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Following the massive UK success of their 2002 debut, Up the Bracket, Clash-fearing rockers The Libertines crashed and burned: Frontman ... | Following the massive UK success of their 2002 debut, Up the Bracket, Clash-fearing rockers The Libertines crashed and burned: Frontman ... | The Libertines: The Libertines | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/4771-the-libertines/ | The Libertines | Call this grossly irresponsible if you must, but short of dying in a plane crash, nothing says "rock star" quite like a public drug freakout. I'm not saying drugs are right for everybody-- kids, stay away from crack unless you think you've got a pretty good shot at getting famous-- but through the years, drug addiction has consistently remained the ultimate in-style rockcessory of all fashion's fickle vicissitudes. For the layperson, addiction may be a tragic, often painful disease; for rock stars, it's simply bolsters "mystique." Alright, I'm teasing, you got me. Addiction is pretty terrific for everyone.
Nevertheless, plenty has been made of Libertines frontman Pete Doherty's battle with crack, and I was fully prepared to not say another word-- right up until I realized that The Libertines' self-titled follow-up to 2002's Up the Bracket was indeed all about them and the interior struggles caused by Doherty's very public addiction. It's all a glitzy mess with a fair share less charm than the debut, and whether The Libertines is a wreck by design, or simply reflects the still-fractured state of the band in recovery, no one can say. All that's clear is that, once again, in the fishbowl of celebrity, addiction is being spun into a PR coup, a thing to be pitied, laughed at, cried at, forgiven, and ultimately used as just another excuse-- mostly for why this isn't a better album. The woes of drug use arise here at intervals, concluding with the romantic lament, "What became of the likely lads?/ What became of the dreams they had?" They signed with Sanctuary and released a slapdash second album; are you guys kidding me?
Considering the great heights this album occasionally reaches, it's a bit of a left-handed compliment to level the lone criticism that it seems hopelessly tossed-off. It's brilliant at points, exhibiting the casual, grimy grace that laced Up the Bracket through English countryside benders, sing-alongs, and pub anthems, but evidently, The Libertines are creatures of excess, and even a good thing can be overdone. Bands pull off "accidental genius" with more frequency than anyone has a right to expect-- Pavement founded an empire based on it-- but even if The Libertines are more hits than misses here, it still takes a little more than slurred speech and sloppy guitars to drive this act home.
Instead of lending the skiffling, slightly skewed rhythms a special air of irreverence, or making the occasionally off-key barbershop caterwaul sound a little sweeter, as on Up the Bracket, The Libertines' half-assed effort here produces half-assed results. Insouciance paid dividends for them in 2002 as they thumbed their noses at rock, dub, folk, and every other genre in arm's reach, but if you can possibly imagine it, that shambling style-blender was actually tighter then, both in terms of songwriting and cohesiveness.
The only issue here is one of investment (or possibly a calculated lack thereof), since little seems to have outwardly changed, except perhaps Doherty's singing. To his credit, his vocal resemblance to Julian Casablancas is downplayed, as he instead opts to rely on his considerable natural vocal character over needless imitation, but with that, so goes the one polished instrument The Libertines had at their disposal. Carl Barât still has a stranglehold on Joe Strummer's uber-Cockney accent, and puts it to good use in the rowdy, fuck-all fashion that's expected, if sometimes too effectively (see: the staggering, raucously incoherent rant of "Don't Be Shy"); but when Doherty goes on to slosh his own path through the impossibly English "Narcissist" ("Wouldn't it be nice to be Dorian Gray/ Just for a day?"-- that's Oscar Freakin' Wilde, folks), the vocal contrast between the two becomes conspicuous in its absence.
