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The follow-up to Renaissance is a powerful and ambitious country album cast in the singular mold of Beyoncé. She asserts her rightful place in the genre as only a pop star of her incredible talent and influence can do. | The follow-up to Renaissance is a powerful and ambitious country album cast in the singular mold of Beyoncé. She asserts her rightful place in the genre as only a pop star of her incredible talent and influence can do. | Beyoncé: Cowboy Carter | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/beyonce-cowboy-carter/ | Cowboy Carter | If Lemonade taught us anything, it’s that you do not fuck with Beyoncé. Her 2016 opus was her seething response to being wronged, giving us the indelible image of a smiling woman in a yellow dress carrying a baseball bat and the enduring specter of Becky and her good hair. We already know what happens when something meddles with her peace—she puts her whole being into righting the wrongs, enacting her revenge with a twinkle in her eye, extra gumption in her voice, and ice in her veins. There’s a particular edge when one of the world’s biggest music superstars has a chip on her shoulder. This doesn’t often occur—of late, Beyoncé has been acting as a beatific Mother in every way—but when it does, boy howdy, look out.
Lemonade, as it happened, may have helped plant the seed for Cowboy Carter, which was “born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed… and it was very clear that I wasn’t.” It seems she is referring to her 2016 appearance at the Country Music Association Awards, in which she performed Lemonade’s Texas country triumph “Daddy Lessons” with the Chicks, who were also once exiled by the entire country music apparatus. As they played the song and after it ended, Beyoncé was met with reactions that ranged from cool sneers to racist vitriol, both in the crowd and online.
At that moment, it was clear that even Beyoncé’s Texas bona fides wouldn’t protect her from the longstanding racism and sexism that still existed in the country mainstream, despite Black musicians creating the spark of country music and Black Americans creating the foundations of the country itself. “Because of that experience,” she wrote, “I did a deeper dive into the history of country music and studied our rich musical archive… the criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me.” The country music establishment got Beyoncé doing homework. The guns they are a-blazin’.
But, as Beyoncé has clarified, Cowboy Carter—or Act II, the follow-up to the 2022 dance album Renaissance—is not a country album. Rather, Beyoncé has ventured into Louisiana Cajun country, the rivers of Alabama, the streets of Memphis, the great Oklahoma plains, and within her memories of multiracial Texas rodeos to create yet another world in her image. It’s partly rooted in Western tropes but with a pointed look toward the America that’s often erased on the CMAs stage—and in the public school history books. The album’s press release reminds us that the etymology of the word “cowboy,” which comes from the Spanish “vaquero,” derives in part from white ranchers calling their white employees “cowhands,” and their Black employees the diminutive “cowboy.” By using country as a starting point for experimentation and recalling genre-porous artists like Ray Charles, Candi Staton, Charley Pride, and the Pointer Sisters, Cowboy Carter asserts Beyoncé’s place in this long legacy while showcasing the ever-expanding reaches of her vocal prowess.
On Cowboy Carter, Club Renaissance is swapped out for KNTRY Radio Texas, an AM station hosted by an ever-hazy Willie Nelson. Here she re-contextualizes roots music—Americana, folk, country—for a contemporary moment, reminding listeners that Black artists were the genesis of these forms and never stopped playing them, despite what Hollywood or Nashville might have on offer. Even before the album dropped, the associated visuals reignited a dialogue about Black country’s legacy that started in 2018 with the success of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” and Dallas culture critic Bri Malandro’s Yee Haw Agenda. With Beyoncé as conduit, she’s made these historical connections fun, though no one would accuse her of edutainment—she’s performed at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo more than once. Nor is Cowboy Carter an explicit fuck you to those who rejected her back in 2016, but it’s a show-and-prove that she knows better, that she belonged on that stage, and so do all the Black country and rock musicians she’s brought along to Carter Ranch. Well—the album’s “rodeo chitlin’ circuit” conceit, which refers to the venues that would allow Black musicians to perform in the segregated South, may be an explicit fuck you.
Cowboy Carter is also a flex, with Beyoncé proffering what may be one of the most expensive albums ever made in terms of royalties—to my ear she’ll be cutting checks to Dolly, Chuck Berry, Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Patsy Cline, Mickey and Sylvia, and Hank Cochran, all of whose songs are interpolated or covered here. Cowboy Carter plays out like a classic country murder ballad, the wronged townsgal returning to her dusty outpost to pop off her vengeance—“Your bloodstains on my custom coutures,” as she sings in “Daughter.” The concept is thrilling, though it must be underlined that in the grand scheme of things, Beyoncé is still a megastar with a billion in the bank as she kicks through the swinging saloon doors. She may be bringing a small posse of lesser-known artists with her, but as she noted, this is more about “challenging” herself, not an altruistic endeavor. She is one of the only musicians in the world who can force the hand of her haters by sheer will and ubiquity; the country establishment will have to hear her whether they like it or not, and that seems to be enough.
Cowboy Carter is equally a text and a performance, but let’s first talk about the text. Beyoncé rides in on a galloping horse delightfully named Chardonneigh, wearing a latex flip on a rodeo queen’s regalia (though we’ll leave the physics of such a pose to the trick riders), and carrying a partially visible American flag into album opener “Ameriican Requiem,” on which she deploys Tina Turner power-rasping toward the foundation of the American project. “Can you hear me, or do you fear me?” she wails, indicting the hypocrisy of a country built on freedom by enslaved people before planting her own flag in it—she’s American, too.
The message is underscored with an affecting cover of the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” a folk song Paul McCartney wrote in part as a response to seeing the violence and hatred levied at the Little Rock Nine—nine Black teenagers attempting to attend high school in Arkansas after Brown v. Board of Education made school segregation illegal. She’s joined in its hopeful lullaby by a coterie of talented Black women making country music—Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, and Tiera Kennedy of “Jesus, My Mama, My Therapist” fame—and elsewhere, extends her influence to Virginia country hip-hop musician Shaboozey (“Spaghettii,” “Sweet ★ Honey ★ Buckiin’”) and the Shreveport artist Willie Jones on “Just for Fun.” The latter song, a gospel-inflected meditation on journeying through your troubles, moves through piano, acoustic guitar, strings, and a percussive stomp that mimics a horse gallop, just one example of the way Cowboy Carter has largely set aside the synths of Renaissance for a more organic, live-to-tape feel of capturing a band in a very nice studio.
Rhiannon Giddens’ banjo and viola on “Texas Hold ’Em” initially set the tone for Cowboy Carter when it was released earlier this year, but there’s not much else resembling contemporary country on the album. Instead, Beyoncé focuses on American folk music and the golden era of country, with cosigns from legends who forged their legacies in the 1960s and ’70s: Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and most notably Linda Martell, the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry. “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?” Martell opens in a voice-over on “Spaghettii.” “In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined.”
To prove the point, Beyoncé ushers in another horse-gallop trap beat and raps about her shooters, though Martell’s argument might be better exemplified on “Daughter,” a cowgirl revenge track that escalates, incredibly, into Beyoncé belting a stanza from the 18th-century aria “Caro Mio Ben”—in Italian, no less. Or maybe on “Sweet ★ Honey ★ Buckiin’,” where Cline’s classic “I Fall to Pieces” gets the Jersey club treatment while Beyoncé does “body rolls at the rodeo.” “My Rose” alternately recalls baroque vocal arrangements, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and ’60s psychedelia on a song about mother-love; “Desert Eagle” is an unlikely slap-bass strip-club anthem. Or, even more explicitly, “Riiverdance,” which interpolates finger-picked bluegrass guitar with a house piano and four-on-the-floor percussion that may be provided by Beyoncé’s nails, Dolly-and-Patti, “9 to 5” style. It’s as though the Renaissance dancers took a detour through Alabama for a little choreo by the Coosa before dipping back to the club.
Despite drawing from the kitsch and fun of ’70s and ’80s country music, Cowboy Carter has an air of melancholy to it, a quality that reverberates through the scores of songs in minor keys about loneliness on the range. But there’s also a musical theatricality, as when Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus “Leather and Lace” themselves across outlaw country on the ride-or-die track “II Most Wanted.” Or on the phenomenal “Ya Ya,” where the electrified live band is in funky mule mode while Bey kicks, shimmies, snaps, and twerks her way through a working person’s lifetime of bullshit. “Whole lotta red in that white and blue… History can’t be erased,” she belts, before summoning the racial wage gap and predatory mortgage company Fannie Mae alongside a sample from Chuck Berry, country and rock’n’roll creator. The reprieve, as with Renaissance, is to dance out the pain and “keep my Bible on the dash.” They’re not permanent solutions, but at least she’ll make sure you’ll have a good time doing it.
The gutbucket sound of the live instrumentation is unique for Beyoncé, but the flexibility of her voice remains unbelievable. On tracks like “Protector” and “Daughter,” her high notes occasionally modulate down like a slide guitar, a breathy technique that’s distinctly country, but only sounds natural when a vocalist is in total control, as Beyoncé always is. The looseness of the acoustic instruments suits her, particularly when she lets herself be languid in the humidity of a song like “Alliigator Tears,” or sings in her lowest register on “Just for Fun.” She doesn’t have to backflip over a horse for the emotion to resonate.
Beyoncé’s persona has become American iconography, and her magnitude tends to cast a shadow over everything before her, no matter the medium. The side effect of this is that some of Cowboy Carter’s songs feel small and ill-suited for Beyoncé’s stature. “Levii’s Jeans,” her branded duet with Post Malone, is a pale attempt at contemporary country that has already been used in a marketing stunt; the shades of Fleetwood Mac on “Bodyguard” feel stock for an album of Cowboy Carter’s aspirations. On the much-ballyhooed “Jolene” cover, requested and cosigned by Dolly herself, Bey transforms its begging into a warning, re-concentrating the power into her own hands (and christening herself a “Creole banjee bitch from Louisiane,” another thread between Acts I and II). “Jolene” is also one of the most-covered songs in history, a choice that requires confidence that it will, at least in those three minutes, belong to you. Like her version of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” at the end of Renaissance, “Jolene” remains on loan.
But Cowboy Carter is another volume in Beyoncé’s years-long project to surface and pay tribute to Black culture, the way she spotlighted the queer dance underground in Renaissance and HBCUs in Homecoming. It’s still wild that she can provoke this type of dialogue on such a massive scale; for weeks both social and regular media have been locked into conversations about the history of Black country musicians, a sort of correcting the American musical canon. On the gospel album closer “Amen,” a companion to “Ameriican Requiem,” she alludes to the fact that the United States was built by enslaved Black people—“The statues they made were beautiful/But they were lies of stone”—and circles back to the inciting incident of Cowboy Carter: that what she experienced at the CMAs is part of an America that, you may have heard, has a problem. Though lyrics like “Can we stand for something?” might be vague, her message is quite clear. Beyoncé, too, is an American, so do-si-do on that. | 2024-04-01T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2024-04-01T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country / Pop/R&B | Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia | April 1, 2024 | 8.4 | 3a633854-9364-41db-ae64-1277d8629483 | Julianne Escobedo Shepherd | https://pitchfork.com/staff/julianne-escobedo shepherd/ | |
Two Latin-trap stars join forces for a slickly produced and familiar-sounding Watch the Throne-style joint album. | Two Latin-trap stars join forces for a slickly produced and familiar-sounding Watch the Throne-style joint album. | Anuel AA / Ozuna: Los Dioses | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/anuel-ozuna-los-dioses/ | Los Dioses | From a business perspective, Ozuna and Anuel AA represent the vanguard of the 21st century artist-driven model. Each artist has their own label—and owns their master recordings—and has marketing and distribution deals with major-label reach. They frequently work with peers, and carefully choose English-language collaborators to expand their audiences. Growing up at the same time in different parts of San Juan, they entered the music industry from different angles but remained friends, their paths occasionally crossing as they racked up views on YouTube and dominated the charts.
So their first collaborative LP Los Dioses makes a lot of sense on paper. Combining star power in service of world domination is a tried-and-true recipe for success (Watch the Throne, Oasis), and their goals seem to dovetail quite nicely. Anuel has spent the past two years since his release from prison staking out mainstream territory with the Shaggy riddim-riding “China” and his duet “Secreto” with the Colombian singer (and current novia) Karol G; a collaborative LP with one of Latin music’s biggest stars is the next logical step to commercial success. And while Ozuna has been one of the most bankable artists of the last few years, his last album Nibiru was disappointingly saccharine, making the prospect of rubbing up against Anuel’s grit even more appealing, even if the latter rapper has been forced to apologize for bigotry in his lyrics.
And it works, with some caveats. The title track’s beat is a fresh reminder of the flavor and syncopation that Latin artists and producers can bring to trap. “RD” captures this feeling too, even if the lyrics are disappointingly focused on sex tourism. And the drill beat on “Maria” knocks, but it feels a bit like cosplay when contrasted with actual drill rappers like Sie7etr3. It might not break any new ground, but the A-level production is consistently excellent.
Across Los Dioses’ 12 tracks, Anuel and Ozuna dabble in several branches of the musica urbana family tree, with a well-sequenced mix of trap, drill (“Maria”), R&B ballads (“Perfecto”), and reggaetón. “Perreo” is a relatively straightforward but undeniably propulsive dancefloor anthem. They even dabble in the increasingly popular Mexican folk revival on “Municiones”—yet more evidence of the rising influence of Natanael Cano’s Trap Tumbado movement. It’s slickly produced, with a familiar roster of beatmakers (Tainy, DJ Luian, Subelo Neo, Mambo Kingz) responsible for some of Bad Bunny’s biggest hits.
But Los Dioses’ lyrical concepts are somewhat tired, packed with mostly boring tropes about disposable women, expensive cars and jewelry, and smoking weed. And Ozuna’s pitch on “Perfecto”—that he’s kind of a bastard, but he won’t apologize so don’t hate him—is at once baffling and impressively brazen. In spite of this, the songs are somewhat redeemed by the vocal performances. These are two artists that understand the unique timbre of their voices—the sweet softness of Ozuna’s croon, the gruff rumble of Anuel’s growl—and how they play off of each other. It’s especially prevalent when they harmonize on hooks (“100”), each occupying their own register, with a combined impact neither could deliver on their own.
Los Dioses is a perfectly serviceable—enjoyable, even—LP. But in a space defined by artists riffing on established genres, the ones that distinguish themselves add new flavor and personality with each release. And after Bad Bunny’s monumental 2020 obliterated the boundaries of both what urbano sounds like and how its stars engage with their audience, making an impact requires more than doubling down on big-name collaborations. While Ozuna and Anuel remain some of Spanish-language music’s biggest stars, Los Dioses will do nothing to prevent them from being eclipsed.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-01-29T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-01-29T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Real Hasta La Muerte / Aura Music | January 29, 2021 | 6.9 | 3a661593-1c70-4fdb-8baa-c6dedc93e78b | Matthew Ismael Ruiz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ismael ruiz/ | |
The Scottish band’s excellent third album features some of their darkest and most detailed songs. Wholly beautiful and delicate, it was Stuart Murdoch’s first reluctant step into the spotlight. | The Scottish band’s excellent third album features some of their darkest and most detailed songs. Wholly beautiful and delicate, it was Stuart Murdoch’s first reluctant step into the spotlight. | Belle and Sebastian: The Boy With the Arab Strap | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/belle-and-sebastian-the-boy-with-the-arab-strap/ | The Boy With the Arab Strap | Stuart Murdoch spent the heart of his 20s suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, engaging his intellect with music, film, and literature while daydreaming about being in a band. Indoors and alone for seven years from the end of the ’80s into the early ’90s in his native Scotland, he found comfort in piano and guitar and began to shape delicate character studies and cultural references into song. By the time he recovered enough to re-engage with the world, he had amassed a cache of evocative songs, often set in childhood or schoolyard settings where he was found absent. This is Belle and Sebastian’s second-most-well-known origin story, but it’s the key to understanding why one of the most gifted songwriters of his generation decided that he wanted to be an ensemble player rather than a star.
Most famously, the group itself started in a Scottish university music business classroom, when a ramshackle collection of friends and acquaintances conspired to flesh out and record a backlog of Murdoch’s songs for a class project which they would call Tigermilk. Sixteen months later, Murdoch’s treasure trove had fueled another album, If You’re Feeling Sinister, and three more EPs. This early work was gossamer and beautiful, coaxing and charming listeners at a time when the major strains of ’90s indie and alternative music—Britpop, grunge, and alternative rock—were either completing their transformations into leaden knuckle-dragging or confusing rote quirk for real charm. Murdoch’s songs were instead a welcome embrace of classicism and craft, recalling ’60s pop and homespun ’80s indie but locating something more intimate than either.
By the time of their third album, 1998’s The Boy With the Arab Strap, Belle and Sebastian truly became a full band, kicking off what would be a tumultuous half-decade or so transforming from a vehicle for Murdoch’s voice to something more democratic and professional. True to Murdoch’s vision of a gang of musicians, four different songwriters and voices appeared on The Boy With the Arab Strap, creating a patchwork effort that at the time frustrated a portion of their audience, disappointed that after a year without any new Murdoch compositions, he had given one-third of this album to other songwriters. Only one song on the album dated back to Murdoch’s long-suffering early days—”Sleep the Clock Around” naturally; on Arab Strap, Murdoch’s characters finally grew up and into adulthood. Fatalism and missed opportunities color the record, with Murdoch grappling with his quick ride from bedridden isolation to notoriety. Mortality even rears its head: “He had a stroke at the age of 24/It could have been a brilliant career,” Murdoch sings on the record’s opening line. Three songs later, on “Ease Your Feet in the Sea,” Murdoch is reflecting on a friend’s suicide.
As a live act, they were still trying just to put one foot in front the other, but the band’s arrangements also began to demonstrate true ensemble playing, taking on more lived-in qualities and highlighted by the addition of Chris Geddes’ Fender Rhodes and his love of Northern soul. Bagpipes close the exquisite “Sleep the Clock Around” and bassist Stuart David’s sluggish story song “A Spaceboy Dream” is redeemed by its jazz-exotica outro and, in particular, the contrast it provides to the punch and force of the organ-led stomp of “Dirty Dream #2.”
Arab Strap and its follow-up, 2000’s Fold Your Hand Child, You Walk Like A Peasant, feature some of Murdoch’s darkest songwriting, but the band itself was nevertheless tagged heavily with the lighthearted “twee” tag—in large part due to the wan vocals of other three songwriters. On top of David’s contribution came cellist Isobel Campbell’s whispered and lovely “Is It Wicked Not to Care?” and a pair of meta-indie narratives from guitarist Stevie Jackson—one documenting a missed opportunity to meet a legendary record executive and one about a day out with an American fanzine writer. Oddly then for many new listeners, their introductions to the band were these second-stage songs. To the uninitiated, it was these tracks that crystallized the idea that B&S were effete and too precious, a reaction most clearly articulated by Jack Black’s acerbic record store clerk Barry in High Fidelity, whose biting reaction to hearing a few seconds of the album was that it was “sad bastard music” that “sucks ass.” (Pitchfork’s original pan came to similar conclusions.)
The band started out as literal students of music and this dialogue with the past is baked into what they do. Soon, though, it would become outmoded. Arab Strap came out the year before Napster was developed, just before a golden age of deep discovery in which the initial mind-blowing concept that all music was now effectively available. This threw the experience of being a Belle and Sebastian fan into stark relief. To date, the band had been more discussed than heard, a secret once passed on primitive message boards and dubbed cassettes. Early records were difficult to find in the U.S. in particular and Tigermilk, restricted at the time to 1,000 vinyl copies, became in effect the last sought-after newly released album that was impossible to hear until Martin Shkreli wrote a seven-figure check to the Wu-Tang Clan.
Most egregious—or delightful depending on your opinion of the band—was that the members refused to do interviews, letting the music do the speaking for them. It takes an almost perverse amount of effort for an eight-piece band to feel reclusive, but the sense of anonymity magnified the intensity of praise around them. The mystery fueled the cult-like following that wound up chasing them into the spotlight by voting them Best Newcomer at the 1999 Brit Awards over prohibitive favorite Steps. (If you wanted a clear idea of who was on the internet in 1999, it’s this: The indie band beat the teen pop band in a nationwide popularity contest.)
Stuart Murdoch was in some ways the last old-school indie star. The late ’90s featured a group of talented, fringe singer-songwriters—Elliott Smith, Cat Power, Stephin Merritt, Will Oldham—but Murdoch still felt like he was crafting his own world with its own internal logic. The sound of Arab Strap is a little slipstream in which the more precious end of Gen X indiedom thrived, a petri dish that would eventually spawn everything from the core Etsy aesthetic to sensitive-couple films like (500) Days of Summer. (Summer Finn’s yearbook quote—”Color my life with the chaos of trouble”—is from the title track and highlight of Arab Strap.) This record arrived at a turning point for the band and in many ways the group became to be defined by it. The quiet confidence of songs such as “The Rollercoaster Ride” or “Ease Your Feet in the Sea” would eventually be discarded for more overt flourishes and the happy-clappy, feel-good pop of later Belle and Sebastian albums. This is, instead, the sound of a very reluctant step into the spotlight.
The central truth of music in the digital era is that while it’s easier than ever to locate an audience, it’s more difficult to maintain one, and more difficult still to foster an intensity of admiration from a fanbase if they don’t have to put in the effort to seek out and experience shared secrets such as an indie band with difficult-to-find records. It’s a type of IRL-only fanaticism that the social media era doesn’t allow for; the economy of likes is a volume-play and the slot machine of swiping up or down your feed demands scannable content and recognizable names. Waving your arms frantically to get people to pay attention to your private obsessions isn’t a game with many rewards, let alone one that many people play. There aren’t hot takes about nobodies. The Boy With the Arab Strap is one of the more context-laden records of its era but it doesn’t suffer from the lack of noise around it, and in many ways is better off without it. The stakes of having to be a proper band clearly weighed on Murdoch and his cohorts in subsequent years and much of the music the group made between Arab Strap and 2003’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress sounds oddly labored. Here they sound like promise and hope; a gang of misfits so comfortable being out of step with the world that they created their own. | 2018-02-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-02-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Jeepster | February 18, 2018 | 8.5 | 3a6b8e7a-1cd0-4710-8960-f762fa1b0a20 | Scott Plagenhoef | https://pitchfork.com/staff/scott-plagenhoef/ | |
Tim Kasher's post-emo band tackles topics both deep and mundane on its latest Saddle Creek release. | Tim Kasher's post-emo band tackles topics both deep and mundane on its latest Saddle Creek release. | Cursive: Happy Hollow | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9323-happy-hollow/ | Happy Hollow | Wait, people actually care about lyrics? Without them we couldn't have the same powerful, personal connections with people who make songs? Okay, fine. Words are important. But screams are better. That's something Cursive frontman Tim Kasher seemed to understand a decade ago, when he ripped out his heart, sewed it on his sleeve, and called it Such Blinding Stars for the Starving Eyes. But around Y2K, a funny thing happened-- he seemed to decide he'd rather his lyrics be understood than his voice be heard.
The result of that millennial crisis was Domestica, Cursive's first concept album, which told of the messy decline of a relationship in stanzas even the tinnitus-stricken could discern. Kasher still screamed plenty, but mixed in were plain-English zingers like, "The night has fallen down the staircase/ And I, for one, have felt its bruises." By the time The Ugly Organ dropped in 2003, even his throatiest bray had taken on tone.
For the scream-deprived, the band last year offered The Difference Between Houses and Homes, a career-spanning compendium of B-sides and rarities that had a whiff of posthumousness to it. Now Happy Hollow confirms the death: Cursive's salad days are over. They're officially a words band, more interested in meaning than feeling. And they're celebrating by tackling some big topics.
Happy Hollow is simultaneously Cursive's most and least worldly album yet, with songs encompassing both infinite realms (the universal "Big Bang") and mundane ones (suburban lead single "Dorothy at Forty"). All the while, Kasher mixes messages and metaphors, bitching far too much for his own good.
The first seven songs kill, but the album's second half drags on longer than a Def Jam debut. Even so, there's still stuff to dig. The single is a surging mass of vitriol- and trumpet-packed orchestral emo, while "Bad Sects" is one of the best American Football songs never written. The latter lays down a slow, stargazing groove while Kasher unveils a feathery, unexpected falsetto. It also features the album's consummate lyrics, accessing the spiritual through the quotidian: "A new recruit, 25 years old/ He joined the habit with a chip on his shoulder/ Some nights he'd proclaim his preference/ But only flat-back drunk on a bottle of Jameson."
Tales of lost faith permeate the album. "This is all we are, we simply exist," sings Kasher by way of an introduction on "Opening the Hymnal/Babies", though it's unclear at first whether the line constitutes an apostasy or just an observation. If you ask the brassy "Big Bang" it's the former: "In a world of entropy, why can't we just simply be," goes the song's pivotal line, kicks underlining each word. On "Dorothy at Forty", a meditation on hypocrisy in picket-fence America that uses The Wizard of Oz as an allegory, Kasher sings, "Dreamers never live, only dream of it." His storytelling may have grown more abstract since Domestica, but his existential observations have never been pithier.
Cursive could be a great rags-to-riches story: Catholic schoolkids purge repressed childhood memories by starting emo band, grow up to be a sort of Hold Steady for high schoolers. But the band's maturation has come in awkward fits, as if forced. Growth is something bands can't force-- it either happens or it doesn't. And even when it works out, people will still say your first album was your best. That's just life. Tough reality, but Tim Kasher will probably write an album about it someday. | 2006-08-23T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2006-08-23T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Saddle Creek | August 23, 2006 | 6.7 | 3a7b315d-4fcf-4d46-8bb1-75ec418f63a3 | Pitchfork | null |
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A geographical move (from the Pacific Northwest to the Carolinas) and a more settled, comfortable sound both seem like logical progressions for the Sub Pop band, who here go for texture and shade over size and scale. | A geographical move (from the Pacific Northwest to the Carolinas) and a more settled, comfortable sound both seem like logical progressions for the Sub Pop band, who here go for texture and shade over size and scale. | Band of Horses: Cease to Begin | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10757-cease-to-begin/ | Cease to Begin | Following the success of their debut Everything All the Time and the subsequent departure of founding member Mat Brooke, the remaining members of Band of Horses moved from Seattle to Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, and set to recording their follow-up, Cease to Begin, in Asheville. Thousands of land-locked miles from the Great Salt Lake, this cross-country change of scenery is subtly apparent: If Everything All the Time was a Pacific Northwest indie album with flourishes of country and Southern rock, then Cease to Begin reverses the equation. Putting a different regional spin on their tender-hearted indie rock, however, doesn't change up the sound too much-- the guitars still churn and crest majestically, Bridwell's vocals still echo with grandiose reverb-- but simply creates an atmosphere evocative of something like autumn in a small town.
This geographical move and musical development both seem like logical progressions for Band of Horses, and not just because Bridwell originally hails from the South. The trio sounds more at home on Cease to Begin, and more confident writing about this specific neck of the woods. As a result, they shed many of the comparisons that dogged* Everything All the Time* last year: Every review had to mention the Shins, My Morning Jacket, or the Flaming Lips (me: guilty). Cease to Begin finds them opening up their sound, drawing in more ideas and giving the music the loping quality of a long walk down a dirt road.
As crunchy guitars give way to light strings on "Ode to LRC", Bridwell sings about a stray dog and a "town so small how could anybody not look you in the eye or wave as I drive by." He's one of few indie artists who can sell a line like "the world is such a wonderful place" or get away with singing "la-dee-da" with open-hearted amazement. On "Detlef Schrempf", for example, he sings, with heartfelt gravity, "Watch how you treat every living soul," and still somehow sounds bold and genuine.
On the other hand, Cease to Begin's looser vibe preempts the big moments that gave Everything All the Time its gravity. Listeners looking for another "Funeral" or "Great Salt Lake" may come away disappointed, making do with only the airborne rush of opener "Is There a Ghost". These songs go for texture and shade over size and scale, an admirable shift even if Band of Horses don't always pull it off. On "Cigarettes Wedding Band", they can't churn up enough bile to convey Bridwell's bitter lyrics; instead of contrasting the album's sweet-tea tone, the song simply reflects it, revealing the limits of their range. Still, Bridwell does accomplish the nifty trick of turning an accusation into a formidable pop hook: "While they lied-dee-die! Lah-dee-dah! While they lied!"
As they move southeasterly, Band of Horses may bear some derision as dad-rock at best, or as granola at worst. And yes, there are moments here that support those stereotypes: The sequencing of two downtempo ballads ("No One's Gonna Love You", "Detlef Schrempf") slows the album's first half almost to a halt. But even if Cease to Begin is a little creaky and uneven and even if it never finds the resting spot the album title promises, Band of Horses do guitar-based indie very well-- well enough, at least, that the next generation of American indie bands may bear comparisons to them. The album closes with "Window Blues", a slow, aching number that fades into a simple "Rainbow Connection" banjo outro that gives the album a snowglobe quality, despite the warmer Carolina climate. These songs depict a personal world in great detail, contained within a small space. Sure, Band of Horses could stand to shake it up a bit, but for now Bridwell seems content just to enjoy the view. | 2007-10-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2007-10-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sub Pop | October 8, 2007 | 7.7 | 3a7f66b8-aebb-4ed0-bdd2-bf7fbcc2542a | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
The second album from Seattle soul-rock quintet Pickwick finds the band with a renewed sense of harmony. But some songs make you wonder if it would have benefitted from more discord. | The second album from Seattle soul-rock quintet Pickwick finds the band with a renewed sense of harmony. But some songs make you wonder if it would have benefitted from more discord. | Pickwick: LoveJoys | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pickwick-lovejoys/ | LoveJoys | The sophomore album from Seattle soul-rock quintet Pickwick starts off with “Turncoat,” a track that quickly brings to mind the slinky bass-and-drums groove of the Bee Gees staple “Stayin’ Alive”—only slowed to a crawl, as if the band were re-imagining Saturday Night Fever as made by Dark Side of the Moon-era Pink Floyd. When frontman Galen Disston’s falsetto trails off on the word “hide,” so that it sounds like “hiiiiiiiigh” during the chorus, it’s like hearing Barry Gibb sing Floyd’s “Breathe.” Pickwick blend the two styles with impeccable agility—perhaps too impeccably, as “Turncoat” immediately forces the listener’s focus onto flashy exterior style markers that don’t give a sense of the album’s character.
LoveJoys arrives four years after Pickwick’s full-length debut, Can’t Talk Medicine, but it’s actually the band’s second attempt at a follow-up. Forty songs into the process, an internal dispute over musical direction precipitated the exit of percussionist and in-house producer Kory Kruckenberg. His departure isn’t mentioned directly, but it is perhaps lurking between the lines when Disston makes musical references like “Hate to see you go/I lined up all the memories for the show” on “Never Gonna Be Enough.” Either way, the breakup left the remaining members with a renewed sense of harmony as they started from scratch with producer Erik Blood (Shabazz Palaces) at the helm.
But “Turncoat” and other songs make you wonder whether this album would have benefitted from more discord. Where Pickwick’s boppy live show is galvanizing enough to inspire even the most dance-averse audience member to move a little bit, the downtempo turn of the new album hints at a darker, more internal place. Ultimately, though, neither the music nor the lyrics go all the way there. On several songs, Disston sings about what appear to be romantic entanglements that are clouded by uncertainty—fertile ground, of course, but he doesn’t provide enough detail for listeners to relate or feel the sting when he gets worked up into an Otis Redding-via-Bernhoft style lather.
“Even I had left you by the end/You left me too, no finding you/Where you are,” he croons on the Ethiopian jazz-tinged “Light It Up (Let It Burn).” It would help if we knew where Disston’s narrator was in relation to this other person. To his credit, though, he doesn’t point fingers much, which leaves the songs on LoveJoys short on both villains and heroes—a lot like real life. There are also points where he gets the overall feeling across without being explicit. On the somber Zero 7-type album closer “Ammonia,” he sings almost entirely in falsetto, and yet makes the song rise and fall with him in a remarkable show of dynamic control.
It also helps that the band plays “Ammonia” with a bit of an edge, pointing to raw nerves underneath its gliding musical proficiency. When Pickwick push themselves beyond just mashing-up soul with other forms, they begin to arrive at a style of their own, such as on “Ascension,” where Garrett Parker’s bass throbs as if it were a cello run through a wah-wah pedal. The song bristles with a feeling that approaches but doesn’t quite reach anger, as drummer Alex Westcoat lags behind, strolling his way through the otherwise urgent groove, while bright horns spike the air.
With every note on LoveJoys, Pickwick’s execution is formidable and fluid. But on “Ascension,” the band sounds urgent, casual, hopeful, regretful, and sexy all at once. It is at those moments, when they put feeling over style, when their music truly stands out. | 2017-07-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-07-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Small Press | July 27, 2017 | 6.6 | 3a811291-1ef5-4f69-89ef-d7982ca318fd | Saby Reyes-Kulkarni | https://pitchfork.com/staff/saby-reyes-kulkarni/ | null |
Wreckless Eric, born Eric Goulden, is a cult power-pop artist who got his start on Stiff Records in the late 1970s. His new album, amERICa, is rooted in classicist rock gestures but fixated on the contemporary United States. It isn’t complacent or satisfied; he anatomizes his surroundings with the wide-eyed thrill of discovery. | Wreckless Eric, born Eric Goulden, is a cult power-pop artist who got his start on Stiff Records in the late 1970s. His new album, amERICa, is rooted in classicist rock gestures but fixated on the contemporary United States. It isn’t complacent or satisfied; he anatomizes his surroundings with the wide-eyed thrill of discovery. | Wreckless Eric: amERICa | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21141-america/ | amERICa | "Several Shades of Green", the opener on Wreckless Eric’s amERICa, is flush with memories of "the hit parade," feckless backing musicians, and silly jackets recommended by magazine stylists. The music—a spare backbeat and bass guitar lollygag, busied by skittish piano runs and a modest choral section—belies the ragged, bemused delivery of an artist reflecting on his time as a journeyman power-pop artist on Stiff Records in the late 1970s. "If I’d known then, what I know now," goes the chorus—but it’s a tease. He stops and snickers at the temptation. That nimble maneuver—to reminisce, but jettison nostalgia—makes it a great opener for amERICa, an album rooted in classicist rock gestures but fixated on the contemporary United States.
Wreckless Eric, born Eric Goulden, wrote a lot of songs about the music industry. "Take the Cash (K.A.S.H.)", for instance, urged artists to get paid up front. And peers such as Nick Lowe memorably looked at the era’s intersection of fandom and commerce in songs such as "I Love My Label" and "Rollers Show", too. But Goulden’s return to the show business theme—which, perhaps because it seemed crass in the wake of punk, faded from rock lyricism forever and today thrives in rap—acknowledges the chasm of time between then and now. With distance, he gains lucidity.
It’s the same with the Englishman’s observations of the United States, which are dappled in telling detail and really rather astute. "White Bread", for instance, looks at the normalized delusions of a Middle America gun nut. On the rustic "Sysco Trucks", Goulden hovers over the wholesale food business: remote diners, kitchens, and markets all stocked with the same goods. There’s a critique implied, if not of capitalism at large then at least of monopoly and its subtly unsettling consequences for common cuisine. As he lightly notes, "Everything we’re eating comes from somewhere." The slaphappy typography "amERICa" is a bad indicator of Goulden’s tone; he’s mistily allusive, often playful, but never ham-fisted.
Wreckless Eric recorded amERICa at home in upstate New York. He played many of the instruments himself. The palm-muted guitars and roaring refrains of his old work remain, but the record is more reserved and instilled with zany, fanciful flourishes. Goulden rarely grasps for big, beaming hooks. Instead, reverse reverb and spectral keys temper his creaky, pliable voice. And that blurred, homespun atmosphere makes amERICa sound modern; it puts him in league with bedroom revivalists such as Home Blitz, who ply weirder, less commercially aspirant versions of Wreckless Eric’s classic power-pop sound.
Many artists of Wreckless Eric’s era and tradition have imitators, but few of yesteryear’s outliers can catch up with their descendants, let alone best them. amERICa is that rare record. Goulden is grownup, with all of the stereotypical benefits: an air of wisdom, emotional texture, and, perhaps most cliché of all, a seasoned voice. And yet, amERICa isn’t complacent or satisfied; Wreckless Eric anatomizes his surroundings with the wide-eyed thrill of discovery. His American flyover reveals simmering cultural disturbances and essential beauty alike—a late capitalist hellscape beneath "Bobbie Gentry’s Mississippi skies." | 2015-11-17T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2015-11-17T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Rock | Fire | November 17, 2015 | 7.7 | 3a8f5cee-624f-4ffc-b1a5-9b05738eb3b0 | Sam Lefebvre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-lefebvre/ | null |
Conceived of as a celebration of the right of protest, Fatima Al Qadiri’s Brute is a piece of music ideally suited to a time of shadowy corporate manipulation and apocalyptic political theater. | Conceived of as a celebration of the right of protest, Fatima Al Qadiri’s Brute is a piece of music ideally suited to a time of shadowy corporate manipulation and apocalyptic political theater. | Fatima Al Qadiri: Brute | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21555-brute/ | Brute | Since the beginning of the year Boeing has been running an ad called "You Just Wait" to celebrate the aircraft company’s centennial. In it, Boeing forecasts an extremely optimistic vision of 2116—a future where Boeing’s cutting-edge research helps create a spotless and conflict-free world replete with colonies on Mars, regular travel to the Moon, unlimited clean energy, and smiling innocent children. It's a startlingly ironic piece of corporate lip-service that sidesteps the company’s long history of defense contracts and early pioneering in the military industrial complex. I first saw the ad in the gym, being broadcast across an array of large flat-screen televisions—a dramatic commercial break that followed ominous speculations on the incoming results of the South Carolina primary.
The album I was listening to at the time was Fatima Al Qadiri’s Brute, a piece of music ideally suited to a time of shadowy corporate manipulation and apocalyptic political theater. Qadiri started writing Brute last year while recovering from a knee injury in Kuwait, unable to move much for more than a month. The injury coincided with the height of the horrific news cycle that included the events of Ferguson, Baltimore, and more. Reminded of the first large-scale protest she attended as a freshman in college and shaken by the sheer scale of the police force that met the protesters, she conceived of Brute as a celebration of the right of protest, which is funny when you’ve listened to its 11 songs and realize there isn't all that much celebrating going on. If anything, the album runs as direct counterpoint to the optimistic future that Boeing presents in its ad.
This is made immediately clear by the album’s disconcerting cover: a dead-eyed and inhuman Teletubbie in SWAT gear. The art was designed by the artist Josh Kline, borrowing from his piece Freedom, which the New Yorker described as an "elegy to lost hope and broken promises." This is an equally apt description of Qadiri's dystopian music: Starting with "Endzone," Fatima creates an ominous découpé from live recordings of the unrest in Ferguson. The sounds of gun shots, walkie-talkie beeps, explosions, crowds screaming, overwhelming confusion, and the weaponization of sound via the police’s use of LRADs (Long Range Acoustic Device) is mixed together with a slow burning thump—resulting in a heart-palpitating minute of music. In fact, the album’s three best moments come from the songs that feature extended sample use. In "Blows" Al Qadiri opens and closes the track with a now-infamous report by MSNBC news anchor Lawrence O'Donnell chastising the excessive police brutality at Occupy Wall Street. And in the album’s closer "Power," arguably the album’s only danceable moment, she deftly inserts a cutting interview with ex-LAPD sergeant Cheryl Dorsey on the abuse of police power in the middle of a dizzyingly spacious and confident sonic environment.
These moments bring Qadiri's music somewhere outside the usual purview of electronic music: Brute is in some ways closer to a piece of Brechtian theater than a traditional album. But outside of the successful manipulation of samples and found sounds, there are large blocks of shapeless tracks that excessively borrow from her previous projects. The descending chord progression and sweep of vocals in "Blood Moon" feels like it was copy-and-pasted from "Hydra," a track from her Desert Strike EP. "Breach," with its swooping helicopter sample and belching bass, is similarly a pastiche, mixing elements of Desert Strike and her last two albums: Asiatisch and Future Brown. There are far too many of these moments in Brute: "Fragmentation," a moody and string-heavy track in the album’s back half, might have been cut from Asiatisch and retrofitted for Brute.
Overall Brute is a frustrating mish-mosh of middling and artful. When it’s working, there is a certain panache in the high-powered, informationally dense musical speedballs she creates. Tracks like "Oubliette" (a reference to claustrophobic French dungeons) and "10-34" (the police code for riots) are perfect examples of the push-and-pull animating Qadiri’s most interesting work. When you listen to some of these songs you feel as if you’re being followed. As a conceptual piece, it’s unlike any politically driven electronic music being made today. It illustrates how exhausting and draining it is to be attuned to the problems of the world, but also how worthwhile it is keep yourself awake and see through the artifice. | 2016-03-10T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2016-03-10T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Electronic | Hyperdub | March 10, 2016 | 7.3 | 3a96f4bd-d4cb-4bf2-b1a3-8989e4a6de73 | Kevin Lozano | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kevin-lozano/ | null |
The Philadelphia-based artist uses damaged acoustic guitars, piercing electronics, and unsettling vocals to construct a grotesque and hermetic world, conjuring visions of abject terror. | The Philadelphia-based artist uses damaged acoustic guitars, piercing electronics, and unsettling vocals to construct a grotesque and hermetic world, conjuring visions of abject terror. | Morgan Garrett: Extreme Fantasy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/morgan-garrett-extreme-fantasy/ | Extreme Fantasy | Ugliness is underrated these days. Somewhere down the line, as the underground gave in to poptimism, the freaks made peace with the cheerleaders. But not Morgan Garrett. Reared in the small town of Portsmouth, Ohio, and based today in Philadelphia, Garrett is no stranger to the darker end of the human experience. His hometown is known as the epicenter of America’s opioid crisis. The collapse of the steel industry paved the way for swarms of pill mills that gradually devastated the region. Garrett’s willfully isolating music feels inextricably tied to the ghosts of this upbringing; an uneasy morass of atonal electronics, quavering vocals, and ragged guitars, Extreme Fantasy openly explores the depths of loneliness and fear. Appalachian hymns are mutilated and swathed in ear-scraping feedback, while his electronic “melodies” arrive twisted beyond all recognition. If Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers could be expressed in sound, this would be it.
Though Americana has always loomed large in Garrett’s various musical projects, Extreme Fantasy makes his folk fascinations much clearer. Like Royal Trux’s Twin Infinitives or Smog’s Sewn to the Sky, Extreme Fantasy is technically a guitar album, but the instrument is less a vehicle for melodies or chords than a rickety can to be kicked and batted down the pavement. On the opening “Fall & Walk,” a buzzsaw guitar riff ruthlessly cuts through Garrett’s queasy electronic soundscapes, initiating the listener into his hermetic and grotesque world. When Garrett’s acoustic guitar first appears on “Mercy & Grace,” it’s hopelessly out of tune, as if Garrett were twisting the pegs as he plays it. There’s not much time to ruminate on this, however, as squeaking feedback and crashing drums begin gnawing into the track like termites. Every note feels precisely determined to elicit maximum discomfort.
Jandek’s mutilated country is the clearest forebear for Garrett’s sound, and the deranged exorcisms of Throbbing Gristle and Bill Orcutt figure into his stew as well. Garrett fearlessly throws himself into this legacy of confrontational music with a gripping conviction. On “In bed with anger,” his mangled strumming is swathed in nightmarish noise, and his processed and doubled vocals sound as if they were harmonizing over some hellish campfire sing along. In between the dissonant yodeling and off-tempo drums of “Life after life,” an iPhone notification pings in the background. Perhaps Extreme Fantasy’s most striking quality is the way damaged acoustic textures haunt contemporary electronic sensibilities, subsuming shiny, clean digital tones in a torturous murk.
At 26 minutes, Extreme Fantasy’s relative brevity comes as something of a relief. Even so, Garrett retreads the same territory too often for it to remain completely fresh throughout. But his vision is undeniable. To say that this music isn’t meant for most people would be a gross understatement, but by the same token, accusing it of being unpleasant to listen to seems like missing the point. Whether it’s the blast of apocalyptic feedback that commences “Fall & Walk” or the unnerving skipping noise that courses through the title track, Extreme Fantasy plays like an uncanny catharsis, diving headfirst into the disturbing depths to confront demons that few artists dare to acknowledge. It’s shocking to watch Garrett unravel these sickly shapes, leaving their entrails strewn out on the floor for us to gape at. In its willingness to be so ugly, it strives toward a different kind of beauty. | 2023-03-07T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2023-03-07T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Orange Milk | March 7, 2023 | 6.7 | 3aa212eb-f227-4ac8-b449-05a8d720e47f | Sam Goldner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-goldner/ | |
Saturday Looks Good to Me's Fred Thomas creates a record that ranges between early Paw Tracks' folk abstractions and the recent outpouring of lo-fi dream beat. | Saturday Looks Good to Me's Fred Thomas creates a record that ranges between early Paw Tracks' folk abstractions and the recent outpouring of lo-fi dream beat. | City Center: City Center | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13287-city-center/ | City Center | Last year, Grouper released Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, a record that was not only a personal breakthrough for Liz Harris, but arguably for the Type label as a whole-- an LP so insidiously ingratiating that it just had to be pop at its core, right? So what now that Fred Thomas, he of the erstwhile retro-pop outfit Saturday Looks Good to Me, is now recording as part of City Center on the same imprint?
City Center doesn't necessarily come off like a true pop record, but where Grouper made a point of sounding fully submerged, City Center never go so far that they can't come up for air. Somewhere between early Paw Tracks' folk abstractions and the recent outpouring of lo-fi dream beat, most of City Center is content to drift in and out of its aqueous surroundings like a buoy. The major chords and ringing ambience of "Killer Whale" make for a welcoming entrance point, though Thomas' vocals sound like they've been suspended in some kind of gelatin. If you're looking for a commonality between Coldplay's "Yellow", Bonnie "Prince" Billy's "So Everyone", and Animal Collective's "Who Could Win a Rabbit", it's the same ringing B-major chord that begins "Open/House"-- likewise here, amidst punchy synth kicks, it heralds an unusual display of scrutability even while erratic panning, processed steel drums and plate reverb give it distance.
You hear echoes of Thomas' past work on "Gladest" and "Summer School", which hide otherwise sure-footed progressions under bobbing, waterlogged percussion and bell-timbres. Lyrics are, at best, implications and vocal melodies are content to eddy away with no plans of return. Ultimately, it's the dynamic between melodic resonance ("Young Diamond") and found-sound obfuscation (the four minutes of "You Are a Force" are pregnant with stay amp hum) that defines a debut that I'd call "promising," if only it gave any sort of indication that it was looking to become a part of some sort of artistic arc, as opposed to a stasis with plenty of breathing room-- even when City Center may appear impenetrable, it's still welcoming. C'mon in, the water's great. | 2009-08-05T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2009-08-05T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Type | August 5, 2009 | 6.8 | 3aad268c-7711-431f-9612-70fbd42fa710 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
With their third release, the five-song Small Sound EP, Tennis complicate the easy breezy beautiful schtick with some positive results. Some of that is up to producer Richard Swift, who gives their throwback sound a few new wrinkles. | With their third release, the five-song Small Sound EP, Tennis complicate the easy breezy beautiful schtick with some positive results. Some of that is up to producer Richard Swift, who gives their throwback sound a few new wrinkles. | Tennis: Small Sound EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18713-tennis-small-sound-ep/ | Small Sound EP | Tennis' Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley are a Pinterest-ready married couple. Perfect prep narrative (I mean, c’mon, even Vampire Weekend don’t sail), pretty pop songs, that sort of thing. But perfect and pretty get boring after a minute, and the two have come to realize that. With their third release, the five-song Small Sound EP, Tennis complicate the easy breezy beautiful schtick with some positive results.
The effort works off last year’s Young and Old, which the Denver-based band recorded with Black Key Patrick Carney acting as producer. Carney helped Tennis park the boat in the garage, upping the fuzz considerably from debut Cape Dory. Here on Small Sound, producer Richard Swift helps Tennis grow. “Dimming Light” starts with a sour riff that evokes Mac DeMarco, but ends strong with straightforward piano layered atop a tense synth line; hearing its arrangement, it's easy to imagine Swift coming in and taking over. Even with his own music, Swift tends to wear his vintage influences on his sleeve. If this guy can make the new Shins groove, he shouldn’t have too much trouble infusing 1970s flavor to Tennis’ Brill Building aesthetic from a decade earlier.
But Tennis aren’t Fitz and the Tantrums or anything quite so gaudy. Moore, Riley, and drummer James Barone work within their limitations to create an EP that offers subtle twists to their throwback thing. What sounds to be bassoon immediately funks up “Cured of Youth”, while Moore actually gets an opportunity to belt on the standout track. Organ lines, too, are peppered throughout the EP, but never overpower. “100 Lovers” sees Moore recalling an ex who was a real heartbreaker, her astutely noting, “100 loves will make you bold, 100 more will make you cold.” It’s the stuff of 60s Girl Group gold, but it goes to show you that while the music can progress, the lyrics won’t necessarily follow.
At their worst, narrative-heavy buzz bands like Tennis are the indie rock equivalent of YouTube novelty songs. Lyrics about coconut groves are precious, sure, but it’s hard to feel like there’s a future in that. It’s not to say blissed-out guitar pop isn’t a viable path—look at where Beach House have masterfully taken their sound—but Moore will never have Victoria Legrand's vocal depth. She’ll always sound sweet and innocent, better cooing atop a retro riff than leading listeners into dark corners. Moore sounds positively determined on the EP’s single and strongest song, “Mean Streets”, but when she chants the line, “Born and raised on the mean streets/ That’s where she learned how to keep the beat,” it’s hard to imagine she’s speaking autobiographically. Only so much change can be achieved over two LPs and one EP.
To liken Tennis to the liquid state of being would be insulting, but they do seem to take on the shape of the container they’re in. Essentially, each producer adds something new to the sound. Maybe by the next LP, they’ll have built something with real dimension. | 2013-11-12T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2013-11-12T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | Communion | November 12, 2013 | 7 | 3aadcaf6-784c-43c9-910a-aa684cebfc94 | Jill Mapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jill-mapes/ | null |
Spanning the years between her debut and Blue, this 122-song set documents the hard work of exploration, revision, and rejection that shaped the songwriter’s first masterpiece. It is a humanizing wonder. | Spanning the years between her debut and Blue, this 122-song set documents the hard work of exploration, revision, and rejection that shaped the songwriter’s first masterpiece. It is a humanizing wonder. | Joni Mitchell: Archives Volume 2: The Reprise Years (1968-1971) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/joni-mitchell-archives-volume-2-the-reprise-years-1968-1971/ | Archives Volume 2: The Reprise Years (1968-1971) | When the drummer Russ Kunkel was just 21, Joni Mitchell arrived at his garage apartment in Laurel Canyon to play him a few new tunes alone. It was the summer of 1970, and Mitchell had slowly been drifting toward real stardom on the strength of three albums and hit renditions of her songs by the likes of Judy Collins and Tom Rush. Kunkel, meanwhile, had already played with Bob Dylan, B.B. King, and Mitchell’s new beau, James Taylor.
But as he told me in April 2021—just over 50 years since he first heard the tunes that would become Blue—he was a touch starstruck, dumbfounded that Mitchell would not only deign to perform for him but also ask him to join in. Her confidence and control, however, calmed him as he drummed along on his knees and bongos. When he arrived in the studio months later, he again followed her cool lead. “It was so easy, because Joni is such an amazing rhythm player,” he told me. “She dictated the grooves. I just listened.”
That sense of ease is a pernicious theme in discussions of Mitchell’s first six or so albums, as though their songs just arrived as gifts. Enchanted, inspired, divine, genius: Mitchell has invariably been portrayed as such during her era of intense personal upheaval, her own moment of putting blood on the tracks. It’s as if her preternaturally graceful playing and singing on record meant she were simply some blessed conduit, not a serious craftsperson off record.
At its best, the second volume of the Joni Mitchell Archives—a titanic effort to sort through six decades of her musical dustbin, beginning last year with the innocence-losing early days of Volume 1—dispels such notions of effortless grace or any other divine spark. It, instead, documents Mitchell’s deliberate, determined progress as both songwriter and performer. She toils over tunes just to discard them. She wrestles with minuscule but monumental shifts in language. She tries complicated arrangements only to clear them away like brambles. Meanwhile, onstage, she emerges as a chameleonic charmer, able to adapt to any night’s assorted demands.
With these Archives, Mitchell joins the recent ranks of Bob Dylan and Neil Young, songwriters who have been reductively deified as touched geniuses for far too long and who are showing their work through massive troves of old recordings that dispel those notions of effortless perfection. They have revealed themselves as working craftspeople, made “divine” only by a fawning music press and rapacious record companies. We are haunted by the illusion of their presumed untouchability even now, still elevating gifts and grifts as opposed to craft and commitment. It’s delightful to see Mitchell put truth to that festering lie. Indeed, these 122 tracks capture Mitchell at the moment she went from hitting singles and the occasional triple to clearing the bases with routine grand slams. Spanning the three years between her debut, Song to a Seagull, and her landmark fourth album, Blue, Volume 2 is a monument to real effort.
Nowhere is this clearer than “A Case of You,” her unsparing portrait of love’s sweet poison that’s so canonical it’s been covered nearly 500 times. It debuts here as part of the Blue demos cut in Los Angeles’ A&M Studios in the summer of 1970. The song is mostly there—its staccato dulcimer sway, its “Oh, Canada!” outburst, its defenseless moment where she prepares to bleed. The first verse, though, isn’t. “You’re just as silly as a northern fish,” she sings, replying to the lover who says he’s “constant as a Northern Star.” She laughs self-consciously at this speck of juvenilia.
Just three months later, Mitchell shared the stage of London’s Paris Theatre with Taylor. They were smitten—in a few weeks, she’d pass the holidays with his family in North Carolina, caroling, buying records, and painting his portrait. “I’m not gonna be singing right away, but I might breathe heavy,” mutters Taylor as he tunes, just before they unveil the near-finished version of this song about her ex. There are no more fish in the first verse, only a scathing rebuke to the lover’s swagger: “Constantly in the darkness—where is that at?” she sings, the withering glare almost audible. “If you want me, I’ll be in the bar.” It’s a snapshot of a breakup so crisp and raw you long to stick around to see the wreckage. Mitchell would continue teasing out phrases and contractions before recording “A Case of You” that winter, but at least she had found the mot juste for the song’s devastating premise.
Like the Beatles’ Get Back, these moments on Volume 2 illustrate the ordinary labor involved in making something that ultimately seems extraordinary. During two home-recording sessions in her New York apartment, for instance, Mitchell sits at the piano or guitar to play or sing, searching for a phrase that might spark a new tune. She tries two different strumming patterns (including one clearly indebted to her old friend Neil Young) for “Midnight Cowboy,” an early character study of a cosplaying and hopeless urban outlaw. Both missed their mark; until now, the song never made it to record.
And in a moment of vulnerability, Mitchell admits during her Carnegie Hall debut she’s “just begun to pick out a few tunes on the piano” but has only one finished. (The exquisite version of “Blue Boy” that follows her confession was actually recorded two weeks later.) It’s strangely reassuring to imagine a moment where Mitchell is just learning to write at the piano, not yet a master. She was conjuring fundamental new paradigms for herself on an instrument that soon became critical to her career.
Mitchell was contemporaneously drilling down on the precise language and arrangements that marked the best work of her first four albums. Several early songs here border on logorrhea, with verses overloaded in alliteration and internal rhyme and rafts of florid images that crowd out the song’s conceit. Recorded within a four-year window, both “I Had a King” and “River” deal with former partners who have been dispatched. During that gap, though, Mitchell shaped the sense of economy that made possible a self-indictment as sharp and simple as “I’m so hard to handle/I’m selfish and I’m sad.”
Early in the set, Mitchell adds overdubs of peacock harp to a home demo of “Roses Blue,” its prickly notes meant to reinforce the song’s spooky mystique. She replicated the effect on 1969’s Clouds, but she soon dropped the desire to overcomplicate her songs. Time and again on Volume 2, the alternate versions of Mitchell classics—“River,” “Urge for Going,” “The Fiddle and the Drum,” “Blue Boy,” “Ladies of the Canyon”—include some unnecessary element, like the French horns that end “River.”
