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The band formerly known as Teen Suicide has a new name and a fresh outlook on life. Their new album might be the best thing frontman Sam Ray has made so far. | The band formerly known as Teen Suicide has a new name and a fresh outlook on life. Their new album might be the best thing frontman Sam Ray has made so far. | American Pleasure Club: A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/american-pleasure-club-a-whole-fucking-lifetime-of-this/ | A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This | Sam Ray seems relatively happy. He’s married, knows some cute dogs, had a lovely little Christmas. And the oldest of the prolific Baltimore musician’s three core projects has changed its name, from Teen Suicide to American Pleasure Club—maybe not quite a 180 degree turn, but at least a hard 90. Earlier this month, in a tweet thread that approached Kanye levels of grandiosity, he congratulated himself and his bandmates, Sean Mercer, Daniel Windsor, and Nick Hughes, for their first proper album under the new name, A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This. Ray rejoiced in having finally allowed himself to make art without the encumbrance of “apathy, fear, [and] anxiety,” and said that this was only the beginning of a new phase for him.
Which is not to say his new record is not filled with apathy, fear, or anxiety. Yet it’s also among his prettiest and least chaotic albums, even as it jumps wildly from the emotional frankness of post-emo, to the gleeful candy of hip-hop beats and samples, to quiet folk, and finally to what has long been Ray’s wheelhouse—his take on the more outré experiments of ’90s and early-aughts indie rock. If you were familiar with Teen Suicide’s past output, or the music he’s made with Ricky Eat Acid and Julia Brown, you already know that he’s as casually dismissive of genre as any SoundCloud rapper, that his albums are collages that would make T.S. Eliot gape (and not only because Ray’s general fuck-it-all posturing would unsettle any member of the early-20th-century gentry). Still, coming in at a cool 35 minutes, A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This is Ray’s most coherent album. His self-congratulation may be grating, but he’s not wrong that this might be the best thing he’s made so far.
The record’s sequencing is somewhat inscrutable. The two most obviously hip-hop influenced songs, “Sycamore” and “Lets Move to the Desert,” are two of its best. But they’re grouped together in the middle, when either could have provided a jolt to the album’s less memorable back half. As it stands, one of the few upbeat songs in the record’s final quarter is “Just a Mistake,” a misguided slice of big beat that sounds like Aaron Maine of Porches being drowned alive by the reunited members of the Prodigy.
Still, there’s an emotional logic at play, if not necessarily a musical one. Even as he moves into his late twenties, Ray remains as combustible as an adolescent, and his ability to channel his feels productively leads to potent songs like “This Is Heaven & I’d Die For It,” a straightforward pop-punk anthem about the excitement of illicit pleasure. That crashes directly into the first of the full-length ballads, “All the Lonely Nights in Your Life,” about the more tender and (not to be all Love Actually about it but) vastly more terrifying thrill of falling in love. Then we move to the chipmunk soul of “Sycamore,” followed by “Lets Move to the Desert,” which uses a sample of Frank Ocean’s cover of “At Your Best (You Are Love)” so deftly that it only feels like a minor blasphemy to call it Dilla-esque.
Ray’s gift for arresting imagery gives many of his songs a quiet profundity that’s at odds with his online persona. The droning “Seemed Like the Whole World Was Lost,” with Beirut-brand horns played by Spencer Radcliffe, might feel tiresome were it not for sparely-drawn scenes like the one in which Ray’s nose starts to bleed, he loses the feeling in his hand and feet and, hauntingly, “the bicycle kids rush in.” (Bikes and bloody noses crop up elsewhere, funny motifs coming from someone who claims to hate “Stranger Things”.)
As his stubborn unwillingness to change his band name to something other than (for God’s sakes) Teen Suicide up until this year suggests, Ray has a talent for undermining himself. He is a strong and curious musician and a good songwriter, one who glories in the bounty of inspirations, musical and otherwise, available online, mining them expertly to make daringly original songs. With his new album, he’s gotten out of his own way long enough to put together a collection of very strong tracks, with only one real misstep. Now, is A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This “ESSENTIAL LISTENING FOR ANYONE WITH A SINGLE SHRED OF LIFE IN THEM,” as Ray has said? No. I mean, no. Not at all. But it’s a pretty good record. | 2018-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Run for Cover | February 19, 2018 | 7.9 | 32c09c6b-8ca4-41e8-8c5f-478e1d902d11 | Jonah Bromwich | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jonah-bromwich/ | |
John Darnielle delves into the lore of 2002’s All Hail West Texas with a soft-rock opera that adds baroque arrangements to his brutal, tender storytelling. | John Darnielle delves into the lore of 2002’s All Hail West Texas with a soft-rock opera that adds baroque arrangements to his brutal, tender storytelling. | The Mountain Goats: Jenny From Thebes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-mountain-goats-jenny-from-thebes/ | Jenny From Thebes | Few working artists have accumulated a richer body of lore than the Mountain Goats. Across a vast catalog spanning more than 30 years, John Darnielle has developed a mythology with enough recurring characters and references to fill its own Wiki and support a number of dedicated blogs and podcasts. The Sophoclean title of new album Jenny From Thebes announces it as a continuation of the myth cycle. A sequel to Darnielle’s 2002 lo-fi masterpiece All Hail West Texas, his latest album revisits some of the most beloved characters and settings in the Mountain Goats universe.
That earlier album was a loose collection of story fragments about down-and-out people; making out the whole picture required some close reading. Jenny From Thebes doesn’t continue the story so much as fill out its absent center: Jenny, a recovering addict who runs a safehouse in a small West Texas town. When Jenny has appeared in other Mountain Goats songs, she has functioned as a vague emblem of freedom: riding in on her custom Kawasaki motorcycle, promising escape. These songs bring Jenny back down to the sordid everyday while also imbuing that desperate reality with the soft glow of magic.
Despite the thematic callback to Darnielle’s home-recorded early work, the Mountain Goats have never sounded so baroque. Working with producer Trina Shoemaker, the now-standard lineup of Darnielle, bassist Peter Hughes, drummer Jon Wurster, and multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas gets a lift with expansive string and horn arrangements, and Bully’s Alicia Bognanno contributes icy stabs of echoing guitar. If this is a rock opera, it is a soft-rock opera. The plush arrangements insulate the often brutal scenes depicted in the lyrics. The jittery strums and surging backbeat on “Murder at the 18th St. Garage” make its titular crime—Jenny killing her scumbag landlord—feel like a victory. In the standout “Water Tower,” a forensic account of Jenny disposing of the body turns into a lullaby: “Float downstream,” Darnielle murmurs over a soft bed of guitars. It’s the sound of tragedy recollected from afar, not reported live from the scene.
In a way, Jenny From Thebes is precisely about the struggle to find the right distance: from the past, from other people, from ourselves. Darnielle is a master of the perspective shot; he is often at his most vivid when writing in the second person. The narrator of “Cleaning Crew,” a loping response song to West Texas’ “Source Decay,” imagines the pain of the addressee in medically precise detail, almost as if it were her own. The tenderness of these observations, together with the warmth of the vocal delivery, ensures that it takes a few verses to realize that the song is actually a farewell.
Early in the strings-driven “Same as Cash,” where the speaker tries to reconstruct Jenny’s inner life, this realization emerges: “I can only see the scene secondhand/I can only try to understand.” This statement underlines Jenny’s tragic flaw: a compulsion to take on others’ burdens until she breaks. It also happens to be a pretty good encapsulation of what the Mountain Goats do well. Darnielle has spent his career trying to get inside the heads of injured athletes, dead celebrities, pagan warriors, and struggling junkies, finding the humanity in their particular suffering. The acknowledgement that we can never have total access is far from damning—it’s what gives his songs their license to operate. Perhaps that’s why those lines about our flailing attempts to connect appear near the beginning of “Same as Cash” and not the end. Rather than cutting the story short, they clear the ground for it to continue. | 2023-11-01T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2023-11-01T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | November 1, 2023 | 7.6 | 32c1b920-35c6-4ecb-869d-54c7a81ee41c | Mitch Therieau | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mitch-therieau/ | |
The latest album from Stephan Jenkins’ alt-rock band is full of big swings and big misses, but its best songs elicit a modest, familiar sense of nostalgia. | The latest album from Stephan Jenkins’ alt-rock band is full of big swings and big misses, but its best songs elicit a modest, familiar sense of nostalgia. | Third Eye Blind: Our Bande Apart | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/third-eye-blind-our-bande-apart/ | Our Bande Apart | As tales of Stephan Jenkins’ overbearing demeanor, business chicanery, and outright creepiness have mounted, the Third Eye Blind mastermind has become something of a caricature: Who does this “semi-charmed” guy think he is? It’s easy to imagine the 57-year-old songwriter walled away in a fortress like Phil Spector, tinkering with bridges and chord progressions, scrawling four-syllable adjectives on scratch paper and hastily striking them out, smiling in recollection of adoring crowds from the 2009 homecoming show at Skidmore. Or was it ‘98? As weeks turn to months, he cycles through bandmates and session players, and the old howling question remains: How’s it gonna be when you don’t know me anymore?
The same grandiosity that always made Jenkins an easy target, however, is also what set Third Eye Blind apart. While their alt-rock peers hunched in the smirking self-deprecation of “Sex and Candy,” he crafted arena-sized records that owed as much to glam rock as to the post-grunge canon. The triptych of 1997’s Third Eye Blind, 1999’s Blue, and 2003’s Out of the Vein is packed with such melodrama and so many gutsy melodies that all the coke and blowjobs sound downright Shakespearean. If Jenkins really believed his cock-rock to be the scion of Renaissance poetry, it at least made 3EB a far more interesting band than Marcy Playground.
Their seventh full-length, Our Bande Apart, comes adorned with the usual trappings, and it often hinges on how much stomach you have for lyrics like “It’s just a demon road/But we have to go.” Jenkins is a man who sees constellations in the female anatomy; he also remains weirdly obsessed with nautical expeditions. But Our Bande Apart’s sporadic cheekiness feels like a minor accomplishment. “New order, shit won’t stop/We’ll never sing about tits and ass again,” he deadpans on “Goodbye to the Days of Ladies and Gentlemen.” This is an artist who either fears obsolescence or is in on the joke—perhaps a bit of both.
With his eye for sticky imagery and nose for narrative climaxes, Jenkins strikes gold at a reliable rate. When the rapturous chorus finally arrives on “Box of Bones,” you want to pump your fist in triumph. It’s the sort of gracefully delivered moment that helped 3EB transcend the frat-rock scene, and it’s remarkable that these visions of reckless infatuation continue to rattle around his head. And yet, it’s also his most understated single to date: no falsetto, no rapping, barely any percussion. The final chorus all but announces a soaring instrumental breakdown; instead, the song just ends.
The intimate arrangements of acoustic guitars and keyboard give Our Bande Apart something of a quarantine cabin vibe. Founding member Kevin Cadogan is long gone, as is his hard-rocking successor Tony Fredianelli. Their latest replacements—among them a multi-instrumentalist who goes by colin creeV, in tribute to the Harry Potter character—aren’t tasked with replicating their pulsing rhythms and theatrical solos. “Dust Storm (How We Hold Each Other Right Now)” is pleasantly jangly; “Funeral Singers” unfolds around a punchy riff. “To the Sea” and “Time in Berlin” recall the chamber-pop ponderousness of 2009’s Ursa Major.
There are still moments when you can’t help but laugh at the MFA-level indulgence: “He got you pregnant on the night you met,” Jenkins sings in “The Dying Blood.” “Full-year pandemic and you don’t regret it.” He is incapable of making a quiet pop record—his idealism manifests in big swings and big misses. Given the songs’ familiar structures, Our Bande Apart doesn’t always stand on its own: “Box of Bones” sounds a bit too much like “Wounded,” “Silverlake Neophyte” like “Motorcycle Drive-By.” Yet even these glimpses of surrender have their charms. For a quarter-century, Jenkins has tried to find language commensurate with his fathomless desire, but Our Bande Apart alights upon a more modest, delicate nostalgia—the kind that makes you want to call up an old friend you haven’t thought about in years.
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. | 2021-10-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-10-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Megacollider | October 1, 2021 | 6.9 | 32c34d04-860a-4db1-8ef0-15ac153ec494 | Pete Tosiello | https://pitchfork.com/staff/pete-tosiello/ | |
Reissue of the pioneering instrumental hip-hop album adds a bonus disc of remixes and singles. | Reissue of the pioneering instrumental hip-hop album adds a bonus disc of remixes and singles. | DJ Shadow: Endtroducing... [Deluxe Edition] | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2377-endtroducing-deluxe-edition/ | Endtroducing... [Deluxe Edition] | Ask the NoCal turntable nerds, the trip-hoppers, the frat boys, the hippies or the ravers stoned on the beach at sunrise: Endtroducing... is deeply spiritual. Not in the conventional sense, but in the spirituality of the soul that lives in your chest and got there from the ether and returns to the collective unconscious-- the one you feel when you feel things. That's the spirit that saves us from being fleeting and disposable: If I necked with that one girl that one sunset, with Endtroducing on the car stereo, then no matter who else did the same thing, I'm me and that moment's still mine. Dig?
Endtroducing taps that inner-whatever better than most of the albums of its day, and it swims so easily that it established an entire genre of instrumental hip-hop-- count how many records come out every month and are dubbed "Shadowesque." Building the album from samples of lost funk classics and bad horror soundtracks, Shadow crossed the real with the ethereal, laying heavy, sure-handed beats under drifting, staticky textures, friendly ghost voices, and chords whose sustain evokes the vast hereafter. Even the "look at me" cuts like "The Number Song" didn't break the mood; the album was so perfect and the technique, so awesome that it's still definitive today, and Shadow has yet to top it. (Never mind that if Four Tet could swing a record as proficient as The Private Press, we would throw him a parade.)
For this Deluxe Edition, Endtroducing hasn't been enhanced or remastered, but it now comes with a bonus disc of remixes and singles, including Cut Chemist's fantastic "party mix" of "The Number Song" and Gift of Gab's rhymes on "Midnight in a Perfect World", as well as alternate versions that give a useful perspective on the album. For example, "Building Steam With a Grain of Salt" and "Mutual Slump" omit the overdubbed speech, and without it, the samples seem naked and duller-- which highlights one of the album's subtler strengths.
But Shadow can't avoid the irony that this is a revival of an album that revives other albums. We could be hearing this music, not for the second time around, but for the third and maybe the fourth. The buzz of these dug-up sounds infuses the texture of the album; focusing on it reminds me of the few times that I've heard an album by a deceased performer and actually realized he had passed-- like the time I listened to Kind of Blue the night that Miles Davis joined three of its personnel in the grave, and felt their absence, even while their solos hadn't lost a shred of vitality.
Shadow clearly gets that. In the documentary Scratch, Shadow takes us to the record store where he found most of the vinyl used on Endtroducing. Upstairs we see the regular shelves and bins, but downstairs, in the basement, are tens of thousands of old albums stacked or dumped all over the room, barely lit by a few light bulbs and littered with dust and dead bats. Shadow patronized the store for five years before they let him in this crypt, and as he says in the documentary, "Just being in here is a humbling experience for me, because you're looking through all these records and it's sort of like a big pile of broken dreams...Whether you want to admit it or not, 10 years down the line you'll be in here. So keep that in mind when you start thinking like, 'I'm invincible and I'm the world's best,' or whatever. Because that's what all these cats thought."
We usually dismiss reissues of CDs as the ultimate cash-in-- the most cynical way for artists like Elvis Costello to charge us again and again for the same album. We think this because we assume that once you commit music to a disc and put it in a store, it's immortal. But without new attention and rereleases, albums can drift off the radar. Today, Entroducing may be a legend of the 1990s, but the world of beat-driven music regularly throws away old milestones to make room for new ones. How do we know this album will impress-- let alone connect with-- anyone 10 or 20 years down the road?
So you could call this rerelease Shadow's first bid for a legacy, and his admission that no matter how many fans called Endtroducing a masterpiece, someone else needs to slap that word on the cover for the next batch of kids. Yet even more than the first time, this is also a meditation on mortality. Shadow knows what it's like to wander through that basement, find some buried treasure-- some sax riff like those immortal notes on "What Does Your Soul Look Like, (Pt. 1 - Blue Sky Revisit)"-- and resurrect it for millions of listeners, like an irrational God on beats 'n breaks Judgment Day. And he also knows how it feels to be in that bin, like all of us on the way to our own graves, where we'll be trapped with all the other goners-- hoping someone will see something a little different and special in us, that might pull us out of the pile. | 2005-06-09T02:00:53.000-04:00 | 2005-06-09T02:00:53.000-04:00 | Electronic | Mo'Wax | June 9, 2005 | 10 | 32c3574f-53de-4c19-a3a8-78f58acbbe71 | Chris Dahlen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/chris-dahlen/ | null |
With harmonized guitars, spring-loaded rhythms, and snotty hooks, the Louisville band’s major-label debut is a well-earned success that doesn’t quite feel like a triumph. | With harmonized guitars, spring-loaded rhythms, and snotty hooks, the Louisville band’s major-label debut is a well-earned success that doesn’t quite feel like a triumph. | White Reaper: You Deserve Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/white-reaper-you-deserve-love/ | You Deserve Love | White Reaper weren’t lying on The World’s Best American Band, but they were joking. The shitkicking Kentucky quintet seemed to have enough self-awareness to recognize that their craft —we’re comin’ to your town, we’ll help you party down—was no longer understood as a form of populism, but something as archaic and artisanal as, say, scrimshaw. They might as well be the only American band. So they must’ve been as surprised as anyone when Elektra called their sorta-bluff and made them one of the first new signings in the venerated label’s ambitious relaunch, otherwise focused on reliably massive pop-punk, metal, and country acts. But White Reaper hardly sound intimidated by the fact that You Deserve Love now bears the same logo as their treasured Cars, Metallica, Queen, and AC/DC records. They just went ahead and made the next White Reaper album.
“If you hate the new record, then you hate us. The major label didn’t do anything. You should at least know that all the blame is on our shoulders,” keyboardist/hypeman Ryan Hater said earlier this year, perhaps assuming heated discussions about selling out to accompany his band’s throwback aesthetic. Rest assured, there are no quasi-trap beats or forced duets or empowerment anthems like those that typify the radio-friendly unit shifters and mono-genre pop acts now flanking White Reaper on the Elektra website. Singles “Real Long Time” and “Might Be Right” are prime reasons the band considered Music For People Who Like Us as an album title. But there’s also none of the indulgences one could reasonably expect from a band that prophesied their own pill-popping, hotel-demolishing rock stardom two years ago—no string sections, no acoustic ballads. It’s actually their shortest album.
White Reaper justify their anachronistic existence the same way they did on The World’s Best American Band: By proving that “rockism vs. poptimism” is a modern creation. Their harmonized guitars, spring-loaded rhythms, and snotty hooks are all referential of Van Halen and Cheap Trick, some of the most popular musicians going in the ’70s and ’80s. White Reaper’s desire to really get on that echelon rather than merely evoke its essence results in the one noticeable Elektra-funded upgrade: You Deserve Love is produced by Jay Joyce, a guy who’s worked with Eric Church, Thomas Rhett, and Little Big Town, but also Cage the Elephant and FIDLAR—straightforward guitar acts whose enduring popularity and total lack of critical favor confound assumptions about rock bands in the streaming era.
While You Deserve Love is certainly slicker and more reliant on synths, it’s to the same degree that The World’s Best American Band was slicker and more synth-y than White Reaper Does It Again. More importantly, Tony Esposito continues to successfully walk the tightrope between dirtbag and douchebag, a guy who could easily be cast as a Linklater good ol’ boy with his own band soundtracking the latest well-meaning debauch. “I’ve brought too many drinks with me and a 10-ton bucket of gasoline,” he jokes on the bubbly dub verse of “Saturday.” He’s drunk on nearly every song, either out of spite or feelings of inadequacy or just a desire to escape.
But the guys Esposito sings about would be better served by some audible evidence that they’re going against the grain. Whether sanding off the grit of The World’s Best American Band was Joyce or White Reaper or Elektra’s idea, it nonetheless makes You Deserve Love less worthy of Camaro-revving fantasies, even if these total non-gearheads lean into them on “1F.” Watch the videos for “Real Long Time” or “1F” and White Reaper are no longer a throwback to Thin Lizzy or Cheap Trick, but to another fertile era for pop-leaning guitar music: The one that bridged the gap between the New Rock Revolution and The O.C., when dudes in denim jackets with snappy songs about booze and girls were getting snapped up by majors by the dozens. Think of Elevator-era Hot Hot Heat, the Thrills, Tokyo Police Club, or Phantom Planet, bands who pumped out enjoyable singles to sizable fanbases without ever worrying what their success indicated about the future of rock. Pointing out the thematic similarity of “1F” to Rooney’s “I’m Shakin’” is only an issue if you deny that “I’m Shakin’” still slaps.
This is how You Deserve Love can be a well-earned success while not feeling like a triumph, the way a filler-free major label debut should be for the rare band that outwardly aspires to it. While the title track of The World’s Best American Band was its only overtly conceptual song, the title itself created an unexpected emotional undercurrent for a band that prefers to be taken at face value. A modestly successful indie band from Louisville declares themselves as The Greatest before they knew they were: It’s wish fulfillment as transportative as any of the prog fantasies White Reaper’s idols put to tape. On You Deserve Love, the risk and rewards are lower: White Reaper aspire to be a very good American band.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-10-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-10-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Elektra | October 22, 2019 | 6.8 | 32c58336-be77-4ad2-87cd-789c91bbcb54 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
Welsh band's mini-LP, out last year in the UK and now being issued in the States, demonstrates a flair for guitar anthems. | Welsh band's mini-LP, out last year in the UK and now being issued in the States, demonstrates a flair for guitar anthems. | The Joy Formidable: A Balloon Called Moaning | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14170-a-balloon-called-moaning/ | A Balloon Called Moaning | For the Joy Formidable, bigger most certainly is better. The London-by-way-of-Wales outfit makes music that feels bred for the arena, packing each driving track with huge washes of guitar and giant swarms of buzzing bass. This despite the fact that half the band's debut mini-LP, A Balloon Called Moaning, was recorded in a bedroom. If nothing else, the album is proof that you don't need a ton of production gloss to create a sound that's this anthemic and emotive.
On almost every track here, you get that moment of boisterous clarity-- usually in the form of some skyward-shooting chorus-- that feels affirming and perfectly in-line with UK arena rock. But these fist-pumping jolts are mixed in with prickly goth textures and doses of melodic post-punk, which serve as a welcome contrast. And most of these big moments get over without the benefit of being outwardly catchy, which is both impressive and occasionally worrying. Opener "The Greatest Light Is the Greatest Shade" and stunning highlight "The Last Drop" are two exceptions, but elsewhere the band's emphasis is on making emotional contact rather than trying to wiggle a hook into your head.
And it's all good, just as long as the band cranks it. Guitarist and lead vocalist Ritzy Bryan's sprightly voice soars when hoisted up by the rousing buzz of the band, even in instances when they seem like they should drown her out. Bryan's energy delicately enhances and ekes feeling out of draggier numbers, especially relatively to occasional vocal contributor and bassist Rhydian Dafydd. On material that offers more of an edge, like the harder-charging "Whirring", Bryan stands out as more than just a sing-along leader, injecting a little bit of snarl into the proceedings.
A Balloon Called Moaning could actually stand for a bit more of that edge, and sometimes the material's boisterousness can seem a little hokey. But if enveloping and cleanly-stated material like "The Last Drop" or recent single "Popinjay" are any indication, there's real potential for the band's big songs to be as much about pop as they are about payoff. | 2010-05-03T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2010-05-03T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | Black Bell | May 3, 2010 | 6.7 | 32c67cdf-8389-48c4-af8e-df93ed3d9e29 | Zach Kelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zach-kelly/ | null |
The masterful R&B singer returns with more creative control on a project where her voice, style, and swagger are well preserved. | The masterful R&B singer returns with more creative control on a project where her voice, style, and swagger are well preserved. | Toni Braxton: Spell My Name | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/toni-braxton-spell-my-name/ | Spell My Name | Toni Braxton could have had more. That seems like a crazy assertion to make about an artist whose first two albums went 8x platinum in the U.S., but Braxton’s career has been marked with health issues, lawsuits, and industry setbacks—most famously, plans to release the 2pac-sampling “Me & My Boyfriend” as a single were scrapped when JAY-Z and Beyoncé put out “‘03 Bonnie & Clyde,” suppressing the reach of Braxton’s 2002 record More Than a Woman. On her new album, Spell My Name, the 52-year-old wants more; she wants her name carved in stone so her legacy is never in question. “I’ve been in this business for a long time and I’ve been blessed, so put some respect on my name a little bit,” Braxton told iHeartRadio last month.
With Spell My Name, Braxton upholds her position as an originator of the sound of 1990s R&B. Though long-time collaborators Babyface and Antonio Dixon once again assist in production, Braxton asserts more agency than her previous album, 2018’s Sex & Cigarettes, by writing and producing a significant amount of the record. It adds up to a short collection that shows the familiar voice, style, and swagger of Braxton to be well preserved, even though things get off to an inauspicious start with “Dance.” It’s a track that aspires to the great tradition of danceable hits about dancing—Jessie Ware made an album of these recently—as Braxton tries to groove the pain of a break-up away. On a record that trades in retro sounds, this gooey disco jam it’s one of the few moments that sounds dated and stale.
The album’s best moments move with a sleek sophistication that defines some of her greatest hits. On the excellent “Gotta Move On,” Braxton analyzes post-breakup life over an immaculately crafted musical backdrop and backing vocals courtesy of H.E.R. The title track features a back-and-forth between Braxton and an unbilled male vocalist in the role of a younger beau. “I’m a little older and I really kinda like it that way,” she declares. “I’ll get you straight up fiendin’,” he later retorts like a guy who has heard “He Wasn’t Man Enough” and is trying very hard. Braxton’s voice—with all its brilliant depth—suitably overpowers her co-stars' presence, hinting at the chasm in their maturity and experience.
Missy Elliott appears on and co-produces “Do It,” throwing back to her more understated work with the ’90s soul group 702 that ran counter to her more futurist solo catalogue. The best song, though, is “O.V.E.Rr.,” a tale of two lovers who keep coming back to each other. There have been a million songs that cover similar terrain but Braxton boasts not just the voice to carry the drama, but the specificity as a writer to depict the emotion. Over a swooning instrumental, her voice gasps and gyrates. When she hits that extra “r” in spelling out the title—the relationship is more “overer” than before—you want to believe her but can’t.
Less impressive are the ballads that appear down the stretch. There’s a touch of musical theatre to “Happy Without Me.” It’s alright, but it’s not exactly “Un-Break My Heart.” And the album is probably missing that one banger to put a button on the set that perhaps a Darkchild or Pharrell—two of Braxton’s iPhone contacts—could have helped provide. Still, Braxton has evoked the spirit of ’90s R&B without ever sounding like she’s simply throwing out nostalgia bait. Into her fourth decade as a recording artist, she’s refusing to accept that her best is in the rearview mirror.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-09-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Island | September 15, 2020 | 7 | 32c71d50-544c-4854-9d83-78968225f3de | Dean Van Nguyen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dean-van nguyen/ | |
Featuring Samothrace bassist Dylan Desmond, the Seattle metal duo's spacious, somber debut is defined by inescapable haunting and loss, but they have a knack for turning maudlin doom into perverted praise music. | Featuring Samothrace bassist Dylan Desmond, the Seattle metal duo's spacious, somber debut is defined by inescapable haunting and loss, but they have a knack for turning maudlin doom into perverted praise music. | Bell Witch: Longing | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17450-longing/ | Longing | Take a look at the figure on the cover of Longing, the debut from Seattle doom duo Bell Witch. Its eerie presence is appropriate for a record defined by inescapable haunting and loss. On these six songs, bassist/vocalist Dylan Desmond and drummer/vocalist Adrian Guerra play patiently, and sparingly; they appear to be carefully purging themselves of an inexplicable force corrupting their bodies. Instead of going for a frontal assault, piling riffs upon riffs upon riffs, they opt for something subtler, a spacious approach that affects the entire nervous system.
The album opens with a 20 minute journey into despair, "Bails (of Flesh)", a track that will likely weed out those who can't handle the unrelentingly downcast feel of the record. The tracks get shorter from there, but they also get sparser. Of note is "Longing (the River of Ash)", which grows more drawn out as it progresses. In this music of solitude, it's the loneliest track by far. Metal's defined by exaggeration, but the title Longing is perfect here: Desmond and Guerra want to go back to where pain didn't consume their reality*.*
A duo's primary challenge is to find a way to fill up space with minimal equipment. Usually, when a doom band's a two-piece, the guitars are double-amped and so downtuned that a bassist becomes irrelevant. Bell Witch flip this convention, employing a six-string bass in place of a guitar. (Often, one can hardly tell it's a bass.) Even lacking guitar, Desmond constructs melodies reminiscent of funeral doom acts like Skepticism and Esoteric, adding a touch of American dirtiness from his experience as the bassist of Samothrace.
There is one exception where the bass doesn't masquerade as a guitar. "Beneath the Mask", save for a sample from the Edgar Allen Poe-inspired film The Masque of the Red Death, is a five-minute drumless drone piece, where notes fly off and subsequently wither like Icarus on 33 1/3 RPM. The clean bass is more lonesome and more eerie than the distorted bass that the album's built upon. "Mask" seems like the perfect track to incorporate a sudden blast of hisses, feedback, screams-- something to make the listener jolt. It doesn't, and that suspense, like walking over rows of false trap doors, adds to the creepy atmosphere.
Throughout, Guerra's growls are complementary of the genre, and he even throws in a few blackened shrieks on "Rows (of Endless Waves)". Desmond's clean vocals, however, are more compelling, taking different shapes throughout the record. His warm, forlorn style carries the latter half of "Bails (of Flesh)", turning maudlin doom into perverted praise music. It's not a far stretch to imagine this being played in some church that worships self-destruction, congregants raising their hands up high, arms bleeding from cutting themselves. Desmond gives hails and salutations to the misery, like Om learning of a terminal illness diagnosis.
The previously mentioned "Rows" sees Desmond's voice become more delicate, almost crushing under the weight of the music. Frailty is important to the variety of doom Bell Witch explores, but rarely does a vocal performance capture what it is to stand on the line between sanity and madness. Desmond will whisper certain lines in "Rows", adding emphasis without raising his voice. He channels dISEMBOWELMENT's Renato Gallina on "Longing" making that track a true successor to the Australian doom-death quartet's 1993 classic Transcendence into the Peripheral. Remember that editorial arguing that metal vocalists are irrelevant? It wasn't entirely without merit, but Desmond challenges that line of thinking. He's got a cleverness and sense of space most vocalists don't possess. His voice is much like the music itself: it reverberates around, as if wandering and looking for a way out of this despair. Open and wide-reaching as it may be, there's also a sense of weighty claustrophobia in his voice, as if it's carrying his burdens, and the burdens of others, too. | 2012-12-13T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2012-12-13T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Metal | Profound Lore | December 13, 2012 | 8 | 32cfd783-6e5a-4beb-aac2-42c8e486763c | Andy O'Connor | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-o'connor/ | null |
The New Zealand duo of Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate have influenced generations of lo-fi rockers. This 55-track box set reminds us why. | The New Zealand duo of Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate have influenced generations of lo-fi rockers. This 55-track box set reminds us why. | Tall Dwarfs: Unravelled: 1981-2002 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tall-dwarfs-unravelled-1981-2002/ | Unravelled: 1981-2002 | The story of New Zealand rock music is a tale of isolation. For the young Kiwi musician, rock’n’roll was a familiar cultural language, but one separated by a whole lot of clear blue water. This distance engendered a degree of self-reliance, spawning bands, labels, and hyperlocal scenes, as well as a certain can-do sensibility. Thus was the case in 1981 when vocalist Chris Knox and guitarist Alec Bathgate—already veterans of two NZ bands, Dunedin punk upstarts the Enemy and the more polished, new-wave-inflected Toy Love—plugged in a TEAC 4-track reel-to-reel and started to record.
And record, and record. The level of fidelity would fluctuate over the years, but Tall Dwarfs—the absurdity of their chosen name characteristic of the duo’s artistic sensibility at large—never wholly lost their instinct for the homemade. The muse seemed to find them most naturally in bedrooms, front rooms, or the garden shed. Despite this, following their debut EP, Three Songs, they graduated to New Zealand’s trailblazing indie label Flying Nun, and the songs kept coming. They kept coming across seven EPs, six albums, and a couple of decades. Enough to fill Unravelled: 1981-2002, a 55-track box set that, despite its breadth, is relatively light on chaff.
It probably has a lot to do with the fact that Knox and Bathgate had bounced through a couple of groups already, but Tall Dwarfs fell out of the womb fully formed. The first track from Three Songs, “Nothing’s Going to Happen,” encapsulates a particularly Antipodean sense of ennui: a manic thrash of melodic guitar, smashed tambourines, and whacked xylophones, topped off with a lyric that wallows merrily in its own alienation. The means were rudimentary, but this did not imply a lack of ambition. Knox and Bathgate recorded its 12 layers by recording to their 4-track, bouncing out the tape, recording another four tracks on top, and repeating the process once more. The video—a stop-motion animation filmed in a grotty apartment that comes to life around the slovenly humans that call it home—showcases a similar sense of homemade ingenuity.
In the UK or U.S., you might find groups that made an entire career out of one corner of the Velvet Underground or Beatles catalog. Tall Dwarfs seem to ask: Why choose? Instead, their songs are crammed with styles and reference points, ricocheting between noise and melody, comedy and despair. “Crush” is powered by frayed guitar, pounding drums, and a wall of feedback, like the missing link between the Velvets’ “European Son” and Pavement’s Slay Tracks. But just as often the Dwarfs jury-rigged their rudimentary materials into works of peculiar beauty. Take “Carpetgrabber,” a hymn to hermetic living woven from piano, cymbal, triangle, and a drone of feedback; or “Paul’s Place,” a spry electronic shanty powered by bleepy synths and featuring a frantic percussion break which the credits reveal to have been played using a draining board, pan, and spoon.
Tall Dwarfs’ very existence felt like a conscious affront to the familiar rock-band format. Knox distilled the duo’s attitude in an interview with the New Zealand webzine Audioculture: “The bass player’s always the real muso of the group and thinks he knows everything, and the drummer is just a fuckwit, so it’s much easier to be without them.” In lieu of a rhythm section, Tall Dwarfs clapped their hands, stomped their feet, banged upon anything within reach. From 1983’s Canned Music EP on, their music was often underpinned by Knox’s tape loops, which accentuated their songs’ sense of cranky claustrophobia.
Unravelled is packaged with sleevenotes drawn in a comic-book style, detailing Tall Dwarfs’ history with a number of self-effacing asides. This playful presentation only slightly obscures the darkness in their music, which often grappled with small-town isolation and the feeling of being, if not quite a force of good in a world gone bad, at least shrewd enough to recognise one’s failings. “Life Is Strange,” from 1991’s Fork Songs, and “Entropy,” from 1994’s 3EPs, secrete a bleak nihilism within their breezy indie thrash. Elsewhere, tales of mundane existence are pockmarked by incidents of horror and the grotesque. On “Walking Home,” a drunken nighttime ramble is interrupted by an encounter with a man whose jaw has been sliced open. “Oatmeal,” meanwhile, is squalling freak-folk that revels in disgust: “The gulls above our heads are ill/They’ve eaten much more than their fill/Excreta plunges from the sky.”
Despite their music’s focus on a life of low horizons, Tall Dwarfs got a chance to see the world. In 1985 Bathgate went to live in London, before being driven home by the English weather. But as the 1990s dawned, Tall Dwarfs found their way to the United States, where they forged links with the incipient Stateside lo-fi movement. In 2009, after Knox was struck by a stroke that left him barely able to speak, artists including Will Oldham, Bill Callahan, Yo La Tengo, and Jeff Mangum came together to record a fundraising compilation, Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox.
Being an influence in this way is surely flattering, but it threatens to make you a footnote. Unravelled seeks to redress this imbalance, making the case for Tall Dwarfs as a group worthy of such a sprawling retrospective. There’s a lot of music here, maybe a little too much for the newcomer to digest, and it’s hard to deny their pretty, songwriterly moments have dated a touch better than their more raucous excursions. But when it works, Tall Dwarfs pull off a feat of alchemy. Around the back of the world, they took up makeshift instruments, wrote songs steeped in grit and gloom, and dropped something close to perfect pop straight onto a reel of magnetic tape. | 2022-08-20T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-08-20T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | August 20, 2022 | 7.4 | 32d9dda0-493f-4a35-8108-9da355d1f4a4 | Louis Pattison | https://pitchfork.com/staff/louis-pattison/ | |
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 look back at the UK band’s 1992 debut, a deceptively hazy pop record that showcases the complementary songwriting of Emma Anderson and Miki Berenyi. | 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 look back at the UK band’s 1992 debut, a deceptively hazy pop record that showcases the complementary songwriting of Emma Anderson and Miki Berenyi. | Lush: Spooky | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lush-spooky/ | Spooky | For a too-brief moment, Lush were the platonic ideal of an underground college band turning their dreams into a career. Emma Anderson and Miki Berenyi had channeled their careers as teen fanzine publishers and avid showgoers into singing and guitar-playing frontwomen, recruiting bassist Steve Rippon and drummer Chris Acland after meeting them at North London Polytechnic University. Anderson and Berenyi wrote all the songs, mostly individually but sometimes together, drawing on influences as wide as ABBA, the Shangri-La’s, and Siouxsie Sioux. They spent their early gigs opening for bands like My Bloody Valentine and the Pastels and, according to Berenyi’s crucial 2022 memoir, Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success, fending off snide dismissals from asshole band guys.
On their first two releases, the six-track EP Scar and compilation album Gala, Lush drew on their love of post-punk and riot grrrl, sometimes spangled and ramshackle on songs like “Bitter” and “Sweetness and Light.” The latter song, an early fan favorite, exemplified their sense of elegance, laying down a bed of flange for Berenyi and Anderson’s high-pitched harmonies to float through, a blueprint for the sound they’d carry through their 1992 debut, Spooky. In retrospect, it was probably not the most auspicious time for an opaque British rock band known for beautiful harmonies to release their first proper album. Grunge was exploding around the world, and disaffected men from San Diego to Australia were being stalked by besuited label thirst-buckets looking to hit post-Nirvana paydirt. A band fronted by two women from the London underground whose guitar sound conveyed sangfroid rather than ennui was decidedly not that, and the UK was going in a more man-heavy direction, too, with the massive success of Primal Scream’s house-oriented psychedelia and the louche Britpop lads priming for a takeover.
As signees of the eclectic 4AD, Lush initially fit better alongside the label’s arty, college-radio roster—like Throwing Muses and the Pixies—and by 1989, Lush were near-instant heroes of the British press. “We are racking up write-ups on a weekly basis and score a full-page Melody Maker interview barely after our first rehearsals with Steve,” Berenyi writes in Fingers Crossed. “While the plaudits are flattering, they were worryingly premature and punters expecting to witness the Next Big Thing are disappointed to find that Lush are a stumbling band fronted by a painfully shy and barely audible vocalist.”
By the time Lush started recording Spooky, they had already been through the British press’s love-hate wringer a couple of times, and they’d also already been categorized into a scene that would become known as shoegaze—as in self-absorbed guitar nerds all staring at their shoes—a derisive term in the UK that, incidentally, scanned as “cool as hell” in the U.S. They’d recorded a few songs for Scar and Gala with Robin Guthrie, co-founder of the Cocteau Twins, and Berenyi and Anderson were directing their music in a more textural direction, with massive, staticky guitars acting as a scrim before their angel harmonies.
While Guthrie was alternately credited and blamed for Spooky’s ethereality, Berenyi writes that he was often not even in the studio, off nursing his “notorious cocaine habit.” Besides, a lot of the ethereality came from Berenyi’s voice itself, which was high and throaty, the kind of head voice that a voice teacher might scold for not coming from the diaphragm. Anderson’s higher register was much clearer, but her harmonies often floated in minor keys and weird thirds that made their songs sound as though the band was high upon a cliff, majestic but at risk of teetering off.
The album that resulted was deceptively hazy, its guitar effects coalescing into the women’s voices, giving the iridescent effect of oil circling in a whirlpool. “Stray” opens with Berenyi taking the high notes and Anderson providing the lower harmonies, in a statement about troubled wandering that sounds almost Gregorian in tone: hymnal, somehow above the earth. It bleeds into “Nothing Natural,” an Anderson-written track that follows the ascent and disappointment of a relationship, Rippon’s bass rolling like the wheel rod on a steam engine to ground the women’s rotor of guitars. Berenyi and Anderson’s writing styles were complementary: The latter’s hooks were stormy and heavier on the low end, while the former’s had a dreamier quality, letting each idea unfurl at its own pace. By drenching their songs in reverb and flange, their poppiness was almost subliminal. “Tiny Smiles” is practically a lullaby, their voices hinged in harmony and “mmm-mmms” wafting down like celestial detritus, while “Superblast!” roils at a speedy punk pace, a thrash song that confuses the prospect with the bait and switch of Anderson and Berenyi belting patiently about abandonment. The shoegaze label had missed the point: Lush were not their effects pedals, but a pop-punk band with a heightened sense of aesthetics.
”Untogether” and “For Love,” two Berenyi-written tracks, are as Beatlesian in spirit as any of the Britpop boys who came before or after, two bop-along songs telling vivid stories about other peoples’ relationships and one complicated breakup. The latter track got a video, too, which focused primarily on Berenyi’s soft-lit visage with a handful of pink roses and white daffodils, intercut with scenes of the band playing. The “Nothing Natural” video was also mostly close-ups of Berenyi singing next to Anderson, a quiet angel with bangs. Lush’s visuals were clean, high-contrast, and full of color, with the women making deliberate eye contact with the camera more frequently than looking down at their feet. They may have sounded impressionistic—their words weren’t super easy to discern without a lyric sheet—but their approach was unflinching and direct. Lush, at heart, had more in common with Nirvana: the way they could sneak pop melodies into the messy overdrive of guitar pedals, the way Berenyi’s voice, in particular, had a sort of eely characteristic, like it would disappear just as you were about to get your arms around it.
Spooky came at a precocious time, when Berenyi and Anderson were approaching their mid-twenties, and beginning to molt into their more adult selves. It was partly a vessel for building something powerful and beautiful atop the painful memories Berenyi writes about in her memoir, coming to terms with her grandmother’s horrific abuse and her divorced parents’ messiness in general. Where Anderson could be more pointed in her lyricism, Berenyi tended towards the dreaminess (”Stray,” “Ocean”) of organisms, using the blue tide and green fields as imagery. “For Love,” one of Lush’s most popular songs, is not about a whirlwind romance as its enthusiastic tempo might imply, but about her relationship to her parents in light of their broken marriage.
The titans of shoegaze were always presented—whether via their conceptually far-flung, wall-of-sound guitars or the diaphanous photographs that depicted the band members—as serious bands purveying serious music. (Perhaps it was the correct term after all.) “There’s some heavy class snobbery. Middle-class is a dirty word at the moment,” Berenyi told the Glasgow Herald’s Peter Easton upon the release of Spooky. “They think that bands like us and Ride and Slowdive are rich kids whose parents bought all their instruments. Just spoilt brats. A bit of a misconception.” And apart from the occasional key figures—My Bloody Valentine’s Bilinda Butcher and Debbie Googe, Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser, Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, all of whom defined their bands’ sound—there were few women to take the mantle in a scene where genius was measured by the overdrive of a guitar pedal.
After Spooky’s release and constant stateside touring, Lush were truly welcome figures in the U.S. Not only were they a pair of women leading a band, Berenyi was the rare woman of color in the alt-rock scene of any subgenre—her mother was Japanese—and she became a de facto frontwoman thanks mostly to her fire-engine-red dye job, which translated into a kind of charisma. (She also wore really cute minidresses with rugby stripes and black tights with cutoff jorts, a true 1990s style idol.) This wasn’t the easiest position in an era overrun with male shitheads—Berenyi’s former boyfriend, the ’80s punk figure Billy Childish, once wrote a poem about her entitled “Someone Else’s Little Jap,” for one, plus Berenyi and Anderson were constantly asked to wear sexualized outfits in photo shoots, which they refused. They were feminist and plucky despite certain condescending perceptions of women who harmonize in high keys. “People suggest we don’t say anything with our music, that we’re apolitical, but some of the subjects we deal with are really quite disturbing. Because we’re not shouting and screaming, people don’t register that,” Anderson told The Observer’s Simon Reynolds, in February 1992. Their love songs could pine, but mostly they were about female desire and willful rejection of their own lovers; “Laura,” a bass-driven rollicker, was about a general world-weariness and finding comfort in the music of Laura Nyro.
Still, Spooky got a slight drubbing here and there, the British press’ fickleness haunting Lush again, even as the album hit No. 7 on the UK charts. The U.S. wasn’t always kind, either. “British band gets sidetracked by its avant-garde leanings. As a result, baby-voiced singing drowns in a midtempo wash of atmospheric guitar noise,” went Billboard’s review, which was not bylined but it’s giving Man. Perry Farrell liked them, though, and Lush (with new bassist Phil King) were booked for 1992’s Lollapalooza festival. They were the only women playing on the main stage, which Berenyi says in her memoir could be pretty dreadful, be it their tour manager taking bets on which of the men could fuck her and Anderson or truly gross sexual harassment from, Berenyi writes, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis and Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes.
But their opening slot helped Lush’s popularity in the U.S., and soon they’d be touring the states constantly, albeit on some weird bills. After the release of their second album, Split, I saw them headline Denver’s Ogden Theater on August 4, 1994, when they played with this new rock band from L.A. called Weezer. That lineup wasn’t nearly as ill-fitting as their tour a couple of years later with the Goo Goo Dolls and the Gin Blossoms, those post-grunge, alt-adult-contemporary superstars that cursed mainstream rock in 1996. Lush released one final album, Lovelife, that same year, but as Britpop took over and management and label situations in both the U.S. and the UK soured, their fate was in question. When Chris Acland, Lush’s drummer and close friend, died of suicide in the fall of ’96, the band was done for 20 years, up until one brief reunion and EP in 2016.
Thirty years later, Spooky stands out more for what it wasn’t than what it was: it wasn’t a by-the-numbers shoegaze album, nor was it comfortably situated in shoegaze’s sister genre, dream pop. The album is an example of how labels tend to pigeonhole a sound and cloud it for what it was; easy consumption is not close listening. Lush were first and foremost a DIY punk band who were witness to and part of the mainstreaming of the underground, a pop band with a love of loud-ass guitars, and an important band that made alternative rock music massively more interesting in a time of recovering male metalheads. Mostly, though, they left a lasting document of determination and beauty, two teen fanzine publishers made good.
Additional research by Deirdre McCabe Nolan. | 2023-07-02T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-07-02T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | 4AD | July 2, 2023 | 8.6 | 32e189a6-85b7-4911-a8e9-08bcbf55dc3c | Julianne Escobedo Shepherd | https://pitchfork.com/staff/julianne-escobedo shepherd/ | |
After a five-year absence-- in part due to being hospitalized with double pneumonia-- Jason Pierce returns with another LP of love songs, drug songs, and God songs, producing his best record in a decade. | After a five-year absence-- in part due to being hospitalized with double pneumonia-- Jason Pierce returns with another LP of love songs, drug songs, and God songs, producing his best record in a decade. | Spiritualized: Songs in A&E | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11569-songs-in-ae/ | Songs in A&E | I'm loathe to call any album a summation of an artist's career-- that reeks of lazy criticism-- but Songs in A&E is certainly Spiritualized's best work in 10 years. All of Jason Pierce's fascinations of the past 20-plus years appear here-- we'll get to 'em soon enough-- in a truly syncretic, muted, and beautiful way. And there's something rooted and grounded about Songs in A&E. Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in place.
This is Pierce's first record in five years-- the delay was, in part, due to him being hospitalized with double pneumonia, i.e. he was really fucked-up and tethered to machines to keep him alive. (In the UK, the ER is called the Accident & Emergency ward-- hence the title.) Not surprisingly, Pierce's ordeal colors the sound and tone of the record-- "Death Take Your Fiddle", essentially another update of the traditional "O Death", seems to sample the sound of a respirator-- although Pierce has stated in interviews that the album was already more than half-finished when he took ill.
Lyrically, as Pierce as wont to do, there are love songs, drug songs, and God songs-- typically, they're all those things at once at times. Pierce's protagonist on these tunes is world-weary ("So hard to fight when you're losing/ I got a little fire in my soul," he says on "I Gotta Fire") and sounds all the more so in Pierce's lovely croaking/cracking vocals. What saves the songs from woe-is-me solipsism and overarching sentimentality is a well-hidden but ironic sense of humor. Well, that and the fact that the music itself is awesome. The key song is "Borrowed Your Gun", which begins like a typical junkie lament with "Daddy I'm sorry" but continues into murder ballad territory with "I borrowed your gun again/ Shot up your family."
A few songs on Songs in A&E run on a bit too long-- this is a Spiritualized record, after all-- and from some angles a few arrangements can sound hokey. The big rocker "I Gotta Fire" is like the Stone Roses covering Sonic Youth's "Bull in the Heather", but even on lesser tracks, a delightful oboe or a crazy lyric or a swelling gospel chorus swoops in and gives you a reason to replay the track. Pierce is again walking mopey, orchestral, minimalist rock out to the margins of taste and messing with your head all over the place. And this time he does it with a shit-ton of sonic subtlety. (Take those earbuds out and pop this one on the stereo.)
Pierce has never seemed so in control of his aesthetic, rather than controlled by it like some sort of drone-rock fetishist. The props dropped here are super obvious, and meant to be so, whether to Daniel Johnston with the "Funeral Home" refrain or to Kris Kristofferson with a quotation from "Me & Bobby McGee". Prior releases each had enjoyable but indulgent bliss-out tracks that went on a long time, but on A&E the out sounds are distilled into six miniature numbered tracks each called "Harmony". These serve as a glue holding the album together, and while they're "spacey," their brevity keeps the record on solid terrestrial ground. The other songs are vessels for contrasting ideas: la-la melodies vs. wah-wah guitar, strings vs. brass, country licks vs. Free Design-style vocals, and simple structures vs. lush arrangements. These oppositional concepts overlap more than ever on A&E, but the album only sounds muddled or muddied during a few clunky transitions. And weirdly, those serve to make you more aware than ever of the greatness of what he's doing the rest of the time. | 2008-06-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2008-06-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Fontana | June 3, 2008 | 8.4 | 32eb5451-7d5b-4c9f-a192-9b7cf465bf0d | Mike McGonigal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mike-mcgonigal/ | |
Six months after their debut album, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus return with a self-mythological companion EP aglow with the sense of triumph from their imperial year. | Six months after their debut album, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus return with a self-mythological companion EP aglow with the sense of triumph from their imperial year. | Boygenius: The Rest EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/boygenius-the-rest-ep/ | The Rest EP | For years, Phoebe Bridgers has been on an odyssey to the moon. She yearned for a spaceship to carry her away from a strained relationship on Boygenius’ 2018 self-titled EP; the trio’s full-length debut ends with Bridgers gazing at the full moon as she pulls away from her tormentor. On “Voyager,” the third song on Boygenius’ new EP, The Rest, Bridgers has finally landed. “Walking alone in the city/Makes me feel like a man on the moon,” she sings, taking stock of the journey. Her bandmates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus are there with her, swaddling each lyric, cushioning each step, with hummed harmony. These are friends—the ones you tell your stories to, again and again, who stick around for every revision and new installment.
Friendship, famously, is Boygenius’ raison d’être and a key part of its value proposition. Kindred spirits who first met while making the rounds with their respective solo projects, Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus were eventually booked on a joint tour, precipitating their first EP together. Almost immediately, their union accumulated extramusical significance. Initially, it felt like wish fulfillment for those eager to pass off women playing rock as a newsworthy event; ultimately, it settled into an extended counterpoint to heteropatriarchal ideas about feminine friendship and cooperation, and to the notion of genius as an attribute of erratic (male) individualists. (When a prominent contemporary embodiment of that idea recently used Boygenius as the setup for a cheap joke, Dacus minced no words.)
Over the pandemic, seeking companionship and a creative outlet, the band got back together to write and record a proper debut—The Record, released this March. Six months later, they’re following it with The Rest, a four-song companion EP aglow with the sense of triumph that has haloed the group’s recent history. Boygenius are about as big as a rock band can be in 2023: They’ve landed an album in Billboard’s Top 10, received second-line billing at Coachella (“I’ve never played a festival when the sun was down,” Baker quipped), and, earlier this month, sold out Madison Square Garden. Their shows incite rapture; all three women are queer, a clear subtext and surtext of their performances, which has solidified their tour’s reputation as a welcoming space for sapphic expression.
