bit of this kind of thing already. They can play their instruments, and they've mastered the sound. Yndi Halda know their way around the build, so here's hoping they spend their next record thinking out how the music might be taken apart. | 2007-04-26T02:00:05.000-04:00 | 2007-04-26T02:00:05.000-04:00 | Rock | Burnt Toast Vinyl / Big Scary Monsters | April 26, 2007 | 5.1 | 1e88c00e-e1de-41d1-b81a-c4dddbe444ca | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
After a clumsy attempt at goth-tinged guitar-based rock, New Order enjoy a slight return to form by going back to what they do best-- create mournful and ebullient pop. | After a clumsy attempt at goth-tinged guitar-based rock, New Order enjoy a slight return to form by going back to what they do best-- create mournful and ebullient pop. | New Order: Waiting for the Sirens' Call | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5769-waiting-for-the-sirens-call/ | Waiting for the Sirens' Call | For a group of folks nearing the half-century mark, Get Ready was pretty damn good; but for New Order, that return-from-wherever effort was a bit meh. New Order's "meh" is often better than most group's "hell yeah," but that doesn't disguise their shortcomings, and "Who's Joe"-- the first track from New Order's latest album, Waiting for the Sirens' Call-- is a continuation of the underwhelming competence of the band's previous album. That track isn't as in love with the sound of space-age guitars as Get Ready, but it's still a three-minute song that's given an extra two minutes' worth of rope to turn stiff and tepid. Combine that with the unwarranted focus on Bernard Sumner and his lyrical stylings-- not often a main attraction for New Order (and for good reason)-- and I'm settling in for another reasonably competent, mildly underwhelming effort from a group that doesn't need to prove a damn thing to anyone.
But then the second track, "Hey Now What You Doing", manages to make its five-minute length seem like half that. Credit the pronounced presence of that nifty Peter Hook basswork, or the pithier words Sumner spits ("You have the brightest future/ Writing songs on your computer"-- believe me, it sounds better in context), but this sounds more like a group that's doing the damn thing and not just coasting on their own coattails. And then the title track comes on, and it's this gorgeous effortless shimmering thing, mournful and ebullient all at once. And then the first single, "Krafty", with its synth flourishes and corny pop-perfect sentiment ("But out there the world is a beautiful place/ With mountains, lakes and the human race") blows the doors wide open, and any trepidation I had regarding this record dies on the vine.
In his review of Get Ready, Pitchfork's own Joe Tangari makes note of how much the album rocked, which is probably why it felt to me as if the group went astray. First and foremost, New Order is a pop band-- just ask Frente!-- and for them to try their hand at loud guitars and loud beats doesn't play to the group's strengths. Nor does such a maneuver do them any favors when compared to their contemporaries-- Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie made a guest appearance on Get Ready, which is fitting, since his group's XTRMNTR did what Get Ready attempted to do, only bigger, louder, and-- most importantly-- better.
In comparison, Sirens' Call features the Scissor Sisters' Ana Matronic-- she gets a verse and a few background lines in "Jetstream", a chirpy, flippant track where "you are my jetstream lover" and a sense of laconic confidence out-Kylies Ms. Minogue at her own coy game. When it's firing on all cylinders, Sirens' Call offers manic pop thrills that either recall the group's heyday, or slyly recalls the noise made by other people that were touched by New Order-- dig that Ace of Base action in "I Told You So". The track lengths don't lend themselves to a tidy, hit-and-run pop experience, but they do offer a taste of what the inevitable extended dance remix would sound like.
The one track that most conforms to the three-minute radio oligarchy is closer "Working Overtime". It's a garagey barn-burner, not too dissimilar to Get Ready single "Crystal". These track's placements on their respective albums are a telling sign of New Order's confidence level. "Crystal" was Get Ready's centerpiece and calling card, the document that was supposed to announce to the world that New Order Is Back and could ably play ball with the kids they fathered. In some sense, it was a capitulation by a group that had no need to capitulate. "Working Overtime" is an afterthought, a track that does what "Crystal" did with less pomp and exerted effort, announcing to all those aforementioned indebted groups that, oh by the way, they can write these sorts of songs in their sleep, and they can put them at the end of their records, because they don't need to play ball with the other kids. They invented the game. In other words, they're New Order. And you're not. | 2005-03-29T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2005-03-29T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Reprise | March 29, 2005 | 7.9 | 1e8c58b6-f599-469b-839a-a26df0a22935 | David Raposa | https://pitchfork.com/staff/david-raposa/ | null |
Slug returns, stripping some of the more larger-than-life traits of misspent youth away from his approach and tilting more towards plainspoken sincerity. | Slug returns, stripping some of the more larger-than-life traits of misspent youth away from his approach and tilting more towards plainspoken sincerity. | Atmosphere: The Family Sign | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15297-the-family-sign/ | The Family Sign | Lots of indie-rap figures wallow in self-pity, bemoan their own bad habits, snap at those who make life hard for them, and somehow find a way to wrap all those emotions up into a resilient shell. But Atmopshere's Slug established a particular knack for it when he broke outside the Twin Cities about a decade back-- every heartfelt line about lonely people or fractured relations was offset by an offhand remark that took some the sting out of his lamentations. Atmosphere got tagged as "emo rap" because there wasn't an easier go-to term for a barfly raconteur with female troubles, but while Slug's lyrics spoke to the same sour impulses that drove teenage misery, they did so through the experiences of someone who discovers to that misery when you grow up.
The catch is that growing up also means growing out of a few things, and The Family Sign catches Slug at a point where he seems to be tilting more towards plainspoken sincerity. The hard-drinking, love-stressed, party-fatigued persona that made him a breakout cult figure 10 years ago might sound somewhere between disingenuous and ridiculous coming from a 38-year-old today. But in stripping some of the more larger-than-life traits of misspent youth away from his approach, he's also lost some of the outsized arrogance and aw-shucks smartassedness that gave his more po-faced moments a three-dimensional context or sharp emotional counterpoint. While The Family Sign has a specific titular focus on loved (and formerly loved) ones and the way people define themselves through them, the real conceptual leap on this album is how patriarch maturity means less jokiness, more earnestness, and a traveled perspective that doesn't leave much room for not giving a fuck.
What room is left winds up parceled out over a couple of highlights. As blunt as the premise is, the negligent alky father meets stoner pickpockets of "Bad Bad Daddy" has a certain caustic bite to it. And the road-ravaged, detail-rich narrative of "Millennium Dodo" evokes the same harebrained excitement-slash-disorientation that made the best moments of 2003's fantastic Seven's Travels stand out. Pointing out his car's mirror-ball décor as an homage to Escape From New York or noting the resemblance between a Best Western clerk and "WKRP in Cincinnati" nebbish Les Nessman is the sort of pop-culture debris that's evocative enough to transcend reference-dropping and hint at the metaphorical reserves in Slug's brain. But the track also starts out with a couplet-- "I only act like an asshole/ Why don't ch'y'all stand back, let the man grow"-- that explains the rest of the album's almost total lack of sardonic edge.
Heartfelt moments haven't necessarily been beyond Slug's grasp-- When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold highlight "Wild Wild Horses" and "Lifter Puller" off Seven's Travels are genuinely moving in a way that few indie-rap love songs are. But here love songs are deployed a bit blank-facedly, strings of clichés, shrugging platitudes and half-thoughts drawn together into a husk of what used to be a compellingly contradictory personality. The idea of a banal yet subtly tense reunion with a long-forgotten ex in "Your Name Here" is undercut by the fact that there's not enough interesting personal details to make Slug's rejected reconnection come across like anything more than a petty dismissal. And while "The Last to Say" is 100% worth hearing if it convinces just one woman to leave the abusive asshole that blackens her eyes, it's weird that it sounds less emotionally invested than the sharp-spitting breakup kissoff "Just for Show".
As Slug's performative role dials down the emotional resonance, the beats have followed suit into a low-intensity churn, one that undercuts what could've been a set of adventurous live-band hip-hop with a uniform lethargy that tops out at mid-tempo. While the instrumentation of When Life Gives You Lemons signaled a wealth of potential new directions for Atmosphere's production, The Family Sign runs almost entirely on gloomy ballads heavy on maudlin piano chords and keening guitar riffs. That latter instrument's maybe the most interesting sonic component of Ant's post-sampling compositional phase, and Nate Collis cranks out Black Keys-ian twang ("Bad Bad Daddy"), psychedelic noir ("My Key"), and eerie slide ("The Last to Say") with versatile ease. And if Erick Anderson's keyboards tend to provide more texture than melody, at least he's as handy with Jackie Mittoo reggae riffs ("Just for Show") as he is with new wave glow ("I Don't Need Brighter Days"). But there's little to cut through the fog-- with the exception of the joy-buzzer jolt of "She's Enough" and the flailing attempt at Nilsson-style AM pop on "Ain't Nobody", this is music that conflates maturity with exhaustion. | 2011-04-13T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2011-04-13T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Rhymesayers | April 13, 2011 | 5.8 | 1e8e04b7-e25f-4c8a-a113-199890a5aaa9 | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
Beirut's defiantly small third studio album finds a restrained, stately Zach Condon displaying his antiquated fantasies on slightly shrunken canvases. | Beirut's defiantly small third studio album finds a restrained, stately Zach Condon displaying his antiquated fantasies on slightly shrunken canvases. | Beirut: The Rip Tide | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15715-the-rip-tide/ | The Rip Tide | Zach Condon's been wonderfully stuck in the past since 2006, when he first arrived on the scene armed with a ukulele and dreams of old Europe-- in 2011, though, he and his art suddenly seem especially out of place. In the five years since Gulag Orkestar became a surprise success, the dialog surrounding indie culture has drastically shifted away from flesh-and-blood odysseys like Condon's and toward synth textures and vague electronic sighs. (Arguably, Condon and the current crop of emotionally distanced indie stars share nostalgia for experiences not necessarily known first-hand, but that's another conversation.) What's more, many of his peers are in drastically different places, both aesthetically and commercially, since Beirut's last full-length, 2007's excellent The Flying Club Cup. The National and Arcade Fire have successfully settled into the arena-rocking stage of their respective careers, while Owen Pallett and Sufjan Stevens have embraced idiosyncratic conceptual weirdness-- Stevens especially: Just last week, the pair of Brooklyn shows closing his extraordinary tour behind last year's glitchy, restorative LP The Age of Adz were a complete cosmic blowout, embracing an Etsy-gone-neon ethos and electronic expansiveness alike.