Perhaps her 1968 appearance on John Peel’s Top Gear—the only Peel Session of her career, where he introduces her with a review that lauds her as the “yang to Bob Dylan’s yin”—helped convince her that she didn’t need to accessorize her sound. The John Cameron Group cluttered “Chelsea Morning” with bass and flute, distracting from the wild swings of her voice. When she subsequently issued the song on Clouds, it was just guitar and voice, as she even sang her own jubilant backing vocals. Mitchell’s music would get plenty ornate as she marched through the ’70s; her austerity in this era afforded these songs intimacy and, in turn, gravity.
Though most of these revelations-via-revisions arrive through home demos or discarded studio sessions, the lengthy live sets—or occasional excerpts of them—that dominate much of Volume 2 show another kind of growth. Mitchell is dark and alluring at Ann Arbor’s Canterbury House in early March 1968, but she’s at ease in the Ottawa coffeehouse and cultural locus Le Hibou a week later. She’s actively parsing new ideas, working through several songs that never made an album. “Dr. Junk” is the hilarious and tender romp for a Southern dentist who collected spare car parts. “Come to the Sunshine” is a mystic ode to the magic that love may impart, especially the ineffable feeling that you’re temporarily connected to some kind of cosmic wonder. “Share in the quiet of knowing,” she urges.
Jimi Hendrix sat at Mitchell’s feet that night at Le Hibou, twiddling the knobs of his new tape machine as he recorded her set. “Fantastic girl with heaven words,” he wrote after they stayed up late, partying and smoking and listening to recordings he’d made. (His tape machine and her performance were stolen the next day; the reel miraculously resurfaced just as work on Volume 2 began.)
That anecdote of colliding young superstars is a reminder that this is Mitchell in sheer ascendance. Less than a year later, after all, she made her Carnegie Hall debut, her parents and Bob Dylan among those in attendance at a masterful $5 gig, included here in all its glory. Fans throw her love notes, protest when she suggests the concert is almost done, and sing along to “The Circle Game.” A year after that, she strums her strings and pushes her voice to such extremes during “Big Yellow Taxi” you worry she may break both. The take comes from the 1970 benefit concert that helped launch Greenpeace, so Mitchell is emphasizing the environmental seriousness that underpins (and also undermines) the refrain of a song so gleeful it can scan as a gimmick. Witnessing bits of Mitchell’s stepwise transformation into a public figure—occasionally fleeting, sometimes reluctant—is Volume 2’s other point of true inspiration.
The live performances may start to seem repetitious or perhaps like filler, especially when taken alongside Volume 1. How many slightly different versions of “Conversation,” “Gift of the Magi,” or “Marcie”—just a few of the staples that appear on both sets, sometimes multiple times—must one endure before hearing unreleased gems like “Hunter” (a great song about a stray cat) or “Jeremy” (a great song about a stray addict)?
To date, the lone flaw of these Joni Mitchell Archives is that they often feel like monstrous information dumps as opposed to carefully constructed paths on which you might wander and delight. Even Cameron Crowe’s longform interviews, which shape the bulk of the liner notes for both sets, feel burdensome. There are amazing tidbits, of course, like Mitchell’s contentious but caring relationship with Georgia O’Keeffe and her disdain for David Crosby. They’re often surrounded by loads of routine Mitchell lore.
That, of course, is picking the tiniest nits. It is good to read Mitchell speak, which she rarely does publicly as she nears 80, and to hear her search for her own essence at this pivotal moment, even when it feels like déjà vu. Given the famous vulnerability of her first half-dozen albums, which she actually laments during an on-tape conversation during Volume 2, how much more could there be?
“I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes,” she later told Crowe in Rolling Stone of this era. Whatever else remains unheard may feel like Mitchell’s very marrow, something much too intimate for any of us to know. There’s so much to hear and ponder on the generous Volume 2; even if it leaves you wanting more, that absence of deeper secrets is crucial to the set’s humanizing effect. At last, Volume 2 shows the work behind the beginning of Joni Mitchell’s masterworks, at times so seemingly effortless even her collaborators wondered if it existed.
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. | 2022-01-07T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-01-07T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Reprise | January 7, 2022 | 8.8 | 3aaf7c7c-9f54-4454-845d-d0eb6c59fe4d | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
The second album from these Florida up-and-comers features carefully crafted, smartly executed, and reasonably lively garage-rock that finds them sounding comparatively settled since their last LP, 2009's No Seasons. | The second album from these Florida up-and-comers features carefully crafted, smartly executed, and reasonably lively garage-rock that finds them sounding comparatively settled since their last LP, 2009's No Seasons. | Jacuzzi Boys: Glazin' | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15775-jacuzzi-boys-glazin/ | Glazin' | Garage rock was never an album's game, and-- in the midst of yet another revival-- that hasn't changed. Scuzzbucket strum and teenage truth will always fare far better as short, sharp shocks; then as now, the impact of a song like the Seeds' mighty "Pushin' Too Hard" is dulled by the half-dozen soundalikes on the LP from whence it came. Good as many of them are, that this new crop has yet to produce a truly classic LP isn't terribly surprising-- the song's the thing, cohesion's almost antithetical. So it is with Floridian up-and-comers Jacuzzi Boys' sophomore set, Glazin': five fine 45s masquerading as a fun, slight 10-song LP.
Between their sweetly shopworn lyrics, their not-quite-frenetic pacing, and all those ooh-augmented choruses, there's nothing new under the Glazin' sun. The Boys have settled down some since their last LP, 2009's No Seasons: volumes mostly steer clear of the red zone; the songcraft's less rollicking, more measured; and the occasional glint of pop sheen flickers at its surface. Singer/guitarist Gabriel Alcala's maintained the snide edge in his voice, but he doesn't have the fire in his belly he did a couple of years ago. At this point, these teenaged kicks of their work feel less lived than lived-in, lacking the manic edge and the neuron-branding melodies of the genre's leading lights. The songs go down easy but, with a few exceptions, leave little aftertaste. When you're constantly flipping a 45, that's a good problem to have; when you're talking an LP-- even a shortie like Glazin'-- the amnesiac feel foregrounds what's lacking.
Opener "Vizcaya" is a blast, a rallying cry of ascending melody and youthful insouciance that gets it done in record time. And the one-two punch of closers "Los Angeles" and "Koo Koo With You"-- the first, a half-affectionate, half-dismissive take on left coast life, and the second, a shapeshifting half-nonsensical come-on-- are far and away the album's best. Brimming with personality and oddly pitched humor, they're really the only tracks on Glazin' that don't sound like covers of songs you can't quite place. (They would've made for a killer single.) Elsewhere, "Silver Spheres" throws a little Detroit thunder in there to fine effect, and the bouncy "Libras and Zebras" feels especially effortless. As for the rest? Carefully crafted, smartly executed, and reasonably lively garage-rock that's all just a little too on-the-nose to inspire much beyond agreeable indifference.
In an era when the surfeit of garage-rock bands need to push personality and melody harder than ever, Glazin's got a bit of both, an abundance of neither. The beefy but slightly sterile production buffs out some of the gnarl of their earlier work, which doesn't do them many favors. And the once-raucous band's performances seem a bit reeled in, too. More than anything, though, Glazin's sneer'n'strut is just too much of a pretty good thing: One or two at a time, these songs work wonders, but over half an hour, the Boys' retrograde sneer and strut proves a bit too safe and samey. | 2011-09-02T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2011-09-02T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Rock | Hardly Art | September 2, 2011 | 6.2 | 3ab2b4c9-32cb-4243-b00d-402295caf32b | Paul Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-thompson/ | null |
While living on houseboats in Sausalito, California, Deftones broke away from nu-metal and recorded the melodic highlight of their career, a moody album born of sex, Sade, and cocaine. | While living on houseboats in Sausalito, California, Deftones broke away from nu-metal and recorded the melodic highlight of their career, a moody album born of sex, Sade, and cocaine. | Deftones: White Pony | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/deftones-white-pony/ | White Pony | The extended universe of nu-metal in 2000 included rapping clowns, rappers who wore clown makeup, clowns who did not rap but used turntables and wrote lyrics about Chuck D, and rappers who sounded like Chuck D and vehemently denied using turntables. Two of the genre’s most iconic songs were named “Nookie” and “Freak on a Leash.” It was deemed an evolutionary merger of hair metal and hip-hop, and yet, if there’s any unifying factor in what came to define the state of popular rock in the second Clinton term, it’s that no one seemed to be enjoying any of it.
Nu-metal was angry music—some of it sourced from childhood trauma and the despair of rural and suburban America outside the so-called monoculture; some of it sourced from the toxic masculinity ingrained in that monoculture. Yet, this was the music that moved millions of units during a prosperous time for the music industry. It also created a context where Deftones could make an album about sex, drugs, and druggy sex that cemented their reputation as rock’s most unmarketable weirdos.
White Pony may have transcended the dubious genre by fashioning a truly new form from post-hardcore, industrial, trip-hop, shoegaze, ambient electronics, and synth-pop. But Deftones were once undoubtedly rap-metal. What’s more rap-metal than lead singer Chino Moreno dropping in on Korn’s 1996 album Life Is Peachy to help cover Ice Cube’s “Wicked.” In both chronology and sound, Deftones’ 1995 debut Adrenaline was stuck between stations: not quite rap enough, but somehow missing out on the inconceivable moment when stone-faced post-hardcore acts like Helmet and Unsane were the subject of seven-figure bidding wars. Deftones’ sophomore bow, 1997’s Around the Fur, had no real bars, per se, but its aggression and imagery played just as well at Warped Tour, Ozzfest, skate parks, mosh pits, and other places where metalheads and hip-hop fans tangled dreads.
The sonic genesis of White Pony came from Around the Fur’s second single, “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away),” which was nothing short of nu-metal’s “There is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Not only was it the first indication of Moreno’s fatalistic romanticism, but it was also the band’s first embrace of outright melody; it’s the closest thing to a classic Smashing Pumpkins song to come out in the same year as Adore. Critics took notice—it was chosen as SPIN’s No. 12 single of 1998—but it never stuck on radio and as a total outlier on Around the Fur, it was an obvious fork in Deftones trajectory. Going further down that path would mean courting tastemakers who would likely still snicker at the name “Deftones,” but it also left them without an easily identifiable target market.
It’s easy to see things from the perspective of Maverick—the band’s label at the time—when Moreno, bassist Chi Cheng, guitarist Stephen Carpenter, drummer Abe Cunningham, and turntablist/synth player Frank Delgado turned in the masters for White Pony in 2000. The concept of mixing nu-metal with new wave wasn’t entirely original—after all, Orgy scored a major hit with a cover of “Blue Monday.” But despite its sharper dynamics, louder vocals, glossier production, and a wealth of earworm choruses, White Pony was still not as obvious as playing New Order songs in drop-D.
White Pony debuted at No. 3 with over 117,000 copies sold—enough to earn the top spot on Billboard in any given week in 2017, but the kind of numbers that led to a stern talking-to from the label in 2000. “I remember [Maverick] sitting me down and pointing [out that] Papa Roach and Linkin Park had sold six million albums while [White Pony] hadn’t sold a tenth of that,” Moreno recalled in a 2010 interview. Even though Moreno had spent the past three years trying to prove to skeptics that he and Fred Durst had nothing in common, his immediate reaction to Maverick’s needling betrays his rap-metal roots: “First, I wanted to stick this idea up my ass.”
Lead single “Change (In the House of Flies)” could most accurately be described as a heavier version of “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)”—they tuned their guitars lower and played at a slow grind, and Moreno’s lyrics were more inscrutable and unsettling (“I took you home/Set you on the glass/I pulled off your wings then I laughed”). “Change” was a deeper, darker shade of rock, but not heavy in a way that was going to move major units in 2000.
Maverick didn’t hear a second single, which was a self-fulfilling prophecy given their unwillingness to release one for nearly eight months after “Change” peaked at No. 3 on Billboard’s Alternative Rock chart. “Pink Maggit” is the last song you’d consider for a single, seeing as how it’s the last song on White Pony, seven minutes long, and the drums don’t come in until it’s nearly halfway through. (It is also titled “Pink Maggit.”) But Maverick thought there was something to the chorus—“’Cause back in school/We were the leaders”—and given how directly benchmarks like “Last Resort” and “One Step Closer” spoke to the high school outcast, the wheels at the label began to turn.
This is how the song that defined White Pony—and Deftones’ career for the next several years—isn’t even on the record. “They asked me to rewrite [“Pink Maggit”] as a three-minute song,” according to Moreno. “They kept hounding me about it, so I was like, ‘Watch this.’” The new version was written in a day, and Paul Hunter was hired to direct the ensuing video, a savvy move given how his clips for Eminem and Dr. Dre dominated the summer and those two never had much trouble infiltrating rock audiences. Deftones were afforded all of the financial and promotional firepower that could be mustered by a booming major label in 2000, and Maverick decided, in their infinite wisdom, that White Pony was best served by a video treatment that amounts to Never Been Kissed scored by Fred Durst. It stalled at No. 27.
Time has been about as kind to “Back to School” as it has been for Fieldy’s haircuts or Wes Borland’s eye contacts, but the rationale behind its creation makes it an unintentionally perfect appendix to White Pony. Moreno made this song out of spite, wanting to be contrarian while seeking the approval of authorities and popularity amongst his peers. For all of their heightened ambitions, for all of the infusion of cash and drugs, Deftones crucially but quietly maintained the same shitty, relatable, adolescent emotions that fueled Adrenaline—I mean, there’s a song here called “Teenager.” Deftones never come off as too cool for school—an indispensable quality for a band if they’re gonna record while living on houseboats in Sausalito. They sing about partying with strippers and being abducted by aliens and riding in cars with Tool’s Maynard Keenan without ostracizing their diehard fanbase.
At the very least, “Back to School” proved that Deftones were impressionable, enthusiastic, and willing to follow even their most dubious ideas to fruition—Chino Moreno made a trip-hop album in 2006 and a witch house album in 2014, each at least five years beyond its genre’s sell-by date. Their influences and interests were scripted onto their work like stickers on a Trapper Keeper; the title of “Feiticiera” was “some Portuguese name I read in a magazine and liked,” whereas “Pink Maggit” was taken from a random shot at Nas taken by Kool Keith on his first Dr. Dooom album. Given the eventual fate of “Pink Maggit,” it’s ironic that the line itself mocks Nas as a sellout for agreeing to an elaborate and expensive video treatment.
White Pony is the most coherent and novel expression of Deftones’ varied influences. The band’s covers of Sade’s “No Ordinary Love” and the Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” date back to 1995, around the time when Deftones were defined by the aggro hooks of "Bored" and "7 Words" ("suck, suck, suck, suck, suck, suck/they fuck with my head"). When they compiled all their covers on 2005’s B-Sides & Rarities, they proved to be true believers in MTV and alternative rock radio, providing something a little-left-of-the-dial that won’t leave you completely exiled from the center. You never have to guess what Moreno likes about these songs; the cruel swing of Drive Like Jehu and Jawbox’s “Savory” is the instrumental basis for “Feiticiera” and “Knife Prty,” while Moreno’s vaporous, seductive vocals draw heavily from Cocteau Twins and the Cardigans.
But of all the influences that came to the fore on White Pony, none was more crucial than cocaine. Deftones had always been a party band, recording Around the Fur while living and getting fucked up together in a Seattle apartment complex. Fur sure sounds like a weed album—the pinched snares, rubbery bassline, and bloodshot vocal EQ’ing underlying “My Own Summer (Shove It)” are the raw elements of a dub song.
Meanwhile, White Pony was made in a studio once occupied by Fleetwood Mac during Rumours. Moreno called it a “cocaine concept album,” though the “concept” part seems redundant. Plenty of the album’s sonic details make its intentions clear—the neck pick that brings in the final chorus of “Digital Bath” bursts like a ruptured vessel, “Knife Prty” is bisected with blood-curdling, otherworldly shrieks from Rodleen Getsic and turntablist Frank Delgado’s contribution to “Korea” has the uncanny resemblance to the sound of a credit card trying to scrape the last caked-on line from a mirror. That song, in particular, lays Moreno’s obsessions bare and captures White Pony in all of its grimy debauchery: “strippers and drugs and [explitive]" he told the Washington Post in 2000. The main riff of “Korea” is an atonal cluster of notes, it’s impossible to replicate Moreno’s verse melody on piano and the bridge is engineered for a mosh pit. Every song feels overlayed with a blindingly white sheen.
Where most DJs in the nu-metal era were relied upon for the occasional wiki-wiki scratch or looking cool in the video, Delgado was instrumental in the world-building of White Pony: a constant, hollowed-out whoosh pervades “Digital Bath” like the immediate, incapacitating rush of the first hit, while he scatters abrasive percussion in the margins of “Rx Queen” like empty beer bottles and pizza boxes. Drake, the Weeknd, and Future have defined pop in the new decade by plumbing the spiritual void of the VIP lounge, but White Pony is the exact opposite, fully embracing newfound decadence as an escape from misery, the high life always the solution rather than the problem. The hook on “Digital Bath” succinctly expresses White Pony’s spiritual ethos: “I feel like more.”
The rock star clichés that accompany coke-induced bloat would come later—Deftones were fined $1 million for turning in their 2003 self-titled album late, while 2006’s Saturday Night Wrist found Moreno struggling terribly with weight gain and writer’s block, hounded by label-funded song doctors and swapping out producers ranging from Dan the Automator to Bob Ezrin. But on White Pony, Deftones liked the drugs and the drugs liked them. Moreno strove to write about something other than his own experiences, a way of separating the band from their autobiographical past work as well as the subject matter of their nu-metal competition which Moreno mocked as “me, myself and I.” When asked where most of his songwriting ideas came from, Moreno bluntly answered, “drugs.”
“It was probably five in the morning—we were still up partying—and I just pictured this whole scenario of having this girl, bringing her downstairs and taking a bath and like, out of nowhere, just reaching back and . . . electrocuting—basically throwing some kind of electrical device in the bathtub and then taking her out of the bath and drying her off and putting her clothes back on.” This was Moreno’s origin story of “Digital Bath” during an extensive and not altogether flattering interview from 2000. “Knife Prty,” the most elaborate and exotic track on the album, was inspired by an actual dance party on their tour bus with Abe Cunningham’s cutlery collection. Moreno said, “I made up this fake scenario of some kind of underworld society of knives, people who just get off on these erotic fantasies.”
White Pony explicitly indulged in BDSM, blow, and bloodsport while making good on the original promise of nu-metal to revitalize rock by separating it from classic rock canon. “The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin—those bands haven’t influenced us in any way,” Korn bassist Fieldy told Chuck Klosterman. “Nobody in the band ever listened to that stuff. Our musical history starts with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and early Faith No More. As a band, that’s where we begin.” For Deftones, it was Faith No More and Primus. “I always thought that Northern California had all the integrity,” according to Cheng.
On the other side of the U.S., the Strokes and White Stripes were bringing their version of sex and drugs back to rock’n’roll. Of course, New York’s “New Rock Revolution” recodified the de rigueur critical theory that Velvet Underground, Television, the Ramones, and, of course, New York City were at the center of the universe. For all of the legitimate criticism of nu-metal’s dopey lyricism and intolerable misogyny, there was always a rather blatant, though underlying classism that often came with it; these bands emerged from Des Moines, Memphis, Jacksonville, and some of the most unglamorous parts of California’s interior. Nu-metal was also a welcoming arena for musicians of color, though it was mocked as suburban white-guy music by no less of an authority on the subject than Ben Folds.
It’s understandable for Deftones to run from their rap-metal past, but it allowed White Pony to be seen for what it is—a model of personal evolution that was aspirational and relatable compared to what came next. The Strokes attended Swiss boarding schools, Julian Casablancas’ father ran a modeling agency, and Interpol showed up in suits on their very first day. Meanwhile, here’s Deftones, who, at least until the stylized vampirism of White Pony, didn’t strike an image of cool or even conventional anti-cool. They were five skateboarders from Sacramento with dreads and risible facial hair, inspired by bands that critics reliably misunderstood—the early work of the Cure and Depeche Mode had about as much credibility as nu-metal.
Even if White Pony didn’t sound that much like the Cure or Depeche Mode or Smashing Pumpkins, Moreno understood how each band was never meant to be reality programming. Nu-metal was smothered by the stench of its own machismo and stale beer, and Deftones recognized that separating nu-metal from rap wasn’t as important as allowing it to be a platform for romantics and dreamers—its rallying cries were “I feel like more!” and “I could float here forever!” bravely and enthusiastically embracing the possibility of transcending the mundanity that pervaded their lives in Sacramento and cities just like it. White Pony was the change Deftones wanted to see in themselves and they watched you change right along with them. | 2017-09-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-09-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal / Rock | Maverick | September 17, 2017 | 8.4 | 3ab42949-4936-4d56-bd0a-eda0aa058b40 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
John Darnielle's latest is a richly detailed collection of songs about the beautiful melancholy life of a goth, and the long journey between life in the dark and death in the light. | John Darnielle's latest is a richly detailed collection of songs about the beautiful melancholy life of a goth, and the long journey between life in the dark and death in the light. | The Mountain Goats: Goths | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23153-goths/ | Goths | Save for perhaps lumberjacks, there is no scene more everlasting than goths. The candles and coffins, the bats and spiders, the milky-white legs under jet black jeans that fill up the corners of goth culture are all just the artifacts for its everlasting creed: death is real, and it waits for us all. The true goth compass points toward the final darkness and woe unto those who must lease their time here in the light, squeezing cantaloupe at the grocery store and forgetting to call the guy about the broken sump pump. Goths, the latest from the Mountain Goats, is about the journey between life in the dark and death in the light, and ultimately trying to find a home somewhere between.
That elusive, literary home for John Darnielle—the lead singer and songwriter of the Mountain Goats for 26 years—has been a theme in his writing lately. Whether on his 2015 album Beat the Champ or in his 2017 novel Universal Harvester, Darnielle writes about the larger, decades-long journeys that play out in the rural American diaspora. Though setting these stories in bloody wrestling rings in South Texas or spliced into unsettling VHS tapes at a local video store in Iowa, at the center of both is a question: Where can we go when our youth, our vocation, or our family has left us? The same question applies here to Goths, a question buried underneath its fables about a singer in a California goth band in the ’80s.
At this point in his career, Darnielle is in his own private league of songwriting. His verse is effortless, his detail impeccable, and the joy with which he animates these weary souls languishing in Long Beach rock clubs make every word just glow. Goths is Darnielle’s most evocative work since the occultist All Eternals Deck and even though it remains loosely conceptual like Beat the Champ, it’s all tethered to this palpable, too-casual melancholy, the kind that comes with telling a cautionary tale one too many times.
This type of emotion was always present in the Mountain Goats of the ’90s and early ’00s, when it was just tape hiss, a guitar, and Darnielle, who then had nothing to more to give than his swollen heart. Since the band adopted their hi-fi lineup of bassist Peter Hughes and drummer Jon Wurster—and peppered songs with Memphis-soul horn arrangements and the occasional men’s chorus—it’s been a bit harder to sink your teeth into a Mountain Goats song, and vice versa. But for the first time in Mountain Goats’ history, there’s no guitar on the album, replaced instead by Darnielle on piano or a warm Fender Rhodes. This slight tweak in tone makes the band more like the silk paper on which Darnielle writes, illuminating the lyrics and making the story and verse more accessible. Goths sounds nothing like goth rock, but maybe, Darnielle seems to suggest, every goth rocker is destined to write their own bookish, soft-rock opus about nights doing cocaine while listening to Bauhaus.
For indeed, the life of a goth all starts out great. After a jaunty, baroque tune about the lead singer of Sisters of Mercy packing it in and moving back to his punk roots in Leeds, the lens shifts to the West Coast of America, trying to understand how goth rock works in California thousands of miles away from Batcave, the London nightclub at the center of the UK scene. Darnielle takes us to the Los Angeles suburb of West Covina where, on “Stench of the Unburied,” a young vamp cruises the highways in a Pontiac Grand Am, drunk and alive, seeing visions of his car going up in flames, all while listening to KROQ play Siouxsie and the Banshees. The prime years of the young goth culminate with “Wear Black,” a gorgeous hymn for the timeless language of black, a sigil of goths worldwide. No matter what happens, Darnielle sings, one must wear black in the light, in the dark, in the present tense, or in my absence.
On the back half of the album, the fast life of a goth becomes untenable. Our singer is older now, playing shows to no one on the Sunset Strip, ostracized and broken, recalling how they were once paid in cocaine (“Paid in Cocaine”) and now refusing to open for Trent Reznor (“Shelved”). Darnielle adds more and more space to the songs, slows down his delivery as if it is almost too difficult to admit that “the ride’s over.” By the quiet end, he’s almost thankful for his grim middle-aged fate, “hauling these songs to the light from the mouth of the grave” playing “really big festivals every other summer in Brazil” (“For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands”). What was once a consuming identity has now calcified into a useless signifier, the passion for the music of the Cure, March Violets, and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry all displaced into trying to pay down the interest on the mortgage. “Nobody wants to hear the 12-bar blues/From a guy in platform shoes” Darnielle sings, hapless and dejected.
This hollow feeling of Goths lingers. Either you fear age dulling the passions of your youth, or you are living it right now. It’s like when you bury a loved one when death is no longer a pose, but an endless stream of paperwork and phone calls and garbage bags full of old clothes. This ultimate mundanity is detailed on the most haunting song on the album, “Abandoned Flesh,” an ode to the “suffocated splendor of the once and future goth band” Gene Loves Jezebel. Darnielle blithely tells the history of the unheralded band from their Wikipedia page. A band’s whole career, the theater of death and the comfort it created has a half-life in the real world, reduced to an anecdote, or quite literally, to an epilogue on a dainty Mountain Goats album about goth. This final turn by Darnielle is what makes him a songwriter nonpareil: macabre humor, tales that weave in and out of fiction, and the smile he cracks after leaving a gaping hole in your heart. Beware, ye goths, life waits for us all, too. | 2017-05-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | May 22, 2017 | 8 | 3abc762e-3f98-4381-961f-8ede4644e42c | Jeremy D. Larson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jeremy-d. larson/ | null |
The prolific composer and Radiohead member crafts a diverse, dissonant, and beat-heavy score that matches the alternate realities of Lynne Ramsay’s psychological thriller. | The prolific composer and Radiohead member crafts a diverse, dissonant, and beat-heavy score that matches the alternate realities of Lynne Ramsay’s psychological thriller. | Jonny Greenwood: You Were Never Really Here (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jonny-greenwood-you-were-never-really-here-original-motion-picture-soundtrack/ | You Were Never Really Here (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | The ball-peen hammer is a blunt-force instrument, yet the hole it leaves in a human skull is surprisingly tidy. That much, at least, is what we are led to believe by writer-director Lynne Ramsay’s striking film You Were Never Really Here, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as Joe, a hirsute, hammer-wielding bundle of hurt—a hired retriever of kidnapped children who is himself covered in the many scars of a damaged upbringing. In its own quiet and sidewinding way, Jonny Greenwood’s exceptional score is as surprising as Ramsay’s film. It is as calmly brutal as Phoenix’s dead-eyed shuffle, and as tender as the way Joe clasps the hand of the dying man he has just dispatched with a bullet to the gut.
You Were Never Really Here is a film about violence and men and power. It is also, in its own uncomfortable way, a film about love, duty, and compassion. Greenwood’s score responds with remarkable restraint, refusing to over-dramatize yet never shrinking from the fundamental sadness—and strangeness—of Ramsay’s world. Departing sharply from the baroque piano compositions of his 2018 score for Phantom Thread, Greenwood cycles mainly between three principal modes here. The album’s bookends are gentle mood pieces for swelling synthesizers and strings. Then there are severe, atonal fugues that make the most of the orchestra’s spectral properties, detuning the strings until they throw off the dull pewter gleam of a migraine. Most surprising of all, he fires up his banks of electronics on several tracks, approximating coldwave or proto-techno.
The score plays up all of those contrasts, sometimes within the course of a single track. After the verdant opener, “Sandy’s Necklace” begins like Sonic Youth tuning their guitars before easing into a murky sort of funk—swinging groove, plucked guitar—fleshed out with orchestral percussion and a bleak string melody. But “Nausea,” which follows, could almost be LCD Soundsystem demoing a rickety New Order cover. It’s a coiled study for synth and drum machine, which, along with its out-of-time drums, is the closest thing Greenwood has composed for a movie that sounds like a Radiohead song. A few tracks later, he returns to the uneasy electronic mood with “Dark Streets,” a John Carpenter-like sketch whose shifting pulse mimics Ramsay’s own jittery storytelling: While Joe’s steely focus drives the film’s pacing, the narrative is pocked with grim flashbacks and even grimmer glimpses of a kind of alternate reality, as though we were witnessing his psychotic break from behind his own heavy lids.
Greenwood flirted with harsh dissonance in his score for 2007’s There Will Be Blood, but his string arrangements here up the otherworldliness by an order of magnitude. With ethereal drones, he evokes 20th-century avant-garde composer Iannis Xenakis’ shimmering music of the spheres, and with relentless slashing and sawing motions he channels the dull ache of self-loathing; one late cue sounds like the early-20th-century German composer Paul Hindemith tackling Psycho’s shower scene. (The reference may be intentional: Hitchcock’s film plays in the background of an early scene, and in a darkly comic moment, Joe even does his best impersonation of those iconic stabbing strings.)
In the context of the film, Greenwood’s writing is remarkably unobtrusive. When Joe gets behind the wheel, the new-wave flavored tracks are used in a way that is stylish and propulsive, but for long stretches of the film, the score falls silent, making way for Paul Davies’ hair-raising sound design, as well as some inspired AM-radio staples (“Angel Baby,” “I’ve Never Been to Me”) whose incongruity only heightens the film’s tension. The soundtrack wisely opts to leave those out; heard here, they would lose their counterintuitive power and break the eerie, bruised mood that Greenwood so skillfully evokes. The restraint of his score is a testament to his interpretive abilities, but even as a standalone album, You Were Never Really Here is an engrossing listen. | 2018-03-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-03-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Lakeshore | March 14, 2018 | 7.8 | 3abd9f96-6241-4459-9ed6-3dd909c0dac4 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
After a 12-year hiatus, the Norwegian duo returns with an especially airbrushed take on easy-listening pop. At their best, the Kings sound deceptively effortless, but the facade is sometimes too smooth. | After a 12-year hiatus, the Norwegian duo returns with an especially airbrushed take on easy-listening pop. At their best, the Kings sound deceptively effortless, but the facade is sometimes too smooth. | Kings of Convenience: Peace or Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kings-of-convenience-peace-or-love/ | Peace or Love | Europeans have mastered the art of taking it easy in a way that elicits American envy—how else to explain the plethora of hygge coffee-table books, the popularity of travel vloggers, and the eternal appeal of striped bateau shirts? In that sense, to describe Kings of Convenience’s work as easy listening isn’t disparaging. It’s simply an acknowledgement that the Norwegian duo’s music, particularly Peace or Love, the follow-up to 2009’s Declaration of Dependence, makes languid, pleasant pop seem deceptively effortless; the album is so smooth that its seams are barely visible. The record’s 11 tracks are a Quaalude dream, a set of gossamer songs so refined that they take on sedative properties.
Peace or Love is, more than anything, evocative: of early-aughts indie pop (Feist duets on the tracks “Love Is a Lonely Thing” and “Catholic Country”), yachting as a lifestyle, bossa nova, the soundtrack to Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Chad & Jeremy’s “A Summer Song.” If songs can sound the way sea breezes feel, or like an iced coffee in a piazza, these do. Which makes it even more confounding that the duo of Eirik Glambek Bøe and Erlend Øye recorded this album five times. “It’s very, very hard to make something sound simple,” Bøe says in the record’s press release—a very, very Norwegian understatement.
All sweat and other signs of effort have been completely scrubbed from the album, if ever they were audible. On certain tracks, like “Fever” or “Angel,” which sounds like the fraternal twin of Flight of the Conchords’ ‘“Foux du Fafa,” this airbrushed effect works well, especially in concert with lyrics that border on the absurd. “Angel, she’s an angel,” Bøe sings, deadpan, “Though she might be promiscuous.” On others, like “Song About It” or “Comb My Hair,” this sleekness occasionally has the uncanny gloss of packaged lunch meat, over-engineered and too distant from its composite parts. These tracks’ success pivots on an axis of earnestness—when they’re cheeky, Kings of Convenience pay winking homage to saccharine ’70s pop, and when they’re serious, they deliver music engineered to play over speakers at a tony rooftop bar. There’s a disjunct between “Comb My Hair’s” abject sadness—why bother with personal hygiene?—and its high-fidelity treatment, bright and affectless.
The uptempo “Rocky Trail” showcases Kings of Convenience at their faux-casual best: traveling at a clip, unspooling a winsome, jaunty guitar line, just two guys harmonizing about a failed friendship with a man carrying “a world on his shoulders that needed lifting.” “Brave enough to go climbing a wall so high that no sunlight is seen through winter,” Bøe incants, “Brave enough to go traveling around the world without money to eat or sleep for.” It’s the laminating of reality that Kings of Convenience do so well— buoyant sounds that make traveling penniless and hungry seem as toothless as a walk to the supermarket. Peace or Love, even more than the rest of the band’s oeuvre, renders the prickly, inconvenient parts of living smooth; it soothes, it backlights, it finesses.
At the end of a decidedly rocky 12 years, in which the band’s members saw relationships form and dissolve, felt label pressure, and confronted the onset of their 40s, it’s easy to understand the appeal of ease, or at least the facade thereof. Perhaps, despite Americans’ envy of European leisure, it’s also a distinctly American trait to look for cracks in the mirage. Still, Peace or Love is often as anodyne as its moniker would suggest, in need of a few fissures. It’s hard to separate these songs from their production. Both are panna-cotta smooth and occasionally cloying. It begs the question: What might have been left on the cutting room floor after 12 years of collaborative work and the frantic effort to erase the ensuing evidence?
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-06-17T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-06-17T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | EMI | June 17, 2021 | 6.7 | 3ac15556-e800-491d-b3b7-3e8d94bf48f4 | Linnie Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/linnie-greene/ | |
On an ambitious three-disc project, the violinist collaborates with a wide array of bright, younger composers, crystallizing a new vision for American classical music. | On an ambitious three-disc project, the violinist collaborates with a wide array of bright, younger composers, crystallizing a new vision for American classical music. | Johnny Gandelsman: This Is America | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/johnny-gandelsman-this-is-america/ | This Is America | What is American classical music? Long before there was a United States of America, classical music took shape in the courts and cathedrals of Europe, where its role became like that of religion: setting the weave of history and myth that bound a people together and stirred their highest feelings. This was as strange a fit for a 17th century land with no perimeter and no past as it is for a 21st century one with no center and, we fear, no future. We might as well ask what America is. Yet the new album by Brooklyn Rider violinist Johnny Gandelsman, with original music by a cornucopia of younger composers in the United States, sounds like one clarion answer to both riddles.
Set in the European mold, American classical came into its own by the 19th century, mineralized by folk. In the 20th, as the U.S. became a more cosmopolitan haven for modernists fleeing fascism—imagine that—American classical fatted itself on homegrown vernaculars like blues, jazz, and rock, producing innovations like minimalism and its long postmodern tail. Meanwhile, technology was changing it, filling it with electronic sounds and global influences and shattering it through electronic conduits. Culture was also changing it, exposing its colonial underpinnings and sapping its white male ramparts. This, circa 2008, is where Brooklyn Rider entered the scene. The 21st-century inheritors of Kronos Quartet, they’re celebrated for commissioning and collaborating almost rampantly, around the world, with classical, jazz, folk, and pop musicians. The string quartet’s internationalist perspective also shines in Gandelsman’s American saga.
For the three-disc album This Is America, Gandelsman sought new works from more than two dozen composers, most of whom picked up institutional funding in their regions. While all of them live in the U.S., they represent a global commonwealth of trained but unbound traditions. The marquee name is Terry Riley, the soul of American minimalism, whose piece for five-string violin is playful and chatty, as is his priceless composer’s note. (“Having nothing particular in mind I began.”) But, surprisingly for a record from this milieu, the churning minimalism of Riley and Philip Glass is hardly the default mode. Instead, a sterner, more sculptural modernism is the baseline, though much of the standout fare departs from it.
The opening disc is bookended by its most striking moments. The first, by the Brazilian American composer-pianist Clarice Assad, is called “O,” which stands for “oxygen.” The music was composed in response to the early pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, events that lend many of the pieces tones of mourning or healing. The titular vowel hangs in gauzy swags of reverb and delay as Gandelsman’s tremolos burrow up, his bow darting and scurrying in the dark. Compare that to the clear, sorrowing style of Rhiannon Giddens, the classical-folk crossover star who revived Black string band music with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Her “New to the Session” closes the disc, which has traversed a sort of experimental operetta by Rhea Fowler and Micaela Tobin and an atonal noise piece by Nick Dunston, with a hint of Irish fiddling.
The second disc includes two songs—one by the storied New York cellist and singer Marika Hughes, and one by the Diné poet and scholar Bojan Louis—in which Gandelsman sings and plays tenor guitar, and he’s got a solid Andrew Bird thing going on, including whistling. This clears the way for the likes of Tomeka Reid, a cellist-composer who’s deep in the Chicago scene, who wrote an arresting one-sided conversation in “Rhapsody.” And Angélica Negrón’s “A través del manto luminoso” is the most ravishing piece in the project. A Puerto Rican-born electro-acoustic composer who also fuses dream pop and dembow in the Brooklyn indie band Balún, Negrón set out to sonically translate a certain photo of stars reflected on the ocean; Gandelsman’s violin and her brilliant, beating electronic tones seem to meld into one resonant body, like an inky, starry singing bowl.
There are more peaks on the third disc, especially Tyshawn Sorey’s crumbling harmonic corridors and the four blissful movements of Anjna Swaminathan’s “Surrender to the Adventure,” which warms the violin with tape manipulation and cozy narration, and would make a fine standalone EP. While This Is America’s extreme variety might outstrip even the most adventurous taste, the coexistence of all these points of view seems like part of the point. So does the fact that the artistry of Gandelsman, a guide through this sprawling labyrinth of tonal systems and difficult techniques, almost washes away in the collective clamor.
The 21st-century canon, unwritten and maybe unwritable, already seems characterized by its multiplicity, its razing of toxic roots, and its anxieties about whether they run too deep for anything but technique to be saved. Yet a new paradigm, at once productively modern and elementally historical, may be coming into view. In Brooklyn Rider’s times, classical music would still look to America’s past for inspiration, but with a more critical eye and a fuller chorus of voices, revealing what others had missed or ignored, seeking unity in individuality. This is the insight and vision that Gandelsman crystallizes, and This Is America stirs feelings about our country that are almost hard to recognize: pride, hope, and the simple relief of consensus reality. The violin strings can never touch, but the drawn bow makes them vibrate as one. | 2022-07-12T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-07-12T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | In a Circle | July 12, 2022 | 7.5 | 3ac8b15c-0bfb-43fa-9a1b-15c2bfedcd20 | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | |
Yves Tumor’s latest album is a benchmark in experimental music. It is searing and borderless, music that is aware of oppressive confinement, and music with an intoxicating urge to be free. | Yves Tumor’s latest album is a benchmark in experimental music. It is searing and borderless, music that is aware of oppressive confinement, and music with an intoxicating urge to be free. | Yves Tumor: Safe in the Hands of Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yves-tumor-safe-in-the-hands-of-love/ | Safe in the Hands of Love | You can ask to be known and you can resist being defined all in the same breath. This is the demand at the center of Yves Tumor’s primal, beautiful, and beseeching new album, Safe in the Hands of Love. At no point in its duration do you have a clear sense of where, exactly, you are. Tumor has been identified as a noise artist but has released ambient tracks and made grooving songs that could pass for R&B and pop. Safe in the Hands of Love embraces it all. Few albums that feel this big wander so freely between genres and fewer still manage to invoke such intense emotions while remaining so inviting. It’s Tumor’s first project since signing to Warp, and it dwarfs everything the artist has released by several orders of magnitude. The leap is so audacious it’s disorienting.
Tumor seems to savor invoking disorientation. “A lot of people are confused about my actual whereabouts, but that’s OK,” Tumor once said when asked a simple question: “Where do you live?” But there is no apparent desire to trick anyone: If anything, Tumor’s evasiveness stems from something more like self-preservation. There is implied violence, after all, in the language of definition, in “boxing in” and “pinning down.” Definition can be something that happens to you, a way of robbing you of selfhood. Incipient violence, symbolic and literal, both as a lure and threat, seethes in Tumor’s music. There is palpable menace in the mix—the drum hits on “Economy of Freedom” feel like something already dead hitting the floor. The noise collage of “Hope in Suffering (Escaping Oblivion & Overcoming Powerlessness)” buzzes at the edges with what sounds like the sampled sounds of carrion flies. When pure moments of beauty arise, like the cello solo in “Recognizing the Enemy,” you almost fear for them.
Everywhere on Safe, violence mingles uneasily with delicacy—Tumor’s own voice switches from a wraithlike falsetto to a yell to a menacing chant. All of it feels too close—mixed too close in our headphones, clipping into distortion, but also too close for comfort, the massive sounds looming over the delicate ones. “Have you looked outside? I’m scared for my life,” Tumor pleads on “Noid.” This is music aware of oppressive confinement, and music with an intoxicating urge to be free.
Tumor’s music sounds freer to move than most, and it prowls fearlessly around every corner of the record store. There are moments here with the brooding tang of ’90s alt-rock. “Hope in Suffering” feels like the first half of a Prurient album submerged in the first half of Loveless. “Honesty” suggests a Boyz II Men vocal trapped beneath a frozen lake. The only real thread linking all the disparate genres is Tumor’s sensuous approach to sound: Tumor produces sounds from equipment that feel like individual human lives. Each one has a story, a reason to exist. The “psssh” of the snare on “Honesty,” the way it is echoed by a deep-dub ping—those two sounds alone, and the loving way Tumor frames and surrounds them, suggests a drama worth pursuing all by itself.
The lyrics are full of references to ripping, cracking, screaming, breaking, gouging; pain and torture. But they also brim with references to love—love lost, love held for a time, love that sounds like a threat (“I wanna wrap around you”), love that renders the narrators unrecognizable to themselves. Transcendent feelings are forever one hairsbreadth from annihilating ones—“Some call it torture, baby I enjoy it,” goes a line on “Licking an Orchid.”
These words feel searingly personal, but in a way that cannot be tracked to a person: Tumor has arranged them a bit like confessions dropped into a box, untethered to a central character. “I’m trying not to lose my only baby girl to a toxic world/I crawled back in our mother’s womb to find a piece of you,” guest vocalist James K wails on “Licking an Orchid.” The overpowering “Lifetime,” driven by rolling live-tracked drums, is pinned in place by the admission: “I miss the good old days out in Biscayne, I miss my brothers.” The specificity is almost overwhelming. Whose brothers, and what happened in Biscayne? You get the sense, maybe, that Tumor is carrying around other people’s secrets, and that Safe in the Hands of Love is so cavernous-sounding, in part, to accommodate them.
Holding all of this together is a stew of feelings—dread, sensuousness, ecstasy, terror—that melt into a mood so pungent and pervasive that people who grew up inside all kinds of different music will be beckoned towards it. Ambient electronic, dream-pop, experimental noise, ’90s R&B, even late-’90s alt-rock—Tumor’s music is fluid and generous enough to contain it all. “It means so much to me when I can’t recognize myself,” Tumor sings on “Recognizing the Enemy.” This could be the voice of someone depersonalized by trauma, unable to piece together their identity from the wreckage. Or it could be the cry of liberation of someone who has finally slipped free of selfhood's constrictions. Genre, Tumor seems to say, is a body; if you feel imprisoned inside one, you can seek freedom. | 2018-09-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-09-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Warp | September 7, 2018 | 9.1 | 3ac8ee71-fbb3-4448-ad65-f289ee7e49d6 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | |
Now 84, the celebrated novelist, poet, and playwright presents his first collection of original songs. These sweetly earnest and stirringly beautiful pieces reflect a life immersed in jazz. | Now 84, the celebrated novelist, poet, and playwright presents his first collection of original songs. These sweetly earnest and stirringly beautiful pieces reflect a life immersed in jazz. | Ishmael Reed: The Hands of Grace | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ishmael-reed-the-hands-of-grace/ | The Hands of Grace | Ishmael Reed has been renowned as a novelist, poet, and playwright for more than half a century, yet his progress in the music world came more slowly. Introduced to jazz music in the front room of a bootlegger’s house at age four, Reed has been immersed in the genre his whole life. He would later tell Max Roach that bebop kept him and his friends out of reform school because they were too busy listening to records to get into trouble. Reed first recorded in the early 1980s, performing vocals and recitations alongside Conjure, a supergroup of jazz musicians—including Allen Toussaint, Olu Dara, Taj Mahal, and David Murray, among others—that Kip Hanrahan, of American Clavé Records, had assembled to arrange music for Reed’s poetry. “But I wanted to apply my ‘sensibility’ to more than songwriting,” Reed later said. “I found that lyrics ranked second to music, and though I had written the songs and poetry, the famous performers had a higher status than the writers.” And so, at the age of 60, he began to study jazz piano seriously. In 2007, a cancer diagnosis motivated him to assemble an ad hoc group and record a collection of jazz standards, For All We Know. Fifteen years later, he finally steps out as a composer on The Hands of Grace, a sweetly earnest and stirringly beautiful collection of jazz tunes for piano and ensemble.
Reed began composing out of necessity when his recent play The Slave Who Loved Caviar was short on funds. The titular slave is Jean-Michel Basquiat; Andy Warhol is the man who supplied the caviar. Rather than the usual story that casts Warhol as Basquiat’s mentor, here the Pop Art icon vampirically feeds off young Basquiat’s growing fame to prop up his own faltering career. For Reed, Basquiat is a Black genius killed by the art world and blamed for his own murder. Four of the tracks here are elegiac piano compositions that soften his characters’ angry polemics on Warhol’s complicity in Basquiat’s early death, while the rest of the album consists of occasional pieces written for Reed’s friends and family.
In a text accompanying the album, the poet Fred Moten compares Reed to Charles Mingus, another musician who came late to the piano; Reed’s approach is as refreshing as Mingus’ on Mingus Plays Piano, with a playfulness that demonstrates a deep fondness for the instrument. Reed’s style is casual and unpolished as he adds his own twists to carefully studied jazz techniques. “Bells of Basquiat” slowly teeters back and forth between two notes that are supported by sparse chords, while “When Beautiful Boys Drown in the Nile They Become Gods” is grounded in a straightforward exploration of the pentatonic scale. “What I Hear When I View Basquiats” works itself up into a ragtime rhythm before faltering again and again, as if each painting generates a joy that quickly dissipates as Reed draws his eyes across a museum wall. In the play, these compositions color the plot of Basquiat’s life in the 1980s, but on record they work wonderfully as a series of simple, expressive vignettes.
Elsewhere, Reed’s daughter Tennessee and his partner, Carla Blank, make the album a family affair. “How High the Moon” features Tennessee reciting her poem of the same name. In a wry play on the jazz standard, she describes the moon in scientific detail over Reed’s piano and Roger Glenn’s flute, calculating the moon’s altitude—238,900 miles—like an uncommonly didactic Beat poet. Blank’s violin on “Steve Cannon Blues” is among the highlights, riffing on Reed’s piano in a way that suggests an ongoing household conversation. Two of the most moving pieces, “Anniversary Song for Carla” and “Timothy,” are respectively dedicated to Blank and to Reed’s late daughter Timothy. Again by himself at the piano for “Anniversary Song,” Reed plays a brief and bittersweet composition whose melody is tentative but determined, as if we’re hearing him rehearse for the anniversary party through the walls. “Timothy” is a slow, stately memorial to Reed’s daughter that fades out in a series of dissonant left-hand chords. The last words on the album are a voicemail from Timothy: “It’s beautiful outside today, and that’s all I wanted to say.”
The Hands of Grace is a uniquely personal glimpse into Reed’s world. Throughout, we can hear chairs squeak, papers rustle, and a slight static pervade, as if we’re listening to an audio diary meant only for Reed and his family. Far more than a theatrical soundtrack filled out by stray pieces, this is a rare, private document of a lifetime investment in jazz coming to fruition. For Reed to pick up composition so late in life is remarkable; that his debut is this intimate and assured is a gift. | 2022-11-29T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2022-11-29T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Reading Group | November 29, 2022 | 8 | 3acebf1a-72a9-4b0a-b640-e4186ca600e1 | Matthew Blackwell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-blackwell/ | |
Moonlighting from their gig in the National, the Dessner brothers deftly transpose their rock acumen to a subtle and detailed film score. | Moonlighting from their gig in the National, the Dessner brothers deftly transpose their rock acumen to a subtle and detailed film score. | Bryce Dessner / Aaron Dessner: Transpecos OST | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22398-transpecos-ost/ | Transpecos OST | Bryce Dessner is, if only to those attuned to the new-classical world, no longer just a rock’n’roll tourist in the world of major orchestral commissions. For the past five or so years, Dessner has premiered a few major works every year and demonstrated a breadth of musical vision that goes well beyond the expected post-minimalist gambits of the “crossover classical” composer. To the art-music world, a Deutsche Grammaphon recording of a multi-movement orchestral suite might have signalled that Dessner meant business. To a larger chunk of music fans, it might have been his involvement with the Ryuichi Sakamoto-helmed soundtrack for Oscar shoe-in The Revenant* *that singled that this classical stuff wasn’t just a dalliance.
In collaboration with his brother and bandmate Aaron, Bryce has now created intimate and modest music for an even more intimate and modest movie. There are similarities between Transpecos and The Revenant: like Alejandro Iñárritu’s unsparing epic, director Greg Kwedar’s feature film debut—a tale of three border patrol agents in Texas whose lives are derailed forever by the illicit contents in the trunk of car—traces a few men’s battle against cruel fate and crueller nature. A festival favorite this year and another among the ever-widening ranks of straight-to-VOD critically lauded indie films, Transpecos is a testament to what a filmmaker can do with the bare minimum in terms of set pieces, climactic action, and performance forces.
The Dessner brothers, in turn, limit their resources as well. Their interplay on the soundtrack (released by indie soundtrack label Milan Records) often resembles their dynamic in the National: an effects-laden rhythm-and-lead relationship, often between a precisely fingerpicked acoustic and sighing, slightly blurry electric guitar figures. It’s much less intricate than Bryce’s recent work, but the musical vocabulary and emotional scope is just as diverse. It’s also a big step forward from the brothers’ themes for the 2013 Kerouac adaptation of *Big Sur. *Chord-organ synth surges and controlled feedback overwhelm the muted guitar rhythms, lending colossal weight to Kwedar’s wide shots of endless desert.
At moments, the Dessners’ response to the source text is a bit knee-jerky. The tracks are heavy on guitar effects (whammy bars, heavy tremolo, weeping slide guitar figures) that conjure a distinctly Western patois (look no further than the track “Cowboys”). But then again, this is a genre film that asks for such things, a Border *noir. *These are semi-winking diversions along the way, not the lifeblood of the soundscape.
Like the film, the soundtrack slows and softens in the third act, becoming all pointillistic guitar, violin notes, and gritty, seething ambience. Hints of folksiness and pop harmony disappear as the three officers accept their grim lot and contemplate the eternal. The spare music mirrors their desolation—sometimes the ruthless phantoms they are hobbling frantically away from, sometimes a vain twinge of hope. Moments like these show that the Dessners as a composing/performing unit have built their reputation not only from developing melodic and rhythmic interchanges, but for finding unexpected ways to shade them.
Though they make for the most interesting cues in the film, these more glacial compositions (the lengthy “Chase” and “Man Down,” in particular) don’t work as well apart from the images, as many are choreographed fairly specifically to beats in the script. But they pay tribute to the Dessners’ real gift as programmatic composers: their ability to play both to and against the dramatic moment when the time feels right. The true power of this music can only be fully felt in context, but that is, after all, what it was designed for. The Dessners understand their relatively slight role. In the context of ethereal modern film scores, they create something both familiar and, in its deployment, unexpected. | 2016-09-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rock | Milan | September 17, 2016 | 7 | 3ad06cdc-e971-4a1f-8045-efbd429886b0 | Winston Cook-Wilson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/winston-cook-wilson/ | null |
Matt Martians is the founding member and a driving force behind the band the Internet. His new solo record is full of slack, indolent funk. | Matt Martians is the founding member and a driving force behind the band the Internet. His new solo record is full of slack, indolent funk. | Matt Martians: The Drum Chord Theory | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22883-the-drum-chord-theory/ | The Drum Chord Theory | As a founding member and driving force behind the band the Internet, Matt Martians got better the old-fashioned way: album by album, the group tinkered and tightened and scraped away dust, gradually revealing their identity as an adept lite-funk outfit. Their third full-length, 2015’s Ego Death, twinkled softly, but with enough clarity to earn a Grammy nomination and radio play. After all that hard work, Martians unwinds on his new solo record, The Drum Chord Theory, slackening the traditionally taut lines of funk and rap to make a droopy, indolent album.
This is music judiciously leached of urgency. Martians keeps verses short or excises them completely, so there isn’t much of an opportunity to upshift into refrains, which mostly come in the form of repetitive chants or near-whispers. Sometimes the drums and bass are overlaid at odd angles, hinting at a ’90s hip-hop groove but splaying sideways rather than cohering into something clipped and commanding. After a few minutes of a vamp—keys and rhythm section, maybe hand percussion and a stray guitar line—the band tires and moves on to a new one, frequently within the same song.
The recumbent funk comes paired mostly with stories of romantic woe; a central riff may change, but the male-female disconnect remains paramount. “We can’t read minds,” Martians laments, addressing any potential future partners who might be listening on “What Love Is.” “We just want to know what the fuck you want—is that hard?” “Every time I think I found the one, something always goes wrong,” he sings a couple tracks later. But he continues his search, assuring a woman on the album’s final bonus cut, “Elevators,” “that girl from the dream was you.”
These feelings don't bloom into anguish; The Drum Chord Theory is dillydallying on lazy Sunday, with stormy Monday kept at safe remove. Martians lightens the mood by flying into a synthetic, “Alvin and the Chipmunks” register to undercut a possible commitment—“if you were my girlfriend, I'd make you feel good”—and peppers songs with asides like the enthusiastic Internet endorsement that closes “Where Are Yo Friends?”: “Syd, Chris, Steve, Pat, Jameel, I love y’all niggas man,” he says, name checking bandmates. Then he adds happily, “But everyone else man, if we ain’t cool, then I’m sorry.” There’s meta-commentary, too: after a couple tunes reorganize around a different vamp at the halfway point, on “BabyGirl,” Martians quips “Ain’t no hidden track back here—next song.” Cue a track change.
If you won’t come to The Drum Chord Theory for a bracing shot of adrenaline, supine doesn’t mean unenjoyable. The more Martians sinks into his funk hammock, the better. On “Southern Isolation,” the bass squirms up and down the scale, evoking Caetano Veloso’s great “Olha O Menino,” while the singing washes back and forth, unhurried and opulent, like a sloop bobbing on the tide. Elsewhere, the band keeps sketching outlines and leaving them behind, dangling one riff, teasing it a bit, discarding it. Martians doesn’t return to the rapturous, near nod-off state of “Southern Isolation.” The Drum Chord Theory is never unpleasant, but it’s also never very distinct. | 2017-02-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-02-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | AWAL / Kobalt | February 9, 2017 | 6 | 3ad4a43d-0f60-4891-962f-efdfa248cfdf | Elias Leight | https://pitchfork.com/staff/elias-leight/ | null |
The latest from Melodies International, the reissues label by Floating Points’ Sam Shepherd, is the 1976 LP from Chicago soul-disco band Tomorrow’s People—featuring an audacious 20-minute title track. | The latest from Melodies International, the reissues label by Floating Points’ Sam Shepherd, is the 1976 LP from Chicago soul-disco band Tomorrow’s People—featuring an audacious 20-minute title track. | Tomorrow's People: Open Soul | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22834-open-soul/ | Open Soul | When he’s not touring as Floating Points, Sam Shepherd also DJs a funk and soul party, called You’re a Melody. His selections skew ludicrously rare, and for most DJs, just flashing them before the trainspotters is enough. But Shepherd’s love of the music led him to start up Melodies International, a reissues label run in tandem with DJ Love on the Run, Mafalda, and Javybz. They suss out, lovingly remaster, and (legitimately) reissue long-lost singles for a new generation of fans, from a $500 7” to the complete recorded works of the woefully obscure Detroit band Aged in Harmony, housed in a picture sleeve with an accompanying newsprint fanzine. This level of care and dedication towards the physical artifact is rare in an increasingly streaming-only world. And while such speculation over old records typically benefits only the seller, the profits from these reissues wind up going back to the original artist themselves.