With Boygenius’ tour wrapping at the end of the month, The Rest bookends this period of transcendence, its title containing a note of finality as well as of respite. The songs feel unwound; on the cover, the boys are faceless figures before a misty sea, soaking in the sublime, like in a Caspar David Friedrich painting. Unlike many post-album clearing-house EPs, this material is brand new, produced in May with returning collaborators (Tony Berg, Ethan Gruska, Collin Pastore) along with affiliates of the members’ solo projects. The songs revisit old themes, like Bridgers’ lunar voyage, with clear eyes and renewed spirits. Baker reconsiders the black hole that appeared on The Record’s “Not Strong Enough”—there, a symbol of domestic unrest; here, one of unexpected potential. “You can see the stars/The ones the headlines said this morning/Were being spat out /By what we thought was just/Destroying everything for good,” she sings over a steady pedal point, referencing a recently discovered supermassive black hole that mysteriously produces new stars instead of obliterating old ones. This cosmic twist on the notion that destructive forces can be generative calls to mind another lyric from The Record. To quote Dacus quoting Leonard Cohen: “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
The Rest closes its fist around the ideas that Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus have been reaching toward—that values are more worth living than dying for, that our feelings of difference and dysfunction can be fonts of power. When an idealogue with a death drive appeals to Dacus’ narrator on “Afraid of Heights,” she voices her skepticism: “Not everybody gets the chance to live a life that isn’t dangerous.” As usual, the members take turns up front, each leading songs that bear the hallmarks of their own writing, and “Afraid of Heights” is classic Dacus—a writer first and musician second, by her own estimation. In her hands, steady, soft acoustic strums and pedal steel are like pale blue lines on loose leaf, waiting to be filled. She spreads her ideas across pages rich with dialogue and imagery, including the tidy, perfect couplet, “The black water ate you up/Like a sugarcube in a teacup.” It’s part of a parable about hope: “Oh, it hurts to hope the future/Will be better than before,” she sings. Expect nothing and the worst you’ll get is validation; expect more, and you’ll be crushed.
Boygenius is sometimes billed as “sad girl” music, a dubious classification born of Spotify playlists and social media’s bad habit of aestheticizing mental illness. It’s only marketing, but it still threatens to sand down the contours of the band’s music, which is full of emotions not so easily parceled and labeled (nor managed) as “sadness”—and, often, not so sad after all. As Bridgers has observed, this reductive interpretation involves a certain amount of projection on the part of fans. Such is the nature of producing art for public consumption: Songs are made, released, and then made into something else in the ears of their listeners.
The band’s relationship to its ballooning audience is not uncomplicated, but certainly Boygenius respect the power of their platform. Anyone in their position would be grappling with the question of what they mean, to whom—a line of inquiry that can give way to self-mythologizing. This instinct has always been present in a band that’s styled itself as both Crosby, Stills & Nash and Nirvana, but in these songs, it starts to feel less self-conscious, more sincere. It’s in the internal references, the leitmotifs—an emergent iconography of Boygenius. It’s definitely in The Rest’s closer, “powers,” a Baker-led superhero origin story set to sonorous brass and ambient texture. She sings about crawling out of a nuclear reactor, about supercolliders and fission, invoking the invisible, unknowable forces that govern our universe as a metaphor for profound transformation. “The hum of our contact,” she concludes, summarizing the Boygenius ethos, “The sound of our collision.” Her words suggest preciousness, but also ephemerality: When particles collide in an accelerator, they erupt into ultra-rare bits of matter that linger for only a split second before breaking down. We are called to look closely while they last. | 2023-10-13T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2023-10-13T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Interscope | October 13, 2023 | 7.5 | 32f098d1-cf40-4d6c-9356-4511c31a166b | Olivia Horn | https://pitchfork.com/staff/olivia-horn / | |
The Toronto indie pop veterans follow their theatrical, big-room work with a more muted, grayer record. | The Toronto indie pop veterans follow their theatrical, big-room work with a more muted, grayer record. | Stars: The Five Ghosts | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14349-the-five-ghosts/ | The Five Ghosts | Stars have never done "small" very well-- hell, I don't think they've ever done it at all. The Toronto act, now entering their second decade, have built a reputation on filtering tragedies of the heart through a widescreen lens, most excellently on 2004's Set Yourself on Fire. Even 2007's theatrical In Our Bedroom After the War exquisitely mired itself in misery, sounding more like 13 takes on the Smiths' "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" than the original cast recording of Gypsy.
Simply put, then: They know bombast and melodrama, which makes a decent amount of their latest effort, The Five Ghosts, all the more off-putting. For the first time in the band's career, they sound defeated. There's not much urgency, or even a range of emotion, for that matter; rather, much of the record blurs together, forming a single streak of gray. Telling, too, that the more upbeat cuts are the highlights. "I Died So I Could Haunt You" and "How Much More" both deserve a place among Stars' best work, with the latter working itself into a serene build that sounds like a thousand rockets taking off all at once.
Otherwise, this is a sluggish record, and a good deal of the blame rests on the production. The mix seems so muddy and poorly executed that you have to wonder who signed off on this stuff. "Fixed" may sound like it's intended to be this album's "Ageless Beauty", but where that song's shoegazed guitars burned brightly, here the buzzy melody ends up sounding as neutered as the song title suggests. The more dynamic instrumental lines are frequently buried in the mix at the expense of bringing out Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan's voices. Campbell aims for an overdue cathartic wail near the end of "He Dreams He's Awake" but slams into a mess of tangled vocals and drums. At his best, Campbell's always been a charmingly corny vocalist; not allowing him his hammy release here takes away his greatest strength as a performer.
Surprisingly, though, the middling sound ends up benefitting Millan's vocal performances greatly, affording her breathy coo the bright glow that it's been missing throughout the band's career. On previous releases, her voice has acted as not much more than a pretty-sounding foil for Campbell's, but on this record's best cuts, she sounds like a true frontwoman. She hugs the mid-tempo melodies of "Wasted Daylight" and "How Much More" tightly. Millan also is featured on the album's finest moment, "Changes". Her voice burns with patient regret, as the rest of the band finds their shimmering sweet spot and turns what, in another act's hands, could've been a dull, drum-machined shuffler into the Canadian indie-pop equivalent of Fleetwood Mac's "Storms". Stars may spend most of The Five Ghosts resembling sonic equivalents of the album title, but "Changes" is all flesh and blood, as well as a suggestion that, even after 10 years, this band ain't quite dead yet. | 2010-06-21T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2010-06-21T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Vagrant / Soft Revolution | June 21, 2010 | 5.7 | 32f16937-d863-4289-b152-b7090abc72cb | Larry Fitzmaurice | https://pitchfork.com/staff/larry-fitzmaurice/ | null |
One-third of Peter Bjorn and John follows his group's breakthrough with a folk-pop solo album loosely inspired by the final, unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a sad tale of a workaholic, studio-era Hollywood mogul. | One-third of Peter Bjorn and John follows his group's breakthrough with a folk-pop solo album loosely inspired by the final, unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a sad tale of a workaholic, studio-era Hollywood mogul. | Peter Morén: The Last Tycoon | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11337-the-last-tycoon/ | The Last Tycoon | It took more than a year, but Peter Bjorn & John's "Young Folks" finally turned into the kind of honest-to-goodness worldwide sleeper hit the mainstream U.S. music business hardly knows what to do with anymore. Not only did the single from the Swedish indie-pop trio's 2006 album Writer's Block hit #13 in the UK and crack the Top 40 in Germany and the Netherlands. Not only was it sampled by Kanye West and covered by everyone from the Kooks, James Blunt, and Pete Yorn to "99 Luftballons" singer Nena and Japanese folk-popper Shugo Tokumaru. Not only has it appeared on TV shows like "Grey's Anatomy" and "How I Met Your Mother", in commercials for Budweiser and AT&T. Why, the catchy little thing even charted in the U.S.-- where Writer's Block has sold roughly 160,000 copies.
None of which quite explains why the guy who sings male lead on "Young Folks", Peter Morén, has chosen to follow his group's breakthrough with, umm, a meandering folk-pop solo album loosely inspired by the sad tale of a studio-era Hollywood mogul whose passion for his work causes him to miss out on life. The Last Tycoon, now known as The Love of the Last Tycoon, was the final, unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The 1973 film adaptation, starring Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson, was the final (finished) movie by On the Waterfront director Elia Kazan. And Morén? Presumably, he's just getting started. And it shows, in a set of slow, plaintive love songs that flash occasional glimmers of his band's charms, but too often fail to even stand out over their stripped-down arrangements.
It's not Morén's indulging his self-professed "Dylanhead" status that hobbles The Last Tycoon. Folk-flecked acoustic guitar underpins some of the better songs here, stretching out beneath the caustic rasp of the handclap- and piano-splashed digital single "Social Competence" or dancing beneath harmonica on casual, intimate finale "I Don't Gaze at the Sky for Long", which alludes to filmmaker François Truffaut. "Le Petit Coeur", the track Morén tells Billboard gave him the idea for this project, adds strings and rumbling piano for an ominous, bilingual song about nighttime skulking, tribal conflict, and relationship brinksmanship: "If you lock me out again, I may not come back to seek you," Morén sings.
The album's vague concept can't be blamed for the disappointment, either. Sure, loping opener "Reel Too Real"-- with its synths, tubular bells, and knee-slaps-- examines the difference between images and reality. And Bert Jansch-esque six-minute epic "This Is What I Came For" is a cinematic character portrait: "You're the spoiled white kid with clenched white teeth." But it'll take way better Fitzgerald scholars than me to find other potential connections.
See, this points to the album's main problem: a failure to communicate. Fellow Swedish singer/songwriter José González keeps his lyrics elemental and his playing atmospheric, but neither Morén's voice nor the samey folkie backing here are strong enough to add interest to the clumsy rhymes and lackluster tunes of songs like "Tell Me in Time". Same goes for the sparsely orchestrated "Missing Link": "I've found the missing link, the missing link/ No longer do I have to think, have to think." Morén's words and melodies were as big a part of the appeal of his songs on Writer's Block as was Björn Yttling's reverby production, so again, it's not as if Morén hasn't done stuff like this well before.
In fact, he even does it here. Only once, on the electric guitar-based "My Match". With a spaciousness that's the closest The Last Tycoon comes, sonically, to Writer's Block, Morén delivers the album's deftest hook-- "I can't say that I plead guilty of theft/ But I agree I've done you wrong"-- and backs it up with a plea to "trust me, I trust you", mirrored by weeping lead guitar. On the Cat Stevens-like piano confessional "Twisted", spiced up by Spanish guitar and güiro, Morén sings, "Don't overrate yourself/ It could have been someone else." I wouldn't go that far. But The Last Tycoon shows that although Morén may not suffer from writer's block, he'd be smart to withhold some of his output. A lot like the rest of us. | 2008-04-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2008-04-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Wichita / Quarterstick | April 9, 2008 | 5.4 | 32f1c9ce-7995-467e-82da-bae60d3a7aa9 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | null |
Sky Ferreira's new EP veers from effervescent synth pop to sleepy acoustic ballads and features songwriting and production collaborations with Shirley Manson, Cass McCombs, Jon Brion, and Dev Hynes. | Sky Ferreira's new EP veers from effervescent synth pop to sleepy acoustic ballads and features songwriting and production collaborations with Shirley Manson, Cass McCombs, Jon Brion, and Dev Hynes. | Sky Ferreira: Ghost EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17305-ghost/ | Ghost EP | Sky Ferreira's rise has been just short of meteoric: She teamed up with Miike Snow's Bloodshy & Avant after their brief window of crossover fame at the age of 15 and commissioned a track or so each from professionals like Swedish indie popper Marit Bergman and serial songwriter Ryan Tedder. There was some music shelved and some routine image trouble, but she scrabbled her way back to square two with the help of more professionals: Dev Hynes of Blood Orange and Shirley Manson of recently revived Garbage. Now her protostar is brighter than ever and she's earned one of the biggest cult hits of the year. On her new EP, Ghost, she's settled into several mutually exclusive styles of music. It's official: she's the year's next big latent potential.
None of this is entirely fair to Ferreira. It says a lot about both her talent and tenacity that she's even managed this much of a comeback when every major label and producer has a basement cluttered with the discarded half-debuts and dozens of demos that never even made it that far. It helps that she's got connections from before and during her industry time, and that they're easily spun into anecdotes (her mentor, Michael Jackson! Her partner in vodka-bottle scandal, Katy Perry!). It helps that all those singles, hits or not, gave her residual name recognition. It helps that she shows candor about it, on Twitter and to tastemakers. It helps that she's got her alt-fashion and modeling gigs-- ever more necessary as industry demands layer multi-platform experience and brand support on artists like tiered skirts. And it helps most of all that Ferreira's spent the years since her debut cultivating an impeccable, or at least impeccably marketable, sense of taste. She's called her upcoming album more of a collection of that taste than a statement of an album. And though she's spoken elsewhere about how developing artists aren't encouraged to curate those collections as often as inherit them from someone else's drawer, everything on Ghost sounds like something Ferreira does genuinely like.
What Ferreira likes, it seems, adds up to a veritable nostalgia feed. "Lost in My Bedroom" burbles over with details, sounding as if Ferreira's actually lost in about 10 synthpop songs playing at once, three of which came from John Hughes movies and two of which are "Dancing on My Own". Her voice disappears into the mix as if she's disappearing into a one-girl, mattress-jumping dance party, and as soundtracks to those go, this is as gleeful as any. Earlier on, Jon Brion assists with "Sad Dream", which flitters from the mundane ("I hear your call and I let my phone ring.../ I listen to the stereo play") to the mythologizing ("I live by my own laws, I stick to my guns"), from calypso to folk, from the warbled vocals of certain Brion acolytes to the more petulant, wailing sort. It never quite lands on a chorus, but it never quite needs to; the hesitation fits the subject matter. The same can't be said, alas, of "Ghost", Ferreira's alt-country track. The songwriting's evocative enough, and Ferreira emotes with enough stirrings of yearnings, but they sound more aspirational than heartbroken. She's crying out for someone, but not as loudly as the track cries out for its Emmylou Harris.
Nobody's asking Ferreira to be an alt-country singer, though. She fares better and sounds far more comfortable on tracks like the Manson-penned "Red Lips". It's essentially a Garbage B-side shorn of a pre-chorus, and it wears its concept as brightly as its colors, but Ferreira sells it with a distant, almost tossed-off vocal. There's distance in Hynes' "Everything Is Embarrassing", too, but a different sort. Where "Red Lips" is haughty, this is sullen; where Ferreira snarls out the former's chorus, "Embarrassing" sees her really dancing on her own, her melody too plaintive, her vocals too understated, and the beats too hazy to register much beyond resignation. It's not a come-on, as some have written, nor is it the anthem it's clearly trying to become (and that the inexplicable overproduction on the Ghost re-recording seems to try to make it). It's a gift to everyone more apt to mumble "I wouldn't bother" than attempt a diva kiss-off, and it oozes relatability, which may be her greatest strength.
Ghost demonstrates well enough Ferreira's versatility, certainly her stylishness, but even more than those, it shows her empathy. At this point, she could probably carry an album on any one of those three, but it's probably not a coincidence that of her myriad, varied singles, she was granted her first true breakout from the latter, from a human-sized dance song. It probably won't be a coincidence either if that's the trait to grant her staying power. | 2012-10-19T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-10-19T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Rock | Capitol | October 19, 2012 | 7 | 32f56d7c-a5bd-4a08-8ea3-3cdf638763ef | Katherine St. Asaph | https://pitchfork.com/staff/katherine-st. asaph/ | null |
Guitar/drums band from Vancouver makes terminally catchy music played with punk's enthusiasm and velocity that makes you feel like joining in to bash along. | Guitar/drums band from Vancouver makes terminally catchy music played with punk's enthusiasm and velocity that makes you feel like joining in to bash along. | Japandroids: Post-Nothing | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12965-post-nothing/ | Post-Nothing | Disliking teen-pop gets you cast as some sort of rockist Luddite these days, but beyond the fact that most of it doesn't sound like stuff I'd have wanted to hear as a high schooler, it doesn't feel like music for teens either. (Hell, it's more tween-pop than teen-pop anyway.) But what about the kind of stuff that, say, the "1979" video lionized-- breaking into your folks' liquor cabinet, obliterating the speed limit despite just getting your learner's permit, leaving your hometown for the first time and discovering how small it feels. What about jamming out with your best bud and deciding to call it a band?
These are the kind of gut-level concerns Post-Nothing trades in, and I know, on paper it describes an itch that a late-1990s Vagrant record could scratch. And combined with the fact that the band is called freakin' Japandroids, it's easy to not take it seriously. Which is fine, since Japandroids do not make particularly complex music: Brian King plays broad chords stewed in mid-90s fuzz (think Superchunk) while David Prowse splays spastic but never showy drum fills that beg to be pounded out on your steering wheel. There's maybe one overdub on the whole thing and occasionally, both of them yell at the same time. Several songs have less than five lines. And while they've been known to cover Mclusky's "To Hell With Good Intentions" live, what makes Post-Nothing such a blast is how Japandroids tend to embody the opposite sentiment of that song title. This is terminally catchy music played with punk's enthusiasm and velocity, and maybe it's the fact that there's only two dudes in this band that makes you feel like joining in to bash along. It's as fun as an ill-gotten sixpack and there really aren't too many bands doing stuff like this well anymore.
Recent trends, however, might make you think otherwise: Due to their two-man setup and no-frills recording, Japandroids risk being lumped into the increasingly tiresome no-fi/noise-pop scene that finds bands using distortion to tear through the fabric of the medium and, in some cases, drown out weak songs. Either way, there's some form of obfuscation, but what makes Post-Nothing such a thrill is the manner in which Japandroids hold absolutely nothing back. As contagious as any of the lyrics, melodies, riffs, or drum fills are, their energy and lack of self-consciousness is every bit as equally lovable. Opening mission statement "The Boys Are Leaving Town" could be seen as a goof on Thin Lizzy, but the response, "Will we find our way back home?", is delivered with such conviction that between those two lines, "Boys" displays a palpable desperation. Six tracks later, the question is still unresolved-- amidst the cyclical thrum of "Sovereignty", they observe: "It's raining, OH-OH! in Vancouver/ But I don't give a fuck/ 'Cause I'm far from home tonight."
So yeah, it's a record about distance. For the most part it's a record about the distance between themselves and girls. Too often, similar records find themselves lapsing into easy misogyny, and while "Heart Sweats" skirts the issue, the in-jokes are kinda duds. Nonetheless, its thick riff is a good introduction to the less excitable but still very exciting side B. "Crazy/Forever" is heaving stoner rock (think Black Mountain with hooks), and closer "I Quit Girls" is about as close to a power ballad as Japandroids will allow themselves. It's full of musical drama-- King reaches for falsetto amidst almost-synthetic guitar EQ'ing and it's the longest stretch of time with no drumming, but the whole thing is leavened by a tongue-in-cheek pledge of devotion from Rowse: "After her, I quit girls."
The distance is emotional as well as physical on "Wet Hair", and I'll be surprised if I play another song in 2009 as much as this one. Its structure is almost comically linear-- there's three lines in the whole thing, and the most ridiculous one gets repeated for nearly half of its three minutes, something about going to France to French kiss some French girls. There's hardly even a verse-chorus structure, just a single melody that repeats itself faster after the drums drop out. But it's one hell of a melody, and it's lyric, like much of Post-Nothing, doesn't need to be analyzed or even understood to be felt.
Where it all comes together best is "Young Hearts Spark Fire". Almost a flipside to LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends", it's thematically similar, trading wistful reminiscence for drunken defiance and pulsing electro for chaotic garage rock. The five minutes go by in a blur, and amidst the guitar heroics and cymbal-bashing, King lets his guard down on Post-Nothing's key line-- "We used to dream/ Now we worry about dying/ I don't want to worry about dying." It would be so easy to view this sort of musical and lyrical directness with suspicion, but "Young Hearts" is life-affirming stuff-- if only it affirms that, even in these times, life doesn't need to be as complicated as we tend to make it. | 2009-04-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2009-04-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Unfamiliar | April 27, 2009 | 8.3 | 32fda147-97ff-462c-897b-316b51bd870c | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
After years of Drake-wave and clones like Bryson Tiller and PARTYNEXTDOOR beating the sound into the ground, it’s hard to have patience for another moody, emotionally distant piece of one-note R&B dystopia. Canadian rapper/singer Tory Lanez, who scored a bit hit last year with "Say It," continues in this vein and shows flashes of promise when he leans on his singing. | After years of Drake-wave and clones like Bryson Tiller and PARTYNEXTDOOR beating the sound into the ground, it’s hard to have patience for another moody, emotionally distant piece of one-note R&B dystopia. Canadian rapper/singer Tory Lanez, who scored a bit hit last year with "Say It," continues in this vein and shows flashes of promise when he leans on his singing. | Tory Lanez: The New Toronto / Chixtape 3 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21457-the-new-toronto-chixtape-3/ | The New Toronto / Chixtape 3 | Somewhere inside of Tory Lanez’ identity crisis, a good artist waits to emerge.Born Daystar Peterson, the Canadian-born rapper/singer released his first mixtape in 2009 but only recently gained visibility with his current single "Say It," the Brownstone-sampling single that has rounded the corner on 35 million YouTube views. In the same vein as "Say It," his new mixtapes Chixtape 3 and The New Toronto offer a combination of R&B’s current, dreary "New Jack Sleaze" sound (of which Ty Dolla $ign is the current mayor) and obvious nostalgia bait (particularly of the '90s). In both, you can hear the wheels and gears of a talented individual trying to shape himself into something more consumable and familiar to general audiences as though he’s simply another manifestation of a record company business meeting.
Chixtape 3 loosely acts as a concept tape about Lanez’ girlfriend, Jalissa, and his newfound infatuation with her best friend Keisha. It’s a showcase for Tory Lanez the singer, something he’s very good at doing. The problem is he doesn’t actually have anything to say. After years of Drake-wave and clones like Bryson Tiller and PARTYNEXTDOOR beating the sound into the ground, it’s hard to have patience for another moody, emotionally distant piece of one-note R&B dystopia. The brightest moment on Chixtape is "Juvenile (Freestyle)," in which Lanez rap-sings over Juvenile’s "Slow Motion." Nothing particularly interesting is being said, ("Shorty when we meet, gotta fuck for real/ Took the TTC just to get the whole meal/ And we used to fuck, girl it was so trill/ You remind me of Monica, you was so real") but he sells you on it anyways, riding the instrumental with a quivering, confident sing-song. It’s infectious, even as you become aware of the dullness and grossness of the lyrics.
About those lyrics: Lanez has a disturbing tendency to conflate lines that surpass aggression and tip into assault ("Now shawty I'mma take it, if you don’t give it to me," from "Juvenile (Freestyle)") with "swagger." Aggressively dehumanizing women even while serenading them is nothing new in rap or R&B: The Weeknd and Ty Dolla $ign, arguably the new gold standards in the current sound Tory Lanez is chasing, have been just as crude and disrespectful. But Lanez doesn’t have half their talent to make you forgive him. His star power, such as it is, shines in sparks that can barely carry your typical mixtape, much less one with such uncomfortable lyrics.
The best moments on either tape come when he chooses to sing: He seems the most comfortable on songs like "Them Days," off New Toronto, when he kicks back into crooning about sex with ex-girls rather than the damaged-puppy rapping he spends so much of the tape committed to. It makes you wonder why he doesn’t just commit to that aspect fully. Also, for a Gangsta Grillz tape, DJ Drama makes no impression. Most of the time, you completely forget that he’s there; none of his usual overbearing bombast and record rewinds show up over the tracks, making you wonder whether the fanfare is an extra fee rappers need to pay for.
Despite all this, Tory Lanez does have a buzz going, and it feels like a missed opportunity that neither of these tapes offer anything more than reconstructed pieces of what’s already popular. Lanez has a great voice that appears in glimmers; on "Say It," his voice is full of vulnerability and a confidence that allows him to stay afloat the easily-recognizable Brownstone sample instead of drowning in it. The New Toronto closer "Letter to the City" is stripped of the theatrics and eager need to impress radio, and exhibits a competent rapper trying to be heard living in a city increasingly being crafted into a hub of Drake impersonators. Competency may seem like a low bar, but for now, it’s the best thing going for an artist with a lovely voice and absolutely nothing to say. | 2016-01-21T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2016-01-21T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Rap / Pop/R&B | null | January 21, 2016 | 3.9 | 3308956e-1f0f-4fc7-9e0a-e7a471875f24 | Israel Daramola | https://pitchfork.com/staff/israel-daramola/ | null |
The debut from versatile Compton rapper offers a perspective that is close enough to suffer turbulence but removed enough to avoid succumbing to it. | The debut from versatile Compton rapper offers a perspective that is close enough to suffer turbulence but removed enough to avoid succumbing to it. | Buddy: Harlan & Alondra | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/buddy-harlan-and-alondra/ | Harlan & Alondra | When Buddy first moved out of his parents’ house in Compton, he landed at an apartment in Santa Monica at the corner of Ocean and Montana. The intersection inspired the title of the collaborative EP he released with producer Kaytranada last year—five tracks as warm and breezy as their beachside namesake. For some, that was their introduction to the singer-rapper, but it was picking up in medias res. Buddy’s story really begins at Harlan and Alondra, the cross streets of his childhood home and, now, his debut album.
Harlan & Alondra positions Buddy as a tour guide whose depiction of Los Angeles is as much marked by the city’s rich political and musical history as it is his own personal experiences. We learn of his triumphs and his losses, his ambitions and his politics. (It takes less than three minutes for him to hurl his own “fuck Donald Trump.”) But unlike many of his more prominent regional peers, he’s no street rapper; his perspective is largely that of a bystander, close enough to suffer the turbulence but removed enough to avoid succumbing to it.
On the charged lead single “Black,” he comes alive, replacing his normally laid-back glide with a blistering flow. It’s one of the few songs where he seems truly fired up. More often though, listening to Buddy is like hearing an old soul trapped in a young body. There’s wisdom underscoring his lyrics and classic elements in his production choices. He summons the ghost of Nate Dogg on the hydraulic “Trouble on Central,” exaggerating the contrast between the easygoing rhythm of G-funk and the suffocating reality of poverty. Elsewhere, the funky bass groove of “The Blue” draws to mind old heads in roller skating rinks, a love song hidden among Buddy’s ambitions. Snoop Dogg’s apt but brief appearance bridges the gap between the way the elder rapper smoothed the edges of West Coast hip-hop nearly three decades ago and the way younger continues that tradition. “Speechless,” which immediately follows, is a fitting counterpart. Buddy blends seductive soul with raunchy rap come-ons.
At a time when such an attribute almost seems like a requirement that’s overdone, seamlessly slipping between singing and rapping is still one of Buddy’s strongest assets. His good vibe music is rooted in a deeper and more spiritual place, so when he does break out his silken vocals or dip in and out of melody, it sticks just a little more. Even sharing a track with current it-man Ty Dolla $ign on the mellow celebration of “Hey Up There,” he’s able to hold his own. Conversely, when he leans into rapping, he achieves an emotive style of delivery that injects his words with extra resonance.
Still, Buddy is at his best when he lets himself be carefree. The Khalid-assisted “Trippin” allows a slippery sort of levity much like the drug-induced highs it portrays. The 2016 earworm “Shine” also makes an appearance at the end of the album, all lighthearted aspiration and resilient optimism. But “Find Me 2” settles in like the album’s true closing piece. Over the haze of minimalist production and blunt smoke, he reminisces about how far he’s come—a journey that started with him signing a largely fruitless deal with Pharrell in 2011—and looks towards a hopeful future. In these final moments, a sense of gratitude relieves the album of its own tension. Pensive but at peace, Buddy offers an exhale: “Lord willin’ we won’t die tonight/We gon’ fly tonight,” he croons, concluding to walk by faith and not by sight.
As the West Coast continues its rap renaissance—led by the likes of rap prophet Kendrick Lamar, energetic quartet SOB x RBE, gritty rhymer Mozzy and the tragic darling 03 Greedo—Buddy emerges as one of the region’s most versatile artists. Like a bluesman who still believes things get better, he offsets their often weighty revelations masked in revelry with something that feels more soothing. Part conversation and part confessional, Harlan & Alondra is an alternative take on one of pop culture’s most fabled cities. Buddy drops the top and extends an invitation to ride with him, reminding us along the way that though it may not always be sunny by the beach, it’s always worthwhile. | 2018-07-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-07-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | RCA | July 23, 2018 | 7.4 | 330a3bc7-11a2-4a4f-8302-f9625db57999 | Briana Younger | https://pitchfork.com/staff/briana-younger/ | |
With pedal steel, synthesizer, and a whisper of voice, Marielle Jakobsons and Chuck Johnson create rippling soundscapes as soothing and engulfing as a warm bath. | With pedal steel, synthesizer, and a whisper of voice, Marielle Jakobsons and Chuck Johnson create rippling soundscapes as soothing and engulfing as a warm bath. | Saariselka: The Ground Our Sky | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/saariselka-the-ground-our-sky/ | The Ground Our Sky | From the mystic power of a sound bath to the biological comfort of a cat’s purr, humans have long recognized that sound affects the entire body. The late composer Pauline Oliveros called it deep listening: a practice in which listeners to engage with sound by surrendering to it completely. Among her students were Oakland’s Chuck Johnson and Marielle Jakobsons. Johnson issued Balsams, an ambient pedal-steel album inspired by his own deep-listening practices, in 2017; Jakobsons co-founded California instrumental duo Date Palms, whose 2013 album The Dusted Sessions was a masterwork of hazy desert psychedelia. As Saariselka, the pair create rippling soundscapes as soothing and engulfing as a warm bath.
Though the duo’s stated intention for The Ground Our Sky was to encourage a return to the earth, Jakobson’s sparkly keys and Johnson’s honeyed pedal steel sound as though they’re meeting in mid-air. From shared low-end foundations, they gently peel off and curve around one another. “Horizons” opens the album on a bed of fuzzy keys and synths, gradually stretching outward as Johnson’s steel-string tendrils curl around Jakobsons’ melody. Johnson carries the beginning of “Into the Wind” with a three-note repetition that rolls with the asymmetry of an unhurried tumbleweed. Jakobsons’ voice arrives somewhere between a hum and a whisper, fluttering like a transmission from beyond.
In the modern era, “frictionless” is often a euphemism for wringing humanity out of everyday interactions—an autoplay function instead of a live DJ, or an online food order instead of a phone call with a stranger. But Jakobsons and Johnson use their lithe maneuvers to build a space that feels restorative. Their compositions are without both friction and the uncanny-valley gloss that can accompany its absence.
Saariselka’s most gorgeous composition is the resonant “Neochrome,” which best demonstrates how Johnson and Jakobsons mutually amplify each other’s talents. Jakobsons initiates the piece with the cool vibrance of a Rhodes keyboard, and the song builds slowly from there, overlapping layers appearing and dissolving seamlessly. Their tonal kinship sometimes makes it difficult to find where her contributions end and his begin. “Neochrome” stretches for nearly eight minutes, and yet it fades too fast.
Saariselka’s entry into the canon of music geared toward deep listening is modest, barely eclipsing the 40-minute mark. But their careful pace and refusal to succumb to instant gratification is a tonic against chaos, a reminder that otherworldly idylls exist within terrestrial grasp. The Ground Our Sky encourages sensuality in the most literal sense: an awareness of one’s senses and taking deliberate pleasure in them.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-01-03T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-01-03T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Temporary Residence Ltd. | January 3, 2020 | 7.7 | 330c7951-5ab1-4232-922c-78e47bdc1223 | Allison Hussey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/allison-hussey/ | |
Their latest album aims for life-or-death melodrama, but amid the layered arrangements and slick songwriting, Ra Ra Riot seem to once again have lost their sense of identity. | Their latest album aims for life-or-death melodrama, but amid the layered arrangements and slick songwriting, Ra Ra Riot seem to once again have lost their sense of identity. | Ra Ra Riot: Superbloom | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ra-ra-riot-superbloom/ | Superbloom | Ra Ra Riot are perhaps doomed to permanent association with a certain crop of verbose, precocious pop-rock acts, dating to around the time of their unofficial debut at the 2006 CMJ festival. But few of their peers have had Ra Ra Riot’s longevity—last year, the band toured in honor of the 10th anniversary of their debut LP—and over the past decade, they’ve explored electronic sounds and more ambitious production techniques, to mixed results. On 2016’s Need Your Light, they seemed to finally strike a balance between Beta Love’s outlandish synth pop and The Orchard’s overwrought orchestration. The band enlisted a litany of producers and writing collaborators for their latest album, Superbloom, but amid the layered arrangements and slick songwriting, Ra Ra Riot seem to once again have lost their sense of identity.
Named for a botanical phenomenon that produces an abundance of wildflowers, Superbloom is awash in bright excess. Heavily reverbed backing vocals and larger-than-life synth lines provide enough flourishes to drown out any attempt at restraint. “Belladonna” begins innocently enough, with Rebecca Zeller’s staccato strings and a buzz of handclaps and kick drums. But the chorus drops any pretense of subtlety, introducing a rollicking bassline, a stack of backing synths, and a chorale of “ohs” befitting of a “We Are the World” cover. It feels unwarranted, even before the Japanese spoken-word interlude. “Bitter Conversation,” the first side’s other biggest attraction, opens with a faux radio-dial effect and crashes into a chorus of DayGlo synths. In a song already crammed with ornamentation, even a little extra Auto-Tune is enough to be exhausting.
But Ra Ra Riot can’t commit to their dance-pop tendencies, either. The band recorded Superbloom in multiple sessions on opposite coasts, and the record struggles to bridge the differences. Songs recorded in Los Angeles with frequent collaborator Rostam Batmanglij tend towards a kind of weightless decadence. But tracks recorded in frontman Wes Miles’ childhood home in New Jersey take on an almost self-consciously gritty streak. “Endless Pain/Endless Joy,” a claustrophobic punk number that morbidly puts Miles “at the Sandman’s door,” is full of crunchy riffs and screams. After three tracks that rival the Cinematic Orchestra in their instrumental overload, it feels like whiplash.
According to Miles, Superbloom represents an East Coast band’s vision of California. Its lyrics, crafted with a legion of co-writers boasting impressive pop CVs, are starry-eyed Hollywood clichés: beautiful women on Italian motorcycles, working-class love affairs, dramatic scenes of lovers driving off into the night. They aim for the life-or-death melodrama of Lana Del Rey (Superbloom co-writer Dean Reid worked on several songs on Lust for Life), then collapse into platitudes (“love is blind”) or pleas to “make love.” Even Miles’ lithe falsetto cannot conjure the necessary theatrics.
Despite—or perhaps because of—its tightly wound riffs and booming drumline, closer “A Check for Daniel” finally finds a comfortable fit. Driven by distorted guitar and a frantic vocal, it recalls the eagerness and excitement that distinguished Ra Ra Riot when they first appeared. It’s a welcome jolt of anxious energy, evidence that the band need not sacrifice authenticity for enthusiasm.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-08-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-08-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Caroline / Rob the Rich | August 12, 2019 | 5.2 | 330cc738-ea8e-4cbb-969c-3acfc48b1ba2 | Arielle Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/arielle-gordon/ | |
This revelatory and confrontational live album centers around Angel Bat Dawid’s prowess as a bandleader. With her eclectic band, it is a brilliant document of how free jazz functions as both exploration and exorcism. | This revelatory and confrontational live album centers around Angel Bat Dawid’s prowess as a bandleader. With her eclectic band, it is a brilliant document of how free jazz functions as both exploration and exorcism. | Angel Bat Dawid / Tha Brothahood: LIVE | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/angel-bat-dawid-tha-brothahood-live/ | LIVE | It first sounds like a straightforward request for the soundman, but soon becomes more like a plea for salvation. “Turn brother Julian up. That bass gotta hit,” urges Angel Bat Dawid early in her new album LIVE, a document of a concert she and her band Tha Brothahood gave during JazzFest Berlin in November 2019. “Turn it up! Turn that shit up!” she continues, her voice quickly reaching the edge of frenzy, as if she is a wanderer in the desert and the prospect of more low end is an oasis on the horizon.
Her cries join the rhythmic stream of syllables she’s been using to introduce the tune, a radical reimagining of “Black Family,” from her 2019 debut album The Oracle. “Black, Black,” she repeats, sometimes truncating the word to emphasize its percussive quality, sometimes letting it flow like palilalia, sometimes adding a long rolled “r,” like a rapper imitating the sound of automatic gunfire. When she begins adding “Up, up,”—as in “Turn up the bass,” and maybe also “up with Black families”—her apparent outburst takes on a different color, as another element in a melange that posits togetherness and music as salves for Black pain. You might wonder: was the mix really off, or was the whole episode intentional, somehow a part of the composition? Could both things be true?
A clarinetist, vocalist, composer, and keyboardist rooted in Chicago’s jazz scene, Dawid introduced herself on The Oracle as an idiosyncratic auteur. She composed, performed, recorded, and mixed the album almost entirely by herself, layering instruments and voices on a multitracking smartphone app. The Oracle’s hermetic quality was a part of its appeal, but Dawid’s vision was always more communal and participatory. In a 2019 interview with the Chicago Reader, she said she’d originally considered the solo tracks to be something like demos for the Brothahood to learn and perform with her, “But the recordings actually sounded kinda good,” so she released them that way.
LIVE is something like a manifestation of that initial vision, using her compositions as vehicles for ecstatic group improvisation, featuring a sundry ensemble of multi-instrumentalists and singers. It features plenty of the bracing instrumental work you might expect from a free jazz album, but also seems intent on capturing the full expressive range of the human voice. Dawid and Brothahood members Deacon Otis Cooke and Viktor Le Givens deliver gorgeous and fractured singing, chilly sci-fi vocoder chants, impassioned monologues, playful free associations. Often, a tune begins with a phrase repeated like a mantra, which they gradually break down and rebuild into dazzling new rhythms, the way an instrumentalist might construct a solo by twisting and reshaping small fragments of the written melody. On “The Wicked Shall Not Prevail,” all three improvise vocals in tandem across a polyrhythmic bed of percussion and electronics, which Dawid occasionally augments with pointillistic clarinet melody and shards of dissonant electric piano. It is an overwhelming display of musical and verbal invention.
Across LIVE, Dawid explodes the boundaries of her role as jazz bandleader, turning it into a suggestive and multivalent kind of performance art. She frequently implicates her audience along the way—sometimes as co-conspirators, other times as antagonists. The studio version of “Black Family” is almost mechanistic, with looped drums and throbbing sub-bass; on LIVE, it is lithe and funky, with exuberant soloing over an ominous two-chord vamp. In its stunning final minutes, Dawid entreats her listeners to join her in delivering the refrain: “The Black family is the strongest institution in the world.” The rhythm section gathers force, but the German crowd evidently declines to oblige Dawid. Again, a cliche of live concerts and recordings—the cathartic audience singalong—is suddenly fraught with racial and political implication, conflicts Dawid makes inextricable from the music itself. She shouts, admonishes, demands, preaches, begs, even seems to weep: “It will really help my people. It’s so simple, y’all. Can you just say it with me?” Two minutes later, she sounds drained of all energy as the band churns on behind her: “What’s wrong with me? You don’t love me. You don’t love my family. We need you to affirm us.”
At moments like these, Dawid seems to take the unchained improvisation of free jazz as a guide for all aspects of her performance, turning seemingly extraneous details—like stage banter, or instructions for the soundman—into vital components of her art. (One thing LIVE doesn’t capture is the visual element: witness an incendiary early 2020 performance of “Black Family,” captured on video, in which Dawid slams her electric piano keyboard with open palms, gets up and headbangs, and crouches on the floor in front of audience members, clarinet held high in her raised fist.)
In her conception of a jazz concert as a vividly multisensory experience, her ensemble’s ragtag instrumental eclecticism, her defiance of stylistic orthodoxies, and her emphasis on the group dynamic over individual solos, Dawid is clearly in the lineage of Sun Ra, as well as the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the seminal out-jazz organization formed in her hometown in the 1960s. (She pays tribute to both with “We Hearby Declare The African Look,” an Afrofuturstic mashup of quotes from Ra and AACM affiliate Phil Cohran; Adam Zanolini, who plays bass and several other instruments in the Brothahood, is the AACM’s current treasurer.) Her multi-instrumental excursions and streams of dialogue with the audience can recall Rashaan Roland Kirk, and her use of her voice as a free improvisational instrument sometimes reminds me of Linda Sharrock. But her particular alchemy of these elements, and her ability to transmute everything that happens onstage into music, are blazingly original.
Dawid frames LIVE with two arresting field recordings taken in Berlin before the concert. The intro documents a confrontation between the artist and a hotel employee who’d told her to stop playing a piano that was on display in the lobby. The final track is a collage of remarks Dawid made on a JazzFest panel on the afternoon of the concert, in which she expounds on anti-Black racism in the world of European jazz festivals and more generally. In a note accompanying the album on Bandcamp, Dawid writes of several racist incidents she experienced while in the city, and the pain and exhaustion in her voice in these recordings are viscerally palpable.
She has said that she was “protesting” the festival and the audience during the concert, and the music of LIVE is often densely confrontational. But it is also tender, and full of solidarity. A 14-minute rendition of the Oracle highlight “We Are Starzz” accompanies its elegiac melody with sampled birdsong and exploratory leads from Dawid’s clarinet and Xristian Espinoza’s tenor sax. As it winds down, Dawid again addresses the crowd, sounding more conciliatory than she did during “Black Family,” but no less urgent: “Hold on to this memory right now. Seal it in your heart. We have an agreement, alright? This is called unity. This is what it feels like to be unified.”
“I’m a black woman—there’s no turning that off,” Dawid told a Guardian interviewer last year. “I look at the totality of the black experience. I don’t see my sister who has a crack addiction for 40 years as not being successful. Because of the lineage she’s coming from, this is the best she can do. When you’re black, being alive is a success.” Dawid’s use of the stage as a pulpit on LIVE makes it difficult by design for a white listener to simply lose themselves in the music, forcing us to confront racism and its effects in every note. To Black listeners, perhaps, Dawid offers another message, embedded in the title, not as a descriptor but an imperative: live.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-11-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-11-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Jazz | International Anthem | November 9, 2020 | 8.4 | 33124585-8bc8-480f-bb30-1a3a73e0dcd2 | Andy Cush | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-cush/ | |
Denmark’s DJ Sports makes experimental dance music with a hazy patina and a healthy appreciation for the 1990s. His new album is among the dreamiest, most heartfelt dance music this year. | Denmark’s DJ Sports makes experimental dance music with a hazy patina and a healthy appreciation for the 1990s. His new album is among the dreamiest, most heartfelt dance music this year. | DJ Sports: Modern Species | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dj-sports-modern-species/ | Modern Species | Like a lot of artists in underground dance music right now, Aarhus, Denmark’s 11-person Regelbau collective are happy to keep things mysterious. Their releases, spread across a handful of artist-run labels including Regelbau, Help Recordings, No Hands, and PARTNERS, are mostly available only on vinyl or cassette, although a few titles have also turned up digitally on Bandcamp. You won’t find their releases on Spotify, which is to say that they’re also happy to keep things intimate: They helpfully sell directly to customers via their in-house distribution arm, SAFE Distribution—a mom-and-pop operation whose rudimentary website feels like the modern equivalent of buying punk 7”s out of Xeroxed mail-order catalogs back in the ’90s.
At first, the collective’s identity overshadowed its individual members, but over the past couple of years, two artists have steadily distinguished themselves: DJ Sports, aka Milán Zaks, and Central, Milan’s brother Natal. DJ Sports’ debut album, Modern Species, might represent a breakout moment for the Aarhus scene, coming as it does via Firecracker Recordings, an Edinburgh label with a marginally higher profile than the brothers’ clandestine network. (You can find its releases on Spotify, for one thing.) Like his colleagues, Sports makes experimental dance music with a hazy patina and a healthy appreciation for the 1990s. Despite what his deadpan alias might suggest, though, there’s nothing particularly ironic about his retro fixation. Harnessing club tropes for home-listening contexts, Modern Species is among the dreamiest, most heartfelt dance music this year.
Much of DJ Sports’ previous work has been suffused in tape hiss, but there’s nothing outwardly lo-fi about his debut album, which looks back at a moment when innovations in digital technology were bringing wild new rhythms and unprecedented polish to electronic music. Some of his influences are unexpected, if not downright unfashionable. The opening “World A” is a rolling drum ‘n’ bass cut whose ethereal synthesizers and coolly ecstatic vocal samples bring to mind LTJ Bukem, long one of jungle’s smoothest operators, and “For Real For You” returns to the breakbeats-on-cloud-nine vibe. This isn’t the first time Sports has delved into drum ’n’ bass; much of last year’s Phases of Winds cassette also took inspiration from the intersection of breakbeat science and IDM. What’s different this time out is how unabashedly he goes after a billowy, new age vibe: The last time you heard synths as luminous as the ones in “World A,” there were probably dolphins and underwater pyramids on the sleeve. Instead of using the same oft-rinsed breakbeats as classic drum ‘n’ bass, though, Sports is crafting his own rhythms from scratch out of a motley collection of percussion samples and drum-machine hits, giving his grooves a wonky quality you won’t find elsewhere.
The album’s house tracks have a similar aesthetic. “Fertile Crescent” features shuffling drum programming, flickering synths, and a hint of a breakbeat in the background; the whole thing twinkles like a field full of fireflies. Its palette is descended from acts like 808 State, and its wistful qualities aren’t too far off from the clubbier output of Kettenkarussell and the Giegling crew. “Parallax,” meanwhile, harks back to the frictionless glide of West Coast deep house from the ‘90s, with a silky, sax-like synth lead fluttering gently over a quick-stepping groove with lots of toms and tambourine; the slowly unfurling pads sound like new age with a jazz pedigree.
The rest of the album explores a diverse range of beats and tempos, all of it rendered with the same sumptuous sound design and playful drum programming. The eight-minute long “Ascension” is a dubby, meditative deep house jam whose percussive accents slap like raindrops on the surface of a lake; even more Balearic in vibe, the downbeat “Stellar Clusters” sounds a little like Shy Layers remixing Nassau studio wiz Wally Badarou, with rolling hand percussion dotted across glassy synths and a patient arpeggio that gives the track the air of walking contentedly in circles. Both “Entry Mode” and the closing “Reluctant Memory” evoke the intricate rhythms and shimmering synths of Plaid, Sun Electric, or Mouse on Mars—‘90s-rooted acts that all invented their own respective fusions of techno, ambient, and breakbeat. “Reluctant Memory,” suffused in burbling electronic tones and synthetic bird calls, is particularly striking: Lush rainforest techno at its most sumptuous, it's a reminder of the world-building sense of place that was inherent in the most adventurous electronic music of the '90s. With that experimental spirit finally creeping back into dance music, Modern Species feels like a long-overdue passing of the baton. | 2017-06-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-06-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Firecracker | June 15, 2017 | 7.8 | 331567f8-c738-4cf2-8269-5eef00620057 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
Featuring guest spots from Kendrick Lamar, RZA, and A$AP Rocky as well as Father John Misty and Michael Bolton, Kid Cudi's 70-minute third album Indicud has all the sheen of a cinematic event, but no substance. | Featuring guest spots from Kendrick Lamar, RZA, and A$AP Rocky as well as Father John Misty and Michael Bolton, Kid Cudi's 70-minute third album Indicud has all the sheen of a cinematic event, but no substance. | Kid Cudi: Indicud | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17925-kid-cudi-indicud/ | Indicud | Kid Cudi's an undeniably popular rapper. Though his 2009 debut Man on the Moon and its slightly better sequel weren't exactly critical darlings, he’s been a reliable Soundscan dent-maker and the type of figure that easily inspires 379-page threads on message board and hype thermometer KanyeToThe. And even if Cudi rarely lines it all up, his ability's evident: The music's production, which is for the most part self-generated, is usually interesting, and his fuck-the-world posturing resonates with a certain angsty personality type. When he finds the right balance-- Man on the Moon II’s “Ghost!” is the best example-- it can add up to an effective cocktail of blurred anguish. Three years after the overstuffed Man on the Moon II and several outside dalliances-- the rock/rap sideproject WZRD, a small role in HBO’s cancelled "Entourage" spin-off "How to Make it in America"-- Cudi’s back with Indicud, which aims for a little bit of everything: It's an 18-song collection that features guests from the indie rock world (HAIM, Father John Misty) as well as new-school demigods Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky. And Michael Bolton.
Factoring in all of that, Indicud has the sheen of a cinematic blockbuster. At 70 minutes, it certainly has cinematic length, too: "Guess I'm just a star of my movie," Cudi thinks aloud on "Mad Solar". Unfortunately, it also has no substance. From the first notes of the melodramatic opening instrumental "The Resurrection of Scott Mescudi", it's pretty easy to size up where Cudi's head is at these days, thanks to serrated, booming production underscored by a heartbeat-like drum lurch. It's ominous but hollow stuff. Ever prone to grandiose proclamations, Cudi wastes no time on Indicud; "You know I'm unfuckwittable!" he belts, his chest fully puffed. He's certainly putting his money where his mouth is, but to ill effect; though A$AP Rocky and Kendrick drop by, they do just enough to collect the paycheck and hit the door. Old heads RZA and Too $hort roll through and check in and out just as unremarkably. Nothing sticks. From the outset, he's more concerned with the soundscape shrapnel left over from WZRD than he is with synthesizers, a tool with which he's more effective.
For someone who's attained such a following, Cudi is remarkably unlikeable. Confessions like "Just What I Am"'s "In my spare time, punching walls, fucking up my hand/ I know that shit sound super cray, but if you had my life you’d understand" come off as humblebrags about just how tough it is to be famous. He seethes about being G.O.O.D. Music's "black sheep" and calls haters "pussies." Outside of the occasional nugget of calm-- the HAIM and Hit-Boy collab "Red Eye", maybe-- Indicud is one long, increasingly grating vent. And if rage isn't your thing, don't worry about sifting through Indicud's softer side, capped by the nine-minute slog "Afterwards (Bring Yo' Friends)". Fashioned as a late-night dance-party jam, it's built around sensationally off-putting come-hithers by soft rock titan Michael Bolton as well as Cudi's woozy synths kicking up dirt in the name of "atmosphere."
Long gone are the days of the spongy "Pursuit of Happiness" as well as the Trojan Horse that initially brought Kid Cudi through our gates, "Day 'n' Nite". "I look for peace, but see, I don't attain," he chanted on that song. Now, he's officially off Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music imprint-- it's amicable, Cudi insists, and he'll carry on with his own label, Wicked Awesome. Still, he looks for war in Indicud; he can't find anyone to fight, but he rages anyway. | 2013-05-09T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2013-05-09T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | G.O.O.D. Music | May 9, 2013 | 4 | 33157ae9-3940-41d3-b2dd-963ab0a49bc1 | Corban Goble | https://pitchfork.com/staff/corban-goble/ | null |
Eluvium's commanding new double LP was supposed to be the immediate successor to the drone artist's 2007 album Copia. Although there's been five years of mixed successes in between, it's Copia's contemporary at least in terms of quality, providing an alternately delicate and deluging take on Matthew Cooper's penchant for elegant piano and dreamy electronics. | Eluvium's commanding new double LP was supposed to be the immediate successor to the drone artist's 2007 album Copia. Although there's been five years of mixed successes in between, it's Copia's contemporary at least in terms of quality, providing an alternately delicate and deluging take on Matthew Cooper's penchant for elegant piano and dreamy electronics. | Eluvium: Nightmare Ending | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18000-eluvium-nightmare-ending/ | Nightmare Ending | Ambient music has plenty of stargazers, but not many stars. There are so many people working in subtly different but broadly similar styles, and so much of their music is less keen to develop the individual persona than to dissolve it in a universalist hum. One exception is Matthew Cooper, who has spent the past decade becoming a touchstone for contemporary indie ambient music. As Eluvium, Cooper has staked out an ambient brand that blends piano-playing in the styles of classical minimalism and French Impressionism with dreamy electronics and guitar drones derived from IDM and shoegaze. It should not diminish his talent as an arranger to hazard that his centralizing influence probably rests on his impulse for accessibility above intricacy. Cooper's music can be light or dark, vehement or mild, romantic or hopeless, but it is always shaped into emotionally lucid, easily habitable spaces.
Still, Cooper's stature is surprising when you consider that he hasn't released a great record since 2007. Copia was the highlight because it combined modes that were isolated on his prior releases-- from the Satie-like piano jingles of An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death to the grainy, radiant drones of Talk Amongst the Trees-- with expanded acoustic instrumentation, resulting in a majestic statement that sounded like the work of an artistic thinker rather than a fine technician of incidental sound. Copia at last meets its match in Nightmare Ending, Eluvium’s commanding new double LP. That it was supposed to be Copia's immediate successor might make you slap your forehead over Cooper's five years of mixed successes: the low-impact ambient techno of his Martin Eden alias, the tepid vocal-centric pop of Similes, and the dark, noisy Static Nocturne (the best of the bunch). But perhaps Cooper couldn't finish Nightmare Ending until he repeated the process that produced Copia, gathering new fuel for this bonfire of an album. The bided time pays off in what feels like a career-spanning best-of that happens to contain all new music.
Alternately delicate and deluging, the 80-plus minutes of music that compose Nightmare Ending are wrought together with a heft and thrust that banish the aftertaste of Cooper's most recent EPs, which collected leftover dregs from Similes. This tremendous collection holds electronics-encased piano themes (e.g. the breathtaking dawn of "Don’t Get Any Closer" and the Harold Budd-like "Covered in Writing"), rich orchestral fogs that recall Copia ("Warm"and "Unknown Variation"), and rhythmically roiling dark clouds resembling Static Nocturne ("By the Rails", "Envenom Mettle"). Elegant little solo piano compositions, insistent with nostalgic repetitions, periodically surface through the heavy drapings of texture and harmony, proving refreshing for it. Cooper even redeems the ambient pop that derailed him on Similes by roping in a ringer, Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan, to sing on the tender closer "Happiness".