But what the hell, even "Narcissist" is still a riot. The worst that can ever be said of this album is that if it suffers from an excess of half-formed ideas, or a lack of effort (even if a little extra elbow grease could've made some otherwise marginal songs much, much better), it's because they're too busy having fun, asshole. The one thing The Libertines excel at without qualification is pure entertainment; they may not be masters of any of the styles they crazily flirt with, or even possibly talented enough to produce the craftsmanship this album begs for at points, but they string genres together so readily and wildly that it's tempting to allow one's self to be swept away in barrage and just have a great time in the face of other shortcomings. You're just lucky that someone was diligent enough to resist all the fun this album promises and point them out for you; if not, you might hear the quiet call-and-response of "Can't Stand Me Now" or the infectious groove-stomp of "Campaign of Hate" or any of the myriad other relentlessly enjoyable moments on this album and forget that The Libertines aren't trying very hard. Boo.
Okay, you caught me, I'm kidding; The Libertines is a charge. But it does still seem unfortunate that The Libertines don't more frequently reach the heights at which their music frequently hints here: The echoing chords and free-form trumpet of the sprawling sea shanty "The Man Who Would Be King" best exemplify The Libertines' lack of stylistic allegiance. Barely more than a string of "la-la-la"'s and a chorus, the lightning riffs and hollow, dramatic spaces still kick sand in the faces of the rest of the album cuts. The song is outdone only by the incomparable solo on "The Ha Ha Wall"-- indescribably brief, bright, evocative, and maybe the single finest moment The Libertines will ever lay to tape-- and "Music When the Lights Go Out", a genuinely sad, sweet tune with lots of cowbell and a chorus of earth-shaking majesty. These tracks show what might've been.
Instead, The Libertines settle for less because demanding more would've been harder. And lest we forget why this album was a necessary casualty, the obvious (and crass) snorting that opens "Last Post on the Bugle" is an unnecessary hint. Cocaine, crack, whatever-- whether their self-titled second album is a wreck on purpose or not, drugs are The Libertines' reason, and it's not a very good one. | 2004-08-30T01:00:01.000-04:00 | 2004-08-30T01:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Rough Trade | August 30, 2004 | 7.1 | 40f2c5a4-b2ac-4bcd-a00b-8f3ccf94c78e | Eric Carr | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-carr/ | null |
After a lengthy hiatus, the distinctive MC returns with a record reminiscent of Beanie Sigel's The B. Coming, one that's alternately boastful and ruminative, and on which he mostly avoids misguided attempts to become a crossover star. Jay-Z, Scarface, Jadakiss, and 50 Cent all guest. | After a lengthy hiatus, the distinctive MC returns with a record reminiscent of Beanie Sigel's The B. Coming, one that's alternately boastful and ruminative, and on which he mostly avoids misguided attempts to become a crossover star. Jay-Z, Scarface, Jadakiss, and 50 Cent all guest. | Freeway: Free at Last | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10928-free-at-last/ | Free at Last | The knock on Freeway is that his delivery is only suited for hood-on-smash conviction, but even if that's true, it's like criticizing GZA for being too clinical or M.O.P. for not doing enough for the ladies. There's something to be said for knowing your strengths, and-- lest we forget-- playing against type with Nelly and Mariah Carey collaborations on 2003's Philadelphia Freeway did him no favors. Free's been mostly out of the public eye since that record, embarking on a pilgrimage to Mecca and doubtlessly listening to The B. Coming hundreds of times. He's probably pissed that his former mentor, Beanie Sigel, came up with the "I still spit gangsta, think Muslim, and act Catholic" line first, but beyond that, you get the sense on his long-awaited follow-up Free at Last that he's trying to make a similar record-- one that's alternately boastful and ruminative, and on which he mostly avoids those misguided attempts to become a crossover star.
Free at Last also marks a shift away from the commercial behind the boards, with-- as he moans about on "It's Over"-- Freeway neither working with Just Blaze nor Kanye West, who between them produced three-fourths of Philadelphia Freeway. Instead, like a lot of Roc-A-Fella records, Free at Last employs sweeping soul loops and it's content to forgo a hook when the source material will do just fine. Though it isn't as opulent or expansive as Jay-Z's American Gangster, Freeway is still in some pretty tony real estate, with the live percussion of the orchestral "When They Remember" and "Reppin' the Streets" both flirting with Ghostface levels of classic soul.
