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Sexwitch is a project from Natasha Khan of Bat for Lashes. With her producer Dan Carey and the UK-based psychedelic group TOY, she reinterprets old Moroccan and Iranian songs. She seizes on the material, allowing her voice to leap into a wail and break free. Each song was recorded in one take, and the album is the product of one daylong session. | Sexwitch is a project from Natasha Khan of Bat for Lashes. With her producer Dan Carey and the UK-based psychedelic group TOY, she reinterprets old Moroccan and Iranian songs. She seizes on the material, allowing her voice to leap into a wail and break free. Each song was recorded in one take, and the album is the product of one daylong session. | Sexwitch: Sexwitch | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21198-sexwitch/ | Sexwitch | She knows it "sounds ridiculous," but when Natasha Khan (aka Bat for Lashes) began reinterpreting old Moroccan and Iranian songs with her producer Dan Carey and the UK-based psychedelic outfit TOY, she felt like she was "channeling some sort of ancestral feelings about witches." She's not fully clear on what came over her; in interviews, she makes the process sound like an exorcism. Each song was captured in one take, and the whole album recorded in a daylong session. Her lyrics are collaged-together English translations of the songs' source material, which mostly concern seduction and infatuation. After a certain point, her singing becomes wailing. Her screams are pained and, to borrow Khan's word, "orgasmic." When it came time to name the project, she shrugged and told Carey, "It’s Sexwitch, innit?"
The material for the album was unearthed during a fruitful crate-digging trip, when Khan and Carey obsessed over some rare psychedelic tracks from other countries. They found two songs from Iran: "Ghoroobaa Ghashangan" (on the Light in the Attic comp Zendooni) and "Helelyos" (a song by Iranian singer Zia that's appeared on several Iranian pre-revolutionary pop compilations). Two songs are featured on the Raw 45s of Morocco comp: "Ha Howa Ha Howa" and "Kassidat El Hakka". The original version of "Lam Plearn Kiew Bao" is from Thailand and can be found on a Soundway comp. These songs' messages of liberation and passion are well suited to Khan's voice, especially at its most intense.
Compared to The Haunted Man, Khan's untethered presence on Sexwitch is a departure. Her Bat for Lashes work foregrounds structure and melody, but here she takes key phrases and molds them, repeating and inverting them. When necessary, she makes her voice percussive, especially when she emphasizes the repeated words "my dark girls" on "Helelyos". Khan's performances are equal parts wild and controlled, and TOY have no trouble nailing these songs. They're funky on "Ghoroobaa Ghashangan" and their percussion work on "Kassidat El Hakka" is satisfyingly heavy. To Carey's credit, this album sounds great, too.
But since every song on Sexwitch is a cover, it begs the question: What do Sexwitch's versions add? Occasionally, they feel overlong. Repetition is key to this music, but after several cycles, tracks begin to plod, broken up only by Khan's vocal work. The Sexwitch interpretations lose vital elements from the originals like horns, organs, and bells.
The most successful cover is arguably the closer: Skip Spence's "War in Peace". It's an excellent choice, and it offers Sexwitch the opportunity to simmer, jam, and gradually ramp back up. "War in peace," Khan sings, adding, "What a funny combination." The song is proof that they can thrive in the sweet spot between unchained freewheeling psychedelia and something more regimented and precise like "All Your Gold". But then again, why tame a band that's hell-bent on staying untamed? | 2015-10-15T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-10-15T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | BMG / Echo | October 15, 2015 | 6.4 | 38c29fc0-999c-406b-b23a-4f38e1069cd1 | Evan Minsker | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-minsker/ | null |
The Gen Z philosopher’s hard-rock era continues with an album about love and hurt, pain and healing, done with great nuance but not quite enough originality. | The Gen Z philosopher’s hard-rock era continues with an album about love and hurt, pain and healing, done with great nuance but not quite enough originality. | Willow: <CopingMechanism> | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/willow-copingmechanism/ | CopingMechanism | Last year on Mother’s Day, Willow surprised her mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, with a reunion performance by Jada’s 2000s nu-metal band Wicked Wisdom, starring Willow in her mother’s place as frontwoman. Clad in a Mastodon T-shirt, she foreshadowed her rocker era belting uncharacteristically dark lyrics—“I love your pain and how it opens you so wide/And I love the way you bleed all over me”—while the band shredded electric guitars to “Bleed All Over Me.” Though she officially shed her R&B indie-folk skin on 2021’s pop-punk Lately I Feel Everything, <COPINGMECHANISM> gets even grittier. The Gen Z philosopher’s efforts to evocatively communicate complex generational angst are hindered by her impersonal writing and delivery that doesn’t quite push past vocal imitation of her predecessors.
Willow’s early albums, her 2015 neo-soul debut Ardipithecus and subsequent psychedelic-folk record Willow, sought spiritual enlightenment. Here, she follows the example of artists like Rico Nasty and Kelis by reclaiming cathartic rage in a genre where Black women are woefully absent. Willow grew up watching audience members hurl racial slurs at her mother during her Wicked Wisdom days and came out of that experience determined to end the exclusionary nature of heavy metal. On <COPINGMECHANISM>, she’s not afraid to sound feral and vindictive. Through frenzied guitar breaks, guttural screeches, and screamo vocals on tracks like “ur a ˂stranger˃” and the Yves Tumor collab “Perfectly Not Close to Me,” she purges her grief over the dissolution of a relationship. Though she has noted bands like Lamb of God, Deftones, and Crowbar amongst her inspirations, here her style more closely mimics the celestial croons of Evanescence (“Split”) and the “rock-voice” of early Paramore’s Hayley Williams (“<Coping Mechanism>”).
Even for the self-assured performer who commanded attention on the Oprah show at 5, scored a breakout hit at 9, and put herself first by pausing her career as an adolescent, navigating life in the spotlight as a Black girl can be a horror. In a 2021 interview with Genius, she spoke about her anxiety surrounding betrayal: “I can’t tell you how much I’ve had fear that if I opened up about this to this person or if I say this or whatever, they’re gonna tell TMZ.” As she’s come of age, a deep sense of paranoia runs through Willow’s pop-punk and rock discography. She preemptively plays offense on “BATSHIT?” “If I were you, I would watch out/Whatever you do, it better be true/I’m coming for you,” she hisses, throwing “fucks” like grenades as howling guitars and propulsive drums heighten the potency of her venom. Her lulled laments peak through the adrenaline-filled finale and sum up the album’s tension between intellectualizing her pain and surrendering to its visceral messiness.
Chris Greatti’s stadium-ready production is often diluted by lyrics that attempt to abstractly embody and assuage the disaffection of an entire generation. <COPINGMECHANISM> is a break-up album for Gen Z—a generation that exchanges mental health advice on TikTok and isn’t afraid to publicize their innermost thoughts and pathologies. Sometimes painfully reminiscent of an episode of Red Table Talk—the healing-driven multigenerational talk show and pop culture forum hosted by Willow’s family on Facebook—the album is peppered with therapeutic mantras like “I try to stick to the facts/I try to learn from the past” and buzz phrases like “fight-or-flight... freeze.” “Never wear a frown/Because life doesn’t choose either side/Win or lose, right or wrong/It’s a battle that’s all in your mind,” Willow continues on “curious/furious.” She does counteract cheesy lines with ethereal melismatic breaks and yearning falsettos on tracks like the sapphic love song “hover like a GODDESS” and on the Evanescence-inspired “Split” she makes a case for a spot as one of her generation’s most versatile vocalists.
Despite the pop-therapy mad-libs, Willow takes a nuanced approach to heartbreak. Even while jilted, she retains compassion for her former lovers and doesn’t view herself as blameless. She starts the album with “How I can forgive you?” and evolves into a I’m starting with the man in the mirror moment: “I don’t know if I’m worth forgiving,” she wails. Love can inspire vengeful feelings but on this album the final wound is self-inflicted: “Murdering my ego with a hatchet.” <COPINGMECHANISM> asks us to accept a grungier and more mature Willow, but this maturity feels formulaic and the intimacy feels manufactured, relying on universal tropes of angst instead of her own. Even if the album is generic at times, Willow’s limber vocals surely enchant as she trapezes across pop, punk, metal, and screamo never fully landing on a signature sound. | 2022-10-13T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2022-10-13T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Roc Nation | October 13, 2022 | 6.7 | 38c5209b-39e6-42a7-867b-a21a08dd4bcb | Heven Haile | https://pitchfork.com/staff/heven-haile/ | |
The new LP from Toronto’s Weaves features more refined production than their 2016 debut. It highlights frontwoman Jasmyn Burke’s lyrics about personal experiences that parlay into universal struggle. | The new LP from Toronto’s Weaves features more refined production than their 2016 debut. It highlights frontwoman Jasmyn Burke’s lyrics about personal experiences that parlay into universal struggle. | Weaves: Wide Open | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/weaves-wide-open/ | Wide Open | When Weaves wrote their debut self-titled album, released last year, the Toronto quartet were in the business of rattling fixed formulas. They peeled apart the classic roles of an indie rock band—a singer, guitarist, bassist, and drummer—so that each member ricocheted off the other, using Weaves as a space to deconstruct and then rebuild songs, like an espresso-laced jazz troupe set loose in a bounce house. As much as their first album was about living in the musical moment, their follow-up, Wide Open, is about reflecting on moments at large. Weaves shed their improvisational tendencies in favor of more polished pop, and this swap pushes frontwoman Jasmyn Burke’s songwriting to the foreground. It’s a welcome change that sees what Weaves can do inside a box instead of operating outside one.
After the band toured through the U.S. and UK mid-elections last year, Burke realized her personal experiences feed into universal struggles and wrote the meat of Wide Open. “In a way, I was thinking about it like Bruce Springsteen,” she said, “but my experience of the world couldn’t be less like Bruce Springsteen’s.” The similarities are easy to draw when Burke sings about issues like wealth inequality and racial tensions in suburban plots. The real Springsteen analog, however, is in how the bulk of Wide Open hits: there’s clean, hummable guitar lines; liberating, wordless bridges; and this overarching feeling that perseverance is both possible and worthy of pride. That’s why it opens with “#53,” a song about feeling compressed by financial and social limitations that Weaves pepper with glockenspiel while Burke nails falsettos with full lungs. There’s no wild guitar solo or unstructured drum fills. It’s saturated with vocal emotion that captures a relatable yearning instead.
The production makes Wide Open sound like the work of a rising pop star. But since Weaves tinker with it to bring out their art-school flair, it doesn’t feel like they nixed their old style. Morgan Waters’ wiry guitar on “Slicked” builds to an enormous chorus of noise. “Law and Panda,” one of the album’s punchiest songs, forgoes the unpredictable breakdowns of their past in favor of handclaps and charging fury from bassist Zach Bines and drummer Spencer Cole. The arty peculiarities that oversaturated their debut are repurposed into a controlled format. At times, they loosen their grip too much, like when the formulaic side of pop takes the reigns on “La La” and “Walkaway,” going on autopilot. But this is bent pop, and they pull off its highs with enough cool-headed confidence to veil its lows.
Their refinements work best when Burke stands front and center. The title track swims in reverb, a prom slow ballad of melancholic longing across all instruments, while she waxes self-reflective lines about creating amid rubble. She balances personal emotions and overarching observations over the whole of Wide Open, and it’s the strongest evidence that Burke is channeling her inner Springsteen after all. With Canadian throat singer Tanya Tagaq by her side, Burke turns “Scream” into a deranged anthem about loving yourself in the face of racial violence. Fuzzed guitars, drum crashes, and Tagaq’s guttural howls act as pins nailing Burke’s declarations against a wall: “We are living in a time when misery is just common circumstance” hangs beside “My thighs are too big, my head isn’t small, my brain is on fire, I’m feeling this fall.”
Individualistic sighs become communal armour—“Get up on the table and scream your name,” goes “Scream”—and Burke hands them out to anyone who’s in need. With their musical recklessness out of the way, Weaves prioritize lyrical strengths like these on Wide Open while still accenting their musical eccentricities. Weaves’ ambitious song structures used to be too large to wrangle. With Wide Open, they realize the straightforward tentpoles of pop may suit them after all. | 2017-10-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-10-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Kanine / Buzz / Memphis Industries | October 13, 2017 | 7.2 | 38ccf251-a277-4a8b-9eae-cd636004506a | Nina Corcoran | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nina-corcoran/ | |
On their third studio album, Bombay Bicycle Club follow in the tradition of Snow Patrol's Final Straw and Travis' The Man Who: Band links with a hotshot producer (here, Ben Allen), ditches traditional indie sound, churns out soft-serve sweetness. | On their third studio album, Bombay Bicycle Club follow in the tradition of Snow Patrol's Final Straw and Travis' The Man Who: Band links with a hotshot producer (here, Ben Allen), ditches traditional indie sound, churns out soft-serve sweetness. | Bombay Bicycle Club: A Different Kind of Fix | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15914-a-different-kind-of-fix/ | A Different Kind of Fix | It's incredibly easy to say "forget everything you know about Bombay Bicycle Club," when they really haven't established much of an identity to begin with. But I'll try to sum it up: If you've ever wondered what might happen if Editors were fronted by a freak-folk singer, by all means pick up their debut. Meanwhile, on last year's mostly acoustic soft parade Flaws, they sounded like they'd get their lunch money stolen by Kings of Convenience. I suppose their sales inspired more patience from Island than their art, but on A Different Kind of Fix, they follow in the proud tradition of Snow Patrol's Final Straw and Travis' The Man Who, wherein a band links up with a hotshot producer, ditches a trad-indie sound that just wasn't working, and discovers its destiny churning out soft-serve sweetness that completely neutralizes your critical reasoning skills. I'm fairly certain the same impulse that triggers my desire for an Oreo McFlurry makes me want to listen to A Different Kind of Fix.
It's more likely that Bombay Bicycle Club sought out producer Ben H. Allen than the other way around-- after all, BBC have dutifully namedropped Allen clients Animal Collective and Deerhunter as big influences leading up to the release of Fix. Yeah, it's 2011 and just discovering those bands is just another aspect of BBC that seems so easy to make fun of before they totally disarm you: While nothing here will make you say, "yeah, total 'Summertime Clothes' moment," they've opted out of "quiet is the new loud" by investing themselves in the elemental songwriting aspects of America's indie elite: repetition is the new chorus, texture is the new volume.
And indeed, Apple might need to take a long look at Allen as a product designer if they haven't found a worthy successor for Steve Jobs-- as with Merriweather Post Pavilion, Halcyon Digest, and especially Washed Out's Within and Without, Allen gets a sound that's sleek, bold, and covetable, yet within the price range of the young and upwardly mobile. The easy lilt of Jack Steadman's vocals (thankfully shorn of his prior melismatic fringe) gives Fix enough humanity and extroverted charm to keep it from being a mere showcase for Allen's production tricks, but the depth of the low-end and a prudent amount of abrasive grit imparts a three-dimensionality that saves BBC from getting pushed around like any band that could reasonably be compared to early Coldplay.
Sure, the guitars on "Bad Timing" are thickly distorted, and the drums get a digital makeover into machinery, but it doesn't exactly rock-- it just asserts itself the right amount where a Steadman solo performance would be content to play the wall. The point of "Lights Out, Words Gone" isn't to praise BBC for apparently owning a Talking Heads record, or writing the catchiest Foals song Foals didn't actually write-- it's to lose yourself in the luxurious gulf between the band's vaporous harmonies and the glassy, yacht-funk riffs. The title of "Shuffle" might just be an indication of whose ad dollars Fix has in its crosshairs, and it could very well get there. BBC make full use of a stammering piano loop for both melodic and percussive purposes, and Steadman's vocals tumble over handclaps and layered harmonies in a manner that becomes subtly unstoppable instead of mawkish.
And Fix is all about accumulative properties, little bits and pieces that add up to way more than it should. "How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep" seems genial enough in its first minute-- a blindingly clean guitar riff providing an acoustic sunrise while Steadman somnolently delivers the same line the same way ("Can I wake you up/ Is it late enough") for nearly the song's entirety before an EQ-tweaked drum break sets things in motion. Frankly, you wonder what something this sparkly and chipper was doing on a Twilight soundtrack, but the sonic color is secondary to BBC and Allen playing off each other's skills in service of a certain kind of emotional "click" that's certainly in that franchise's demographic. I can't speak much for the actual biochemical workings, but at its best, Fix strikes that point where, "oh, they're cute" hits a groove in your mind and gets looped into total infatuation. After its three and a half minutes run out, not much has changed about "How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep" except maybe your way of looking at it.
But there's something faintly troubling about A Different Kind of Fix even in light of its success: While the songs are wildly improved, I still can't say there's much of a discernible identity. How much of Bombay Bicycle Club are you actually getting here? Steadman's lyrics and the band's tasteful playing convey, above all else, a kind of utilitarian earnestness endemic to young Brits with acoustics writing about girls and feelings. And you might find some of these hooks creeping up on you when you least expect it-- whistling the melody to "Lights Out, Words Gone" while buying groceries, realizing how deeply the riff of "Your Eyes" burrowed into your consciousness. But just as easily, it can pass right by you as you're actually listening to it, and the closing piano howler "Still" serves notice that they've still got an awkward sweet tooth or two left to extract. And maybe this stands out on account of filling a real void. Prior to the Strokes and the Libertines, this is often what UK guitar bands sounded like-- unabashedly cuddly, a little cloying, and in thrall with even the most rudimentary facets of electronic music. But hell, this is called A Different Kind of Fix and not The Shape of British Rock to Come for a reason: whether you're totally nostalgic for a time when Turin Brakes loomed large or just hoping that the Maccabees and the Vaccines might have a decent album in them at some point, BBC are your pushers. | 2011-10-12T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2011-10-12T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Island / Interscope | October 12, 2011 | 7 | 38d09713-7943-4cc0-949e-244953ab2409 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
The Norwegian producer's latest EP remixes a handful of strange tunes, from Vangelis to Boney M. to Yellow Magic Orchestra, that have entered the disco canon. | The Norwegian producer's latest EP remixes a handful of strange tunes, from Vangelis to Boney M. to Yellow Magic Orchestra, that have entered the disco canon. | Todd Terje / The Olsens: The Big Cover-Up | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21984-the-big-cover-up/ | The Big Cover-Up | In the late ’50s, pianist-turned-Tiki-titan Martin Denny began to mimic the sound of bullfrogs and tropical birds that could be heard from the bandstand at his Oahu cocktail bar. From that simple decision, the genre “exotica” was born, in which Denny grabbed whatever instruments outside the continental U.S. that caught his eye to weave them into leisurely living-room listening. One of his tunes, a cheeky approximation of Japanese court music called “Firecracker,” struck Japan’s Yellow Magic Orchestra two decades later when they covered it. YMO's version subsequently got spun by the likes of Afrika Bambaataa and J-Lo.
And now comes another layer of interpretation as Norwegian producer Todd Terje and a live band present their version of “Firecracker,” making for a Scandinavian nu-disco take on an electro-Japanese version of a lounge simulacrum of Japanese music. Terje’s itchy, perky six-and-a-half minute spin frets little about technocracy and orientalism, instead finding a groove to dilate and zag around in. Terje built his career as a master of the disco edit, that practice (revived in the early 21st century) of taking a song and chopping it up so as to accentuate and heighten the dancefloor euphoria of it. But before there was “disco music” in the early ’70s, astute DJs took from music of all stripes, genres and countries.
It’s that open-eared approach that informs The Big Cover-Up, as Terje and pals cover “Firecracker” as well as a handful of strange tunes that—thanks to some venturesome DJs and producers—somehow cohered as part of the disco canon, from Greek composer Vangelis’ “La Féte Sauvage” to “Baby Do You Wanna Bump,” performed by Boney M. Take “Disco Circus,” a sidelong track from the late ’70s from Martin Circus, a now-forgotten French prog rock band. Recorded as a cash-in on the “disco” trend, its rubbery groove and pillow-soft “ahhhh” might have never escaped the decade had pioneering disc jockey François Kervorkian not stripped out all the rock elements, toughened up the rhythm, and pumped up the stomps and chants into a swirling classic (one that Todd Terry soon updated as a house track). Terje and cohorts audibly relish the vocal gibberish and the spiraling rhythms of François K.’s remix, though with the addition of the ARP and extra percussion, it ranges into LCD Soundsystem territory.
If only these homages were matched by the remixes in terms of energy, as a fun-enough maxi-single bogs down as a double-pack. While something like “Disco Circus” was invigorated as a remix, these additional mixes add little. Mexico’s Daniel Maloso adds drunken brass and some McCartney II strummed guitar to “Bump” but not much more. The Idjut Boys’ Dan Tyler accentuates the silly metallophone melody and then plops spacey FX atop of “Firecracker,” while I’d be hard pressed to differentiate between Terje’s take on Vangelis and Prins Thomas’ own remix.
These songs were primarily studio creations and in covering them, there’s the sense that whereas Terje would have previously just tinkered with them as edits in his studio, now they’re just goofy numbers to jam out with real live players. At least for the first half of The Big Cover-Up, Terje and band have fun paying tribute to that era, where under the flashing lights of the discotheque, borders and nationalities began to bump and blur as one wild party. | 2016-06-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Olsen | June 21, 2016 | 6.9 | 38e6bf36-374a-4e32-8d06-730a6a988e20 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
On the band’s sixth album, frontman Stephan Jenkins Peter Pans his way through an improbably infectious set of would-be hits. | On the band’s sixth album, frontman Stephan Jenkins Peter Pans his way through an improbably infectious set of would-be hits. | Third Eye Blind: Screamer | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/third-eye-blind-screamer/ | Screamer | If he had less ambition and a lower tolerance for failure, Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins could be sipping Mai Tais with Mark McGrath on the deck of a ’90s rock cruise right now, enjoying a life of royalty checks and low expectations. Instead, he’s carried on as if any year might be the one where his group finally reclaims its former glory. Everything he does is a long-shot bid for relevance: He covers Bon Iver, records bold political statements, and generally does the last thing we ask from the second-tier figures of alt-rock’s yesteryear: He tries.
Third Eye Blind’s closest corollary is probably Weezer, another band with an extremely online frontman who never lost his thirst for the charts. They haven’t experienced anything like Weezer’s continued success, but they share a refusal to accept middle age as a commercial expiration date.
In pop-punk and emo circles, Third Eye Blind’s 1997 self-titled debut is treated with an affection reserved for Weezer’s Blue Album and the Violent Femmes’ debut—nervy, warts-and-all depictions of adolescent alienation. Jenkins is in his mid-50s now, but he hasn’t outgrown that angst, and he still sings in a raw, post-pubescent yelp. His perennial youthfulness remains his most endearing quality, and on the band’s sixth album Screamer, Jenkins Peter Pans his way through a record so improbably infectious that you almost begin to wonder if he might score that late-career radio hit after all.
He brings along some younger recruits to boost his chances. Sleigh Bells’ Alexis Krauss injects homecoming-rally pep into the record’s shouty title track, while Poliça’s Ryan Olson punches up the piano-flushed “Got So High” and the lighter-waving “Who Am I.” Billy Corgan is also credited as the album’s “musical consigliere,” though it’s unclear what precisely he contributed to the record beyond some pre-release buzz. The album’s open-door policy helps keep things fresh, and the band sounds more comfortable in their skin than they have since the ’90s. “Turn Me On” and “Tropic Scorpio” are buoyant and bombastic, tinged with EDM-adjacent production that plays off of contemporary Top 40 without pandering to it.
Although he’s laying it on less thick than usual, Jenkins’ swaggering vocals remain an acquired taste. He can still be an unrepentantly clumsy lyricist, especially when he breaks out his old sing-rap on “Walk Like Kings.” But overall, Screamer is better than a sixth Third Eye Blind album ever needed to be. It’s unlikely to be the full comeback Jenkins is gunning for, but if Third Eye Blind never score another hit, it won’t be for lack of scratching and clawing.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-10-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-10-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Mega Collider | October 18, 2019 | 6.9 | 38e81200-5414-4d2b-9c01-a069773a9a9a | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | |
null | During the bizarre final minutes of Beck's ninth album, director Spike Jonze and author Dave Eggers philosophize about what the "ultimate record that ever could possibly be made" would sound like. "[The songs would] change depending on what mood you're in," imagines Jonze. "Or, depending on when you listen to them at a different age, they'll mean something different." In many ways, Beck's discography embodies this idyllic malleability; from the sullen strains of Nick Drake to food'n'sex funk to broken-down blues to awkward boho-beat hip-hop, his oeuvre is a one-stop shop-- emotionally and sonically-- that defied stagnation for more than | Beck: The Information | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9485-the-information/ | The Information | During the bizarre final minutes of Beck's ninth album, director Spike Jonze and author Dave Eggers philosophize about what the "ultimate record that ever could possibly be made" would sound like. "[The songs would] change depending on what mood you're in," imagines Jonze. "Or, depending on when you listen to them at a different age, they'll mean something different." In many ways, Beck's discography embodies this idyllic malleability; from the sullen strains of Nick Drake to food'n'sex funk to broken-down blues to awkward boho-beat hip-hop, his oeuvre is a one-stop shop-- emotionally and sonically-- that defied stagnation for more than a decade. But his track record took a hit with last year's Guero, the first Beck album that cited Beck as its primary musical influence.
Ultimately, the same can be said for The Information, which is made from a similar scattershot, self-referencing pastiche. But there are key variations that give the new album a cohesion its predecessor lacked. This time, über-producer Nigel Godrich is the main collaborator, and his psychedelic studio wizardry one-ups the Dust Brothers' sample-based concoctions at nearly every turn. The record also benefits from a future-sick quasi-concept worthy of Philip K. Dick (or Thom Yorke). While still lyrically cryptic (sometimes maddeningly so), Beck injects many tracks with the distress of an attuned cultural observer raising a child in an age of phony wars, data saturation, and government-sanctioned apathy. The deadpan delivery remains intact, but his anxiousness and anger are more pointed than before.
Over a brisk groove, Beck states his frustrations on opener "Elevator Music", a damning critique of prettified American culture. The song details the troubling unreality of modern times, where the public is relegated to "fly on the wall" status, distracted by media overflow and the nine-to-five grind. "When you're down and out, pounded, and there's nothing that's real/ It's like a plastic heart too amputated to feel," raps Beck. His trademark spoken-word rambles are still rhythmically challenged and verbose, but, in context, the unorthodox flow can offer a vulnerable counterpart to the scathing precision of lines like, "If I could forget myself/ Find another lie to tell/ From the bottom of an oil well/ Cell phone's ringing to talk to my brain cells." As with most Beck songs, meanings are fluid, imprecise, and listener-specific, and The Information's strange wordplay lies somewhere between the straightforward heartbreak of Sea Change and the non-sequitur absurdity of Odelay. While the music sometimes suggests the manic hodge-podge of his mid-90s material, there's no more getting "crazy with the cheese whiz." Nearly every word on The Information has a distinct purpose.
Whether quoting the robot strut of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon" on "Cellphone's Dead", driving a trippy krautrock beat through the title track, or scratching up the hallucinatory dub of "We Dance Alone", The Information pumps musical life into its references thanks to Godrich's space-age sheen. Yet, this upbeat liveliness is often subverted by Beck's increasingly hopeless obsession with death and decay.
With its graveyard calisthenics, windshield-wiping reaper, and roving coffin, 1994's "Loser" video made this particular preoccupation clear early on. But back then, at age 23, Beck was laughing at death and vouching for the sexiness of the netherworld. Now, at 36, there's little room for such frivolousness. Multiple appearances of words like "desert," "cremation," and "dust" ground The Information in stark morbidness. And the once-favored devil has been replaced by a more sinister "lord" who will "take his motorcade and drive us into the dirt." Religious cynicism and technological paranoia meet on "The Information", an unforgiving apocalyptic vision: "When the information comes we'll know what we're made from," sneers Beck. Elsewhere, the ill-fated "Soldier Jane" lies comatose at best, and, whispering on the slow motion ballad "Dark Star," Beck sees the American dream perishing at the hands of misguided warmongers: "A widow's tears washing a soldier's bones/ Sterilized egos, delirium sequels/ Punctured by the arrows of American eagles." Meanwhile, the album's most haunting eulogy ditches political commentary for something more personal.
Quiet and forceful, "New Round" sounds like a gift from father to son. "Every little step/ Every new direction/ The closer you will get," sings Beck, taking full advantage of his underappreciated vocal timbre. But, instead of ending up as yet another sappy "dad" song, "New Round" looks ahead to the inevitable disconnect between parent and child. "And farther away/ You'll go from where we are," he continues. Backed by spare acoustic guitars and a calm break beat, the harrowing love letter exudes a fierce passion missing from other parts of The Information.
While his lyrics offer few solutions to the current onslaught of ones and zeros, Beck encourages user-side involvement by offering blank cover art and a sheet of stickers that fans can arrange how they please (possibly a tribute to his grandfather, a founder of the similarly democratic 60s art movement Fluxus). But participation is also required to comb through the album's low points-- as in deleting the duds from your iPod. "Strange Apparition", on which Beck does a warbling Chris Cornell impression over rollicking Rolling Stones piano, is too boisterous when stacked against the album's stealthy charms. "Motorcade", on the other hand, is barely there; it's a soured tangerine dream, reliant on Godrich's aural doodads and little else. And, although Beck and friends goof around on the accompanying DVD (featuring super lo-fi videos for every song), it looks like the type of project that's more fun to make than it is to watch.
After Jonze gives his take on the ever-changing super album at the end of disc, Eggers politely disagrees. "I don't like it when they change, it frightens me," he admits. "It makes me feel like someone's pushing me from below, trying to turn me over and put me down." As he edges close to middle age, Beck is stuck between the spontaneity of old and a safer middle ground. Although The Information contains some of his most aware, intriguing lyrical head-scratchers yet, the familiar musical settings are something of a letdown from an artist famous for complete reinvention. "Thought I saw a ghost but it might have been me," he raps on "We Dance Alone", "might have been a world that was moving too fast, caught up in a future that was drunk on the past." It always used to feel like Beck was years beyond us but, as The Information attests, the universal struggle is finally catching up with him. Took long enough. | 2006-10-04T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2006-10-04T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Interscope | October 4, 2006 | 6.9 | 38e82e07-15f0-4485-973f-5e75ce091309 | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | null |
Collecting the sometimes-dismissed output of these pioneers between their masterpiece and their breakup, this box set sheds welcome light on how relevant many of these songs remain. | Collecting the sometimes-dismissed output of these pioneers between their masterpiece and their breakup, this box set sheds welcome light on how relevant many of these songs remain. | Cocteau Twins: Treasure Hiding: The Fontana Years | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/cocteau-twins-treasure-hiding-the-fontana-years/ | Treasure Hiding: The Fontana Years | Before Cocteau Twins released their perfect sixth album, Heaven or Las Vegas, in 1990, they had spent the previous decade building a discography as innovative and amorphous as, say, Bowie in the 1970s or Aphex Twin in the 1990s. Their catalogue of curiosities sounded nothing like what had come before. Elizabeth Fraser’s voice could do anything and did everything, groaning like a rusty switchblade being opened, soothing like a dopamine flood in the brain, performing runs like Mariah Carey and Maria Callas combined. Her partner, Robin Guthrie, played guitar and programmed drum machines with the sui generis, near-mystical ease of Mark Rothko’s painting or Martha Graham’s motion. Simon Raymonde, who joined soon after the Twins began, offered unexpected choral basslines that propelled it all.
And then, Cocteau Twins began to break down. They left the label they’d defined, 4AD, in a flurry of financial and personal acrimony… and cocaine. The birth of Fraser and Guthrie’s child had largely inspired the wonder of Heaven, but becoming parents was no panacea. The survival of their marriage and the band seemed unlikely. When a single, “Evangeline,” arrived in 1993, the first shock was its mere existence. Treasure Hiding: The Fontana Years gathers their creations for a new label after “Evangeline”—four subsequent singles, their B-sides and the albums they accompanied, a pair of lovely EPs, some typically beautiful odds and ends, and a few live sessions. But Treasure Hiding is sometimes just good, its miscellany confirming suspicions that the Twins sometimes settled for spinning their celestial wheels. Nevertheless, revelations abound.
The second shock of “Evangeline” was the sound. It begins with a guitar being picked, something more identifiable than Guthrie had ever offered. And almost never before had Fraser just sort of stood there and sang. Michael Stipe could mumble and be haled, and other guys made careers of bad poetry inspired by Burroughsian cut-ups. Fraser shaped assemblages of academic and arcane lexicons over the Beach Boys’ close and complicated harmonies, forming an inimitable style. Perhaps because she was a woman, fans sold it short as divine inspiration, while foes dismissed it as some girlie bullshit. A power ballad that could make Diane Warren proud, “Evangeline” suggests these poetics were always protective cloaks. “I had to fantasize just to survive,” Fraser announces over a tear-jerking final key change.
That directness—along with the title and unexpected singer-songwriter vibe of the accompanying album, Four-Calendar Café—carried through on “Bluebeard,” the next single. “Are you the right man for me?/Are you safe? Are you my friend?” Fraser asks over a very good imitation of the Smiths. Guthrie mostly abandons pyrotechnics for conservative comfort, but Fraser’s plain words take the risks as she ask questions we all should have for the men in our lives, our homes, our courts, our culture.
Four-Calendar Café is full of trauma’s echoes. On top of a very troubled marriage to Guthrie, a lifelong anxiety disorder, and issues of addiction, Fraser had finally decided to stare down the lingering effects of what, in Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD, author Martin Aston calls “sexual abuse she suffered in her youth, from within her own family.” In the icy “Theft, and Wandering Around Lost,” she sings, “My body is mine alone/And I deserve protection.” Out with the glossolalia and in with Kathleen Hanna, just sung like Karen Carpenter—these are easy-listening songs about the difficulty of being kind to yourself. At a moment when society has never seemed more divided between those who have survived abuse and those amused by its prospect, Fraser’s expressions of fury on her own terms feel timely and urgent.
A pair of EPs offered two paths forward in 1995: Twinlights is essentially Cocteau Twins Unplugged, asserting the good bones of early standards on “Pink Orange Red” and offering new odes to self-care on “Rilkean Heart.” Otherness adds the dubby languor of Seefeel’s Mark Clifford and remains fascinating. Further steps in either direction might have been fruitful, and the latter path might have even restored some critical acclaim.
Instead, they retreated for 1996’s Milk & Kisses; Fraser’s voice and Guthrie’s guitar meet halfway, both showing up but not showing off. Café’s rage has settled into turbulence, with Fraser beautifully exhibiting her linguistic filigree and Guthrie putting on a shoegaze workshop. “Half-Gifts” and “Eperdu” approach the old cathedrals of Blue Bell Knoll; B-sides like “Round” and “An Elan” are ineffable epics, not to be missed as the Twins neared their end. When Kisses closes with the bleak “Seekers Who Are Lovers” and the sound of blowing wind, it’s tough to imagine what could have been left. There wasn’t much, turns out—a few compilation appearances, a live session that doesn’t capture the fury and magic they summoned onstage. And then they split, probably for good.
More than 20 years later, it’s easy to remember Cocteau Twins for their otherworldly grandeur, their belief in turning toward beauty in the face of ugliness. That’s achievement enough. But Cocteau Twins did more. When, after years of hiding within invention, Fraser finally asked to be heard, she sang the words she needed to hear. We needed them then and now, too. The grandest of finales, Café’s “Pur” ends with words as charged as the band’s most groundbreaking music. “I’m glad you are a girl,” she sings. “You are angry and that’s OK/I am not afraid of your anger/What do you need? What do you want?/I love you, and I know that you can figure it out.” | 2018-10-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-10-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | null | October 19, 2018 | 8 | 38e98604-f9de-4a81-8f50-10353be5b652 | Jesse Dorris | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-dorris/ | |
The Bristol punk band’s third album goes for fist-in-the-air righteousness but stumbles over itself at nearly every turn, resulting in a broad and unfocused attempt to speak to the moment. | The Bristol punk band’s third album goes for fist-in-the-air righteousness but stumbles over itself at nearly every turn, resulting in a broad and unfocused attempt to speak to the moment. | Idles: Ultra Mono | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/idles-ultra-mono/ | Ultra Mono | At the onset of lockdown, as busy lives drained away only to be refilled with ennui and baking, Zadie Smith wrote this adage: “The people sometimes demand change. They almost never demand art.” Before the pandemic, society offered a tacit contract whereby artists, and few others, could essentially act like children: painting flowers, blowing into flutes, storyboarding plots where lurid men meet their comeuppance, yelling “A heathen! From Eton! On a bag of Michael Keaton!” into microphones—anything that might elicit joy or clarity in the general populace. Some art, Smith conceded, has political potential, but artistic urgency is nearly always a metaphor, borrowed from “the urgency of the guerilla’s demands, or the activist’s protests.” Essential workers are necessary. Art is more like baking a sourdough loaf: something to do with our long days.
Smith articulates a common misgiving about Necessary Art—one that bodes poorly for Ultra Mono, wherein Idles stage a risky foray into the form. The Bristol post-punks’ 2017 debut, Brutalism, and follow-up Joy as an Act of Resistance flirted with necessity but preferred irreverence, populating songs of Brexit Britain with cocaine connoisseurs and the far-right ghouls haunting Westminster halls. Any necessity in the music seemed, as it should, to occur by accident.
With Ultra Mono, Idles trump up the social values while continuing to occupy a peculiar British tradition: ornery blokes from outside the capital charismatically proclaiming moral truths in a tone that suggests they could also annihilate you in a bar fight. (This thing goes over particularly well at festivals.) Such groups embody the infinite promise of working-class rage—never mind their actual background—which can feel refreshing, since British class commentary rarely rises above vague talk of metropolitan elites and “ordinary voters.” In a war of subtext, we appreciate those brave or stupid enough to carry a megaphone.
The thrills and perils of flouting this social contract play out on Ultra Mono centerpiece “Model Village,” where shouter-songwriter Joe Talbot rails against a fictional village’s latent fascism, provincialist racism, tabloid-fuelled alarmism, and other moronic English values. In the process, he characterizes his villagers as “half-pint thugs” and “nine-fingered boys,” which inevitably feels a bit patronizing. Still, his willingness to slip into class stereotypes clarifies Idles’ political position: charitably as a conduit for proletarian anger, but primarily as a vent for the sort of leftists who can’t decide whether to valorize the working class or furiously condemn it for the calamities of Brexit and Boris Johnson.
Ultra Mono oscillates between the spry minimalism of “Model Village”—which bridges macho punk and, say, the Hives—and brawnier screeds aping Mclusky, albeit without the Welsh greats’ absurdism. The Jesus Lizard’s David Yow, Bad Seed Warren Ellis, and, improbably, Kenny Beats all make fairly anonymous contributions, presumably brought in to jolt the band from a creative rut. Throughout the record, promising flickers of invention—jittery electronics here, an elephantine squeal there—invariably leak into choruses built on mechanical, double-time strumming, with Talbot roaring indignantly over the top.
For a man wracked with moral outrage, Talbot sounds strangely unfocused, his characters now hollow composites and his lyrics stalled in an interzone between winking cliché and gibberish. “Clack clack clack-a-clang-clang/That’s the sound of a gun going bang bang,” he barks on “War,” with none of the astronomical flamboyance that might redeem such a line. Side B’s duskier sounds demand at least a moderately unhinged vocal presence, but Talbot is ruthless only in his efficiency. On the shoutalong “Carcinogenic,” he drones through a policy checklist—austerity, food banks, military spending, climate crisis—as if cramming for a job interview in the civil service. “Ne Touche Pas Moi” almost works as riot grrrl pastiche, until the appearance of Savages’ Jehnny Beth reminds us her own group would sooner dance the Macarena than serve threats as feeble as “This is a pistol/For the wolf whistle.”
Just as Talbot’s jabs at haters feel whiny, his declarations of solidarity, while sincere, often sound braggy. “[You’re] saying my race and class ain’t suitable,” he hollers on “Grounds.” “So I raise my pink fist and say, ‘Black is beautiful.’” Where to begin? Well, unlike civil rights matters, which demand allyship, the “Black is beautiful” movement does not seek white validation—in fact, the white gaze is exactly what it resists. To weaponize the term in this way is not a grave misstep, but it’s the sort of clumsiness that makes Idles’ good intentions feel squeamish.
Rather than plucking pretty mantras from a hat, authentic provocateurs mine injustice until they strike unpalatable truths. These may, through some magic hatch, lead to Necessary Art. Either way, I’m not sure Idles have the patience for it. “Model Village” is the one genuine provocation on a record that could otherwise have outsourced its politics to a woke publicity firm. On “The Lover,” Talbot defends Idles’ “sloganeering,” but instead of heeding the social media-era’s abundance of edifying slogans (“The system cannot reform itself”; “Every billionaire is a policy failure”), Ultra Mono charges into the discourse like a hobbyist at a rally. It’s not listening, just shouting. Not radical but restless. Not bad, just unnecessary.
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. | 2020-09-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Partisan | September 28, 2020 | 5.5 | 38f1a778-1add-4fd4-bc6a-21f7daea0284 | Jazz Monroe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jazz-monroe/ | |
On their first album in five years, Drexciya’s Gerald Donald and his long-time collaborator To-Nhan allow their habitually chilly electro to thaw a little, unexpectedly making way for a glimmer of human emotion. | On their first album in five years, Drexciya’s Gerald Donald and his long-time collaborator To-Nhan allow their habitually chilly electro to thaw a little, unexpectedly making way for a glimmer of human emotion. | Dopplereffekt: Neurotelepathy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dopplereffekt-neurotelepathy/ | Neurotelepathy | If it weren’t for the instant appeal of his music, Gerald Donald’s sprawling discography and penchant for aliases might obscure the fact that he’s been making peerless techno and electro for more than 30 years. His work with the late James Stinson as conceptual electro superduo Drexcyia blew minds and subwoofers. As Arpanet, he and Stinson (and then he alone) flipped Kraftwerk’s maybe-ironic Euro-techno utopianism for a maybe-cynical industrial music for virtual workplaces. His Der Zyklus productions bumped and bounced with the best of Detroit funk. The ripples created by a series of albums under his own name in the early 2000s deserve wider circles of listeners, as do his early, proggy workouts as L.A.M. This brutal world might not deserve a comprehensive Collected Works box set, but I sure hope we get one.
And then there’s Dopplereffekt, his duo (as Rudolf Klorzeiger, another alias) with To-Nhan, aka Michaela To-Nhan Bertel. Over the decades, the pair have undertaken electronic investigations of sex, fascism, capitalism, and other human entanglements, producing increasingly chilly output. Neurotelepathy thaws things to a kind of body temperature: It won’t break a sweat, but its cinematic swoon and crisp precision break the Dopplereffekt mold. What spills out sounds an awful lot like human emotion.
A concept album about a machine’s ability to decipher a subject’s thoughts, Neurotelepathy switches on the mechanics that come standard in much of Donald’s work. Then things get real. “Neural Impulse Actuator - Mirror Neuron” grounds itself in peppy electro, impeccably made, with a bassline that establishes unexpected grids. What appear to be recognizably human vocals swerve in, tangled with synth-y zigzags. They almost destabilize the whole endeavor, as if to say, it’s chaotic out there. As if they read my mind.
“Visual Cortex” and “Optogenetics” carry on the Carpenter-esque arpeggiated menace Donald excels in, but swap out the paranoia for stretches of panoramic wonder at what data can do. Opener “Epigenetic Modulation,” an unexpected collaboration with Kranky ambient explorer Christina Vantzou, establishes the philosophical framework. An announcer labels the audio transmission “transgenerational epigenetic inheritance” the same way Curtis McClain anointed Marshall Jefferson’s “Move Your Body” as “house music all night long,” the way SOPHIE invoked the immaterial. What you do, and what’s done to you, becomes who people can be. It might not take a mind-reader to suppose that, for someone with a legacy like Donald’s, this possibility is a blessing and a curse. And indeed, after this clear statement of intent, Neurotelepathy only gets squishier. Closer “EEG” is fleshiness made audible, like Cronenberg in its mess and revelation, and light years from Donald’s usual scientific method—dark years, maybe.
There’s pleasure, too. “Neuroplasticity” and “Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation” show off Donald’s encyclopedic collection of hi-hats and kicks, but they also iterate pop, the best empathy machine humans have ever built. Mostly, though, the buzz offsets the song cycle at the album’s center: a trio (“Cerebral Data Download to 2100 AD,” “Cerebral to Cerebral Interface,” and “Cerebral - AI Entanglement”) that opens with twinkles of melody, succumbs to a targeted downpour of bass, then reveals a shifting world with clicks that swipe as scythes through blooming fields of data. By the end, the only sounds are smoke. The achievement is a reversal: Now we’re telling machines what they think, projecting apocalypse onto our tools. The future is bleak, and we’re not even ready for Donald’s present. | 2022-04-19T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-04-19T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | null | April 19, 2022 | 7.8 | 38f1f5a8-5d80-48f1-b01f-d47112b011e5 | Jesse Dorris | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-dorris/ | |
Long sought after by collectors, the Spanish composer’s 1987 album of minimalism, period electronics, folk melodies, and chanted Catalan poetry is another gem in Freedom to Spend’s reissue series. | Long sought after by collectors, the Spanish composer’s 1987 album of minimalism, period electronics, folk melodies, and chanted Catalan poetry is another gem in Freedom to Spend’s reissue series. | Pep Llopis: Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pep-llopis-poiemusia-la-nau-dels-argonautes/ | Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes | Some of the best reissue labels, like Soul Jazz, Numero Group, and Light in the Attic, made their mark by unearthing sounds that most of us never knew existed. They give names to them and put frames around them—a taxonomical project that has brought us essential compendiums of Ohio proto-punk, private-press new age music, and psychedelic country from the early ’70s, to name just a few pins in our ever-expanding musical atlas. RVNG Intl.’s Freedom to Spend imprint takes the opposite tack. Instead of creating alternative canons, it’s plucking obscure records from the ether and presenting them as standalone curios. Co-founders Pete Swanson, Jed Bindeman, and Matt Werth are interested, they say, in confusing the timeline, in sidestepping the historical frame to engage strangeness and wonder head-on.
For its first few releases since re-launching earlier this year, after a trial run nearly a decade ago, Freedom to Spend has swung its lens widely. First there was Eye Chant, a 1986 album of synthesizer music recorded in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania by Michele Mercure (aka Michele Musser); then came the Seattle electronic musician Marc Barreca’s Music Works for Industry, a 1983 cassette of sleek electro and wry anti-capitalism. The label’s third release stems from the same time period and thousands of miles to the east: the Mediterranean city of Valencia, Spain. Pep Llopis’ 1987 album Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes makes for a good opportunity to meet the label’s challenge of listening without prejudice. Mixing the sounds of classical minimalism with period electronics, folk melodies, and chanted poetry in Catalan, it’s the most unusual thing they’ve put out yet.
Long a sought-after prize by record collectors, the album is, fittingly enough, driven by the spirit of the quest. Llopis began writing the music after the dissolution of his previous band, the progressive rock group Cotó-en-Pèl, sent him sailing across the Mediterranean, island-hopping from Menorca to Crete, Lesbos, and Santorini. Inspiration from Wim Mertens and Philip Glass spun in his head along with the Greek music he had brought back from the Aegean; it was an encounter with the Valencian poet Salvador Jàfer’s collection Navegant obscur that pointed him toward the final form of the piece, in which Jàfer’s poetry—not so much spoken as chanted—infused the music with the dark, swirling pulse of the open sea. Llopis and his ensemble performed a version of the piece at Valencia’s Poiemusia, a 1986 festival of contemporary composition and poetry, and he recorded the album in early 1987, utilizing a limited set of instruments—cello, flute, clarinet, vibraphone, marimba, and keyboards—and with Jàfer himself reciting the text, accompanied by the late actress Montse Anfruns. The album was released later that year on Madrid’s Grabaciones Accidentales, home also to the Iberian Fourth World sounds of Finis Africae.
All these points of reference can help orient you within Poiemusia’s waters, but the listening experience itself requires few footnotes. Llopis’ work makes no secret of its debt to composers like Glass, Mertens, and Steve Reich: Throughout most of the album’s five tracks, contrapuntal arpeggios spin like wheels within wheels, with diverse acoustic and electronic timbres fusing into a sumptuous sound as dynamic as the play of light on choppy water. (The lone exception is “Nits de Cristall,” a beautiful, piano-led piece that brings Satie and Debussy to mind.) Minimalism’s sense of moving while standing still is balanced by a forceful compositional hand that emphasizes major shifts from passage to passage—not unlike jibing and tacking in the wind.
Both individually and as a set, the five tracks have a strong narrative feel, with chapter-like arrangements and mirroring sections. “El Vell Rei De La Serp” begins with a lengthy passage of bowed cello and gentle flute before shifting into tumbling pulse-minimalism mode; after five minutes of rising pitch and growing complexity, all the instruments drop out save a faint whistle, and a two-minute coda brings us back to the flute-and-cello theme of the opening. In a similar maneuver, the whole album is bookended by the drifting synths that suggest the stillness of the harbor that lies on either side of the journey.
The text, however, is not narrative. Jàfer’s impressionistic poetry emphasizes striking visual imagery—“Bees and slugs, honey and liquefied wax”; “Mysteries, algae, lips”—and its incantations begin to assume an almost liturgical feel. You don’t need to understand Catalan to appreciate the sonority of the voices, particularly when they are subtly processed through vocoder-like effects. Swirled into the music, the voices contribute to an overall effect that is like painting in sound and word, and just enough of the text cuts through to trigger unexpected associations in the listener’s mind. (“Moriré amb l’enyorança/De no ser un jaguar,” goes one particularly potent line which is bound to resonate, whatever your degree of exposure to various Romance languages.) Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonauts is an album of oceanic currents, of cultural exchange, with a shape dictated by the rhythms of both the sea and the journey. Despite its late-’80s provenance, it still sounds both futuristic and faintly medieval. It might as well be a message in a bottle washed up with no returning address—a fine example of Freedom to Spend’s vision of historical music that strikes home like a bolt from the blue. | 2017-07-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-07-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Freedom to Spend | July 8, 2017 | 7.6 | 38f3c300-0930-4016-8862-a731a08d0c8e | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | null |
Following last year's brilliant but sadly ignored Segundo, Domino Records releases Argentinian indie/electronic folk artist Juana Molina's second pleasant outing. | Following last year's brilliant but sadly ignored Segundo, Domino Records releases Argentinian indie/electronic folk artist Juana Molina's second pleasant outing. | Juana Molina: Tres Cosas | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5593-tres-cosas/ | Tres Cosas | In a past life that came to a close sometime around 1996, Buenos Aires' Juana Molina was a well-known comedienne and television host, something akin to Argentina's Tracey Ullman, or say, Carol Burnett. It was a role she dutifully fulfilled for almost seven years before succumbing to a twerk of conscience and retreating to Los Angeles in the hopes of starting again, this time as a musician.
Tres Cosas is Molina's third full-length since she abandoned television outright in the mid-90s, but her past as a successful comedian still clings closely to her brand. The obvious reason for that is because it's a compelling backstory in its own right, the kind of anecdote that journalists and publicists don't easily forget. But in the context of her work as a musician, the dogged funnylady characterizations begin to make even more sense; modest, meandering and resoundingly uncommercial, Molina's is just not the kind of music you would anticipate from a former star of any kind.
Conceived as a bare-bones response to 2000's comparatively elaborate Segundo, Tres Cosas consists of breathy, wafer-thin Argentinean folk that occasionally flirts with the vanguard. Excepting the underwater synth piece "Filter Taps" and the gonzo pitch-wheel bonanza of "Yo Se Que", everything here hinges on Molina's nimble voice and a guitar, and yet it'd be misleading to stop at calling it acoustic music.
Part of Molina's appeal-- and this is what's getting her namechecked by more than just the world music set-- lies in the way her songs incorporate subtle additions like xylophones, strings, synths, loops and ambient washes without ever changing shape. One gets the sense from tracks such as "No Es Tan Cierto" (which slyly sneaks a xylophone and some sparse percussion behind its opening guitar motif) and the beautiful "Curame" (a three-shades blend of guitars, keys and vocals) that she's seeing the spaces in her songs and arranging them to match. The end result is a record of mixed materials that still sounds natural; a far cry from some of folk music's more hamfisted attempts at acoustic/electronic collusion.
Because Molina's compositions tend to be guided by stream of consciousness, sing-songy word trails, some of them need lots of time to fully take root; others-- like the clumsy "El Cristal"-- may never germinate at all. On the whole, however, Tres Cosas is still remarkably lean in fat. Neither particularly immediate nor eager to please, it's also absolutely nothing like a punchline, but who said Molina had to be funny anymore? | 2004-07-22T01:00:03.000-04:00 | 2004-07-22T01:00:03.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Domino | July 22, 2004 | 7.2 | 38f87755-b98e-44c5-a762-d8afb733e924 | Mark Pytlik | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-pytlik/ | null |
When Neil Young gets angry, he gets impulsive. The Monsanto Years, his latest album, is a screed against big agribusiness and the corporations that support it, but it is ultimately less a call to topple an evil empire than an expression of helplessness in trying to fight it. | When Neil Young gets angry, he gets impulsive. The Monsanto Years, his latest album, is a screed against big agribusiness and the corporations that support it, but it is ultimately less a call to topple an evil empire than an expression of helplessness in trying to fight it. | Neil Young: The Monsanto Years | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20643-the-monsanto-years/ | The Monsanto Years | When Neil Young gets angry, he gets impulsive. Mere days after the May 1970 massacre at Kent State, he had branded Richard Nixon a mass murderer; nearly 20 years later, he was redrafting George Bush Sr.'s inaugural address into a state-of-the-union screed dripping with so much bitter sarcasm, some conservatives still mistake it for an ad hoc national anthem. Those songs remain FM-radio staples to this day because their raging invectives still sting like a ripped-off bandage, decades removed from the moments that incited them. But the topical material that Neil has rush-released in recent years has turned both more lyrically obvious and musically frivolous; whether dramatizing 9/11 valor in a goofy bar-band grind or calling for Dubya's head with a cheery choral sing-along and chirpy cavalry-charge trumpets, these songs' shelf lives can be measured in weeks rather than years. As much as his legacy is tied to the politically charged tumult of the late '60s and early '70s, Neil has always been more compelling when playing the rugged, inscrutable individualist rather than the man-of-the-people populist—the urgency to get his message out tends to override the sublime lyricism and unnerving ambiguities that have yielded his most resonant, timeless work.
On his new album, Neil revisits an old pet cause: the plight of the American farmer. But 30 years after he co-founded Farm Aid to save cash-strapped field workers from foreclosure, the terms of war have changed. The Monsanto Years fixes its crosshairs on the GMO-pimping agribusiness behemoth that has a stranglehold on the world's seed (and, by extension, food) supply, forcing farmers to comply their strict terms or be litigated into destitution. And, here, the buckshot splatter extends to other entities contributing to the suppression of the average American: Wal-Mart, Chevron, Citizens United, and even Starbucks (though in the latter case, the company insists it's just an innocent bystander). But despite the dawn-summoning optimism of the opening eco anthem "A New Day for Love", The Monsanto Years is ultimately less a call to topple an evil empire than an expression of helplessness in trying to fight it. As the album trudges through its treatises on corporate bullying, compromised democracy, and environmental degradation, Neil's not so much standing up for the embattled farmer as embodying the withered voice of one.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the sound of the album hearkens back to Neil's immediate post-Harvest period, a time when the narrative concision and electric-guitar savagery of his early work was giving way to a certain fuck-it-all sloppiness and sundazed cynicism. His amped-up backing band for this set, the Promise of the Real (fronted by Willie Nelson's sons Lukas and, when performing live, Micah), never approaches the trance-inducing psychedelia of Crazy Horse, but they make for a solid Stray Gators substitute, encouraging the sort of rough'n'tumble rave-ups and slack-rock jams that defined early '70s detours like Time Fades Away. The appealing looseness of their performances proves to be the saving grace of an album too often hamstrung by heartfelt but hackneyed messaging.
While the loping, whistle-hooked "A Rock Star Bucks a Coffee Shop" and cowpunk stomp "Workin' Man" playfully highlight the absurdity of Monsanto's strong-arm tactics, extendo-rants like "Big Box" forsake the rich characterization of Neil's most incisive social commentaries for worn-out catchphrases ("too big to fail"), broadstroked scenery ("Main Street's boarded up") and the blunt simplicity of a Change.org pitch ("people working part-time at Wal-Mart/ never get the benefits"). The album's preference for critique over craft is epitomized by the awkward ubiquity of the very word "Monsanto," which is wedged into several songs even when Neil can't be bothered to find anything to rhyme with it. (On the otherwise poignant seven-minute title track, a breezy "Mambo Sun" groove is tripped up by each utterance of the company name, delivered with all the grave weightiness of a movie villain appearing to the sound of dun-dun-dun.)
With much of the songwriting on The Monsanto Years taking the form of hastily scribbled screeds, the most revelatory moments come when Neil grapples with the paradox of making complex politics more pop-song palatable. The album's most immediately engaging track—the raggedly glorious "People Want to Hear About Love"— isn't a protest song but a song about protest songs. Sure, its call-and-response structure provides Neil with another opportunity to check off all of his key talking points: the fragility of the environment, political corruption, the link between pesticides and autism, and so on. At the same time, it shrewdly addresses those concerns within the context of a more existential dilemma: that is, in a cultural landscape craving feel-good entertainment, The Monsanto Years' brand of straight-shootin' rock'n'roll activism is going to be a tougher sell than a Pono. | 2015-06-30T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2015-06-30T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Reprise | June 30, 2015 | 5.2 | 38f8da17-e0f7-4e1f-a3bb-8e31a6593a35 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
Featuring YOB bassist Aaron Riesberg, Too Many Winters is a welcome throwback, taking cues from ’80s power and doom metal in a way that is actually refreshing. | Featuring YOB bassist Aaron Riesberg, Too Many Winters is a welcome throwback, taking cues from ’80s power and doom metal in a way that is actually refreshing. | Norska: Too Many Winters | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23296-too-many-winters/ | Too Many Winters | Mixing doom metal and noise rock was prevalent in the mid-2000s—when classic Amphetamine Reptile had as much cultural cachet as classic Earache—but it is somewhat of a relic even now. However, this is the mode of Portland’s Norska, who are mostly known as a side band for YOB bassist Aaron Rieseberg, which is why their recording history is sporadic. Too Many Winters, their second full-length following a split with Fister and a self-titled record, isn’t rife with reinvention, yet still shows Norska as a capable band who wield from familiar—and a few not-so-familiar—sources.