Back in 2009, it seemed like Zach Condon was considering a similar synthetic transformation. The back half of Beirut's mini-LP released that year credited to his Realpeople alias, March of the Zapotec/Holland, suggested a move away from his baroque stylings and toward homespun electronic pop in the vein of the Magnetic Fields circa The House of Tomorrow. Apparently, the experiments were just that, as those sounds are nowhere to be found on Beirut's third proper full-length, The Rip Tide. Instead, the project has turned inward, ditching the frilly drama of The Flying Club Cup for more plaintive, understated arrangements. Condon told The New York Times earlier this year that the relatively stripped-down approach was a response to his feeling like "a dilettante with instruments. For years I was picking up new instruments once a month, and for this I was trying to focus a little more, stick with piano, ukulele and trumpet." You're still going to find a pump organ part or two on this record, but otherwise, The Rip Tide's reliance on the Basic Beirut Food Groups (piano, horns, strings) keep Condon true to his word.
Leading up to The Rip Tide's release, Condon also hinted at the album's "sunny" disposition. I'm not sure if I'm hearing that. The Rip Tide was recorded in upstate New York two winters ago, and although there's a handful of upbeat cuts (notably, the infinite earworm and LP highlight "Santa Fe"), a good part of the album sounds especially soft and melancholy, a possible result of the fact that the winter of 2010 was especially snowy and brutal for the greater New York area. If you prefer Condon's balladeer side, then, this isn't a bad thing at all, especially if you are drawn to his richest, most melodrama-dripping highlights ("The Penalty", "After the Curtain"). Arrangement-wise, The Rip Tide is slightly more complicated than those past glories, with a few moments ("Payne's Bay", the swelling title track) that, at times, recall the wooden psychedelic weirdness of Grizzly Bear. Things never get too strange, though: This is still a Beirut album, so declarative horns and impassioned strumming are frequent visitors.
There's a newfound sense of restraint and stateliness on display here, and it's impressive that within five years and at such a young age, Condon's developed so quickly as an arranger and songwriter. Watching him ease into adulthood (he was 19 when Gulag Orkestar dropped) means we've been able to track the maturation of that rich, golden voice he possesses; On The Rip Tide, it occasionally sounds huskier and, in the case of his slight trembles of "Santa Fe" and "Goshen", a little more unstable. These little cracks in the drywall actually make him seem more human; his voice has always seemed almost too sonorous and perfectly dusty to be real, and hearing him falter (if ever so slightly) is a positive reminder that, not too long ago, this was a kid who, as he told the NYT, "just want[ed] to swig whiskey and drink beer and go onstage and have a ball." Still, he's a commanding presence, as his powerful pipes swing to and fro on the robust album bookends "A Candle's Fire" and "Port of Call". Vocally, The Zach Condon Show is nowhere near cancellation, to a point where the usually distinctive contributing vocals of slow-burning singer/songwriter Sharon Van Etten (who pitches in on "A Candle's Fire" and "Payne's Bay") are smothered and unnoticeable.
Despite Condon's clear development, The Rip Tide is a defiantly small effort-- the shortest LP in Beirut's catalog (nine songs, clocking in at just over 33 minutes), self-released on Condon's own label, Pompeii. As such, it's a record that's easier to slip by unnoticed than Beirut's two other LPs. (The lack of the previously present heavy affectation contributes to this as well.) However, our own Marc Hogan put it best in his recent Playlist item on "East Harlem"-- you get as much out of Condon's creations as you put time into them, and familiarity eventually becomes its own reward. Near the end of the album's beautifully mournful, penultimate cut "The Peacock", Condon repeats this telling admission into the face of fading horns: "He's the only one who knows the words." His antiquated fantasies still very much belong to him, but it's still a joy to peer inside them-- even if the canvases they're displayed on have shrunk ever so slightly. | 2011-08-08T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2011-08-08T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Pompeii | August 8, 2011 | 7.7 | 1e8eae08-6c0b-468d-8acb-0e5626b79801 | Larry Fitzmaurice | https://pitchfork.com/staff/larry-fitzmaurice/ | null |
Collection of unreleased material from the late producer runs the gamut from 90s Ummah-era loops to beats he put together from his hospital bed. | Collection of unreleased material from the late producer runs the gamut from 90s Ummah-era loops to beats he put together from his hospital bed. | J Dilla: Jay Stay Paid | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13152-jay-stay-paid/ | Jay Stay Paid | Dilla will always be with us. I don't mean that in just the spiritual sense, or in the way that people are going to be feeling his legacy for a while, though god knows I must've reviewed a dozen albums over the past year that were either in tribute to him or featured some of his beats or both. What I'm talking about is that he'll always be with us in the sense that the amount of material he recorded over the decade-plus before his death was completely overwhelming. When Los Angeles blogger and music journalist Jeff Weiss interviewed the Pharcyde back in May, Imani mentioned that when Labcabincalifornia was being recorded, Dilla gave them "hundreds of beats" to choose from. And since Donuts became the last album issued in his lifetime, it's been followed by a flood of releases-- sanctioned and otherwise-- that've raided his archives and spilled forth a flood of previously-unheard detritus that rivals the early-1970s post-mortem output of Jimi Hendrix.
Sadly, not all of that detritus has resulted in James Yancey's bills getting paid. His mother's been infamously entangled in rights issues with the executor of Dilla's estate, who has blocked the releases of more than a few projects that might've helped his family financially and brought some of his vault material to light. But Jay Stay Paid should hopefully circumvent that, since it puts a new piece of Dilla's musical legacy in good hands and creates a life-spanning statement in a way that previous memorial assemblages like 2006's The Shining could only hint at. Jay Stay Paid isn't a cash-in piece of vulturework, but a labor of love executive produced by his mother and assembled, arranged, and mixed by Pete Rock, one of Dilla's greatest influences. You couldn't come up with two people more qualified to help turn the DAT-stored scraps and sketches of Dilla's ideas into a full-fledged work of art.
The source material on Jay Stay Paid runs the gamut from 90s Ummah-era loops to beats Dilla was putting together from his hospital bed, but it stylistically falls in a general area that fits best between the dense but crisp boom-bap of his early-aughts material (i.e., Welcome 2 Detroit and Slum Village's Fantastic, Vol. 2) and the grimier, more frenetic beat-tape rawness of his Jaylib/Donuts L.A. phase. That latter aesthetic tends to permeate the surface here, filtered through a loose radio-show concept that interjects some actual disk jockey shoutouts, comedic asides, and brief interjections from the man himself. That bugged-out hyperkineticism keeps things moving, but it doesn't reduce the beats to ADD afterthoughts: Early scene-setting moments like the stuttering elasticity of the organ-riff loop in "King", the glowering Minimoog g-funk retrofuturism of "I Told Y'all", and the Morse-code keyboard of "Lazer Gunne Funke" don't run too long, but they sink in deeply.
Like The Shining, Jay Stay Paid breaks up the instrumental passages with a number of guest appearances by various MCs, most of whom either worked with Dilla in the past or otherwise have some level of simpatico compatibility with his aesthetic. Raekwon, whose upcoming Only Built for Cuban Linx II will also feature a repurposed Dilla production, teams up with Mobb Deep's Havoc in a pairing that might seem at odds with Dilla's conscious-rap-friendly Ummah/Soulquarian rep, but the skittering beat, skulking bass, and late-night creeping atmospherics in "24K Rap" fit them perfectly. And the usual suspects-- DOOM muttering acerbic wordplay on "Fire Wood Drumstix", Black Thought throwing around reality show namedrops on the Latin guitar-driven bump of "Reality TV", a host of raw-spitting Detroit cohorts from Frank Nitti to Phat Kat to Dilla's own brother Illa J-- come at it with the reverence and enthusiasm of longtime friends and admirers who fully understand the gravity of the project they're doing.
But Jay Stay Paid's biggest strengths don't lie in its guest roster, impressive as it is. It's the way these reconstructed, reassembled beats so vividly show off how left-field he was willing to get in the service of finding new ways to make a beat knock. Hearing "Make It Fast Mega Mix" turn the spooky burble of David Essex's "Rock On" into a sinuous players' anthem for up-and-comer Diz Gibran makes it sound like an obvious idea turned novel, and anyone who's paid attention to what Donuts brought to the table should find some welcome familiarity in the vintage 60s and 70s electronics that flicker across large swaths of the album; "Spacecowboy vs. Bobblehead", "In the Night (Owl N Out) - While You Slept (I Crept)", and "On Stilts" provide the brightest examples. But even for diehards, there's something on nearly every track here that gives his production some strange, intriguing angle: swooping astral choirs ("Milk Money"), a bizarre, fuzzed-out and pitched-up mutation of the Mothers of Invention's "Oh No" in "9th Caller", and the closing statement of "KJay and We Out", one of Dilla's characteristic glowing boom-clap beats overlaid with a faint psych-soul guitar that might be the most elegiac beat dropped since his passing. This may not be the last we hear of some long-lost, recently-unearthed material of Dilla's, but you can consider this the most heartfelt eulogy Pete Rock's had a hand in since "They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)", and the definitive document so far from the family that misses him. | 2009-06-02T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2009-06-02T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Nature Sounds | June 2, 2009 | 8.1 | 1e8fa5fc-7daa-44c3-afed-48812de4dbb9 | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
Beyond its myth or this questionable new remix, the debut album from the Band made roots music sound as impressionistic and idiosyncratic as any other kind of rock’n’roll. It was revolutionary. | Beyond its myth or this questionable new remix, the debut album from the Band made roots music sound as impressionistic and idiosyncratic as any other kind of rock’n’roll. It was revolutionary. | The Band: Music From Big Pink | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-band-music-from-big-pink/ | Music From Big Pink | Music From Big Pink went from album to legend decades before it reached its 50th anniversary this year, an occasion being celebrated with the release of a variety of splashy commemorative reissues, all featuring a startling new remix by Bob Clearmountain. Such a milestone offers an opportunity for a reassessment, but the striking thing about the Band’s debut album is how its story hasn’t been changed since its release in the summer of 1968, when it provided a tonic to the overblown psychedelia swamping the late 1960s.