Freeway's first album since 2003, Free at Last unsurprisingly often nods to the salad days of Roc-A-Fella, with the MC frequently decorating his verses with Sigel and Jigga quotes. "This Can't Be Real" catches you up to speed ("They say Free's nekkid/ He won't sell another record/ Y'all talkin' reckless!") with enough ambivalence to rise above rumor mongering, and on single "Roc-A-Fella Billionaires"-- a maddeningly catchy tribute to outlandish buying-- you can hear the difference between new money's hunger and the shit-eating satisfaction of CEO wealth as Jay-Z simply flips his "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" flow while detailing his spending habits ("I just copped me of all things/ A professional ball team").
Throughout Free at Last, Freeway displays a deft ability to play the foil to less exuberant MCs, with the exception of a firebreathing Busta Rhymes cameo on "Walk With Me". Free's intensity can be a lot to take in one sitting, which is why guest spots from Jay-Z, Jadakiss, and Scarface feel like the work of crafty sequencing. (Unfortunately, Lil Wayne collaboration "Step Back", once marked for the record, has gone missing.) Whatever religious enlightenment Freeway culled during his time off doesn't seem to translate to anything here, but his braying hood laments mix well with a typically sage Scarface verse on "Baby Don't Do It", as the Houston MC laments "I don't wanna be another joke/ 55, doing concerts, relying on the shows."
Listeners can guess which collaborations are skip-worthy from the tracklist alone. "Executive Producer" 50 Cent looms large over the mid-album trough of "Take It To The Top" and "Spit That Shit", temporarily turning Freeway into a G-Unit club connoisseur. Meanwhile, Cool & Dre's coke-cutting synths on "Lights Get Low" stand poorly in opposition of every other sound on the album and a Rick Ross appearance is a year too late to inspire anything other than wisecracks about hip-hop's most accomplished beards.
By the brief closer, "I Cry", Freeway finally gives into his emo-rapness, lamenting a life's story of woes, from having his G.I. Joe's go missing to being incarcerated during his daughter's birth. It's his voice more than his lyrics that has made him seem like an open book, but the title of this album isn't a mere play on words or a reference to his lengthy between-album hiatus; Free at Last is a portrait of someone who's still discovering his own identity. | 2007-12-04T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2007-12-04T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rap | Roc-A-Fella | December 4, 2007 | 7.7 | 40f4ba26-9c23-42ae-99ca-e450712bb02a | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
The noise-rock duo’s fifth album is a fresh and clear-eyed statement, drawing most from punk’s impulse towards attentiveness and honesty. | The noise-rock duo’s fifth album is a fresh and clear-eyed statement, drawing most from punk’s impulse towards attentiveness and honesty. | No Age: Snares Like a Haircut | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/no-age-snares-like-a-haircut/ | Snares Like a Haircut | Dean Spunt and Randy Randall have spent 13 years unraveling the dualities that speak most to misfits: the beautiful and the ugly, the harsh and the bright, pop and noise. “Fever dreaming! Fever dreaming!” they shouted on their 2010 LP, cutting to the heart of everything amid a radiant mix of ear-drilling dream-punk and tugging vulnerability. No Age—named after a 1987 comp of SST instrumental music, perennial global ambassadors to Los Angeles DIY art space The Smell, immortalized with a beguiling rainbow-ombre logo—still present this, a tattered and abrasive vision of the ecstatic.
Snares Like a Haircut is No Age’s latest glimmering and grating progression. It sounds like holding a power saw up to the sun. After their last album, 2013’s slightly more abstracted An Object, No Age seem to have deconstructed their approach and analyzed the blistering pieces, viewing them now in a reinvigorated and relatively more refined way. The five-year break, though, was owing to life: Both Spunt and Randall became fathers. (For a glimpse of what Spunt’s been up to these days, see this endearing video of his young daughter persistently crashing/improving his recent performance at an art gallery in New York.)