For the third release on the imprint, Shepherd went beyond, reissuing the lone full-length from Chicago soul-disco group Tomorrow’s People. Comprised of four brothers (Kevin, Maurice, Gerald, and Timothy Burton), their 1976 album Open Soul may not have sold many copies on the short-lived Stage Productions label, but since then it’s become a true “holy grail,” with copies in the last year changing hands for over $1,500. With the master tapes lost 20 years ago, the label set about reissuing the LP sourced from multiple copies of the original album. Alas, the foxy cover of the original is now replaced with a drawing of the four brothers.
For those not taken with the rarefied stratosphere of private press funk and soul albums, the first half of Open Soul might leave you wondering what the fuss is all about. “Lovers to Friends” is a slow-burner featuring the brothers’ effortless harmonies, but there’s not too much that would have made it stand out during that decade. “It Ain’t Fair” continues along at nearly the same tempo, with a bit more eerie analog synth and a saxophone line drifting across as the brothers coo “ooooh, don’t take your love away.” It’s a soulful plea, but unless you’ve worn out the Gamble & Huff discography, there’s more immediately rewarding fare to be had there. More upbeat is “Let’s Get Down With the Beat,” which features the kind of proto-disco beat and cymbal work that Earl Young pioneered during those years. The fidgety instrumental “Hurt Perversion” puts the keyboards front and center—but it’s contemporaneous of Bernie Worrell and his key work with Funkadelic, and not nearly as wigged out.
No matter how rare the album might be, no one is paying a month of New York City rent for the first five songs of Open Soul. And no one pleaded during a You’re a Melody DJ set for this album to be made available again (based on the A-side). But flip it over and you’re presented with the stunning 20-minute title track. Brother Timothy’s spare organ work and Brother Gerald’s guitar cast a spell, and for the first minute, you might think you’re in for a beatless cosmic soul trip. Just as the two-minute mark approaches, though, that guitar tightens up, a conga drum flares to life, and “Open Soul” bursts into full flame. “Soul.../Everybody’s asking me what it is,” the brothers chant as the drums and hand percussion run at double time.
Like any good writer, in providing an answer, they show rather than tell. “Open Soul” soon moves into a psychedelic break, with each successive electric guitar solo and sax squall nudging the temperature up a few more degrees. Seven minutes in, the brothers’ harmonies return, and it seems that surely the song will begin to lose steam or focus. But the Burtons keep that momentum going (and going). And while the song never veers off the path of funk, in its tirelessness and doggedness it starts to mutate and resemble a motorik groove, seeming like it might forever run to the horizon.
There’s examples of such audacity in African-American music of that time—Funkadelic’s double-digit explorations, the unreleased J.B.’s album, and Norman Whitfield’s ambitious productions for the Temptations immediately spring to mind—but none are as determined and downright exhaustive as “Open Soul.” By the time that final drum roll comes around some 17 minutes in, it feels like a marathon runner collapsing at the end of a race and the song recedes back to its soul ambient opening. The song no doubt wore down even the most fervent of dancers during Shepherd’s DJ sets. And thanks to his due diligence, now it can perform a similar feat in your living room. | 2017-01-28T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-01-28T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Melodies International | January 28, 2017 | 6.8 | 3ad4b4af-d025-43ee-aef7-35fa1a08563b | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
Husband-wife duo-- he's from Animal Collective, she was in Múm-- record an album, then release it with all the songs running backward. Seriously. | Husband-wife duo-- he's from Animal Collective, she was in Múm-- record an album, then release it with all the songs running backward. Seriously. | Avey Tare / Kría Brekkan: Pullhair Rubeye | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10153-pullhair-rubeye/ | Pullhair Rubeye | It's possible to listen to and discuss this album by married couple Avey Tare (real name: David Portner; main gig: Animal Collective) and Kria Brekkan (aka Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, formerly of Múm, lots of guest appearances since) on a conceptual plane. As has been widely disseminated in the online community, Pullhair Rubeye was essentially complete last December when, prompted in part by a viewing of director David Lynch's Inland Empire, Portner and Valtýsdóttir decided to reverse the tapes and release the album with all the songs running backward.
There's plenty of experimental music out there-- long drones, say-- where such a move might have gone unnoticed; this isn't one of them. The original tapes consisted of earthy, folky songs of simple construction consisting of mostly acoustic guitar, piano, and voice. Some potentially interesting questions crop up. Portner and Valtýsdóttir knew lots of people would re-reverse the record to hear its source; indeed, plenty of computer-savvy fans have already "fixed" Pullhair Rubeye, and-- what do you know-- in its original form, it's a damn nice album.
Though Portner and Valtýsdóttir's main projects have little in common, here they are aesthetically simpatico. Relative to the dark material Portner released on his half of a 2003 split EP, these tracks show him with an interest in singsong melody and childlike simplicity as pronounced as that of his partner-in-crime Panda Bear. And while I am no fan of Valtýsdóttir's infantilized coo of a voice, I like it in this context better than anywhere outside the first Múm record. So I highly recommend that Animal Collective fans seek out the re-reversed copies of Pullhair Rubeye. They are enjoyable. And the computer-savvy downloaders helped make them.
Another point of interest: there is something compelling about how "acoustic" music can become "electronic" merely by running the tape backward. In their original form, these are "songs;" reversed, if they are going to be appreciated at all, these "songs" are heard as "ambient pieces." So yeah, conceptually, Pullhair Rubeye might have something on the ball, and I'm always a fan of playful gestures. But then there's, you know, the thing that sits on store shelves and costs money. And that version of Pullhair Rubeye is remarkably dull.
For me personally, the irony is that I've long considered myself the biggest sucker ever born for the simple backward effect. In reviews I've praised passages for their "disorientation" and "peculiar sense of longing" that were no more than a couple of notes tapped out on a piano and flipped over in Pro Tools. I admit it; it's easy to pull off, but backward instruments can still get to me. Probably all that time as a kid spent listening for Satanic back-masking when I should have been outside playing kick the can (or maybe it was those Beatles records).
A whole album of this one effect, however, the reverse piano and reverse guitar and reverse voices going from decay to attack over and over and over again for 31 minutes... man, it's not just boring, it actually becomes depressing. It all kind of bleeds together into one bland and undifferentiated sonic blob that I never need to hear again. That's one nice thing about living when we do, though: Unlike Lou Reed fans with Metal Machine Music or Flaming Lips fans with Zaireeka, no one is going to pick this up on a whim without knowing what they're getting into. The information is out there. Everyone who knows and cares about the Animal Collective, everyone who follows the doings of Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, all these folks also spend time online and so know Pullhair Rubeye's story. So it's not a rip-off, at least, we have to give them that. It's also no fun whatsoever to listen to. | 2007-04-26T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2007-04-26T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Experimental / Electronic | Paw Tracks | April 26, 2007 | 1 | 3ad756f4-7805-46ae-83be-1e92613b2855 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
Michelle Zauner is the guitarist and singer for the underrated Philadelphia indie rock band Little Big League. After her mother was diagnosed with cancer, she returned home to Oregon; while she was there, she revamped songs from her previous lo-fi releases under the name Japanese Breakfast. | Michelle Zauner is the guitarist and singer for the underrated Philadelphia indie rock band Little Big League. After her mother was diagnosed with cancer, she returned home to Oregon; while she was there, she revamped songs from her previous lo-fi releases under the name Japanese Breakfast. | Japanese Breakfast: Psychopomp | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21629-psychopomp/ | Psychopomp | Halfway through Little Big League's "Year of the Sunhouse," some dope asks Michelle Zauner whether she's still "playing basement shows with the band—doing the music thing?" She roars back, "Well yes I fuckin' a-a-am!" Her pride was justified. The underrated Philadelphia four-piece were among the best of their kind, playing knotty, effervescent indie rock that confronted darker themes like sexual violence and infidelity. Shortly before that single's release in late 2014, Zauner's mother was diagnosed with cancer. The frontwoman/guitarist stopped playing basement shows with the band, and moved back to small-town Oregon to be with her mom, and later comfort her widowed father. Psychopomp came together that year in rural Eugene, where Zauner revamped songs from her previous lo-fi releases under the name Japanese Breakfast. In collaboration with musician Ned Eisenberg, she pushed them beyond their original scrappy basement confines into shimmering gems.
If Zauner's palette has largely softened, her subject matter hasn't, even though only two songs here deal specifically with the death of her mother. "In Heaven" welds the billowing, shoegazy coo of peak Asobi Seksu to distinct songwriting fit for the Sundays. The heartbreaking lyrics measure the distance between a mother's love and the effect of its loss, but Zauner sings in a forceful celebration of life. When she belts, "Oh, do you believe in heaven like you believed in me?/ Oh, it could be such heaven if you believed it was real," her heart sounds like it might burst.
It sets the tone for a record that loosely explores issues of dependency. The disco-tinged "The Woman That Loves You" and intimate closer "Triple 7" find Zauner playing "the other woman" involved with a married man. The latter is one of her characteristically blunt depictions of sex. "I love a man in uniform," she admits, before wrinkling the cliche: "'Cause he loves me like a slot machine from the valley of loose women in the cruel light of morning." Similarly, "Everybody Wants to Love You," a driving duet with Radiator Hospital's Sam Cook-Parrott, leaps swiftly from a one-night stand to marriage through varying emotional and physical demands—most notably, "When we wake up in the morning, will you give me lots of head?" These songs are never as clear-cut as dominance versus submission, and Zauner doesn't apologize or rationalize her desires, which is refreshing.
Nevertheless, Psychopomp bites harder when Zauner lets you feel the weight of her pain. She turns the lens on herself on "Jane Cum," the record's most hopeless, cathartic moment, where the starry shimmer slips away, and heavy, staticky storms envelop her yearning voice. "Heft" is the other song about her mother's death, updated from its original appearance on 2014's Where is My Great Big Feeling to sound like the kind of eerie, creeping indie rock that the teens in "Twin Peaks" would have listened to if the show had its own Bronze or Bait Shop. Staring down the barrel of her mother's impending diagnosis, Zauner panics about whether "it's the same dark coming," a reprisal of the cancer that also took her aunt. "Oh fuck it all," she sings, wringing out the last word.
It's as good a response as any other. Playing shows in basement bands may not offer adult security, just as writing songs about one of life's worst losses doesn't necessarily offer any resolutions, but survival is its own reward. And Psychopomp offers much more than that: at once cosmically huge and acutely personal, Zauner captures grief for the perversely intimate yet overwhelming pain it is. Long may she keep at this music thing. | 2016-03-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-03-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Yellow K | March 29, 2016 | 7.9 | 3adaf131-b9ac-4928-ade6-b5006148132f | Laura Snapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/laura-snapes/ | null |
On this strong return after a tough year, Nathan Williams enlists Jay Reatard's backing band, polishes his sound, and embraces pop-punk clarity. | On this strong return after a tough year, Nathan Williams enlists Jay Reatard's backing band, polishes his sound, and embraces pop-punk clarity. | Wavves: King of the Beach | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14415-king-of-the-beach/ | King of the Beach | In the world of independent music, learning on the job is frowned upon. It's easier than ever for kids to make professional-grade records and have them heard, but any sign of weakness-- a lackluster stage show, a questionable interview, a dud follow-up-- and listeners will let you know how duped they feel. Few people know this better than Nathan Williams, who made his buzzy second album Wavvves at his parents' house and spent the rest of 2009 on a badwill tour (live disaster, canceled tour, fistfight) that earned him Lohan/Hilton-levels of derision in certain circles.
But some stuck with him, like Best Coast best bud Bethany Cosentino, the late Jay Reatard's backing band, and esteemed producer Dennis Herring. If you include yourself in that group, new album King of the Beach rewards your belief. The album's title may be something of an ego-fueled joke on indie's ongoing infatuation with seaside fantasy, but Williams is still very much a part of the world he pokes fun at. Though the scorched-earth production of Wavvves was pretty much the opposite of chillwave, it did share themes, embracing weed, nostalgia, and both music-making and the outdoors as ideal escapes from early-20s boredom and a depressed job market.
In its quest for an endless summer, King of the Beach wears its California lineage with pride. It's major-key and resplendently colored, owing as much to Orange County skate-punk as it does to the Beach Boys. In the past, Williams' 1960s fixation mostly manifested in some falsetto Brian Wilson oohs and ahs, and that's still his go-to hook. But the references here are drawn from an exponentially wider palette: The twinkly, lovelorn "When Will You Come" uses the evergreen "Be My Baby" beat, while "Mickey Mouse" cops from "Da Doo Ron Ron" and distills Person Pitch to a three-minute essence. The charm is hearing Williams going directly to the sources of his inspiration, whether it's the warped synth lope of "Baseball Cards" or the jingle-like facility of "Convertible Balloon".
Yeah, "variety" and "well-produced" are new concepts for Wavves, but even when Williams recalls his high-voltage past, the growth in songwriting is unmistakable. Catchy as they were, the melodies of "So Bored" and "No Hope Kids" weren't hooks so much as battering rams that broke through with sheer repetition. The bright production here allows the songs to go places. The title track is built on a chassis of four-chord power-pop, but it opens up enough to be filled in with oddball percussion, whammy bar damage, and a surprising key change. Even though the double-time slamdancer "Post Acid" reminds me of everything that was good about Lookout! or Epitaph, Williams lets us in on his sense of a good time before an impassioned delivery of one of 2010's most anthemic choruses: "Misery, won't you comfort me in my time of need?"
While King of the Beach manifests a quantum leap in Williams' confidence as a musician, from a lyrical standpoint, he's pretty much the same downbeat loner who made Wavvves. It's very much a punk record in attitude, but one that eschews its artier iterations and reps for the marginalized, snotty mid-90s heads like Green Day, MxPx, or even Blink-182, bands who were wrongly conflated with jock culture despite predominant themes of isolation, boredom, and sexual inadequacy. Though Williams never specifically addresses his real-life beefs, it's hard not to read into the self-loathing as real time commentary. His old friends hate him, girls won't listen, and he's fucked up. The mood never becomes oppressive, though. "I'm not supposed to be a kid/ But I'm an idiot/ I'd say I'm sorry but it wouldn't mean shit," isn't the most artful mea culpa, but like most of King of the Beach, there is power in its directness.
Williams has boasted that he wants King of the Beach to be his Nevermind, and while I'll go out on a limb and speculate that it won't change the music industry as we know it, it serves a somewhat similar function in introducing a talent who benefits from a pop polish. More pointedly, it might be derided because it owes more to Dookie than Doolittle and many might choose this as a soundtrack to drinking beer or starting a mosh pit. Some may see King of the Beach as a story of redemption or even an argument that a public shaming might do good for some of these younger bands. Either way, it's' a fantastic record, and you can't say Williams didn't earn it this time. Don't blow it, dude. | 2010-07-01T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2010-07-01T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Fat Possum | July 1, 2010 | 8.4 | 3add0746-365a-4c82-bf8b-097219688343 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
Dreams Worth Than More Money takes a few more risks than Meek Mill's debut. With high-profile guest spots from Future, Drake, Nicki Minaj, and others, it has more breathing room and clears space for Meek Mill's unrelenting intensity. It also reinforces the impression that a brief blast is the best way to experience Meek. | Dreams Worth Than More Money takes a few more risks than Meek Mill's debut. With high-profile guest spots from Future, Drake, Nicki Minaj, and others, it has more breathing room and clears space for Meek Mill's unrelenting intensity. It also reinforces the impression that a brief blast is the best way to experience Meek. | Meek Mill: Dreams Worth More Than Money | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20778-dreams-worth-more-than-money/ | Dreams Worth More Than Money | Meek Mill's signature song remains "Dreams and Nightmares", the title track and first song from his first album. The rest of the album has more or less dropped from public consciousness, but the intro remains a resonant classic: When the song suddenly shifts tempo and mood, and Meek jumps into an urgent, bleating rap cadence (complete with lines like "all I know is murder" shouted with guttural intensity), he's introducing himself as the only rapper that matters for five minutes.
The "for five minutes" qualifier is an important distinction: Meek's intensity is both the key to his appeal and his Achilles Heel. His mixtapes are often long and scattershot, while still containing at least a half dozen keepers, and his first album, and now the second, suffer a similar fate. Every few months, Meek drops an incredible single, or an eyebrow-raising feature, reinforcing the idea that his music works best in short blasts, harnessing his energy and expending it all at will. Recent non-album single "Monster" is an incredible song, but I can't imagine it being on this album; it's too concentrated. And I'm not even sure if 14 "Monster"s is sustainable or desirable.
However, Dreams Worth Than More Money is still a few clicks better than his debut, because it feels like Meek Mill is taking risks. Opener "Lord Knows" lays a Tory Lanez hook and a typically fraught Meek vocal performance atop sample from Mozart's Lacrimosa movement from his Requiem in D, a tip of the hat to how epic "Dreams and Nightmares" remains but also as a hedging of bets: Nothing could realistically top his first intro, so they reached all the way back to Mozart for a fitting backdrop. He's still rapping hard-hitting lines like "Shout-out the judge that denied me my bail/it made me smarter and it made me go harder." It's a great song, even if it can't match the bar set by "Dreams and Nightmares."
"Classic," a typically nimble, bouncy, Bangladesh track, is an atypical Meek move: he's rarely if ever sounded so airy, clean, fun, bright, and it's a good look. In fact, the album's biggest highlights are its biggest departures, from the druggy "Jump Out the Face" with Future (which would fit nicely onto 56 Nights), to "R.I.C.O." featuring Drake, and even "Bad For You" with Nicki Minaj. Meek has allowed these artists to "take the lead" on these tracks, and the album is better for it, because it opens the record up and gives Meek breathing room. It also keeps in line with the idea that a brief blast of Meek is the best way to experience Meek.
The '70s exploitation flick vibe of "Stand Up," featuring an indelible two-line cameo from DJ Khaled, is another stylistic switch-up on the album's back end. And "Cold Hearted" is a surprisingly touching closer. Ostensibly riffing on a familiar rap trope—rebuking family and friends who turn on you once you taste success—it gains depth through little details, and ends up feelin more like an introspective testament to youth. Diddy, his voice sounding destroyed, offers a weirdly unguarded monologue, and Meek sneaks gut-check details like "we started off as kids, stomach touching our ribs" in a sing-song patter. It reminds you why you loved the guy in the first place: He accomplishes more with the sound of his rapping than other rappers do with entire albums. His understanding of rap as a vocal performance; his ability to summon powerful emotions; his combination of vulnerability, bravado, and a storyteller's sense of character and time—well, shit, those are all the hallmarks of a great rapper. Maybe it only all coheres in flashes, but if Meek Mill works best in bursts, then so be it. | 2015-07-06T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-07-06T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Atlantic / Maybach | July 6, 2015 | 7.4 | 3ae1a3b4-1f7a-43ec-a26a-ec9f3f767621 | Matthew Ramirez | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ramirez/ | null |
The second album written, produced, and performed by Georgia Barnes is the work of a budding pop mind finding her own space on the dancefloor. | The second album written, produced, and performed by Georgia Barnes is the work of a budding pop mind finding her own space on the dancefloor. | Georgia: Seeking Thrills | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/georgia-seeking-thrills/ | Seeking Thrills | From behind a set of cherry-red drum pads, Georgia opened a small show in Brooklyn this past October with the announcement that, just that day, she’d met a personal hero: Sheila E., the iconic drummer, singer, and Prince collaborator. There are famous women drummers, but few who are songwriters, producers, headlining performers, and pop stars, too. Perhaps that’s why Seeking Thrills, the new album from 29-year-old British musician Georgia Barnes, sounds so fresh and exploratory: She’s not working from any real blueprint. Though it’s her second record, Seeking Thrills has the ascendent energy of an audition tape; brighter and less tentative than her self-titled 2015 debut, even its awkward moments convey earnest, self-taught sincerity.
As the daughter of Neil Barnes from the ’90s UK electronic duo Leftfield, Georgia grew up surrounded by her father’s collection of electronic and international records and developed an early love of pop and hip-hop, particularly Missy Elliott. She later became a London session drummer, performing alongside acts like Kate Tempest and Kwes. Seeking Thrills builds from all these interests simultaneously, foregrounding Georgia’s voice and fusing the rattling beats of her debut with the familiar neon warmth of Chicago and Detroit house. On opening track “Started Out,” a slinky house-pop firestarter with the enigmatic hook, “We are wicked young fools who behave now,” the combination is magnetic.
To write the new album, Georgia holed up in her home studio, studying a personal pantheon of great songwriters: Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Kate Bush. She’s estimated that it took a year and a half worth of study to unlock her own abilities. A finished version of Seeking Thrills was ready in spring 2019, but early last year, after “Started Out” landed in rotation at BBC Radio 1, she happily delayed it. Fully half of the album’s songs were released as singles, from “Feel It” in 2017 to the most recent, “24 Hours,” just this week. The promotional advantages are self-evident, though the outcome is frustrating: The album front-loads its two best songs, “Started Out” and the twisty “About Work the Dancefloor,” and nothing thereafter packs quite the same punch.
In this way, some of the same things that allow Seeking Thrills to feel like an edition-of-one discovery can also come across choppy or scattered. “Ray Guns” still sounds like castoff M.I.A., a frequent point of comparison for Georgia’s debut. It’s not that her time in the studio didn’t pay off—the new album has better hooks, bigger personality, and a radiant optimism that her older material can’t match. But learning to write isn’t the kind of job you finish. Some of these lyrics are paper-thin, and Georgia doesn’t always have the range to give them more dimension. “Mellow” makes the disparity clear: South London singer Shygirl’s verse is sultry and stylish, but Georgia dominates the song with reference-track stiltedness. Lines that ought to sound effortless—“Keepin’ real/Never spill/And I’m gonna get it/From the spigot”—instead land with a thud.
Yet Georgia is coming into her own as a singer: She handles the deep-water affirmation grooves “Till I Own It” and “Ultimate Sailor,” two of the most rewarding album cuts, with a husky pop style indebted to Robyn. “Started Out” is still the strongest song here, but this wasn’t supposed to be an album of floor-fillers. It’s better suited to a house party, or as the soundtrack to a private “Dancing on My Own” moment (the very Girls scene Georgia watched just before writing “About Work the Dancefloor”). Even when it’s clumsy, Seeking Thrills never feels manufactured. It’s a passion project, a result of trial and error, the singular product of someone learning to write for her own voice.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-01-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-01-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Domino | January 10, 2020 | 6.8 | 3ae1e907-f799-450a-a333-72141c552421 | Anna Gaca | https://pitchfork.com/staff/anna-gaca/ | |
The Baltimore synth-romantics' third album is invested in wide-open spaces. Though less intent on bringing drama or fury than last year's In Evening Air, its reflections on aging and memory accumulate into something moving. | The Baltimore synth-romantics' third album is invested in wide-open spaces. Though less intent on bringing drama or fury than last year's In Evening Air, its reflections on aging and memory accumulate into something moving. | Future Islands: On the Water | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15903-future-islands-on-the-water/ | On the Water | Samuel T. Herring, lyricist and lion-throated singer of Baltimore synth-romantics Future Islands, has written a lot of break-up songs. He penned some pretty vitriolic ones on the band's 2008 debut, Wave Like Home, and then he wrote an entire record's worth on their terrific 2010 release, In Evening Air. About four songs into their latest-- which contains such boldfaced melodrama as "I loved you and I still do"-- you get the idea that this guy might be something of a Sisyphus, relieved at last of the whole boulder-up-the-hill business but doomed to sit on the receiving end of an "It's not you, it's me" conversation ad infinitum.
Future Islands initially came out of Baltimore's Wham City scene; their first, rather unexceptional record was built from electro-punk and day-glo squiggles. Over the past few years, though, they've become more aesthetically disciplined. The thing that made In Evening Air such a bruiser was how seriously it took its job as a break-up album: Its gaze was singularly affixed on hurt. Herring's lyrics were simplistic and conversational, yet pointed: "You couldn't possibly know how much you meant to me," "You hurt me so bad," etc. Amidst a steady, drum-machine heartbeat and uncommonly sentient-sounding synths, he repeated these lines-- the banal poetry of relationship-speak-- until they started to sound downright sinister. His refrain on "Long Flight" builds from a quietly mounting frenzy into, by song's end, a full blown, grown-man temper tantrum. Listening to the part when he finally breaks evokes the skin-prickling claustrophobia of watching a mild-mannered airplane seatmate start to freak out 30,000 feet above an exit route.
Their third and latest LP, On the Water, is more invested in wide-open spaces. The opening (and title) track gives all the elements of the band's sound more leg room: Herring's unhurried vocals, epic, smoldering synths, and the steady churn of a not-too-choppy tide on a sample that begins the song. Recorded in a friend's house in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, overlooking the Pasquotank River, On the Water draws from the imagery and movement of the sea. It's less intent on bringing the drama or the fury than In Evening Air was, but its reflections on aging and memory accumulate into something surprisingly moving.
With the songs' energy scaled back, the efforts of the other two band members come to the fore. Gerrit Welmers handles the keyboards and programming, bringing an evocative, setting-sun vibe to slowburners like "The Great Fire" (a soulful duet with Jenn Wasner of fellow Marylanders Wye Oak), while William Cashion's guitars have the same low-end lurch of early-New Order riffs. Though treading familiar sonic and thematic waters at the start, On the Water really comes alive midway through, beginning with the mournful "Where I Found You" and building to "Close to None", the record's most buoyant track.
Though some of Herring's more temperate moments make me miss his snarling freakouts of yore, one of On the Water's most striking moments is decidedly minimal: "Tybee Island" pairs the sound of crashing waves with a warm synth tone, both of which overpower the presence of their frontman. For most people, Herring's hyper-theatrical vocals are the make-or-break point of Future Islands: He sings every line like Meat Loaf serenading Yorick's skull. It's an acquired taste for sure, one that's much easier to be unequivocally swept up in when you're watching him on stage (doing grand hand gestures, grinning like a maniac, and occasionally slapping himself across the face), but even on the record, Herring's signature affect communicates something about the operatic sadness of life's everyday banalities. "Tybee Island" finds him, for once, barely audible. It's a powerful moment to hear a voice usually so big made to sound-- in contrast with the natural world-- so human and small. It's the polar opposite of the tension-building repetitions of In Evening Air: With each utterance of this coda, he seems more and more to loosen his grip on the past. | 2011-10-10T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2011-10-10T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | Thrill Jockey | October 10, 2011 | 7.7 | 3ae5dba6-cedb-46df-9611-89bc8d25ffca | Lindsay Zoladz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/lindsay-zoladz/ | null |
With Why Make Sense?, Hot Chip continue to capture pure joy while acknowledging the limits of such a quest. They've always been traditionalists at heart, making pop songs that utilize the vocabularies of house, R&B, and hip-hop rather than the other way around. | With Why Make Sense?, Hot Chip continue to capture pure joy while acknowledging the limits of such a quest. They've always been traditionalists at heart, making pop songs that utilize the vocabularies of house, R&B, and hip-hop rather than the other way around. | Hot Chip: Why Make Sense? | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20506-why-make-sense/ | Why Make Sense? | "Let's fuck shit up," suggests Alexis Taylor on a bonus track from Hot Chip’s sixth album. "Let's go for a rollercoaster ride—even a shit rollercoaster ride." The lines are pure punk while everything around them is anything but: Taylor sounds like the universe's loneliest astronaut as synth pulses blink in blackness behind him. The song is called "Burning Up" and it's vintage Hot Chip: funny where it might be wistful; wistful where it might be funny. It also serves as a mini-history of the London quintet, who first formed 15 years ago. As the song moves along, youthful abandon gives way to consequence, weight, blame. Co-leader Joe Goddard arrives to split the difference in the final verse. "My age says I'm an adult but some days my heart will not be told," he hums as the track evaporates behind him. "Hearing teenage symphonies dancing through my head."
With Why Make Sense?, Hot Chip continue to capture pure joy while acknowledging the limits of such a quest. It's an adult album made by a group of guys in their mid-thirties who know all of the trappings of an "adult album." These ahead-of-their-time pop omnivores—remember the bewilderment that surrounded the bedroom Prince and Stevie-isms of their debut album in 2004?—are now, remarkably, something of an institution, their eclecticism the new normal. They used to be LCD Soundsystem’s brainy British counterparts (the two bands even shared a member in guitarist Al Doyle), but now LCD are gone, and James Murphy is opening wine bars, and Hot Chip are still here, still looking for spontaneity, still hopelessly bittersweet, still trying to get better, still romantic, still funkier than a bunch of pasty dudes from Putney have any right to be, still making it cool to dance even if you can’t dance for shit.
This is the smoothest Hot Chip album, and they’ve never sounded more professional. It's a mixed blessing: For a band healthily obsessed with not making sense, the refined sound can seem a bit commonplace after more than a decade of spikes, jump-cuts, and curveballs. Then again, Hot Chip have always been traditionalists at heart, making pop songs that utilize the vocabularies of house, R&B, and hip-hop rather than the other way around. They've stacked up plenty of bridges worthy of the Brill Building, a phenomenon that continues on the lovingly nostalgic "Need You Now", which is about as close as they've come to matching the melancholy perfection of "Boy from School". The wafting "White Wine and Fried Chicken" takes the band's high/low culture expertise into the realm of gastronomy, and feels like a soul standard for our century. The three-minute song sounds about as straightforward as anything Hot Chip have made, though there are big knots in Taylor's words; whereas much of the band's last two albums dealt with the wonders of stability and contentment, Why Make Sense? seems more conflicted. Existential crises abound, creating discord with the album's glossy finish.
Taylor and Goddard ask themselves questions that many almost-middle-aged musicians—especially in the pop and dance worlds—are too scared to broach. They try to find some clarity within the ambiguities of committed relationships (romantic or musical), exposing vulnerabilities in the name of emotional honesty. "Out of happiness can come a bitterness," admits Taylor—the son of a Shakespeare scholar and psychoanalyst—on the booming title track, before mixing in confrontational politics that spin around ideas of personal freedom: "Why be tough when strength is just for losers/ Be what you are at the mercy of your rulers." Meanwhile, the mildly anti-machine-music "Huarache Lights" has Taylor trying to find a heartbeat between ones and zeroes, but he’s too savvy (or neurotic) to construct any bold lines. "Am I so truthful, or in truth, is the youth just getting old?" he sings, putting his own perspective into question. On a self-critical bonus track, Goddard suggests, "I need to separate the head from the body," but he knows that can be hard to do—a fact that this album, with its bulbous grooves and anxious themes, makes clear again and again.
Why Make Sense? is probably the fourth-best Hot Chip album. But that’s not necessarily a knock, because their fourth-best album is still a very good album. At this point, they seem too smart and talented to really fail. They will always be underdogs that you root for to make songs that highlight the complexity of human experience while also helping you to put those complexities in the back of your mind for a minute. They are confident in their abilities, even when those abilities are aimed at throwing their own confidence into doubt. They are beloved. They are trustworthy. Their senselessness now makes a lot of sense to a lot of people. | 2015-05-20T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-05-20T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic | Domino | May 20, 2015 | 7.3 | 3ae6bbd2-e5ab-4cdb-a980-be96a81bc4b1 | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | null |
After scoring a #1 hit with 2014's "Rude," the Canadian Rastatryhardians return with an album that posits them as "Magic! The Career Artists." | After scoring a #1 hit with 2014's "Rude," the Canadian Rastatryhardians return with an album that posits them as "Magic! The Career Artists." | Magic!: Primary Colours | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22083-primary-colours/ | Primary Colours | 2014 was the time of conscious uncoupling, of Macklemore apologizing to Kendrick, of “Happy” ruling the charts from winter’s thaw to spring’s bloom. In this congenial milieu, four Canadians put on their best suit, took their favorite Police record and Bob Marley poster into the studio, and emerged with the most probing philosophical inquiry of the 21st century. It was less a mantra than a beaming admission of defeat. *They *knew that *we *knew that they suck. And yet we were invited to accept this sucking—to acknowledge that what reeks to one may be gold to another, whether it was a shotgun marriage to a patchouli-reeking transient, or Kidz Bop Sings Legend.
If Magic! had left us with their message of peace and absconded back into the Canadian wilderness, nobody would’ve noticed. But two years after “Rude” went to #1 in seven countries, they’ve returned with a new record called Primary Colours, which comes with a sparkling narrative: Magic! As Career Artists. “‘Rude’ was just the introduction,” singer Nasri Atweh told Rolling Stone. It presents them as feel-good slacker spiritualists: guys who know how to have a good time around a bonfire, but can put the guitar down and get thoughtful when it matters. Though they were, in essence, a studio creation—birthed by the meeting of professional songwriters who’d made their career recording for other artists, and who got together after collaborating on a Chris Brown song—Magic! have seen gold in the nearly one billion YouTube hits for the “Rude” video. When your first hit gets you on tour with Maroon 5, it would be silly not to go for it.
Nothing on *Primary Colours *captures the unguent hippie-dippie charm of “Rude,” which might be by unconscious design. Atweh was fond of talking in interviews about how the expectation of singing their mega-smash over and over again made him feel like “a dancing monkey,” and lo, Primary Colours has a song called “Dance Monkey,” which is sung from the perspective of a literal monkey who learns how to sing and play guitar before being sold into captivity, though his musical heart remains strong. Many of the songs are pop takes on basic reggae rhythms—such as “Red Dress,” an ode to nightwear that sounds close enough to “Rude” to remind you that Magic! can’t deviate from their form *too *hard.
Then there are the songs that sound like the band was ripping gravity bongs before putting pen to paper and melody to reel. Consider “Gloria,” a lament about getting cuckolded that begins a slinky riddim before speeding to a romp as Nasri belts “Did you have sex all day / Just to tease me all night” at a woman who, we’re told, went on a cruise with the narrator only to stage a threesome with two sailors in their room. Or “Lay You Down Easy,” the Sean Paul-featuring single that flows as smoothly as diarrhea as Nasri coos, “Baby, this is human nature, let’s turn our gadgets off / Smoke a little vapor and stay up till the sun.”
You don’t need to get into the nitty gritty of how they don’t *make *non-mechanical vaporizers, or how you don’t smoke vapor, to get where they’re coming from. Details are for pedants; details are rude. But the conceptual sloppiness ties in with something incomplete about the whole deal. They say they want to sound like reggae, but their pop ideas—so many horns!—are too agitated to sink into a righteous groove; they say they want to sound like the Police, but they lack the mystic, mysterious vibe that elevated Sting and friends above low-stakes breeziness. And if you didn’t like “Rude” at all, Magic!’s aesthetic transgressions seem even more objectionable. There’s something off-brand and Disney-fied to their whole approach, like a band thrown together for a soundtrack. Imagine that Primary Colours is the OST for a movie about an albino penguin who learns to love himself, and the album almost makes sense.
You might say that even by the mandate of this website, poking fun at the second Magic! album is like criticizing the camerawork in Air Bud 2. Soulless snob I may be, even I wince a smidgen when imagining Nasri’s pained hang dog face as he slams his fist against the door. If you take their word for it, Magic! are huge in Jamaica, and anyone who quibbles with them is just a jerk. As the Rastatryhardians themselves might put it: Why do we have to be so rude? Don’t we know they’re human too?
It’s a great point. Who doesn’t want to live in a wholly permissive society, where all criticism is dismissed as the bleating of the endlessly jealous haters and losers? But a sour smell settles in when the band talks about showing their serious side despite having "Dance Monkey" to show for it, and complains about having to sing their #1 hit over and over. The acid reflux begins to flow outright when Nasri bleats lines like “I feel like Robert Marley” like the world’s most misunderstood college student. Listen: Peace, love, and understanding are worthwhile philosophies, but when combined with cynical refrains about their existence like “Everything is a shtick, man,” it begins to sound less like gentle mantra and more like path of least resistance in a challenging world. Why do we have to be so rude? Because there’s only so much magic in the world, and this isn’t it. | 2016-07-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-07-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | RCA | July 6, 2016 | 3.5 | 3aebb79f-5888-4a0d-bef0-e47e4a4c8a36 | Jeremy Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jeremy-gordon/ | null |
The producer and guitarist D33J has long been an integral behind-the-scenes member of L.A. beat collective WEDIDIT. His immersive debut full-length contains the surreal lushness its title suggests. | The producer and guitarist D33J has long been an integral behind-the-scenes member of L.A. beat collective WEDIDIT. His immersive debut full-length contains the surreal lushness its title suggests. | D33J: Death Valley Oasis | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/d33j-death-valley-oasis/ | Death Valley Oasis | The Los Angeles beat collective and label WEDIDIT’s music runs the gamut of modern electronic production, but its affiliates all seem to mine a singular sense of weirdness. Artists like Shlohmo and Ryan Hemsworth have meandered around cerebral electronic and R&B, while RL Grime hits the festival circuit and fills larger rooms with more aggressive, conventional EDM. D33J, née Djavan Santos, has long been an integral behind-the-scenes member of the well-branded WEDIDIT crew, but he’s just now stepping fully out on his own with a full-length debut, Death Valley Oasis. It’s a well-timed introduction given that, together with Shlohmo, Santos has produced the entirety of the high-profile debut from Corbin—the divisive and haunted, sad-boy R&B sensation who used to go by Spooky Black. In his collaborations with Corbin and Shlomo, Santos rarely produces cold club tracks and instead leans into dance-infused R&B that sounds densely overgrown.
For his part, Santos, a guitarist and electronic producer, is a formally-schooled sound maker—he studied experimental audio at the San Francisco Art Institute—and his productions are immersive. Like the surreal lushness the title suggests, Death Valley Oasis frequently plunges underwater. Texturally, the synths ripple and gurgle outright; compositionally, the sounds pool and swirl together. On elegant synth tracks like “Endless Fall” and “Black Ice,” delicate new sounds seem to rise unseen and then envelope the mix completely. It’s an effect that feels like swimming through a warm patch in a cold ocean, where the edge of the change is indiscernible and porous. Like they are on most of the songs Santos sings himself, the lyrics are an afterthought and his voice is often rendered as a murmuring atmospheric element.
The album’s guest vocalists fare better as leads. “Spark,” which features the nimbly experimental vocalist Deradoorian, is the fizziest of the bunch. With her variously soaring and whispering vocals, Deradoorian gives the electronic power pop song a peculiar effervescence. Santos’ fellow Anticon signee Baths turns up on “Wisp,” his single voice manipulated into a Gothic choir-like effect over a punchy, sentimental dance track. If not for their pinging melody, the percolating synths that poke through the surface might sound glitchy, but D33J almost never lets his sounds turn frigid, imbuing even his sharpest percussion with a mellow warmth.
Shlohmo and Corbin both appear on “Rot,” a guitar-based floater that hints at the dramatic, maximalist electronic emo the latter artist has been circling around. “When all is gone/Flesh and bone, rot until the weeds are grown,” Corbin coos, his voice an almost pure legato due to his barely-there, always hushed consonants. It’s the most serene and spacey song on the album, but it almost threatens to lull following the pep of “Dead Sea.” That one is the most direct club attack, still woozy but thumping, propelled by clashing percussion.
Dissecting one of D33J’s tracks can lay bare the lush simplicity that he traffics, and also the distance he covers. Tracks never sounds quantized and there’s never the sense that he’s rotely stacking bricks to frame out a drop. Instead, there’s an almost feverish quality to the way the songs swell and intensify and then wither away. It doesn’t always make for easy listening, but because D33J has such an epicurean touch, you never have to strain to hear something interesting. He has a way of flooding his tracks; it’s just a matter of letting them wash over you. | 2017-09-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-09-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Anticon | September 7, 2017 | 6.8 | 3af899f1-1a0b-417b-bbce-debf38ec67f1 | Jay Balfour | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jay-balfour/ | |
The harp innovator experiments with an arsenal of new instruments—including her voice—on an album of ambient music as complex and meditative as the work of Pauline Oliveros. | The harp innovator experiments with an arsenal of new instruments—including her voice—on an album of ambient music as complex and meditative as the work of Pauline Oliveros. | Mary Lattimore: Hundreds of Days | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mary-lattimore-hundreds-of-days/ | Hundreds of Days | There’s a striking photograph of Mary Lattimore that tells you more than any sentence could about the vibe of her music. It’s a dusty, black-and-white image, in the style of Walker Evans, that shows Lattimore holding her enormous, 47-string Lyon & Healy harp in the middle of an arid-looking plain. Behind her there is dirt, bushland, and, in the distance, a mountain range. The harp is best known as a devotional instrument, its connotations of holiness and delicacy etched into the collective imagination by wedding processions and artists’ renderings of Christian paradise. But Lattimore doesn’t seem interested in the heavens. Her harp sounds crunchier, stranger, and more rooted to the earth.
On her first two solo albums, At the Dam and Collected Pieces, she devised a new way to experience the harp. Permeated by memory and endowed with a sense of place, Lattimore’s wordless songs managed to evoke the Hoover Dam, Wawa convenience stores on the Jersey Shore, and her family’s dearly departed dog. Her secret weapon was a Line 6 looping pedal, which allowed her to create deep sounds that imparted these instrumentals with a dizzying emotionality. On her new album, Hundreds of Days, Lattimore looks beyond the harp and proves she’s capable of composing ambient music that is every bit as complex and meditative as the work of Pauline Oliveros and Harold Budd.
The record began its life in a redwood barn on a hill overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. During a two-month residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, California, Lattimore experimented with electric guitar, piano, theremin, a semi-modular synthesizer, and, most importantly, her voice. By adding these new sounds to her trusty harp and looping pedals, she’s expanded the possibilities of her music. The six songs on Hundreds of Days are the best she’s recorded so far.
The 12-minute opener, “It Feels Like Floating,” is a showcase for the progress she’s made. If Lattimore’s earlier songs were redolent of places she’d visited, this track is proof that she has the skill to build new landscapes with her instruments. Inhabiting the song is like being placed in some alien terrarium: She conjures the organic buzzes and clicks of everyday life with the reverb bouncing off her harp strings, but gaseous synthesizer hiss and a groaning theremin mutate that naturalism into something freakier. That wet and weird noise surrounds her beatific harp melody and peaceful hums and sighs. The combined effect of all these sounds is pastoral, spacey, and even a bit spiritual.
“It Feels Like Floating” sets the scene for the album’s best track, “Never Saw Him Again,” which foregrounds Lattimore’s fluttering, wordless singing as soupy synthesizer noise gives the composition depth and weight. Hardly the main attraction, her harp notes just float around in amniotic sound. At first, the song recalls the murky calm of Oval. But, halfway through, it starts to skip and distort, as if it were made of corroded magnetic tape. Then the tape gets stuck on fast-forward, catching the harp in its slipstream until Lattimore is plucking more quickly than any human could possibly play. For what is ostensibly an ambient song, “Never Saw Him Again” feels pretty thrilling.
Lattimore shows a darker side of the harp on “Baltic Birch,” mixing melancholic strumming with dramatic electric guitar flourishes. She even reaches for uncharacteristically heavenly, classical harp heights on the soothing “Hello From the Edge of the Earth.” What makes Hundreds of Days so special, though, is how often it hits ambient music’s sweetest spot—a place where the world slows down and the performer’s free-floating noise makes you appreciate everything around it.
Listening to the album’s closing track, “On the Day You Saw the Dead Whale,” while jogging in the park one morning, the piano chords and harp notes activated the sounds of the forest around me. The thump in my chest, the whistle of the wind blowing through the leaves, and my footfalls on asphalt all danced around her notes. In that moment, it was impossible to tell where Lattimore’s song ended and the world began. | 2018-05-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-05-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Ghostly International | May 18, 2018 | 7.8 | 3afa54ea-41d9-4faf-91c6-a8b374bf69e9 | Kevin Lozano | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kevin-lozano/ | |
On their debut as a trio, Phantom Posse singer-songwriter Nadia Hulett and members of Ava Luna play with open-ended questions and experimental pop zest. | On their debut as a trio, Phantom Posse singer-songwriter Nadia Hulett and members of Ava Luna play with open-ended questions and experimental pop zest. | NADINE: Oh My | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nadine-oh-my/ | Oh My | Nadia Hulett has spent years searching for the best environment for her minimalist lyrics to thrive. Many first heard her waxing hazily poetic as a member of chillwave group Phantom Posse; in 2015, she released a solo EP, i’m your protector now, where strong storytelling got lost in dream-pop swirls. Now, after forming the experimental art-pop group NADINE with Julian Fader and Carlos Hernandez of Ava Luna, she’s found the backing momentum needed to highlight her songwriting voice. On the trio’s debut full-length, Oh My, they forgo personal anecdotes in favor of discussing broad emotions—indecision, love, forgiveness. While the collaboration is very much a work in progress, Hulett herself remains a constant highlight as she and her new bandmates explore what funk, jazz and lounge-inspired pop can do to illuminate her ideas.
Even as a child, she was interested in how words sound out loud. “My mom says she has memories of me in the back of the car with a marker and paper asking her to spell out word by word lyrics to a song I was scheming up,” Hulett says in a recent press release. She brings a similar spirit of worry-free inquiry to Oh My. And while there are plenty of questions to be found on the album—the slinky R&B single “Not My Kinda Movie” asks how social media complicates desire—her curiosity goes well beyond lyrics. Keenly aware of how delivery can alter the interpretation of a word or phrase, she often plays with her voice to see how it changes the mood. On the playful highlight “Ultra Pink,” Hulett alternates between whispers and bravado, exploring, in real time with polyphonic lines, the song’s idea of knowing you can do something before you do it. Elsewhere, she uses clear, unbothered vocal tones to shape her lyrics into liberating moments of realization. “See, I’ve been tied up inside of old ideas/And haven’t seen the light for a while ‘till I got here,” she sings on “That Neon Sign,” her voice somehow sounding nervous and confident at once.
Some of this album’s joys come from the ways NADINE’s three musicians push one another. Hulett is the band’s boss—according to Fader and Hernandez, she defines the “parameters of the sandbox” that they play in—but their contributions can take her songs in unexpected directions. On the breezy standout “Pews,” she sings about “chaos before integration” in a voice that echoes Feist’s low, honeyed gusto. Simultaneously, Fader and Hernandez expand on that feeling by chasing a sneaky bass line with acoustic percussion, creating what’s essentially a whistle-free follow-up to Peter Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks.” The two create an underhanded calm on “Little Self in the Garden” and “Contigo,” the latter of which turns Hulett’s words into double-edged taunts guarded by rough guitar and manipulated saxophone. While she sings, they find a way to create a poetic rhythm of their own.
Yet the same music that gives Hulett room to breathe can also take the attention off of her and onto nothing in particular. At times, the rhythm section on this album sounds like Fader and Hernandez are staring at a wall, lost in thought. On “Peace in the Valley,” which drones on without offering a memorable melody, it’s hard not to join them. Though they try to salvage dull moments with spontaneous interjections, like the drum fills and keyboard loops that pop up near the end of the sleepy ballad “Can’t Be Helped,” the mismatched parts can end up feeling grating. In that, Oh My feels like a pocket-sized chapbook set to music: some songs inspire, some feel thin. When NADINE’s strange poetry does convince you to dog-ear a song, though, returning to it feels as creatively refreshing as when you heard it for the first time. | 2018-01-30T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-30T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Father/Daughter | January 30, 2018 | 6.6 | 3afb3e0d-ed50-4e1c-89cb-c2f4d87714ce | Nina Corcoran | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nina-corcoran/ | |
Chaz Bear (of Toro y Moi) teams up with New York club producer AceMo for a fun, spirited, spontaneous debut EP. | Chaz Bear (of Toro y Moi) teams up with New York club producer AceMo for a fun, spirited, spontaneous debut EP. | AceMo / Les Sins: C’mon Les’ Go EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/acemo-les-sins-cmon-les-go-ep/ | C’mon Les’ Go EP | For Chaz Bear and Adrian Mojica, rhythm is a bridge capable of spanning geography, styles, and even generations. Oakland’s Bear, an indie veteran and chillwave pioneer best known as Toro y Moi, has been making music since the mid ’00s; club aesthetics play a crucial role in his music (particularly in the dancefloor-oriented cuts of his alias Les Sins), but he has never been known as a club producer per se. New York’s Mojica, aka AceMo, came along roughly a decade later (in fact, the year of AceMo’s debut release, 2014, was also the year of Les Sins’ last recording until now); his raw, hardware-driven house, techno, and jungle productions throb with an upstart’s determination. Fun, spirited, and spontaneous, their debut EP together plays to their shared strengths.
Where Bear’s music is often woozy and a little bit whimsical, Mojica’s productions typically favor overdriven sonics and hard-charging rhythms. But on these five tracks, they seek a middle path, wrapping quick-stepping drum programming in heady, ruminative tones. The opening track, “C’Mon Les’ Go,” is the deepest of the bunch, punctuating an aquamarine swirl of synths with bare-bones drum machine, mostly just rimshots and hi-hats, and whispered come-ons. But the smoothness of the groove is offset by bursts of boisterous energy, and a layer of sampled hoots and yelps rides roughshod over the top of it all.
That sense of tension defines all the EP’s tracks. At its core, “Can’t Take It Anymore” is a psychedelic party cut that invites dancers to get lost in the play of textures like glassy synth tones and silvery electronic squiggles. Despite the innumerable little details at play, it doesn’t feel busy; it moves with a frictionless glide. But that sleekness is the foil for the artists’ nonstop stream of off-the-cuff vocals, the kind of energy-stoking rhymes a house-party DJ might shout through headphones plugged into the mixer’s mic jack (“Yo, I can’t take it anymore/Can you take me out on the floor”; “Dance, dance, dance, dance/Do the resistance”).
“Holy Cow” slips between moments of barely controlled chaos and effortless cool, bouncing pitch-shifted variations of the titular phrase over a TR-909 groove splashed with staccato organ chords. With a bumptious, ’90s-inspired sense of swing, it marks the record’s most extroverted moment. (“Hello?” is essentially a remix of “Holy Cow,” doubling down on the gonzo elements and throwing extra ad-libbed vocals into the pot.)
That playful spirit is a big part of the EP’s charm. Though the two musicians produced the bulk of the record remotely, they laid down its foundations when Mojica traveled to the Bay Area to DJ one of Bear’s Snap to Grid parties last fall, and all those whoops and hollers bear the unmistakable trace of real, in-person connection, of shared laughs in a shared space. The inaugural record on Mojica’s new Sonic Messengers label, a co-release with Bear’s own Company, the EP is a tribute to connections forged in dance music, as well as to the spontaneity that happens outside the actual club—a celebration of happy accidents and new creative directions. That might be why this bumping EP, split between heads-down energy and hands-up thrills, is tempered in places by a distinctly wistful air. The pandemic has been hell on dance music, and with C’mon Les’Go, it’s clear that Bear and Mojica can’t wait to get back out on the floor.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-09-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Sonic Messengers | September 10, 2020 | 7.2 | 3afc3137-c2f8-4afd-87c2-327a39e0cb29 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
On his second solo EP, the Seattle producer weaves together samples, field recordings, and original instrumentation to craft tactile electronic music that’s beat-oriented yet meditative. | On his second solo EP, the Seattle producer weaves together samples, field recordings, and original instrumentation to craft tactile electronic music that’s beat-oriented yet meditative. | Lucas: Fall in Love EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lucas-fall-in-love-ep/ | Fall in Love EP | Seattle producer Matt Lucas isn’t one to rush. His wistful, atmospheric songs are noticeably slower than most club music, often clocking in at 90 bpm or less. And in an era of constantly updated SoundCloud feeds, Lucas, who records under his last name, releases his work at a measured pace. Since emerging in 2014, he’s put out just one solo EP, Clearing, and a collaborative EP with Canadian producer Ryan Hemsworth. But, despite his small catalog, he’s slowly finding his voice as a songwriter.
That voice is clearer than it's ever been on Lucas’ second EP, Fall in Love, which explores an impressive range of ideas in just 20 minutes and four tracks. He approaches songwriting the way a DJ might, stitching together distinct movements into a patchwork whole and creating texture through juxtaposition, drawing from disparate genres (he cites post-rock and lo-fi indie as influences, while his drum programming is rooted in contemporary rap) and leveraging a variety of sources: samples, field recordings, original instrumentation. On Fall in Love, this style starts to feel truly purposeful: Melodies build momentum and collide forcefully, the seams that unite them smooth but visible. For the first time, Lucas’ songs demand more attention than the methods he used to make them.
Although his work often feels sun-streaked, opener “Beacon” is a bouncy, late-night club banger that still finds space for plaintive keys and a stargazing crescendo. “Baptist” evokes a Buddhist monastery as much as a church: Lucas layers echoing bells and chimes atop record scratches and a hip-hop break, like Kid Koala blending a Four Tet record with a dusty rap 12". True to its title, “Fall in Love” is the EP’s most nakedly sentimental track. Over the course of five minutes, the song builds from a swirling pool of sepia-toned R&B into a trap instrumental, then washes away in a sea of reverb-soaked guitar notes that could have been plucked from an emo record.
“Corsica,” the EP’s stunning closer, is a showcase for the dynamic shifts that animate Lucas’ music. Portions of the song wouldn’t feel out of place on one of Kompakt’s Pop Ambient compilations, save for the expressive drum beats that form the track’s bones—little bursts of noise that punctuate a chorus of exhaling voices. Once that groundwork has been laid, the beat pushes to the fore, in the form of a half-drunk fill that nods toward the precise but human production of J. Dilla. When a racing, arpeggiated synth and a pounding 4/4 beat nudge the rhythm aside, the song hurtles into straight-faced trance territory. But then a window opens, the air clears, and all of its many disparate elements reach an equilibrium.
With a palette this varied and individual tracks that cover so much stylistic ground, Lucas continues to blur the line between DJ and composer. But, as his music evolves, he’s starting to find his niche as a creative force (rather than simply an eclectic curator) in electronic music. Fall in Love often recalls the fractured warmth of Fennesz, the warped nostalgia of Boards of Canada, and the glimmering intracracy of Four Tet. While Lucas still has a long way to go if he wants to achieve the compositional sophistication for which those acts are known, he’s steadily refining his craft with each bite-sized release. Just give him some time. | 2018-05-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-05-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Hush Hush | May 11, 2018 | 7 | 3afc7f9a-d691-479e-931a-76a761f27473 | Mehan Jayasuriya | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mehan-jayasuriya/ | |
Second album from this Japanese artist is more song-based and less evocative than his intriguing debut. | Second album from this Japanese artist is more song-based and less evocative than his intriguing debut. | Shugo Tokumaru: L.S.T. | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8271-lst/ | L.S.T. | The original review I wrote for Shugo Tokumaru's 2004 debut, that spritely guitar-pop mini-album called Night Piece, got shot back to me. A Tokyo twentysomething whisking through his own soundscapes, losing himself in the cinema, shooting guns at wild west bad guys, battle rapping-- apparently it wasn't criticism. Fair enough, but as I work through this follow-up jam L.S.T., what jumps out most is how un-evocative it is by comparison. Shugo's really pulled back. In just a half-hour, Night Piece covered impossible ground stylistically, flirted with genre pastiche but still came unassuming. It was clever, making something cohesive of all that j-pop video game and film scoring and straight-up, unequivocal pop stuff-- maybe not as lovable immediately, but certainly more memorable. L.S.T. has one-speed-- Raffi Plays the Shins-- and while Shugo's clearly settling into being "one of those guys who just writes good songs, man," he's also not come up with anything special here, or memorable, or anything more than pleasant.