Cooper reportedly first conceived of Nightmare Ending as "a way of helping loosen his self-imposed ideals of perfection," which provides a clue as to why the record makes such an impact. Cooper has never made anything terrible, but the greatest danger to which his music succumbs is to be too perfect, too placid and undisturbed, too perfunctorily lovely and sad. Nightmare Ending, on the other hand, is always bursting out through its own imperfections and impulsive gestures, with a wide emotional spectrum pumped full of fresh life from when Cooper returned to finish it years later. It's a long glorious exhalation of energies not actually dissipated, as it seemed for a while, but only multiplying in force under suppression. | 2013-05-30T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2013-05-30T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Electronic | Temporary Residence Ltd. | May 30, 2013 | 7.8 | 331b87a8-438e-44fa-bded-1b2598f268c2 | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | null |
The veteran DJ’s first solo EP confidently navigates a full spectrum of emotion, imbuing her tracks with a sense of wonder. | The veteran DJ’s first solo EP confidently navigates a full spectrum of emotion, imbuing her tracks with a sense of wonder. | Eris Drew: Fluids of Emotion | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/eris-drew-fluids-of-emotion/ | Fluids of Emotion | Sweat, saliva, tears—at peak time, the dancefloor brings all fluids to the fore. For Eris Drew, whose adolescence was soundtracked by the distinct mix of industrial, house, garage, and trance at mid-’90s Chicago raves, the scene behind the DJ booth is similarly visceral. As a primarily vinyl DJ, Drew leans into the physicality of mixing—dragging a record across the needle to scratch; pressing, with some force, to pitch-match tracks on the fly. Her ideal live setup involves decks stacked on top of cinder blocks. But for all her visceral performances, Drew speaks with effusive sensitivity about crying while mixing. To Drew, certain songs carry deep-seated traces of former lovers and past traumas. On Fluids of Emotion, the veteran DJ’s first solo EP, she confidently navigates that spectrum of sentiments, imbuing her tracks with a similar sense of wonder.
In a world of high-fidelity dance parties and listening bars, Drew stands defiantly against audiophile puritanism. To her, raving is about pushing one’s body past its healthy breaking point—“Every soundsystem that I heard in Chicago was made to crack you open,” she’s remarked. That raw intensity is evident from the first snare hit on the titular opening track. Powered by a shuffling breakbeat so taut it sounds like it might snap, “Fluids of Emotion” carries the tactile qualities of live mixing—the drums might cut out entirely for a four-count, leaving a bouncing synthesizer to hang in the air playfully, before an exaggerated scratch brings the drum record back in. By reproducing the patterns of turntablism—scratching, doubling, pitch manipulation—in the controlled environment of a recording studio, small imperfections become intentional. The track’s vocal sample—a flat, alien-like voice that names various reasons for crying (“joy...pain”)—vacillates between emotional extremes, further distancing Drew from traditional hierarchies of taste and restraint.
“Transcendental Access Point,” with its locomotive synths and snappy four-on-the-floor beat, initially plays things a bit closer to the vest. But then, just as the synthesizers begin to build to a crescendo, Drew removes the melody, and an extended spoken passage takes center stage. In a soft, even tone, ethnobotanist Kathleen Harris describes bearing witness to “a beautiful storm of harpsichord notes that were moving and dancing with an apparent individual and collective will.” We soon discover she’s under the influence of DMT; she tries the “pure substance” again in 1975, the year of Drew’s birth, nodding to the DJ’s belief in divine symbols and patterns. “You can choose to ignore the coincidences in your life, or you choose to let them give it meaning, kind of like dreams,” Drew has said, describing her almost devotional commitment to certain beliefs.
Drew’s work is informed by an interwoven series of faith systems, some self-generated and others more widely known. Her concept of a divine feminine rhythm called The Motherbeat stands at the center of her work; for Drew, this LSD-induced realization came to represent the healing qualities of music more broadly. She also espouses Discordianism, a belief in chaos as the guiding force of society. These ideas coalesce on the EP’s only B-side track, the slow-burning “So Much Love to Give.” With soaring Orbital synths, a deep, diva-esque vocal, and a wooden beat that seems ready to collapse on itself, the track is at once spacious and precarious.
In a vacuum, those heady dogmas might overshadow the understated elegance that Drew hones on Fluids of Emotion—seamlessly connecting genres like trance and jungle with a playfulness that speaks to her love for underground dance music and deep roots in the community. There’s no esoteric belief system required to appreciate a moment of unexpected brightness like the bird calls that close the album, evoking the euphoric exhaustion of leaving the club at dawn. Her aggressive style of mixing may alienate listeners accustomed to subtle fade-ins and precise beat-matching. But those comfortable with the sweaty, porous, chaotic nature of the rave will find moments of transcendence in its flaws. | 2020-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Interdimensional Transmissions | February 19, 2020 | 7.4 | 3320b8f5-69af-4f7a-abac-af27e2826956 | Arielle Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/arielle-gordon/ | |
On his latest album of country-influenced indie rock, Dave Benton takes surprising, subtle turns in songs of indecision, introspection, and alienation. | On his latest album of country-influenced indie rock, Dave Benton takes surprising, subtle turns in songs of indecision, introspection, and alienation. | Trace Mountains: HOUSE OF CONFUSION | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/trace-mountains-house-of-confusion/ | HOUSE OF CONFUSION | HOUSE OF CONFUSION, the third studio album from Trace Mountains, is the fruit of joblessness. After being laid off from his position at a warehouse, primary songwriter Dave Benton, formerly of LVL UP, continued to rise early, devoting his morning hours to writing songs and practicing guitar. His latest album is a tribute to the transience of the past year, a tattooed heart enclosing the word “uncertainty.”
In the time that Benton might have spent touring behind 2020’s warmly received Lost in the Country, he instead traveled “on the road in my mind.” He’s at his happiest imagining the freedom of a rural highway, and at his very lowest on the sad, stunning “LATE.” “The city makes you nervous,” he sings—and so do the synths, interrupting the record’s earthy acoustic and pedal steel guitars with eerie artificiality. The moon, a friend on many tracks, here casts “cruel, sharp” light; the sun, by contrast, is “stark,” casting “dark, long shadows” down a city street during a miserable run for coffee. It’s as though his proximity to the modern world is leeching his spirit, making him anxious and paranoid. By the next track, “AMERICA,” he escapes, driving alone beneath a starry sky. The darkness that menaced him back in the city is a comfort now, welcoming and shielding him.
There’s a thrilling indecision in many of these songs. “I can’t be your friend,” he sings on one track, and then on the next, “You and I, we’re always friends, though.” In the sweet ballad “EYES ON THE ROAD,” home to one of the year’s greatest bridges, Benton calls the person in the driver’s seat “Daddy,” and then “buddy,” and then “honey.” He’ll take a risk in one line and then leap back, protecting himself in the next. You are left unsure exactly where he’ll come down; he doesn’t seem to know, either.
He plays a clever trick on “MORNINGSTAR”: Slow, droning guitars stretch like saltwater taffy across the lyrics about being “gone a while,” driving down “a “long, dark mile.” And then he sings the phrase “checking my phone,” and the instrumentation suddenly becomes staccato and fragmented, the same way the mere fact of having a phone in your hand can shift your attention. It’s a gorgeous, subtle move.
The full-band arrangements offer a compelling mirror to Benton’s inward-facing lyrics: His accompanists provide rich pillows for his fragile songs to rest in. Drummer Greg Rutkin, also formerly of LVL UP, spreads a low fog of cymbals over the opening and closing tracks. Drops of what sounds like a xylophone drift into the mix like motes of dust in morning light. Listening to the album end to end is like closing a loop, or drifting off to sleep and then waking again, finding that the shadows have shifted around you.
Benton may have written HOUSE OF CONFUSION in isolation, but it’s clear he yearns for connection. His choruses were built for campfire-style singalongs; his arrangements will echo to the very furthest, darkest corners of crowded venues. “The hardest part,” he sings, in the closing moments of this album, “is over now.” Listening to these generous, openhearted songs, it’s easy to believe him.
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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. | 2021-11-04T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-11-04T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Lame-O | November 4, 2021 | 7.5 | 3323a773-2b94-47bb-ba25-5ac0314b4f75 | Peyton Thomas | https://pitchfork.com/staff/peyton-thomas/ | |
Sarah Kirkland Snider's Penelope cemented her as one of the decade’s most gifted up-and-coming modern classical composers*.* Her new group of songs, Unremembered, is more restrained than Penelope, but no less haunting. It features Shara Worden on vocals, alongside DM Stith and members of So Percussion and ICE. | Sarah Kirkland Snider's Penelope cemented her as one of the decade’s most gifted up-and-coming modern classical composers*.* Her new group of songs, Unremembered, is more restrained than Penelope, but no less haunting. It features Shara Worden on vocals, alongside DM Stith and members of So Percussion and ICE. | Sarah Kirkland Snider: Unremembered | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20854-unremembered/ | Unremembered | Released five years ago, Sarah Kirkland Snider's Penelope cemented her as one of the decade’s more gifted, up-and-coming modern classical composers for the voice. Emotionally fraught and cloudy, the words used an amnesiac soldier’s past as a lens to explore memory and mortality over muted explosions of electronics and a weighty, restless orchestra. Her new group of songs, Unremembered, is more restrained than Penelope, but no less haunting.
Like Penelope, Unremembered features Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond on vocals. This time, Asthmatic Kitty vet DM Stith and Clogs’ Padma Newsome join her, while the ensemble is a collection of all-star new music players from ICE and So Percussion. Its vague stories are set in shadowy old houses, endless meadows, sinister thickets and forests lost souls enter to never emerge from. Snider’s multiple narrators spiral deep into dark memories of these places. The libretto comes from the poet Nathaniel Bellows, who takes his formal cues from 20th century imagists like Emily Dickinson and William Wordsworth, describing gothic New England vistas.
The foreboding and chaotic tenor of the music mirrors the fear and horror of the characters: Ghosts are ever-present, evoked by the constant surges of soupy, heavily reverbed background vocals that rise and fall behind each song’s primary narrator—either Worden, Stith, or both. Often, these anonymous voices assume a role in the story: In the pastoral "The Song", they are echoing bird calls, but on the more macabre "The Estate", they become taunting spirits ("The field has breath, the pond a voice...They told me then to leave this place/ Or stay and lose it all"). Eventually, they become buried underneath Snider’s mournful, kinetic instrumental figures (glissandi-punctuated violin lines, chimes, harp, or Snider’s own celeste), which sometimes recall the work of Snider’s former teacher, David Lang, and at more tuneful moments, Max Richter. Most songs build to booming climaxes, that dissipate along with the "vapor of the dead" at the end of each song.
The record is best when Snider’s music captures both the beauty and foreboding of Bellows’ setting at once; in restrained pieces like "The Orchard" and "The Past", she lets subversive dissonance creep slowly into her simple accompaniments. Many of Bellows' poems feature images of mirroring, water, and hazy vantages of landscapes or spirits, and Snider’s musical landscape complements this with a rippling, echoing quality. Her melodic shapes are as vague as the scenes she is describing: It is intelligent and evocative, but it takes a focused listen, and is best enjoyed with Bellows’ words on hand for reference. His poetry interacts closely with the musical pivots. Unremembered definitely lacks the haute tension and the fierce musical contrasts of Penelope, but there are plenty of pleasurably uncanny moments. Even in these more contemplative scenarios, Snider still keeps visceral emotion on the surface of her music. | 2015-09-29T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2015-09-29T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Experimental | New Amsterdam | September 29, 2015 | 7.5 | 332b9519-7887-40ad-a253-db670143db61 | Winston Cook-Wilson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/winston-cook-wilson/ | null |
To tell you the truth, it never even occurred to me. Sure, there were the countless nights spent listening only ... | To tell you the truth, it never even occurred to me. Sure, there were the countless nights spent listening only ... | The Postal Service: Give Up | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6432-give-up/ | Give Up | To tell you the truth, it never even occurred to me. Sure, there were the countless nights spent listening only to "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan", the apparent one-off collaboration between Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello that served as the brilliant centerpiece of Dntel's Life Is Full of Possibilities. And there were my frequent, semi-coherent rants about how "Evan and Chan" was not only one of the best songs of 2001, but perhaps the perfect synthesis of IDM production and indie pop songwriting. The thought of further collaboration between Tamborello and Gibbard, however, never crossed my mind, so when I heard last year that they were collaborating on another single, I shit a brick-- and when it was later revealed that the single had evolved into a full-length album, I practically shit a whole firehouse.
First, the bad news: Give Up doesn't offer 45 solid minutes of the same wholesale excellence that appeared in condensed form on "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan"; if anything, the album's occasional missteps serve to elucidate what exactly made the first collaboration between Tamborello and Gibbard so effective. Still, the core tension between Tamborello's intricate production and Gibbard's cutting voice makes Give Up a pretty damned strong record, and one with enough transcendent moments to forgive it its few substandard tracks and ungodly lyrical blunders.
Tamborello and Gibbard put their best foot forward with "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight", which exemplifies the two best elements of this entire collaboration: contrast and subtlety. Here, Gibbard's vocal melody and Tamborello's instrumentation build independently to a perfectly orchestrated emotional climax, replete with hiss-laden sampled strings and ethereal background vocals. There's a noticeable clash between Gibbard's emotive singing and the upbeat drum machine line that drives the track's second half, but Tamborello's production is loaded with enough warm, melodic instrumentation to provide a surprisingly apt background for Gibbard's sincere tenor. The song also benefits from possessing some of the album's stronger lyrics.
"Such Great Heights", the album's debut single, offers Give Up's strongest melody, but its lyrical parallels to N'Sync's "God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You" make it just a bit hard to swallow. It hurts me to hear the words, "I am thinking it's a sign/ That the freckles in our eyes are mirror images/ And when we kiss they're perfectly aligned," sung to such a unique and riveting melody. Of course, the song is a fine work of literature compared to "Sleeping In", which claims the record's most thoroughly cringe-worthy lines: "Last night I had the strangest dream/ Where everything was exactly how it seemed/ Where there was never any mystery/ About who shot John F. Kennedy." I realize there were probably some time constraints, but the vivid and intriguing lyrics of "Evan and Chan" proved Gibbard capable of much, much better than "I want so badly to believe that there is truth and love is real."
Fortunately, Give Up overcomes its highly questionable lyrical choices, and the sometimes painful duets between Gibbard and indie folkster Jen Wood, purely on the strength of Gibbard's consistently strong melodies, which carry far greater impact in the context of Tamborello's hyperactive electro-pop than they have on recent Death Cab for Cutie releases. And Tamborello's production gives the intricate precision of Life Is Full of Possibilities a caffeinated overhaul, here forsaking the time-honored glitch of that album for bright, danceable beats. While it may be impressive that the unified and cohesive vision of Give Up was the result of a par avion collaboration, it's anything but surprising given the talent behind it and the immense chemistry shared by these two musicians. | 2003-02-09T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2003-02-09T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Electronic / Rock | Sub Pop | February 9, 2003 | 8 | 333091d5-ca22-4b98-a6dc-bdcf701e28e6 | Matt LeMay | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matt-lemay/ | null |
Chicago rapper Saba is a frequent collaborator with Chance the Rapper. His latest mixtape, Bucket List Project, is about the experiences we long to pack into one lifetime. | Chicago rapper Saba is a frequent collaborator with Chance the Rapper. His latest mixtape, Bucket List Project, is about the experiences we long to pack into one lifetime. | Saba: Bucket List Project | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22655-bucket-list-project/ | Bucket List Project | Many were first introduced to Chicago rapper Saba as another local artist in Chance the Rapper’s orbit: he was a standout voice on Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment’s Surf (with an uncredited verse on “SmthnthtIwnt”) and more recently he guested on Coloring Book’s “Angels.” Both songs create a decent-enough sample size to assess what exactly Saba is all about: spirituality. He isn’t just fascinated by religion and its role in black families and communities, he’s fixated on the human spirit and the soul, too—both in the eternal sense and the mortal one. His latest mixtape, Bucket List Project, is about the experiences we long to pack into one lifetime. “They ask me ‘why Bucket List?’’’ he raps on “California.” “You know the bucket list: I finally climbed the rock, made it to the top of the precipice/I came from the pessimism of inner city as it is,” detailing the obstacles he’s hurdled to come within arm’s reach of his dream. To that end, the mixtape encourages listeners and guests to find the spirit necessary to achieve their own goals before they die.
Saba has always dealt in a hopeful optimism steeped in pragmatism. Chance’s joy overflows, rooted in an unshakable confidence that no matter what, we gon’ be alright. Saba isn’t always so sure about that, but he wants to believe it. His writing is more analytical, taking stock of everything from the flawed U.S. education system to his own value, grading on a weighted scale. On his breakout project, 2014’s ComfortZone, he recounted the observations he’s accrued living on Chicago’s West Side, revealing uncanny abilities to scrutinize and to self-assess in the process (on “401k” “All my niggas did time and got beat up/But I was never street enough to grow up and be a thug”). Bucket List Project, which shares similar sonic space, picks up where its predecessor left off, telling West Side stories that expose the runoff of American corruption. But with death seemingly lurking around every city corner, it wonders, openly, about impermanence, too.
The imagery is overwhelmingly theological on Bucket List—paradise, demons, heaven, prayers, blessings, preachers—usually with intent to make sense of a chaotic natural order. He seeks an ear from anyone listening (human or divine), and solutions from anyone who has them. “Call Obama, Jesus, Yeezus/He can save Chicago from the demons and the deacons,” Saba raps sarcastically on the Noname-assisted “Church/Liquor Store,” a Common-esque hood log that notes the role community institutions play in creating a toxic atmosphere. The lyric pinpoints a very particular, and prevalent, response to social inequity: passing the buck. Saba doesn’t really offer any answers, either, opting instead to witness, but what he does offer are insights.
Bucket List Project isn’t as complete a journey as ComfortZone, but for the much of its groovy runtime, it is superbly written and performed. Saba is a crafty storyteller who makes full use of his long memory and slithering wordplay. On the xylophone-laden “Stoney,” a ride in a new car becomes a time machine back to past journeys that helped to inform his present. Some of his lyrics have devastating impact. He can open wounds with one-liners as simply as “How you lonely in a room with God?” or “I wish I didn’t have to be famous to be important,” but he’s just as capable of rattling off a razor-sharp diagnosis like this one from “American Hypnosis,” a reliving of personal traumas: “Had to learn my mama depression wasn’t my own/Had to feel the pressures of the pessimism/Trying to convince me that realism was a better vision.”
In Bucket List Project’s margins, Saba has several people, some of them notable Chicagoan musicians, sharing their personal bucket lists. Among them: Chance, Lupe Fiasco, guest Jean Deaux, and local rapper Stunt Taylor. One fan wants to go one-on-one with former Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose. Another wants to play soccer on rooftops in Tokyo. Deaux wants to smoke a blunt with Beyoncé and de-gentrify Chicago neighborhoods. It’s a wishing well filled to the brim with unfulfilled dreams, further exploring the underlying thesis that inactivity is, in a way, similar to death. One outro speaks to the core of that message: “Hailin’ from the West Side, nigga tryna make it to the Grammys...at least somewhere. Somewhere more than where a muthafucka been.” Bucket List Project finds Saba going somewhere specific: forward. | 2016-12-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2016-12-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | self-released | December 10, 2016 | 7 | 3335826a-6b8e-4843-a64f-8250cfb69cd4 | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | null |
After a long hiatus, the big-tent UK pop band returns with a joyful but middling album that’s a little bit of everything they’ve always been. | After a long hiatus, the big-tent UK pop band returns with a joyful but middling album that’s a little bit of everything they’ve always been. | Bombay Bicycle Club: Everything Else Has Gone Wrong | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bombay-bicycle-club-everything-else-has-gone-wrong/ | Everything Else Has Gone Wrong | Ask 10 people to describe the sound of Bombay Bicycle Club you’ll probably get 10 different answers; it all depends when they got into them. Perhaps you thrashed along to Bombay Bicycle Club’s post-punk jams at the pub in 2009, when they released their debut I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose; or maybe you were more into the stark genre-flip of their 2010 follow-up, Flaws, which was more freakish whisper-folk. If you got into them around 2012-2014, you’d have heard more expansive ideas, and a rush of electronic lifeblood—particularly on their best record to date, 2014’s So Long, See You Tomorrow. Throughout their career, the UK band shifted from one identity to the next, and when they hit their peak, they announced they were going to take an indefinite hiatus.
But as hiatuses in music are wont to do, it didn’t last very long. The band reconvened in 2018 to discuss playing some celebratory shows for the 10th anniversary of their debut album. But doing a reunion tour without new music didn’t feel right. The result is Everything Else Has Gone Wrong, a brightly hued record that combines frontman Jack Steadman’s crate-digging and synth-noodling with guitar-driven hooks. With its full-chested choruses, it’s a record that—like the eerie video for the title track in which his bandmates literally dig Steadman out of a grave—seems to cheer: “We’re not dead yet! We’re not dead yet!”
The palpable joy of Everything Else indicates that the hiatus was healthy for the band. It was a decision that was born of the fact that, having found success while still at school, the four-piece has never known any other career, and were getting complacent. This is a playful record, from the swooning brass that opens the album on “Get Up” to the squiggly synth-flute sample on the shuffling “Do You Feel Loved?” Its propulsive rhythms often feel perfectly engineered for sunset slots at summer festivals. As the hook of “Is It Real” swells into a call-and-response chant, it’s easy to imagine muddy feet having fun with its frantic rhythm in a Glastonbury field. As they did on So Long, the band take great delight in disappearing down into rabbit holes of sound, as with “Let You Go,” which crescendoes in a flurry of chopped vocals, guitars, and synths.
While the sound is more swaggering and unashamedly stadium-sized, Bombay Bicycle Club’s lyrics remain decidedly introverted. Steadman will sing of obsessively thinking of someone while listening to music on headphones or not being able to speak due to shyness. In the album announcement, the band indicated that this would be an album of “music in a time of crisis” and “finding kernels of hope and renewal in dire situations.” However, these strongly worded descriptions belie the fact that Steadman’s lyrics largely seem to deal with internal mutterings and a kind of personal, low-level malaise. On the muted, downbeat “Good Day,” he briefly touches on “the melting ice caps in my drink” but tosses it aside to dwell on aging, the loss of friends, and the listless refrain: “I just want to have a good day/And it’s only me that’s standing in my way”.
To what extent has it become fashionable to frame music in the context of generalized “crisis”? Many of these songs don’t sound specific to 2020 in any sense other than that the Bombay Bicycle Club that made them as a grown, arena-filling version of itself. Their greatest triumph is the title track—a song that, it could be argued, adheres most closely to their theme of hope in a crisis, thanks to the hand-clap-driven, lackadaisical hook that’s an absolute joy to sing along to: “Keep the stereo on/Everything else has gone wrong.” With a synth melody that blooms red like a siren, the song builds to a fantastically proggy conclusion.
But the song, which climaxes with Steadman crying out that he’s “found [his] second wind”, is ultimately about writer’s block. This is what holds Bombay Bicycle Club’s latest iteration back: a tendency for the self-referential. On “Is It Real,” they deal in nostalgia, singing about watching old tape reels, while musically weaving together strands of their different sounds through the ages: skittering drums, sweet-voiced indie singalongs, and a psychedelic break. It’s masterfully handled, but ultimately, not a “kernel of hope or renewal in a dire situation.” On Everything Else, the band reminds us why it is that they’re still so beloved after 10 years in the game (those earworm melodies are unshakeable!) but they also cling to their upper-tier festival billing without ever truly being controversial or pushing boundaries. This is the sound of an ever-curious, shape-shifting band finally finding the confidence to tell us who they really are. But they are not telling us anything we didn’t already know.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-01-23T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-01-23T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Caroline International / Island | January 23, 2020 | 5.9 | 3336af79-2623-4feb-a67d-1c6e39bd4b37 | Aimee Cliff | https://pitchfork.com/staff/aimee-cliff/ | |
The cantankerous Smashing Pumpkin embraces his vision of country music, but the lightest, breeziest songs of his career come with their own peculiar Corganian paradox. | The cantankerous Smashing Pumpkin embraces his vision of country music, but the lightest, breeziest songs of his career come with their own peculiar Corganian paradox. | William Patrick Corgan: Cotillions | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/william-patrick-corgan-cotillions/ | Cotillions | Billy Corgan has forced his fans to reconcile a whole mess of contradictions over the past 30 years. He’s the self-branded zero who became a hero to millions. He’s the would-be Vince McMahon who also owned a tea shop. He’s a friend to cute cats and ugly monsters alike. He is both the bull-headed autocrat who does and says whatever he wants regardless of what anyone thinks, and the thin-skinned reactionary who seems to care very much. His days as a multi-platinum, game-changing force are two decades in the rear view, yet he remains a towering figure in the pop-cultural landscape, if only because he’s been one of this century’s most reliable sources of WTF clickbait.
So it’s telling that, in the thick of the most recent Smashing Pumpkins reunion drama, Corgan resurrected—and rebranded—his long-dormant solo career. In 2017, he issued Ogilala under his birth name, William Patrick Corgan, making it his first solo effort since The Future Embrace was released 12 years prior. It was a surprising move; the various recombinant versions of the Pumpkins he had fielded in the interim underscored the fact that Corgan was the last musician on Earth who needed a solo vehicle. But the understated Ogilala suggested that Corgan wasn’t just seeking an outlet for quieter music (something his main band has always been happy to accommodate). Rather, its acoustic and piano-based meditations represented both a dismantling of the Pumpkins’ wall of sound, and of the Billy Corgan persona itself, by projecting a grace and humility at odds with his combative public image.
Still, an acoustic Corgan album couldn’t help but sound like Smashing Pumpkins Unplugged, and the string arrangements woven through Ogilala offered not-too-distant echoes of his band’s epic bombast. So on his second William Patrick Corgan effort, Cotillions, he takes that same busker aesthetic to a place even the Pumpkins feared to tread: deep into the heartland. Cotillions presents Corgan’s vision of country music, a genre he had long dismissed until he recently realized that its sepia-toned portraits of America’s past offered insight into his family’s hardscrabble history. And like everything he does, Corgan goes all in: The album was written following a road trip through America and recorded with a crew of Nashville session veterans (along with current Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder and one-time touring bassist Katie Cole). It’s rife with impressionistic Southern-gothic images of old-time religion, girls named Clementine, and suicides in the desert. But beyond the novelty of Corgan donning his cowboy hat in earnest, what distinguishes Cotillions from anything in his discography is its mood. Quite simply, these are some of the most casual and contented songs he’s ever produced.
Corgan’s droning voice isn’t the most natural fit for these rustic settings. But he embraces his fish-out-of-water position by letting his unvarnished vocals playfully scuff against the fiddlin’, pedal-steel sweeps, and female backing vocals that gussy up these tunes. Off-the-cuff charmers like the ’69-Stones honky tonk of “Buffalo Boys” and the Depression-themed dustbowl ballad “Hard Times” function as a sort of Westworld simulacrum of country music, where the close attention to period authenticity ultimately amplifies their uncanny qualities. (Few country songs open with a line like “scream like jets off to Orion,” as the latter does.) But the album also proves Corgan is at his most disarming in intimate spaces: The delicate, finger-picked lullaby “Fragile, the Spark” is a reminder that he covered Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” way before it was cool, while “Neptulius” is a work of soft-focus beauty whose banjo-kissed melody line ebbs and flows like the gentlest of ocean waves.
According to Pumpkins lore, “Neptulius” is a title that’s been bouncing around Corgan’s head for quite some time—it was reportedly the original proposed name of the band’s 1994 castaways collection Pisces Iscariot, a record that showed, for all his musical excesses, Corgan was a shrewd editor when it came to sequencing his proper albums. Alas, that acumen fails him here. At 17 tracks and 62 minutes, Cotillions is advertised as a double album, but it never really forms a discernible dramatic arc or a logical flow that suggests four discrete sides. Instead, the most cataclysmic songs (like the title track) arrive too early and the most languid ones (like the piano reverie “6+7”) turn up when the record should be building to a climax. The sense of stasis is compounded by the fact that, like Ogilala, Cotillions is 100 percent drum-free, and Corgan’s laidback strums aren’t enough to keep the momentum going once fiddle-inflected serenades like “Dancehall” and “Cri De Coeur” start to blur into one another. For all its surface simplicity, Cotillions is saddled with its own peculiar Corganian paradox: the lightest, breeziest songs of his career add up to a demanding slog of a record. | 2019-12-03T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-12-03T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Martha’s Music | December 3, 2019 | 6.4 | 33384569-c785-47c3-939a-064ed83bb8a3 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
With “Kiss” as its lead single, Parade reeled in listeners. The rest of the album featured fresh turns of minimalist funk. Prince isn’t known for his subtlety, but Parade proves perhaps he should be. | With “Kiss” as its lead single, Parade reeled in listeners. The rest of the album featured fresh turns of minimalist funk. Prince isn’t known for his subtlety, but Parade proves perhaps he should be. | Prince / The Revolution: Parade (Music From the Motion Picture Under the Cherry Moon) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21844-parade/ | Parade (Music From the Motion Picture Under the Cherry Moon) | Sometime in April, 1985, as Prince was waiting for Around the World in a Day to show up in stores, he walked into a studio, sat down at the drum kit, and began the sessions for his next album by recording the drum parts for its first four songs, consecutively, in a single take. That seems like the practice of a genius auteur who knows exactly what he wants, which Prince of course was—except for the times when he was a genius auteur who kept changing his mind.
After Purple Rain, Prince spent the rest of the decade trying to repeat its success in theaters (he came closest with Batman, in which he doesn’t even appear). Under the Cherry Moon, his second film, is an indulgent stinkeroo: a black-and-white tragicomedy that’s not quite a musical. Its soundtrack album, Parade, on the other hand, is breathtaking. Raw, spare, and unflaggingly eccentric, it sounds radically unlike Purple Rain, Around the World, and everything else released in 1986, but it's baited with that year’s most brilliant No. 1 single, “Kiss”—a song that taught its listeners how to hear the rest of the album.
“Kiss” is a slash in the air surrounded by negative space. Whenever the song is played, it seems to open up a vacuum around it. It’s almost unfathomably funky, but it keeps going silent, and its silence yanks the groove forward. Prince famously gave the song to protege group Mazarati as a demo, then snatched it back once he heard the remarkable arrangement that producer David Z had come up with (most of Prince’s version is actually Mazarati’s recording, including their “aah-AAA-aah” backing vocals). Still, it would never have occurred to anyone else to make the recording’s groove deeper and the performance more thrilling by mixing out the bass altogether and singing it in a delicate falsetto. (That’s why he was Prince and we aren’t.)
The rest of Parade makes similarly ingenious use of the zero mark on the mixing desk’s faders. Prince asked jazz arranger Clare Fischer to score and record orchestrations for every song on the album except “Kiss,” then (mostly) peeled them right back off. Even so, the orchestra is fully present and flickering between dissonance and consonance for the opening track, “Christopher Tracy’s Parade”—although they’ve still got Prince’s mammoth, processed drum sound keeping them in shadow.
Christopher Tracy had been Prince’s character in the movie; “Christopher” was also the pseudonym he chose to be credit by as writer for the Bangles’ “Manic Monday,” released a couple of months earlier. But “Christopher Tracy’s Parade” had formerly been about an actual member of Prince’s band: he’d initially recorded it as “Wendy’s Parade,” a title that survives via a shoutout in the middle of “Kiss.” It echoes the form and subject of the Beatles’ “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!,” but as soon as its horns and flutes fade (and that gigantic beat pauses for a breath, then continues as before), Prince shakes off the psychedelic dreamcoat of Around the World in a Day. When he grabs the mic again and lets loose a whoop and a groan, we’re in an even starker groove than “Kiss”: the brief, insistent “New Position,” which is mostly about sex and also kind of about the realignment Prince was demanding of his listeners. There’s nothing behind him but the bass-and-drum groove, some steel percussion, and eventually the voices of his invaluable bandmates Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman. (He sings, “I can make u happy,” and they harmonize back at him: “H.A.P.P.Y.!” Then he rhymes it with “I won’t be your pappy,” to which they chirp “P.U.S.S.Y.!”)
Parade was a Top Five album. Given how fresh it still sounds, you might imagine that it would have inspired other artists to try what Prince called his “new funk,” but you’d be wrong. The direction R&B took in the wake of Parade had a lot more to do with Prince’s former associates Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, whose production work for Janet Jackson, the Human League and Force M.D.’s was pointing toward New Jack Swing. What did endure beyond Parade was Prince’s new habit of perpetually tinkering with his albums after they seemed to be finished. The album as initially sequenced would have been very different and significantly less fun: All four songs that were released as singles were added later on. As it is, there are still a few throwaways on it, like the formless instrumental “Venus de Milo” and the interstitial doodle “I Wonder U,” as well as incongruous if charming moments like “Do U Lie?,” a ridiculous stroll through bistro jazz that lets Prince try on a few silly accents for flirtation's sake.
Still, the slow, elegiac “Sometimes It Snows in April” stayed in Prince’s live repertoire right up to his final show. And the core of the album is its dance tracks, bracingly crisp and airy, with those offhanded register-vaulting vocals and that peculiar rhythmic lurch no other artist could duplicate. With “Kiss” as its key and signpost, Parade makes the case that the secret engine of Prince’s funk was what it left out. | 2016-04-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-04-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Rock | Paisley Park / Warner Bros. | April 30, 2016 | 9.1 | 333a43e3-9100-4d99-84c4-e05c7fd1a660 | Douglas Wolk | https://pitchfork.com/staff/douglas-wolk/ | |
What is the difference between American and Italian minimalism? A preeminent example of the latter is this 1979 record, one of the most sumptuous, spiritual ambient albums of any era or provenance. | What is the difference between American and Italian minimalism? A preeminent example of the latter is this 1979 record, one of the most sumptuous, spiritual ambient albums of any era or provenance. | Giusto Pio: Motore Immobile | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23044-motore-immobile/ | Motore Immobile | Italian progressive rock icon and all-around renaissance man Franco Battiato once sought out violinist Giusto Pio for violin lessons. A member of Orchestra Sinfonica Di Milano Della RAI, Pio assisted Battiato as his sound was undergoing a furious metamorphosis, from the prog rock of his earliest albums to a more minimalist sound of the late ’70s (in this regard, Battiato is Italy’s Brian Eno). Soon after, the duo would pivot towards pop song, with some of Battiato’s early ’80s albums selling over a million copies, which led to the two collaborating on a Eurovision hit by 1984.
In 1979, the same year Battiato made L'Era Del Cinghiale Bianco (with Pio handling arrangements), Battiato also produced Pio’s first solo album, Motore Immobile, two diametrically opposed efforts that showcased the duo’s musical range. And while the former marked the tandem’s first foray into pop, the latter stands as one of the towering beacons of Italian minimalism and one of the most sumptuous ambient albums of any era. Recently, there’s been a greater appreciation for that era in Italian music with the Milanese label Die Schachtel reissuing stark classics like Luciano Cilio’s Dell’Universo Assente and Raul Lovisonni and Franceso Messina’s Prati baganati del Monte Analogo. But Pio’s debut has long been unobtainable. Originally released on the revered Cramps Records label (home to operatic progressives like Area and Demetrio Stratos as well as albums by American composers like John Cage and Robert Ashley), Motore Immobile has been near impossible to track down since its release. And with Pio’s recent passing earlier this year, it’s a fitting tribute to the man to have his greatest work see reissue now courtesy of the newcomer Soave label.
Motore Immobile is one of Italian minimalism’s most beatific iterations, with an approach that brings to mind Italian cuisine, meaning a concentration on a handful of quality ingredients so as to reveal the profundities contained within such simple material. Though with food it’s to reveal the essence of the earth; with this music, it’s to experience something more celestial. The first side of the album features the seventeen-minute title track, wherein Pio explores the sonorities to be had in two church organs, a hum originating from the soft palette of vocalist Martin Kleist, and Pio’s own violin. A burst of organ opens “Motore Immobile” as if the start of a Sunday service, though it soon seems as if the keys are stuck, holding the note well past the breaking point. Ever so carefully, the keys of that chord peel off and the hum of a voice in harmony can be heard alongside that drone. A minute in, Pio’s violin ever so gently sneaks in alongside the two organs.
It is then that the piece appears to reach a standstill. There’s not much in the way of an “event,” but that’s beside the point. The held keys of the organs resemble the op-art of Bridget Riley, the drones producing an aural moiré. Pio’s patience is remarkable throughout, letting the horsehair of his bow move exquisitely slow across the strings, ever so subtly keying a shift in the drones. And so subtle and subliminal are the exhalations of Kleist that if you listen on headphones, you might wonder if you’re actually humming along with these held tones. When the organs again revert back to their opening chord, it gives the impression that “Motore Immobile” could just as easily continue on into infinity.
“Ananta” which comprises the second side, again uses a similar approach to suspended tones, this time with just piano and organ. With just the sparest of ingredients, Pio makes something delectable. A glissade of piano notes opens the piece before again settling into the sustained drone of the organ. The piano then carefully moves one note at a time against that continuum, to the point of where the piece seems to reach a stasis, only to have the piano break that stillness with a flurry of notes. And with every new cascade, the organ’s drone shifts its center ever so slightly. But again, the piece’s greatest attribute is that it again gives the illusion of suspending the passage of time.
It’s hard to put a finger one just what distinguishes Italian minimalism from its American counterparts, but to my ears, it ultimately boils down to lineage. While Americans trace back to the rugged and mischievous works of La Monte Young and Tony Conrad, the Italians go back to the compositions of Giacinto Scelsi, whose microtonal sound edges toward the mystic. As a result, Italian minimalism tends to be more crystalline and ascetic (read: pure) than what can be found elsewhere. It’s telling that Pio grounds both of these extended compositions not in his violin work, but in the tones of the church organ. It’s a sound that still resonates during services throughout the duomos of Italy, and one on Pio’s Motore Immobile that too evokes a sense of the divine. | 2017-03-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-03-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Stranded Rekords / Soave | March 22, 2017 | 8.2 | 334c9971-2862-4407-abee-f2925567aed3 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
At age 69, Lana Del Rey’s father—boating enthusiast, real-estate agent, domain-name investor—makes his piano-playing debut on a major label. It’s totally fine. | At age 69, Lana Del Rey’s father—boating enthusiast, real-estate agent, domain-name investor—makes his piano-playing debut on a major label. It’s totally fine. | Rob Grant: Lost at Sea | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rob-grant-lost-at-sea/ | Lost at Sea | I am writing about the pianist Rob Grant for the same reason you are likely reading about the 69-year-old serial entrepreneur: He is the father of Lizzy Grant, or Lana Del Rey, the American pop star who has expertly made and managed a mythical cosmology for more than a dozen years. Lana’s career has hinged repeatedly upon inverting tropes from America’s most gilded ages; the daughter landing the daddy a major-label debut late in life fits that inside-out paradigm, a dynastic flip-flop that suggests the family has always deserved what it did not already get.
Grant, the father, seems thrilled to play his part. In the rollout for his balmy piano LP, Lost at Sea, the lifelong boat enthusiast and son of a Navy aviator has cavorted up the Hudson River wearing Hawaiian shirts aboard a borrowed yacht with Lana at his side. Looking like a maritime Mike Pence, he has done his best Brian Wilson while donning Prada leather in a pristine Los Angeles xeriscape. A canny internet huckster with a profitable past, Grant even bought nepodaddy.com, a phrase now festooned across crop tops and badge sets. If Lost at Sea feels like some cosmic joke, kudos to Grant for being its winning and willing punchline, especially a week before his 70th birthday.
Thing is, Lost at Sea is a nice little album. Its 40 minutes are a self-contained wellness playlist of lovely piano miniatures, swaddled in lavish strings from the Budapest Art Orchestra and the graceful electronics of collaborators like Jack Antonoff, the ostensible guy Friday of the Lana empire. “I know I’m not Joni Mitchell/But I’ve got a Dad who plays like Billy Joel,” Lana slyly sings at the start of “Hollywood Bowl,” the second of their two songs together here. But Grant is not that kind of piano man, or at least not on Lost at Sea. Evoking the distant ambient music of Harold Budd and the virally confessional instrumentals of Joep Beving, the gentle Lost at Sea is more sylvan creek than turbulent tide or River of Dreams.
It is also not some austere solo meditation. The party line runs that Lost at Sea stems from an uninterrupted 75-minute improvisation cut in a California studio as workers waited on Lana to arrive during the Blue Bannisters sessions. (That’s Grant playing the piano on closer “Sweet Carolina,” using the same tender touch he displays on his own album.) Sure, that happened, but these 14 tracks were stitched together from sessions on three continents with an oft-sprawling cast.
The bulk of the work rests with Luke Howard, an Australian polyglot of minimalism who specializes in surfeits of the soporific. For most of these tracks, Howard ensconces snippets of Grant’s stepwise melodies inside orchestral tumescence or undergirds them with wispy circuitry. Some pieces are subtle, like “A Beautiful Delirium,” where Mellotron traces the piano like a gray highlighter. Others, like “The Poetry of Wind and Waves,” are only a few turns of the dial from Hollywood score grandeur. In both cases, this is high-production, low-stakes instrumental ambience. If this music of limited opalescence passed you by on a modern Windham Hill sampler during a stony Sunday afternoon, your reverie wouldn’t crack.
The truly captivating tracks avoid that compromised middle-ground. “A Delicate Mist Surrounds Me” is a 61-second solo gem, Grant playing a slow-motion round of chutes and ladders with a simple but reassuring theme. This is the lone moment where it feels like you’re resting your head against the piano’s bulwark while a loved one conjures comfort through the keys. Like those studio hands, I too could sit still in this space for 75 minutes.
To make “The Mermaid’s Lullaby,” which follows, Howard slows and stretches a piece Grant had intended to be a “brief piano interlude” (how most of these songs feel, anyway) until the instrument nearly disappears. It is gorgeous and ghostly, the extended undulations recalling Gavin Bryars’ landmark The Sinking of the Titanic and Nicholas Szczepanik’s wondrous obscurity Please Stop Loving Me. This tandem represents the extremes of Grant’s piano playing—the former as the output itself, the latter as mere input. They’re the pieces that make you consider new possibilities, not merely rest inside instrumental retreads.
For better and worse, Lost at Sea slides comfortably into the Decca Records roster and the wider ranks of contemporary classical crossover—pleasant and inoffensive, a landscape painting fit for the wall behind the couch. It is not an embarrassment, a punchline, or a gimmick. It is also not distinctive enough to transcend its backstory.
Really, what’s most vexing about Grant’s debut is a kind of reverse paternalism, where the father seems incapable of speaking or playing for himself. Lana is the lure to his marquee interviews, the mysterious star tantalizing with familial normalcy. And Howard, Antonoff, and all the rest pad his actual music like they’re a fastidious moving crew, so scared his delicate sounds will break when they encounter the rest of the world that they’ve smothered them in unnecessary padding. Grant’s plaintive and vulnerable piano lines, however modest they may be, are the best thing about an album in turn built and sold around them. Now that the novelty is gone, perhaps everyone can get out of the way and just let Nepo Daddy be Rob Grant. | 2023-06-12T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-06-12T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Decca | June 12, 2023 | 5.8 | 334d5f9a-bbe0-470e-8535-a0fc0c00061b | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
Stop-gap EP from Justin Broadrick's most pop-oriented project foregrounds his memorable riffs and ringing climaxes. | Stop-gap EP from Justin Broadrick's most pop-oriented project foregrounds his memorable riffs and ringing climaxes. | Jesu: Opiate Sun | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13600-opiate-sun/ | Opiate Sun | The EP might be the ideal format for Justin Broadrick's music, regardless of his alias. Whether he's trying to erase your head via concrete-slab guitars in Napalm Death, reduce techno to a series of clockwork hammerblows with Final, or massage your pleasure centers with neo-shoegaze in Godflesh, Broadrick's music has a laudable singularity. The three-or-four-song dose mainlines his all-consuming mood of the moment without the potential dilution of trying to fill up a CD.
Broadrick claims to be channeling his long-unused (or presumed non-existent) pop instincts via Jesu, and the band's DNA always has too much of hard rock's cathartic oomph and pop's peaks and valleys to pass for ambient. But Jesu's extended-players like Silver, Lifeline, and now Opiate Sun do seem to bring out Broadrick's more memorable riffs and choruses. If nothing else, they foreground those riffs and ringing climaxes in a way that the hour-plus ebb-and-flow of Jesu or Conqueror isn't designed to do.
Opiate Sun isn't as good as the all-over bodiless sparkle of Lifeline, which may be the best non-collaborative release in Broadrick's unwieldy discography. It's more of a Jesu sampler, a four-song distillation of the band's major modes, with some of Broadrick's most accessible, ingratiating songwriting-- radio-ready if not for the tempos and the fuzz.
"Losing Streak" and the title track are more or less arena alt-rock at a snail's pace, almost cuddly and triumphant enough to be a Foo Fighters single, or maybe Probot if Dave Grohl had drafted Kevin Shields instead of Lemmy. (Plus, I swear, a hint of slow-motion southern rock grandeur in "Losing Streak"'s mid-song solo.) "Deflated" is one of those oxymorons Jesu do so well-- the angelic dirge-- with bass skirting doom metal while the guitar auditions for some early-1990s Creation Records A&R dude. "Morning Light" really is doom, the only out-and-out metal tune here, skewed only by Broadrick's multi-tracked sad-dude vox. Add it all up and (more or less) you've got Jesu.
So Opiate Sun is both the most recent fix for Jesu addicts anxiously awaiting album número tres, and an easy-access jump-on point for not-quite-yet-fans. Opiate Sun's heavy enough to act as gateway drug for those who still know Broadrick only as the guy behind Godflesh's decade-long bad day (if such creatures even exist). It will please the post-'gaze guitar-texture freaks who cream on contact with sonorous feedback. And it's memorable enough to hook those one-and-done consumers of the album-abjuring age. Not bad for four songs. | 2009-10-30T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2009-10-30T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Metal / Rock | Caldo Verde | October 30, 2009 | 7 | 3350e4da-fb48-4ed2-b9c7-16f8d472798f | Jess Harvell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jess-harvell/ | null |
Music for Listening to Music to is La Sera's fourth album and its first with singer/bassist Katy Goodman's husband Todd Wisenbaker officially on board. Produced by Ryan Adams, it finds its way to a blend of Adams' alt-country and their winsome take on alt-rock. | Music for Listening to Music to is La Sera's fourth album and its first with singer/bassist Katy Goodman's husband Todd Wisenbaker officially on board. Produced by Ryan Adams, it finds its way to a blend of Adams' alt-country and their winsome take on alt-rock. | La Sera: Music for Listening to Music to | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21583-music-for-listening-to-music-to/ | Music for Listening to Music to | Calling an album Music for Listening to Music to seems at best a throwaway line, at worst an unfortunate, self-directed neg. La Sera's fourth album, its first with singer/bassist Katy Goodman's husband Todd Wisenbaker officially on board, does itself at least one disservice with it, subtly highlighting that this is La Sera's most tentative-sounding outing. Produced by Ryan Adams in the sole week he was able to spare from a demanding schedule, Music finds the line separating "casual-sounding" from "underbaked" and plays hopscotch.
That concentrated week with Adams produced a coherent sound, one that cleaves to Adams' alt-country wheelhouse. At their best, the duo harnesses wavering Ennio Morricone guitar and pairs it with indie pop pathos. "That's my mistake," Goodman allows mournfully in "Begins to Rain," as duelling bright guitars whine. Yet Adams' whims might be responsible for some of the weaker inclinations of the record: "I was certain that I could help her lose control a little bit more," he said of Goodman's vocal performance.
He's done that, but it wasn't a favor. On jangling opener "High Notes," Goodman's trill is less poised than we're accustomed to hearing. Whether losing purchase on a sustained note or dashing off the final syllables of a verse ("I'm sorry/ Is the song too slow?" goes one breathless, ironic phrase), the ex-Vivian Girls bassist's warble feels thin and skittish. Instead of embodying the pursed-lips defiance of its lyrics, the song lands like a just-OK bet thrown onto the bar. The difference between the voice pushed beyond its limits here and its smooth nonchalance on 2012's Sees the Light or the breezy multitracked comings and goings on the self-titled 2011 LP is noticeable.
The band still has a good feel for a certain kind of song: Wisenbaker's nimble, reverb'ed guitars and Goodman's coltish vocal line makes Music sound like nothing so much as the soundtrack to a '90s high-school dance. From the descending bluesy riff of "I Need an Angel" to the languid sway of "Take My Heart," the best songs recall nervous sweat, skittish dancing, and hopeful heartbreak. A notable exception to this mood is "Shadow of Your Love," which echoes hauntingly as if from a jukebox somewhere in Gene Pitney's West.
Wisenbaker turns a few of the record's songs into duets, with mixed results. "I would do anything for you to love me," he beseeches Goodman in "Angel," a boy whose snarl disguises pain. The spurning-and-supplication interplay in this duet is fun, but the song peters out, turning the time-honored two-chord guitar outro into an extended shrug. In "One True Love" his singing battles his guitar low in the mix, bringing to mind the guy from accounts who doesn't really want to be at karaoke. By contrast, Goodman's angelic peal soars, her counterposition distant as a mirage.
As with the record's title, closing track, "Too Little Too Late" accidentally invites you to agree with the sentiment. Over simple, pretty arpeggiation, Goodman sings with assurance, finally settled and at ease. La Sera's experiment with a new musical direction, line-up, and producer is by no means a failure, but, being the product of a logistical opportunity, comes across as more like a short stop on the way to something more solid and definitive. | 2016-03-02T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2016-03-02T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | Polyvinyl | March 2, 2016 | 6.7 | 335e6c32-abcd-4416-aae2-77faf854121a | Estelle Tang | https://pitchfork.com/staff/estelle-tang/ | null |
On her debut album, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter and her extraordinary voice search for a place to call home. | On her debut album, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter and her extraordinary voice search for a place to call home. | Sara Bug: Sara Bug | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sara-bug-sara-bug/ | Sara Bug | Sara Bug fills her songs with stories about self-discovery, set in scenes from the California coast to New Orleans, trying on different places, lovers, and selves as she eventually makes her way back to her home in Nashville. For her debut album, the New Orleans-raised singer-songwriter homes in on an emotive indie alt-country sound, a little pastoral, a little ragged. It’s a meandering but always welcoming journey that’s as mesmerizing as dandelion spores floating to the ground.
Across the record, Bug wanders around the geographic and emotional map looking for meaning. Her trip begins with the very first lyric: “I wanna be happy/I wanna be with you,” she sings on “Die With You,” as she elongates “I” with a touch of vibrato. Her voice sounds like the ding of a bell, bringing to mind the clarity of folk singers like Adrianne Lenker or Florist. When she sings about wanting to be someone—anyone, it seems—she trills urgently, dipping into an alto register as fuzzy electric guitar, bass, and horns crescendo into a soundscape that lasts over half the song. Even if she had some moment of clarity, it’s as if Bug isn’t fully ready to reveal herself yet.
Bug is absolutely luminous at the intersection of indie and alt-country. On “The Beholder,” one of the album’s strongest tracks, her stylized harmonies over jangly rock riffs and a drawling lap steel create a mix of dust and glamour, like stilettos stepping on a tumbleweed. As the album continues, Bug’s voice gradually gets twangier, like the way someone’s accent gets stronger when they cross their home state line. Along with the twang comes palpable confidence. By “Back In Nashville,” the album’s closer, Bug has transformed to a heady voice that recalls Dolly Parton on a few milliliters of helium. It’s a cartoonish, very fun, two-step track with steel guitars and exaggerated harmonies that sound like glitter erupting in a barn. The song departs from the cool indie rock tone that glosses the rest of the album, but it never feels like an exercise; not only does Bug fully inhabit the country setting but, importantly, she is such an extraordinarily precise vocalist.
That’s the real star of the show. Bug sounds like she’s both classically trained and accidentally good, able to toss in vibrato for some catharsis and take it out just as easily for hollowness. She can ascend to mountain-high notes or croon swampy alto ballads at the drop of a hat. Bug uses that dexterity to gradually build to the twanged-out, most confident version of herself at the end of the album, where she sings triumphantly, “I’m back in Nashville/Year after year/Tryin’ to make a family/In the dirt out here.” Of course she sounds best when she’s at home.
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. | 2021-05-24T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-05-24T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | EggHunt | May 24, 2021 | 6.9 | 3363363a-1cd9-4269-b90b-35aa44c0a048 | Sophia June | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sophia-june/ | |
Producers Armando Martinez and Rey Rubio focus on electro's Latin roots with an album that's all about percussion. | Producers Armando Martinez and Rey Rubio focus on electro's Latin roots with an album that's all about percussion. | Alpha 606: Afro-Cuban Electronics | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22112-afro-cuban-electronics/ | Afro-Cuban Electronics | The style known as electro has no single origin, but its lineage can be traced back to a few fairly clear antecedents. Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force’s 1982 single “Planet Rock” canonized the syncopated rhythmic cadence, played on the Roland TR-808 drum machine, that is central to the style; that song was partly inspired by the lurching, snapping beat of Kraftwerk’s “Numbers,” from 1981. The Germans had probably been listening to Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Ryuichi Sakamoto, who deployed the same whip-crack syncopations on 1980’s “Riot in Lagos.” But beating them all to the punch was a Miami group called Herman Kelly & Life, who laid down that signature beat in 1978, in a rousing Latin funk song called “Dance to the Drummer’s Beat” that would go on to be a major influence on Miami bass, a regional variant of electro.
Electro’s Latin roots have often been overlooked, but they’re at the center of Afro-Cuban Electronics, the debut album from Miami’s Alpha 606, which fuses the booming and hissing 808s of classic electro with congas, clave, guiro, and other Afro-Cuban percussion instruments. The project dates back to the early 2000s. Originally, it was a group comprising producers Armando Martinez and Rey Rubio and percussionists Marino Hernandez and Danny Chirino, all of Cuban descent (Hernandez, in fact, arrived on Floridian shores in 1980’s Mariel boatlift). They put out their debut EP in 2005, with a remix from fellow Miami electro experimentalists Phoenecia. By 2008, when Detroit’s Interdimensional Transmissions label released the Electrónica Afro-Cubano EP, only Martinez remained, and he continues solo on Afro-Cuban Electronics.