Both YOB and Norska are adept in stretching their energy out through spaced out, hammering thrusts. The doomier tracks that comprise most of the album are as potent as the more raging “Samhain” and “Eostre.” If anything, “Samhain” is where spindly guitar patterns and crushing doom coexist best with each other, especially in its first verse riff that’s weighted enough to roll with Portland’s Orange-Amp orators, yet flexible to bend into something more jangle. Winters’ key strength is that it doesn’t overstay its welcome; those 37 minutes fly by even by doom standards. Its economy is necessary—had they leaned even just an inch more towards the doom side, it would be too plodding, too lost. Even when they turn nearly ambient in the middle of closer “Fire Patience Backbone,” it doesn’t detract from the flow. When they come tearing back in towards the end, it’s all the more furious.
Norska takes cues from ’80s power and doom metal that aren’t immediately evident, but are enough to set them apart. Jim Lowder’s voice soars towards the end of “Samhain,” and combined with backing vocals, it sounds like Manilla Road arranging gang vocals. Expansive yet rough-edged, it elevates what is normally a stylistic tribute to a past not that long ago, while still grounded enough to not conflict with their more earthbound rawness. Even before Lowder’s vocals kick in, the guitar on “Samhain” turns from Jesus Lizard-worship into more classic Thin Lizzy leads, interlocking melodies that lift spirits. In the title track and “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” Lowder morphs his roar into a bellow, and with an airier guitar when he does so, Norska turn into Candlemass recorded from a distance. While Norska is mostly known in relation to YOB, Lowder carries most of the weight on here, motioning different directions with his vocals. Among bands of this style, cribbing from Neurosis is so common that taking influence from more traditional metal is actually refreshing.
If metal was increasingly multifaceted nearly a decade ago when it came back into critical prominence (and it always has been, even with a few dominating bands), it’s even more so now. Norska’s particular band has been swept away by an increased focus on death metal, less clear-cut forms of experimentation, more traditional ’80s revivals, and even synthwave bands with legit claims to metal. Winters may be a bit behind the times, but it’s well-executed enough to starve off any lingering nostalgia for Scion Rock Fest. | 2017-06-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-06-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Brutal Panda | June 12, 2017 | 7.2 | 38faca33-dbd8-4c18-84dc-edd15ebf1267 | Andy O'Connor | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-o'connor/ | null |
The incarcerated Watts rapper’s latest is a loosely movie-themed collaboration with producer-of-the-moment Kenny Beats. | The incarcerated Watts rapper’s latest is a loosely movie-themed collaboration with producer-of-the-moment Kenny Beats. | 03 Greedo / Kenny Beats: Netflix & Deal | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/03-greedo-kenny-beats-netflix-and-deal/ | Netflix & Deal | As 03 Greedo’s 20-year prison bid continues, so too does his bid to remain relevant. He stashed a lot of music away in anticipation of a long hibernation, and his latest is Netflix & Deal, a 13-track collaborative tape with rising producer Kenny Beats. Greedo said that the project is based on movies he watched while he was dealing, and you only have to be half-paying attention to know he meant that literally. These are songs very loosely inspired by his streaming queue, usually about or related to selling drugs in some way. It isn’t the strongest work from either artist, but the white EDM DJ turned rap producer and the face-tatted trap rapper from Watts make a good odd couple.
Greedo leaned heavily on his melodies for Still Summer in the Projects, but from the rapid-fire mumbles of “Traffic” to the staggered chants of “Aye Twin,” his raps are center stage here. Greedo has said that making music isn’t a conscious process for him, but this time he at least had some external stimuli: he would watch scenes from his favorite movies on his phone in the studio and then hop in the booth to apply them to his raps.
The tape does enough to earn its title, but some of the duo’s most impressive connections come when they aren’t trying to make good on its premise. Greedo remains one of the best rappers working, even behind bars, and his style is all-purpose: “Payback” flips Big Tymers’ “Still Fly” into a stunter’s anthem, while he pairs off with Maxo Kream for some respect-the-shooter flaunting on “Beg Your Pardon.”
Kenny Beats has a way of punching up a rapper’s sound without losing his own: adding more bite to Rico Nasty’s mosh-raps, bringing suavity to Freddie Gibbs's pusher chronicles, warping Atlanta trap for outsider Key!, pushing Vince Staples toward the bounce of SoCal radio. But Greedo told him to set all the “Greedo shit” he’d prepared to the side and give him something else. It’s clear he wanted to branch out in as many directions as possible in his limited time —as he puts it in the making-of doc, “You gotta show ‘em as hard as you would’ve been, in a short period of time.” Thus, Kenny lets Greedo rummage through his recent releases like a kid at a Redbox kiosk. Freddie, Key!, and Vince all appear, and it’s a bit like binging the last two years of Kenny Beats with Greedo offering director’s commentary.
The vibe is more couch potato than cinephile, and the tape works because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are Home Alone bars, some character-actor bars you’d expect (Blow’s George Jung) and some you wouldn’t (Stitch from the animated Disney franchise), bars running through the Brad Pitt IMDb, and rapper-movie inception bars (in which Greedo thinks he’s Paid in Full’s Rico, a character played by Cam’ron). Songs like “Blue People” and “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” construct entire snappy hooks out of nothing more than titles. With Netflix & Chill, 03 Greedo and Kenny Beats never try to make a movie; they’re content to be distracted and charmed by them, and that preoccupation becomes contagious. | 2019-12-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-12-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Alamo | December 5, 2019 | 7.5 | 38fad192-f82a-40d7-89f9-433e28272aaa | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | |
As Voices From the Lake, Italian producers Donato Dozzy and Neel reinvent typical techno structures wholesale. Rarely can an album be this intimidatingly detailed, warmly inviting, and totally indifferent. | As Voices From the Lake, Italian producers Donato Dozzy and Neel reinvent typical techno structures wholesale. Rarely can an album be this intimidatingly detailed, warmly inviting, and totally indifferent. | Voices From the Lake: Voices From the Lake | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16357-voices-from-the-lake/ | Voices From the Lake | Since its inception, Munich's Prologue label and its stable of artists have been associated with a brand of techno focused on deep wells of subterranean rumbling and liquid synth washes, an ambient, texture-oriented sound once dubbed "headfuck techno" and that has become ubiquitous. Prologue has a secret weapon in Donato Dozzy, whose own productions could range from relatively chugging techno ("Menta"), pastoral daydreams (his remix of Tin Man's "Nonneo"), and any manner of ambient synth kosmische material. His Voices From the Lake project is a collaboration with fellow Italian Neel, and solves Prologue's predictability problem by reinventing typical techno structures wholesale.
Voices From the Lake emerged in 2010 as the name for a semi-anonymous Neel mix, proffering up more than an hour of elegantly paced ambient techno. The moniker appeared on Prologue last year with a four-track EP of spiritually throbbing techno. Their self-titled album is the fruit of a live set worked up by the duo played at Japan's infamous Labyrinth, the mountain-set festival with which Dozzy has long been associated, and removes most of the conventional techno signifiers of both contributors' past work in favor of a webbed crawl that takes trance's steady chug and applies it to a new-agey palette of discrete, delicate textures.
Kick drum? What's that? The first thing you'll notice about Voices From the Lake is that it seems to be made out of meticulously detailed glass shards, a brittle and dissolute sort of rhythm that forms out of synchronous elliptical patterns rather than the rigid time signatures of techno. There's a pulse there, but it's soft and hidden, like you'd have to peel back a thousand layers to get closer to these songs' beating heart. The result is something that sounds strangely alive and heavily dynamic, where patterns shift and forms morph so subtly and patiently that it's hard to tell exactly what's going on at any moment, like a fractal that actually changes shape as you go further down to its core. This gives the album an unusual flow that feels like stationary floating in space, 70 minutes of beautifully constructed breathing music so painstaking you can't tell where one track begins and another ends if you aren't watching your music player: It just is.
That's not to say Voices From the Lake doesn't change over its running time, because dip your fingers into the world music vortex of "Vega" and then look to the submerged rave of "Twins in Virgo", and you'll find yourself in two very different wading pools of bubbling beats. There is one defining moment on Voices that stands out above all others, the pair's rework of the previously-released Dozzy track "S.T.". After almost 30 minutes of percolation and vibration, a single bassline emerges, a gently ascending and descending chord progression that harbors an unusual impact for something that sounds so airy and ephemeral. Those particulate low frequencies flood the canvas of a work painted mostly in dot matrix with broad strokes of emotion.
In terms of taking "techno" to unconventional extremes of sound design and structure, Voices From the Lake most immediately recalls Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer's exhaustive Re: ECM double album from last year, but Voices has more emotional resonance and a rhythmic plot that feels more inviting, even if it's no less difficult to figure out. But barring that mid-album explosion of melody, this is a record that eschews the politics of techno linearity, replacing the rise-rise-rise-rise-peak-blowout-descend progression with one that puts all the tension and shift into pockets and sounds so small that it sounds more like a vibrant ecosystem of microorganisms than "beats."
Voices From the Lake is a triumph of care and exactitude, the kind of well-executed work of art that feels effortless despite its obvious complexity. Rarely can an album be this intimidatingly detailed, warmly inviting, and totally indifferent. In its seeming quest to map out rhythm to an unimaginable infinity, Voices From the Lake manages to be everything at once: It's some of the most inventive techno in ages, it's some of the prettiest ambient you'll hear on any German techno label, and it's a unique kind of entrancing that would feel hokey if it weren't so undeniably attractive. | 2012-03-23T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2012-03-23T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Electronic | Prologue | March 23, 2012 | 8.2 | 38fae3b1-8bcc-4755-8687-38ec4fb989e2 | Andrew Ryce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andrew-ryce/ | null |
Veteran Montreal DJ Kid Koala steps away from the turntables for an album of cosmic-themed ambient pop, assisted by Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini. | Veteran Montreal DJ Kid Koala steps away from the turntables for an album of cosmic-themed ambient pop, assisted by Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini. | Kid Koala / Emiliana Torrini: Music to Draw to: Satellite | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22750-music-to-draw-to-satellite/ | Music to Draw to: Satellite | Kid Koala rose to fame in the early ’00s as a DJ, or what today might more accurately be called a turntablist. His skill set is decidedly a traditional one: scratching, beat juggling, manipulating vinyl in real time. His signature move—adjusting the pitch of individual notes by hand in order to coax warped, theremin-like sounds out of records—extends the metaphor of turntable-as-instrument further than just about any other DJ has managed. Still, he’s known as much for his mixes as for his technique. Well before artists like Girl Talk popularized the idea of mashups, Koala was playing genre-bending, sample-heavy live sets, some of which were opening gigs for the likes of Radiohead, Björk, and DJ Shadow. Yet, despite considerable success as a DJ, he’s always seemed artistically restless, collaborating with everyone from Amon Tobin to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, joining supergroups like Deltron 3030 and even penning comics and graphic novels.
Given how melodic his playing is, it was probably only a matter of time before Koala walked away from the decks in order to try his hand at conventional instruments. 2011’s Space Cadet: Original Still Picture Score was a step in this direction; while it was composed in part on turntables, its melodies rely heavily on his own piano, bass and viola playing. Music to Draw to: Satellite represents an even bigger departure for Koala: Its songs are composed entirely on guitar, bass and synth with only occasional vinyl flourishes. What’s more, he's brought in hushed Icelandic singer Emiliana Torrini to add vocals to his compositions, a first.
Music to Draw to: Satellite takes its name from a series of events that Koala convened in Montréal and elsewhere, where he played slower-paced, less beat-oriented records and invited attendees to draw. In keeping with that idea, the album consists largely of compositions that blend ambient pop and post-rock, punctuated by electro-pop numbers that bubble without boiling over. Many of these songs are underpinned by languid basslines and glacial synth melodies. Almost none feature percussion.
This is all relatively new terrain for Koala and the majority of these tracks feel a bit tentative, more like experiments or sketches than fully fleshed-out songs. “Novachord” and “Adrift” are slow dirges that evoke celestial motion, all sustained organ chords, backwards loops and in the latter, a plodding beat that sounds like a the clicking hands of a grandfather clock. “Apoapsis” recalls the minimalist synthscapes of early Lullatone, just two simple melodies that interlock to form a soothing lullaby. “The Hubble Constant” breaks the mold by leading with dissonance: its throbbing bassline will rattle your speakers, though the low-end is gradually overpowered by a field of twinkling synth tones.
Torrini sings on seven of the album’s 18 tracks, and these veer much closer to electro-pop, so much so that they often feel at odds with the album’s ambient focus. Take the arpeggio-driven “Collapser”: while it’s undoubtedly one of the prettiest, catchiest songs on the record, it also sounds as if it could have been cribbed from the Postal Service. Many of the lyrics that Torrini sings on the album—most of which were written by Koala—could also benefit from some refinement. Torrini is no stranger to saccharine lyrics in her own work, but many of these (literally stargazing) lines feel especially precious (“When we lay there, side-by-side/Watching stars shine bright like keyholes in the sky,” “Oh, you rustle up the stardust in my head”).
Even if most of these songs don’t feel totally polished, nearly all are brimming with little sonic details that remind us of Koala’s ability to craft evocative sounds: scratches that swoosh past like gusts of wind, noises that clatter like machinery, garbled chatter that sounds like it’s being beamed in from a faraway satellite. It’s in these small moments that Koala leverages his greatest strengths. Take, for instance, his subtle scratching on tracks like “Fallaway,” which hint at the finespun avant-turntablism of Fog’s Ether Teeth. Listening to Music to Draw to: Satellite, it’s hard not to wish that Koala would lean just a bit more on his core skills, though there’s admittedly something admirable about his willingness to be seen as a novice, rather than a master. | 2017-01-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-01-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic / Jazz / Pop/R&B | Arts & Crafts | January 18, 2017 | 6.3 | 3901cbc7-0936-4e0f-89a8-a9048e1b2a0a | Mehan Jayasuriya | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mehan-jayasuriya/ | null |
Suck on This is a teaser for an upcoming full-length from the South African rap trio, but more often than not these days, Die Antwoord comes off as tired and trying way too hard. | Suck on This is a teaser for an upcoming full-length from the South African rap trio, but more often than not these days, Die Antwoord comes off as tired and trying way too hard. | Die Antwoord: Suck on This | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21976-suck-on-this/ | Suck on This | *Suck on This *is presented to us as a stopgap for Die Antwoord’s fourth studio album, We Have Candy. MC Ninja teases the record in an interlude where he mimics geek king Napoleon Dynamite, a cultural reference so dated and worn-out that 12 years have passed and it still feels too soon to revive it. It's a neat stand-in for the South African rap trio and troll merchants Die Antwoord themselves: They may have started this act with the intention of discomfiting us and making us think, but in 2016, they are merely wearisome.
Even though it’s hard to erase the shock rap-rave South African group’s rat-infested, toilet-sitting, loogie-hocking videos from your memory (we’ve tried), it has been two years since they released their last album, Donker Mag, so here’s a refresher: Ninja and Yolandi Vi$$er embrace “zef,” a philosophy that encourages intentional vulgarity. In doing so, they’ve created a body of work that at times can be engaging. Even now, it’s hard not to be riveted by 2010’s “Zef Side”—there’s that slow-mo of Ninja’s knock-kneed thrusts that send his flaccid penis flopping around in his Dark Side of the Moon shorts; there’s Yolandi’s severe mullet, her awkward dancing and alien-like visage. In the ensuing years, however, we’ve become inured to Twitter trolls and ALL CAP$ personalities. More often than not these days, Die Antwoord comes off as tired and trying way too hard.
In a 2012 interview about their sophomore album Ten$ion, Die Antwoord said their issues with Interscope stemmed from the label urging them to “be more generic.” This is an ironic claim, for it's precisely what plagues *Suck on This, *their first mixtape since being liberated from their contract. While the tape includes new material along with remixes of old songs, the whole thing sounds like a retread. Nothing here is as bad as Ninja’s nasally chorus on Ten$ion’s opening track “Never Le Nkemise 1” or the unlistenable Uncle Jimmy skit, but maybe “boring” is a worse criticism than “bad.”
Sure, there are moments here that you can imagine playing well to festival crowds: If you close your eyes during the drops on “Gucci Coochie,” you can practically see the rows of shirtless bros and underbutt-showing girls in the Sahara tent at Coachella losing their minds. The best production is on the slinky, simmering “Bum Bum,” but Ninja’s line, “Bed wet, legs spread, big mess everywhere” is such a profoundly gross visual that you will be lunging for the skip button.
When it’s all said and done, the remixes are the most interesting tracks on Suck on This and God (fka DJ Hi-Tek) especially squeezes some life out of Die Antwoord’s most popular songs. He pumps “I Fink You Freaky” full of steroids, bumping up Letterman’s favorite song to a vein-popping, eyes-bulging, steam-spouting cartoon. The last 45 seconds reach such berserk Road Runner-levels, you wonder if he’s making fun of electro trap. If so, he’s beating Ninja and Yolandi at their own game. At this point, it all—even the letter that accompanied *Suck on This *claiming they didn’t know what a mixtape was—feels too contrived to be enjoyable. Maybe We Have Candy will surprise us and swerve far left, but if not, Die Antwoord’s getting muted. | 2016-06-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | ZEF | June 2, 2016 | 5 | 39077b76-52aa-4c2c-a63c-a982cd6c75d1 | Rebecca Haithcoat | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rebecca- haithcoat/ | null |
Following the blues influences of his last solo album, the K Records founder’s new record offers a restless pastiche of primitive rock’n’roll, rockabilly, cowpoke ditties, and living-room dub. | Following the blues influences of his last solo album, the K Records founder’s new record offers a restless pastiche of primitive rock’n’roll, rockabilly, cowpoke ditties, and living-room dub. | Calvin Johnson: Gallows Wine | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/calvin-johnson-gallows-wine/ | Gallows Wine | K Records impresario Calvin Johnson tried the solo singer-songwriter thing for a while, but that’s not usually how people prefer to hear him. Anybody who caught one of Johnson’s acoustic coffeeshop sets around the release of his 2002 solo debut, What Was Me, might have been struck by how uncomfortably bare they could be. Johnson’s performances, heavy on a cappella, longed for some accompaniment to temper the intensity of his brutalist baritone and unblinking gaze. Some presences are just too overpowering to take in unadorned.
Johnson’s most beloved work was recorded within the conceptual framework of a band: the lovelorn pop of Beat Happening, the galactic rock of the Halo Benders, the kitchen-sink dance of Dub Narcotic Sound System. Johnson’s fairytale giant voice fares better when paired with an equally unusual instrumental accompaniment, and his subsequent solo albums have swapped What Was Me’s austere intimacy for more varied and lively arrangements.
For 2018’s A Wonderful Beast, he teamed with the Black Keys’ Patrick Carney for a pinball-machine reimagining of a blues-rock record. Some of those blues influences carry through to his new follow-up, Gallows Wine, but this time they’re just one of many modes that Johnson toggles between as part of a restless pastiche of primitive rock’n’roll, rockabilly, cowpoke ditties, and living-room dub. Recorded in Columbus, Mississippi, with the psych outfit Hartle Road, the album replaces Carney’s modernist thump with the straight-to-tape sensibilities of the earliest Sun Records releases.
In its dedication to direct songwriting and bygone strains of oldies, Gallows Wine can feel kindred to Jonathan Richman’s crooned homages to the teen music of yesteryear. Johnson even drops a “She’s my baby and I don’t mean maybe” on the closing “Crazy Legs.” But while Richman’s voice and demeanor continue to exude earnest, youthful wonder in his golden years, Johnson’s presence is more mischievous.
On Gallows Wine, he giddily indulges his most pranksterish impulses. The spaghetti western kitsch of “Tony Deano” descends into sheer camp while “Blues (We Got ‘Em)” sets old-timey blues tropes against skronky swing that grows more volatile by the verse. Johnson’s usual confrontational edge is on full display, but he offsets it with jolts of levity. The instrumental “Orange Aid” casts his huffing melodica solos against dizzying funk, while the garage rocker “A Walk in the Sun” lays down a go-go tempo so infectious it makes even Johnson’s leaden voice sound light on its toes.
Johnson’s Dub Narcotic records took similar pleasure in drilling into disparate styles, but that group’s grab-bag sensibilities felt part and parcel with the ’90s, a time when acts like Beastie Boys and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion excavated old record crates in search of unlikely currents of cool. The muses on Gallows Wine, in contrast, are so unexpected, so divorced from any possible notions of hipness, that the project stands out even in Johnson’s idiosyncratic discography. It’s one of his most esoteric, uninhibited albums, and after four decades of indulging novel whims, that’s really saying something. | 2023-04-10T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-04-10T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Rock | K | April 10, 2023 | 6.8 | 39080592-5194-4ab8-9312-f1f4186a977a | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | |
On her third LP for Hausu Mountain, the Chicago experimental musician amps up the extremes of her work: It’s more crushing than ever, yet it features moments as tranquil as anything in her catalog. | On her third LP for Hausu Mountain, the Chicago experimental musician amps up the extremes of her work: It’s more crushing than ever, yet it features moments as tranquil as anything in her catalog. | Fire-Toolz: Rainbow Bridge | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fire-toolz-rainbow-bridge/ | Rainbow Bridge | The music that the Chicago experimenter Angel Marcloid makes as Fire-Toolz exists somewhere at the fuzzy border between peace and pandemonium. Across the handful of albums she’s released under that name over the last half-decade, she’s made room for moments of blissed-out digital ambience, technical death-metal fantasias, glitch-scoured noise, and glossy AM radio jazz—often all slammed together within a few bars. It can feel like mayhem, but Marcloid insists her songwriting has never been self-consciously designed that way. She told AllMusic that over the last few years, her music has emerged from “a much more peaceful place,” even if it comes out gnarled and complex. “I might be making something about a serene meadow, but […] to someone who just listens to it, it might shatter their world temporarily,” she says. “That’s just how it’s going to have to be.”
On Rainbow Bridge, her third Fire-Toolz album for Chicago’s Hausu Mountain, she maintains this head-spinning approach, doubling down on the extremes of her music. It’s somehow more crushing and complex than anything she’s done as under the moniker, but it’s also full of moments as tranquil and bright as anything she’s offered in her catalog. It’s a strange balance, but it’s true to the spirit of the Fire-Toolz project as a whole, which is full of pieces that feel like they’re being torn apart as Marcloid’s impulses go galloping off in different directions.
The record begins in tumult with the double-kick battery of the concussive, minute-long “Gnosis .•o°Ozing.” It is bleak, bruising, and brief, but it also contains a few glimmers of an ascendant synth lead, which lends even this short, violent intro a surprising emotional complexity; there’s a sort of hopefulness embedded in its punishment. On “(((Ever-Widening Rings)))” she unleashes a series of terrifying screams over a shuffling synth piece that sounds not entirely unlike a Peter Gabriel instrumental. Marcloid has said that her fascination with metal began with proggy groups like Dream Theater and Fates Warning, bands that were more about world-building than brutality. The heavier moments on Rainbow Bridge seem designed with the same purpose in mind. They may be more transparently metal than anything Marcloid has done to date, but she’s not just trying to pummel you, she’s presenting complicated emotions for a complicated world. It’s a careful, considered exploration of a vein that’s run through her music from the very beginning.
The slower moments of Rainbow Bridge are no less engaging. Tracks like “Dreamy #ex Code” evoke both the dizzy mysticism of new-age music and the burpy psychedelia of Animal Collective’s early collage experiments, while others draw on the humid jazz riffing that informed Marcloid’s record as Nonlocal Forecast. Even if any given moment is crammed with sounds, the record gives a lot of space to the serenity that she says informs her work. The record’s closer, “{Screamographic Memory}” is perhaps the most purely placid thing in her catalog: a collection of bell-like synth tones stretching and seeping into one another. It’s sweet and sunny, about as far from the thunderous terror that opens the record as you could imagine getting.
Rainbow Bridge was made in part as a reflection on the death of Marcloid’s cat Breakfast, which explains in part the way the record swings back and forth between beauty and cacophony. Marcloid’s work as Fire-Toolz has always been about the way that these two emotional poles can coexist, but the way we deal with death is especially complicated. Even the most intense grief is braided with moments of peace and clarity, the beautiful memories of a life well-lived. Rainbow Bridge mirrors the intensity and the confusion of these experiences and shows that even in the direst times, it’s possible to find comfort.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-05-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-05-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Hausu Mountain | May 8, 2020 | 7.5 | 39109752-4414-44cc-ad43-366847efff3d | Colin Joyce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-joyce/ | |
The Compton-based, Dr. Dre-affiliated rapper steps out with a pop-rap debut that puts a futuristic spin on 90s alt-rap. | The Compton-based, Dr. Dre-affiliated rapper steps out with a pop-rap debut that puts a futuristic spin on 90s alt-rap. | Kendrick Lamar: Section.80 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15653-section80/ | Section.80 | Kendrick Lamar is a weird kid, and rap music could always use more weird kids. The 24-year-old is a Compton native with a budding and mysterious Dr. Dre connection, but there's little-to-no link to his hometown's gangsta-funk legacy in his music. Instead, Lamar is very much a product of the late blog-rap era-- an introverted loner type who's willing to talk tough but is more interested in taking a Mag-Lite to his own personal failings and what he sees as the flaws of his generation. His rap style is fluid and melodic but approachable, and his frantic tumble of syllables evokes the feeling when you're high enough that your thoughts arrive fast and interrupt each other. If one of the Bone Thugs guys had a dorky, overly sincere younger cousin who was really into Afrobeat and Terrence Malick movies, it'd be Kendrick.
Lamar does exist within a strong West Coast continuum, but it has nothing to do with Dre. Instead, he's very much within the tradition of 90s groups like Souls of Mischief or the Pharcyde-- self-deprecating and insanely talented kids who routinely ripped dizzy, slip-sliding flows over mellow jazz breaks. Section.80, Lamar's new album, arrives on a wave of blog-based buzz, but beyond a couple of ill-advised choruses, it doesn't make much attempt to present Lamar to major-label A&Rs or to a wider audience. Instead, it gives him a chance to chase his muse wherever it runs. The production, mostly from relative unknowns like THC and Sounwave, is almost uniformly excellent-- a spaced-out blur of astral horns and blissed-out Fender Rhodes, with drums that only knock when they need to. A couple of guys from Lamar's Black Hippy crew-- those guys really sound like Souls of Mischief when they get together-- show up, but the album isn't a guest-heavy affair. It's a young thinker attempting to describe the world as he sees it.
"You know why we crack babies cuz we born in the 80s," Lamar raps on the excellently emo relationship-song "A.D.H.D.", and that's a theme that comes up over and over. Everywhere he looks, Lamar sees generational symptoms of the kids who came from the era of crack and Ronald Reagan. When he looks around, Lamar sees self-hate, nihilism, institutionalized oppression. When he talks to girls, he sometimes recalls the supportively sincere Goodie Mob of "Beautiful Skin", actually counseling against cosmetics on "No Make-Up (Her Vice)": "Don't you know your imperfections is a wonderful blessing?/ From heaven is where you got it from." (Somehow, the redundant double-"from" makes the sentiment all the more adorable.) And he also recognizes self-destructive tendencies in himself: "I used to wanna see the penitentiary way after elementary/ Thought it was cool to look the judge in the face when he sentenced me." But it's not like he's some preacher/prophet figure; he says "suck my dick" often enough that it gets boring.
Given that Lamar is a talented and earnest young man with a lot to say and no big label nudging his music toward accessibility, it's only natural that he'd lose his way every once in a while. Section.80 is an hour long, and it could drop probably a quarter of its running time without anyone missing anything. And certain moments just make me wince so hard, like this one, from "Hol' Up": "I wrote this record while 30,000 feet in the air/ Stewardess complimenting me on my nappy hair/ If I could fuck her in front of all these passengers/ They'd probably think I'm a terrorist." Those few lines add up to a repellent cauldron of horniness, persecution-complex fantasies, exhibitionism, and plain old youthful Bad Idea Jeans indulgence. Dre hasn't yet taught Lamar how to hone all his best ideas into a few absolutely killer pieces of music; maybe he still will. But self-serious flaws and all, Section.80 still stands as a powerful document of a tremendously promising young guy figuring out his voice. Its best moments ("Rigamortis", "HiiiPower", "Kush & Corinthians", "A.D.H.D.") are simply dope as fuck, no qualifiers necessary. | 2011-07-21T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2011-07-21T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Top Dawg Entertainment | July 21, 2011 | 8 | 39109be5-1169-409f-b3f0-21be8273a7fa | Tom Breihan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tom-breihan/ | null |
Three tracks from the singer-songwriter’s Little Oblivions sessions further detail her dread, suffering, and sadness with great beauty and little reprieve. | Three tracks from the singer-songwriter’s Little Oblivions sessions further detail her dread, suffering, and sadness with great beauty and little reprieve. | Julien Baker: B-Sides EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/julien-baker-b-sides-ep/ | B-Sides EP | Julien Baker’s music is all calamity. Scenes of suffering are laid so bare that they seem to serve as confessionals, a way of unburdening them while seeking higher ground. Dating back to her 2015 debut, Sprained Ankle, Baker has depicted emotional wreckage in excruciating detail, recalling weekday mornings blackout drunk or lonely conversations with a god she’s not sure she still believes in. Baker’s been open about her mental health struggles and history of substance abuse, but her songs need no out-of-frame context to land their gut punches. On last year’s Little Oblivions, her raw sound was blown out dramatically, adding piano, distorted drums, and banjo to her songs of self-destruction. It’s a gorgeous and impressive record, a gauntlet to get through. Baker’s voice conveys such anguish that even when her writing includes traces of optimism, her despair is deep enough to drown in.
The three songs on her new B-Sides EP were recorded during the Little Oblivions sessions and, apart from the acoustic guitar-backed “Guthrie,” could slot right into the album. In fact, “Vanishing Point” and “Mental Math” would have been indie-pop standouts on Little Oblivions. She’s at her most undone on “Vanishing Point,” turning off the headlights in her car, wishing to be “impaled on the pass.” Baker ends the song on a long-suffering note: “Don’t feel bad, I’ve always been too far down to rеach/And I was long, long gone before you got to me.” A devastating admission, to be sure, but there’s a certain clarity that comes only by wringing yourself dry.
The EP’s other highlight, “Mental Math,” describes a relationship on life support. Over a double guitar riff and four-on-the-floor kick, Baker balances quiet revelations (“You say you never had a good night's sleep/Any of the nights you spent with me”) with jarring images (“Hanging on a ledge, outside of your house/Trying not to freak out, staring at the ground/Doing math in my head, how far is it down?”). All the while, Baker’s narrator scrutinizes her motives and actions, identifying pride and a lack of patience as barriers to connection. Like Little Oblivions, the songs on B-Sides EP sound like snapshots from the most difficult day of your life, overwrought yet moving elegies about surviving through what almost killed you.
Even across three songs, Baker’s lack of levity is draining. On Sprained Ankle and Turn Out the Lights, moments of humor occasionally opened a porthole to redemption, offering a glimpse into a space unburdened by totalizing pain. B-Sides EP is less forgiving. “Used to call upon the spirit, now I think heaven lets it ring/Wanted so bad to be good/But there's no such thing,” she concludes on the brutally sad “Guthrie.” Without resilience, these songs can sag into themselves, but this isn’t music meant for direct-line healing. Baker’s songwriting captures the feeling of being at the bottom, where language fails and every thought hurts—a place that probably feels a little like oblivion. | 2022-07-26T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-07-26T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Matador | July 26, 2022 | 7.3 | 391750a0-af5e-4df1-bff8-f78b1016063d | Brady Brickner-Wood | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brady-brickner-wood/ | |
Meltframe is a solo guitar album of covers from Mary Halvorson, one of the most exciting musicians making jazz today. It's an adventurous record, both in her song choices and her interpretive playing. In her dexterity, Halvorson acts as a bridge between the jazz of the past and the jazz of the future. | Meltframe is a solo guitar album of covers from Mary Halvorson, one of the most exciting musicians making jazz today. It's an adventurous record, both in her song choices and her interpretive playing. In her dexterity, Halvorson acts as a bridge between the jazz of the past and the jazz of the future. | Mary Halvorson: Meltframe | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21027-meltframe/ | Meltframe | Mary Halvorson owns one of the more easily identifiable guitar sounds you will encounter, in any genre. That is partly due to an ingenious effect: a delay pedal that she uses as a startling, mid-note pitch-shifter. But if she didn’t have anything to offer beyond that novelty, her playing wouldn’t sustain the three modern jazz groups she currently heads (a trio, a quintet and a septet), as well as her sought-after work in various other ensembles—including two different bands led by jazz guitar luminary and occasional Tom Waits sideman Marc Ribot. With her quick, experimentalist’s mind, Halvorson resembles the great composer, saxophonist and teacher Anthony Braxton (an early instructor of hers, with whom she still collaborates). On her new album Meltframe, a set of guitar covers, she is simultaneously employing two suggestions from her former professor’s syllabus: develop a solo act, and don’t forget to engage with the past.
Halvorson is well respected in the jazz community for the speed with which she can conceive of strong ideas. In the midst of a fleet improvisation you might hear her becoming progressively enamored of some small portion of a given melody, selecting it for additional repetition within the flow of a solo. Next, she’s slowing the tempo and turning the fragment into a rollicking vamp, while switching her amplifier’s tone. As you’re appreciating the rhythmic change, you may not immediately notice that she’s also creating a new path back toward the full theme. But when she returns to the original hook, the culmination is as satisfying as any single effect she may have used for punctuation along the way.
Meltframe’s tracklist was refined during her stint as the opener for an acoustic tour by King Buzzo of the Melvins. If at first it seems like a self-consciously idiosyncratic grab bag (Duke Ellington and Ornette Coleman?), as usual, Halvorson has a plan. She links these two composers in the album’s sequencing via mournful tune-selection, but uses different methods of attack to preserve a distinction. Slide-playing and tuning quirks grace her performance of Coleman’s "Sadness" (while recalling something of the composer’s own "harmolodics" concept). Then, she slows Duke’s "Solitude" way down, using a delicate reverb to provide the sparest of pulses. Her playing shines in both performances. Nor is a conceptual subtlety the only thing Meltframe has going for it. The opening number is a finger-busting, grungy take on Oliver Nelson’s "Cascades"—a song aptly titled, given its quickly swooping figures. Those familiar with Nelson’s soulful hard-bop sound may be tempted to wrinkle a nose at the interpretive move, here, but they shouldn’t: Halvorson’s recourse to the distortion pedal successfully underlines what an imposing riff-writer this composer was. A high energy approach also predominates during the back half of Halvorson’s exciting reinterpretation of McCoy Tyner’s "Aisha" (which features on the John Coltrane album Olé Coltrane).
Halvorson also tosses recent pieces by contemporaries like Tomas Fujiwara and Chris Lightcap into her mix. These cuts don’t always carry the melodic jolt of the certified classics, but Halvorson’s performances show how today’s jazz still works with an awareness of popular textures, including indie rock (as with the noisy drone section she creates when playing Lightcap’s "Platform"). Surely, Halvorson’s most personal statements are still found on the albums where her own compositions rule. Though by liquefying some of the curatorial borders that surround jazz in the popular imagination, Meltframe refocuses our attention on an essential malleability that is the genre’s core tradition. | 2015-09-17T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2015-09-17T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Jazz | Firehouse 12 | September 17, 2015 | 8 | 391cc527-e269-4411-8d2a-1611f5c73603 | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | null |
Nearly twenty years later, Wolfgang Voigt’s records under the GAS alias still assault our presumptions about electronic music. How can music that seems to be monotonous convey such beauty and clarity? | Nearly twenty years later, Wolfgang Voigt’s records under the GAS alias still assault our presumptions about electronic music. How can music that seems to be monotonous convey such beauty and clarity? | GAS: BOX | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22555-gas-box/ | BOX | Earlier this summer, a story began to circulate about “Shinrin-yoku,” a coinage created by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in the early ’80s that basically translates as “forest bathing.” It’s not hiking or trail exploring per se (nor is it, as the name might suggest, stripping naked and bathing in a pile of leaves), so much as it is a meditation that provide its bathers “an opportunity to slow down, appreciate things that can only be seen or heard when one is moving slowly,” as one guide put it. He expects it to be a trend not unlike yoga in the future. Naturally, the documentation is sparse on the health benefits of “forest bathing,” though researchers have focused on the phytoncides given off by the plants, the so-called “aroma of the forest.”
The emergence of “Shinrin-yoku” dovetails nicely with the most recent reissues of Wolfgang Voigt’s GAS project. It, too, draws on the image of the forest and the density of its landscape, perhaps even drawing its name from the vaporous, relaxing properties of said “aroma.” One of many of Voigt’s production aliases, GAS, ran for five years in total, producing four full-lengths and a handful of singles, before coming to an end in 2000 with Pop. At that point in time in the new century, there were dozens of projects that could be traced back to Voigt’s industrious, multifaceted genius—from the maniacal, Pantone minimal techno of Studio 1 to the gateway drug of Burger/Ink’s Las Vegas (one of the earliest German techno albums to see domestic release in the U.S.)– but the vagaries of Voigt’s GAS project were hard to pin down. The intent of GAS—as Voigt stated in an interview from that time—consisted of seeming contradictions: “The aim is always pop and to bring the German forest to the disco.” Or to take the club into the forest. That synergy—between the natural and electronic, the ancient and modern, the metered and the untamed, the infinite and the temporal—came together and then disappeared.
While nearly impossible to compile a linear chronology for his discography—which includes more than 160 albums and 40 aliases—in the intervening years since these pivotal albums were released, their influence has overshadowed his own prodigal body of work. So while the four original GAS records were boxed and compiled merely eight years ago, Nah Und Fern infuriated many fans in that each album was reduced to an edit on a single side of vinyl, cutting hours of music into just one hour. And so now we are being given the simply and monolithically titled Box: a deluxe set featuring ten pieces of vinyl (each album is now spread across three sides, with another piece containing his 1999 12,” “Oktember”), an art book of Voigt’s manipulated forest photos, as well as four CDs.
Box presents Voigt’s vision in its most momentous physical document to date and is a fitting monument. But it also looks back and edits the history in such a manner that brings to mind fellow countrymen Kraftwerk, who disavowed their first three albums they made before hitting upon the technological themes of Autobahn. Box also functions similarly to William Basinski’s massive 9-LP box set from 2012, arranging his archive of crumbling tape loops in a post-9/11 world as The Disintegration Loops, giving bookends and a coherent narrative to a project that during its creation and lifespan did not always bear one.
Originally, GAS was but one of Voigt’s innumerable pseudonyms, first arising in 1995 as a remix of his own sampledelic cover of T. Rex’s “Hot Love.” GAS may have ultimately been a defining quality of the moniker but it’s easy it also easy to hear in it an homage to T. Rex’s own languid “Life’s a Gas” and Voigt’s beloved glam rock. When he spun off GAS with its own 12”, it was decidedly more ambient, though there were bits of glam and disco still deeply embedded in the productions.
That history is elided completely here. As Box now posits, GAS begins two years on with 1997’s Zauberberg. It’s the first instance of Voigt presenting GAS as a unified sound and vision. There’s a blurred photo of black trees bathed in a demonic red light on the cover, as if a forest fire blazes just out of frame, and the music itself reveals—and revels in—a far more somber tone. The glitter of glam is replaced with soot, as Voigt ventures further back in time, sampling and looping late 19th century-early 20th century composers like Richard Wagner, Alban Berg, and Arnold Schoenberg. Not that you can quite make out the motifs, as he slows such works until they become dirges, the crackle of the original vinyl casting off a campfire-like warmth, putting the techno producer on ground similar to that of experimental turntable manipulator Philip Jeck.
The opening minutes of Zauberberg’s first track drifts through an indeterminate number of orchestral loops before dissolving into mist. They drift between drone and slowed melody, focal point and blur, foreground and background, sound and decay. That approach remained intact throughout GAS’ duration. As Philip Sherburne put it eight years ago, reviewing a rare live performance from GAS: “The point of GAS isn’t the moment or the riff; it’s the totality. I’d be unable to tell you the title of a given GAS track, or even the record.”
Voigt had a lot of different approaches, so many that he had to keep switching aliases to contain them. For this particular project, Voigt only has one pitch, but it’s a doozy. His narcotic way with these loops, his ability to shift them in space, to slow them down even as the pulse beneath them intensifies, to ever-so-carefully alter the repetition so that it mystifies rather than lulls, remains unmatched. He muffles his telltale kick drum so that rather than shake a club's walls, it now seems to emanate from twelve feet under the forest floor. It’s as much a haunted memory of these nearly century-old classical recordings as it is a vague impression of last night's endless party, and as such GAS exists in a purgatorial state between the two.
Despite spending nearly two decades with the albums, I’d be hard-pressed to distinguish the twenty-four tracks here. Mostly, the tints on each cover suggest the moods within. Zauberberg remains the most menacing, suggestive of being submerged in a lake or lost in the darkest hours of night. The next year, Königsforst—while still dark—suggests more glints of light. The amber glow on the cover is conveyed by the harps that plink across “II” and the majestic brass growling on “V.” Taking its title from the woods that Voigt himself grew up in, dosing on LSD as a teen and wandering amid the trees, Königsforst reconfigures Voigt’s memories as Brothers Grimm fairytale, seeing nature as an enchanted landscape.
Pop ranges the farthest of the GAS albums, it’s opening moments warm and gurgling. Elsewhere, the swells are reminiscent of New Age music, which at the time was still widely scorned. The very next year, the chiming bells that bounce around on “IV” would become the foundation of Kompakt’s Pop Ambient sound. (In a strange twist, the A-side of the original “Oktember” single is replaced here with “Tal 90,” a track credited to Tal and released on the second Pop Ambient comp, by far the gentlest GAS track on the set and an outlier in its use of guitar as its foundation.) By the time that telltale darkness returns for the last fifteen minutes of Pop, the project feels like a riddle closing in on itself, resolving on a note that’s both ominous and transcendent at once.
Box both cements Voigt’s legacy yet it also threatens to overshadow it, collecting and solidifying a haunting body of work that echoes not just through techno, but all music as the 20th century came to its end. No other project of Voigt’s created quite as much of an obsession amongst its listeners. It’s possible to hear Voigt move through post-rock, modern classical, noise and electronic: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Max Richter, Eluvium, Tim Hecker, Andy Stott, Sunn O))), the Orb (at least in the 21st century), the Caretaker, Jóhan Jóhannsson, the Field, most entrants in the annual Pop Ambient series, they are just a few of the modern music makers who imbibed these albums and realized their own work.
Last year, Dr. Christopher Dooks published a paper/sound piece entitled “Lessons Learned in the Königsforst,” wherein the interdisciplinary artist trekked to the forest outside of Cologne, obsessed by the album that he’s used for years as a sleep aid, an album that “taps into something potentially universal to aid stress reduction, almost as a medication.” He goes on to compare Königsforst to the sound of hearing your mother’s heartbeat in utero, to the Buddhist practice of a walking meditation, to coming down off of drugs and our modern “hyper-aroused” state of existence, to the album being a possible treatment for PTSD. In chatting with Voigt about it, the producer said the project was “about childhood dreams and traumatic fantasies, about (drug) paranoia and very special trippy ‘inner ear’ tinnitus adventure worlds.” It’s a suspension of time in both its exploration of extended duration, as well as in blurring the sensations that inform childhood and intoxicated adult realms.
Clocking in at over four hours, Box can still be a foreboding listen. Many might still only hear a migraine-level thump and the hiss around it, while others can behold the infinite depths of space that Voigt suggests between each beat, luxuriating in each lurch of ghostly strings. Nearly twenty years later, GAS still assaults our presumptions about electronic music. How can music that seems to be monotonous, so uneventful, also convey such beauty and clarity? Why take a slow walk through the forest when there is so much to get done on any given day?
In explaining the health benefits of “Shinrin-yoku,” one researcher suggested that it’s not the aroma of the trees that gives such bathers a sense of calm, but rather from a sense of “awe,” be it astronauts gazing down at the earth, tourists taking in the Grand Canyon, or even a young man recalling the forest from his youth. The expanse and vastness of GAS reveals as much as the listeners are willing give to them, the level of attention and perception helping to create such awe. Whether it’s your first visit or a return trip into this world, the ability to travel into each track unaccompanied by Voigt yet find your own trail is part of what makes this music resonate decades later. In this way, GAS continues to confer such medicinal, even magical, qualities upon its visitors. | 2016-12-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2016-12-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | null | December 9, 2016 | 9.5 | 391fa63b-55da-4154-8505-a372202aa3c2 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
The latest from the D.C. rapper is a focused beam of live-band and hip-hop soul that rattles loudly in our present political moment. | The latest from the D.C. rapper is a focused beam of live-band and hip-hop soul that rattles loudly in our present political moment. | Oddisee: The Iceberg | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22927-the-iceberg/ | The Iceberg | “I'd rather die than be complacent with the way that it goes,” Oddisee declares on “NNGE,” one of several tracks from his new album that aim to unravel listeners' tightly wound spools of indifference. At 32 years old, the rapper has been working at a steady clip without much fanfare for more than a decade. 2015's The Good Fight showed his fine-tuned, live-band sound; last year brought the instrumental Odd Tape, which highlighted his beat-making, and the anxiety-laden Alwasta EP, which foreshadowed The Iceberg. “Lifting Shadows,” a song from that release where the Sudanese-American MC worries that the government might be tapping his phone, feels prescient in the light of recent actions by President Trump: “That's what makes this country great, it's built by those who bleed/It's built by those who came on boats, it's built by those who flee… So if you just try to chop us down you only hurt your knees.”
That song provides an easy bridge to *The Iceberg, *a focused beam of hip-hop soul that rattles loudly in our present political moment. On “NNGE,” Oddisee reckons with the election of the new President from the perspective of someone familiar with government-sanctioned antagonism. “What is there to fear?/I'm from black America, this is just another year.” “Like Really” also calls attention to pervasive, systemic inequality. “Why a brother get three for a sack while your brother go free for raping?” Oddisee wonders. “How you made a film about Egypt with all lead roles caucasian?” Sexism gets a similar treatment in “Hold It Back,” the idea of which “annoys [him] more than cargo shorts.”
The backdrop for Oddisee's cutting analysis is a continuation of the funky sound honed on his recent records. Limber runs from bassist Dennis Turner and quicksilver riffs from Olivier St. Louis flash through The Iceberg, and the programmed drums hit with a human player's snap. St. Louis is also a gifted vocalist—during “Rain Dance,” a glittering, four-minute head-nod symphony, he tumbles into the track from above, shaking the walls with a wail that nods to the Temptations in the early ’70s.
Live-band hip-hop has cycled back into the mainstream again after more than a decade in the cold behind acts like Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper. Though in modern pop, rising tides do not lift all boats. It's not clear if the success of the Kendricks and the Chances means that other rappers with a comparable approach can ride their coattails and enjoy the benefits of more listeners without needing to compromise their methods. Having support from gatekeepers helps with that process, and at least one gatekeeper is listening to Oddisee: “Like Really” premiered on Ebro's Beats 1 program. But Oddisee has bigger fish to fry. Frequently on The Iceberg, characters seem stuck in entrenched paths dictated by America's racist history, and the album ends at a stand-off. “We can't agree on a thing,” Oddisee raps on “Rights and Wrongs.” “We both are beyond the games/But we still play.” | 2017-03-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-03-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Mello Music Group | March 2, 2017 | 7 | 39206da2-5393-4190-aeac-c52671d923e9 | Elias Leight | https://pitchfork.com/staff/elias-leight/ | null |
The most aesthetically cohesive album of Stephen Malkmus' career, Real Emotional Trash is also his jammiest-- an unabashedly rock'n'roll band album unafraid to stretch its songs past the 10-minute mark. | The most aesthetically cohesive album of Stephen Malkmus' career, Real Emotional Trash is also his jammiest-- an unabashedly rock'n'roll band album unafraid to stretch its songs past the 10-minute mark. | Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Real Emotional Trash | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11233-real-emotional-trash/ | Real Emotional Trash | The first line of Real Emotional Trash begs to be read autobiographically: "Of all my stoned digressions/ Some have mutated into the truth/ Not a spoof." It's the same tease that Malkmus pulled by calling his last album Face the Truth, in spite of its characteristically elusive contents. While that record featured Malkmus fully indulging his penchant for eclectic basement tinkering, Real Emotional Trash is an unabashedly rock'n'roll band album. It's the most aesthetically cohesive album of Malkmus' solo career (which is good), but also the jammiest (which, here, is bad). The record may sound like it would have been a blast to play on, but that doesn't always make for an engrossing listen.
On the plus side, Real Emotional Trash is still a Stephen Malkmus album, and it's host to all his pursuant charms and quirks. As a writer, Malkmus remains in top form; the album is rife with character-based songwriting that seems increasingly rare and valuable as songwriters increasingly grapple with overstated signifiers of sincerity. Even the album's title is characteristically apt-but-not-apt; though the material on Real Emotional Trash could hardly be considered straightforwardly "emotional" (even in comparison to Malkmus' output at large), there's a very real sense of excitement that comes from its communal sound.
The excitement is justified, too; these Jicks (Malkmus included) are stellar musicians. Malkmus shows off his band's strengths right off the bat; "Dragonfly Pie" is equal parts swaggering indie and 1970s AOR, coupling simple and memorable melodic phrases with synchronized, fuzzy guitar riffs. There are some moments of extreme understated structural elegance here; as the song's chorus emerges from a tangled verse, Sleater-Kinney/Quasi drummer (and now Jick) Janet Weiss' muscular and precise drumming lends the song a unified sense of purpose that's largely been absent from Malkmus' solo work.
Unfortunately, it doesn't last. Many of the songs on Real Emotional Trash start promising, but quickly become frustratingly repetitive and aimless. At times, the album veers satisfyingly into proggy excess or White Stripes-like forceful minimalism, but never commits to either. If anything, it sounds like the work of a band that knows how to play well together, but can't necessarily convey a purpose beyond that. "Hopscotch Willie" starts out with a pleasant verse (that actually brings to mind the melody from Sade's "Smooth Operator"), but by the six-minute mark you're, uh, well aware that you've hit the six-minute mark.
The album drags even more with its title track, one of many on Real Emotional Trash that struggles to construct an epic from just a handful of memorable moments. The song’s extended midsection deftly shows off the band’s ability to work in tandem, but it's not a gesture that rewards repeat listens. Thankfully, the album picks up with lead single "Baltimore" and the under-three-minute, almost-"Reelin' in the Years"-quoting "Gardenia", both of which use the band’s strength to put some extra oomph into already-great songs. Closer "Wicked Wanda" is great, too, incorporating enough musical curveballs to keep things interesting.
Then again, "Wicked Wanda" is a fitting end for a record that is something of a curveball itself. Face the Truth overflowed with incongruous musical ideas, but Real Emotional Trash is determinedly unified, even if it isn't always clear to what ends. At its best, the record hints at opening a whole new musical world for Malkmus-- one in which his well-worn style is effectively played down in the service of a mighty rock'n'roll band. Otherwise, it's simply a satisfying, if underdeveloped, gesture towards something much greater than itself. | 2008-03-03T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2008-03-03T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Matador | March 3, 2008 | 6.8 | 3920a813-7a63-47b8-b65c-db16deb6b752 | Matt LeMay | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matt-lemay/ | null |
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Sheryl Crow’s barnstorming second album, a collection of restless pop-rock anthems with something to prove. | Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Sheryl Crow’s barnstorming second album, a collection of restless pop-rock anthems with something to prove. | Sheryl Crow: Sheryl Crow | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sheryl-crow-sheryl-crow/ | Sheryl Crow | Sheryl Crow’s self-produced second album begins with a woman scanning the sky for extraterrestrial life. “I swear they’re out there,” she sings, barreling down the highway in hot pursuit. It ends, 12 songs later, with a woman sneaking out of bed before the man beside her wakes up. “I’m just an ordinary woman/Slipping away,” she sings in her upper register, like she’s belting out a gospel standard.
The word “ordinary” is important here. Plenty of records follow a trajectory from the daily grind toward transcendence. Sheryl Crow traces a path from the stars down to earth. In its character-driven mosaic storytelling, we perceive a fractured country where kids buy guns at Walmart and women are murdered outside abortion clinics. Almost every character is alone. Even the happy ones are mysteriously, naggingly sad. The days stretch on, like open roads. If there’s a feel-good ending to “Ordinary Morning,” it’s that she got out at all, freed from anyone’s expectations, her future intact.
It takes a particular type of artist to make this all go down so easy and feel so light—so ordinary, as she might say. A multi-instrumentalist who often begins the writing process on bass guitar, Crow almost always situates her melodies around chiming major chords, bright tones she conjures with intuitive turns like a revving engine. You get the sense she heard “Start Me Up” at a formative age and aspired to live inside its opening riff, before the snare snaps in, for eternity.
Her voice, too, is a texture made for any weather, a type of denim that looked vintage from day one. No matter the existential angst or the extremes to which she pushes herself—those soulful howls in “Ordinary Morning,” or the shredded screech three-and-a-half minutes into “Love Is a Good Thing”—she never sounds less than completely comfortable. It feels good to sing her songs—and to sing them loud. It remains as true for drunken karaoke goers as it was for icons like Johnny Cash, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen, all of whom made songs from this album their own.
There is something elemental about the way Crow sees the world, and Sheryl Crow is her most timeless encapsulation of her vantage point. The song titles read like self-help books that have remained in print for decades: A Change Would Do You Good. Everyday Is a Winding Road. Love Is a Good Thing. Even if you aren’t one of the millions of people who bought this album on CD—it has never been issued on vinyl—you may know the songs just as well from endless radio play, car commercials, or the muffled speakers at department stores.
This is partially by design. Like the characters she sings about, Crow is woven into the everyday. Born in Kennett, Missouri in 1962, she grew up on the Beatles, the Stones, and Fleetwood Mac: “The punk scene never made it out to the Midwest,” she joked during a 1996 interview with NME. At a time of newfound industry focus on regional scenes and independent artists, Crow reached for the masses. When Kurt Cobain gets namechecked early on the album, alongside a band of male rock stars who all died before their time, he’s as distant a myth as Elvis and John Lennon, or the UFOs she’s chasing in the preceding verses. “All I’ve seen just terrifies me,” she sings with a tinge of paranoia. “But I believe they’re coming back for me.” She rejected the romance of the tortured, fame-averse artist. She wanted to reach people, shamelessly, to hear her song reverberate through the world.
The first record she made never saw the light of day. After a decade of high-profile session work and a major role on Michael Jackson’s Bad Tour, she signed to a major label in the early ’90s and wound up with a glossy, trendy product that she begged the label not to release. The next album she made was named after the Tuesday Night Music Club, a Pasadena-based community of male musicians with whom Crow gathered to jam and co-write eventual hits like “Leaving Las Vegas,” “Strong Enough,” and “All I Wanna Do.” The fruits of those exercises—according to the liner notes, fueled by the simple desire “to experiment (musically, that is) and create”—went on to successfully launch Crow’s career, win a bunch of Grammys, and lose her nearly every friend she’d made. Producer Bill Bottrell told her, “If you only sold 10,000 copies, they’d love you.”
Tuesday Night Music Club sold millions. In the wake of its success, there were claims Crow had failed to properly credit her co-writers. There was tremendous backlash both in and outside her camp, talk of betrayal, dangerous amounts of drinking. Meanwhile the deceptively upbeat single “All I Wanna Do” reached a point of commercial ubiquity that began to haunt Crow, misconstruing her as a happy-go-lucky Los Angeles socialite. As bridges burned around her, she felt an increasing urgency to release something new and regain control of her life.
She and Bottrell got to work on some new songs in Pasadena, then decamped to New Orleans. It only took a day of recording for them to get into an argument and for Bottrell to abandon her. This is how Crow decided to produce the record herself. She continued working at Kingsway Studios in the French Quarter, where she had formed a close and lasting connection with engineer Trina Shoemaker. Together, they began working on a new set of songs she hoped would offer a clearer picture of who she was—songs that nobody else could take credit for.
Her ambition, as she told Billboard in 1996, was to make “a rural-sounding record—sort of Bobbie Gentry in the ’90s.” In an interview with Vivien Goldman for The Daily Telegraph, she elaborated that second part—“dragged into the ’90s.” It’s an apt word choice. You can almost hear the songs gathering dirt as they move along, catching fragments of the eras in between, resisting the flow of time as they move stubbornly forward. One of the first sounds on the record is a shovel being used for percussion; the last thing you hear is a noisy, tugging electric guitar solo that fades right on the verge of descending into chaos.
The whole record plays like a glitching patchwork quilt, flickering and fading as it unfolds. It’s self-titled, but it could just as easily be called The Sheryl Crow Songbook: an attempt to craft her own 13 entries in the American music lexicon. With the possible exception of “The Book,” whose chorus is more of a narrative Easter egg than something designed for road trip singalongs, nearly every song has an indelible hook. You get the sense, after the disputes of creative ownership that followed her debut, she would settle for nothing less: “My last record was heavily influenced by my writing from the standpoint of a woman with four guys around all the time,” she told the Telegraph. “I don’t feel like the same person anymore.”
She expressed this change through songs that refused to be misunderstood—an impulse that led to her first attempts at protest songs. On her previous album, there was “The Na-Na Song,” a “Loser”-style slacker rap that culminates in a jokey allusion to her experience of sexual harassment at the hands of Michael Jackson’s manager. “Frank DiLeo’s dong/Maybe if I’d let him I’d have a hit song,” she chants before the final iteration of the wordless chorus.
Now she trafficked in the type of songwriting that gets your record banned by big-box stores: Walmart, a dominant retailer during the height of the CD boom, refused to sell Sheryl Crow due to a lyric about gun violence in “Love Is a Good Thing.” The decision became so divisive that local radio stations banded together to sell the album themselves, in Walmart parking lots. (“Boo for Walmart or boo for me?” Crow once asked an audience after introducing it in concert as “The Walmart Song.”)