Still, as far as inoffensive acoustic guitar pop goes, this ain't bad. Give Shugo a chance to snap "Mist" out its woozy lullablahs; his sudden, close-mic'd guitar strums grit forcefully like the opening moments of Microphones' It Was Hot. The whistling on "Mushina" beats Andrew Bird's for most dulcimer, and "Vista" has something of a less-collective Broken Social Scene sound to it, with heavy reverb, disembodied vocals, and big dumb horn melodies. The first 100 seconds or so of "Yukinohaka" promise to sour L.S.T.'s unfazable grin, something along the lines of Ben Chasny's rolling drone figures, but then Shugo starts singing. And oh that voice-- it's as if nothing could possibly go wrong when that unintelligible full-bodied whisper of his courses these headphones. This time Shugo's pushed it into the instrument mix further, sometimes even pitting it against the intermittent noisemaking that normally stays beneath the guitar lines.
But then I hear something like "Karte". It's by far the least pleasant song here-- super-cartoonish silent movie chase music, no vocal melody to rally behind, occasionally showy guitar-playing, some weird squeaky wheel sound I can imagine is torture for some. To be honest I hated it at first, because the short, nimble track has more energy than the rest of the album combined, more smarts too-- the only track Shugo didn't dumb himself down for. It doesn't go down easy, and some spots do prick at first, but that's pittance for smart and lovable-- maybe we could stand to meet him halfway. | 2005-12-07T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2005-12-07T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Experimental | Compare Notes | December 7, 2005 | 7 | 3afe5ed1-1e95-4783-b927-faf1cf758552 | Nick Sylvester | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nick-sylvester/ | null |
Nine Inch Nails’ second EP in a year is as perplexing and immediate as their first. Trent Reznor has lost none of his power to discomfit and intimidate. | Nine Inch Nails’ second EP in a year is as perplexing and immediate as their first. Trent Reznor has lost none of his power to discomfit and intimidate. | Nine Inch Nails: Add Violence EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nine-inch-nails-add-violence-ep/ | Add Violence EP | It’s a scary time for Nine Inch Nails. Not that the band or its founder/leader Trent Reznor seems at risk of getting sucked back into the substance abuse, label shenanigans, and self-destructive personal demons that characterized their first turbulent decade of existence. In fact, Add Violence and the matching EP that preceded it, Not the Actual Events, are the first NIN releases to include an official band member other than Reznor, Atticus Ross. The very presence of Reznor’s long-time partner for film-soundtrack work implies a creative and interpersonal stability unprecedented in the group’s history.
It’s external circumstances rather than internal dynamics that account for NIN’s fear factor today. Their ferocious performance of "She’s Gone Away" on episode eight of the “Twin Peaks” revival—rather uncontroversially viewed as the most artistically ambitious hour of television ever aired—revealed that Reznor has lost none of his power to discomfit and intimidate. Placed alongside David Lynch and Mark Frost’s visions of atomic fire, indestructible doppelgangers, skull-crushing demons, and slithering insectoids, Nine Inch Nails fit right in.
Back in the real but no less frightening world, the depredations of the Trump administration and its Republican allies in Congress make Reznor’s most excoriating anti-authoritarian anthems—the breakout single “Head Like a Hole,” the Bush-era agitprop of “The Hand That Feeds,” the dystopian entirety of 2007’s Year Zero—sound understated. And as the singer-songwriter continues to wrestle with the same feelings of stasis, hopelessness, and despair his lyrics have chronicled for nearly three decades, his heroes (David Bowie, Prince), contemporaries (Chris Cornell), and acolytes (Chester Bennington) are dying at an alarming rate. In retrospect, the clingy black powder that served as Not the Actual Events’ prankish “physical component” seems less like a cheap gag and more like scattered ashes.
Into this morass, Reznor and Ross have dropped Add Violence, their second EP in a year and only the third (discounting remix efforts) in Nine Inch Nails’ history. At first listen, it’s as perplexing as its immediate antecedent Not the Actual Events. Both five-track records are elliptical, following roughly the same pattern: a banger to open; a bloopy, spooky, spoken-word-heavy follow-up; a centerpiece dirge; a penultimate screamer; and a lengthy, distortion-heavy comedown to close.
Add Violence kicks things off with its lead single, “Less Than”—as close to an outrun/synthwave song as Reznor has gotten since the birth of those micro-genres in the first place. The structure of the chorus echoes “Copy of a,” the proper kickoff for NIN’s last full-length Hesitation Marks (the line “Look what you’ve gone done” is repeated almost verbatim), while the direct-address of rhetorical questions to an unnamed, politically antagonistic “you” recalls “The Hand That Feeds.” But when interpreted as a reproach of Trump voters, the song’s liberal borrowing from Reznor’s lyrical grab-bag can be forgiven: “Did it fix what was wrong inside? Are you less than?” is as close as any recent rock act has come to nailing the right wing’s “You think you’re better than me?!” ressentiment.
From this opening assault, Reznor and Ross scale down. “The Lovers” blends murmured dialogue and bubbly programming, then builds to a disarming, romantic chorus sung in Trent’s warbly falsetto, followed by the ethereal, slow-and-low ballad “This Isn’t the Place.” And if Nine Inch Nails had to pick a song to follow “She’s Gone Away” during their set at “Twin Peaks”’ Bang Bang Bar, Add Violence’s fourth track “Not Anymore” would be the logical choice. Its verses sway back and forth drunkenly, satirically mocking America’s not-in-my-backyard approach to atrocities (“Mouth taped shut, crippled and frozen with fear/That maybe happens to somebody else/No no, that doesn’t happen ’round here”) before lurching into a faster, louder chorus that seems designed to punish doubt and dissent. “I can’t seem to wake up,” Reznor repeats at the end of the song, a brand of paralysis no stranger to residents of David Lynch’s nightmare.
The EP’s final track is both the strongest and strangest. “The Background World” appears to be a slinky electronic groove that might conclude a big-budget Hollywood thriller, serving the same function as Moby’s “Extreme Ways” in the Bourne movies, or Reznor and Ross’ cover of Bryan Ferry’s “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” with their frequent collaborator (and Reznor’s wife) Mariqueen Maandig in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Yet the lyrics are bluntly bereft of sequel-ready optimism: “There is no moving past/There is no better place/There is no future point in time/We will not get away.” Reznor’s detractors tend to mock this sort of sentiment, but in the year of our Lord 2017, who’s laughing now?
The song’s formal moments are even more intimidating. It repeats the same awkwardly edited instrumental snippet—a brief empty hiccup separating each iteration—over fifty times. Seven minutes and thirty-nine seconds of the song’s eleven minute, forty-four-second runtime are eaten up as the segment plays out over and over, each new version a degraded facsimile of the last, until only static remains of the original riff and rhythm. Like an image run through a Xerox machine until it’s no longer recognizable, this makes Reznor’s Hesitation Marks–era worry that he’s just “a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a” legitimate entity real and audible. Its audaciousness would make David Lynch himself proud. As Reznor promises additional work to come in the near future, it gives his listeners reason to hope, no matter how hopeless he himself becomes. | 2017-07-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-07-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | The Null Corporation | July 26, 2017 | 7.3 | 3b082e09-a77e-4d64-84ab-1d74d8ffec36 | Sean T. Collins | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sean-t. collins/ | null |
The Monterrey-based experimental musician abandons the outward trappings of electronic music on his latest album, a hushed collection of cryptic etudes that flicker in the margin between the played and the programmed. | The Monterrey-based experimental musician abandons the outward trappings of electronic music on his latest album, a hushed collection of cryptic etudes that flicker in the margin between the played and the programmed. | Antiguo Autómata Mexicano: 20+ Piano Improvisations | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/antiguo-automata-mexicano-20-piano-improvisations/ | 20+ Piano Improvisations | The pianola—better known as the player piano, an instrument that appears to play itself, as though a ghost were seated at the keyboard—has been obsolete for a century, yet its DNA lives on in the form of the piano roll. Originally, the piano roll was a scroll of paper perforated with tiny holes that dictated the pitch, tempo, and dynamics to be reproduced by a player piano. Today, the piano roll is a common term for the graphical interface used to program MIDI notes on a computer screen. These two technologies, one archaic and the other contemporary, collapse together on 20+ Piano Improvisations, a collection of cryptic etudes that flicker in the margin between the played and the programmed.
The Monterrey-based musician Ángel Sánchez Borges, aka Antiguo Autómata Mexicano, has been active in the Mexican experimental-music scene since 1985. On previous releases like 2005’s Microhate and 2007’s Kraut Slut, Borges explored the spring-loaded rhythms and brushed-metal textures of millennial glitch techno. With 20+ Piano Improvisations, he abandons the outward trappings of electronic music, turning his attention to the piano—and, in the process, emphasizing the automaton in his alias. Dating back millennia, automata are machines programmed to perform basic tasks or execute certain movements, often in ways that appear deceptively lifelike. The player piano was an automaton common to many middle-class living rooms in the early 20th century; an early (albeit expensive) model of music player that brought virtuoso performance techniques to the mass market.
An album of electronic commands masquerading as acoustic music and vice versa, 20+ Piano Improvisations is part of a tradition stretching from Conlon Nancarrow’s pianola studies to Aphex Twin’s Disklavier experiments. But in Borges’ blend of hands-on performance and MIDI programming, there is little evidence of the ghost in the machine. Unlike Nancarrow’s formidably difficult pieces, with their runaway-train rhythms and impenetrable blocks of notes—antecedents to the punishing cascades of black MIDI—Borges’ two- and three-minute preludes are slim, almost wistful things. Tentative right-hand melodies tease out their counterparts on the left, nudging repeated figures both forward and outward, like rainwater finding its path. The pacing is a kind of mechanistic rubato, as though a robot were feeling out its limbs. The mood is tentative, quiet, inquisitive—unafraid to be sentimental, yet never maudlin. It’s even playful, at times, albeit in a hushed, hangdog way.
Borges never goes out of the way to hide the irreality of his pieces; the very first song sounds like something that could be plausibly executed by 10 fingers in real time, yet it is trailed by a faint, unobtrusive shadow of synthesizer, almost as though the computer were humming along—like Keith Jarrett, lost in his reverie. In the closing piece, a long reverb tail detunes as it curls, lending the piano an eerie, waterlogged air.
The album’s early pieces tend to proceed naturalistically, as cautiously graceful counterpoints map out the melodic and harmonic terrain with the precision of county surveyors. Even at its most unadorned, his instrument sounds unusually rich and embodied, with the shuffling of felted hammers lending a percussive feel to his denser passages. A piece might start out simply but gradually accrue extra voices—in “Piano Improvisation No. 5,” faint echoes, almost like traces of dub delay, creep into the frame; in “Piano Improvisation No. 14,” left- and right-hand parts seem to branch into several hands’ worth of counterpoints as the music speeds and slows. Often, by the end, the melodic line of any given piece has been fogged with stray accidentals and extra layers, like an Etch A Sketch that hasn’t been thoroughly erased. And occasionally Borges abandons the solo-piano conceit altogether; with its dissonant sheets of string synth, “Piano Improvisation No. 16” sounds like his answer to Paul Hindemith’s sonatas for piano and violin.
But the pleasure of this wonderfully moving album does not lie in the search for the wizard behind the curtain. How the music was created is ultimately unimportant; what matters is the depth of feeling he achieves. Borges’ concerns are musical, not technological: Channeling the bristly high Modernism of Erik Satie’s “Vexations” and John Cage’s “In a Landscape” alongside the warm-blooded neo-Romanticism of Harold Budd’s La Bella Vista and Perhaps, Borges lays out 20 gentle musical riddles that feel at once nostalgic, curious, and whimsical—like well-worn bar puzzles, delightful to the touch.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-07-15T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-07-15T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Static Discos | July 15, 2021 | 7.6 | 3b12efba-a745-41d6-8512-1a79d6deff3c | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
Formed out of slowcore legends Bedhead, the New Year return with an album that is judiciously paced and artfully arranged, recorded with fine detail over the better part of the last decade. | Formed out of slowcore legends Bedhead, the New Year return with an album that is judiciously paced and artfully arranged, recorded with fine detail over the better part of the last decade. | The New Year: Snow | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23210-snow/ | Snow | We’ll probably never hear it, but Bedhead made a jazz album. As a palate-cleanser before the Beheaded sessions, the Brothers Kadane hit the studio, cut Thelonius Monk’s “Misterioso” and a couple others, played it for a few tight-lipped friends, then buried it in the backyard. Bubba Kadane maintains that the record’s not actually worth hearing, but that hasn’t stopped the Kadane faithful—among the most quietly loyal fanbases in indie rock—from decades of speculation.
Though nobody’s going to mistake Transaction de Novo for Brilliant Corners, the Kadanes, like Monk, are as concerned with the notes they don’t play as the ones they do. And while most jazz records are made in a day or two, Snow, the fourth LP from Matt and Bubba Kadane’s post-Bedhead outfit the New Year, took the better part of a decade. Recorded in studios and living rooms from Chicago to Denton, Snow is—like virtually every Kadane record before it—a spare, deliberate record, judiciously paced and artfully arranged. With its wide-open vistas and vast expanses of negative space, the album lays claim to the territory the band staked out 25 years back while managing to turn over a couple new leaves.
Change does not come naturally to the Kadanes; The New Year, after all, is more or less Bedhead with a different rhythm section. The New Year’s 2008 self-titled LP tracked down a piano and turned up the optimism a half-notch or so; hardly a radical reinvention, but fairly seismic shifts in the New Year universe nonetheless. Songs don’t so much start as materialize; solos seem to gather themselves up in the air and float across the room before drifting back into the ether. The ripples of electric piano beneath the jaunty lite-psych of the Left Banke-inspired “The Last Fall” are a welcome addition, but that’s just about the only “new” thing here. The rest is textbook Kadanes: decorously expansive, decidedly unhurried indie rock, every note afforded due space, every syllable careful consideration.
Tricky as it is to draw a through-line across two-and-a-half decades, history professor Matt Kadane’s oft-undervalued lyrics have generally concerned themselves with how the forces that act upon us keep clawing at our heels. Drugs, depression, organized religion, general malaise: Kadane’s tackled them all, with a lighter touch than many of the sadder-sacks in his cohort. Where its predecessor found Kadane drawing just little more light in through the window, Snow pulls back the shades even further. Album highlight “Recent History” sees Kadane scoffing at those who think we are uniquely—as opposed to just generally—fucked; “There’s nothing wrong with the 21st century,” he points out, “that wasn’t wrong with the 20th, too.”
It’s not that Kadane is unbothered by the state of affairs, he’s just urging us to take the long view, and the wisdom he imparts in these songs is both hard-fought and well taken. There’s still plenty keeping him up at night—unraked leaves in the backyard, unchecked power operating behind closed doors—but he operates with a kind of quiet resolve; things may be rough, he seems to be saying, but we’ve all got to keep pushing. There’s a lot of life in these lyrics; if the band’s nine years away didn’t exactly upend their sound, it certainly seems to have given Kadane more to draw from.
The New Year worked and reworked Snow for years: between day jobs, across state lines, whenever they could find a spare moment. A few songs date back to the late-aughts; others have come in the years since. That Snow sounds very much of a piece with the Kadane’s back catalog is a testament to their singular and durable sound. From the sunburnt shuffle of “Myths” to the rangy push-and-shove of “Recent History,” they know just how far can stretch themselves without upsetting the balance. There’s a moment in virtually every song where a single loose strand seems to break free and float skyward and it’s there, in the languid sway, where Snow truly takes hold. | 2017-04-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-04-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Undertow | April 28, 2017 | 7.4 | 3b1956bd-0db6-44e8-ac3f-96d89dfa8faf | Paul Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-thompson/ | null |
On their second album, the goth-influenced Manchester rock band MONEY shines a light on the crisis of identity that often befalls creative folk during their late twenties (or, occasionally, their thirties or forties)—Who am I? What do I really have to say? And how can I figure it out without somehow destroying myself? | On their second album, the goth-influenced Manchester rock band MONEY shines a light on the crisis of identity that often befalls creative folk during their late twenties (or, occasionally, their thirties or forties)—Who am I? What do I really have to say? And how can I figure it out without somehow destroying myself? | MONEY: Suicide Songs | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21479-suicide-songs/ | Suicide Songs | "Suffer Little Children," the final track on the Smiths' eponymous 1984 record, was a kind of siren song for romantic miserablism. The song itself might have been based on the infamous Moors murders of the 1960s, but it also served to cement Morrissey's home city in the cultural imagination. "Oh, Manchester, so much to answer for" rang like a bell, forever positioning the Northern city (at least for mopey Anglophiles such as myself) as a place where creative melancholy always wins out—a city in which the industrial gray, bitter cold, and ceaseless rain helped to forever nourish great, hopeless art.
On their 2013 debut, The Shadow of Heaven, Manchester’s MONEY upheld this vision, simultaneously playing up to the city's melancholic legacy while also grandly skewering it. (The record’s release involved billboards emblazoned with the words "Manchester Is Paradise.") By turns dour and swooningly romantic, self-destructive and charmingly fey, the songs on Heaven were sprawling, guitar-driven affairs that often stretched beyond the five-minute mark and sounded as if they might have been recorded in a candle-lit cave. It was the sound of a band almost living up to the scale of its own grand ambitions.
On their second album, the intensely titled Suicide Songs, MONEY appear to have weathered what must have some harrowing sophomore anxieties. The album opens with "I Am the Lord"—a nearly seven-minute long opus involving Indian dilruba, hushed gospel singers, and gently-employed shakers that sounds more like Storm in Heaven-era Verve than the echoey WU LYF squall of their earlier efforts. "You are not the same as me/ I'm up there in the clouds," Jamie Lee sings. "I am the Lord/ He gave me his eyes to see through." It’s a suitably epic opening for an album that deals largely in seeking transcendence via self-imposed oblivion. And while another record of young Brits singing songs about despair and getting smashed at the pub isn’t exactly a novel concept, MONEY manage to make the prospect of weathering your own personal apocalypse sound not only beautiful, but transformative.
The cover art of Suicide Songs features a black-and-white photo of Lee with a knife that appears to be balancing on (or slowly burying itself into) his forehead. That image—paired with the record’s oblivion-seeking lyrics—makes for what should be a pretty heavy listen. ("I wanted the album to sound like it was ‘coming from death’ which is where these songs emerged," explains Lee in the promo materials). Still, the nine tracks on board never feel oppressive. Even "Suicide Song," the album’s centerpiece (whose chorus is literally, "This is your suicide song") is weirdly more merry than maudlin.
It’s to the band’s credit that this despondency feels exploratory—occasionally even celebratory. Lee, along with bandmates Billy Byron and Charlie Cocksedge, emerges with a record that shines light on the crisis of identity that often befalls creative folk during their late twenties (or, occasionally, their thirties or forties)—Who am I? What do I really have to say? And how can I figure it out without somehow destroying myself? It seems grimly fitting that the album ends with a song called "Cocaine Christmas and an Alcoholic’s New Year," which is just as much of a glorious drunken bummer as the title would suggest. Alternately making comparisons to both Marilyn Monroe and Jean Genet, Lee allows a sense of levity to permeate even the messiest of moments: "I've wasted all my time on cocaine at Christmas and bottles of wine," sings Lee, "And I’m as happy as a child/ Because you don't have to ask me why." Much like records by the Smiths, Suicide Songs is both consoling and encouraging, revealing itself fully only after repeated listens and paying dividends each time. Manchester should be proud. | 2016-01-28T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2016-01-28T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | Bella Union | January 28, 2016 | 7.7 | 3b301ff5-aa97-4151-a2b5-604ebf1598f7 | T. Cole Rachel | https://pitchfork.com/staff/t.-cole rachel/ | null |
The Canadian composer’s latest album marks a subtle but significant shift in her music-making, marking her most extensive foray to date into the hands-on, real-time realm of studio recording. | The Canadian composer’s latest album marks a subtle but significant shift in her music-making, marking her most extensive foray to date into the hands-on, real-time realm of studio recording. | Sarah Davachi: Gave in Rest | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sarah-davachi-gave-in-rest/ | Gave in Rest | Something unexpected happens almost exactly one minute into “Auster,” the opening track on Sarah Davachi’s Gave in Rest: The song goes silent. It happens abruptly, as though someone has hit the pause button on the Canadian composer’s dial-tone drone. Then, after a few soundless seconds, the tone cluster springs back to life, except deeper and darker. Such a break is almost unheard of in Davachi’s work, in which electronic and acoustic tones—vintage analog synthesizers, Mellotron, Hammond organ, cello, viola, piano, voice—are layered as intricately as tendons and sinew. Hers is a music of continuity, where the shifts in tone and timbre happen so subtly you barely perceive them taking place. But the pauses in “Auster,” and the subsequent changes in pitch, go on like that, once every 60 seconds or so, for the duration of the eight-and-a-half-minute track, until it comes to seem almost that the music itself is breathing. As the Slits once noted, silence is a rhythm too.
Those breaks are symbolic of a larger rupture: Gave in Rest marks a subtle but significant shift in Davachi’s music-making. Despite the vastness she conjured—lines arcing toward a perpetually receding horizon; reverb suggestive of caves, cathedrals, canyons—most of her composition until now has taken place in the flat, virtual space of the computer. She has occasionally worked with collaborators, and she has done some work with acoustic instruments in actual recording studios, but for the most part these occasions have served mainly as opportunities to generate raw material to be rearranged in Logic later. She’s been as much a collage artist as a composer.
But Gave in Rest, recorded in Montreal’s Hotel2Tango studio, marks Davachi’s most extensive foray into the hands-on, real-time realm of studio recording, where the sound and even the vibe of the room are intrinsic to what gets caught on tape. Hotel2Tango is a particularly hallowed space—Arcade Fire, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Wolf Parade have all recorded there—and it’s equipped with a pretty enviable gear list; the plate reverb Davachi used is said to be the very same unit applied to Stevie Nicks’ voice when Fleetwood Mac recorded “Rhiannon.”
Davachi says that much of the writing this time took place before she went into the studio, working out harmonic relationships on the piano, then fleshing out those ideas with collaborators (Godspeed’s Thierry Amar on contrabass, Thee Silver Mt. Zion’s Jessica Moss on violin, Terri Hron on recorders, and Lisa McGee, aka Vestals, singing), as well as playing the effects as though they were instruments. In “Gloaming,” the piano is run through multiple tape-echo devices whose controls are manipulated on the fly: What starts out sounding like one of Grouper’s ruminative sketches is gradually smeared until nothing is left but an ambient blur.
In some places on Gave in Rest, Davachi’s music sounds much like it always has: “Auster” remains, despite the pauses, a minimalist study of harmony and tone color, and the gorgeous “Third Hour” is languid and drifting. But there’s also more motion here than we’ve heard in her work before. On previous releases, a track like “Third Hour” might have been a foggy snapshot of static tones; now, her elements slowly twist like tall grass in the wind, contrapuntal melodies pulling themselves up and away from the background, flashing out in stark relief before disappearing into the swirl.
“Evensong” goes even further. An ensemble piece for piano, organ, violin, bass, and voice, it marks the rare occasion when an honest-to-goodness chord progression can be detected in Davachi’s work. The title is a reference to evening services, particularly in the Anglican church, and there’s a distinctly liturgical feel to the song’s resonant textures and melancholy harmonies, with their eerie echoes of medieval music.
Davachi has said that much of the album was inspired by a summer spent touring in Europe, seeking out moments for reflection in the reverberant stone spaces of centuries-old churches. The purest expression of that experience takes shape in the album’s closing track, “Waking,” recorded in a single take on the Hammond organ. A tentative right-hand melody paces up and down the scale, pulling against the root note; pulsing overtones throb and relax as Davachi’s chords shift between tension and resolution. It is meditative, searching, but also peaceful—the sound of solitude and solace. It’s one of the simplest things Davachi has ever written, and also among the most powerful. | 2018-09-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-09-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Ba Da Bing | September 15, 2018 | 7.7 | 3b325e15-ade4-4e07-b170-8b3beac7a63b | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
I sometimes wonder if musicians like Samuel Beam (aka Iron & Wine), envy contemporary "artists" such as Britney Spears or Linkin ... | I sometimes wonder if musicians like Samuel Beam (aka Iron & Wine), envy contemporary "artists" such as Britney Spears or Linkin ... | Iron & Wine: The Creek Drank the Cradle | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/4126-the-creek-drank-the-cradle/ | The Creek Drank the Cradle | I sometimes wonder if musicians like Samuel Beam (aka Iron & Wine), envy contemporary "artists" such as Britney Spears or Linkin Park-- and not for reasons of fame or money. Spears and Linkin Park, after all, make decidedly contemporary music that, while tangentially owing debt to earlier music periods, puts little pressure on them to legitimize their backgrounds. Spears was once a teen who liked Madonna; Linkin Park were once teens who liked angst. That's about all anyone asks of them.
Not so for Sam "Jim" Beam. He makes bare-bones music that constantly nods to musical periods long since passed, perhaps the earliest being the 1920s of Blind Lemon Jefferson. In short, Beam makes roots music with southern themes, though to end there would do him a disservice. But now knowing this, you may be wondering: What are his qualifications? Is this guy authentic?
Where you come from, of course, can automatically grant you authenticity. Perhaps the best current example of this is Detroit; if The White Stripes and Eminem grew up in the most miserable city in the States, they must be for real! Beam, however, hails from the Miami area, which is not exactly backwoods Mississippi. Moreover, he teaches cinematography at a local college (an academic!) and was recently signed to Sub Pop, of all labels.
Of course, issues of authenticity plagued Bob Dylan at first. Plus, isn't Neil Young a Canadian? In other words, if you exhibit enough talent, then the critics will look past whatever your background may be, and time-- the greatest critic of all-- will erase any petty misgivings. While Beam has a long way to go before joining these visionaries, The Creek Drank the Cradle is a good enough start to make you forget anything you ever knew about the man. The music speaks for itself, and for Beam's talent.
The gentle acoustic plucking that ushers in the opener, "Lion's Mane", may not grab your attention, but Beam's delicate, hushed vocals sure will. His lyrics, meanwhile, tread familiar territory without sounding too familiar. He even tackles love through metaphor without seeming like a high school poet: "Love is a tired symphony you hum when you're awake/ Love is a crying baby mama warned you not to shake."
As with the rest of the album, slide guitar and banjo appear throughout the first track. The folksy sound sometimes recalls Nick Drake-- that is, if the British troubadour were from the bayou instead. In the lolling "Bird Stealing Bread", Beam's voice then takes on a Drake-ian resemblance, as he sings, "Did his hand in your hair feel a lot like a thing you believed in?/ Or a bit like a bird stealing bread out from under your nose?"
By the time "Faded from the Winter" arrives, the album has its hooks in you. Beam's overdubbed harmonies, delivered in a repetitive cadence, are spooky without being forbidding, bringing Low's early work to mind, if only in pace and tone. On songs like this one, Beam feels like an artist working in different hues of the same color-- blue, perhaps, or brown.
But the changes keep coming, subtle though they are. "The Rooster Moans", with its layered banjos and talk of riding a rusty train to the Devil, could sit firmly in the middle of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and no one would blink an eye. The southern themes continue on "Upward Over the Mountain", in which the narrator kills a snake in a creekbed, but Beam's vocal harmonies are nearer to Simon and Garfunkel than Ralph Stanley. "Southern Anthem", meanwhile, brings to mind Crosby, Stills and Nash.
But any potential writhing or wincing is soon dissolved by "Weary Memory", the album's simplest and perhaps strongest track. Here, Beam's voice is all his, as he stretches out his vocal cords and displays a greater range than he had led the listener to believe he possessed. As the song peaks, all guitars but one drop out for a brief respite. "Found a photo of when we were married," Beam sings, breaking the last word into two. "Leaning back on a broken willow tree/ That's one memory I choose to carry/ Weary memory I can always see," and he takes that "see" soaring skyward.
The Creek Drank the Cradle is made of small epiphanies such as this. There are few guitar solos, if they can even be called that. Beam rarely gets adventurous with his voice, and the songs, for the most part, are of the same pace, tone, lyrical content. Written and performed to tape by Beam alone, the album could easily be lumped in with other home-recording talents such as John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. But the music here has such deeps roots in a vast swath of Americana that the bedroom image just wouldn't suit Beam.
And please don't be fooled by the label. Sub Pop may not be the foremost purveyors of roots music, but they've proven before-- in the case of former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan-- that they at least know good old-time country and blues music when they hear it. If indeed The Creek Drank the Cradle is only half of the material Beam submitted to the label, then hopefully there's some more Iron & Wine on the way. It sure beats more mud and honey. | 2002-10-01T01:00:01.000-04:00 | 2002-10-01T01:00:01.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Sub Pop | October 1, 2002 | 8.1 | 3b329a67-6755-484e-90ea-921ccccbed03 | Pitchfork | null |
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Wedding the elemental, earthworn rock of My Morning Jacket to the atmospheric pop of the Shins or Red House Painters, this debut from Sub Pop signees Band of Horses is immediately, invitingly familiar. But if its roots are recognizable, the music is anything but commonplace. | Wedding the elemental, earthworn rock of My Morning Jacket to the atmospheric pop of the Shins or Red House Painters, this debut from Sub Pop signees Band of Horses is immediately, invitingly familiar. But if its roots are recognizable, the music is anything but commonplace. | Band of Horses: Everything All the Time | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/1200-everything-all-the-time/ | Everything All the Time | "At every occasion, I'm ready for a funeral."
In the year between my father's diagnosis with cancer and his death, I dreaded the telephone. Whenever it rang, I jumped. Picking it up with a trepidant hand, I tried to quickly discern the caller's tone of voice, fearing the worst news. Whether intentionally or not, the line quoted above, from Band of Horses' debut album, Everything All the Time, perfectly evokes that particular anxiety. It's a sad line for any song, but Band of Horses singer Ben Bridwell's delivery isn't mopey or self-absorbed-- there are no intimate acoustic guitars or whispery male vocals accompanying these words. Instead, he belts them over soaring guitars and extroverted chords, all tempered with a stoicism that staves off histrionics. Turning despondency into indie majesty is a major talent of Band of Horses; their music is carefully balanced to evoke specific emotional responses while allowing space for personal projection.
More elemental than the lush dream-pop of Bridwell and Mat Brooke's former band Carissa's Wierd (the duo played all the instruments here before fleshing out the band with backing musicians), Band of Horses' sound will be immediately, invitingly familiar to anyone who reads this site regularly. Their guitar-heavy sound and Bridwell's echo-y vocals invite specific comparisons to labelmates the Shins as well as My Morning Jacket, and more general similarities can be noted with forebears such as Neil Young and the Ocean Blue. While apt, these comparisons seem restrictive and reductive, but their limitations can be illuminating. On quieter songs such as "St. Augustine", Bridwell recalls Jim James' reverb-heavy vocals, but he lacks the defining regional drawl; as a result, Band of Horses seem placeless. Where the Shins coil their songs tightly to spring out at the choruses, Bridwell and Brooke's tracks sprawl languorously-- more atmospheric than hooky, but nevertheless too structured and targeted to be considered jammy.
Band of Horses' alternately lucid and obscure songwriting remains life-size, even as their guitars swell beyond the everyday. Album centerpiece "The Great Salt Lake" begins with a jangly guitar that suggests early R.E.M., lying low to the ground during the verses until the chorus takes off. They also successfully work that contrast between earthbound and airborne on "The Funeral" and "Monsters", with its rickety banjo carving a rough path for a climactic finale.
Of course, if all of Everything strove for such catharsis, the repetition of builds and releases would become tedious and cheap. Wisely, Band of Horses show off a much broader dynamic, peppering the album with rangier numbers like "The First Song" and the churning, catchy "Wicked Gil". "Weed Party", the album's most upbeat track, even begins with what sounds like a spontaneous and genially goofy "yeee-haw!" Still, every element and track on Everything contributes to the album's wistful, twilit atmosphere, from its first cascading guitar chords to its final rueful strums. And instead of closing with the slow crescendo of "Monsters", they go out on a quieter note with "St. Augustine", a gently ebbing tune featuring both Horses singing together, Bridwell's higher-pitched voice anchored by Brooke's low whisper. So the album's not as grim as that introductory quotation would imply; the band's downheartedness is always offset by a sense of hope. As Bridwell sings on "Monsters", "If I am lost it's only for a little while."
Though Band of Horses aren't likely to be heralded as trailblazers, they do sound quietly innovative and genuinely refreshing over the course of these 10 sweeping, heart-on-sleeve anthems. Ultimately, the band's most winning trait is its delicate balance of elements-- between gloom and promise, quiet and loud, epic and ordinary, familiar and new, direct and elliptical, artist and listener. Each of these aspects makes the others sound stronger and more complex, making Everything All the Time an album that's easy to get lost in and even easier to love. | 2006-03-19T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2006-03-19T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Rock | Sub Pop | March 19, 2006 | 8.8 | 3b3820b7-e153-45d4-aa13-257d46804d7a | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
Recorded in a sleek L.A. studio, the Gen-Z hyperpop artist’s latest EP hides his natural talent under a layer of amorphous production. | Recorded in a sleek L.A. studio, the Gen-Z hyperpop artist’s latest EP hides his natural talent under a layer of amorphous production. | glaive: All Dogs Go to Heaven EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/glaive-all-dogs-go-to-heaven-ep/ | All Dogs Go to Heaven EP | Glaive’s youth lends itself to easy characterizations, but it should really be used to place his second EP, all dogs go to heaven, into context. He’s a 16-year-old high schooler from North Carolina, and his real name is Ash Gutierrez. He’s a member of a generation that has spent their formative years perceiving the world through a screen, and he’s a natural musician.
Cypress grove, his first EP, was an impressive snapshot of modern adolescence: Emotions were suffocating and cell phones were central. Yet Glaive got away with shouting lines like “I’m so pissed, I’m angry as fuck” and titling songs “hey hi hyd” and “dnd” (shorthand for “do not disturb”) due to the force of his charisma rather than his age. All dogs go to heaven follows in a similar direction, but instead of being recorded in Glaive’s childhood bedroom, it’s told from a sleek L.A. studio with a crew of young producers and Gen-Z punk-whisperer Travis Barker. The EP is polished, near spotless, and that’s the problem.
Certain production choices buff out the knicks and fingerprints that make Glaive a magnetic talent. The shinier tracks are solid pop songs, but they’re so amorphous that they could easily accompany any TikTok. On opener “1984,” Glaive dons a Post Malonian tremble-moan that reappears throughout the rest of the EP. “Poison” could be a 2000s boy band B-side with its sultry guitar and Glaive’s drawn-out enunciation (“You’re like a poison that I just can’t esca-ee-ay-ee-ay-ee-ape.”) “I wanna slam my head against the wall” is deceptively chipper, complete with radio-friendly lyrics like “She don’t really like me/She likes alcohol” and “Sometimes I shouldn’t text you/You act just like my ex do.”
Glaive is part of a new wave of artists and listeners exposed to every kind of music across a few streaming platforms. You can listen through a survey of Midwest emo and most of Beyoncé’s discography, but you can also discover 30 songs that all sound vaguely similar, grouped under genres that Spotify more or less engineered. You can even upload your own music and pray your single gets placed into one of these categories. It’s perhaps telling that Glaive is featured on several of Spotify’s branded genre playlists: Hyperpop, Lorem, SALT, Pop Sauce, dear diary, Alternative Beats, and misfits 2.0, to name a few. Glitchy chaos, emo-pop, and future Top 40 hits are smoothed into one mushy MegaGenre, bleeding into one another as their tracklists multiply.
Glaive’s influences are consistent, like if Lil Peep was a suburban teen who listened to pop punk, 100 gecs, and the 1975. They resonate when there’s friction, the styles rattling together inside his brain. The inspiration is lost when they’re coated in gloss. He’s at his most compelling and genuine on the bumping, screeching “Synopsis” and penultimate track “Bastard.” On the latter, he masters the space between a bummed-out scoff and a desperate cry, evoking teenage ambivalence. Initially paired with the clunk of a keyboard, his exasperated whine is joined by a string arrangement as he reaches a moment of clarity. The entire EP has been building to this revelation: “Let me tell a story ’bout a boy I know/He was ’bout 15 years, stood about six-foot four/He made a couple connections and he opened some doors/And now he realized he was way better before.” It would be a nice moment of levity if it weren’t sadly true.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-08-16T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-08-16T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Rap | Interscope | August 16, 2021 | 6.3 | 3b3a945b-ba32-4ce3-b639-2e68cc978698 | Julia Gray | https://pitchfork.com/staff/julia-gray/ | |
On the New York rappers’ collaboration, just about every bar is sharply written, rapped, and also could’ve been plucked from any project these two have done in the 21st century. | On the New York rappers’ collaboration, just about every bar is sharply written, rapped, and also could’ve been plucked from any project these two have done in the 21st century. | Fabolous / Jadakiss: Friday on Elm Street | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fabolous-jadakiss-friday-on-elm-street/ | Friday on Elm Street | There probably was greater demand for a Fabolous and Jadakiss collaborative album in 2002, but far less likelihood of it actually happening. At their commercial peak, the two were inverses of each other: Jadakiss, the grimy hardhead whose overt pop concessions never gave him a bigger single than the one with the 9/11 trutherism; Fabolous, flippant and frivolous, sounding effortless over the flossiest beats of the “MTV Cribs” era.
But on the time since, they’ve remained respected veterans with mixtapes and guest verses that play to their strengths without having to address their weaknesses: beat selection, development of a multi-layered personality, artistic evolution, the sort of things that result in great albums. And so what Summerland Tour is to KROQ, Friday on Elm Street is to Hot 97, a nostalgic package deal that consolidates all of the fond memories of past radio hits at the expense of everything that kept their CDs readily available at your local Disc Go Round.
Friday on Elm Street has been in development for damn near two years, so it can’t be accused of trying to bandwagon 21 Savage and Offset’s Without Warning. But their commitment to the slasher-flick aesthetic lasts about as long as the intro, which makes a more accurate sales pitch: Fab spends several bars working towards a Harold Miner gag, while Jadakiss rhymes over the drums from Notorious B.I.G.’s “Dead Wrong,” both serving as an ID check to clear out anyone under the age of 30.
Like basically everything the duo has done in the past decade, Fabolous and Jadakiss instead spend most of their time enumerating the countless ways in which the current generation are failing to respect a street code of bygone, gullier days. Their voices have aged exceedingly well, and few rappers savor a slightly past-its-prime namedrop quite like Fabolous, though his punchlines are just as likely to land like a punch to the groin, taking all of the air out of the room. If it isn’t obvious by now how much Big Sean picked up from the guy, groaners like, “I humbly put y’all in y’all fuckin’ place, that’s my OCD” should pass for a positive DNA test. Meanwhile, Jadakiss sounded like the proverbial gangster who got chubby and moved to Miami since the get-go, so tough talk always remains convincing, even when he’s face-to-face with Donald Trump “in my man cave watching CNN.”
Not surprisingly, this is where Jadakiss and Fabolous are most committed to putting a contemporary spin on ’80s horror, if only for one track. “Talk About It” is a fairly platitudinal survey of America’s political nightmare, though Fabolous shows some rare insight as a political thinker: “Kerr got the credit, forgot about Mark Jackson,” he raps, likely referring to the latter positioning the Warriors as NBA’s wokest team by calling to boycott Clippers games as a protest against Donald Sterling. This is the track that needs a Styles P guest appearance, as he echoed Jadakiss’ attack on the Clinton’s “super predator” policies (“Will Hillary release niggas that Bill locked up?”), in one of the most passionate and cogent arguments for black voter disengagement at the end of 2016. Instead, Styles shows up later on “Ice Pick” for what’s essentially an outtake from the Lox’s muted 2016 comeback, while Fabolous’ solo track “Nightmares Ain’t as Bad” closes out Friday on Elm Street with motivational mogul talk that negates the entire point of the project.
As with most of the duo's recent commercial projects, Friday on Elm Street forgoes its obvious throwback appeal to try to exist in a middle-school netherworld. There’s a distinct post-Tunnel Banger approach on Friday on Elm Street, as the duo hone in on flows traceable to The Black Album, others from a few years prior when New Yorkers had to learn how to ride southern beats on the fly. And yeah, Swizz Beatz is all over this thing, but it’s mostly reprising his hypeman role from Kanye West’s “Famous” and his one production credit is a fairly standard Marvin Gaye flip (“Theme Music”) rather than the happy-hardcore Casio abuse that resulted in so many Ruff Ryders anthems with Jadakiss. Whether or not it’s unfair to even dream of a We Are the Streets throwback, most of the production betrays its years in developmental limbo and features the same stainless steel trap beats from not-quite name producers (i.e., Tory Lanez producer C-Sick) that could’ve been given to Dave East, Uncle Murda or any other functional “bring New York back” type. Meanwhile, the inclusion of Future and French Montana suggest some level of commercial expectations, but there needs to be a stronger term than “phoned in” to describe their zen-like lack of engagement; the hooks on “Stand Up” and “All About It” are more like getting an away message from their assistant.
The problem isn’t that these two didn’t become the 2017 Gravediggaz; once the initial novelty wears off, the solo tracks stuffed at the end serve as a reminder of how little collaboration took place on Friday on Elm Street. The best crossover franchises of this sort—Run the Jewels, Without Warning—result from contrast or unexpected chemistry, something that presents well-known entities in an unfamiliar light. Just about every bar is sharply written and rapped and also could’ve been plucked from just about any project these two have done in the 21st century. Then again, if an enterprising Canal Street bootlegger did that in 2002 with a compilation of radio freestyles and guest verses intended to settle “top five” debates, it’d be the Fabolous/Jadakiss album we truly deserve—one more like Alien vs. Predator than Friday on Elm Street, a competition rather than a collaboration. | 2017-12-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-12-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Def Jam | December 2, 2017 | 6 | 3b3bae52-fccd-4bc3-b66a-0d46922a17f1 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
Sorority Noise's hushed, brief EP is a four-song cycle about grief and loss, narrated from the perspectives of both the departed and those left behind. | Sorority Noise's hushed, brief EP is a four-song cycle about grief and loss, narrated from the perspectives of both the departed and those left behind. | Sorority Noise: It Kindly Stopped for Me | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21827-it-kindly-stopped-for-me/ | It Kindly Stopped for Me | Sorority Noise’s 2015 album Joy, Departed culminated in an awakening. On "Using," songwriter Cameron Boucher saves the album’s biggest, grungiest riff for an explosive declaration: "I stopped wishing I was dead!" The sentiment is played mostly for celebration, and Boucher shouts it with palpable joy. But it’s also a correction, an indictment of emo’s long history of glorifying depressive thinking, and an implied apology for his complicity in that. In interviews, Boucher explained "Using" was the first song he’d ever written with a positive takeaway. Despite his struggles with mental illness, he'd decided to make the best of things. "I started loving again," he sang.
How cruel it is, then, that just as Boucher was learning to appreciate his own life, so many of the people close to him were giving up on theirs. Since recording Joy, Departed, Boucher lost some friends to suicide—"a lot of friends," he told American Songwriter. Loss on that scale would upend anybody, but it’s especially derailing for an artist who’s had reason to fear he could meet the same fate. In all likelihood he’ll be working through his grief for albums to come, and that long process begins on the home-recorded It Kindly Stopped For Me EP, a four-song cycle narrated from the perspectives of both the departed and those left behind.
Boucher doesn’t just sound bereaved; he sounds downright shell-shocked. Singing like all the color has been drained from his face, he recites most of the EP in a sickly, half-inaudible mumble. If there are listeners who haven’t checked in on Sorority Noise since their debut LP Forgettable, released only two years ago, they won’t even recognize the band. Boucher’s purged every trace of pop-punk whimsy from his songs, trading crunchy riffs and shout-along tantrums for hushed pianos and closed-mic'ed drums tapped so lightly it’s as if they’re being gently blown on.
It Kindly Stopped is as intensely somber as its subject matter demands—maybe even more so, if that’s possible—and Boucher often seems to be processing these tragedies in real time. He captured the EP’s most disquieting track, the spoken-word interlude "Fource," while he was literally wandering through the wilderness. "I think it might be okay, I’ll be okay," Boucher mutters unconvincingly into his recorder while trying to catch his breath. "Today was an off day; I’ve had a few." If he wasn’t actually drunk when he recorded it, he’s a mighty convincing actor. And while the rest of the EP is more deliberate than that field recording, it’s nearly as lonesome.
Sonics aside, what truly distinguishes this recent iteration of Sorority Noise is Boucher's newfound sense of responsibility. In concert, he prefaces "Using" with a heartfelt introduction about mental illness and the value of life. He includes a similar plea in It Kindly Stopped For Me’s liner notes. "If you do have the opportunity to listen to this record please know that suicide is not the answer," he writes. "Please know how important you are and how much your life matters to your family, friends, and most importantly yourself." Yet despite his convictions, he never admonishes the dead in these songs. He sympathizes with them too much for that. On "Either Way," he casts life as a coin toss, drawing a parallel between a friend who saw "a chance to leave a life you couldn’t lead" and his own chance "to rid myself of my toxic ways," a chance he could have just as easily missed. That’s the lone consolation on an otherwise disheartening EP, and it’s not an insignificant one: Many of his friends are gone, but Boucher is still here and he's still thankful for that. | 2016-04-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-04-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Topshelf | April 22, 2016 | 6.6 | 3b3c7a64-2183-4a85-b5ff-a699c5579ef1 | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | null |
Natalie Mering, the brains behind indie-folk outfit Weyes Blood, has toured as a member of noise-rock outfit Jackie-O Motherfucker and alongside Nautical Almanac, though most listeners will recognize her robustly forlorn voice from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti's Mature Themes. All those experiencess come to play on her second album, The Innocents. | Natalie Mering, the brains behind indie-folk outfit Weyes Blood, has toured as a member of noise-rock outfit Jackie-O Motherfucker and alongside Nautical Almanac, though most listeners will recognize her robustly forlorn voice from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti's Mature Themes. All those experiencess come to play on her second album, The Innocents. | Weyes Blood: The Innocents | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19792-weyes-blood-the-innocents/ | The Innocents | Natalie Mering, the brains behind the indie-folk outfit Weyes Blood, has seen a great deal of the country in the past few years. She has toured as a member of noise-rock outfit Jackie-O Motherfucker and alongside Nautical Almanac, although most listeners will recognize her robustly forlorn voice from Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti’s Mature Themes. After the release of her 2011 label debut, The Outside Room, she has wandered America like a Steinbeck character (anyone who adapts her stage name from a Flannery O’Connor novel will certainly be familiar with literary references). Mering tapped maple trees for syrup in rural Kentucky and studied herbs in the New Mexico desert. After a brief layover in Baltimore, she settled into the New York music scene and signed with Mexican Summer.
All of those experiences—from harsh drone to hallucinogenic herbology—come to play on her second album, The Innocents (which is presumably a reference to the 1961 film adaptation of Henry James’ "The Turn of the Screw"). The album plays like a picaresque of the Lower 48, as Mering collects sounds and ideas along her journey and pieces them together into an album that has considerable scope yet is rooted in the personal. Drawing from Donovan and Joan Baez as well as Mark Linkous and Sonic Youth, Mering blends the idylls of folk ballads and madrigals with the sonic abrasiveness of noise rock. Most of the songs feature just guitar and Mering’s rich soprano, but on several tracks she manipulates the instruments to suggest music that is curdling, fading, transforming, evolving right before our ears. Even the simplest and loveliest tunes, such as “Requiem for Forgiveness” or closer “Bound to Earth”, sound like they might be interrupted at any moment by waves of distortion.
To indulge another literary reference, the center will not hold. Things fall apart. There is no solid ground on The Innocents. The album opens with explosions in the distance, a rhythm of destruction that portends something darkly ominous. Borrowing not just the music but also the topicality of '60s folk, “Land of Broken Dreams” conveys a sense of immense dread as Mering sings about an America in fantastical disrepair—in particular, the growing rift between what the country should be and what it actually is. “Stand by to believe in the land of the free, whatever you want it to be,” she sings, and it’s impossible to determine just how much irony is packed into that line. Are those explosions an echo of atomic testing in the 1950s, or perhaps of the bombs planted by radical activists in the 1970s?
The aftershocks of those opening explosions reverberate throughout the album. “Bad Magic” sets its delicate acoustic guitar theme against an ambient tape hiss, as though Mering were self-consciously creating a new field recording. “Some Winters” opens with a warped piano, its glissandos garbled and mutating, as though Mering found the tapes buried deep in the snow—memories of an old affair made new. “I’m as broken as a woman can be,” she sings, with a peculiar quiver in her voice. That vibrato, it becomes clear, is not part of the performance itself, but a subtle distortion of the notes in the studio. It’s applied so sparingly that it’s impossible to determine where her voice ends and the manipulation takes over, and the effect is thematically powerful and musically jarring. There’s no small thrill in hearing Mering both uphold and upend the conventions and even the pieties of folk music, which means that while The Innocents may be her second album, it plays like a debut. These finely wrought songs introduce a fascinating and confidently subversive artist and offers a glimpse of the road she’s traveling. | 2014-10-28T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2014-10-28T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | Mexican Summer | October 28, 2014 | 7.7 | 3b40d833-33f6-4e5f-aae8-05e4bb926a17 | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
The Irish artist’s full-length collaboration with DJ Koze is a showcase of everything impressive about the musician sapped of the excitement that has historically made her work feel so vital. | The Irish artist’s full-length collaboration with DJ Koze is a showcase of everything impressive about the musician sapped of the excitement that has historically made her work feel so vital. | Róisín Murphy: Hit Parade | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/roisin-murphy-hit-parade/ | Hit Parade | Róisín Murphy has always made a point of standing out. For nearly three decades the Irish diva has pitched herself as your friendly neighborhood pop star; a couture-clad weirdo at odds with her surroundings but at ease in the world. In the tradition of David Bowie or Grace Jones, she’s capable of bridging haute art sensibility with down-home naughtiness; a fashion week fixture, “KLF MILF,” and “JG Ballard sexpot,” who’s still an absolute scream down at the pub. Her career looks like a traditional glam blueprint, which is to say a whirlwind of references, identities, and genres, all phrased as a sexy, mischievous kind of dare: Why don’t you dress up too? Even though she presents in an outlandish way, escapism has no place in Murphy’s music. What you get instead is an artist wrestling with the problematics of being a person in the world, until through a feat of style, she’s charted her own way out and through.
After a string of releases in the 2010s that spanned Italo-pop to prog-disco, the pandemic imposed an especially dramatic set of limits that Murphy’s music seemed uniquely poised to meet. Where other artists in the incongruous disco boom of 2020 went for broke on dancefloors that would be shuttered for months, Murphy was able to tap into the genre’s cathartic undertow, foregrounding yearning and resilience even as she was high-kicking in a Balenciaga gown in her living room. A song like “Murphy’s Law,” which rages against fate while insisting on “making my own happy ending” came as a revelation, especially since everything that could go wrong, had indeed gone wrong. “Everyone had this response, like, ‘You’ve saved me,’” she expressed in an interview with Pitchfork in June, “I’ve never lived through a time where music suddenly became the most important thing in people’s lives. They poured themselves into it.”
It’s almost impossible to imagine Hit Parade being received in remotely similar terms. The cache of goodwill for the singer seemed to evaporate almost instantly upon the news that Murphy had written that young trans people are “little mixed up kids” and that “puberty blockers are fucked” in a private Facebook comment. A screenshot of her comment rippled through social media and many fans, especially those in her sizable LGBTQ fanbase, were met with bewilderment, anger, and disappointment. A few days later, she issued a statement that included an apology for “comments that have been directly hurtful” to her audience, stating they were made “out of love for all of us” and that she would no longer share her feelings about the issue publicly. You could feel all the excitement surrounding Hit Parade being sucked out of the room.
With her masks and costumes and make-up, Murphy’s act is seemingly all about the fluidity of identity and suspended reality on the cusp of a breakthrough. Despite her saying that her “true calling is music, and music will never exclude any of us,” her comments feel like a contradiction to the spirit of her best work. The truth is that Hit Parade is the best record of Murphy’s career; it also feels like the definition of a qualified triumph. It is both musically vast and hemmed in by its circumstances, a showcase of everything impressive about the musician sapped of the excitement that has historically made her work feel so vital. Like the album’s cover art by Beth Frey, Hit Parade is colorful, fun, and unwieldy, but also vaguely disfigured in spite of itself.
Where 2020’s Róisín Machine proved her mettle as a disco queen, very little on Hit Parade resembles any kind of a straightforward genre exercise. House bangers are pitched-shifted and sped up into digitized slurries, while detours into funk and disco are derailed by peels of dissonant electronics. A large part of the record’s chaotic alchemy boils down to the dialogue that played out between Murphy and executive producer, DJ Koze. Over the course of almost six years, the duo cycled through version after version, tearing down and reinventing fully completed songs before Murphy would put her foot down when they’d landed on something really good. “Two Ways,” which was initially conceived of as a country song, pits the singer’s warbling vocals against a heaving slice of corroded mutant trap, while the effervescent “The Universe” manages to stay the course while swerving from bluesy guitar-pop to demented spoken word to an interpolation of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and back again.
From Maurice Fulton to Matthew Herbert, Murphy has been blessed to collaborate with all-star dance producers throughout her career, but none have matched her for sheer off-the-walls weirdness as perfectly as DJ Koze. From their first collaboration— the dazzling astral house of “Illumination” off of Koze’s 2018 album Knock Knock— the duo have smuggled moments of absurdity into the mix that only heighten the music. The put-on American accent that Murphy affects on “The Universe” and “Crazy Ants Reprise” strikes as both a call-back to her old days in Moloko, an outgrowth of the characters she plays on TikTok, and a hybrid of Koze’s own love for babbling non-sequiturs. On “The House,” an incredibly sticky funk beat is fraught with anxiety, as Koze stutters and stops the beat for Murphy to interject with a withering “Fuck’s sake!” The tug of war between the song’s seduction and agitation is brought into creepy-camp relief when Murphy belts “this house is our swannnnn song” through a vocoder, suggesting she’s got a piece of soul-devouring horror movie real estate on her hands.
When they’re not seeding their tracks with brazen silliness, Koze and Murphy have an unrivaled sense of space and sensuality. “Can’t Replicate” is the album’s most glorious high point, a hypnotic deep house banger that makes an unbelievably sexy moment of mutual recognition last until the end of time. It’s also a showcase for how powerful Murphy can sound in moments of vulnerability, giving a performance built almost entirely from exhales that gradually transforms bruised hesitancy into bracing exhilaration. The absolutely devastating “You Knew” is just as moving. For seven minutes Koze sends Murphy’s voice through cycles of processing, repeating and stalling out on the line: “You’ve always known I had feelings for you that burned.'” The effect is of a brain broken by unrequited love gradually re-gaining sentience, and as the sheer enormity of Murphy’s wasted time and effort comes into view, a constantly disintegrating dub echoes her yearning and progressive disillusionment into darkness.
Throughout the record, Murphy wrestles with themes of loss and fate. “CooCool” is an ode to uncomplicated love, tinged from the beginning with the specter of heartache as she whispers “I’ve lost it” before Koze’s beat lifts her rapturously into the sky. The extended metaphors of “Free Will” and “Eureka'” most literally embody these ideas, as Murphy respectively weighs romance so euphoric it feels predestined and dejection so visceral it shows up as a black dot on a doctor’s scan. “Fader” is the album’s most triumphant moment and a clear sequel and call-back to the cosmic, push-and-pull struggle of “Murphy’s Law.” Flipping a sample of Sharon Jones’ “Window Shopping” from a bluesy lament into a fist-pumping high, Murphy sings of holding onto love for as long as she can, death be damned. In doing so she isolates that track’s chorus and blares it like a personal motto: “Keep on!”