This narrative didn’t just come out of the blue. Journalist Al Aronowitz wrote three lovely portraits of the Band in 1968—appearing in Life, Rolling Stone, and Hullabaloo, covering every possible readership—that made hay of the many years the Band spent grinding out a living on the road. He treated Big Pink, the house the group shared with Bob Dylan in West Saugerties, New York, with a nearly mystical reverence. This framing persists to this day, buttressed by repetition and hagiographies, all citing elements of these initial stories as accepted fact, possibly because there is considerable supporting evidence that Music From Big Pink had a profound influence on the Band’s peers. At the time, George Harrison and Eric Clapton cited the album as the reason why they decided to abandon overdriven blues and psychedelia to pursue a path of quiet contemplation and authenticity.
Authenticity is always a tricky thing regarding the Band. Music From Big Pink is often called the place where Americana starts even though every member, save drummer Levon Helm, hails from Canada. What’s harder to parse is how Music From Big Pink gets conflated with The Basement Tapes, the collection of homemade recordings Dylan cut with the Band during the summer of 1967. Intended as songwriting demos and self-amusement, those recordings wound up circulating as a bootleg for years, headed off by the 1975 release of a double-album which was loaded up with Band tracks not recorded at the Big Pink, giving the impression that the Band were equal players during this time, when the tapes were largely devoted to Dylan. Similarly, the very title of Music From Big Pink suggests that the album itself is a product of The Basement Tapes, which is true as far as its sensibility and many of its songs originate in the music Dylan and the Band made when nobody was listening during 1967.
Music From Big Pink, in contrast, was very much made with an audience in mind. Because of their months of woodshedding with Dylan, the Band—who at that point were lacking even their plain Jane name—were a hot commodity within the music industry. They signed a deal with Capitol who put the group into high-end recording studios in Manhattan and Los Angeles with producer John Simon. While they were there, the Band didn’t follow standard procedures: Guitarist Robbie Robertson is fond telling an anecdote where the group insisted on removing studio baffles so they could play face to face. Because of, or perhaps despite all this, they wound up with an album so rich and complex it still sounds singular even on its 50th birthday.
From the outset, its originality was described in terms of genre, how Music From Big Pink draws from a number of American roots musics—country, blues, gospel, folk, gospel, rockabilly—without ever sounding distinctly like one its inspirations. Such a hybrid has since become common, yet Music From Big Pink still sounds trapped out of time, lacking the simplicity of its predecessors or the po-faced sincerity of its disciples, and so much of this is due to how the album is executed with a casual disregard to authenticity. Robertson may have advocated for the Band to play as a unit, a savvy move that captures their elastic interplay, but Simon didn’t produce the group as if they were a mere bar band. The very presence of Garth Hudson, an organist who doubled on horns, removed the Band from the confines of three-chord rock’n’roll, with his waves of texture evoking not just gospel but the heady horizons of psychedelia the Band reportedly rejected.
While it’s true that the 11 individual songs on Music From Big Pink are steeped in tradition, the album itself is resolutely modern, a studio concoction meant to expand the mind. Listen to how the album starts, not with a salvo, but with a dirge. “Tears of Rage” comes into focus with a guitar line phased so heavily it sounds like an organ, the piano chords piling up just as pianist Richard Manuel’s lonely voice begins to pine. It’s well over a minute before another voice is heard, with the song slowly expanding to encompass horns and harmonies, every sound in concert and every musician in communion. The tempo soon quickens with “To Kingdom Come,” where the supporting vocals of Rick Danko and Helm carry the shakey Robertson through to the end, setting the stage for the communal hymn of “The Weight.” Simultaneously the best example of the Band’s collective nature—Helm and Danko switch verses, everybody chimes in on the chorus—“The Weight” also is an outlier on Music From Big Pink, pointing the way to the lean and sinewy sound of their self-titled second album. The rest of the record contains so many textures, it nearly feels ornate: the plaintive “Lonesome Suzie” gains resonance with its washes of echo and horns, while “Chest Fever”—the hardest rocking number here—is a head trip, thanks to the roar of overdriven organ and indecipherable vocals.
Music From Big Pink may be rooted in the earth but it exists entirely within the head. The way it makes roots music sound as impressionistic and idiosyncratic as any other kind of rock’n’roll is revolutionary. It casts a very distinct spell, which is why it’s so unsettling that the new Bob Clearmountain mix breaks this moody magic. Clearmountain takes pains to separate the elements that were previously inextricably intertwined, shattering the specific otherworldliness that has been retained in every reissue of the album over the past fifty years. Sometimes, certain parts are pushed to the forefront—the call and response on “We Can Talk” by Helm and Danko are isolated from each other—and sometimes, everything piles on to of each other, as on the cacophonic “This Wheel’s on Fire.” Worse, extraneous studio chatter has been added to “The Weight” and “Lonesome Suzie,” a move that punctures the illusion that Music From Big Pink materialized out of thin air from a cheap rental house in the woods of New York.
Perhaps this super deluxe reissue accidentally deflates that myth, but the legend of Music From Big Pink is so deeply ingrained in musical culture that one single splashy reissue can’t tarnish its reputation. If anything, this super deluxe edition—complete with a 49-minute album pressed as a double-LP at 45rpm—encourages exploration of the original album, because even with the bright, discordant new remix, there remains a mysterious core that can not be explained but only experienced. | 2018-09-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-09-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Capitol / UMe | September 1, 2018 | 9.4 | 1e958c62-a76d-4f18-a6ce-9f1646d28f40 | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
This storied 1986 live bootleg captured the band on the cusp between New York Noise act and alt-rock behemoth. Thirty-eight years later, it finally gets an official release. | This storied 1986 live bootleg captured the band on the cusp between New York Noise act and alt-rock behemoth. Thirty-eight years later, it finally gets an official release. | Sonic Youth: Walls Have Ears | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sonic-youth-walls-have-ears/ | Walls Have Ears | If Manhattan’s misunderstood muck could talk—think smashed-up cigs, boot-trodden gum splotches, the strange liquid that oozes from certain subway stations—its voice would sound a lot like early-career Sonic Youth. Long before their weaponized tinnitus would take their music, and their tour van, across the globe, they occupied a derelict yet fertile corner of New York, where dissatisfied art types recognized the squalor of their city, processed it through shitty speakers, and threw it back in its face. This was a nascent, no-holds-barred iteration of post-punk, marked by left-field song structures, unforgiving decibel levels, and, in extreme cases, bloodied strumming hands. “I maintain that/Chaos is the future/And beyond it is freedom,” Thurston Moore deadpans in “Confusion Is Next,” from 1983’s Confusion Is Sex. To extract catharsis from chaos, you must first spend time at chaos’s altar.
On paper, Moore’s declaration sounds vague, like the sort of thing a young eccentric might scribble in protest of detention. But it was also pretty prophetic: Spearheaded by Sonic Youth, indie rock’s next decade would seek strange beauty in the bizarre—tongue-talking pedalboards, battered whammy bars, feedback that foamed at the mouth. Pulled from three 1985 UK shows, Walls Have Ears pinpoints the band between sputtering sound system and well-oiled noise machine, soon to transcend fringe credibility for alt-rock titanhood. The record existed for decades as a coveted bootleg, originally issued without permission by Paul Smith, an early arbiter of their European releases. Thirty-eight years later, it still sounds like a smuggled good. The mixing is stuffy, low quality, borderline claustrophobic. It’s hard to listen without feeling, ever so faintly, like the walls are closing in, damning you to suffocation in a shaking hell. You can’t hide from the monster—and yet, for some reason, you don’t really want to.
The collection offers a ragtag crash course in Sonic Youth’s first three records, interspersed with occasional cameos from the then-unreleased Evol. On raucous renditions of “Death Valley ’69” and “Kill Yr. Idols,” Steve Shelley’s drumming—at that point, a fresh addition to Sonic Youth’s apparatus—is enchanted and animalistic, a hungrier, more depraved engine behind tracks that already seemed murderous enough. “Brother James,” in particular, makes the version that appears on Confusion Is Sex sound pedestrian, maybe even polite. Kim Gordon wants to usher you “straight to hell”; Shelley’s thumps are the feet of the devil, dancing with glee at the sight of fresh meat. For all its audible stitched-togetherness, there’s value in hearing the entrails of Sonic Youth’s anarcho-apparatus spark into place, one by one. Midway through “Kill Yr. Idols,” when Moore hollers “Confusion is seeeeeeeex,” letting the “sex” hang just long enough for you to think about it, the naked guitar registers, uncannily, like the rasping throat of a ghoul. When Shelley and Gordon return to fill in the empty space, it’s one of those moments where you feel like the room is shrinking, an inch every beat.
The record’s second half pulls from an April pre-Shelley gig, one of their last with early drummer Bob Bert. There’s volcanic musicianship here, as is true of the Shelley shows, but there’s also more of the in-between stuff—like the minutes-long fuzz-guitar murmuring that precedes “Ghost Bitch,” or the tentative input-jack bursts that eventually fester into a second “Brother James” rendition. They weren’t the types to say it themselves, but Sonic Youth were hungry to be respected, hungry to have their dissonant catharsis understood by outsiders to the city that produced it. By the mid ’80s, much to their annoyance, writers had been making cheap comparisons to the Jesus and Mary Chain, another upstart quartet that drew more acclaim, faster. Between “Ghost Bitch” and “Death Valley ’69,” while the group audibly readies guitars, a JAMC cassette can be heard playing, sped up to the point of cartoonish oblivion. They aren’t doing any talking, but you get the sentiment.
Walls Have Ears is rife with an endearing patched-together air, the splotchy varnish of a band established enough to gig overseas, but not quite ready to afford guitar techs. They had a chaotic gospel to spread, and they were hellbent on spreading it—regardless of where, to whom, and to what effect. Sonic Youth were often desperate, it seemed, to prove that the filthy was even filthier than you imagined: Your America was their wicked warzone, your Manhattan their squalid sublunary. With the grittiest versions of their grittiest songs, it’s hard to deny that even at their best, they were brash, harsh, and confusing. They’d probably take each of those as compliments. | 2024-02-14T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2024-02-14T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Goofin’ | February 14, 2024 | 7.8 | 1ea3bf1f-ffd8-4e94-b8ae-832be9e04836 | Samuel Hyland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/samuel-hyland/ | |
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 Tejano star’s landmark 1994 album, her magnum opus that redefined the sound of Latin pop. | 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 Tejano star’s landmark 1994 album, her magnum opus that redefined the sound of Latin pop. | Selena: *Amor Prohibido * | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/selena-amor-prohibido/ | Amor Prohibido | You can find Selena’s face on prayer candles, tote bags, and coin purses; coffee mugs, ’90s-style band tees, and poster prints; throw pillows, air fresheners, and baby onesies. MAC Cosmetics created a limited edition Selena collection in 2016, featuring lipsticks in her signature cherry-red stain, as well as makeup pouches in the shape of her indelible rhinestone-encrusted bustiers. There have been reusable grocery bags sold by the Texas supermarket chain H-E-B, a juniors’ apparel line at JCPenney and Sears, loungewear from Forever 21. I could go on.