And then there was “Redemption Day,” a folk song inspired by Crow’s experience in Bosnia and her expanding perspective on the motives behind American intervention abroad. You can hear her ambition in her word choice—“Come leaders, come you men of great,” she sings, adopting early ’60s Dylan cadence—but it’s also in her performance. When she sings “freedom” in the closing line she repeats it a few times, allowing the word to be a conduit for contemplation and catharsis.
She brings this type of nuance to each song, and the ones centered on matters of the heart feel just as urgent and impassioned. There’s a reason why “If It Makes You Happy” is the track from the album that’s actually become a standard. Even Crow, who co-wrote the song with Jeff Trott, was overwhelmed by how many different ways she could find to accompany its lyrics: haunted and Lynchian, funk or punk, country or rock. What they landed on is maybe her defining performance: steady and simple, at 95 BPM, grinding through each verse before exploding in the chorus. “I’m not the kind of girl you take home,” Crow sings, and the song never quite comes to rest either. The wheels are always rolling.
No matter the highs and lows that followed, Crow had situated herself in the greater consciousness. This is how she fought the establishment and, in turn, became the establishment. As the album went multi-platinum and elevated her star far above the one-hit wonder or cautionary tale she’d feared becoming, she swiftly began remodeling herself as a legacy artist: a self-possessed, old-school singer-songwriter, already disillusioned with the industry and uninterested in catering to pop trends. Next up was the theme song for a James Bond movie; then a dark, triumphant follow-up that featured, among her own material, a brand new, unreleased Dylan composition; then a live album recorded in Central Park, where she welcomed childhood heroes Stevie Nicks, Keith Richards, and Chrissie Hynde onstage beside her.
And the decade wasn’t even over yet. Where could she possibly go next? In a ’97 interview with Charlie Rose, after discussing her brief dalliance with acting, the two have a jokey conversation that goes like this:
Rose: Let’s figure out something for you to do. We need an obsession.
Crow: Bridge? Knitting, perhaps?
Rose: How about your own label?
Crow: Actually, I’m thinking about doing that. I’ve talked about it with my manager.
They go on for a bit, suggesting names: “Cranky Old Lady Music,” Crow offers, and then: “Do It Yourself Records.” Rose changes the subject—“Is there anything you desperately, desperately want? Children?”—but there is something interesting about Crow aligning herself with DIY culture: a burgeoning scene at the time that ran directly against all her usual metrics of success. Her seeming commercial indestructibility, combined with her proudly boomer taste and earnestly optimistic political outlook, made her a perfect contrast to gendered, Gen X notions of cool and authenticity, a dissonance she increasingly noticed when she confronted the press. After an exhausting interview for Q in 1998—“Did you hear the rumor that you are a heroin addict?” “Do you think you are attractive?” “Can you be a ruthless bitch?”—the interview concludes thusly:
Q: Do you have anything to declare?
A: I’m sick of being a woman. That’s what I want to declare.
One track that didn’t make the cut for Sheryl Crow is a killer B-side called “Free Man.” Structured like a country song but bashed out like a scrappy garage band, it tells a story of a woman who hitches her wagon to a free-thinking, self-styled anarchist. She’s momentarily entranced until her casual observations start to form a larger picture. His friends seem a little off; he’s teaching her how to shoot a gun. Soon, she’s cooking for him, mothering him, sitting shotgun while he goes off on a racist rant. It all concludes with a punchline as she files for divorce: “I’d appreciate a little bit of government!”
Crow never ended up starting her own label, but she did start operating her own recording studio out of her Nashville home, where, among others, Kacey Musgraves booked some time to work on 2018’s Golden Hour. For someone who had spent a rollercoaster decade playing by the industry’s rules and wrestling, over and over again, with its ugly power dynamics, the splendid, isolated comfort of a recording studio seems a better fit, anyway.
On Sheryl Crow, you can hear her settle into this eventual legacy behind the boards, searching until she finds just the right sound. In the liner notes, Crow, who worked as a music teacher before she left Missouri for California, is credited with playing acoustic, electric, and bass guitar, along with Moog bass, harmonium, keyboards, Hammond organ, Wurlitzer, a Penny-Owsley piano, and loops. Deep within the buzz and clatter of these masterfully written songs, you can hear an even more elusive quality that makes them stick: an artist having fun. “There was a huge spectrum of emotions that went along with that record,” Crow recalled to Rolling Stone last year. “One of being burned out, two of being misunderstood… and very underestimated. But also euphoric: The euphoria of feeling like, ‘Well, nobody believes I can do anything anyway. So I’m going to do what I want to do.”
Later in the Charlie Rose interview, Crow performs “Home,” the best song on Sheryl Crow and one of three on the tracklist without a co-writer. She tells Rose it was the only one that arrived to her “on the mic,” claiming the whole thing came together in just 10 minutes. (“That’s probably why I still have a certain affinity for that song,” she says, cracking a smile.) The recording backs up her memory of this impromptu bolt of inspiration. It fades in and out, as if we are receiving a transmission of just the most crucial bit of a long, ongoing investigation.
At first blush, it might sound like a love song. “I woke up this morning and now I understand/What it means to give your life to just one man,” Crow begins. “This is home,” goes the chorus. Every detail, however, tugs at the sense of certainty in those words. The music sways and swells, in a cosmic country kind of way, as she traces a path from her teen years to the present day, her fantasies of wandering the world to the suffocating rooms where she now looks into the eyes of someone she used to love. Meanwhile, she measures the distance between their two breaking hearts: “Mine,” she observes, “is full of questions.” This may be where the relationship ends, she acknowledges. But it’s also the precise moment where any good story begins. | 2023-05-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-05-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | A&M | May 28, 2023 | 8.6 | 39218d7d-4fc5-4457-91a0-9740d26f9fd6 | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | |
It's been a long time since Springsteen has been hip, if he ever was. His coolness was in question ... | It's been a long time since Springsteen has been hip, if he ever was. His coolness was in question ... | Bruce Springsteen: The Essential Bruce Springsteen | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7727-the-essential-bruce-springsteen/ | The Essential Bruce Springsteen | It's been a long time since Springsteen has been hip, if he ever was. His coolness was in question even back in the '70s, despite the grudging thumbs-up ("Springsteen is all right") Lou Reed gave him on the live album Take No Prisoners. The aging population that loves "real rock 'n' roll" are his biggest supporters, from rock critic turned producer/manager Jon Landau through biographer Dave Marsh and on down. If Springsteen partied with Warhol, the photos are rarely anthologized.
Springsteen is neither glamorous nor mysterious, but as this three-disc compilation demonstrates, he is an extremely talented and important artist. Assembled as part of Columbia's Essential repackaging of its signature artists, The Essential Bruce Springsteen is a fine introduction to his work and it atones for the shoddy 1995 compilation Greatest Hits (12 tracks are common to both). The previous Hits collection was both too brief, and poorly selected. The Essential stretches 30 of Springsteen's best-known songs over two discs and then adds a third of odds-and-ends.
Springsteen's career has been a series of attacks and retreats. He stormed out of the gate in 1973 on Greetings from Asbury Park as a word-drunk boho who spent as much time in Manhattan as he did on the Jersey shore. Manfred Mann and Greg Kihn made "Blinded by the Light" and "For You" into hits by omitting words, smoothing out Springsteen's chaotic phrasing and tightening the rhythm. The original versions here are loose and elastic as they come, with rubbery drumming by early E Streeter Vinnie Lopez that was the polar opposite of Max Weinberg's robotic thud. The race for the rock 'n' roll prize picked up steam later that year with The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, but here, Springsteen traded some of the goofy Dylanesque wordplay of his debut for detailed, romantic character studies that borrowed from Van Morrison. When Tom Waits described Springsteen's songs from this period as "little black and white films," he was talking about material like "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)". And there has never been a bar band rave-up quite like "Rosalita", which is structured like a suite without losing any of its whiteboy R&B; energy.
The final phase of Springsteen's early charge was the 1975 album Born to Run, where he openly stated that he was trying to make the greatest rock album of all time (later he clarified that what he was shooting for was Phil Spector producing Roy Orbison with words by Dylan). Songs like "Born to Run" and "Jungleland" are overblown to a degree that some find comical (here is the structural template for Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell). It's true, these songs swirl and build and jump from one discrete section to the next, and who now would try and get away with the line, "I wanna die with you, Wendy, on the street tonight in an everlasting kiss"? (Andrew WK, maybe.) This is rock mythology as gospel music, and there is no possible way to appreciate it other than to give yourself over to it completely.
Darkness on the Edge of Town from 1978 was the first retreat. Springsteen's lyrical focus darkened as his sound became leaner. This was the record in which Springsteen saw economy as a storytelling virtue, perhaps in emulation of fiction writers he admired like Flannery O'Connor. Unfortunately, Darkness is probably the album served most poorly by Essential. The omission of "Racing in the Street" is puzzling, considering that it's one of Springsteen's best ballads and also manages to turn the mythology of "Born to Run" completely on its head. "Candy's Room" is one of his best rock songs and should have replaced "Promised Land".
The two-disc album The River is difficult to pull from for an anthology. It was something of a summary of what Springsteen had done to that point, its upbeat frat-rock cuts alternating with country weepers. The Essential chooses "Hungry Heart" and "The River", one great song from each end of the spectrum. Obvious choices, certainly, but sensible. "Hungry Heart" was Springsteen's first Top 10 single and he followed that popularity by drawing inward and recording the solo acoustic Nebraska, the album that has certainly become the indie rock favorite in Springsteen's catalog. He was at home with the four-track years before it became an indie cliché, and he was writing stark, superbly focused songs that people have been covering ever since. "Nebraska" and "Atlantic City" are the two represented here, again completely obvious choices but ones that make the most sense for a Springsteen newcomer.
The second disc of The Essential picks up with "Born in the USA". At some point after Nebraska, Springsteen decided to kick his career back into high gear. His sound got huge, he became versed in the ways of MTV (though his videos were awful), and he basically lived in stadiums for a couple years. Born in the USA has little to recommend to an indie purist but listen to "Dancing in the Dark" and it's easy to hear why it was so popular: Springsteen's melodic gift was at its peak. The Essential adds "Glory Days", which I never liked (I would have swapped it for "I'm on Fire", the album's subtlest moment), and the title track, about which little remains to be said. It was ironic but the patriots loved (and love) it.
After the deluge of Born in the USA, Springsteen laid low for a good ten years to make quieter music and eventually raise a family. Tunnel of Love from 1987, recorded largely alone at his home studio, is Springsteen's most underrated album and certainly his last great one. The title track has the booming synth-pop sound of the preceding record, but Springsteen is painting with a finer brush and dealing with emotion in the abstract. "Brilliant Disguise" is perhaps Springsteen's finest lyric, a sharply observed mediation on vulnerability and self-doubt. The two albums Springsteen released in 1992 were the weakest of his career, and Essential rescues the titles cuts and "Living Proof" from the heap (though only "Human Touch" approaches the best of Tunnel of Love).
Springsteen peaked melodically in the early 80s, but he's compensated for his weaker tunes since by becoming a more skilled storyteller. The Ghost of Tom Joad has the stark sound and detail of some Nebraska songs, but the title track, represented here, lacks a tune that sounds like it has always existed. The events of 9/11 energized Springsteen, calling him back to the spotlight for his first record with the E Street band since Born in the USA. I like the melody of "The Rising", but it sounds an awful lot like Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner", and "Mary's Place" doesn't have nearly enough of a hook for a song about a party. As demonstrated on these songs and the live tribute to Amadou Diallo, "American Skin (41 Shots)", Springsteen addresses big contemporary topics with nuance, but it's tough to listen to songs repeatedly when you know they're connected with a single real-life event.
The bonus rarities disc is spotty but has awesome highs. It's great to finally have Springsteen's dynamic live cover of Jimmy Cliff's "Trapped" on CD, which was previously released only on the USA for Africa album (it was a radio staple in 1985). The slow, gentle "Lift Me Up", which Springsteen recorded for a John Sayles film, has an ungodly beautiful falsetto and perhaps Springsteen's best melody of the 90s. I could do without the cover of "Viva Las Vegas", however, and "Code of Silence" is a Springsteen rocker on autopilot. But that's why they're a bonus. The meat of this collection is enough to chew on for a lifetime. The two discs get the Springsteen story as right as is possible in 150 minutes, and if they don't work, then Springsteen is definitely not for you. | 2004-01-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2004-01-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Columbia | January 6, 2004 | 8.6 | 392506f3-9110-4819-8c46-d4b073064ef9 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
The northern England crew specializes in dance music at its most juiced and jacked up. Like the best nights out, their new album passes by in a blur. | The northern England crew specializes in dance music at its most juiced and jacked up. Like the best nights out, their new album passes by in a blur. | Bad Boy Chiller Crew: Full Wack No Brakes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bad-boy-chiller-crew-full-wack-no-brakes/ | Full Wack No Brakes | You get about 15 seconds to do some deep breathing exercises (or huff a thick line) before Full Wack No Brakes launches into full force. Opener “450 - 2020 Mix” is a high-octane ode to dirtbikes, petty robberies, and living large, and it sets the tone for what’s to come: a blistering dose of big grins, bassline, and organ house. It’s dance music at its most juiced and jacked up. And it’s amazing.
BBCC comprises MCs Kane, Clive, and GK, along with a loose raft of regular collaborators that includes S-Dog, PC Bill Bacon, and the group’s manager Dr. Google. They hail from Bradford, a city in the north of England, and have risen to hyper-local fame off the back of viral videos that include chaotic comedy sketches and downing inhuman amounts of booze through traffic cones. They’ve soundtracked ads for diners and car washes. Promo for the second single from Full Wack No Brakes, a thumping club anthem titled “Guns Up,” involved seeing which of the crew could endure the most pops from a paintball gun. Earlier this month, they caught the ear of the UK’s original pop-star bad boy, Robbie Williams. Dr. Google says he’s lining up a collab.
The crew exist on the fringes of an overlooked bassline scene that, since emerging from northern hotspots in Sheffield, Leeds, Huddersfield, and Bradford in the early ’00s, has wobbled along on its own steady path. While celebrating occasional forays into the charts—T2’s “Heartbroken” in 2007, or DJ Q’s “You Wot!” the following year—the sound has largely been left to develop alone. Bills stacked with acts like Notion, Deadbeat, Skepsis, Holy Goof, Bassboy, and Mr V would, pre-COVID, regularly pack out raves under the nose of the UK’s music media. BBCC’s first mixtape, titled Git Up Mush, was sold direct to fans and stocked in vape shops and convenience stores.
But while bassline’s most recent iterations have been typified by an aggressive, crunchy mid-range sound that’s closer to jump-up dubstep and drum ‘n’ bass, BBCC’s up-tempo blend of rumbling low-end and silky, pitched-up female vocals has more in common with the canonical MC-led sounds that once incubated in Sheffield’s Niche nightclub or Sheridan’s in Dewsbury. The beats here are lean and precision-engineered, like the Ducatis and Husqvarnas that pepper the lyrics. The group’s comic edge and old-school styling have brought comparisons to People Just Do Nothing’s hapless Kurupt FM crew. But the likeness is a shallow one. While Kurupt FM score laughs skewering the characters that typify aging underground scenes in the UK, BBCC are no parody act. As ambassadors for their own northern working-class culture, they’re strikingly authentic.
They make bangers, too. “Active” is bouncy xylophone 2-step; “New Machine” goes four-to-the-floor with a fairground ride riff; “Loco” is a purist organ house pumper. They switch flows and wrap syllables around the catchiest choruses this side of the pop charts. It’s a tonic to the po-faced tendencies of Business Techno, or the chin-stroke posturing of artsy metropolitan club scenes. A reminder that raving is, ultimately, about getting loaded and letting loose. Like the best nights out, Full Wack No Brakes passes by in a blur. The next day you piece it together from hazy recollections and suspect video clips—before pulling out the traffic cone and cracking a fresh six-pack, ready to go again.
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. | 2020-09-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | House Anxiety | September 29, 2020 | 7.5 | 3935d2ad-f71a-41fe-9463-fe13be11e16f | Will Pritchard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/will-pritchard/ | |
The charmingly low-key Many Moons from the lead singer of Real Estate is an act of humility and, beyond that, quiet grace. Once heard quasi-chanting about suburban suds, Courtney is now the lawnchair-Zen dad. | The charmingly low-key Many Moons from the lead singer of Real Estate is an act of humility and, beyond that, quiet grace. Once heard quasi-chanting about suburban suds, Courtney is now the lawnchair-Zen dad. | Martin Courtney: Many Moons | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21091-many-moons/ | Many Moons | Leave it to Martin Courtney to turn a solo album into a gesture of self-effacement. The singer/guitarist's New Jersey band Real Estate have spent the last six years elevating effortless indie pop into a deeply moving art form, and his fellow group members have routinely worked in side projects—bassist Alex Bleeker with his woolly'n'rootsy Freaks outfit, and guitarist Matt Mondanile with the watery dreamscapes of Ducktails. But Courtney's debut solo outing arrives with his own name pushed to the fore. And yet, Many Moons is hardly the work of a narcissistic singer/songwriter. ("I just couldn't come up with a band name," he recently shrugged.) Instead, the charmingly low-key album is an act of humility and, beyond that, quiet grace.
Courtney's voice, like his name, is front and center here, markedly stripped of Real Estate's signature reverb. And rather than relying on his familiar turn-of-the-millennium indie rock touchstones, the singer inhabits winsome, lightly orchestrated '60s psych pop and '70s power pop (documented in a nicely complementary playlist). The album gains shape thanks to an enviably accomplished band that includes Real Estate keyboardist Matt Kallman, like-minded Jerseyite Julian Lynch, and Woods' Jarvis Taveniere, who produced. Plus, for a set that casually began as a stress-relief outlet ahead of Real Estate's 2014 album Atlas, Many Moons works as a remarkably cohesive album, meandering its way across themes of past and present to a state of aching clarity that's modest, but no less genuine for it. Once heard quasi-chanting about suburban suds, Courtney is now the lawnchair-Zen dad.
The album’s title phrase occurs first amid a hodgepodge of images on the lushly jangling "Vestiges": "Many moons for it to grow/ Phases they will come and they will go." These are the musings of an artist often associated with nostalgia accepting the truism that what we really have left from yesterday is the same ol' never-ending flux. It's a concept he darts around on the equally fine "Foto", which finds Courtney reflecting on an old passport photo: "The past is just a dream." While a line like that could seem nursery-rhyme commonplace on its own, it builds force nestled amid tracks like "Awake", a gentle apology for strumming next door that offers its own ruminations on the past, and "Asleep", a backwards-effects reverie that's somewhere between an "Oh Yoko!" dream and "I'm Only Sleeping". The terrain may be narrow, but Courtney finds subtleties to explore in his quest for a wisdom that will keep growing in meaning as months and trend cycles pass.
Many Moons isn’t all painstaking philosophy on the inevitability of change. A more immediate highlight is "Northern Highway", which cruises along, suitably upbeat, as it balances existential questions ("Do you feel just like a stranger?") with the narrator's avowal that he could never retire to a place without seasons—all via a chiming arrangement befitting the Left Banke. Or "Little Blue", a windows-down listen about windows-down listens that’s named after Courtney’s old car. By contrast, on "Focus", when Courtney implores, as if giving Magic Eye advice, "The trick really is not to try," it's a bit too on the nose; besides, he already put it better on Real Estate's 2011 sophomore LP, Days, singing, "Our careless lifestyle, it was not so unwise." The trick is not to reveal it's a trick.
The simple complexities of Many Moons all come together on the 10th and final song, "Airport Bar". It's about, yes, airport bars—places that stay the same while the people who pass through them speed around the globe. The music here is the album's most hypnotic; the lyrics are its most observant. Courtney's raconteur has been asleep, dreaming, before he finally realizes what’s real: "Please don't go forgetting about me," he repeats, understanding full well that Timehop, Facebook's "On This Day" feature, or even ripped-jeans-pocket Polaroids are no substitute for "just being here." It's all unassuming enough that it almost breezes past, and, if Courtney didn't know better, he might even say that's the point. | 2015-10-22T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2015-10-22T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Domino | October 22, 2015 | 7 | 393790e0-ccae-4fd8-ba51-620307c26829 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | null |
One of the most unfuckwithable records of the 20th century gets another pair of reissue releases, the better of the two being this Legacy Edition. | One of the most unfuckwithable records of the 20th century gets another pair of reissue releases, the better of the two being this Legacy Edition. | Miles Davis: Bitches Brew [Legacy Edition] | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14623-bitches-brew-legacy-edition/ | Bitches Brew [Legacy Edition] | There's a passage in Miles Davis' notorious 1990 autobiography where he's talking about how much quality music he recorded in the mid-to-late 1960s with his current quintet-- the group featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. "I made six studio dates with this group in four years," he says. "And there were some live recordings that I guess Columbia will release when they think they can make the most money-- probably after I'm dead." I can remember chuckling at that line when reading the book the year of its publication, but it would have been difficult to imagine just how extensive and sustained the Miles Davis reissue program would actually be after his death in 1991. The anniversary sets; the complete studio sessions boxes; the boxes collecting the boxes. It goes on and on and every new gift season brings another new offering.
And now here's the latest, from a couple of years after the period Davis mentioned: two re-releases of the legendary 1970 2xLP set Bitches Brew. One is a 40th Anniversary Collector's Edition gathering together the original album on one and a quarter CDs, along with studio outtakes, another CD containing a previously unissued set recorded at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Mass., in August 1970, and a DVD containing a previously unissued concert in Copenhagen from November 1969. The other version of the album is part of Columbia's Legacy Edition and contains the first two CDs from the 40th Anniversary set along with the Copenhagen DVD.
There's a reason Bitches Brew is getting this kind of treatment, even after the release of the 4xCD Complete Bitches Brew box set 12 years ago. It is, after all, one of the three or four most important albums of Miles Davis' career. And coming nine months after In a Silent Way, it is also one of founding texts of jazz fusion. It's a Big Deal Jazz album that's been tapped as being an essential part of any collection. Which unfortunately is something that tends to obscure the actual music. Putting on Bitches Brew and then straining to [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| hear why it mattered so much is a pretty lousy way to go about enjoying this music. Which is not to say there isn't a lot here to puzzle over and listen for-- the music on Bitches Brew is so variable and hard to pin down it rewards any amount of close listening. But Bitches Brew is also pretty accessible as electric Miles goes, and it's something you can put on and let wash over you for now, figuring out what it means and what everyone was doing later.
The first thing that Bitches Brew made clear is that Miles was keenly interested in expanding the idea of what his music could be, and was starting to stretch it way out. The title track runs 26 minutes, which then and now is at the extreme end of what a side of vinyl on an LP can hold; the opening "Pharaoh's Dance" also breaks 20 minutes. And these pieces weren't lengthy compositions or single jams, but were assembled by Miles and producer Teo Macero through editing-- unrelated tracks could become one piece through the miracle of the razor blade and magnetic tape. For an improvisatory art form that was founded on the idea collective expression in the present moment, the idea of stitching together pieces into a new whole was radical enough on its own. But Miles was changing his approach in several ways simultaneously as the 1960s came to a close. He was processing his trumpet with echo, working with electric keyboards and electric guitar, adding new percussion colors, experimenting with rock rhythms, doing away with chord changes, and building long tracks from riffs and vamps. And, as the liner notes from Greg Tate included with these sets illustrate, he was hanging out with Betty Davis, who was introducing him to new music, and along the way he had become a fan of Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and James Brown.
All of these elements swirled together into a record of brilliant and fascinating contradictions. The psychedelic cover art and long electric jams on the one hand anchor the music in Age of Aquarius, but the connections to earlier jazz tradition and unmoored, floating quality of music also lend it a timeless feel. It sounds very much like a bunch of dudes jamming in the room, but some of the abrupt edits serve as a reminder that it owes a lot to technology. It finds Miles distancing himself from his musical past, but it sounds equally far from the dense abstraction his music would take on a couple of years later, especially in a live setting. It was long and hard to get a handle on, but it was also a huge commercial success. Ultimately, Bitches Brew seems mostly like a single beautiful frame from a jarring film filled with jump-cuts. The amount that Miles Davis' music changed from the early 60s to the early 70s is astonishing. His sound was constantly on the move, and this is what it sounded like on those August days in the studio.
The bonus material illustrates just how quickly Davis' music was changing, and how much his music could vary given the context. Three months after Bitches Brew was recorded (but before it was released), he performed in Copenhagen with a five-piece band that included Wayne Shorter. Chick Corea's electric piano aside, the music is acoustic, though several tunes from Bitches Brew are included (the video is exceptional in quality in terms of both sound and image). In this setting, Davis' music sounds like what most people would identify as "jazz," and is less challenging than the cerebral and harmonically complex music he'd made just a few years earlier with his quintet. But by the August 1970 set included with the 40th Anniversary edition, the raging funk maelstrom that would epitomize his live shows in the next four years was on the rails. What a difference nine months made for Miles Davis as 1969 turned into 1970.
The two sets sit at opposite ends of the value scale. Listing at about $19, the Legacy Edition seems to me a very good buy-- the original album is a 2xCD set, the outtakes are reasonably interesting, and the Copenhagen DVD is a vital addition to the Davis canon. Also included on the second disc are four tracks edited down for release as 7" singles, and they are interesting curios good for one play but not much more-- three-minute edits are the opposite of what this music is about. The 40th Anniversary Set, on the other hand, goes for over $100 and is obviously geared toward Davis completists-- for them, it actually delivers pretty well as these sets go, since the 1970 live set is excellent, there are some extra visual goodies, and it's not padded out with a promotional film masquerading as a documentary (it also comes with two 180 gram vinyl discs-- I'll never quite get why someone wants both CD and LP sets.) How much is left in the vault? We'll see, maybe when the album turns 50. | 2010-09-10T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2010-09-10T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Jazz | Sony | September 10, 2010 | 9.5 | 3940036e-a6be-4696-8a7a-03b88fc7050c | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
Dusting off practice-room staples and writing more new songs to go with them, the hyper-prolific Aussie rockers scrap their conceptual inclinations in favor of shredding for the sheer pleasure of it. | Dusting off practice-room staples and writing more new songs to go with them, the hyper-prolific Aussie rockers scrap their conceptual inclinations in favor of shredding for the sheer pleasure of it. | King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: Omnium Gatherum | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/king-gizzard-and-the-lizard-wizard-omnium-gatherum/ | Omnium Gatherum | King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s reputation as a vinyl pressing plant in human form is an endless source of both intrigue and fatigue. But the Melbourne psych-rock ensemble’s latest record forces us to consider a prospect even more unfathomable than releasing 20 albums in 10 years (five of them in the past 18 months alone): This hyper-prolific group is also sitting on a ton of unreleased material. Where many records in King Gizzard’s discography center on some grand idea—be it an exploration of specific guitar tunings or a thrash-powered song cycle about our planet’s looming self-destruction—Omnium Gatherum is a double LP whose great concept is that there’s no great concept. (That fearsome title, emblazoned in a demonic font on the cover, is actually just Latin for “a collection of miscellaneous things.”) But while the album was originally an excuse for the band to fine-tune tracks that didn’t previously make the cut, it sparked yet another songwriting surge, yielding a bunch of new songs to complement those leftovers. Even when King Gizzard are trying to retrace their steps, they can’t help but barrel forward.
Case in point: The album’s lead track, “The Dripping Tap,” is a quintessentially Gizzardian Neu!-metal rave-up that had been kicking around since 2018, but it didn’t yield a definitive version until the band dusted it off last June at its first post-lockdown jam, after working remotely throughout the pandemic. The recording they captured that day is absolutely buzzing with all that pent-up communal energy: The track runs for a staggering 18 minutes but feels like it blazes by in a quarter of that time, its blitzkrieg momentum pushing the group to new heights of majestic shredding that suggest Thin Lizzy gone prog. But if you’re wondering whether you really need another high-octane King Gizzard blowout about the ravages of fossil-fuel dependency, “The Dripping Tap” instantly distinguishes itself by teeing up bandleader Stu Mackenzie’s machine-gunned, broken-record chants with a surprisingly soulful chorus hook from multi-instrumentalist Ambrose Kenny-Smith that sounds like it was cut in some early-’70s Gamble and Huff session. As a result, “The Dripping Tap” undercuts its musical madness with a genuine sense of sadness—over the precarious state of the world, the suits who stand to profit from its decline, and the willful, widespread ignorance that breeds inaction.
“The Dripping Tap” serves a strategic purpose beyond merely documenting King Gizzard’s return to peak horsepower. By devoting Omnium Gatherum’s entire first side to a signature warp-speed workout, the band gives itself free rein to do anything but that over the record’s remaining three acts. As such, Omnium Gatherum lacks the satisfying fluidity and holistic interconnectivity of King Gizzard’s definitive statements; splendorous synth-pop reveries like “Magenta Mountain” (which feels like it was spun out of the same cocoon as last year’s blissful Butterfly 3000) rub up against tracks that revert to the doomsday-metal battle plan of 2019’s Infest the Rats’ Nest (“Gaia,” “Predator X”). And where the band’s best records tend to build toward some cataclysmic climax, Omnium Gatherum peaces out with a serene but slight lounge-pop mini-suite (“Candles”/“The Funeral”) that feels like the musical equivalent of discreetly ghosting your own house party.
That said, the benefit of traveling without a roadmap is that you can wind up in some delightfully unexpected places. After teasing his flow on Butterfly 3000’s “Killer Year 2.02,” Kenny-Smith steps out as the band’s resident MC on two hip-hop-rooted cuts, “Sadie Sorceress” and “The Grim Reaper.” And the transition into King Gizzy & the Leezy Weezy proves surprisingly smooth: The band finds its natural funky footing in the sort of weed-hazed sampledelic grooves favored by early-’90s Beastie Boys, Avalanches, and Edan, while Kenny-Smith’s breathless brat-rap treatises about witches and grim reapers (complemented by vocal snippets of his 97-year-old grandmother) fit squarely within the group’s established parameters of apocalyptic prophecy and brain-scrambling absurdity.
If Omnium Gatherum is a crazy quilt by design, it’s ultimately threaded together by some of the Gizzard’s most sumptuous songcraft to date—not to mention the band’s ever-colorful ways of telling us that the Earth is fucked. The piano-twinkled soul-jazz of “Kepler-22b” provides the lustrous backdrop to Mackenzie’s stargazing fantasy of moving to the namesake planet to get away from this one, while guitarist Joey Walker’s dreamy quiet-storm bass-slapper “Ambergris” speaks of oceanic waste from the perspective of a whale who’d rather be harpooned than live its life swimming through the murk. (That said, no poetic license was required for “Evilest Man,” a giddy swirl of jaunty sunshine-soul, Kraftwerkian synth clusters, and interstellar guitar noise wherein Mackenzie cheerfully assails the most insidious Australia-bred pollutant on our planet—i.e., Rupert Murdoch.)
If the sheer abundance of songs, styles, and lyrical concepts on Omnium Gatherum is indicative of a band that never takes a break, the album also shows that the least these dudes can do is take a break from being themselves. And for around four minutes, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard ease off the doomscrolling psychedelia and subversive soft rock to deliver “Persistence,” a joyous folk-funk shuffle that proves Kevin Parker hasn’t cornered the Aussie market on breezy, beach-bound jams. It may seem odd that an album that begins with an epic 18-minute assault on oil addiction also yields a car-fetishizing pop song where Mackenzie celebrates his (ahem) stamina by comparing his performance to “a Ford motor piston.” But as Mackenzie assures us, he’s got “no want for gas/I run on love”—a line that applies as much to his endurance in his band as in his bed. After all, you can’t make 20 albums in a decade without a lot of love for what you do, and—in lieu of any other unifying principle—Omnium Gatherum proves King Gizzard still have a whole lot of it left in the tank. | 2022-05-05T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-05-05T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | KGLW | May 5, 2022 | 7.3 | 39530326-269a-4dc5-9611-5ec919cb508c | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
Alternating between loud, sumptuously produced rock and softer, Tin Pan Alley-inspired songs, the British singer-songwriter delivers a brooding set of songs about time’s ceaseless march. | Alternating between loud, sumptuously produced rock and softer, Tin Pan Alley-inspired songs, the British singer-songwriter delivers a brooding set of songs about time’s ceaseless march. | Elvis Costello: Hey Clockface | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/elvis-costello-hey-clockface/ | Hey Clockface | Whoever said that rock’n’roll is a young person’s game was waiting to be proven wrong. Few know this better than Elvis Costello. Since he was a twenty-something in black-rimmed glasses, Costello’s talent for arrangement and pastiche pointed toward fruitful twilight years, particularly as he strayed from meat-and-potatoes rock and began to dabble in musical styles less invested in the cult of youth. Now 66, the British icon has only continued to diversify his interests over the decades, collaborating with the Roots and writing for the London Symphony Orchestra. Yet he’s shown himself to be at his best in two modes: making driving, surprisingly ageless rock and exploring the conventions of the American Songbook, as he did on his sublime 1998 Burt Bacharach collaboration, Painted From Memory. Costello’s latest, Hey Clockface, merges these potentially divergent sensibilities in an adventurous set of songs about time’s ceaseless march.
Costello no longer sounds quite so ageless. On the Fats Waller-quoting “Hey Clockface / How Can You Face Me,” Costello’s voice strains against gravelly limitations, complementing his elegiac lyricism. Always a wide-ranging writer, he’s managed to preserve his breadth while allowing a sense of mournful retrospection to give the record structure and focus. Affairs are related almost uniformly in the past tense, appearing far enough in the rearview mirror that Costello often substitutes wistful affection for his customary bitterness. Even sex seems more like a memory than a present reality; his “magic powers have drained,” he tells us on one song, quoting a lover who left him. He muses on his reflection throughout, wondering how others bear to look at him: Sure, faces age, but the thought that they might be windows to the soul is frightening in Costello’s world, where everyone’s past is checkered.
Musically, the album alternates between loud, sumptuously produced rock’n’roll and softer, Tin Pan Alley-inspired tracks, reflecting two disparate recording sessions. In Helsnki’s Suomenlinnan Studio, Costello played all the instruments, from the Fender Jazzmaster to the Rhythm Ace, buffing his pop-rock songwriting with a maximalist studio sheen that sounds more like St. Vincent than the Imposters. Costello even beatboxes on the curveball “Hetty O’Hara Confidential,” about a once-towering gossip columnist whose work has become outdated in an age when “everyone has a megaphone.” In Paris, Costello linked up with jazz players, including a cellist and a brass section, who improvised much of their performance. The Paris sessions yielded the record’s most powerful songs, such as “They’re Not Laughing at Me Now,” with its poignant flügelhorn trills, and “What Is It That I Need That I Don’t Already Have?,” a masterfully evocative exploration of the 32-bar form. The dueling approaches of the two recording sessions enrich each other, providing Hey Clockface with its yin and yang. Alone, either style might have seemed like predictable genre play for Costello at this stage in its career, but together, they make for an album that’s energetic and consistently surprising.
America’s rich musical history and ubiquitous cultural sway have long factored heavily into Costello’s work. Accordingly, to finish Hey Clockface he turned to a group of New York musicians who contributed their parts remotely. Bill Frisell, one of Americana’s great experimenters, layered guitar loops, as did versatile improviser Nels Cline. The present state of the country is all over the record, like a wraith haunting the American Songbook. After the fractured warmth of the Paris-recorded “I Do (Zula’s Song)” we get the sumptuous “We Are All Cowards Now,” its lyrics dipping into the voice of someone who’s scared of a government taking away their guns, while “No Flag” plays like a national anthem entangling nihilism and narrow-mindedness. “No sign for the dark place that I live/No God for the damn that I don’t give,” Costello sings; “We want everything and we don’t want to share/Outer space for the faces we fear.”
Hey Clockface’s Tin Pan Alley-bred schmaltz is self-conscious and even gleefully deliberate, yet there are moments when it can be overpowering. The speech that begins “Radio Is Everything” employs a dizzying series of internal rhymes (“screams,” “regimes,” “seems”; “that trivial, sniveling rosary, that ring-a-ding rosemary”) that are distracting in their florid excess. Yet by combining such mannered lyrical tropes with music that sounds alternately nostalgic and dystopian, Costello’s noirish atmospheres suggest another populist American tradition: the pulp mystery. His killer, of course, is time. On an album that has him narrating the decline of so many characters, Costello finally seems aware that the clock has it in for him, too.
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. | 2020-11-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-11-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Concord | November 4, 2020 | 7.5 | 3955199f-28f5-4062-bdcf-45e50f04d0e9 | Daniel Felsenthal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-felsenthal/ | |
null | On the first song on their debut record, MGMT let us know how they got here. The rock song-as-origin myth is nothing new-- from "Who Do You Love" through "Immigrant Song", to "We Share Our Mother's Health" and Kanye West's "Big Brother"-- and "Time to Pretend" situates itself in that canon. Emerging initially from a viscous electronic fluid, the song quickly takes shape as a bombastic electro-glam number about rock star dreams. Accordingly, it's cheesy and clichéd, but also thick with sarcasm: Before the first chorus, MGMT sing nostalgically about having models for wives, moving to Paris, and shooting heroin. | MGMT: Oracular Spectacular | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10761-oracular-spectacular/ | Oracular Spectacular | On the first song on their debut record, MGMT let us know how they got here. The rock song-as-origin myth is nothing new-- from "Who Do You Love" through "Immigrant Song", to "We Share Our Mother's Health" and Kanye West's "Big Brother"-- and "Time to Pretend" situates itself in that canon. Emerging initially from a viscous electronic fluid, the song quickly takes shape as a bombastic electro-glam number about rock star dreams. Accordingly, it's cheesy and clichéd, but also thick with sarcasm: Before the first chorus, MGMT sing nostalgically about having models for wives, moving to Paris, and shooting heroin. The kicker, though, is in the title itself. Knowing that the Almost Famous notion of stardom doesn't exist anymore (if it ever did), the duo of Andrew Vanwyngarden and Ben Goldwasser realize they're "fated to pretend." It's a charming idea-- making a career out of fantasizing-- and on Oracular Spectacular, they not only accept their playacting destiny, they demonstrate that, just maybe, it's a path more people should take.
MGMT find kindred spirits in Muse and Mew by dressing their melodies in the fanciful trappings of 1970s British prog, but unlike their contemporaries the duo also weaves in lessons from disco, new-wave synth-pop, and early 90s Britpop. The understanding that youthful innocence is a potent force-- a theme first established in "Time to Pretend"-- continues throughout the record. Instead of the "Knights of Cydonia", though, MGMT fights "Weekend Wars", ostensibly an ode to the fictionalized childhood battles that treat backyards as independent colonies in need of conquering. The gentle, chiming melody and effete vocals of "The Youth" recall Sparks or Queen at their most restrained moments, and "Kids" comes across as an inspirational dance anthem for playgrounders.
Most impressive on Spectacular is Vanwyngarden and Goldwasser's ability to dabble, with the shared understanding that whatever they do is Big. "Pieces of What" is an unexpected acoustic guitar piece, but it's delivered like an outtake from Suede's Dog Man Star. "4th Dimensional Transition" augments its cavernous psychedelic vocals with a jacked-up BPM count, and on "Electric Feel", MGMT pull off lithe, falsetto electro-funk surprisingly well. There's not much to the song aside from a Barry Gibb vocal and limber bassline, but within the context of the rest of Spectacular, it makes perfect sense. In fact, so does the duo's current tour pairing, as the openers for Of Montreal. Kevin Barnes' emergence as an icon of theatricalized electro-glam seems the ideal toward which the duo should strive. They're still young, of course; they've got plenty of time to figure that out. | 2007-10-22T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2007-10-22T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Rock | Columbia | October 22, 2007 | 6.8 | 395852b6-d01a-4a40-83f2-65117fb651aa | Eric Harvey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-harvey/ | null |
Over the course of his Hurry Up and Die and Cocaine Riot mixtape series, the Coke Boys-affiliated Queens rapper Chinx pieced together a gruff, promising sound. Then, he was killed after shots were fired at his car. As a result, Welcome to JFK is a different kind of hip-hop debut. Instead of pointing the rapper toward the places he could go, JFK hints at places he might’ve gotten. | Over the course of his Hurry Up and Die and Cocaine Riot mixtape series, the Coke Boys-affiliated Queens rapper Chinx pieced together a gruff, promising sound. Then, he was killed after shots were fired at his car. As a result, Welcome to JFK is a different kind of hip-hop debut. Instead of pointing the rapper toward the places he could go, JFK hints at places he might’ve gotten. | Chinx: Welcome to JFK | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20924-welcome-to-jfk/ | Welcome to JFK | Over the course of his Hurry Up and Die and Cocaine Riot mixtape series, the Queens rapper Chinx pieced together a gruff, promising sound. Versed in the foreboding thump of Atlanta trap but very much New York in spirit and form, Chinx at his best (the mischievously weird "I'm a Coke Boy", from Cocaine Riot 2), suggested that Coke Boys could be more than just French Montana's goon squad. Then one May morning the unthinkable happened: Chinx was killed as shots were fired at his car outside of a venue he’d just performed. He was only 31, married with three children and a fourth on the way.
As a method of coping with the loss, his manager and close collaborators gathered to honor their friend the only way they knew how: workshopping the sessions he’d left behind. As a result, Welcome to JFK is a different kind of hip-hop debut. Instead of pointing the rapper toward the places he could go, JFK hint at places he might’ve gotten. From the dejected Auto-Tuned opener "Experimental", in which Chinx sings "I swear I want this to last us a lifetime", to the foreboding closer "Die Young", the specter of mortality haunts the proceedings.
Despite all of this, it's a testament to Chinx's still-growing pop smarts that Welcome to JFK is sometimes a lot of fun. "Experimental"’s mournful opener is quickly offset by a stream of upbeat shots at radio play. "Thug Love" and "The Other Side" spring for help from outside singers, the former calling Jeremih for the chorus and the latter tapping Ty Dolla $ign in full goon regalia. The real gem of the batch is "Yay", a bratty bit of spiteful money counting that is concise and catchy without sacrificing Chinx’s dopeboy veneer.
For the stretch of songs from the wistful pep talk "How to Get Rich" through the closing Coke Boys posse cut "Die Young", Welcome to JFK tenses up and eases off the good times. Chinx walks his audience behind the triumph of "Go Get It" and "Yay" to illuminate the hard decisions and paranoia that accompant success on the streets. "Pray" pairs him up with Chicago Coke Boys affiliate Lil Durk as each ponders mortality and their legacy. In the latter, Chinx raps chillingly about a nightmare in which he gets shot in the head, only to dive into a chorus essentially eulogizing himself. Welcome to JFK doesn’t allow much comfort. The album is by turns a succession of punchlines so snarky it’s upsetting Chinx won’t be around to write more of them and an unnerving trip into a mind coming to terms with the ever-present reality of sudden death. | 2015-09-08T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2015-09-08T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Rap | Entertainment One | September 8, 2015 | 7.3 | 3962768a-6d9c-41ad-a653-74ca93324a40 | Craig Jenkins | https://pitchfork.com/staff/craig-jenkins/ | null |
Despite being based on a ’70s vampire film, the rap trio’s album is somehow their most bloodless project to date. | Despite being based on a ’70s vampire film, the rap trio’s album is somehow their most bloodless project to date. | clipping.: There Existed an Addiction to Blood | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/clipping-there-existed-an-addiction-to-blood/ | There Existed an Addiction to Blood | Rap trio clipping. take pride in their commitment to ego death. When they formed they adopted two foundational rules—strict avoidance of first-person perspectives and the word nigga—just to make explicit that their music is not about them. Using found sounds, foley tricks, and imagined characters, rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes fabricated entire worlds. Following the space opera of 2016’s Splendor & Misery, which was actually nominated for a Hugo Award following a fan campaign, and the abstract improvisation of 2018’s Face EP, they channel horrorcore.
Their third album is named after a lyric from the soundtrack of ’70s horror film Ganja & Hess, a surreal love story in which a vampiric black couple wrestles with their appetite for blood. The movie is lurid, mysterious, and tender, a combination that completely eludes clipping. Somehow, despite the gory source material, There Existed an Addiction to Blood is their most bloodless project to date.
Their vision of horror is high-octane, high-concept, and fussy. Technically, there is a lot happening in their meticulous, densely referential songs. Across There Existed an Addiction to Blood there are shootouts, a ScHoolboy Q interpolation (Diggs uses Q’s flow from “What They Want” on “Nothing is Safe”)and a resurrected Bobby Hutton on “Blood of the Fang”—but every detail feels exhaustingly mechanical.
As a vocalist, Diggs has the charisma of a metronome and the expressive range of a sock puppet. Performing in a stiff monotone, he exclusively raps fast or faster, enunciating words with crisp diction but never relishing them or giving them life. “And there may even be some meaning gleaming in the streets that they built/On top of dead bodies in the olden days when the pen was a quill,” he raps on “Intro.” “The best menage is a death menage, agree?/ Chest massage with electric rods for three,” he says on “The Show.” You can appreciate the internal rhymes and inversions, but his flow is so robotic it rarely feels like he appreciates them
Snipes and Hutson are just as perfunctory. Their production style is informed by film scores and a range of genres, but their beats are dry and lifeless. “He Dead” is a dirge that dissolves into bland ambience. “Club Down,” presumably an ode to shut-the-party-down Memphis crunk, is built around an arid, prickly drone that wanes in and out of focus. Drumless and peppered with EFX, the beat is as vast and empty as an airlocked bunker. The sole outlier is “Blood of the Fang,” which works elements from Ganja & Hess into a throbbing romp that Diggs navigates nimbly. It's one of the rare moments where his flows feel loose and natural.
In theory, the pulp and theater of horrorcore should fit clipping.'s skill set. Snipes has done extensive work as a composer for TV and film; Hutson has a background in experimental music, and Diggs is an actor and slam poet. Attention to atmosphere and cadence is essential to all their disciplines, and horrorcore has often drawn from the TV and movie horror canon. What sinks the record is its enduring sense of cosplay. Horrorcore is about terror as a mood and as a state of mind. When RZA mocks suicide, Tyler defiles corpses, or Lord Infamous summons demons, there’s a sense of alienation behind the provocation. The point of horrorcore is to both piss off church moms and find a language and vehicle for rage and misery. But there is no aching, tortured self at the center of clipping., just three fanboys’ overworked hearts palpitating into the abyss. While you can’t deny the imagination, you also can’t fathom the point.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-10-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-10-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Sub Pop | October 21, 2019 | 4.5 | 396cc196-5d75-466d-ad40-8d5af67d8766 | Stephen Kearse | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-kearse/ | |
Mature Themes is Ariel Pink's grittier, gristlier, and funnier follow-up, an album that clarifies that Before Today was not a sign of things to come but rather just a signpost along his strange journey. | Mature Themes is Ariel Pink's grittier, gristlier, and funnier follow-up, an album that clarifies that Before Today was not a sign of things to come but rather just a signpost along his strange journey. | Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: Mature Themes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16936-mature-themes/ | Mature Themes | Ariel Pink's music began its strange journey early in the last decade, as a CD-R lying on the floor of Animal Collective's tour van. Before then, he'd been heard by almost no one, despite that he'd recorded hundreds of songs, by himself, in what sounded like a windowless dungeon. The quality of those early recordings was poor, but something shone from the murk: Pink became the first artist signed to the band's Paw Tracks label, which reissued his album The Doldrums in 2004. The path of his career since then has been wayward and strange, culminating in the highly professional Before Today in 2010. But there are through-lines. Whether you tuned into his world during the Paw Tracks era or after Before Today's "Round and Round" became an indie anthem, you probably sensed an intriguing off-note lurking in the L.A. home-recording savant's music.
In Pink's hands, the boundless sunshine of 1970s AM pop grows queasy, even malevolent, splitting the difference between a grimace, a smirk, and a smile. Even at its loveliest, his music radiates a mesmerizing sense of bad faith: Pink often incorporates humor into his songs, but it's hard to be sure if you're in on the joke. He may express seemingly sincere sentiments in one moment while mocking them in the next. In his most compelling material, these impulses curl around each other until his "fuck you's" sound like "I love you", and vice versa.
Before Today was Ariel Pink's breakout record, a leap to a new stage from his cult beginnings that made his skill as a songwriter and craftsman clear. Free of the lo-fi grit that characterized his Paw Tracks material, you could suddenly hear his uncanny knack for fusing together unlikely parts with no visible seams. Mature Themes, Pink's grittier, gristlier, and funnier follow-up, clarifies that Before Today was not a sign of things to come but rather just a signpost along his unknowable path. The production has hardened, as if Pink has found a midpoint between the warped, warbly sound of his tape releases and what he can now afford. The songs themselves, while still catchy, are often opaque, antisocial, and confounding. The mood of the record veers closer to the melted emotional nowhere of The Doldrums' "Good Kids Make Bad Grown Ups" or the arch piss-take of Worn Copy's "Artifact".
As a result, some have pegged Mature Themes as an alienating move meant to prune Pink's flock back down to the diehards. But the album is too rich for that straightforward reading. Here, even his puerile sentiments remain generously melodic and lovingly wrought. "I'm not real and I won't call you," he croons on the title track, over a melody that climbs upward so gracefully it sounds like he's vandalizing a Shaker hymn. It might be one of the truest lines he's ever sung. But the Elvis Costello-like rising-action of the chorus, which takes the phrase "I wanted to be good" up the scale, is an expression of love, pure and simple.
"Only in My Dreams" is another example of his singular songwriting mind: Listen casually and it's a Byrdsian pop tune, but sit down at a piano to map out it's details, and you'll lean back, baffled. If taken apart, no one but Pink would be able to reassemble it. It's this talent that links Pink to past practicioners of outsider music-- R. Stevie Moore, Frank Zappa, Ween. Like those artists, Pink looked at the puzzle pieces of a pop song and figured out jarring new ways they fit together, mingling affection with ironic commentary and intellectual distance. "Kinski Assassin" opens with Pink singing nonsense in a stentorian voice not far from a 1930s radio drama: "Suicide dumplings dropping testicle bombs." Then, he chimes in with something silky and romantic: "We'll always have Paris." The lyrics don't make any more sense together than the music behind them does, but they glide smoothly into each other, conveying a strong sense of internal coherence. It's the kind of bewitching almost-logic that drives people to endlessly re-watch David Lynch's Mulholland Drive or Inland Empire.
But don't look to Pink's lyrics for clues, because they offer few ways to emotionally engage. "The bad breath of a cross-eyed goat/ Eating children for a Monday morning," go the opening lines of "Driftwood", intoned with the seriousness of a Druid. On "Symphony of the Nymph", he speak-sings the song's title in an exaggerated scientist voice straight out of Thomas Dolby's catalogue over a backing track located somewhere between "Monster Mash" and "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah". On "Farewell American Primitive", the sentiment that comes through most clearly is, "Fuck it." It's moments like these that forcefully remind you: There's nothing operatic at stake in Pink's music. It's a Chinese finger trap.
When The Village Voice interviewed Pink in 2010, he suggested that he'd lost the ability to make music the way he did in his earlier, more prolific days. But Mature Themes is as vital as anything he's ever recorded: Even the throwaway "Schnitzel Boogie" fails at being one-dimensional, playing instead like something McCartney might have worked on for the fifth side of the White Album. This seesaw between sincerity and insincerity is the fuel that drives Pink's music. It's the riddle that creates his cult, and it's the reason everyone will continue to pay attention to him, no matter how many faces he pulls. | 2012-08-21T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-08-21T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rock | 4AD | August 21, 2012 | 8.5 | 396d72ba-f28d-472a-9d7e-dc02c89aecb5 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | null |
Jones’ all-star pop-soul adventure prefigured Thriller and highlighted his ear for new grooves. | Jones’ all-star pop-soul adventure prefigured Thriller and highlighted his ear for new grooves. | Quincy Jones: The Dude | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/quincy-jones-the-dude/ | The Dude | One day while the rapper and producer MF Doom was sequestered away from the world writing his 1999 solo debut, Operation: Doomsday, the sound of Quincy Jones’ “One Hundred Ways” came on the radio. Doom became smitten with an instrumental section of the track that includes Greg Phillinganes’ electric synth solo. He’d later chop up the sample and use it as the basis for his own kooky “Rhymes Like Dimes,” adding another crate-digging reference to an album that sampled heartily from the similarly warming sounds of ’80s R&B artists like the S.O.S. Band, Atlantic Starr, and the Deele.
“One Hundred Ways” originally appeared on Jones’ 1981 album The Dude, which has now been given the Super Audio CD reissue treatment. The voice you hear when Doom lets the sample spill over belongs to James Ingram, who was making his debut on the LP. And while the moment conjures up the entertaining image of Doom in a metal mask casually rapping along to the radio, it also raises the deeper suggestion that the music of bandleaders like Jones—along with James Brown, Roy Ayers, and Isaac Hayes—has proved to be so fertile for hip-hop producers because it’s made with the spirit of collaboration in mind. Records like these sketch out funky templates and trust guest musicians to stamp the tune with their own identity, much in the manner of a producer repurposing a sample into something fresh but also evocative of its original source.
The cast list involved across The Dude’s nine songs underscores this point. Along with Ingram, there are contributions from Michael Jackson, Patti Austin, Herbie Hancock, and Stevie Wonder. English R&B keyboardist and craftsman Rod Temperton, who would go on to pen “Thriller” and George Benson’s “Give Me the Night,” notches four songwriting credits, while Chas Jankel, from funked-up punk outfit Ian Dury and the Blockheads, scores a co-writing credit by virtue of Jones covering “Ai No Corrida,” which originally appeared a year earlier on Jankel’s debut album. The Dude is a Quincy Jones solo project in name, but this post-disco pop-soul cornucopia of groove resonates as a testament to his ear for anticipating new sounds.
The album struts into life with the aforementioned “Ai No Corrida,” an ebullient, Latin-infused dance track with a rhythm section that pumps and shuffles along with four-to-the-floor swagger before the sugary chorus worms its way into your memory. Jones smoothes out Jankel’s original vision while introducing perky and infectious handclaps to the song. Next comes the slap-bass pomp of the title track, a Blaxploitation vignette that stars a character whose main attribute is simply being cool. It’s narrated by Ingram, includes backing vocals from Jackson, and at one point nods to the nascent hip-hop scene by breaking into a braggadocio rap that even by early-’80s standards sounds like it was recited by someone’s grandpa: “I graduated from the college of the streets/I got a Ph.D in how to make ends meet.”
The vibe switches dramatically as Ingram steers the session into quiet storm territory with the sentimental “Just Once,” before Stevie’s synth wizardry and Austin’s vocals amp up the moody funk of “Betcha’ Wouldn’t Hurt Me.” Elsewhere, “Razzamatazz” is a pulsing dancefloor outing spiked with rousing horns, and “Velas” brings the album into a gentler, jazz-influenced zone complete with Toots Thielemans’ harmonica lines.
The Dude’s eclectic mix of styles and sometimes bumpy song sequencing risk making it an uneven listen‚ albeit under Jones’ savvy stewardship, everything is seamlessly blended together. The music has an almost electronic slickness, as if Jones is signposting a way to turn a traditional jazz and soul grounding in a more radio-friendly direction.
A year after the release of The Dude, Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson would achieve pop perfection with Thriller. The shadow of that power move leaves The Dude as an open sketchbook of sorts, with Jones showcasing styles, introducing personnel, and prompting other musicians to take his template and run with it to commercial success. A wave of smooth R&B artists would readily take up the offer, and Herbie Hancock would build on Jones’ nod to hip-hop through the electro shock of “Rockit” in 1983. The musicians that Jones’ vision influenced would in turn inspire artists like MF Doom to repurpose Jones’ grooves all over again, proving The Dude’s prescient vision and enduring cool. | 2018-01-17T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-17T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Super Audio CD | January 17, 2018 | 8.1 | 396e92ec-cfaf-40b2-90e6-7e3a12095f56 | Phillip Mlynar | https://pitchfork.com/staff/phillip-mlynar/ | |
The Barcelona singer sticks to her synth-heavy, sticky-sweet sound on an album that’s meant to signal her arrival as a global force. | The Barcelona singer sticks to her synth-heavy, sticky-sweet sound on an album that’s meant to signal her arrival as a global force. | Bad Gyal: Worldwide Angel | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bad-gyal-worldwide-angel/ | Worldwide Angel | Spain’s main musical exports, at least from an English-language audience’s perspective—artists such as Mourn, Hinds, Delorean, and John Talabot—tend to line up with Anglo-American trends in indie rock and leftfield dance music. But don’t let the rosters of Primavera Sound or Sónar fool you: What young Spaniards listen to has very little to do with any of that. On the streets, in city parks, and in underage dance clubs, not to mention on Spotify streaming charts, trap and reggaeton dominate.
Bad Gyal occupies a kind of middle ground. The music of the 20-year-old singer Alba Farelo, who hails from a bedroom community of Barcelona, is largely influenced by reggaeton and dancehall, but she is signed to Editorial Canada, a local indie label. And many of her collaborators on her latest mixtape are drawn from a who’s who of hot club producers from around the world. Night Slugs’ Jam City; Colombia-via-Manchester’s DJ Florentino, of the Swing Ting crew; the Los Angeles-based Popcaan producer Dubbel Dutch; and WEDIDIT producer/guitarist D33J are the sorts of names more likely to turn up on Boomkat’s front page than on a teenagers’s boombox at a botellón.
Worldwide Angel isn’t her debut; that was 2016’s Slow Wine mixtape, a collection of chilly trap and neon-kissed dancehall that yielded one of her biggest (and best) early hits, “Mercadona.” But the new album is clearly meant to signal Bad Gyal’s arrival as a global force, following her rapid rise over the past two years. Since releasing her breakout song, a Catalan-language riff on Rihanna’s “Work” called “Pai,” she has racked up over 24 million plays on YouTube and played everywhere from the Red Bull Music Academy Festival in Los Angeles to Iceland and Japan, not to mention her hometown’s Sónar. FACT even named the Dubbel Dutch-produced “Jacaranda” their No. 1 song of 2017.