Despite the record’s jagged edges, Hit Parade bears a funny symmetry to her solo debut, 2005’s Ruby Blue. A thorny collage of micro-samples, unconventional vocals, and unapologetic artsiness, that album was well-received by critics, but regarded as an inauspicious start for a wannabe pop star; too unnecessarily difficult to ever find a proper mainstream audience. After years spent striving for a breakthrough and many more course-correcting back toward a career as a successful solo auteur, Hit Parade is the kind of highly original pop assemblage that the Irish singer has seemingly always wanted to make, a record of peerless highs whose best and worst quality is how alienating it just so happens to be. | 2023-09-13T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2023-09-13T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Electronic | Ninja Tune | September 13, 2023 | 8.2 | 3b453e28-67cc-48f1-919e-ad715c4e2f2f | Harry Tafoya | https://pitchfork.com/staff/harry-tafoya/ | |
Gibbs is in full command of his weathered voice and persona, and though its runtime may be short, You Only Live 2wice is a brief showcase of the Indiana rapper at his hardest and most haunting. | Gibbs is in full command of his weathered voice and persona, and though its runtime may be short, You Only Live 2wice is a brief showcase of the Indiana rapper at his hardest and most haunting. | Freddie Gibbs: You Only Live 2wice | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23057-you-only-live-2wice/ | You Only Live 2wice | There’s sounding like you’ve triumphed, there’s sounding like you’ve struggled, and then there’s sounding like you’ve just survived. The well-worn voice of Freddie Gibbs has typically resided in the space between the first and second category like an audio imprint on whatever path he rolls through. But as Gibbs approaches his mid-30s, he’s still reeling from the after-effects of two life-changing events: the 2014 shooting in Brooklyn that wounded two members of his entourage, and the sexual assault charge that hung over him for much of 2016. The gunmen missed and the court acquitted, but for an artist who’s never had Tupac far from his mind, Gibbs has to have used him to reflect on what could have gone wrong otherwise, and just how he managed to survive.
You Only Live 2wice doesn’t put Gibbs on a Makaveli cross, but does paint him as a Christ-like figure, resurrected and floating on the album cover’s modern-Renaissance depiction of him. Whose sins he’s ready to die for, he’s not saying; he calls himself “20 Karat Jesus” on the crystal chandelier of a leadoff cut but focuses more on the actions (“Fresh up off the highway with that higher power how you want it”) and the consequences (“Don't sleep, bags under my eyes is designer”) than the casualties. Throughout the album, he’s haunted by both the things that have and haven’t happened to him, what he has and hasn’t done, ruminating over a tight 32 minutes across eight tracks that feel haunted even at their hardest.
So is he interrogating his first life, or planning for his second? Early single “Crushed Glass” finds Gibbs pushing towards the latter. He’s in reflection mode, continuously comparing himself to days (or weeks, or years) gone past only to open each verse with the proclamation that “the future started yesterday.” It’s less an examination of what he’s done than what’s been done to him, and its hook (“If I gotta be by myself, I’m’a be all right”) hints at the only-trust-yourself defiance of a man burned too many times. He’s still got that thematic focus on frustration, toughness, and regret that keeps things on edge, feeling like he’s outgrowing all his friends on “Alexys” and pledging to abandon his crew for the sake of his infant daughter on “Homesick.” Even on “Phone Lit” and “Amnesia”—the closest he gets to true brag tracks—his blackout flow sounds like an agitated reaction to being overwhelmed by demands.
But Gibbs never brings a low-energy pity party. There’s still the sense that he can lay claim to a rap-over-anything flow that centers his voice as all the authority a track really needs. The rest of the beat can do whatever—a quality that makes him one of those ultra-rare Madlib/Gangsta Grillz crossover artists who can never make weak shit. His vocal command is still stunning, that rough-hewn flexibility in his voice putting across intensity and vulnerability at the same time. And when the beat goes melodramatic (or dramatically mellow)—the aching violin-laced Speakerbomb-produced flip of Sade’s “Fear” on “Crushed Glass,” molasses-creeping to billowy new age keyboards on “Homesick,” satiny vocal-harmony R&B on “Andrea”—each syllable feels like a knuckle busting your eyebrow open. You could look at *You Only Live 2wice *as a transitional record—and many could see it that way dismissively, given its brief borderline-EP runtime—but whatever turning point this might be in Gibbs’ career, it stands to reason that he’ll still be making diamonds out of pressure. | 2017-03-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-03-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | ESGN / Empire | March 29, 2017 | 7.5 | 3b4a2d2b-c5f1-4af4-a410-d70294a5d7a5 | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
The Scranton indie rock band Petal records beautifully aching songs that are illuminated by singer/songwriter Kiley Lotz's clear, direct voice and poetic lyrics. The album's atmosphere is nervous and defeated at once, the frenzied search for a cigarette and the long exhale of smoke layered on top of each other. | The Scranton indie rock band Petal records beautifully aching songs that are illuminated by singer/songwriter Kiley Lotz's clear, direct voice and poetic lyrics. The album's atmosphere is nervous and defeated at once, the frenzied search for a cigarette and the long exhale of smoke layered on top of each other. | Petal: Shame | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21429-shame/ | Shame | Kiley Lotz, a musician from Scranton, Pa. who performs as Petal, writes songs that ache. Aches are ambiguous and often mosaic sensations; they’re less a product of pain or pleasure than a seductive mingling of both. Ache can flow through the body as a kind of dark, indefinite wave, summoned by a photograph, or an old email.
Shame, which came out in October last year, functions well enough as an indie rock record, but its atmosphere is nervous and defeated, both the frenzied search for a cigarette and the long exhale of smoke layered on top of each other. Lotz describes scenes, relationships, and emotions in fragments. "A bulb/ A thought/ A home you’re not,” she sings in "Feel." Her voice is clear and direct, and illuminates her songs internally, like a skeleton made of Christmas lights. Sometimes she crafts an unstable reality, the physics of which are susceptible to anxiety. "Being mocked by the crack in the ceiling at the top of the stairs," she sings in "Sooner." "Wishing it’d swallow me whole." Later in the same song she threatens to "sow a garden of backbones I never had." Her imagery is rich and often moves like poetry, knowing just when to slip out of sense into a region that feels blurred and indefinite, yet true to the lived experience of love and panic—all this atomic activity beneath an otherwise placid surface. Lotz’s lyrics are also funny; in "Chandelier Thief," she instructs someone to "be thankful for the floor/ it leads you to a new place."
Fellow Scranton band Tigers Jaw acts as Lotz’s band on Shame; their playing is precise yet also softens at its edges. Chords appear like bruises, vivid shapes with unclear borders. In "Camera Lens II," there’s a delightful, lopsided quality to the changes; they almost seem to collapse on each other. "Nature" is the opposite; it’s completely skeletal, just vocals and drums, and yet it communicates with extreme precision something as shapeless as falling in love. "It’s like you have an innate sense of me," Lotz sings. "Like you’ve lived in my head waiting patiently/ To tell me 'you’re so afraid, just breathe.'"
Lotz's finest moment is on "Photobooth," which unfolds patiently as she sings, "Kissed under the streetlight/ By your friend’s house." Then the image recedes into a cerebral space, while the song itself amplifies and expands: "I guess what I mean is that if I could/ Pick out all the parts of my brain/ I would leave the place where you made your home." This is the lingering quality of Shame: Lotz’s ability to translate the imprecision of a kiss, the quality of a streetlight, the decay of a shadow into a memory so powerful it consumes everything. Shame is an album of preserved traces, of things that were. | 2016-01-14T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2016-01-14T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Rock | Run for Cover | January 14, 2016 | 7.9 | 3b4d03dd-487a-428d-b74e-1e29e3176c5c | Ivy Nelson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ivy-nelson/ | null |
On his eighth solo album, Talib Kweli remains the vanguard for deep-thinking conscious rap; storytelling and uplift are in ample supply, though the risks are few and far between. | On his eighth solo album, Talib Kweli remains the vanguard for deep-thinking conscious rap; storytelling and uplift are in ample supply, though the risks are few and far between. | Talib Kweli: Radio Silence | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/talib-kweli-radio-silence/ | Radio Silence | Scholar. Street philosopher. Triple Nobel Peace Prize victor. First black male to pilot an aircraft. Father of the Nike Swoosh. “The man that made Kool Aid say, ‘Oh yeah!’” So said Dave Chappelle, that hip-hop tastemaker with the 90-percent free-throw percentage, on the first track of Talib Kweli’s first album, Quality. Yeah, it was hyperbole worthy of ushering Xerxes the Great into court, but it reflected the rising Brooklyn star’s bottomless ambitions. While hip-hop has continued to stylistically mutate, Kweli has spent the decade and a half since as the vanguard for deep-thinking conscious rap. You can’t solve all the world’s curses—not even over seven solo records. But at least he’s given it a shot.
Album number eight, Radio Silence, is another solid Kweli release to add to the pile. He’s still bending the knee to the same soul-infused beats that contemporaries like Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco mostly abandoned sometime during George W. Bush’s second term. Kweli is still stacking cultural references on top of cultural references: The opening 90 seconds of Radio Silence alone see him citing, among other things, Back to the Future and Carlito’s Way, and rhyming “Sonny Carson” with “Johnnie Cochran.” And he’s still sometimes guilty of being a better thinker than music maker. Kweli’s flow can feel rushed and sticky, as though he can’t articulate his thoughts as neatly as he can conjure them up. But his fans are loyal. Radio Silence will comfortably shore up the base.
If the album is in any way shocking, it’s because of the topics that Kweli does not directly engage with. He’s long been one of rap’s most prominent social activists, using interviews and a super-prolific Twitter feed to advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement, address the escalation of white supremacy, and criticize the current presidency. On Radio Silence, Kweli only circles the topics, occasionally throwing out jabs—“Every problem can’t be solved at the ballot box,” he raps on “All of Us,” in perhaps the album’s most obvious reference to the administration—but stopping short of launching the big, direct haymakers. This is not a record distinctly of its era like, say, Common’s Black America Again or A Tribe Called Quest’s We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service—contemporary albums from artists that qualify as Kweli’s direct stylistic forefathers. Instead, these are mostly songs that could have been pulled from any era of his career.
There are, though, some very good Talib Kweli numbers. Radio Silence is a mostly a fresh tonic of brightness and positivity. “I live my life in the sunshine,” he raps on the lush, triumphant opener, “The Magic Hour,” without any sense of triteness; “I’m praying for a better tomorrow.” But over the bluster, Kweli still delivers his short sermons. “All of Us” slashes away with loquacious one-liners that cut deep: “The common myth is we’re savages with no history or accomplishments/Or knowledge of ourselves, they did a job on us.” There’s even room for a verse from the elusive Jay Electronica, who takes police brutality head on by evoking the image of cops beating an elderly woman. “Officer Friendly is an enemy now,” Electronica sighs, reminding everyone that his inability to sign off on an album qualifies as hip-hop’s own Greek tragedy.
The most focused effort is “She’s My Hero,” a song inspired by Bresha Meadows, the teenager who last year shot and killed her allegedly abusive father as he slept. Over a beat produced by Oh No, Kweli runs through the narrative with the storytelling elegance and human understanding of a skilled documentary maker. There’s more deep-thinking as Kweli drills into masculinity and the corrosive effects of negative male role models on “ Knockturnal.” But this is comfortable territory. We’ve seen him thrive on cuts like these dozens of times before.
A change of pace does come with “Chips,” where Waka Flocka Flame tempts Kweli onto some rattling hi-hats and brash brass. It’s a weird experiment likely to pique the interest only of those who are into weird hip-hop experiments—the muscular, anti-lyrical Waka teaming up with the new-age philosopher. But Kweli sounds less at home on the blustering beat, and the results are as mixed as you might expect.
“The One I Love” is the kind of rap-R&B hybrid number that was slid onto every commercial hip-hop release about 15 years ago and is totally fine. In fact, the album only occasionally slips out of “sounds pretty nice” territory. When it really hits its stride—like on the soulful production and funky flows of “Let it Roll”—it sure is good to have Kweli around. But a decade and a half deep, I’d rather hear him testing himself more. Risking defeat to go for the win is infinitely more interesting than always playing for the draw. | 2017-11-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-11-23T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | 3D | November 25, 2017 | 6.7 | 3b5851ad-e00c-4730-b449-f208b0a3b415 | Dean Van Nguyen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dean-van nguyen/ | |
Songs From the Shoebox is a rough-around-the-edges record that bursts at the seams with excitement. Two of the band's members, bassist William Cashion and frontman Sam Herring, have higher profiles with their band Future Islands, but the Snails puts a greater emphasis on pure fun. | Songs From the Shoebox is a rough-around-the-edges record that bursts at the seams with excitement. Two of the band's members, bassist William Cashion and frontman Sam Herring, have higher profiles with their band Future Islands, but the Snails puts a greater emphasis on pure fun. | The Snails: Songs From the Shoebox | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21638-songs-from-the-shoebox/ | Songs From the Shoebox | In April 2013, a little band out of Baltimore called the Snails put out a double 7'' EP called Worth the Wait. Two of the band’s members, bassist William Cashion and frontman Sam Herring, had higher profiles with their band Future Islands, but that outfit had yet to take off, and the Snails were just another venture with a different pack of pals. All of the Snails’ personnel committed to the group’s big bit: Onstage in Raleigh, N.C., band members donned colorful headpieces that looked like snails’ eye stalks, and Herring thanked a friend of the band for making sure the Snails got to the venue safely from Baltimore in a shoebox stashed under the passenger seat. Later, the Snails would lay down a full LP, but Future Islands’ sudden wave of success in 2014 meant the Snails and their Songs From the Shoebox were more or less shelved—until now, that is.
Songs From the Shoebox is a rough-around-the-edges record that bursts at the seams with excitement. The record feels like it could fall apart at any moment, but it somehow never does: Everything sounds a little fried, from the fuzz-caked guitar and bass riffs that dominate to the slick, squealy saxophone parts that work their way in. Herring doesn’t so much sing as he shouts, with his vocals sometimes bordering on outright screeching. Where Future Islands has always done well at delivering sad songs you can kind of dance to, the Snails mostly focus on fun. "Tight Side of Life" is a thick, rollicking opener, with Herring bellowing, "We’re on the tight side of life, everything is going to be all right." The song is so forceful that you feel like you have no choice to believe it’s the truth.
The tracklisting is loopy, but in a way that suits the project. "Flames" makes for an appropriately named scorcher late in the record before sliding into the droopy instrumental "Do Like You Do." The downer tune feels out of step with the rest of the album, but the band picks back up again with "Snails Christmas (I Want a New Shell)." It’s a non sequitur, but then again, the band’s over-arching concept is songs by and about snails—so, sure, why not a Christmas song, too?
Though Songs From the Shoebox’s completion was delayed by Future Islands’ massive touring schedule in 2014, the timing of its release is perfect. We’re in the agonizing home stretch of winter, and the album carries the promise that summertime’s carefree, sunburnt Saturday afternoons are right around the corner. With Songs From the Shoebox, then, the Snails offer a brief opportunity to escape to that happiest place. | 2016-02-23T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2016-02-23T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | self-released | February 23, 2016 | 7.4 | 3b5b7a57-2c39-429f-bbe7-119852b86b43 | Allison Hussey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/allison-hussey/ | null |
The Brooklyn-based rapper’s latest sports heady lyricism and honest self-exploration. Her words are raw, wise, and immediate as they blaze across the dusty, sun-faded production. | The Brooklyn-based rapper’s latest sports heady lyricism and honest self-exploration. Her words are raw, wise, and immediate as they blaze across the dusty, sun-faded production. | Maassai: With the Shifts | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/maassai-with-the-shifts/ | With the Shifts | Maassai loves jazz. It comes through in the amber-toned, free-flowing production that unfurls leisurely throughout her music, leaving ample room for her dense lyrics. When rappers like Earl Sweatshirt and Mavi write similarly philosophical raps, their delivery generally matches the dreaminess of the production. Maassai’s voice carries an unrelenting urgency and clarity that allows her to relay complex ideas with stunning efficiency. Her poetry is creative and immediate, teeming with wisdom and raw emotion in equal measure.
Producer and collaborator JWords has said Maassai always chooses to rap over the most adventurous beats, and that spirit of experimentation defines her recent work. In addition to releasing three EPs in the past two years, Maassai has collaborated with like-minded rappers including Mavi and Pink Siifu, bringing complex, polished wordplay to their glimmering, soul-sampling production. Last year, she and JWords released ve·loc·i·ty, an eclectic, vivacious rap and dance music collaboration. Her latest album, With the Shifts, is another remarkably compact avant-garde rap offering. It burns and blossoms, encompassing, in just over 17 minutes, the pain, pleasure, and lucidity of journeying inwards.
Album closer “to no end” is a prime example. It’s only 28 seconds long, but combing over its 16 lines will leave the mind and the pulse racing. As Maassai simultaneously articulates her desire and celebrates her strength, her words weave around a prickly drum beat. The last six words of the final verse are delivered with unwavering confidence and precision: “Everything they never pictured/Watch when I frame it different.”
At its core, this album documents Maassai’s resilience. The searing imagery of opener “Next Chapter” relays her struggle not to get buried in the heaviness of her childhood. “Born to break the cycle for whoever’s after me/Started channeling my rage/I knew I didn’t have to be a product of my pain,” she raps, acknowledging her hurt while also making space to grow around and beyond it. “Nine Lives” is an affirmation that celebrates rebirth and grace in the face of hate. “We all been enslaved to our traumas/You brave if you honest with yourself,” she says, showing the work that goes into this spiritual growth.
She contextualizes her emotional journey in a broader framework of intergenerational Black liberation. Her healing is for herself but also the people who come after her, and for the people who are listening now. On “Grace Jones,” she looks to the iconic, gender-bending and genre-defying artist as inspiration to “redefine the model.” Maassai questions a world where people posing as radical get credit without doing much work while “We innately magical/And they hate to see it/And we hate the status quo.” Speaking in the second person, she encourages the listener to treat the fire in their soul as sacred, to not lose their faith in themselves.
With the Shifts defies easy categorization. Every time it feels like you’ve understood the emotional trajectory of a song, Maassai shifts direction, never allowing any one sentiment or sound to define her for long. She describes herself as having flames on her tongue, and her words blaze across the dusty, sun-faded production. It’s not easy to weave together such conflicting emotional states, to access the pain in her past while celebrating more recent triumphs, but Maassai’s understanding of self is vast and complex enough to hold it all. She also keeps one eye looking ahead: “Saving up all of my magic/Can’t imagine what I’m about to be/All of my aims is up in the sky,” she says on “to fly.” The tough combined work of remaking the self and remaking the system pays off in this idyllic future she generously allows us to preview with her.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-17T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-17T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Shiny | February 17, 2021 | 7.8 | 3b5e8404-59b1-4d88-8508-81671717bcbe | Vrinda Jagota | https://pitchfork.com/staff/vrinda-jagota/ | |
Even as the Floridian crooner becomes a breakout star, his music remains bleak and filled with pain. | Even as the Floridian crooner becomes a breakout star, his music remains bleak and filled with pain. | Rod Wave: Pray 4 Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rod-wave-pray-4-love/ | Pray 4 Love | In the months since Rod Wave’s breakout album Ghetto Gospel, the St. Petersburg-born rapper’s life has changed. He went on tour with Kevin Gates; Meek Mill called him his therapist; and he released a Cole Bennett-directed music video. But even as his profile grows, his music remains drenched in misery; Pray 4 Love, his new album, is more bleak than anything he’s made before. In an interview discussing the recording process of the project, Rod Wave said he laid down the vocals in a dark hotel room with nobody else but his engineer.
If you didn’t listen closely enough to his 2019 debut LP, you might think it was recorded in the piano room of a church. It’s a soulful record with constant mentions of faith, but it’s not exactly religious. Instead, he makes songs about pain, heartbreak, trauma, and turning to religion as a last resort, made digestible with catchy songwriting and choir-ready vocals that separate him from others in the South and Midwest making similarly hopeless music.
But sometimes Pray 4 Love can be overwhelming. At its worst, it’s like reading someone’s college admission essay, where all of their life struggles are squeezed into a couple hundred words: On “I Remember,” his father goes to prison; he confesses his love to someone; he cries when it goes unreciprocated; he goes to prison; his mother cries; his friend stabs him in the back over money, and so on. It’s a running list of traumatic events with the goal of making you feel sorry for him, but pity is not what makes Rod Wave’s songs work. At their most effective, they have the raw immediacy of someone going to confession for the first time.
Notably, at three and a half minutes, “I Remember” is the album’s longest song. Rod Wave’s best tracks rarely cross the three-minute mark, typically a single pain-filled verse bookended by an agonized chorus. “Fuck the World” follows that blueprint here, with Rod Wave biting off the ends of his consonants and sounding on the brink of a breakdown: “Said you wouldn’t leave, but you left like I expected/I opened up ’bout my pain, now I regret it,” he belts. If it weren’t for the trap drums, the melancholy pianos and gloomy electric riffs would land squarely in country-ballad territory.
Rod Wave’s songwriting has its flaws. Occasionally it’s unnecessarily melodramatic: he acts like he’s scarred from having to wake up early to catch the school bus and working at a donut shop as a teenager. But when the writing is sharp, and often it is, his lyrics hit hard enough to bring your own buried pain right to the surface. “I need some happiness again, this life done beat on me/I caught a flight to ease the pain, I switched the scenery,” he sings bluntly on “Ribbon in the Sky.” It’s straightforward and complicated; unpolished and imperfect; all of which makes the painful emotion on Pray 4 Love feel genuine even as his life changes. | 2020-04-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-04-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Alamo / Geffen | April 8, 2020 | 7.3 | 3b64df90-f97d-4e86-ab90-04f415b1f8ea | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
The drone and minimalim pioneer recorded this solo pump-organ improvisation-- created to accompany a Piero Heliczer film-- in 1968 at the home of John Vaccaro, director of New York's notorious Playhouse of the Ridiculous. | The drone and minimalim pioneer recorded this solo pump-organ improvisation-- created to accompany a Piero Heliczer film-- in 1968 at the home of John Vaccaro, director of New York's notorious Playhouse of the Ridiculous. | Tony Conrad: Joan of Arc | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9545-joan-of-arc/ | Joan of Arc | To anyone familiar with Tony Conrad's best-known works, Outside the Dream Syndicate and Four Violins, mention of his name conjures a vivid sound: The drone of a bow slowly sawing across violin strings. Not that his other achievements-- vital roles in the early minimalism of the Dream Syndicate, the early incarnations of the Velvet Underground, and the early experiments of American cinema-- aren't equally memorable. But it's hard to picture him without a violin in his hands.
Recent archival releases on Table of the Elements are changing that perception, offering examples of Conrad's work with sine-wave oscillation (Fantastic Glissando) and audio vérité (Bryant Park Moratorium Rally). Joan of Arc is the most exciting recovery yet, a solo pump-organ improvisation created to accompany Piero Heliczer's film of the same name. Conrad recorded the piece in 1968 at the home of John Vaccaro, director of New York's notorious Playhouse of the Ridiculous. Not knowing how much music Heliczer would need, Conrad played Vaccaro's aging instrument for the entire length of a one-hour reel-to-reel tape. (Heliczer ultimately used an excerpt for his 11-minute film.)
As a display of energy and focus over an hour of unscripted time, Joan of Arc is simply impressive. Even more striking is how recognizable the piece turns out to be. On the surface, the pump-organ's low, moaning timbres, blurred by Conrad's lo-fi recording, share little with his violin's attacking treble. Rather than aggressive or sharp, his tone here is plaintive and often hymn-like. But the distinctive way he builds a drone, patiently layering and shifting it like wind and gravity shaping ocean waves, is unmistakable.
The result is an entrancing meditation that rivals the work of latter-day masters Charlemagne Palestine and Phill Niblock, as well as the post-rock ambience of Stars of the Lid and Flying Saucer Attack and the metal dirges of Sunn0))) and Earth. What sets Joan of Arc apart is its all-alone aura. Drones often engulf their surroundings like a blinding snowstorm, but instead of evoking cold, dark landscapes, Joan of Arc feels warmly intimate, like crackling wood in a fireplace.
Among all the sounds one might expect here-- church-organ hums, cinematic chords, woozy groans-- lies a surprise: an odd kind of percussion. Conrad's mic registers his foot tapping on pedals and his fingers clicking keys, creating rhythmic sparks and ripples beneath his cycling drone. As the organ swells and shrinks, these tactile sounds keep the piece grounded. Conrad's long chords may blow your mind, but his tangible effort makes Joan of Arc a dream come to life.
As fascinating as it is, Joan of Arc doesn't rank with Conrad's violin classics. It's more snapshot than masterwork, a private moment made with little expectation of an audience beyond the few who would see Heliczer's film. But Conrad's willingness to pour so much thought and vigor into something so small makes Joan of Arc much more than a footnote to his storied career. | 2006-10-26T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2006-10-26T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rock | Table of the Elements | October 26, 2006 | 7.5 | 3b6a6d2c-322a-404d-9068-1de5f6247900 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
This new box documents a pair of late-’50s albums in which the New York saxophonist left an indelible mark on West Coast jazz. | This new box documents a pair of late-’50s albums in which the New York saxophonist left an indelible mark on West Coast jazz. | Sonny Rollins: Go West!: The Contemporary Records Albums | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sonny-rollins-go-west-the-contemporary-records-albums/ | Go West!: The Contemporary Records Albums | While touring America as part of Max Roach’s group in early 1957, New York saxophonist Sonny Rollins found himself in California, where he settled into a three-week stint at Los Angeles’ Central Avenue club Jazz City. A week into the run, Lester Koenig—a blacklisted screenwriter turned record producer—approached him with an offer to cut a record for his Contemporary Records. Studio time was swiftly booked with two of the top players of the time, drummer Shelly Manne and bassist Ray Brown, and the three musicians knocked out Way Out West in a marathon session starting at 3 in the morning.
Way Out West provides the anchor in Go West: The Contemporary Records Albums, a triple-disc box—available either as a handsome vinyl set or on CD—whose name suggests that Rollins spent a considerable amount of time at Koenig’s label. That’s not the case. The saxophonist cut just one other record for the imprint, Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders, a 1958 LP where he was paired with a combination of six different musicians who had previously led records at the label. In this set, the two records are supplemented by a disc of alternate takes from both sessions, all but two of which appeared on previous reissues, including an expanded version of Way Out West released in 2018.
Sonny Rollins recorded Way Out West as a trio, introducing a format that has become so commonplace it can be hard to hear how revolutionary it was in the 1950s. Rollins’ combo with no piano or trumpet possibly has its roots in the loss of pianist Richie Powell and trumpeter Clifford Brown, members of the Max Roach Quintet who died in a car accident in June 1956.The tragedy affected Rollins deeply. By the time he cut Way Out West, he tested out the trio format with Roach—the group was obligated to meet the concert dates on their calendar—and Rollins biographer Aidan Levy suggests that “the pianoless trio carries the ache of a phantom limb” on the album. That’s true to an extent. It’s possible to hear where the music could have been filled out with the addition of a piano or trumpet, yet the passage of time has dispersed any ghosts lingering over the session. Rollins seems alive to the possibilities of this freeing format. He later explained that without a pianist dictating chords, he could go anywhere: “A pianist by definition leads the horn players, because of the chords and the volume and everything… I always loved the idea that if I could get a rhythm section—a drummer for the rhythm and the bass player for the basic harmony—then I had the freedom to do what I wanted to do. Which was perfect for me.”
That freedom manifests on Way Out West in fascinating ways. Rollins isn’t above indulging in a little cinematic flair, such as when drummer Shelly Manne mimics the sound of horse hoofs on the opening “I’m an Old Cowhand.” There are nods to Hollywood Westerns throughout, such as a cover of the old 1930s screen hit “Wagon Wheels,” and Rollins’ extended improvisations gesture toward wide vistas. Using the rhythm section as rock-solid support, he roams far from suggested chords—a process he dubbed “strolling”—playing solos that are invigorating and adventurous; the sauntering stride of their version of Duke Ellington’s “Solitude” suggests a cowboy roaming the wide open plain. It’s remarkable how picturesque a combo featuring only Rollins, Manne, and bassist Brown can be. In the musicians’ sparing touch and careful interplay—just listen to the ample room they leave for each other in “Solitude”—they positively luxuriate in evocatively wide-open spaces.
Way Out West is such a titanic effort that it overshadows its companion Contemporary album. Jazz Review critic Amiri Baraka, in fact, called Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders “shallow and superfluous” upon its release in 1959. Ever since, the record has been treated like a footnote, yet the subdued quality of Contemporary Leaders seems intentional. Hunkering down for three days of recording on Melrose Avenue, Rollins was paired with a set of musicians who all had led sessions for Contemporary, including Manne, guitarist Barney Kessell, pianist Hampton Hawes, and bassist Leroy Vinnegar. He brought them a selection of standards, pairing songs like “The Song Is You,” from the Frank Sinatra songbook, with “Rock a Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,” an old minstrel tune sung by Al Jolson.
Where there was a distinct edge to Rollins’ 1956 breakthrough album Saxophone Colossus, the performances on Contemporary Leaders are breezier. Koenig may have claimed that he coined the phrase “West Coast jazz” as a marketing device, but the records on Contemporary did seem to run a few degrees cooler than their East Coast counterparts. They may have shared the same post-bop vernacular, but they operated with a smooth reserve. Barney Kessel’s elegant, swinging guitar on Contemporary Leaders steers the record toward familiar West Coast territory, a place that Rollins enlivens with his robust tone but doesn’t quite challenge. The session is easy to enjoy, but it doesn’t linger in the imagination the way Way Out West does.
Go West: The Contemporary Records Albums doesn’t offer much in the way of previously unreleased material. Almost all of the alternate takes on the bonus third disc—there are three outtakes from each album session—have shown up on earlier reissues, and while there are slight variations in tempo and emphasis, the execution remains the same; the outtakes don’t significantly alter our perceptions of the original records. That doesn’t mean this box is lacking in insights. Pairing Way Out West with the relatively conventional Contemporary Leaders serves to underscore just how innovative Rollins’ first album for the label was. Way Out West ranks among the elite jazz albums of its era, as innovative as it is compulsively listenable. This box set offers a reminder of how fresh it can still sound—and how Rollins made his mark on West Coast jazz in two very different ways. | 2023-06-29T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-06-29T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | Craft | June 29, 2023 | 8 | 3b70fe36-6426-4131-ada9-7e267cad03e3 | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
A new archival box set collecting Blondie’s first six albums and assorted rarities and outtakes makes the case for their singular presence in American music. | A new archival box set collecting Blondie’s first six albums and assorted rarities and outtakes makes the case for their singular presence in American music. | Blondie: Against the Odds: 1974 - 1982 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/blondie-against-the-odds-1974-1982/ | Against the Odds: 1974 - 1982 | The group Blondie—vocalist and songwriter Debbie Harry, guitarist and co-conspirator Chris Stein, drummer Clem Burke, keyboardist Jimmy Destri, bassists Gary Valentine and Nigel Harrison, and guitarist Frank Infante—were one of the success stories of American punk rock, the only member of the 1975 CBGB’s class with No. 1 hit singles and Top 10 albums. They wrote pop hits that were still unquestionably rock’n’roll; Harry’s lyrics were direct and funny while maintaining an air of mystery. The band embraced disco before the days of Disco Demolition and befriended early rap pioneers when very few people outside of the South Bronx cared about this new musical form. They also deliberately cultivated their visual presentation, teaching a generation of kids how to thrift and look good doing it.
Harry grew up in New Jersey and crossed the Hudson to NYC when she was old enough to escape: “I didn’t have a career motivation; I had a personal motivation,” is how she described it. She held a variety of odd jobs while trying to figure things out—a waitress at Max’s Kansas City, a stint as a Playboy Bunny—and briefly sang in a folk group called the Wind and the Willows, though her heart was more aligned with the new, glammy guard down at the Mercer Arts Center. She formed a band called the Stilettos, and it was at one of their gigs that Harry met Chris Stein. They soon split off from the Stilettos to form Blondie and the Banzai Babies, eventually shortened to the moniker Harry heard when she walked her newly peroxide-blonde self past construction sites: “Hey, Blondie!”
Against the Odds is Blondie’s first archival presentation of their essential years, available in a variety of formats. The super deluxe collector’s edition contains their first six studio albums, four records of outtakes and rarities, a book of liner notes featuring new interviews with every band member, a 120-page annotated discography, and some bonus extras. If you already have the albums and just want the rarities, Numero offers that option on either vinyl or CD, both of which still come with a smaller version of the same liner notes. This shouldn’t be noteworthy but it is; it’s the difference between a detailed and respectful chronicle of a band’s legacy versus a label that sees dollar signs. It’s also not surprising given that the first “thank you” in the acknowledgements is to “Blondie Nation.”
Back in the day, the band handed out promotional badges that read BLONDIE IS A GROUP!—a clever but futile attempt to get radio DJs and music consumers to understand that this wasn’t the kind of joint where a svengali plucked an attractive woman out of obscurity and stood her in front of a bunch of hired hands. They were a project, a collective of like-minded folks who shared a specific love for Brill Building-era girl groups and 1960s pop songs, but not with the worshipful approach of nostalgia acolytes. Blondie weren’t trying to duplicate what had been done before, but instead cherry-picked the musical bits and pieces that they liked and refashioned them to meet their particular specifications, which was punk rock’s DIY ethos in action.
All of the elements are there in their eponymous 1976 debut: the nods to ’60s pop, the vivid lyrical imagery, the Blondie attitude, the visual presentation, the wry humor, the musical chops. Every record after that built on this solid foundation, which becomes obvious when working your way through a comprehensive collection of the band’s output. The outtakes and rarities within the box set reinforce that. “Heart of Glass,” the hit from 1978’s Parallel Lines, began life as a wannabe reggae tune that couldn’t quite get off the ground. The demo included here has less reggae and more rock, but doesn’t yet have the magic of the final version. But the presence of the demo compared to the album reinforces that despite the disco-fication of the track, it’s still very much a rock song with disco influences. The same can be said for “Call Me,” the 1980 megahit recorded with producer Giorgio Moroder—whose work with Donna Summer directly inspired “Heart of Glass”—on the American Gigolo soundtrack. This was about the time that the band was accused of “selling out,” though there wasn’t a band at CBGB’s who didn’t want a record deal and the success that came with it.
1979’s Eat to the Beat, which got overshadowed by “Call Me,” holds three solid hits (“Dreaming,” “Atomic,” and “Union City Blue”) and “The Hardest Part,” an underrated funk number that should have been massive. The band (and the producer) are open about the effects of drugs and egos and other intra-band drama on the recording, which isn’t obvious from the outside, even with the benefit of hindsight. 1980’s Autoamerican was far more experimental in nature than its predecessors, but still built on the band’s formative core. “The Tide Is High” is ’60s pop from Jamaica, reinforced by the demo; “Rapture,” despite the dashed-off rapping outro (the liner notes tell how Harry wrote it on the spot in the studio, in about five minutes), was more new wave and pop than hip-hop. The Hunter, the band’s final release before a long hiatus, stays true to their loves and their influences, but pales in comparison to its predecessors, something the band notes was a casualty of all the usual band strife, as well as plain old burnout. That, too, is more visible from the 30,000-foot view of Against the Odds: “We put the lid on the coffin with this one,” Harry comments.
“I can make a long list of things I would do differently,” Harry says in the beginning of the liner notes. “But if I were actually thrown back there, I’d probably do it all the same.” Against the Odds perfectly captures the band’s legacy precisely because it presents the history, music, and memories with an admirable degree of honesty and doesn’t try to make the story into something it wasn’t. It’s easier to do that when the music can stand on its own merits, because all you have to do is hear it for yourself. | 2022-08-27T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-08-27T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | UMe / Numero Group | August 27, 2022 | 8.5 | 3b71b6db-0969-4491-ae6f-0faf40cdd687 | Caryn Rose | https://pitchfork.com/staff/caryn-rose/ | |
On their first new album since 2011, Vivian Girls jump back into fried guitar, loose percussion, and fast and easy repetition, as if they’d simply woken up from an eight-year nap. | On their first new album since 2011, Vivian Girls jump back into fried guitar, loose percussion, and fast and easy repetition, as if they’d simply woken up from an eight-year nap. | Vivian Girls: Memory | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/vivian-girls-memory/ | Memory | Even in their rebirth, Vivian Girls have death on the brain. “I live in New York City/And all my friends are dead,” Cassie Ramone sings flatly on “I’m Far Away,” a creeping, paranoid track off of Memory, Vivian Girls’ first album in eight years. That sentiment also serves as a general consensus about the state of indie rock in the half-decade since the band’s official breakup: Vivian Girls, along with the North Brooklyn DIY scene they came to represent, have died.
But even after their demise, it was hard not to hear Vivian Girls everywhere. Their spirit existed, in their absence, in the school-choir harmonies of Girlpool and Ovlov, the electric fuzz that burns after a Deli Girls track or a Priests riff, the hesitant confidence of Frankie Cosmos’ lyrics. That’s not to suggest the band only touched the lives of female and nonbinary musicians—look no further than Wavves, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, or the entire Orchid Tapes catalog for their stoned ennui. But perhaps these groups could thrive, both critically and in the harsh spotlight of the internet, because Vivian Girls forged a brave new world of punk rock that wasn’t afraid of a beautiful vocal harmony, one that could exist in between the uncompromising politics of riot grrrl and the soft hues of twee-pop.
Ramone, bassist Katy Goodman, and drummer Ali Koehler could have cleaned up their sound and shaken off their harsher edges. Instead, from the first chord of opener “Most of All,” the band jumps back into fried guitar, loose percussion, and fast and easy repetition, as if they’d simply woken up from an eight-year nap in the middle of a set. If anything, the group leans into their garage rock roots a bit more, letting songs spiral out, as on “I’m Far Away”’s scorched guitar solo or the prolonged, slowcore-indebted outro to “Something to Do.”
The band stretches their blend of punk and ethereal pop the farthest on the uncharacteristically slow-building “Lonely Girl,” where a muted kick drum hits like a resting heartbeat as layers build around it. And then, after two minutes of long vowels and drawn-out sentences, the song picks up steam, as if the band chugs a Red Bull each time Cassie repeats the titular phrase. By the end, they sound like a train running out of track: “No you can’t come here,” Ramone sings, louder and gnarlier, before putting her foot down—“No! Cuz I’m a lonely girl.” It sounds like a breakdown, a tantrum, a moment of clarity—and then, as if nothing had happened, it fades into washed vocal melodies, and then into silence.
There are missteps, a risk on most punk albums that run north of 10 songs. The seesaw vocals that open “Mistake” are a bit too short of breath, like a child fervently reciting a playground rhyme. The longest song on the record, “All Your Promises,” pushes the band’s capacity for extended psych-rock jams to its limit with a four-minute, free-wheeling outro. But those indulgences are forgivable, even understandable, on an album that feels like a triumphant return. And seen through the frame of the critics they’ve outlived, who often interpreted their use of distortion pedals as amateur musicianship, the extra time spent on riffs seems like an abrasive “fuck you.”
On their last pre-breakup album, 2011’s Share the Joy, Vivian Girls’ lyrics seemed mired in the heightened politics of blog-rock, with long spoken-word intros mocking their “girl group” status. On Memory, there’s a clarity and intensity to Ramone’s songwriting that leaves little room for gimmicks, employing the earnestness that made the Brooklyn DIY scene such a refreshing break from the coy art rock of early 2000s Manhattan. Despondency is a running theme, but more specifically, the album homes in on the quiet despair that comes with the passage of time—an ex-lover remarking that Ramone looks different, old wrongs that can’t be righted, driving drunk because God gets us all in the end. The anxiety that plagues Ramone runs deep—she’s itching to crawl out of her skin, screaming that nobody loves her; coming from a musician who admittedly agonized over harsh criticism in the past, it’s almost daring to admit to the level of self-hatred she does here. But wrapped in Vivian Girls’ dusty, rose-colored melodies, the anxiety goes down easy.
Up until the release of Memory, the band’s arc followed that of their namesake: The Story of the Vivian Girls, the magnum opus of reclusive outsider artist Henry Darger. His stories and illustrations were completed at night; no one knew of his prolific output until they were discovered by his landlord shortly before his death. And while the Vivian Girls of certainly received recognition during their active years, it was only after their breakup that fans started to see their work as something greater, more representative of big questions about the state of rock music. After everything they’ve been through, Vivian Girls prefer to live on the outside.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-09-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-09-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Polyvinyl | September 25, 2019 | 7.3 | 3b73f8d7-6cc2-491b-894b-12d9e14f89d1 | Arielle Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/arielle-gordon/ | |
The veteran improviser creates a virtual quartet indebted to classical minimalism and avant-garde guitar ensembles, sculpting multitracked figures into complex systems. | The veteran improviser creates a virtual quartet indebted to classical minimalism and avant-garde guitar ensembles, sculpting multitracked figures into complex systems. | Bill Orcutt: Music for Four Guitars | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bill-orcutt-music-for-four-guitars/ | Music for Four Guitars | Bill Orcutt’s career has been as winding as his approach to the guitar. Formerly of the Miami noise group Harry Pussy, he has played free improv with musicians like percussionist Chris Corsano, recorded a string of solo guitar records, and even coded open-source software. On Music for Four Guitars, he takes another new direction. It’s a rigidly structured quartet for multitracked electric guitars that weaves tiny rhythmic phrases into expansive tapestries, drawing on the tenets of early minimalism and New York guitar groups like Glenn Branca Ensemble, and adding bluesy riffs and taut, distorted tones to the mix.
Orcutt was inspired to create a guitar quartet a few years ago after a conversation with guitarist Larry Manotta. While that project never manifested in its original form, Orcutt held on to the thought of one day writing for an ensemble, an idea that eventually became Music for Four Guitars. Orcutt plays all four parts on each song, and while all 14 tracks are relatively short—just two or three minutes apiece—they grow into intricate, brightly hued lattices that feel much more expansive than their relative brevity might suggest.
The songs unfold in similar ways: Short melodic fragments accrue in layers to form a web of earworms. Each track grows from a single phrase into an interwoven network in which each motif is in conversation with the others. Orcutt’s structures are indebted to minimalism’s interest in the way that repeated figures, when echoed and entwined, can transform over time. In its relentless drive and emphasis on repetition, it’s reminiscent of pieces like Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint or Philip Glass’ Two Pages. But while this general pattern reappears throughout Music for Four Guitars, it doesn’t become monotonous—instead, Orcutt brings a kinetic, improvisatory spirit to his pieces.
Despite the music’s meticulousness, it’s the moments where Orcutt throws in twists and turns—and leans into sharp distortion—that make it feel alive. Tracks like “In profile” begin with a simple, oscillating melody and grow into a maze of tangled dissonance. Here, instead of letting pieces snap together like a jigsaw puzzle, Orcutt leans into tension, letting lines collide and harmonies crunch. Elsewhere, his pursuit of the drone takes him to some far-flung places: The clanging “Only at Dusk” recalls the hypnotic expanses of no wave, while the trills of “On the Horizon” might suggest Tuareg desert blues.
While stern, pummeling loops serve as the album’s backbone, it still takes some unexpected turns. “In the rain” beams like a ray of sunshine with its bouncy, folksy air, while closer “Or head on” sends the album off in a rainbow of colors with radiant strums. The rigorous patterning of early minimalist composition is just a starting point for the snakelike paths Orcutt ends up taking. At its heart, this music might be all about structure, but it’s also about listening to patterns evolve, celebrating the journey that leads wherever the music wants to go. | 2022-09-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-09-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Palilalia | September 1, 2022 | 7.8 | 3b77a4da-775a-4176-9df0-5d81dd429680 | Vanessa Ague | https://pitchfork.com/staff/vanessa-ague/ | |
On his best mixtape yet, the Southern rapper offers introspective street rap, free-flowing punchlines, and youthful swagger, moving beyond the Gucci and Boosie comparisons to find a voice of his own. | On his best mixtape yet, the Southern rapper offers introspective street rap, free-flowing punchlines, and youthful swagger, moving beyond the Gucci and Boosie comparisons to find a voice of his own. | Kodak Black: Lil B.I.G. Pac | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22046-kodak-black-lil-big-pac/ | Lil B.I.G. Pac | Nineteen-year-old Florida rapper Kodak Black has always been blessed with a slurred, frog-like croak—though he’s had trouble differentiating himself from similarly drawling Southern forefathers like Boosie Badazz and Gucci Mane. After making a splash with two viral hits, “No Flockin” and “SKRT,” he released three good-not-great mixtapes, all of them overlong and generally indistinguishable from many of his contemporaries. His latest tape, Lil B.I.G. Pac—recently released on his birthday as the young rapper sits behind bars—fixes this. It's punchier; the themes are weightier; the emotional range is more dynamic. And it finds Kodak Black sounding like nobody but himself.
On the tape, Kodak offers a highly pleasurable mix of introspective, gripping street rap, free-flowing punchlines, youthful swagger, and even hints of an old soul. Though Gucci Mane and Boosie appear as guests, their presence does not lead to shallow comparisons; rather than being a copycat, Kodak is now living up to their legacies. His flow snakes its way through Southern-fried productions with a sleepy effervescence, where he drops punchlines and subtle turns of phrase with a Gucci-like sensibility: “Grinding for a mil’ and I ain’t talking ‘bout a combo/My mama need a crib, I been thinking ‘bout a condo,” he offers on mission statement “Everything 1K.” Oftentimes, food-based imagery lands the hardest: “Drop two ounces of codeine in my Minute Maid,” or “I be on that Little Ceasars shit, hot and ready,” or, on the buoyant, bristling “Today,” he raps, “I might lace the birthday cake with molly.”
But it’s the thoughtful, throwback street raps that linger after the party has ended. On crawling summer anthem “Can I,” Kodak oozes pathos over a gorgeous beat co-produced by Honorable C.N.O.T.E. and Derelle Rideout: “Can I ball, can I chill? Can I stunt? Will I live long enough to raise my son?” Though he’s rapped like this before, the potent combo of his laconic delivery and his natural voice has never sounded so affecting.
Penultimate track “Letter” twists a few new wrinkles into the idea of a hip-hop song written from the perspective of someone in prison: The first verse finds Kodak reflecting on a letter he receives while in jail, while the second sounds like the note itself. It’s a nuanced portrait of camaraderie, and by voicing his own feelings against the backdrop of what his friend is writing to him, the track illustrates the wistfulness and uncertainty of two young people living their lives apart. Kodak says fondly, “He remember them times going on them missions/Say he for real, he reminiscing.” Then later, from the other perspective: “You my lil nigga forever, just keep your head up.” In just about two and a half minutes, Kodak weaves the story, and you gain the full picture of friends struggling to stay afloat, drifting from jail to a tempestuous street life. It’s a disarming emotional display from someone so young.
However, much like his stellar collaboration with French Montana earlier this year, “Lock Jaw,” it’s Kodak’s ability to keep up on any beat while flexing his lyricism and unique flow that makes him a compelling artist. This is evident on single “Vibin in this Bih,” where he handily floats atop a frisky instrumental. “Hittin’ licks, now I’m dropping hits, mouthpiece cost a brick,” he raps on the track, before Gucci responds, “Walk around the club like I walked around the yard.” It’s telling that Kodak is one of a handful of rappers Gucci has worked with following his recent release from prison; he sees the talent and vision in this kid. And with Lil B.I.G. Pac, that vision is clearer than ever. | 2016-06-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Dollaz N Dealz | June 18, 2016 | 7.2 | 3b7ad9aa-c15c-4585-9a8a-f165484376ce | Matthew Ramirez | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ramirez/ | null |
Fiercely independent and with few avenues into its world, this minimalist record completes the psych-rock band's Thank Your Parents trilogy. | Fiercely independent and with few avenues into its world, this minimalist record completes the psych-rock band's Thank Your Parents trilogy. | Oneida: Absolute II | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15490-absolute-ii/ | Absolute II | In 2009 the Flaming Lips invited Oneida to play at a day they were curating at an ATP festival in upstate New York. That pairing felt like an inevitable convergence of like-minded talents-- two similarly wayward outfits naturally coming together. Both have gone though stages of late-career reinvention, both have a fondness for repetitive psychedelic rock music played loud, and both have demonstrated scant regard for conventional career trajectories. At that point Oneida were two albums deep into a proposed trilogy titled Thank Your Parents. The fact that they decided to play a 12-hour set, complete with a double drummer assault from Lips sticksmen Steven Drozd and Kliph Scurlock at one point, made a strange kind of sense. It felt like Oneida were in the process of untethering themselves from their own sound, of cutting loose common constructs that had been threaded through their prior work. In Absolute II, the third and final segment of Thank Your Parents, that evolution has been taken to its most far-out point yet.
Of all the strands that make up the trilogy, which began with Preteen Weaponry in 2008 and continued with the triple album Rated O in 2009, this is the one that makes least sense as a standalone item. It's very much a part of a greater whole, a logical if somewhat obtuse and reflective way to enter the comedown phase after the wild diversity of the previous installment. With all three pieces slotted together, it's easier to process the other material. The studio trickery and dub-influenced tunes of Preteen Weaponry, which was split into three songs but designed to be listened to as a continuous track, now feels like a perfect ease-in entry point to the sprawl of Rated O. But finding a similar way in to Absolute II takes some work. There are no drums here and barely any vocals. Anything that could be defined as "traditional" instrumentation is largely absent. Initially, it feels impenetrable. Almost everything is locked in stasis, with tiny phrases and pulses occasionally prickling to the surface.
As such, it's firmly rooted in the minimalist tradition. Steve Reich's "Pendulum Music" is a touchstone, as is Philip Glass's "1+1". At times it bears a similar textural heft to Brian Eno's work with Harold Budd on their The Plateaux of Mirror collaboration. In terms of eyebrow-raising deviations in style it's not dissimilar to the arcane moods of Scott Walker's Tilt and The Drift. Like Preteen Weaponry this isn't an album that needed to be divided into individual tracks, although there are four of them, beginning with "Pre Human". The opening is built around a single repeating keyboard riff that's lightly distorted and sounds not unlike something Martin Rev from Suicide might have left on the cutting room floor around the time of their first album. It feels like a reflex shift out of the jagged edges of Rated O and into calmer waters, especially when it relaxes into solitary organ drones and droplets of water-like piano plinks.
But the mood of Absolute II oscillates somewhere between turmoil and ease, with the stretched out tones of "Pre Human" ultimately congealing into the hostile atmosphere of "Horizon". Here, the solitary vocal lines on the album are cut so they speak a curious un-language, which is set to aggressive machine noise that feels like a feverish itch prickling away under the skin. It's the dark side of Eno's dream for ambient, or the notion of Erik Satie's "furniture music" gone horribly wrong. Something that should sink into the background is ultimately turned on its head and shoved in your face instead. "Horizon" is painful at high volume, and it's most likely designed to be listened to that way. From there "Gray Area" continues in much the same vein, with its clanging guitar motif ratcheting up the inhospitable atmosphere. It's like Oneida have locked you out of their world and are making it as difficult as they can for you to re-enter.
This isn't music as escapism, it's music as challenge and provocation. Even the closing title track, which is all hushed-out generator hum and occasional murmurs of instrumentation, falls loosely into the same kind of disconcerting atmosphere as the incidental music to David Lynch's Eraserhead. Oneida are often talked about as a band that should have reached a wider audience, but they won't achieve that here, and they don't seem to care. They're a group whose music takes a great deal of time to sink in, where the process of evaluation slowly unravels over years and months rather than days and minutes. It's the reason why their album Each One Teach One, which is nine years old, is only now being fully unpacked and canonized as a major piece of work. Thank Your Parents will take an equivalent span of time to reveal its secrets, especially as this final part is likely to be met with a large degree of bafflement on first listen. But taken as a concluding piece of a larger body of work, as this is intended to be heard, it's a fiercely individual statement to end this chapter in Oneida's unique history. | 2011-06-06T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2011-06-06T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Jagjaguwar | June 6, 2011 | 7.2 | 3b7f7608-ccc0-4b2d-b6d7-ba85f409dc32 | Nick Neyland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nick-neyland/ | null |
Chapel Hill indie rock veterans Polvo have used time away to reflect, refine, and re-energize—and have thus come out the other side a more intuitive band than ever before. The band’s second post-reformation record, Siberia, drives the point home even further. | Chapel Hill indie rock veterans Polvo have used time away to reflect, refine, and re-energize—and have thus come out the other side a more intuitive band than ever before. The band’s second post-reformation record, Siberia, drives the point home even further. | Polvo: Siberia | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18576-polvo-siberia/ | Siberia | When bands break up or embark on extended hiatuses, the cumulative effect of all those years away is automatically assumed to be degenerative. Conventional wisdom suggests that the passage of time—and the day jobs, marriages, and diaper changes that often go with it—will inevitably erode the youthful abandon and creative frisson that fuels inspiration, not to mention the aging musician’s physical ability to retain their chops. But since reforming five years ago after a decade of inaction, Chapel Hill indie-rock linchpins Polvo have been getting down to the business of blowing such theories out of the water. Their wholly impressive 2009 comeback effort, In Prism, instead proffered the notion that, when removed from the load-in/load-out drudgery of perpetual van tours, artists are able to reflect, refine, and re-energize—and come out the other side a stronger, more confident, and more intuitive band than ever before. The band’s second post-reformation record, Siberia, drives the point home even further.
Polvo’s improved prowess can be felt in literally the album’s opening seconds. Like a beaten-down lawnmower, the band’s early records needed a few tugs to rev up—think of the many false starts of “Thermal Treasure” on Today’s Active Lifestyles, or the molasses-drip intro of Exploded Drawing’s “Fast Canoe”—as if the band was untangling and reorganizing its intricate strategies in real time. By contrast, Siberia’s introductory salvo, “Total Immersion,” provides just that in an instant—it’s as if we’re joining the band in progress at the precise moment they locked into the song’s powerful riff during hour five of an all-night jam session, with all the sweat and humidity in the room shaken out through the barrelling, handclapped backbeat. But where art-rock forbears like Canfamously distilled their epic improvisation sessions into more manageable pieces, Polvo work the other way, revealing new melodies and motifs in train-like fashion; they’re constantly opening new doors to explore, but in a linear, structured fashion. The real triumph of Polvo’s second phase is how they’ve managed to become a more approachable band without losing their sense of adventure—they can still go from accessible to inscrutable and back in a single chord progression but the shifts feel fluid and predestined rather than spastic and impulsive. Their songs have come more sprawling, but their albums on the whole have become tighter and more focused and, in the case of the breezy but byzantine "Blues Is Loss", they have an uncanny knack for making a seven-minute song feel more like three.
Siberia is very much a sister album to In Prism, adopting its predecessor’s eight-song, four-to-a-side composition and even its sequential trade-offs between hot-wired rockers and psychedelicized excursions. But within these set parameters, the band continually surprise—in the extended fadeout to spectacular centerpiece track “The Water Wheel” alone, there’s enough new passages introduced in 90 seconds to spawn another record. Just when you think “Total Immersion” is about to dissolve in a dub-fuzz quicksand, its central riff suddenly reemerges like a rescue team leading you back to safety; and just as you’ve adjusted your ears to the high-beam synths (!) that drive the chorus of “Light, Raking", you’re hit with a twinned, harmonic guitar solo straight out of the Brian May/Thin Lizzy playbook.