The branded knickknacks and cutesy homewares tell a more sinuous—and sinister—story of Selena. They reflect her status as an icon, forever young, shot dead at 23 by a resentful employee. To some, she has become a saintly figure free of complexity and contradiction. But of course, the Tejano star’s life was far less neat and digestible than that.
Amor Prohibido, the last album Selena released before her death, is her magnum opus. It has soundtracked quinces, barbecues, and rough breakups, harnessing the kind of romantic suffering that leaves you weeping on your bedroom floor. Amor Prohibido distills Selena’s legacy, but it’s also a statement about the boundless aesthetic potential of Tejano, a once-maligned working-class folk genre, whose touchstones include the accordion, the bajo sexto, and rhythms from Czech and German genres like the polka and the waltz. Over 11 tracks, she and her band Los Dinos stretch the limits of Tejano and cumbia, warping elements of R&B, reggae, and electronic music into eminently catchy songs of love and loss. Amor Prohibido was a commercial blockbuster, and it remains the best-selling Tejano album of all time. But more importantly, it is a glimmer of all the corners of pop music that Selena was beginning to explore—both in English and Spanish.
In 1993, Selena’s brother and go-to producer A.B. Quintanilla III was in a bind. A year earlier, he’d co-written his sister’s breakout hit “Como La Flor,” which propelled her to fame in Mexico and Latin America. By then, Selena was already a superstar in her home state of Texas. Mexicans across the border, along with non-Mexican Latinx groups in the United States, had long stigmatized Tejano as too old-fashioned, too blue-collar, or too gringo. Selena’s previous album, 1992’s Entre a Mi Mundo, helped dismiss skeptics by updating the genre’s templates while preserving its working-class allegiances. The next challenge was to write an album that would safeguard her authenticity and simultaneously introduce her to new audiences across the U.S.
More than simply venturing into different stylistic territory, or ushering Tejano into the pop realm, Amor Prohibido lands as an avowal of Selena’s mutability. On “Techno Cumbia,” A.B. arranges explosive synths and guacharaca scrapes into a command to get your ass onto the dancefloor. Here, Selena raps, growls, and beckons. She berates all the losers at the party, instructing them to toss their chairs aside and sweat. In the early ’90s, it was rare for any mainstream Latinx artist in the U.S. to experiment with dance music, hip-hop, and traditional genres in a single production. But Selena was constitutionally intrepid. She was a child of the border region, born to seek out hybrid contours in the music she called home.
There is the part of Selena that knows how to bottle anger, too. “Si una vez dije que te amaba, no lo vuelvo a hacer/Ese error es cosa de ayer,” she sings on “Si Una Vez.” If I once said that I loved you, I won’t do it again/That was yesterday’s mistake. Selena delivers these lines with pure rasp, in a voice that sounds like it’s been forced to constantly defend itself against betrayal. She longs to remain in the tides of resentment, far from the waters of forgiveness. In her rage and disaffection, Selena invites us to cultivate a discipline of self-worth.
Several of Selena’s vocal performances (and the lessons they contain) feel forged from the anguish of women who came before her, including ranchera legends like Chavela Vargas, the musical doyen of love’s agony. On “No Me Queda Más,” Selena conjures that inherited endurance in flashes, entering a kindred mode of performance as she searches for relief. “No me queda más/Que aguantar bien mi derrota/Y brindarte felicidad,” she sings. I have nothing left but to withstand my defeat/And toast to your happiness. Her voice, husky and melismatic, exhibits the kind of breath control only the most technically skilled ranchera singers and rappers can. When she sings “Y aunque vivía enamorada/Y totalmente equivocada, no me importa,” the word “importa” gushes out of her lungs like a bloody wound, transforming into desperation itself.
But Amor Prohibido suggests the grief doesn’t have to be suffocating. There is always the remedy of movement. “Fotos y Recuerdos,” a cover of the Pretenders’ 1983 single “Back on the Chain Gang,” retains the original’s looping new wave melody, but Selena’s version doesn’t possess the same kind of melancholy; cumbia pulses and dapples of steel drums nourish the production. Instead of feeling like an embittered farewell to a partner, “Fotos y Recuerdos” puts the subtle joys of cumbia front and center. It’s as if she wants to remind us that these lilting rhythms are embedded with exactly what you need to feel good again.
Amor Prohibido was as much a claim for broader industry appeal as it was an ardent request for a Latina star to be seen as multivalent, contemporary, and capable of constant reinvention. Selena packs the album with genre-crushing experiments: “Techno Cumbia;” the wispy R&B jam “Donde Quiera Que Estés,” featuring New York’s Barrio Boyzz; the reggae-inflected bounce of “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom”; and the rock grit of “Fotos y Recuerdos.” But the press often overlooked her artistic complexity, instead presenting Selena as both an archetypal “good girl” and a gorgeous seductress. Profiles and interviews from that era referenced her “innocence” and “immaculate purity” at the same time that they labeled her exotic and sensual—in part because of her sparkly bustiers, the cultural fascination with her butt, and her signature “washing-machine” choreography. All the while, journalists lauded the way she deferred to her elders and offered “positive comments about any subject thrown her way.”
These flattening portrayals should come as no surprise. The impulse to deny young female pop stars the luxury of self-determination and depth is a longstanding American tradition, one that was acute in the ’90s, especially for Latinas. But Selena’s presumed virtue wasn’t absolute; it wasn’t even a fact. Consider the title track of Amor Prohibido, which tells the story of two young lovers from different sides of the tracks who fall for each other in spite of their parents’ disapproval. Co-written by A.B. and backup vocalist Pete Astudillo, “Amor Prohibido” was inspired by Selena’s grandmother, a maid in a wealthy Mexican household who fell in love with the son of the family.
“Amor Prohibido” has come to represent much more than family lore. The song’s narrative is uncannily similar to Selena’s own story of forbidden love; in 1992, she famously eloped with band member Chris Pérez, ignoring her father’s objection to their partnership. Over the years, many fans have reinterpreted the song as an anthem for other kinds of verboten relationships, especially queer ones. When Selena sings,“Qué importa qué dirán, también la sociedad/Aquí sólo importa nuestro amor” (“Who cares what they say, society too/Here, only our love matters”) over those moonstruck synths, it doesn’t feel like a story of generations past. It resembles the quotidian acts of defiance that embody queer dissent.
Plenty of Anglo critics overlooked the innovation of Amor Prohibido, instead focusing on its commercial performance and Selena’s looming crossover. Headlines reminded readers that “just a few years ago, hardly anyone knew of Tejano,” and journalists wondered if she would be able to duplicate the lofty career arc of Gloria Estefan, apparently the only referent for Spanish-language music back then. The label expectations surrounding what would become Selena’s first posthumous album, Dreaming of You, only fueled the media obsession with her crossover. In an interview for La Prensa de San Antonio, A.B. said that at first, the label sought to assume control of the forthcoming English-language album, choosing songs on behalf of the group. “We said, ‘Hey, wait a minute. It’s not like we’re some small-time group that hasn’t sold any records.’ We’ve proven ourselves,” Selena later explained.
So much of Selena’s place in the collective imagination is framed through these pressures of legibility. For the belittled or the slighted, the chance to finally be understood is seductive. Some of us have spent our lifetimes softening our edges to settle on a version of self that is breezy, simple, flat. The fantasy of crossing over offers freedom from pigeonholing, and the potential to be whole and unfettered. In this rosy paradise of recognition, the crossover is another item in the long checklist of qualifiers that might make us feel like we belong.
The martyrization of Selena was practically instantaneous: At her public funeral in 1995, a crowd of more than 50,000 fans assembled to mourn the artist at the Bayfront Convention Center (now the Selena Auditorium) in her hometown of Corpus Christi. There were candlelight vigils in San Antonio, roses and placards outside the motel where she was murdered. A high school near where she grew up called in guidance counselors to console grieving students. People, Entertainment Weekly, and Texas Monthly all released tribute cover stories in the months after her death. A Tampa Bay Times article published in the fall of 1995 felt prophetic: “She is the fallen one…and an industry of mythology is perpetuated.”
Amor Prohibido has been cemented as Selena’s masterwork and a watershed moment for Spanish-language pop, in part because Selena and her band sought out fresh and versatile ways of sustaining Tejano. And instead of chronicling the genre’s familiar, masculinist tales of female infidelity and deception, the album gave a language to the scars that patriarchal love leaves behind. For the dozens of other Latina stars who followed in her footsteps, including Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, Selena’s trajectory became a blueprint for navigating the demands of a world that couldn’t contain your multiplicity.
Yet that legacy has become inextricably bound to Selena’s sanctification. There are the aforementioned mementos; the Netflix series; the Gregory Nava biopic starring Lopez; and a recent album of previously released material, digitally manipulated to age Selena’s voice. Part of that worship, as the scholar Deborah Paredez has written, emerges from the historical context of Selena’s celebrity. In the ’90s, corporations sought to capitalize on what they perceived as a “Latin boom” in culture and business, even as the country experienced a nativist panic around immigration. As Paredez notes, Selena became a symbol for Latinx communities’ longing for a brighter future.
In the almost three decades since her death, the image of Selena as a martyr has intensified, often yielding omissions or elisions about her life and beliefs. Selena grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness, a denomination that would have strictly prohibited her deification. In the Texas Monthly cover story that followed her death, even Selena’s father made it clear the veneration was unwelcome. “She believed worship should go only to the Creator…I don’t think Selena would be pleased to be part of any form of idolatry,” he said. Retellings of Selena’s story, whether by fans or in screen adaptations, often skip over her conservative views on abortion and premarital sex, “in favor of focusing on the way she embraced her sexuality on stage,” as Cat Cardenas noted in a 2021 article for Texas Monthly. When we perform Selena’s memory like this, it creates a space of possibility—a utopia where our communities’ social and cultural conventions might disappear. But this is a dismal kind of victory. All that is left is an impression of a star that is static and flawless, rather than human.