Despite the expanded guest list, Worldwide Angel largely sticks to the template established on previous Bad Gyal songs: synth-heavy, sticky-sweet dembow grooves tinged with airy melancholy. On “Tra,” Dubbel Dutch wraps a ribbon-like G-funk lead around a snapping digital-dancehall beat. DJ Florentino’s “Blink” brings Elysia Crampton’s style of FM-radio excess to a beat bristling with airhorns, breaking glass, and insistent, syncopated claps. The textures are deliciously synthetic—as crinkly and richly hued as pastel-colored cellophane. Farelo sings mostly in Spanish peppered with the occasional English word (“Buena vida, mucho work”), though “Yo Sigo Iual,” a protestation that fame hasn’t changed her, is sung mostly in Catalan. Farelo, who veils her voice in layers of Auto-Tune, doesn’t pretend to be a strong singer. Instead, she has traditionally leaned on attitude, both in her lyrics and, especially, her self-presentation: the scowls and outfits that have helped her rack up all those views so quickly.
But “Mercadona” and “Jacaranda” also benefited from truly catchy hooks, and here, her melodies are often about as emphatic as a shrug. It seems inauspicious that the two-note chorus of the Jam City and Dubbel Dutch-produced “Internationally,” the mixtape’s catchiest cut, mimics the up-and-down cadence of the Chainsmokers’ “Closer.” On “Blink,” too, she sounds hemmed in: Her melody is a desultory shuffle from note to note, when what the song could really use is a bold line of flight up and away from its steady pedal tone. Her lyrics also seem hesitant to stray far from themes she’s already explored. “Internationally” and “Candela” revel in her success and her pleasure in spending its fruits; “Tra” and “Blink” are love songs aimed at the dancefloor; “Realize” is a kiss-off to the doubters and haters.
She has her moments. Her Auto-Tuned harmonies on the latter song have a bittersweet tinge, and on “Yo Sigo Iual,” she’s convincingly sorrowful as she pleads with her lover, her voice dripping like teardrops in a cup of melted sorbet. But on “Trust,” a duet with the singer/producer Faberoa, she’s nearly upstaged by his sensual, smoky whisper. Farelo has spoken of Bad Gyal as an invented character or an avatar, an exaggeration of her own personality, but where Worldwide Angel stumbles is that it doesn’t sound nearly outsized enough. | 2018-03-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-03-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Puro / CANADA | March 1, 2018 | 6.2 | 39777426-a8ce-4a3d-be75-818b50b533d6 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
This set from the Palestinian techno DJ and producer is sleek and rolling, fueled by driving rhythms and punctuated by moments of emotional release. | This set from the Palestinian techno DJ and producer is sleek and rolling, fueled by driving rhythms and punctuated by moments of emotional release. | Sama’ Abdulhadi: Fabric Presents Sama’ Abdulhadi | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sama-abdulhadi-fabric-presents-sama-abdulhadi/ | Fabric Presents Sama’ Abdulhadi | When Sama’ Abdulhadi performs, a range of expressions plays across her face in quick succession: concentration, euphoria, mischief, grace, determination—and sometimes, fleetingly, something like a deep-seated weariness. If dance music is often regarded as a form of liberatory escapism—from drudgery, oppression, trauma—then Abdulhadi might be a spokesperson for escape itself. As the world’s foremost Palestinian techno DJ, a fixture in some of the world’s biggest nightclubs and festivals, she is proof that you can make it out of a system that wants to crush you.
Born in Jordan to a family of Palestinian exiles forced out by Israeli authorities who objected to her grandmother’s political activities, Abdulhadi returned to Ramallah as a child and first soaked up local hip-hop (and played for the national soccer team). She then moved to Beirut, where she discovered techno, and then Cairo to study sound design, work as a sound engineer, and DJ throughout the region. Her global breakthrough came in 2018, performing a Boiler Room set from the heart of Ramallah—part of an extensive lineup drawn from the Palestinian underground, including the experimental DJ and producer Muqata’a and the Haifa-based Jazar Crew—that has been viewed more than 12 million times to date. Abdulhadi plays a thoroughly international style of big-room techno, and as a globe-trotting DJ she enjoys a freedom of movement denied to many of her compatriots. (Even on her home turf, however, Abdulhadi has encountered obstacles: In 2020, her performance at a Palestinian mosque triggered a conservative backlash that led her to spend more than a week in jail.) Still, she has always taken pains to center her identity as a Palestinian woman. “It’s a lot of pressure, because I want to represent Palestine perfectly,” she told The Guardian in 2023.
Abdulhadi’s fabric presents mix showcases a hard-charging style behind the decks: 73 relentless minutes of throbbing ostinato basslines, sharply carved drums, and glinting synths. The mood is coiled and tense, evoking grinding teeth and clenched fists. She typically mixes in key, layering complementary synths and basslines in call-and-response-like counterpoints, and using syncopated patterns to break up endlessly tumbling four-on-the-floor grooves. Her single “Well Fee,” featuring Palestinian singer Walaa Sbeit, offers a potent distillation of her style: lumbering drums, rattling rhythmic accents, and hypnotic vocals. It’s a glowering, strutting, mean-mugging track that oozes intensity.
Melodies rarely extend beyond sullen two-note sequences, and the similarity of Abdulhadi’s selections, combined with her layered style of mixing, means that there are few standout moments. Viennese psytrance producers Psycrain & C.A.T provide a brief moment of contrast with “Goosebombs,” in which the beat drops away to reveal pensive piano and saxophone; it’s a welcome respite from the rhythmic juggernaut. Palestinian-born, Berlin-based producer YA Z AN’s “NADA-R” is another highlight, thanks to its eerie, glistening high end, though it’s overshadowed by the ravier, more synth-heavy tracks that bookend it.
The setlist draws from all over: Syria, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Panama, Italy, France, Switzerland, and Germany. Those passport stamps paint a picture of techno’s globalized nature in the 21st century. Abdulhadi’s only explicit nod to the SWANA region comes at the end of the set, in a track by a duo called Acid Arab that pairs mournful Arabic-language vocals with strident reeds and a thundering electronic groove. It’s a multicultural affair: Acid Arab are a group of white Frenchmen; the featured singer, Radia Menel, is Algerian; Ammar 808, the track’s remixer, is Tunisian and based in Denmark. “[We] want to build a bridge between the East and the West,” Acid Arab have said. Their own experience shows how fraught that process can be. They have been accused of cultural appropriation, but they’ve also collaborated with artists from across the region, and in 2017 pledged to boycott Israeli venues other than those run by Palestinians and Israeli Arabs—a move that provoked criticism from anti-BDS listeners.
The timing of Abdulhadi’s fabric presents mix is bittersweet: It came out in late November 2023, in the wake of the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, which killed roughly 1,200 people, including some 700 civilians, and in the midst of Israel’s ongoing reprisals against Gaza—which are estimated to have killed more than 22,000 people, the majority of them women and children—and increased settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. The release of the mix should have been a celebratory affair, the next step in a DJ career that proves anything is possible for Palestinians. Perhaps the aura of optimism around her Boiler Room set was illusory. Even last January, when she spoke to The Guardian, Abdulhadi said, “There was a point when people from Germany were buying tickets and flying into Palestine for parties. But now, no one comes. Nobody’s in the mood to do a party. Nobody’s even thinking of organising their birthday.” Yet even in a relic of false optimism lies an idea of hope, and perhaps therein lies its power. Before he was killed by Israeli missiles, the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer wrote a poem equating his death to a kite flown over Gaza, as a symbol of hope to the children orphaned below. “If I must die,” he concluded, “Let it bring hope/Let it be a tale.” | 2024-01-05T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2024-01-05T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Fabric | January 5, 2024 | 7.2 | 397b3649-c8bc-43cc-a090-7d474c55a02d | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
The L.A. rap deconstructionist trio, which features Hamilton’s Daveed Diggs, has released their highest-concept work yet: a hip-hop space opera. | The L.A. rap deconstructionist trio, which features Hamilton’s Daveed Diggs, has released their highest-concept work yet: a hip-hop space opera. | clipping.: Splendor & Misery | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22344-splendor-misery/ | Splendor & Misery | If there’s an animating principle that runs through all of clipping.’s work to date, it’s a willingness to challenge expectations at every turn. To recap, in the past, the L.A. rap trio have swapped out low-end—a traditional pillar of hip-hop’s sound—for high-pitched noise. They once created a drum track entirely from recordings of gunshots. They’ve forced themselves to jump through conceptual hoops—their previous full-length completely eschewed use of the pronoun “I.” And they’ve built a rap song around a power electronics sample from Whitehouse. All of this headiness makes a bit more sense when you consider the band members’ recent outside pursuits: William Hutson finished a Ph.D. dissertation on experimental music, Jonathan Snipes composed film scores, and Daveed Diggs won both a Grammy and a Tony for his performance in the runaway hit musical, Hamilton.
clipping.’s latest full-length, Splendor & Misery, might just be their most challenging release yet. It’s a hip-hop space opera of sorts, one that, according to the band, “follows the sole survivor of a slave uprising on an interstellar cargo ship, and the onboard computer that falls in love with him.” Calling the album high-concept feels like an understatement. This is the rare rap release that draws inspiration in equal parts from prog-rock and P-funk.
Certainly, it’s difficult to question the quality of the raw materials used here. Founding members Snipes and Hutson skillfully evoke the hum of the ship’s machinery with their bleeps, bloops, and shuddering waves of static. Though it should come as no surprise, Diggs’ rapping is technically impressive, if a bit clinical, throughout Splendor & Misery. On “The Breach,” for example, the rapper dexterously spits tongue-twisting lines for 40 straight seconds. His rapid-fire delivery brings to mind Busdriver and André 3000.
Splendor & Misery’s best songs manage to succeed on their own terms, independent of the overarching narrative. “All Black” sets up the storyline in third-person: “So the danger, clear and present/Is presented as the gift of freedom/Wrapped in days of rapping to himself/Up until his vocal chords collapse.” It nods toward the familiar with turns of phrase (the “all black everything” vacuum of space) and playful anachronisms. “Air ’Em Out” is a trap anthem in zero-gravity, its gleaming synths and skittering drums floating skyward with no bassline to hold them down. Diggs allows his tightly-wound delivery to go slack here, imbuing the track with a looseness and personality that’s sorely missing from much of the album.
As with much of clipping.’s work, the ambition is admirable: using a rap album for an Afrofuturist take on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unfortunately, most of Splendor & Misery’s songs rely on the narrative to propel them forward, not the other way around. Many of these tracks lack an identifiable rhythm section and feel more like spoken-word. It’s possible to create compelling hip-hop instrumentals from shards of noise—just look at Food for Animals and Death Grips or clipping.’s previous work—but on Splendor & Misery, clipping. often prize well-placed sound effects over songcraft. In its drive for conceptual rigor, the album neglects to engage the listener musically. That puts a lot of weight on the story, which tends toward the abstract. Perhaps Splendor & Misery’s plot would be better-suited to another medium—the hip-hop musical is, after all, enjoying something of a moment on Broadway. | 2016-09-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Sub Pop / Deathbomb Arc | September 6, 2016 | 5.3 | 397c1198-9bb9-4a82-871a-e3f702b79f12 | Mehan Jayasuriya | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mehan-jayasuriya/ | null |
Using piano, strings, a wind ensemble, and light percussion, Brion’s score subtly and deftly mirrors the existential ambling of Greta Gerwig’s outstanding coming-of-age film. | Using piano, strings, a wind ensemble, and light percussion, Brion’s score subtly and deftly mirrors the existential ambling of Greta Gerwig’s outstanding coming-of-age film. | Jon Brion: Lady Bird (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jon-brion-lady-bird-original-motion-picture-soundtrack/ | Lady Bird (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | Jon Brion has probably never been a 17-year-old girl, and yet there’s something to the loose, swinging compositions he’s put together for Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut Lady Bird that indicates a grasp of what it’s like to be young, seething, and entirely dissatisfied with your surroundings. Gerwig’s heroine, whose name is Christine but who goes by Lady Bird as a bid for an identity beyond the material conditions of her lower-middle-class family in Sacramento, Calif., introduces herself within the first minutes of the film by flinging herself out of a moving car during an argument with her mother about why she must go to college on the East Coast. You see her mom scream and then there’s a cut to a pink cast with the words “FUCK YOU MOM” firmly scrawled on it. It’s quite an entrance, and a movie with a heavier hand might have thrown something punk-rebellious in the soundtrack, or at the very least something with a snare-driven backbeat and an electric guitar. Not Lady Bird. Christine’s not punk; she's just exasperated and understimulated, searching tirelessly for a way out of the cage she sees around her life.
In the past decade or so, movies about quirky high schoolers have thankfully aged out of their twee phase. Lady Bird has far more in common with Kenneth Lonergan’s 2011 stunner Margaret than it does with Juno; it has gravitas, and it assigns more meaning to the looking than the finding, the neat endings, the easy answers. With a piano, string, wind ensemble, and light percussion, Brion’s score deftly mirrors Lady Bird’s existential ambling. His notes barely glance off the piano keys, and there always seems to be a spring in the music’s step, leaving just enough room for the film’s actors to carry the real weight. This isn’t the kind of soundtrack that tells you exactly how to feel; Lady Bird isn’t that kind of movie. Its magic happens in the space between the characters, the tensions and betrayals and bruises they inflict on each other and how they propel each other forward. There’s an arc to the film—it doesn’t just throw its characters in a spin-cycle of increasing absurdity, like the Brion-scored I Heart Huckabees—but it’s a subtle, emotional one. Lady Bird’s big quest is just to fly across the country to college in New York without destroying every meaningful relationship she’s ever had along the way.
Lady Bird is one of Brion’s more unassuming scores (you wouldn’t necessarily be able to place its theme instantaneously if you heard it out in the wild), but it’s also one of his least cynical. Even the gut-mangling Charlie Kaufman movie Synecdoche, New York had its sneering moments with wildly sarcastic Brion themes to accompany them. Lady Bird’s score stays in a consistent mode, never pushing beyond a light touch, which is fitting enough for a film set in Sacramento, a place whose anodyne pleasantness threatens to swallow its heroine alive. And still in all the sunniness lurks the sense that something is happening. Something is pushing Christine toward a precipice that she’s both terrified and eager to scale. A bass drum pounds insistently on “Maybe”; piano keys strike up through the woodwinds like mountains through fog on “Leaving”; there’s a track called “Hope” and a track called “More Hope” and one “Hope Against Hope” and then, finally, the minor key conclusion, “Hope?”
Set in the early 2000s, right around the time Jon Brion started composing for directors like Paul Thomas Anderson who prefer to see the world askew, Lady Bird easily could have aimed for millennial nostalgia with its music cues. Rather than have Christine listen to the American Analog Set or early Sufjan Stevens, though, Gerwig pivots her emotional growth around a ubiquitous Dave Matthews Band single. Brion follows her lead. The way he colors the film’s world leaves it wide open, with room enough for gentle movement and subtle triumphs. His light, playful motifs buoy the narrative without crowding it, and help paint a rich, fulfilling portrait of a girl on the edge, ready to fly. | 2018-01-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Lakeshore / Fire | January 4, 2018 | 7.3 | 3984b8f7-51a3-4ad0-995d-71653f8310d3 | Sasha Geffen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sasha-geffen/ | |
null | They say legendry lysergic prophet Timothy Leary used to dose the drinks at parties with LSD, but it might not have been necessary. By the tail end of the 1960s, something was already in the air (and water) marking a radical cultural shift; recreational drugs were just one part of the anti-establishment equation. By 1967, year of the Summer of Love, the counterculture made a valiant bid to supplant the dominant culture, and in retrospect a strong case can be made that the counter-culture won.
At the forefront of this battle, in Britain, were acts like Pink Floyd, fixtures of the | Pink Floyd: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn [40th Anniversary Edition] | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10643-the-piper-at-the-gates-of-dawn-40th-anniversary-edition/ | The Piper at the Gates of Dawn [40th Anniversary Edition] | They say legendry lysergic prophet Timothy Leary used to dose the drinks at parties with LSD, but it might not have been necessary. By the tail end of the 1960s, something was already in the air (and water) marking a radical cultural shift; recreational drugs were just one part of the anti-establishment equation. By 1967, year of the Summer of Love, the counterculture made a valiant bid to supplant the dominant culture, and in retrospect a strong case can be made that the counter-culture won.
At the forefront of this battle, in Britain, were acts like Pink Floyd, fixtures of the nascent underground psychedelic scene. Granted, they were fixtures of the infamous UFO Club and the toast of no less than Paul McCartney (allegedly a recent convert to the powers of psychotropic drugs), but the band never claimed to be spokespersons for the revolution. They weren't leaders but fellow travelers-- at least until their epochal debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Piper was recorded at Abbey Road at the same time the Beatles were there recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but the results couldn't have been more at odds with one another. Where the Beatles exerted complete control over the tools of the studio, Pink Floyd used the studio to lose control. It didn't hurt that the band's primary songwriter and visionary Syd Barrett was on the verge of permanently losing control himself. Less than a year after the release of Piper, in 1967, Barrett was out of the band, one of the most prominent and tragic casualties of the rock era. Of course, while Barrett lived out the remainder of his life as one of the psychedelic age's walking wounded, Pink Floyd went on to much bigger (if not necessarily) better things. Their catalog remains an AOR goldmine, the gift that keeps on giving for the band's principals, who, all said and done, released relatively few records during their heyday, but who have benefited a thousand fold from their efforts.
The 40th anniversary edition of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn-- overseen by producer James Guthrie, who engineered and co-produced The Wall and who first cleaned up Piper for its 1994 reissue-- is now available as either a 2xCD or 3xCD set, but don't get your hopes up for a bounty of rarities or other goodies. The former includes both the stereo version of the album as well as the mono version (which many Floyd fanatics find superior). The 3xCD edition includes an extra disc covering the group's classic 1967 singles "Arnold Layne" and "Apples and Oranges", their respective B-sides "Candy and a Currant Bun" and "Paintbox", an alternate take of "Matilda Mother", two alternate versions of "Interstellar Overdrive", and a stereo version of "Apples and Oranges". Only "Matilda Mother" and one take on "Interstellar Overdrive" are previously unreleased.
A special edition of Piper was inevitable, but so was the failure of any reissue as incomprehensive as this one: This new edition underscores the reality that EMI and/or the surviving members of Pink Floyd-- especially since they shifted from band to de facto corporation-- have been either downright stingy with their unreleased archives or hopelessly coy about what may lie in there, leaving fans to settle for second-hand scraps like those on A Treeful of Secrets, a 17xCD fan-made rarities compilation. From a fan's perspective, Pink Floyd, Inc. has been either indifferent at best (or hostile at worst) to the notion of managing its legacy-- especially its formative years-- and has only reluctantly taken up caretaking duties as part and parcel of cordoning it off.
Few would criticize the merits of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn itself (as reflected in the rating above)-- it's an essential album. While so many other products of the Summer of Love were positive and unifying, Piper was fractured and scary. Songs like "Astronomy Domine" and "Interstellar Overdrive" captured the sustained improvisational freakouts of the band's live shows, but did so in more concise form. Other songs, like "Lucifer Sam," "Bike", and "The Gnome", split the difference between quirky pop songs and explorations of the nightmarish found-sound fringe, setting a twisted template for countless acts to come. By 1980's The Wall, Pink Floyd had become sterile and solipsistic. At this auspicious start, Pink Floyd were thrilling. Anything was possible.
Those aforementioned singles, "Arnold Layne" (produced by early Floyd booster Joe Boyd) and "See Emily Play", probably remain the best distillations of early Pink Floyd, and in particular the pop genius of Syd Barrett. They set the stage not only for the more sustained vision of Piper, but also Barrett's all-too-brief subsequent solo output, before he receded into the background. In fact, it's the presence of Barrett (who wrote all but one song on Piper) that accounts for the album's influence as more than just a psychedelic relic. As a lyricist, his stream-of-conscious nonsense verses are every bit the match of Lewis Carroll. As a vocalist, often singing with keyboardist Rick Wright, his languid delivery lends the album a dreamy quality at odds with its menace. You can catch glimpses of Barrett's subconscious in a 12-page reproduction of one of his notebooks, hanging as bait for ardent fans to shell out for the deluxe 3xCD version (selling for around $40), but at least the tactile document is something you can't get anywhere else.
That's not the case for the rest of this anniversary set. Even taking into account the remastering, the long-available stereo edition of Piper can now be discounted as little more than a novelty. Yet you can only buy the mono version on its own through iTunes. Double-dipping is one thing; compelling fans to double-dip is another, and the unavailability of the mono version as a stand-alone CD purchase is the kind of move that all but goads downloaders to do exactly what their gut tells them to do. Maybe Pink Floyd can't be bothered to troll through the BBC archives for live material, footage or lost tapes, or bake old masters to their sonic satisfaction, but certainly they can hire someone to do it for them. The appetite is there, which makes such a banal celebration of this psychedelic masterwork so disappointing. | 2007-09-18T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2007-09-18T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | EMI / Capitol | September 18, 2007 | 9.4 | 39851ca7-4a5e-40d8-b0c1-55ece8694810 | Joshua Klein | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joshua-klein/ | null |
Side by Side shows Natalie Prass' playful side, comprising two live cuts of songs from her self-titled solo debut, as well as covers of Grimes, Anita Baker, and Simon & Garfunkel. | Side by Side shows Natalie Prass' playful side, comprising two live cuts of songs from her self-titled solo debut, as well as covers of Grimes, Anita Baker, and Simon & Garfunkel. | Natalie Prass: Side by Side EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21275-natalie-prass-side-by-side-ep/ | Side by Side EP | Let me be the first to formally apologize for accidentally contributing to the execrable proliferation of analyses that Natalie Prass sounds like "a Disney princess." This writer was in attendance for a show where she took a moment to defend herself from the claim, which was followed by a not-sober fellow yelling out an unprintable word and the name of this website, a moment that made at least one person in the vicinity feel very uncomfortable. You can understand how she would take it as a backhanded compliment: There's something unavoidably infantilizing about the suggestion that your voice resembles a fictional cartoon monarch's, even if Snow White could really sing.
It makes her sound so… formal, too, and while Prass makes music inspired by classic artists like Dusty Springfield and Dionne Warwick, she's no traditionalist. Covers of modern musicians like Janet Jackson and Ryan Adams have snuck their way into her sets, and she even popped up on the AV Club last month to turn the gory chug of Slayer's "Raining Blood" into an inside-voice delight. Side by Side shows that playful side, comprising two live cuts of songs from her self-titled solo debut, as well as covers of Grimes, Anita Baker, and Simon & Garfunkel, artists whose only obvious connection is "singers that Natalie Prass decided to cover on her new EP."
Her take on Baker's "Caught Up in the Rapture" does away with those awesomely '80s gated drums and sparkling filter sweeps, instead pushing the tempo and adding guitar for something a little more lively. On the original, Baker welcomes the listener with open arms through some magical doorway, where the evening of a lifetime awaits. Prass sings from a more present place, like she's three beers into a muggy summer night at a Nashville bar. She makes the gentle folk-rock of "Sound of Silence" a little more lively, nailing those melodies with her graceful, nimble voice. "REALiTi" is done as a straight up ragtime jaunt, and if her press release commentary on the cover ("[Grimes is] probably going to say 'what is this jazz shit' and hate it") is maybe a little too accurately self-deprecating, she at least commits.
The live versions of "My Baby Don't Understand Me" and "Christy" strip away the dense orchestral instrumentation and let a Wurlitzer piano do the driving. The arrangements are cleaner, and show her mastery over negative space. One knock on the self-titled record was that Prass sometimes sounded secondary to the orchestra, but here the same can't be said. My favorite moment on the original LP was at the end of "My Baby Don't Understand Me", where the repeated refrain of "our love is a long goodbye" built to a grand climax. On the live take, she lets the groove ride a few seconds longer, transforming the swelling romance into something steamier.
Similarly, the nighttime vibe of the unadorned "Christy" precludes all future Disney princess comparisons, as she lets the lonesomeness of the lyrics ("Why does it have to be that she can take the hand of anyone she meets?/ Still, the only one she sees belongs to me") really sink in. In this, Side by Side does what a good EP should—it reminds us of what she's skilled at, while showing off some other strengths. There's even something like a mission statement to her music in the title, and the song it's taken from: "When I feel the magic of you/ The feeling's always new." It's an old sentiment, and the lyric belongs to another artist, but Prass makes it hers. | 2015-11-23T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2015-11-23T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Spacebomb | November 23, 2015 | 7.2 | 398575ca-d10e-42f3-a723-dfa6df3515dd | Jeremy Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jeremy-gordon/ | null |
A bona-fide rock album from a noisy duo known for a killer live show and inconsistent records. Here they find success with straight-up rockers, punk rants, country-ish acoustic tunes, and even an aching piano ballad. Lee Ranaldo produces. | A bona-fide rock album from a noisy duo known for a killer live show and inconsistent records. Here they find success with straight-up rockers, punk rants, country-ish acoustic tunes, and even an aching piano ballad. Lee Ranaldo produces. | Magik Markers: BOSS | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10700-boss/ | BOSS | Despite their long list of releases, Magik Markers have up to now been more compelling live than on record. Even on their best discs, the highs of their free-ranging noise-rock have come with meandering, sometimes off-putting lows. By contrast, the live act of guitarist and singer Elisa Ambrogio and drummer Pete Nolan is constantly fascinating. Their commanding stage presence steamrolls over musical gaps that, without the visceral visuals, might stick out awkwardly on record.
So it figures that, to make an album that holds attention the way their shows do, Magik Markers would have to channel their rambling spontaneity into more conventional tunes. What's so great about BOSS is that even though it is more structured and song-oriented than any previous effort, the band's fiery, scraggly approach remains intact. Paradoxically, by restricting their options (and, coincidentally, losing bassist Leah Quimby), the band has made its music even more open and free.
Such discipline has also made Magik Markers' sound more diverse. Their improv-based records sometimes got stuck in a narrow range of noises, but while BOSS may be a bona-fide rock album, there's lots of different stuff happening here: straight up rockers, punk rants, country-ish acoustics, and even an aching piano ballad. And each has an energy and authority that matches the band's live show.
That said, BOSS isn't a complete split from the band's past. They have veered toward straight rock in the midst of some of their noise jams before, and many tracks here evoke the post-Sonic Youth clang of 2005's I Trust My Guitar Etc. But there's definitely something new going on, and most of it comes from the seductive voice and lyrics of Ambrogio. She's always been a deserving attention-getter, but here her talents seem wider and sharper. Her singing primarily evokes Patti Smith, as do her words, which deftly use rhyme to build intangible meaning. For example, on "Taste" she varies her choruses with tantalizing off-rhymes-- "He had tasted her, tasted her/ Smiled right into the base of her/ He kept racing her, racing her/ And stayed alive; outpacing her"-- while her guitar and Nolan's simple drumming seem to rhyme in turn.
"Taste" may be *BOSS'*s most memorable track, but highlights abound. Opener "Axis Mundi" rises from initial guitar noise into a chugging swing, while "Last of the Lemach Line" sways hypnotically as Ambrogio intones with increasing desperation. Later, Nolan contributes primal piano chords to Amborgio's Cat Power-ish croon on "Empty Bottles", mixing nicely with the glockenspiel of producer Lee Ranaldo. Ranaldo also adds a layer of guitar fire to the manic "Body Rot", which sounds like a punked-out take on Rhys Chatham's minimal trance-rocker "Drastic Classicism".
BOSS stumbles just slightly at its end. The noise essay "Pat Garrett" never really gathers steam, while closer "Circle" comes off as a thinner version of "Lemach Line". But sandwiched in between is the stellar "Bad Dream/Hartford's Beat Suite", a haunting tale of bloody pockets and severed thumbs that approaches the chill of a Johnny Cash tune. Such a comparison might be surprising, but then BOSS is bound to rearrange a lot of people's perceptions of this potent duo. | 2007-10-04T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2007-10-04T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rock | Ecstatic Peace | October 4, 2007 | 7.5 | 39872ebb-ad23-45f9-bb75-ea1dd5794492 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
Stones Throw offers an expertly crafted introduction to a label focused on unearthing electronic DIY music from the late 1970s and 80s. | Stones Throw offers an expertly crafted introduction to a label focused on unearthing electronic DIY music from the late 1970s and 80s. | Various Artists: The Minimal Wave Tapes: Vol. 1 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13910-the-minimal-wave-tapes-vol-1/ | The Minimal Wave Tapes: Vol. 1 | New Yorker Veronica Vasicka has spent the past five years painstakingly and lovingly building Minimal Wave, a label that specializes in digging up and reissuing electronic DIY music from the late 1970s and 80s. From taking full control of the mastering process to creating packagings that border on the fetishistic, Vasicka has uncovered forgotten forays into independent new wave and synth-pop. Aptly dubbed "minimal wave", the genre's stock characteristics-- ticky-tacky drum machines, analog synthesizers, amateur vocal experimentation, lo-fi production-- seem more relevant than ever now, as a recent rash of DIYers have been toying with unpolished variations of everything from disco to IDM, using little more than a MIDI synth and a microphone. Thankfully, Stones Throw founder Peanut Butter Wolf-- who has devoted a great deal of time spotlighting leftfield niche records himself-- had the good sense to see the "obsessed freak" (his words) in Vasicka. "I always wanted to do an album of this kind of stuff, but I don't want to try and compete with someone like Veronica who does it better than I ever could."
For those seeking a substantial once-over, Minimal Wave Tapes, Vol. 1 serves as a great introduction. Most of the releases on the imprint are vinyl only, so PB Wolf combed through Vasicka's vast collection (the two co-produced the project) and hand-picked the group of tracks that show up here. Though Vasicka has released compilations in the past, Tapes is the kind of primer that makes the overwhelming (and for the listener, rather expensive) process of weeding through these acts (hailing from Belgium to Spain to the States and beyond) a little easier. And though there is a commonality at work with the music featured, the genre variations that arise throughout the compilation-- ranging from punk-funk to early techno rumblings to chilly goth textures-- help orient the listener with what they might like to delve deeper into. Almost every track shares an exploratory, homemade feel in either production or the varying degrees of musicianship at work, and though it makes things sound a little lop-sided at times, it's an exciting peek into the experimental, underfunded aspect of a burgeoning trend.
A lot of the music here is the underground response to the the well-selling synth-pop of the Second British Invasion. Oppenheimer Analysis' Andy Oppenheimer and Martin Lloyd bonded over the Human League and Soft Cell, and their "Radiance" echoes that chic, disaffected club feel. Certainly one of the poppier contributions here, it proceeds Crash Course in Science's "Flying Turns", a queasy, corroded chunk of Gang of Four-- acerbic, noisy but equally compelling. And while you can hear a little Kraftwerk just about everywhere, there's a wealth of varied personality that rescues these simple efforts from sounding too repetitive or indistinguishable. Most of the more memorable submissions fare better thanks to fuller construction and actual hooks, like the Joy Division-modeled "Just Because" by French trio Martin Dupont, or the English outfit Das Kabinette's "The Cabinet", which Ladytron can pretty much thank their entire career for.
But what might be one of the coolest things that Minimal Wave Tapes accomplishes is how nicely it frames the current synth-pop renaissance, reinforcing the idea that there's room in the garage for sequencers and Korgs as well as guitars and drums. Hopefully we have a little time until we start hearing traces of Bene Gesserit's brand of goofy spoken word or Duex's "Sprockets"-approved robo-schtick, but for now, there's plenty of really catchy touchstones being explored under early synth-pop's umbrella, many of which can be found in resurrected form over at Minimal Wave's site. And thanks to the parallel lines being drawn by Vasicka and the good folks over at Stones Throw, we might not have to bother with all that crate-digging to enjoy and experience it. | 2010-02-17T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2010-02-17T01:00:02.000-05:00 | null | Stones Throw | February 17, 2010 | 8 | 39892994-1e0b-47ed-8bc6-98af9eba8b32 | Zach Kelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zach-kelly/ | null |
Slime Season 2 is Young Thug’s third full-length release in seven months. And in small but significant bursts, it’s the first of his releases to begin to flesh out a real idea of Jeffrey Williams beyond the blinding veneer of experimentation. This is the sound of 2015’s most dazzling bar-for-bar rapper hitting his stride. | Slime Season 2 is Young Thug’s third full-length release in seven months. And in small but significant bursts, it’s the first of his releases to begin to flesh out a real idea of Jeffrey Williams beyond the blinding veneer of experimentation. This is the sound of 2015’s most dazzling bar-for-bar rapper hitting his stride. | Young Thug: Slime Season 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21262-slime-season-2/ | Slime Season 2 | Slime Season 2 is Young Thug’s third full-length release in seven months, rounding out a productive streak as formidable as any of his peers'. We already knew he was rap’s most wildly creative stylist: a rogue alchemist of undiscovered melodies, an electrostatic bonding agent for new metaphors. Still, until now, it remained unclear whether he could broaden the scope of his talents beyond a song-by-song basis, channeling the constant spray of ideas into something built to last. Slime Season 2 edges further in that direction, a more carefully constructed work than its predecessor in every sense. And in small but significant bursts, it’s the first of his releases to begin to flesh out a real idea of Jeffrey Williams beyond the blinding veneer of experimentation. This is the sound of 2015’s most dazzling bar-for-bar rapper hitting his stride.
It’s a noticeable improvement over September’s Slime Season, but not because Thug’s rapping is evolving at that speed. Both projects are culled from archives of work presumably stretching back at least a year; there is almost no hint of chronology among these tracks. But where SS1 felt rambling and uneven, there is a clear sense of purpose to SS2, applying the cohesion of Barter 6 to SS1’s pop promise. His engineer Alex Tumay executive produced the project, and Thug benefits greatly from an editor: SS2 is nearly an hour and a half long, but it flows. The mood is woozy and nocturnal, Thug’s adlibs serving as his own echo in some damp subterranean cave. The production roster ranges from Atlanta’s most wanted (Metro Boomin, Southside, London On Da Track) to lesser-known collaborator Goose and—out of nowhere—Fool’s Gold blogwave holdover Treasure Fingers, but all of their contributions blend into the tape’s murky cool.
Thug's lyrics are studded with the glorious non sequiturs you expect: baffling asteroids of one-liners, orbiting in isolation, that either mean nothing or hint at vast cosmological secrets. ("I look good as your dad on a Friday," from "Thief in the Night", is probably the former; "A wise man told me nothing," from tape standout "Raw (Might Just)", is unquestionably the latter.) But SS2’s most exciting developments are the rare moments Thug lowers his guard and focuses inward—something that’s only happened in glimpses until now. He darts between flashes of nostalgia, frank meditations on faithfulness and jealousy, nuggets of formative family history: "My nephew saw his daddy sent out home to the sky," he recalls on the queasy, wobbling "Beast".
But the moment that’s burned into my skull comes in the first verse of "Never Made Love", a Rich Homie Quan duet left over from the Rich Gang era. Quan brings pathos to the hook and gets out of the way: The song's main attraction is Thug’s sincere and complicated grappling with defensive detachment that taps into a well of long-buried family trauma. With it comes perhaps the most vulnerable and mystically cogent mini-narrative of his entire catalog, one I can’t help but quote in full: "My lookout man was my right-hand man, but he was wrong, though/ Then I seen some diamonds come off of my neighbor’s porch/ And it was her/ She had a Louis Vuitton purse clean as detergent/ She had the same exact face as my brother’s nurse/ And he in a hearse/ I never looked at it for what it’s worth." It’s pure poetry.
Critics have called Thug’s music surrealist, but SS2 presents him instead as a storyteller in the magical realist tradition, drawing glimmers of nonplussed fascination out of the rational world. Within this context, his habit for working in small-scale, occasionally disjointed bursts, recording each line spontaneously, makes perfect sense. His thoughts fracture and wander down unpredictable paths, forcing us to draw connections in non-linear ways.
At its core, magical realism suggests that the ultimate mystery in a logical world is man himself; its soft mysticism is a roundabout path to the heart. Above even the muddy, waterlogged sonics, the unifying thread here is intimacy. SS2 has Thug more transparent on love, trust, and heartbreak than ever before: "She Notice" and "Hey, I" stand out above the rest, unguarded and earnest and complicated as ever. He cheats, he stumbles, and then he attempts to deconstruct his own behavior, tracing the tangled roots of how 2015 rap’s greatest enigma came to be. Nearing the end of a landmark year, we still talk about Thug as a mystery: as transcending language, or as the ultimate triumph of style over substance. But the last thing we hear on SS2, closing out a chopped and screwed version of previously leaked ballad "Love Me Forever", is a hopeful yelp: "And I just wanna be loved!" It doesn’t get clearer, or more human, than that. | 2015-11-06T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2015-11-06T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rap | self-released | November 6, 2015 | 7.9 | 39977126-57cd-45c6-adbe-0e060432cc50 | Meaghan Garvey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/meaghan-garvey/ | null |
After touring together, the psych-funk trio and the soul singer head into the studio for an EP that’s both tantalizing and a little half-baked. | After touring together, the psych-funk trio and the soul singer head into the studio for an EP that’s both tantalizing and a little half-baked. | Khruangbin / Leon Bridges: Texas Sun EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/khruangbin-leon-bridges-texas-sun-ep/ | Texas Sun EP | From their respective metropolises, Khruangbin and Leon Bridges offer fascinating variations on the notion of “Texas music.” The Fort Worth-based Bridges explores a strain of soul that is more closely associated with Mississippi and Chicago than the Lone Star State, while Houston trio Khruangbin dabbles in a strain of globally minded, stoner-friendly psychedelia that authorities didn’t always look upon so kindly. Today, both artists find themselves rising stars, garnering millions of streams and promoting the vision of a more diverse and open-minded Texas, the one that leads to headlines like this.
The two teamed up for a joint North American tour in 2018, but heading into the studio together wasn’t an obvious next step. Their partnership might pay dividends down the road, but at four songs in 20 minutes, Texas Sun is both tantalizing and a little half-baked. The title track gives a glimpse of how each party might bolster the other: Khruangbin bassist Laura Lee, guitarist Mark Speer, and drummer Donald Johnson impart some much-needed looseness and pliancy to Bridges’ vocals, while the singer in turn grounds their wandering with song structures and sturdy vocals. “Texas Sun” is a simmering road-trip number, with Bridges’ delivery rendering that oppressive sun into something more mellow. Khruangbin provides a head-nodding beat, but for all of their synergy, the result still resembles boilerplate Bob Seger.
The slinky “Midnight” could have been cribbed from a Numero Group Eccentric Soul compilation. Bridges’ lyrics again situate us in a moving vehicle, this time at night instead of the sweltering midday heat. They conjure a wistful mood, with lyrics that detail a new love in the passenger seat, cruising around with no particular destination in mind, smoking with the windows down, the backseat beckoning from the rearview mirror. “Put on your lavender/Perfume and a nice dress,” Bridges croons sweetly.
“C-Side” boasts the sultriest groove, with Lee’s loping bassline riding behind a clopping cowbell and mallet percussion. But Bridges’ chorus is diffuse and unmemorable, and the percolating beat lingers in the mind for longer than the words. The smoky minor-key ballad “Conversion” (which has its roots in the gospel hymn “At the Cross”) showcases Bridges’ honeyed, unhurried delivery at its most effective. If anything, the four songs leave you wanting more from this collaboration, offering up brief, blurry glimpses of their Texas landscape rather than the expansive vistas that they might arrive at should they ride together a little longer.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock / Pop/R&B | Dead Oceans / Columbia / Night Time Stories Ltd. | February 8, 2020 | 6.9 | 39977264-cff2-45c7-9a4e-ef4aa952ba64 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
The indie rock singer-songwriter Ella O’Connor Williams’ debut album is poetic, ethereal, and slightly distant. | The indie rock singer-songwriter Ella O’Connor Williams’ debut album is poetic, ethereal, and slightly distant. | Squirrel Flower: I Was Born Swimming | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/squirrel-flower-i-was-born-swimming/ | I Was Born Swimming | Ella O’Connor Williams’ debut album as Squirrel Flower is a promising leap to a bigger label (Polyvinyl) that attempts to reach headier places than your typical indie rock record. It’s an experiment that does justice to Williams’ expanding vocal talent and her poetic way with sound, and it’s a bold departure from her previous material. The songwriting, though, suffers from a certain inattention.
Album opener “I-80,” named after the famed freeway connecting California to New Jersey, begins with acoustic guitar, as a clear and focused-sounding Williams sings poetically about the failure of poetry: “I tried to be lyrical/But lyrics failed me.” Gradually, more instruments—louder and more rhythmic guitars, pounding drums, heavier bass—build toward a promised epic release, like testing to see how fast you’re willing to let yourself speed along an empty highway. But it never arrives; the song just stops. Williams spends the rest of the album repeating this cycle, speak-singing over electric riffs that sound like they were meant to be acoustic. It feels like playing air guitar to Leonard Cohen.
The first single, “Red Shoulder,” is the best song, a “we inherit the earth” declaration that Williams seems to pull directly from the soil beneath her, even if it may or may not be about the end of a relationship. (“You’re one for healing/But I’m still reeling.”) While it’s one of two songs on the LP that was self-produced, the song’s appealing “road-trip indie” feel fits perfectly on an album produced by Gabe Wax (arguably best known for his work with the War on Drugs, Soccer Mommy, and Adrianne Lenker). Its guitar-riff-as-a-chorus recalls one of Pavement’s songwriting tricks: using sounds, not words, to construct the catchiest moments of a song. It’s going to sound great live.
If no other song approaches the high of “Red Shoulder,” there are plenty of isolated moments that come close. Williams is at her best when she’s confident enough to sit back and whisper. “Slapback” brings out her voice with a stark, blues-like chord progression that makes the phrase “If you slap me, I’ll slap you right back” more potent than any wall of sound could. “Eight Hours” renders guitar notes as delicate as wind chimes. “Streetlight Blues,” starts out like Dave Matthews Band’s “Cry Freedom” (not an insult; that guitar tone is great) and builds into a Derek Trucks-like solo that feels like a ray of light. And the closing title track deftly mirrors the melody from “I-80.”
Williams’ most straightforward and ingratiating album as Squirrel Flower is 2015's Early Winter Songs From Middle America. That album’s standout track, “I Don’t Use a Trash Can,” proved that she can write a great chorus when she wants to. I Was Born Swimming suffers from its lack of them. Save for “I-80” and “Red Shoulder,” the album’s lyrics read more like poems set to music written after the fact. By side B, the disconnect becomes noticeable. The songs all have similar tempos and dynamics and lack clear centers, and the music starts to feel like an afterthought. When there is a chorus, like in “Honey, Oh Honey!” it’s the whole song, or it feels like a joke. At its most aimless, like on “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” the music just feels lost.
It’s OK for songs not to have choruses, of course, and it’s OK to write songs that feel more like poems than, well, songs. But in doing so, Williams puts some maybe-unintentional distance between herself and the listener. I Was Born Swimming is her most expansive and professional-sounding record to date, and on the whole, does more right than wrong. But it’s an MFA of an album. As a project, it’s admirable. As an album, it leaves you cold.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-02-03T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-02-03T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Polyvinyl | February 3, 2020 | 6.6 | 3997a375-7a7e-4b15-b2d9-45bc6b763d00 | Brady Gerber | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brady-gerber/ | |
As part of its 40th-anniversary celebrations, the Mute label commissions 58 covers of 4:33, John Cage’s notorious “silent” piece, from New Order, Depeche Mode, and other staples of the roster. | As part of its 40th-anniversary celebrations, the Mute label commissions 58 covers of 4:33, John Cage’s notorious “silent” piece, from New Order, Depeche Mode, and other staples of the roster. | Various Artists: STUMM433 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-stumm433/ | STUMM433 | It’s been almost 70 years since John Cage debuted 4:33, his infamous silent piece, to a baffled crowd in Woodstock, New York. A lot of people left the concert pissed off. His friend and colleague Christian Woolf was mortified to have brought his mother, who dismissed it as “a schoolboy’s prank,” while Lou Harrison, another peer, said Cage’s work was “quite boring.” But in 2019, the hubbub having long since died down, the feeling is that someone had to do it. However grating it might have seemed, 4:33 remains arguably the 20th century’s most elegant artistic thought experiment. It’s a moon-landing-level gesture of the avant garde’s triumph over history. In a century obsessed with liberation, Cage deftly penned the ultimate musical permission slip.
Brazen and deceptively simple, 4:33 was a hit. Its premise can be explained in a single sentence and demands a reaction, which means it moved like wildfire through the public consciousness. While much of the century’s early modernism required an educated audience capable of following the unnerving destabilizations of dodecaphony and its attendant tone rows, hexachords, and aggregates, Cage’s silence hits you right between the eyes. 4:33 is a koan, a question without an answer. As Cage put it, “Silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind.”
Of course, the thing about 4:33 is that it’s not really silent. In the absence of composed sounds, the world rushes in. Not only are the idyllic rustling leaves or the soft hiss of the wind part of the piece, but also the scoffing of peeved concertgoers and the slamming of doors as they storm out. 4:33 opens its borders to any sound or absence thereof and in this way it embodies a set of twin legacies: on the one hand, meditative submission to the world, and on the other, jarring provocation of its audience’s perception of music’s place within it.
Mute Records remains one of the great disciples of this second legacy. In the 1980s, label boss Daniel Miller cultivated a space where some of the most popular sounds of the era swam freely with the bleeding edge of punk and industrial music. Yazoo and Erasure found their footing as global superstars alongside Boyd Rice’s “Mode of Infection” and Throbbing Gristle’s “Maggot Death.” Echoing Cage’s embrace of the unknown, Miller said of electronic music, “You didn't have to learn any chords, just press down on the keyboard and an interesting sound would come out.” He described the Birthday Party as “not so much a band as an incendiary device.” A similar assessment could have been made about much of Cage’s work throughout the 1950s.
So it makes sense that Mute is releasing STUM433, a collection of “covers” of 4:33, as part of its MUTE 4.0 (1978 > Tomorrow) retrospective. As the label celebrates four decades of visionary work, a plan was formed to have every Mute artist record their own version of the piece. They were able to round up 58 of them, ranging from synth-pop icons New Order to dub-techno pioneer Pole. This is a testament to Miller’s acumen as a label boss. You might not think the musicians behind “Porcelain” or “People Are People” would be interested in a composer who spent time playing a cactus with a feather, but Moby and Depeche Mode both make an appearance. Plus, you know, it fits the label’s name.
It takes almost four and a half hours (though not quite four hours and 33 minutes) to get through STUM433, which means practically no one will hear it in full. And even if you make it to the end, will you ever truly hear it? Try focusing your full attention on 265 minutes of microphone hiss, light urban din, and intermittent nature sounds. It’s not easy. The album hovers, misty to the point of near-invisibility, with a number of interchangeable outdoor takes, some vacant rooms, and an odd cavernous reverberation. Occasionally someone gets clever, like when Michael Gira counts his way through the piece, but few dare to seriously run with Cage’s prompt.
STUM433 is a mammoth coffee-table book of a record, telegraphing astute cultural values and cool points without offering much actual art. But staging a team-building exercise for the label roster isn’t a crime, and the only people who will purchase the lavishly packaged set are those with a yen for sexy, rather pointless lifestyle accessories. So what the hell, go for it, right?
Maybe, maybe not. 4:33 gestated in Cage’s mind for at least 12 years before he wrote it. “I didn’t wish it to appear, even to me, as something easy to do or as a joke,” he once said, while pianist David Tudor, who premiered 4:33, described it as “one of the most intense listening experiences you can have.” So what exactly, for example, does Chris Liebing bring to the conversation? The techno producer is known for slamming it out on huge festival stages, presenting loopy synth lines and 909 snare rolls on an IMAX scale. His contribution to the compilation is a muffled roar, perhaps of a dancefloor heard through a dressing room wall. You may enjoy it, but the recording absolutely seems “easy to do.” The same applies for Goldfrapp, Nitzer Ebb, ADULT. and others across the collection. Regardless of your opinion of these artists, an interest in the avant garde doesn’t guarantee an intriguing point of view on its most iconic and vexing works. STUMM433 is a diversion, a far cry from Cage’s measured conviction. “I probably worked longer on my silent piece than I worked on any other,” he said. “I wanted to mean it utterly and be able to live with it.”
Cage never released a recording of 4:33, but its spirit haunts the halls. The last 70 years have been filled with music that deploys field recordings and nature sounds to transportive effect. A generation of composers embraced Cage’s fundamental ideas of letting go, ceding authority to process and space. More recently, YouTube has been populated with quasi-silences: extended videos that recreate the ambient hum of sci-fi environments as well as ASMR’s hushed, reverential banalities. As the years went on, Cage and his direct contemporaries often composed on the edge of silence, as if 4:33 had expanded into an ocean of emptiness, their sparse arrangements the dinghies keeping them afloat.
Maybe you just have to be there, and any attempt to capture the piece on tape will falter. Going through the set, I was reminded of a subway ride I once took. I had a handheld recorder and a set of headphones with me, and I decided to capture the sounds of the train. As I put on the headphones, I was enveloped in an astonishing world. All the sounds were the same, but the depth of field had changed—conversations seemed closer, the rattle of the ride more vibrant. I walked out on the street entranced by the tingling psychedelia of this same-but-different reality. It’s an experience anyone can try. But don’t expect it to last. When I got home and listened back, there was nothing particularly distinctive there. It just sounded like any other subway ride. | 2019-08-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-08-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Mute | August 17, 2019 | 6.3 | 399ce45a-6de1-4565-b62e-8c787defa0bb | Daniel Martin-McCormick | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-martin-mccormick/ | |
The new ensemble from vanguard jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette has been called a supergroup. Their debut draws on the cultural legacy of Upstate New York, with takes on Dylan, Hendrix, and Joni Mitchell. | The new ensemble from vanguard jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette has been called a supergroup. Their debut draws on the cultural legacy of Upstate New York, with takes on Dylan, Hendrix, and Joni Mitchell. | Hudson: Hudson | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/hudson-hudson/ | Hudson | Drummer Jack DeJohnette has spent five decades in jazz’s vanguard. Last century, he helped steer Miles Davis’ fusion excursions, led a stellar series of sessions for the ECM label, and later accompanied fellow giant Herbie Hancock. In more recent years, DeJohnette has built out that legacy with a range of work that has been notably diverse in character, even by the standards of someone with his eclectic track record.
In 2013, DeJohnette convened a group of avant-garde elders including Henry Threadgill and Roscoe Mitchell for the searing live set Made in Chicago. Then he teamed up with Ravi Coltrane and Matthew Garrison for In Movement, an album that spent some time looking at jazz’s past without neglecting to push things forward. Now comes yet another new DeJohnette ensemble: the collaborative group Hudson. Since the lineup includes famed jazz guitarist John Scofield, keyboard stylist John Medeski, and the versatile bassist Larry Grenadier, Hudson is being billed as a “supergroup.” If that seems a stretch—given that no one else’s reputation is quite on the level of DeJohnette’s—it’s only a slight one.
The band’s self-titled debut opens with a song that’s also titled “Hudson”: a nearly 11-minute meditation on the subject of improvisational funk. Steering so close to the textures of Davis’ Bitches Brew might prove embarrassing for most groups, but Hudson pulls the homage off—and not just because DeJohnette played on that vintage landmark. Scofield’s distorted tone on the track suggests a cool, pristinely judged restraint. At the close of the song, the guitarist plucks some ghostly harmonics with just the right amount of bite, merging with the drummer’s quiet-but-crisp pulses. It’s electric, not histrionic.
Named after the valley that its members call home, the band also draws on the legacy of a few musicians associated with the area (at least in the broader pop imagination). So Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” gets a tender, bluesy airing. Hendrix, a Woodstock veteran, is conjured via a hurtling take on “Wait Until Tomorrow.” Medeski shines during an interpretation of Robbie Robertson’s “Up on Cripple Creek”—producing soulful figures on his electric instrument, at select points, while also crafting boisterous, early-jazz textures on an acoustic piano.
Scofield turns in some of his most inventive work on two Dylan covers: the guitarist lends “Lay Lady Lay” a cheerful vibe, while “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” inspires a harmonically adventurous solo. All of these covers sound successful on their own individual terms. But as a band, Hudson hits an interpretive high note on “Hard Rain.” They start out doing justice to Dylan’s melody—though as the performance progresses, the group collectively channels the song’s sense of portent, without any need of the recent Nobel laureate’s lyrics.
The originals have charm, too. DeJohnette’s “Dirty Ground” sounds like it could be an old-school R&B number. The composer-drummer’s vocals have a weathered quality, but his phrasing is catchy and assured. (The man knows what goes into a memorable rhythmic progression.) “Song for World Forgiveness” and “Great Spirit Peace Chant” further enforce the fusion-jazz-meets-Summer of Love concept. And since Bitches Brew was (roughly) part of that same moment, another new song—Scofield’s “Tony Then Jack”—references the lineage of Davis’ drummers (specifically, Tony Williams, who preceded DeJohnette in the trumpeter’s retinue). This is not the most fiery music DeJohnette has collaborated on, in his eighth decade. But the peaceable mastery that moves through Hudson does have the distinction of feeling comfortable without being too predictable. | 2017-06-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-06-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | Motéma | June 20, 2017 | 7.5 | 39a36ee2-81e1-4fd5-ba09-1e506265c773 | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | null |
Will Sheff makes kindness an aesthetic on this album of gentle, idiosyncratic songs about dog adoption, celebrities’ emergency tracheotomies and finding transcendence in nature. | Will Sheff makes kindness an aesthetic on this album of gentle, idiosyncratic songs about dog adoption, celebrities’ emergency tracheotomies and finding transcendence in nature. | Okkervil River: In the Rainbow Rain | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/okkervil-river-in-the-rainbow-rain/ | In the Rainbow Rain | Will Sheff walks into a bar. Let’s say it’s your local and there’s an empty stool beside you. The past couple of years have sheared nerves and petrified muscles; bad news passes through you both, like radio waves, at all times. But Sheff has some wisdom to offer you. So, do you want to hear that you gotta lose a little pride to love somebody, that we probably won’t ever have all the answers? Or would you rather learn about a bunch of celebrities’ emergency respiratory surgeries?
Sheff takes both tacks on In the Rainbow Rain, Okkervil River’s ninth album. It’s telling, though, that “Famous Tracheotomies” is the icebreaker. The track is an ideal reminder of his talents: his surefooted navigation of jagged cadences, his obituarist’s judicious sense of detail, his reverent rifling of cultural back pages. (The final tracheotomy detailed is Ray Davies’, which allows the band to vamp on the chorus to “Waterloo Sunset.”) Even though Sheff leads with his own story—he had a tracheotomy before turning two—there’s nothing mawkish about the song. Layering soft-rock melodies over gospel backing vocals, it’s an alternately tender and stark inventory of frailty that demonstrates how mortality snaps everyone to attention.
“I wanted to make a record where a sense of kindness felt encoded into the music,” Sheff has said. And he has. The current iteration of Okkervil River, composed of Sheff’s touring band for 2016’s Away, casts the songs in warm, dusky light. The album’s sound is confident yet gentle, like the War on Drugs’ tricked-out AOR engine powering a languid Sunday drive. For his part, Sheff avoids the vocal exhibitionism that goosed previous albums. Sometimes you have to lean in to catch the takeaway—but that careful attention is too often rewarded with platitudes. He adopts a beatific, drunken burble on the twinkling “Family Song,” which closes with a statement —“You’re alive, I’m alive”—that is life-affirming in only the most literal sense.
It’s one of three tracks that, perhaps in a callback to Okkervil River’s early releases, have “song” in their titles. The best of these is the dog adoption story “Shelter Song,” which tempers the human and animal characters’ relief at finding each other with Sheff’s acknowledgment of how precarious survival can be: “I thought that nobody loved me at 10/Sad kid, scared animal/A nasty word and I’m back there again.” The drum machine pads apprehensively. At the close, bassist Benjamin Davis traces wary circles that give way to a yowling guitar solo from Will Graefe.
You can win over a dog with kindness, but sizing up people proves more difficult. On “Human Being Song,” which closes the album, Sheff is so stuck between the competing urges to embrace others (“It’s hard to be a human being/Just seeking, needing, feeling pain”) and to push them away (“It’s hard to open up your heart/And face the fact that you could fail”) that it’s up to the band to nudge him beyond this impasse, shifting from the sway of classic rock to the benediction of gospel. But, since the former genre exists to conjure the unnameable and the latter speaks the language of certainty, neither quite provides the answers Sheff seeks.
In the Rainbow Rain isn’t always this thematically dense, though, and its more laid-back songs help loosen the philosophical knots that tracks like “Human Being Song” tie. The epic “The Dream and the Light” takes the E Street Band on a nighttime limo ride straight out of Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis. On “Pulled Up the Ribbon,” keyboardist Sarah Pedinotti suspends synth lines from a high ceiling and Davis’ basslines nail them to the earth. “External Actor” is a backwoods trek that celebrates “moments of opaque-eyed, knocked-out rapture” and traces a line from your beer can to zodiacal light. The song may be a bro-country writing exercise under the influence of mushrooms, but it plays to Sheff’s strengths. Like the bar’s most beloved regular, he has a gift for shoving drinkers’ shared uncertainties under the stools and making old stories do new work. | 2018-05-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-05-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | ATO | May 16, 2018 | 6.9 | 39a4ac45-81d6-419b-a79e-6530e9ed15a4 | Brad Shoup | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brad-shoup/ | |
Jenny Death is billed as a companion album to Niggas on the Moon, and part of a larger sequence called The Powers That B. It furthers Death Grips' vision for aggression without borders, and while it isn't on the level of their artistic and commercial breakthrough The Money Store, it will absolutely remind you of why you loved them in the first place. | Jenny Death is billed as a companion album to Niggas on the Moon, and part of a larger sequence called The Powers That B. It furthers Death Grips' vision for aggression without borders, and while it isn't on the level of their artistic and commercial breakthrough The Money Store, it will absolutely remind you of why you loved them in the first place. | Death Grips: Jenny Death | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20451-jenny-death/ | Jenny Death | Keeping up with the Death Grips has increasingly become a headache. Cryptic break-up notes, a tumultuous split with Epic, a realignment with Harvest, cancelled tours (including one with Nine Inch Nails), no-show gigs: All of these antics were tolerable, sometimes fun, when they came backed up by compelling music. But even that part of the bargain, over the last year, has proved questionable. Last year’s Niggas on the Moon leaned too heavily on Björk samples and flattened their approach, while Fashion Week was an intriguing, if ultimately directionless, collection of instrumentals. *Fashion'*s song titles spelled out JENNYDEATHWHEN, hinting cryptically that their next album would be Jenny Death, the second half of the two-part sequence called The Powers That B. But by Fashion, it was hard to tell if even their hardcore faithful cared about what they would do next.