These subtle classic-rock quotes—like the “Tom Sawyer”-worthy arpeggio that underpins the tranquil “Changed”—serve to make Polvo’s complex guitarchitecture more inviting to the uninitiated, but what really makes Polvo 2.0 an especially enticing proposition is Ash Bowie and Dave Brylawski’s more emotionally revelatory approach to their vocals. Polvo’s 90s-era output didn’t necessarily shy away from pop melody, but you often had to cut through the band’s barbed-wire discord to get at it. Siberia puts the hooks—and lyrical ruminations on passion versus reason—further out front than even In Prism, to take full advantage of their ageless but increasingly expressive voices: the deceptively serene prog-folk reprieve “Old Maps" acquires the spectral melancholy of Elliott Smith, while the punchy power-pop of “Some Songs” will satisfy that rogue faction of first-album Foo Fighters fans who wish Dave Grohl would’ve continued down the winsome, jangly path of “Big Me” rather than cranking up the stadium-grunge ballast. Fifteen years ago, it would’ve been strange to be speak of Polvo in relation to such noted melody-makers, but at this stage in their career, crafting pop songs is as much an experiment for Polvo as piecing together multi-sectional avant-rock odysseys. And what makes Siberia so great is that it thoroughly succeeds on both counts—proving once again that, for Polvo, all those years out of the game are to be measured not in inspiration lost, but wisdom gained. | 2013-10-07T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2013-10-07T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | October 7, 2013 | 8.3 | 3b8abebc-e79d-43ef-aba8-caeda0282afc | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
The release of Eyehategod, the Southern metal band's first album in 14 years, has been a long time coming; luckily, the resulting eleven-song testament is well worth the wait, resembling the band's most classic work through and through. | The release of Eyehategod, the Southern metal band's first album in 14 years, has been a long time coming; luckily, the resulting eleven-song testament is well worth the wait, resembling the band's most classic work through and through. | Eyehategod: Eyehategod | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19381-eyehategod-eyehategod/ | Eyehategod | Eyehategod’s twenty-odd-year history is so rich, dark, and squalid that it’s nearly impossible to ignore when discussing the band’s formidable musical output. Alongside Crowbar and Down (both of whom are also riding high on recent releases), they are the quintessential Southern sludge band, and were instrumental in articulating and perfecting that bleak, swaggering metal-meets-punk sound that frontman Mike Williams still calls “heavy blues”. While it’s easy to wax romantic over what Eyehategod friend and occasional collaborator Phil Anselmo once dismissively referred to as “the Southern slow jam thing, whiskey that, rebel this,” Eyehategod are so much more than their backstory. (And, anyway, Mike prefers vodka.) The New Orleans institution refuses to either take themselves too seriously or be made victims of their own mythology. They’re just here to play, and if you have a problem with that, well, they’re tougher than they look, and they already look pretty damn tough.
In the many years since they started the band and released 1989’s Garden Dwarf Woman Driver demo, Eyehategod’s core members have collectively survived the worst luck imaginable. They’ve been battered by hurricane winds, crippling addiction, jail time, depression, and ultimately, death; they've welcomed new drummer Aaron Hill into the fold following the untimely passing of original sticksman Joey LaCaze in 2013. LaCaze’s signature drumming style married swaggering looseness with a powerful physicality, and his presence is felt all over the band’s new self-titled album. It’s a fitting epitaph for such a larger-than-life talent, and an excellent sign for the future.
The release of Eyehategod has been a long time coming: the band took their sweet time dithering over album titles and labels, and the recording process was waylaid by fitful stops and starts, as it began at legendary Dopesick producer Billy Anderson’s studio, paused, and was resumed at Anselmo’s home studio alongside Down producer Steve Berrigan. Anselmo’s Housecore label signed on to the release resulting album, which marks the now-quartet’s first full-length studio recording since 2000’s Confederacy of Ruined Lives. The smoke's since cleared, and the resulting eleven-song testament is well worth the wait.
“Agitation! Propaganda!” is a full-bore rager that sounds more like Williams’ hardcore punk side project Arson Anthem than anything else. Eyehategod has always written fast songs, but they’ve never opened an album like this before; typically, they've preferred to catch their listeners off-guard with a mid-album burst like Dopesick's “Methamphetamine”, or kick things off with a bait-and-switch a la “Blank” on Take As Needed For Pain. For a few nerve-wracking moments, you’re left wondering whether Eyehategod have burrowed way back down to their punk roots and abandoned the heavy altogether, but halfway through the song those dirty Delta blues riffs force their way back in, and from then on, it’s business as usual.
Eyehategod resembles the band's most classic work through and through, from the abject aural misery on “Robitussin and Rejection” to the feedback-heavy “Flags and Cities Bound”, the latter of which sees Williams dip into one of his wild-eyed spoken word rants. Jimmy Bower and Brian Patton are in fine form as they pass leaden blues riffs back and forth, teasing out grooves and smashing into teeth-out blasts of intensity when the mood strikes. They have some fun, too; “Worthless Rescue” catches them smuggling in a straight-up Southern rock riff under loads of distortion, and the “Framed to the Wall” gives them another chance to wrestle with sweaty punk riffs before stalling back down into syrupy sludge. Bassist Gary Mader’s got the most heavy lifting to do across the board, matching LaCaze’s apocalyptic beats and anchoring the whole unsteady mess with dependably solid skill while Williams throttles both the mic and his own beleaguered vocal chords with a perverse alacrity. Acidic and unpredictable, you’d never guess just how many times Williams’ voice has been put through the ringer. As always with Eyehategod, those scars are internal.
The band has been playing several of these songs live for years, and there’s a reason “Medicine Noose” and “Nobody Told Me” have become set staples. The manic-depressive “Medicine Noose” is a lumbering behemoth of a song with a thick, patient central riff that promises big and delivers bigger, and the perfectly-executed “Nobody Told Me” is the best song they’ve written in years, with a perfect riff that's exactly what fans would ask for if Williams, Bower, and the fellas pulled them into the practice space for input. “The Age of Bootcamp” has William wailing like a sick animal atop a familiar punishing groove that, more than anything else, signals that Eyehategod is back, and they aren’t going anywhere.
You’ve got to admire the sheer force of will that has brought Eyehategod to this point. After fourteen years, they’ve come out swinging, armed with yet another of their often-renewed leases on life and still spoiling for a fight. That Eyehategod exists at all is a miracle in and of itself, but the fact that it is so damn great is simply extraordinary. | 2014-06-25T02:00:05.000-04:00 | 2014-06-25T02:00:05.000-04:00 | Metal | Century Media / Housecore / Daymare | June 25, 2014 | 8 | 3b8e0267-87cc-4d64-83bc-2947addc1ef0 | Kim Kelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kim-kelly/ | null |
The debut tape from the Montreal vocalist and producer is a daring, eclectic mix of experimental R&B, where intoxicated club nights bleed into sunglasses-and-Advil mornings. | The debut tape from the Montreal vocalist and producer is a daring, eclectic mix of experimental R&B, where intoxicated club nights bleed into sunglasses-and-Advil mornings. | Littlebabyangel: Gada | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/littlebabyangel-gada/ | Gada | In a 2016 interview, LuckyMe co-founder Dominic Flannigan described the Glasgow label’s strategy toward releases, saying, “We are quite slow at putting out records. Part of that is because we sign artists, not records.” This long-game approach, which feels delightfully anachronistic in today’s industry, prioritizes development and explains why signees like Lunice and Jacques Greene often spend several years making their full-length debuts. Major players have unsurprisingly taken notice, and many of LuckyMe’s artists have been tapped by household names including Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Ariana Grande, and more for behind-the-scenes work.
Now three years after releasing Littlebabyangel’s “@Cartier,” a menacing, post-Yeezus anthem, and equally ominous follow-up single “GENEVIèVE,” the boundary-pushing label has shared Montreal vocalist and producer Stephan Armstrong’s debut tape exclusively through a mailing list. By foregoing traditional digital outlets, there’s an added sense of intimacy to GADA, which serves as a compelling introduction to the semi-elusive artist. He’s yet to give an interview, and his internet presence offers scant biographical details, but the 11 tracks here speak loudly for themselves without giving too much away.
Featuring additional production by “childhood friend” Cameron Morse (who’s also worked with Montreal R&B singer and XO affiliate Black Atlass), the project plunges listeners into a shadowy, hedonistic world, where intoxicated club nights bleed into sunglasses-and-Advil mornings. Over the course of the tape, he alternates between a purposely wan R&B croon and chest-boasting Autotuned half-raps, the latter of which lends to the most thrilling moments. “Bring me a goddess,” he demands over a squelching digital beat on “320k,” listing minks, diamonds, Dior, and Prada as his preferred spoils of war. The one-two punch of “@Cartier” and “GENEVIèVE” still sound every bit as ground-shaking, all rumbling low-end and glassy-eyed come-ons. On the former, he references Biggie’s “Party and Bullshit,” turning the carefree hook into something more sinister.
Just when you’ve pegged the singer as a cold-hearted, red-blooded Adonis, he lets his emotional guard down on “Love Animation” and “Crazy Mary,” dialing back the maelstrom electronics in favor of more atmospheric backdrops. It’s hard to tell whether he’s singing about one woman or multiple women, but the album’s sequencing creates a whiplash narrative of weekend after-parties and weekday heartbreak. The only break from the metaphorical storm is the somber piano instrumental “Supersky,” which clocks in at an all-too-brief minute and forty seconds, and feels like entering the eye of a hurricane.
The slow-building closer “Los Angeles” is not only the tape’s most fleshed-out song, but perhaps the best summation of Littlebabyangel’s prodigious talent. There’s plenty of experimental flourishes—the track begins with the sounds of birdsong and gently falling rain, and ends with a breakdown resembling trance—but the tale of love gone amiss at its center is a premium display of pop songwriting. Two years ago, Scottish producer and early LuckyMe signee Hudson Mohawke shared a demo featuring Armstrong originally intended for Rihanna’s ANTI, which would later become ANOHNI’s sweeping, war atrocities critique “Crisis.” Whatever form his next move takes, GADA shows he won’t stay a secret for long. | 2018-04-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-04-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | LuckyMe | April 19, 2018 | 7.3 | 3b8e6f82-0521-40b3-9451-311ecc7d6d5c | Max Mertens | https://pitchfork.com/staff/max-mertens/ | |
Jessica Pratt’s fourth album of hypnagogic folk music hones her mysterious song to its finest point. | Jessica Pratt’s fourth album of hypnagogic folk music hones her mysterious song to its finest point. | Jessica Pratt: Here in the Pitch | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jessica-pratt-here-in-the-pitch/ | Here in the Pitch | There is already so much to admire about Jessica Pratt the folk artist: her elliptical lyrics, her nylon-string guitar and voice to match. But the label of folk singer-songwriter doesn’t quite capture the real essence of the Jessica Pratt song. It is difficult to describe, like a dream that doesn’t go anywhere but still feels like you should talk about it in therapy. In the bottom right-hand corner of the lyric sheet that accompanies the physical release of her fourth album, Here in the Pitch, Pratt includes a quote from Leonard Cohen, pulled from a 1975 Crawdaddy interview about the genesis of songwriting and trusting your own process: “The fact is that you feel like singing, and this is the song that you know.”
The great joy of Here in the Pitch is getting familiar with this mysterious song that Pratt knows so well. There are nine of them here that amount to less than half an hour of music—notable not only in an era of gluttonous releases but also because it’s the same track count and runtime as her last record, Quiet Signs, which she put out five years ago. Now, for the first time on her albums, there’s some light drumming and synth playing, a few basslines and distant bongos. Yet none of this makes the music sound bigger. It’s as if we’re zooming out while dollying in, a hypnotic shift in perspective that makes the music sound more intimate in a larger space. It is a prime example of hypnagogic folk that quietly explores the simultaneity of time in all its misery, wonder, and promise.
Which is to say, it also has a lot of reverb. What did she use as a reverb chamber, an Olympic natatorium? No, but as on Quiet Signs, Pratt continues to put the studio to work for her the way famed pop innovators like Brian Wilson or Phil Spector did by letting her voice sound like it could fill a cathedral in these tiny little songs. If her first couple of homespun records were her Pink Moon, this one has more the feel of Bryter Later, the warm sound of psych-folk melancholy sparsely appointed and loosely fleshed out. Sprinkle in the Brazilian rhythms of ’70s MPB albums and the pinpoint vocal precision of someone like Judee Sill or even a jazz singer like Anita O’Day, and you’re starting to map the old soul and hazy recombinant soundworld of Here in the Pitch. Something in its chemistry will turn any speaker into a vent that leaks the album into the room until it is invisible and all-consuming.
To understand this mysterious Pratt song, one must submit to its dream logic. She’s one of the few songwriters who, I think, favors the verse over the chorus. There’s no release of tension or fulfillment of a promise when she arrives at something resembling a chorus. Instead, her choruses gently turn you around and lead you back to the verse, where Pratt’s vocal melodies gambol and cartwheel around the space. The timbre of her voice resembles a breathy saxophone, like a cool Paul Desmond bossa nova tune. It is reedy and precise, languid and surprisingly technical. No one could just sing the melody on the verse of “Get Your Head Out,” right? You can hear just how considered every note is, each sung with her own unique interpretation of American vowels.
One of my favorite moments in Pratt’s catalog is on the song “Jacquelyn in the Background,” from 2015’s On Your Own Love Again, where it sounds like she’s impossibly detuning her guitar as she’s playing it. This melting sound was an unsettling moment of trickery for an artist whose elemental rawness was part and parcel of her draw. There’s a more subtle use of post-production effects on the dizzyingly obtuse highlight “Empires Never Know,” a rare piano-led song that features some backmasking effect on the vocals. You only hear it for a few seconds, but it’s crucial. Like Cindy Lee’s recent hypnagogic Motown pop record, Diamond Jubilee, the way Here in the Pitch uses the studio to bend and abstract the instruments makes it sound more like a transmission than a recording. These albums feel beamed in from far away, or long ago, so that this imagined distance the music travels makes each song feel much larger and more important than if it were produced like a Tiny Desk concert.
“Empires Never Know” also becomes the closest thing to a title track when Pratt sings, “I never was what they called me in the dark”—if you take the “pitch” in the title to mean darkness and not black tar. The syntax of that line is typical of the Pratt song. She uses odd tenses and conditional grammar to comment on the past or presage the future. These lines emerge as riddles and half-thoughts: “I used to want for what your desolation hadn’t come by” or “I soon should know what remains” or “It’s only lasted for awhile.” Pratt’s narrator is constantly inquiring about emotional states, searching high and low for the right phrase to evoke a feeling that’s difficult to name. This temporal displacement and imagistic writing make Here in the Pitch feel vaporous at first, but it soon becomes its own transfixing language, a magnet that makes your internal compass go haywire.
“And wouldn’t you say the past’s no longer quite as near as you’d like?” Take a minute with that one, from the final, warmest, most hopeful track, “The Last Year.” You’re witnessing music’s greatest horologist create another ornate clock to hang on the wall. Time is her muse, after all, this invisible force that binds the whole of the world to the same path. Her four albums comprise a body of work that is a metaphysical exploration of time and what you can find in its pockets. Her song considers how strange it is to conceive a distance between two moments, and likewise, how beautiful it is to consider the distance between two people. This is the Jessica Pratt song, and Here in the Pitch hones it to its finest point. | 2024-05-02T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2024-05-02T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Mexican Summer | May 2, 2024 | 8.8 | 3b901aa0-c221-4ca7-981e-5192d8adc7d5 | Jeremy D. Larson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jeremy-d. larson/ | |
The inimitable art-pop singer collects his 21st century non-album collaborations, including work with frequent partner Ryuichi Sakamoto. | The inimitable art-pop singer collects his 21st century non-album collaborations, including work with frequent partner Ryuichi Sakamoto. | David Sylvian: Sleepwalkers | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14812-sleepwalkers/ | Sleepwalkers | Like many singers who came of age during glam and made their name as the new romantics were wresting English rock from the punks, David Sylvian has a voice-- unashamedly mannered and theatrical and oozing wounded romanticism-- that's both inimitable and divisive. It's also been the only constant in his music over the last 30 years; the man shreds styles as a rule, often as soon as listeners have adjusted to his latest changeup. So hardcore Sylvian-ophiles are usually in it for That Voice, which has grown warmer and deeper and more restrained with experience while still being recognizable within seconds. It's the reliable pleasure that's carried listeners through Sylvian's less-than-fertile periods, the collaborations that didn't quite spark, the styles that proved an ill fit for the singing, all the downsides to his ultimately admirable brand of creative restlessness.
Sylvian's voice is certainly the only constant on Sleepwalkers, a collection of his 21st century non-album collaborations that's coherently assembled, which means it flows like an album, but artistically all over the map, which means the individual songs range from several undeniable keepers to a small handful of wince-inducing missteps. Naturally, it's the missteps which stand out on first listen. Sylvian's singing, though it's more versatile than his reputation for mannered art-rock melodrama suggests, proves very, very awkward when dropped into a slab of George Michael-esque blue-eyed soul ("Money for All", complete with Vegas-y backup singers). The oddity of appropriating the style doesn't necessarily make the song fun to listen to, but it certainly dispels the rumors that Sylvian's hardened into a pop-spurning experimentalist over the last decade.
Some old-school Sylvian fans have been turned off by his 21st century albums, which have stretched verse-chorus structure to its limit while recasting both improv-style instrumental abstraction and avant electronics as a songwriter's tools. Personally I think 2003's Blemish and 2009's Manafon are minor masterpieces, but it's easy to understand why folks who fell in love with Japan's lush, tight synth-rock might not be too keen on the way Sylvian's albums now hide the pleasure of his voice inside the forbidding box marked "free music." If you're in that camp, Sleepwalkers, despite its wildly varying quality, may come as some relief. Here, in addition to the knotty electro-acoustic/glitch stuff, brilliant Blemish-esque tracks like "Sleepwalkers" and "Transit", we also get Sylvian goes country ("Ballad of a Deadman"), Sylvian goes piano bar torch singer ("Playground Martyrs"), and so on.
Sylvian's genre-takes are always a little skewed, as befitting a guy who's worked with Holger Czukay, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and other great avant/pop synthesists. Sometimes this tweaking adds frisson to what might have otherwise been too stale, too traditional. Sylvian-goes-country twangs for sure, but it also squeals and clonks and squirms with little Matmos-like musique concrète embellishments. But on a few occasions Sylvian's sound-art touches feel like oddball window dressing on flimsy tunes. And when one of those Blemish/Manafon style songs pops up, you're struck by what a singular sound-world Sylvian's solo albums have created in the last 10 years. That's not an achievement to chuck away lightly, so it's good that Sylvian has these one-off collaborations as release valves. Sleepwalkers naturally doesn't draw you into a world as fully realized as one of Sylvian's true albums. But his fearlessness, if not quite his versatility, at tackling new sounds (and even new structures) is still a beacon, especially at an age when many of his contemporaries have fossilized into post-punk heritage acts. | 2010-11-01T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2010-11-01T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | Samadhi Sound | November 1, 2010 | 6 | 3b908fd4-22e0-4770-b9c7-4f6d5983a3d4 | Jess Harvell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jess-harvell/ | null |
The Japanese ambient artist’s new album is an immersive textural exercise that demands full use of the senses. It is some of his most magnetic work yet. | The Japanese ambient artist’s new album is an immersive textural exercise that demands full use of the senses. It is some of his most magnetic work yet. | Tenka: Hydration | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tenka-hydration/ | Hydration | Daisuke Fujita is a channeler of the unseen. As Meitei, the Hiroshima-based producer has cultivated a whisper-soft style of ambient music, distilling what he describes as “the lost Japanese mood” into loops suffused with all the melancholy and mystery of an old ghost story. Though his main project has revolved specifically around the goal of interpreting Japanese history and culture through sound, with Tenka, Fujita has put aside any particular thematic focus. If Meitei has been fixated specifically on Japan, Tenka widens Fujita’s canvas, evoking a more universal kind of spirit.
Hydration is an exercise in texture, one that captures, as Fujita puts it, “a more everyday part of myself.” Even for a project supposedly designed with no particular concept in mind, Fujita can’t help but fully engage with this idea of music as a sensory experience (the physical edition of the album even comes with a fragrance specifically designed to accompany the record). Appropriately, Hydration moves like dew evaporating into the air: Fujita’s light, trickling sound design never offers anything like a melody, or even clearly defined chords for that matter, instead constantly hovering on the edge of becoming. It’s a delicate balance that Fujita pulls off with grace, making Hydration some of the producer’s most entrancing, elemental work yet.
Where Fujita’s previous albums typically condensed his ideas into short musical poems, Hydration’s extended track lengths allow the listener to sink more fully into its steamy depths. The album resembles an ecosystem abuzz with microscopic life, in part because it was inspired by the walks Fujita would take in the mountain forests near his home. Sounds seem to seep into each other, like the rainstick effect that courses through “Antioxidant Shower ~ Permanent Natural Circulations Seem to Be Beautiful ~,” before reappearing again in a new form on “The Ocean That You Observe in My Aquarium ~ The Eternity I See in Your Eyes ~.” Fujita’s ear-tickling timbres are serene; hear the way his crisp, icy synthesizers caress the chimes of “Diverse Aesthetics ~ Our Hydration Is a Symbol ~,” phasing in and out of the track like a cold, pulsing vein. It may seem stationary at first, but it possesses a level of subtly shifting detail, lifted straight from the book of ambient glitch practitioners like Oval and Vladislav Delay. Every tiny, granular tone comes together to form an incandescent whole.
Because Hydration is so focused on the small intricacies of particular sound patterns, any one wrong move can derail a whole track. The main misfire is “How to Spend an Aromatic Night ~ 23PM-1AM ~,” which resembles the buzz of a sea of cicadas, but unfortunately ends up becoming more grating than soothing. Aside from that moment, Hydration is as peaceful as a misty morning, the kind where every small refraction of light off the trees feels magical. In Japan, there’s a traditional incense ceremony known as Kōdō, where rather than “smelling” fragrances, participants are instructed to “listen” to the scent. With Hydration, it feels as if Fujita is asking us to treat his music in the same manner—not as something to be enjoyed via only one sense, but as an experience meant to emanate throughout our entire bodies. Understood this way, it is nothing short of nourishing. | 2022-09-15T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-09-15T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Métron | September 15, 2022 | 7.7 | 3b95a619-033c-43d6-8440-fd59519e4f9a | Sam Goldner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-goldner/ | |
The Harlem-based MC's long-delayed first official release finds her standing at a number of interesting junctions, if not yet having committed to a solid path. | The Harlem-based MC's long-delayed first official release finds her standing at a number of interesting junctions, if not yet having committed to a solid path. | Azealia Banks: 1991 EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16775-1991-ep/ | 1991 EP | Though it's only been about six months since the release of Azealia Banks's debut single "212", the room's still trashed from when she first stormed the scene. On the strength of that one track, the hot-shot Harlem-based MC with a slyly aggressive flow became not just a rising star but a boundary-busting symbol of hip-hop's ever-changing mores. While some listeners gasped at the supposed audacity of Rihanna's suggestive chant, "cake cake cake," Banks, grinning, was like, "cunt, cunt, cunt." Around the time Ye and Jay were extolling jet-setter excess on Watch the Throne, Banks drummed up the sort of publicity you can't buy thanks to a charismatic, low-concept video shot on a DSLR. And as for the guy still stuck on the "no homo" refrain, the openly bisexual Banks waited until he wasn't looking and then slipped out the door with his girl and his best friend. By the measure of pretty much any metaphor you can throw at her right now, Azealia Banks is the girl with the most cake.
Banks' first official release, a four-song EP titled 1991, still finds her standing at a lot of interesting junctions, if not committing to a solid path. She's currently prepping a mixtape (Fantasea, which is slated for July) and a Paul Epworth-produced Interscope debut, Broke With Expensive Taste. But despite her visibility, the half-statement of 1991 reminds us that Banks is still an artist in her development stage.
From its opening "excuse-moi"s and "ooh-la-las," 1991's vibe is an almost comically caricatured version of extravagance and luxury. The title track's beat is runway-ready and Banks, reclined but in control, unfurls her lines like somebody chiseled is feeding her grapes. Like "212", it's an introductory statement, but this time Banks is in no hurry; a few minutes roll by before she gets to the breathy but bombastic hook, "NY rose me, most high chose me/ Let me know what I can-can-can-can do for you."
Like much of the music Banks has released so far, 1991 owes a stylistic debt to New York's vogue ball culture. The title refers to the year Banks was born, but it's also a year after the release of the cult documentary Paris Is Burning, which chronicled the drag ball scene, and a year after Madonna introduced voguing to middle America. She may be riding the crest of a revival of ball imagery right now, but this aesthetic is much more than just a trendy put-on. Ball culture is where she picked up that controversial vocabulary ("I feel like 'cunt' means so feminine... in the vein of, like, voguing," she said in a 2011 interview) and it's also responsible for the particular air of luxury that pervades 1991. Vogue culture values DIY fabulosity and "1991" and "Van Vogue" stay true to that spirit: They don't sound like songs about pursuing wealth so much as they profess of a kind of luxury of the self. Which means she's not rapping about accumulating cars and private jets; the finer things in life, Banks always seems to be saying, are the ones that make you look good.
Some of Banks' best lines are elegantly self-aggrandizing and enemy-deflating ("You gonna be a bitch, nigga, I'ma be that bitch"), but she's just as capable of executing those moves in more straightforward terms ("I'ma ruin you, cunt"). Even when she's barking her most aggressive lines, Banks' signature is her sly irony, and she lacquers it on deliciously thick here on the previously released "Liquorice" ("Can my hot fudge bitches get with your vanilla friends/ Hey, I'm the liquorice bitch, you know I'm looking for these niggas if these niggas is rich").
Like any new artist greeted with the sort of fanfare, the expectations people have of Banks seem perilously high. As an MC with commercial potential who's repping for hip-hop's two majorly underrepresented groups (women and the queer community), it's easy to saddle Banks with savior-sized hopes. But the long-delayed 1991 is solid and unsurprisingly promising. "What you gon' do when I appear? When I premiere?" she roars memorably at the climax of "212", and 1991 doesn't so much answer that question as add a couple of more dots to the ellipses. But as another example of Banks' versatile skills, it also gives ample reason to stick around for the answer. | 2012-06-08T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-06-08T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Interscope | June 8, 2012 | 7.7 | 3b980d0c-e17e-4dbb-bf89-fca79ccddb83 | Lindsay Zoladz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/lindsay-zoladz/ | null |
The Philly indie pop band’s second album keeps things hooky and whimsical across 24 tracks of mostly light fare and dynamic songwriting. | The Philly indie pop band’s second album keeps things hooky and whimsical across 24 tracks of mostly light fare and dynamic songwriting. | 2nd Grade: Hit to Hit | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2nd-grade-hit-to-hit/ | Hit to Hit | The music video for “Velodrome”—a breezy indie power-pop cut off 2nd Grade’s second record Hit to Hit—features the band dressed up in character as a beatnik, a flower child, a home baker, a cowboy, and a bubble bather. Each is rendered as both earnest and comically archetypal—the beat poet, for example, plays the drums in tiny sunglasses and a French beret, in front of a copy of Infinite Jest, while never once breaking into winking self-awareness. Those discrete sketches of slightly askew tropes provide an apt visual guide to Hit to Hit, a record that often feels like a series of creative writing assignments illuminated by compact pop hooks.
Led by guitarist and vocalist Peter Gill, 2nd Grade is the product of Philadelphia’s thriving DIY scene, a supergroup of sorts for fans of West Philly house shows. Catherine Dwyer and Jack Washburn of the cult punk group Remember Sports provide guitar and bass, respectively; guitarist and vocalist Jon Samuels collaborated with Gill on the folk-country act Friendship; Gill previously played guitar in the now-defunct indie pop act Free Cake for Every Creature. There’s even a vocal credit from Carmen Perry of Remember Sports’ two-year-old brother. Gill’s new venture takes bits and pieces from each of those acts—the childlike wonder of Free Cake’s songwriting, the melodies of Remember Sports, the Americana of Friendship—and rids itself of any context or pretense. Instead, each song on the record exists with its own internal logic, homing in on a single concept—taxes, Texas, the existential freedom of riding your first bike—as the core tenant of that song’s universe.
If Gill’s vision weren’t so specific, and if the band weren’t so mutable in their approaches to instrumentation, these concepts would quickly wear thin. But at every possible juncture, Gill leans heavily into the playfulness of his ideas. There’s the cartoonish gunshot effects on “Shooting From the Hip” and the sound of motorcycles revving on the ode to road films “Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider.” There’s the thrashing punk track “Baby’s First Words,” whose title only starts to make sense as a toddler giddily yells “Truck!”
Though most of the record exists in the broader sounds of indie pop, borrowing from the jangly guitar of Big Star’s Chris Bell and the bright chord progressions of the Beach Boys, Hit to Hit manages to keep a sense of novelty by shifting modes throughout—on “100 Hrs,” Samuels’ deep, rounded twang takes the record into “Lonesome Cowboy” territory; the noisy discord and shouting vocals on “Jazz Chorus” recall the spartan intensity of Big Black. At 24 songs—most clocking in under two minutes—Hit to Hit is an unfiltered product, one that prioritizes absurdity and experimentation over consistency. It takes a bet on jingles as a creative mode (sometimes quite literally, as on the sugary-sweet “Sunkist”), and these songs are most fleshed out in that precise context—peppy, self-contained, practically built to be cheeky filler on a crush’s mixtape.
Hit to Hit’s final quarter, which the band recorded as an ensemble, takes a more grounded approach. But after a record of instant gratification, these gentler tracks have a tendency to melt together. “Flavor of the Week” and “Summer of Your Dreams” is built on open chords and romantic pining, but fails to grow into more than circuitous, sleepy strumming. It’s not that they’re poorly constructed—Gill’s soft crooning is a charming accompaniment to the subdued acoustic guitar. But in a world as whimsical as 2nd Grade’s, it’s hard not to wish for Gill’s camp counselor enthusiasm to stick around a little longer. | 2020-06-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-06-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Double Double Whammy | June 3, 2020 | 6.4 | 3b9a81f1-fa6b-4389-b633-a2a5e990ba7d | Arielle Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/arielle-gordon/ | |
The long-running Belgian avant-garde band explores complicated gender dynamics on their ambitious new double album. | The long-running Belgian avant-garde band explores complicated gender dynamics on their ambitious new double album. | Aksak Maboul: Figures | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aksak-maboul-figures/ | Figures | A genre that defined 1960s French-language pop music, yé-yé always had a glaring gender problem. Named famously after the refrain of “Yeah! Yeah!” that American and British bands introduced to continental Europe, many of the genre’s hits cast teenaged girls as doll-faced puppets for older male songwriters. Certain ’60s artists, most notably the indelible Françoise Hardy, challenged their contemporaries’ misogyny problem, yet yé-yé cast its long shadow on the Francophone mainstream for decades.
On Figures, Belgian avant-garde fixtures Aksak Maboul offer a compelling détournement of French pop’s gender assumptions. Led by Marc Hollander, Maboul emerged in the late 1970s as both globally minded experimenters and malcontents of convention. Their innovative 1980 album Un Peu de l'Âme des Bandits begins with a song called “A Modern Lesson” in which a signature Bo Diddley rhythm—the sort of clavé beat that courses through the bubblegum sounds of the ’60s—dissolves into distorted punk guitar work and discordant samples of Un Peu’s other tracks. The rest of the album thumbs its nose at Western pop, mixing in musical traditions from cultures as varied as Turkey, Polynesia, Baka, and the Mississippi Delta.
After Un Peu, Hollander put Aksak Maboul on the backburner, growing his record label, Crammed Discs, which expounds a highly influential global vision of contemporary sound. He also played in the post-no wave band The Honeymoon Killers, an early collaboration with the singer Véronique Vincent. By the time Aksak Maboul completed their next record, 2014’s Ex-Futur Album, Vincent and Hollander were married and had raised kids together. Musically, she had become frontwoman to his backstage sonic mastermind, a transgressively familiar format they bring to the double album Figures.
At its best, Figures addresses a 21st century in which the misogyny of the 1960s lives on, finding new places to hide and new opportunities to rear its head. One of the few English-language songs, “Dramuscule,” features a parodic conversation between a Georges Perec-reading man and a submissive woman. The man describes himself as the woman’s “hero,” and the woman tells the man, “I drink up your words, and I swallow mine,” before she later leaves him or kills herself—the narrative ends indeterminately. Vincent seems to echo yé-yé tradition on “Spleenétique,” repeating the song’s name at the beginning of each verse in a playful chirp before adding a few nonsense words. Yet the title translates to the English “Splenetic,” and the next lines maintain the rageful momentum coiled beneath her upbeat tone: “Idling speed attack/Ire swells in me.”
The conflict between words and music reflects the album’s gender battles. Though Hollander composed most of the music, Vincent wrote all of the lyrics, and her musings are often self-reflective. “La musique et les lettres,” she sings on a track near the end, her next line translating into English as, “Words have ensnared me.”
While the album’s hour-plus runtime is full of fragments and found sounds, Figures is most cohesive when it serves as a stage for Vincent’s writing. Hollander layers his restless electronic tracks with woodwinds, programmed beats, electric guitar, and runs of jazz piano, but the album lacks the surprising juxtapositions that mark Aksak Maboul’s early work, its relative smoothness often giving the impression that Figures’ arrangements are settings for words and voice.
Non-French speakers may find it difficult to appreciate the quality of Vincent as writer and chanteuse. Of course, listeners across the world are alienated by the tyranny of Anglophone songs, and Aksak Maboul’s musical vocabulary is admirably worldwide. Figures is both musique and lettre, male and female, and it rejects a whole bunch of tyrannies in the course of proving its point. | 2020-05-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-05-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Crammed Discs | May 22, 2020 | 7.2 | 3ba359e4-68cc-4618-81ed-a91754c2acb0 | Daniel Felsenthal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-felsenthal/ | |
Virtuosic saxophonist Colin Stetson teams with Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld for an album of inspired minimalism. The eight pieces on the album feel simultaneously contemplative and busy—the sound of active minds idling in a lower gear. | Virtuosic saxophonist Colin Stetson teams with Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld for an album of inspired minimalism. The eight pieces on the album feel simultaneously contemplative and busy—the sound of active minds idling in a lower gear. | Colin Stetson / Sarah Neufeld: Never Were the Way She Was | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20289-colin-stetson-sarah-neufeld-never-were-the-way-she-was/ | Never Were the Way She Was | There’s something inscrutable and implacable about the music of the Montreal-based saxophonist Colin Stetson. His journey from the edges of the avant-garde to touring with Bon Iver and Arcade Fire has an inexorable feel to it, as if Stetson pushed his way to prominence wielding nothing but the mighty sound wrung from his chosen instrument. Sarah Neufeld, a violinist who has been a permanent member of Arcade Fire since their second album, is a kindred spirit: She brings a highly unconventional ear to her instrument and also seems to wander between genres without much fuss. The pair even share an avid interest in yoga—Neufeld has opened a studio, and Stetson has talked about the role yoga plays in his discipline, both in assisting with his demanding circular-breath style and in the mindfulness it cultivates.
Neufeld and Stetson worked together on the score to the 2013 film Blue Caprice, and on Never were the way she was, they achieve a kind of ecstatic communion. The eight pieces on the album feel simultaneously contemplative and busy—the sound of active minds idling in a lower gear. The record is fantastic morning music, its tone and pace mirroring the moment in the day when your thoughts are murmuring, not yet speaking, and all you sense are their shades. It is too eventful, its surface too agitated, to be ambient, but it might help you think more clearly anyway.
Neufeld and Stetson’s pieces start with something very simple and build layers that you can hear stack and slot into place. Stetson is a virtuoso, the sort of player whose technical feats change people’s perceptions of what his instrument can do. But the pieces on Never were the way she was are laid out as simply and clearly as a children’s story. Each time, Neufeld and Stetson begin with an undulating pulse, their two instruments working busily to create the illusion of one massive one (some kind of amplified church organ, maybe, that hasn’t been created yet). Once they’ve hit this point, they hold there, letting the multifaceted sound soak in.
Each piece on the album has a different pulse, with its own quality and clarity: Neufeld’s eerily smooth bowing on "Won’t be a thing to become" mirrors Stetson’s long-breathed, even tone, creating a glassy and impenetrable sonic surface. On "In the vespers", Stetson flutters his fingers over a few keys, making a wailing, high-pitched riff, and Neufeld bows sharp double stops beneath it. It’s an anxious sound, and listening to the jagged little peaks and valleys it hits is its own perversely pleasurable discomfort.
The mood behind these pieces is amorphous, but there is a steely, elemental feel to the album that suggests pre-industrial times. On the unmistakably baleful "With the dark hug of time" Stetson’s hammering fingers on the keys make a "CHUNK" that suggests the sound of a stomping kick drum, and he plays in the lowest ranges of his instrument, where the sub frequencies aren’t too far off from a drone-metal band. This kind of buzzing, physically upsetting drone is an inherently primordial sound, and the piece feels more than a little 2001-obelisk. The scrapes and thuds embedded in the otherwise smoothly rolling "The rest of us" send a similar message. Though the pieces are fleshed out with other small touches—other horns at the periphery, and uncanny wordless vocals—the foundation of the album rests on the power and warmth Stetson and Neufeld generate by themselves. Never were the way she was has a bracing air, an implicit reminder of the things that can be done with two instruments and two hands. | 2015-04-27T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-04-27T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Experimental | Constellation | April 27, 2015 | 7.7 | 3bad6a35-8dcf-495e-968d-91558aa4afba | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | null |
The rapper and now flautist’s debut solo album is an 87-minute devotional to new age, ambient jazz, and spiritual discovery. It’s beautiful, demanding, and among the most fascinating artistic left turns in recent memory. | The rapper and now flautist’s debut solo album is an 87-minute devotional to new age, ambient jazz, and spiritual discovery. It’s beautiful, demanding, and among the most fascinating artistic left turns in recent memory. | André 3000: New Blue Sun | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/andre-3000-new-blue-sun/ | New Blue Sun | André 3000 was never a solitary genius. Not when he put on the pith helmet and shoulder pads. Not when he kicked off a song called “Int’l Players Anthem” with an ode to fidelity and true love. Not even when he put a dozen versions of himself on stage in the video for “Hey Ya!,” an all-time classic song that will be played at weddings until the heat death of the universe, and on which he played nearly every instrument. Even when he sounded like he was rapping from outer space, his Southern accent dragged him back down to Earth, back to his roots, back to Atlanta, and more specifically, back to his friends and family. “It gives you an opportunity and support system to be as free as you can be,” he recently told NPR, reflecting on where he came from and where he finds himself now, in 2023, a starman in a brand-new galaxy, one dot in a different kind of constellation.
So New Blue Sun isn’t really a solo record. It’s also not a bandleader record in the jazz sense, like Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue or John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, where the name on the sleeve indicates the leader in the studio. It’s not the work of one person surrounded by exceptional musicians to help execute his vision; in that sense, New Blue Sun is even less of a solo record than The Love Below, André’s half of OutKast’s 2003 double album. On the first full-length release to bear his name and his name only, André 3000—a man who once christened himself Possum Aloysius Jenkins, Dookie Blossom Gain III, Funk Crusader, and Love Pusher, all at once—is oftentimes barely visible. He is a stick of nag champa perfuming the room of this record. He is a happy contributor to its world, one among many. The man who brought Afrofuturism to TRL has a new trick up his sleeve: He’s blending in.
Like every OutKast record, New Blue Sun is the product of a community. Over the past decade or so, the worlds of ambient music, electronic music, jazz, beat music, free improv, and new age in Los Angeles have congealed to create a new and far-reaching style. It encompasses everything from the DIY dub jazz of Sam Wilkes and Sam Gendel to the harpscapes of Mary Lattimore to the fluid Ethio-funk of Dexter Story. Though there’s no real center to the scene, nearly everyone either has or is about to work with Carlos Niño—percussionist, producer, founding DJ of the influential internet radio station Dublab, and connective tissue in a city designed to discourage connection. You’d call him an instigator if his presence weren’t so gentle. The music he releases under the name Carlos Niño & Friends is technically complex and spiritually sincere. He invites a few people over, they improvise freely on whatever instruments are at hand, and Niño then chops, cuts, and shapes the jams into albums that swell with unspoken but easily understood feelings—André played flute on his album from earlier this year.
André and Carlos met at Erewhon, the grocery store whose, let’s say, exclusive prices and exceptional kombucha selection have made it the go-to shop for celebs and a highly memeable avatar of L.A. wellness culture. Niño invited André to an Alice Coltrane tribute concert he was hosting that evening, and they started jamming together soon after. Though he’d puffed a tenor sax on The Love Below’s “She Lives in My Lap,” André was turned on to the true power of woodwinds when he heard champion surfer Kassia Meador play her flute at a breathwork class in Venice. This is all intensely L.A., nearly to the point of parody—we haven’t gotten to the song inspired by an ayahuasca therapy session—but it’s also the everyday reality for plenty of people who live here. When Leaving Records’ Matthewdavid, who plays “mycelium electronics” on New Blue Sun, talks about how private-press new age music has opened him to more beautiful possibilities in his life, he means it.
That heritage means that New Blue Sun might be baffling and disappointing to anyone who didn’t have an opinion on Online Ceramics’ Alice Coltrane collection. There are, as the warning label on the vinyl sleeve promises, no bars—not a single word is spoken, sung, or rapped—but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have something to say. In spite—or maybe because—of its lack of language, New Blue Sun is the most emotionally direct music André has ever made. The methods might be oblique, the instrumentation often unclear, the man himself occasionally missing in action or off on his own pursuits, but the sense of intermixed sadness, loss, and peace that permeates this music is impossible to miss.
Together with a core ensemble of guitarist Nate Mercereau and keyboardist Surya Botofasina (both responsible for some incredible music on their own), André and Niño flood this record with a mood as blue and deep as the water off Catalina. You can hear it there in the opening moments of “I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time.” It’s in the clear-eyed regret that comes through Mercereau’s guitar and sticks around as the group begins to build upon it; it’s the foundation of all eight of these songs.
André has been playing handmade flutes for years, a devotion that has put his desire for anonymity in jeopardy. Like John Coltrane, who would invite over a friend and then spend the entire visit working out new ideas on his sax, André’s devotion to his instrument is nearly compulsive; maybe you saw him practicing at LAX. So it’s surprising that he recorded much of New Blue Sun with a digital wind instrument he’d never played before. Like a Fairlight synth set to “strings,” it makes a virtue of how little it sounds like the instrument it claims to sound like, producing a flat and buzzing tone that André learns how to manipulate over the course of the record.
The great Pharoah Sanders, whose influence is felt in the general tone of New Blue Sun more than in its actual playing, sits out the first five minutes of his classic Tauhid, allowing his band to develop the mood before he makes his entrance, piccolo in hand. André does the same on New Blue Sun, sitting back and allowing us to stare into “I swear”’s breezy darkness for three minutes before he picks up his instrument. The song yips and howls, Niño rattles his signature shells, Botofasina weaves a meshy wave of synths that swell without breaking. There’s a lot to hear and very little movement; imagine a spotlit meteorite on display in a gallery, rotating slowly so you have time to take in all its facets. Now imagine what that would make you think about.
When André does finally play, he picks his notes carefully, like he’s testing to see where he fits. The melody he dots out in “I swear” recalls Philip Glass in the nakedness of its notes, or even the writer Raymond Carver: He’s making simple gestures feel grand by virtue of their accumulation. Throughout New Blue Sun, this tends to be how he plays his instrument, whether he’s setting the theme or exploring its variations. The notation is minimal, and he repeats short and uncomfortable phrases until they begin to sound right: Listen as he dips, brushes, and dabs in “The Slang Word P(*)ssy Rolls Off The Tongue With Far Better Ease Than The Proper Word Vagina . Do You Agree?,” finally tracing a few fine, confident lines at the top of the canvas that pull the song into a new mode.
About those titles: Yes, they are long. They are playful. He misspells Gandhi’s name, yes. There is something to be said about how André can’t help but use language to both say and obfuscate what he’s feeling. It’s tempting to map some kind of narrative onto instrumental music, particularly something as gauzy and obviously personal as this. You can read the beatific sigh of New Blue Sun as a comment on the relief of anonymity André must feel, or how the safety of a group of like-minded people allows you to take a closer look at the darkness outside. If you don’t look at the tracklist, you can do that. But those song titles deflect your gaze, keep you from taking this stuff too seriously, from reading too much into it. Call it a feint, but it feels like a way of keeping the music light and exciting, of protecting the exploratory spirit that went into its creation.
Despite his lyrical virtuosity, André has always sought out what a song needs; consider the way the back half of “B.O.B” is given over to gospel rave, or how “SpottieOttieDopaliscious”’ ineffable hook is a wordless trumpet line. Here, he’s doing the same thing, moving carefully and only asserting himself when it feels right. He tests “The Slang Word” out for vulnerabilities, teasing at its fabric with his flute, picking lightly lest he rip the seam. Armed with his contrabass flute in “That Night In Hawaii When I Turned Into A Panther And Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn’t Control … Sh¥t Was Wild,” he’s much more confident. He slurs like Rahsaan Roland Kirk, tweets like Eric Dolphy, sets up a melody, then liquidates it and lets it simmer against the muted vibration of Deantoni Parks’ drum.
Parks, like the rest of the ensemble, is a full participant in the creation of this music, and throughout New Blue Sun, the other instrumentalists show off their ability to spontaneously birth new sounds. In “Ninety Three ’Til Infinity and Beyoncé,” Matthewdavid scrapes and smears crusty grains of noise thick as wheatpaste across the track and Botofasina brings to mind Laraaji’s Vision Songs, Vol. 1 with his homey basement organ in “The Slang Word.” Then there’s Diego Gaeta, whose slowly turning piano runs in “Ghandi, Dalai Lama, Your Lord & Savior J.C. / Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, And John Wayne Gacy” are the rotator in the gyroscope, a counterweight that keeps everything from tumbling. He flirts with dreamy realization, pumps a bit of gospel, then slides into a resigned darkness, barely touching the keys; the way his playing sits like a glass turned over the buzzing fly of André’s melody brings New Blue Sun closer to the tragic experiments of Tim Hecker’s Ravedeath, 1972 than jazz or new age.
Niño is a great architect of audio space, but his touch here is more subtle than it is on his Carlos Niño & Friends records. He layers carefully, letting you peek through windows into adjacent rooms, teasing you with the possibility of a party going on but keeping it just out of reach. In the album’s best song, “BuyPoloDisorder’s Daughter Wears A 3000™ Shirt Embroidered,” he sets his own drums deep in the distance and cloaks them in mist, then keeps André halfway between the drums and the foreground, lightly dipping the his flute in distortion. It has the strange effect of making the background of the song more intriguing than the foreground, a sensation deepened by André’s melody. While Mercereau and Botofasina lacquer a sexy, tuxedoed duet for guitar and synth in the front of the song only to be overtaken by a wall of brass, André’s peppy, questioning melody disappears and returns at strange intervals behind it all, blurring out of view and occasionally getting lost in the noise. Even when it’s not there, you feel its presence in the haze; like a Magic Eye piece, “BuyPoloDisorder” is a song whose chaos resolves into unstable patterns over and over again. It’s among the best music anyone on this record has ever created.
Still, the instincts of André and Niño, who produced the album together, occasionally get the better of them. New Blue Sun is patient in a way that Niño’s work often isn’t, and the performances here develop so slowly they sometimes stall out. The stillness of the scene often aims for the muted drama of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s environmental music, but on repeated spins its dramatic tension collapses and can feel tedious at times. On “The Slang Word,” the ensemble struggles to break out of its mutual deference, and the gentleness of André’s prodding starts to feel like time-killing foot-tapping. When it does finally break free, letting out slurry little lines before hopping back into a jittery theme, the song is already beginning its (strangely lengthy) fadeout. This kind of music is built on the relationship between tone, texture, and personality, and as the pieces begin to dilate, it becomes harder to track their development; there are no truly dull moments, but there are dull stretches.
Asking people who have only ever shaken it like a Polaroid picture to clear their minds for 90 minutes of spacey new-age music might be a tall order. Even in the context of the world that birthed it, New Blue Sun is a demanding listen. For all its considerable bright moments, this is a frequently ponderous record, one that suggests a surprising amount of potential but that still demands a lot even from seasoned ears. It’s more successful as a symbol than as an album: It can be incredibly moving to witness one of the most self-assured musicians of all time put himself in vulnerable artistic situations and enjoy figuring out how to navigate them. Even on his handmade flutes, he never lets out the kind of fluid, cocksure flow that sold over 25 million records.
The album’s greatest triumph, then, is its normalcy. It reveals André 3000 to be nothing more than a guy with solid taste in outré music, another Angeleno in deceptively expensive workwear who’s probably been listening to Midori Takada since the YouTube rip. His ability to fit in and play along on New Blue Sun suggests he could easily spend the next 30 years making insular but genuinely interesting records for a small pool of devotees, riding off into well-earned obscurity like Laraaji in a Cadillac. Few stars of his caliber have managed an artistically and personally fulfilling post-fame career without repudiating what they did to become famous—or, worse, rehashing it. That he’s made such a thing possible is a significant achievement. | 2023-11-20T00:02:00.000-05:00 | 2023-11-20T00:02:00.000-05:00 | Experimental / Rap | Epic | November 20, 2023 | 8.3 | 3bb417dc-b859-42b4-9570-156ef90890ae | Sadie Sartini Garner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sadie-sartini garner/ | |
Whether as the Sun God, I.B.M., IAMTHATIAM, or most often as Hieroglyphic Being, Jamal Moss' discography is filled u-turns; Africans With Mainframes swings into Chicago acid house at its most caustic. | Whether as the Sun God, I.B.M., IAMTHATIAM, or most often as Hieroglyphic Being, Jamal Moss' discography is filled u-turns; Africans With Mainframes swings into Chicago acid house at its most caustic. | Africans With Mainframes: K.M.T. | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21934-kmt/ | K.M.T. | Recently DJ and producer Jamal Moss appeared on a panel on Afrofuturism at Moogfest alongside Reggie Watts, Janelle Monáe, and hip-hop production duo Christian Rich. It was good company for him to be in, but even in that eclectic crowd he is an outlier. Whether as the Sun God, I.B.M., IAMTHATIAM, or most often as Hieroglyphic Being, Moss' abundant discography is filled with so many u-turns that it begins to resemble a Spirograph. For every CD-R of synth squalls there is another full of manic drum machine polyrhythms. And then there was We Are Not the First, last year's meeting with an ensemble of free jazz’s finest, suggesting an imaginary space where the AACM gigged at Ron Hardy's Music Box.
Working with fellow producer Noleian Reusse as Africans With Mainframes, now Moss swings from Windy City jazz to Chicago acid at its most caustic. While the duo have released a slew of 12”s dating back to 2001, K.M.T. is their first full-length. Kemetic Modulating Textures is eight tracks of Moss and Reusse at their most unrelenting and there’s a coarseness to every texture that at times might make you mistakenly think it was just slapped together. Yet the frequent references to Egyptology (Googling each track title reveals a profound knowledge of prehistoric culture) suggest a greater thought at work, and if you manage to survive the bruising BPMs of the album's first half, it becomes mesmerizing.
Opener “Anachronistic” sets the table for what lies ahead: everything in the red, a snare fill stumbling and slipping across the grid, the 808’s edges increasingly fuzzy with distortion. And then just when it verges on pure noise, that telltale acid squiggle worms through and the snare coheres into a visceral thrill. What might scan as sloppy and unfocused suddenly snaps into sharp relief and it’s effective throughout K.M.T., album highlight “Negroid Spinx” being a fine example. It too features overdriven snares that concuss to the point of delirium and then at the 3:30 mark, Moss and Reusse drop out the beat and give us a brief respite, a glimpse of an oasis in the midst of a haboob.
On the back half of the album, AWM relent and allow in more space. The epic “Qustal Artifacts” builds carefully, the track forgoing heavy beats for a heady array of arpeggios, the results not unlike Cluster, had they been Afrocentric rather than Germanic. “Naqada” and the title track sound like some tribal Folkways field recording rendered on machine rather than anything currently extant in electronic music.
Last year, Moss explained his first encounter with Sun Ra’s music as a shock to the system: “His music wasn’t about making sense: it was just about receiving these transmissions, this knowledge.” It’s a lesson that Moss carries forward with K.M.T., suggesting that while some of his tracks might scan as scrambled transmissions, continued exposure reveals a profound signal beneath the noise. | 2016-05-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-05-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Soul Jazz | May 28, 2016 | 7.5 | 3bb6d136-4e83-4b98-a6aa-4a2b4f87c732 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
On their debut album, the anarchic Philly hardcore trio muster a raw, thrilling assault against complacency. | On their debut album, the anarchic Philly hardcore trio muster a raw, thrilling assault against complacency. | Control Top : Covert Contracts | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/control-top-covert-contracts/ | Covert Contracts | Surviving under capitalism is hard work. It extracts compromise. Constant precarity locks us into routines, inertia dulls our senses. Breaking out requires kinetic energy—commitment to the illogical unknown, to making the sort of disruptive noise that startles even its creators. On their debut album, Covert Contracts, Control Top harness the chaos necessary for transformation.
The album opens with “Type A,” in which the narrator reclaims their agency by declaring autonomy against an inflexible know-it-all. “The thought of chaos worries you/Only your solution will do,” taunts Ali Carter, echoed by an upbeat Tony Molina-esque guitar riff, before screaming plainly “Why don’t you get out/Get out of my way!” The bridge dissolves into noise and then springs back up like a fighter dancing on their heels.
But obstacles to freedom don’t just come from individuals. They also come from alienated labor (“Office Rage”), the smokescreen of information overload (“Covert Contracts”), patriarchy (“Traffic,” “Ego Deaf”), bad-faith communication (“Chain Reaction”), and a litany of other root causes including the nation, ambition, and “the cronies on the left and the right” (“Betrayed”). To reflect this ambient anxiety, Control Top songs are coiled and driving, frantic and cathartic. Carter’s vocals, mixed clear and up front, follow a legacy set by LilliPUT/Kleenex and Ari Up of The Slits—sharp and staccato on verses that build to explosive hooks, and plenty of unexpected details which include yelps and sneers, an actual cough after the line “Trying to speak but I can’t stop coughing,” and moments of open vulnerability on otherwise straightforwardly aggressive tracks. Alex Lichtenauer’s hardcore drumming gives the songs a punk urgency while Al Creedon (Bleeding Rainbow) brings no-wave and noise influences to his guitar work as well as samplers and synth drones.
Covert Contracts was produced by Creedon, who has also worked with Priests and Pouty, and came out (during peak Aries season) on Lichtenauer’s label Get Better Records. Something like a Kill Rock Stars of the Philly scene, the label (“for the queers, by the queers”) has put out vital records by bands such as Disipline, HIRS, Sheer Mag, Empath, and Choked Up. “Everything looks like a commercial /It’s a brand to be controversial,” deadpans Carter on the titular song, concerned with being unwittingly locked into someone else’s scam. But on their own terms, on their own label, there is room to be expansive.
Their supportive band dynamic comes from a place of mutual healing: when Carter brought them onto Control Top, Creedon was feeling uninspired by punk and guitars, and Lichtenauer had quit drums after an abusive situation in a previous band. Control Top created a space for everyone involved to rebuild, and the energy is of a band existing despite the odds. It’s no wonder that, despite the claustrophobic subject matter, Covert Contracts crackles with genuine joy. “What is this/Sense of elation,” sings Carter on “Prism.” “Could it be/Liberation?” | 2019-04-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-04-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Get Better | April 22, 2019 | 7.9 | 3bbfea0b-590f-467e-8632-145a0d4cde0d | NM Mashurov | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nm-mashurov/ | |
On a pair of 30-minute SoundCloud streams, the former Giegling affiliate applies his windswept aesthetic to boom-bap, ambient, and jungle, to emotive—some would say maudlin—effect. | On a pair of 30-minute SoundCloud streams, the former Giegling affiliate applies his windswept aesthetic to boom-bap, ambient, and jungle, to emotive—some would say maudlin—effect. | DJ Healer: Lost Lovesongs / Lostsongs Vol. 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dj-healer-lost-lovesongs-lostsongs-vol-2/ | Lost Lovesongs / Lostsongs Vol. 2 | The Prince of Denmark—that is, the proper prince, Shakespeare’s prince, the skull-fondler and doomed dilly-dallier known widely as Hamlet—was a blurry sort of character. Famously unsure of himself, he was prone to things like acting mad and then forgetting it was meant to be an act, and also spreading death like a contagion. At the end of Hamlet (spoiler alert, for those who haven’t tuned in since the 17th century) everyone’s been offed and the kingdom is in disarray. Now, it may seem a little overcooked to start drawing parallels with Giegling’s Prince of Denmark—the anonymous, much-adored, much-emoting techno producer whose aliases include DJ Metatron, Traumprinz, and now DJ Healer—but then, he’s never been afraid to lay it on a bit thick himself. As he exits the troubled kingdom of Giegling, still in turmoil after revelations that its co-founder Konstantin doesn’t believe in women DJs, the Prince of Denmark has passed on to the next life to pursue his spiritual and existential investigations as DJ Healer. On this twinset of mulchy club tracks and after-hours grooves, he seems to be wandering in purgatory, looking for answers.