Pop martyrdom is an easy and reductive kind of devotion. It creates an alluring simplicity, and eliminates the discomfort of multiple truths and multiple realities. It allows the palimpsest of an artist’s legacy to overshadow the music itself. But if you peel back the layers, you’ll see that Amor Prohibido begs us to consider Selena beyond her mythos. The album doesn’t paint her as some fixed totem so much as it exhorts us to consider all the possible creative directions she may have explored if she’d survived. It forces us to remember Selena on her own terms, in all her intricacy, and not through the imagined liberation of a crossover. As the critic Margo Jefferson reminds us, “goddesses belong to myth, not history.” To render Selena an idol, rather than a person, only distracts us from fully immersing ourselves in the joy and originality of her music. We, and Selena, deserve all that and more.
Additional research by Deirdre McCabe Nolan. | 2023-03-26T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-03-26T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | EMI Latin | March 26, 2023 | 9.1 | 1ea60e4e-b845-4da6-ab90-0c8ddb22aaa6 | Isabelia Herrera | https://pitchfork.com/staff/isabelia-herrera/ | |
This is the latest from Matthew Houck, and though he still sounds a hell of a lot like Will Oldham, his blend of harmonies-and-drone with delicate folk-pop is a perfect autumn sound. | This is the latest from Matthew Houck, and though he still sounds a hell of a lot like Will Oldham, his blend of harmonies-and-drone with delicate folk-pop is a perfect autumn sound. | Phosphorescent: Pride | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10815-pride/ | Pride | Matthew Houck’s adoring fans occasionally find themselves conscripted into straw-sheriff roles, bound to struggle against the mob justice of Inspector Bloggit followers who'd charge him with petty theft just because he seems aesthetically connectable to other dignitaries within his cosmic art-folk / mystic alt-country / slowcore-gospel idiom. The Neutral Milk Hotel comparisons that his work used to attract were inexplicable to this typist's ears-- wtf, because he also lived in Athens? And yes, now that he claims Brooklyn, one can detect-- in three songs-- a flirtation with those post-Animal Collective poles of, y'know, elliptical ethereality and raucous tribalism in his approach to song structure and performance.
Sure, a few acts do consciously cannibalize others' textures, but we hype-machinists too frequently commit the fallacy of assuming that soundalikeness equals influence or translates as aping. Try this at home: Play a guitar and sing, and odds are, now that so many of our psyches are plumb awash in multiplicities of bands, you're going to innocently/organically "sound like" somebody else, unless you're, I don't know, David Thomas Broughton. If in the past Phosphorescent's work contained moments that could be received as echoing Sparklehorse, Tindersticks, Clem Snide, Low, downbeat Flaming Lips, the Pacific-pastoral K Records stable, and the Joe-Henry-curated Jesus' Son soundtrack's commingling of soul, spirituals, oldies, and faux-ldies, well, good for humanity.
But the Will Oldham thing: yeah. And Pride continues that tradition on all fronts. First, the cover photo is difficult not to perceive as an homage to Oldham's Days in the Wake, itself a Jandek homage. And the lion theme, even if it's based on Houck's hair-encircled face: consult Oldham's "The Lion Lair" (since citing the Sage Francis team-up "Sea Lion" would be rash). The yelping, howling, abstract title track: consult Oldham's "Come a Little Dog"-- from Days in the Wake, no less. Speaking of canines, this album's "Wolves": consult Oldham's "Wolf Among Wolves" and Superwolf. Houck's voice warbles exactly like mid-career Oldham, one of his old songs even used a Days in the Wake song title ("All Is Grace") as a lyric, both performers abuse further animal metaphors, both frame songs as prayers, both feature lackadaisical-verging-on-catatonic overdubs, and both include female singing as flesh-out fodder. Most damningly, Pride was preceded (and upstaged) by a kickass Daytrotter session featuring arrangements and production that strike me as aiming for the throat of Oldham's greatest 4-song EP, the Kramer-helmed The Mountain-- the two closing songs of which Houck already mimicked in terms of lyrics and inflection on his last full-length's "South (of America)."
The above paragraph: FOOLED YOU! Could have kept going, too, through more Phosphorescent-discography lyrical and vocal similarities with Lost Blues and Western Songs, even milking the strangely touching syllabic nonsense of Houck's Aw Come Aw Wry and Oldham's All Most Heaven, but this "review" would have then topped 2,000 words. I also could have faked an equally dubious/convincing chunk about Iron and Wine, down to the hirsuteness, biblical dabblage, EP supremacy, and the titles of Beam compositions such as "Lion's Mane" or the new album's, um, "Wolves." My point: I don't put much stock in Jungian collectivity, but nobody gets to monopolize this archetypal shit. Oldham and Beam were both called copycats of their ancestors when they dawned, and 'tis time to afford Houck the respect that their work has since earned. OMFG all three of 'em use the same chord progressions AND mention the (planet-dominating) ocean a lot! OMFG, I think I hear traces of Pride's awesome guestlist in Phosphorescent's music, too! That'd include Nat Baldwin, Annie Palmer, Jana Hunter, Liz Durrett, Dirty Projectors, and Castanets in the conspiracy!
So: stunning, stand-alone album. Except that the reportedly high-school-marching-band-inspired version of "A Death, A Proclamation" here-- while more interesting than anything recently by, say, Will Oldham-- doesn't hit the heights of the wailed, piano-solo-assisted Daytrotter arrangement. Same goes for "Cocaine Lights", despite its being a fine comedown un-anthem on par with classics by Kris Kristofferson or Neil Young, every chronicled gesture precise (the "blood clicking" and face-covering) and every phrase beautiful (the partner-in-a-slip and the "showy amen"). Pride romanticizes the burden of touring ("Even in these dirty clubs counting 1-2-3"), but: Live in concert, Houck just dwindles and stumbles. Over multiple shows, I've only seen him confident once, when right in front of the stage, I redneckfully started a shoving match with a former bosom chum turned consummately annoying townie who insisted on yammering loudly to someone gullible enough to suffer him and who made fun of my investment in the show after asking him to be quiet or move back five fucking times. Houck put his hand on my head like a guru, and to an even less worthy arrangement of a requested "Cocaine Lights", smirked and repeatedly crooned, "Where is the love?"
The love is in Pride's lyrics, which escape the shackles of their occasional poetic flourishes to be unmysterious and self-explanatory, totally broken and totally vulnerable, and therefore unique. The speakers' partners are pretty much anchors, and the crack in Houck's voice: a mournful yodel. These voices would have us believe that they mean to repair the relationships they're in: "Tell me where you've been and I will tell you where I've been/ It will all be okay." But seductive statements of faith in resurrection are eventually outweighed by aftermath-odes; these speakers prefer loss. The listener gets the sense that they don't even miss a singular individual but a composite of squandered loves, Frankenmates formed in minds that crave impossible partners, even while retroactively full of promise: "O love, the one day I tarried too far and I never came home/ O love, I always carried your heart married deep in my own." And even the internet doesn't have room for me to gush over the Beach-Boy-haunted, vocal-drone stuff. | 2007-10-22T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2007-10-22T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | Dead Oceans | October 22, 2007 | 8 | 1ea7b95c-eb36-4160-9d78-1236ca12b70f | William Bowers | https://pitchfork.com/staff/william-bowers/ | null |
null | Neko Case is a force of nature. Her voice can knock you over-- it's one of the strongest in any genre. She has immense control and surprising physical and stylistic range, able to jump from cowgirl honkytonk to pop muse to Americana banshee with ease and grace. However, on her fifth studio album, *Middle Cyclone* , she literally becomes a force of nature: Case sings opener "This Tornado Loves You" from the point of view of an actual tornado, tearing up trailer parks and cutting a 65-mile swath in search for its beloved: "I carved your name across three counties," | Neko Case: Middle Cyclone | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12729-middle-cyclone/ | Middle Cyclone | Neko Case is a force of nature. Her voice can knock you over-- it's one of the strongest in any genre. She has immense control and surprising physical and stylistic range, able to jump from cowgirl honkytonk to pop muse to Americana banshee with ease and grace. However, on her fifth studio album, Middle Cyclone , she literally becomes a force of nature: Case sings opener "This Tornado Loves You" from the point of view of an actual tornado, tearing up trailer parks and cutting a 65-mile swath in search for its beloved: "I carved your name across three counties," she sings defiantly as the guitars whip around her and the snare patters frantically, suggesting destruction can be a demonstration of love. Later she's a cyclone, an elephant, a killer whale, a dove, a magpie, and possibly a mollusk. "I'm an animal," she sings on "I'm an Animal". "You're an animal, too."
Middle Cyclone is another strong entry in her strange catalog, a culmination of some of the lyrical and musical concerns she's been exploring since Blacklisted , when she started receiving full songwriting credit. That 2002 album marked a turning point for Case as she abandoned the straightforward country-soul of 2000's Furnace Room Lullaby for a spookier sound that favors odd song structures and odder imagery about serial killers, downed planes, and automobile accidents. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood developed those ideas and Middle Cyclone further refines them. It plays almost like a culmination of her career this decade, the final installment of a trilogy about the weird American wilderness of her mind.
Listeners more familiar with Case's previous work will appreciate the tendrils of mythology that reach from this album into her recent catalog. With its first-verse image of a man "filleted on the stairs," "Polar Nettles" recalls the bloodspatter lyrics of "Deep Red Bells" on Blacklisted ; "Red Tide" and "Magpie to the Morning" play with critter imagery similar to "Lion's Jaws" and "Maybe Sparrow" on Fox Confessor . In fact, "People Got a Lotta Nerve" sounds like a sequel of sorts to "The Tigers Have Spoken", from her live album of the same name. Both concern zoo animals who rebel against their prisons, and both end, tragically and inevitably, in bullets. The album, however, doesn't demand any special context to be enjoyed: It sounds impressive and immersive on its own, so those who've only heard her name will find much to admire in her skewed songs. But because Case doesn't really write hooks and typically avoids the standard verse-chorus-verse song structure, Middle Cyclone may take even longer than previous albums to reveal their charms and mysteries.
What ties everything together is her unmistakable voice. Pushing herself, she shows off a few new tricks in these songs. On "People Got a Lot of Nerve", she fashions one of the album's best hooks from the repeated syllables of "man man man eater", then ascends a vertiginous scale on the bridge, hitting that impossibly high note with no loss of tone. She layers her voice to create an airy chorus on "Magpie to the Morning" and a dramatic gospel on her cover of Sparks' "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth". "Prison Girls" may be her best performance here, with an emphatic vocal that gives the chorus-- "I love your long shadows and your gunpowder eyes"-- new meaning and greater menace with each repetition.