The sound of the music will be familiar to anyone who has heard Hashim’s “Al Naafiysh (The Soul),” Newcleus’ “Jam on It,” or any other classic in the electro pantheon; one of electro’s salient features it that it simply doesn’t change very much. It all comes down to syncopated 808 patterns, skeletal synth bass, and not much more, and Martinez remains faithful to the blueprint. Even without the Afro-Cuban addition, electro enthusiasts would find plenty to love here: His rhythms move with the easy grace of a jungle cat flicking its tail; his drums are as crisp as you could ask for, and his synthesizers shimmer with a vivid, sci-fi sheen.
But the added percussion greatly adds to the music’s dynamism, filling in the empty space with rolling rhythmic counterpoints. On “Shake,” the two opposing rhythmic figures—guiro and clave patterns against snapping kicks and claps—bob like double needles on a sewing machine, zipping in and out of each other’s way. The Latin percussion also does wonders for the music’s tone colors, lending a warm, glassy glow to the Roland’s dry thump and scratch. Often, Martinez leaves his percussion elements relatively unadulterated, but occasionally, as on “Endangered Cuban Crocodile,” he leans hard on the effects, running the congas through heavy compression and reverb; the results sound a little like if Warp’s Artificial Intelligence compilations had an explicit Latin underpinning.
Martinez does his best to keep things varied; tempos range from a skulking, 110-BPM four-to-the-floor up to 170-BPM rollers. Still, at 13 tracks and nearly an hour (plus a different bonus cut on both the vinyl and digital editions), the album feels a little long. For the most part, these are drum workouts, not songs, per se, and the palette begins to blur together by the record’s end, even with two vocal tracks to break things up.
On “Engineered Floatation Device” (sic), the heavily processed vocals speak to the experience of Cuban exiles who fled their island home in small boats and rafts, and the song is dark and alluring, with a silver lining of a synthesizer arpeggio. “Defection” covers similar ground, but its chanted couplets and militant theme—“Defection was our only choice/It happened when you first oppressed our voice/We did not retreat from the attack/ We’ve been deep in the swamp working our way back”—feel a little like empty bravado. And the fact that Cuba’s exiled “freedom fighters” left a trail of blood behind them might leave a bad taste in the listener’s mouth: Alpha 606 is named in tribute to Alpha 66, an anti-Castro paramilitary group, founded by Cuban exiles, that allegedly carried out terrorist attacks on tourist targets in Cuba. The style of the track is clearly meant to recall Drexciya, the Detroit electro act who created an Afrofuturist mythology around a supposed race of subaquatic beings who were born to pregnant women thrown overboard during the Middle Passage. But Drexciya’s underwater resistance was an imaginary conceit, and a utopian one at that. Alpha 606 is best when it lets the drums do the talking, and the only thing that goes boom is the kick on the 808. | 2016-09-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Interdimensional Transmissions | September 12, 2016 | 6.5 | 3369a562-ed52-40b2-991c-2d018330548f | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | null |
The latest from chillwave pioneer Ernest Greene, aka Washed Out, is a visual album for Stones Throw Records. But it doesn’t say anything new about Washed Out. | The latest from chillwave pioneer Ernest Greene, aka Washed Out, is a visual album for Stones Throw Records. But it doesn’t say anything new about Washed Out. | Washed Out: Mister Mellow | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/washed-out-mister-mellow/ | Mister Mellow | You’d be hard pressed to find a more flagrant example of truth in advertising this year than a Washed Out album called Mister Mellow. This dude even put a neon, airbrushed “chillwave” hat on the cover. No surprise, really: Washed Out has been right on the nose since the beginning, even though he lands there with the softness of a light summer breeze. Hell, even his parents might be in on the act. Given his solemn, devout adherence to the subgenre he pioneered, as well as his guileless vocals and lyrics, you could describe his entire approach by his birth name: Ernest Greene. Considering the lengths this new “visual album” goes to take relaxation as seriously as possible, it feels like the very thing Greene was born to make.
That said, in light of the more renowned recent examples of the “visual album”—Lemonade, JAY-Z’s upcoming 4:44—do not mistake this as Greene’s declaration of auteurism. Like Greene’s music itself, the visuals don’t ask for your undivided attention, and they don’t quite say anything new about Washed Out either. Compared to the deep ocean blues of his earliest work and the “daytime psychedelia” of 2013’s Paracosm, Mister Mellow is filled with warm browns and yellows. In the multimedia set, it’s all presented through Claymation, collage, clips of guys smoking weed, and other things that tend to visually pair well with your strain of choice: clocks, geodes, cheeseburgers, and blurred out images of Greene as a youth, wearing his prom tux and assorted Georgia sports gear.
None of this feels random. Witness the bric-a-brac on the album cover: a Xanax bar, a toy panic button, and bumper stickers reading “Work/Life Balance,” “I Never Get a Break,” “Feeling Fine.” Mister Mellow, then, is a kind of concept album about The Way We Live. In fact, Mister Mellow might be viewed as a hero of superhuman chill who has come to save us all from the mid-afternoon blahs at work. Given the modest demands of sensory immersion and time (about a half hour), the optimal viewing experience is “eating a salad in front of your computer during lunch,” or in five or 10 minute increments when someone can’t snoop at your cubicle.
This doesn’t make Mister Mellow all that different than other Washed Out releases. It’s just a deeper dive on the subject closest to his heart: the despair and boredom of an otherwise stress-free life, and how that very despair and boredom is compounded by the full awareness of being someone who doesn’t stand to lose much immediately in the current climate. As a pitched-down sample slurs “I go to work, I try my best” on “Floating By,” Washed Out comes this close to quoting Toro Y Moi’s “Blessa” and achieving chillwave singularity.
The most important development on Mister Mellow is that Washed Out has moved from Sub Pop Records and is releasing the album on Stones Throw—a label best known for weeded-out hip-hop. In 2009, the most interesting chillwave drew from the warbly beat science of Stones Throw patron saints like J Dilla and Madlib. Likewise, a good portion of Mister Mellow is earmarked for crate-digging reveries, with titles that read like Batman word bubbles (“Zonked,” “Instant Calm,” “Time Off”). Mister Mellow also contains about an EP’s worth of Washed Out pop songs that deviate from the acoustic-toting, college quad aspirations of Paracosm: “Get Lost” and “Floating By” touch on the psychedelic soul and jazz that often serves as Stones Throw source material, while the cruise-disco highlight “Hard to Say Goodbye” almost sounds like a slowed-down take on Anthony Naples’ “Mad Disrespect,” showing how far Greene has come as a sample-based artist since his earliest days.
Truly, it all feels right on Mister Mellow, which is why it doesn’t leave much of an impression. Even if Mister Mellow asked more of Greene than any prior Washed Out album, it lacks the artistic ambition and tension that made his work endure beyond a blurry moment in the sun. The intrigue of every Washed Out release was created in the gap between what Greene was going for and what he could actually achieve: he had a clear vision for his art on Life of Leisure with only a rudimentary knowledge of his toolkit; Within and Without was a modest guy all of a sudden having to become cool; Paracosm felt like his bid to be seen as a songwriter rather than a creator of vibes. Greene simply tries to fit in here, presenting Mister Mellow as the work of a Stones Throw beatminer in the sturdy, reliable manner of, say, Quakers or Koushik. Mister Mellow may well be Greene’s moment of self-actualization, but it could’ve been more. | 2017-06-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-06-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Stones Throw | June 29, 2017 | 6.7 | 336bb499-aa08-47c4-b4f2-eab0af6dd458 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
The rapper’s joyless debut is the sound of a scam artist. It is unoriginal, outdated, and one of the most stylistically unappealing projects to come from the SoundCloud scene. | The rapper’s joyless debut is the sound of a scam artist. It is unoriginal, outdated, and one of the most stylistically unappealing projects to come from the SoundCloud scene. | Comethazine: Bawskee | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/comethazine-bawskee/ | Bawskee | Put a team of desperate record executives looking to cash-in on a demographic that looks at No Jumper podcast host Adam22 as this generation’s Barbara Walters, and the result is Comethazine. The 20-year old St. Louis rapper is designed to be an amalgamation of everything that has worked on SoundCloud before him: edgy, polarizing, iconoclastic. The result is anything but, an unoriginal and outdated rip-off attempting to fool a generation obsessed with stardom into thinking he is a star. These qualities contribute to Comethazine’s debut album Bawskee, a project that tries so badly to force its way into the SoundCloud upper echelon that it ends up birthing one of the most wretched and stylistically unappealing projects to come from the scene.
In early 2018, Comethazine’s blatant attempts at manipulating his way into the limelight came to a head when his early single “Bands” bait-and-switched its way into the elusive No. 1 spot on the SoundCloud charts. A SoundCloud page by the name of SoundClout had posted YBN Nahmir’s “Bounce Out With That,” which was making waves on YouTube but had yet to be posted to SoundCloud. Almost instantly, it shot up to the platform’s top spot. Once there, the page took advantage of SoundCloud’s ability to swap sound files at any time and replaced “Bounce Out With That” with Comethazine’s “Bands,” making it appear that this relatively new rapper had hot-shotted all the way to having the most popular song on the platform. The song was eventually removed, and his label Alamo Records put out a vague “oops oh well” quote laughing off the foolery.
Quickly on Bawskee, it becomes evident that the SoundCloud file-swapping scheme was the only original idea ever associated with Comethazine. Borrowing flows and aesthetics has always been a part of hip-hop, but there is not a single point throughout the 18-track album—loaded with short little ad-lib marathons—where we get any insight to who the hell Comethazine actually is. The thievery is soulless as Comethazine doesn’t just reach for a flow but instead tries to copy the entire essence of an artist. Over the empty and heartless drums of “V12” he rips every aspect of Lil Pump: the jumpy ad-libs, the flow, and even the obsession with a former child star: “Demi Lovato my bitch but I’m still out here fucking these females.” His burglary extends to artists throughout the SoundCloud world: the BHUNNA-produced “Sick Shit” sounds like a Pi’erre Bourne type beat that’s been left on the shelf and Comethazine’s voice is hardly recognizable like a low-quality Playboi Carti leak that was never meant to see the light.
Essentially, Comethazine is not engaged with the genre of music he makes. The album is out of touch with the current direction of SoundCloud as if Comethazine hasn’t logged onto the site since the 2016 XXL Freshman List. The drums on tracks like “No Ex” sound leftover from an ancient 808 Mafia drum kit. And the speaker-blaring kicks on “Blicky” belong on an XXXTentacion project from his “Look At Me!” era. Even the features feel like hail marys, a last-ditch effort for some clicks by recruiting a tired Lil Yachty and a lost Ugly God clinging to relevance.
Comethazine seems to think that to be a SoundCloud star you need to be edgy. He creates a running gag throughout Bawskee about how he wants to sleep with Demi Lovato that plays out uncomfortably. On “Demi,” Comethazine’s trollish obsession with the pop singer is just not charming, at all: “I just wanna fuck Demi, nut on her titties/Whip out my cock, ayy, make that bitch lick it.” He then leans on some homophobic jabs on “Let It Eat” which don’t make an attempt at sounding the least bit clever: “Sweet ass nigga, you belong in a Gay bar.” And his humor rubs off on Yachty who drops a line on “Bring Dat Bag Out” (”Got them white folks saying ni**er/Got them black folks saying cracker”) that makes you ask the question: What the hell is fun about any of this?
It’s rare you come across an album as hollow as Bawskee. It’s so worthless across the board that you fear it might tarnish everything the SoundCloud scene has built from association alone. Comethazine is joyless, making an album that some executive must’ve told him will make his Instagram Live numbers spike. He is a vapid figure who has not developed a personality, direction, or sense of his own style, left to collect dust once the No Jumper diehards and out of touch label heads move on to their next cash-grab obsession. | 2018-09-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-09-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Alamo | September 7, 2018 | 2.6 | 336d7dce-c360-4b66-aaa1-f93830b75fec | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
Andy Butler’s fourth album as Hercules and Love Affair delivers the subtle genre pivot that was so needed to reinvigorate their standing as the elder gatekeepers of club music history. | Andy Butler’s fourth album as Hercules and Love Affair delivers the subtle genre pivot that was so needed to reinvigorate their standing as the elder gatekeepers of club music history. | Hercules and Love Affair: Omnion | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/hercules-and-love-affair-omnion/ | Omnion | When Hercules and Love Affair, the ongoing semi-retro dance music project of musician and producer Andy Butler, released their gorgeous debut album in 2008, it was the perfect environment for them to flourish. Disco and house music were experiencing a robust underground revival, lead by collectives like Horse Meat Disco and Honey Soundsystem, and a real appreciation for the detailed history of dance music was front and center in clubs across the country. Bolstered by A-list vocal talent like ANOHNI and Nomi Ruiz, seeing Hercules and Love Affair ascent to the top of the zeitgeist that year was like watching an up-and-coming athlete crush it at the Olympics—raw, undeniable talent rewarded with universal acclaim.
In the near-decade since Hercules and Love Affair was released, the dance scene has undergone several more cultural shifts. A late-’00s interest in techno and pop begat EDM, celebrity DJ culture became more and more prevalent, and a younger generation, perhaps less versed in the gospel of Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles, began to assert their dominance. While solid, Hercules’ last album, 2014’s The Feast of the Broken Heart, felt like a blurry reflection of stronger tracks from previous years. For a group that is so reliant on a pure interpretation of classic genres, Hercules’ main challenge would be to find a way to continue honoring the sounds of the past while exploring a new version of themselves, in a landscape where disco revivalism might not be as thrilling as it once was.
Omnion, Hercules’ fourth LP, thankfully delivers the subtle genre pivot that was so needed to reinvigorate their standing as the elder gatekeepers of club music history. The disco and house influences are there, for certain, but they are more general overtones than color-by-numbers rehashes. Instead, huge swathes of the record take their cue from ’80s pop, easy listening, techno, and ambient—a hodge-podge that ends up lending a deeper color and dimension to the group almost immediately.
Butler has always done an incredible job at choosing which vocalists would best suit his compositions, and Omnion is no different. The album’s eponymous opening track has Sharon Van Etten using her blown-glass voice to draw circles around keyboards and swelling trumpets. Butler’s use of horns is striking—instead of the staccato disco brass we’ve been used to, he uses them throughout the record as warm accents to quieter moments. It may seem simple, but it’s a conscious move away from his comfort zone, which is what makes Omnion’s production so intriguing for a listener that’s been following his work.
Faris Badwan of the Horrors appears on a few tracks, shedding his typical post-punk tenor and sounding more like Marc Almond or Dave Gahan, sinewy and sexual. “Move me/It’s all I want/Use me/It’s all I want,” he croons on “Controller,” pleading with the listener to engage in a sensual game of master and servant. The dark synth-pop tones continue through the record, from “Rejoice”—in which regular Hercules player Rouge Mary’s distorted diva vocals get compressed under a drum beat worthy of Nitzer Ebb’s grittiest moments—to “Through Your Atmosphere,” another Badwan track that could have been a Vince Clarke-penned ballad if not for a recurring techno flourish during the chorus. With a less knowledgeable producer, these references could seem heavy-handed, but Butler’s flair for extracting the juiciest parts of his favorite sonic touchstones and reassembling them around his own signatures has always been the most exciting aspect of his production skills.
The true test of Butler’s maturity, however, is “Fools Wear Crowns,” the first Hercules song ever in which he sings lead vocals. It’s a song about addiction, about making mistakes, forgiveness, and redemption—for a man who consistently gives his lyrics to other people to sing, it’s a giant leap towards the unknown. Butler’s voice isn’t strong, especially compared to singers he’s worked with, but it’s unpolished, unnerving, searching for its footing with every line and almost tumbling into nothingness. In a few notes, it encapsulates the element that makes Omnion such an interesting chapter for Hercules and Love Affair: risk. With this album, Butler has thrown caution to the wind and his soul-searching has created some of his best dancefloor experimentation in years. | 2017-09-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-09-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Atlantic | September 5, 2017 | 7.7 | 336db426-4eb7-4f35-91ca-55af1c5f5743 | Cameron Cook | https://pitchfork.com/staff/cameron-cook/ | |
Despite the best efforts of Yukimi Nagano's dynamic voice, the Swedish band's fifth album of cautiously controlled, luxury mood music remains flat on the page. | Despite the best efforts of Yukimi Nagano's dynamic voice, the Swedish band's fifth album of cautiously controlled, luxury mood music remains flat on the page. | Little Dragon: Season High | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23170-season-high/ | Season High | Little Dragon singer Yukimi Nagano must have a separate phone line just for fielding feature requests. Since their breakout appearances on Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach and Big Boi’s Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors, Nagano and her electronic-pop band have become the go-to collaborators for any artist looking to make a statement about how eclectic their tastes are. Over the last two years, the Swedish group has popped up on albums by De La Soul, Flume, Mac Miller, and Kaytranada, lending each an air of sophistication and modernity.
It’s a wonder they haven’t called on more of those artists to return the favor. For a band best known for their work on genre-blurring albums with huge casts, Little Dragon’s own albums have become surprisingly hermetic and narrow in scope. Like its predecessors, their fifth full-length Season High purposefully avoids marquee guests and wild stylistic leaps in favor of cautiously controlled, luxury mood music. It commits even further to the ’80s slow jam vibe of 2014’s Nabuma Rubberband—a look that didn’t completely flatter them the first time around, and feels even more restrictive here.
While Little Dragon pull off the record’s throwback sounds with their usual technical precision, that’s less of a selling point than it might have been five years ago. There was a time when artists scored points for the mere novelty of recreating that decade’s soft aesthetic. But in a post-“Hold on, We’re Going Home,” post-Rhye, post-Blood Orange, post-that one Justin Vernon side project with all the saxophones world, where every third song on the radio channels the ghost of a Reagan-era homecoming dance, those production tropes have become familiar to the point of exhaustion. The sounds of the ’80s are so thick in the air right now that even when the Weeknd and Daft Punk are put in the same room it’s what they come up with.
It doesn’t help that Little Dragon’s take on sensual R&B is strangely dispassionate. Though Season High references touchstones like Prince, Janet Jackson, and Sade, icons that musicians tend to develop intensely personal relationships with, those influences do little to fire up Nagano. In the past, she’s carried entire albums largely on the strength of her winning presence, but here her performances feel less like loving homages than like genre exercises. She’s also been tasked with breathing life into the group’s flattest, most literal songs yet. It’s too great a challenge even for her.
Songwriting is such an afterthought that many song titles simply telegraph the mood the track is meant to evoke: “Sweet” is the record’s sugar rush, “Butterflies” is a nervous slow burn, “Strobe Light” is a dance track, and so forth. Every convention is presented at face value. “Push” sounds like it was commissioned for a salon commercial or fashion shoot, so of course its lyrics touch on the nature of fame. “Angling for the big win, you want the world to know,” Nagano sings over a RuPaul runway beat, “Magazine star/Your name lit up in gold/All eyes on you.” That song wears its emptiness on its sleeve, but Season High’s attempts at profundity don’t land any more gracefully. “Butterflies” wallows in moodiness for six minutes with no end game, and the even grimmer “Gravity” similarly writes itself into a corner. These aren’t songs in search of a payoff; they’re songs that forget to look altogether.
In interviews this album cycle, the band has tried to walk back its reputation as ringers for hire. “Working with other people is fun, but it always makes us more focused on our work because otherwise, we’ll always be ‘that band that always does collaborations,’” Nagano told Dazed magazine. And as frustrating as it must be for the group that their own records are eclipsed by their outside work, Season High won’t do anything to reverse the narrative. It's so clinical that it works better as an audition reel for their next round of features than it does its own statement. Looking to capture that smooth, ’80s feel that’s all the rage right now? Yeah, Little Dragon can do that for you. | 2017-04-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-04-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Loma Vista | April 14, 2017 | 5.6 | 336ee619-df31-48f6-bc02-1d5222beca94 | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | null |
The Peruvian producer’s debut album is a shimmery collection of protest chants, club rhythms, and sunlit synths that testifies to dance music’s spiritual nourishment. | The Peruvian producer’s debut album is a shimmery collection of protest chants, club rhythms, and sunlit synths that testifies to dance music’s spiritual nourishment. | Sofia Kourtesis: Madres | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sofia-kourtesis-madres/ | Madres | The ecstatic house music of Sofia Kourtesis suggests places that are full of people, but not necessarily crowded. Think of a time when you were closely surrounded by more heads than you would normally tolerate, but it wasn’t a problem, and actually made your environment that much better. On her debut full-length, Madres, Kourtesis invites us inside every version of this space that she knows. That includes, but also extends far beyond, the transcendent dancefloors that she summons through her enraptured, hair-on-fire performances. Madres travels from intimate nightclubs in Berlin to sunny beaches on the Spanish coast to booming demonstrations on the streets of Lima. It’s a rich collage of foraged samples that beg to be rewound and heard anew, a dance album that will jolt you with jumper cables, and a stirring statement on maternal patience in its many possible forms. Madres fulfills the promise of Kourtesis’ string of effervescent EPs and exceptional remixes over the past five years.
With her eye for texture, Kourtesis practically drops you into the middle of these gatherings—sometimes through field recordings culled directly from those scenes. But it’s her meticulous composition style that heightens the album’s sense of bounty. On the title track, gentle synths splash and scatter like thick sunshower drops on a windshield, vocal arpeggios loop into an angelic backing choir, and a door hinge creaks in distress. Kourtesis eventually sighs a tender and glowing refrain, introduced by the song’s crown jewel: a grainy, vintage sample of a nasal voice yelping a mysterious broken phrase, calling out from beyond. She treats the sample like it’s a torn-off corner of an old photograph: damaged and decontextualized, then reframed and reconsidered.
That approach pays off most of all on the clamorous protest track “Estación Esperanza,” which features her lifelong role model and the first musician she ever saw in concert, Manu Chao. When Kourtesis released “Estación Esperanza” as a single nearly two years ago, it illustrated her noisiest side, clanging like an old radiator warming up—and in the context of Madres, it’s ripping hot. Alongside chants from a Peruvian anti-homophobia protest, Kourtesis dices up and echoes a rhyme that Chao repeats throughout his 2001 album Próxima Estación: Esperanza. The line—“¿Qué horas son, mi corazón?”—could be interpreted as a parent asking a child for the time, or a personal mantra, or nifty nonsense. Chao named his album after its recurring sample of the Madrid metro intercom announcing Esperanza station; written out, the words appear to say “Next Station: Hope.” But Kourtesis takes a page from Chao’s book and spins the title into a rallying cry: Here, “Estación Esperanza” could be read as “Hope Season.” Her gift for pulling new meaning out of aged audio fragments is one of Madres’ foremost delights.
So is her growth as a singer and lyricist. Kourtesis fully broke out of that shell on Fresia Magdalena opener “La Perla,” and Madres begins with a heart-to-body sequence reminiscent of that EP’s first two songs. “Si Te Portas Bonito” flips the switch from daytime to nighttime Balearic pop bliss, laying a Top 40-style verse-chorus structure over a silky, sexy house beat. “Vas a querer escucharme” (“You’re going to want to listen to me”) is one of its first lyrics, and while she’s singing about physical intimacy, the shot-calling carries its own punch, too.
Madres moves in some familiar dance music patterns, but also harbors a sudden tidal shift. On the icy, desolate “Moving Houses,” she briefly abandons her signature multi-layered house; the song is a tempo-less experiment in crispy static and lonely, sporadic chimes, recalling the sonic dabblings of renowned German photographer and artist Wolfgang Tillmans as well as the voice of Björk. The atmosphere is a world apart, but the individualized care remains: She cherishes each sound like her own child.
Nothing could be more fitting, given the hardship that preceded Madres. While she toured off the acclaim of Fresia Magdalena, Kourtesis was also constantly flying home to Peru to see her mother, who had been diagnosed with cancer. In desperation, Kourtesis posted a clip of Madres’ title track on Instagram with a public plea to be introduced to the world-renowned neurosurgeon Peter Vajkoczy. He replied the next day, performed a high-risk surgery, and extended her mom’s life. She honors him on the soulful and melancholy “Vajkoczy,” which doubles as something of an extended lead-in to “How Music Makes You Feel Better,” the album’s biggest endorphin release. Together, the tracks climb to the clouds, peaking with a sky-high synth line that squiggles like an airplane banner in the wind. As a token of her gratitude, Kourtesis took Vajkoczy to the Berlin techno hub Berghain and blew a brain surgeon’s mind.
Such is the good karma of someone who once trusted her dentist to remove a wisdom tooth a few hours after she encountered him nude in the club. Kourtesis is always seeking out new stories, whether she’s pulling strangers onstage to dance with her, or flipping traditional cumbia rhythms into a metallic, blaring album closer. It takes a special kind of force to get so many different voices in one place to coalesce. Maybe a common goal. Maybe a shared spirit. Sometimes, it’s as simple as having somebody at the center who’s willing and able to care for everyone—and who’s as magnetic as Sofia Kourtesis is here. | 2023-10-27T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2023-10-27T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Ninja Tune | October 27, 2023 | 8.5 | 3372eac9-ed6b-4b50-aed3-1b8860ad15b4 | Steven Arroyo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/steven-arroyo/ | |
On their debut album, the teen (and pre-teen) punk rockers turn adolescent angst and razor-sharp hooks into heartwarming pop-punk with ample charm. | On their debut album, the teen (and pre-teen) punk rockers turn adolescent angst and razor-sharp hooks into heartwarming pop-punk with ample charm. | The Linda Lindas: Growing Up | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-linda-lindas-growing-up/ | Growing Up | Viral videos come in many forms: a lightsaber demonstration, a musical celebration of Fridays, a pig rescuing a drowning goat. In May 2021, the young punk band the Linda Lindas got their own taste of internet fame with a filmed performance of their song “Racist, Sexist Boy.” “A boy came up to me in my class and said that his dad told him to stay away from Chinese people,” the band’s drummer, Mila de la Garza, explains at the start, referencing an interaction that occurred shortly before Covid lockdowns. “After I told him that I was Chinese, he backed away from me.” Like countless women before them, the Linda Lindas reclaimed this painful experience by transforming it into a sludgy punk song. “We rebuild what you destroy!” bassist Eloise Wong shouts. The internet gobbled the clip up, with everyone from Thurston Moore to Paramore’s Hayley Williams declaring the Linda Lindas the absolute coolest.
The Linda Lindas were destined for greatness, one way or another. The Los Angeles quartet—whose members range between 11 and 17 years of age and are Asian American, Latin American, or both—began as part of a kid cover band organized by Dum Dum Girls’ Kristin Kontrol. The musicians, a mixture of sisters, cousins, and chosen family, then formed their own band. Within a year, they were opening up for Bikini Kill, who they later covered in Amy Poehler’s riot grrrl film Moxie. Shortly after the release of “Racist, Sexist Boy,” the Linda Lindas signed with the long-running punk powerhouse Epitaph. Their debut album, Growing Up, is potentially the most heartwarming record of the year.
The songs on Growing Up center on anxieties heightened by adolescence, like self-doubt, loneliness, and a lack of control. All four members—the aforementioned Wong and de la Garza alongside Lucia de la Garza (guitar) and Bela Salazar (guitar) —split songwriting duties, and each expresses her innermost thoughts with candor and precision. “If I were invisible/No one would judge me for/Wanting to be by myself,” goes one heartwrenching verse on the upbeat “Magic.” “But I’m already invisible/Enough without anybody else’s help.” But even when monstrous insecurity threatens to swallow them, the Linda Lindas anchor themselves to the hope that tomorrow will wash away the pain of today. On the Spanish-language “Cuántas Veces,” Salazar laments the agony of feeling like an outsider but lands on a place of acceptance: “I’m different/Not like everyone else,” she concludes. “And not the whole world/Will understand me.”
Beyond emotional acuity, the Linda Lindas also understand the power of a great hook. Arriving at under 30 minutes, Growing Up moves at a tight, bouncy clip, pogoing between power pop and punk, political statements and tributes to cats. The latter, “Nino,” is a post-punk sibling to the Shaggs’ “My Pal Foot Foot” that unexpectedly segues into a spacey, haunted breakdown; if you listen closely, the band say, you can catch a keyboard performance by a cat named Lil Dude. Other songs are more melodically straightforward: The anxiety spiral “Talking to Myself” channels the bubblegum stickiness of the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack while the shout-along “Oh” evokes the Go-Go’s at their punkiest moments. Of course, “Racist, Sexist Boy” makes an appearance at the end of the album and sounds as invigorating as it did in the viral video; Wong’s sludgy snarl places her in a lineage of powerhouse punk vocalists.
Growing Up is produced by the de la Garzas’ dad, Carlos de la Garza, who has worked with Paramore, Best Coast, and Bleached. This detail, along with the bandmembers’ ages, might inspire cynics to levy charges of nepotism. But to do so would deny the Linda Lindas their agency and ignore one of the album’s major themes: that through the collective action of making music together, the Linda Lindas are empowering themselves and each other. This idea comes to a head on the title track as the band acknowledge that growing up can’t be either hastened or slowed. But if they have to be on this rollercoaster, they choose to ride its highs and lows together. | 2022-04-07T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-04-07T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Epitaph | April 7, 2022 | 8 | 3373183f-18e7-44fb-bcee-e3d5a727a8c9 | Quinn Moreland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/quinn-moreland/ | |
The Grizzly Bear and Department of Eagles member's first solo EP is a brief, majestic song cycle. | The Grizzly Bear and Department of Eagles member's first solo EP is a brief, majestic song cycle. | Daniel Rossen: Silent Hour/Golden Mile EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16394-daniel-rossen-silent-hourgolden-mile-ep/ | Silent Hour/Golden Mile EP | There is something almost topographical about Daniel Rossen's music. It has the overwhelming grandeur of something viewed from above-- perhaps from the top of a tall tree or an airplane or very possibly, if you're into that sort of thing, heaven-- but also the painstaking, labyrinthine detail of a map. His first solo EP, Silent Hour/Golden Mile, is a brief but majestic song cycle full of fingerpicked notes that babble like tributaries, echoing piano chords that cut through silence like rocks rippling the surface of a pond, and in a few cases, explosive mountains of sound that jut up out of nowhere. It occasionally sounds like George Harrison or Harry Nilsson or even, in fleeting and not unwelcome moments, the Eagles, but it also sounds personal, like one person's recollections of the music he grew up with knocked slightly askew by memory's jostling. So yes, a map, but if you had to draw it, it would end up looking like one of those on the inside cover of a fantasy novel or maybe an old edition of Robinson Crusoe: a detailed rendering of an imagined, serenely unpeopled place.
Rossen is one-fourth of Grizzly Bear and one-half of Department of Eagles. "A lot of this music comes from exiling myself," he said in a recent interview, and considering the year he had in 2009, it's understandable why the guy would need to get away from it all. After the success of Grizzly Bear's acclaimed record Veckatimest, a group that began with humble aspirations suddenly found itself catapulted onto Billboard's Top 10 and magazine covers, and vexed by sensationalist reports of intra-band conflict. The guys could weather it (they're recording Veckatimest's follow-up as we speak), but in the meantime writing and recording Silent Hour/Golden Mile was Rossen's way of keeping his fingers busy and his mind at ease during the band's downtime. It seems to have worked. "Up On High", the opener, has the bright feel of someone pushing off from the world to find the clarity that has eluded him. "In this big empty room," he exhales over a gently crescendoing chord progression, "Finally feel free."
Expansive yet graceful in its moments of restraint, Silent Hour/Golden Mile shows off Rossen's skill as an arranger. Tracks like "Golden Mile" (on which he's joined by Dr. Dog drummer Eric Slick) and "Silent Song" (which is streaked with the signal-flare wails of Scott Hirsch's lap steel) feel full and lush but never cluttered; the emotion of the songs is free to bob unobstructed to the surface. "I'll dig until I bleed/ Drink until I rot," he hollers soulfully on "Silent Song", before appealing for salvation, "Lord, I know it's wrong/ So help me out." Drowning out his pleas, "Silent Song" builds to an instrumental bridge that finds Rossen doing Rossen: imbuing architectural grandeur with gentle naturalism. "Silent Song" towers, but even in its boldest moments it trembles and rustles precariously, as if a breeze much stronger than the one blowing through could topple the whole thing.
Rossen's guitar playing has unmistakable personality. You could probably count on one hand the number of indie rock guitarists you can say this about right now, but a lot of listeners will recognize these as Daniel Rossen songs before he even opens his mouth. The style that you can hear Rossen developing from the earliest Department of Eagles recordings up through Veckitmest is a distinct, improbably fluid blend of folk, jazz, rock, and even the occasional jolt of punk attitude (one of his finest moments with Grizzly Bear, "While You Wait for the Others", hinges upon his subtly sneering distortion). And here, he busts out some of his most impressive tricks. Positioned at what feels like the exact geodetic north of the song cycle, "Return to Form"'s summit recalls Veckatimest opener "Southern Point" as it explodes into a jazzy, Beatles-esque cascade of notes that glimmer with the naturalistic sorcery of the northern lights. As with Grizzly Bear, Rossen's lyrics rarely approach the poeticism of his guitar playing, but he's able to suggest more with his unique tones and phrasing than most singers can. When words fail, Rossen's jazz hands shred.
Though Veckati-mania was replete with plenty of overzealous YouTube commenters proclaiming Brooklyn's fab four to be better than the Beatles, it doesn't feel too hyperbolic to say that Rossen is gradually, quietly earning his George Harrison stripes. Though there's nary a "Hare Krishna" in sight, Silent Hour/Golden Mile still has the candid honesty of a person grappling with faith and trying to reconcile his place in the universe. The terrific closing track, "Golden Mile", is the closest he's yet mustered to an "All Things Must Pass", and though he doesn't quite stumble upon lasting enlightenment, momentary peace will do. Rossen brings to this EP the meticulous craftsmanship we've come to expect from his work, but in Silent Hour he's created something rare: a rendering of isolation that feels sincere but never maudlin. Returning from the solitary hike of "Golden Mile", he concludes with an observation that will still ring true in a busier world: "There is bliss in this mess." | 2012-03-20T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-03-20T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Warp | March 20, 2012 | 8 | 3373af4a-ddf1-4a7d-8ee2-46e5c6017ba3 | Lindsay Zoladz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/lindsay-zoladz/ | null |
The Chicago rap scene has undergone a creative renaissance in the past few years, and Mick Jenkins is the latest auteur to emerge to the forefront. His new mixtape features improved songcraft and a tightened focus, its cohesive sound reflective of the album's titular metaphor. | The Chicago rap scene has undergone a creative renaissance in the past few years, and Mick Jenkins is the latest auteur to emerge to the forefront. His new mixtape features improved songcraft and a tightened focus, its cohesive sound reflective of the album's titular metaphor. | Mick Jenkins: The Water(s) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19745-mick-jenkins-the-waters/ | The Water(s) | Chicago has undergone a creative renaissance in the past few years, one of a depth few anticipated. Compared with earlier regional moments, where local buzz propelled a handful of artists to the national stage, the Internet's clear-glass window into this world—and the increased marketing savvy of even its least-established teenagers—has made the city's multiple scenes appear saturated. This is further exaggerated by the reams of imitators the city's bigger stars—Chief Keef and Chance the Rapper—have inspired. With limited oxygen in a competitive space, a raft of rookie artists have stubbornly hoisted themselves into the air, grasping for whichever angle best fits.
With the release of The Water(S) earlier this month, 6'5" Alabama-born, Chicago-raised rapper Mick Jenkins towers above most of the city's newcomers, literally and figuratively. Like collaborators Chance the Rapper, Saba, and No Name Gypsy, he's a product of Chicago's vibrant poetry scene, and a sharp disciple of a similar lyrical tradition. Jenkins is a conscientious person, a writer drawn to literary symbolism, punctuating the poetic obliqueness of his bars with barbed truths. His debut, 2013's jazzy Trees & Truths, was loose and indistinct. The improved songcraft of The Water(S) tightens his focus, yet each track feels of a piece, its cohesive sound reflective of the album's titular metaphor.
This mixtape does bear an evident debt to Kendrick Lamar, and at times, The Water(S) feels like an album-length tribute to Kendrick's "Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst" and "Swimming Pools (Drank)". Although the first few songs take on amorphous shape of album tracks, Jenkins' very first verse grounds them in "The Art of Peer Pressure"-like action and movement: "It was 91st and Laney, we were six deep, steppin' up the stairs/ Black Buick with a slick creep, moving down the block, we had froze/ Felt the tension in my toes…" But Mick Jenkins' bold delivery is nothing like Lamar's introverted one. Even when Jenkins' poetical hand gets a bit too free with the pen, his verses are drawn together by the unbroken stride of his words. He stands apart thanks to a rap style that gives muscle to a moral position.
As Guru once said, it's mostly the voice: deep and sonorous, Jenkins' vocals resonate with a particularly masculine brand of authority. Where Chance the Rapper's voice affects a manic, elastic character, or Vic Mensa aims for empathic transcendence, Mick Jenkins is practical, decisive, and no-nonsense. Uninterested in high-minded frivolities, he often sounds like he's getting to the point, even when he isn't: "Everybody wanna be the back of a D-Rose" is a bit of coded language (Derrick Rose's jersey has the number one on the back), but his delivery still gives this wordplay pointed gravitas. Serious and dignified, he wears his voice like a Sunday suit.
This confident rhetorical style is underpinned by the anxiety of a person who perceives that the world has issued him a false bill of sale. Clear-eyed, he recognizes the superficiality of his peers' wealth and status obsessions and the counterfeit choices the world has presented them. For Mick Jenkins, "water" represents spiritual nourishment, clarity, purpose, qualities essential to life yet too easily ignored by the distracted. This isn't just standard young adult nonconformism—although it is that, too—but in the context of Chicago's South Side, where "Little niggas got guns now/ And they carry them to the fuckin' beat," a matter of life and death. Mick Jenkins combats this anxious frustration with aggressive confidence, willing his truth to reshape a warped reality.
The album's best songs foreground his words. The sparse, unsettling "Jazz", which twists with terse ambiguity, lets his vocals take center stage. Statik Selektah's "Black Sheep" gives the back half some sleek momentum, while the frenetic "Who Else" upends the casual atmosphere with some of Jenkins' most focused writing. But The Water(S) peaks with the climactic DJ Dahi-produced urgency of "Dehydration", where each word seems underlined for maximum dramatic impact. Closer "Jerome" with Joey Bada$$—the album's most atypical track—feels like an exuberant Lost Boyz tribute, and a welcome exultation after a record of stern intensity.
In sharp contrast with Mick Jenkins' brolic tone, the album's leisurely production is soothingly therapeutic, all smudged-graphite edges. Where his first album was jazzy in a general sense, The Water(S)' languid guitar lines and airy atmosphere bathe the music in soft-focus blues and greens, a watercolor that recalls the placid cool of '60s modal jazz. The connection between aggression and relaxation is essential: his vocals keep the chilled production dynamic, while the reassuring ambiance is immersive, sanding the rough edges on occasionally weighty material.
Heaviest of all is "Martyrs", released as a video at the end of last year. The visuals include a flashed simulacrum of Chief Keef's "Don't Like" video, but with Jenkins and each dreadlocked extra wearing a noose. The beat, like Kanye's "Blood on the Leaves", co-opts a conceptually loaded sample in Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit". His lyrics attack youthful hypocrisy and conformity, the empty pursuit of money and sex, and his peers' susceptibility to these traps. This is his truth, and a welcome counter to the blithe attitude many rap fans have carried over the last two decades of violence in the form. All the same, as Mick Jenkins grows in stature, he may experience the sensation of having people agree for the wrong reasons; that his words, as potent as they are, could easily be co-opted by those who would demonize teenagers for their own oppression—a mirrored experience of what may have gone through Keef's mind the first time he saw a crowd of white fans rap the hook to "I Don't Like". One's eyes can never be too open, but at least we can trust Mick Jenkins to tell us how he sees it. | 2014-08-29T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2014-08-29T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rap | self-released | August 29, 2014 | 7.8 | 3374b992-6969-4439-9444-388707aa5367 | David Drake | https://pitchfork.com/staff/david-drake/ | null |
Joining the Mivos Quartet’s strings with rapper Kool A.D. and a traditional jazz ensemble, the Oakland trumpeter crafts suite-like compositions that grapple with structural racism and state violence. | Joining the Mivos Quartet’s strings with rapper Kool A.D. and a traditional jazz ensemble, the Oakland trumpeter crafts suite-like compositions that grapple with structural racism and state violence. | Ambrose Akinmusire: Origami Harvest | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ambrose-akinmusire-origami-harvest/ | Origami Harvest | Ever since his 2014 album The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier to Paint, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire has made patient development seem exciting, whether as bandleader or playing a sideman role. He has a lot of tools at his disposal on his roundabout path to dazzlement. In solos, the nimbleness of his phrasing and his steady tone control are immediately apparent, even when the overall shape of what he’s crafting might seem hard to fathom. Then, at last, he might linger over a few select notes, putting them through a range of timbres and moods, or flash a showy shift in dynamic power, creating a sense of drama further accentuated by his having held back.
Akinmusire also clearly enjoys the idea of the ensemble as a concept. On The Imagined Savior, he added a diverse range of guest vocalists, plus a string quartet, to an instrumental core familiar to fans of post-bop jazz. His latest record pursues a similar impulse. This time, the stylistically varied group of collaborators includes the cutting-edge Mivos Quartet as his string section, while the rapper Kool A.D. is the sole guest vocalist over the opening trio of lengthy, suite-like compositions.
This grouping is extravagantly strange, even for Akinmusire. The onetime Das Racist emcee’s blunted-out free verse and screwball non sequiturs aren’t an obvious match for the contemplative style of a composer who gives his albums titles like When the Heart Emerges Glistening. Sometimes the collision doesn't pay off. As Giovanni Russonello notes, a recent sexual misconduct claim made against A.D.—and his own response—makes his continued reliance on freestyle tics like “pussies get wetter” seem ill-advised. When this phrase comes out of nowhere (as it tends to do), it’s difficult to tell if the emcee is mocking a trend in rap—or simply perpetuating it. The air of poetic abstraction on the album doesn’t clear anything up.
But elsewhere, the contrast in styles works more successfully. On the opening track “a blooming bloodfruit in a hoodie,” a strangely dry production effect on A.D.’s voice makes it sound as if recorded in another studio, and grafted on to the more natural-sounding acoustic of the string quartet and jazz combo. This is the first movement in what comes to seem like a purposeful progression. Over the 38 minutes that A.D. shares the stage with the strings, Akinmusire, drummer Marcus Gilmore, and pianist Sam Harris, there is a gradual sense of convergence among the players. By the end of that first track, the boom-bap influence on Gilmore’s playing seems sympathetic to A.D.’s sound. During the following song, “miracle and streetfight,” Akinmusire joins in this same energy, firing off a steady stream of riffs, after a powerhouse Gilmore solo.
On this track, Kool A.D.’s flow doesn’t sound as though voiced from a remove, which helps underline some of his more politically evocative lines. (“Actively looking for escape routes/Gaze at the starry sky/The moon/The tombs… of the buried ones.”) Even the re-entrance of the string quartet, at the end of the piece’s fourth minute, has the feel of alarm.
The album’s third piece, “Americana / the garden waits for you to match her wilderness,” has a slower tempo and a gentler melodic profile, with Harris occasionally incorporating G-funk slides between notes on a keyboard. Kool A.D. reprises some of his earlier freestyle fragments, but in a calmer voice, over stretches of minimalist repetition in the piano and strings, which provides a sense of closure for his stretch on the record.
Yet the rapper’s abstract influence can even be felt even when he’s no longer in the booth—particularly on the track “Free, White and 21” (a reference to a vintage cinematic catchphrase of privilege). On previous albums, Akinmusire has dedicated tracks to African-Americans killed by police. On his debut for Blue Note, he fashioned a memorial for Oscar Grant; on his follow-up, he incorporated a longer list of names in his “Rollcall for those Absent.” Here, though, the mourning takes on a more experimental quality. The names of the dead are whispered with real solemnity. But in the background, Akinmusire—credited for all the voices—bleats out higher-pitched vocalizations that sound distressed in a different way, regarding the body count.
This combination of vocal timbres makes for a more bleakly ironized memorial. Though when the American present requires a near-constant state of mourning on this topic, having recourse to multiple registers can be healthy. In these moments, Akinmusire’s decision to work with artists like Kool A.D. and the Mivos Quartet seems less like the product of a personal creative challenge than an impulse to remind us of the range of worthy ideas that unusual collaborations might yet produce. | 2018-10-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-10-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | Blue Note | October 13, 2018 | 7.6 | 33801d55-f32a-4abc-9a99-852209554db7 | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | |
*Brothers *is a snapshot of two young producers—Suicideyear and Outthepound—evolving quickly. They both favor languid tempos and nostalgic synth tones, and their work has a druggy, melancholic feel. | *Brothers *is a snapshot of two young producers—Suicideyear and Outthepound—evolving quickly. They both favor languid tempos and nostalgic synth tones, and their work has a druggy, melancholic feel. | Suicideyear / Outthepound: Brothers | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22767-brothers/ | Brothers | Though he’s worked steadily since his 2013 debut album Japan, the New Orleans-based producer James Richard Prudhomme (a.k.a. Suicideyear) is still probably best known for producing “Hurt” by Yung Lean, a rapper whose work is often used as a proxy for the most grating aspects of hip-hop appropriation. Whatever you think of the controversial Swede, however, Suicideyear never deserved to inherit Lean’s criticisms. Over the course of his relatively short career, Prudhomme has worked with Atlanta rappers Rome Fortune and OG Maco and embraces hip-hop as sincerely as he does his house and techno influences. Though he's clearly still fond of Yung Lean, he told Impose in 2014 that “I wouldn’t say I’m a sad boy."
Mistaking Suicideyear’s Tumblr-friendly sound for irony was easy to do a few years ago, but today the definitions of “trap” have become so nebulous, for better or worse, that conversations about authenticity have naturally shifted. “Bad and Boujee” is, amazingly, the number one song in America and arguments about ownership now have easier targets (see: Lil Peep, perhaps saddest boy of all). Suicideyear’s 808s sound like the ones he’s heard listening to Louisiana hip-hop stations for most of his life, and the beats he crafts from them are often quite good.
Brothers is a collaboration with similarly-minded producer Outthepound, a friend who also favors languid tempos and nostalgic synth tones. Though not as high-profile a producer as Prudhomme—as of press time Outthepound has 16 tracks and 608 followers on SoundCloud—his production has already coalesced around identifiable touchstones. While Suicideyear often employs club-friendly synths in unusual contexts, Outthepound prefers presets that recall ’90s video game soundtracks. (Album art on Facebook for their song “Lust” features an avatar wielding Cloud Strife’s Buster Sword from “Final Fantasy VII.”) Other solo tracks of his, like “Conclusive,” come wreathed in dream-pop haze. The two had previously collaborated on Rome Fortune’s “Trap Lady,” a spaced-out track with screwed vocals and soothing textures that brought together both of their styles: slick, druggy, melancholic.
On Brothers, the duo’s template is spare, with bright melodies placed atop staccato snares and moody bass. These are purposefully low-impact productions: On the one hand, it’s easy to imagine that adding a warbler like Lil Uzi Vert to “All Nite” would add some direction and purpose. On the other, the instrumental beats show that Suicideyear and Outthepound are comfortable in their own world. The final two tracks are the most and least successful on the EP. “Jolly” sounds like TNGHT’s “Bugg’n” with a hint of NOLA bounce, a combination that works, but isn't original enough to be interesting on its own. “For Us,” on the flip side, swells into something more maximal and engrossing than anything on the record and hints at widescreen impulses the duo rarely indulge.
A digital release with just six tracks, Brothers is a compelling snapshot of two young producers evolving quickly. If they stay in the hip-hop world, it’ll be fascinating to see if more rappers hop onboard and how they mesh with their sound; if they follow the path suggested by “For Us,” we might see a Suicideyear x Outthepound teamup capable of headlining clubs or festivals on their own. | 2017-01-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-01-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | self-released | January 13, 2017 | 6.8 | 3382ef9e-a897-4ec9-ad1f-aead71a7992a | Nathan Reese | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nathan-reese/ | null |
The Rhode Island native’s second album of noisy, downbeat techno is a cocoon ringed with razor wire—the kind of music that’s perfect for headphones and subway journeys when you’re in a foul mood. | The Rhode Island native’s second album of noisy, downbeat techno is a cocoon ringed with razor wire—the kind of music that’s perfect for headphones and subway journeys when you’re in a foul mood. | DJ Richard: Dies Iræ Xerox | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dj-richard-dies-irae-xerox/ | Dies Iræ Xerox | DJ Richard’s music is as understated as his name, and that understatement extends even to the way it flits between extremes. The Rhode Island native was raised on noise and dance music, and his own productions fold in elements of both, existing in a liminal space between the two genres. From noise he gets his sullenness; from dance, his steady pulse. But there is nothing harsh or grating about the textures of his sad, coppery foghorn synths, and there is nothing particularly festive about his grooves. He didn’t invent this interzone, of course; especially in the underground, moody, downbeat techno is a busy lane. But DJ Richard navigates it far better than most. There’s a commendable depth to his forlorn atmospheres, which refuse to lapse into maudlin caricature or shift into industrial techno’s grayscale default mode.
His debut album, Grind, was about as moody as dance music gets, and probably for good reason. It was written in the space of three months, in the aftermath of having his home burgled and his computer stolen at the precise moment when he was backing up what should have been his debut album to an external hard drive. He had quit drinking, wasn’t going out much, and was beginning to contemplate leaving Berlin, where he’d been living for the past few years, and heading back home. (“That is definitely the state of mind that somehow was really conducive to music making for me,” he has said.) His new one, Dies Iræ Xerox, was created after his return to the Ocean State, but that old undercurrent of unease remains. From the very first note of the opening track, the music sounds perpetually on the verge of slipping out of tune. But this isn’t the nostalgic tape warping of Boards of Canada; it’s more like the groan of a mortally wounded beast, or a soul heaving beneath a great psychic weight.
Like its predecessor, Dies Iræ Xerox balances beat-driven tracks with drum-free synthesizer sketches whose mottled colors and blurry outlines suggest bruises. On their own, the five beatless tracks would have made for a pretty spellbinding ambient EP. “Crimson Curve” turns a gravelly, minor-key bass progression into a black-lit aquarium populated by strange, billowing shapes. “Ancestral Helm” is elegiac and becalmed. “Dissolving World” is a seven-minute investigation of two restlessly morphing chords, its emotional tenor inscrutable.
In the drum-driven tracks, the mood has darkened. You can feel the anger and defiance in the cutting sharpness of DJ Richard’s drums, the sheer force of his beats. On Grind, there were still echoes of the twinkling strain of house associated with Dial, the Hamburg label responsible for both albums. But there’s no trace of that legacy here. “Pitfall,” the album’s first drum track, is part trap beat and part bear trap, with hi-hats like rusted metal teeth. “Vanguard” advances, slow and mechanical, in rigid movements shorn of every last vestige of swing. “Tunnel Stalker” arrays bass squelches in triplets over a snapping drum groove and blackened, sizzling electronics. “In Broad Daylight” is equally stern, with brooding synths over lacerating drum programming—no mercy, no apologies, no bullshit. Simultaneously cushion and armor, this is the kind of music that’s perfect for headphones and subway journeys when you’re in a foul mood—a cocoon ringed with razor wire.
But even here, he cannily holds back. It’s not about pulling punches; DJ Richard is simply too crafty to let you see more than a flash of the blade before he draws blood. In the album’s most powerful tracks, there’s the sense of something partially obscured trying to break through—some awful presence, an indistinct background noise clawing its way into the foreground. The album’s title pairs the Latin term for “Day of Wrath” with “Xerox,” in a cryptic phrase that suggests calamity repeating itself in progressively degraded form, like Marx’s dictum about the revolving door of history as an endless cycle of tragedy and farce. The photocopier reference evokes punk zines, which feels fitting. The album doesn’t sound punk; it’s too elegant for that. But its spirit is evocative of a cut-and-paste Kinko’s missive from the 1990s, juxtaposing contrasting ideas and sources to render its own grim truth in stark black and white. | 2018-06-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-06-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Dial | June 25, 2018 | 7.8 | 33872346-0f54-40a1-95f8-6b629848aac3 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
The Brooklyn-based electro-pop duo follows their 2012 EP Candy Bar Creep Show with a full-length of brooding, rhythmically strong pop songs that fall halfway between the poutiness of Lana Del Rey and the hyperactive fizz of HAIM. | The Brooklyn-based electro-pop duo follows their 2012 EP Candy Bar Creep Show with a full-length of brooding, rhythmically strong pop songs that fall halfway between the poutiness of Lana Del Rey and the hyperactive fizz of HAIM. | MS MR: Secondhand Rapture | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17776-ms-mr-secondhand-rapture/ | Secondhand Rapture | Before MS MR had written a song, the band already knew how they would initially release their music, conceiving a Tumblr rollout strategy complex enough that Wired first reported it. The project was originally the idea of Lizzy Plapinger, co-founder of boutique NYC pop label Neon Gold, and it was consummated when she started working with producer Max Hershenow. After putting out a few singles under the guise of anonymity, they made music to fit the Tumblr plan in the form of 2012’s Candy Bar Creep Show EP. They put out one song a week, alongside “obsessively curated” images and remix stems.