Lost Lovesongs and Lostsongs Vol. 2 appeared on SoundCloud in the last week of 2018. Their low-key delivery as a pair of half-hour streams (the tracks are unmixed), along with their “lost” titles, suggests a hard-drive dump rather than a milestone release. (When the Prince has something very important to say, he likes to say it through eight-disc LP box sets priced at €100.) But the tracks are carefully sequenced, and they’re split into two distinct moods. The maudlin palette of Lostsongs will be instantly identifiable to fans of DJ Metatron and Traumprinz’s sentimental club hits, while Lost Lovesongs is the more obvious successor to last year’s Nothing 2 Loose, the new-age-infused triple-vinyl LP that introduced the DJ Healer alias.
Lostsongs is easier to stomach. Opening with “Outro,” DJ Healer runs a warm bath of gloopy, sad-eyed synths, reminiscent of Mr. Fingers’ sci-fi voyage “Qwazars.” It’s the kind of loop you could stew in for hours. The rest of the half-hour, aside from two sections of drizzly ambient, plays with different versions of the same recipe: chilly minor chord loops, scruffy breakbeats, dreamy vocal fragments, and an overcoat of surface noise that’s part dub techno, part Burial; muck pollutes every crevice. “U 4ever” is the basic iteration, placing a lip-wobbling sample (“Have you ever-r-r-r?”) over stuttering IDM-style breaks and frozen drones. On “Grown,” Healer returns to Olive’s 1990s crossover dance hit “You’re Not Alone” (a prototype edit appeared in his Resident Advisor podcast in 2013) to slice off a single soppy line—“See how our love has grown”—without brushing off two decades of moss and mold. The action peaks with “Geister,” tipping close to 170 BPM and fueled by dank synths and a snaking bassline, placing us close to vintage drum’n’bass territory. Insofar as these are club tracks, they’re for those moments when you close your eyes and turn inward, away from the communal scene, only to get snagged on some existential drama bubbling up from your subconscious.
Lost Lovesongs then takes those awkward internal soliloquies and gives them a Broadway transfer. Lost Lovesongs is almost unbearably squishy; it runneth over with feels. It’s a post-club face wipe for sensitive skin, a totally moist after-hours playlist for softbois who put American Beauty on in the background while they roll baggy spliffs for the crew. It has thunderclaps. Though not as toe-curlingly pompous as Nothing 2 Loose and its whispered monologues (“All of this is a mirror that expands…”), Lost Lovesongs doesn’t hold back on the earnest stuff. “Everything becomes meaningless,” someone says, over and over, through a fog of new-age drones and white noise. A reedy church organ pulls on the heartstrings, joined by boom-bap drums and a quivering voice singing, “Lost, lo-ost.” It is exactly like Play-era Moby, which is an amusing comparison because Moby was deemed uncool not only for making million-selling coffee-table electronica, but because he was the world’s worst sellout, which in the ’90s was a terrible thing. (Famously, every track on Play was licensed for a commercial). Our Prince, along with Giegling, found fame by doing the exact opposite: creating the illusion of quality through obfuscation and scarcity.
The final track on Lovesongs goes in hard, with waterlogged piano drifts barely keeping it together under a tear-jerking line nabbed from a Terence Trent D’Arby song: “Holding onto you means letting go of pain.” The wracked voice of the all-too-briefly-famous 1980s musician seems a symbolic choice for Healer: D’Arby changed his name to Sananda Maitreya in 2001, saying his earlier incarnation had died a “noble death.” The DJ Healer project is itself infused with the tantalising possibility of leaving old identities behind, of “dying” and being resurrected. (The first DJ Healer album was even announced on Easter Sunday.)
Writing about Nothing 2 Loose, Resident Advisor’s Will Lynch made the perfect connection between Healer’s sentimental sincerity and the famous scene in American Beauty where Ricky Fitts, the outcast teenager who takes his camcorder everywhere, shows his neighbor a video of a plastic bag dancing in the breeze. “Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it,” he wibbles. Lynch implies that the whole thing is fake-deep—philosophizing about a plastic bag, for god’s sake: So lame, so cringe. But it’s a revealing reference, because the grocery bag isn’t just about beauty—it’s about seeing God. “That’s the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things,” Fitts says, “and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever.” You could imagine the same quote floating over new-age pads and a dusty breakbeat on Lovesongs. So if you don’t feel the same way—that there is something, somewhere, looking out for you—then you’ll probably laugh, or cringe, at all of this. If you do, or if you can suspend your lack of belief for long enough, then maybe it’ll hit you right in the feels. | 2019-01-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-01-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Planet Uterus | January 11, 2019 | 6.2 | 3bcc192c-52ba-4315-9752-ef2d9cd931d5 | Chal Ravens | https://pitchfork.com/staff/chal-ravens/ | |
The British house producer Leon Vynehall's new album continues in the vein of 2014's mini-LP Music for the Uninvited, but it boasts a bigger sound in almost every way, with more layers, bolder basslines, and harder-edged drums. | The British house producer Leon Vynehall's new album continues in the vein of 2014's mini-LP Music for the Uninvited, but it boasts a bigger sound in almost every way, with more layers, bolder basslines, and harder-edged drums. | Leon Vynehall: Rojus | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21627-rojus/ | Rojus | Leon Vynehall's music is an artful blend of punchy and plush. Since the British producer started putting out records, in 2012, his music has blended the tough, percussive energy of contemporary UK house music, with its muscled low end, with the rich harmonies of sample-centric producers in a continuum that stretches through Pal Joey, Moodymann, Pépé Bradock, and Four Tet. Stylistically, he hasn't changed much since his first singles. But while there's no shortage of electronic musicians who approach dance music as a form of collage, Vynehall has developed into a master craftsman. He's got a keen sense for tone color, and the way he mixes textures—blocky piano chords, silken disco strings, rounded horns—lends to an unusually tactile sensibility, like brushstrokes built up into thick waves and oily crusts.
Rojus continues in the vein of 2014's mini-LP Music for the Uninvited, but it boasts a bigger sound in almost every way, with more layers, bolder basslines, and harder-edged drums. With the exception of beatless opener "Beyond This," whose arpeggiated synth and sampled birdsong make for a breezy ambient aperitif, the record aims its sights squarely at the dancefloor, with bass and percussion pushed up in the mix and tempos locked between 118 and 124 BPM. Like Music for the Uninvited, which was inspired by the cassettes he listened to in his mother's car, Rojus is a loose sort of concept album, one that purports to compare the mating rituals of birds of paradise with the behavior of clubbers. (The title means "paradise" in Lithuanian; it comes from a book cover he serendipitously stumbled across around the same time as his epiphany regarding dancers and jungle fowl.)
The theme doesn't extend much further than the sampled caws and trills woven into a few tracks. Still, like his avian inspirations, who sometimes use tools to prep the patch of ground where they'll dance for potential mates, Vynehall proves a remarkably resourceful producer: Instead of limiting himself to a single drum machine, he avails himself of scads of percussion sounds sampled from a variety of sources—a choice that yields a vastly expanded palette of timbres and timing. "Paradisea," one of the record's standouts, boasts at least three different sampled snares and a panoply of differently treated hi-hats; its syncopated accents are typical of the record's highly elastic sense of swing. The effect is a dizzying array of textures and frequencies, about as easy to parse as a rainstorm.
Vynehall only stumbles when it comes to the uniformity of his songs. They all avail themselves of similar types of sounds, and they all develop in exactly the same way—by beginning with a particularly resonant set of loops and then progressively adding more layers. To create tension, he'll mute a handful of sounds throughout the breakdown and then bring them back for a reprise. But there are no choruses, no bridges, no unexpected left turns. And his sounds sit so well in the mix, there are really no surprises, either. A little dissonance would go a long way.
Despite sonic attributes meant to suggest roughness, rawness, and even risk—the distortion, the swing, the grit—the music remains fundamentally agreeable, polite, even a little safe. Even the wordless cry that goes soaring over the top of "Blush," meant to evoke a moment of total abandon, fits so well with all the other moving pieces that it provokes admiration for its craft more than it stirs, much less disturbs, the soul. It points you in the right direction, but it doesn't quite tip you over the edge.
In addition to its ornithological conceit, Rojus is supposed to represent the arc of a night out. But it doesn't quite manage: The music's intensity remains more or less constant from the second track on. A good nightclub should have nooks and crannies, hidden rooms, mysterious passageways; its layout should encourage all kinds of mystery and mischief. But as wonderfully appointed as Rojus is, it really offers just one vista: Once you're through its welcoming foyer, you know exactly where you're going to be and what you're going to hear until the doors close. As a set of tracks for DJs to pick from, Rojus offers plenty of potential. As a front-to-back listening experience, it's almost paradise—but not quite the album that it wants to be. | 2016-04-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-04-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Running Back | April 4, 2016 | 7.8 | 3bcdc02d-ca40-4af5-9a01-27d5eb075686 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | null |
On his latest release, the former Emeralds member presents a back-to-basics approach to his trancelike guitar playing. The result is an LP that feels as natural and refreshing as summer rain. | On his latest release, the former Emeralds member presents a back-to-basics approach to his trancelike guitar playing. The result is an LP that feels as natural and refreshing as summer rain. | Mark McGuire: Ideas of Beginnings | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23344-ideas-of-beginnings/ | Ideas of Beginnings | Mark McGuire’s best performances gain their momentum from a feeling that they could go on forever. His style of looped guitar work focuses on one or two introduced melodies that eventually overlap and congeal, joined by harmonies that extend into a trancelike wave of rhythm. It’s a style that seems to be built entirely from new beginnings.
Between 2007 and 2010, McGuire solidified this technique with his prolific output as a solo artist and member of the influential drone outfit Emeralds. But after his ambitious, autobiographical breakthrough Living With Yourself, McGuire searched for different ways to expand his sound. He brought in drum loops and live percussion; he tried his hand at singing and eventually mimicked the feeling of a full band. The resulting records were intriguing plot twists but not necessarily satisfying developments in his catalog. McGuire’s music always suggested subtler means of evolution.
Ideas of Beginnings is a new introduction to McGuire and a much-welcomed return-to-form. Composed of eleven pieces mostly focused on one instrument, it’s the simplest, prettiest music McGuire has made since his limited-edition CD-R days, and it serves as a stunning showcase for his distinctive style. Opening with the brief “Beginner,” the album makes no claims to build upon his sound or engage in new ideas—and it’s all the better for it. There’s a lightness to McGuire’s playing that makes Ideas of Beginnings an easy and addictive listen, spending its 35 minutes illustrating how dynamic the sound of his unaccompanied guitar can be.
While solo guitar compositions are often noted for their loneliness and intensity, McGuire has never operated in the same plane as traditionalists like John Fahey. He’s always eschewed the patterns of rustic Americana for more tranquil motifs, a kind of new age music transcribed for six strings. There’s a reason why his most natural collaborators have been synth-based acts like Oneohtrix Point Never or his Emeralds bandmates as opposed to players in the New Weird America camp; his only true connection to folk music is his instrumentation.
The opening run of solo acoustic songs on Ideas of Beginnings are dazzling examples of McGuire’s mastery. “Skipping Stones” and “Smiling From Up North” are breezy and subtle, conjuring images of rushing water and shivering blades of grass. His focus on bright, open chords allows his melodic counterparts to fill the spaces with an emotional undercurrent, shifting the atmosphere of the songs like passing clouds, occasionally dimming or illuminating the landscapes. “Late Summer Early Evening” glides with a loose, galloping picking pattern. Like many songs in the album’s first half, it all goes down in under two minutes, as if McGuire hit record as soon as he started playing it without giving much thought to where it would lead. His excitement sustains the record, creating a sense of familiarity without feeling like a retread.
The album is sequenced neatly into distinctive movements to explore the territory McGuire has covered best, with the opening run of acoustic songs segueing into a series of lo-fi pieces and field recordings. These tracks are followed by two electric guitar compositions that serve as the album’s high points. “To Continue” finds McGuire’s delayed, chiming strings building to an almost orchestral sense of immersion, the space between each note filled with ghostly reverberations. In “Beginning of Winter,” he takes the opposite approach. His muted picking is packed as densely as possible to create a cozy, percussive effect.
The album closes with two droning pieces that wrap things up with a feeling of renewal, indicative of the spacier music on his other new release, the explorative Vision Upon Purpose. That album’s wild synth experiments suggest that the back-to-basics approach of Ideas of Beginnings won’t necessarily be a lasting mode for McGuire. Still, the album itself is enough cause for celebration. With Ideas of Beginnings, he’s refined ten years worth of growth into a record that feels as natural and refreshing as summer rain. | 2017-06-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-06-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock / Experimental | VDSQ | June 8, 2017 | 7.7 | 3bcfe552-7c2a-4853-abbf-e19ac872ee3d | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | null |
Bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty—the rhythm section of Fugazi—team up with experimental D.C. guitarist Anthony Pirog for an economic, emotionally resonant instrumental power-trio record. | Bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty—the rhythm section of Fugazi—team up with experimental D.C. guitarist Anthony Pirog for an economic, emotionally resonant instrumental power-trio record. | The Messthetics: The Messthetics | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-messthetics-the-messthetics/ | The Messthetics | The music of Fugazi presented a series of overlapping conversations—between punk and funk, aggression and experimentation, the personal and the political. And those internal tensions became manifest in the frisson between the band’s two caustic yet complementary voices: the blare of Ian MacKaye and the sneer of Guy Picciotto. But if Mackaye and Piccotto were the de facto stars of the show, then bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty were the directors in the control room engaged in their own off-mic dialogue. In their 16 years together as Fugazi’s rhythm section, Lally and Canty developed a personality of their own every bit as distinct as the band’s dueling mouthpieces. When you think of any given Fugazi song, often the first thing that comes to mind is the band’s authoritative but mischievous sense of groove.
So when you hear the stalking, bass-powered backbeat that kicks off the Messthetics’ debut album, it’s like listening in on old friends shootin’ the shit. The Messthetics is Lally and Canty’s first venture together since Fugazi went on hiatus in 2003, after which Lally decamped to Italy for the better part of a decade, while Canty became an in-demand soundtrack composer, side player for Bob Mould, and frontman for the short-lived art-pop outfit Deathfix. But if their rhythmic repartee in the Messthetics is the same as it ever was, it serves as the foundation for a dramatically different construct than Fugazi. While Fugazi fearlessly embraced un-punk influences—dub, piano balladry, musique concrete—shredding was not one of them; they were so self-conscious about indulging in a little guitar noodling that they gave their song with lots of arpeggios the tongue-in-cheek title of “Arpeggiator.”
With the Messthetics, Lally and Canty defer to Anthony Pirog, a dexterous guitarist and a mainstay in the Washington D.C. avant-jazz scene, who’s given free rein to unleash his six-string splatter atop Lally and Canty’s propulsion. But lest that combination suggest a post-hardcore version of Surfing With the Alien, the album is more an instrumental power-trio record that values economy and emotional resonance over technical wizardry and structural complexity.
The band wisely ease you into their hermetic world with the opening track, “Mythomania,” where Pirog offers fleeting displays of his favorite tricks—shortwave-frequency screeches, morse-code shocks, and fretboard fills that bend strings and minds alike. But Pirog sets off his full arsenal of pyrotechnics on rock-outs like “Serpent Tongue,” where he plays call-and-response with himself, effortlessly switching between the song’s incessant main riff and his frenetic, interstellar leads. And with the dizzying patterns and freeway-ready thrust of “Quantum Path,” the Messthetics imagine an alternate history for Rush where Alex Lifeson says, “Eh, Geddy, maybe you shouldn’t be the singer,” and makes their instrumentals the rule instead of the exception.
The Messthetics is a carefree, low-stakes endeavour for its participants; recorded live off the floor in Canty’s practice room, the album captures two old pals communing with a new one, exploring the potential of their developing dynamic and sculpting ideas into song-like shapes (or, in the case of “Your Own World” and “Radiation Fog,” leaving them as moody, formless interstitials). This is a band tuning out the noise of the outside world by making some of their own. But for all the guitar acrobatics and rhythmic fury on display here, The Messthetics also yields some beautifully meditative moments: on “Once Upon a Time,” Pirog coasts on a gentle Afrobeat shuffle en route to an aching, skyscraping solo, while the sullen post-Slint lurch of “The Inner Ocean” erupts into dramatic second act where he lets his guitar not-so-gently weep. Clearly shredding is something you should administer to heartstrings as much as guitar strings. | 2018-03-31T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-03-31T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Dischord | March 31, 2018 | 7.4 | 3bd0b949-926b-4c3d-abf5-4b4c927842ae | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
On his sixth album as Hiss Golden Messenger, M.C. Taylor's lifelong theme remains intact: What happens when you feel a distance from the thing that’s meant to sustain you? | On his sixth album as Hiss Golden Messenger, M.C. Taylor's lifelong theme remains intact: What happens when you feel a distance from the thing that’s meant to sustain you? | Hiss Golden Messenger: Heart Like a Levee | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22323-heart-like-a-levee/ | Heart Like a Levee | Hiss Golden Messenger is a strange name for the music of M.C. Taylor. Rather than preach the word, he’s often scoured for it, doubted and discarded it. Faith, he learned, cannot save you from depression or from the temptation to self-destruct, and when hypocrites can play it as their “get out of jail” card, what’s the use of it at all? God barely comes into the equation on the sixth Hiss album, recorded in Taylor’s 40th year—around the time when the Big Questions tend to get outweighed by smaller, more immediate responsibilities. But his lifelong theme remains intact: What happens when you feel a distance from the thing that’s meant to sustain you?
Hiss took flight with 2010’s Bad Debt, a record written in the quiet moments while Taylor’s newborn son slept. After years flailing in ’90s hardcore band Ex-Ignota and Americana outfit the Court and Spark, Taylor gave up trying, for the first time, to find an audience. The album’s charred hush found one anyway. Family and adulthood became central to the work, the revelations they offered making the hard times worthwhile. “The misery of love is a funny thing,” he sang on “Mahogany Dread” from 2014’s Lateness of Dancers. “The more it hurts, the more you think you can stand a little pain.”
The album’s success tested his thesis. As his Merge debut and breakout moment, it necessitated endless touring, taking him away from his wife and two young kids, who inspired the music and gave it purpose as a vocation. Heart Like a Levee is Taylor reckoning with the guilt of being an absent provider whose work financially supports his family—and spiritually sustains him as a good father. It’s not “rock star writes home,” but a familiar theme to anyone who’s felt pulled to honor disparate callings, and the rare record that doesn’t treat adulthood as a punchline or a final resting place.
Nor do the mature themes smother the songwriting, where Taylor locates a grounded soulfulness in his tapestry of folk, country, blues, and dub, whether he’s furrowing deeper into the groove he started digging on Lateness of Dancers—as on freewheeling standout “Ace of Cups Hung Low Band”—or easing back into his porch. Although Heart Like a Levee is often heavier than its sunny predecessor, the core Hiss band (Megafaun’s multi-instrumentalists Phil and Brad Cook, and drummer Matt McCaughan) tend to strike a major chord M.O., even when the lyrics are decidedly minor-chord: There are moments of profound communal joy here that continue the homespun gospel Taylor minted on Lateness. That contrast makes the music feel real and integral to a life, and the way that domesticity’s small lows and highs are always intermingled.
As rollicking as it often is, Heart Like a Levee is a deeply intimate record, filled with anxious conversations about obligation. “It’s hard, Lord/Lord, it’s hard,” he sings on capering opener “Biloxi,” surveying the scene at his eldest kid’s birthday party. “There’s one way in and one way out and we’re gonna have a good time.” The title track unfolds with Taylor and his wife laying in bed on an ostensibly perfect morning. “We’ll pretend all we wanna,” he sings with his trademark reedy nuance. “Yeah, tomorrow I’ll be on my way.” His high-pitched acoustic guitar mounts the tension as he unleashes a series of rhetorical questions, each more desperate than the last. “Will you grieve me, honey?” he asks in a wrenched tone, then skews quieter: “Did I give you a reason to try?” he asks in one of the album’s more flooring moments.
The pleas recur on “Happy Day (Sister My Sister),” a beautiful acoustic duet with Tift Merritt that sounds like a flood of relief but offers little of it. “Sister, my sister/What should I do?” Taylor sings with a sigh. “Should I wade in the river/With so many people living just/Just above the waterline?” If that sounds a little like liberal guilt, “Like a Mirror Loves a Hammer” is its flipside, exposing Taylor’s darkest inclinations to throw it all away rather than cause anyone more pain. “Should I drown in that Atlanta rain? Yes, babe—I can’t stand it,” he seethes, blurring into swampy dub funk shot through with mystic ricochets of reverb. The track stands alone in the record, its magnetic groove as myopic as Taylor’s mindset, doggedly pushing forward (and making the idea of a Have Fun With God-style album remix sound eminently necessary).
If all this makes touring life sound like too much trouble, Heart Like a Levee offers two songs that trace Taylor’s bond to the road. “I can feel October coming on the backscratch wind,” he yearns like a weathered traveler on “Cracked Windshield,” where the tiniest golden synth gradually casts a piercing light on his gentle ruminations. The tension finally breaks on the impressionistic “As the Crow Flies,” a subtle, cantering groove that breaks into a raucous height-of-summer refrain led by Phil Cook’s euphoric holler. “Blue horizon—late again/West Lafayette, babe/And tomorrow’s a dream,” Taylor sings, and the view seems endless.
Although younger male artists are returning to domestic settings in their music, there are few older male artists questioning how their work impacts upon the families they leave behind. It’s borderline inconceivable that a white, male, 40-something artist could bring a refreshing perspective to a traditional genre, but Taylor’s graceful accountability and invigorating songcraft makes him an anomaly. His own dose of perspective arrives at the end of the plainly gorgeous Heart Like a Levee.
“When I set the river on fire, you laughed in my face,” he recalls on “Highland Grace,” over an easy tumble of a groove, the words and music aligned for once. He ticks off his old stubbornnesses: “And if you can’t buy it and you stand and deny it/And if you can’t see it and you refuse to believe it/And if you can’t count it but you can’t help but doubt it,” he yearns over softly twiddling piano. “But loving her was easy/The easiest thing in the world.” Love as salvation is Old Testament songwriting, but few artists make you feel it like Taylor does. | 2016-10-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Merge | October 11, 2016 | 8.2 | 3bd398ef-f5e2-456f-88ef-146ffef28217 | Laura Snapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/laura-snapes/ | null |
Bootlegs! They're not just Maxell XLIIs with fuzzy recordings of that acoustic Smashing Pumpkins Tower\n\ Records appearance anymore ... | Bootlegs! They're not just Maxell XLIIs with fuzzy recordings of that acoustic Smashing Pumpkins Tower\n\ Records appearance anymore ... | 2 Many DJs: As Heard on Radio Soulwax, Pt. 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8228-as-heard-on-radio-soulwax-pt-2/ | As Heard on Radio Soulwax, Pt. 2 | Bootlegs! They're not just Maxell XLIIs with fuzzy recordings of that acoustic Smashing Pumpkins Tower Records appearance anymore! Bootlegs! Compilations of which are finding their way onto even the most esteemed criticos' mid-year best-of lists! Bootlegs! Their pissing-on-copyright-laws approach poetically mirrors-- and is, one might argue, made possible by-- the wonders of digital file-sharing! Bootlegs!
Quasi-anonymous 2 Many DJs are the kings of the bootleg mountain. Otherwise known as Soulwax, the Belgian duo (brothers Stephen and David Dewaele) has released some of the genre's most popular MP3s, many of which sprang to notoriety after being posted to Boomselection, the web's primary resource for this new music. As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt 2 is their first full-length release as bootleggers (they actually started out as a rock band), but genre classification aside, the album is really just a very cohesive, hour-long DJ mix. This incarnation of the 25-year-old artform, however, seems to be kicking up quite a bit of fuss amongst those 'in the know.' But what's the big deal? According to my analysis, four incredibly deep, insightful conclusions can be reached from the album's content:
All popular music is, by definition, pop music.
This has been the manifesto of the bootleg movement from day one, or at least since the Freelance Hellraiser's "A Stroke of Genius" started making the Internet rounds. Effortlessly merging the biggest hits of Christina Aguilera and The Strokes played a galactic prank on the hipsters of the world, showing that their latest pet band was just a few mouse clicks away from being the latest teenie pop sample loop. Nothing on Radio Soulwax is quite so subversive, but the integration of the thick-glasses crowd's favorite bands-- the Velvet Underground, The Breeders, The Stooges-- into what's basically a club house mix might ruffle some feathers. Who would've known "I'm Waiting for My Man" was just a Sly & The Family Stone tambourine away from being a party anthem? Who'd've thunk "No Fun" or "Cannonball" wrapped so perfectly around aged rap tracks from Salt N' Pepa and Skee-Lo? Nobody, actually, and that's part of the fun.
DJ mixes are not just a novelty.
Beyond this valiant mission, the dexterous wrists of 2 Many DJs appear to strive for even higher, more artistically lofty accomplishments with their mix. Witness, for example, the middle 20 minutes of the album, a movement largely devoid of mainstream-recognizable tunes. Dropping music from the household-name likes of Funkacise Gang, Alphawezen, and Zongamin, the duo slaps rhythm against rhythm in calculated haphazardry, creating new sounds sure to earn ever-more-arcane classifications from the self-appointed genre taxonomists. You might argue such experimentation is instant death to the album's boogie-boogie purpose, and is even a bit middling. Or you might argue that I and others are convincing ourselves of this objective's presence in order to wax intellectual about a pop music collection. On certain occasions, I'd be obliged to agree with you.
DJ mixes are just a novelty.
Because really: Dolly Parton into Rokysopp? Early New Order vs. house sleazeballs Detroit Grand Pubahs? These are combinations designed to provoke disbelief and mirth on the first listen-- which they do, admirably. But thereafter, as with the vast majority of DJ mixes, the Law of Diminishing Entertainment Returns applies more readily-- these krazy kombos are certainly worth the download-time to hear at least once, but the audio trickery wears out fast. Compounding the problem is the inclusion of fairly pointless pre-processed kitsch, like the techno covers of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and ELO's falsetto favorite "Don't Bring Me Down". Choosing to include the electro-fied versions of other mixing board pranksters is surely an odd decision, and resembles smirking in a hall of mirrors, with all the fun-or-headache debate that implies. So what's the real, overarching über-purpose?
Hire us for remixes!
And hell, don't assume from our web address that I think there's anything wrong with a little self-promotion! 2 Many DJs show off their renovatin' stuff on Radio Soulwax, and their stuff ain't too shabby. Witness Destiny's Child's TRL fave "Independent Women Pt 1," transformed into a 70s lite-funk groover by the addition of 10cc's "Dreadlock Holiday." (Mere coincidence that Beyonce's movie-driven first solo step had similar funktastical leanings?) The duo also definitively proves that nothing goes with the gleefully self-aware over-the-top house of Basement Jaxx like the hilariously oblivious prog of Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The hybridization of "Where's Your Head At" and a live take on "Theme from 'Peter Gunn'" has got BANG!-- you can already envision Pringles' ad execs riffling their Rolodexes.
Despite all my hypothesizing and yelling about stuff, I concede that Radio Soulwax is a good time. I don't know that it's groundbreaking, beyond the fact that whatever this bootlegging craze is the start of could eventually yield fantastic results. At this point, though, all I hear is a temporary house-party enhancer that, while fun for a while, isn't the kind of thing you're going to come back to in five years (or even two) to find that it's withstood the test of time. Enjoy it while you can. | 2002-08-29T01:00:03.000-04:00 | 2002-08-29T01:00:03.000-04:00 | Electronic | PIAS | August 29, 2002 | 7.6 | 3bd5ecdb-d57e-4ce8-80ee-7ca2c4f17adc | Rob Mitchum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rob- mitchum/ | null |
Vessel is one of many names used by Bristol-based "non-dance dance music" producer Seb Gainsborough. The series of 12"s he released over the past year didn't offer an indication of just how wide open his vision would become on this debut full-length. | Vessel is one of many names used by Bristol-based "non-dance dance music" producer Seb Gainsborough. The series of 12"s he released over the past year didn't offer an indication of just how wide open his vision would become on this debut full-length. | Vessel: Order of Noise | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17286-order-of-noise/ | Order of Noise | A number of Bristol artists have soundtracked the early morning waning of post-club buzz over the years. Vessel, part of Bristol's Young Echo collective, feels like someone who's been there and experienced those hours many times over. Vessel is one of many monikers used by Bristol resident Seb Gainsborough, who has gained some momentum via a series of 12"s released over the past year. None of those offered an indication of just how wide open his vision would become on this debut full-length. His music falls roughly into the tenuous category of "non-dance dance music," although he's not averse to constructing tracks that are eminently danceable. This album's "Court of Lions" offers up a quietly euphoric type of mazy techno that feels made for huge sound systems.
Of those prior releases, 2011's Wax Dance EP occasionally circled the plastic haze of chillwave, perhaps offering a clue as to why Gainsborough ended up releasing Order of Noise on Tri Angle. Many of those rougher edges were smoothed over on the title track of the Standard EP from earlier this year, although Order of Noise goes some way to reclaiming them. Gainsborough's music as Vessel has already gained comparisons to Actress, and it's not hard to see why. Like R.I.P., this is an album that requires listeners to put in some work, to extract their own sense of logic and rhythm from its scattershot surface. The path from the leaden bong fug of "Stillborn Dub" through to the light and bloopy "Lache" isn't apparent at first, especially as the latter veers off on so many tangents; around the midway point, it feels like an entirely separate track has encroached, ushering in a whole wave of contrasting feelings.
That particular part in "Lache" offers a useful entry point into Order of Noise as a whole, highlighting how adept Gainsborough is at subtly warping his vision in unexpected ways. It's the type of approach that can easily end up unfocused, with separate strands set in motion that end up dangling in the ether. But tiny motifs emerge that tie everything together. The processed sighs that pockmark "Silten" give it a sluggish feel, something that loops around again later in the barren slo-mo grind of "Villaine". And Gainsborough is fond of stretched-out mood pieces. "2 Moon Dub" is the embodiment of that malaise at finding a club winding down for the night after endlessly plodding through puddled streets under the promise of something better. "Aries" goes even further, dredging up feelings of desperate 4 a.m. glances between strangers across a rapidly emptying bar.
There's no overall sense of narrative to Order of Noise, but the depth of the production leaves itself open to interpretation. Dig past the early Warp stylings of "Scarletta", and there's an intriguing mesh of industrial noise and balmy ambience. Some of those tweaks occasionally bear an Aphex-like fondness for tinkering. On "Plane Curves" it initially sounds like Gainsborough has mixed a percussion loop far too high in the mix, only for it to become a wonderfully cantankerous center on multiple plays. That desire to bring agitation into an unexpected realm is a particularly Bristolian trait, whether it's in Mark Stewart's aggro-funk workouts or through Portishead adding an unanticipated analog bite to their sound circa Third. Order of Noise subtly pulls on similar feelings of antagonism, in the process splitting open some welcome cracks in a well-traveled path. | 2012-11-01T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2012-11-01T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Experimental | Tri Angle | November 1, 2012 | 7 | 3bdd3d52-4ec1-492e-b790-c67b8766017a | Nick Neyland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nick-neyland/ | null |
A new compilation surveys the period in Japan when Jamaican influences mixed with the opulent melodies and high-production gloss of city pop. | A new compilation surveys the period in Japan when Jamaican influences mixed with the opulent melodies and high-production gloss of city pop. | Various Artists: Tokyo Riddim 1976-1985 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-tokyo-riddim-1976-1985/ | Tokyo Riddim 1976-1985 | In the 1980s, as Japan became an exporter of both culture and technology, budding scenes in the once insular nation began creating a local home for foreign sounds imported from afar. Among them was a collection of artists creating homegrown reggae music that honored the genre’s Jamaican roots. Tokyo’s leading disciples of Trenchtown included drummer Masahito “Pecker” Hashida, who recorded at Tuff Gong with Bob Marley himself, while the band Mute Beat drew heavily from reggae and dub to forge a sound that presaged acid jazz and trip-hop. The new compilation Tokyo Riddim 1976-1985 is not a snapshot of that scene. Instead, it’s a valuable collection of more pop-aligned, pseudo-reggae music masterminded by artists and producers who envisioned Caribbean influences amalgamating seamlessly with Japan’s own city-pop sound. These songs are more analogous to the English cod reggae artists of the same era—think UB40, the Police, and Paul McCartney—than the Jamaican pioneers they pilfered from.
Often this influence manifests as simply a vibe, as though all involved were attempting to recreate the feeling of a half-remembered concert they had attended while journeying through Kingston. Tokyo Riddim 1976-1985 even begins with the sound of crashing waves, setting a seaside mood, before Miki Hirayama’s “Tsukikage No Nagisa” (“Moonlight Shadow at the Beach”) mixes the singer’s sophisticated vocal, typical of city pop, over some lazily strummed reggae guitar. A lot of the set moves at a similarly easygoing pace: On “Music,” Chu Kosaka—a rock artist whose reggae credentials include citing Jimmy Cliff’s House of Exile as his favorite album—deploys an appropriately hazy falsetto and voluptuous saxophone lead over a bassline as heavy as the setting sun.
The producers are clearly unconcerned with adhering to the core tenets of reggae, and in some brashly experimental moments they blur genre lines even further. The second of two Hirayama tracks, “Denshi Lenzi” pinches the rhythm guitar and bassline from Marley’s “Natural Mystic,” but sets them against vocals doused in futuristic robo-pop vocoder effects. “Hittin’ Me Where It Hurts,” by Marlene, a Filipina singer tapped by Japanese talent recruiters to become a pop star, includes airy ba ba ba harmonies that evoke Latin jazz, adding hints of arcade electronica, clattering percussion, brass, and trippy vocal effects that fray Marlene’s flashy big-band-style performance into a fantastical, cross-cultural melange.
As with a lot of city pop, the lyrics—some of which are in English—often come off as enjoyable, if lyrically imprecise, pastiches of Western love songs: Izumi “Mimi” Kobayashi’s “Lazy Love” includes such crumpled wordplay as, “Yes, I’ll let you go, yes, I’ll make you come/Baby, I’ll set you free, baby, I’ll make you leave.” Unexpectedly, Junko Yagami’s “Johannesburg” addresses South African apartheid by noting that the city’s beauty is betrayed by the injustice meted out on its people. Mostly sung in Japanese, the song nonetheless emulates Marley’s social-justice soul. It’s difficult to discern from Tokyo Riddim 1976-1985 alone if political engagement was a common thread of this odd corner of the city-pop sound—at just eight songs, the album offers only a glimpse. But within a broader narrative, these cuts showcase the omnivorous nature of a scene that repudiated Japan’s isolationist history and created exciting new hybrids in the process. | 2023-12-09T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2023-12-09T00:00:00.000-05:00 | null | Time Capsule | December 9, 2023 | 7.2 | 3be74389-28f1-41cb-b9e5-9f57e70c9545 | Dean Van Nguyen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dean-van nguyen/ | |
Alchemist and Oh No approach Gangrene's You Disgust Me as an excursion into weed-hazed hip-hop psychedelia. The two complement each other, and the Gangrene project allows both of them to subvert their well-worn sounds. | Alchemist and Oh No approach Gangrene's You Disgust Me as an excursion into weed-hazed hip-hop psychedelia. The two complement each other, and the Gangrene project allows both of them to subvert their well-worn sounds. | Gangrene: You Disgust Me | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20894-you-disgust-me/ | You Disgust Me | When you hear an Alchemist beat, you know it. He's refined his style over 15 years and hundreds of productions, from Prodigy's thug-rap high-water mark Return of the Mac to brilliant loosies for Dilated Peoples ("Worst Comes to Worst"), Nas ("Book of Rhymes") and Raekwon ("Surgical Gloves"). His sound moves between two poles. There are the loops woven out of all manner of sample fodder, like the superior Israeli Salad instrumental suite he released earlier this year that excavates records purchased during a trip to Israel. Then there's his coldly synthesized gangster music, best displayed on Mobb Deep's mid-'00s hit "Got It Twisted", and seemingly inspired by New Wave pop and '80s crime soundtracks like Giorgio Moroder's Scarface and Tangerine Dream's Thief. Both types are clipped and chopped like vintage DJ Premier, yet rumble at a leisurely West Coast tempo.
Alchemist does consistently entertaining work, but it's become predictable after over a decade and too much music—so far this year, he's dropped Israeli Salad and Retarded Alligator Beats joints, and now comes Gangrene's You Disgust Me. Yet Al's Gangrene project with Oh No gives both a chance to subvert their well-worn templates into something more dynamic. The two complement each other: Oh No likes to flip vinyl from exotic sources, too, whether it's Dr. No's Ethiopium or Exodus into Unheard Rhythms, the latter built around Galt MacDermot's catalog. He tends to be underrated—it's unlikely that most people who heard Dr. Dre's Compton and its "Issues" track know that Oh No also sampled Turkish folk singer Selda's "Ince Ince" with his 2007 track "Heavy", which Mos Def used for his 2009 single "Supermagic". And while his dependence on traditionalist sample loops runs deeper than Alchemist, he uses rhythm more dynamically.
Both Alchemist and Oh No approach Gangrene's You Disgust Me as an excursion into weed-hazed hip-hop psychedelia: Snippets of whacked-out voices, culled from some late night VHS videodrome, dudes talking greasy over crate-digger's delights. (RIP Sean Price, who drops a jewel on "Sheet Music" alongside Mobb Deep's Havoc.) It's a formula that Gangrene established over its two albums, Gutter Water and Vodka & Ayahuasca, light themes that bracket the usual backpack thuggery. The thirteen tracks add up to just under 40 minutes, and often seem to blend in with one another. Peaks like “Noon Chuckas,” its ominous big band buildup smoothing out into a female voice’s hypnotic glissando, sound indistinguishable from knuckleheaded errata like “Driving Gloves,” with Action Bronson’s brain fart about needing "a bitch with a pussy like like a Little League glove."
As rappers, the words Alchemist and Oh No say are less interesting than the sound of their slangy, chippy voices riffing over the blappers.Their peak You Disgust Me moment arrives on "The Man with the Horn", which draws equal inspiration from Miles Davis-styled melancholy and New York noir vis-à-vis Travis Bickle samples. Al visualizes himself as a loner wandering the streets, "stumble out the bar, vision blurry/ Humphrey Bogart, face underneath the rim of my derby." Oh No adds, "It's looking like a scene out of Vegas/ It's nighttime, and the jazz jukebox is playing." It offers a glimpse of what Gangrene could be if it was more than just headnod music stuffed with weed jokes. Both are more than capable of crafting memorable hip-hop music, even if they're too focused on cranking out bangers at an industrial rate to notice whether anything they've made stands out. | 2015-08-11T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2015-08-11T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rap | Mass Appeal | August 11, 2015 | 6.9 | 3be84fcb-727c-40ee-8365-22293d02154b | Mosi Reeves | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mosi-reeves/ | null |
Grimes’ first project as a bona fide pop star is more morose than her previous work, but no less camp. Her genuineness shines through the album’s convoluted narrative, and the songs are among her finest. | Grimes’ first project as a bona fide pop star is more morose than her previous work, but no less camp. Her genuineness shines through the album’s convoluted narrative, and the songs are among her finest. | Grimes: Miss Anthropocene | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/grimes-miss-anthropocene/ | Miss Anthropocene | In 2011, Grimes was eager to say in an interview that she had “been studying pop stars.” Since emerging 10 years ago as a DIY ingénue out of Montreal’s freewheeling music scene, Claire Boucher has become known for her experimental production that often traded discernible lyrics for otherworldly and synthetic vocal textures. The words she sang didn’t figure into what made her music so fascinating—it was how she used her vocals to mimic whalesong or aliensong, a futurist reimagining of the transfixing voices of Enya and Mariah Carey, over irresistible melodies. Yes, Grimes always wanted to be a pop star, but on her own creative terms.
Miss Anthropocene is Grimes’ fifth album and her first as that bona fide pop star—the result of widespread acclaim for both 2012’s Visions and 2015’s addictive and upbeat Art Angels. With this new celebrity, accelerated by her relationship with tech billionaire Elon Musk, Grimes wants to talk about the climate crisis—although she doesn’t use that more accurate phrasing herself. “I wanted to make climate change fun,” she’s said in interviews and on her Instagram. Meaning, Grimes is using her preferred lenses of fantasy, villainy, and pop iconography to attempt to engage with reality.
The result is a record that’s more morose than her previous work, but no less camp. Art Angels was the result of a decade spent feverishly honing the tenets of songwriting, production, and engineering in order to show listeners who she was, and what she could do (be a pop star). Miss Anthropocene is the willful destruction of that self-conception. Grimes calls the sound “ethereal nu metal,” and the vibe is more honest to the pensive, sometimes cynical, public persona Grimes has shared in public over the last decade.
In November 2018, Grimes released “We Appreciate Power,” a collaboration with her best friend HANA, and a cunningly meta prelude to Miss Anthropocene. Though the propulsive, guitar-driven track didn’t end up on the album, it reveals the aesthetic cynicism behind it: a beckoning chant about capitulating to A.I. supremacy from the perspective of a girl group, the ultimate vessel for artifice and propaganda. Surprisingly—or not, given Grimes’ track record of being more outspoken on Twitter and Tumblr—the 10 tracks that make up Miss Anthropocene, are lyrically more ambiguous about this ambitious theme. Instead, we’re left with a convoluted narrative about personifying climate change through a fictional cosmology of demons and villainesses giddily celebrating global warming as a force of good. In that sense, Miss Anthropocene reflects the creative state in which it was made: “negative, aggressive, and isolating.”
When Grimes veers away from high concept toward examining intimate and relational forms of human erosion, Miss Anthropocene finds some clarity. “We don’t love our bodies anymore,” she intones over the droning wasteland of “Darkseid,” which also features metallic vocals by the Taiwanese-rapper 潘PAN (formerly Aristophanes). “So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth,” introduces this conceit, weighed down by a simple drum pattern. It’s a lament about the ways in which women are domesticated through patriarchal forms of control. “Specifically how when a dude cums inside you, you become in their thrall,” she said in an April 2019 interview, alluding to her relationship with Musk, who is now thought to be the father of her expected child. “Love can be this beautiful thing, but then love is the thing that’s fucking up my career. The biggest change … is losing my hardcore masculinity. I used to just be free of all this bullshit all the other girls were going through, and now I feel like I’m not.” (She’s more besotted, jubilant even, on the winsome closer “IDORU.”) And on “Delete Forever,” she shifts focus to addiction, vocals high and clear in the mix as she sings over a freakin’ banjo: “I can’t see above it, guess I fuckin’ love it.” It’s a sublime, mood-perfect vignette of self-destructive nihilism. Grimes wrote it the night Lil Peep died of an accidental overdose.
Miss Anthropocene thrills when it reveals a refined, linear evolution of Grimes’ long-standing interest in rave nostalgia and alluring pop music from around the world. On “Violence,” a vocal trance banger co-produced by Deadmau5 affiliate i_o that’s destined for a RuPaul’s Drag Race lip-sync, Grimes gives one of her most dynamic performances. Through gauzy overdubs and steady four-on-the-floor drums, she flips between whimpering and a snarl to delineate perspectives of an abusive relationship. And “4ÆM,” which she teased two years ago as an “ethereal chav jam that’s like a cyberpunk interpretation of the [Bollywood historical fantasy blockbuster] Bajirao Mastani,” delivers on the mind-bogglingly referential impulse. It’s Hollywood futurism: an Orientalist fantasia colliding with a revved-up hook; the soundtrack to a John Wick fight scene.
So much about the actual music of Miss Anthropocene succeeds that the choice to bury it below a warped—and yes, misanthropic—concept about “The Environment” makes it hard to connect with who Grimes is as an artist today. Standing in the way of humans reckoning with climate emergency are multiple delusions: that wealth brings freedom, that boundless acquisition and unchecked growth remain tenable, and that political and economic institutions are inherently trustworthy actors. Grimes sounds like the pop star she’s worked very hard to become, but her imagination seems diminished—or, like many of her celebrity ilk, is cordoned off in a bubble floating above the rest of humanity. In 2020, revolutionary pop stardom might try to clarify, rather than obscure, the havoc that systems wreak when it comes to, say, gender roles and social compliance, technology and surveillance capitalism, nationalism and land exploitation, or whiteness and pathological denial.
And that’s the obstacle, the slimy mouthfeel, standing in the way of Miss Anthropocene offering genuine catharsis: Grimes, the self-taught, self-possessed iconoclast, as insincere. In this very specific political moment rendering climate crisis as dystopian aesthetic is privileged and indulgent, and perhaps even more frustrating given Grimes’ stage wink of an album title. Who exactly is the subject of her misanthropy? Having achieved recognition and acclaim for what she can do with Visions and Art Angels, the question remains: Who is she now? And so, some footnotes from Grimes’ life feel useful here: childhood ballerina, daughter of a former accountant and former Crown prosecutor-turned-journalist, and in a relationship with a man whose real-time net worth literally jumped from $41 billion to $44.2 billion between drafts of this review. Sometimes it is important to be reminded that celebrity is also a system, a way of distracting the powerless and nurturing ruling class values through notions of exceptionalism and vanity. Perhaps, before she was a pop star, Grimes might have made a statement with this album—but what the world needs now is less obfuscation, not more.
Correction: An earlier version of this review erroneously stated that Grimes was managed by Roc Nation, a company that had ties to the National Football League. This reference has been excised. The review has also been updated to clarify the career of Claire Boucher’s father. He is a former accountant.
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Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-02-21T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-02-21T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | 4AD | February 21, 2020 | 8.2 | 3be90b80-19ed-47b3-9015-1dca4ff95d83 | Anupa Mistry | https://pitchfork.com/staff/anupa-mistry/ | |
On her full-length debut, Brooklyn-based songwriter Nicole Schneit wrings a range of feelings from simple, ramshackle guitar pop. | On her full-length debut, Brooklyn-based songwriter Nicole Schneit wrings a range of feelings from simple, ramshackle guitar pop. | Air Waves: Dungeon Dots | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15011-dungeon-dots/ | Dungeon Dots | "I'm alive," sings Nicole Schneit of Air Waves on the jangly, major-chord shuffle of Dungeon Dots opener "Knock Out", "I'm on fire, for the first time in my life." When that line is lifted out of its context, it reflects where the Brooklyn-based songwriter is in her career. After spending the entirety of 2010 (and even a sizeable chunk of 2009) building buzz, playing alongside Real Estate, and serving as Dan Deacon's favorite band, the release of Air Waves' debut serves as a boost to Schneit and her band's already-quick sprint out of the gate.
In context, the lyrics of "Knock Out" paint the portrait of love as a boxing match, surveying the opponent ("Can you put all your teeth out/ So we know just how you fight?") over the vintage bounce of a sock-hop floor-filler. The darker "Radio" carves a vignette of the demise of a relationship out of an economy of lyrics, clanging, strummed guitar, and a resilient bassline. Schneit has a weather-beaten alto reminiscent of folk songstresses Jana Hunter, Bosque Brown, and Scout Niblett, and her thin but charming voice often strains to hit high notes that are just a hair out of reach.
While "Humdrum" takes minimal musical elements and blends them together to create something surprisingly full sounding, "Sweetness" succeeds wildly with just two chords. Throughout, Dungeon Dots displays slapdash pop charm; it sometimes feels as though the running times of the songs are the exact length of time it took her to write them, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The rudimentary song structures can get plodding on "Fort Tilden", but even then, Schneit manages to add a simplistic-but-infectious element-- in this case, the "ooh-oohs" during the chorus-- that carries it over.
There is a sense of melancholy that courses through the fiber of the record, and this is no more apparent than on the two songs that bookend Dungeon Dots. "Waters" is a waltz that serves as the highlight of the record, featuring glittery guitar work, sweet spot-hitting harmonies from Sharon Van Etten, and some of the album's best lyrics ("Wear your purple shirt, boy/ But blue hangs on your sleeve"). Picking both the saddest and most climactic way to end the record, closer "Bisous" starts as a minor-key ballad and turns quickly into a driving climax, evoking a lonely night drive with fog hanging low on the street, while Schneit dejectedly sings, "We wait for a change, but that change never came." There is a rawness, both musical and emotional, in the best moments of Dungeon Dots, proving that the simplest ways to communicate feelings are sometimes the most effective. | 2011-01-19T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2011-01-19T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Rock | Underwater Peoples | January 19, 2011 | 6.9 | 3bf0bf93-68a0-49aa-9e63-851b3080c63d | Martin Douglas | https://pitchfork.com/staff/martin-douglas/ | null |
On her second album, the London singer-songwriter examines personal growth, romantic upheaval, and the trials of young adulthood through an astrological lens. | On her second album, the London singer-songwriter examines personal growth, romantic upheaval, and the trials of young adulthood through an astrological lens. | Nao: Saturn | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nao-saturn/ | Saturn | Saturn, the second album from London singer-songwriter Nao, is based on the Saturn return, that specter haunting all horoscopic astrology nerds in their late twenties, when the planet Saturn comes back to meet the same spot it was at your birth. Nao, loosely within that age bracket, is a shrewd observer of the phenomenon, which is said to leave all kinds of interpersonal grief and transformation in its wake. As the astrologer Chani Nicholas explained earlier this year, the Saturn return is a time when “we aren’t so innocent, unformed, or new anymore”—a time when, “if we are lucky, we realize that no one is going to save us. And if they tried it wouldn’t feel right.”
The album drifts through a mindset in flux, largely focusing on heartbreak and the regenerative bliss that comes after. Following her 2016 debut, For All We Know, Saturn draws from R&B, pop, and funk influences with considerable self-assurance. It also reveals a newfound precision in her production, choice of collaborators, and the fine-tuned intimacy of her lyrics—all of which throw the album’s themes of personal growth and astrology into sharp, gorgeous relief.
Nao’s voice, capable of quickly shifting between a husky lower register and a mellifluous, piercing falsetto, remains a vitalizing force over Saturn’s meditations on love and loss. On “Orbit,” the album’s shapeshifting centerpiece, she traces the state of mental unsteadiness that follows a breakup, anchored by plucked electric guitar and spacious programmed beats. The track takes its time meandering from a sung, broad-stroke depiction of the end of a relationship (“I lost you in dreams, now I’m falling”) to a pitch-shifted rap that chisels its failings down to minute detail (“I don’t care about this dog and you know I can’t afford it”). Unsparing yet emotionally generous, “Orbit” adds a new wrinkle to Nao’s songwriting without sacrificing any of its tenderness. That she calls out D’Angelo here (“You can give me the voodoo/Like D’Angelo said, ‘How does it, how does it feel?’”) seems especially apt—“Orbit” moves with the same pointed intention as the neo-soul forebear’s most balanced compositions.
But Nao doesn’t wallow for long. Highlights “If You Ever” and “Yellow of the Sun” are balmy, sunlit odes to dizzying romance, while the proto-funk of “Gabriel” and the icy, restrained “Curiosity” explore sultry new depths. Tapping familiars like Mura Masa, LOXE, and GRADES for production duties, with background players ranging from Daniel Caesar to the Chineke! Orchestra, Nao enlists musicians that help her deftly transition between lean future-pop and sparse, levitating R&B. She even indulges listeners with radio-oriented fare like the silky, SiR-featuring, straight-R&B cut “Make It Out Alive.”
Regrettably, when Nao slows things down too much the occasional clumsy turn of phrase becomes obvious. The title track, despite a lovely vocal feature by UK singer-songwriter Kwabs and an expansive, strings-enhanced backdrop, doesn’t add much nuance to the album’s astrological motif, and its lyrics are graceless: “Your constellation circulating me/Like a Capricorn, you’re hard to release.” Nao trips over a similar problem on the forgettable “Drive and Disconnect”: Over a guitar line and insistent Afropop beats, she vaguely intimates an escape from “too many crimes” while elaborating on approximately none of them.
Yet even for its sometimes awkward lyrics, Saturn is tempered with enough dynamic songwriting that these instances feel less like artistic failures than growing pains. Between Nao’s lush voice and the album’s glossy production, it’s easy to get lost in Saturn. A worthy successor to For All We Know, it homes in on a specific, if occasionally ham-fisted, conceit while expanding on her sound in clear, vibrant ways. | 2018-10-31T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-10-31T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Little Tokyo | October 31, 2018 | 7.7 | 3bf345fc-f8a6-4b6b-9145-0ee2c5d12d9b | Eric Torres | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-torres/ | |
Produced by Adrian Sherwood and since-deceased Roots Radics drummer Style Scott, the eighth album by singer/songwriter Jeb Loy Nichols has an ease about it that stems from Nichols’ long familiarity with both Jamaican dancehall and American country music. | Produced by Adrian Sherwood and since-deceased Roots Radics drummer Style Scott, the eighth album by singer/songwriter Jeb Loy Nichols has an ease about it that stems from Nichols’ long familiarity with both Jamaican dancehall and American country music. | Jeb Loy Nichols: Long Time Traveller | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21515-long-time-traveller/ | Long Time Traveller | Looking at the respective states of American bro-country and Jamaican dancehall, it's hard to imagine that these genres ever had anything to do with each other. But in the 1960s, the harmonies of country music were big in Jamaica, as can be heard most explicitly on comps like Noah Found Grace. Or, as the owner of reggae specialty shop Deadly Dragon Sound once explained: "You can always tell when a collection of Jamaican LPs is bona fide when you come across a copy of Marty Robbins' 1959 smash hit Gunfighter Ballads." This strange hybrid continues on in the work of multitasking singer/songwriter Jeb Loy Nichols.
Nichols—born in Wyoming but now based in Wales—boasts a peculiar skill set that includes doing artwork for the reggae reissue imprint Pressure Sounds as well as curating the Country Got Soul series. So it’s no real surprise that country and reggae commingle on Nichols' eighth album Long Time Traveller, previously only issued in Japan in 2010 and now re-released on On-U Sound with a second disc of alternate mixes. Produced by Adrian Sherwood and since-deceased Roots Radics drummer Style Scott, Traveller has an ease about it that stems from Nichols’ long familiarity with both forms.
A dribble of keys and guitar upstroke introduce "To Be Rich (Should Be a Crime)," a song that replicates the classic sound of Studio One right down to the Jackie Mittoo-esque keyboard solo taken midway through. Nichols’ drawl is just behind the beat, as easeful as classic rocksteady crooners like Ken Boothe or Errol Dunkley. So closely does Nichols replicate the music of that bygone era that the songs can sound like standards, even though they are primarily originals. Nichols and his mates backing him up aren’t trying to push the envelope so much as just enjoy a mild, swaying lilt, as on "97 Miles." It’s relaxed to the point of narcolepsy, and while the cool ruler Gregory Isaacs no doubt figures into Nichols and his vocal delivery, he often just sounds drowsy. There’s a sprinkle of dub effects added to the drums of "Salt of a Fallen Tear," while there’s a dash acoustic guitar twang on "Lonely King of the Country," but rarely do Nichols’ country and roots actually entwine. It avoids the weed-infused gimmickry of Willie Nelson’s own stab at reggae on Countryman, but Traveller could stand either more splinters or more spliffs on its too-smooth moves. | 2016-02-08T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2016-02-08T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | On-U Sound | February 8, 2016 | 6.4 | 3bf6fddd-338e-4ce3-b237-8398ff8dd3a3 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
On his new solo album, the Tortoise guitarist blends loops and improvisations in dazzling ways. It sounds like jazz but moves like a soft techno dream. | On his new solo album, the Tortoise guitarist blends loops and improvisations in dazzling ways. It sounds like jazz but moves like a soft techno dream. | Jeff Parker: Forfolks | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jeff-parker-forfolks/ | Forfolks | After a quarter-century as a linchpin of Chicago’s overlapping experimental jazz and rock scenes, the guitarist Jeff Parker finally made his solo debut in 2016 on the aptly named Slight Freedom. For years, Parker had embedded his chiseled guitar leads within the sophisticated post-rock of Tortoise and played in audacious jazz-oriented ensembles like the Chicago Underground Duo. But in 2013, Parker split for California, leaving behind those familiar musical contexts. The move offered him the opportunity to bask uninterrupted in his rarified guitar tone and snaking sense of rhythm, an impetus for Slight Freedom. Parker still seemed reserved, though, as if negotiating his newly solitary relationship with the guitar was an ongoing process.