Case remains her own best muse, a strong, feminine presence who demands you meet her songs halfway (she calls herself a control freak in every article I've read), but her band deserves credit for creating the ambient, dark-night setting in which her tales of murder and animals sound natural and compelling. Middle Cyclone features the same core group she's been playing with for years-- including guitarist Paul Rigby, bass player Tom V. Ray, multi-instrumentalist Jon Rauhouse, and back-up singer Kelly Hogan-- along with a supporting cast that includes regulars Garth Hudson of the Band, M. Ward, Sarah Harmer, and members of Calexico, the Sadies, and Giant Sand. With an increasing familiarity between them, this cast finds new ways to sell her songs and couch Case's vocals in unpredictable arrangements. "People Got a Lotta Nerve" kicks off with a chiming Byrds riff that makes it impossible not to perk up and listen to the song, and a strangled guitar line staggers through "Fever", implying an unnamed threat just off camera. Much of the album is acoustic and subdued, and a few of the slower songs start to sag a bit. The album picks up considerably towards the end, as "Prison Girls" lurches ominously like film noir and "Red Tide" generates a rumbling garage-rock stomp.
Middle Cyclone ends with "Marais la Nuit", which translates to "The Night Marsh". True to its title, it is 30 minutes of frog noises that Case recorded at her farm in Vermont, just outside the barn where most of these sessions were held. It's not surprising that her animal lyrics would break down into real animal sounds, and as chill-out music for any domesticated wildlife in your home, it's not unpleasant. It is, however, nearly as long as the album proper. Its inclusion show just how thoroughly Case has imagined her own little world on these three albums and how thoroughly she rules that realm. | 2009-03-03T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2009-03-03T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Anti- | March 3, 2009 | 7.9 | 1eaa19e1-75e9-477a-a07b-b6fde5bc4874 | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
On his collaborative album with Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden, the producer, multi-instrumentalist, DJ, and archivist remains masterful by simply turning what he hears into something new and revelatory. | On his collaborative album with Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden, the producer, multi-instrumentalist, DJ, and archivist remains masterful by simply turning what he hears into something new and revelatory. | Madlib: Sound Ancestors | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/madlib-sound-ancestors/ | Sound Ancestors | Listening to music can be a way of making it. Few artists understand this better than Madlib. Across dozens of releases and nearly as many alter egos, the West Coast hip-hop producer, DJ, multi-instrumentalist, and de facto archivist born Otis Jackson Jr. has worked chiefly by flipping cherished records from his collection, inviting audiences to hear what he hears: the unique emotional texture of this particular vocal line, a saxophone solo distilled to its most elegant single bar. Madlib places these moments at the center of our attention, stuttering and alive, their significance impossible to ignore for those of us who might miss it otherwise. Cue up one of his beats side-by-side with its source material and you may be surprised at the similarity. But such an attempt at demystification would miss the point of his music. Some producers specialize in manipulating their samples until they are unrecognizable; for Madlib, the hearing itself—the noticing—is as important as whatever happens after that.
Sound Ancestors, his new album, is a rare entry in his vast catalog to be billed straightforwardly as a Madlib solo release, not a collaboration with a rapper, or a record by one of several fictitious jazz players and ensembles he’s invented, or an entry in an arcane thematic series. But it, too, is a joint effort, this time with Kieran Hebden, the electronic producer better known as Four Tet, who curated, edited, and arranged its 16 tracks from a body of hundreds of recordings that Madlib sent him over a period of two years. Their process reminds me of 2003’s Shades of Blue, which Madlib created by raiding the vaults of Blue Note Records, sometimes chopping the original jazz recordings intricately and sometimes letting them unfold for long stretches without much apparent editing. Now, Madlib is the one opening his archives, and Four Tet is the one listening and assembling.
The two are friends whose recorded collaboration began in the mid-2000s, when Four Tet remixed several tracks from Madlib’s classic MF DOOM collaboration Madvillainy. Hebden’s arrangement of Sound Ancestors shows deep and intuitive engagement with Jackson’s weed-scented sensibility, which has no use for presumptive distinctions between the beautiful and the funky, the silly and the profound.
“Loose Goose,” a delirious early highlight from the album, pairs an enormous dancehall rhythm with a minor-key woodwind line and a repeated sample of Snoop Dogg exclaiming “Fo’ shizzle, dizzle,” before veering hard left into the territory of some faintly demonic, helium-voiced avant-garde pop, then returning to its original groove just in time to end. Immediately after comes the whiplash of “Dirtknock,” built on a loop of tender vocals and bass guitar from the cult-favorite Welsh indie rock band Young Marble Giants, plus a snippet of what I can only guess is a YouTube tutorial about how to properly hit a bong. Of the many mind-expanding contrasts in this passage, the most striking involves the surface quality of the audio: the way the trebly mix of an early 1980s post-punk record sounds especially brittle and tactile when it emerges out of reggae’s subaqueous low end, and vice versa. Madlib’s preference for leaving his samples largely raw and untreated, and his appetite for music across genres, eras, and locales, lead to many such juxtapositions. Recording fidelity is no longer a fixed characteristic of the album as a whole, but an inflection that is subject to change from moment to moment, as mutable and expressive as rhythm or pitch.
Despite the album’s frequent joyous and even comic moments, it also has the feeling of an elegy. Its release comes not long after the death of MF DOOM, and one of its tracks is presented as an homage to J Dilla, another collaborator and kindred spirit who died young. “Two for 2 - For Dilla” is a pitch-perfect emulation of the late producer’s style, and serves to highlight the similarities between the two musicians (Sound Ancestors, like much instrumental hip-hop from the last decade and a half, bears more than a little resemblance to Dilla’s 2006 swan song Donuts), but also the differences. Soul samples arrive in herky-jerky staccato, turning half-words and breaks between syllables into unlikely hooks: pure Dilla. But the stretched-out backdrop they punctuate in the track’s second half bears Madlib’s smoky signature, suggesting the sound of Donuts as imagined in a daydream on a lazy afternoon. It would be hard to come up with a more fitting tribute.
One emotional peak comes during “Hopprock,” a track whose construction seems almost offhanded: palm-muted guitar, a simple drum line, a fragment of bass that pops in every few bars. Several ghostly voices float at the margins, sounding more like Four Tet’s previous work than Madlib’s. Their words are mostly indistinguishable: a yeah here, a what! there, a few ooohs in between. Together these elements alchemize a feeling that none would summon on their own. Listening in the right mood feels like watching a sunrise over a mountain.
Across his catalog, Madlib has maintained a tricksterish relationship to authorship, relishing his ability to leave you wondering who exactly is doing what, and when. On a series of jazz-oriented releases that feature Otis Jackson Jr. playing many or all of the live instruments himself, he has adopted a series of fanciful aliases: Yesterday’s New Quintet, Sound Directions, Ahmad Miller, The Last Electro-Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble. Whatever other roles these characters serve in his process, they also upend received hierarchies of value in musical creativity. He’s happy to take credit for an album that a traditionalist might write off as plagiarism of other people’s work—but when he’s playing bass, drums, percussion, kalimba, synth, organ, electric piano? That wasn’t Madlib, that was Monk Hughes & the Outer Realm.
Sound Ancestors is elusive in subtler ways. “Duumbiyay,” its gorgeous final track, features a grainy child’s voice and a crisply recorded jazz combo working in tandem. When a piano enters the mix and stabs out a two-note figure that precisely mirrors the singer’s exclamatory phrasing at the end of a line, the moment is mildly startling. The voice and the instrument sound like they were recorded in different decades, perhaps on different continents. As the track goes on, their involvement becomes more intimate: the piano seems to accompany the singer deliberately, harmonizing the simple melody with a jaunty left-hand bassline and densely clustered chords, as if they were in the same room. Maybe we are hearing the magic of two musicians reaching unknowingly toward each other across time and space; maybe Madlib played the piano himself along to an old field recording he likes, or maybe he hired a session musician to do it. Maybe the strange mix of fidelities is all baked into a single uncanny sample, and he’s just letting it play. Whatever the answer, the effect is the same. Hey, you, the music calls out. Listen to this.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Madlib Invazion | February 2, 2021 | 7.9 | 1eb05384-6231-4d7b-8fd4-c4723c84c8fb | Andy Cush | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-cush/ | |
Kevin Morby, who played bass in Woods and the Babies and now resides in Los Angeles, offers a collection of intricately textured songs that function as a love letter to New York City. | Kevin Morby, who played bass in Woods and the Babies and now resides in Los Angeles, offers a collection of intricately textured songs that function as a love letter to New York City. | Kevin Morby: Harlem River | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18796-kevin-morby-harlem-river/ | Harlem River | Considering his career, Kevin Morby’s own shift from buzz band sideplayer to existentially peripatetic frontman is an interesting one. Once upon a time, the Kansas City-bred musician was based in Brooklyn, playing in groups like Woods and the Babies. Now, he lives in Los Angeles and has written Harlem River, a love letter to New York City that transforms its eponymous subject's long stretch of water into a metaphor for a wandering heart.
Within Woods’ discography, Morby's bass-playing wasn’t necessarily meant to suggest the existence of a richly detailed interior. Meanwhile, the Babies were formed from an inside joke and have been self-described as a party band. Harlem River has the same emotional looseness as those groups, but its instrumental texture is more focused: it’s made up of intricately plucked acoustic guitars, shimmering organs, and electric guitars cutting through the negative space like a foglight. And, given the proper room to breathe, Morby’s voice reveals its lazy-day Kansan cadence, sounding not unlike Cass McCombs, Kurt Vile, or any guy with a guitar who’s got something to tell you.
What Morby has to say is unspecific, but no less true. On “Miles, Miles, Miles,” he alludes to the darkness the song’s protagonist has come from, while offering a wishful portrait of the place he’d like to be. The title track is slow and ponderous, Morby’s voice reduced to a muted creep as he seeks answers from a path showing no end. On “Slow Train”, he sings of not wanting to be destroyed by his temperament while wondering if he’s already missed his chance at redemption. That title, borrowed from the most spiritual of Bob Dylan albums, is surely no coincidence. The song features Cate le Bon, a similarly-minded singer who on her most recent album offered the mournful admission: “I forget the detail/ but know the warmth.” That, more than anything, functions as an explanation of Morby’s creative ethos.