In his review of Charli XCX’s debut, True Romance, Marc Hogan called for a moratorium on treating internet platforms as musical genres, and rightly so. But even as MS MR break their umbilical connection to Tumblr to release their full-length debut album, they’ve supplemented Secondhand Rapture with what they’re calling “Secondhand Captures”-- a different visual treatment for every song available online; made up of videos of eerie, wretched glamor and corruptible, all-American innocence. MS MR’s desire to give their music a visual analog is interesting, but you wonder about their ability to create a record that can be listened to on its own.
“We both get off on wild weather and write our best music when there’s something crazy happening in the air,” MS MR have said; fittingly, much of Secondhand Rapture revolves around deep, thunderous rumblings, celestial twinkling, foggy shrouds, and the sweet clarity of a pastel dawn. There are brooding, rhythmically strong pop songs that fall halfway between the poutiness of Lana Del Rey and the hyperactive fizz of HAIM. The parts where it deviates from that template, however, are baffling: most notably "Salty Sweet", which has an airy, pumping Middle Eastern-sounding riff, and “Head Is Not My Home”, which revolves around what sounds like a programmed banjo sample. They fit awkwardly amidst the rest of the record.
Plapinger has spoken about not feeling confident about her ability as a lyricist, which works for and against them. At her best, as on the wounded trip-hop-leaning “Hurricane”, she conveys the air of a girl in her mid-to-late teens feeling disillusionment for the first time, mistrustful of herself and others. Songs like “Dark Doo Wop” and “Think of You” make triumphant hooks out of single lines ("Baby, you should stick around” and “I still think of you and all the shit you put me through” respectively, and conversely), the latter in a hi-NRG springy chorus that sticks out like a showgirl in a convent among its plain verses. But elsewhere, as on the rumbling, pastel synth-swathed “Bones”, the words come over as thin and contrived.
The “secondhand” part of the title, the band say, is a reference to how many of our experiences are mediated through the internet rather than direct contact. It’s a concern shared by many of the current class; Drake is terrified of Tumblr, Savages want to smash through mediating devices to live in a present, burning now. MS MR, however, make no attempt to engage with or bristle against the idea, merely representing it. Just as their early release strategy predated the existence of the music itself, these songs play like the moodboard for an actual album, a pitch for the idea of a pop band, rather than one you’d set up a fuckyeah… Tumblr for. MS MR do have one, but it hasn’t been updated in 10 months. It’s all well and good having a pristine launch strategy, but it means nothing if you can’t follow it with something that invites genuine engagement. | 2013-05-22T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2013-05-22T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Electronic | Columbia | May 22, 2013 | 6 | 338af42a-d7e4-4955-b90e-de4dba883186 | Laura Snapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/laura-snapes/ | null |
The UK goddess of lite pop still sounds serene, unbothered, and preternaturally confident. | The UK goddess of lite pop still sounds serene, unbothered, and preternaturally confident. | Dido: Still on My Mind | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dido-still-on-my-mind/ | Still on My Mind | Six years after her last album, Girl Who Got Away, and 20 years after her ubiquitous debut, No Angel, Dido’s version of pop is still most distinguishable for what it lacks: drama. The London singer may be one of the UK’s best-selling artists of all time, with her keening pop mantras “Thank You” and “White Flag” still reliable soundtracks in Tescos the nation over, but her even-keel approach feels removed from the volatile acrobatics and catharsis of Adele, Amy Winehouse, Ellie Goulding, and her other peers of the past two decades. Her songs still feel like the exhalation after all the action happens; in Dido songs, the tumult has been resolved by the time she records. Her breakup ballads simmer with loss and melancholy, but no regret or indecision; sweeping love anthems have no runway left for the chase, only snug contentment and bright promises to live up to another’s faith. What her music lacks in heat, it makes up for in reliable serenity—the sense that she’s already done her emotional heavy-lifting offstage, and the song she offers is the coda, not the conduit.
It’s extremely mature, in other words—not always the sexiest bait in pop music, but a balm all its own. Dido’s fifth album, Still on My Mind, guides her even more into the path of serenity and easy listening electronics, with odes to marriage and motherhood that bask in their comforts. Her most stunning asset is still her voice—a glossy, palatial purr, fraying at the edges, nodding clearly to Enya and Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries. When she sings of “Hurricanes,” those frightening and upending sources of power, she is really asking to stand by her partner forever, so they might face them together; a delicate, late-’90s synth beat (from her brother and regular collaborator, Rollo Armstrong) offers up a few light gales, but nothing so forceful as the title could conjure.
Soon after, Dido sings her harshest and most jarring lyric: “I’ve found a way to let you go/It’s gonna rip your heart out,” she offers tranquilly, with all the malice of a kitten gif, skipping up into falsetto for a dash of whimsy. (Imagine Eminem, whose sampling of her on “Stan” made her ubiquitous, braying that same line. Marvel that they ever had a conversation, let alone shared a hit song. Let your heart swell to embrace all the gorgeous, absurd potential in this world, and then cap it with the knowledge that Dido named her son Stan.)
Elsewhere, the dance floor beckons: “Take You Home” rides a feathery disco pulse and an undercurrent of rakishness, below the elegant surface: “I can sing you a song, take you home/But I can’t seem to find my own,” Dido sings, unbothered, in a neutral middle register that doesn’t jump octaves or arpeggiate in any of the usual disco conventions. It’s notable that in a dance track, a style that would usually suggest more momentum, Dido’s singing twists in the wind; the passive house-lite backing emphasizes the lack of vocal heat. “Friends,” the other dance track and a confident brush-off to an ex, also simmers with a gentle, proto-“TRL” amiability that sounds more dated than No Angel’s winsome mixes. Plenty of career pop singers have found second lives in house and EDM tracks that amped up their voices with fresh relevance, from Kelly Rowland to Lenny Kravitz and Leona Lewis; when Still on My Mind dips into the dance realm, it suggests Dido could do the same, but she’d need more dynamic backing.
Or maybe the dance tracks don’t land simply because the club is not where Dido wants to be. In Still on My Mind’s closing track, “Have to Stay,” she sounds her most enamored; nearly a capella to open, with just a puff of echo, she sings a delicate, lovely ode to her son, promising that she’ll stick by his side, enduring all his young histrionics and troubles, and leave him only when he’s truly ready, “’cause that’s what love is, darling.” It’s the preternatural certainty Dido shows that really warms the song; on Still on My Mind, more than ever, she presents her convictions fully formed, with a confidence that can feel infectious. Of course her marriage will face storms and come out intact; of course she’ll continue to shun the ghosts of her past, and guide her son towards a bright future. Here she declares it, and so shall it be. | 2019-03-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-03-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | BMG | March 13, 2019 | 6.6 | 3393486b-5c70-4944-9378-c52746692fe4 | Stacey Anderson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stacey-anderson/ | |
After a run of increasingly fussy, exhausting records, Kevin Barnes has started making direct and inviting music again. Innocence Reaches dips its toe into contemporary EDM. | After a run of increasingly fussy, exhausting records, Kevin Barnes has started making direct and inviting music again. Innocence Reaches dips its toe into contemporary EDM. | Of Montreal: Innocence Reaches | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22150-innocence-reaches/ | Innocence Reaches | Kevin Barnes is done chasing listeners away, at least for the time being. After pruning his fan base with a run of increasingly fussy, exhausting records, lately the capricious Of Montreal frontman has been attempting to widen the tent again. 2013’s Lousy with Sylvianbriar was the band’s most inviting effort since their 2007 consensus high watermark Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer, and with its grimy ’70s rock aesthetic and openhearted account of Barnes’ divorce, 2015’s Aureate Gloom was as direct as anything he’d done in a decade. It seems that when Barnes’ personal relationships are in shambles he compensates in the studio by dialing back some of his more alienating impulses, and apparently he’s still reeling from his divorce, because even more so than the last two, the band’s 14th record Innocence Reaches craves approval.
Like most Of Montreal LPs, Innocence Reaches arrives with a hook: It’s the band’s first to dip its toe in contemporary EDM. With its springy, raved-up synths and Calvin Harris tempos, opener “Let’s Relate” teases a spectacular reinvention, while Barnes nods to shifting gender norms with a distinctly 21st century pickup line: “How do you identify?” Challenging gender binaries is nothing new for Barnes, who was prancing around stages in pantyhose back in the mid-’00s, when indie-rock was at its most heteronormative, but the pulsing production seems to invigorate him. He draws out syllables just to savor the moment. Even during his Georgie Fruit phase he rarely sounded quite this liberated.
The electronic makeover is such a flattering look for the band that it’s a shame Barnes didn’t run with it. Though contemporary sounds dot the record, especially the bottom-heavy splatter of “A Sport and a Pastime” and “Trashed Exes,” both of which play like remixes of themselves, Barnes mostly defaults to his go-to muses, Prince and David Bowie, filtering them through his usual prism of funhouse psychedelia. It’s not that any of it misses its mark. “Chaos Arpeggiating” rides a frisky, seriously hummable Ziggy Stardust riff, but we’ve heard Barnes do this kind of thing so many times before, and it sounds that much staler because it follows something we haven’t.
And after a pair of encouraging bounce-back records, Barnes has begun to fall back on some bad habits. Lousy with Sylvianbriar and Aureate Gloom were each recorded with a full band, and Gloom in particular fed on that live energy. The same band is credited on Innocence Reaches, too, but they aren’t nearly the presence here—it sure sounds like Barnes recorded most of it alone, with the same tinker-and-paste ProTools approach that made Paralytic Stalks such a slog. As outgoing as the record tries to be (and it really, really tries), it can’t shake that particular sense of claustrophobia endemic to any full-length where the singer insists on doing his own backing vocals.
That’s one lesson Barnes never learned from Prince or Bowie, both artists who, for all their leading-man charisma, understood the value of collaboration. Each assembled ace bands and made records that felt like group efforts, yet Barnes’ approach is far more rigid. His albums are very much the work and vision of one man, and so even on a relatively easygoing outing like Innocence Reaches, that insularity can grow stifling. It’s as if since Barnes can’t escape his own head, he won’t allow listeners to, either.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this review misinterpreted a lyric from the song “Let’s Relate;” it has been amended. | 2016-08-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-08-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Polyvinyl | August 11, 2016 | 6.3 | 33966883-b733-49b4-9e0e-fee40639645a | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | null |
On his latest EP, the Indiana-raised hyperpop upstart takes a step closer toward the mainstream, sharpening his style without losing the irreverence that makes up his volatile vision. | On his latest EP, the Indiana-raised hyperpop upstart takes a step closer toward the mainstream, sharpening his style without losing the irreverence that makes up his volatile vision. | midwxst: Back in Action EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/midwxst-back-in-action-ep/ | Back in Action EP | Edgar Sarratt III started this year sounding like a scared kid on the bus, unsure of what the future held for him. “I’m twiddling my thumbs, don’t know what comes next,” he sang waveringly on the opening line of “Final Breath,” the stunning highlight off his SUMMER03 mixtape released back in March. The song’s breezy emo guitar strum, throbbing digicore bass, and heart-pounding drum sticks captured the racing thoughts of the 18-year-old hyperpop breakout; it was an outpouring of self-doubt that zoomed by at breakneck speed.
The South Carolina born, Indiana-raised Sarratt (who goes by midwxst) has become one of hyperpop’s most promising young upstarts. A charismatic vocalist and producer with the ability to fully execute his vision, midwxst has been adept at threading the needle between Juice WRLD-styled emo trap and bass-blasting maximalist pop in the 100 gecs tradition, underlining hyperpop’s indebtedness to Soundcloud rap in the process. While other ascendant hyperpop acts like Glaive have already begun to buff out their songs to the point where they don’t sound terribly different from, well, pop, midwxst has pushed his sound in new directions (even after getting picked up by a major label). On his new EP, Back in Action, he sharpens his flows and trims some of his noisier production back, while still managing to capture the volatile energy that makes him such a compelling voice.
midwxst always feels most at home on candy-colored beats that let him flex his inner nerd. Nowhere is this more obvious than on “Tic Tac Toe,” which comes complete with Super Smash Bros. sound effects and goofy lines like, “Got that yellow on me like I’m Pikachu/And that choppa be blowing like it’s a flute.” midwxst has never hidden the fact that he’s an excitable band kid who was raised on Roblox, and his best tracks course with the kind of nervous excitement you get from cracking the top 10 in Fortnite. “All Talk” ping-pongs about like Bubble Bobble marbles ricocheting off the wall, with midwxst deftly switching between his usual triplet flows and a breathless double-time bridge, even dropping a house bassline in the middle of the verse as if it were nothing. It’s such pure fun that you might not even notice the crushing doubt that seeps into midwxst’s voice halfway through the song: “Never fit in, don’t fit in the classroom; remember hiding from class in the bathroom,” he belts just a moment before singing about hopping back in the Benz for another joyride. In midwxst’s hands, his vulnerability becomes his greatest strength.
Momentum is the name of the game with midwxst, and for the first two thirds of the EP, each track slams into the next, ratcheting up the dial further and further. A long time disciple of Pi’erre Bourne (particularly for his keen sense for smooth track transitions), midwxst experiments with a few Playboi Carti-styled tracks throughout Back in Action, with some landing better than others. The vvspipes-produced “Star” and the ericdoa-featuring “Slide” tap into the same fearsome, teeth-gnashing template that Carti solidified on Whole Lotta Red, a mode that suits midwxst’s maximalist impulses well. The same can’t be said for “LA” and “Made It Back,” whose more mellow, TLOP-y synths leave midwxst out to dry, his effusive vocals limited from being as impactful as they could be.
The EP fires out the gate with plenty of energy, but by the end you can feel the inevitable sugar crash setting in. It’s refreshing to hear midwxst firmly assert how foundational Soundcloud rap has been to the very soul and language of hyperpop, without losing the charming, open-hearted irreverence that’s made the genre such a breakthrough. On Back in Action, midwxst takes a step closer toward the mainstream, molding the current trends of hip-hop to fit his hyperactive vision. He may have started the year twiddling his thumbs, but now he sounds more confident than ever.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-09-22T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-09-22T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Geffen | September 22, 2021 | 7.2 | 33980df6-2dc1-4461-abdd-edc458e04a82 | Sam Goldner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-goldner/ | |
In the 1980s, the legendary Bay Area composer self-released her first three albums of roving, curious synthesis. Restored and remixed by master engineer Marta Salogni, they’re collected in a new box set. | In the 1980s, the legendary Bay Area composer self-released her first three albums of roving, curious synthesis. Restored and remixed by master engineer Marta Salogni, they’re collected in a new box set. | Pauline Anna Strom: Echoes, Spaces, Lines | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pauline-anna-strom-echoes-spaces-lines/ | Echoes, Spaces, Lines | “My compositions grow as if on canvas,” Pauline Anna Strom once said of her labyrinthine, incandescent music. The San Francisco-based keyboardist was speaking in 1986, when her take on New Age music was still less known, despite three albums already to her name. Trans-Millenia Consort, Plot Zero, and Spectre, released in quick succession in the first half of the ’80s, were rich with undulating, immersive soundscapes inspired by modernists like Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream as much as classical composers like Bach. “I would say my music is virtually dominated by my imagination,” the blind-since-birth musician continued, giving voice to the wellspring of her spacious compositions: a boundless, searching curiosity that touches every part of her music.
The new 4xLP or 4xCD collection Echoes, Spaces, Lines shines a comprehensive spotlight on this period of Strom’s work with reissued versions of those three early albums, plus Oceans of Tears, a previously unreleased album also recorded in the ’80s. The box set follows Angel Tears in Sunlight, the artist’s first LP in over three decades, released posthumously in 2021. Since then, the producer and mixing engineer Marta Salogni, who worked with Strom in her last years, has beautifully restored and remixed Strom’s early work from the original reels. The new compendium, which also marks the release of Strom’s first three albums on streaming, is an essential look at an undersung experimental artist who made strides in the genre ahead of many of her contemporaries.
Listening to Echoes, Spaces, Lines, Strom’s rich musical philosophy quickly comes to light. She used nature, spirituality, and legend as guideposts for her roaming music, transforming those themes into curling synthesizer curios and shadowy, abstract compositions. On her first record, 1982’s Trans-Millenia Consort, Strom was drawn to “the metals of the earth,” a poetic description of the album’s resonant, darkly enchanting glow: Highlight “Cult of Isis” opens gently with twinkling harp and eerie ambient whistles, rising and falling alongside a deep drum pattern that thumps like a heartbeat. “Energies” moves faster, building elusive, gliding ribbons of synth and a polyrhythmic beat into one of her liveliest songs. Strom’s music never shifts or peaks in a predictable manner; instead she takes her time, adding color through slight modulation or unanticipated accents, like the blips of 808 on “The Unveiling.” She created the gorgeous, subaqueous “Emerald Pool” by recording the reverberations of water in a ceramic bowl, then layering the sounds with impressionistic vocal and harp melodies. It’s one of her earliest recordings yet easily one of her most accomplished, establishing a wandering sense of play that typified her work.
For 1983’s Plot Zero, Strom adopted a psychedelic approach and embarked on a “mind trip without chemicals,” as she described the album’s tense, low-frequency vibrations. Here, her music is imbued with a hypnotic warmth that teeters on the brink of darkness. Immersive opener “Mushroom Trip” dances around a tight, tripwire melody and chiming vibrations, lodging in the brain with near-psychotropic force. The tactile approach continues on “Organized Confusion,” whose burbling, droning melodies induce a trancelike sense of hypnosis, and especially “Plot Zero,” a striking composition that opens with cinematic, windswept tones before settling into a mesmerizing, cyclical synth pattern. Plot Zero prompted pushback from some New Age purists who took issue with its drug references, but Strom never swayed. “You look at Plot Zero and the new things that are in my head—that’s not what New Age would’ve wanted,” she said in 2017. Her willingness to break from genre convention allowed new forms to take shape in her music.
Echoes, Spaces, Lines’ reissues conclude with the frostbitten Spectre, released in 1984. Inspired in part by vampire stories, the album wields a pronounced, desolate sound palette. The low, murky tones of “Spatial Spectre” drift like fog over a graveyard in a horror film. Strom even incorporates organ melodies into “Blood Thirst” and “Blood Celebrants,” reshaping the liturgical sound alongside throbbing intonations and cosmic keyboard arpeggios. Even in its darker shades, her music contains an enchanting, roving curiosity, an extension of her seemingly endless imagination.
That mindset is best captured on Oceans of Tears, the previously unreleased record that caps the physical box set. Celestial and contemplative, it’s an astonishing addition to Strom’s catalog that expands on her fascination with the natural world. The languorous “Summer Rain” allows an entrancing theremin and ambient rumbles of thunder to commingle in meditative harmony, while “Ancient Sea Ritual” follows a winding chord along a bottomless underwater path. On the standout “Domestic Peace,” a synth flute trails over quotidian noises that Strom manipulates into a fascinating, shapeshifting piece, amplifying recordings of a cooing baby and plates and cutlery placed on a table—so it would “feel like you were setting that plate down in a vast canyon,” she said. It speaks to Strom’s extraordinary ethos, using everything within her grasp to create intangible beauty. With the lovingly crafted Echoes, Spaces, Lines, Strom’s individualistic art is proven as exquisite now as it was then, speaking a language entirely out of time. | 2024-01-06T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2024-01-06T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Rvng Intl. | January 6, 2024 | 8.3 | 3398384e-3d62-47e1-8512-4aace2ff84b9 | Eric Torres | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-torres/ | |
Like her debut, Sarah Beth Tomberlin’s Alex G-produced new EP finds her struggling with abandoning the Baptist church she grew up in. The five songs are so intimate they feel like secrets. | Like her debut, Sarah Beth Tomberlin’s Alex G-produced new EP finds her struggling with abandoning the Baptist church she grew up in. The five songs are so intimate they feel like secrets. | Tomberlin : Projections EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tomberlin-projections-ep/ | Projections EP | Sarah Beth Tomberlin wrote hushed, trembling songs about leaving behind faith while working 45 hours a week at a Verizon store and living with her parents in rural Illinois; now, she’s been on Kimmel. She quarantined with Busy Phillips. She toured with the revered indie-rock singer-songwriter Alex G, then asked him to co-produce her new project, Projections, which she recorded in his Philadelphia apartment. It’s not quite fame that Tomberlin’s reached, but Projections arrives at a point where she has more exposure than before, when the stakes are higher. This EP feels like a gift: a package of intricate, mesmerizing tracks, so intimate they sound like secrets.
Like her debut At Weddings, the EP finds Tomberlin struggling with abandoning the Baptist church she grew up in. The most striking song from her past album showed her accepting that hurt was inevitable, that she wanted to stop fearing what she couldn’t control — “To be a woman is to be in pain,” she sang. Tomberlin is often a blunt writer, and Projections is very clear in its premise: she tries to reconcile queerness with her religious past, and to navigate relationships around a sense of impending loss. “It’s all sacrifice and violence/The history of love,” she coos on the opening track, “Hours.” “But remember when we stayed up/And took turns playing songs?” That mix of profundity — or attempted profundity — with the sweet, banal details of new love is woven throughout the project, and varies in its effectiveness. “When you go you take the sun/And all my flowers die,” she intones awkwardly on “Sin,” redeeming the melodrama with the cutting simplicity of the next line: “So I wait by the window and write some shit and hope that you reply.”
Projections gleams when it zooms in like that, unraveling Tomberlin’s internal monologue. She overthinks through much of these songs. Every rush of an instinct must be processed; every lurch towards love, examined. “The night you asked me to hold your keys/ I felt like you wanted me to leave,” she breathes at the start of “Floor.” She watches her lover sleep as the song continues, but can’t allow herself to enjoy the private comfort of the moment: “I felt the quiet/I tried to try it,” she sings, “But my mind was always running crazy loud.” She juxtaposes every passing tenderness with the religious condemnation she’s internalized. “I never felt ashamed in your embrace,” she sings on “Hours,” and you understand the negative space around that statement.
The production helps convey that sense that something sinister is looming, tangled in the background of every intimacy. Alex G’s hallmarks are here: the fuzz that swaddles each song, bandmate Molly Germer’s steady, loping violin. Each track is so richly textured that it blossoms beyond—or despite—Tomberlin’s stark writing. There is always a string plucked somewhere in the background, a bass wriggling under a chorus. Percussive flourishes help telegraph the triumph in the EP’s most upbeat moments—“I don’t mind sinning if it’s with you,” Tomberlin sings, and the ricochet of a drum pattern underscores the accomplishment in that statement. “Wasted” is a soundtrack for mutely punching a fist above your head when your phone glows with a text back from a crush.
There are only five songs on the EP, one of which is a cover of the lo-fi rock band Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. Maybe because of that brevity, Projections offers fewer conclusions than at At Weddings. These tracks cut off just as Tomberlin’s decided she’ll try: to show a lover that she’s stronger now, to not require affirmations of affection. “I just wanna be clean,” she moans, six times in a row at the end of “Sin,” and we don’t learn whether she’s found that through her relationships, or if she’s rejected the yearning for purity altogether. But that’s the beauty in these songs, and the growth that gives them momentum — the shards of clarity that come just with accepting love, the power that comes with naming it.
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. | 2020-10-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-10-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Saddle Creek | October 16, 2020 | 7.3 | 339fa37f-e946-4329-83f6-684a5a6e25f4 | Dani Blum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dani-blum/ | |
For his latest Tobacco collection, Tom Fec of Black Moth Super Rainbow compiles 24 tracks spanning 2007 to present. They testify to his proficiency as an arranger of queasy electronic psychedelia. | For his latest Tobacco collection, Tom Fec of Black Moth Super Rainbow compiles 24 tracks spanning 2007 to present. They testify to his proficiency as an arranger of queasy electronic psychedelia. | TOBACCO: Ripe & Majestic | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tobacco-ripe-and-majestic/ | Ripe & Majestic | When Tom Fec, aka Tobacco, first started releasing music under the name Black Moth Super Rainbow in 2003, his approach to building songs out of analog keyboard gear stood out from his contemporaries—including acts with a similar tonal aesthetic, like Boards of Canada. By 2004, in time for the second BMSR full-length Start a People, he added a vocoder effect to his vocals that remains his signature to this day. Almost 15 years later, the queasy, semi-lo-fi, electro-psychedelic alt-hip hop style Fec invented still sounds completely unique. But he hasn’t done himself any favors with albums that sound increasingly half-baked. Even at his most epic, namely BMSR’s sprawling 2007 breakthrough Dandelion Gum, Fec tends to throw songs together without much regard for finessing the flow between tracks.
He has always maintained that BMSR and Tobacco are separate entities—BMSR is the more pop-leaning of the two—but by 2014’s Tobacco album Ultima II Massage, the line had gotten thin. On that album, it was hard to tell the difference between the more traditionally song-oriented style BMSR had evolved into, and the jagged edges that initially set Tobacco apart. Ultima II played like a hodge-podge of leftovers, so it could signal trouble that the latest Tobacco album Ripe & Majestic literally is a hodge-podge of leftovers spanning 2007 to present. It is almost completely devoid of vocals, and only two of its 24 tracks are more recent than 2015, one being an instrumental of a track he gave to rapper Beans, released as “Cemetery Wind.”
Nevertheless, Ripe & Majestic actually flows. This is the first time Fec has recaptured Dandelion Gum’s sense of journeying through a landscape filled with peaks, valleys, and strangely-colored flora. With its synth line that echoes off into the distance, “Octogram” creates a feeling of looking out towards a windswept horizon. It also has an almost identical production style as Dandelion Gum—which is no surprise, since it hails from the same year. But unlike the abrupt, whiplash-inducing stops on previous Tobacco albums, “Octogram” segues seamlessly into “Feels Like Nothing,” a tune from a different period where soft synth chords percolate in an intricate, perfectly woven call-and-response with what sounds like a fingerpicked banjo filtered through light distortion.
Shifting in style and tone ever so slightly from tune to tune, Ripe & Majestic sidesteps the punishing uniformity and sandpaper-y abrasion of last year’s proper Tobacco album, Sweatbox Dynasty. This time, in spite of the usual sophomoric song titles (“Slaughtered by the Amway Guy,” “Hick School,” “Pube Zone”) Fec doesn’t focus so much on obscuring the beauty in his music. “Wig Blows Off,” for example, skips along at a hopscotch cadence, the mood of the synths as sunny and hopeful as that childhood feeling of anticipation on a picture-perfect summer day.
There are even times when Fec finally pushes himself beyond the musical limits that so strongly define him. On “Sassy Ministries” (the aforementioned Beans instrumental), slick keyboards and simulated handclaps show that, when he wants to, Fec is capable of crafting glossy electronica without sacrificing his individuality. And though the moody noise-collage of album closer “Moss Mouth” is 10 years old, it proves how much Fec has grown. Back in 2007, he probably wouldn’t have allowed a percussive thump of static to play out against a heartbeat for four and a half minutes—not without making it painful in some way. This time, his touch is spare and patient. And strangely enough, the lack of vocals on this material highlights what a proficient and attentive arranger Fec has been for a long time now. In spite of his efforts to scuff-up them up, his synths really do sing. A most unlikely late-career coup, Ripe & Majestic lives up to its name. | 2017-08-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-08-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Rad Cult | August 22, 2017 | 7.7 | 33a55560-75f0-4017-8db7-1eb50d3c63e1 | Saby Reyes-Kulkarni | https://pitchfork.com/staff/saby-reyes-kulkarni/ | null |
The Louisiana sludge-metal giants have always professed a fondness for classic grunge; they make good on those influences on a streamlined album that’s also one of their heaviest yet. | The Louisiana sludge-metal giants have always professed a fondness for classic grunge; they make good on those influences on a streamlined album that’s also one of their heaviest yet. | Thou: Umbilical | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/thou-umbilical/ | Umbilical | Thou have always reveled in misanthropy. Onstage, the band might antagonize a disengaged audience by taunting them, or turning around and ignoring them. In lyric sheets, they paint humankind as a failed endeavor, once full of potential for good but chronically unable to pry itself from pitfalls as old as civilization itself. This outright disdain is one of the few things that Thou will cop to sharing with the Louisiana sludge-metal forebears, like Eyehategod and Crowbar, to whom they’re frequently compared.
Despite obvious similarities in geography, aggression, the lacerating use of guitar feedback, and a stylistic blend of doom metal’s murk and hardcore’s nastiness, Thou have never accepted the sludge mantle. Vocalist Bryan Funck has repeatedly suggested a closer kinship to another decades-old regional scene: Seattle grunge. Thou have amassed a staggering repertoire of grunge covers over the years, and it’s clear that their affinity goes beyond a cheeky fondness for Nirvana. Nevertheless, the band’s own abrasive, atypical, and often meandering compositions can make Funck’s determination to keep sludge at arm’s length seem a little precious. Not even the Melvins at their heaviest have ever sounded a fraction as ugly.
But on Umbilical, Thou make their grunge lineage more explicit while maintaining the intensity of their all-encompassing contempt. “Essentially, it’s a diss record,” Funck said of the album in a recent interview. “But I’m dissing Thou.” He turns the magnifying glass on himself, interrogating the anarcho-DIY ethos he’s held since adolescence against the backdrop of the compromises that Thou have made to further their careers. “Everything you’ve ever done, everything you’ve ever said, everything you’ve ever felt is a dagger on my belt,” he shrieks on “Emotional Terrorist,” before flipping his perspective: “Everything I’ve ever done, everything I’ve ever said, everything I’ve ever felt is a chain around my neck.”
It might seem like this insistent self-loathing calls for Thou’s most gnarled music yet, but instead we get the band at its most streamlined. This is their first album (excepting collaborations) with no tracks over seven minutes, and none of the brief interludes that the band is fond of. Everything is a song, and most of these songs even abide by something close to standard pop structure. Umbilical is no less heavy than any other Thou album—it might be their heaviest yet—but it no longer requires mental gymnastics to call this music grunge. Maybe it’s Alice in Chains starring in The Crow: murdered by a gang and resurrected in ghastlier form to seek vengeance. Maybe it’s Nirvana after Cobain makes a deal with the Devil, surviving the ’90s but cursed to make progressively more fucked-up albums (Umbilical is perhaps two or three iterations past In Utero).
Lead single “I Feel Nothing When You Cry” blusters in with uncharacteristically busy drumming from Tyler Coburn and thick, humid fumes rising from Andrew Gibbs’ and Matthew Thudium’s guitar amps. It sounds like 12 people queuing up “Geek U.S.A.,” all pressing play at once, and feeding the results through a wall of mangled speakers. Umbilical is a faster, hookier version of Thou, more prone to impish check this out feats—like building up to a breaking point in the middle of “I Feel Nothing When You Cry,” stopping on a dime, then shifting the groove and melody ever so slightly—than grimacing I dare you to survive this flagellation. This playfulness extends to lyrical references in unlikely places. The outwardly despondent “I Return as Chained and Bound to You” takes its closing refrain from a Mighty Boosh sketch; on “House of Ideas,” Funck slips in the central line of Billy Joel’s “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” right before a crushing breakdown.
Where previous Thou albums gestured at alt-rock tropes with a sense of remove, Umbilical leaves more connective tissue intact. The 2018 Rhea Sylvia EP and 2020’s full-length collaboration with Emma Ruth Rundle, May Our Chambers Be Full, feel like clear predecessors, but their gothic overtones and/or devotion to slower tempos ensured different results than Umbilical’s pulse-quickening anthems. Low-slung, Cantrellian riffs like those on “The Promise” aren’t alien territory for Thou, but the fact that they’re delivered at 120 BPM alongside a hummable vocal hook is a welcome surprise.
For all of Thou’s provocation, experimentation, and obfuscation, it’s not like they’ve ever been a difficult band to enjoy. Maybe their most accurate grunge analog is Pearl Jam, whose refusal to play by the rules outlined by MTV and Ticketmaster belied their identity as one of the poppiest, most earnest bands of the genre’s first wave. Thou are a blast even when Funck is digging into esoteric philosophy over the slowest riff you’ve ever heard, but it’s refreshing to hear them get real with themselves, jogging their music out of the enthralling but insular world they’ve created over the past 15-plus years. No one is ever going to accuse Thou of selling out. They’ve put in the work; they deserve to have some fun. | 2024-06-03T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2024-06-03T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Sacred Bones | June 3, 2024 | 7.9 | 33a8f294-4af5-4241-b674-52e2c3e5f381 | Patrick Lyons | https://pitchfork.com/staff/patrick-lyons/ | |
For her third album, the Swedish singer and multi-instrumentalist Anna von Hausswolff made a pilgrimage to the city of Piteå, home to the Acusticum Pipe Organ. The collection transforms the instrument, regarded by many as one of the stuffiest in music, into a lusty, lustrous marvel. | For her third album, the Swedish singer and multi-instrumentalist Anna von Hausswolff made a pilgrimage to the city of Piteå, home to the Acusticum Pipe Organ. The collection transforms the instrument, regarded by many as one of the stuffiest in music, into a lusty, lustrous marvel. | Anna von Hausswolff: The Miraculous | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21135-the-miraculous/ | The Miraculous | Growing up in Gothenburg, Sweden, the Swedish singer and multi-instrumentalist Anna von Hausswolff occasionally retreated—as so many kids do—to her own alternate dimension. Like all fanciful realms, this hallowed spot, deemed "the miraculous place", honed the young von Hausswolff’s imagination like a gym for the mind. "The border between fantasy and reality was so blurred," she recently told the Quietus. As the former monarch of the woods across the street from my elementary school, I can attest to this sensation: there’s something about self-created folklore that sharpens the spirit like no other exercise can, and one could argue that such myths lay at the heart of not just childhood, but human experience as a whole.
To craft her third full-length LP—so named for her special place—von Hausswolff made a pilgrimage to the city of Piteå, home to the Acusticum Pipe Organ. One of the largest instruments of its kind in that region, it is equipped with 9,000 pipes, built-in percussion (including vibraphone and glockenspiel), recording/looping tools, and nefarious sounds produced by submerging the pipes halfway underwater. If von Hausswolff’s wanderlust is the soul of The Miraculous, then the Acusticum is its gothic, frequently grotesque heart, its mechanical pulse tempered by the organic approach of the musician's four-piece backing band.
Consider The Miraculous’ universe a carnal Camelot, not far removed from the fucked-up mythologies of Angela Carter or George R.R. Martin. There’s no Ren-Faire tackiness, though; rather, the LP bridges high fantasy with human emotion, as the opening line of "The Hope Only of Empty Men" attests: "I think I see a knight/ I’m gonna fuck him for a while." Considering the religious contexts in which we’re used to hearing the organ, such lines seem downright heretical, and that’s exactly the point: The Miraculous transforms an instrument regarded by many as one of the stuffiest in music into a lusty, lustrous marvel.
For instance, the Swans-reminiscent highlight "Come Wander With Me / Deliverance" pits the puritanical pipes against a pair of droning guitars and an aqueous wail created through the aforementioned pipe-submerging method. It’s a battle that ends with a noise-ridden reunion, the marriage of sacred and profane. There’s darkness embedded within the songs’ dynamics as well; as Von Hausswolff lets out an ascendant wail at the start of "Evocation", the pipes swell up around her like the nightmarish offspring of a THX sound test, imbuing the musician's corporeal angst with divine strength.
There’s nothing wrong with a good glacial pace, but Von Hausswolff’s slowly unfurling arrangements, as well as her reliance on the organ as the primary rhythmic vehicle, occasionally make the record tough sledding. The album’s meandering latter half proves dull: "En Ensam Vandrare" and the title track drift along like flotsam on a lazy river, doing little to command the listener’s attention. Like most stories, The Miraculous take a few retellings for its ultimate magic—invigorating contrasts, medieval madness, and von Hausswolff’s role as foul-mouthed, fantastical raconteure—to sink in. Nevertheless, this is a dimension worth thorough investigation. | 2015-11-17T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2015-11-17T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Experimental | City Slang / Other Music | November 17, 2015 | 7.8 | 33a94fef-389a-4af8-a5b7-c60418f4d81e | Zoe Camp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zoe-camp/ | null |
Setting doomy lyrics atop blissful melodies and wispy psychedelic production, Kevin Barnes’ latest album wields his habitual twee escapism like a shield. | Setting doomy lyrics atop blissful melodies and wispy psychedelic production, Kevin Barnes’ latest album wields his habitual twee escapism like a shield. | Of Montreal: UR FUN | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/of-montreal-ur-fun/ | UR FUN | Children born the year Of Montreal released their debut album have been breezing into American bars with their government-issued IDs for two years now. The psychedelic pop project helmed by Kevin Barnes came into its stride during the indie surge of the early aughts, when widespread twee escapism offered an out from the horrors of the news under the second Bush administration. Few darlings of that era have clung to its aesthetics as stubbornly as Barnes, who injects a surfeit of color into even his most morose undertakings. He has brewed up a storm of music over the past two decades, and while plenty of it is forgettable, hardly any is drab. Cycling through galvanizing Prince shrieks, Bowie-worshipping hooks, and feathery Beach Boys harmonies, Barnes keeps his ear trained on the most exuberant characters in pop music’s past. His latest, UR FUN, keeps the party going, even if it often sounds more like a patchwork of soft-boiled singles than an album with a cohesive narrative arc.
At their best, Of Montreal force a study in contrasts. Barnes is prone to sending doomy lyrics soaring atop blissful melodies nested in wispy psychedelic production. Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, a peak in his abundant discography, was a breakup record disguised as a rollicking (if frantic) good time, a testament to the way that anxiety and self-doubt can jolt a grieving person out of stasis. Its joyful moments teetered on the edge of collapse, and its bouts of melancholy were buoyed by unlikely optimism. UR FUN, by contrast, tunes its antennae to romantic love in a time of overarching social precarity. Barnes still lets nervousness guide his hand, but the stakes are muddled, as is the story. In the foreground, everything’s peachy: Barnes is stably attached and eager to sing his devotion. In the background, everything threatens to go to shit, though the specifics are generally vague.
UR FUN dashes Barnes’ signature cheekiness against a backdrop of ’80s bubblegum, a format that reins in his more freewheeling tendencies. Lyrically, he reaches as ever for big concepts: “We know the universe/Must express itself as awful people, too/So we really just feel sad for you,” he chirps on “Peace to All Freaks,” seeking kernels of godliness in the trolls and fascists of the world, then dismissing them as best he can with a slight wave of pity. These clever lines rarely get space to breathe, though—UR FUN’s arrangements are so tidy, so pruned, that Barnes doesn’t give himself the opportunity to go out on many limbs.
A faithful chameleon, Barnes manages a canned Bowie impression on “Don’t Let Me Die in America,” and even strays into electroclash with “Get God’s Attention by Being an Atheist,” whose chorus (“We don’t give a fuck/We want it louder”) gestures more toward exhaustion than rebellion. Turning up the noise to drown out the horror might work well enough as a short term survival strategy, but it can’t do much more than seal its practitioners away, offer shelter at the expense of connection. UR FUN—a confection, a distraction, a collection of competent and sparkling pop songs—doesn’t open itself to the world as it stands in this moment. With his sardonic wit and sharp ear, Barnes insulates himself from the dreck rather than trudge through it. Armored, he deflects his surroundings. He blisses out until he starts to go numb.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-01-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-01-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Polyvinyl | January 18, 2020 | 5.9 | 33ad8632-2998-4c0d-bfe9-f1e1423c0bf2 | Sasha Geffen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sasha-geffen/ | |
The Indiana shoegaze trio returns with a songs-first, vibes-second concept album that’s both punchy and immersive. | The Indiana shoegaze trio returns with a songs-first, vibes-second concept album that’s both punchy and immersive. | Cloakroom: Dissolution Wave | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/cloakroom-dissolution-wave/ | Cloakroom: Dissolution Wave | Listening to Cloakroom can feel like submerging yourself in an isolation tank. The riffs swallow you whole; the spectral vocals dance behind your eyelids; the sedate tempos distort your sense of time. More than any of their heavy shoegazing contemporaries, the Indiana three-piece subsists on all-consuming atmosphere, which is partially why the “doomgaze” tag, referencing the slower, thicker end of the metal spectrum, has stuck. Maintaining an intoxicating environment for an entire album is a powerful feat, but it’s also a big ask of the listener—it doesn’t lend itself to dipping a toe in and splashing around a bit.
Dissolution Wave, the follow-up to 2017’s Time Well, is a less daunting listen despite its heady themes. It is a concept album about the aftermath of a catastrophic global event that destroys all of Earth’s existing art and philosophy. This, for some reason, results in a world that runs on music—but not just any music. Something called the “Spire and Ward of Song” acts as a filter that only allows the “best material” to pass through and power Earth’s rotation. Throughout the album, vocalist/guitarist Doyle Martin sings from the perspective of an asteroid miner who spends his free time writing music, honing his craft to aid his planet’s survival. While some artists rely on A&Rs, friends, or their own ears to decide which songs are album-worthy, Cloakroom constructed a theoretical framework worthy of an Ursula K. Le Guin novel to get into a “bangers only” mentality.
No lyrics sheets or in-depth interviews, however, are necessary to hear how the structural conceit affected their work. At just 37 minutes, Dissolution Wave is Cloakroom’s shortest album by far, dwarfed by the hour-long Time Well. And while the band’s signature sound is intact, these songs arrive at their climaxes more efficiently and offer more variance in pacing, volume, and tone. The opening “Lost Meaning” sets the scene with a single snare hit and a perfectly timed squeal of distortion, and boom, we’re in the thick of the first verse. The subtle tweaks and tightenings make for a punchy album that still feels immersive.
The central braintrust of Martin and bassist Bobby Markos is joined by a new drummer, Tim Remis, whose propulsive but unshowy style recalls the jump in dynamics that stoner metal titans Sleep found with Neurosis’ Jason Roeder behind the kit. And while Cloakroom and Sleep share a penchant for exploring a single mood for extended periods of time, Cloakroom have grown increasingly interested in broadening their sound with acoustic guitars and synthesizers. On Dissolution Wave, Markos and Martin integrate those textures into the bedrock of heavy guitar and bass tones that they’ve spent 10 years honing. “Fear of Being Fixed” begins with a jagged bassline straight out of Electric Wizard’s Dopethrone, but in its heaviest moment, opts for a stately acoustic guitar to lead the charge. “Doubts,” the loveliest song Cloakroom have ever written, could pass for a decades-old country ballad were it not for the wispy keys (courtesy of Hum’s Matt Talbott) drifting by like soft-focus tumbleweeds.
The “space western” storyline of Desolation Waves inspires Cloakroom to write songs like the world depends on it: They’ve always had riffs, but they no longer seem content to ride them out until the wheels fall off. This is a songs-first, vibes-second album, although Cloakroom have spent so long perfecting their sound that it now comes second nature, no matter how concise or clear-headed the songwriting has become. Martin’s lyrics directly address this challenging balance, albeit from the perspective of an amateur musician trying to cobble together a new musical language, a process so delicate he compares it to “bottling lightning beams.” On “Doubts,” he debates the merits of tried-and-true methods versus complete artistic reinvention: “Maybe I should cherish the gift/Maybe I should smash the mirror to bits.” Settling for the middle ground, Dissolution Wave crystallizes Cloakroom’s strengths while refuting the idea that concept albums are always bloated and pretentious.
Buy: Rough Trade | 2022-02-04T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-02-04T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Relapse | February 4, 2022 | 7.5 | 33b1f3c4-3a0c-4693-81e9-9f8fb0bf075b | Patrick Lyons | https://pitchfork.com/staff/patrick-lyons/ | |
On the follow-up to 2010's Hidden Lands, certifiable hippies Candy Claws maintain their wondrous perspective with a narrative about a seal-like beast and her human partner questing through the Mesozoic Era, and strengthen their dreamy songs with more definition and structure. | On the follow-up to 2010's Hidden Lands, certifiable hippies Candy Claws maintain their wondrous perspective with a narrative about a seal-like beast and her human partner questing through the Mesozoic Era, and strengthen their dreamy songs with more definition and structure. | Candy Claws: Ceres & Calypso in the Deep Time Forever | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18204-candy-claws-ceres-calypso-in-the-deep-time-forever/ | Ceres & Calypso in the Deep Time Forever | If you want to call Candy Claws a bunch of hippies, they don’t have much of a defense-- they live in Fort Collins, Col., a college town in a state that legalized recreational marijuana, and about 98% of their Twitter account is dedicated to documenting the boundless beauty of Mother Earth. On their last album, 2010's Hidden Lands, the music refracted early Animal Collective and late Mercury Rev through a reverbed cloudbank and they generated lyrics by refracting the words of Richard M. Ketchum's The Secret Life of the Forest through a translation program. Their new LP is not only granted the title Ceres & Calypso in the Deep Time, it’s also "the story of Ceres, a seal-like beast, and Calypso, her human partner, as they travel through the Mesozoic Era." Oh, and each of the band's three members plays a different character, with leader Ryan Hover as "The Deep Time." When they give a rare interview, Hover might say something like, “We just say [we're] Dream Pop because I’m a dinosaur from the Cretaceous Period dreaming I’m a human in a band in 2013.” Trippy.
But they are an actual dream-pop band on Ceres, as the most notable additions Candy Claws have made since Hidden Lands are definition and structure; while maintaining the same wondrous perspective and amorphous textures, these are more likely to be considered “songs” than soundscapes. And it turns out Candy Claws have a knack for pop construct, as “Transitional Bird (Clever Girl)” and “White Seal (Shell & Shine)” boast swelling, immediate psych rock hooks that bloom from their earthy verses, countering the unwieldiness of their titles. It allows them a proper showcase for their unusual, intuitive melodic sense-- their chord progressions are deliberate and surefooted, but each turn tends to take a step or two beyond what’s expected. It’s either the result of super-advanced knowledge of music theory or none at all; considering Candy Claws made it a point to create Hidden Lands on instruments with which they had no formal training whatsoever, it must be the latter.
Whereas Hidden Lands defied definition and either drew you in from the beginning or not at all, Candy Claws’ disparate interests are allowed to exist as individual tracks here, creating numerous re-entry points and strange innovations: spaghetti western with a 90% chance of rain, the tropical psych adventures of Os Mutantes relocated to the bedroom of a landlocked teen. Often, Ceres sounds like the first legitimately happy shoegaze record. “Birth of the Flower (Seagreen)” is something like My Bloody Valentine performing “To Here Knows When” at an island resort.
Yet the same fanciful approach to the actual, physical recording of the music doesn’t do Ceres justice. It’s an immersive listening experience, but also a claustrophobic one. There’s flow, though a curious lack of dynamics as so much of it is taken up by midrange. The layers upon layers of whispering vocals and airy synths turns Ceres into a surprisingly loud and brittle listen, a brickwall covered in gauze. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking to imagine Dave Fridmann or Ben H. Allen taking a flier on these guys and rounding out the low end, after helping Flaming Lips, MGMT, Youth Lagoon and Washed Out fuse nature-boy naivety with studio nerd fervor into something festival-ready. But on the other hand, Ceres could’ve just easily benefited from a more holistic production along the lines of Animal Collective ca. Sung Tongs, stripping away the reverb and countermelodies to let things breathe.
Ceres & Calypso is certainly one of 2013’s more unique records, which is even more impressive considering how many of its precedents and peers are some of indie rock’s more populist acts. It’s a strange situation where you wish they treated their passions more like a career-- the leap in songwriting promises an advance, but the decision to record it in the same way as the billowing, freeform Hidden Lands makes it feel like a missed opportunity. It all leads to Ceres & Calypso feeling like concrete evidence of their hippie cred, chock full of fantastic ideas and lacking just enough follow through. | 2013-06-24T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2013-06-24T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Twosyllable | June 24, 2013 | 7.6 | 33b230f5-7dcc-4937-85e6-366c12466c2f | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
Once a player with acts such as Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Cass McCombs, and Deerhoof, Chris Cohen's solo debut is pleasingly blurry on where and when it's supposed to feel beamed from, an effect aided by his cracked, spidery guitars, grand pianos, and Ray Davies croon. | Once a player with acts such as Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Cass McCombs, and Deerhoof, Chris Cohen's solo debut is pleasingly blurry on where and when it's supposed to feel beamed from, an effect aided by his cracked, spidery guitars, grand pianos, and Ray Davies croon. | Chris Cohen: Overgrown Path | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17165-overgrown-path/ | Overgrown Path | Chris Cohen has played with a series of high-profile indie acts, including Haunted Graffiti, Cass McCombs, and Deerhoof, and Overgrown Path, his first solo album, has the unified feel of a stash of songs that he's been sitting on for years. Sunlit, pastoral, and serenely strange, it feels like something unearthed by an enterprising reissue label like Light in the Attic, rather than a brand-new record on Captured Tracks. It's a gentle listen-- the snare drum doesn't receive a lot of attention, and is tapped rather than struck when it does. The pace never ventures beyond mid tempo. But as a whole, it glows with easy comfort, and its wistfulness deepens with repeated listens.
Like his former bandleader Ariel Pink, Cohen bends the reality of his pop-culture references so that his music both begs for and resists carbon-dating. Overgrown Path is pleasingly blurry on just where and when it's supposed to feel beamed from: Does it feel like a singer-songwriter record from the 1970s? Some lost psychedelic-era curiosity? Village Green-era Kinks? A forgotten 1980s jangle-rock band? At various points, I felt certain of each. But unlike Pink, Cohen isn't out to discomfort or unsettle you: He mostly just wants to build a soothing space away from the world for a while, a place where head can breathe and his loneliness can find some room to expand. The time-warp in his music is just a way to cover his tracks.
In fact, Overgrown Path is made of only comforting sounds: cracked, spidery guitars, grand pianos, reverb haze, and Cohen's little Ray Davies croon. Cohen's voice is frail, but uncommonly beautiful, and capable of reaching into a weightless falsetto. The album's title, which suggests cozy remoteness, a time-neglected spot worth rediscovering, strongly reinforces this vibe: This is music to get lost to. Listening to its nine songs on repeat, I was strongly hit with the urge to pad around my home in socks, maybe brew some tea.
Cohen recorded nearly all the instruments parts alone in rural Vermont, and, as a musician, he has extraordinary rapport with himself. The loose Ringo-like tumble of the drum fills on "Caller No.99", its stair-step bassline, the drowsy tangle of wah-wah'ed and clean-toned guitars-- the elements fall into place so easily that it just feels like the dynamic of an expert, veteran band. The fact that it's all Cohen speaks volumes. "Monad" opens in arresting harmonic limbo, a soup of pedal-steeped piano and an uneasily questioning bassline, before easing into smoother, jazzy AM-pop territory. The transition feels like an exhalation.
As frontman to his one-man band, Cohen has a gentle, lost soul's sad-eyed presence: "Peace in life I try to find/ It eludes me another time," he sings on "Open Theme", in a croon so tender it could soothe a colicky newborn. The chorus is a lament about directionlessness that feels dredged from an old folk ballad: "I have pushed a broken wheel." Similarly, "Don't Look Today" pines for "some place you couldn't get to." Cohen crossed the country, from L.A. to Vermont, to record this music of dislocation, and Overgrown Path is darkened with small shadows that suggest a hard-won peace of mind. On "Solitude", he sings: "Sunrise, sunset/ Where I am at this moment/ Is the same as yesterday/ I travel out and the life is so different/ No shadows in the way." Cohen might have made the album for himself as a keepsake, an antidote to the rest of life's pressing noise. It works that way for us, as well. | 2012-09-26T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2012-09-26T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | Captured Tracks | September 26, 2012 | 7.6 | 33b3d0ab-45fd-49ed-b666-3818477d7f10 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | null |
Expansive (and sadly complete) six-disc set collects 24 four-song Peel Sessions, featuring nearly every incarnation of Mark E. Smith's legendary band. | Expansive (and sadly complete) six-disc set collects 24 four-song Peel Sessions, featuring nearly every incarnation of Mark E. Smith's legendary band. | The Fall: The Complete Peel Sessions, 1978-2004 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2978-the-complete-peel-sessions-1978-2004/ | The Complete Peel Sessions, 1978-2004 | The most poignant aspect of this six-disc set is that it is now a document of the past, a finite thing that can no longer be built upon. When the Fall and their labels began work on the compilation, this was not the case-- at that time, it was a document of a living, ongoing relationship between one of Britain's greatest bands and its most legendary DJ, John Peel. But Peel passed away last year, ending a seemingly effortless decades-long run as one of the coolest people on earth, and this six-disc document of his favorite band's appearances on his show instead serves as a sort of encomium. It's at once a tribute to the brilliance of Mark E. Smith and his "always different, always the same" band, and to the dedication of a man who never stopped being a fan and never stopped loving new and challenging music.
The Fall recorded 24 four-song sessions for Peel over the course of 26 years, capturing nearly every one of the band's many configurations in all their sloppy precision, and this sprawling, amazing release makes the case that every one of them had at least something interesting to offer, including the less-appreciated Fall line-ups of the mid-to-late-90s. The case could even be made that this is the definitive look at the Fall's career to date-- even more than last year's very well-considered 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong compilation. Of course, at six discs and more than seven hours, it's not the place to start, but anyone with more than four or five Fall albums would be doing themselves a huge service picking this up.
To touch on all of the highlights, I'd have to devote a full paragraph to each individual session included on the set, so let's just say that this thing is absolutely loaded, with performances that frequently eclipse the studio versions. The 1980 version of "New Face In Hell" is thunderous and Smith's cracking, hysterical vocal is hilariously psychotic-- the band's oft-hidden sense of humor easy to spot. Smith actually laughs on "Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones", and the band's December 1994 piss-take on "Jingle Bell Rock" is a case study in sarcastic destruction.