Jenny, which Death Grips streamed on YouTube last week in advance of its release, is the record they needed to make. It’s not on the level of their artistic and commercial breakthrough The Money Store, but it will absolutely remind you of why you loved them in the first place. In fact, it’s so different from (and better than) Moon that it shouldn’t even be tethered to it. On these ten tracks, they’ve harnessed the unbridled energy of Government Plates into their most fully formed songs since Money, which helps justify their bluster.
Producer Andy "Flatlander" Morin brings a lot of the death-disco of Money back into the mix, which broadens their approach without compromising their potency. Nothing here reaches the aggro-pop heights of "I’ve Seen Footage", but "Inanimate Sensation" comes close; it's clear why it was released as the first single. Over Flatlander’s seasick bass synths, Stefan "MC Ride" Burnett jumps through various vocals patterns—his trademark bark, chopped-and-screwed raps, menacing whispers—and ends up with something like a Jock Jams for the underworld. The buildup to MC Ride’s final verse is a staticky, topsy-turvy rush, culminating with the soon-to-be-immortal "I like my iPod more than fucking!" Yell that with your headphones on at work.
MC Ride was so sorely missed on Fashion that his presence on Jenny feels like a triumphant comeback. Flatlander may provide the electronics and Hill may bring the percussive energy (and also lent initial critical credibility) to Death Grips, but MC Ride is the unpredictable heart of the group. He was somewhat lost in the madness of Plates and subdued on Moon, but he is in full, raw force here: The title "I Break Mirrors With My Face in the United States" brings to mind a sadistic animated .gif enacting the Black Flag Damaged cover, and MC Ride's raging, hypnotic vocal reinforces this impression. He isn’t just a spiral of rage, either—"Pss Pss" casts him in creep mode, suggesting illicit fantasies in a hushed whisper.
The music on Jenny nods to Death Grips' more conventional rock influences, but it’s in no way trying to pander to a rock audience. Each element they reference is blown up and rebuilt in their own vision. Vaguely surfy dream-pop gets shot into overdrive on "Centuries of Damn". "Beyond Alive" and "ON GP" both contain big rock riffs, the latter approaching metalgaze territory. "GP" inflates MC Ride’s discontentment into something massive and anthemic. It’s jaded stadium rock—all it needs is a stadium and an ironclad guarantee they’ll show up.
You hear more of drummer Zach Hill’s acoustic drums on Jenny, too. He continues to unlearn his technical prowess from his Hella days, but he’s electrifying even when going back to basics. Throughout, you can hear them furthering their vision for aggression without borders, swallowing in hip-hop, hardcore, industrial, and the hardest forms of dance music, while not in debt to any one of those elements. Death Grips don’t just imagine a world where rap-rock is redeemed and various forms of heaviness coexist side-by-side, but where those lines are obliterated. That fantasy may not have panned out quite the way it should have, but to deny their ambitions does a disservice to what heavy music can be.
Closer "Death Grips 2.0" acknowledges the ongoing "will they or won’t they" dynamic that’s long been a point of frustration amongst their critics. The title suggests a rebirth, but the content, a sort of Araabmetalmuzik blast of cut-up industrial beats, could also be a fiery demise. It’s the perfect Death Grips closer, especially with their status in constant question. Right after their alleged "breakup," there were eulogies for the group, but Death Grips are not the sort of group to be eulogized. Are they calling it quits after this record and tour? Was the breakup even real to begin with? It’s hard to speculate whether Jenny is a redemptive closing chapter, a new beginning, or some other inscrutable part of Death Grips’ master plan, if they even have such a thing. What is evident is that Jenny Death is some of their strongest material in a while, and may even return a few disillusioned converts to the flock. | 2015-03-31T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2015-03-31T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rap | Harvest | March 31, 2015 | 8.1 | 39b0ed32-a08c-4557-9a22-2429b60de9f1 | Andy O'Connor | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-o'connor/ | null |
The Bronx rapper’s bluntness and playful ear for beats gives his sex-obsessed songs the nonchalance of a one-night stand. | The Bronx rapper’s bluntness and playful ear for beats gives his sex-obsessed songs the nonchalance of a one-night stand. | Cash Cobain: Pretty Girls Love Slizzy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/cash-cobain-pretty-girls-love-slizzy/ | Pretty Girls Love Slizzy | At this point, calling Bronx rapper-producer Cash Cobain’s music “filthy” is like calling hot sauce “spicy”: a technically correct observation that doesn’t begin to describe what it’s doing to your nerve receptors. Though he’s a pioneer of the sample and sexy drill movements that have subsequently merged with the jerky rhythms of club rap, the main topic in most of his songs is sex—having it, pursuing it, starting and ending relationships over it. Still, there’s a care and humor to his craft that makes his debauchery endearing instead of creepy. Like Pusha T with cocaine or Action Bronson with food, he’s a specialist using his skills to wax poetic on his favorite subject in every way possible (“She told me to cum inside like a visit,” he says on “Slizzy Dialogue”). And while he isn’t quite as outlandish as fellow sex-obsessed rappers like SahBabii, his bluntness and playful ear for beats gives each song the nonchalance of a one-night stand.
Pretty Girls Love Slizzy, his sixth album, doesn’t skimp on the sex talk, but for all the silly puns (“I wanna drink on that shit like a Mistic/Name her pussy Jada ’cause I kissed it”), DM slides, and Hennessy-soaked hookups, his never-ending quest to get laid has a romantic drive. Take the frantic “Slizzy Dialogue,” a point-by-point retelling of a short-lived affair—from first contact to steamy linkup—that ends with a postcoital phone call from his lover’s boyfriend. Over warbling synths and fast-clacking drums, the song flows with the hectic energy of an impromptu FaceTime convo, complete with exasperated ad-libs and he-said-she-said qualifiers. Later, on “Clocking U” and “Took a While,” he’s begging for action like a bizarro version of Don Toliver, affectionately telling a woman he misses her before asking her to “blow me like some tissue.” Many rappers could make this request sound uncomfortable, but it helps that Cobain doesn’t take himself too seriously. His unfussed delivery keeps things moving like a breezy romantic comedy.
Aside from his comically large libido, Cobain has a striking ear for beats. His blend of sample drill and Jersey club has many imitators, but none have reached the dizzying heights of his and Chow Lee’s 2022 mixtape 2 Slizzy 2 Sexy, which flipped everything from the Plain White T’s to Trinidad Cardona into singular audio candy. A handful of Pretty Girls’ beats re-up that formula: The flip of Jai Paul’s gossamer “BTSTU” that powers lead single “Rump” dovetails nicely with the thumping club drums at its margins. It pairs well with “Not No Xanax 2,” which reimagines Nelly and Kelly Rowland’s “Dilemma” hook as a chiptune-esque party jam. But what really elevates Pretty Girls is Cobain’s ability to branch out beyond club and drill without overextending himself. “So Fire” scales back the BPM, using heavy reverb and dubby dancehall drums to create a humid sway. On “Nice N Slow,” the talkbox vocals, rapid-fire drums, and twinkling synths call to mind a drill flip of Chromeo. That sense of adventure has always been present in Cobain’s music—this is a guy who’s unafraid to dig into the Spice Girls and Ray Charles catalogs for material—so it’s nice to hear him try out different tunes.
The challenge of being a rapper with hyper-specific subject matter is finding ways to keep it fresh, but Cash Cobain has yet to disappoint. His music isn’t sexy just because he’s unabashedly horny, and it isn’t entertaining just because he has immaculate taste in samples. It works because you can feel the fun behind it. There’s a life-affirming buzz behind the simple elegance of Cobain and New Jersey producer McVertt’s starry beat on “Messy,” or the glowing way he asks, “Can I hit it in the back of the Caddy?”—moments worthy of kicking off block parties and echoing from car stereos at stoplights. Cash Cobain bottles that essence and sprays it on tracks like cologne. | 2023-09-21T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-09-21T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Giant Music | September 21, 2023 | 7.4 | 39b15ff2-392b-4c2a-8c45-f35d35cc60e5 | Dylan Green | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/ | |
One-time 4AD mainstays His Name Is Alive have never stayed in one place. That eclecticism continues here on their latest, a proggy rock opera with horror music undertones. | One-time 4AD mainstays His Name Is Alive have never stayed in one place. That eclecticism continues here on their latest, a proggy rock opera with horror music undertones. | His Name Is Alive: Tecuciztecatl | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19965-his-name-is-alive-tecuciztecatl/ | Tecuciztecatl | Of all the bands to call British label 4AD home in the early '90s, none are as inscrutable—or wholly unpredictable—as His Name Is Alive. While the band’s early peers (the Breeders, Red House Painters) spent the better part of that decade honing singular aesthetics, His Name Is Alive were intent on doing the opposite. Early albums like Livonia and Stars on E.S.P. flirted with everything from shoegazey ephemera to sun-bleached California dream pop, but never lighted long enough on any one style to truly embody it. Warren Defever—the Michigan-based musician, songwriter, and mercurial heart of the band—embraces a kind of gleeful wanderlust, a predisposition that only intensified after the band parted ways with 4AD in the early 2000s. In the years since, Defever’s output has become even more of a willfully mixed bag, encompassing everything from spooky R&B, blown-out psych rock, meandering instrumental compositions, and—on 2007’s Sweet Earth Flower—an album-length tribute to free jazz saxophonist Marion Brown. Some 20 years deep into their career the only single thread twisting through all of His Name Is Alive’s music has been Defever’s own peculiar force of vision, which makes exploring the band’s now expansive back catalog both a satisfying and weirdly schizophrenic experience.
It should come as no surprise, then, that Tecuciztecatl—the band’s 14th full-length—is a thing both wonderful and extraordinarily strange. A concept record that comes with the worrisome descriptor of "psychedelic rock opera," Tecuciztecatl involves a proggy narrative about a young woman who discovers she is pregnant with twins—one good, one evil—and must seek the help of a demon-hunting librarian. Each of the album’s nine tracks is written from the perspective of a different character and the whole melodrama is set to play out like the soundtrack to a gothic psych-rock horror movie that never actually was. (Additionally, every edition of the record—be it on vinyl, CD, or digital download—is unique, each with different mixes and tracklists.) Most records would surely collapse under the weight of this kind of conceptual pretense—the struggle of good versus evil as played out from within the womb! —but Tecuciztecatl succeeds due to the strength of the songs, all of which still operate nicely outside the confines of the album’s bloody narrative.
The album opens with “The Examination”, a 13-minute opus comprised of simmering, Yes-era synthscapes, a chorus of flutes, and—most flamboyantly—an arsenal of fuzzy, overdriven guitar lines twisting around each other. As the song morphs from prog-rock anthem into something resembling a messy garage-funk jam, vocalist Andrea Morici’s plaintive vocals provide a calming counterpoint: "Look into my eyes/ Look into the light all around you/ Make yourself at home." As opening salvos go, it’s a doozy…and something the rest of the album never quite lives up to. Still, tracks like "Reflect Yourself" and "See You In a Minute" play around with classic rock power riffing in ways that are both ridiculous and kind of perfect. Employing harmonious guitar solos that were apparently perfected by practicing along to an edit that Defever created of every Thin Lizzy guitar solo recorded between 1973 and 1983 (It’s a real thing. You can check it out on YouTube), much of Tecuciztecatl plays like a celebration of the kind of bombastic, gatefold double-album sonic excess that marked '70s bands like King Crimson and Emerson Lake and Palmer.
It would be easy for these sorts of rock opera theatrics to come across as jokey or ironically reverential, but Defever's earnest commitment never wavers. Psych-rock noodlings aside, it’s the more subdued tracks—the splish-splashy "African Violet Casts a Spell" and the pastoral vibes of album closer "The Cup"—that not only sound the most like classic His Name Is Alive, but also save the record from simply being a conceptual goof. Divorced from the album’s bizarro storyline, "I Believe Your Heart Is No Longer Inside This Room" would still rank as one of His Name Is Alive’s most inspired tracks—a song that manages to simultaneously address birth and death while also incorporating an orchestral snippet of "Joy to the World" in a way that somehow makes total sense. No small feat.
In the end Tecuciztecatl is an unusual treat because it manages to have it both ways. As an aspiring rock opera, the album is sufficiently bombastic, but it’s also surprisingly emotional. That the record can be both is a testament to Warren Defever’s kooky dexterity and his continued willingness to take big, weird conceptual risks—something that gets celebrated less and less within the increasingly homogenous landscape of what has come to be known as indie rock. Tecuciztecatl will certainly not be everybody’s cup of demon twin tea—and as albums go it is the very definition of a "grower"—but those willing to spend time with it will are to be rewarded with what is a sometimes challenging but ultimately strangely beautiful listen. | 2014-11-05T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2014-11-05T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | London London | November 5, 2014 | 7.6 | 39b3772e-2eef-40e5-951a-df3b4869f41b | T. Cole Rachel | https://pitchfork.com/staff/t.-cole rachel/ | null |
The Mood Hut co-founder’s full-length debut and first release in seven years is a lighthearted collection of deep house, dub, yacht rock, and ambient sketches. | The Mood Hut co-founder’s full-length debut and first release in seven years is a lighthearted collection of deep house, dub, yacht rock, and ambient sketches. | Jack J: Opening the Door | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jack-j-opening-the-door/ | Opening the Door | Vancouver’s Mood Hut broke out last decade with a resin-fingered new-age aesthetic, a preference for vinyl releases, and a gentle, chord-perfumed take on deep house informed by what they variously call the “Canadian Riviera” or the “soft water city.” Though their sound anticipated the buzzy “lo-fi house” movement that would become ubiquitous online a few years later, Mood Hut has shied away from publicity while releasing a stream of albums, EPs, mixes, and compilations (many of which were not available digitally until 2018) at a low-key clip. Australian-born co-founder Jack Jutson has been particularly reticent. His last two releases as Jack J, 2014’s MH007 and 2015’s “Thirstin’”/“Atmosphere,” are among the label’s crown jewels, yet he’s avoided capitalizing on their hype with a full-length—or even another Jack J release—until now.
But Opening the Door offers nothing like a definitive culmination of Jutson’s sound. In keeping with Mood Hut’s tendency to be guided only by the pursuit of the perfect vibe, the album is a lighthearted collection of deep house, dub, yacht rock, and ambient sketches that sounds great on a sunny afternoon walk. Only three tracks, all on the first side, sound like dance music, and Jutson’s heavy, dragging hi-hat is often the only thing affiliating them with house. The remaining tracks lope patiently at reggae or R&B tempos or, in the case of “Clues Pt. 1” and “Closing the Door,” cut the drums to focus on watery ambient textures permeated with Linda Fox’s saxophone. And the pearly guitars in the background sometimes edge towards the slacker-rock atmospherics of fellow Canadians Mac DeMarco and Homeshake.
Jutson’s soft, slightly raspy voice has often shown up in his music as a seductive murmur or as a source to treat as a sample. Now he’s singing actual songs, more or less. “If You Don’t Know Why” opens with an eager drum thwack familiar from Jutson’s earlier work, but soon his circular mantras of reassurance drift into the frame, meandering far from the rhythmic grid: “If you don’t know why/If you don’t know why you’re crying/I’ll come by… Let’s get together and not know why.” “Only You Know Why” describes Jutson’s own distress vaguely but poignantly: “I used to think that if I was lost I’d easily be found/I took one wrong turn and turned my whole world upside down.” These are bleak lyrics for music this sunny, alluding to disappointment and mental anguish, and there’s the sense that these easygoing songs are pushing against a world of suffering. There’s always been a slight melancholy to Jutson’s productions, as if the sun is out but the shadows are lengthening, but Opening the Door literalizes it.
Yet these heightened emotional stakes can’t keep Opening the Door from feeling a little slight, especially given its long gestation. Its eight tracks all hover around four to six minutes apiece, and, conspicuously, there’s no obvious epic or clear highlight like MH007’s “Something (On My Mind)” or “No Need” from Jutson’s Pender Street Steppers duo with Liam Butler. Mood Hut’s insistence on operating on its own timetable means this is either deliberate or outside the sphere of Jutson’s concern. But a Jack J full-length that sustained the scale and ambition of MH007 or Pender Street Steppers’ Life in the Zone mixtape could have towered over the Mood Hut catalog, rather than slotting easily alongside it as a breezy and enjoyable release on a label that’s put out a lot of those. | 2022-04-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-04-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Mood Hut | April 1, 2022 | 6.9 | 39b5e109-4d46-489c-a9d6-ae387d9ffcdc | Daniel Bromfield | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-bromfield/ | |
[EARLY Rough Draft of Death Cab Review, 10/7/03, 6:30 (NOTE: important, finish! final draft for Ryan before ... | [EARLY Rough Draft of Death Cab Review, 10/7/03, 6:30 (NOTE: important, finish! final draft for Ryan before ... | Death Cab for Cutie: Transatlanticism | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2232-transatlanticism/ | Transatlanticism | [EARLY Rough Draft of Death Cab Review, 10/7/03, 6:30 (NOTE: important, finish! final draft for Ryan before first date to Olive Garden and The Rundown (9:50).]
I. INTRO -- (first decision: clever metaphor or witty personal narrative??)
A. (used to be one of favorite bands / accordingly: personal stuff has more depth/heart)
start-shame on band, damn this record. makes me feel old and wise-- uh, but, yeah, am older (a little, SAA was only '99 (98?) in any case-- can say I had it right when it came out-- would give me more leeway (Ich bin expert)-- but, seriosuly not wiser-- shouldn't be made to feel wiser. Trans. decidedly makes me feel wise (see Roget's for new/better word for 'wise'), like i'm all of a sudden worldly and all-aware. Makes me feel like fucking Kerouac or something. --used to pause the songs when playing for friends and read from the lyric book, made me feel so callow and sheltered and myopic and like I had so much more to see and learn w/ "your wedding figurines: I'd melt so I could drink them in," and "gravitated toward a taste for foreign film and modern plays," (find better lyrics) there was nuance and the possibility of discovery and growth and suggestive prowess even in the face of experience. It was so forward-looking/thinking but had already seen so much.-- with this album: the mystique is gone, these songs are heads turned back over shoulders in commentary and nostalgia: but the scenes are already diluted with age and the pictures aren't as sharp-- nowhere left to go, just idling. Lyrical extension: Opening lines of cd: "so this is the new year / and I don't feel any different." (further (farther?)develop later)
B. possible INTRO 2? (direct metaphor route)(hell, first one got loose anyway..)
This is the sound of a band not embarrassed to lounge around Sunday afternoons in a bathrobe and tube socks drinking milk from a straw. Transatlanticism is ripe with indulgence and decidedly lacking in pretension or restraint. (eh, bail for now)-- but does get at 'role acceptance' and complacency.
Transition in....
??(mention concurrent release of Super Hybrid Audio cd version, can only be heard on special player. avoid obvious, "not worth buying just for this cd" rip)
??(new drummer-- Jason McGerr-- Not the same energy, but DCFC more Gibbard's melodies and Walla's knobs anyway)
II. The songs:
An exercise in scope: Transatlanticism dulls the edges of their usually acute divinations. A towering mass of sound: it leans (mostly lyrically) more toward Postal Service inclinations than it does previous groundwork. Case in point:
-- sunny jingle jangle of "Title and Registration", a Gibbard-patented melody accompanied by clear, understated guitar work replete with a stop/start drum kit and ringing tones. Will leave you singing about glove compartments.
Elsewhere: anthems and super-produced moments of glory.
"The New Year": pure arena rock. Direct and pandering. No distance between sound and receptor: play like they're running out of time, even sing about it, "I wish the world was flat like the old days/ and I could travel just by folding the map/ no more airplanes or speed trains or freeways/ there'd be no distance that could hold us back." Used to be Something About Airplanes and coasting down the 405-- the journey was the reward. Now it's the destination.
"We Looked Like Giants"-- fully realized anthem, true rocker- 'bout sexual discovery (old-hat subject matter --again: makes me feel experienced) a claustrophobic's nightmare.
"Expo '86": a mini anthem that tests the waters, pulls away and then dives in headfirst before finally drying off to Gibbard's lonely plea.
"Tiny Vessels": what could be the best moment of the album is tossed off due to lack of restraint, final third is mesmerizing. Broken by an Uluru sized wall of distortion and thrashing. Worst moment- 8 min. of "Transatlanticism", akin to witnessing the reunion of high school sweethearts away for a field trip weekend across a 10 acre wheat field, -- builds and builds to no avail. too romanticized. too far-sighted.
Then, the old Death Cab:
"Lightness", an updated "Coney Island".
"The Sound of Settling", old mixed with new, middle Photo Album pop-sensibilities tuned in to the waning needs of maturation. But no hidden agenda (hand claps and "bah baa/ this is the sound of settling") talks about wanting to go grey-- it shows.
finest moments: "Passenger Seat", bare, spacious understated beauty w/echoes of "Lowell, MA".
"Death of an Interior Decorator", vintage stuff-- overlapping guitar tones folding in on each other and beautifully realized bridge. Showcases his ability to scriptwrite.
--all together: a complete vision. A destination.
CONCLUSION: (III),
Ends the album where the Stability EP left off, w/ "A Lack of Color"-- a low-key ziplock on the freshest meal. Record IS a meal, with all courses well thought out. Ingredients may be obvious-- final taste and chef's vision remain a family secret. Just have to taste for yourself. Same cook-- bigger batch of sound.
My comfort-- nothing affected. Just sincere and honest. Can't disguise who you are-- or who you've become. And can't really complain-- not really. Just accept, Band already has. | 2003-10-07T01:00:01.000-04:00 | 2003-10-07T01:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Barsuk | October 7, 2003 | 6.4 | 39c18696-055b-4ff2-8ecf-c192b5b98ade | Pitchfork | null |
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Left for dead by industry mergers, Pusha and Malice enjoy a dramatic resurrection via the RIAA-baiting mixtape circuit. | Left for dead by industry mergers, Pusha and Malice enjoy a dramatic resurrection via the RIAA-baiting mixtape circuit. | Clipse: We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11708-we-got-it-4-cheap-vol-1-vol-2/ | We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 | Left for dead more than two years ago, Malice and Pusha T-- aka Clipse, two-hit wonders if there ever were some-- had no damn right doing this. This is not what's supposed to happen to these guys. After their label, Arista, messily merged with J Records, the duo was shuffled to Jive/Zomba, an imprint historically unable to market gritty hip-hop. For a brief moment, the Brothers Thornton sat idly, intermittently whining about their still-forthcoming album Hell Hath No Fury, and plotting their return. But lacking the backing of den mother Pharrell Williams, who launched their careers with "Grindin'" and produced their entire debut with partner Chad Hugo, Clipse were toast. So, of course, in an attempt to stonewall Jive into voiding their contract, they recorded the year's most astonishing mixtape series, We Got It 4 Cheap. And when forced to pick up the pieces and carry on, talkin' and sellin' shit, Malice and Pusha recruited two baritone toughs from Philly, Ab-Liva and Sandman, to round out their new incarnation.
The result is the Re-Up Gang, a supergroup in the most undistinguished sense. Ab-Liva and Sandman are the stylistic opposite of Clipse, burly in voice and muddy in inflection, intensifying most tracks, but usually just acting as foils. All vocals are mixed way upfront by DJ/entrepreneur Clinton Sparks, easier to hear over instrumentals you already know. Subtle choices like these make We Got It 4 Cheap's two volumes-- and chiefly Volume 2-- the best examples of what a mixtape can be. Bigger than just that new shit you cop from Canal St., these demonstrate that mixtapes, like albums, can be an art form. Mixing, scratching, beat choice, reconfiguring choruses-- all come into play, elevating typical songwriting into philosophical, deconstructionist terms. "How can I make this better?" "This beat would sound hotter if we rapped on it," etc.
Have we talked drugs yet? That's what they do here; talk the art of the deal and their mastery of such. It sounds simplistic, but Clipse have been the premier drug-dealing soliloquists for some time. Unflinching and unforgiving, Re-Up re-imagine hustler as hero with lyrical ingenuity and deft wordplay. Some may struggle with the joy these boys get from moving weight; it's an indefensible stance-- we all have our faults, and we all have to eat-- but the revelry is also what makes it enjoyable. Otherwise, Clipse could just move West and write for scripts for Michael Mann.
Volume 1, which hit back in January, is too long, and it's overrun with suspect beat selection and too many references to HBO's "The Wire". It's anti-populist and too short on the MCs in demand, Malice and Pusha, who appear on about half the songs. But it's also far stronger than most releases like it, featuring a reinvigorated crew and one killer freestyle ("Coast to Coast"). Tracks like "Studin' Y'all" and "Pussy (Remix)" made them seem relevant again, too. A few months later, "Zen" fell from the sky (onto their website) and the divide was drawn. Once a tremendously gifted but one-dimensional singles crew, Clipse took their talents to new heights with the abrasively dynamic song. Teeming with quotables ("I sell that ostrich, I'm so obnoxious"; "Two diamond jump rope, my neck do the double dutch"; "All I see blackface and you singin' 'Mammy'"), Clipse were possessed by a new vigor. They were clever before, sure, but now everyone-- especially the contemptuously nasal Pusha-- had become transcendent.
Volume 2 delivers on the promise of "Zen". In alternating mismanaged heaters ("So Seductive", the murderous "Kobra"), hugely successful singles ("1 Thing", "Hate It or Love It"), and timeless thrillers ("Elevators", "Daytona 500"), the pacing never slows. It would be too easy to list punchline after punchline, but to put it simply, Pusha, whose scintillating word choice and deft phrasing can be frightening, takes Timbaland's "Put You on the Game" and makes it his anthem on "What's Up". His verse barks and prances at once: "Cop the sorbet/ Straight from Jorge/ Jack of all trades/ Even mastered the gourmet/ Plus the price got the street tongue in cheek/ Cook it till it's Al Dente/ Muah, magnifique!"
The second volume also features key contributions from Pharrell who's still rapping (mostly awkwardly) but is apparently writing his own lyrics, according to Pusha on a humorously assertive interlude. Skateboard P's flow is jumbled but his sentiments are personal on "Maybe (Remix)" where he reveals insecurities about uncleared samples over the "Elevators" beat ("You and me/ BAPE, Ice Cream, and BBC"). Finally, some vulnerability.
The tape ends on a tranquil note with "Ultimate Flow". Lifting the strummy, nearly forgotten instrumental from Lil' Kim's "Drugs", Pusha offers a summation of the conquest: "I draw this off inspiration, you trace shit." Things still aren't right with the world ("Nigga, fuck Zomba/ I sell nose candy.../ Willy Wonka"). And the future of Hell Hath No Fury is still unknown. Some joker at Amazon.com even set the release date for January 1, 2020. Perhaps someone at Jive should take notice-- a lot of people still care about these rogues. | 2005-10-10T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2005-10-10T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | null | October 10, 2005 | 7 | 39c2062a-383d-47bb-92e5-c3fb0b49a9c4 | Sean Fennessey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sean-fennessey/ | null |
Will Oldham shifts away from the fuller sound of his recent albums on this soft, casual collection, but the songwriting-- mostly detailing the moral tangles of everyday people-- still has a reassuring sense of familiarity. | Will Oldham shifts away from the fuller sound of his recent albums on this soft, casual collection, but the songwriting-- mostly detailing the moral tangles of everyday people-- still has a reassuring sense of familiarity. | Bonnie “Prince” Billy: Wolfroy Goes to Town | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15886-wolfroy-goes-to-town/ | Wolfroy Goes to Town | Perhaps the most conventional story Will Oldham has to tell is his own. As a teenager in the late 1980s, he moved from his hometown of Louisville to Hollywood, where he struggled as an actor before eventually landing a small role in John Sayles' Matewan and a larger role in a TV movie about Jessica McClure. Oldham soon defected to music, writing songs first under the Palace set of monikers and later as Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Twenty years later, while he still takes the occasional role, Sayles and McClure represent the poles of his subjects: His songs, often in a skewed country or folk tradition, are full of darkly American oddities and characters trapped down in their own metaphorical wells.
Oldham's film career continues to inform his music, as he writes songs as soliloquies and inhabits them the way an actor might perform a dramatic role, transforming dialog and stage direction into something flesh-and-blood, memorable, and moving. He writes in isolation and hires a small cast of backing musicians to help him bring these one-act songs to life. For his latest Bonnie "Prince" Billy album, Wolfroy Goes to Town, he's chosen a cast of regulars, including guitarist Emmett Kelly. Most of the Wolfroy troupe, like composer/multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily and Chicago-based singer-songwriter Angel Olsen, have toured with him for a while now, and backed him on many of his most recent records. Together, they give these new songs a soft, casual vibe, and the minimal instrumentation-- mostly acoustic guitars and bass-- evokes a dark, bare stage.
Oldham places the hardiest emphasis on vocals-- not just his own, but those of his players. His female duet partners have tended to act as his opposites, the coo of their voices offsetting his weathered creak. But on Wolfroy, Olsen sounds just as odd and ragged as he does. There may be no spark of contrast between them, but there's a spark nonetheless, and she's one of the most grounded female characters on any Bonnie "Prince" Billy record. The rest of the band's harmonies are rough and pointedly unrehearsed, barely holding together on "Black Captain" and "Quail and Dumplings". Rustic, however, does not mean primitive. "Cows" ends with a sophisticated vocal roundelay that has more in common with British folk than with its American counterpart. It's a lovely moment-- a spare, hushed, and unexpected coda.
Oldham's music is deeply attuned to the past and to the people we imagine inhabited it, yet his actorly approach separates him from the mainstream Americana crowd, who tend to favor a more autobiographical approach, or at least some sense of direct confessionalism. Oldham's songs are only obliquely about himself, and they rarely reveal much about the man singing them. "As boys, we fucked each other," he sings at the beginning of "New Tibet". "As men, we lie and smile." In other hands, such a line might deliver a shock to interrupt the lull of the music, but Oldham never breaks character. That f-bomb becomes part of the lull, and is not so much sung as ruefully breathed. The song possesses all the ruminative gravity of "I See a Darkness" and in tone and character could be interpreted as a sequel.
Heroes hold no interest for Oldham, who is much more concerned with the moral tangles of everyday people, like the character in "Quail and Dumplings" who promises a bright future of full bellies and no worries. Despite the subject matter, it's almost impossible to read that song strictly as a 2010s recession anthem, although it certainly derives some power from current conditions. Oldham's antiquated diction and sepia-toned details-- "one day it's going to be quail and dumplings for we"-- removes the song from the present and sets the characters deep in some imagined past. In one sense, it robs the song of any topical gravity, but in another, he allows "Quail and Dumplings" to transcend any one era.
By this point in his career, Oldham seems to realize that it's difficult for his audience to hear his songs outside of the context of his previous albums and incarnations. So he plays that up on Wolfroy, both by shifting away from the fuller sound of his recent albums, and by subtly alluding to his own characters. By now it's esoteric, but hardly a simple retread of past glories. Instead, that sense of connectedness lends these songs a reassuring familiarity, as though they were new corners of a strange world whose boundaries grow larger and whose scenery grows more inviting with every Oldham release. | 2011-10-12T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2011-10-12T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Drag City | October 12, 2011 | 7.8 | 39c2b3de-c115-425c-b316-0a8b9519ca1a | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
Recorded at Berlin’s historic Funkhaus in 2018, this live album sounds uniformly gorgeous and features the composer and his passel of gear working dutifully as a well-oiled machine. | Recorded at Berlin’s historic Funkhaus in 2018, this live album sounds uniformly gorgeous and features the composer and his passel of gear working dutifully as a well-oiled machine. | Nils Frahm: Tripping With Nils Frahm | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nils-frahm-tripping-with-nils-frahm/ | Tripping With Nils Frahm | Nils Frahm’s dominant mode is the eyes-closed fantasia: immersive, rapturous, sentimental. That goes for his post-classical solo-piano work, which is indebted to both Keith Jarrett and George Winston, as well as his surging electronic pieces, which translate the grammar of classical minimalism into the language of techno. His music favors fluid lines and wistful melodies; even when it throbs, it prizes beauty, lyricism, and elegance.
But on stage, the German musician is also a showman. Surrounded by keyboards and machines—grand piano, upright piano, harmonium, Fender Rhodes, Mellotron, toy piano, Roland Juno-60, Moog Taurus, Roland SH 2, analog drum machines, and tape delay units—he is a mad scientist of MIDI/CV converters, a flat-capped conductor of hammers and pan pots and LEDs. Sculpting sine waves into controlled whirlwinds, he straddles his gear, arms akimbo, lunging from station to station: hammering out Rhodes arpeggios with one hand and toggling sequencer parameters with the other, then shifting to the Yamaha grand in the space of a beat, all while finessing his delay chain, triggering pipe-organ samples, and keeping his drum machines in check. There are moments of stillness, too, but at their peaks, his shows are athletic feats as much as they are opportunities to get lost in sound.
Frahm’s showmanship was on full display in December 2018, when he set up at Berlin’s historic Funkhaus—a former East German radio headquarters, where he keeps his own recording studio—for four consecutive nights of performances. He played in the round, a castaway on a small island of gear, by turns manic, melancholy, and mild. Tripping With Nils Frahm, which boils down choice moments from those four nights into a 76-minute album, is more polished than his 2013 live album, Spaces, a compendium of two years of live performances. That collection acknowledged both spontaneity (“Improvisation for Coughs and a Cell Phone”) and the constant possibility of failure (“An Aborted Beginning,” an ambient dub sketch that peters out after 94 seconds), but on the new one, he and his passel of gear are a well-oiled machine.
The album, split between delicate solo piano pieces and billowing, groove-driven electronic improvisations, is largely drawn from his 2018 album All Melody and its outtakes collection, All Encores. What might be most surprising is how faithful his live renditions are to the original studio recordings. Without seeing it—something possible in an accompanying concert film, which includes 11 minutes’ worth of extra music—it can be hard to imagine how Frahm manages to do so much with just two hands. In “Sunson,” he juggles slow-motion techno with Mellotron counterpoints, cascading pipe organs, and the occasional Rhodes melody; “Fundamental Values” makes room for ambient pulses, Windham Hill-like piano solo, operatic vocal samples, and a heart-in-mouth climax whose double-time percussion is reminiscent of Autechre’s “Lost.” The crowd-pleasing “All Melody” stretches the original’s nine and a half minutes to more than 14, drawing out the tension inherent in his tumbling arpeggios. Sprawl is par for the course. Five of the album’s eight songs are more than 10 minutes long; “Fundamental Values” takes a four-minute album cut and blows it up to more than 14.
The sound throughout is gorgeous. Frahm is serious about his gear—he owns 11 Roland RE-501 Chorus Echoes, and uses five of them on stage—and that obsessiveness translates into truly incredible sound: sumptuous, nuanced, enveloping. He favors instruments with striking visceral sonorities, and he knows how to get the most out of the contrast between them. Some of the album’s most electrifying moments happen when he turns the sampled sounds of a pipe organ into an icy cascade of staccato tone bursts. But a nagging sense of sameness nevertheless settles in over the course of the record. “All Melody” and “#2” amount to a 25-minute set of theme and variations; the arpeggios and steady pulse of “Sunson” feel cut from the same cloth, and “Fundamental Values” reprises ideas from all three. The album’s most rewarding stretch is “My Friend the Forest” and “The Dane,” a pair of related solo piano pieces where he strips away the bells and whistles and lets his harmonic sensibilities shine.
Even here, though, Frahm’s fondness for ornament occasionally gets the better of him. Where “My Friend the Forest” is spare and patient, his soloing in “The Dane” turns cloying. There’s an occasionally claustrophobic air of deep feeling in his neo-romantic melodies. Pushing forward in needling eighth-note phrases, his solos can be a little too insistent, his cadenzas too lily-gilding. Listeners suspicious of overt emotional cues might find these portions of his music manipulative in their insistence upon feeling just one type of way.
The album’s loveliest moment is its simplest: The closing “Ode - Our Own Roof” is spare and delicate, like snowfall under a single streetlamp. Dialing back some of the excess—and the seriousness—might go a long way toward letting Frahm’s music breathe. In a 2016 interview with The Guardian, Frahm cited the influence of Andy Kaufman, the consummate showman, and espoused the musical properties of the $1 Ikea toilet scrubber. In the concert film, there’s a brief interlude where Frahm uses just such a pair of white plastic brushes on the inside of the concert grand: drumming on the struts and the strings, eking out a booming rhythm before a tongue-in-cheek finale of bristles scratchy-scratching against mic heads. To be sure, this is Frahm in peak entertainer mode, but in sonic terms, it’s also a welcome contrast—an acknowledgement that there are sensations beyond reverie; that even rhapsody requires the occasional reprieve.
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. | 2020-12-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-12-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Erased Tapes | December 4, 2020 | 6.7 | 39c4ed48-dc92-4f75-b7bb-2381cdcdef92 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
The nu boss is born here:
\n\n\ "Two years ago, Page Hamilton-- singer, guitarist and founder of the proto-metal ... | The nu boss is born here:
\n\n\ "Two years ago, Page Hamilton-- singer, guitarist and founder of the proto-metal ... | Helmet: Size Matters | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3812-size-matters/ | Size Matters | The nu boss is born here:
"Two years ago, Page Hamilton-- singer, guitarist and founder of the proto-metal outfit Helmet-- was driving around Los Angeles with the radio on. The jock on duty had just debuted the hotly anticipated new track from some xFC-metal millionaires."
And, as you might have guessed, the story (and this promo pitch) ends in medias res, with Helmet, unwavering bastion of all things Hard and Rock, emerging from the dry ice mists of obscurity and obsolescence to rescue the tired, huddled, headbanging masses from the ever-growing throng of bare-ass emperors. Glory be unto they who bring forth The Rock for their people beset by The Rot, were that it be The Rock they actually bring forth.
If Helmet had one thing going for them in their prime, it was a monochromatic discipline. They gave fans a gussied-up version of the working class scree proffered by Big Black and other Albini disciples. With Helmet, the guitars cut like lasers, not pavement saws. The rhythms were efficient and martial, not frenetically robotic. And while Albini's words were flecked with coal dust and offal and the scarring of 12-hour work days, Hamilton barked and yelped like a guy earning union wages with full benefits and 401K matching. Helmet did lack a certain visceral passion, but they were precise and exacting and brutal and-- when all the metaphors are bagged and tagged-- Helmet did indeed rock. It's safe to say that Helmet's million-dollar Interscope contract (inked circa 1991) paved the way for all the xFC-metal millionaires Hamilton now finds himself both befriending and opposing.
So, of course, in the era the unnecessary umlaut-- when the sound that made Helmet well-respected kings of rock are now commonplace among both standard bearers (Deftones, Tool, Slipknot) and shysters (take your pick), and it's safe for MTV's "Headbanger's Ball" to return to the airwaves-- Helmet releases a record that's about as hard as a loofah. A DJ could easily slip tracks like "Drug Lord" and "Unwound" between offerings from Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age. In fact, Burning Airlines could probably sue for copyright infringement-- "See You Dead" : "Wheaton Calling :: "Ice Ice Baby" : "Under Pressure".
Instead of reinventing the wheel (or perhaps the tank tread), Helmet attempt to diversify their portfolio, offering dynamics and approachable melodies and other types of listener-friendly capitulations one wouldn't associate with the folks that dropped "Meantime" and "Unsung". The group's online bio claims Page & Co. (old Helmeteer Chris Traynor and new guys John Tempesta and Frank Bello-- veterans of Testament and Anthrax, respectively) didn't set out to make Meantime, Part II with this new record; rather, they made Wilma, a less varied version of their confounding post-breakthrough album Betty.
Therein lies part of the problem. As I said, Helmet's strength is their lack of diversity-- the group is a lumbering, slow-footed, imposing heavyweight, and it succeeds by beating opponents into submission. It's awkward to witness such a gloriously thuggish monster vainly attempt the rope-a-dope. Part of this pop-centric bait-and-switch is shifting the focus away from the guitars and hi-hats towards the vocals. Unfortunately, the "singing" on Size Matters happens in two modes: the hoarse bark and the nasal sneer. Both of these styles are evident on the album's first track, "Smart", and neither do the group any favors. Page Hamilton as R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket (authoritative, stern) = yes, sir! Page Hamilton as R. Lee Ermey in Saving Silverman (emotive, awkward) = unfit for command.
Worse yet, Helmet's clipped monosyllabic lyrical M.O. (consistent throughout their recorded output) doesn't jibe with this slight stylistic shift. It's safe to say that lyrics were never Helmet's strong suit ("I'd like to see you/ In two pieces/ Won't be walking/ Barely breathing/ I'd like to see you/ At my door/ We're together/ Like before"), but it's not going to do any good to draw attention to them.
Granted, there's enough wicked fretwork and cool guitar noise throughout this record to both recall past glories and satiate those in need of a modern rock fix. Just be warned that there are some hoops to jump through. Also be wary if you believe the hype and are hoping that Helmet have returned to save us from the upstarts and charlatans who pass themselves off as metal. Indeed, Helmet have met the enemy-- and, unfortunately, the enemy is Helmet. | 2004-11-29T01:01:40.000-05:00 | 2004-11-29T01:01:40.000-05:00 | Metal | Interscope | November 29, 2004 | 5.4 | 39c69636-923e-4201-86f0-0780000ab0a0 | David Raposa | https://pitchfork.com/staff/david-raposa/ | null |
The chart-topping balladeer’s risk-averse second album is simultaneously overwrought and uninspired. | The chart-topping balladeer’s risk-averse second album is simultaneously overwrought and uninspired. | Lewis Capaldi: Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lewis-capaldi-broken-by-desire-to-be-heavenly-sent/ | Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent | In one scene in the recent documentary Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now (no apologies to Charli XCX!), the Scottish singer’s uniquely graceless manager shares his fears over the slow gestation of his act’s second album, and the apparently underwhelming demos he’s delivered thus far. “I’ve definitely put all my eggs in one basket,” the manager says, right in front of him. Even the usually unflappable Capaldi—an endearing gobshite not shy about posting Instagram videos from the toilet—looks taken aback: “He says ‘eggs in one basket’ as if I’m not here and not Lewis Capaldi whose name is on it.”
He also says it as if Capaldi isn’t evidently in the throes of a mental health crisis, weathering imposter syndrome, writer’s block, and the tightening grip of Tourette’s (which manifests in aggressive full-body twitching) as he crumples under the pressure of following up not only the UK’s biggest-selling album of 2019, but 2020 as well. The balladeer’s lovelorn debut, Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent, filled the chart gaps between Ed Sheeran albums and established Capaldi, with his tornado-strength choruses and plainspoken heartbreak, as The Boy Adele, while his lethally funny social media persona minted viral gold—precisely the sort of asset that the music industry is not about to let go quietly.
The film starts in August 2022, with Capaldi being interviewed onstage at an industry event in London. He convulses violently while giving deadpan answers about wanting to stick precisely to the formula established on his debut, because reinvention is overrated. The audience laughs along. I was there, and left haunted by the disparity of the crisis that appeared to be unfolding and the cheery (some might say venal!) business-as-usual atmosphere, which Capaldi seemed to have embraced creatively at least. But the documentary later reveals that this night proved a turning point: His parents pulled the plug and he got four months off to address his health. We revisit him two weeks back into business, conveniently feeling much better, on the cusp of a UK No. 1 single (bolstered by signed CD copies that retailed for 99 pence, unsurprisingly not mentioned), and with an album finally in the bag. Ta-da! A happy ending! Champagne corks litter EMI’s carpets.
So what magic was wrought to bring Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent to satisfactory completion? Capaldi and his co-writers have stuffed the basket with every egg they have in hopes of reminding listeners why they liked him in the first place. I cannot remember an album that suffered from such an extreme case of risk-aversion, nor demonstrated so little faith in an artist’s potential, nor any notion that their fanbase might be willing to grow with them. If anything, it shrinks his already narrow proposition. Any number of these potential bank-advert ballads sound like his debut’s “Someone You Loved” (which had one of the longest-ever climbs to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100) and it’s no mistake. When Capaldi points this out in the documentary, his manager responds: “That’s a good thing—not to be condescending but people love things that just sound the same.” Nearly every song starts gently, with Capaldi’s voice in its appealing conversational mode—a little boyish and uncertain, as if trying to reach someone—before a chorus smashes in like a wrecking ball. You can set your watch by them: “Haven’t You Ever Been in Love Before?” literally contains the sound of a ticking clock to remind you to brace for impact.
The first time, it’s a hair-raising effect—“Forget Me” is as visceral as a pleading romantic showdown outside EastEnders’ Queen Vic pub—and occasionally Capaldi steals a little nuance in there. “Wish You the Best” starts with understated immediacy as he follows a train of thought about an ex, longing to know everything about her new life, but hold the new boyfriend. Then the chorus hits: “I wanna say I miss the green in your eyes/And when I said I wish we could be friends, guess I lied,” he howls, and the sour note he lands as he stretches out that last word feels grimly true as he contemplates the gap between who he wants to be and who he feels he is.
Otherwise, near enough every song proceeds at this state of emergency. Meanwhile the ceaselessly wet, antiseptic piano proves entirely the wrong foil for a voice forever on the cusp of unraveling. There are no middle eights—songs just toggle between loud and quiet, then finish right where they started. At one point in the film, Capaldi says he wants to make the album “a more cohesive, focused body of work—it’d be nice if people listened to it that way.” Then he briefly breaks down, perhaps daunted by the task, or painfully aware of how unlikely that is given the way things are going. The sheer, incessant velocity makes the record unlistenable as a whole: It’s like watching a play in which every scene is acted as if it were the emotional climax. The inevitable choruses become unwitting punchlines.
And the torrential scale pulverizes some nice songwriting. Yes, there’s a wealth of cliché—lifeless hearts, shipwrecking storms, labored biblical metaphors—but fans come to Capaldi for that kind of unstudied romance. He has a Nashvillian way with a gentle lyrical twist and his yearning to connect is endearing. “I take her out to fancy restaurants/She takes the sadness out of me,” he sings on “Pointless” in a sad rundown of his perceived inferiorities. “Love the Hell Out of You” sweetly subverts the expression by promising to squeeze out his lover’s demons. You get a rare flash of his mischievous personality on “Heavenly Kind of State of Mind” when he declares that being with someone makes him feel like “I could run and tell the Devil to go fuck himself.” (In that sense, Lewis Capaldi reminds me of Liam Gallagher, another comic king whose wit rarely pierces his banal lyrics.)
Although the album’s thematic anchor is a thwarted romantic relationship, the defeated outlook could just as easily apply to Capaldi’s fears over his career. He worries about people changing their minds, realizing that “I’m fucking useless and full of excuses.” These fears underpin Broken’s only two properly good songs. “The Pretender” reveals the depths of Capaldi’s insecurities, whether as a lover or a performer: “So tell me who you want me to be/I can wear a million faces/’Cos I don’t like the one underneath,” he sings, and the pain in his voice is shapeshifting and ragged, rather than blasting like an alarm. The racing piano and swirling tempest of strings actually feel like they might break apart, and the effect is stirring. And the Max Martin co-write “Leave Me Slowly” totally shifts tone from soggy piano to dazzling keys right out of Prince’s “I Would Die 4 U.” The epic mode, right down to a wibbling guitar solo, makes Capaldi’s bloodletting feel right at home. It’s a delightful surprise near the end of the album, like finding the sparkly toy in a box of stale cornflakes.
Why is there not more of this stylistic variation when it works so well? Divinely Uninspired was pretty conservative but it might as well be SZA’s SOS compared to Broken. Perhaps sticking to the formula gives Capaldi a sense of steadiness when he’s otherwise wracked with uncertainty; perhaps it’s pure commercial arse-covering on the part of his team and label. If you don’t like Capaldi, or Adele, or Sheeran, or George Ezra, or any of the hat-wearing British pop boys, you obviously aren’t going to like this either. But if it inspires anything in you, let it be anger at the industry ghouls caging their golden goose, perfectly aware that it won’t be them left with egg on their faces if this hedge-betting waste of time sinks. | 2023-05-19T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-05-19T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Capitol | May 19, 2023 | 4 | 39c6d8d0-73ac-4b13-b8a4-d1bb584a2570 | Laura Snapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/laura-snapes/ | |
Relentlessly smashing together bits of punk, grindcore, rave, industrial, and more, the Pittsburgh duo’s maximalist music echoes the cruel momentum of the modern world. | Relentlessly smashing together bits of punk, grindcore, rave, industrial, and more, the Pittsburgh duo’s maximalist music echoes the cruel momentum of the modern world. | Machine Girl: U-Void Synthesizer | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/machine-girl-u-void-synthesizer/ | U-Void Synthesizer | Since their inception, the Pittsburgh duo Machine Girl have put upsetting images of dogs at the heart of their symbology. Some of their album covers are straightforwardly terrifying—their 2014 album WLFGRL features a blown-out image of a snarling beast, fangs bared, poised for attack. Others are more surreal, like ...BECAUSE IM YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR, which trains a video-game firearm on the face of a canine. For the cover of 2018’s The Ugly Art, vocalist and producer Matt Stephenson said he wanted to make “a fucked up Deep Dream sort of image but with dogs,” and so he stitched together a bunch of pictures of gnarled beasts to make a dizzying collage in the shape of an even bigger dog. U-Void Synthesizer, the duo’s newest album, continues this tradition, editing a regal image of a pup into a demonoid monster wearing a spiked collar that reads “GOODBOY.”
The music has changed a lot over the years—from Stephenson’s solo experiments in the early days of the project to the crushing noise and shredded EBM punk he started making once drummer Sean Kelly joined the band—but the dogs on the covers hint at the spirit that’s united all of Machine Girl’s mutations. No matter the style, their music is designed to be unpredictable and dangerous, full of animalistic rage and uncontrollable energy. You’re meant to be afraid of its bite.
Even with volatility as one of the band’s core values, however, they’ve rarely felt as wonderfully feral as on U-Void Synthesizer. The music that Stephenson and Kelly make together has always been chaotic, but they try out more sounds and styles across these 11 tracks than seems possible. Take the immense first track, “The Fortress [The Blood Inside]”: In just under four minutes, Stephenson and Kelly squeeze in ecstatic trance synths, grinding noise-punk passages, open-hearted sacred-music harmonies, gargly grindcore vocals, half-stuttered rapping, and, yes, the sound of a barking dog.
Most of the record operates at this blistering pace. Other tracks meld together mutant dance music with cacophonous noise (“Scroll of Sorrow”) or slam samples from bad translations of the Star Wars prequels with glitchy metal refractions (“Batsu Forever”). Even more straightforward songs, like the minute-and-a-half blitz of “Kill All Borders,” are arranged in such a way that they’re blurry and bewildering too. Kelly plays his kit with a sweaty intensity that has often invited comparisons to Lightning Bolt’s tunnel-vision pummeling, and Stephenson’s in-the-red electronics leave little room in the margins of the tracks for any stray thoughts. U-Void Synthesizer is meant to totally consume you.
This sort of kitchen-sink approach to heavy music isn’t a totally new one. Avant-minded metal acts like Liturgy have often experimented with deliberately overwhelming arrangements, as have artists like Bonnie Baxter, Deli Girls, and many of their other contemporaries in New York’s punk-minded scene of self-described “mutants.” But U-Void Synthesizer is unique in the way it echoes the cruel momentum of the modern world. Machine Girl have said that this is largely the point of their music. “I think most of what dictates our taste is pretty maximum shit because we’ve just consumed so much media in our lives,” Kelly said in an interview last year. “So for us to really relate to anything it has to be over the top.” In their mile-a-minute music, there’s little hope for rest—just pure fear, momentum, and adrenaline for a society that demands it. | 2020-03-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-03-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Experimental / Metal | Machine Girl | March 10, 2020 | 7.8 | 39cc915e-4168-431c-9f60-635d91c845c2 | Colin Joyce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-joyce/ | |
At various points, the electronic composer and onetime Parts & Labor frontman Dan Friel evokes noise, industrial, punk crossed with techno, video games, even jazz. On Life, his fourth full-length, he covers that range more thoroughly than ever. | At various points, the electronic composer and onetime Parts & Labor frontman Dan Friel evokes noise, industrial, punk crossed with techno, video games, even jazz. On Life, his fourth full-length, he covers that range more thoroughly than ever. | Dan Friel: Life | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21174-life/ | Life | The sound Dan Friel has created is so uniquely specific, it's easy to oversimplify: distorted nursery-rhyme melodies over cracked drum-machine beats. But dig just a little below the surface and there's a lot more going on. At various points Friel evokes noise, industrial, punk crossed with techno, video games, even jazz. On Life, his fourth full-length, he covers that range more thoroughly than ever, which perhaps explains the album's all-encompassing title. Pretty much his entire musical existence is locked in these grooves.
The title might also refer to the fact that Friel has literally created life—this is the first album he's recorded since his son Wolf was born in 2013. Friel's music has always had childlike qualities, but here he makes that connection explicit. He opens with a sweet, woozy jingle called "Lullaby (For Wolf)", following later with the even-more sugary "Theme", which could pass for an outtake from Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Baby. The warped, off-speed crunch of "Sleep Deprivation" would fit on any Friel album, but pinning its title to parenthood reveals how well his music captures the half-awake fog of early child-rearing.
The rest of Life may not be about kids, but every track contains some simple melodic nugget that any toddler would happily hum along to. The best songs revel in that anthemic innocence, particularly the catchy "Cirrus", an immediate earworm on the level of Friel's 2012 insta-classic "Valedictorian". The two title tracks are nearly as memorable, though a lot more abrasive, ringing with distortion and bullet-like fuzz blasts.
But again, hearing Friel through a single thematic prism is unwise. Some sections in Life sound like hip-hop bathed in nitrogen, or even like lost Bomb Squad beats. Friel's way of taking his melodies off on tangents evokes jazz solos; his obsession with gritty texture gives some pieces, like the clanging "Bender", the musique concrète feel of a busy construction site. And for all its machinistic beats, Life can also sound like a sloppy punk band rattling basement walls. That's especially true during "Jamie (Luvver)", Friel's wordless cover of a Joanna Gruesome song, which gives the already-energetic original a huge shot of late-night caffeine.
What unites all the styles in Friel's sonic fryer is playful momentum. His main instrument, a Yamaha Portasound keyboard, is literally a toy, and throughout Life it sounds like he's rolling around on the floor. Most of his songs include a constant whirr, and leave you with the echo of that eternal buzz—an effect that I imagine is a mirror of Friel's bleeping brain. Give Life some time and you might find it infecting your synapses, too. | 2015-10-21T02:00:05.000-04:00 | 2015-10-21T02:00:05.000-04:00 | Experimental | Thrill Jockey | October 21, 2015 | 7.8 | 39cf4011-059e-4897-9aea-08565000af79 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
The Canadian supergroup continues its shift from urgent, high-velocity rave-ups to mid-tempo tunes with an ornate, cinematic grandeur. | The Canadian supergroup continues its shift from urgent, high-velocity rave-ups to mid-tempo tunes with an ornate, cinematic grandeur. | The New Pornographers: Together | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14195-together/ | Together | As a project, the New Pornographers have more in common with a blockbuster film franchise than a typical rock band. All of their albums follow a similar crowd-pleasing blueprint, and the group's four primary vocalists consistently fall into familiar roles: A.C. Newman is the everyman protagonist, Neko Case is the sassy dame, Dan Bejar is the lovable rogue, and Kathryn Calder is the demure ingenue. The logistics of managing so many successful careers makes each album an event along the lines of a sequel, with all the corresponding expectations, escalation of stakes, and more recently, diminishing returns. The first three New Pornographers records stand as an outstanding trilogy of brainy, hyperactive power-pop; Challengers, their fourth LP, left listeners disappointed and confused, wondering why the group had largely abandoned up-tempo thrills.
If only because it rocks slightly more on a superficial level, the New Pornographers' fifth album, Together, will inevitably be labeled a return to form. In reality, Newman and his partners are still developing a style that began with Twin Cinema cuts like "The Bleeding Heart Show" and "These Are the Fables" and came into full bloom on Challengers. Newman has shifted his focus from urgent, high-velocity rave-ups to mid-tempo tunes with an ornate, cinematic grandeur. When the band rock out on Together, as they do on "Your Hands (Together)" and "Up in the Dark", it's mostly a matter of hitting rhythmic hooks with a very strong emphasis, like ending a sentence with a dozen exclamation points.
Compared to Challengers, Together is sunnier and has fewer slow songs. However, whereas Challengers' gentle moments opened up the group's stylistic range, Together's quietest track "Valkyrie and the Roller Disco" feels like a speed bump in the middle of an album that could have used an extra jolt of energy. Newman is more successful when he merges his taste for symphonic bombast with his skill for huge choruses ("Moves", "We End Up Together") or when he holds back from unleashing the band's full force on the springy, cheerful Calder showcase "Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk".
As Newman continues to explore new ways of writing for his ensemble, Dan Bejar's contributions find him making better use of the the band's distinct resources. Whereas his songs had sometimes seemed arbitrarily wedged into New Pornographers albums for the sake of acting as Newman's foil, Bejar's material on Together is more of a piece with the record's tone and character. "Silver Jenny Dollar" and "If You Can't See My Mirrors" are lush yet breezy, and provide a welcome contrast with Newman's more overwrought arrangements. "Daughters of Sorrow" takes full advantage of the band's elaborate harmonies for a majestic vocal crescendo. All three songs contrast Bejar's voice with that of Neko Case, wisely exploiting a chemistry that had not yet been fully explored.
Case, despite taking the spotlight on the stand-out tracks "Crash Years" and "My Shepherd" and being present through most of the songs, is mostly under-utilized here. Whereas her huge, brassy voice had been deployed as the vocal equivalent of a fuzz pedal on classics like "The Laws Have Changed" and "Letter From an Occupant", she has since been relegated to mid-tempo numbers and ballads. She carries those songs well, but it's not a far cry from what she does on her solo albums, and it tosses out the novelty of placing her alt-country powerhouse voice in the context of hard-charging rock songs. Newman has done better in servicing Calder, whose delicate, princessy tone is well suited to his smaller, less assertive compositions.