Harlem River is mostly concerned with different shades of subtlety, which makes the rare overt moments stick out like an anarchy patch on a wedding dress. This is an album which references Easy Rider and Bob Dylan and has the temerity to sing a song called “Wild Side” (which is largely concerned with walking) in a recognizably Reedian drawl. That also means Morby’s perhaps quixotic intent to refashion himself as a 60s-era nomad is sometimes undercut by the limitations of his arrangements: the repeating breakdown in “Wild Side” is rhythm-disrupting brittle, and the cowpoke shuffle of “Reign” is a little too on-the-nose in its attempt to tell a modern outlaw tale. But those moments aren’t too distracting. Morby largely succeeds at taking us on his journey, imploring that the big "Where am I going?" question isn't so daunting so long as you keep collecting suggestions. | 2013-12-02T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2013-12-02T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | Woodsist | December 2, 2013 | 7 | 1eb3cae5-1c91-4b3a-a6b8-d505c3ff67c6 | Jeremy Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jeremy-gordon/ | null |
The second album from the singer-songwriter is a dizzyingly isolated record, spare and serene music that gains momentum as it burrows deeper. | The second album from the singer-songwriter is a dizzyingly isolated record, spare and serene music that gains momentum as it burrows deeper. | Brigid Mae Power: The Two Worlds | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/brigid-mae-power-the-two-worlds/ | The Two Worlds | Irish songwriter Brigid Mae Power makes folk music that can feel more like doom metal played on acoustic instruments, focussing on one motif and stretching it into slow, delirious shapes. And while her lyrics are careful and sharp, Power mostly crafts nonverbal hooks, howling along with the melody or elongating her words until they lose all meaning. In that sense, she resembles Jason Molina, particularly in the early 2000s, when he used the components of country music to build haunted drones that felt like the long fadeouts to more conventional records.
The Two Worlds, the follow-up to Power’s self-titled 2016 breakthrough, is a dizzyingly isolated album, music that gains momentum as it burrows deeper. Power wrote most of it after moving back to her native Ireland with a goal of communicating “what my environment looks like here at the moment out of my window.” Performed with her husband, composer Peter Broderick, the album effectively captures that view: rainy, sprawling, familiar, and serene. But it also reflects the room she’s peering out from. Even in its more propulsive tracks, like the staggering protest song “Don’t Shut Me Up (Politely),” Power’s music feels hushed, like you’re eavesdropping on rehearsal from outside her door.
This quality makes the music on The Two Worlds Power’s most ambitious and her most introspective: an expansion from the intimacy of her previous work but a retreat from its starry-eyed tranquility. Most of these songs have a tugging, downward trajectory, a grounding force for Power’s heavenly falsetto. The piano-based tracks are highlights. “Is My Presence in the Room Enough for You?” and “So You’ve Seen My Limits” are centered on jazzy melodies that drift like falling snow, as Power weaves between the notes with a ghostly chill. While the more upbeat songs are rich with open-tuned guitars and accordions, these moments of quiet intensity—just Power’s voice and one other instrument—are where the album shines.
In the psychedelic spiral of “Down on the Ground,” Power meditates on the dichotomy that’s always existed in her work, melding atmospheric bliss and stark desperation. “I thought I’d find a balance between the skies and the earth,” she sings, “But maybe it will be with me always/That feeling of not wanting to put my feet down/Or just not knowing how.” It’s a driving tension of the record—the dissonance between fantasy and emotional urgency—and one she’s also addressed in recent essays and interviews. “I can’t be up in the clouds forever,” she decided. The Two Worlds finds ways to communicate between these modes, interior and exterior, resulting in a portrait that feels full and honest.
Mirroring the earthier tone of the music, Power’s lyrics often deal with self-preservation, letting people go and finding yourself in their absence. The sweeping album opener “I’m Grateful” is sung in fragments and visions while the music fills in the blanks, illustrating the push-and-pull of devotion and dependence. With an arrangement that sounds like traditional Celtic folk, “Peace Backing Us Up” spins from self-deprecation to cosmic understanding with one realization. “If you ask for something,” she sings, “I can just say no/With peace backing me up.” It’s a simple but crucial declaration. Home is a feeling that begins in one specific place, she reminds us, but you can carry it with you wherever you go. | 2018-02-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-02-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Tompkins Square | February 9, 2018 | 7.4 | 1eb9764a-f3fc-4eae-bbf9-dd8b12e4e624 | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | |
Ty Dolla $ign’s new album is superbly refined. It leverages his gravelly voice, attention to detail, and willingness to kill his ego. | Ty Dolla $ign’s new album is superbly refined. It leverages his gravelly voice, attention to detail, and willingness to kill his ego. | Ty Dolla $ign: Beach House 3 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ty-dolla-dollarign-beach-house-3/ | Beach House 3 | Ty Dolla $ign’s Beach House 3 opens with “Famous,” an acoustic number that mulls over people’s desires to see their names spelled out in capital letters on Sunset Strip marquees, to watch their likenesses pop up two-dimensionally on flatscreen TVs. “They wanna sign autographs,” he sings slyly. You know: “All the important things.” It’s a curious meditation for Ty—a man whose career can be measured by its proximity to serious stardom, but has lacked the type of massive breakout he has sometimes helped to orchestrate for others. So it’s not surprising when “Famous” turns a bit caustic: “They don’t wanna work all day/They wanna make it overnight.”
The South Central-bred singer and producer is not an artist on R&B’s fringes sneering at the pop stars. Since he emerged in 2012, Ty’s been churning out would-be hits with dizzying ease. The original Beach House mixtape (co-hosted by a pre-stardom DJ Mustard) showed Ty—and D.R.U.G.S., the production collective of which he was a key part—had a knack for radio-ready, delightfully sleazy R&B. A trio of successful singles followed: the Jeezy-aided “My Cabana”; the tortured, irresistible “Paranoid” (which featured B.o.B); and “Or Nah,” slinking and conspiratorial.
Those songs and an early string of mixtapes, including the second Beach House installment, garnered Ty a significant following, and placed him in various high-powered sessions as a writer, producer, and collaborator. When it came to his solo career, though, he had to hurry up and wait. There were some misfires, but Ty mostly maintained a steady stream of guest turns and test balloons. Finally, in the fall of 2015, a debut album called Free TC hit shelves. Named for his incarcerated brother, the record was packed with stars and had a radical musical diversity, from plodding, post-Dre processionals to frenetic pop, from minimalist SoundCloud R&B to defiant guitar with Babyface. It was anchored by “Blasé,” a Future- and Rae Sremmurd-assisted song that embedded itself in L.A. radio and didn’t leave for well over a year. Free TC debuted at No. 14 on Billboard.
And so Beach House 3, released almost exactly two years after Free TC, is a superbly refined collection of songs, carefully crafted and smartly cast. It doesn’t have the longer thematic crescendos of TC, but is even more ruthlessly listenable, stacking hooks on top of hooks and flitting between an array different, pop-viable aesthetic frameworks. The five different interludes with “Famous” in the title could have served as the scaffolding for a career-making hit for a young artist from Toronto or Miami, but instead exist here as tossed-off asides. This is in step with the rest of the record, where songs revel in low stakes and stay within themselves. To wit: a duet with Jeremih, “Dawsin’s Breek,” feels decidedly minor next to other cuts on the album, and yet its hook—“I’ve got a brand new coupe”—is impossible to dislodge from your brain.
Though he adapts to almost any collaborator, Ty is at his best when he’s with his long-time cohorts. “Ex,” which reunites Ty with YG, is breezy and propulsive, and features a superb turn from the Compton rapper (“I’m on jet skis with naked bitches”). “Don’t Judge Me” nearly reunites the team from “Blasé”—sans Slim Jxmmi—and repurposes Future’s flow from “Relationships” into a motivational anthem of sorts. (At the end, Future even breaks into his Big Rube impression.) And when Ty and Wiz Khalifa trade verses over Pharrell’s beat on “Stare,” each sounds rejuvenated.
For all the bids at Billboard, Beach House 3’s finest song is its last, the tranquil, metronomic “Message in a Bottle,” where a flat circle of house parties and Hennessy lead him, inevitably, to make FaceTime calls to exes. It would be a one-note idea in most other hands, but Ty’s talents as a musician are leveraged too well: his gravelly voice, his preternatural attention to detail, his willingness to kill his ego and let the worries about his liver creep in. It’s exactly what makes Ty Dolla $ign’s music so rewarding: the crevices in between hits are filled with angst and world-wearied regret. There’s the party, and then the hangover. | 2017-11-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-11-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Atlantic | November 1, 2017 | 7.8 | 1ebb5a32-e261-4dae-85ba-dd162610d54f | Paul A. Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/ | |
Following on last year's Frank Sinatra tribute Shadows in the Night, Dylan's latest finds him once again putting his own idiosyncratic spin on a set of standards. | Following on last year's Frank Sinatra tribute Shadows in the Night, Dylan's latest finds him once again putting his own idiosyncratic spin on a set of standards. | Bob Dylan: Fallen Angels | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21939-fallen-angels/ | Fallen Angels | You can go all the way back to the beginning of “What the fuck is Bob Dylan doing now?” and find jazz. “Peggy Day” from Nashville Skyline—his first detour into melodic crooning—is snappy Western swing; following that was Self Portrait’s notorious take on Rodgers and Hart’s “Blue Moon,” and New Morning’s hepcat pastiche, “If Dogs Run Free.” Dylan’s earliest Frank Sinatra tribute dates back five decades and only found its first official release in 2014: the addled Basement Tapes-era riff on the Johnny Mercer classic “One for My Baby (One More for the Road).”
None of this, however, made the advent of his Standards Period last year any less of a surprise. Some of the initial shock was the result of the growing stigma around the aging-rocker-does-the-American-songbook format, not the fact that Dylan would offer his own version. As he himself acknowledged in his labyrinthine Musicares acceptance speech last year, this sort of record has become a convention—a profitable one. At this point, any new release in this vein scans as something more sordid than a stocking-stuffer: an empty money grab.
Dylan’s particular, oddball point in bringing up the trend was to illustrate the absurd degree to which he was still viewed as a man apart. Why did people pore over Shadows in the Night any more than Rod Stewart’s latest compilation? “In their reviews no one says anything,” Dylan demurred. “In my reviews, they’ve got to look under every stone and report about it.”