In the years since, Parker has issued two complicated and compelling full-band albums, his jazz verve turbocharged by funk drums and a thrilling sense of juxtaposition borrowed from hip-hop’s quick cuts. You could hear him springing away from his longtime roles back east, expressing a more robust version of his musical freedom. He brings the gusto of those recent albums to Forfolks, his spellbinding second LP for solo guitar and a new highlight of an already-rich career. For these eight sublime pieces, Parker capitalizes on solitude to make music that sounds like classic guitar jazz but often moves like a soft techno dream.
The basic premise of Forfolks is simple enough: As the tape rolls, Parker creates loops from tiny snippets of his coruscant electric guitar tone or stretches single notes into long drones that wobble like an old pump organ. He then improvises to those loops in single takes with no overdubs, creating instantaneous guitar duets for one player and his pedals. The results might last 80 seconds, as with opener “Off Om,” or nearly 11 minutes, as on its showpiece, “Excess Success.” This isn’t a novel idea, of course—you’ve likely seen a self-indulgent instrumentalist in the corner of a bar, riffing atop loops generated by the ubiquitous green Line 6. Forfolks, however, never feels showy or vain; it’s joyous, Parker delighting in the ideas he unearths as he plays along with the sound of himself.
The results often feel dazzlingly complicated, as though these songs were built through some greater studio sorcery, like cobbling together various takes or recording the layers one at a time. The points where the loop ends and the playing begins are often unclear, so distinguishing what is new from what is repeating can be like trying to discern the individual spices in a delicate soup. During “Suffolk,” for instance, Parker generates a pattern of flitting notes and then flits around it himself in staccato bursts. He adds a floral hum and inscribes the hovering tone with a bittersweet melody, the guitar sighing with the warmth of an oversaturated sunset photo.
The repetitive elements of his faithful take on Thelonious Monk’s “Ugly Beauty”—blurred notes that glue together its brief sections—appear, disappear, and reappear so seamlessly you may wonder if they’re even there. Its inclusion feels like an homage to the way that Monk would twist and tease rhythms, long before such looping technology was widespread. Parker also interprets the standard “My Ideal,” but he forgoes any sort of loop, dancing alone with a beautiful tune. Just as a house cat excitedly slapping at a ball of yarn will stop and stare at it once in a while, Parker holds his plaything still and marvels.
Forfolks evokes a who’s-who of jazz guitar. Parker, for instance, embraces enthusiastic snippets of repetition like Wes Montgomery. His incisive lines move with the effortless grace of Grant Green. Hearing Parker settling into his solo role recalls the similarly singular tone of the late Jim Hall, always identifiable from the first note onward. What’s more, mixing engineer Graeme Gibson took care not to clean up these pieces, which he captured during two days in June. There is fuzz and static and room sound, so Forfolks indeed sounds like a relic salvaged from another era. You could slip it into a stack of jazz classics at a dinner party, and no one would likely notice this modern anomaly.
But just as Parker makes the lines between his loops and his improvisations fuzzy, Forfolks as a whole gets its power by making fuzzy the distinction between the contemporary and classic. The games he plays with rhythm and repetition feel like a frontier, a suggestion of new spaces to explore for solo guitarists indebted to minimalism, drone, and electronics. There is no better example than the album’s epic, “Excess Success.” Parker approaches its chiming loop like a patient electronic producer. He sometimes dances around it, adding a tizzy of extra notes. And then, he’ll pull back entirely, letting the beat ride as if to emphasize the work he’s been doing. It conjures the wild-eyed improvisations of Manuel Göttsching’s E2-E4 and the coziness of the Field’s From Here We Go Sublime, rather unexpected references for modern jazz guitar. Hearing a long-consummate instrumentalist well into his 50s grapple so clearly with the future of his own idiom is plenty inspiring; the quiet confidence with which Parker proclaims there is something else to say with just six strings and a few effects feels like a revelation, for himself and the form.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-12-13T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-12-13T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Jazz | International Anthem / Nonesuch | December 13, 2021 | 8.2 | 3bf7d597-2d4e-4715-b01a-8a830cc10e6f | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
On Francis Starlite’s third album, his music turns spare and stark as he comes closer to his finding his essence as a songwriter. | On Francis Starlite’s third album, his music turns spare and stark as he comes closer to his finding his essence as a songwriter. | Francis and the Lights: Just for Us | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/francis-and-the-lights-just-for-us/ | Just for Us | So far in his career, Francis Farewell Starlite’s impressive production credits and stable of collaborators have somewhat eclipsed his output as a solo pop star. The artists he works with as Francis and the Lights—be it Chance the Rapper, Drake, or Frank Ocean—all have songs that have benefited from his ghostly electro-soul and propensity for wispy, space-age synthesizers. Even his two biggest hits from 2016’s uneven-but-promising second album Farewell, Starlite!, the low-boil R&B jam “Friends” and the Afro-pop jam “May I Have This Dance?,” enjoyed heightened visibility by featuring Kanye West and Chance, respectively. Some musicians thrive in a collaborative setting, but while he’s chock full of good ideas, it can feel as if Starlite’s best efforts are behind the mixing desk rather than in front of the mic.
What’s refreshing about Francis and the Lights’ surprise third album, Just for Us, is that it sheds so much of what Starlite has made his calling card—the big features, the glossy posturing that borderlines on trying too hard—and instead comes closer to the essence of what makes him a genuinely talented songwriter. Dropped without fanfare on the last Friday of 2017, Just for Us’ stark simplicity might give the impression that it was released almost as an afterthought, a little holiday treat for hardcore Francis fans. But in reality, this is the most honest that Starlite has even been, and the brief collection of 10 tracks speaks ably to what he can achieve as a solo artist.
Previously, the bleating heartache Starlite portrayed on some of his more balladeering tracks was consciously performative, as he tried on the role of the lovelorn pop singer. Here, on a track like “Faithful,” his doubt in romance is painful and palpable. Over a simple, bare piano melody, Starlite sings: “If there was no god and nothing to do/I could be faithful to you.” Clocking in at two-and-a-half minutes, the message is straightforward and inescapable: Caught between love and desire, he just doesn’t know if he has what it takes. It’s a gut-punch, certainly some of his most affecting songwriting thus far.
Organic synth-pop might seem like an oxymoron, but that’s what Starlite goes for—mixing somber pianos and his trusty electronic production, Just for Us’ general sound sways gracefully between understated vulnerability and giddy emotion. Compared to tracks like “Faithful” and the album’s opener “Morning” (the melody of which, it must be said, sounds not unlike the theme from “Cheers”), the title track “Just for Us” is basically a stomper, even if it maintains the album’s icy pace. Its driving snares and bubbling keyboards are complemented by frequent Francis collaborator Bon Iver’s falsetto on the chorus, carrying the song above the Prince-lite style of Starlite’s funky talk-sing.
Speaking of ’80s influences, it’s hard to speak of Starlite’s singing without referencing Peter Gabriel’s wild tenor and staccato phrasing, but on “Tear It Up” the resemblance is downright uncanny, if not a conscious homage. It works as song, but is so on the nose it’s distracting. His major problem here is editing—for the most part, the songs are short, but the album could essentially be boiled down to a really solid EP instead of a bunch of interesting tracks that get obscured by what could be considered sketches or studies, like “I Won’t Lie to You,” which, in less than two minutes, doesn’t really do or say much. On the other hand, after years of injecting his songs with a more-is-more ethos at just about every level, Just for Us is a welcome window into Francis and the Lights’ soul, without smoke, without mirrors, just a man and his keyboard. | 2018-01-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | KTTF | January 11, 2018 | 6.6 | 3bfd2649-1d22-4a7f-bc04-b25e3d402228 | Cameron Cook | https://pitchfork.com/staff/cameron-cook/ | |
The obsessive studio work of Adam Granduciel creates a hermetic experience like no other. A Deeper Understanding is his most layered and meticulous album, a twilight world in which to lose yourself. | The obsessive studio work of Adam Granduciel creates a hermetic experience like no other. A Deeper Understanding is his most layered and meticulous album, a twilight world in which to lose yourself. | The War on Drugs: A Deeper Understanding | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-war-on-drugs-a-deeper-understanding/ | A Deeper Understanding | In his early songs, Bruce Springsteen wrote about machines. Cars were always there to the point of cliché, but he also wrote about howling factories and creaky amusement park rides and record players and undefined contraptions filled with flame that waited for you ominously on the edge of town. His interest is easy to understand. Machines take you places and inflict things upon you, and machines also rust and break down and remind you that time is passing and death is always near.
The singer and songwriter Adam Granduciel, who leads the War on Drugs and who is often compared to Springsteen, arrives at similar terrain from another angle. If so many of Springsteen’s songs were about machines, War on Drugs’ music is a machine. Granduciel’s work finds its meaning in the totality of its sound, in how writing and arranging and perfecting every detail in the studio is part of building music that carries you with it. His way of understanding the world is to use that sound machine to excavate and explore his interior life and hopefully shape it into something listeners might understand, even when he’s not entirely sure where he’s going.
True to the project’s nature, the War on Drugs’ albums aren’t reinventions, they’re more like a new model in an established line—a Mark IV that adds a few features and continually refines the engineering. On A Deeper Understanding, his first album for Atlantic, the synths get an extra twinkle, the bass-led builds get another octave of rumble, and some songs have a dozen instruments on them where they once might have had seven or eight. “Holding On” is packed with piano and celeste and a chugging acoustic, but the entire song is wrapped around the heavenly slide guitar from Anthony LaMarca and Meg Duffy, which uncurls like a plume of smoke and steals the song like a Robert Fripp solo. The arrangements throughout are mind-boggling, and if Granduciel leans slightly away from the explosive anthems punctuated by an echoing “Whooo!” that made Lost in the Dream so special, the extra attention to craft makes up for it.
A Deeper Understanding is also a fascinating study in influence; it’s hard to think of a band with more obvious touchstones that also sounds so original. Over his last two records, Granduciel has chosen a very particular slice of music history—mid-’80s rock made by baby boomers with synthesizers—repossessed it, and built a new world within it. Like the music from that era, A Deeper Understanding is all about contrast, the push and pull of rock grittiness and authenticity, while the layers of keyboards and studio sheen give the music a dreamier quality, suggesting the kind of imaginary spaces dreamed up by future-obsessed ravers. There’s a thread of Granduciel’s music that extends from something like Talk Talk’s ”I Don’t Believe in You“ from their 1986 album The Colour of Spring and winds through later incarnations of sun-kissed guitar pop, or even producer M. Vogel’s opulent edit of Springsteen’s “Tougher Than the Rest.”
So yes, Springsteen, Dylan, Tom Petty, and Neil Young all made songs between 1983 and 1988 that sounded something like the War on Drugs, but they often had these booming gated drums, a technique Granduciel mostly avoids. Instead, he favors a steady, muted pulse evocative of krautrock’s motorik groove. The arrangement of “In Chains” hums and explodes but the drums plow ahead with barely a fill or an accent, precisely marking the passing time. The approach to rhythm highlights the glide of the arrangement, creating a long rope of sound bound together so tightly it could never be pulled apart.
Springsteen had his E Street Band, Petty had his Heartbreakers, and Young had Crazy Horse. But A Deeper Understanding isn’t a “band” record in the same way. It’s very much the product of Granduciel’s obsessive vision. He plays roughly half the instruments on the album, in addition to producing and engineering it. Beneath the lush surface, songs focus on loneliness, alienation, private suffering, and the rare moments when you can leave that all behind. The intricate production and subject matter lend a feeling of hermeticism; the album is a place you hide inside, not a tool for exploring the world.
Granduciel doesn’t create fully-drawn characters (other people are phantoms or wishes or memories in his lyrics) but there’s always a desire for connection, and he lets in just enough light to make it seem possible. The album’s first single was the epic 11-minute travelogue “Thinking of a Place,” with a glowing synth swell reminiscent of Manuel Göttsching’s E2-E4 and a patient tempo that suggests a slow walk through the woods in the dark, the kind where you keep your hands out in front of you, feeling for branches. It turned out to be an appropriate introduction to this record because “thinking of a place”—somewhere where you can lose yourself, get out of your own head, somewhere else—is what the whole record is ultimately about. A different songwriter—someone like Neil Young, say—might sketch out what this place looks like, tell us about who we might find there. But Granduciel can’t, or doesn’t want to. And that lack of articulation, that inability to identify the source of pain and the path to redemption, becomes another of the record’s themes. But all that happens beneath the surface, almost subliminally; it’s the impossible sweep and grandeur of the music that tells the real story, of how a rush of sound can take us somewhere we can’t explain. | 2017-08-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-08-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Atlantic | August 25, 2017 | 8.7 | 3bff8378-4f03-4202-8b98-1e2a11f1fbad | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
The New York duo jump-starts iconic disco label West End Records with a love letter to classic dance, but the mood is strangely sour. | The New York duo jump-starts iconic disco label West End Records with a love letter to classic dance, but the mood is strangely sour. | Holy Ghost!: Work | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/holy-ghost-work/ | Work | Holy Ghost! have been making music for nearly twice as long as the golden era of disco, boogie, and 1980s AOR that their sound invokes. Their longevity is a testament both to Alex Frankel and Nicholas Millhiser’s dogged ambition and the everlasting fertility of the style they’ve adopted. Their third album, Work, opens in a familiar mood: a tasteful cocaine-Koyaanisqatsi bed of sequencers, a sturdy piano riff, and a guitar gurgling like champagne bubbles, all gently rising in a 30-second intro just long enough to let you powder your nose and hit the floor.
But on Work, it sounds like the champagne’s corked. “There’s nowhere really left to go,” Alex Frankel sings on “Epton on Broadway Part I.” The track chugs along. “There’s nothing really left to say/…but if you want, if you want we’ll stay.” Later, the brief “Epton on Broadway Part II” vamps in a filter-disco style for two minutes, then runs out of gas.
Throughout the album, the New York City duo adopts a defensive slouch. The record is expertly mixed and produced: It brims with fully realized moments, like a synth bit on “Anxious” that conjures the exact feeling of seeing an ex like someone else’s post on Instagram; the portamentos on “Slow Burn” should come with a vertigo warning. But the album’s mood is just sour. “You can say we’re stupid, stupid, stupid/But we’re not about to let go,” goes the chorus of “Do This,” which then offers a bit of Imagine Dragons-y festival chanting as if to demonstrate why someone would say such a thing. “Heaven Knows What” is basically “I Keep Forgettin'” plus Frippertronics and icky lyrics like, “I think that I’m moving on/Say I’m kept, look at the company you keep.” The amiably elegant swing of “Nicky Buckingham” offers strings and crisp drums, a la Metro Area, but the macho posturing (“Trash talk/The neighborhood got too busy, didn’t it/Too soft”) is a poor fit.
Authenticity is a bore, and clearly not something Holy Ghost! give a fuck about. This is the band, after all, that pulled off a scene-for-scene remake of New Order’s “Confusion” video. But also a bore is unpersuasive rabble-rousing like “Heaven Forbid,” in which Frankel intones “Get up/You can follow my lead/Sit down/You can take a seat” while the hook from Daft Punk’s “Veridis Quo” floats by. In “Soon,” a flaccid take on the guitar hook from “I Was Made for Lovin' You” joins an unswaggering iteration of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” and Frankel sounds really in his feelings about it:
Can’t believe what I said
Good as new
Good as dead
Silent auction in the back of the room
Don’t happen too often and it just couldn’t happen too soon
We’re making this harder than it used to be
It’s true
Don’t get us started, don’t start with me
Two icons of 20th-century American culture adorn Work’s cover. The first is a piece by the crucial conceptual artist Agnes Denes, documenting what she reaped in convincing the Public Arts Fund to let her grow two acres of wheat in the landfill that once lay between the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty. The second is the logo of West End Records, Mel Cheren’s disco label that, while Denes was plowing and sowing, was hard at work releasing holy queer scripture like Loose Joints’ “Is It All Over My Face?” and other tracks that expanded the possibilities of dance music, like the filter-dub fantasia of Betty LaVette’s “Doin’ the Best That I Can.”
It takes nerve and good taste to conscript those auras. It takes some kind of chutzpah to leave the closest thing the 2000s had to a West End, DFA, in order to convince West End itself to relaunch. And it is a goddamn public service to convince the very inventor of the remix, Tom Moulton, to work his magic on one of your tracks, “Anxious,” then put it out on a 12" benefiting GMHC and LIFEbeat in honor of Cheren, who died of AIDS in 2007. Especially when the remix—as breezy as a Sound Signature boot, as witty and wise as Róisín Murphy’s epics—embodies the sound Holy Ghost! insist they will not stop chasing, and when closer “Escape from Los Angeles” proves the duo can still can catch it. But too often on Work, Holy Ghost! mostly sound like they resent not being allowed to go out and play. What’s stopping them?
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-06-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-06-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | West End | June 24, 2019 | 6.8 | 3c009d99-0e15-4dfd-8600-22fe695d897a | Jesse Dorris | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-dorris/ | |
The Tennessee rapper’s latest four-song EP is a concentrated burst of energy with perfectly paced flows and a vibe that’s always ready for the dancefloor. | The Tennessee rapper’s latest four-song EP is a concentrated burst of energy with perfectly paced flows and a vibe that’s always ready for the dancefloor. | Bbymutha: Cherrytape EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bbymutha-cherrytape-ep/ | Cherrytape EP | For someone who announced her retirement last August, Brittnee Moore (aka Bbymutha, aka Bigmutha) has been putting out music at an amazing clip. She returned in October with “Idiedtoday,” and she’s since released a string of four EPs, each stronger than the last. Cherrytape, the latest of these, is her hardest hitting, most focused project to date.
Muthaland, Moore’s 2020 full-length debut and farewell to hip-hop (if only for two months), was a universe in itself, but it lacked a gravitational center. In its 62 minutes and 25 tracks—20 songs and five skits—there are barely any weak spots and an abundance of standouts: “Dream Sequence,” “11:11,” “Drowning Pool,” and “Pink Poop Emoji” among the best of them. But much like its fun yet forgettable recurring frame—a game show “from the fiery depths of hell”—the record is more a collage of anecdotes than an arcing narrative.
Moore takes the opposite approach on Cherrytape. At four tracks and just over 10 minutes long, it’s as succinct as Muthaland is sprawling. Her flow is perfectly paced, and she delivers every line so confidently in her comfy Tennessee drawl that her self-esteem becomes contagious. Moore’s lyrical prowess was never in question, but she’s particularly sharp here, whether she’s being metaphorical (“He gon’ slit his wrist on my thorns tryna water my rose”), cathartic (“I just wanna go outside and shake it on a rainy day”), or just horny (“He know when I bounce it I buss it/He shakin’, he cummin’, we kissin’ and cussin’”). She’s playfully repetitive on the clubby refrain of “Eatcherrysoda!!!” (“My back hurtin’, my skirt too tight/My booty bouncin’ from the left to the right”), and self-referential on “Indian Hair (Better Install),” a remodeled version of one of her earliest cult hits.
Rock Floyd—the Vegas-born, Chattanooga-raised, Atlanta-based DJ and multi-instrumentalist who’s credited on nearly all of Moore’s EPs and who co–executive produced Muthaland—deserves much of the praise for Cherrytape’s futuristic, free-flowing sound. In their years of collaboration, this is the first of Moore’s projects Floyd has handled alone, and his constant presence creates a cohesion absent in her previous work.
Moore has always had a preternatural knack for party music, but this is her first project that’s dancefloor-approved all the way through. The beat on “Rainyday:)” sounds like something Drain Gang producer Whitearmor might make if he’d split his childhood between Stockholm and the South Side of Chicago. “Indian Hair (Better Install)” has a deep funk synth straight from the UK, and “Eatcherrysoda!!!” takes that sound back to its Midwestern roots, setting it to a footwork drumline that draws on the same raw materials.
Despite the geographically diverse elements of Floyd’s production, it’s automatically, subconsciously apparent that these beats come from the same well. The drum sounds stay constant across tracks, and the arrangements have a tongue-in-cheek quality that makes each instrumental feel like it’s letting you in on a new inside joke. Never is this truer than on Cherrytape’s last and best track, “Wrist.” The beat sets up a satire of Soulja Boy’s production on “Crank That,” which Floyd drives home by adding some well-placed background “yuuuuuuus” to the mix shortly after Zelooperz, the EP’s only guest performer other than Moore’s young daughter, name-checks Soulja Boy directly in his verse.
Bbymutha and Zelooperz—the Detroit-based Danny Brown protégé who’s stepped out of his mentor’s shadow in the past few years and self-released a strong album of his own last month—had already joined forces over Rock Floyd’s production once on Muthaland and again on Muthalificent 2, both times to great effect. Their sounds are drastically different, but they share a rebellious streak that’s led them both to reject hip-hop’s norms. On “Wrist.,” Bbymutha’s even-tempered flow and Zelooperz’s wild delivery are perfect foils, as are her gritty, realist tales and his madcap, post-modern declarations. Floyd bridges the gap between their seemingly opposite styles, injecting his own personality in a way that both enhances the dissonance and makes it less jarring.
Given how arduous Moore found the making of Muthaland, her recent bite-sized tapes have been perfect outlets for her continued growth and experimentation. Cherrytape is a concentrated burst of energy, evidence of her continued dedication to the craft she almost abandoned less than a year ago.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-08-19T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-08-19T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | The Muthaboard | August 19, 2021 | 7.5 | 3c042aa6-497c-4827-adc0-83a6e1464613 | Raphael Helfand | https://pitchfork.com/staff/raphael-helfand/ | |
After a six-year hiatus, the Chicago math-rock-turned-pop-rock act returns with a deceptively upbeat album inspired by the death of singer-guitarist Dave Davison’s father. | After a six-year hiatus, the Chicago math-rock-turned-pop-rock act returns with a deceptively upbeat album inspired by the death of singer-guitarist Dave Davison’s father. | Maps & Atlases: Lightlessness Is Nothing New | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/maps-and-atlases-lightlessness-is-nothing-new/ | Lightlessness Is Nothing New | For a band whose name denotes tools used to find and be found, Maps & Atlases seem more fascinated by absence and its aftermath. Across their debut album, 2010’s Perch Patchwork, and its follow-up, 2012’s Beware and Be Grateful, the Chicago math-rock-turned-pop-rock band examined the loss of love, youth, and even self using polyrhythms and muscular fretwork. If the exploration was going to be layered, so, too, would the music.
On their first album in six years, Lightlessness Is Nothing New, the band tackles a different kind of absence: the death of a parent. In 2012, singer and guitarist Dave Davison lost his father and began working through that ordeal as a solo artist, after Maps & Atlases ebbed toward a natural, if unofficial, hiatus. Eventually, however, he turned to drummer Chris Hainey and bassist Shiraz Dada to help flesh out what he’d written. (Guitarist Erin Elders made an official exit in 2015 to concentrate on his band Wedding Dress.)
Now a trio, Maps & Atlases connect the roller-coaster guitar fretting and weighted timbres of their earlier albums with frenetic synth touches. In addition to working with their longtime producer Jason Cupp, they brought in Scott Solter (the Mountain Goats, Okkervil River), who pushed their sound further in the direction of pop-rock and streamlined the band’s tendency toward striation. The polished result is their most accessible album to date, touching on Peter Gabriel’s fizzy pop proclivities and reaching for TV on the Radio’s early grandness.
Even though it was set in motion by death, it’s reductive to understand Lightlessness as an album solely about grief and its lapping wake. Where grief is conspicuous, the band dramatizes it as a tug of war between Davison’s dour, diaristic lyricism and their coruscating melodies. Standout “Fall Apart” finds the trio working together to create a staccato beat that enlivens the song's stifling imagery. Gloomy thoughts aren’t always best served by gloomy sounds.
More often, the band explores the confusing and confining ways a person’s absence can transform a dialogue into a monologue. Throughout Maps & Atlases’ catalog, Davison has often held conversations with friends or lovers who have moved on. But the singular loss of his father brings him face-to-face with larger doubts. An astute lyricist capable of bending a phrase to his whimsical metaphors, Davison moves away from that density and creates his own echo chamber on Lightlessness. “Ringing Bell,” “Learn How to Swim,” and “Fog and the Fall” run red with repetition, as Davison’s vocals race along at a manic clip, underscored by sinewy synths and nimble guitar fretwork. “Where do we go?” he repeats on the latter.
Davison doesn’t concern himself with finding answers because the questions he poses are not meant to end in understanding. On “Violet Threaded,” a song that invokes both Gotye and Gabriel, he sings, “We dug our histories in the mud/And then a crescent smirked across the stars and gave it all a name.” Meaning becomes random after events that shatter everything we think we know about the world. “We might never find love/We might never find life here,” Davison notes in the chorus. The only certainty in life is uncertainty, but that doesn’t make the march forward any easier. The ten tracks on Lightlessness nestle into that discomforting truth.
Uncertainty eventually transforms into self-doubt as the album progresses. Closer “Wrong Kind of Magic” pangs with the revelation that the absence of a central force in Davison’s life mirrors some larger absence in himself. One of the record’s slower songs, it winds and weaves toward lament, concluding with the declaration, “Sometimes I can’t see what life there might be/Sometimes I can’t see beyond the flood.” It’s not just that Davison isn’t sure meaning exists—it’s that, even if life does have a purpose, he doesn’t trust himself to find it. Without the dialogue he craves, he’s left asking “Am I doing this right?” but receiving no response.
Maps & Atlases have always dreamed big when it comes to their sound, and they infuse their third album with heady, melodic production that spotlights the complex experience of absence. More than focusing on a lack, though, Lightlessness Is Nothing New captures how absence can become a radiating presence that infiltrates and upends every aspect of life. | 2018-06-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-06-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Barsuk | June 9, 2018 | 7 | 3c04bf5c-c258-40fb-87d9-ad7688e206b1 | Amanda Wicks | https://pitchfork.com/staff/amanda-wicks/ | |
Shabazz Palaces’ Sub Pop debut Black Up breathed indelible soul into the Seattle duo’s formidable style, but the duo of Ishmael Butler and Tendai Maraire have since decamped to parts unknown. Lese Majesty boasts 18 songs grouped into seven suites, with a subtle science fiction theme; if that sounds proggy, get used to it. | Shabazz Palaces’ Sub Pop debut Black Up breathed indelible soul into the Seattle duo’s formidable style, but the duo of Ishmael Butler and Tendai Maraire have since decamped to parts unknown. Lese Majesty boasts 18 songs grouped into seven suites, with a subtle science fiction theme; if that sounds proggy, get used to it. | Shabazz Palaces: Lese Majesty | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19631-shabazz-palaces-lese-majesty/ | Lese Majesty | Shabazz Palaces’ Sub Pop debut Black Up breathed indelible soul into the Seattle duo’s formidable style, an assemblage of chaotic grooves that spun out, pivoted on a crafty turn, and hightailed it home along the back roads. The 2011 album cut former Digable Planets member Ishmael Butler’s opaque mysticism loose on a palette of intricate, dreamy soundscapes provided by resident producer Tendai Maraire, sacrificing traditional songwriting conventions like verses and choruses to sojourn to rap’s frayed edges. Ish’s musings on love resonated in their leveraging of heady imagery with wizened world-weariness; his songs triumphed in their arrangement of familiar ideas into peculiar shapes.
Rather than mining Black Up’s fertile retrofuturist boom-bap further, the group have since decamped to parts unknown. The duo’s latest album Lese Majesty boasts 18 songs grouped into seven suites, with a subtle science fiction theme. If that sounds a bit Close to the Edge, get used to it. Lese Majesty aims to free the group’s songwriting apparatus from its trademark purposefulness, to chart a course that zags where earlier work zoomed. While the opening suite “The Phasing Shift” leads with three straight cuts in the spirit and form of Black Up, the record doesn't stay in one place for long. From the moment “They Come in Gold” fades into the undulating drone of “Solemn Swears”, it's clear that, for the duo, space is the place.
The “Touch & Agree” suite is a good primer for what to expect from Lese Majesty. “Solemn Swears” builds on a bed of synth pulses and a playful riff from Ish before collapsing into “Harem Aria”, a disorienting romp whose upbeat never hits where it’s supposed to. “Harem” becomes “Noetic Noiromantics”, which peels a few layers back to tease a hook out of the maelstrom only to dissipate as quickly as it congealed. Lese’s individual tracks aren’t so much songs as ramshackle ideas subject to crumble or explode into something unfamiliar at a moment’s notice. The passage through these movements feels like an itinerant drift, a conscious rejection of the methodical drive of its predecessor.
Lese’s moves aren’t always subtle, though; the album gets shiftier as it progresses, dispensing with the comfort of thematic unity. The run from “#CAKE” to “Mind Glitch Keytar Theme” flies through tribal drum vamps, Miami bass, horror soundtrack synths, and a frayed 190 BPM house workout in just a few minutes, ramping up the intensity before easing off it with the album closing chillout suite “Murkings on the Oxblood Starway”. This is a producer’s album, constructed to showcase a versatile sound architecture the same way Black Up highlighted Ish’s way with words.
Sometimes that means Ish's vocals are a tool in the production arsenal, distorted and distended rhythmic elements instead of guiding points. In Lese’s more erratic passages, Ish is content to toy around with an intriguing turn of phrase instead of unfurling the impressionistic poetry that electrified Black Up, but that doesn’t mean this is just an assortment of chants and sketches; Ishmael’s showcases are a grounding force for a body of songs fixated on the cosmos.
“Lèse-majesté” is a capital crime in stricter monarchic societies that loosely translates to "the offending of royalty." It's an appropriate title for the network of verses Ishmael presents here, which glibly taunt the kings of the modern rap mainstream for slacking on the job. Questioned about Shabazz Palaces' overarching purpose in a recent NPR interview, Ish retorted, "Make no mistake, this is an attack," and cuts like "Suspicion of a Shape" ("All you guys are quantized") and “...down 155th in the MCM Snorkel" (“The type of MC you’d be back then is ‘sucka’”) are rife with bile for feted lesser talents.
Similar to recent albums by the Roots and Common, Lese Majesty is an Armageddon-esque suicide mission to crash into rap's consciousness in hopes of tipping it away from a dangerous path. While its peers have set about their objectives this year with a staunch, unblinking seriousness of purpose, Ish is more forgiving. The Rucker reminiscence "...down 155th in the MCM Snorkel" recalls the days of doorknocker earrings, Dapper Dan suits, and fair ones without pining for a time machine or hawking staid old school invective. These aren’t condescending “Real Hip-Hop” platitudes: this is a call to arms for hip-hop’s creative fringe to snatch the reins from a power structure more interested in self-preservation than the advancement of the culture. The soul of Shabazz Palaces is pairing next-gen sounds with classic brass-tacks show-and-prove emceeing, and Lese Majesty tugs those extremes as far as they've ever been pulled; that it never shows signs of wear speaks to the strength of the bond. | 2014-07-28T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2014-07-28T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Sub Pop | July 28, 2014 | 8.2 | 3c081143-fa3a-4134-93aa-96ad855df00b | Craig Jenkins | https://pitchfork.com/staff/craig-jenkins/ | null |
Taken from his first two post-Buffalo Springfield solo acoustic concerts, Neil Young's new archival material finds the singer locating his voice-- which, even at 23, sounded weathered and experienced. | Taken from his first two post-Buffalo Springfield solo acoustic concerts, Neil Young's new archival material finds the singer locating his voice-- which, even at 23, sounded weathered and experienced. | Neil Young: Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12497-sugar-mountain-live-at-canterbury-house-1968/ | Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968 | Neil Young has always sounded simultaneously young and old. His creaky voice conveys innocence, but it also feels wise and nostalgic, as if its fault lines developed over centuries. That's why, in his mid-twenties, Young could get away with singing that he was a lot like an old man-- it sure sounded like the truth. On most of Young's recordings, the balance between age and youth skews toward the former. He experienced so much so early-- reaching success at age 21 with Buffalo Springfield, then quickly launching a prolific solo career-- that wisdom was branded on him immediately. By the time people even knew who Young was, he sounded more like a wily veteran than a green youngster.
Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968 offers a chance to hear Young with the scales tipped the other direction. It's taken from his first two post-Buffalo Springfield solo acoustic concerts, performed in a ministry on the University of Michigan campus. Unheard until now, these shows have gained legend due to one song from them, "Sugar Mountain", popping up on B-sides and the Decade compilation. Made just weeks before the release of his self-titled debut and only a few days short of his 23rd birthday, this recording reveals an eager, nervous version of Young-- a version that existed briefly, soon gone in the flash of his subsequent solo success.
Not that he was uncomfortable on stage. Young had played to bigger crowds as part of Buffalo Springfield, whose success he gently mocks in between songs, scoffing at their huge amps and, as he puts it, "ra-ta-ta-ta" stage act. But he had yet to prove himself alone, and the weight of a public solo debut adds a little more quiver to his voice, a little more self-deprecation to his rambling stories.
In fact, Young was reportedly terrified, in part because he feared he didn't have enough material to sustain a full performance. Of the 13 songs included here, nearly half were previously recorded with Buffalo Springfield. To compensate, Young fills each gap with jittery, candid banter. "Nothing I say up here is a lie," he claims with a stutter. "I never ever have told a lie onstage." His true stories are consistently endearing, covering everything from taking "diet pills" to get through his previous life as a bookstore clerk, to writing Buffalo Springfield songs while stuck at a diner at 4 a.m., to learning what residuals are and buying a classic car with them.
The songs on Sugar Mountain are delivered with similar earnestness and vulnerability. After an introducer admits that the audience is larger than expected, Young offers a fragile version of "On the Way Home", his timid chords and cracking voice besting the speedier version found on the final Buffalo Springfield album, Last Time Around. Later, he sings "The Loner" in a bashful near-whisper, and the delicate guitar of "If I Could Have Her Tonight" alternates between approach and retreat. As things progress, Young's confidence grows, culminating in the "The Old Laughing Lady", which hits a rushing peak of forceful strums.
Musically, Sugar Mountain isn't Young's best live solo album. On that count, it's outshined by another recent archival release, the Massey Hall performance that happened three years later, and sounds much bolder and wider-ranging. But as a portrait of this ageless artist as a truly young man, Sugar Mountain is an invaluable document-- and a pretty compelling one, too. | 2008-12-05T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2008-12-05T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | Reprise | December 5, 2008 | 8 | 3c0f7978-a142-47a5-9b55-a8db41811a43 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
On his fifth album, executive-produced by Q-Tip, Danny Brown ascends to a sort of hip-hop classicist nirvana and remains one of the most inventive and dimensional rappers working today. | On his fifth album, executive-produced by Q-Tip, Danny Brown ascends to a sort of hip-hop classicist nirvana and remains one of the most inventive and dimensional rappers working today. | Danny Brown: uknowhatimsayin¿ | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/danny-brown-uknowhatimsayin/ | uknowhatimsayin¿ | Danny Brown’s breakout album came the year he turned 30. Now that he’s closing in on 40, he doesn’t seem to be settling into an elder-statesman role; judging by his new album uknowhatimsayin¿, he hasn’t settled at all. “Never look back, I will never change up,” he chants repeatedly on the first song—a vow to never let a groove become a rut, to stay the same without repeating yourself. It’s a lonely sort of promise, but it’s one that he’s kept: He remains as defiantly hard to situate now in the rap landscape today as he was in 2011.
Back then, he was ostentatiously weird, a gap-toothed Detroit rapper with a hyena voice who forever altered the smell and taste of Cool Ranch Doritos, a weirdo fashion plate back when something as mild as skinny jeans could cost you a label deal. Now that he looks like an original X-Man to SoundCloud rap’s New Mutants, he’s still an outlier: His devotion to punchlines and similes makes him sound almost rigid in the melted, borderless landscape of current rap. But this is the joy and pain of being a three-dimensional human in your records, over and over again; if you do it correctly, you’ll never quite fit in anywhere, ever.
When he announced that Q-Tip was going to executive-produce his new album, he reaffirmed that he was a classicist at heart, an old-school formalist in freak’s clothing. They are an odd pairing, The Abstract and The Hybrid; Q-Tip’s music has always felt comfortable and lived-in—wipe your feet on the rug, relax yourself, please settle down. His aesthetic is built on leaving space while figuring out how to make the quietest sound the most interesting one. Danny Brown’s most compelling music, meanwhile, has usually felt ready to leap out of its own skin, full of scraped nerves, nosebleeds, migraines, grinding teeth.
Working with Tip, Brown doesn’t tone his style down so much as modulate it, dotting his voice across these tracks like wasabi blobs. He mostly forgoes the downward-spiral theatrics of 2016’s Atrocity Exhibition and 2013’s Old, opting for punchlines and vivid images and creative cadences—trace over the jagged rhyme patterns of a song like “Negro Spiritual” and you might prick your finger. He stagger-steps around the looped guitar so nimbly it might escape your notice that he rhymes “on par,” “rental car,” “centaur,” and “Pat Benatar” within one 20-second gulp of breath.
Brown usually lunges out of beats, but here melts into them, making himself just another bright leaping dot on a cartoon assembly line. Individual production credits come from longtime collaborator Paul White, JPEGMAFIA, Flying Lotus, and Q-Tip himself, who coaxes and calms these nervy beats into a free-flowing suite, full of irregular rhythms and snipped edges. The snare snap on JPEG’s “3 Tearz” hits either a half-second later or sooner than you expect, prompting the loosest and most unpredictable verses from Killer Mike and El-P in years. Q-Tip’s own “Dirty Laundry” basically loops a full minute of “Aurora Spinray,” a quivering instrumental from the early-’70s psychedelic group Syrinx, and destabilizes the rhythm so much that listening to it feels walking across a waterbed.
These are the kinds of tactile pleasures uknowhatimsayin¿ offers. Brown has never sounded more musical, natural, or locked-in. He reels off quotable lines everywhere; “Henny got me wetter than whale piss/I’mma die for this shit like Elvis” from “Combat” is a particularly rich one, as is, “I ignore a whore like an email from LinkedIn” from “Savage Nomad.” Structurally, at least, he’s a punchline rapper, and from this angle, producing him might not be that different from producing a happy pugilist like Phife Dawg, who similarly wanted to fill whatever small container he was given with the maximum amount of his personality. As he trades bars with Tip over the trilling horn loop on “Combat Zone,” it sounds like Brown has ascended to a sort of hip-hop classicist nirvana, a place where every kick drum lands just-so, every sample clears effortlessly, every loop cuts off exactly where it should.
If there’s anything missing from uknowhatimsayin¿, it’s a sense of mortal stakes, a feeling that this music matters to Brown on a gut level. His best music has always been overwhelmingly personal, and when he declared that he would be the “greatest rapper ever” on XXX’s “30,” the implication was that he might die if he failed. It is an unqualified good thing that he is not rapping about suicidal thoughts, depression, isolation, and drug abuse anymore, but whatever else is in his head is missing. There is no moment where Brown grabs your lapels and demands you to feel what he’s feeling, whatever it may be. He has called uknowhatimsayin¿ his “standup comedy album,” and the mastery on display is that of the comic going out there and killing. But the best-loved and most enduring comedians left their own blood out on the stage, too.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-10-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-10-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Warp | October 7, 2019 | 8.1 | 3c185ec4-88c0-47f8-be3a-3a7b7c60248f | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | |
Read Dominique Leone’s review of the album. | Read Dominique Leone’s review of the album. | Animal Collective: Sung Tongs | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/191-sung-tongs/ | Sung Tongs | At the break in “Winters Love,” from Animal Collective’s feral, sentimental Sung Tongs, when the guitar picks up and Avey Tare and Panda Bear’s voices flail like children who know they’ll never die, it occurs to me that youth isn’t always wasted on the young. This is an old cliche, about how kids can never really appreciate the finer aspects of immaturity—in fact, it’s their immaturity and naivete that all the gray adults crave like zombies. It’s a child’s lack of self-conscience and “common sense” that make them holy, just as it’s an adult’s knowledge of their own mortality that makes them a little bit dead. However, even if the sickly, aching adults might long for days spent wasting precious time and forgetting precious lessons, most of them wouldn’t turn back the clock if given the chance. Youth isn’t wasted on the young at all, because only kids on holiday could afford to leave their hearts exposed for so long, to sing as loudly and to take so much for granted. Rather, wisdom is wasted on the old.
Since their first release, Brooklyn’s Animal Collective have soundtracked the surreal, manic experience of “immature” euphoria. In fact, the Tare/Bear duo responsible for Sung Tongs is the same that issued 2000’s Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished, a singular, idiosyncratic take on fairy tale folk and starchild pop. Fairy tales and star-children: These are impressions of “The Beyond” for imaginative children, and it’s this mentality that Animal Collective explore and evoke. It might seem whimsical or silly, but only in the sense that these perceptions are the birthrights of all children, and this band have such facility with their musical environment that they manage to turn something primal into something almost timeless. Rather, grace is wasted on the elegant.
Unlike last year’s impressive Here Comes the Indian, Sung Tongs opts for folky ambience and late-night, summer camp sing-alongs to carry the weight (or weightlessness) of its strains. Campfire Songs, which followed Here Comes the Indian, suggested a similar kind of sprawling, communal minstrel-craft, but without much of Sung Tongs’ flair for soaring melody and delicate, buoyant pace. As it happens, the last third of the new record does return to more of an open-ended, exploratory rote, but there it seems less a part of an endless ballad than the comedown from scenes of a jungle almost too fantastic to imagine. And despite its eclecticism and relatively Dadaist leanings, Sung Tongs is a romantic album; romantic in its celebration of innocence and nonsensical shared knowledge, and the sweet, trusted idea that everything will be fine—as if it hadn’t always been.
Musically, Animal Collective sound more “pop” here than they ever have, which is to say most of the songs have clear melodies that beg to be doubled and tripled by you or anyone else who cares to join. In songs like “Leaf House,” “Winters Love,” and “College,” the duo stake a direct claim to the ideal American folk of the Beach Boys and Simon & Garfunkel, as their harmonies are pure, without suggesting perfection. As Tare and Bear leap over each other in wordless, sparkler-trail counterpoint, I think about the already-gone ambitions of “Cabinessence” and Smiley Smile. However, as Brian Wilson’s visions were damaged symphonies to God, Animal Collective don’t stop down long enough to mire in the dust left behind.
“Who Could Win a Rabbit” revels in a thousand parts of some giant timepiece, as the pair of delirious children slide over screws into a bright green den of gears. The acoustic guitar rings in the start of this race with a fanfare, major chord strum, and just after the chimes cheer in pandemonium, harmony vocals spit out as many syllables as possible to describe who knows what country fair, bread-and-butter game. Sometimes their voices cross, or fly so near each other for long stretches that what seems like intricate polyphony approaches unhinged, acrobatic maneuvering. Above all, a sense of overwhelming happiness at having discovered this strange place abounds.
Elsewhere, the music is more reflective. “The Softest Voice” layers clear-toned guitar figures upon each other, as Tare and Bear whisper in harmony above, as if singing to the vision peering back at them from the skin of a backwoods creek. The rustic, secretive manner of their voices and the barely disturbed forest around them suggests that whatever ghosts inhabit these woods are only too happy to oblige a lullaby or two. Likewise, the epic “Visiting Friends” gathers in faceless, mutated ghosts (i.e., oddly manipulated vocalizations from the duo) to hover over their dying fire in visage of nothing better than the tops of trees. The constant strumming moves alongside the voices, helping to keep them afloat, but never suggesting they should organize themselves into anything recognizable or predictable. It’s windy, and if it rains they’ll get wet and continue to play.
The ritual dance “We Tigers,” passing like a pagan baptism for children in war paint, gives way to a trilogy of almost formless ballads, beginning with the erratic hymn “Mouth Wooed Her.” Here, Animal Collective, no longer satisfied to keep their enthusiasm in check via tribal drums or faintly Brazilian guitar figures, glide through scenes with impressionistic glee. Wordless coos and birdcalls light up the song, and the pair eases into their narrative with wispy, echoed melodies, before running into each other headfirst and pouncing on their guitars like real savages. This is how Sung Tongs communicates; in place of organized chaos, there are chance meetings and reunions, and plenty of celebratory dances and momentary epiphanies. In truth, it may be too much for some people to take, especially if they’re too far removed from this strange environment. For others, it’s a wonderful place, as these guides know only too well. | 2004-05-02T01:00:01.000-04:00 | 2004-05-02T01:00:01.000-04:00 | Experimental | FatCat | May 2, 2004 | 8.9 | 3c24136d-c2e6-4890-a3f9-eaa8ef09fce3 | Dominique Leone | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dominique-leone/ | |
Dave Grohl gives himself over to arena-sized grief, reckoning, and resolve on the band’s most propulsive and purposeful music of the last two decades. | Dave Grohl gives himself over to arena-sized grief, reckoning, and resolve on the band’s most propulsive and purposeful music of the last two decades. | Foo Fighters: But Here We Are | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/foo-fighters-but-here-we-are/ | But Here We Are | Dave Grohl opens the 11th Foo Fighters album with a realization: “It came in a flash/It came out of nowhere/It happened so fast/And then it was over.” The line likely refers to the shocking death of beloved, longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins in 2022, or possibly the quiet passing, several months later, of Grohl’s mother, Virginia, at the age of 84. For some, death is not for singing about or making into art, those selfish little pursuits that turn pain inward, where it cannot be transformed into the substance of a mass healing ritual. For the Foo Fighters, it is for the Kia Forum, for Wembley Stadium.
Acknowledge this, and the pivot from eulogy to the pure rock’n’roll revivalism of “Rescued” feels inevitable and life-affirming. Whether or not people thought of Hawkins when they heard the song on the radio, “Rescued” must also acknowledge its purpose as the starting gun for Foo Fighters’ marathon live show for the next three years. “I’m just waiting to be rescued, we’re all waiting to be rescued tonight!” Grohl shouts in his indefatigable growl. Bono might endlessly roam the desert and Bruce might drive until there’s no road left in search of spiritual deliverance, but Foo Fighters are more practical and efficient—most of us have work in the morning.
But Here We Are does not change the Foo Fighters’ aesthetic in any meaningful way; it is not their grave, lonely album about loss. Rather, the most impressive thing about the album is how death is gracefully absorbed into this long-running franchise to reinvigorate the band. The album matches its tragic, highly public circumstances with the band’s most propulsive and purposeful music of the last two decades—a burned-out Christmas display that illuminates the entire neighborhood after someone finally finds the missing bulb.
“My Hero,” the most enduring anthem of the “Everlong”-era Foos, is the template upon which the near entirety of But Here We Are is based. And though spiritually that song channels the memory of Grohl’s former bandmate Kurt Cobain, its legacy lies more in how people have transposed “My Hero” onto their parents, 9/11 first responders, high school football highlights, buddy cop comedies, and Dragon Ball Z montages. It’s a populist anthem so broad and undeniable that it got co-opted by a Republican campaign, prompting the band’s own, more modest explanation of the song as “a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential.”
And throughout But Here We Are, this eternal pitch of humility and generosity is like the threat of the bus going below 50 miles per hour in Speed—as sure as “getting colder” rhymes with “over my shoulder,” as sure as an A-E-D chord progression signifies power-pop, Grohl steers Foo Fighters away from the maudlin and insular, offering earnest hope, fond reminiscence, and skyscraping choruses as if the band’s continued existence depended on it, because it almost certainly does. “Wouldn’t it be dangerous/If nothing was restraining us?” Grohl screams on the truly aggro outlier “Nothing at All,” though Greg Kurstin’s reliably cushy production keeps the band in a padded rage room. “Under You,” an MTV Buzz Bin throwback fizzy enough to sustain an entirely new set of Footos commercials, is as specific as things get: “Pictures of us sharing songs and cigarettes/This is how I’ll always picture you,” Grohl sighs, because my hero—my bandmate, my friend—he’s ordinary.
For the band themselves, “Under You” is a means of connecting with the naivete of their 1995 self-titled debut, coming full circle while acknowledging the distance en route. There’s no honest way to recreate the guileless genre-hopping of Foo Fighters, so But Here We Are puts a charming spin on the band’s current status as a benevolent rock conglomerate—the Foo Fighters’ starting lineup has expanded to include former members of Sunny Day Real Estate, the Germs, the Wallflowers and, with the addition of Josh Freese, nearly every legacy rock band of the past 30 years. It’s still MOR, but there are more lanes than ever on the sonic highway, and fewer detours into cartoon metal and unconvincing funk. “Show Me How” is a welcome return to the shimmering shoegaze Grohl hinted at on “X-Static,” exchanging a zonked-out Greg Dulli for the sympathetic harmonies of daughter Violet Grohl. Whereas the Cure tended to keep their arena rock and frosty post-punk separate, “Hearing Voices” evokes both within four minutes. The fractious title track is probably what major label A&Rs heard in their head while handing six-figure deals to Jawbox and Shudder to Think.
Yet these all feel like prelude to the final two songs of But Here We Are, which cement the album as the most inspired Foo Fighters record in recent memory. If the first eight tracks serve as Foo Fighters’ Back in Black—reacting to unthinkable tragedy with a blustery reiteration of formula—“The Teacher” and “Rest” are their Wish You Were Here. Taking up nearly a third of the 48-minute runtime, both are sincerely moving outpourings of grief and empathy for a lost soul, albeit without Pink Floyd’s withering cynicism towards the music industry and its complicity. Though Foo Fighters covered “Have a Cigar” with Taylor Hawkins on vocals, there’s no way they’d ever write a song like that themselves.
The circumstances around Hawkins’ death are profoundly sad and messy, and bring up a lot of uncomfortable questions about ambition, addiction, and the utter lack of meaningful mental health support for artists, even at the upper echelons of the music industry. These questions are perhaps best answered by organizing and policy changes, and not within the lines of a Foo Fighters song. Because what the band does best is honor a dear friend by turning a crowd of 90,000 into a puddle of joyous tears over the span of six hours. Maybe “Rest” would’ve been just as convincing had it remained a stool-bound acoustic ballad, but when it bursts into distortion halfway through, Foo Fighters acknowledge that, even as a set closer, it will probably be followed by “Monkey Wrench” or “I’ll Stick Around” in the first encore.
The one phrase that sticks with me the most owes to a tossed-off conjunction. Grohl sings: “I gave you my heart, but here we are,” which feels less accurate than if he sang, “I gave you my heart, and here we are.” It’s a more honest assessment of how this album is meant to be received—one man’s outpouring of grief, shared at the same altar as their triumphs. | 2023-06-05T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2023-06-05T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Roswell / RCA | June 5, 2023 | 7 | 3c242985-f4a5-41b8-98ae-984972b191d5 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
Tink is a teenage singer and rapper from the south Chicago suburb of Calumet City who has put out four mixtapes of varying tone and quality since early 2012. She stakes out a distinctively young, female voice whether she's expressing the frustration of dealing with flaky lovers or playing at and winning that boys' rap game of pretending you're a drug kingpin. | Tink is a teenage singer and rapper from the south Chicago suburb of Calumet City who has put out four mixtapes of varying tone and quality since early 2012. She stakes out a distinctively young, female voice whether she's expressing the frustration of dealing with flaky lovers or playing at and winning that boys' rap game of pretending you're a drug kingpin. | Tink: Winter's Diary 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18979-tink-winters-diary-2/ | Winter's Diary 2 | This winter marks two full years of Chicago hip-hop attracting national attention. During this period, many people have been eager to assign the city a clear narrative, from the half-dozen or so documentary film crews that have stopped through to the pundits who use Chicago rappers as part of their rhetorical agenda. And while one consistent narrative has emerged—Chicago rap is violent!—the scene has evolved rapidly and dramatically. It's now marked by a fragmented patchwork of genres, microgenres, and individual artist movements—drill, bop, soul trap, acid rap, alternative trap, several types of waves and waviness—that have defied or redefined the narrative completely.
Among the artists who have most resisted easy categorization is Tink, the teenage singer and rapper from the south suburb of Calumet City who has put out four mixtapes of varying tone and quality since early 2012. Her first effort, Winter's Diary, made when she was a junior in high school, introduced her as a sort of potential long-lost member of TLC (never mind that she hadn't even been born during the group's breakout years), a talented, soft-voiced singer with an ear for contemporary rap and an astute emotional awareness. But her first glimpse of success came that summer with the brash, clever rap of “Fingers Up”. Eager to show she was a double threat, Tink then put out Alter Ego, a mixtape full of technically adept but generic raps that, "Fingers Up" aside, abandoned much of the unique viewpoint and subject matter that made her such an immediately electrifying presence.
Playing around in the areas between these two poles has helped Tink retain an edge of unpredictability and cater to a broad audience: She's proved her rap bona fides over and over with surgically precise verses like last summer's widely acclaimed “Versace” freestyle. She's shored up her Chicago credibility through collaborations with Lil Durk and Sasha Go Hard and established herself as part of the wave of successors to drill music by aligning herself with hard-edged lyrical whiz kids Lil Herb and Lil Bibby. She's captured the attention of the internet's avant-garde, spawning collaborations with artists like producer collective Future Brown and New York rapper Junglepussy. And she's continued to stake out a distinctively young, female voice whether she's expressing the frustration of dealing with flaky lovers or playing at and winning that boys' rap game of pretending you're a drug kingpin.
Winter's Diary 2 doubles down on this last point, offering both the most clear-cut perspective and the most accomplished sound of any Tink release yet, delivered with casual charm and easy emotional honesty. The characters in Tink's songs navigate complicated, intimate, and frequently disappointing romantic relationships. They are overtly sexual—take “When It Rains”, a slinky celebration of riding out thunderstorms in bed, which borrows the kind of subject matter normally reserved for grown and sexy album cuts by artists in their 30s (but equally felt by younger people).
They also often find themselves butting up against the gendered expectations of a hip-hop and hustler culture. On the brilliant “Money Ova Everything”, Tink flips the title catchphrase into a couple's joint pursuit, a promise and ultimately a kind of lament. And the back-and-forth of “Talkin' About” with Lil Herb—its lyrical tradeoff and narrative welcome 1990s throwback trope dressed up in modern flows and production—finds a couple arguing about the effects of the guy spending time on the block on their relationship (“I buy my own Prada, man, that's not the problem!” Tink exasperatedly snarls at the suggestion of whose hustling is keeping things afloat). “Dirty Slang”, the clearest pop highlight with its twinkling, synth-driven beat and muscular, Auto-Tuned hook, is a triumphant and flirtatious celebration of a guy who likes hitting the strip club.
Tink's seamless blend of rapping and singing is likely to call to mind Drake or Lauryn Hill, who are similarly interested in dissecting relationships, but the closest sonic equivalent might be Elle Varner, whose taste for R&B laced with acoustic guitars is echoed here. Like all three, Tink has a strong instinct for finding the emotional core of modern crises. This strength is particularly clear when she's discussing heartbreak, as on the arresting, guitar-backed first single “Treat Me Like Somebody” or in the high, plaintive mantra of “please don't break my heart” on “Fight It”. But it also rings true in other contexts, like the romantic, artfully Auto-Tuned “Lullaby” or the carefully spit celebration of intimacy “Your Secrets.”
On the other hand, Tink's singing style, which is slight and breathy, lacks power, and her voice can grate when it gets stuck in the same groove for too long. This type of meandering R&B is fine for building a fan base, but it's almost resigned to always being a hit away from stardom. While Tink's choice in production is mostly smart and inoffensive, her skill set would be immensely well-served by collaborating with an A-list producer. And it would be a smart move for one to pair up with her, too. Not only does she have a strong and unique perspective, she has the willingness to write her own story that has helped Chicago's recent breakout stars defy the efforts at categorization and speak to a broad audience. A city's scene is made not so much by having many artists who stick to the same sound but by having many who break out of it, and Tink is a new voice doing exactly that. | 2014-01-30T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2014-01-30T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | self-released | January 30, 2014 | 7.6 | 3c2a9e46-94d2-48d7-9258-d7fc778b1745 | Kyle Kramer | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kyle-kramer/ | null |
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