Aside from "Valkyrie", Together is a solid collection of well-crafted songs. However, in spite of the quality, the album isn't entirely satisfying. To some extent, this is simply a case of a band capable of greatness merely turning in a pretty good record. The real problem is more subtle. Though Newman's songs have become more melodramatic and sentimental in recent years, his lyrics have remained rather cryptic. It's clear that some of the songs are addressing something intense and personal, but he keeps the listener at arm's length, which in turn discourages identification and emotional connection. Newman's cerebral wordplay and mythic allusions worked well in zippy power-pop songs, but the grand gestures of his newer material require more heart and less brain. Bejar, who is no less arty and obscure in his lyrics, can pull off his more pretentious moves with raw charisma and self-aware wit, but Newman can't help but come across as a sincere straight-arrow type. He puts so much effort into subverting that quality in his voice, but at this point in his career, it's something he ought to consider embracing. | 2010-05-05T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2010-05-05T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Matador | May 5, 2010 | 7.3 | 39d6af17-0be1-489b-973c-6575a98f1fbe | Matthew Perpetua | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-perpetua/ | null |
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today we explore the rise of Cash Money on Juvenile’s 1998 classic 400 Degreez. | 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 explore the rise of Cash Money on Juvenile’s 1998 classic 400 Degreez. | Juvenile: 400 Degreez | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/juvenile-400-degreez/ | 400 Degreez | There’s a title card, but within seconds, the setting is unmistakable:
Magnolia Housing Projects
New Orleans
You see the rows of buildings stretching out toward the horizon, seemingly vacant and endless. A hard cut and suddenly, the frame fills with action: Juvenile in the foreground, perched over a puddle, a sea of Magnolia residents waving their arms behind him, hanging from balconies, poking curious heads out of windows. That’s you with that big-body Benz, ha?
You see Juve shirtless, shimmering with sweat; he’s grimacing in front of convertibles; he’s showing off his gold fronts in jarring close-up; he’s rapping animatedly—skinnier than you expect, all elbows and sharp angles—in front of a mural bearing the projects’ official name, C.J. Peete; he’s dancing around a porch while the family that lives there sits motionless; he’s mugging in a hallway next to Baby and Mannie Fresh; he’s shadowboxing.
The rest of Magnolia pops to life, either in eerily real tracking shots or in static frames that might as well be portraits. Kids jump on cast-off mattresses. Women in church clothes pose soberly—so do EMTs, with arms crossed in front of their ambulance. Magnolians get chased and cuffed and clutched by their fathers. There are roller skaters and pickup basketball games. A man on crutches hobbles down a street lit only by that ambulance’s siren lights; a boy feeds a piece of deli meat to a dog; money is counted and blurs until the bills are indistinguishable.
This is “Ha,” one of the most singularly brilliant rap songs of the 1990s. It’s been interpolated by people who win Pulitzers and bitten by countless young rappers, either in their formative periods or when they fly a little too close to the sun. Its video, directed by Marc Klasfeld, is genuinely stunning—spare but stylized, high art from self-consciously low production budgets, a four-minute blueprint for the rap videos that would come after the massive budgets from the Hype Williams era evaporated. There are no yachts. The whole thing takes place in and around Magnolia, where Klasfeld and his team set up camp for three days. Juve claimed that “all the drug dealers shut down” to accommodate production.
Even today, “Ha” sounds like it’s from the future, except when it sounds like it’s from the lobby of your building. Juve is sly and sarcastic, writing in the second person, ribbing you about child-support payments and switching to Reeboks and finally figuring out how to use your triple-beam. Juve laughs and sneers and, occasionally, commiserates. It’s a writing exercise. It’s also the platonic ideal of a rap song: mean, minimal, funny, foreign. Mannie’s beat is a rattling, electronic taunt, and its coda, which could have easily anchored another hit song, is free and acrobatic and full of bounce.
But underneath the grit and grinning was a mission statement. “Ha” announced to America that Cash Money Records, a New Orleans label that had made a well-timed pivot to rap, would be taking over in the new millennium. Universal had agreed, in a historically lucrative deal, to throw its weight behind the smaller label, and Cash Money countered with Juve’s third record, 400 Degreez. It’s a masterpiece—swaggering but paranoid, pained but free. It’s the sweatiest, funkiest parts of New Orleans culture packaged for export, and it would go on to become one of the most consequential rap records of its era and the next.
Long before the Universal deal, Cash Money was a shoestring operation founded by a pair of brothers, Bryan and Ronald Williams. (You know Bryan as Baby or Birdman; if you know Ronald, you know him as Slim.) At first, it was a label for bounce music, the tight, energetic genre built on bass and various chops of the “Dragnet” theme. And it’s impossible to talk about bounce and rap in New Orleans without talking, first, about Mannie Fresh. Byron Thomas was the son of a DJ who gave his son instruments and hardware before he knew what to do with them; when Byron heard Afrika Bambaataa’s electro-futurist “Planet Rock,” the gear started to make sense. He adopted the name Mannie Fresh and embarked on a career DJing and producing that would make him one of the most acutely influential producers in the history of Southern music.
From his earliest drafts, Mannie’s beats were deliriously danceable; soon, they were also punishing. He was able to flit between bounce and rap (and marry the two), but as Cash Money moved fully into hip-hop, he became the chief architect of its sound. Musically, he was Cash Money. It was one of his beats for a U.N.L.V. song called “Drag ’Em in the River,” that first attracted the attention of a young rapper who had been going by the name Juvenile.
Juve was born Terius Grey in March of 1975 and spent much of his formative years in those Magnolia Projects in Uptown New Orleans. While he was still in his teens, Juve had a foot in the city’s rap and bounce music scenes. With basically no recorded music, he was playing a near-endless string of raucous live shows, marching from spot to spot, hole-in-the-wall bar to high school parking lot, rapping for anyone who would listen. It worked. According to Mannie, people in the city would know the lyrics to Juve’s songs before they were ever released, simply from seeing him tear down tiny venues over and over again; his debut single, a collaboration with DJ Jimi called “Bounce for the Juvenile,” was exhibit A.
Before Cash Money, Juve—on wax, at least—wasn’t the unmistakable presence he would become. But when he linked with Mannie, the evolution came rapidly. The pair had been orbiting one another for a while, but operating in slightly different circles. They finally, officially, met at a bus stop, where Mannie asked Juve to rap. He did: song after song after song. The contract came through almost immediately. By the end of 1997, Mannie had produced (and Cash Money had issued) two albums with Juvenile in a starring role, a solo record called Solja Rags and Get It How U Live!!, an album by the Hot Boys, Cash Money’s supergroup that paired Juve with B.G., Turk, and a young rapper named Lil Wayne. Juve had just turned 22 when that first Hot Boys album dropped, but he was the oldest member of the group—barely out of his adolescence but forced into a grizzled, world-weary role.
You could hear it in his voice. Starting on Solja Rags, Juve became one of the most distinctive rappers imaginable, his delivery evoking the blues but nimble enough to navigate whatever stuttering, gridless drums Mannie used to challenge him. When he was cursing Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, he sounded as if he could be 18 or 58, smirking on a porch somewhere.
By the beginning of ’98, Cash Money and its artists were accruing power throughout Louisiana and the rest of the South. The title track from Juve’s album had been a local hit. B.G.’s album sold 25,000 copies; the Hot Boys tripled that. In March, Baby and Slim signed that infamous distribution deal with Universal, the terms of which quickly took on the qualities of myth: a three-year contract with a $2 million advance annually, a $1.5 million credit on each of up to six albums each year, and an 80/20 profit split in favor of Cash Money. The deal had largely been centered on the Big Tymers—Mannie’s collaboration with Baby—but as soon as the ink was dry, Mannie insisted that Universal push Juvenile to the foreground.
Cash Money was then operating like a factory: Mannie would cook up beat after beat and hook after hook, and artists would be in various studio rooms writing, trying out ideas, with all efforts dedicated to whoever’s album was next on the docket. But as Juvenile became the label’s flagship artist, and as everyone’s focus turned to forging his new album, the process changed in two key ways. For one, the raps often came before the music. There are moments on 400 Degreez when Juve stops a verse at 14 bars or runs past the usual 16. Juve hadn’t learned, or wasn’t bothering to count out his bars; he would simply tell Mannie what and how he was going to rap, then let the producer build a beat around him. As Mannie recalled in 2014, “400 Degreez was already wrote, I just had to put music to it.”
The second divergence from Mannie’s usual process is that, unlike the other rappers on the label, Juve would bring his own hooks to the songs rather than let them be mapped out by the producer. As specific and streetwise as he was, those years winning over NOLA crowds honed his sense for how to manipulate a room. That knack for pop makes the album jell; it lets him float through songs like “Ghetto Children” and stuff melodies into the verses on “Gone Ride With Me” and “Follow Me Now.” (The latter song, in particular, is an absolute joy; the way he opens with a syncopated “I want me a—mil/To see just how it—feel” throws your shoulders into motion immediately.) Juve had long been toying with these parts of his toolkit, but on 400 Degreez he grew into a different rapper entirely, one more in command of his skillset and with a more innate feel for where each song could take him, musically. On the intro, Mannie says this is the new record from “the dude that brung you ‘Put up your “Solja Rag,”’ referencing that lighter, thinner proto-“Ha” from the year before. But Juve wasn’t the same dude—he was a little older, a little better in tune with the bounce.
Which is good, because when Juve forgets to smile, 400 Degreez can turn incredibly grim. It’s an album about what it’s like to be baptized in fire and the ways you need to be resourceful in order to survive—not to escape Hollywood shootouts, but to grit your teeth and keep creditors off your back, to keep from getting carjacked by kids who are bored and lashing out. On “Ghetto Children,” Juve raps: “I got bills to pay/I can’t be playing with you jokers.” On “Run for It,” Wayne is itching to jump out of trees and attack his enemies, but Juve writes about how he’d rather see the violence on TV. He’s seen and done enough to know how scarring it’s all been but can’t sit back and reflect without worrying. On “Gone Ride With Me,” the goal isn’t a big-body Benz, it’s rent money.
That paranoia—about kids who are ready to knock him off, about cops, about acts of God—seeps into the album’s crevices. Juve’s songwriting is, at its resting state, playful, buoyant, full of asides and knowing advice; he is in control. So when things seem out of his grasp (see his opening verse on “Off Top”), the record becomes not just frantic, but desperate, even hopeless. This feeling comes only in brief spurts, but compared to the poise that Juve usually trafficks in, it rattles the calm. “Ha” aside, Juve is most captivating when he’s at his most urgent, like on the title track: “You see me? I eat, sleep, shit, and talk rap/You seen that ’98 Mercedes on TV? I bought that/I had some felony charges—I fought that/Been sent to no return but still was brought back.” And even on “Ha,” the chorus casts the song as something more existential: “You know what it is/To make nothing outta something.”
And sometimes the joy and id and Gothic fear all blur into one. Near the end of the sessions for 400 Degreez, Mannie and Juve got the idea to resurrect one of those songs that had been a reliable concert staple in New Orleans, but had never been properly recorded, one that Juve had been rapping to the “Paid in Full” loop. The title might not have been stylized yet, but it was the early skeleton of what would eventually become “Back That Azz Up.”
That skeleton nearly shared its name with DJ Jubilee’s Jackson 5-sampling hit from the same period in 2003, Jubilee would sue Juvenile, Cash Money, and Universal, and lose. But Mannie sensed that Juve’s version was the one. It just needed the right beat. “[I knew] if we put 808 drums under this with the bounce, we got the hood,” the producer told Complex in 2012. But “we got to get white America too, how do we do that?”
The answer was strings. In the video, two men emerge from the fog like specters, one in a wheelchair, both slinging violins. That’s the song’s slow, morbid intro, a call for bodies to report to the dancefloor not just from the bar or the booths, but from beyond the grave. The men disappear and are replaced by Juve, in a white tee, who leans toward the camera and fires one of the most famous warning shots in all of rap’s history: “Cash Money Records taking over for the nine-nine and the two-thousand.” Then the 808s.
That video became inescapable on MTV. It served, along with “Ha,” B.G.’s “Bling Bling,” Wayne’s “Tha Block Is Hot,” and the Hot Boys’ “I Need a Hot Girl,” as the takeover. Despite being a last-minute addition to the album, “Azz” in particular distilled the label’s vision into a single song. It’s a rave in a haunted mansion: the song’s bass (and baseness) warp and contort its ornate flourishes. It’s the maximalist endpoint of that bounce-rap fusion. Wayne’s ad-libs-on-steroids cameo earmarks him as an obvious future star. And Juvenile raps like getting his partner to bend over is a matter of life and death, which it very obviously is.
400 Degreez is too idiosyncratic to have sprung from the minds of anyone but Juve and Mannie, but they didn’t seal themselves off from the rest of Cash Money. Nearly half the album’s songs feature some combination of the Hot Boys. One of the more interesting payoffs of this is that you get to catch the other three members at various stages in their development: that “Run for It” verse is jarring for how clearly Wayne patterned his flow after Juve’s, but B.G., who wrestles the formless posse cut “U.P.T.” into his own hands, is already a practiced star.
The best group song—and the album’s single greatest moment outside of those tentpole singles—is the anxious, defiant, unbelievably goofy “Flossin’ Season.” B.G. flashes a watch that you can see from a block away; Wayne sounds fully formed for once. Two different men compare their stunting to Evel Knievel; you can practically hear Baby arguing with an auto-body shop about how many PlayStations can realistically fit inside a Hummer. But it’s the principals who make the song transcend. Mannie’s beat and the urgency in Juve’s voice give “Flossin’ Season” its relentless forward motion—the quality that makes a song about watches sound like a matter of family honor. When Juve can’t make it to the bar without being hit on, it seems like the “Odyssey”; Mannie brags, in order, that he has: a burgundy jet, cities named after him; a big dick, a million dollars, and a Nissan Pathfinder; a half a mil riding on the Lakers; a Lexus that comes out in two years (it’s parked by the projects) and a motorcycle that comes out in 12 (it has the Batman fins); and a ring that Liberace can’t afford. Come over here and give a millionaire a hug.
There are traces of Universal’s handwringing, and signs that the label’s priorities got crossed during production. Words like “homicide” and “pistol” are occasionally censored, but they left in embarrassing errors: in the liner notes and on the CD itself, Mannie Fresh is credited as “Manny” Fresh. Fortunately, as on previous Cash Money releases, the art was handled by the legendarily gaudy Houston design firm Pen & Pixel. There’s Juvenile: propped up among the flames like Frankenstein’s monster. There are models pacing through a library. The “z” in Degreez has two vertical lines through it, as in “$.” But the album was a massive commercial success. It reached No. 9 on the Billboard 200—peaking in September 1999, almost a year after its release, due to the sustained strength of “Back That Azz Up”—and, in 2011, was certified quadruple platinum.
On a less quantifiable level, it helped Southern rap pierce the mainstream. It was the tip of the spear that preceded the region’s rule over the 2000s and 2010s. (Of course, that shine would be mostly reserved for Atlanta; even when Cash Money’s last, best hope finally made it, Lil Wayne fled his ravaged New Orleans for Miami.) JAY-Z, who was red hot following that year’s Vol 2: Hard Knock Life, tried to grapple with “Ha” on one of its two remixes, but despite being near his technical peak, he couldn’t find the right bounce to really sell his verse. In a way, that foreshadowed the next decade and a half for New York: trying to keep up with the South, but unable to match its first step.
But for Juve himself, things were never this good again. A few years later, he left Cash Money, claiming—as many artists have since—that Baby and Slim weren’t paying him anything near what he was owed. Both B.G. and Turk were sentenced to long terms in prison. Wayne, perhaps improbably, became the best rapper on the planet before realizing that he, too, was getting robbed. Mannie left the label. In 2005, Juve’s home was destroyed by Katrina; in 2008, his 4-year-old daughter and his daughter’s mother were murdered. Even his biggest commercial success was blackened by death: In 2004, a year before the hurricane, “Slow Motion” got Cash Money its first No. 1 hit in part because the song became a de facto tribute for Soulja Slim, who was murdered the day before Thanksgiving 2003 in the front yard of the house he bought for his mother.
Rap moves so fast that it can be difficult to pin down a new style’s influences beyond its most immediate predecessors. But what Juvenile and Mannie Fresh were doing in 1998 is part of the DNA for much of modern hip-hop, from the way Juve would bake melodies into his verses to the way Mannie blueprinted so much of our current sample-free production. 400 Degreez looms large over the genre, the way Juve’s sunglassed face lurks above the burning blocks on the album cover. It’s a strange, inimitable collage, full of fear and fire, unmistakably New Orleans and unrelentingly inventive. | 2018-07-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-07-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Cash Money | July 15, 2018 | 9.4 | 39d9b0f9-3455-4862-9a83-3c3320e29c63 | Paul A. Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/ | |
The West Coast rapper’s first release since his incarceration is profile-raising look at his rise to folk hero status, culled mostly from scattered loosies released online from 2016 to 2018. | The West Coast rapper’s first release since his incarceration is profile-raising look at his rise to folk hero status, culled mostly from scattered loosies released online from 2016 to 2018. | Drakeo the Ruler: Free Drakeo | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/drakeo-the-ruler-free-drakeo/ | Free Drakeo | After spending almost the entirety of 2017 at Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles for unlawful possession of a firearm, one of the West Coast’s most exciting and innovative rappers, Drakeo the Ruler, was arrested again in early 2018, due to an alleged connection to a 2016 concert shooting. The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office has come after Drakeo’s entire Stinc Team crew with trumped-up conspiracy charges, the kind that were written into law in order to prosecute mobsters but are now mostly used as a loophole to go after rappers with alleged gang connections. Though Drakeo was found not guilty of murder and attempted murder, he remains behind bars; despite the acquittal, the District Attorney’s office has decided to refile several conspiracy-related charges in what’s clearly become an institutional vendetta against an artist who hasn’t been afraid to speak out and push back with the platform he has. Free Drakeo is Drakeo’s first project since 2017’s Cold Devil, as well as the first since his horrific and seemingly endless incarceration began.
The album is culled mostly from scattered loosies, released online from 2016 to 2018. The criminal case has only raised his profile—the album opens with a long supercut of “Free Drakeo” shout-outs from the past two years, before Drakeo directly addresses the intermingling of fame and severe misfortune on “Crime Stoppers,” the only entirely new studio recording on the album (“Crime Stoppers made me famous”). Free Drakeo is bookended by two freestyles, delivered over the phone from prison, that express the kind of self-reflection Drakeo has been forced to do during his time in solitary: “Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill/The type of books a nigga read only in jail.”
The compilation charts the evolution of his career in reverse, from something of a nationally-recognized folk hero, to the reigning monarch of his hometown scene, to a lesser-known local favorite itching to break out. The oldest track included is the song responsible for that breakout is “Mr. Get Dough,” a piano-driven Mustard production, featuring Choice & RJMrLa. The track is very of its time, only a few degrees away from 2 Chainz’s 2012 track “I’m Different,” with a club-friendly nursery rhyme rhythm that could be played by Tom Hanks jumping on a giant keyboard.
Since then, Drakeo’s flow has developed a twisty complexity, the kind of hurried wordiness preferred by the current wave of rappers coming out of both California and Detroit, from Blueface to BabyTron. He’s racked up co-signing remixes from artists across the country—Shy Glizzy, Lil Yachty, Danny Brown—but this is Drakeo’s first full-length project to feature recruits from outside his home region on the roster: Maxo Kream turns in a verse on “Crime Stoppers,” and the Bay Area is represented by SOB X RBE on “I Could Never” and Yatta on “Fuck Being Humble.” It’s not surprising to hear Drakeo link up with Detroit natives like Rio Da Yung OG on “Black Holocaust” and BandGang Javar on “Touchin”—Detroit is maybe the only other place producing rappers precise and technically proficient enough to keep up with Drakeo bar-for-bar.
His delivery is in the tradition of E-40 and Suga Free, but Drakeo lacks their colorful bounce and cartoonishness—his voice is a little more monotone, with a sandpapered edge that makes the playfulness of his rhymes hard to catch on the first listen. Drakeo’s immaculately packaged bars are more “magical realist” in their writing, imaginative and expressionist with the choice of analogies but still cloaked in grit: “I’m not with all that sneak dissing/Chopper rippin’ off limbs and all type of teeth missing/Grim reaper, street sweeper, boy, I'm knee-deep in/Green and red beams like I got these for Christmas.”
Free Drakeo is practical in purpose, packaged together to satiate an emerging desire for more music from Drakeo and to assert his continued presence in the marketplace. But it’s also politically motivated, an album that exists as much to raise awareness about Stinc Team’s continued persecution as it does to turn uncollected singles into a streamable commodity. Drakeo is, after all, effectively a political prisoner, the latest example to be made by a carceral society intent on exacting the cruelest revenge against Black men who find success on their own terms. Though it might not offer much fresh material for the already initiated, Free Drakeo has value as a rallying cry, a call to action not just on the part of Drakeo, but of every incarcerated individual in this country who doesn’t have a microphone or streaming platform to reach us from. | 2020-03-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-03-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | self-released | March 14, 2020 | 7.4 | 39daccea-5f8b-4cd4-9ba4-2e46c6b6c32c | Nadine Smith | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nadine-smith/ | |
"Heroes" is the second installment of David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy. The trilogy, and "Heroes" in particular, show all the signs of an artist growing up, shaking off the trappings of capitalist ego and success, and searching for a soul instead. It often sounds as if Bowie is conducting chaos, smashing objects together to discover scarily beautiful new shapes. | "Heroes" is the second installment of David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy. The trilogy, and "Heroes" in particular, show all the signs of an artist growing up, shaking off the trappings of capitalist ego and success, and searching for a soul instead. It often sounds as if Bowie is conducting chaos, smashing objects together to discover scarily beautiful new shapes. | David Bowie: "Heroes" | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21487-heroes/ | "Heroes" | [Ed. Note: In light of David Bowie's passing, Pitchfork commissioned reviews of several of his classic albums.]
Even before David Bowie stepped foot in Berlin's grandiose Meistersaal concert hall, the room had soaked up its fair share of history. Since its opening in 1912, the wood-lined space had played host to chamber music recitals, Expressionist art galleries, and Nazi banquets, becoming a symbol of the German capital's artistic—and political—alliances across the 20th century. The hall's checkered past, as well as its wide-open acoustics, certainly offered a rich backdrop for the recording of "Heroes" in the summer of 1977.
But by then, the Meistersaal was part of Hansa Studios, a facility that felt more like a relic than a destination. Thirty years after much of Berlin was bombed to rubble during World War II, the pillars that marked the studio's exterior were still ripped by bulletholes, its highest windows filled with bricks. Whereas it was once the epitome of the city's cultural vanguard, in '77, the locale was perhaps best known for its proximity to the Berlin Wall—the imposing, barbed-wire-laced structure that turned West Berlin into an island of capitalism amidst East Germany's communist regime during the Cold War. The Wall was erected to stop East Berliners from fleeing into the city's relatively prosperous other half and by the late '70s had been built up to include a no-man's land watched by armed guards in turrets who were ordered to shoot. This area was called the "death strip," for good reason—at least 100 would-be border crossers were killed during the Wall's stand, including an 18-year-old man who was shot dead amid a barrage of 91 bullets just months before Bowie began his work on "Heroes".
All of which is to say: West Berlin was a dangerous and spooky place to make an album in 1977. And that's exactly what Bowie wanted. After falling into hedonistic rock'n'roll clichés in mid-'70s Los Angeles—a place he later called "the most vile piss-pot in the world"—he set his sights on Berlin as a spartan antidote. And though "Heroes" is the second part of his Berlin Trilogy, it's actually the only one of the three that he fully recorded in the city. "Every afternoon I'd sit down at that desk and see three Russian Red Guards looking at us with binoculars, with their Sten guns over their shoulders," the album's producer, Tony Visconti, once recalled. "Everything said we shouldn't be making a record here." All of the manic paranoia and jarring juxtapositions surrounding Hansa bled into the music, which often sounds as if Bowie is conducting chaos, smashing objects together to discover scarily beautiful new shapes.
Those contrasts begin with the album's personnel. For "Heroes", the then-30-year-old enlisted many of the same players that showed up on its predecessor, Low, once again balancing out the effortless groove-based rock stylings of drummer Dennis Davis, bassist George Murray, and guitarist Carlos Alomar, with Bowie's own idiosyncratic work across various instruments along with the heady synth wizardry of Brian Eno, who took on an expanded role. Part Little Richard boogie, part krautrock shuffle, the unlikely stylistic combination hints at man's evolution with technology while throwing off sparks of sweat. Also like Low, the album is broken into two contrasting sides, with the vocal tracks on the front and the back made up of mostly moody instrumentals.
But setting "Heroes" apart was the crucial addition of King Crimson guitar god Robert Fripp, who sprayed his signature metallic tone all over many of the album's most memorable moments. According to legend, Fripp recorded all of his parts in one six-hour burst of wiry bliss and feedback, often just soloing over tracks he was hearing for the first time. That spontaneity—most of the album's jam-based backing rhythm tracks were also recorded quickly, over just two days—is part of what makes "Heroes" live and breathe to this day. It's an album that is constantly morphing, never static. As Fripp's guitar is shooting electrical shocks, Bowie is bleating saxophone blasts, and Eno is summoning sonic storm clouds that pass as soon as they arrive.
And then there are the vocals. "Heroes" contains some of Bowie's greatest vocal performances, fearless takes in which he pushes his voice to wrenching emotional states that often teeter on the edge of sanity. There's tension here, too, because while Bowie is clearly putting all of himself into the microphone like never before, he would often have no idea what he was actually going to sing until actually stepping up to record, a technique borrowed from his frequent collaborator at the time, Iggy Pop. What came out was a Burroughsian stream of consciousness that suggests elements of Bowie's personal travails—involving alcoholism, a crumbling marriage, and business woes—while also sounding abstract and shadowy. He deals with previous alter egos on "Beauty and the Beast," which could be read as a kind of apology for the ill-advised, coke-fueled fantasies of fascism he was peddling just a couple of years before. He muddles sleep and death, dreams and waking life. On the iconic title track, he undercuts the song's would-be heroism by placing its title in quotes; rather than bending over backwards to elevate his own myth, "Heroes" puts everyday courage on a pedestal. It's an immortal track all about fleeting wonders.
The album's contradictory nature went beyond Berlin and its spitballing creation, too. "Heroes" was released on October 14, 1977, just two weeks before the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks and a few months after the Clash's self-titled debut LP. So as punk was whirling into a frenzy, Bowie's TV appearances around the time of "Heroes" doubled as acts of stoic defiance. On the Dutch program "TopPop," for example, he looked nonchalant in a smart blazer, button-up shirt, and leg warmers, effortlessly crooning the title track like Sinatra in his prime. During the song's swirling bridge, he steps away from the microphone, lights up a cigarette, and stares into the middle distance—the face of calm in an era of turmoil.
He repeated this trick on Italian television, turning the doomsaying instrumental "Sense of Doubt" into an ominous art film in which he oversees a duel between a piano and a synthesizer. To this day, the video feels dangerous, unsettling. A marketing slogan for "Heroes" boasted, "There's Old Wave, there's New Wave and there's David Bowie," which still rings true, especially in light of such performances. With the kids coming up from behind, Bowie used his experience to carve out a different kind of future.
The Berlin Trilogy, and "Heroes" in particular, show all the signs of an artist growing up, shaking off the trappings of capitalist ego and success, and searching for a soul instead. Of course, Bowie's ego was a magnificent thing at its height, but he also understood its insatiability—how it would kill him if he did not kill it. And even in his dressed-down "Heroes" garb—bomber jacket, tousled short hair, jeans—he couldn't escape his own magnetism; in fact, seeing how cool Bowie looked without all the makeup and costumes could make him seem even more untouchable. At 30, he was content with his art, happy to explore humankind's existential struggles while living in a divided, war-torn city. Berlin gave him perspective and compassion. It allowed him to be small. To let his guard down and his mind wander. To begin to come to terms with his own mortality. "We'll do anything in our power to stay alive. There's a feeling that the average lifespan should be longer than it is. I disagree," Bowie told Melody Maker in October '77. "I mean, we've never lived so long. Not so very long ago no one lived passed the age of 40. And we're still not happy with 70. What are we after exactly? There's just too much ego involved. And who wants to drag their old decaying frame around until they are 90, just to assert their ego? I don't, certainly." | 2016-01-22T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2016-01-22T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | RCA | January 22, 2016 | 10 | 39e010f2-b9fd-4256-ac28-8278a026c88b | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | null |
The much-hyped, Jack White-feted Alabama garage band's debut finally arrives a significant amount of time after its completion, working to their benefit and detriment. | The much-hyped, Jack White-feted Alabama garage band's debut finally arrives a significant amount of time after its completion, working to their benefit and detriment. | Alabama Shakes: Boys & Girls | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16479-boys-and-girls/ | Boys & Girls | Alabama Shakes' lead singer, guitarist and primary songwriter Brittany Howard began cobbling her band together in high school mostly just for the sake of having a band. It certainly wasn't with the notion of breaking into her hometown's music scene-- in Athens, Ala., there's not much of one to break into. So she and her friends Steve Johnson, Zac Cockrell, and Heath Fogg made do playing cover-band gigs in dive bars, occasionally slipping their raggedy garage-soul originals in among the Led Zeppelin and AC/DC, and eventually making enough to warrant some studio time up in Nashville early last year. Those sessions produced the 11 tracks of Alabama Shakes' debut LP, Boys & Girls, which they shopped around for a while and finally released on ATO (Rough Trade in the UK) this week.
Things are now moving fast: The band has hit the late-night TV circuit, they followed Fiona Apple's headlining slot at NPR's big SXSW showcase last month, their upcoming shows are almost entirely sold-out, and they've been booked as openers for Jack White's spring solo tour.
Of course, because Alabama Shakes boast these fairly aw-shucks origins, lyrics that seem deeply felt, multiple sonic reference points predating 1975, an affinity for analog, and more than one guitar, by default they've been thrown like chum into the shark tank that is "real music," where fans and critics with false memories of rock's pure and noble past-- and others with aversions to earnest craft both feigned and actual-- gnash out their differences.
But engaging with these paranoid extremes bypasses the whole middle swath of the matter-- the weird, beautiful part, where all the blood and guts are. Here's what seems real enough to me: Boys & Girls is a solid debut, really good but not earth-shifting, a record clearly (blessedly) recorded before anyone much cared who they were or weren't, possibly even before they were entirely sure themselves.
The album is largely confessional-- not in the singer/songwritery sense, but in that it's riddled with admissions that probably wouldn't have been made by any other means, words that feel lighter sung than spoken. Album opener and lead single "Hold On", its central guitar riff ribboning and pooling like slow-poured honey, is the first of many tracks where it's not entirely clear if Howard is singing to, about, or as herself, God, or some boy as she rips through the chorus: "Yeah, you got to wait/ But I don't want to wait!" "I feel so homesick/ Where is my home?" Howard wonders on "Rise to the Sun" before the song dips into a coda of timorous guitar and crashing drums. On the shadowy, fingersnapped "Goin' to the Party" she sings about running around town, getting wasted, and taking care of some drunk boy; when she woozily coos, "gotta take me back now, I'm still somebody's daughter," she sounds half-annoyed and half-comforted in that very particular way that comes from being young and restless and knowing there's someone waiting up for you, but at least there's someone waiting up for you.
Howard's pain feels raw, but like it won't always be-- as if once these first scrapes heal, her skin will be good and tough, but right now they smart like hell. "Heartbreaker" is staggering, gut-punched, a shiny organ weeping and straining away as she laments, "Oh, I wanted to grow old with you/ You told me so, but then you go/ How was I supposed to know?" But later on the slow-boiling "Be Mine" she's regained her footing-- she's direct, nearly petulant: "If they wanna fight/ They done started fucking with the wrong heart." Three minutes in the song shifts focus to a single demand, Howard crowing and screaming, "Be my baby, be my baby!" over and over as the band spins out, crashing and bumping, then circles back home as she loosens into a string of cries and hoots.
Live, Howard often plants her feet flat onstage before bellowing out a line, as if bracing herself against the force of what's to come, and it's easy to imagine her doing that in the studio, too. Most of the time there's a payoff, but sometimes the build-up dwarfs the delivery, her voice coming out thinner and tighter than you'd expect; maybe she needs a vocal coach, or just a little more time to work out exactly how those pipes of hers like best to blow. For now, though, flashes of more contemporary analogs (Macy Gray, Amy Winehouse) swirled in among the more obvious classic-soul vocal touchstones keep her Janis Joplin tendencies from curdling into "Jackie Jormp-Jomp".
Boys & Girls was recorded live in the studio, but the power of the band's stage show hasn't fully carried over-- at times their delivery also seems thin and tight. Perhaps it's a matter of timing, the number and profile and intensity of the gigs the band has played in recent months solidifying their groove to a degree that outstrips what they were capable of throwing down on tape this time last year. Or maybe it's the production-- a little muddled, and not always in the cozy, old-school way they may have been going for. So many bands get churned out of the hype machine seeming either too fully formed or too ephemeral to get attached to, but Alabama Shakes have sparked, in me at least, a degree of ownership, and one that urges, "work with Jack White." Maybe sometime this summer, after the tour, he could work his analog-only magic and coax some big, crunching, whalloping mess out of them--something to ensure they get to stick around for a while, and on their own terms: weird, sweaty, desirous. | 2012-04-09T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-04-09T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | ATO | April 9, 2012 | 7.8 | 39e67518-283d-40de-b567-5343969cc0c8 | Rachael Maddux | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rachael-maddux/ | null |
Twelve albums in, the duo enlists Beck to help synthesize their many interests into a record that feels lively, fresh, and colorful. | Twelve albums in, the duo enlists Beck to help synthesize their many interests into a record that feels lively, fresh, and colorful. | The Black Keys: Ohio Players | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-black-keys-ohio-players/ | Ohio Players | Like many couples in a long-term relationship, the Black Keys decided to look outside their union for inspiration when it came time to record Ohio Players, the band’s twelfth album. No strangers to extracurricular collaborations—guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach practically lives at his Easy Eye Sound, producing records for Robert Finley, Hermanos Gutiérrez, Marcus King, Early James, and Shannon and the Clams in the last few years—the band hasn’t brought additional musicians into the studio since reviving their partnership in 2019 with “Let’s Rock”, a back-to-basics platter that seemed to reject the psychedelic haze engulfing 2014’s Turn Blue.
Turn Blue, like so many of the albums the Black Keys released on Nonesuch between 2008 and 2014, was co-produced by Danger Mouse, a collaborator who helped Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney move far beyond the band’s grimy garage-blues roots. After working with Danger Mouse, the Black Keys prized production—the tactical, physical sound of a record—as much as the song itself, an aesthetic that carries through to Ohio Players. Pointedly avoiding the expansive exploration of their Obama-era albums, the Black Keys instead rely on the bag of tricks they’ve developed over their career intent on creating interesting juxtapositions from familiar sounds.
Sonically speaking, there’s nothing about Ohio Players that feels unexpected. It’s a bustling concoction of fuzz-speckled riffs, funky rhythms, sweet harmonies, tart hooks, and spectral keyboards, the kinds of refurbished retro-rock that are not only the band’s stock in trade but Auerbach’s signature as a producer. Even the presence of rappers Lil Noid and Juicy J on “Candy and Her Friends” and “Paper Crown” recalls Blakroc, the duo’s 2009 excursion into rap-rock, yet the fact that Black Keys have explicitly carved space for hip-hop on Ohio Players goes a long way in explaining why the album doesn’t feel like a retread. Instead of siloing their interests, the group synthesizes them, making a record that feels lively, fresh, and colorful.
To that end, Beck is the crucial collaborator on Ohio Players. Half of the album’s fourteen songs bear a Beck co-writing credit and his presence is felt throughout, whether it’s his lead vocals on “Paper Crown” or how the very sound of the record is pitched halfway between the dense collage of Odelay and the vibrant neo-soul of Midnite Vultures. The Black Keys may follow Beck’s genre-bending lead—the lithe “Candy and Her Friends” bears his imprint but it’s the only song Auerbach and Carney wrote on their own—but they never give the impression of an ironic distance. There’s a reason why a sumptuous cover of William Bell’s slow-burning Stax classic “I Forgot to Be Your Lover” resides smack dab in the middle of Ohio Players: Underneath all the stylish clamor, the Black Keys remain anchored in classic soul.
Nevertheless, the blueprint they’ve sketched with Beck allows the Black Keys to freely play with genre throughout Ohio Players. Dan the Automator flips the throwback vibe of “Beautiful People (Stay High)” upside down by relying on cut-up horns and nagging tambourines. Chintzy organ and garish saxophones give “You’ll Pay” the air of a lost ’60s Nugget, an attitude accentuated by the ’60s sensibilities of Noel Gallagher, the song’s co-writer. Gallagher helps sharpen the Black Keys’ pop attack on “Only Love Matters” and also does his best George Harrison impression with the sighing guitar lines he threads through “On the Game,” one of the best ballads the Black Keys have ever cut. The other important contributor to Ohio Players is Greg Cartwright, the leader of the late garage rock titans Reigning Sound, who helps Auerbach and Carney reconnect with their grubby roots on the relentless “Please Me (Till I’m Satisfied)” and “Read Em and Weep,” which refashions surf for the landlocked Midwest.
While it’s easy to distinguish what each collaborator brings to the table, Ohio Players isn’t disjointed: it’s as coherent as a curated jukebox. All that credit goes to the Black Keys who, after 23 years together, know themselves well enough to know how to accentuate their strengths by choosing the right musician for the right song, confident that they’ll wind up with a record that sounds unmistakably like themselves. | 2024-04-05T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2024-04-05T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Nonesuch | April 5, 2024 | 7.2 | 39ecaf86-b54b-4367-99da-8345438aa4a8 | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
Roberto Carlos Lange eases back into the groove with a gorgeous, delicately rendered album. It’s got space-age synths, wistful romance, and the breeziest vibe in town. | Roberto Carlos Lange eases back into the groove with a gorgeous, delicately rendered album. It’s got space-age synths, wistful romance, and the breeziest vibe in town. | Helado Negro: Phasor | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/helado-negro-phasor/ | Phasor | In a short film about the making of Phasor, Roberto Carlos Lange’s eighth album as Helado Negro, the multi-instrumentalist songwriter says that “slow clouds and soft heat became symbols of long hikes through the mountains, and the noise for these songs.” His environmental inspiration ripples through nine beautiful tracks with a faint and visceral touch—like the effect of clean country air in your lungs that, almost without notice, gives you more energy than usual.
Lange’s specific temperament is a boon in a turbulent culture; his music reflects a gentle soul who encourages slowness and contemplation. But love has always been the message with Lange, an experimenter under the guise of a traditionalist, whose work in English and Español has snuck a folk songwriter’s sensibility into twinkling electronic cut-ups and field recordings. Phasor uses blank space a bit more liberally than 2021’s Far In, and here his expressions of affection feel as organic as the scenery he strives to capture. “And I’ll go outside, looking at the moon way too long,” he harmonizes with the pianist Opal Hoyt on “Best for You and Me,” his melancholic tone vague and aimed heavenward. On “I Just Want to Wake Up With You,” Lange captures one of the simplest moments of intimacy—a nice morning rise with your nearest and dearest—inside a cascade of rhythmic squelches.
The inciting moment for Phasor came in 2019 when Lange spent five hours with the Sal-Mar, a large-scale, one-of-a-kind synthesizer constructed in 1969 by the contemporary-classical composer Salvatore Martirano, who had the idea to use spare supercomputer parts to make an interactive “composing machine.” In Lange’s time interacting with the instrument at the University of Illinois, where it resides, he wrote sounds that bubble up in the crevices of Phasor, conveying ideas through simplicity and repetition whether lyrically or melodically. With the Sal-Mar’s sequencing employed in such a human and heartfelt album, it provokes some interesting thoughts about numbers, fractals, the nature of matter, the great interconnectivity of all beings, et cetera.
It seems significant that album opener, “LFO,” or Lupe Finds Oliveros, is a tribute to electronic composition icon Pauline Oliveros and Lupe Lopez, an original wiring technician for Fender amplifiers known in at least one corner of the internet as “the goddess of soldering.” The concept is literal—the reverb is centered alongside spacy sound snippets—but also posits music as a form of transcendental escape. “Un policía me pegó me dejó por muerto/Y le dije/¿Quién eres tú?” he sings stridently, and then: “¡Y ya sé quien soy!” Who is this cop beating him down, he asks, but at least Lange knows his own self. He then escapes into what sounds like a chopped-up mariachi sample, light cacophony with the echoes of a phasor, the guitar pedal that’s best known as the dub reggae sound. (“I don’t own one,” he admitted in a recent bio, “but I did try to emulate that sound where I can on the record.”)
But let’s not get lost in the oscillators. There may be a lot of theory, artistic experimentation, and new forms of inquiry on this album, but typical of Lange’s work, it’s carried by pure beauty, the sort of diaphanous songwriting that makes the noise of everyday life fall away. His confidence in his songwriting over eight albums and 15 years allows for these loftier ideas to float through the songs but never overpower them—or even present as a central theme if you’re not in the academic mood. “Out There” is a propulsive groove with a tinge of ’70s Brazilian jazz, fleshed out with vibraphones, Moog rhythm, and Pinson Chanselle’s featherweight touch on percussion.
Another standout, “Wish You Could Be Here,” hovers in a multihued electronic atmosphere as Lange hits his raspy lower register: “Streets flood with your love/Cars flowing down like mud/Sun barely under clouds/Heat so soft it sounds like.” His words are authoritative but impressionistic—this music wants nothing but to catch the vibe of a somnambulist summer afternoon. “BLISS IN ONE CONTINUOUS MOMENT,” he writes in Phasor’s liner notes. “LET IT BE YOU.” Heaven is within and lives in those you love, and on Phasor, Lange, never complacent, is determined to find it. “Donde quieres ir/Giraré mundos/Para estar allí,” he coos in the starry-eyed closing ballad “Es Una Fantasía.” Where do you want to go? He’ll move worlds to get there. | 2024-02-09T00:02:00.000-05:00 | 2024-02-09T00:02:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | 4AD | February 9, 2024 | 8.3 | 39ee6c3d-78c1-4367-97b6-007a56f25c15 | Julianne Escobedo Shepherd | https://pitchfork.com/staff/julianne-escobedo shepherd/ | |
With a long list of guest vocalists, Moby’s latest more melancholy album is lush but feels anemic and minor compared to some of his best work. | With a long list of guest vocalists, Moby’s latest more melancholy album is lush but feels anemic and minor compared to some of his best work. | Moby: Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/moby-everything-was-beautiful-and-nothing-hurt/ | Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt | Moby’s last two albums, 2016’s These Systems Are Failing and 2017’s More Fast Songs About the Apocalypse, blazed with the sort of righteous fury you might expect to surround the election of the United States’ 45th president. Those bookending spats of electroclash tapped into a broader anxiety gnawing at many Americans: that late capitalism is gasping its last and when it goes down, it’ll take a whole lot of us down with it. Even the most politically minded electronic musicians are more or less powerless to stop those systems from failing, but for the first time in his solo career (or at least since 1996’s Animal Rights), Moby exercised the catharsis of making angry punk songs about the sorry state of the world. So what happens after catharsis? Rather than funnel more rage, Moby’s latest record, the cloyingly titled Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt, collapses into the melancholy that’s left behind when the adrenaline runs out and the world remains terrible.
Moby once more takes up the techniques he’s honed since his 1999 breakthrough Play launched him to previously unfathomable fame. Instead of tapping his breakbeat hardcore roots for a third time in a row, he falls back on slow, soulful guest vocals treating the new recordings as though they were distant transmissions from an analog past. Using the grit and breathiness of performances from singers Raquel Rodriguez, Julie Mintz, Mindy Jones, Apollo Jane, and Brie O’Bannon, he tailors his guitar, drum, and synthesizer compositions to the organic quality in each vocal loop. When he sings himself, he compresses and dilutes his voice to the point that it, too, sounds like an unearthed artifact drifting through time. This set of aesthetic principles, used liberally across most of Moby’s albums, may never lose its soothing quality.
There’s great beauty in songs built around old things, as hits like “Porcelain” and “Natural Blues” (both built around samples from an Alan Lomax collection of field recordings) proved nearly twenty years ago. Though Everything Was Beautiful incorporates original recordings, not samples, the mournful voices and turntablist beats on songs like “The Sorrow Tree” and “A Dark Cloud Is Coming” seem to hover eerily out of orbit. One song, “Like a Motherless Child,” borrows a refrain from a blues spiritual dating back to the era of American slavery. These displaced words help illuminate the album’s central themes of disillusionment, fear, and abjection: Human suffering is a permanent fixture that can be qualified by a particular political climate, but it has never been birthed by one. That a wealthy, white, male musician would repurpose songs written to bring comfort to black Americans during slavery of course reiterates the colonialist bent that has long haunted Moby’s music, though on this album, unlike Play, at least the vocalists have been paid.
The songs that center on Moby’s voice tend to have less power, not because of the quality of his singing, which remains poignantly unvarnished, but because of the circuitousness of his lyrics. Clunky rhymes and peculiar phrasings abound. “Don’t know my needs, don’t know my way, sir/I had my face, no way to face her,” Moby half-raps on “Like a Motherless Child.” On “The Tired and the Hurt,” he dares to imagine utopia but doesn’t get much further than, “There was hope and endless dreams/There was love and no dying.” More often than not, he employs the vocal tone used on Play’s “The Sky Is Broken,” whose bare instrumentation justified his mumblecore delivery. Against these fuller backdrops, Moby’s murmuring can sound anemic, a flimsy delivery system for words that aren’t really saying anything new.
It could be that the childlike verbiage here is intentional, that Moby’s awkward stutterings intend to illustrate each person’s complete powerlessness against the inevitability of their pain. Certainly, Everything Was Beautiful is the most vulnerable album Moby has made in years, one that doesn’t shy away from desolation and also acknowledges that, within helplessness, beauty can arise. That’s the dynamic that has made Moby’s most moving tracks work: the impulse to luxuriate in despair, to find the lushness in it, rather than shut it down and shove it away. He does that well on Everything Was Beautiful, but he’s already done it better. | 2018-03-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-03-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Little Idiot / Mute | March 10, 2018 | 5.7 | 39ef296d-fd06-4959-8e31-46f77e81fd7e | Sasha Geffen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sasha-geffen/ | |
The L.A.-based beatmaker follow's last year's album, Bad Vibes, with a brief and beautiful three-song EP that shows an expanding mastery of sound manipulation. | The L.A.-based beatmaker follow's last year's album, Bad Vibes, with a brief and beautiful three-song EP that shows an expanding mastery of sound manipulation. | Shlohmo: Vacation EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16219-vacation/ | Vacation EP | With last year's excellent Bad Vibes, L.A. producer Shlohmo showed just how far the Brainfeeder template of abstract instrumental hip-hop could be stretched-- to gossamer, almost transparent extremes. An hour-long, shifting soundscape sketched out with broken drum machines, meandering guitar picking, and hushed vocals, it was as if Mount Kimbie were let loose in the wilderness of Southern California, all scorching sun and and dried, burned landscapes. The soft and pseudo-naturalistic direction was a sharp left-turn for Henry Laufer, who had mostly made synth- and sample-heavy takes on distorted hip-hop before then. He continues down that moss-grown path with the Vacation EP, a more focused and confident take on Bad Vibes' landscape paintings.
Opener "The Way U Do" is firmly in the Shlohmo style: dripping water, those familiar percussive rimshots (taken far outside their house music context), and a slippery sense of time, as if Laufer can't help but let his beats slide out of order every single bar. But the song's strengths lie in its melody: Pairing a distorted riff with an extended vocal sample, Laufer plays a sort of virtuoso conductor with his faceless vocalist, stretching out melisma into twirling, elongated lines and elegant loops, distorting it so it sounds fluid and constant like a guitar solo. Mixed in with the dragging-feet bassline and moping percussion, the emphasis here is on searing pain and heart-tugging emotion, nicely expanding on Bad Vibes' often detached prettiness.
The meek and plaintive "wen uuu" further ratchets up the percussion, but this time it's a bumpy zig-zag of makeshift drums leaving just enough room for a different kind of vocal sampling. Chopping up vocal syllables into fine pieces, the song finds its own beauty in a synchronized jerky stutter, occasionally climaxing in those sublime moments of beauty (the titular "when you" vocal) that mark the best of Shlohmo's recent work. "Rained the Whole Time" rounds things off a little more business-as-usual, a Bad Vibes holdover of bluesy guitar rubbing against knotted basslines and rattling drums.
Vacation is an ideal stop-gap EP, taking the sound of the album it follows and tightening it up just a little bit, closing the story as it were on Bad Vibes' holistic journey. You won't find a gentler, more ruminative take on Brainfeeder-style beats anywhere, and for someone whose work used to sound charmingly homemade, the processing mastery here is impressive. The EP packs a lot of power into a mere three tracks. | 2012-01-30T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2012-01-30T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Electronic | Friends of Friends | January 30, 2012 | 7.5 | 39fb17fc-40bb-460c-9168-b51311f64ab4 | Andrew Ryce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andrew-ryce/ | null |
There’s a suffocating seriousness that runs through the singer and producer’s fourth album, one that bogs down genuine moments of levity and love. | There’s a suffocating seriousness that runs through the singer and producer’s fourth album, one that bogs down genuine moments of levity and love. | James Blake: Assume Form | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/james-blake-assume-form/ | Assume Form | James Blake has always been a confessional singer-songwriter—consider the days where he sang about siblings who would not speak to him, or the “I can’t believe this, you don’t wanna see me” that opened 2016’s The Colour in Anything. But Assume Form is something else, something like a great unburdening. We are not 30 seconds into the record and he is already peeling off the layers to bare all his innermost thoughts: “Know I may have gone through the motions my whole life,” he sings at us, before we have even gotten a chance to find our footing in this surfeit of feeling that is oh so exquisitely soundtracked by a barely there drumbeat and a delicate piano figure.
Blake’s last album was billed as a kind of coming up for air. After the darkness of his self-titled debut and 2013’s Overgrown, new love had let the light in and buoyed his spirits. That now looks like a merely transitory stage on the path to the grand transformation he has undergone on Assume Form. He is a new man here, changed by love—something we learn again and again, as he examines every centimeter of his ego, every corner of the vertiginous ecstasy and insecurity of true love at last. On that opening title track, he confides, “I will be touchable/I will be reachable,” sounding like he is repeating instructions a couples counselor once gave him. Even goopier is the line “I thought sex was at my pace, but I was wrong.” There’s something weirdly clinical about his treatment of romance; instead of rose petals, there’s the pulpy taste of a wooden tongue depressor.
There are moments of genuine sweetness, like the closing “Lullaby for My Insomniac.” It is a promise to keep his sleepless partner company until the dawn, voiced in airy, multi-tracked vocal harmonies and framed by church organ: “I’ll stay up too/I’d rather see everything/As a blur tomorrow/If you do.” The sentiment is sketched with the fine-tipped economy of a pencil drawing; the arrangement sounds like it might have been written by Arvo Pärt. Musically, as a kind of ambient-chamber-gospel music, it captures the essence of Blake’s songwriting in a way he has never done before. It’s perfect.
There are some jokes, too: In “Tell Them,” a slinky trap number with a co-production from Metro Boomin, he admits, “In the snakepit so long I put posters up”—a delightful image and a keen contrast with the opulent surroundings: Arabesque melodic accents, flamenco handclaps, and a breathy guest verse from a soulful and sandpapery Moses Sumney. And in the heartbroken “Don’t Miss It,” when he sings, “Everything is about me/I am the most important thing” it’s an altogether welcome moment of self-deprecation. Although, here in the penultimate song, some 40 minutes into the most solipsistic album of his career—the word “I” appears in the album’s lyric sheet 136 times—it may be a case of too little too late.
Because mostly, Assume Form is aggressively pastel and suffocatingly serious. He has lost the playful sense of surprise that guided his falsetto’s agile twists and turns on his debut. He doesn’t so much explore his upper register as just perch there. His keyboards are draped in reverb; strings and vocal harmonies are strewn about his sentimental tableaux like so many gilded lilies. It’s a lot to take. I suppose there are those who will find inspiration in a song like the doo-wop-infused “Can’t Believe the Way We Flow,” but I can’t help but find something off-puttingly performative and voyeuristic in its romantic rapture; it feels like watching a couple slow-dance in a mirror.
There is the skeleton of a different, more interesting album lurking beneath the surface. In recent years, having moved on from the hermetic dubstep and thrillingly experimental atmospheres of his early EPs, Blake has become unexpectedly ubiquitous in the bold-font pop landscape. He has guested with, and written and produced for, Beyoncé, JAY-Z, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Vince Staples, André 3000, Travis Scott, and Ab-Soul and Anderson .Paak, along with artists like Mount Kimbie and Oneohtrix Point Never, who share roots in his own underground electronic milieu.
The vehement interiority of his own music makes him an unlikely collaborator, though it’s easy to see why so many artists want to work with him: Despite his history crafting boundary-breaking electronic music, most use him as a kind of human preset, a metonym for broad-strokes melancholy. But on Assume Form, a few choice collaborators help draw him back out of himself. Travis Scott’s Auto-Tuned croon adds dimension to the meditative sound of the Metro Boomin-assisted “Mile High,” a druggy reverie imbued with the stillness of an Edward Hopper painting, a portrait of two people who can’t tear their gazes away from each other: “Watch the fan as it spins/In my arms wrapped in/Don’t know where you start/And where I begin,” sings Blake, deep in the zone.
”Barefoot in the Park,” featuring the Spanish electro-flamenco singer Rosalía, is less successful—her own breathy warble is the song’s best feature, while the tropical IDM beat and rising-and-falling melody are largely forgettable. But “Where’s the Catch,” with André 3000, is one of the album’s highlights—the rare instance where Blake’s ethereal coo and dandelion-tuft melodies are anchored by the bass throb of his earliest work. That framing gives him license to roam more freely: “Where’s the catch,” Blake snarls, sounding almost feline as he paces warily around his own contentment. Doubt becomes him.
”OK, all right now, this may be a little bit heady,” warns André as he intros his guest spot: “You know, I hate heady-ass verses. But I wrote this shit, so here we go.” It is not, in fact, a particularly heady verse, at least not in the sense that “heady” might mean “pretentious” or “self-absorbed”; it’s a Jacob’s ladder of alliteration and free-associative wordplay, a dizzying leap of pure pleasure. But André’s self-aware humor embodies a lightness of spirit that’s too often absent from Assume Form, and the unfettered, unpredictable way his verse pours out of him only underscores the stilted, belabored qualities of Blake’s own creation, as heavy as molasses in midwinter. In an album ostensibly all about the freedom to be oneself that love bestows, Blake sounds hamstrung by old habits, trapped in a musical cage of his own making. For an album all about flow, Assume Form is maddeningly stagnant. | 2019-01-22T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-01-22T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Polydor | January 22, 2019 | 5.8 | 39fd4222-a90d-42bc-bfa9-0c37f785acba | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
The debut album by Hand Habits—aka Albany D.I.Y. stalwart Meg Duffy—is a joyous, open-ended study in vulnerability. | The debut album by Hand Habits—aka Albany D.I.Y. stalwart Meg Duffy—is a joyous, open-ended study in vulnerability. | Hand Habits: Wildly Idle (Humble Before the Void) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22852-wildly-idle-humble-before-the-void/ | Wildly Idle (Humble Before the Void) | Hand Habits’ debut LP, Wildly Idle (Humble Before the Void), evokes a striking image, that of submitting oneself to an expansive unknown with arms outstretched. It’s a feeling Meg Duffy, the singer-songwriter behind this project, knows well; the upstate New York native once packed up everything and moved to Los Angeles to become the guitarist for Kevin Morby. Before that, she’d experimented as Hand Habits around the Albany D.I.Y. scene and, in 2014, released Small Shifts, a 10-inch split with Avi Buffalo’s Sheridan Riley.
It is with an earthly reverence that Duffy attends to her music. When Duffy plays with Morby, she’s a calm and grounded presence, shredding with natural ease, often with eyes closed. Here, her meditations are never rushed and the record rumbles along patiently. Duffy recorded Wildly Idle herself between the Catskills and Los Angeles with assistance from Riley, Quilt’s Keven Lareau, and M. Geddes Gengras. Rather than feeling pigeonholed by the sonic stereotypes of either locale (woodsy vs. hi-fi), Wildly Idle sounds birthed from exploration and experimentation.
Like her main influences, Grouper and Phil Elverum, Duffy understands that songs are “evolving, living things,” as the latter musician once said. One gets the sense that Duffy’s songs are so thoroughly composed that they could fly off on their own. “Actress” is overflowing with minutiae like the shaking of maracas, gentle guitars, and a moment when all these fizz into dissolution. “Now isn’t it just like me?/I’m cracking up out of the blue,” she asks after this break, with a hint of levity. Indeed, on Wildly Idle, Duffy displays a joy in opening herself up. Part of submission is admitting one’s own vulnerability and reliance on the intangible, which Duffy does many times here. “I don’t want no one else/It’s better to believe in something/Bigger than ourselves,” she sings on opener “Flower Glass.”
Three poems (“scenes,” per Duffy), are scattered throughout the record and are read by their authors: Kayla Ephros, Catherine Pond, and Lucy Blagg. Beneath their distorted voices, Duffy warps her instruments into haunting, ethereal atmospheres. Each poem purposefully addresses one of the motifs Duffy confronts on Wildly Idle: “Greater LA” probes the metropolis’ inherent despair, “Cowboy” subverts gender roles, and “Time Hole” questions the rapid pace of contemporary life. Like Jenny Hval’s collaborations with writer Annie Bielski, these additions work to minimize the distinction between poetry and song.