Elsewhere, you get two 1983 sessions from the band's mighty double-drummer lineup and a generous offering from the unstoppable mid-80s lineup that produced This Nation's Saving Grace and the Wonderful & Frightening World of the Fall. The TNSG songs hit like a hammer to the head, with a borderline out-of-control take on "Spilt Victorian Child" (my favorite Fall song) and a crunching, hypnotic reinvention of "L.A." leading the way. As one might expect, the first three discs, which reach up through 1987, are the strongest and most consistent, with the last three discs veering through ever more rapid line-up shifts and wider stylistic ground.
What's shocking is the way those last three discs paint a picture of the band's late career as nearly as vital as what preceded it. Fiddler Kenny Brady brings a stronger melodic underpinning to the 1989 and 1991 recordings, without compromising the band's signature rough groove, while some of the band's more electronic 90s material comes off much rawer and crunchier in the live setting. "Immortality" in particular becomes fire-breathing, heavy death funk of a caliber the Fall only sporadically achieved in the studio during that phase of their career.
The Complete Peel Sessions, 1978-2004 is one of the most straightforward titles a Fall compilation has ever had, and the execution of the package is similarly no-nonsense: The recordings are sequenced in strict chronological order and the remastering is uniformly crisp and sharp, something that's not always the case with retrospectives of this band. It's an embarrassment of riches for the Fall's devoted cult of fans, none of whom should pass this up, and it works surprisingly well for more casual fans who've only just begun to delve into the band's bewildering back catalog. | 2005-06-12T02:00:48.000-04:00 | 2005-06-12T02:00:48.000-04:00 | Rock | Sanctuary | June 12, 2005 | 9.3 | 33b41359-8fdb-4b49-a235-8f9d88d64c57 | Joe Tangari | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-tangari/ | null |
Another in a series of jittery, post-Supergrass rockers, this young UK band released an excellent 2007 single, "The Next Untouchable", and now follows that with a Bernard Butler-produced debut album. | Another in a series of jittery, post-Supergrass rockers, this young UK band released an excellent 2007 single, "The Next Untouchable", and now follows that with a Bernard Butler-produced debut album. | Cajun Dance Party: The Colourful Life | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12072-the-colourful-life/ | The Colourful Life | Bernard Butler produced the Libertines' first single, "What a Waster". Six years later, the former Suede guitarist and co-songwriter has become a producer of choice for aspiring NME pinups. Butler totally deserves his status as Britpop legend, but his recent reemergence was anything but preordained. Aside from his short-lived 2005 reunion with Brett Anderson as the Tears, Butler's post-Suede output has tended to be, at best, unexceptional. His production credits-- including the 1990s' Cookies, Sons & Daughters' This Gift, and the Veils' Runaway Found, but also Black Kids' Partie Traumatic and Duffy's Rockferry-- have been similarly scattershot.
Black Kids have a handful of good songs, all of which sound simply inept rather than charming on the album. London five-piece Cajun Dance Party are better off-- they only have one good one! And it's better suited to the sort of rollicking, punched-up production Butler gave the Libs or the 1990s. Cajun Dance Party released first single "The Next Untouchable" last year, when the group's members were all younger than 18; the song's snakelike guitar riff combines with Daniel Blumberg's pinched, impassioned cries to overcome unremarkable boy-girl lyrics ("Do you really like me?/ 'Cause 1 and 1 and 1 makes 3"). Another jittery post-Supergrass rocker, it loses less than "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You" when Butler polishes off the appealingly rough edges.
The rest of The Colourful Life is, ahem, less colorful. Most of the blame shouldn't go to Butler, but to these not-so-ragin' non-Cajuns. There are many reasons critics tend to adore the Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner, and one is that he doesn't write songs like this album's sunny opener (and second single), "Colourful Life", which cautions, "Don't crush the bird just for fun/ Because that's not fun for everyone." Another single, "The Race", exerts a great deal of Arctics-like energy answering an age-old question: If the sun rises and no one's around, does it still rise? (Um, yes.) And Blumberg's breathy whisper-to-shout antics quickly grow old, particularly on the "Creep"-aping coda of "Buttercups" or the empty, Travis-like melodrama of "Time Falls", which fails despite mentioning a wildebeest.
Not that Butler completely evades responsibility. The sentimental strings draping "Yesterday"-style ballad "No Joanna" don't make up for its fundamental silliness and ethereal moaning that must have Jeff Buckley rolling in his (watery?) grave. Nor do they help second single "Amylase", which opens with a suspiciously Go! Team- or Black Kids-like group chant of "1, 2-- 1, 2, 3, 4!", has big bendy Oasis guitar bits, and is disappointingly nothing like "Animal Nitrate". That's from Suede, dudes.
This slight album's ninth and final track, "The Hill, the View, and the Lights", is pleasant but befuddling, with keyboardist Vicky Freund briefly turning things into a Neko Case gothic fairytale as she gets her first turn on lead vocal. Earlier, within dud "The Firework", Blumberg sings, "This is now and that was then," a cliché that means no more on The Colourful Life than it does here. One thing Cajun Dance Party's future selves have going for them, though: They aren't called Beirut. | 2008-08-07T01:00:03.000-04:00 | 2008-08-07T01:00:03.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | XL | August 7, 2008 | 5.1 | 33b6e1fc-be5b-4005-adf4-68a1e372d978 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | null |
With actorly affect and an Orbinsonesque croon, the New Zealand singer-songwriter uses the bright, artificial gloss of 1980s pop to evoke an uncanny, self-protective brand of masculinity. | With actorly affect and an Orbinsonesque croon, the New Zealand singer-songwriter uses the bright, artificial gloss of 1980s pop to evoke an uncanny, self-protective brand of masculinity. | Marlon Williams: My Boy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/marlon-williams-my-boy/ | My Boy | Marlon Williams’ music is debonair and elegant, performed with the countenance of an old-school crooner. But focus too hard on the timelessness of it—the rubbery, Orbisonesque tremble to his voice, the rollick and swing of his saloon-ready band—and you might miss an occasional wink or fourth-wall break: a sly acknowledgement that there’s something ridiculous, almost, about someone from Lyttelton, New Zealand, taking on the posture of a country troubadour. Williams’ actorly affect hardly diminishes the weight of his songs, though: 2018’s Make Way For Love, his second solo record, was a dark, magnificently bruised album about a fractured relationship. What better way to deal with catastrophic heartbreak than to pretend you’re just singing the classics?
On My Boy, his third record, Williams largely steps away from country, but he’s still acting. Drawing from 1970s and ’80s soft pop, he sketches out stories of damaged and dysfunctional men: two-timers trying to evade commitment, lecherous reply guys, high-functioning cocaine addicts. Much like Alex Cameron or the Weeknd, he uses the bright, artificial gloss of ’80s pop to evoke masculinity’s uncanny, self-protective qualities—the way it crystallizes weakness and vulnerability into something impermeable and cool. And, like Cameron in particular, Williams sometimes confuses gory details for satire or genuine insight.
In its weaker moments, My Boy can feel like a collection of signifiers in search of meaning. “Soft Boys Make the Grade,” the flimsiest song here, deploys the same kind of overwritten male-manipulator parody that tends to bounce around on social media. The song’s lyrics—“Coulda wrote it all down in a letter/But here I am in your DMs”—have no weight to them, nothing to offer besides the hammy, totally unsubtle subtext: It’s funny because I’m the opposite of this. The perplexing “Morning Crystals,” seemingly written from the point of view of a drug user, counters its easy ’70s lope with manic passages (“Hey hey, I’m gonna do a spin/Hey hey, I’m gonna twist and shout”) that ostensibly signal come-ups. But like “Soft Boys Make the Grade,” the track comes to a conclusion that’s seemingly bereft of interiority: “Morning crystals are all that I see/Soon it will be too late/And morning crystals will seal my fate.”
Williams is at his best when he’s being gestural, as opposed to literal. The lovely title track ambles forward, fueled by a sun-dappled Māori strum, its lyrics giving off a paternal radiance that matches the production: “He’s all to me and more/Nothing can touch my boy.” The same warmth comes through on “Easy Does It,” a love song to a faraway friend written with gentle fondness, the kind of unassuming affection rarely put in song.
These songs, in particular, sound gorgeous: The production, handled by Williams along with Tom Healy and Mark Perkins, aka Merk, feels dazed and nostalgic, a smeary mix of Pasefika pop and indie country that’s warm and incredibly detailed. My Boy is filled with almost imperceptible production choices, such as the faint, grunting exhales in the background of “Easy Does It,” that give the album a depth and humor Make Way for Love didn’t necessarily have. Even when My Boy leaves this zone, as on the anthemic, anxious “Thinking of Nina,” a song inspired by the TV show The Americans, the production feels grounded in the same universe as the rest of the record. It’s easy to be skeptical of “going ’80s” as a concept, now that nearly every indie rocker has tried it, but Williams only indulges in full-blown synth pyrotechnics when it’s warranted. Ultimately, that’s what saves My Boy: Even when his lyrics don’t land, Williams’ musical intuition is hard to beat. | 2022-09-09T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2022-09-09T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Dead Oceans | September 9, 2022 | 6.9 | 33b7c5a7-3c69-4176-84e3-d7de2f3a32b4 | Shaad D’Souza | https://pitchfork.com/staff/shaad-d’souza/ | |
Ten years on from the minor psych-rock renaissance that birthed them, the Swedish quartet have proved surprisingly durable, even influential*. Allas Sak* finds the band fully re-engaged in the sound that they have staked out over the past decade—performing music that’s still as beautiful, optimistic, strange, and singular as ever. | Ten years on from the minor psych-rock renaissance that birthed them, the Swedish quartet have proved surprisingly durable, even influential*. Allas Sak* finds the band fully re-engaged in the sound that they have staked out over the past decade—performing music that’s still as beautiful, optimistic, strange, and singular as ever. | Dungen: Allas Sak | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20949-allas-sak/ | Allas Sak | In 2004, when Dungen released their third and still-greatest LP, Ta Det Lungt, the Swedish quartet was just one good act amid a minor psych-rock renaissance. At the time, a number of bands were finding inspiration in progressive rock from the '60s and '70s and pushing those sounds toward fuzzier and more frantic extremes. This was also the year that Santa Cruz's Comets on Fire released their well-loved record, Blue Cathedral, and around the same time that Dead Meadow, Pearls and Brass, and Boris were putting out some of their best music.
Ten years later, a lot of these groups have split up, moved on, or faded from view, but Dungen have proven surprisingly durable, even a bit influential. It’s hard to listen to Tame Impala’s Innerspeaker and Lonerism without hearing some parallels to the Swedish band, particularly in the sense of rhythm and the doubled upper-register vocal melodies.
Allas Sak is Dungen’s first release in five years and seventh album overall. Not too much has changed since their last record, 2010’s Skit I Allt. Like that album, Allas Sak is split almost evenly between Swedish-language pop songs and instrumentals. And like all preceding Dungen records, it sounds awesome. Led by singer, multi-instrumentalist, and engineer Gustav Ejstes, the band is able to perfectly dial in the organic tones of vintage '60s pop, even when working with computer-based recording software.
While Dungen have never quite bested Ta Det Lungt in terms of pop uplift and songwriting, the band have also never made a truly bad record. Rather, they have remained remarkably consistent, so much so that by the time 4 came out in 2008, audiences had probably started to take them for granted—one more record, one more Keith Moon-style drum fill, one more expertly-fuzzed guitar solo. But after half a decade off, Allas Sak provides some great evidence for why Dungen have endured while so many of their peers have trailed off.
Though Ejstes initially wrote all of the songs and even performed most of the band’s music, over the years Dungen have gradually become a group effort, with a dedicated band including guitarist Reine Fiske and drummer Johan Holmegard, and bassist Mattias Gustavsson. As a result, they’ve gotten progressively jammier from album to album. But while Dungen’s music has its share of sprawling moments, it’s seldom aimless. Even in their most improvisational passages, the band’s songs move with intention—one solo or spaced-out interlude setting up the next climax or scene shift.
Of the record’s instrumentals, only the guitar-driven freak-out "En Dag På Sjön" sounds like it was clipped from a spontaneous jam session, while the rest are deliberate and composed. On "Franks Kaktus", Ejstes performs the lead melody on a flute, trading riffs with the guitar and guiding the band in and out of a bongo-laden groove. As smooth as the music is, though, it doesn’t come off as arch or ironic. Indeed, you can hear evidence of Ejstes earnestly vibing out every time his notes go slightly sharp—the wind equivalent of a bent guitar note or scrunchy face. On "Flickor Och Pojkar", a delicate Rhodes piano melody is gradually augmented with string and acoustic guitar flourishes that sweep across the stereo field. The music recalls the work of film composer Ennio Morricone in its attention to arrangement and sonic detail.
This obsession over small moments and gestures is important to the Swedish band’s music. A lot of psychedelic rock is focused on the big-picture freak-out—the zonked experimental and spontaneous moment where the music becomes combustible and uncontrollable. And while Dungen are capable of producing those moments, the band have always set their primary focus on hooks, both in a rhythmic and melodic sense. Just about any four bars of a Dungen song could be sampled and looped as the foundation for something else.
And though the group’s music appropriates sounds and production styles from the past, it’s hard to think of a particular act from the '60 or '70s that Ejstes is consciously emulating. Rather, Dungen use retro-minded instrumentation and recording techniques to convey fairly modern musical ideas, removed from the established sounds of classic rock and psych. The rhythm section, in particular, takes a strong influence from the feel and pulse of hip-hop. In this, they’re a little like Stereolab, another band that drew heavily from vintage experimental music, but who would never be mistaken for revivalists.
It's true that over the years Dungen have not changed very much. The band has remained in a more or less fixed position, while styles, temperaments, and audiences around them shifted. Ejstes has been right to stick to his guns, though. Today’s Dungen record might sound a lot like yesterday’s Dungen record, but yesterday’s Dungen record was good. And while the execution has at times wavered over the years*,* Allas Sak finds the band fully re-engaged in the sound that it has staked out over the past decade—performing music that’s still as beautiful, optimistic, strange, and singular as ever. | 2015-09-22T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2015-09-22T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | Mexican Summer | September 22, 2015 | 8 | 33b904e3-aefc-41fa-8ea9-32536134b07a | Aaron Leitko | https://pitchfork.com/staff/aaron-leitko/ | null |
This meeting of punk and jazz heavyweights sidesteps contemporary trends; instead we’re treated to four players finding common ground as they slip between genres. | This meeting of punk and jazz heavyweights sidesteps contemporary trends; instead we’re treated to four players finding common ground as they slip between genres. | The Messthetics / James Brandon Lewis: The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-messthetics-and-james-brandon-lewis/ | The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis | As far as meetings between punk elder statesmen and avant-jazz explorers go, the Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis is an intuitive one. Drummer Brendan Canty and bassist Joe Lally, as the rhythm section of Fugazi, had a wide appetite for grooves from outside of hardcore’s pummeling standard vocabulary, whether the half-time sway of reggae or the piston-pumping backbeat of funk. And Lewis, though deeply rooted in jazz tradition, is similarly willing to stray from genre orthodoxy in search of a sound that suits him: The saxophonist’s modern-classic 2016 LP No Filter, full of distorted electric bass and throaty horn lines, has the gleefully pugilistic energy of an all-ages basement show. Lally and Canty formed the Messthetics as an instrumental trio in 2018, filling out the lineup with Anthony Pirog, a left-field jazz guitarist who’s equally adept with sidewinding melody and searing noise, and has worked often with Lewis, including on No Filter. After Lewis sat in with them on a couple of live dates, it must have felt only natural to invite him into the fold for an album.
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, which the four men composed collaboratively, sits comfortably apart from any prevailing trends in 2020s jazz: no new-agey ambient soundscapes, cerebral free improvisation, nor incense-and-hand-bells spiritual-jazz revivalism. Its sensibility has a whiff of downtown New York in the freewheeling 1980s and early ’90s, when John Zorn was playing grindcore in Naked City and Sonny Sharrock shared a bassist with Henry Rollins. As in that era of cross-pollination, the players meet each other confidently and generously on their own terms. The punks don’t sound eager to prove their jazz bona fides, and the jazzers don’t seem to view punk with any condescension toward its rudimentary building blocks. Each one brings his particular skill set, and the others figure out how to work with it. The results can be astonishing, as in the climactic final section of “Three Sisters,” when Lewis and Pirog play intertwining solos and the Fugazi guys churn beneath them, each player urging the others toward ever higher flights of intensity and invention.
There are also moments that sound more or less like Fugazi with a free-jazz saxophonist instead of a singer. Though they may lack the grand scale of a composition like “Three Sisters,” they ground the album in a sense of boisterous good fun. “Emergence” should be particularly easy for fans of Canty and Lally’s old band to love, with the Messthetics making breakneck switches between “Waiting Room”-style syncopation and pogo-ing power chords, and Lewis blowing like hell on top. Even in his more overtly jazzy work, the saxophonist tends to favor relatively static harmonies over the elaborate chord changes of bebop, an approach that proves a good fit for the lean-and-mean compositional sensibility of a couple of guys schooled on hardcore. With the rest of the band providing such a solid and stripped-down framework, Lewis is free to embellish the melody of “Emergence” in whatever direction he chooses: first straight and declarative, then with increasingly frenetic dissonance as the song goes on.
On a high-profile collaboration like this one, the players could have easily just vamped on a few different grooves with the tape running and called it a day. They’re good enough that even no-stakes jamming would have yielded some compelling moments, and they have enough collective clout that people would have listened either way. To their great credit, they didn’t skimp on actually composing. From the sideways funk riffs of “That Thang” to the bluesy refrain of “Railroad Tracks Home,” each tune is robust enough to stick with you, all providing meaningful context and structure for the improvised journeys they frame. The most ambitious of them is “Boatly,” which spends its first half as a sultry ballad and its second as a soaring post-rock anthem. If a group without this quartet’s easy chemistry and clear mutual respect attempted such a drastic change, it might come out hokey or unpleasantly abrupt: the clear point at which one member’s ideas fade to the background and another’s take over. But as the Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis shift into their finale—Canty stops caressing the drums and begins to pound, Lewis brings his sax from a purr to a scream—you get the sense that these four would only reach this particular conclusion together. | 2024-03-25T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-03-25T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock / Jazz | Impulse! | March 25, 2024 | 7.8 | 33bd2dfd-a388-49f6-9c32-7a0263632499 | Andy Cush | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-cush/ | |
We wanted a The Wrestler-style comeback that derived power from its protagonist's fall; instead, this LP has a lonely, defensive Kirk Van Houten vibe. | We wanted a The Wrestler-style comeback that derived power from its protagonist's fall; instead, this LP has a lonely, defensive Kirk Van Houten vibe. | Cam’ron: Crime Pays | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13029-crime-pays/ | Crime Pays | Our current financial difficulties haven't stopped the incessant need to find trends in anything, and the result has been dozens of publications proclaiming the fashionability of frugality. This has worked out extremely well for not only people who were cheap before it somehow became cool, but unexpectedly, for many rappers who have either passed their commercial peak or never really experienced one in the first place. No longer cowed by unrealistic expectations, either self-imposed or label-imposed, guys like Scarface, Styles P, Beanie Sigel, Freeway, Slim Thug, and Jim Jones are putting out highly enjoyable, no-frills records with low overhead, proving all along that some rappers just need a decent beat and everyone else to stay out of their way.
Crime Pays all but confirms that Cam'ron is not one of those rappers. Over the past half-year or so, leaks like "I Hate My Job" and "Get It in Ohio" suggested a possibility of a The *Wrestler-*style comeback narrative that derived power from admitting how far its protagonist had fallen. Instead, Crime Pays has a lonely, defensive, and vaguely desperate Kirk Van Houten vibe-- more noticeable than a lack of breakout bangers or guest spots (though you gotta wonder how 40 Cal was the biggest name to clear his schedule for the first Cam'ron record in three years) is a palpable and inexcusable lack of excitement and spark. Killa could stand to borrow a feeling.
Seems like any time Cam isn't able to shout out the names of every inaugural member of DipSet, he retreats into the sort of insular (not to be confused with impulsive or impenetrable-- that would be more interesting) bad habits he's picked up since Purple Haze became arguably the last definitive document of popular New York rap. Earlier in the decade, beats from Just Blaze, Kanye, and Heatmakerz provided exquisite and posh soundtracks that added extra shine to Cam's theater of the absurd. But whether it's a reduced budget or his increased need to show allegiance to the Sun Belt states, Cam outsources most of Crime Pays to Araabmuzik and Skitzo. They contribute mixtape-quality music that goes heavy on repetitive Psycho strings and incessantly ticking 16th-note hi-hats but ultimately has about as much low end as a Junior Senior record.
And not that I'd expect the guy who penned lines like "take it in your ass-- how 'bout 30 grams?" and the entirety of "Stop Calling" to give the most positive spin on gender relations, but even after all the poisonous misogyny we've heard Cam deal in up to this point, "You Know What's Up" and "Cookies & Apple Juice" are so mirthlessly repulsive that "Bottom of the Pussy" somehow becomes, like, the fifth-most offensive song on Crime Pays. At least Cam seems amused with himself on that track, which also explains how the comic high point of Crime Pays is a two-minute skit wherein Cam'ron threatens to shit in a woman's car-- it's a veritable Easter Egg for people who remember his second verse on "Dead Muthafuckas".
Of course, when Cam disappears headlong up his own assonance (no ho-millz, as he helpfully instructs throughout) it's still incredibly entertaining. Even within the tightest rhyme stricture, his gamesmanship in spooling vowel sounds fascinates. Cam'ron's one of those kind of guys where you could read his lyrics on paper and know exactly how it sounds. If only his lyrics and cadence weren't saddled with such shabby beats-- even as they contain some of the least imaginative lines on Crime Pays, the relative levity of kiddie beats like "Never Ever", "Silky (No Homo)", and "Whoo Hoo" feels welcome.
And then there's "Hate My Job". Killa's relationship with reality is so dysfunctional that his most "normal" songs tend to be his weirdest, especially when he tries to make an honest connection: the maybe-sincere love letter "Daydreamin'", "I.B.S." (that's irritable bowel syndrome). It's hard to say what could have inspired this unusually human and empathetic moment-- "Ay yo, I hate my boss/ Dude think he know it all/ And I know I know it all/ But I follow protocol." It's typical Cam smirk, and really the last bit of self-respect he can dredge up before a host of travails break him down, from everyday nuisances ("That's why I light the sour before I hit the office/ Being here eight hours sure get you nauseous") to the very real hopelessness befalling someone with a checkered past ("You're working on my future/ Why you calling out my history?").
As bizarre as it initially seems for a rapper like Cam'ron to go in character as a working stiff, it's not unprecedented-- in fact, the soundtrack for Office Space had two such instances, from Canibus and Kool Keith. The latter's shadow paradoxically hangs heavy over Crime Pays-- shortly after Dr. Octagonecologyst broke him with the indie set*,* Keith was also making intermittently enjoyable records centered around NBA namedrops, poop jokes, and the fine distinction between "alien" and "alienating." It's a slippery slope Cam would be well-advised to study, since on four separate "Fuck Cam" skits, a bunch of crotchety haters talk shit about his lemonhead earrings, floor-length minks, and his pink and purple pioneering. In their minds, Cam's done nothing worth really mentioning since 2005, and Crime Pays often makes you wonder if they've got a point. | 2009-05-15T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2009-05-15T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Asylum | May 15, 2009 | 5.7 | 33c1a1b0-7f19-4ef7-9c5f-d928dc2c5c9e | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
On its second album, the Asheville five-piece goes big and loud, scaling up its shoegaze-indebted sound while frontwoman Karly Hartzman buries an undercurrent of anxiety beneath the clutter. | On its second album, the Asheville five-piece goes big and loud, scaling up its shoegaze-indebted sound while frontwoman Karly Hartzman buries an undercurrent of anxiety beneath the clutter. | Wednesday: Twin Plagues | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/wednesday-twin-plagues/ | Twin Plagues | Wednesday frontwoman Karly Hartzman has a crowded head. “I’m honestly trying to forget and move on, rather than hold onto these memories. I’m writing about them to let them go,” she once professed. Hartzman wades through these lingering impressions at a slacker’s pace in the band’s sophomore album, turning heads with each extraordinary afterimage: a burned-down Dairy Queen, an acid-induced window escape that results in a broken foot, the warm breath a lover leaves on the bathroom mirror. On Twin Plagues, the Asheville five-piece goes big and loud, breathing second life into the things (and a dog) that refuse to die, curling secondhand wisps of sound over and under the living world with remarkable, unexpected beauty.
Hartzman covers a lot of ground, splitting her time between brash, head-banging lines about the Beach Boys and reverb-drenched moments of intimacy: “At night a stone/Alone/Faking Sleep/I won’t fool you,” she sings in “One More Last One,” a classic shoegaze cut that could have been pulled straight out of Loveless. In Hartzman’s universe, even the most callous of objects come alive. The wall cares so much as to wince, while the floor’s proximity to her lover makes Hartzman jealous. Meanwhile, Jake Lenderman’s animated guitar meets this world head on: A breathing, kicking creature, it squalls all over and piles up heaps of feedback.
Fuzzy, distorted riffs are a constant presence on Twin Plagues, layering atop one another two, three times over. Hartzman elbows through the chaos a little like Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan did on Habit. But while the latter revels in cathartic emotional displays, Hartzman’s own feelings are more delicately tucked away. An undercurrent of anxiety runs beneath the clutter. Recurring reminders of a real-life car crash follow the record like its shadow. And as pointed as her writing is, Hartzman frequently shrinks into generality when she writes in the first person. Names turn into pronouns; objects lose their outlines: “Couldn’t laugh at it yet/Wasn’t far away from it yet,” or “There’s something moving over me/I want to remember everything.” That loss of specificity, rather than dampen the strength of her songwriting, injects another dimension into it—there’s a sense that we are catching Hartzman right after the moment of impact, transfixed in a state of shock or paralysis, whether that’s in the aftermath of trauma or a heartbreak in which “the pain was kinda wonderful cause it was so complete.” That pain, the devastating, ineffable immediacy of it, is perhaps the most striking aspect of the album.
Twin Plagues can feel relentless, almost interminable. After all, this is a record haunted by its own becoming. Hartzman’s vocals are often submerged underneath the noise completely, crushed by its weight. Occasionally, she breaks through the surface in slower ballads like “How Can You Live if You Can’t Love How Can You if You Do,” where a folksy twang adds welcomed variation. One might charge, perhaps, that those moments are too few. In “Three Sisters,” things start to get lost within the folds of a dense blanket of sound. But the issues on Twin Plagues are minor. Like Amanda, in “Gary’s,” who was “screaming something at her boyfriend that we could not make out,” Wednesday leave behind something—something we’ll remember even without all the details.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-08-19T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-08-19T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Orindal | August 19, 2021 | 7.4 | 33c2cd2c-8fa1-49f4-ba79-b466cb28257e | Kelly Liu | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kelly-liu/ | |
This essential six-CD set captures Otis and his blazing ten-piece band at a vital time in soul music, where a young showman was trying to cross over to the white rock'n'rollers on the Sunset Strip. | This essential six-CD set captures Otis and his blazing ten-piece band at a vital time in soul music, where a young showman was trying to cross over to the white rock'n'rollers on the Sunset Strip. | Otis Redding: Live at the Whiskey A Go Go: The Complete Recordings | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22569-live-at-the-whiskey-a-go-go-the-complete-recordings/ | Live at the Whiskey A Go Go: The Complete Recordings | “We’re hoping that this be one of the greatest albums that ever come out.”
Otis Redding says these words just before launching into “Respect” on April 8, 1966, wrapping up the first of seven sets he’d play over the course of three days at Los Angeles’ Whisky A Go Go. A few songs earlier, he first informed the crowd that they were recording the concert with plans of releasing it as an album, playing the newly-written “Good to Me” for the second time in nine songs simply because it was the single and they needed to get it right. For his ’66 stint at the Whisky A Go Go, he was backed by his road band, the Otis Redding Revue—a ten-piece group similar to the bands who supported him whenever he toured the south. This is the residency that is captured in its entirety on Stax’s six-disc box Live at the Whisky A Go Go: the Complete Recordings.
Redding’s residency was a deliberate attempt on the part of the singer and his management to move him out of the Chitlin Circuit and into the mainstream. The idea wasn’t to have Otis record pop music, but rather bring his act straight to the rock audience. So they set up shop right on the Sunset Strip, home to such hip rock‘n’rollers as the Byrds, Love, the Turtles and the Doors, figuring there was no better place to introduce Redding to a white audience.
Otis managed that crossover but not at the Whisky. It happened later at the Monterey International Pop Festival in ’67—backed then by Stax/Volt house band Booker T. & the M.G.’s—because he benefitted from the festival setting. In the open air, excitement spreads like fire. Indoors there is a different dynamic, particularly if it’s a crowd confronted with something they’ve never seen before, which was certainly the case of the Los Angelinos that headed to the Whisky to see Otis Redding that April weekend in 1966.
Once Otis hit the stage on April 8, the applause was polite but not enthusiastic. He had to work to win that crowd, which he does by the end of the set, by which point they’re cheering “Respect.” At that point, Redding wasn’t unknown, particularly in R&B quarters—he had three Billboard R&B Top 10s, with a fourth soon to follow—but such gutbucket soul shows simply weren’t played in mainstream rock venues like the Whisky A Go Go.
That alone made the three nights at the Whisky a step forward from Redding, who was hungry to become a star on his own terms. But the concerts alone weren’t the main thing: These shows were designed to be the primary source for an album, one that could capture the raw power of Redding on wax and hopefully bring in a wider audience. Throughout the seven full sets captured on Live at the Whisky A Go Go: the Complete Recordings—a box that doubles Stax’s 2010 set Live on the Sunset Strip, which contains about half of the sets from that April ’66 stint—Redding reminds the audience they’re cutting a record and, in a way, the sets are structured as recording sessions. Over the course of the seven shows, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is played no fewer than *ten *times, a sure sign that Redding wanted to be sure he nailed this song for the album. A few other songs appear nearly that often (“I Can’t Turn You Loose,” “Good to Me”) but he also made sure to play almost every song he and his Revue knew, throwing in covers of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” along the way—anything that could snag new listeners.
Once Volt/Atco heard the tapes, they decided the performances were too raw to release. Not only was fidelity poor, but the band sometimes seemed ragged, veering out of tune and maybe not locking in on a groove. Stax/Volt founder Jim Stewart decided to shelve the record for reason, bringing out a version of it ’68 called In Person at the Whisky A Go Go only after Otis had died and the market demanded more Otis. The Whisky A Go Go tapes served that very purpose over the years, popping up on vinyl in 1982 as Recorded Live and almost a decade later on CD as Good to Me: Live at the Whisky A Go Go, Vol. 2, with some tracks popping up as bonus tracks on a 2008 deluxe edition of 1965’s Otis Blue. The double-disc Live on the Sunset Strip seeming like the last word in 2010.
Live at the Whisky A Go Go: the Complete Recordings, however, trumps them all. It simultaneously emphasizes the consistency of Redding and his Revue along with their quirks. Listening to the sets back to back, it’s hard to hear where the band allegedly strays off path: Whatever flaws that may exist in a given track tend to melt away in the context of a full set. There’s an electricity to the performances even when they bring the tempo down for the slow-burners, and a great thing about this box is that there’s plenty of space for the band to play.
On the 1968 LP, the longest number topped out just over five minutes but here performances routinely clock in between six and eight minutes, giving the band room to vamp while Otis works the crowd. It’s not only invigorating, but it suggests how Redding’s southern soul was tied to James Brown’s nascent funk. Listen to how he closes out Saturday’s first set with a marathon eight-minute “Satisfaction” then picks up the next set with the same song, stretching this version out to nine minutes via interlocking horn solos—it’s nearly 17 minutes of white-hot down-home vamping that is earthier than Brown and the J.B.’s but undoubtedly comes from the same source.
Nevertheless, the greatest thing Live at the Whisky A Go Go: the Complete Recordings offers is so much vital live soul from an era where the sound was in its prime but was rarely recorded. Perhaps Booker T & the M.G.’s were a tighter outfit than the Otis Redding Revue, but the rawness heard on Live at the Whisky A Go Go: the Complete Recordings has its own singular virtues, particularly because so little of these southern soul acts were recorded in the ’60s. That alone would make this a worthy historical document but, better still, it remains exceptional because it captured a moment when a premiere showman worked his hardest to win over new fans. Decades later, these 1966 concerts at the Whisky A Go Go still possess the power to convert skeptics so seems that Otis Redding did indeed get his wish: He made one of the greatest albums that ever came out. | 2016-11-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-11-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Stax | November 3, 2016 | 9 | 33c38a05-c3d8-47d7-99d7-32aff14c9b0b | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | null |
Drawing singles from his forthcoming album, DJ Shadow's latest flirts with trendy, forward-thinking sounds in bass music without jumping into the thick of it. | Drawing singles from his forthcoming album, DJ Shadow's latest flirts with trendy, forward-thinking sounds in bass music without jumping into the thick of it. | DJ Shadow: I Gotta Rokk EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15525-i-gotta-rokk-ep/ | I Gotta Rokk EP | DJ Shadow has been skirting predictability for a good long while. The Outsider might have been a critical and fanbase fiasco, but at least it proved he was trying to engage with the greater hip-hop world and make something that didn't fit the precedent of Endtroducing.... (And we got a pretty damn good E-40 track out of it.) Shadow could be excused for testing his limits, for reacting to the sounds currently reverberating through the instrumental hip-hop arena he helped build. And it's tempting to speculate what his next move might be. He could be ricocheting off recent psychedelic L.A. bass music, or trying to see how his beat-building/breakdown technique could spar against UK funky rhythms, or maybe just stripping things back to the point of minimalism. The fact that he's calling his upcoming album The Less You Know, the Better says something about his M.O., at least.
Then again, the I Gotta Rokk EP contains a few singles drawn from that album, and they suggest a new direction more along the lines of what people expected from him 10 years ago. Any of the three original tracks on this EP would've fit well stylistically as follow-ups to the prog-skewing aspirations of The Private Press, representing a gradual evolution from his sample-virtuoso approach. As they stand in 2011, these songs are a bit of a mixed bag, flirting with sounds that could qualify as trendy or forward-thinking in bass music without jumping into the thick of it.
It's not so much the scattershot styles that register as strange; if there's anywhere hard rock, psych-folk, and electro-glitch all share a root context, it's in the scrapyard assemblage of an ecclectic cratedigger like Shadow. It's more of a structural disconnect, where it's possible to hear what he's reaching for but harder to grasp just how he plans to get there. The title track lurches around in a stoner-rock plod, as a creeping armada of metal guitars eventually bleeds through its slow build to a manic false-ending. The hesher trappings are novel enough, but its drums are uniquely Shadow's: clipped yet heavy-sounding snares, hi-hats, and claps that sound culled from a dozen long-buried sources, but which coalesce into a dense vortex of percussion.
The other two originals debuted last year as a digital single, and if they're both distinctly Shadow, they also prove how nebulous that descriptor really is. "I've Been Trying" leans toward the same vaguely soulful psych-folk that informed "Six Days" and "This Time (I'm Gonna Try It My Way)", but it sounds less like an actual sample-based construction than a song with overdubs-- it's one of those cuts that might feel more alive if the seams were less concealed. "Def Surrounds Us" is the more intriguing proposition, Shadow loosely toying with dubstep in a somewhat self-aware mode. The Southern-bounce digital snare rolls and hornet-sting synthesizers approach Benga's more jittery moments, but only until the song takes a left turn into glitchy drum'n'bass. It may be the most manic thing he's done since the similarly structured "Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain", and it's proof positive that he can still do exhilarating, spectacular things with drum breaks.
Out of three additional remixes, the one that pulls it off the best ironically has the weakest source material: Various' take on "I've Been Trying" scatters that track's weedy vocals into lonely dub echoes, bringing out the same sense of isolation with a completely different mood. The other two-- Irn Mnky's Pendulum-style "Swagger Mix" of "I Gotta Rokk" and Rockwell's twitchy, overstuffed remix of "Def Surrounds Us"-- show just how tacky contemporary drum'n'bass bombast can be, weirdly managing to use all the prominent elements of their originals to create remixes that miss all the things that make Shadow's tracks slice instead of bludgeon. At least the first three tracks prove that Shadow himself still knows how that approach works. | 2011-06-13T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2011-06-13T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic | Island | June 13, 2011 | 7 | 33c3b563-976c-4d6c-8ec3-e805abefaea9 | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
This collaborative album between Ghostface Killah and D-Block's Sheek Louch features spots from Raekwon, Method Man, Jadakiss, Styles P, Masta Killa, GZA, and Erykah Badu, among others. Everyone sounds engaged and happy to be in the room. | This collaborative album between Ghostface Killah and D-Block's Sheek Louch features spots from Raekwon, Method Man, Jadakiss, Styles P, Masta Killa, GZA, and Erykah Badu, among others. Everyone sounds engaged and happy to be in the room. | Wu-Block: Wu-Block | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17446-wu-block/ | Wu-Block | You don't tune into a D-Block and Ghostface Killah collaborative project expecting surprises, so here's the good news: There are absolutely none on Wu-Block. Neither Ghost nor the LOX have switched up their style in over a decade, which makes listening to Wu-Block feel a little like watching a late-period Woody Allen film; before anyone opens their mouth, you already know exactly how everyone will sound, what they will talk about, what the surroundings will look like. If you're drawn to Wu-Block, it's probably at least in part for the way it promises, for 50 minutes or so, to shut the door on surprises.
Luckily, it's coming out, as all Ghostface-related projects do, right before the holiday season, a moment when we're all a little fonder of hoary old institutions and a little more susceptible to nostalgia. Ghost and D-Block are mascots of an unchanging NYC, as reliable as a beloved slice joint. But there's a blurry line where "reliable" fades into "stagnant," and mileage will vary for rap fans where Wu-Block falls. (Me, I still can't quite shake the memory that one of these guys, Ghost, was one of the most constantly surprising to ever do it.)
The tone is established from the opening seconds: The first song is called “Crack Spot Stories". It opens with the sound of Raekwon, Jadakiss, Ghost, and Sheek arguing over who has the remote, and the production is a faded soul loop. Sheek Louch nails the project's slightly-too-comfy vibe in one line: "Fiends at the door, I'm too lazy to let 'em in/ Turkey sandwich, barbecue chips, ESPN." Ghost is "chillin' in his robe," while Raekwon is sitting with his "leg back, examining choices." The scene is less crack-spot than man-cave, a bunch of grouchy old guys cracking each other up with the door closed to the outside world.
All of them sound great, though, and it's nice to hear them settle comfortably into their roles as older heads. Ghost is still finding vivid notes within his coke-sniffing kingpin fantasy persona, which is more than a decade old. "If I sneeze, the left side of my nose might rip," he yelps on "Comin For Ya Head". In that same verse, he gives us some home potency remedies ("You eat seal meat, dick stay up for a fuckin' week") and takes us to "a brutal rap battle in Zaire." On "Take Notice", he says "I do hood yoga/ I pull muscles counting money, need a new shoulder," and in a club-scene verse on "Pull Tha Cars Out", he shows off his still-sharp flair for imagery: "A baby ghost appeared from the blunt smoke/ It lingered through her hair and set into her clothes."
Neither Sheek Louch nor Styles P ever had golden ages like Ghost's to live up to: They've been endearing knuckleheads pretty much since Day One, and they're as enjoyable, more or less, as always. Sheek Louch's "winded touch-football participant" flow tends to make his dumb jokes hit harder than they should (see "My chain lower than your GPA," from "Take Notice"), but they make his unintentionally funny lines even funnier: "My bars is prenatal!" he yells on "Comin For Ya Head". Styles P has always flowed like steel shavings (one of the most quotable lines of his career is still "I don't give a fuck who you are/ So fuck who you are"), and his best line here is when he sneers the line "probably in the crib getting high watching Fargo" with a fierceness all out of proportion to the act of watching the movie Fargo.
There are other familiar faces, too: Cappadonna, yelling about a girl with a "thunder butt" on "Pour Tha Martini"; GZA working out an over-labored "life-as-car" metaphor on "Drivin Round", a song that also features a lightly crooning Erykah Badu. Raekwon sounds amazing, always, but his cadences and slang have budged so little over the years that everything he says has started to sound the same, giving his lines a "pull-string Raekwon" feel: "Sit back, laughin' with a stack and a clapper." See? You know exactly how that sounds.
But again, that familiarity is the point of Wu-Block. Everyone on the album sounds engaged and happy to be in the room. There are a handful of goofy skits, and a lot of hilarious cross-chatter in the album's margins: after the song "All in Together" ends, they stick around to make fun of people who wear fake jewelry. On "Take Notice", Ghost yells about the cold he has, acting grumpy and pulling the covers around him in the booth. "He's tellin' me to throw onions and garlic in my socks-- I ain’t with all that! Hand me some TheraFlu, some NyQuil or something." Small joys, but real ones that give Wu-Block a rap Statler-and-Waldorf feel. The conversation has long since passed these guys by, so they're having their own. You can visit whenever you like, but close the door on your way out. | 2012-12-04T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2012-12-04T01:00:03.000-05:00 | null | E1 | December 4, 2012 | 6.5 | 33c40d7d-0ac2-4e62-b3bb-16db568b3ced | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | null |
Five years after their party-starting YoYoYoYoYo, Spank Rock returns with an album executive produced by Boys Noize with guests including Santigold; it's not nearly as much fun as it wants to be. | Five years after their party-starting YoYoYoYoYo, Spank Rock returns with an album executive produced by Boys Noize with guests including Santigold; it's not nearly as much fun as it wants to be. | Spank Rock: Everything Is Boring & Everyone Is a Fucking Liar | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15845-spank-rock-everything-is-boring-and-everyone-is-a-fucking-liar/ | Everything Is Boring & Everyone Is a Fucking Liar | Remember when everyone was having panic-attack cred-spasms over skinny-jeans rap? Thinkpieces about indie appropriation, flame wars about "real hip-hop," stock insults hefted toward Billyburg trusties-- good times, right? Well, not every pioneer goes unrewarded. Five years after the Diplo-sanctioned fuck-bass shtick of Spank Rock's YoYoYoYoYo set critics' brows furrowing, there's a lucrative boom in party music that turns the once-communal dancefloor/club experience into overblown swag-level competitions between Red Bull-addled alpha males. And if you push hyperactive pussy-popping anthems to enough well-meaning lefty skeptics who are otherwise hesitant to buy into strip-club chic, eventually that noise will ricochet its way toward the mainstream. Anything that skeevy to the point of being problematic has to have real transgressive pop cred, right?
So waiting a good half-decade between the debut and the follow-up shouldn't matter too much. Not with an updated production sound and some choice gigs sharing bills with Ke$ha and LMFAO to back the sophomore effort. The beats on this new album signal a shift in emphasis from Spank Rock as self-contained Hollertronix-satellite rapper/producer group to Spank Rock as MC showcase, with YoYoYoYoYo's sonic architect XXXChange taking a backseat to a new palette heavy on German electro-scuzz specialist Boys Noize. It all bumps distractingly enough, sure. The opening salvo of "Ta Da" builds off a decent swath of plink-thump minimalism that serves as a little early snap-music nostalgia, and the Santigold-boosted "Car Song" pulls off a good mixture of jittery, late-nite, uptempo, indie dance-punk bombast. Even the token sop to indie-punk, the Death Set collaboration "Energy", has a neat interpolation of the break from Can's "Vitamin C" underpinning its bursts of freakout rock. The worst you can say about the production is that it can be sort of anonymous-- there's a song called "#1 Hit", and I bet you know what it sounds like without listening-- but it's nominally the sort of stuff an engaging presence on the mic can overcome.
Which brings us to the problem of Spank Rock himself. After originally carrying himself like a smartassed joker on the debut, he now comes across as someone more ambivalently unserious. Everything Is Boring & Everyone Is a Fucking Liar is the title, and maybe the easiest joke on the whole album: the cynical veneer on a loosely bundled collection of bass-rap tics that are delivered from a vantage point you can't quite see. There's no point in trying to sneak bass music through under cover of irony these days, but the edge that sparked Spank Rock's best moments back in the day either isn't there or flails around without direction. His rhymes are occasionally vaguely political, sometimes intentionally disingenuous, but never confident enough to tell you just where he stands. Somewhere between the rote, my-dick-rules bragging ("Hot Potato"; "Nasty"; "Race Riot on the Dance Floor") and the even more rote, I'm-so-fucked-up material (this is a dude who requests coke in place of salt on the rim of his margarita in "Cool Shit"), it's easy to hear that title's disillusioned cynicism in the spaces where the actual persona should be. YoYoYoYoYo at least tried to let some of the sketchier meat-market catcalls off the hook because they were funny; here it's just a bunch of boilerplate sex raps that seem a little too possessive to be fun.
Trying to engage the pop market with something there's already a surplus of is tricky enough when you're outsized enough to justify it. For Spank Rock, it just gets exhausting. He's a stylistic free-agent with a flow that drifts between Baltimore club, Southern bass, post-Guetta house-rap, and the occasional halfway-inspired Prince pastiche ("Baby"). But if his enthusiasm for genre-hopping gives him carte blanche to work his hyperactive, higher-register yawp into some interesting shapes, it does so at the expense of attention-getting things to say. And if lines stick out, it's usually because they're kind of tone-deaf-- "now I wanna go west (like Kanye?)/ I was thinkin' more Cornel" (wow, someone just heard his first Das Racist track). But his flow is either too rushed or too buried in the mix to jump out. What you're left with half the time for a lyrical identity is a hook, and the thing about hooks is that they work best if you can shout along without either feeling like an asshole or hoping everyone catches your scare quotes. If you can pull that off with lines like "shake it 'til my dick turns racist" ("Race Riot") or "I can make you famous/ He can buy you bottles but I can buy you Billboard" ("#1 Hit"), congratulations on overcoming the crippling burden of self-awareness. | 2011-09-30T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2011-09-30T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Bad Blood | September 30, 2011 | 3.5 | 33cb2859-8106-42c0-bf20-3534b648a249 | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
The acerbic, self-deprecating magic of the show barely translates to its soundtrack. Taken on their own, most of the original music is decent comedy rap, which is to say, imminently disposable. | The acerbic, self-deprecating magic of the show barely translates to its soundtrack. Taken on their own, most of the original music is decent comedy rap, which is to say, imminently disposable. | Various Artists: The Rick and Morty Soundtrack | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-the-rick-and-morty-soundtrack/ | The Rick and Morty Soundtrack | Let’s get this out of the way: “Rick & Morty” is about 20% too far up its own ass but it’s still very funny. And a big part of why its funny comes from its musical moments. The marquee Adult Swim cartoon, which aired its third season last year, has evolved from a Back to the Future parody about ball-licking into a gross, existential science fiction comedy that deftly integrates music into its episodes: a teenaged Rick using an acoustic guitar to express his literal decay, an alien’s schmaltzy ballad wondering why we can’t all just, like, get along, man, and an original school special rap about how the flu is bad. So “Rick & Morty” definitely has enough music to fill out the The Rick & Morty Soundtrack—but is it really worth listening to on its own?
Part of the magic of “Rick & Morty” is the way the show’s animation exists to add credibility to what is, essentially, the controlled rambling of co-creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, exemplified by the series’ “Interdimensional Cable” episodes, in which Roiland essentially ad libs alien television shows only for the animators to try to decide what to put behind them. Most of the music on The Rick & Morty Soundtrack has heavily improvised lyrics in this vein: Harmon made up the lyrics to “The Flu Hatin’ Rap” and “Alien Jazz Rap,” while most of Rick’s lyrics are ad-libbed by Roiland, as in the series’ musical episode “Get Schwifty,” where the Earth is conscripted into a life-or-death intergalactic singing competition.
That episode, written around some goofy beats made by series composer Ryan Elder and improvised by Roiland, is very funny, and “Get Schwifty,” in particular, is a highlight of the soundtrack. (“Get Schwifty” was on two Pazz & Jop ballots as one of the best singles of 2015.) When “Rick & Morty” is firing on all cylinders, it’s a sort of delirious, highly produced drunk riffing that manages to induce giggling fits even though you haven’t thought about the show in months. Then there’s the rest of it. Though there are a few moments where this degree of intentional sloppiness works on the soundtrack (in particular, the extended version of “The Flu Hatin’ Rap”), for the most part audio-only doesn’t work as a medium for “Rick & Morty”.
Taken on their own, most of the original music is decent comedy rap, which is to say, imminently disposable except to the people for whom comedy rap is an absolutely fundamental, Ten Commandments-level genre. And though the original score is fun enough, like the deliriously over-the-top theme song riffing on the “Doctor Who”music, most of it doesn’t work divorced from the episodes themselves. Tracks like “Jerry’s Rick,” a lilting sad guitar riff, wouldn’t be out of place on a treacly hospital drama—even though it’s used on the show to create humor. Does that make these songs effective parody, or out of place songs on a record that includes a track called “Terryfold”?
Like the show itself, a decent chunk of the music of “Rick & Morty” is incredibly catchy, if slightly irritating. Mostly, these are cheesy parodies of genres designed to infect your ears like “The Rick Dance,” an ’80s rap takeoff featuring a beat drop from Slow Mobius, or “Goodbye Moonmen,” a chintzy David Bowie parody sung by Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement. Some tracks are previously existing songs that acquired an almost meme-level quality from their placement in the show, like Blonde Redhead’s “For the Damaged Coda” or Mazzy Star’s “Looking on Down from the Bridge.” (Unfortunately, ”X Gon Give It To Ya” didn’t make the cut.)
It feels telling that the most effective “Rick & Morty” songs are loud and goofy, working in equally loud and goofy genres. (One thing that doesn’t work in this context: clipping.’s “Stab Him in the Throat,” which is definitely a clipping. song with vocal samples of a screeching character named Mr. Poopybutthole.) Much of “Rick & Morty”—the show, not the broader hologram of “Rick & Morty” as a cultural phenomenon—feels like solving a giant jigsaw puzzle of genres that aren’t supposed to fit together, and making them work largely through sheer force of will. While many of the individual songs are minor triumphs of this process, The Rick & Morty Soundtrack isn’t one of them. | 2018-10-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-10-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Sub Pop | October 4, 2018 | 5.2 | 33ce6ee7-7e26-4480-8d58-924634385239 | Eric Thurm | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-thurm/ | |
On his debut, this young Glasgow post-dubstep producer seems to understand that the surest route to dance music immortality is to reach both the dabblers and the hardcore by marrying innovation with hooks. | On his debut, this young Glasgow post-dubstep producer seems to understand that the surest route to dance music immortality is to reach both the dabblers and the hardcore by marrying innovation with hooks. | Rustie: Glass Swords | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15937-glass-swords/ | Glass Swords | Twenty years ago, Warp released Frequencies, the debut album by LFO, a duo who'd come up in the North England rave scene and scored an unexpected UK chart hit with their bold and brutal eponymous bleep techno single. This year, Warp releases Glass Swords, the debut album by Rustie, a young Glasgow producer who's come up in the protean post-dubstep scene and has yet to rough up the mainstream. (Give him time, though, especially if he catches the ear of a diva.) Most of the vinyl-only singles by LFO's revolutionary contemporaries are now sadly forgotten. In another 20 years, there's a good chance that most of the singles by Rustie's boundary-pushing peers will likewise be gathering metaphorical dust in the deep recesses of some iPod. But LFO's music has survived, and I have a feeling Rustie's will too. Because Rustie knows, like LFO knew, that the surest route to dance music immortality is to reach both the dabblers and the hardcore, marrying underground innovation with as many of electronic music's biggest ideas and best hooks as you can cram in.
Frequencies kicked off with LFO literally asking, "What is house?" The duo's answer was the album itself. For LFO, house was everything that had already come along, from wistful Kraftwerk to future-shock electro to beatific Detroit techno. They then edited it all into short and vibrant jolts, without watering things down a bit. Glass Swords takes the same tack, to brilliant and sometimes bewildering effect. The heavy wobble of dubstep is the frame that holds everything together, but thankfully Rustie's no purist. The title track is a dreamy and disorienting merger of metal guitar and IDM ambiance, bombastic and beatless, that owes as much to a portentous Metallica intro as old-school shoegaze swirl as Daft Punk's kitschy take on progressive rock. And like the new wave of take-rave-back-to-the-kids producers, Rustie is also fearless about rehabilitating and reinventing the genre's cheesiest and most pleasurable moments, the stuff dubstep's more glower-prone producers wouldn't even claim as being part of the genre's DNA. On the so-giddy-it-feels-unstable "Crystal Echo", you might mistake Rustie for a happy hardcore producer brought out of retirement to remix Rihanna, all squeaky, sped-up voices and hammering drums, twinkling melodies running smack into dubstep's bass whomp. Glass Swords might just as well have opened with Rustie asking, "What is dubstep?" His answer is the same as LFO's was for house: Everything, but as shiny and delirious and speaker-rattling as you can make it.
But Rustie is operating in a world where radio producers have already plundered dubstep for fresh sounds, and as if knowing he's now competing as much with Billboard hit-makers, his tracks have the maximalist zeal of Max Martin bubblegum. Even his most traditionally "dubstep" tunes won't sit still or do what they're supposed to, maniacally morphing plastic basslines and synth riffs with the sharpness of the album's titular crystal weaponry. "Surph" has the genre's requisite big bass drops, but Rustie also throws in pop-rave pianos, trance keyboards, and snippets of sugary R&B, because he can, because he's showing off, because it's fun, because he's never interested in just turning out another scene-pleasing exercise. He shares the make-it-immediate urge of Deadmau5 and his ilk but has no time for their simplicity or brutality. One of the best things about Glass Swords is that, for all of its pop-goes-clubbing bluster, it's also as psychedelic, where the devil's in the zillion little details zigzagging across the tracks-- as you'd expect from a Warp album-- whether we're talking their classic-era IDM records or more recent signings like Flying Lotus. "Cry Flames" has more of metal's brute force in its gnarled groove, but the real shiver-inducing moment comes when Rustie begins weaving a fragile, almost Satie-like piano melody into the bass snarl.