But his point doesn’t quite land. After all, Shadows, and Dylan’s second standards set, Fallen Angels, don’t bear much resemblance to the market standard. The latter’s arrangements recall a time and place that never existed—a mythical dive halfway between a resurrected smoky East Village club and, when drooping pedal steel figures dominate the action, a Texas barroom. When creaky cellos and horn soloists crop up, Tom Waits’ more muted '00s output comes to mind. But this atmosphere sounds like a byproduct of who could make it to the session, how much rehearsal they had time for between tour dates, what Dylan ate yesterday; it doesn’t come over as carefully cultivated.
Dylan doesn’t put a clear twist on this music; it twists him. Devotees judge performers of early–20th-century standards on their ability to interpret—whether they can shape and communicate a song’s meaning with some degree of musical cleverness. But Dylan simply delivers them. In the process, he tends to draw out the strangeness inherent in the compositions rather than making them sound effusive and natural. On opener “Young at Heart,” the close rhyme schemes and overstuffed lines (“Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive…”) draw attention to themselves. On the ubiquitous “Come Rain or Come Shine,” there’s so much precedent for logical ways to approach this song that one can't help but feel like Dylan is deliberately trying to muck it up. “We’re in or we’re out of the money” is faxed out mechanically, the contrast inherent in the line absent.
The languid pacing—often, as down-tempo you could reasonably take these songs—often improves matters. So while Dylan’s breezy take on Hoagy Carmichael’s greatest triumph “Skylark” is a dead-eyed, aberrant disaster, his pliable, conversational intro to the Casablanca/When Harry Met Sally…-famous “It Had to Be You” feels inviting. But some shifts in pacing work. Blonde on Blonde’s amphetamines are a things of decades past, but perhaps some young engineer handed Dylan his first 5-hour Energy to carry off “That Old Black Magic," Angels’ closest thing to a barnburner. Here, words spring off Dylan’s lips, rather than becoming saltwater in his throat; his ever-odder, geographically indeterminate accent stays out of the way. He chuckles a bit on the final triumphant release, as if he’s stunned even himself.
The axioms in the songs on Fallen Angels were written to speak to various familiar moments of the human experience. With Dylan, though, the universal “truth” in these compositions—that word is littered throughout his Musicares tirade—doesn’t reflect easily, or even deliberately uneasily, back on him. In his muse Sinatra’s case, of course, such truth came easy: The singer was at the bar until last call in both the tabloids and on his albums, probably bemoaning Ava Gardner’s latest tryst. But there’s no clear through-line to Fallen Angels’ subject matter, no point of view.
The final product, then, feels adrift: just off the coast of delivering a discrete emotional impact, offering a sporadic, self-reflexive charm for fans who smile at Dylan’s every left turn, whether in spite of themselves or on principle. In other words, it’s a new Dylan album: the product of a life ritual no one can fathom, but which is doubtless way more typical than one might think; perennially modest; worth a faithful fan’s money. | 2016-05-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-05-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Columbia | May 23, 2016 | 6.4 | 1ebd624d-48ce-42bc-81f5-6a999a34f241 | Winston Cook-Wilson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/winston-cook-wilson/ | null |
On his first studio album since 2017, Matthew Barnes details the inner mechanics of loneliness and frailty, mapping them onto lurching rhythms and agonized, alienated cries. | On his first studio album since 2017, Matthew Barnes details the inner mechanics of loneliness and frailty, mapping them onto lurching rhythms and agonized, alienated cries. | Forest Swords: Bolted | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/forest-swords-bolted/ | Bolted | In the 2022 supernatural horror movie Skinamarink, the camera’s distorted lens stares into complete darkness for so long that the darkness starts to take on a form all its own, roiling with what’s not there. A similar presence emerges from the holes left open in Matthew Barnes’ work as Forest Swords. His silences have depth and body to rival the figures that clatter inside them. On his new album Bolted, the UK producer details the inner mechanics of loneliness, paranoia, and frailty on the level of the beat, dreaming up a cold world where broken, snarling things have no choice but to huddle together for survival.
Barnes recorded Bolted in a factory in his native Liverpool, joining legions of artists who have drawn grim inspiration from northern England’s post-industrial landscape. Like Throbbing Gristle, the industrial pathbreakers who sprang malformed from Hull nearly 50 years back, Barnes finds plenty to excavate in the physicality of percussion: the way materials slam and grind into each other, the effects the resulting sounds have on the nervous system. (His 2018 DJ-Kicks mix notably included a field recording called “Voice Memo of Piston at Manchester Museum of Science & Industry.”) Rather than sounding as if they’ve been optimized by a digital studio, his beats tend to impart the illusion of different objects crashing to the ground at varying distances. They’re loose, anxious assemblages that leave plenty of space for the ear to play in. On Bolted, they cohere less than they ever have on a Forest Swords record, leaving dance music’s standard rhythmic logic to fray in the wind.
On lead single “Butterfly Effect,” a scraping, asymmetrical beat skitters beneath a vocal from Neneh Cherry. Barnes composed the drum pattern in the wake of a leg injury, and he has described the process of piecing it together as “some kind of attempt to cope with the psychedelic amounts of pain I was in.” The beat’s jittery, deformed locomotion neatly impresses the idea of a body thrown out of equilibrium, shuddering its way through physical suffering. The bold metallic cacophonies of “The Low” and “Rubble” similarly probe at the idea of the body as a lurching machine, and at the chaos that unfurls at the points where it starts to break.
One especially evocative technique in the Forest Swords toolbox is the tight crop on an impassioned vocal sample. Barnes likes to pinpoint the most urgent moment in a singer’s performance, then sever it from its surrounding context: no intake of breath, no resolution, no language, just assonance. On “End,” a displaced voice duets with a dusty woodwind sample; it sounds desperate to be understood, but all the syllables pour out scrambled. This mutilated utterance is lonelier than silence. Someone’s out there, but you can’t understand them; there’s distance between you that can’t be closed.
In the sparse imagery that accompanies Barnes’ music, the symbol of the cage repeats. A 2010 Forest Swords single took the name “Rattling Cage,” while the cover of Bolted depicts a gray humanoid figure trapped inside a rusty cube of wire. On the single “Caged,” which drones in just before Bolted’s halfway mark, a swirling, plaintive vocal sample echoes out into beatless silence—one of those Forest Swords silences that feels planetary in scale. The voice begins to stutter. A single utterance loops, the sharpness of the edit taking on its own percussive quality. And then the actual beat bears down like the hoofbeats of something massive, threatening to pummel the wisps of voice beneath it.
When you look closely at Bolted’s cover, you see that the cage and the body inside it are the same color. You see that inside the metal mesh, something like cobwebs strangles the human form. On the record, voices jolt and quake, their edges hard; the beat clamps down. Maybe this cage is not exactly a cage; maybe it runs all the way down to the bone. | 2023-11-10T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2023-11-10T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Ninja Tune | November 10, 2023 | 7.5 | 1ec0c3f6-b263-44cd-b05c-2fd8359b6051 | Sasha Geffen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sasha-geffen/ | |
The Baltimore rapper helps the superproducer loosen up on their new collaborative album, a follow-up to 2021’s Memory Lane. | The Baltimore rapper helps the superproducer loosen up on their new collaborative album, a follow-up to 2021’s Memory Lane. | Murda Beatz / Shordie Shordie: Memory Lane 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/murda-beatz-shordie-shordie-memory-lane-2/ | Memory Lane 2 | Shordie Shordie is a rapper comfortable playing both casanova and jilted ex, sometimes in the same song. He got his start as the hook man for Baltimore rap trio Peso Da Mafia, turning tracks like “Money Man” and “About Us” into anthems for the hustlers and romantically downtrodden. As a solo artist, Shordie has leaned more aggressively on the romantic side of things, delivering dispatches from the nebulous corners of situationships like a raspier version of fellow DMV vocalist Brent Faiyaz. Chameleonic Canadian producer Murda Beatz was a periodically interesting foil for Shordie on their first collaborative album, 2021’s Memory Lane, but his beats often blended into the background. This year’s Memory Lane 2 is like a DLC pack for the first project, tweaking the muted sound of the original and more fluidly displaying Shordie and Murda’s chemistry.
As a producer, Murda Beatz is a jack of all trades who can come across bland, a type-beat producer watering down distinct regional flavors. The Memory Lane projects stick to the guitar melodies and 808s that typify Shordie’s catalog. Roughly two-thirds of Memory Lane 2’s production is string-based; most of it is serviceable, but some songs have more personality and finesse than usual. Early highlight “Me Too” features skittering hi-hats that play double-dutch with guitar strums and Shordie’s lively hums. “A Nice Time” teases out a flamenco shuffle, turning a tale of interstate love into a nervy and seductive dance.
Shordie has always been the animating force behind his and Murda Beatz’ best songs, his melodies, stories, and trademark “ayeee-yeah-yeah” adlib bursting with color. Only he could croak-sing to a woman about having sex with her sister, like he does on the hook for “Drink,” and make himself sound more endearing. Flow-wise, he’s dexterous and unpredictable. “Ride With Shordie Pt. 2” chronicles a drug deal, party, and anxiety-riddled drive with a girlfriend over the course of a night; Shordie brings it to life with a rat-a-tat delivery at the start, then raps verses seemingly in one gulp of breath. His voice can communicate fear (“First Kiss”), excitement (“Sin City”), and regret (“Farmers Market”) effortlessly.
Memory Lane 2 really revs up in moments where Shordie and Murda Beatz go offscript. “WYO” turns the cliche sidepiece narrative into a dialogue, with guest BlakeIANA just as down to creep as Shordie is: “I’m so P, won't tell your bitch, but I might put it in my song.” “Don’t Forget Me” dwells on a drug-fueled fling over a jaunty hyphy beat, the melancholy lyrics contrasting with the peppy atmosphere. You can tell Shordie and Murda are getting more comfortable around each other, figuring out how to turn foibles into ear candy.
Whether he’s dodging enemies or linking with a new lady for the night, Shordie is constantly grappling with several things simultaneously. If he’s with one girl, he’s thinking about another; if one drug trade or shootout ends with him alive, he’s occupied with a different one that almost went south. There’s tension and unease in even his most relaxed songs, and that multifaceted approach seems to be rubbing off on Murda Beatz. The production, though still mostly leaning on reliable tropes, is a little more challenging and curious than before. More collabs together might be what it takes to get Murda Beatz to fully loosen up. | 2023-11-07T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2023-11-07T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Warner | November 7, 2023 | 6.9 | 1ec31fa0-3b60-42f3-98da-4895dab7bdca | Dylan Green | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/ |
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