Listening to Wildly Idle (Humble Before the Void) reminds me of a line from Eve Babitz’s collection Slow Days, Fast Company: “I’ve been in love with people and ideas in several cities and learned that the lovers I’ve loved and the ideas I’ve embraced depended on where I was, how cold it was, and what I had to do to be able to stand it.” Duffy sings of romances come and gone without ever sounding jaded or spiteful; future love promises a mystery, a sensuality that’s open like the road. “I just wanna be a bad boy/Baby in your arms tonight,” she murmurs at one point, with an Elvis-like softness. There’s a hope here that the unknown contains more positivities than anxieties. The final words on the album are “I’m gonna grow,” and there’s every reason to believe it’s a promise Duffy will keep. | 2017-02-15T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-02-15T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Woodsist | February 15, 2017 | 7.6 | 3a01fff7-fdbc-4e30-ad42-c1331cd0b2eb | Quinn Moreland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/quinn-moreland/ | null |
The Italian composer recruits Parquet Courts and Karen O to pay tribute to the Italian city’s hedonistic 1980s heyday. | The Italian composer recruits Parquet Courts and Karen O to pay tribute to the Italian city’s hedonistic 1980s heyday. | Daniele Luppi / Parquet Courts: MILANO | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/daniele-luppi-parquet-courts-milano/ | MILANO | “There was a sensation that everything was possible,” the fashion journalist Renata Molho has written of Milan in the 1980s. Money flowed, parties raged, and the streets were filled with glamorous foreigners. “It was a very superficial atmosphere, but it was vibrant,” Molho writes. That description goes to to the heart of the Italian composer Daniele Luppi’s MILANO. Luppi achieved his renown in Los Angeles, where he has worked as an arranger for artists like Gnarls Barkley and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but his own work harks back to his home country. Rome, his 2011 collaboration with Danger Mouse, was a soundtrack to an imaginary spaghetti western featuring high-profile guests like Jack White and Nora Jones. Now MILANO pays tribute to another bygone era in another city, one where he reveled as a teenager in the early 1980s.
In much the same way that utilizing White and Jones to evoke Ennio Morricone’s heyday didn’t make much sense on paper but somehow worked out on Rome, Luppi now recruits New Yorkers Parquet Courts and Karen O to pay tribute to the city nicknamed “Milano da bere” (or “drinking Milan”) due to its excesses. That city shared more than a few parallels with New York City—like Keith Haring’s floor-to-ceiling decoration of Milan’s Fiorucci store, for one thing—so it makes sense that Luppi’s album-length ode to that time and place also recalls the nascent sound of NYC punk.
Across MILANO’s frisky nine songs and half-hour run time, I’d be hard-pressed to identify Luppi’s fingerprints, aside from some bell chimes here and some sax squalls there. But when the pairing of Parquet Courts and Karen O is this inspired, who wouldn’t be inclined to step back and just let the sparks fly? Much in the way that one of the delights of HBO’s “The Deuce” is simply seeing James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal strut the mean streets of 1970s New York, hearing Andrew Savage and O voice the album’s many wound-up and desperate narrators is thrilling in its own right.
Parquet Courts nail a sound somewhere between late Velvet Underground, the Modern Lovers, and the Feelies (with a hearty nod to Pavement’s prime slack): gritty and seedy, bleary but somehow still bright-eyed. Savage’s jaded delivery on “Soul and Cigarette” evokes Lou Reed most explicitly, flatly singing of a “bloodthirsty saint with the soul of a whore” as the band shuffles behind him, a glint of glockenspiel brightening the corners of the song. Chimes and handclaps give a bit of bounce to “Mount Napoleon,” though the lyrics reveal a fraying underneath: nosebleeds and the wish for “a rock” (not, presumably, of the Cartier variety). Later, the band ventures into the detuned twang of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, and the skronking horns on “Café Flesh” tip a hat to New York’s no wave heritage.
On the songs that showcase O, the Courts’ sound ramps up, suggesting a cocktail of Benzedrine, espresso, and overflowing ashtrays. The nervy guitar jangle and bouncing bass of “Talisa” revamps VU’s “Real Good Time Together” into the perfect springboard for O, who pouts, mewls, and doot-doots across the ode to former model Talisa Soto. Post-punk wiriness underpins “The Golden Ones,” where the spindly guitars and throbbing basslines snap against O’s pouty come-on: “With me and you/The pleasure is all yours.”
“Memphis Blues Again” slyly name-checks a Bob Dylan song, and Savage’s voice frays as it exhausts its rhymes, while the band nails the anxious air of early Fall sides. The Fall comes to mind again when the groove tightens into a stomp on standout “Flush,” in which O plays her most petulant and assured character on the album, sneering and strutting over the beat as she yelps like Mark E. Smith recast as a fashionista.
Luppi’s name may never cross your mind during playback of MILANO; rather than display his talents as composer and arranger, he lets his casting and talent booking do all the talking. But O’s delivery throughout would certainly be enough to catch Molho’s attention. Like the city in its ’80s golden age, MILANO is superficial, vibrant, and full of possibility. | 2017-11-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-11-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental / Rock | 30th Century / Columbia | November 6, 2017 | 7.5 | 3a026228-0eee-41bb-98fe-451f6273e4ca | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
Kristina Esfandiari and her band move from the darkness to light on their second album, taking liberally from post-rock, grunge, and doom to tell a tale equally inspired by a childhood brush with death and Paradise Lost. | Kristina Esfandiari and her band move from the darkness to light on their second album, taking liberally from post-rock, grunge, and doom to tell a tale equally inspired by a childhood brush with death and Paradise Lost. | King Woman: Celestial Blues | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/king-woman-celestial-blues/ | Celestial Blues | For King Woman founder Kristina Esfandiari, the darkness is the point, and everything else is negotiable. That impulse has given rise to Miserable’s doomgaze dirges, Dalmatian’s damned hip-hop, Sugar High’s unsettling R&B, and NGHTCRWLR’s industrial mutations; it has allowed each of her many projects room to fully develop without succumbing to an overstuffed kitchen-sink mindset. On the Jack Shirley produced Celestial Blues, King Woman’s sophomore full-length for Relapse Records, doom metal is a bit player in Esfandiari’s perpetually expanding musical universe, dominated here by post-rock’s dynamic shifts, shoegaze’s woozy walls of distortion, and grunge’s prickly depressive weight. The riffs are still as heavy as a church tower, but Esfandiari tamps down the more aggressive aspects of King Woman’s earlier work here, turning towards the light instead for an exploration of the apocalypse, religious trauma, and life after death.
Inspired by a childhood near-death experience, Celestial Blues evolved into a meditation on spiritual warfare, personal rebirth, and paradise lost. Slowly unfurling to somber chimes and Esfandiari’s throaty murmur, the title track contains a sing-song lyricism that seems simple, but weighs heavily. “I want to ascend until we collide/I want to crash my heart into the divine,” Esfandiari croons into the abyss, setting the tone for the album’s overarching message of defiance. Though the record is best enjoyed in one sitting, obvious standouts pierce through its thick, inviting blitz. “Morning Star” takes the guise of a dreamy Satanic lullaby, the massive-sounding “Coil” verges on the ecstatic, while the pleasantly disorienting choral gymnastics of “Golgotha” mask its bloody, self-sacrificial subject matter.
Esfandiari is firmly at the helm, and her lived experience of surviving an early life steeped in religious fundamentalism is what drives the story forward. Whether she’s spinning secrets in a husky whisper or dipping into a slurred murmur, her languorous vocals take center stage throughout the proceedings, even when her bandmates, guitarist Peter Arensdorf and drummer Joseph Raygoza, muscle their way into a deserved spotlight (as on the propulsive second half of “Morning Star” or in the doomsday leads of “Psychic Wound”). King Woman also continues to dip its toes into doom metal’s primordial slurry when the mood strikes and the riff fits, diving headfirst into a satisfying post-doom ooze on the macabre “Boghz,” which also sees Esfandiari explore the creepiest contours of her eminently pliable voice. Closer “Paradise Lost,” takes inspiration from John Milton’s epic poem, but eschews the original’s ornate prose in favor of stark, nakedly personal lyrics and the album’s most delicate, reverent vocal performance. After seemingly letting the listener down easy, it leaves them alone with their thoughts—perhaps the cruelest fate of all.
Celestial Blues is an exploration of spiritual healing and survival that’s been shellacked in a veneer of grungy malaise, heavy post-rock, and blissed-out darkness, wrapped up in Biblical allegory and set ablaze. King Woman’s ability to outdo themselves continues apace, and the bar continues to rise each time Esfandiari sheds her skin anew. She is living proof that once you’ve already made it through hell, the only path forward is up.
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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. | 2021-08-02T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-08-02T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Relapse | August 2, 2021 | 7.5 | 3a02d3f4-aab3-4a09-bca5-c249610b105e | Kim Kelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kim-kelly/ | |
Michael Milosh, the Toronto-based singer/producer who fronts Rhye, has been releasing his own music for nearly a decade. If you discovered Milosh via Rhye, don’t expect to hear his unmistakeable voice surrounded by the same kind of silky soul on this chilly solo offering. | Michael Milosh, the Toronto-based singer/producer who fronts Rhye, has been releasing his own music for nearly a decade. If you discovered Milosh via Rhye, don’t expect to hear his unmistakeable voice surrounded by the same kind of silky soul on this chilly solo offering. | Milosh: Jetlag | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18761-milosh-jetlag/ | Jetlag | Last fall, “The Fall” seemed to appear out of nowhere, a tantalizing, faceless wisp of sultry R&B without a bio blurb’s worth of context. As details slowly congealed leading up to the release of Rhye’s excellent debut album Woman this past March, many listeners were introduced to Michael Milosh, the man—and yes, many were reluctant to believe, that’s totally a dude—who was effortlessly braiding his voice through Robin Hannibal’s silky tracks. Milosh has been producing and releasing his own music for nearly a decade via L.A.’s Plug Research, a label with an aesthetic of high-polish adult contempo grooves personified by the Toronto transplant. That same voice is in peak form on Jetlag, but if you discovered Milosh via Rhye, don’t expect to hear it surrounded by the same kind of sultry soul. Left to his own devices, Milosh prefers chillier confines.
First, a word on that voice, which—stay with me here—reminds me of no less than Michael McDonald, in a specific and positive way. The two evoke different types of soul—McDonald’s furry baritone is a simulacrum of church-trained 60s and 70s belters while Milosh’s lithe countertenor owes much more to the hushed tones of Quiet Storm legends Sade and Anita Baker—but they’re equally transfixing, in a way that suggests an uncannily human android programmed to the “soul” setting. Each voice doesn’t sound like the product of training as much as something that automatically emanated the first time they set themselves to try and sing. Much in the same manner that McDonald manifested his alien instrument as a radiant background production cog on Steely Dan’s infinitely layered productions, Milosh prefers to highlight the otherworldly affects of his voice. At several points on Jetlag, he ceases singing words and simply weaves his wordless croon amidst the other ProTool layers, creating the sensation that you’re driving past his voice as it sits on the side of a highway at night. Milosh’s skill in twisting and stretching his voice is his greatest gift as an artist. The way he and Hannibal gently interweave layers of these feather-light sighs at the start of “Major Minor Love", for instance, is a highlight of the Rhye LP.
Milosh’s crisp electronic soundscapes work mainly as contrast, immaculate bedding designed to melt away as his warm voice slithers in. At his best on Jetlag, Milosh builds up his tracks in the simple interest of pulling them back to let the vocal take over. The first minute of “Hear in You” is a perfect example of this. The first minute of the song is pieced together from the Junior Boys/Apparat template of chilly electro-pop, but merely serves as walk-on music for the dramatic reveal of the track’s simple hook, on which Milosh stretches a syllable—the “ohhh” at the end of “know”—at just the right time, for just the right duration, and repeats it over and over. The effect is a specific kind of listening pleasure, of the late-90s/early 2000s post-Portishead/Massive Attack moment, when groups like Zero 7 and Morcheeba boiled off trip-hop’s sense of danger, leaving it with a glut of sticky mood. When songs from that “chillout” moment of electro-R&B are done well—like Zero 7’s shimmering “Destiny,” say—they nail a perfect middleground between passion and propriety. “Hear in You” finds itself in that orbit, as does “Don’t Call It”, on which Milosh dips into his more gutsy lower register amidst what sounds like an adult-contempo remake of Radiohead’s Amnesiac.
The passion and yearning of “Destiny” was of a particular sort, Sia Furler opening the song by admitting to watching porn in her hotel dressing gown. This style of longing for human contact to counteract the cold, sterilized distance of travel is all over Jetlag, recalling another turn-of-the-century groove-based album: Thievery Corporation’s The Mirror Conspiracy, a cosmopolitan soundtrack for a specific kind of jetsetting rich guy—“Smooth Operator”s trust-funded step-son. Jetlag draws from this DNA, though Milosh evokes a starker, more purposefully mundane scenario: a design firm executive coldly shuffling a leatherbound portfolio through people movers in stark-white airports, and glassily staring into the near distance. It’s impossible for Milosh’s voice not to signify desire, and Jetlag is an album on which the glow of intimate passions arises from immaculate interior design. | 2013-11-26T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2013-11-26T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | eOne / Deadly | November 26, 2013 | 6 | 3a08a4c0-59ec-4465-89e9-9a05b53ba7a8 | Eric Harvey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-harvey/ | null |
LA electronic duo Youth Code infuse their hellish soundscapes with elements of melodic coldwave, charging power electronics, and even hardcore. The result, the band's self-titled debut, is both uncompromising and consuming. | LA electronic duo Youth Code infuse their hellish soundscapes with elements of melodic coldwave, charging power electronics, and even hardcore. The result, the band's self-titled debut, is both uncompromising and consuming. | Youth Code: Youth Code | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18592-youth-code-youth-code/ | Youth Code | In recent years, electronic musicians have invested a good deal of energy into excavating lesser known sub-genres and revitalizing them in contemporary ways. But while you could easily tag dozens of different acts under everything from darkwave to acid house to trip-hop, real-life couple Sara Taylor and Ryan George, aka Los Angeles' Youth Code, are one of only a precious few reviving industrial-thrashed electronic body music. Though they're not shy about their influences-- everything from Skinny Puppy to Wax Trax! Records are evident touchstones of inspiration for the confrontational music the pair make-- it doesn't make them genre purists. On their self-titled full-length debut, Youth Code infuse their hellish soundscapes with elements of melodic coldwave, charging power electronics, and even hardcore. The result is both uncompromising and consuming, suggesting the "body" in their EBM was formed in an early Cronenberg film: Disfigured, mutant, and grossly compelling.
Youth Code have only being recording for a little over a year, but their chops suggest the work of a more informed and consistent outfit. Chalk it up to studious ears and hard work: Taylor works as a tour manager, George has bummed around in various different punk and hardcore bands, and both eschew the constrictions of "scenes" while committing themselves to DIY ethics. A recent list the pair drummed-up for self-titled magazine, titled "Youth Code's Top Ten Industrial Songs That Have Nothing To Do With Nine Inch Nails," showcased their curious blend of influences and disinterest in convention. A cassette released last December translated those ideas well, despite sounding uncomfortably shrill thanks to its homemade quality (three of those tracks have been re-recorded for the LP). With Youth Code, everything is about depth, the corroded atmospheres and indelicate but fierce percussive elements. Though it's short, it's a brutal listen, like being brained with a fire extinguisher in the middle of a nitrous hit. Exhausting, surely, but there's a propulsion and a warped tunefulness on display that keeps you on your toes, even if Taylor and George didn't intend that to be taken literally.
For as violent and caustic as Youth Code is, there's also balance. Their hardware sounds rusted and cranky, but the variety of sounds the two are able to conjure-- gunshot snare cracks, boiler room clankings, rubbery synths, metal-on-metal-- keeps the slavish 4/4 tempos engaging. And while it's no one's idea of a traditional dance record, there's no denying that Taylor and George are beat freaks, keeping rhythms insistent and corporeal. The strobe-lit highlight "Carried Mask"'s elevated heart rate and ping-ponging synths sounds like something a Crystal Castles fan could relate to, while "What Is the Answer" is almost like some kind of demented funk exercise. Everything here taps into a sort of dystopian feel, like a Satanic reimagining of Brad Fiedel's Terminator 2 score, all skulls and twisted metal and flames as far as the eye can see.
If this all seems a little over-the-top, it's because it is-- Youth Code don't really do subtle, but their full commitment to these theatrics is what makes the music work. Opener "Let the Sky Burn" is a harrowing introduction, complimented by George's putrid, strangulated screams and spoken word snippets from downer newscasts ("We have an obligation to every last victim of this illegal aggression, because all this carnage has been done in our name," a woman vows, making everything about the track-- right down to its title-- chillingly timely). Still, Youth Code isn't completely impervious to familiar trappings. Thanks to those rigid tempos, monotony is bound to set in. And though repetition is part of its hammering appeal, things eventually begin to grey a bit as the record moves on, losing the punch of the pure blacks and neon reds of the first half. And though those spoken word samples that pepper the album do more obstructing than enhancing, there's no hampering Youth Code's intentions. "I love pop music but at the end of the day I know we're not going to write a fucking pop record," Taylor recently told I Die You Die. "So it has to be raw and fucked up." | 2013-09-30T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2013-09-30T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Electronic / Metal | Dais Records | September 30, 2013 | 7.2 | 3a0aff06-7e8e-45bb-9922-0294180bd18f | Zach Kelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zach-kelly/ | null |
Sadistic is the only way to describe it-- a conscious effort toward slapping away all the little hands clamoring for ... | Sadistic is the only way to describe it-- a conscious effort toward slapping away all the little hands clamoring for ... | Liars: They Were Wrong So We Drowned | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/4765-they-were-wrong-so-we-drowned/ | They Were Wrong So We Drowned | Sadistic is the only way to describe it-- a conscious effort toward slapping away all the little hands clamoring for more of They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top's antagonistic punk-funk. After winning enough early praise to make most lesser bands blush and acquiesce to the demands of a fanbase craving more of the same, Liars hinted that they were not in the business of catering to expectations. You want the battery (acid)-powered post-punk that drove all the Williamsburg hipsters wild in 2001? You want the brittle aggression of their debut? Well, you'll get wind-up toy funeral dirges and oblique, numbing sound collages, and you'll like it! ...Or leave it. It seems Liars don't much care either way.
Liars know why their debut won them instant acclaim. It's no accident that They Were Wrong So We Drowned bears so little resemblance to their debut. Circumstance plays a part-- the old want-ad rhythm section hightailed it prior to recording, leaving longtime associate Julian Gross to take over on drums-- but more importantly, to Liars, they've beaten dance-punk at its own game and are ready to move on. So maybe masochism is a better way to describe what's going on here-- what else could cause a band to willfully alienate their supporters? Independent music isn't exactly the easiest racket in town, after all, even if you're blessed with almost instant celebrity (relatively speaking). But to walk away from your clearest, most accessible shot at success, to dare any fairweather trend-riders to keep listening after the wave has crested-- well, you have to be more than ready for a backlash; you need to want to savor it.
If I'm treating a lukewarm reception for this album among Liars fans as a foregone conclusion, forgive me; the fact is, We Were Wrong is such an entirely different creature than They Threw Us All in a Trench that I envision widespread strife caused by its polarizing force, street-team members fighting turf wars, brother against brother. I envision the faithful losing faith, while simultaneously, former detractors, uh, tracting by the dozens in response to such a reversal. Older tracks like "Everyday Is a Child with Teeth" only hint at the screeching atonality, or the formlessness, of "If You're a Wizard, Then Why Do You Wear Glasses", or the overwhelming boredom of "Read the Book That Wrote Itself". These tracks aren't so much unwelcome as they are completely, utterly baffling in context. Nothing Liars have done in the past will provide listeners with an adequate transition to these anti-songs.
For better or worse, though, nebulous, arrhythmic atmospherics comprise a significant portion of the album. When Liars remove the formal structure of songs and descend into carnival experimentalism, they do so not with the precision of intent, but with a punk vibe-- the sound of people attacking instruments with a desire to play that far outstrips any overt talent. Though the band has challenged listeners with this album, their intent doesn't seem as much like a desire to overtly alienate their audience as to embrace their artistic freedom.
Contrary to what some have claimed, They Were Wrong is listenable, and intentionally so: the band frequently finds ways to successfully straddle the fence between form and noise ("They Don't Want Your Corn They Want Your Kids", and the brain-stealing chant of "Broken Witch", among others), though most of the time, it's admittedly impenetrable and alienating. I'll be honest: I count myself among those turned off by the shift of focus. But isn't Liars' obvious intention not to pander to their fans' expectations-- even when it results in abrasive, half-formed lab disasters-- deserving of respect? Even laudable?
They can be commended, to a degree, but "there's no talent to obscurity" as your old pal Chris Ott once said; when it comes to music, it's not hard to not be popular. A lot of this experimentation is simply in the name of narrative-- a rumination on the nature of witchcraft and the sordid politics surrounding the Salem witch trials-- which makes the decision to show preference to such intensely esoteric structures even more questionable. Although a little S&M; makes a good backdrop for the twisted subject matter of black magick and bedevilment, etc., Angus Andrews' vocals and lyrics are, as a constant, a complete non-factor. As such, the "concept" isn't any more apparent than the songwriting, conveying more in mood and implication than any substance. So as it stands, Liars mostly abandon their jittery dance blasts to highly mixed effect, to tell a tale that just gets lost in their deep, dark woods.
But they don't even totally see that through-- the album is undercut, so to speak, by two songs capable of going toe-to-toe with anything Liars have done to date. "We Fenced Other Houses with the Bones of Our Own" is nothing but nervous electronics and the steady, dooming pulse of a bass drum counting down the moments until "kingdom come" amidst a steady chant that echoes the numbing opening verse of "Grown Men Don't Just Fall in the River, Just Like That", before sliding cleanly into "They Don't Want Your Corn". It only paves the way for the eventual, epic assault of "Hold Hands and It Will Happen Anyway"; as the denouement to this story arc, the ritual concludes, the Earth splits, cracks, and erupts with hellfire and the rotten scent of sulfur as, for one brief moment, Liars summon up some of the (immensely entertaining) demons that infested their first album. The remarkable cacophony is fantastic as a stand-alone song, and does its part to bolster the minor sense of story, but only weakens the album as a whole by confronting its flaws head-on. In the end, the flash-in-the-pan excellence of that track sums up They Were Wrong perfectly: An entire album of exposition is not justified by one moment of revelation, but if nothing else, I can respect their intentions. | 2004-02-23T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2004-02-23T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | Mute | February 23, 2004 | 6.3 | 3a0b2dae-d905-4b0d-9bf0-0de3b13117ba | Eric Carr | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-carr/ | null |
The duo depicts moments of great longing and melancholy on their sensual and gloomy new album. | The duo depicts moments of great longing and melancholy on their sensual and gloomy new album. | HTRK: Venus in Leo | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/htrk-venus-in-leo/ | Venus in Leo | In the wake of bassist and founding member Sean Stewart’s passing in 2010, HTRK’s sound changed considerably. The now-duo shed the cold, industrial leanings of their earlier releases for a more overtly sensual approach, something that could soundtrack moments of intimacy or ennui, or both.
HTRK explores these same rich themes on Venus in Leo, but the mood is suffocated by melancholy. If the steely electronics of Work (work, work) recalled Antoine D’Agata’s alluringly grotesque photography, Venus in Leo suggests those same photos shot in broad daylight, all obscurity and mystery erased. HTRK are at their most vulnerable here, sounding in desperate need of sating desires before they are paralyzed by listlessness and disappointment.
On opener “Into the Drama,” Jonnine Standish’s vocals are equal parts disaffected and fatigued as she contemplates her obsessive tendencies. “And you dance me to the edge of romance/And you called and I heard/I hang onto every word,” she sings over the nonchalant strumming of an acoustic guitar. Her craving for physical contact is palpable on “Mentions,” a track that details everyday experiences with beauty counter workers (“The touch of your hand to my face/And the way that you’re talkin’ softly/It’s not enough attention for me”) and social media (“Even with another mention/You should’ve made a difference by now"), and how both prove insufficient. Even on the woozy cover of Missy Elliott’s “Hit ’Em Wit Da Hee,” Standish highlights specific lyrics—like the evocative “slurp me swiftly”—to highlight her yearning.
More than any other HTRK album, Venus in Leo is filled with anguish. It looms over “New Year’s Day,” where Standish confesses her fears about the upcoming year: “I’ve got a sinking feeling I’m gonna do the wrong thing, eventually.” On “New Year’s Eve,” she recalls a failed teenage romance and broods on how it has come to define her. For Standish, her memories are a remorseless window into the person she is today, and the one she thinks she’s destined to be forever. As such, Venus in Leo is an album for those who feel doomed to a repeating cycle of failed loves and dashed hopes, for when one’s existence can resemble the fading apparitions that adorn the album cover. “I could be free somehow,” Standish sings on “Dying of Jealousy.” That sense of freedom—tangible yet unattainable—makes Venus in Leo as harrowing as it is intimate. | 2019-09-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-09-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rock | Ghostly International | September 3, 2019 | 7.6 | 3a0d016e-612d-44d4-ab78-87259989b116 | Joshua Minsoo Kim | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joshua-minsoo kim/ | |
Local Natives have a familiar sound-- rustic vocals, harmonies, clattering percussion-- but songwriting skill and youthful energy mark their striking debut. | Local Natives have a familiar sound-- rustic vocals, harmonies, clattering percussion-- but songwriting skill and youthful energy mark their striking debut. | Local Natives: Gorilla Manor | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13925-gorilla-manor/ | Gorilla Manor | Gorilla Manor, the debut album from L.A.'s Local Natives, features rustic and yearning vocals, three-part harmonies, clattering percussion, wiggly guitar leads, euphoric chanting, and a Talking Heads cover. In short, the Silver Lake quintet have followed indie rock's major players in recent years-- they knew how to dress for success in 2010. Great for them-- now, what's in it for you? Plenty as it turns out.
Local Natives have already gained a foothold in parts of Europe-- their album has received attention in the UK and they graced the cover of Scandinavia's Sonic magazine late last year-- at home in L.A., and online. With good reason too: Advance singles "Airplanes" and "Sun Hands" recalled elements of Dodos or the Fleet Foxes. The best comparison perhaps is that they're sort of a West Coast Grizzly Bear-- right down to naming an album after the location in which it was recorded. Yet whereas Grizzly Bear's Yellow House is a cozy, isolated New England seaside shack, Local Natives' Gorilla Manor is a squalid Orange County party pad.
At first listen that seems off-- the chops and compositional sense here are the most immediately impressive part of the album. But dig deeper and you realize Local Natives never lose sight of the pleasures of being a youthful rock band-- right down to themes of wanderlust and discovery. "Oh, to see it with my own eyes," goes to the central lyrics to album opener "Wide Eyes". This inquisitiveness and quest for self-knowledge may as well be the record's life-affirming and open-armed thesis statement.
Indeed, this optimism relishes experience and finds opportunity where others may see obstacles: Garage rocker "Camera Talk" initially reads like a harried travelogue ("We're running through the aisles/ Of the churches still in style"), but the [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| band still comes off like they're living the dream-- " [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| And even though I can't be sure/ Memory tells me that these times are worth working for." "Airplanes" is a tribute to one of the bandmember's pilot grandfather, and while the counterpoints of strings and piano are buoyant enough it's the evocative images (chopsticks from his time spent in Japan, a well-thumbed encyclopedia) that indicate his life was well-lived.
But even where the lyrics get more obtuse (a Skype exchange with an ex is likened to a "Cubism Dream"), there's almost always a strong pulse running through the busy, precise compositions: "Shape Shifter", for example, is about impressionistic themes of self-reckoning but the sentiment is also reflected in the song's arrangement. At certain points, it's Gorilla Manor's sludgiest track; at others, it's the most quicksilver and agile. The strings and harmonies of the glacial "Cards & Quarters" and "Who Knows, Who Cares?" are gorgeous, but drum rolls and washes of cymbal hint at imminent collapse. Only closer "Sticky Thread" offers calm.
So while the record's second half dials back the tempo, stuck in its midsection is a cover of the Talking Heads, hardly a band that would be considered "loose." "Warning Sign" isn't the most canonical of their songs, but taking it on is an audacious decision for a band that would be wise to let the comparisons come to them first. They retain the elasticity of the bassline and the general verse-chorus structure, but that's about it: David Byrne's pinprick vocals are treated with melodic contour and supple harmonies, the breakdown veers from nervous to joyfully emphatic, and the guitars soften around the edges. Whether it's "better" than the original is besides the point-- at least for four minutes, Local Natives take ownership of it, fully integrating what might have been an incompatible hard left turn into the record's seamless whole. True, we tend to bow at novelty and innovation, but Gorilla Manor proves to be a refreshing reminder of the pleasures of synthesis. | 2010-02-15T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2010-02-15T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Frenchkiss | February 15, 2010 | 8.4 | 3a138d19-c966-4f6f-92fe-ea2b325d6e22 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
The indie pop veterans’ sixth album fuses the laid-back sound of 1990s soft rock with pedal steel and countrypolitan filigree. It’s lean, clean—and a little sleepy. | The indie pop veterans’ sixth album fuses the laid-back sound of 1990s soft rock with pedal steel and countrypolitan filigree. It’s lean, clean—and a little sleepy. | Real Estate: Daniel | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/real-estate-daniel/ | Daniel | For Real Estate’s sixth album, the New Jersey jangle-pop quintet decamped to Nashville’s legendary RCA Studio A, the epicenter of country music’s post-war shift out of its rougher, twangier roots designed to accommodate large vocal and instrumental ensembles. For a band that’s slowly been broadening its sound, it’s an ideal venue. But as intriguing as the notion of “Martin Courtney goes countrypolitan” is, Real Estate’s relocation was less concerned with the musical possibilities than the symbolic ones. Studio A has made pop crossover dreams come true; so has producer Daniel Tashian, a Grammy winner for his work on Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour. Unlike Golden Hour, there’s no disco excursion on Daniel—they already pulled off that trick on 2020’s The Main Thing—but it’s the cleanest and leanest album they’ve ever made.
As such, Daniel may seem like a sort of retreat. The Main Thing was intended to be Real Estate’s statement album, but as with so many pandemic-era projects, the lack of an accompanying tour made it an unfinished argument. Left to his own devices, Courtney recorded a solo project that tacked away from extended arrangements and jazzy sophistipop. Some of that was out of necessity (he tracked the bulk of the instrumentation on his own); some of it was the lower expectations for an album that wouldn’t be played live any time soon. And some of it was the pleasure of writing an indie-pop song like “Corncob,” which put pedal steel to a gorgeous melody that recalled the Shins at their most magisterial. Daniel carries that pleasure forward, pedal steel rig in tow.
There’s an urgency to these songs, even at their lightest. On “Haunted World,” Real Estate snap from AM country gold into chiming choruses with the efficiency and feel of a crack studio group; guest musician Justin Schipper’s pedal steel curls around Matt Kallman’s soft-rock keyboard fills like cigar smoke. The ill-at-ease “Market Street” shuffles R.E.M. albums like playing cards—from a high-stepping, almost four-on-the-floor clip that would be at home on Green or Document, Julian Lynch draws a snarling guitar line out of “Ignoreland.” According to press materials, the band wrote Daniel with “’90s soft-rock radio” in mind, which presumably means adult alternative instead of, I don’t know, Richard Marx. “I hear a song there inside my head,” Courtney sings on the bright-eyed lead single “Water Underground.” “Can’t lose it yet, try to make it stay.” The chorus suggests that the song may be “There She Goes.”
But for all Real Estate’s attention to detail—I’m particularly fond of drummer Sammi Niss’ syncopations on “Freeze Brain” and “You Are Here,” which recall the sampled loops that littered Triple A radio in the ’90s—there’s still a sense of incompletion, that in the push to make a particular kind of record, something has been forgotten. As a pop album, Daniel has little room for the jammy excursions of 2021’s Half a Human EP, which at its best suggested a chicken-fried Popol Vuh. But surely they could’ve broken off some of that for, say, the suspended instrumental break of “Haunted World,” which sounds like a roomful of musicians staring at each other, waiting for someone to jump. And the rest could’ve gone to bassist Alex Bleeker’s customary showcase, the cosmic-country trifle “Victoria.” Draped in steel and dotted with crypticisms (“Your consultant has gone out to sea”), it lasts long enough to conjure the idea of a college-rock Flatlanders before evaporating.
The band’s other lodestar during recording was Automatic for the People: a collection of reveries on memory and mortality that—like so much R.E.M. did—is filled with wonder and mystery. Real Estate can do the former, always could, but the latter proves elusive. Some lines here feel like placeholder dialogue that made it to post-production; they land so flat that in aggregate, it feels like a deadpan bit: “Meanwhile on Market Street/Things are happening to some degree,” “We sit in furnished rooms/Listen to Harvest Moon,” “The day becomes the night.” It’s not pop directness so much as straight reportage. (In the classic suburban tradition, Real Estate were always better at listing anxieties than examining them.) The effect is like having beers in your neighbor’s garage. You say goodnight, the door comes down; by the time you’re home you forgot what you talked about. Still, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good hang.
The architects of the Nashville Sound—the people who built and staffed Studio A—reached the suburbs by transplanting the perceived realness of hillbilly music into a pillowy pop container. At their best, the resulting records were glossy and gorgeous: everyday emotions pumped up until they could fill a stadium. Daniel conjures some moments that feel almost as big: the existential skitter of “Airdrop,” the hopeful power-pop pulse of “Flowers.” Real Estate already had the suburbs on lock. In trying to recover their essence on Music Row, 15 years on, it seems they’re not taking that connection for granted. | 2024-02-28T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2024-02-28T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Domino | February 28, 2024 | 6.9 | 3a15755f-a0a9-4695-912b-585a46fc1ce5 | Brad Shoup | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brad-shoup/ | |
On several levels, David Bowie's 24th studio album is a cunning act of sleight of hand. From the "Heroes"-referencing cover on down, he hasn't only come to terms with his past, he's making his old material work for his new material. | On several levels, David Bowie's 24th studio album is a cunning act of sleight of hand. From the "Heroes"-referencing cover on down, he hasn't only come to terms with his past, he's making his old material work for his new material. | David Bowie: The Next Day | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17855-david-bowie-the-next-day/ | The Next Day | Before there was Ziggy, Aladdin, Halloween Jack, the Man Who Fell to Earth, the Thin White Duke, Major Tom, the Goblin King, The Dame, the Mid-Life Crisis Soul Patch, and all the rest, there was the Mask. In 1969, when David Bowie was just another struggling London songwriter desperate for a break, he shot a promotional film to showcase his particularly dramatic brand of performance. Along with a handful of songs-- including an early version of "Space Oddity" in which a tinfoil-helmeted Bowie is seduced by a couple of space sirens-- the reel included an original mime piece called "The Mask". It shows Bowie, looking like the least intimidating pirate of all-time in tight white tights, a frilly top, and a pageboy wig, stealing an invisible mask and proceeding to charm his family, co-workers, and eventually entire concert halls by simply placing it on his face. "Autographs, films, television-- the lot!" he says, in voiceover, describing the opportunities afforded by his mysterious new facade. "Had a very strange effect on me, though." The mime ends with the white-faced "star" giving his biggest performance yet-- and then he can't get the mask off. It strangles him. "The papers made a big thing out of it," he continues, "funny though, they didn't mention anything about a mask." Even before David Bowie gained a smidge of notoriety, he was well aware of its pitfalls-- and his own susceptibility to the lure of disguise.
To put it mildly, this self-aware attraction to reinvention has served him well. In the 1970s, he rifled through looks, genres, and band members without hesitation, from space-age glam, to cocaine funk, to harrowing ambience, to name a few. In more modern terms, consider Radiohead's whiplash transformation between OK Computer and Kid A... and then consider how Bowie pulled off equally radical shifts at least five times between 1970 and 1980 alone. This malleability astounds because it runs so counter to the way most of us think and behave. It's non-conformist, uncomfortable, and irrational, without any of the detrimental consequences that are supposed to come along with such rule-breaking. Granted, a stupendous coke habit nearly killed him and he wasn't able to be a present father to his young son during that time, but even those disappointments led to the despondency that fueled his oblique Berlin trilogy. While many artists claim to despise the status quo, only a few have discarded previous successes with the abandon of Bowie, especially during that flawless decade-long stretch. "Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming," read the tagline in an ad for 1977's "Heroes". It was anything but hyperbole. Back then, Bowie may have had many masks, but he knew exactly how long to wear each one.
The following couple of decades weren't quite as fulfilling, with Bowie reaching stadium success, over-diluting his art, and then doubling-back and over-corroding it. Whereas the 70s run was marked by unpredictability, the 80s and 90s were more transparently reactionary, with Bowie eventually following trends rather than leading (or ignoring) them. But this is what happens to rock stars, right? They age, they wither, and they eventually play 30-year-old songs to 50-year-old people who are doing their best to avoid nostalgia's bittersweet aftertaste while nursing an $11 Bud in the back of a basketball arena. Bowie could've gone that route. He didn't.
Following the death of his mother, the birth of his daughter, the decision to lay down roots in New York City, and a reunion with Tony Visconti, the producer who helped him hit career highs like Young Americans, Low, and Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), came 2002's Heathen. The album found Bowie in a contemplative mood, finally finding peace by twisting up his own past in a way that did service to his accomplishments without overtly repeating them. The following year's Reality pulled off a similar trick, and it seemed like David Bowie was settling into a respectable late-career renaissance. And then, on June 25, 2004, he collapsed backstage after a show in Germany, and had to undergo emergency heart surgery. "I tell you what, though, I won't be writing a song about this one," he joked, following the angioplasty. "I can't wait to be fully recovered and get back to work again."
Nearly a decade of silence followed. Rumors of retirement or serious illness came up once in a while, but that's about it. In Paul Trynka's 2011 biography Starman, a friend of Bowie's was quoted as saying, "If you were in hospital after a heart scare, would you be wishing you'd spent more time flogging yourself on tour? Or would you be wishing you could spend more time with your five-year-old?" The explanation seems reasonable; Bowie was going to avoid rock'n'roll fogey-dom by avoiding rock'n'roll altogether while making up for his early fatherly failures. But then he figured out another way to move ahead.
On several levels, David Bowie's 24th studio album is a cunning act of sleight of hand. On The Next Day, he hasn't only come to terms with his past-- he's making his old material work for his new material. For Bowie, the always-savvy son of a public relations man, it's good for business and good for art. The "Heroes"-erasing cover is an admission, a boast, and a provocation ("how dare he!") all at once. And by keeping the album's recording sessions a tight-lipped secret, the back-from-the-dead exclamation of its announcement was that much more pronounced. Also, by abstaining from any new interviews and only releasing a few drab black-and-white promo photos, he's all but forcing the press to go back through his archives to fill the inevitable cover stories from all across the globe. So, there's long-haired Hunky Dory Bowie on the cover of France's Telerama, a lightning-eyed Aladdin Sane fronting the UK's Q, a "Heroes" outtake peering out from Japan's Rockin'On. He turned the "David Bowie is dying!" worry into a thousand fawning would-be obituaries that instead build excitement for his new album-- all while he's likely sitting at his computer, sipping tea and enjoying the coup.
The music found within is also something of a bait-and switch; on the surface, many tracks are uptempo rockers that recall various moments of Bowie's near-50-year career-- hopeful fodder for a tour that looks unlikely to take off-- but delve into the lyric sheet and you'll find death, war, graves, murder, and ghosts at almost every turn. Admittedly, this is not new subject matter for the singer-- his 1967 debut album ended with the theatrical "Please Mr. Gravedigger", an essentially a cappella tale of a child killer and a man re-digging holes for bodies after a bomb tore up their original resting places. And there's the glam apocalypse story of 1974's Diamond Dogs. But while those yarns could be fanciful and campy-- the musings of a young man glamorizing or sensationalizing the ultimate end-- The Next Day's deathly bent is more blunt.
Inspired by English medieval history books, the title track tells of a man being dragged and maimed by an angry mob. "Here I am, not quite dying/ My body left to rot in a hollow tree," sings Bowie, in a husky voice. The simmering "Love Is Lost" observes a troubled, perhaps suicidal 22-year-old girl whose "fear is as old as the world." It builds to a clenched-fist climax with Bowie ruefully pleading "oh, what have you done?" "Valentine's Day", meanwhile, is a Ziggy-style romp... about a tiny-faced school shooter; "How Does the Grass Grow?" offers a quasi-sentimental graveyard tale in which Bowie quips, "Remember the dead/ They were so great/ Some of them"; "You Feel So Lonely You Could Die" wishes comeuppance upon a heartless Cold War assassin. You get the point. It may very well be his bleakest set of lyrics to date, words that don't glorify death as much as they detail its cruel inevitability throughout history. So while "The Next Day" could be seen as an optimistic phrase on paper, on the title track its describing nothing less than eternal brutal violence: "And the next day, and the next, and another day."
Musically, The Next Day isn't as radical or dreary, as it bounces around from style to style, casually suggesting past greatness while rarely matching it. The production is clean and crisp, almost to a fault, leaving little room for the off-kilter spontaneity that highlights Bowie's best work; it's no coincidence that two of the album's best moments, on the skulking "Dirty Boys" and the taut "Boss of Me", feature glorious sax solos from longtime collaborator Steve Elson. Too often, though, the instrumentation sounds museum-ready. This is a shame, especially considering Visconti's pedigree-- this is the same guy who revolutionized the way rock drums sound on Low by pitching them down using a device that, he boasted to Bowie at the time, "fucks with the fabric of time." The same effect teasingly shows up ever-so-briefly on The Next Day, at the start of "Love Is Lost", and the Scott Walker-style closer "Heat" nails a disconcerting ambience, but otherwise, the album's sonics could've certainly been fucked with a bit more.
In 1974, Rolling Stone sat a 27-year-old Bowie down with a 60-year-old William Burroughs to discuss accelerating technologies, the uselessness of love, and the quality of porn films from country to country: "The best ones were the German ones," Bowie concludes. (In one of the few Next Day press photos, the 66-year-old Bowie sits beneath a photo of himself and the famed author from that '74 interview.) They also touch on the trappings of public perception. "They want to see their picture of you," says Burroughs, "and if they don't see their picture of you they're very upset." David Bowie has made a career of walking that line between the picture people want to see and the one he wants to give them. In this way, The Next Day finds him as astute as ever, casting a ghoulish shadow over sounds and images we know and love. In fact, there was at least one exclusive magazine cover photo to go along with the new record; according to an editor's letter, the image that appeared on the front of last week's NME arrived in his inbox with the message, "This is just for you. No-one else has seen this. David would like to be on the cover." The photo, shot just last month, shows two eyes-- one pupil bigger than the other-- behind a stark white mask. | 2013-03-11T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2013-03-11T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | ISO | March 11, 2013 | 7.6 | 3a24acb4-1339-4b2d-8ae1-502524c7889f | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | null |
Can's 1971 album Tago Mago, freshly reissued in a "40th Anniversary Edition," is a colossus, the product of a band that was thinking huge, pushing itself to its limits, and devoted to breaking open its own understanding of what rock music could be. | Can's 1971 album Tago Mago, freshly reissued in a "40th Anniversary Edition," is a colossus, the product of a band that was thinking huge, pushing itself to its limits, and devoted to breaking open its own understanding of what rock music could be. | Can: Tago Mago [40th Anniversary Edition] | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16075-tago-mago-40th-anniversary-edition/ | Tago Mago [40th Anniversary Edition] | Can have long been one of those bands that are more talked about than heard. They were enormously influential on certain kinds of forward-thinking rock artists (their fingerprints are all over Radiohead and the Flaming Lips, not to mention more more recent underground acts like Woods and Implodes); their records have never been out of print for long. But they've got a big, disorderly discography, and they don't really have any signature songs (the Can tracks that pass for pop-- "Spoon", "I Want More", and not many others-- are alarmingly unlike the rest of their work). They're also tougher to "get" than a lot of their contemporaries: They specialized in long, jam-heavy rock grooves, and they had (two different) aggressively difficult vocalists, as well as a guitarist (the late Michael Karoli) who liked to noodle way up in the treble range. So where do you start?
You couldn't do much better than beginning with 1971's Tago Mago, freshly reissued in a "40th Anniversary Edition" (whose main difference from previous editions is the addition of a live disc from the following year). It's a colossus of an album, the product of a band that was thinking huge, pushing itself to its limits, and devoted to breaking open its own understanding of what rock music could be. The core of Can was four German musicians from wildly different backgrounds-- when they initially came together in 1968, two of them had studied with composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, one had played jazz, and one was a teenage guitar whiz. They recorded soundtrack music and a few straightforward rock songs early on, but what they were really interested in doing was going beyond kinds of music for which they had language.
For some musicians of that time, that meant replacing (or augmenting) composition with improvisation: letting the unconscious mind take over in the instant, and recording the results. Can's insight was that jamming alone wasn't going to do the trick. One of their solutions to that problem was that, like Miles Davis' electric group at the time, they were not a jam band but a jam-and-edit band. Their working method involved collectively improvising on little riffs and grooves at enormous length, but that's not quite what you hear on Tago Mago. Bassist Holger Czukay chopped up, layered and extensively reorganized pieces of their recordings (including recordings they made when they didn't think the tape was rolling), imposing afterthought on instinct to create something as densely packed as composition but distinctly different.
Their other solution was smashing the crutch of language. After Can's original singer Malcolm Mooney had left the band in 1970, they'd encountered a Japanese street artist named Damo Suzuki "singing or 'praying' in the streets of Munich" (as Czukay put it) and immediately installed him as their new frontman. Suzuki is ostensibly vocalizing in English-- the lingua franca of rock-- but English that's either seriously mangled or almost totally faked.
Tago Mago is seven songs in 73 minutes; the first half is big-beat floor-fillers, the second half yanks the floor away. For those first four songs, drummer Jaki Liebezeit is the star of the band, setting up rhythmic patterns of his own devising (isolate his part of almost any Can song, and you'd immediately know what you were listening to) and repeating them like mantras. His drumming is actually the lead instrument on "Mushroom", which could very easily pass for a post-punk classic from 10 years later; everything else just adds a little tone color. (The song might be about a psychedelic mushroom, or a mushroom cloud, or maybe just the kind that comes in a can.) And his deliberate, crisply articulated marching-band-of-the-unconscious beat is the spine of the overwhelming "Halleluwah", possibly the only 18-minute song that would be too short at twice its length.
Then the trip turns sour and trembly. "Aumgn" is almost as long as "Halleluwah" but clammy, deliberately disjointed, and nearly rhythmless; its central sound is keyboardist Irmin Schmidt's repeatedly intoning elongated, mangled variations on the meditative "om." Both "Aumgn" and its follow-up "Peking O" mess with their listeners' perception of time-- everything in them happens much more quickly or slowly than it's supposed to, and as soon as any pattern of sound has stuck around long enough to grab onto, it shudders and evaporates. By the time the dreamy, softly throbbing one-chord piece "Bring Me Coffee or Tea" arrives to conclude the album, it's almost hard to trust it not to be a mirage.
The bonus for the new edition (aside from a reproduction of the original sleeve, with four variations on a semi-abstract image concerning the mouth and the mind) is a three-song 1972 live recording: something identified as "Mushroom" that shares nothing but a couple of lines with the Tago Mago version, a "Halleluwah" that fades out after nine minutes without generating the studio recording's heat, and a half-hour workout on the band's three-minute German hit "Spoon". It's okay-- they were a solid jam band, and Liebezeit could pull off those remarkable rhythms on stage, too-- but it's mostly interesting for its perspective on how much less a band Can might have been without Czukay's keen razor blade slashing away their excesses and preserving their flashes of revelation. | 2011-12-09T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2011-12-09T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Experimental | Mute | December 9, 2011 | 10 | 3a28e4c9-8945-4b96-9ef3-9540d1ae19bc | Douglas Wolk | https://pitchfork.com/staff/douglas-wolk/ | null |
The Brooklyn rapper and former beauty influencer has charisma to spare on her swaggering, stylish debut. | The Brooklyn rapper and former beauty influencer has charisma to spare on her swaggering, stylish debut. | Maiya the Don: Hot Commodity | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/maiya-the-don-hot-commodity/ | Hot Commodity | In the music video for her breakout single “Telfy,” Maiya The Don shimmies down the aisle of a beauty store in Crocs, flexes her designer handbag, and gets sturdy with her girls at a playground. The Brooklyn rapper has the type of charisma that demands to be recorded. She got her start as an influencer and beautician on TikTok, where her wig tutorials and “get ready with me” vlogs quickly built her a loyal following. Rap was something she loved, but she never pursued it seriously until the runaway success of her menacing 2021 track “Chiraq.” On her new album, Hot Commodity, she expands her irresistible personality, approaching East Coast bully rap with the confidence of a Sephora manager.
Maiya shows off her undeniable New York swagger as she calls out faceless haters and dumb men over beats that range from fast-paced street rap to Nicki Minaj-esque pop-rap. These subjects are well-worn, but her brash tone and creative delivery keep things fresh. On “Dusties,” she interpolates both Ice Spice and Lil Kim while dropping clever esthetician bars: “Bitches tryna make up, knowing we don’t blend.” On the hook for opener “Hella Scary,” she zig-zags through producer D.A. Got That Dope’s 808s, bubble pops, and finger snaps while clearing her nemeses: “Lotta rap hoes wack, these the same ol’ tracks/Wouldn’t pop even if you put Drake on that.”
But Maiya hits differently on earnest love songs. “Got me ignoring DMs/I might just be your BM,” she says on the sample drill track “Luv U Better,” playing friends with benefits with Queens drill rapper Shawny Binladen. Things escalate further on songs like “In Your Hands” and “Call Me If You Down,” where she asserts her freedom (“I don’t gotta deal with you, I could fuck your friends”) while still catching feelings. But even at her most tender, Maiya never simps; she lays out the ground rules, but she’s perfectly content to keep it moving if her man’s not willing to shower her in affection and designer brands.
Maiya sounds great on just about every beat. She rides the luxe instrumentals of “Into Myself” and “Telfy” with bravado; she slinks her way through the middling digital funk of the Ty Dolla $ign-featuring “In Your Hands,” the project’s sole weak spot; and she keeps pace with the breakneck sample drill of “Luv U Better” and “Body.” The latter is a chest-thumping roll call for people who want to test Maiya’s patience, delivered over a sample of Mariah Carey’s bubbly 2009 hit “Touch My Body.”
Hot Commodity operates from a similar blueprint as Cardi’s B’s 2017 mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 2 and Megan Thee Stallion’s 2018 breakout Tina Snow: It’s a focused and punchy sample platter of regional styles that proves Maiya is capable of holding her own. By the time she’s breaking down her origin story—growing up on the intersection of Macon Street and Marcus Garvey Boulevard, raising her siblings in and out of foster care—it’s clear that she’s interested in more than just flexing her fabulousness. “I can’t put a price on this; I put my life in it/My story ain’t finished because nigga, I’m still writing it,” she says, growing from despondent to triumphant over the course of two bars. By this point, she's left the comforts of BeautyTok for a real world takeover. | 2023-10-11T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-10-11T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Rap | RCA | October 11, 2023 | 7.6 | 3a290694-299f-4315-b5e8-853281560d50 | Dylan Green | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/ | |
Today on Pitchfork, we are taking a critical look at the UK band Sade—from quiet storm mainstays to defining a generational vibe—with new reviews of four of their records. | Today on Pitchfork, we are taking a critical look at the UK band Sade—from quiet storm mainstays to defining a generational vibe—with new reviews of four of their records. | Sade: Diamond Life | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sade-diamond-life/ | Diamond Life | In 1984, while British new romantics like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet filled arenas with enormous synth-pop, Sade became the minimalists, crafting quiet, vintage soul out of basic components. Their end product, Diamond Life, values brevity. The band had a weapon in lead singer Helen Folasade Adu—Sade for short—a modest contralto who wore hoops with a classic red lip and moved in silence like Carmen Sandiego. Despite early comparisons to the likes of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, Sade, then 25, saw not jazz but Black American soul as her band’s core influence. “I’m frightened of anyone for one minute thinking that we’re trying to be a jazz band, because if we were, we could do it a lot better than we’re doing now,” Sade said in 1985. “Our music is clearly pop, because it’s easy to understand.”
More precisely, their sound liquified soul and jazz into new-school pop. They were executors of spaciousness. With Diamond Life, Sade produced feeling music that became a prototype for a generation of singers who favored naked elegance: D’Angelo, Jill Scott, Alicia Keys. Maxwell later borrowed guitarist, saxophonist, and co-writer Stuart Matthewman for his own immaculate 1996 debut Urban Hang Suite; and Drake once equated the “dark sexy feel” of Sade’s records to those on his mixtape So Far Gone. The seductive undertones of artists like Tinashe and Yuna are similarly tethered to Sade, whose fierce dashes of sensuality originated here.
Over nine tracks, Sade sings of unwanted separation and missed connections under the banner of “quiet storm” music, the nickname for mood-setting, after-hours R&B that powered adult contemporary radio. Washington’s WHUR-FM is said to have originated the format in 1976 in response to radio programming that featured predominantly white easy listening acts. Quiet storm was, in contrast, a platform for balladeers like Anita Baker and Luther Vandross and their mellow grade of soul. For Sade, a band that conveyed turbulence even in their subtlety, the label fit. The swagger of “Smooth Operator,” their breakout U.S. single, almost overshadows the fact that the subject’s task is to travel across state lines breaking hearts. Their album, for the most part, seeks out and cherishes serenity and stability in partnerships while acknowledging the rocky parts. Lead U.S. single “Hang On to Your Love,” a stylish, midtempo number, views commitment as a courageous act, and on “Your Love Is King,” Sade drags out her prose, praising ordinary love between the exhales of a sax. The song has all the romance of a shimmering sunset gondola ride.
Born in Ibadan, Nigeria, Sade moved to England at 4 with her mother and brother. As early as 14, she began hitting nightclubs, and by the mid-’80s, the former art student turned menswear designer was casually experimenting as a backup vocalist in the seven-piece funk band Pride. Sade and Matthewman then morphed into a slicker breakout known collectively as Sade (a band name suggested by the singer herself), with Sade as their lead singer, keyboardist Andrew Hale, and bassist Paul S. Denman.
At the time, Sade was living in a deserted fire station, where she and Matthewman would listen to her collection of soul records, from Curtis Mayfield to Nina Simone. When band manager Lee Barrett began shopping a demo featuring “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King”—material they’d been performing in clubs across England—producer Robin Millar said label execs dismissed their songs as “too slow, jazzy, and too long.” Next to the electro-pop of that era, Sade read as desperately tender, which proved to be an asset. The band eventually landed a deal with Epic in 1983 and issued Diamond Life the following year.
As with other idols whose enigma was part of their appeal, Sade practically invented the artist hiatus, taking years-long breaks between records, trading celebrity for freedom and longevity. She was, by all accounts, the coolest in everyone’s orbit. Tom Hanks, who appeared with Sade on Saturday Night Live in 1985, told The New York Times, “Calling her elusive or mysterious might color her as unkind or remote. She was not that. She was, rather, just very comfortable in the command of her art, as well as her presence.” Sade communicated gravity, often amid a cascade of keys and gentle sax riffs suspended in the air. Her voice entered the room like a chill. But her strength was in her ability to render truth and desire concisely. In relaying the sensation of a physical rush on “Your Love Is King,” she sings, “You’re making me dance…” and pauses before settling the emotion: “…Inside,” stretching its syllables into eternity.
The tracks on Diamond Life play in the arena of blues because Sade sought inspiration in the love stories of soul music that centered everyday people. On Diamond Life, she’s still refining her narrative voice, so the allegory in a cut like “Sally,” a sauntering tour through “one angry day in New York,” about the Salvation Army, has good intentions, but it’s the rare Sade song that offers the pretense of sentimentality in lieu of the real thing. The working-class anxieties that became a thread in their music materialize on “When Am I Going to Make a Living,” a song Sade wrote on the back of a receipt from the cleaners one night during a downpour.
Even when the lounginess is laid on thick, the album’s tones are subdued enough to be affecting. The damp ambiance of songs like “Frankie’s First Affair” and the six-plus-minute “Cherry Pie” burn like the type of molten soul expected to backdrop a film noir. While the track billows and tapers, becoming more atmospheric than dynamic by the end, Sade’s debut is a strong compilation of stories that bristle with simplicity.
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. | 2020-10-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-10-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Epic | October 9, 2020 | 9.6 | 3a298c23-c484-4859-96cf-28086d8ae8b5 | Clover Hope | https://pitchfork.com/staff/clover-hope/ | |
Though the lucre here at Pitchfork is plentiful, and I scarcely have time to get one wrecked Lex towed off ... | Though the lucre here at Pitchfork is plentiful, and I scarcely have time to get one wrecked Lex towed off ... | Jóhann Jóhannsson: Englabörn | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/4274-englaborn/ | Englabörn | Though the lucre here at Pitchfork is plentiful, and I scarcely have time to get one wrecked Lex towed off before a new one is delivered, any promo CD package that falls through my mail slot is doomed. They will all be sold unless they can prove something to me, and quick. I don't need the damn things cluttering my pad. Englabörn, with its pretty little Jon Wozencraft cover, didn't have a prayer. But through a series of accidents, the disc somehow slipped into repeat mode without my realizing it. By the time I'd caught the error, the album had played through twice, looping and breathing to life, its leitmotifs orbiting the room in blissful, indolent circles, completely entrancing me. This first solo album from Jóhann Jóhannsson is absolutely beautiful, and it has only become moreso over the past few months, sustaining me for long periods of time when other music just wouldn't do the trick.
Jóhannsson is a member of the Icelandic artist group Kitchen Motors, and aside from the fact that his loose-knit collective has, on at least one occasion, held a concert for cellphones at their local Reykjavik mall, additional information is scarce. So I'll tell you what I know: Taking cues he provided to a stage play by Hávar Sigurjónsson, Jóhannsson's Englabörn is composed of music he wrote, as performed by the Eþos String Quartet, with a light gauze of electronic processing applied to it. Although it's difficult to ascertain any obvious tweaking in the end result, there is just a slight haze in the air surrounding the sounds, letting the notes levitate and linger.
It begins innocuously enough with an AppleTalk voice reciting Latin scribe Catullus' poem, "Odi et Amo". An intriguing selection of text, the poem addresses the agonizing extremes between devout love and consuming hate. To have this very human poem delivered by a droid tenor reveals all sorts of counterbalances at work: gentle, nuanced music that soundtracked a brutally violent piece of theatre, these acoustic, classical string quartets mixing with digital alchemy, and an ancient voice coursing through the latest in Speak 'n' Spell technology. It somehow balances beautifully, graceful in all its gestures.