All that said, there's not a lot here that will redefine your ideas of what dubstep or electronic music in general can do. For all of Rustie's skill as a sculptor of very 21st-century beats, Glass Swords can feel just as much like a "greatest bits" collage. A lot of déjà vu elements are worked onto the framework of a current club trend, little hints of everything from Art of Noise to U-Ziq to the S.O.S. Band to old RPG soundtracks colliding with dubstep's bass pressure. But compared to the sterile sound of most retro-collage electronic albums, it's also an undeniable and up-to-the-minute rush. And in a couple of decades, when you're looking for an instant hit of what electronic pop felt like in 2011, you'll be able to throw on Glass Swords and get a dose of that feeling in its purest form. | 2011-10-18T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2011-10-18T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Electronic | Warp | October 18, 2011 | 8 | 33d2f128-7a5d-452c-9029-9ed39fe86544 | Jess Harvell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jess-harvell/ | null |
The New Orleans singer’s lush, sultry soul-pop goes down almost too easy. | The New Orleans singer’s lush, sultry soul-pop goes down almost too easy. | Lucky Daye: Candydrip | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lucky-daye-candydrip/ | Candydrip | Lucky Daye takes a decidedly old-school approach to contemporary soul and R&B. The artist born David Brown cut his teeth as a songwriter for artists like Ella Mai and Mary J. Blige before releasing “Roll Some Mo,” a smoky breakout that foregrounded the New Orleans native’s weightless falsetto. Daye’s lush soul-pop and sultry lyrics about modern relationships don’t break new ground, but they don’t need to—his music is refreshingly crisp, built for breezy afternoons and sweltering late nights. Daye’s 2019 debut, Painted, netted him four Grammy nominations, placing him among the current class of artists (H.E.R., Anderson .Paak, Giveon) reinvigorating classic R&B for a new era.
Daye’s second LP, Candydrip, expands the scope of his laidback sound only slightly. As on Painted, the new record’s tasteful instrumentation is handled by powerhouse executive producer D’Mile, who furnishes the album with gently plucked acoustic guitar and cinematic strings alongside textural pitch-shifted vocals and rhythmic backbeats. They’re elegant and manicured backdrops for Daye’s musings on love, whether unabashedly horny on slow-burning standout “Deserve” or dissecting a toxic affair on the balmy, Musiq Soulchild-sampling “Over.” Daye’s fluttering voice makes even the most libidinous line sound like an impassioned plea for connection, giving the album’s best moments a sense of raw vulnerability.
Daye chooses collaborators who match his smooth temperament—on last year’s velvety Table for Two EP, he recruited a fleet of up-and-coming women in R&B (Ari Lennox, Joyce Wrice, Yebba) to complement him. Candydrip branches out toward rap and lo-fi soul; Daye vamps alongside Smino over tinkling keys on the forgettable “God Body,” but makes out better on the bossa nova-infused “NWA,” where he teams up with Lil Durk. When Daye links with experimental soul duo Chiiild for the deep cut “Compassion,” their falsettos dance around each other with a soothingly mellow rapport. “Sometimes I know I get dramatic, yeah/But it’s automatic,” Daye sings, a bleeding-heart admission that sounds altogether angelic.
Candydrip’s easygoing sensibility and glossy production are both a feature and a fault; the blandly lovesick lyrics and funky guitar strut of “Feels Like” wouldn’t be out of place in line at CVS. But Daye often finds a surprising sweet spot, like when he lifts a melody from the pre-chorus to Usher’s “U Don’t Have to Call” on early highlight “Guess,” stretching it out into a warbling undercurrent beneath one of his most indelible hooks. The homage to Usher is fitting—Daye is working in the same lineage, emphasizing the strength of his voice to create effortless soul-pop that goes down easy. | 2022-03-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-03-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Keep Cool / RCA | March 28, 2022 | 7.2 | 33d32437-7d01-4d28-b6a1-441974942e70 | Eric Torres | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-torres/ | |
If the mesmerizing motorik hum of the War on Drugs' earlier records gave leader Adam Granduciel an outlet to escape his problems, Lost in the Dream is where he pulls a U to survey the emotional wreckage. The result is the band's most lustrous, intricately detailed, and beautifully rendered record to date. | If the mesmerizing motorik hum of the War on Drugs' earlier records gave leader Adam Granduciel an outlet to escape his problems, Lost in the Dream is where he pulls a U to survey the emotional wreckage. The result is the band's most lustrous, intricately detailed, and beautifully rendered record to date. | The War on Drugs: Lost in the Dream | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19094-the-war-on-drugs-lost-in-the-dream/ | Lost in the Dream | The War on Drugs’ 2011 album Slave Ambient saw perpetual unease as a Zen state: bandleader Adam Granduciel’s ruminations on restlessness read like a veritable prescription for Xanax, but the psychedelia-smeared country-rock enveloping his words was all, like, “No worries, dude.” The War on Drugs’ third album, however, presents no easy remedy for his inner turmoil. If the mesmerizing motorik hum of Slave Ambient gave Granduciel an outlet to escape his problems, Lost in the Dream is where he pulls a U to survey the emotional wreckage. While his former War on Drugs compadre Kurt Vile is forever Waking on a Pretty Daze, Granduciel has been sleepless through some ugly nights.
As detailed in a recent Grantland feature, Lost In the Dream was the product of a grueling, year-long recording process. Though Granduciel involved his touring band more so than any previous War on Drugs record, his perfectionist tendencies still held sway, resulting in endless cycles of recording, revising, and scrapping. And such self-doubt wasn’t helped by the fact that Granduciel was recovering from the flame-out of a long-term relationship, the ashes of which are scattered all over his lyric sheet here. But the obsessiveness and insecurity pay off massively on Lost in the Dream—this is the War on Drugs’ most lustrous, intricately detailed, and beautifully rendered record to date. In essence, the War on Drugs have evolved as a band on an album-to-album basis in precisely the same fashion as so many of their songs: what at first seemed like a fairly straightforward, traditionalist roots-rock exercise has very gradually, very subtly blossomed into something wondrous and profound.
Lost in the Dream continues down the Slave Ambient route of bridging polar-opposite strains of 1980s rock—namely, the tremulous haze of late-era Spacemen 3 and the sort of flyover-state Americana anthems used to sell pick-up trucks. But even in the album’s opening seconds, the new album asserts itself as a more urgent affair—overtop the blurry, break-of-dawn guitar ripples of “Under the Pressure”, a stuttering drum machine sounds off like an alarm clock coaxing you out of bed and prodding you out the door. And if the steady-pulsed melody that emerges initially positions “Under the Pressure” as the most placid song about anxiety ever, by the third chorus run—at which point it’s amassed a swirl of dueling guitar solos, starburst synths, and brown-note saxophone swells—you feel the full weight of this nine-minute track bearing down on your chest.
This tension is inescapable. Whether it’s the hair-raising, Autobahn-blazing charge of “An Ocean In Between the Waves” or the Positively South Street sway of “Eyes of the Wind”, Granduciel’s litany of worries are laid bare here, free of any textural interference or obfuscation. And the comparatively direct lyrics mirror the new approach to incorporating some of Granduciel’s more unfashionable influences. As ever, totemic figures like Dylan and Springsteen cast a long shadow over the War on Drugs’ terrain, but Granduciel is the sort of classic-rock purist who wore out the grooves of those artists’ most canonical albums so long ago that he now finds fresher inspiration in their less lauded 80s discography.
Period sounds abound: “Red Eyes” is what would happen if Springteen’s simmering “I’m on Fire” was actually set aflame; “Burning” finds its fuse in the buoyant keyboard riff to Rod Stewart’s 1981 new-wave novelty “Young Turks”; the melancholic mid-album meditation “Disappearing” sounds like the synth-powered rhythm track of Tears for Fears’ “Pale Shelter” on a codeine drip. And the preponderance of glistening piano chords on this record suggests Granduciel is not one to touch his dial whenever Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is” pops up on his local oldies station.
But if Lost in the Dream is unapologetic in its dad-rock reverence, it’s dad-rock for people who are too fucked up and broken to even think of having kids. (As he sings on “The Ocean In Between the Waves”: “I’m in my finest hour/ Can I be more than just a fool?”) In sharp contrast to, say, recent efforts to liberate Dylan’s 80s output from its dated production, Granduciel’s songs are left to fidget and squirm within the claustrophobic sonic confines and synthetic sheen. In his hands, these echoes of the past ultimately emphasize the uncertainty of his future, those shiny surfaces representing the good life that seems forever out of reach.
And besides, on Lost in the Dream, the most crucial details are found in its structural mutations. The album is loaded with songs whose greatness is revealed slowly, where the simplest, most understated chord change can blow a track wide open and elevate it from simply pretty to absolutely devastating. Note the shift that occurs two minutes and 50 seconds into “Suffering”, where the pent-up despondency heard in Granduciel’s state-of-his-union address (“Why we here when we’re both gonna fake it?”) is unleashed in a crying jag of drizzling piano chords and gently weeping White Album-like guitar slides. Or in the midst of the album’s epic break-up-ballad finale, “In Reverse”, you realize that all of the angst and ache that went into the song, and the album’s creation as a whole, is just building to the moment of release provided by the big, shoulder rub of an acoustic-guitar riff that appears out of nowhere at the 5:13 mark. They’re the sort of perfect little touches that effectively translate Granduciel’s private hurt into communal catharsis—and reify Lost in the Dream as an immaculately assembled portrait of a man falling apart. | 2014-03-18T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2014-03-18T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Secretly Canadian | March 18, 2014 | 8.8 | 33d4bf7e-8641-4b8d-bf48-64f27785d8e1 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
Kieren Hebden has been letting loose on stage, but he keeps it restrained on his smartly sequenced album that deftly incorporates virtually every style of music that he’s made over the years. | Kieren Hebden has been letting loose on stage, but he keeps it restrained on his smartly sequenced album that deftly incorporates virtually every style of music that he’s made over the years. | Four Tet: Three | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/four-tet-three/ | Three | Some performers start playing it safe when the stages get bigger. Not Kieran Hebden—better known as Four Tet—the heady, tasteful, crate-digging producer who has taken his new arena-sized crowds as an opportunity to confound, delight, and troll. Behind the decks, there’s no move that’s taboo, no track that’s off-limits. A decade ago, that meant raising eyebrows by going back-to-back in the booth with Skrillex, Now that he and Sonny Moore have become an Odd Throuple with Fred again.., the BFFs’ B2B2Bs are Hebden’s opportunity to further subvert whatever you might have thought Four Tet is supposed to sound like. At Madison Square Garden, he dropped a mischievous minimal-house edit of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” that he’d cobbled together for his daughter. At Coachella, he used the intro to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as the setup to an absurdist punchline: Hol!’s “Country Riddim,” a dubstep anthem featuring a cartoonishly garish drop. (Hebden loves that song: At the trio’s surprise Times Square gig in February 2023, he unleashed the tune again—and then spun it back to the top of the drop, just to savor its ridiculousness.)
But however unpredictable Hebden might be on stage, on record he’s as reliable as they come. Three is his 12th solo album, give or take—the proliferation of live recordings, early-works anthologies, shadowy side projects, and experimental longform excursions complicates the count—and it embodies everything that has come to define Four Tet over the years. There are shuffling UK garage rhythms and moonlit pools of ambient, heavy-lidded head-nodders and floor-filling rave-ups, hand-carved breakbeats and harps, harps, and more harps.
A few years back, I found Four Tet’s consistency on his albums frustrating; I longed for him to switch things up, throw the occasional wrench in the works. I wondered, with 2020’s Sixteen Oceans, if he was getting boxed in by his formula. But on Three, the familiarity is welcome. The record is less experimental than 2020’s Parallel, which collected the 2-stepping club tracks and atmospheric experiments of his alias ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ. But the trim, eight-track album is smartly sequenced and nicely varied, taking in virtually every style of music that Hebden’s made over the years—house, downbeat, hip-hop, and more, all given the customary Four Tet slant. Most importantly, he sounds energized, as though all that mischief-making behind the decks had taught him new twists in old tricks.
The album drops us directly into classic Four Tet territory with “Loved,” a wistful tune whose slowly rocking breakbeat and sun-seeking tendrils of synth call back to Rounds’ juxtaposition of muscular drums and watercolor keys. Crisply delineated shakers and hi-hats, along with a sizzling hint of vinyl crackle, flesh out a perpetually evolving beat in which no two bars are alike. A hissing loop runs out of sync with the groove, adding an almost imperceptible hint of instability; out of nowhere, little burrs of white noise swell into thunderclaps. Yet for all this activity, the track is never overstuffed, and it’s remarkably efficient: Before it even hits the 3:30 mark, the song has said its piece, and winds down across a gentle ambient outro.
While tempos vary widely, most of Three maintains a similarly ruminative mood. In the elegiac “Gliding Through Everything,” a beatless swirl of bells and chimes gradually gives way to clouds of overdriven ambience; “Storm Crystals” lays out a meandering synth melody over a slow-motion breakbeat and wraps it in a halo of dubbed-out harp. Only with track four, “Daydream Repeat,” does Hebden finally lock into dancefloor mode, anchoring a flyaway harp melody with a rugged, house-inspired rhythm. But even here, the vibe remains as dreamy as the beat is physical. Only one other track so much as flirts with the dancefloor: “31 Bloom,” which revisits the minimal-techno investigations of 2008’s Ringer. A heads-down roller arraying cottony chords over a beat that sounds like two small stones being clacked together, it’s the album’s most emotionally ambivalent track—a welcome counterbalance to the occasional moment (on “So Blue,” say) where things get misty-eyed.
It’s the details that make Three really sing. “Daydream Repeat” opens with great, dissonant sheets of phased and distorted guitar that sound like something off the Cure’s Pornography—hardly the first reference point that typically comes to mind on a Four Tet record. Guitar is all over the album, in fact, and it makes for some of the record’s best moments—like “Skater,” which imagines an alternate universe where DJ Shadow remixed the Cocteau Twins. The rosy ambient glow that opens “So Blue” is suddenly broken by a single tone, slightly too loud, shorn of reverb and weirdly skewed to the right; it reminds me of a boss I once had who would sneak a hidden phrase into the final paragraph of a 2000-word email, just to make sure you were paying attention.
There’s much more here than meets the ear: interruptions you never see coming, intimations of sounds in the depths of the mix you can’t quite make out. That’s what separates Three from the merely chill; it takes a master craftsperson’s skill to create music that scans so simply on the surface but then opens up to reveal hidden rooms within hidden rooms—just like it takes a seasoned selector to drop “Country Riddim” and get away with it. In tone and mood, Three is the opposite of Hebden’s stadium setlists. But within the carefully thought-out parameters of what makes a Four Tet record, he’s finding new, quieter ways to surprise. | 2024-03-15T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2024-03-15T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Text | March 15, 2024 | 7.8 | 33d60aac-33cf-4011-8f46-d7623ddddb38 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
GoGo Penguin's latest album comes on the heels of a revival of sorts for jazz music, when artists like Kendrick Lamar, David Bowie, Flying Lotus and Kamasi Washington fused the genre with their own blends of rap, rock, electronica and soul. Man Made Object, the band's third album, resides in similar space; many of its 10 tracks started as electronic compositions, created on Logic and Ableton by the group’s percussionist. | GoGo Penguin's latest album comes on the heels of a revival of sorts for jazz music, when artists like Kendrick Lamar, David Bowie, Flying Lotus and Kamasi Washington fused the genre with their own blends of rap, rock, electronica and soul. Man Made Object, the band's third album, resides in similar space; many of its 10 tracks started as electronic compositions, created on Logic and Ableton by the group’s percussionist. | GoGo Penguin: Man Made Object | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21463-man-made-object/ | Man Made Object | In his 1982 film, Koyaanisqatsi, director Godfrey Reggio sought to explain the relationship between human beings, nature and technology. He presented a gorgeous collage of scenic landscapes and rolling clouds, set against an equally riveting score. The movie said everything it needed without any spoken dialogue, which can be nearly impossible in cinema and music.
Jazz trio GoGo Penguin rescored the film in a one-off event this past fall, which makes total sense the more you assess the band’s art. Drummer Rob Turner, bassist Nick Blacka and pianist Chris Illingworth fuse classical and electronic elements while keeping with jazz’s improvised nature. Much like Koyaanisqatsi, GoGo Penguin’s music is full of subtle shifts that allow its composers to shine equally. For Man Made Object, the band’s third album, many of its 10 tracks started as electronic compositions, created on Logic and Ableton by the group’s percussionist.
GoGo Penguin opts for an energized sound on Man Made Object, conjuring pastoral imagery while loosely exploring scientific concepts. Between its title and multifaceted sonic approach, the LP seems directly influenced by Koyaanisqatsi, bringing to mind the same sorts of aerial views we see during the movie’s 86 minutes. The album comes on the heels of a revival of sorts for jazz music, where artists like Kendrick Lamar, David Bowie, Flying Lotus and Kamasi Washington fused the genre with their own blends of rap, rock, electronica and soul. The success of their respective LPs brought jazz back into mainstream view and made it more accessible for younger listeners.
Man Made Object resides in similar space. Much like the band’s first two albums—Fanfares and v2.0, the latter of which was shortlisted for a Mercury Prize Album of the Year—the band’s new album takes hold right away and sustains an upbeat groove. Even in its quieter moments, like those on “GBFISYSIH” and “Initiate,” they carry a reflective vibe without losing momentum. GoGo Penguin creates jazz in the same vein as Robert Glasper: It’s a piano-driven blend with all the traditional aspects you’d expect from the genre while still scanning as something refreshingly vibrant and contemporary. Theirs is a percussive strain of frenetic drum breaks and rock-infused instrumentals, like on “Smarra,” where a fluttering bass line takes center stage, ramping up the rhythm until it burns to a smoldering heap. It’s the best moment of an album filled with unique creative twists.
Yet despite these details, Man Made Object is largely devoid of standout, calling-card tracks. “Smarra” and “Protest” hit hardest at first glance, but the other tracks take longer to build up, one leading to the next for a unified listening experience. Man Made Object is tailor-made for laid-back enjoyment, to be consumed at a moderate volume without much fuss. It marks a nice step forward for a group that lives comfortably beyond artistic restraints. | 2016-02-09T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2016-02-09T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Jazz | Blue Note | February 9, 2016 | 7.5 | 33dc6d14-9e85-494f-bcc2-56d2f38f653d | Marcus J. Moore | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marcus-j. moore/ | null |
On his supposed debut album, the hyper-prolific Rochester rapper upgrades his fidelity and sharpens his focus. | On his supposed debut album, the hyper-prolific Rochester rapper upgrades his fidelity and sharpens his focus. | RXK Nephew: Till I’m Dead | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rxk-nephew-till-im-dead/ | Till I’m Dead | Few artists have maximized the direct-to-consumer possibilities of YouTube like RXK Nephew. Where other artists are bound by contractual obligations and release schedules, the Rochester, New York rapper took an accelerationist approach, delivering an erratic stream of loosies to a devoted cult following. Recently he’s slowed his once-overwhelming workrate—relatively speaking. Till I’m Dead is his first full-length project since November 2022, while his flood of YouTube uploads is now more of a trickle. Even as he’s started to acknowledge the game a little more, Nephew manages to swerve industry expectations—his music is still confusingly spread across multiple Spotify profiles with slight differences in spelling, as if to throw off any fair-weather fans.
Despite Nephew’s mammoth catalog, Till I’m Dead is presented as his official debut album. If it’s not his actual debut, it at least introduces a new version of the ever-mutating Nephew. Alongside his conspiratorial bars and non-stop flow, a general indifference to conventional standards of mixing and mastering has long been a defining feature of Nephew’s work. On Till I’m Dead, he finally acquiesces to industry audio conventions. And while past releases have included beats from multiple producers, Till I’m Dead is produced entirely by Rx Brainstorm. Nephew is approaching his work with greater focus: It’s the first album he’s recorded entirely sober, a formative shift for an artist whose work has always felt deeply intertwined with drugs, in both lyrical content and overall atmosphere.
Any concern that these developments might impede Nephew’s distinctive stream-of-consciousness flow quickly proves unfounded—greater intentionality has merely brought the pixelated edges of his work into sharper resolution. Till I’m Dead is an hour of unrestrained and overlapping bars sans features, showcasing Nephew’s singular fusion of galaxy-brain absurdity and unexpected vulnerability. The pressure to conform is a stress that Nephew acknowledges lyrically—“Hey Neph, you should do a hook,” he says in a mocking tone on “1000MPH”—but he still refuses to give in.
Nephew’s love affair with dance music is hardly new, but Till I’m Dead proves it’s more than just flirtation. Rx Brainstorm weaves effortlessly from footwork on the opening track to LTJ Bukem-like astral jungle on “Frames” to smooth tropical house on “Critical.” Even when the mood is more relaxed, the music glides through multiple styles: The watery synthesizers on “Do It For You” have a slight indie pop flavor, and “On My Mind” sounds like trance music by way of vaporwave.
On his most uptempo tracks, Nephew transforms into an MC in the classic sense, an enthusiastic party conductor commanding the audience to groove. The air horns and trap drums that open “I’m High” recall Datpiff-era rap, but the beat switches to Baltimore club as Nephew unleashes his manic Slitherman persona, suggesting a demented version of early ’90s hip-house jock jams. Cartoonish alter egos like Slitherman and Too Tuff Tony, who Nephew embodies through affected voices, are a core part of his mythology and a locus to his work. A compelling parallel emerges in his constant references to professional wrestling; like the greatest pro wrestlers, Nephew treads a thin line between persona and personality. The contrast between his whimsical side and the increasing poignance of his writing makes the expression of sincere emotion land harder. Though Nephew is still negotiating a compromise between his own sensibility and more commercial considerations, Till I’m Dead is the closest he’s come yet to threading the two. | 2023-03-22T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-03-22T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | New Breed Trapper | March 22, 2023 | 6.8 | 33dfa589-7826-456a-9280-afb881bea75c | Nadine Smith | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nadine-smith/ | |
Muse are back, with an LP of all-caps, no half-stepping ART-ROCK that closes with a three-part epic so shameless about its size it's billed as a "Symphony." | Muse are back, with an LP of all-caps, no half-stepping ART-ROCK that closes with a three-part epic so shameless about its size it's billed as a "Symphony." | Muse: The Resistance | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13453-the-resistance/ | The Resistance | As with so many 21st-century mainstream (or quasi-mainstream) rock albums unafraid to stuff 10 tons of quasi-operatic melodrama into 60 or so minutes, The Resistance will be easily dismissed by those into the Grizzly Bear/Dirty Projectors brand of orchestrated art-rock. You know, where the album has a pleasing ramshackle feel under the surface-level skillfulness, the sense that the vocal acrobatics or tricky instrumental interplay could suddenly veer into uncomfortable, mock amateurish expressionism.
By contrast, you never get the sense that Muse are anything less than in total control of their "difficult" music at all times. Throughout The Resistance, frontman Matt Bellamy is ready and willing to foreground his chops, be it tickling the ivories, hopping octaves, or tossing out increasingly tasteful solos. If the The Resistance is "about" anything, aside from the conceptual malarkey encoded in the lyrics, it's about mastery, ego-security, etc. It's the kind of all-caps, no half-stepping ART-ROCK that closes with a three-part mini-epic so shameless about its own classic rock bigness that it's billed as a "Symphony", complete with "Overture". Jumped ship yet?
For the wary or outright dismissive, however, The Resistance is also a very smartly sequenced album. it opens with the most "pop" sequence of the band's career, a three-song sequence aping the stadium-grade synth-rock of Depeche Mode at their crossover height. It then segues into a middle section of hard (but not too hard) rock, nodding in the direction of grottier bands like Queens of the Stone Age or System of a Down without stripping away the sparkle. Only then does The Resistance shift into the sort of fist-pumping, kitchen-sink prog you were probably expecting. It's canny: Leading the uncommitted down a drum machine paved path of catchy 1980s revivalism and straight into the path of an army of kids straddling the gap between entry-level classical and "Headbanger's Ball".
And "army" is right: Unity in the face of faceless post-industrial society grinding down beautiful stuff like love and friendship is perhaps Muse's great theme. Bellamy is constantly tossing out mass-shout-along-ready lyrics like "we will be victorious" and "they won't stop breaking us down." Songs get titles like "Uprising" and (natch) "Resistance". Things break down easily into a "we" (rarely does an "I" creep into Bellamy's songwriting) and a "they." Your age-old, rock-standard good (we, the fans) vs. evil (them, the nebulous straight government-corporate nexus) set-up, got it?
But unlike the creepy mass-rally overtones that so bugged early rock critics about music designed to pack civic centers-- or thrilled them when it was punk leading in the kids in revolt-- you get the sense that Bellamy's lyrics are an outgrowth of wanting to make his music as big and inclusive as possible, rather than any inchoate political impulses. No doubt Bellamy fancies himself some sort of social crusader, but his mush-headed vagueness (like Bono and Chris Martin and just about any Brit frontman operating on this scale) is designed to inspire warm fuzzy feelings of togetherness and resistance rather than offer any ten-point plan to overthrow the emotionally fascist modern world.
So let's take the warm fuzzy bigness of the music at face value. It's understandable if the Buckley mannerisms and Mercury multi-tracking on "The United States of Eurasia" aren't your cup of tea. You may cringe at the Pavlov-approved crescendos that surge through "Guiding Light", the sort of thing where you imagine a ProTools preset producers have nicknamed "10,000 People Holding up Bics They Bought Especially for the Concert." And then there's "Exogenesis", the aforementioned "Symphony" in three parts. Now a Daydream Nation style knowing "trilogy" this is not. There's massed strings. There's half-time chest-beating theatrics ready for flashpots and Vegas set design. If it's not quite Keith Emerson's territory-- or Celine Dion's, for that matter-- it's a similarly grandiose ballpark where the fans wear slightly different clothes.
But still: I'm a punk at heart, suspicious about the meeting of rock band and orchestra after all these years, and even I have to admit there's something cornily beautiful about "Exogenesis", like Radiohead with no fear of pushing things until the motor bursts into flames. Judged on its own terms-- out of control scale, genre-smashing ambition, musical and vocal virtuosity-- The Resistance is a success. It's just the kind of success where you have to appreciate a guy who builds his own guitars daring himself to make the next song even more rapturously overstuffed and classically cathartic. It's an album you can embrace or get the fuck out of its way. There's really no in between. It's high-test pop-prog hokum, better suited to mashing buttons to kill wizards or gorging on a stack of four-color batshittery than working on your thesis or darning your socks.
Video games or comics are probably a closer comparison than most of the music Pitchfork covers, actually. There's a prevailing idea that there's something spiritually and emotionally dangerous about grown men and women spending most of their alone-time immersed in improbable fantasies where interpersonal relationships and the traumas of the real world can be dispatched/ignored via magical powers. But do you want to wallow in grey impotence in the face of quotidian bullshit every damn minute of the day? Escape, whether via Matt Bellamy or the Immortal Iron Fist or the fine folks at Nintendo, shouldn't be a dirty word, at least when used sparingly. | 2009-09-15T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2009-09-15T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Warner Bros. | September 15, 2009 | 5.9 | 33e1dfc1-e4bd-49b6-9531-713080a7e34e | Jess Harvell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jess-harvell/ | null |
The Chicago band moves past its early twang into raucous alt-pop on an album that captures childhood confusions and adult yearning. | The Chicago band moves past its early twang into raucous alt-pop on an album that captures childhood confusions and adult yearning. | Ratboys: Printer’s Devil | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ratboys-printers-devil/ | Printer’s Devil | On their earliest releases Ratboys tagged their sound “post-country,” but you really had to squint to hear the country. The twang on their 2017 album GN was more implied than explicit, and the music cozily straddled the line between woozy guitar pop and homespun folk. The whole album seemed to exist in a blissful state of in-between.
GN was a gem, the kind of album that’s hard to replicate, and on their follow-up Printer’s Devil, Ratboys don’t even really try. Years of sharing stages with punkier bands like PUP and Dowsing has thickened and toughened their sound, as has the solidification of a full-time rhythm section after years of touring with rotating drummers. Printer’s Devil is Ratboys’ first album as a four-piece, and there’s no mistaking the difference.
That riff-forward makeover brings them closer to the alt-pop of bands like Charly Bliss and Speedy Ortiz. On the surface that’s a step toward anonymity—not a lot of bands shared GN’s tender, ephemeral reimagining of Americana, while plenty share Printer’s Devil’s debt to the Veruca Salt lane of ’90s alternative. But it rips convincingly: The classic rock-spiked “Look To” is pure speaker candy, the kind of unabashed windows-down moment that GN’s muted production didn’t allow, while the guitars on “Anj” sizzle like early Paramore.
Even when working with less-novel sounds, singer Julia Steiner has individuality to spare, both as a vocalist and a songwriter. She’s not a howler. Instead she works her frayed voice like a pair of kitchen shears, doing her damage not through broad swipes but well-placed snips. Her warmth and whimsy seeps through even Printer’s Devil’s grungiest songs. Like Doug Martsch, Jenny Lewis, and David Byrne before her, she captures how childhood confusions linger into adulthood. And like those songwriters, her cleverness never masks her vulnerability. On “I Go Out at Night,” one of the record’s rare softer numbers, she pictures herself in “a job uninstalling ’90s payphones,” a wry image but also a wistful metaphor for growing up.
Ratboys demoed the album in Steiner’s empty childhood home just after it had been sold, which she’s said was as emotionally taxing as you’d expect. That experience may account for the extra ache in these songs. Steiner fills Printer’s Devil with half-remembered snapshots of adolescence—sprints down hills in the summertime, a ride on an airplane simulator at the mall—juxtaposed with images of overgrown grass, vacated lots and other innocuous signifiers of the passage of time that carry weight only in the rare moments we pause to consider them. The effect is comforting and sobering all at once, like revisiting your elementary school’s playground as an adult. The swings are still there; you can sit on them, even. But whatever you’re hoping to reclaim is long gone.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-03-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-03-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Topshelf | March 2, 2020 | 7.7 | 33e3c7ee-4c0d-4901-8a99-4a18ff004608 | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | |
Swedish punks Makthaverskan embody a reaction to what they considered to be a conformist, “happy and cute” indie scene in Gothenberg. Their new album is an interior and personal record of constricted scope, one of unhinged beauty that can be wrested from longing and anger. | Swedish punks Makthaverskan embody a reaction to what they considered to be a conformist, “happy and cute” indie scene in Gothenberg. Their new album is an interior and personal record of constricted scope, one of unhinged beauty that can be wrested from longing and anger. | Makthaverskan: II | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19263-makthaverskan-ii/ | II | There’s a tendency in American culture to use foreign punk bands to gain insight to another nation’s political and emotional tenor, and that’s just not gonna work with Sweden’s Makthaverskan. Though a reaction to what they considered to be a conformist, “happy and cute” indie scene in Gothenburg, II is an interior and personal record of constricted scope, occurring entirely within Maja Milner: in her blood, in her head, in her body, in her room. Beyond that, who knows what else is going on in the world—but that’s the whole point of II, a record of unhinged beauty that can be wrested from longing and anger. At times it feels threatening enough to render all other concerns inconsequential.
The cramped confines of II are indicative of its attitude, a desire to get the fuck away from somewhere, whether it’s a torturous relationship, a mental straightjacket, or a shitty mood. For the most part, Makthaverskan flit through decades of genre variations (dream-pop, melodic post-punk, and so on) that are typically lumped into “bedsit music”. However, its punk ethos and intensity make it all feel like a crying fit so physically severe that you’re actually sore afterwards.
Makthaverskan try to soar with makeshift wings on II, and more often than not, the results are charming rather than awkward. Glistening guitar leads occasionally stumble upon a bum note, drums get lost in swirl of reverb if they let up the intensity. Regardless, it’s rare to hear a singer who can flat-out project like Milner__—the leaps of faith she takes before hitting the skyscraping notes that punctuate the daring introductory duo of “Antabus” and “Asleep” are captivating to the point where sometimes it seems like she’s only utilizing a small fraction of her powers. But as with the rest of her band, Milner is less compelling on songs that require a bit more finesse;__ when “Drömland” drops the 100,000,000th “Be My Baby” drum intro and “Something More” runs through facile midtempo, mid-career Cure, it comes off as strangely sheepish. Consequently, there are points where Milner’s voices gets a bit too piercing amidst the unbalanced mix__—__it’s the effect of cleaning your ear with a Q-Tip and going in a little too far.
But then again, II takes on the form of what happens to people who’ve gone a little too far putting themselves out there—the “never again” visceral reaction one has after getting screwed by their vulnerability. (It's worth noting that “Antabus” is named after a drug which elicits a violent reaction in alcoholics when they relapse.) While little of II’s vitriol is lost in translation, there is no English equivalent for the band name: “The woman with the power” is as close as we can get.
And yet, Milner’s lyrics can be categorized into three stages of trying to recapture that power rather than owning it: "Don’t go", "Please come back", and "Fuck you, leave". At times, the latter is literally what it comes down to__:__ there’s no real chorus to “Antabus”, just a refrain of “I don’t know what to say/ So fuck you!/ Fuck you!” Fittingly, “No Mercy” is even more direct__,__ as Milner yells, “Fuck you for fucking me when I was 17...You never loved me/You wanted to own me." The fine and crucial semantic distinctions of “fuck” apparently cross the language barrier and throughout II, there isn’t much romantic love, just the romanticization of young lust and teen angst. Those are part of the same continuum, though and when II taps into its eternal power, the cries from Milner’s bedroom nothing short of universal. | 2014-05-07T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2014-05-07T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | Run for Cover | May 7, 2014 | 7.5 | 33e42cc1-56a3-49ae-862c-3494c61a7783 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
One of the more common criticisms of Jamaica's music from those who don't typically listen to it is ... | One of the more common criticisms of Jamaica's music from those who don't typically listen to it is ... | The Bug: Pressure | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/1086-pressure/ | Pressure | One of the more common criticisms of Jamaica's music from those who don't typically listen to it is that it's monolithic. That it all. Sounds. The. Same. I can't remotely agree with the sentiment, but those who have this idea in their head don't often care to reconcile with the possibility that they may be mistaken. There's no such problem on Pressure, as The Bug skulks around the dancehall underground working with a variety of sounds and vocalists. He takes a distinctly outsider's view to the genre and scene, blending it with elements of his own dubby ambient work and other white-boy dancehall crossovers-- German Basic Channel-esque minimalism, hard-edged beats, and ruff-in-the-jungle ragga.
Calling The Bug a Jamaican artist is, naturally, a fallacy in the first place. It's one of many pseudonyms for Kevin Martin, who also worked in Sonic Boom's space-rock collective EAR and who, with Justin K. Broadrick, creates ambient techno as Techno Animal and hip-hop as Ice, among other projects. Despite his restless genre-hopping, Martin has enjoyed his greatest successes working with elements of dub sounds and processes, most notably his first album as The Bug (1997's Tapping the Conversation-- yes, named for the Coppola film) and his work as the curator of the landmark Macro Dub Infection compilations.
On Pressure, Martin's exploration of the wildly creative and vital sounds of contemporary dancehall works best when he's at his most abrasive and least distant from its Jamaican progenitors. Tracks with ragamuffin hip-hop pioneer Daddy Freddy ("Run the Place Red" and "Politicians and Pedophiles"), longtime Martin collaborator Toastie Tailor ("Beats, Bass, Bombs, and Weapons"), and the Rootsman and He-Man ("Killer") are the record's highlights, gruff and tumbling shards of sound system greatness.
When straying further from dancehall's frenetic, digital snap/crackle/pop, The Bug is less successful. Providing variety-- but with less interesting results-- are a handful of collaborations with London poet Roger Robinson, who offers spoken-word sentiments over sly ambient waves and rolling basslines, and former Rhythm & Sound mate Paul St. Hilare, who chips in with some Horace Andy-like falsettos.
Pressure is another blow to what I thought was an irreversible dislike of Tigerbeat6 Records and the juvenile, prankster-like approach to music that seemed to be the only feather in its creative cap. Then, after years of churning out sonic sludge-- often slathered over the works of far more creative artists-- dj/Rupture came along and had me at hello. Pressure (released on Rephlex in the UK) is another winner from the label. The more kinetic and abrasive the record gets the more it appeals to me, but its melange of elastic bass, distorted beats, and spacious pools of electronic dub offers a bit of something for everyone. | 2003-10-14T01:00:04.000-04:00 | 2003-10-14T01:00:04.000-04:00 | Electronic | Tigerbeat6 | October 14, 2003 | 7.2 | 33e6a1f5-58f6-4856-80c7-1525c13c33f6 | Scott Plagenhoef | https://pitchfork.com/staff/scott-plagenhoef/ | null |
The garage rock auteur’s latest is a mid-career standout full of gunky riffs and tender love. | The garage rock auteur’s latest is a mid-career standout full of gunky riffs and tender love. | Ty Segall: Three Bells | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ty-segall-three-bells/ | Three Bells | The video for Ty Segall’s recent single, “Eggman,” is just a static shot of Segall, sitting at a table, eating hard-boiled eggs for four minutes straight. Around the time Segall scarfs down his eighth egg, he starts showing visible signs of fatigue, a shift reflected in the music: What starts out sounding like a pissed-off John Lennon ad-libbing a sequel to “I Am the Walrus” with Plastic Ono Band devolves into a queasy, uncomfortable dirge that feels like a blocked digestive system. By the time the song disintegrates into a murky pool of distortion, you’ll never want to eat another egg again. But Segall and wife/co-director Denée’s “Eggman” video is more than just a high-concept visualization. It’s also a spot-on advertisement for Segall’s own approach to classic-rock revisionism: He takes something that’s supposed to be a source of comfort and makes it seem kinda disgusting. And with his 15th studio album, Three Bells, he delivers some of his most immaculately constructed grotesquerie to date.
While no two Ty Segall albums are totally alike, his first decade’s worth of records at least felt like they were positioned along the same psych/punk spectrum. But since dropping his definitive double-album statement, Freedom’s Goblin, in 2018, Segall has entered an exploratory phase not unlike Neil Young’s notorious 1980s period, approaching each record as a premeditated genre exercise to further dismantle his long-standing reputation as the impulsive garage rocker who can bash out three albums before breakfast. There was the anti-guitar exotica of First Taste, the synth-shocked treatments of Harmonizer, the no-frills folk of “Hello, Hi”—all illuminating additions to his multifaceted discography, but also insular, low-stakes affairs from an artist who didn’t seem all that interested in capitalizing on the momentum that Freedom’s Goblin generated. With Three Bells, however, Segall once again gives himself license to embrace randomness and surrender to sprawl. More than a status update on Segall’s ever-changing whims, it’s an ambitious, uncanny, joyously unpredictable album that invites you to get lost within its house-of-mirrors design.
Three Bells’ vitality is all the more remarkable considering how easy it is to mistake it for the sort of temperate album a once-unruly rocker inevitably makes as they approach middle age. This is a record that relies on acoustic guitar as much as electric. There’s another song about his dog that’s way more chill than the last one. And when he’s not singing about life at home, he’s dropping copious references to bells and vibrations and mirrors and metaphysics, suggesting the Ty Segall of 2024 is more likely found in an occult bookshop than a basement dive. But Segall avoids slipping into the dad-rock zone because he’s still a mischievous punk at heart. He’s not pretending to be the Beatles in ’68 or Led Zeppelin in ’70—he’s imagining the music they’d make today if they were California surfer bums and skate rats just like him: “I Hear” is Bowie’s “Fashion” on a DIY budget, its disco-club bounce replaced by a grimy acoustic groove and the Frippian guitar squeals pushed into the red; “Wait” starts off on Side 1 on The White Album and ends up on Side 2 of Master of Reality.
But Three Bells isn’t just a cruise through Segall’s record collection. The album opens with two multi-sectional prog-folk epics—“The Bell” and “Void”—that apply the battle plan of his madcap 2017 medley “Warm Hands (Freedom Returned)” to more mystical realms, dialing up the delirium with each new melodic fragment and sudden tempo shift. This is rock’n’roll as an M.C. Escher painting—a balance of innovative engineering and disorienting up-is-down logic. But for all their twists and turns, “The Bell” and “Void” clearly lay out the thematic terrain that Segall explores throughout Three Bells: the eternal tension between seeking inner peace while buckling under external pressures. On the rustic power-pop reverie “My Room,” he admits: “Out there, I’m too dizzy/I’d rather be inside my room,” but as the song’s electric-guitar hooks get sharper, nastier, and more intrusive, he seems to acknowledge the impossibility of fully tuning out.
Segall’s prescription for sanity is to draw strength from the ones he loves: his pets, yes, but most notably his wife. On Three Bells, the Lennon influence is as much matrimonial as musical: While Denée has turned up in Segall’s work before (including in their robo-punk project the C.I.A.), with this record, she becomes the muse and creative co-conspirator who’s completely enmeshed in his art, and the agent provocateur pushing it to new degrees of raw carnality. As singer and lyricist, she delivers her idea of a love song with “Move,” a brash proto-metal boogie in which she reveals the couple’s secret to stress relief: “When we are sideways/I disconnect the phone/It’s different in the morning/When we’re alone.”
By contrast, Segall addresses his better half with pure reverence. “To You” begins as a portrait of touring-induced homesickness colored by manic folk-punk strums and ping-ponging synths, but when he declares, “I’m coming back to you,” the song melts into a swooning, faux-symphonic serenade. And toward the end of this long, labyrinthine album, Segall offers up Three Bells’ climactic set piece, “Denée,” whose title constitutes its lone lyric. But while it initially sounds as though Segall is laying down an ad-hoc placeholder vocal, he keeps repeating her name until it blossoms into a devotional mantra, which bursts open into an extended cosmic-jazz jam that’s unlike anything else in his bottomless canon. It may not be an outwardly sentimental “Oh Yoko!”-style serenade, but “Denée” is no less direct a paean to the transcendental power of a love that leaves you at a loss for words. | 2024-01-29T00:02:00.000-05:00 | 2024-01-29T00:02:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Drag City | January 29, 2024 | 7.8 | 33e6c08c-2b6c-460e-aa32-b06c809fe36a | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
While fame and fortune may’ve eluded them, the before-their-time New York City rockers’ influence is incalculable. Two decades on, their 1996 mini-LP sounds like a hiccup in the timeline. | While fame and fortune may’ve eluded them, the before-their-time New York City rockers’ influence is incalculable. Two decades on, their 1996 mini-LP sounds like a hiccup in the timeline. | Jonathan Fire*Eater: Tremble Under Boom Lights | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jonathan-fireeater-tremble-under-boom-lights/ | Tremble Under Boom Lights | Jonathan Fire*Eater’s Walter Martin once interrupted a meeting with Dreamworks label brass to see about capping sales of Wolf Songs for Lambs, their major label debut, at an even half-million, lest the band grew too big, too quickly. Ambitious, but perhaps a bit premature; Wolf Songs wound up selling about 10,000 copies in the early going, a few zeros shy of the Appetite for Destruction numbers Martin was gunning for. Chutzpah isn’t everything, but it’s certainly not nothing, and what DC-to-NYC before-their-timers Jonathan Fire*Eater lacked in bankable success, they more than made up with unshakable faith in their own abilities. Through their brief, tumultuous tenure, the elegantly wasted JFE looked, acted, and frequently even sounded like heirs apparent to the big crown. They never really came close.
Yet, while traditional markers of fame and fortune may’ve eluded them, Jonathan Fire*Eater’s influence on a generation of stall-hogging, scene-making New York rockers—some of whom did go on to the kind world-conquering fame JFE only grasped at—is incalculable. Flip through the first few chapters of Lizzy Goodman’s NYC scene tell-all Meet Me in the Bathroom, and you’ll see one bold-face name after another singing JFE’s praises, if not openly copping to stealing their moves. Jonathan*Fire Eater were it; and then, just as suddenly, they weren’t.
For years now, Jonathan Fire*Eater have been a band more talked about than actually listened to. That’s largely been a problem of access: For nearly 20 years, just about the only record available through the usual channels was the spiny Wolf Songs for Lambs, which served as many curious Karen O fans’ first and only taste of JFE. And Wolf Songs is a stellar record, all subterranean scrum atop squealing organs and clattering drums. Now, Third Man has brought Tremble Under Boom Lights—the band’s 1996 mini-LP, released a year before Wolf Songs—back to shelves, alongside five bonus cuts and a chapbook of Stewart Lupton’s poetry. It’s not quite Marvin Berry holding the receiver up to Marty McFly, but two decades on, Tremble Under Boom Lights does manage to sound like a hiccup in the timeline: The brash young JFE didn’t just arrive in NYC fully formed, they showed up to the party five years early.
The short version of Jonathan Fire*Eater’s turgid tale goes something like this: DC boys, prep schoolers all, forge a proto-JFE called the Ignobles. The Ignobles eventually relocate to NYC, recruit bassist Tom Frank, put Stewart Lupton behind the mic, and acquire the asterisk. From there, they hustled: Meet Me in the Bathroom finds Lupton glad-handing at every gallery opening and 4 a.m. bar he could find, shamelessly trying to get the word out. Even early on, JFE had something: They were preppy with an unlikely goth edge, “talky” without digressing into polemic, wide-ranging in their musical interests but still very much rooted in oily, scuzzy rock’n’roll. Once they’d worked through the collective throat-clearing of their self-titled debut, their sound was fully in place: big blasts of Walter Martin’s dusty organ, Matt Barrick’s galvanic drumwork, Frank’s subcutaneous bass, Paul Maroon’s alternately stately and spooky guitar, and the scrawled-past-the-margins picaresques of the late Stewart Lupton.
Lupton was possessed with the kind of preternatural confidence granted to only the heavily deluded and the genuinely dazzling, and after three seconds with Tremble Under Boom Lights, it’s pretty clear he wasn’t kidding himself. He’s a man of 1,000 voices, able to jut nimbly through a dry Iggy Pop drawl, a squawking Timmy Taylor falsetto, and the Jarvis-worthy swoon that closes out “Winston Plum: Undertaker.” Mostly, though, he’s a scene-stealer, a scenery chewer: whether prattling on about yet another estranged relative or passing out in the hotel hallway after too much free record company hooch, Lupton’s never less than compelling, stuffing scene after roundabout scene with past regrets and unsteady futures.
Rollicking highlight “Give Me Daughters” imagines Lupton, years down the road, ringing up his theoretical offspring from some dingy motel. The song is more or less a tacit admission that Lupton’s not about to settle down anytime soon, and like many of his songs, it finds him sliding further and further into a kind of perpetual transience: always on the go, always looking for a new rush, always wondering what his life might’ve been had he hewed a little closer to the straight and narrow. Lupton’s prone to abstraction and red herrings, stocking the pond with characters whose purpose remains somewhat unclear. This Dylanesque combination of cracked imagery cut with bohemian drift is the jewel in Lupton’s crown, the dividing line between JFE and so many other citified mopesters, past and present. “It’s important that you know how I want all the shadows on my street to converge every time it snows and have the conversation that they really need,” he sings on the gnashing “Make It Precious,” the kind of line—and there are plenty like it here—you could spend a lifetime turning over in your head.
The tension between the wild-eyed, increasingly unpredictable Lupton and his more temperate bandmates was JFE’s ultimate undoing, but Tremble finds the two sides sparking each other to new heights. Tom Frank—along with Lupton, JFE’s only non-Walkman—brings an almost visceral heft to the low end with his near-toneless bass. Matt Barrick’s drumwork is, as with the Walkmen, the electricity in the socket: without him, the whole thing never gets off the ground. On the organ, Walter Martin favors a piercing, otherworldly sound that’s more “96 Tears” than the grandiose Rothko techtonics he favored later. They wield this rangy, malleable sound—an ever-shifting mishmash of moddish classic rock and post-punk, speckled with Motown and new romance—with all the foolish audacity of youth. These guys just went for it, and 20 years past its sell-by date, their cocktail of inexperience and gall hasn’t lost a drop of potency.
The five songs from the initial Tremble release are joined here by five additional tunes: three from 1995’s Public Hanging of a Movie Star EP, a pants-free cover of Lee Hazlewood’s “The City Never Sleeps,” and the previously unheard “In the Head.” The spry, mercurial Tremble songs, available for the first time this century, are the real draw here, but the Public Hanging songs—JFE’s first release after their forgettable debut—are where the band sorted out the sonics, pushed the vocals to the front, and came into their own. “In the Head” is thought to be their final recording, finished not long before their 1998 split; it’s tempting to hear the first murmurs of the Walkmen in its “In the New Year” ripple, but the tune belongs, as they all do, to Lupton: Adopting a decidedly Dylanesque wheeze, he inches the ambling track heavenward. By the end, organs are churning, Lupton’s howling, and the whole thing seems to collapse in on itself. Lupton seems right at home.
Influence is a strange currency: It seems valuable enough, but the exchange rate’s lousy. Jonathan Fire*Eater were, for a moment, the hottest band in New York, which was just enough to earn them a massively lopsided deal with Dreamworks and the occasional Paul Banks namecheck. Their stormy, searching sound still looms large over the glammy inversions of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the brackish urgency of Interpol, and so many others, but for too long, that’s how most people encountered their music: indirectly. Once JFE split, Lupton disappeared for a couple years, reemerging as the Childballads and, later, the Beatin’s; Martin, Barrick, and Maroon’s Walkmen called it quits in late 2013, and Frank took a gig with Vanity Fair. Lupton passed away in 2018, a tragically early end. There’ll always be a lot of “what if?” hanging over JFE, particularly now, with no chance of a full reunion. But for all their accidents of fate, Jonathan*Fire Eater accomplished something most bands can only dream of: not many may remember, but those who do won’t soon forget.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-10-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-10-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Third Man | October 26, 2019 | 8 | 33e9a03c-7e2b-446c-a6ac-f1b14696cbad | Paul Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-thompson/ | |
The “experimentation” on the Baltimore band’s latest album is hesitant and unfocused. It’s a punishingly familiar collision of yesteryear's crossover rock with textbook hardcore bluster. | The “experimentation” on the Baltimore band’s latest album is hesitant and unfocused. It’s a punishingly familiar collision of yesteryear's crossover rock with textbook hardcore bluster. | Turnstile: Time & Space | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/turnstile-time-and-space/ | Time & Space | Turnstile’s fans—at least in the colorful imagination of their haters—are a legion of spin-kicking sycophants splayed akimbo in mid-air devotion, cheering the thrash-funk and rap-rock that surely no savvy hardcore fan misses. But the Baltimore-anchored five-piece deserves credit for riling these hardcore purists, who often sound like musical xenophobes when they decry outside influence. The backlash against the group also seems to stem from the presumption that the popular and resonant music of one’s adolescence—in this case, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Deftones, and 311—is categorically irredeemable as an adult. But Turnstile’s unlikely rise to a nationally adored major-label act shows hardcore’s nascent poptimism: Fans’ latent fondness for the alt-rock radio of their youth is resurfacing in their affection for Turnstile, even if they’re quick to point out, a smidge defensively, that the band cites its debts to lumpen bruisers such as Madball alongside Rage Against the Machine.
But the “experimentation” advertised on Time & Space, Turnstile’s third album and first for Warner Bros. imprint Roadrunner, is hesitant and unfocused. Instead of woven throughout the album, the flourishes are like mismatched ornamentation, out of place. To wit, Diplo’s synth squiggles on “Right to Be” are a celebrity cosign, not a touch of boldness. The 25-second R&B sketch “Bomb,” echoing the Gap Band’s hit “You Dropped a Bomb on Me,” is a derailment, not a detour. The album also includes an interlude called “Disco” and the cover sports a disco ball. Unless it’s about selling pre-order bundles, which come with a disco ball keychain, this theme is mystifying. Certainly, none of the songs themselves sound inspired by disco, and the imagery isn't imaginative enough to compensate for the record’s fundamental shortcomings. It’s not exactly the conceptual, post-hardcore verve of Fucked Up. Even relieved of these distractions, Time & Space is actually a punishingly familiar collision of yesteryear's crossover rock with textbook hardcore bluster.
Turnstile developed the sloshing hi-hats and mid-tempo strut of its early EPs into a more careening sound on 2015’s Nonstop Feeling, with vocalist Brendan Yates adopting a syncopated, Anthony Kiedis-style yawp atop blocky riffs and zigzagging solos. A perceptive troll listed Hot Action Cop’s sub-Limp Bizkit rap-rock hit “Fever for the Flava” as “Turnstile 'NONSTOP FEELING’” on YouTube; it has 12,000 views. Perhaps chastened, Yates raps less these days. Time & Space has more lift than Nonstop Feeling, with texture and contour conveyed by tuneful backup vocals, tambourine, and handclaps where they’re unexpected. “I Don’t Wanna Be Blind” is like Deftones with more low-end, while “Moon,” on which bassist Franz Lyons charismatically croons, is an outlying bit of spritely pop-punk. The tasteful overdubs, along with dynamic mixing, rescue some songs, such as “Generator,” from feeling aggressively antiseptic.