Some of the pieces, like "Karen býr til Engil" and "Eins og Venjulegt Fólk" recall the similarly melancholy electronic touch that infused the most desolate moments of Radiohead's Kid A. With subtle, digital rumbles, poignant glockenspiel, and scarce violin sustainment, a dreadful space surrounds each note, allowing the music to resonate deep inside of you. "Jói & Karen" is exceptionally restrained, the piano moving like droplets off of slowly melting icicles, and the violin breathing warmth from above. The hesitation of each breath and falling bead feels as though it were a Morton Feldman piece condensed to three minutes.
"Sálfrædingur" is the most propulsive of the set, sounding like classic Moondog, with shaking rattles, percolating drums, and stately piano. Its counterpoint is "Sálfræðingur Deyr", where the theme is recast with bowed strings, the bass solemn in its slow movements. As the violin shivers against it, Jóhannsson reduces it all to scarcely whispered vibrations. This resonates into the music boxes and small squeaked brass of "Bad". "Ég Átti Gráa Aesku" recombines the processional percussion from before with the earlier refrains of piano into a more majestic statement, while "Krókódíll" recapitulates the downward movement of piano notes of the opening theme, this time with the voice replaced by profound organ drones.
By the time of "Odi et Amo - Bis", which slows the original recitation to the point of near stasis, each computer tone and bowed note is stilled to the point of absolute zero, the echoes reverberating off of the ice. A rememberance of things past is conjured up as chilling ghosts float in the ether. The emotional strain is apparent with these haunting last moments, though the music remains elegant and elegiac.
Just as Catullus balanced the extreme emotional opposites of love and hate into a composite whole the greater of its parts, so does Jóhannsson transform these sixteen miniatures into an exquisite listening experience. With the slightest of movements, and in a handful of descending notes, a shivering gulf of sadness is conveyed. It's easy to mention something grandiose, but to fully expound upon this subtly gestured work of music is far more difficult a task. While Englabörn remains out of reach with these words, the music continues to enrich. | 2003-03-05T01:00:05.000-05:00 | 2003-03-05T01:00:05.000-05:00 | Experimental | Touch | March 5, 2003 | 8.9 | 3a307e4c-2662-46cd-b411-821ce9bc1cc5 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
Latest batch of reissues from Brian Eno includes three records from the late 1970s and early 80s and adds a new collection. | Latest batch of reissues from Brian Eno includes three records from the late 1970s and early 80s and adds a new collection. | Brian Eno: Music for Films / Apollo / Thursday Afternoon / More Music for Films | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11732-music-for-films-apollo-thursday-afternoon-more-music-for-films/ | Music for Films / Apollo / Thursday Afternoon / More Music for Films | A spiritual big brother to theory-sopped music bloggers everywhere, the left-brained Brian Eno has always had a love affair with parameters. As the story goes, when Microsoft asked him to compose the Windows startup sound in the early 90s, they supplied a broadsheet of adjectives requesting the piece embody the phrases "universal," "optimistic," "emotional," and "futuristic," among others. The task of mediating those descriptors would be a lot to ask of any composition, never mind one that couldn't exceed 3.25 seconds in length. But to Eno, who happened to be stuck in a particularly barren creative rut, Microsoft's challenge looked a lot like a life preserver. By subsequently creating more than 75 pieces of music that fit the description (one of which was the familiar open-ended bell chime that probably sits somewhere between "Happy Birthday" and any number of Coke jingles on the master list of North America's most frequently heard pieces of music), Eno managed to shake himself out of a tree; not soon after, he was back to composing original material with his usual prolificacy.
But it's the rare puzzle solver who naturally gravitates to hazy, formless spaces, and Eno fits that description as well. Arguably as interested in the mysteries of methodology as he is in music, he's never been one to deny ambiguity's role in the creative process. Few composers have trusted music's nowhere qualities as fully as Eno-- that he's managed to maintain a logician's interrogative, purposeful edge while maintaining an output of sounds so enveloping they hang like a fog is one of his most interesting accomplishments.
Released under the Soundtracks container, these beautifully packaged reissues mark the third batch of Eno remasters from Astralwerks. Where the four discs released under the Early Works banner focused on Eno's vocal-driven compositions and those in Ambient Works on his most clearly defined ambient pieces, the thread tying these four 'soundtracks' together is more tenuous. Two of them (1978's Music for Films and the new compilation More Music From Films) include significant portions of music that were only ever conceived (but not used) as film soundtracks; 1985's Thursday Afternoon may have comprised the backing to one of Eno's video art installations, but it's built in the mirror image of his more famous ambient compositions, and has little in common with traditional soundtrack work.
So really, instead of lumping them together as soundtracks, it's probably more accurate to say these discs represent the point in the excavation where Eno's work starts to get a little trans-concept and certainly more difficult to classify. Containing music for films that never existed and music for existing places that, as far as the earthbound among us are concerned, might as well not, this is the sound of Eno playing with parameter and ambiguity's relationship to one another.
Music for Films is a collection of sparse, moody setpieces whose connections to actual films vary widely. Although more active and more heavily orchestrated than Eno's ambient compositions, its 18 tracks waft in and out in similarly unceremonious fashion. Some, such as "Inland Sea" and the "Sparrowful" trilogy, recall the fat-bodied analog keyboards of Discreet Music; others, like the percussive drone-piece "M386", counteract the melodic lulls with hammering nervous tension. Featuring songs recorded in different time periods with different musicians (Robert Fripp, John Cale, and a young Phil Collins are among the many who turn up here), it runs a little unevenly in spots, but it's nonetheless as evocative as anything Eno's ever done.
My favorite of these four reissues, 1983's Apollo-Atmospheres & Soundtracks is the only full-fledged film soundtrack of the lot. Co-written with brother Roger and Daniel Lanois (who provides radiant guitar work on tracks like "Silver Morning" and "Deep Blue Day") as the score to Al Reinert's documentary on the Apollo lunar landings, it represents Eno's attempt to slightly redress the popular media's glib and histrionic television presentation of the event. At times empty and disconnected ("Matta"), weightless and serene ("Drift") and completely beautiful ("An Ending (Ascent)"), it adheres to an internal logic that culminates with the suitably skin-crawling "Stars".
Featuring a single, mostly static track that hovers unchanged for the bulk of its 61 minutes, Thursday Afternoon is probably the best example of what Eno famously called a holographic work. Just as a small piece of a holograph contains the information of that holograph in its entirety, any small portion of this track also contains its essence as a whole. With its ambient drones and gently suspended piano notes, Thursday Afternoon unfurls like a blanket, and along with Music for Airports, remains one of Eno's most mystifying and durable works, a thing you could stare into forever without ever seeing through.
Finally, More Music For Films marks the first of Astralwerks' twelve reissues to potentially hold something new for existing Eno fans. Consisting of tracks taken from the rare, vinyl-only compilations Music for Films Directors' Edition and Music for Films Volume 2, it represents the first time that about half of these songs have ever been released on CD. As you might expect from a collection of lesser heard odds and sods, it's easily the most disjointed and sprawling disc of the bunch, but there are enough rewards and curiosities there to reward the diehards. Be warned though: due to a manufacturing error, many of the discs contain the music for "Approaching Taidu" as tracks 18 and 20, thus shortchanging the buyer of the scheduled track 18, "Climate Study". Astralwerks are currently working on a replacement version, so caveat emptor and all that.
Fans who've had the opportunity to A/B any of the old CD pressings to the first eight reissues in this series already know how good the remastering job is, but it bears repeating one last time. Not only are the small details now significantly more vivid, but the overall levels have been adjusted as well. To me, these feel definitive, the pressings that these records have always deserved, and it's nice to be able to hear them for the first time again. | 2005-04-15T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2005-04-15T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic | null | April 15, 2005 | 7.8 | 3a323b2f-5e53-4a6a-9652-7ab88eed0d89 | Mark Pytlik | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-pytlik/ | null |
Over the last year, Chairlift's Caroline Polachek was playing secret shows and debuting new material under increasingly inventive, singer-songwriterly pseudonyms such as Ramona Lisa, the name under which she’s presented her solo debut, Arcadia. The album is a quiet curiosity, a quirky side project that’s mostly a labor of love. | Over the last year, Chairlift's Caroline Polachek was playing secret shows and debuting new material under increasingly inventive, singer-songwriterly pseudonyms such as Ramona Lisa, the name under which she’s presented her solo debut, Arcadia. The album is a quiet curiosity, a quirky side project that’s mostly a labor of love. | Ramona Lisa: Arcadia | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19287-ramona-lisa-arcadia/ | Arcadia | To the outside observer, Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek had an identity crisis over the last year. She was playing secret shows and debuting new material under increasingly inventive, singer-songwriterly pseudonyms: Kimsin Kreft, Theora Vorbis (an A/V pun), and most fancifully, Ramona Lisa, the name under which she’s presented her solo debut, Arcadia. Chairlift’s sophomore LP, 2012's Something, possessed some excellent singles, and the Polachek-written “No Angel” ended up on Beyoncé's recent self-titled album, but despite all this upward momentum, Arcadia is a quiet curiosity, a quirky side project that’s mostly a labor of love.
Arcadia was composed and recorded entirely on tour and on laptop with MIDI instruments, but the music’s not too recognizably lo-fi or idiosyncratic, especially when compared to some of Chairlift’s past work. There are reprises and recurring motifs that lend Arcadia a conceptual coherence, but Polachek’s songwriting is as broad as it is pared-down. The record works in two modes: for more abstract material like “Hissing Pipes at Dawn (They're Playing Our Song)”, which is, yes, a impressionistic sound-painting of hissing pipes at dawn, there are tracks like “Lady’s Got Gills” and “Backwards and Upwards,” which resemble Chairlift album cuts that were allowed to melt around their chorus sections.
Despite their meandering tendencies, the songs on Arcadia sound neither tossed-off nor incomplete, and are surprisingly sticky at times. “Backwards and Upwards” is a driftier sequel to Something’s “I Belong in Your Arms” as an insistent organ hook and bass burble are paired with love-dazed vocals; “Lady’s Got Gills” is as playful as its title suggests, its synthesized instruments scattered through the busy beat like stones. These moments are where Polachek’s sense of humor comes through: “Getaway Ride” is a charming bit about arson and fanciful theft, and you can hear little deadpan nudges and winks in Polachek's delivery. Arcadia's introspective cuts are mostly effective as well, particularly the pastel waltz “Dominic,” which comes and goes as drowsily as the “perfect disaster” of a fling described in the song. Like much of Arcadia, "Dominic" is “pastoral” in the sense that it uses nature—fields, pale mornings-after—as an incidental backdrop for stories that tend toward the small and personal.
Arcadia tends to lean instrumental and abstract, interspersed with field recordings that were inspired by Polachek’s traveling through Rome and wanting to recreate what she saw out the windows. The results are warm and almost meditative: synth pads that evoke sunbeams, choral multitracking that sounds like General MIDI voice patches. There are referents for this, some expected and some not; Polachek is an avowed fan of cult singer-songwriter Virginia Astley—specifically, of Hope in a Darkened Heart, her collaboration with Japan’s David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto—as well as Japanese artist Mishio Ogawa, and their watercolor art-pop is a clear, audible influence.
But Arcadia evokes other artists' work, too, from ambitious composers like Julia Holter or Lucrecia Dalt, to more workaday ambient artists like Sleepthief in his less trip-hop moments, to Miriam Stockley (who coincidentally has her own “Arcadia”), to any number of bedroom-produced singer/songwriters. The album is an interesting, almost peculiarly personal mix of sounds, one that almost seems underdeveloped and unlikely to win Polachek any new fans. As an outlet for Polachek’s songwriting, though, it suggests there's more interesting work yet to come from her. | 2014-05-01T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2014-05-01T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Terrible | May 1, 2014 | 6.8 | 3a35fd15-3fbd-4520-8f96-fffb8f11dc01 | Katherine St. Asaph | https://pitchfork.com/staff/katherine-st. asaph/ | null |
Hearing Prince sing these songs that he gave to other performers brings you close to the pulse of his artistry: transgressive, funky, sexy, a testament to his genius even in the form of demos. | Hearing Prince sing these songs that he gave to other performers brings you close to the pulse of his artistry: transgressive, funky, sexy, a testament to his genius even in the form of demos. | Prince: Originals | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/prince-originals/ | Originals | It was said that only Prince knew the combination to his legendary, quite literal vault with the spinning wheel doorknob. But sometime after his death on April 21, 2016, the hulking door was drilled open, revealing an astounding archive of unreleased songs—so many thousands of tapes and hard drives that his estate could allegedly release a Prince album every year for the next century. Now, the latest from the vault, comes Prince: Originals, a compilation of 14 previously unreleased songs written for other performers that prove once and for all that a Prince demo was often better than most other musicians’ finished songs. It offers a window onto the playfulness of his improvisations and, in a structure that mimics the range of an actual Prince album, shifts nimbly between up-tempo songs and ballads, sweat and tears, near impossible to stay sitting still while listening.
In the winter after the release of his third album, Dirty Mind, 22-year-old Prince moved into what he’d call Kiowa Trail Home Studio in suburban Chanhassen, Minnesota, not far from what would become Paisley Park. Prince had its cream-colored exterior repainted with his favorite hue; it was nicknamed the Purple House. Outside was the driveway where he’d do motorcycle laps practicing for Purple Rain and the gates he decorated with a sculpted heart and peace sign. Inside, he outfitted his studio with a 16-track recorder and later upgraded to a 24-track Ampex MM1200, with a piano upstairs for any sudden inspiration.
Inside the Purple House, large parts of Controversy, 1999, Purple Rain, and Sign o’ the Times were recorded, as well as about half the songs on Originals (most of the rest were recorded at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles). In 1985, when he sat with a Rolling Stone reporter on the white plush carpet of the bedroom at Kiowa Trail, he said that he finally came to understand why his musician father was so hard to live with. “When he was working or thinking, he had a private pulse going constantly inside him,” Prince said. “I don’t know, your bloodstream beats differently.” Discovering some of the unscripted moments in Originals feels like taking that pulse.
Written into his Warner Bros. contract was a clause that allowed him to recruit and produce other artists. It essentially assured him access to a congregation of performers who would spread the gospel of his music—the pop-funk he’d canonized in his early records, and a vast and uncharted road ahead, both under his own name and others. Sometimes he adopted an alias—as Joey Coco, for instance, for the power crooner “You’re My Love,” one of the surprises on Originals. It appeared on Kenny Rogers' 1986 album They Don't Make Them Like They Used To, but Rogers’ version pales next to Prince’s, who uses a deeper, full-throated register that sounds an imitation of what he thought Kenny Rogers should sound like. But the Prince of Dirty Mind and Controversy didn’t exactly mesh with Nashville of the 1980s—what would the world have thought then if he released a country song? Giving that song to another voice freed him to fly elsewhere.
Better known is his alias for “Manic Monday,” which charted at No. 2 for the Bangles, second only to Prince’s own smash “Kiss.” Here, Prince is “Christopher,” a reference to his character from his 1986 film Under the Cherry Moon. The song, triggered by a dream he wrote into the lyrics, is essentially a rewrite of “1999,” and Prince’s rendering of it here centers on a synthesized harpsichord and the psychedelic flourish of the song’s bridge, which sounds as if Alice just dropped in the rabbit hole.
Most of the other tracks on Originals represent even greater gifts. Prince gave songs to Minneapolis’ great performers: Morris Day, Sheila E., Jill Jones, Apollonia, among others. By spreading out the credits, “he was creating the wave, but he made it seem like there was a lot of people doing that thing in Minneapolis, which was brilliant,” engineer David Z once said. To the press, Prince acted nonchalant. “I usually try to give up a groove to somebody if they ask me,” he said.
These grooves are the dance-floor core of Originals. Prince’s version of “Jungle Love” is close to the rendition on the Time’s Ice Cream Castles and the Purple Rain soundtrack, down to the “oh-we-oh-we-oh” chorus, but embedded with his ad-libs (“If you’re hungry, take a bite outta me!”). Prince had showed up in the studio shirtless with one bandana around his neck and another tied on his ripped red pants, but he loosens up in the recording. “Somebody bring me a mirror!” you hear him shout midway through. He gets it in “Make-Up,” a torrid electric number that was fine on Vanity 6’s lone solo album but made surprising and transgressive by Prince, who voices the lyrics in robotic staccato bursts: “Blush. Eyeliner. Hush. See what you made me do.” It has the percussive electricity of Liquid Liquid and maybe a little Kraftwerk too, androgynous Prince at his most diva: “Smoke. A. Cigarette,” he retorts to an impatient lover. “I’m. Not. Ready Yet.”
How wild that a chronicle of a lost era can feel so modern when all over it are musical markers of the ’80s: synths and drum machines and clap tracks and extended breakdowns and of course, sax solos. Nostalgia, even rendered fresh, works on the ear in invisible ways, as does the sequence of these songs. We careen between slow-burning love songs (witness Prince’s glorious falsetto over the heartbeat percussion of “Baby, You’re a Trip,” which Prince wrote for Jill Jones, about the time she snooped in his diary after he read hers) and more quintessential dance hits. “Holly Rock,” which he gave to Sheila E. for the Krush Groove soundtrack, is snappily upbeat, Prince punctuating the chorus with James Brown-esque flourishes (“I’m bad, good god!”) and a snarky taunt at the end: “Now try to dance like that,” he says.
“Nothing Compares 2 U,” the best-known and most-loved of all the songs here, became a massive hit for Sinéad O’Connor, whose rendition was, in fact, a cover, not one of Prince’s gifts. Here, in its original incarnation, Prince turns it into a torch song for himself. He lets a love-worn raggedness occasionally creep into his voice, lets it tremble ever so, powered by the saxophone accompaniment of longtime Family and Revolution member Eric Leeds. The video shows a collage of Prince and his band running through stage choreography: dressed in a scarf worn as a backless shirt, or suspenders and white high-heeled boots, he delivers perfect splits, kicks, and spins. But the arrangement here is stark and lonely and beautiful, the closest you get to hearing Prince’s own pulse. Arriving at the end of this set of originals, and with the promise of hearing more from that vault, it becomes an affirmation too. Maybe all those flowers you planted in the backyard will bloom again. | 2019-06-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-06-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Rock | Warner Bros. | June 7, 2019 | 9.5 | 3a3616a2-ee83-45fa-a1df-0d2a5b381ea6 | Rebecca Bengal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rebecca-bengal/ | |
On the first record to appear since 03 Greedo’s incarceration, the L.A. rapper teams up with Vallejo’s Nef the Pharaoh on a breezy five-track EP that makes the most of their respective strengths. | On the first record to appear since 03 Greedo’s incarceration, the L.A. rapper teams up with Vallejo’s Nef the Pharaoh on a breezy five-track EP that makes the most of their respective strengths. | Nef the Pharaoh / 03 Greedo: Porter 2 Grape EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nef-the-pharaoh-03-greedo-porter-2-grape-ep/ | Porter 2 Grape EP | Last month, 03 Greedo reported to a prison in Texas to serve a 20-year sentence on drug and weapons charges. The week he set foot in the facility, he dropped God Level, an anxious opus that mulls his pending incarceration and its impact on his rapidly ascending career as a rap star. The sentence will rip him away from his family and his fans, but it won’t mark a hard stop to his output: There are dozens of solo and collaborative albums sitting on hard drives, waiting to be parceled out over however long the authorities in Texas keep him caged. Porter 2 Grape is the first such record to surface; it pairs Greedo with Nef the Pharaoh, who distinguished himself in the last couple years as one of the Bay Area’s most exciting and charismatic rappers. Their mixtape together is warm and refreshingly slight. It also reveals that, while Nef’s rise has proven much slower and less stratospheric than Greedo’s, he still possesses the wit, versatility, and magnetism that might land him a larger, nationwide audience.
Both Nef and Greedo grew their followings from their hometowns outward, but their relationships with rap’s regionalist conventions are far different. Greedo, who bounced all over the country in his childhood before settling in Watts, is a synthesist, as fluent in popular modes from Atlanta and Baton Rouge as he is in those from L.A. By contrast, when Nef broke through, in 2015, he was rightly singled out as the heir to the Vallejo throne—he even signed with E-40. While Nef’s style is more straightforward, Greedo’s is more in tune with national pop trends on rap radio in most cities; Nef is from a lineage that, save for a few breakout stars, has been hermetically sealed in one location.
Nef, though, has absolutely no interest in sitting still. The EP is littered with little odes to traveling: On “Ball Out,” he’s appalled that some of his peers haven’t ridden double-decker buses in London; on “Blow-Up Bed,” he compares his tattoos to the stamps in his passport; he and Greedo brag about being in Paris, Miami, Memphis, everywhere. That jetsetting figures so centrally on Porter is a testament to how both rappers process abstract ideas like fame and success: They ground them in the material changes of their day-to-day lives. How else do you account for the record’s best and most deeply felt song being an upbeat cut about air mattresses?
While the rapid pace of Greedo’s writing and recording in the final months before his prison term could have been expected, what’s intriguing about Porter 2 Grape is how carefully his vocals have been attuned to Nef’s. Their harmonizing on the “Blow-Up Bed” hook crystallizes the EP’s promise: Greedo’s voice is stranger than Nef’s, but he comes in softer, more melodic, while Nef is allowed to take the more forceful lead. Throughout the tape, but especially on that song and “Choosy” (the latter also features ALLBLACK and Chris O’Bannon), the two rappers pull one another into breezy, comfortable pockets that not only allow their senses of humor to come through but also communicate appreciation for their incremental progress—and, by implication (and occasionally overtly), lament the ways their advances might be reversed in a matter of seconds.
The last song on Porter 2 Grape, “Feeling You,” flips the same Bobby Caldwell sample that 2Pac used for “Heaven Ain’t Hard 2 Find,” the closing number on All Eyez on Me. (There are few better arguments for the symbiosis between Bay rap and L.A. rap than the second disc of All Eyez.) The Pac song is nominally about sex, but there’s a break in the middle where he reveals the neuroses that plague nearly all of his work. Pac was a more linear writer than Greedo and a more self-mythologizing one than Nef. What Porter shares with the breezy back-end cuts on Pac’s masterpiece is the sense that it’s never all good or all bad; that blow-up mattresses can become luxury hotel beds and, occasionally, prison cots. | 2018-07-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-07-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Empire | July 26, 2018 | 7.2 | 3a363dfe-e0d2-4378-b5ca-47d5a7d8bb1a | Paul A. Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/ | |
Producer Jennifer Lee’s latest album is darker and more introspective, but the innovative beats frequently take a back seat to her guest vocalists’ voices and personalities. | Producer Jennifer Lee’s latest album is darker and more introspective, but the innovative beats frequently take a back seat to her guest vocalists’ voices and personalities. | TOKiMONSTA: Oasis Nocturno | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tokimonsta-oasis-nocturno/ | Oasis Nocturno | Electronic producer Jennifer Lee, better known as TOKiMONSTA, considers making beats the ultimate form of freedom. As a child learning piano, she resented having to play entire compositions written by someone else, preferring to play her favorite passages over and over—an experience she likens to an early foray into sampling. After teaching herself production in her college dorm room, she joined a community of musicians in L.A. who organized beat battles, a signal to the world that their work was complete without vocalists. It was almost philosophical in nature: While beats are often considered background, Lee and peers like Flying Lotus considered them the main event.
But the beat-music world has changed in the past decade, and TOKiMONSTA’s sound has likewise opened up to incorporate sweeping arrangements, pop melodies, dance beats, and, notably, space for vocalists. On her last two albums, she has negotiated the process of making music on her own terms while accommodating an expanding roster of guest features. As she has worked vocals into the mix, she has also embraced more genres. Oasis Nocturno folds funk, rap, and R&B into a shape-shifting blend of styles that recalls Disclosure one moment, and Anderson .Paak the next. She also works extensively with house and house-adjacent beats for the first time, frequently slowing the tempo to a ruminative, heads-down pace. To branch out in so many different directions seems like the ultimate declaration of creative freedom, but it’s not clear that the strategy suits her; the album often feels like it’s on the brink of delving into a groove, only to be pulled in a new direction. And Lee’s beats frequently take a back seat to her guest vocalists’ voices and personalities.
TOKiMONSTA’s previous album, Lune Rouge, was held together by an underlying narrative. “Because I’m making beats, it might not be as obvious, but each of these beats—all these songs I put together—tell a story,” Lee said. She had recorded the record in the wake of undergoing surgery for Moyamoya, a rare brain condition; while recovering, she temporarily lost her ability to understand speech or music. It was only after finishing the first song for the album, “I Wish I Could,” that she finally felt like everything was going to be OK. That sense of relief was palpable in the album’s layered vocals and crystalline production.
Oasis Nocturno exists in the aftermath of that emotional catharsis. Compared to Lune Rouge, it is darker and more introspective, but it doesn’t have as explicit a narrative attached to it. The album’s song titles—“For My Eternal Love, Dream My Treasure,” “Love That Never,” “To Be Remote”—hint at stories Lee might be trying to tell; combined with the predominantly minor keys and slow, house-inspired grooves, they signal a newfound heaviness. But her frequent stylistic shifts and reliance on guest vocalists give the album a disjointed feel that contradicts her usual immersive sensibility.
Lee’s background as a beatmaker is still the guiding force on Oasis Nocturno. The songs are strongest when they are purely instrumental and the production has space to shine, or, as on “Love That Never” and “To Be Remote,” when a human voice is warped and stretched until it becomes another layer of texture. “Up and Out,” a leisurely, house-flavored track, is sleek and soothing, like a handful of marbles. On “House of Dal,” the pulse quickens: A see-sawing beat propels inky keys and twangy synth to delightful, cosmic effect.
In contrast, the vocals sound underdeveloped, and it often feels like Lee is holding back in order to make room for them, sacrificing complexity for glossy restraint. The more upbeat or empowering tracks feel out of place amid moody instrumentals. “One Day,” an anthemic self-love pop song, details the exes and doubters that vocalists Bibi Bourelly and Jean Deaux want to prove wrong. But the production—not much beyond a sparse drum beat and light keys—leaves you wondering how Lee’s vision for this otherwise morose and sedated album relates. Rosehardt’s echoey vocals are worked deeper in the mix on “Higher Hopes,” but the watery synth still feels aimless. “Fried for the Night,” a psychedelic party track about “those moments you feel fried and turnt,” is the lone case where the beats elevate the vocals: Atlanta hip-hop duo EARTHGANG’s jubilant, staccato flow and playful imagery (“Cotton candy in my cup/Sour Patches, pucker up”) sparkle over Lee’s warbling synths and rippling trap beats.
You leave the album wishing for she had allowed herself to get a little weirder. A few songs are nearly there. Opener “Love That Never” masterfully mixes wavy, distorted vocals through a wash of rain sounds and water droplets, conveying an acute sense of yearning that’s missing from much of the album. The breadth of Oasis Nocturno is commendable, but you can’t help but wonder what these songs would sound like if she had let the grooves, and not her guests, be her guide. As her songs become more encumbered, you can tell that the beatmaker in Lee still longs to break free. | 2020-03-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-03-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | TOKiMONSTA MUSIC | March 21, 2020 | 6.3 | 3a3ad2cb-c32d-4d7d-84b0-5a217471424c | Vrinda Jagota | https://pitchfork.com/staff/vrinda-jagota/ | |
London Grammar first came to notice stateside with their vocal turn on "Help Me Lose My Mind", a highlight from Disclosure's Settle. Their debut album is filled with spacious, reverb-heavy pop that sometimes brings to mind the xx and Portishead. | London Grammar first came to notice stateside with their vocal turn on "Help Me Lose My Mind", a highlight from Disclosure's Settle. Their debut album is filled with spacious, reverb-heavy pop that sometimes brings to mind the xx and Portishead. | London Grammar: If You Wait | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18473-london-grammar-if-you-wait/ | If You Wait | When an album is proclaimed the frontrunner for the UK's Mercury Music Prize before it's even released, it's a sign of both the accelerated nature of the modern hype cycle as well as a vote of confidence in a band's ability to deliver the goods. That London Grammar have been the latest recipients of this sort of breathless anticipation shouldn't shock-- their influences are the kind of alternative-but-still-polite acts generally favored by the prize, and they were featured on "Help Me Lose My Mind", a highlight from Disclosure's Settle. But a cynic tempted to dismiss their downcast take on spacious, reverb-heavy pop as a calculated attempt to muscle into a sizzling market would miss out on an accomplished debut that belies the fact that this trio of Nottingham University alumni wrote and recorded their first song together less than a year ago.
That song-- the achingly slow-building "Hey Now"-- is a perfect encapsulation of London Grammar's sound. It begins with frostbitten chords which are soon joined by guitars that recall the xx at their most spectral and, eventually, Hannah Reid's vocals. Jessie Ware has often been invoked as a point of comparison, and both vocalists understand that restraint can be far more effective than constant demonstrations of strength. On "Hey Now", Reid's voice emerges as an elemental power that can clear entire fields, displaying an outward composure that always provides glimpses of a staggering vulnerability lurking just below the surface. This kind of range lets Reid come at any one line from multiple angles, which gives her obsession with the fallout from heartbreak a surprising amount of nuance. When she admits to "feeling shyer" at one point on the album, she sounds at once exhausted, confused, and defiant-- basically anything but shy-- and later in the song, when she advises a suitor content to send mixed signals and make half-plays for her heart that "maybe you should call her," it becomes a taunt rather than a desperate plea for attention.
There's always an emotional urgency in Reid's vocals-- she doesn't do low stakes. When producer Dot Major and guitarist Daniel Rothman find that musical equivalent to Reid's reserved sense of theatrics, the results are devastating. "Wasting My Young Years" starts off austere and picks up steam as it races toward a climax that never arrives-- at the precise moment you'd expect the song to launch into the stratosphere, it's yanked back to earth, satisfying through its refusal to meet our expectations. "I don't know what you want, don't leave me hanging on," sings Reid as the song disintegrates into pieces, but this kind of thread-dangling is London Grammar's strong suit. They can conjure emotions without hammering you over the head with them-- on the autumnal "Strong", Reid sings of being "wide-eyed and I'm so damn caught in the middle," plotting coordinates where romantic idealism and reality meet to disastrous results.
This no-man's-land between indecision and action is a common thread throughout these songs, even influencing Reid's approach to conflict. "We argue, we don't fight" she accuses on "Metal & Dust", making it clear she'd rather air things out in the moment than let resentment build. Major and Rothman wisely stay out of Reid's way when she locks her sights on a target, and they use their knack for dynamics to support her in subtle ways. They help elevate a cover of Kavinsky's "Nightcall" from filler to a vital peak in its emotional trajectory, stripping it of its fluorescence and ratcheting up its inherent melancholy a dozen notches. At points even a trip-hop influence can be heard, with Portishead-like breaks popping up on and injecting much-needed propulsion into moments that might otherwise wilt on their own.
Due to this emphasis on compositional restraint, If You Wait occasionally feels a little too homogeneous, a little too tidy. It's so uniform tonally that it sometimes approaches somnambulance, its negative space becoming a liability rather than a cleverly-used tool. Then again, London Grammar seem bright enough to know there's always room for improvement: "I've heard it takes some time to get it right" Reid opines on "Wasting My Young Years", but this trio already functions like a well-oiled machine, and they've produced a stylish debut that demonstrates both their immense talent and impressive instincts. | 2013-09-17T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2013-09-17T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Columbia | September 17, 2013 | 7.1 | 3a404dc5-12d5-4ffc-ac88-18a3e1f13492 | Renato Pagnani | https://pitchfork.com/staff/renato-pagnani/ | null |
If this really is the grime producer's swan song, * Playtime Is Over* caps off Wiley's career in a low-profile fashion, considering that the progression he's taken since he dropped the "Eskimo" riddim on an unsuspecting underground in 2002 can be measured in inches. | If this really is the grime producer's swan song, * Playtime Is Over* caps off Wiley's career in a low-profile fashion, considering that the progression he's taken since he dropped the "Eskimo" riddim on an unsuspecting underground in 2002 can be measured in inches. | Wiley: Playtime Is Over | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10346-playtime-is-over/ | Playtime Is Over | Playtime, amongst other things: Aside from the possibility of doing some by-request production jobs and mentoring younger artists, Wiley was originally planning on retiring from the grime scene after this album. Yeah, I know, rap retirements-- but he's gone through a lot of shit, whether recent (the fumbled pop-crossover of his Roll Deep crew's 2005 album In at the Deep End) or longstanding ("I'm getting threats but it's never stopped in 10 years," he told RWD Magazine during his "farewell" interview). Considering he had a beef at some point with almost everyone who appeared on Run the Road and is approaching 30 with a baby daughter in tow, the urge to step into the background is an understandable one-- even if there's little indication on his supposed last album that he's had it on his mind.
*
Playtime Is Over* caps off Wiley's career in a low-profile fashion, considering that the progression he's taken since he dropped the "Eskimo" riddim on an unsuspecting underground in 2002 can be measured in inches. While Dizzee Rascal took a few risky chances on switching up and Americanizing his style for Maths + English-- released, significantly enough, the same day as Playtime Is Over in the UK-- Wiley has kept his formula mostly intact: skittering, hiccuping bounce rhythms, synths that sound like a turbocharged Super Nintendo with a subwoofer attached, and a manic, borderline-toasting flow that plows through everything in its path.
Wiley's deficiencies as an MC aren't overwhelming, but the possibility that his retirement may just consist of him stepping away from the mic while continuing to produce seems like a decent outcome. His voice is a hell of an instrument in itself, a ragga-inflected string of serrated, lightning-quick jabs, but it spends a little too much time barreling over beats like they're suggestions instead of backbones. Opener "50/50" is a sharp bit of lyrical work, wrapping a few tight phrases around a titular term that typically wouldn't give much room for them ("I'm 50/50, nifty nifty/ Got the best deal, nobody can twist me/ Anytime somebody tries to shoot me/ I flip the ball they miss me, miss me"), but by the second verse he's dropping syllables off-rhythm and his inflections fight distractingly against the beat.
"Gangsters" (one of three tracks carried over from 2006's self-released Da 2nd Phaze) is a loosely-associated string of threats and observations with only one word-- an icy, synthetic female voice echoing "gangsters"-- holding his verses together, and technically there isn't even really much rhyming involved: "We just had a wave of new (gangsters)/ Yeah, I think there's been a rise, more (gangsters)/ Imagine that, I'm a street kid brainy like (gangsters)," and so forth. It's weird that someone with such a straightforward lyrical style is so frequently thrown off by his own beats, but after hearing "Bow E3"-- where Wiley's postal-code hood-rep is halfway submerged under Maniac's production and constantly undercut by a stuttering, omnipresent hook-- you begin to miss how his voice sounds, flaws and all, when it has breathing room.
And there's a couple tracks where he gives himself plenty of it, often with some uncharacteristically gentle touches. "Baby Girl" is the most notable example, a dedication to his daughter that tempers his typical gruffness with a soothing flute/Mellotron loop and paternally poignant lyrics about teaching her the music business when she grows up. "Letter 2 Dizzee" is the other standout moment of raw feeling, where his side of the beef with his onetime protégé is played out with more wistfulness and disappointment than straight-up fury, reminiscing about coming up in the business together and couching a tentative ceasefire in shit-talking lingo: "Nothin' ain't changed except I'm the best now/ It don't matter, I'm still your big brother." (Given how calm and reconciliatory he sounds, it's probable he cut this before Dizzee's alleged Wiley dis "Pussyole (Oldskool)" dropped.)
Still, Wiley's always been strongest as a producer, arguably as important to the rhythmic aspect of grime's development as Dizzee was to the vocal. Even if there's little here that's surprising to anyone who heard 2004's Treddin' on Thin Ice, there's no sign of any creative entropy behind the boards; the Castlevania creep of "Johnny Was a Bad Boy", the elbow-throwing conga line of "Eski-Boy" and the electro tinges in "No Qualms" round out an album that's varied enough to serve as a solid final mission statement. And the guest spots featuring young, ambitious up-and-comers like Scorcher (who sounds like Wiley's smoother-voiced doppelganger on "Flyboy") and Jukie Mundo (growling like a rudeboy version of M.O.P. on "Stars") could serve as a preview for what Wiley's post-"retirement" mentorship itinerary might involve down the road-- dense, precise beats with intricately flexible drum programming, fronted by a new generation of grime torchbearers.
But suitably enough, the best beat on this album is on the final hidden track: Like his name-making "Eskimo", it's an instrumental with icy electronics and elastic bass, but it's also got a massive rhythm built on Lennox Lewis-force handclaps and a loose-limbed tempo that smoothly shifts gears from an off-center grime rhythm to a pounding, pseudo-house 4/4 for roughly seven seconds, just because it can. The bonus track's name: "Where's Wiley". Hopefully not a question we'll have to ask two years from now. | 2007-06-22T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2007-06-22T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rap | Big Dada | June 22, 2007 | 6.9 | 3a457a69-a422-423c-b67f-b0c2e675e03a | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
Marking 10 years since he set off down his path of dour, slow-motion techno, the Manchester musician returns to his familiar palette of ashen moods and richly textured electronics. | Marking 10 years since he set off down his path of dour, slow-motion techno, the Manchester musician returns to his familiar palette of ashen moods and richly textured electronics. | Andy Stott: Never the Right Time | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/andy-stott-never-the-right-time/ | Never the Right Time | A decade ago, the Manchester-based electronic musician Andy Stott extinguished the dub-techno torch he’d been carrying for Basic Channel and plunged into some lightless place where all the usual values got switched around. From that murk, he retrieved a pair of acclaimed short albums, Passed Me By and We Stay Together, which set his course for the next 10 years. What had been fast would be slow, what had been trim would be mussed, and what had been roomy would be cramped. Steep slopes were leveled flat, perpendicular lines knocked out of plumb. His affable name now seems like an accidental vestige of this transformation. It’s easy to think of an Andre making this spooky, severe music, maybe even an Andrew—but an Andy?
All of this remains as true as ever on Never the Right Time, Stott’s eighth album. As usual, the sense of techno passing through a looking glass is enhanced by the unique timbre of his production, which recalls a mirror with its silver flaking off. On its surface, fleeting images, often incarnated in the voice of Alison Skidmore, fragment across patches of matte and bright, opaque and sheer. As usual, the palette consists of mercurial basses, chromed synths, evaporated instrumentation, and hocketed rhythms spliced together from varied drum hits, scrawls of interference, stray sibilants, and other little wads of dream fluff. Yet despite all this, Never the Right Time adds one more inversion to Stott’s list: What once was exciting is now a bit boring, and it’s hard to say exactly why.
Stott is still a wonderful sound technician of unerring good taste, but something seems to go slack at the center of Never the Right Time. On prior standouts like “Numb,” from 2012’s Luxury Problems, he hardly even needed that one eventual kick drum to dissect Skidmore’s voice into a hypnotically seething groove. This music, by contrast, mainly wakes up when the drums do, as on the title track or the Junior Boys-like winner “Don’t Know How.” But even then, it tends to drift along in undissolved layers, and seems more linear than the spiraling burrows nested in Stott’s most inspired music. While the tracks have many pleasant modulations and evocative riffs, they seldom feel like they’d fall apart without our rapt attention holding them up.
Perhaps the consistency of Stott’s work since 2011 is itself the issue. He gained crossover success and minted his new identity when music was having a moody, damaged moment, not long after Burial, and in the thick of Demdike Stare and Salem. His dragging rhythms, interdimensional sound sense, and close-cut vocal samples put him on track with early James Blake, before the latter re-centered on the voice. But none of those references feel particularly lively these days. Maybe this record is just marked by that COVID feeling of time stretching out blankly, or maybe I am, but it’s also possible that Stott has painted himself into a dark corner, one he and we know too well, and it’s time to light a new torch.
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Back to home | 2021-04-20T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-04-20T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Modern Love | April 20, 2021 | 6 | 3a4f9e20-de35-424a-9b42-d8a13ac0401e | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | |
DāM-FunK’s latest is his most romantic and awestruck album. If his earlier work suggests a bleary-eyed, late-night haze, Above the Fray is a cloudless vista where you can see for miles. | DāM-FunK’s latest is his most romantic and awestruck album. If his earlier work suggests a bleary-eyed, late-night haze, Above the Fray is a cloudless vista where you can see for miles. | Dām Funk: Above the Fray | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dam-funk-above-the-fray/ | Above the Fray | In 2009, DāM-FunK released a track that doubled as a promise: “(My Funk Goes) On & On.” His sound stays true to a few fundamental building blocks: the hollow thwack of a vintage drum machine, sinuous synth bass, searing keyboard leads, jazz chords that hang in the air like Los Angeles smog. Those basic elements have spilled over into so many EPs, collabs, and side-projects that he seems to be scooping up fistfuls of the same stuff and preserving it in packages of different sizes and colors. So when he makes an album, it’s a big thing: His brilliant 2009 debut Toeachizown sprawled across five LPs, and 2015’s Invite the Light was a triple album blessed by his funk forebears—Junie Morrison, Snoop Dogg, Leon Sylvers III, and Jody Watley, to name just a few.
Compared to the aforementioned monsters, Above the Fray is a modest affair—48 minutes, half the length of Invite the Light. DāM-FunK eliminates his own small but self-assured voice from the palette, letting fake guitars and funky worms do the talking for him. And it doesn’t exactly introduce any new sounds, either; even the song titled “Evolution” sounds like a holdover from Toeachizown. Above the Fray is, in fact, a lot like his 2019 EP STFU II. Both peak with lengthy, climactic house odysseys: “Deeper” on STFU II, “Levitate From It All” here. And both explicitly advertise the music within as a respite from the madness of the world to which DāM-FunK, as a Californian, has a front-row seat.
But like a great ambient artist, DāM-FunK finds subtle ways to push forward without really pushing forward at all. Above the Fray puts less of an emphasis on chords and more on solos, which halfway through “Levitate From It All” seem to duel in midair like fighting dragons. The “distorted guitar” synth preset on “Allies” and “Get There” is such a richly colored sound, somehow triumphant and melancholy at once, that it competes with just about any tear-jerking classic-rock actual-guitar solo you care to name. And while “UHF” and “I Mean Well” cruise at the unhurried pace of a lowrider, the title track and “Begin Again” hurtle forward so relentlessly that the instruments sometimes need time to catch up. The overall impression is of his most romantic and awestruck album yet. If his earlier work suggests a bleary-eyed, late-night haze, Above The Fray is a cloudless vista where you can see for miles.
Even its comparatively short length has an advantage: Above the Fray plays like something that might’ve been made in the early ’80s, when vinyl was still king and more expansive formats like cassettes and CDs were just starting to make inroads. A 10-minute track like “Levitate From It All” feels more significant and proggy when it’s slotted alongside shorter tracks on a shorter album than if it’d been just a pit stop on a multi-hour odyssey. It’s easier here than it is on his EPs to see just how ambitious his vision is, how ardent his belief remains in the power of funk. It’s also easier to worry that he’s landed on a sound so foolproof he’s more interested in luxuriating in it than elaborating on it. There was another track on Toeachizown called “Searchin’ 4 Funk’s Future.” Is he still?
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-08-12T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-08-12T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Glydezone | August 12, 2021 | 7.7 | 3a527a61-9dfa-428d-bb4a-ce4299bf9429 | Daniel Bromfield | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-bromfield/ | |
Mike Cooper's led a rich, erstwhile life, and these reissues of a cluster of folk-rock records released in the 1970s highlight just one facet of this multitalented artist's career. | Mike Cooper's led a rich, erstwhile life, and these reissues of a cluster of folk-rock records released in the 1970s highlight just one facet of this multitalented artist's career. | Mike Cooper: Trout Steel/Places I Know/The Machine Gun Co. with Mike Cooper | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19483-mike-cooper-trout-steelplaces-i-knowthe-machine-gun-co-with-mike-cooper/ | Trout Steel/Places I Know/The Machine Gun Co. with Mike Cooper | The most famous line in Mike Cooper's biography is "turned down an offer to join the Stones." He did so in the early 1960s, while he was running a blues club in Reading; for this, he has earned some mild rock-history infamy, but given his trajectory since then it's unlikely he stuck around to observe it. Cooper had other things on his mind, and if he had joined the Stones, he might never have gotten to any of them: he's a collage artist, a painter, a world traveler, a sometime-music journalist, and a Hawaiian shirt enthusiast who will lecture you on the complicated post-colonial origins of the Hawaiian shirt. In Cooper's rich, erstwhile life, the Stones were bit players, a group of well-meaning British boys inviting him down a very dull-seeming road.
After he and the Stones parted ways, Cooper departed England for the south of Spain, spending time in Almuñécar, reading Borges and 12th-century and Muslim philosophy and formulating an approach for the solo records he began producing in 1969 for the Dawn label. Trout Steel, in 1970, was his second solo album and his first landmark statement; Places I Know and Machine Gun Co., his fourth and fifth, were released in 1971 and '72. Cooper intended the two to be released at once, as a double album, but in "a corporate decision that involved musical taste, economics, politics and men in suits with cigars and bad taste in ties," as he deadpanned to Aquarium Drunkard, they were released separately.
They eventually fell out of print as Cooper moved on, to collaborating with writers and painters to accompanying silent films with live performance. But Paradise of Bachelors, which has made a name for itself in the increasingly crowded reissue market, spent two years tracking down the masters. The resulting reissues are the first time the albums have been available on vinyl since their initial release.
It is surprising, upon revisiting these albums, to contemplate that Trout Steel arrived first and was followed by the other two. The ear, free of context, suggests the opposite story: Places, in particular, is a more modest, songful affair than Trout Steel, which has the gracefully exhaled quality of a master statement. The records all tell various angles of the same story, however; Cooper began in British folk alongside Bert Jansch and Michael Chapman, strayed into country blues, and then veered further afield into free jazz when he became aware of Pharoah Sanders and Ornette Coleman. The wide-open music he makes here wants to let everything in: improv, folk-rock, blues, chamber pop. His high, rangy voice and dexterous, quietly brilliant guitar are the maypole that everything else twists around.
Cooper was driven by a firm theory in all of his explorations—namely, that country blues and free jazz are both "microtonal" forms that closely mimic the human voice and can naturally be combined that way. But as granular and egg-headed as that sounds, there is nothing even faintly theoretical about the music. The warmth of folk-rock is palpable throughout all three albums, even when observable traces of folk-rock have dissipated from the music. Cooper's tone is tender, grateful, wry, bewildered: "All these things are mine and much more," goes the refrain of Places I Know's "Broken Bridges". "And nothing that I’m sayin' seems to wanna make you leave," he marvels on "Night Journey", a song that cribs directly from Bob Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry". "You don't know how she comes to me from time to time," he sings on "Time to Time", a gently love-drunk ballad.
Those songs, all from Places I Know, were written as exercises in imitation, tributes to Cooper's colleagues. They clear the path for the flights of imagination on Trout Steel and Machine Gun Co., in which Cooper's ensemble engages in flexible bursts of activity that abandon pop-song structure before relaxing back into it. Saxophonist Geoff Hawkins, standup bassist Harry Miller, and a coterie of other musicians wander in and out of the margins, forming the core of a band that could do anything and go anywhere while preserving the fluid, good-natured energy of Cooper's music. "I've Got Mine" wanders through 11 hushed minutes, the sung verse alternating with extended jamming like honey running from a spoon.
There are mildly abrasive moments—the spittle-flecked wailing of free saxophone on Machine Gun Co.'s "The Singing Tree", for instance, or the horns on "Goodbye Blues, Goodbye", which break down like a St. Louis horn ensemble being dispersed by an angry traffic cop. But the albums mostly move in long, heaving sighs—long, free-flowing sections where Cooper plays in open tunings and clusters of instruments take their turns speaking to each other around him. In a way, he's like Van Dyke Parks; equally in love with traditions and in thrall to eccentricity, someone whose solo records build an alternate set of rules that their maker has no intention of spelling out for you.
"Improvisation is what I do—full stop. I am not interested in anything else," Cooper told video artist and sometime collaborator Grayson Cooke. "Improvisation is the reason to play music as far as I am concerned." On paper, this has a forbiddingly purist ring to it, a pronouncement from a high temple, but Mike Cooper makes music in a shack with the doors and windows open; for him improvisation is an allowance of all possibilities. He has name-checked Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, and you can hear its liquid ease coursing through every moment, while Cooper remains a calmly rooted spot in the center. | 2014-06-27T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2014-06-27T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Experimental | null | June 27, 2014 | 8.6 | 3a57f49e-8f73-480d-bc54-3c26804cdeac | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | null |
Ten months after the release of Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective return with an EP that finds them still on a creative roll. | Ten months after the release of Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective return with an EP that finds them still on a creative roll. | Animal Collective: Fall Be Kind EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13739-fall-be-kind-ep/ | Fall Be Kind EP | The first song on Fall Be Kind, Animal Collective's new five-song EP, is called "Graze", and it starts with a colorful swirl of Disneyfied strings as Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare) sings teasing lines like "Let me begin" and "Let light in" and "Some ideas are brewing." The song seems to be partly about the struggle of creation-- grazing on the imagination, maybe-- and then Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) comes in with his thick, honeyed voice to sing a bridge that seems a distant cousin of the Beach Boys' "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)". There's tension in this opening section; the words and music suggest a sticking point, something that needs to be punctured before the song (and ideas) can really flow. And then it happens, the break, but in an unexpected way: a peppy flute melody materializes and the rhythm becomes a kind of stomp that seems designed to inspire folk dancing, while Portner and Lennox pick up the tempo and start singing rounds: "Why do you have to go?/ Why do you have to go?"
The first time through, hearing "Graze" explode into this weird sing-along RenFaire jig is a bit of a shock. It sounds very far from what we imagine a hip, frequently name-checked indie band with abrasive experimental roots to sound like. And their performance of it is certainly not tongue-in-cheek: They sound joyful, and they're not smirking. (I'm not sure they're capable of that particular expression, to be honest.) And thus it becomes clear that Animal Collective, despite having become a certain kind of alt touchstone in 2009, doesn't much care about conventional notions of cool. If they want to get dorky and put in a section that asks you to bust out the medieval garb and hop around on one leg for a minute, they'll do it. And maybe they'll put this song in the lead spot on an EP that follows up the biggest and most successful record of their career. All this went through my mind before finding out, after reading Fall Be Kind's credits, that the flute sample comes courtesy of an artist whose name became a punchline after an endless run of goofy TV spots advertising his music: Zamfir, the Master of the Pan Flute. Cool? These guys aren't sweating it.
Like their last three EPs of new material, Fall Be Kind exists in the orbit of the full-length that preceded it but it isn't defined by it. It's got songs written before and during the creation of Merriweather Post Pavilion, but they're songs that didn't fit that record for one reason or another. Given its fragmented genesis, it's surprising how listenable and of-a-piece Fall Be Kind is. "Graze" flows directly into "What Would I Want? Sky", a song that samples Grateful Dead's "Unbroken Chain" and is easily among the most warm, likeable, and melodic tracks Animal Collective have recorded. It refracts Aquarian optimism through a modern sense of uncertainty, undercutting the loop's jovial lilt with a tricky structure and lyrics that seem confused about what will happen next. "Sky" contains the first officially licensed sample of the Dead, and it's the best marketing move the band's organization has made since they greenlighted Cherry Garcia. It's not easy to take a cut-up voice and make it the centerpiece of a tune, and it's harder still to sing along with it in a way that doesn't sound forced. But "What Would I Want? Sky" sounds as natural as something that grew out of the earth.
The final three songs are more abstract and dreamy. "Bleed" feels like an interlude, something the band might have put on an album five years ago. It's a shifting drone, with Portner and Lennox's treated voices singing one simple refrain. It doesn't develop or do much, but it's not supposed to. Instead, it serves as a bridge to the EP's darker second half, which kicks off with "On a Highway". Something like the A.C. version of Bob Seger's "Turn the Page", "On a Highway" is a lonesome tour lament. Over a throbbing, dubby background, which is punctuated by thwacks of hand drums that slowly rise in the mix, Portner offers a series of scenes glimpsed out the window of a van, and he gets unusually personal, even referencing his bandmate directly ("Sick of too much reading/ Jealous of Noah's dreaming/ Can't help my brain from thinking"). Lennox's closing "I Think I Can" is the one song here that takes a few listens to sink in. It's longer (a touch over seven minutes), with busier production (sequenced piano notes, synth pulses, percussion, and voices flying back and forth between the speakers) and a more circular melody, but the final two minutes provide a terrific payoff to the opening clatter, with Lennox repeating the title's affirmation in a quick descending pattern as the song finally opens up.
At 27 minutes, Fall Be Kind is short enough to invite another play once "I Think I Can" fades out, which means a return to that striking second half of "Graze". When a band tries something that shouldn't work and brings it off, it's a sign of confidence. Animal Collective's focus and general disinterest in looking over their shoulders obviously makes what they're doing that much more appealing. But the most interesting thing about them at this point may be that, despite all the great music they've been making the past few years, it's not hard to imagine them failing. They've honed their craft and become very good at what they do, but there still seems to be a desire to go to unfamiliar realms, and it's possible that wherever they head next will turn out to be place they don't inhabit as easily. There's still a sense of gamble with Animal Collective, nothing is fixed-- and that's exactly what makes them an especially exciting band. | 2009-11-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2009-11-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Domino | November 25, 2009 | 8.9 | 3a5b1574-6646-4618-84b5-fb3e1a7f4455 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
On this 5-disc musical memoir, Stephin Merritt has penned a song for each of the first 50 years of his life. His writing suggests that our deepest wisdom can be located in our most personal thoughts. | On this 5-disc musical memoir, Stephin Merritt has penned a song for each of the first 50 years of his life. His writing suggests that our deepest wisdom can be located in our most personal thoughts. | The Magnetic Fields: 50 Song Memoir | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22930-50-song-memoir/ | 50 Song Memoir | Following his late-1990s triumph 69 Love Songs, Stephin Merritt began cannily organizing his Magnetic Fields songs. There was 2004’s alphabetic i, followed by the genre filters of 2008’s Distortion and 2009’s Realism. In 2012, Merritt took on a slightly defeatist project—“the concept is there is no concept!”—with Love at the Bottom of the Sea, an album whose lack of thematic unity resulted in a disappointingly uneven listen. Now, the Magnetic Fields return with a record that, like 69 Love Songs, forces Merritt to get focused and inspired. 50 Song Memoir is easily the best gimmick Merritt’s stumbled upon since the turn of the century.
Arranged chronologically with a song for each of the first 50 years of Merritt’s life, 50 Song Memoir is a conceptually satisfying work, spanning five discs and two-and-a-half hours without feeling repetitive or samey. If there’s one thing Merritt has learned over his three decades as a songwriter—besides how to seamlessly insert limericks into songs—it’s how to pace himself on record, keeping his quasi-showtunes from becoming cloying, his jokier ones from turning precious, and his ballads from sounding melodramatic.
Of course, for anyone turned off by the idea of Merritt—an escapist pop descendent of Bacharach and Sondheim—getting all Benji on us, you will be relieved to know that the story of his life sounds a lot like a Magnetic Fields album, and a very good one at that. There are some deeply revealing moments here. The opening songs, in particular, pinpoint the origins of Merritt’s career-spanning themes of placelessness and unrequited love—how they began with his parents’ wanderlust and a childhood cat, respectively. But 50 Song Memoir often takes a less literal route through Merritt’s life. “’76 Hustle 76” illustrates its time period by mimicking the then-inescapable sound of disco. Judy Garland’s death gets its own song, as does the rise of synthesizer music in the early ’80s. For a songwriter who once formulated an entire record around the first-person pronoun, 50 Song Memoir is more selfless than its title indicates. Here, Merritt seems more interested in exploring the moments that mark time—where we’ve lived, who we’ve loved and lost—than tracing his own particular narrative.
As a result, 50 Song Memoir is an immersive, incisive listen, despite its avoidance of traditionally memoiristic details (we never, for example, learn the names of Merritt’s parents, whether he has siblings, what it was like trying to follow-up a breakthrough album, etc). The themes that Merritt addresses over multiple songs become the album’s guiding lights. “All the young dudes of 25/Caught diseases, few survived,” he sings in “’90 Dreaming in Tetris,” before explaining, “We expected nuclear war/What should we take precautions for?” The AIDS crisis influences many of these songs, adding an ominous shadow to the darker tracks and a mournful tone to the love songs.
There’s something jarring about Merritt singing so directly about his fears—even his bleakest work used to come bundled with the naivety of a hopeless romantic. It helps that most of the album sits squarely in Merritt’s musical comfort zones. Like Love at the Bottom of the Sea, 50 Song Memoir draws inspiration from the sounds of each of his records, from the psychedelic synth pop of Holiday to the indie-film-trailer twee of i, even making room for genre exercises in dance music (his Future Bible Heroes records) and surf-rock (Distortion).
By the album’s end, though, the songs begin to lack the cultural context that distinguished the earlier ones, and 50 Song Memoir borders on morphing into just Several More Love Songs. But among these sit some of his finest tracks. “I guess there’d be other fish in the sea/But I don’t want fishes and you don’t want me,” he sings in the exquisite “’05 Never Again.” It’s the exact kind of song that would turn to putty in the hands of a lesser writer, but Merritt knows how to wring it for emotional resonance. In fact, its place near the end of the album almost signals—more than the impact of the breakup—his growing mastery as a songwriter. It suggests that our deepest wisdom can be located in our most personal thoughts. “I wish I had something better to do,” he sings, “But even my own clothes remind me of you.”
Just one song later, Merritt gets a little too specific, showing what the album might have been if he took its title more seriously. In “’06 ‘Quotes,’” Merritt dredges up an old controversy that involved several music critics accusing him of racism. The subject matter has him sounding slightly bitter and self-righteous, but even worse, it simply doesn’t make for a good Magnetic Fields song. Merritt’s work has always been less confessional and more “Things Fitting Perfectly Into Other Things”: you listen to his songs and marvel at how effortlessly he packs his thoughts into verse, one rhyme parlaying into the next. The best of 50 Song Memoir plays to his gifts (“From the time I began, I was mostly vegan,” he boasts in an early song), but with an extra layer of urgency, tied to the task of representing an entire year in a tightly structured pop song. “I am the least autobiographical person you are likely to meet,” Merritt admitted with typically humdrum candor in an interview about the album, “I will probably not write any more true songs after this than I did before.” He’s likely already dreaming up his next project—putting the past behind him and moving on, his catalog 50 songs richer as a result. | 2017-03-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-03-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Nonesuch | March 6, 2017 | 7.4 | 3a5ed387-d0ce-48f6-8a05-83b6535548cb | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | null |
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