Even by the standards of hardship and adversity bromides in hardcore, Turnstile lyrics still read like ad jingles for a gym (”It’s hard / Too hard / Too hard to get it off the ground”). Yates sings about “you,” who’s typically a traitor, and himself, who overcomes challenges that remain mostly mysterious. And “Big Smile,” though its subject is vague, typifies the scorn with which he writes about women, striking a chillingly dictatorial tone as he shouts, “When I look you in the eye/Don’t need your big smile.” It fits a pattern in the catalog: “Death Grip,” from 2011, goes “Another girl to tear apart a man’s heart/Tie me down while you sleep with the world,” while Nonstop Feeling’s “Can’t Deny It” criticizes a “two-faced girl.” How easily camaraderie, the theme Turnstile shares with its hardcore peers, dovetails with gendered expectations of loyalty and reprisals for perceived betrayal. They could better vindicate the Lollapalooza headliners of yore if they didn’t evoke the rank sexism of emo.
As far as sharing stages, Turnstile’s effort to straddle different scenes is commendable. Time & Space’s record release gig is presented by Damaged City—the prominent Washington, D.C. hardcore fest—and they recently played at Nature World Night Out in Los Angeles, which featured Hatebreed alongside rappers Lil Ugly Mane and CupcakKe. Despite its formal constrictions, hardcore is amenable to stylistic exchange. But if hardcore and hip-hop have better common ground than nu-metal, they deserve a better synthesis than Turnstile. Drummer Daniel Fang once said that “rebelling against your peers is the hardest thing to do,” but nostalgia is easy, and Time & Space is conservatism in disguise.
Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly identified the song “I Don’t Wanna Be Blind” as “Drop.” It has been corrected. | 2018-02-28T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-02-28T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Roadrunner | February 28, 2018 | 5.4 | 33f3b5d2-47a1-4c84-b56e-4bf187d2d43d | Sam Lefebvre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-lefebvre/ | |
Now I know what it's like to assume you know what Arthur Russell sounds like. Back in the day ... | Now I know what it's like to assume you know what Arthur Russell sounds like. Back in the day ... | Arthur Russell: Calling Out of Context | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6908-calling-out-of-context/ | Calling Out of Context | Now I know what it's like to assume you know what Arthur Russell sounds like. Back in the day, those comfortable with his modern classical accomplishments were baffled by his acetates of loopy leftfield disco. Likewise, lovers of these dance tracks were confounded by their beatless, beatific recasting on World of Echo. And then there were listeners astounded by the intimacy of his voice and cello work, stymied by both the pop songs and the classical works, all spinning in a vicious cycle of artistic assumptions.
Smug with the presumption that I could accept all of his work, here comes the first release from the label now responsible for the Herculean task of gleaning the contents of hundreds of hours' worth of unreleased music from Arthur's tape archives. Culled from an unreleased album from 1985 called Corn and another slated for release on Rough Trade but never solidified, Calling Out of Context's twelve tracks are unlike anything I've ever heard from the man.
Consider the immediately striking "The Platform on the Ocean"; gone is the personal, arm-hair rubbed dub of cello, the atom-heart palpitations of layered drum skins, the murmuring, translucent voice in the chilly discofloor of space. In its stead is the rigorous drive of programmed drums and a heavily distorted cello that fuzzes like The Jesus & Mary Chain, chopping up the surface of the song. Arthur's killer whalesong voice, often a lone entity, bobs in multi-tracked rounds like schools of jellyfish on the unplumbed depths. He sings about seeing the fish beneath him, yet he also hears the steam room churn behind him, and it makes for seven minutes of cycling pop strained between the pull of fluid motion and a more mechanistic push.
I'm so used to hearing Russell be ahead of his time (the cover even shows him anticipating hipster style with a crooked trucker's cap!), that I'm surprised to find these twelve pop songs are simply of his time. While long-time collaborator Mustafa Sidahmed provides a good deal of percussion, he bolsters the beats with drum machines that would sound more familiar on a Mantronix track or Patti LaBelle comeback. The keyboard intro to "That's Us/Wild Combination" could pass for a Mike Post theme song, but while the production is shiny at points, there's just enough of that innate, anachronistic ability of Arthur's that-- though it marred his career during his lifetime-- has guaranteed critical resurrection ever since his passing in 1992.
With all these cheesy earmarks of an era, Arthur makes it seem unfamiliar: synth-pop in an alternate reality. "I Like You!" takes simple sentiment and slices it with tin-canned handclaps, serrated cello, and ancient arcade game bleeps. "Calling All Kids" takes a digital keychain and sets it as a destabilizing sound effect throughout the song, robotically intoning that "grown-ups are crazy." Despite the factory presets that date "Arm Around You", Arthur's watery vocals convey that endearing, universal gesture of touching a lover's face yet never quite overcoming the space in-between. A poignant koan reiterates throughout the song: "All alone and right next to you/ What I'm doing in a fine, this fine stretch of time." As the title track runs on, the comforting cello and percussion rises up between the drum machine hits, and Arthur echoes through the space, conjuring both the Iowa fields of his youth and the Indian Ocean. There's that axis of intimacy and unrecoverable distance, of the tangible and ethereal, dealing with the hardware that makes music and the soft machines that do, too, inseparable no matter what song form gets explored.
The disc proves Russell to be a changeling artist whose only parallel might be Miles Davis, constantly placing his individual sound in new contexts, constantly searching. But whereas Miles' explorations-- from cool nonets and electric washes to on-the-one funk and Cyndi Lauper-- came over a forty year period, Arthur did it all at once; the genres undifferentiated in his mind and compacted into the infinity of a single decade. | 2004-02-17T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2004-02-17T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Experimental | Audika | February 17, 2004 | 7.9 | 33f55f5f-66d7-464b-aaed-35c724b1fd34 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
For their sophomore effort, the Calgary post-punk band offer a bleak but beautiful record, full of subtly skewed melodies. | For their sophomore effort, the Calgary post-punk band offer a bleak but beautiful record, full of subtly skewed melodies. | Women: Public Strain | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14694-public-strain/ | Public Strain | On their self-titled debut, Women kept their howls and hooks separate. The Calgary-based post-punk quartet dished out gritty drones and pristine pop with equal aplomb, but the album's highlights-- the spiky and dissonant "Shaking Hand" or the melancholy psych-pop nugget "Black Rice"-- stuck to one camp or the other. Two years later, Women have bridged the divide. The group's sophomore effort, Public Strain, pushes forward in both directions-- the hooks are noisier, the noise is hookier, and both are fogged over with enough reverb to make Felt records seem bone-dry by comparison. Fidelity-wise, it's a step down. But in just about every other sense, Public Strain is an improvement-- a bleak but beautiful record, full of subtly skewed melodies.
Women's debut revved up quickly-- a minute's worth of garage-rock stomp dropped straight into the throbbing art-noise of "Lawncare". Public Strain is a more subdued record. Album opener, "Can't You See", drifts gradually into form-- the bass anchoring Patrick Flegel's vocal amid a haze of bowed guitars and abstract sampler-squeals. "Narrow With the Hall" pits ghostly vocals against a sea of feedback, bound together only by a couple of wiry, tremolo-riddled chords. The atmosphere owes a distinct debt to the noisier side of 1980s underground music-- particularly Sonic Youth's darker, skuzzier early days. But the when it comes to melody, Women dial things back a few extra decades. The Flegel brother's vocals are harmony-heavy, recalling the work of ornate 60s pop acts like the Zombies and the Electric Prunes. The mixture produces a unique, gray-paisley vibe-- the sound of vintage psychedelia bleached of its color.
But by the halfway point, Public Strain shifts toward darker, more paranoid territory. "China Steps" rides the eerie, tick-tocking, interplay between the rhythm section and two de-tuned guitars. The Flegel brothers' ethereal vocals drift in and out of key, creating an unsettling call-and-response at the song's climax. For all the sonic bric-a-brac, it's these vocals that push Women off of the retro-rock grid and into territories unknown. Their songs start out familar enough, but the Flegels-- along with guitarist Chris Reimer, who also sings-- frequently dovetail into unexpected, crooked-sounding harmonies. In the first minute, "Venice Lockjaw" screams Velvet Underground knock-off. But by the time the chorus swings around, things have been screwed an octave up into choir-boy territory, giving the song an awkward but tender resolution.
Public Strain was recorded alongside producer Chad VanGaalen, who also helmed Women's self-titled record. His production is chilly and thin-- possibly a nod to the early-80s indie bands that Women hold in high regard. Or maybe it was just the weather--the sessions were conducted in Alberta, Canada during the dead of winter. At first listen, Public Strain is impenetrably cold. But deep down, beneath the blizzard of noise and hiss, something's burning. | 2010-09-30T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2010-09-30T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rock | Jagjaguwar | September 30, 2010 | 8 | 34023be1-601e-445d-bf88-a1a470d09f0c | Aaron Leitko | https://pitchfork.com/staff/aaron-leitko/ | null |
Since leaving the Pipettes, Rose Elinor Dougal has quietly released an impressive trove of lovelorn pop music. Stellular is wry, frosty and swooning by turns, romantic but hesitant. | Since leaving the Pipettes, Rose Elinor Dougal has quietly released an impressive trove of lovelorn pop music. Stellular is wry, frosty and swooning by turns, romantic but hesitant. | Rose Elinor Dougall: Stellular | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22812-stellular/ | Stellular | The Pipettes as a group were never bound to last—a decade on, it doesn’t sound so appealing to combine the girl-group fandom of indie rock with the schtick of Meghan Trainor and the singer-retention of the Sugababes. The Pipettes as a group of artists, though, have been remarkably prolific. Two years ago, Gwenno Saunders released the year’s highest-concept album, the Welsh-language, sci-fi-enamored Y Dydd Olaf. Bandmate Rose Elinor Dougall, meanwhile has quietly released several albums and EPs’ worth of lovelorn pop music. The comparison is inevitable—both artists work in more or less the same vein of synthpop—but where Gwenno prefers futurism, Dougall prefers romanticism. On tracks like “Fallen Over” and “Hanging Around,” she sheds the self-consciousness and polka-dotted prurience of her old group for a disarmingly earnest swoon.
Stellular, produced with Oli Bayston of Boxed In (who also sings on and co-wrote “Dive”) is not a departure from her past solo work—if you’ve heard any of the EPs, you know what to expect, and even if you haven’t, you can venture a guess. Dougall is a Pipettes alum; pastiche is expected. Specifically, most of Stellular wouldn’t exist without the past several decades of post-punk (in particular, Blondie), and the rest of it wouldn’t exist without Trish Keenan and Sarah Cracknell. The lilting “Take Yourself With You” recalls ’70s folk, spacey Stereolab, and some of ABBA’s pastoral, statelier tracks. As influences, they’re ideal—they don’t lend themselves to kitsch so much as sturdy, comfortable arrangements that Dougall inhabits with love and familiarity.
Take the title track: it begins bramble-spiky, but Dougall makes it entrancing. She winds through verbosities like “Hopes and despairs in parallel live wildly side by side” effortlessly, almost distracted. It’s a love song, but a hesitant one, caught between prickly guitars and moony sentiments, warning itself off in the bridge: “You’re giving yourself away again.” The title, as precisely chosen as the rest, compares her would-be partner to a small star; full-on cosmic crushing is just not something the narrator allows herself. She does allow herself the more earthy kind on “Closer”: closing time in some arbitrary bar, gazing at someone who’d rather blather on about something so much less important than moving their hand that last crucial centimeter. Dougall’s a wry songwriter when she wants to be, and she delivers these details to match, but the way her coy chorus and frosty “I don't care about your band—it’s 3:45 a.m.” melt within seconds reveals her hopes, and the speeding-heartbeat guitar lick, her blissful impatience. The other blatant new wave cut, “All at Once,” pulls the same sleight-of-heart. There’s as much “Rapture” in it as actual rapture; the funk and whispers and “tonight”s affect cool and do it quite well, but the lyrics—“Give me apathy...sentence me to heaven”—merely aspires toward it, from a longing place.
Indeed, what elevates Stellular from just another decade’s nostalgia exercise is that longing. “Answer Me,” while the weakest track here—Dougall’s posh voice doesn't navigate soft-rock or R&B ballads well—redeems itself in its final minute, a plush pile of backing vocals; “Space to Be” is nothing but redemption. It’s a sequel to “Stellular”—the chorus melody is tucked into the synths—set in the same city with the same loneliness, but none of the hesitation. The chorus might lend itself to a girl-group arrangement, and certainly the sentiment would: “I want a love to lift me up high, to wreak havoc on this heart of mine, tear me limb from limb until I find some kind of space to be.” But where the Pipettes would give it irony or sex somewhere, and just about every other girl-group revivalist would lean into the darkness and violence, Dougall leaves it at full-throated emotion. | 2017-02-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-02-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B / Rock | Vermilion | February 2, 2017 | 7.2 | 34059539-701a-4712-8ea0-443307a4e52a | Katherine St. Asaph | https://pitchfork.com/staff/katherine-st. asaph/ | null |
At the age of 36, and after two decades in hip-hop, Memphis rapper Yo Gotti has scored his biggest-ever hit with "Down in the DM." The album it comes from, The Art of Hustle, is the biggest of his career, featuring guest spots from Nicki Minaj, Future, Pusha T, and more. | At the age of 36, and after two decades in hip-hop, Memphis rapper Yo Gotti has scored his biggest-ever hit with "Down in the DM." The album it comes from, The Art of Hustle, is the biggest of his career, featuring guest spots from Nicki Minaj, Future, Pusha T, and more. | Yo Gotti: The Art of Hustle | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21602-the-art-of-hustle/ | The Art of Hustle | Yo Gotti has been a Memphis rap star for so long that you can hear his voice deepening over the years even as his subject matter hasn't. If you listen to his first regional hit, 2000’s "After I Fuck Your Bitch," and then his recent viral breakout, last year’s "Down in the DM," you’ll hear the same guy rapping about pretty much the same thing in slightly different registers. But at the age of 36, and after two decades in hip-hop (he first released music under the name Lil Yo when he was 14), Gotti has finally firmed up his status as a major-label rap artist. And while his latest album, The Art of Hustle, is unquestionably the biggest of Gotti’s career, it also feels like just another notch in his belt.
As a rapper, Gotti is practiced but lyrically unambitious. His bars are straight-to-the-point and matter-of-fact, and it’s his willingness to open up that endears. On "Momma," one of The Art of Hustle’s best and most personal songs, Gotti raps about being raised by six women and a man that wasn’t his father, accounting for the highs and lows of a life built on hustling and basking in the relief of going legit. For opener "My City," Gotti enlists K. Michelle to lament and pay homage to their shared hometown. But for all his pride and investment in the city—Gotti’s Collective Music Group label has signed local up-and-comers like Blac Youngsta, Snootie Wild, and Zed Zilla—The Art of Hustle reads generically Southern.
Despite an impressive head count of industry heavyweights, the album doesn't fare well as a whole. Lil Wayne shows up on "Bible" for a rote banger; Future punches in a forgettable verse on a flat trap anthem called "General"; Pusha T snarls appropriately on the middle of "Hunnid." The collaborations are evidence of Gotti’s industry footprint rather than creative matchmaking, and the only one that strikes a spark is mold-breaker "Law," which folds E-40 comfortably into a slinky beat with bells ringing in the background.
And then there’s the album’s money-maker. "Down in the DM" isn’t a fluke hit, but it’s enjoyed the type of viral success that can’t be forced. In the last week alone: Lil Mama shared a video called "Memes," Lil' Kim enlisted Kevin Gates for a Valentine's Day track called "#Mine", and Soulja Boy offered a sleazy artwork-toting single called "Snapchat." All three are lame attempts to recapture what "Down in the DM" does so naturally, revelling in the shallowness of Instagram. The addition of two full-fledged verses from Nicki Minaj improves on the original and also gives the album its best and most memorable burst of rapping.
In a recent podcast interview with Rap Radar, Gotti admitted that "Down in the DM" was "just another song." "I’m making three, four, five songs a day," he said. "To be honest with you, I’m not even dwelling into the music that long." It’s an unsurprising piece of insight that accounts for the album’s generally low-stakes vibe. Noticeably, on the same day that Gotti released this eighth album in his catalog, another Memphis rapper released his first. Young Dolph’s King of Memphis seems almost like a provocation, but that there’s a crown worth snatching at all is a testament to Gotti having molded it for himself. Unfortunately, The Art of Hustle is mostly forgettable as a major-label rap record, but it bears out a teachable truth about Gotti's career: sometimes showing up is more than half the battle. | 2016-02-23T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2016-02-23T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rap | Epic | February 23, 2016 | 6.6 | 34084343-4c5c-49ae-ac8b-c409286a47d4 | Jay Balfour | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jay-balfour/ | null |
This 16-minute EP of leftovers comes from the same sessions as Drums Between the Bells, Eno's earlier collaboration with the spoken-word artist, and once again it feels more geared toward Eno completists and poetry fans. | This 16-minute EP of leftovers comes from the same sessions as Drums Between the Bells, Eno's earlier collaboration with the spoken-word artist, and once again it feels more geared toward Eno completists and poetry fans. | Brian Eno / Rick Holland: Panic of Looking | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16005-panic-of-looking/ | Panic of Looking | A 16-minute EP of leftovers, released in conjunction with a little mountain town's music festival-- doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But you could put Brian Eno's name on the cover of just about anything and generate intense anticipation and scrutiny. Our prime architect of interdisciplinary electronic art has so much authority that when I don't love one of his records, I feel disappointed in myself. That was the case with Drums Between the Bells, a worthy but uneven collaboration with the poet Rick Holland, where sonic miracles sat cheek-by-jowl with dated electronic styles perhaps better left in mothballs. Now, from the same sessions, comes Panic of Looking. It's very slight, and its clearest purpose is to augment Eno's recent residency at Asheville, N.C.'s Moogfest (which honors electronic music pioneer Robert Moog), where the EP received an early release. But even Eno's spare parts give us something of substance to chew over.
Panic of Looking is distinguished from its father LP by placing more emphasis on the words. This is a happy development, because poetry is delicate. It can sound strained, or even fake, when it tries to scale the visceral heights of music. Instead, music must lay back. If the glitchy sonics of Drums Between the Bells sometimes ran roughshod over the words, Panic verges on overcorrection. Eno has engineered it to feel like Holland's show-- spoken-word with accompaniment, sometimes engaged and sometimes desultory. It can be difficult to discuss the musical quotient because there's so little of it. The most developed tracks are "In the Future" and the title piece. The former draws out the tonality of speech via placid melodic counterpoint and euphoric backing vocals, recalling the joyous world-pop of Eno/Byrne collaboration Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. The latter may be the best-balanced effort the collaboration has produced, with Eno's taut textural background sensitively augmenting Holland's staccato verse. Beyond those, we get a minute-long lite-industrial curio, a pro forma instrumental, and a couple less memorable fusions of orotund speech and crepuscular atmosphere.
Poetry writing and poetry recitation are two very different talents that don't always-- or even often-- coexist. Inverting classical music's emphasis on the concert hall over the recording, modern Western poetry favors the written word over the oral performance, which has become something you do mainly in order to sell books, regardless of whether or not you're any good at it. It's a weird cultural construct: Imagine if musicians were expected to promote their work by juggling. As a result, even poetry lovers may emit a long-suffering groan at the prospect of attending yet another reading. But there are things oratory can do that text simply can't, and Holland exploits them to his advantage, especially on the title track. One of them is homophonic ambiguity: Is he saying "speed and weight" or "speed and wait?" Both concepts are compelling, especially in flickering juxtaposition. Biting off words one by one, Holland creates hard enjambments ("Men… shake… hands") that deliver doses of meaning, each altering the last, as if from a time-release capsule. If all of this sounds more geared toward Eno completists and poetry fans than the general listener, that's about right. | 2011-11-08T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2011-11-08T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Electronic / Jazz | Warp | November 8, 2011 | 5.9 | 34097af1-d37a-4493-9123-07a2016610ee | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | null |
This 1974 performance of Femenine is a marvel of open-form minimalism, a rare recording of the undersung avant-garde composer and pianist that heralds the powerful voice of the black, queer artist. | This 1974 performance of Femenine is a marvel of open-form minimalism, a rare recording of the undersung avant-garde composer and pianist that heralds the powerful voice of the black, queer artist. | Julius Eastman: Femenine | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22310-julius-eastman-femenine/ | Femenine | According to all eyewitness accounts, Julius Eastman was hard to ignore. He was lithe, he had a five-octave voice and an improviser’s intelligence at the piano. When he was healthy, Eastman was sought out by famed conductor Pierre Boulez. He played jazz in a combo that frequented clubs in Buffalo, contributed synths and vocals to an experimental disco outfit organized by Arthur Russell, and sang in early groups led by Meredith Monk. As a queer African-American member of the avant-garde, he cut a unique figure in the 1970s by necessity. Composer and trombonist George Lewis remembers that, to him, Eastman represented “a singular figure of presence” in those years, since “black artists were far less in evidence in the Downtown New York music scene than queer ones.”
While in the company of such elites, Eastman challenged the norms of etiquette with a potency that guaranteed scandal. His explicit, queer reframing of John Cage’s Song Books famously enraged Cage himself. And Eastman’s confrontational “nigger series” of compositions—including pieces like Nigger Faggot, Crazy Nigger, and Evil Nigger—were sometimes truncated on concert bills, due to pressure from well-meaning protestors and risk-averse programmers. These were moves that obscured Eastman’s stated desire to face up to “that thing which is fundamental” in American society. He contained so much art and vision as to be a scene unto himself. Then he faded from view.
After alienating lovers and collaborators alike, Eastman was evicted from his apartment in the mid-’80s. Most of his scores were bagged and carted away—eventually lost to history. Details from his homeless period are sketchy (or contested), but it’s generally agreed that he lived in Tompkins Square Park and also suffered from some form of addiction. After he died, alone in a Buffalo hospital at age 49, it took eight months for an obituary to be published.
Eastman can be almost as fascinating to read about as he is to listen to. Yet for a long time, hardly anyone pursued either activity—largely because much of his music had been scattered to the winds prior to his death in 1990. Thankfully, the last decade has seen a renaissance in Eastman appreciation. Contemporaries like Kyle Gann and Mary Jane Leach have pooled rare recordings and fragments of scores, and found new material in archives. In 2005, a three-CD set on New World Records, Unjust Malaise, brought several of Eastman’s most notorious compositions into wide circulation. Jace Clayton reinterpreted two of those works on a 2013 album. And along with Renée Levine Packer, Leach has edited an important book of essays covering every aspect of Eastman’s career. Still, the primary stumbling block to any greater revelry has been a lack of recorded evidence of Eastman’s own performances.
The release of Femenine, however, is an occasion for wide celebration. In terms of sonic fidelity, this is an occasionally scratchy live recording of a chamber orchestra performance from November 6, 1974, with Eastman at the piano. In creative terms, it’s a crystal-clear, 72-minute shot that reaffirms what all the veteran scholars and performers have been talking about for decades. Though it doesn’t offer an expansive look at his compositional growth like Unjust Malaise, it gives us a better sense of Eastman as a bandleader and performer of his own works. Better than any recording currently circulating, it’s on Femenine that listeners can get a sense of how Eastman fused jazz-informed improvisation with the rigors of early, pulse-based minimalism.
And there is also a suggestion of Eastman’s humor—an attribute sometimes overshadowed by the seriousness of his politics and the tragedy of his death. The first sound you hear on this recording is an audience casually settling down. And then there is laughter, as a performer switches on a mechanical device that shakes sleigh bells. In an era before drum programming, inhuman percussion had a jokey, improbable tinge. Artists in the Fluxus movement outfitted a violin with a rod-twirling motor that slapped away like the meekest torture device imaginable.
For Femenine, Eastman’s machine automated the shaking of sleigh bells for the entirety of the performance. It can be read as both a Fluxus-style joke on the stark rhythmic processes of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, as well as an assumption of that sound into the overall Eastman palette. That Eastman could simultaneously be a prankster and a skilled style-scout was one aspect of his genius; whereas he’d copped R&B textures for a prior composition, Stay on It, with Femenine, Eastman was scouring his avant-garde contemporaries for inspiration. He gave as much as he took, too. As Leach told the musician and writer David Menestres, Femenine offers “the fluidity of jazz and a swing that is missing from, especially, Reich.”
In the recording’s opening minutes, Eastman plays a few chords and notes as the other members of the chamber ensemble tune up. Before too long, the piece begins in earnest with a catchy vibraphone line: one that starts with fast, one-note repetition, before ascending in see-saw fashion up a narrow interval. Along with the bells’ rhythm, this vibraphone motif—both optimistic and energetic—is the backbone of the piece. Aside from that, it’s up to Eastman and the other members of his orchestra to sustain the audience’s interest over the next hour.
The length of the performance was a grid that Eastman used to guide his ensemble’s improvisations. Each member had a digital clock, as well as brief passages of scored material that corresponded to a particular minute-mark in the performance. Choices left up to individual performers might have to do with octave placement, or with the selection of a given note from a particular chord. Another direction in the score is more explicit: “pianist will interrupt.” Like other minimalists, Eastman knew how to get a lot of mileage out of means that look scant on the page.
Overall, the assembled string and wind players can hang with Eastman—an impressive feat, since this performance included some players who were much less familiar with the composer than others. There are brief fumbles in the ensemble, at some points, but nothing that can derail the performance, as it’s Eastman who holds everything together at the piano. Over time, it’s the intuitive authority of his largely improvised piano part that emerges as the major attraction of this set. He stays in the background during the initial playing, allowing that vibraphone part to really carve out a space in the listener’s consciousness. Once that hypnotic effect is achieved, Eastman starts pulling from his personal dictionary of styles and influences, all while staying relatively close to the melodic material he gave to the other players.
Femenine was an early example of Eastman’s “organic music” concept—a version of minimalism which allowed for all previously played material to be present in later stages of a performance. Years after this gig, Eastman would tell an audience that he was still trying to perfect this approach. But there are hints of his success with it here, thanks to a steady accretion of ideas that never throws Femenine off balance. Ten minutes in, there are strong hints of the blues coming from Eastman’s piano. Soon after, he steadily adds new chords to a jazzy, rollicking piano line that syncopates with the vibraphone theme. Gradually, the harmony is built out to a point of richness that recalls Romantic-era classical composers.
After nearly half an hour, the flute player of the S.E.M. Ensemble works in tandem with Eastman on an extended, ascending progression. A quarter of an hour later, when Eastman shifts down several octaves, he creates a massively booming, bass-heavy crunch. While he manages to put the recording a little in the red, the intensity and volume of this choice can’t obliterate the essential joy of Femenine.
Remembrances of the show included in this album’s liner notes inform us that Eastman appeared in a dress for the concert. The audience was also served soup. That convivial group spirit is alive on this recording, even at its loudest or roughest edges. The piece’s semi-notated structure and expanded performance timeframe present a question of genre that is pointedly never resolved. But the force of Eastman’s performance shows his own mastery of this ambiguity. His spirit of offering isn’t merely strong enough to survive the openness of the form, it is enhanced by this radical flexibility.
Though never intended as an album as such, the first appearance of Femenine is nonetheless a major landmark in both Eastman’s posthumous narrative and the story of the American avant-garde. In the recent scholarly volume edited by Packer and Leach, there is a tantalizing list of other Eastman-led performances, currently available only at the music library of the University of Buffalo. The artistic value of this archival release—imperfect sonics and all—begs for an arrangement that will make the rest of Eastman’s genius widely accessible. | 2016-09-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Frozen Reeds | September 17, 2016 | 8.9 | 340cb25b-3e25-45f2-9cba-12bf2b652619 | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | null |
The latest from cerebral and refined UK duo Rob Brown and Sean Booth, who continue to work with complex structures but here flirt at times with metered rhythm. | The latest from cerebral and refined UK duo Rob Brown and Sean Booth, who continue to work with complex structures but here flirt at times with metered rhythm. | Autechre: Untilted | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/368-untilted/ | Untilted | (Sitting in the dormitory room just after class on Thursday, Achilles changes into his gym clothes as his roommate Tortoise bursts through their door in a fit of happiness.)
Tortoise: Achilles, have you seen this?
Achilles: What?
Tortoise: Do you see? Yes? I'm referring to the object, though small in size, quite interesting in stature, I am holding in front of you now.
Achilles: It's a CD.
Tortoise: Brilliant! I can see I have come to the right man.
Achilles: ...
Tortoise: Never one for suspense, I'll begin the next phase of our conversation: It is a new album from one of my country's most respected groups of musicians, Autechre.
Achilles: Okay.
Tortoise: And I am holding it in my hands.
Achilles: Okay. Yeah, I heard a new one was coming out or something.
Tortoise: Or something indeed, for I think it may be their best. Better even than the fine Confield. Do you remember the one?
Achilles: Yeah, to be honest, I kinda stopped listening to them a few years back. I liked the first one, I think I liked EP7. I don't really remember much about it.
Tortoise: I would happily grant you a very big favor in return for a moment of your time as I explain to you my thoughts on this record. Might you humor me?
Achilles: Hey, hand that to me. Over here. Thanks. Yeah, whatever.
Tortoise: Thank you. For starters, it's called Untilted. Isn't that funny? "Un-til-ted." They really do have a good sense of humor, don't you think?
Achilles: Um, not really. It's kind of stupid.
Tortoise: Well, I think it's a decent title all the same. But funnier still, I will admit, is that it's comprised of eight letters.
Achilles: Oh shit, yeah, that's hilarious.
Tortoise: Which is to say, funny when I recall that their previous album's title was also comprised of exactly eight alphanumeric characters (not counting the colon, of course). As was the full length before that-- Confield. Don't you think that's strange?
Achilles: No.
Tortoise: And even stranger still, Autechre-- A-U-T-E-C-H-R-E-- has the identical number of characters. Why, when I happened upon this, I was struck by the similarity in form.
Achilles: Okay, way to go off the deep end. Are you going to tell me now that they're geniuses and I can learn trig faster by listening to them? I mean, what's funny is I might actually study to them more if I could hear a beat somewhere.
Tortoise: As it happens, I do believe they are masters of form. But then I also believe they are as instinctively driven as any other musician, if that's not a contradiction (and I don't necessarily believe it is). Take "Pro-Radii", the third track: It begins with pounding, industrial-machinery sounds, as if stomping through a foggy alley using meter-thick blocks of iron as shoe souls. Yet, it slowly mutates into something lighter, with stuttering snare and what sounds like a digital sitar drone in the background.
Achilles: You sound like a critic.
Tortoise: And I haven't even gotten to the punchline! As it changes into something even further removed from the weighty opening, as eerie overtones ring above the pinging, metallic percussion, I realize the piece has arrived at this point in segments, lengthy and subtle, but obviously delineated to be sure. This, or course, is exactly the same scheme much of the dance music-- that with a "beat"-- follows. Measure by measure, units of 8, 16, 32, 64-- it proceeds formally, yet changes its "colors" quite unpredictably.
Achilles: Hey, hand me my bag.
Tortoise: And the first piece, "Lcc"--
Achilles: haha
Tortoise: --"Lcc", with its rapid-fire artillery precision, tight snare, and clear, metered rhythm, could easily be mistaken for dance music. In fact, I'd move some limbs for you, but would hate to influence your judgment negatively.
Achilles: Next.
Tortoise: Achilles, if you'd listen, you'd hear that the beat you are looking for is here, and an especially well-put-together one at that. Autechre are rightfully accused of being influenced by hip-hop, even as I imagine a rapper laying behind the beat might find himself on the wrong side of "1" from time to time.
Achilles: So, you're saying it's got an interesting beat as long as you don't expect any kind of groove. And you know what? It's not even like I'm turning to Autechre for "grooves." Where the fuck did all the cool IDM even go? Like three years ago, you couldn't stop finding cool shit, shit that nobody'd ever heard before.
Tortoise: I'm saying that interest is found where you are sufficiently motivated to look. "Fermium" would fit perfectly in the Berlin mix you made for your nephew. A little busier, perhaps, but...
Achilles: Oh man, I forgot I was supposed to copy that for that board chick. Fuck, hey, can I use your computer? The library's closed today.
Tortoise: The point is, despite their abstraction over the last few years, Autechre aren't an altogether different beast than when they started. In fact, they're smarter, more refined.
Achilles: Look, I'll grant you they sound more complicated, but so the fuck what? I mean, I heard Draft 7:30. I liked it at first, until I realized all this form and content or whatever you're talking about is totally transparent. Dance music? Come on man, you need a more than "beat" to make dance music. If anything, I think they're out of ideas; throwing in a bunch of random shit to hide the fact that they peaked about seven years ago.
Tortoise: My point is, I am still moved by this music. Not just the form, not just the hidden beats and seemingly chaotic shifts in meter. I believe artists are those who instinctively recognize the ways of things, and translate them in ways ultimately true to their spirit. Ours is a "seemingly chaotic" world, but underneath the maze of people and opinions, there is order, truth, and beauty. And maybe, just maybe, Autechre have the rare gift of showing us just where we stand, turbulence and all.
Achilles: And my point is, if it's driven by form, it's a pretty messy, lazy form-- certainly no more structurally sound than any other software wank music. On top of that, if I'm supposed to "feel" this, to pick up on some obscure metaphysical in-joke, I'm not-- isn't it the job of a good artist to make that shit clear? Either way, it fails for me. Autechre decided to go their own way, fine, you know, just don't expect me to call them "geniuses."
Tortoise: [Sigh] Alright, Achilles, I can see we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm sorry to have wasted your time.
Achilles: Oh don't worry, dude, just wear headphones when you play that stuff.
(With all apologies to Douglas Hofstadter and Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, which I'd send you if I had an extra copy.) | 2005-04-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2005-04-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Warp | April 20, 2005 | 7.4 | 340d2406-ed9f-4587-8d2e-cfb68df9cb92 | Dominique Leone | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dominique-leone/ | null |
A collaboration between noise icon Masami Akita—aka Merzbow—and drummer/pianist Eiko Ishibashi, Kouen Kyoudai is long on pretentious theory but short on fresh musical ideas. | A collaboration between noise icon Masami Akita—aka Merzbow—and drummer/pianist Eiko Ishibashi, Kouen Kyoudai is long on pretentious theory but short on fresh musical ideas. | Masami Akita / Eiko Ishibashi: Kouen Kyoudai | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21641-kouen-kyoudai/ | Kouen Kyoudai | Four years ago, Sasha Frere-Jones wrote an article in The New Yorker called “Merzbiebs” where he conflated the music and process of Japanese noise icon Masami Akita (aka Merzbow) with the then-nascent tabloid pop machine of Justin Bieber. Frere-Jones made a very compelling case that the two, while incommensurably disparate musically speaking, were enviably talented and more similar than we’d like to realize, ultimately deciding that they were “both worth hearing.” But that same argument could not be made in 2016. At this point, Bieber is shifting rapidly, releasing vibrant pop songs carved from strange and infectious sounds, while Akita is mired in some very old tropes.
Akita’s latest record, Kouen Kyoudai, is a collaboration with Eiko Ishibashi, a Japanese singer and multi-instrumentalist who has released two Jim O’Rourke-produced albums of languorous J-pop over the last few years. According to the artists, the two tracks that compose this album, “Slide” and “Junglegym,” can be read as “contemporary takes on the avant-garde”—an increasingly meaningless marker often used by artists who want to paint themselves as utterly tasteful outsiders. They also stress that the tension of the music comes from “the human use of the tool” which is “made explicit as these works unfold in a storm of ecstatic human/instrument/interaction.” These pretentious statements create an air of importance, suggesting the album only gains weight from its textural presentation. As for the music itself, it fails to live up to the way it’s offered.
Kouen Kyoudai’s two tracks both run more than 18 minutes, and there is very little that distinguishes them other than the main analog instrument accompanying the field of noise. For “Slide” it's a drum set; for “Junglegym” a piano. But both are generally diminished by Akita’s noodling drone sounds, which hog up too much space, making it seem like Eiko’s contributions were little more than an afterthought. In this case, the forceful drone is like the sonic equivalent of manspreading between subway seats. As the album wears on unchanged through almost 40 minutes, it sounds more like an amorphous chunk of noises than an exploration of contemporary avant-garde.
It’s a shame too. For decades, Akita’s music has been chipping away at an allusive and important thesis: That music created with his array of noise-making tools can be life-affirming and express sublimity from such raw and uncontrollable forces. But a lofty presentation can create lofty expectations from a consumer of art. As such, the entire apparatus revolving around Kouen Kyoudai did it in. The album expects to be taken seriously. It demands to be evaluated under a different aesthetic criteria by pure virtue of its gravity. These demands could be met and accepted if the music here was more than a tired retread of endless philosophical dead-ends alongside a smattering of flashy noises. | 2016-03-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-03-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Pop/R&B | Editions Mego | March 25, 2016 | 5.1 | 3412b2b6-0f90-421a-b927-d81830990d03 | Kevin Lozano | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kevin-lozano/ | null |
The minimal Austin duo Hovvdy stack simple riffs in idiosyncratic ways. Their debut album rarely accelerates past a snail’s pace, but its interlocking pieces are deceptively complex. | The minimal Austin duo Hovvdy stack simple riffs in idiosyncratic ways. Their debut album rarely accelerates past a snail’s pace, but its interlocking pieces are deceptively complex. | Hovvdy: Taster | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23175-taster/ | Taster | Hovvdy never really seem in a hurry to go anywhere fast. Since 2014, the Austin duo of Will Taylor and Charlie Martin has made frill-free rock music on a shoestring budget—they’ve shouted out both the convenience and happily strange compression that comes from recording songs in their iPhone voice memos—that centered on repetition and spacey simplicity. They make quiet compositions that plumb the cavernous depths of romantic and existential disillusionment with little more than some fuzzy guitar strums as accompaniment, but to hear them tell it, that started out of necessity rather than design.
Both Taylor and Martin were drummers before Hovvdy, and neither has been playing guitar all that long, which they’ve said has made their instrumentals naturally “minimal.” But after an EP and a split with the similarly minded Austin band Loafer, they’ve figured out how to make those limitations work to their advantage. Their debut album Taster—released last year on tape, but reissued in remastered form by beloved Brooklyn indie rock label Double Double Whammy—rarely accelerates past a snail’s pace, but the interlocking pieces are deceptively complex. Recalling the unpretentious efforts of bands like Bedhead, Duster, and even Yo La Tengo’s more hushed moments, they stack simple riffs in idiosyncratic ways, and in the process put together 11 songs that are far more compelling than the sum of their parts.
That’s perhaps most evident on “Can’t Wait,” one of the record’s more straightforwardly catchy moments, which weaves together at least three loosely interlocking guitar riffs over the course of its three minutes. Played by a different band, it’d feel like a rip of Weezer’s across-the-sea balladry, but Hovvdy’s take is a little more austere. A lazily drawled acoustic guitar and a barely on-beat lead make the scuzzy main riff feel a little dizzier than it would otherwise. Piling uncomplicated parts on one another until it resembles something like a pop song is a surprisingly sophisticated trick—and one they’re able to keenly repeat throughout Taster. Each song seems like it should topple over under its own weight, but it never does.
Lyrically, the record revels in the overwhelming confusion and regret bound up in interpersonal relations. “In My Head” tells a surreal tale of romantic pining, describing scenes in small jagged snippets, like a conversation that takes place “on the gulf in that screened-in room.” On “Try Hard,” they perform a clever autopsy of the failures of a past relationship (“You could not call your dad back then/Forgot his name again/I never did try hard”). It’s relatively standard stuff for this sort of downcast rock music, but the beauty is in its lack of resolution. All conflicts remain unsolved—there are only events, no answers.
Taylor and Martin have jokingly referred to their music as “pillow core” over the years, which is fitting for Taster both in its downy sonics and fragmented lyricism. As they flit through various half memories and upsetting realizations, it feels like the thoughts that spin through your head as you lie in bed late at night, waiting for sleep to overtake you. Those liminal moments can be puzzling, filled with internal conflicts that are hard to untangle. But there’s a suggestion of how to move forward embedded in Taster: start at the beginning, go slow. | 2017-04-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-04-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Double Double Whammy | April 19, 2017 | 7.3 | 3414530f-5fa5-44ac-a554-1d71ab30fb12 | Colin Joyce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-joyce/ | null |
"Electro" is a slippery word. When affixed to the word "clash," it's come to stand for a recent movement ... | "Electro" is a slippery word. When affixed to the word "clash," it's come to stand for a recent movement ... | Transllusion: L.I.F.E. | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8142-life/ | L.I.F.E. | "Electro" is a slippery word. When affixed to the word "clash," it's come to stand for a recent movement in electronic music that draws from the icy and removed synth-pop sound of the 80s, strips the beats down, and turns the lyrical focus to the joy and loathing in decadent sex. Because "electroclash" is an unwieldy word, many have taken to shortening it to just plain "electro." I find this abbreviation confusing, because the word "electro" has such specific connotations in my mind. To me, electro is an early strain of hip-hop that used the stiff machine beats of Kraftwerk as a foundation for a new, sci-fi obsessed form of funk.
Time and meanings change, though, and I'm trying to set aside my semantic biases and get with the program. Still, hearing this record by Transllusion, one half of Drexciya, got me thinking about the original electro and how it developed as a vehicle for two expressions. On the one end, dating from 1982, Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" is without question the electro classic of the era, a party jam through and through. This sound and vibe made its way down South and played a part in what came to be called Miami Bass. "Planet Rock" is the future as a high-tech carnival.
The other branch of electro was bound for a more desolate and isolated Northern climate. On their influential 1983 track "Clear", Detroit's Cybotron saw electro as a means for projecting a cold, depressing future where technology leads to alienation. "Clear" is clearly not celebration music, and this is the branch of electro that picked up some sounds and eventually morphed into ultra-serious Detroit techno (Juan Atkins, who was half of Cybotron, was an originator of the Detroit sound).
The wintry side of the place where electro-meets-techno has been kept alive in Detroit by Drexciya, the mysterious duo comprised of the Gerald Donald and the late James Stinson (he died in September of this year). Ironically, the identities of Drexciya's members were revealed only shortly before Stinson passed away. For most of the group's life, it remained an anonymous outfit dedicated to producing paradoxically cold yet emotionally evocative music from the Detroit template. Drexciya side projects included The Other People Place and Transllusion.
As electronic music goes, there's something oddly timeless about Transllusion. Certain aspects of the production sound quite current, while other bits are allude to the 80s. The synth patterns in "Bump It", for example, are very early videogame, but the thick bottom end seems of a more recent vintage. I have to say that of the Drexciya-related material I've heard, L.I.F.E. seems especially grim and bleak, and the repetition, while central to the project's aesthetic, is wearying. It's certainly a good record that succeeds at what it sets out to do, but I expect that I won't find myself in the mood to listen too often. I hope not, anyway.
Most of the tracks follow a similar template. The midtempo drum hits are ridged as drop forge steel, never deviating even slightly for the beat, never pausing for a fill, never laying out. Moving through and around the beats are all manner of synth squiggles that give some hint of the unpredictable nature of organic life. And the thread through it all is the deep and menacing bass tones that make sure the dark cloud never goes away.
The contrast between the downright oppressive repetition of the drum machine and the looser, softer synth patches make me think of these tracks as a view of a factory floor. The steel crash of the factory machines are always there, but moving between the spaces are the people, flesh just barely visible beneath helmets and through gaps in their coveralls. There's humanity in Transllusion's music, but it takes a lot of effort and compassion to find it. | 2002-12-17T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2002-12-17T01:00:01.000-05:00 | null | Rephlex | December 17, 2002 | 7.4 | 3414a5a9-ec1e-49dd-99d5-1538bd8d49a0 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
Cherry Bomb, Tyler’s fourth long-player and third official album, bears all the hallmarks of his personality, for good and for ill. Smart, annoying, obnoxious, and creative, it's a reminder that Tyler, the Creator only creates as the sum of his exhaustive, trying, kaleidoscopic self. | Cherry Bomb, Tyler’s fourth long-player and third official album, bears all the hallmarks of his personality, for good and for ill. Smart, annoying, obnoxious, and creative, it's a reminder that Tyler, the Creator only creates as the sum of his exhaustive, trying, kaleidoscopic self. | Tyler, the Creator: Cherry Bomb | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20493-cherry-bomb/ | Cherry Bomb | In a recent appearance on "Tavis Smiley", Smiley asked the now-24-year-old Tyler, the Creator to describe himself. He replied with a candid, perhaps-practiced monologue: "I’m very bright. I’m smart. I’m annoying and obnoxious. I’m very creative and borderline genius, and I think other people are starting to see that, too."
Cherry Bomb, Tyler’s fourth long-player and third official album, complements his self-professed characteristics to a T, in ways both good and bad. His greatest strength has always been world-building, using a synth-heavy blitz of candy-colored jazz chords taken straight (sometimes blatantly so) from the Pharrell handbook. Cherry Bomb isn’t exactly a hard left turn from this lane, but it is a quick swerve.
He’s still occasionally obnoxious and shockingly adolescent for someone almost a quarter-century old (on "Smuckers" he defiantly raps, "Fuck your loud pack, and fuck your Snapchat" with the gusto of Ian MacKaye declaring his devotion to straight edge). His idea of a joke is making the lead single to his rap album a Stevie Wonder-inspired bop about an underage relationship. What makes the joke "land," of course, is that the song is really good, a warm-sounding piece of pop music complete with an appearance from the ineffable Charlie Wilson. It’s a smart, annoying, obnoxious, creative, and borderline genius tactic from someone still working on reaching his final form.
The best thing Cherry Bomb has going for it is relative brevity. Goblin and Wolf were notoriously long, which felt like a betrayal of one of Tyler’s biggest strengths—shotgun blasts of creativity and anguish as opposed to woozy, multi-part dirges that bordered on self-parody. Cherry Bomb still features three songs that are longer than six minutes, but the songs transform within themselves, like the jazz Tyler admires, so that they almost feel like three songs in one. There's still nothing "minimalist" about what Tyler does; this tweet just about sums up his approach to this album.
Opener "Deathcamp" was allegedly inspired by the Stooges, and it sounds like what would happen if you put Tyler's idea of the Stooges on top of Glassjaw on top of Trash Talk, and, it should go without saying, on top a vintage N.E.R.D. production. Your mileage may vary, but I find it thrilling—the influence of rock music, while always present in Tyler’s music, is overwhelming here, which creates a Rebirth-ian wrinkle to an album that, to its strength and detriment, mostly recycles three or four similar ideas. "Pilot" and the title track to me recall none other than Big Black—drum machine-led walls of sound that break down and start up again as Tyler struggles to be heard over the noise. He is friends with Toro Y Moi’s Chaz Bundick (who makes an anonymous appearance on filler track "Run"), and "Find Your Wings" is Tyler’s gentlest song to date, an interlude that’s part quiet storm, part Toro, and completely without pretense or sarcasm.
Kanye and Wayne have verses on "Smuckers", the album’s best song. All three artists are auteurs in their own right, and with Tyler’s verses bookending and sandwiching the track and a beat switch thrown in the middle, it’s as if he’s playing hot potato with rap’s most singular voices and inserting himself in their world, a vandal placing his imprimatur on a piece in a gallery. The thrilling part is how at home Kanye and Wayne sound having fun in this playground (Kanye’s "Richer than white people with black kids/ Scarier than black people with ideas" is an instant classic, while Wayne slides into a comfortable vintage flow).
There will be a lot of talk about how unfocused or chaotic this album is, but I’ve always taken that as par for the course with any Tyler music. Tyler is still gonna do Tyler things, and it’s refreshing when an artist creates exactly the kind of art they want to create. A quick glance at the announced five alternate covers to the album was revealing—there’s a real aesthetic consistency to them. I’m reminded of the work of Marilyn Minter, an artist with a similar panache for creating intentionally ugly and tacky art, with the knowing observation, "Yes, this is ugly, but I can’t stop looking at it." That may be old hat at this point, but the idea is still such a seductive one: I know it's a mess, I put a lot of work into creating this mess, and it's your problem if you can't handle it. A funhouse mirror doesn’t make sense without knowledge of how a regular mirror works. Tyler, the Creator only creates as the sum of his exhaustive, trying, kaleidoscope self—and I keep looking at him. | 2015-04-17T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2015-04-17T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Odd Future | April 17, 2015 | 6.7 | 34176119-a4a7-4cf3-bee3-d1e263330e94 | Matthew Ramirez | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ramirez/ | null |
The trio’s fifth album further smooths out their neo-soul sound while celebrating the voices that inspired them along the way. | The trio’s fifth album further smooths out their neo-soul sound while celebrating the voices that inspired them along the way. | Moonchild: Starfruit | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/moonchild-starfruit/ | Starfruit | Los Angeles–based trio Moonchild have refined their sound with every release. A decade ago, the group—composed of lead singer Amber Navran and multi-instrumentalists Andris Mattson and Max Byrk—introduced their brand of jazz-inflected soul on their soothing, groove-heavy debut, Be Free. Their next three LPs fused dreamy keys with funk-inspired songs over lush instrumentation. Set against a similar backdrop, their fifth album, Starfruit, leans further into those smooth instincts while staying true to their neo-soul roots.
The album marks the first time Moonchild have had featured artists. Navran noted in a press release that they intentionally chose primarily Black women as collaborators, with a stacked guest list including North Carolina MC Rapsody, R&B mainstay Lalah Hathaway, and indie rapper Ill Camille. Their voices add a sense of vibrancy to Starfruit, an otherwise carefree record about the rocky yet rewarding experience of falling in love.
Navran’s velvety voice is the album’s anchor. Over the synths and subtly throbbing bassline of “Takes Two,” she croons to a partner: “The greatest gift that you could give to me is to leave and stay gone.” Her soft tone sounds even more pristine when paired with artists whose vocals challenge her to test the depths of her own. On the sultry opener “Tell Him,” Lalah Hathaway’s signature low register motivates Navran to toy with the delicate contrast of her falsetto. The Tank and the Bangas–assisted single “Get By,” a playful, synth-driven track, sees Navran flirting with hushed melodies alongside Tarriona “Tank” Ball’s coy raps.
The album’s subdued beats and airy vocals almost beg for extended instrumental jam sessions. But only the closing track, “The Long Way,” aided by a sax solo from jazz musician Josh Johnson, rewards that desire. With Starfruit, Moonchild settle into their groove, further smoothing out their sound while celebrating the voices that inspired them along the way.
Buy: Rough Trade | 2022-02-22T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-02-17T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Tru Thoughts | February 22, 2022 | 6 | 341810b9-dbb6-48f2-84f2-fa6d24bda1e4 | DeAsia Paige | https://pitchfork.com/staff/deasia-paige/ | |
The newly reissued six-song EP from the Maryland indie-pop band wallows in uncertainty and transition—but their songwriting makes it feel both adolescent and eternal. | The newly reissued six-song EP from the Maryland indie-pop band wallows in uncertainty and transition—but their songwriting makes it feel both adolescent and eternal. | Snail Mail: Habit EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/snail-mail-habit-ep/ | Habit EP | When Lorde released Pure Heroine in 2013, critics could not get over that fact that a teenage girl could contain such galaxies. Though Lindsey Jordan is not a New Zealand pop star, her work as Snail Mail serves another reminder that the most thoughtful perspectives often come from those who are misunderstood or underestimated. Jordan began playing classical guitar as a small child and then began writing her own songs as a young teenager. While balancing guitar lessons and hockey practice, she became absorbed in the D.C./Baltimore music scene and was moved to form her own group.
Two weeks after Snail Mail’s first practice, Jordan, drummer Shawn Durham, and bassist Ryan Vieira performed with punk heroes Sheer Mag and Priests at a Maryland festival. Priests, in particular, took Snail Mail under their wing and released the trio’s first full band EP on their Sister Polygon label; guitarist G.L. Jaguar and Jason Sauvage of Priests’ sibling band Gauche served as producers. When Habit was released in July 2016, the arduous but ultimately rewarding process implied by the group’s moniker proved to be prescient: after emerging quietly, the EP built considerable buzz that led to tours with Waxahatchee and Girlpool, a vinyl reissue, and talks of a future full-length with a major label home. Oh, and most importantly, Jordan graduated high school.
But Habit portrays a time before any of this felt possible. The six songs here wallow in the spiral of uncertainty and transition that feels both adolescent and eternal. Rather than joining the “we ain’t ever getting older” crew (though she does occasionally indulge in such luxuries), Jordan is burdened with being young and feeling old. “Baby when I’m 30 I’ll laugh about how dumb it felt/Baby when I’m 30 I’ll laugh it out,” she sings on “Dirt.”
Only on “Thinning,” Habit’s upbeat opener, does ennui sound somewhat enjoyable. Even though Jordan wrote the track while ill with a double whammy of bronchitis and infatuation, sunshine radiates through the weary oozing of her voice. “I wanna spend the entire year/Just face down/...And spend the rest of it asking myself/‘Is this who you are?’/And I don’t know/It just feels gross,” she declares before launching into a slippery guitar lick.
But for the most part, Habit’s lucid reflections move at relaxed pace. It gives Jordan the space to tackle the anxieties that she can’t “run [her] hands over.” On “Static Buzz” and “Stick,” her heavy, vast voice serves as the inverse of her tight, intricate guitar work (Jordan’s guitar teacher is Mary Timony of Helium and Ex Hex). While the instruments stay measured, only Jordan’s voice breaks through the slowcore haze. “I can’t keep anything down,” she belts on the former with a hurl. “Dirt” and “Slug” are less lethargic as they touch on rising above smallness.
Regardless of what path Jordan chooses for future Snail Mail material, Habit’s six songs eloquently reflect a place in life that most find too complicated to express. There’s no grandstanding here, no attempts at hiding how truly confusing it is to be young and feel like the world is simultaneously infinite and hopeless. Perhaps that is why Snail Mail sound so alive despite much tangible optimism: there’s no person behind a curtain, the ugly resides in reality. | 2017-07-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-07-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sister Polygon | July 27, 2017 | 7.7 | 34206891-a266-4316-8cb3-a96bfec64e09 | Quinn Moreland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/quinn-moreland/ | null |
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