Their first album for Drag City after three on Sub Pop, Snares Like a Haircut is also No Age’s most dynamic collection by some margin—their version of a proper rock record. If its nervous system is running on hooks and speed, then its blood is sublime, sparkling noise and emotion. Back in 2009, No Age performed a pair of Hüsker Dü classics alongside Bob Mould, “New Day Rising” and “I Apologize”—which Spunt called a “very mystical” experience that helped them put a magnifying glass to the songs—and whatever No Age learned there, they have applied the lessons on Snares Like a Haircut more fully than before. It feels utterly fresh, like thawing or spring, and it rips.
No Age have finessed their extremes. “Tidal” opens like a kind of experimental folk song, with hardly more than Spunt’s unvarnished voice, before bursting into color: “Hurt so much on the way down,” Spunt sings, “I feel every branch and thorn/For all of time.” Vulnerability is still No Age’s best move. Over the record’s remarkable industrial sprawl, Spunt brings this to the fore with raw lyrics and latticed melodies. It gives every song, even the sad ones, the life-affirming levity that elemental rock bands are always after, as if No Age are finally rolling down a window for air. “Drippy” has the indie-pop bounce of a careening C86 tune, and the inquisitive, existential “Send Me” is maybe the closest No Age have gotten to a sky-beckoning pop-punk ballad. “There’s so much that I wish I had,” Spunt sings, “Another room perhaps and then/I wouldn’t feel so bad.” No Age are still a punk duo in practice, but on this clear-eyed LP, Spunt and Randall draw most from punk’s impulse towards attentiveness and honesty.
They allow plenty of room for artful, minimalist edges. Spunt and Randall’s conceptual and visual sides come through on “Third Grade Rave,” an instrumental loop of a diamond-cut jam; you feel as though you’re in the room with them, at arm’s length. The title track, meanwhile, is a generative pastel-shaded drone that rattles and flickers wordlessly. These ambient-noise pieces are seamlessly incorporated; they never feel like deviations. Instead, they sound like moments of inspired reinvention, like symbols of a greater commitment to the band’s own creative growth. As much as No Age use Snares Like a Haircut to outline their best traits in boldening Sharpie marker, ensuring their permanence, they also keep changing.
One of No Age’s earliest songs—included on 2007’s Weirdo Rippers—was called “Everybody’s Down.” At the core of its tinny production was a simple but powerful line: “Everybody’s down/In every soul/In every town.” It makes me think now of the 2010 DIY guidebook In Every Town: An All-Ages Music Manualfesto, in which No Age—alongside their Smell comrades of yesteryear Mika Miko and Abe Vigoda—are cited as the primary example of how “the small creative choices involved in having a venue and putting on shows have wide-ranging ripple effects.” If those effects include the unlikely autonomy of two musical outsiders, they still ring through Spunt and Randall’s wise songs. It has now been over a decade since The New Yorker first reported on the half-pipe in No Age’s backyard, and Randall’s efforts to improve The Smell’s bathroom situation. But in 2018, No Age’s name seems self-actualizing. And in their psycho-candied sound, which has progressively gotten better, they still know how to locate the timeless, fever-pitched feeling of a beginning. | 2018-01-29T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-29T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Drag City | January 29, 2018 | 8 | 40f6737e-e15a-4ebd-a5e2-c5bfcb2156cc | Jenn Pelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jenn-pelly/ | |
On her latest gothic folk missive, singer/songwriter Marissa Nadler opens up her sound slightly, retaining her grey-skies aesthetic while bringing in a more spacious and rock-oriented sound. | On her latest gothic folk missive, singer/songwriter Marissa Nadler opens up her sound slightly, retaining her grey-skies aesthetic while bringing in a more spacious and rock-oriented sound. | Marissa Nadler: Strangers | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21864-strangers/ | Strangers | Marissa Nadler doesn't seem like she's from here. She seems like a transitional spirit from another era—some dark and medieval place, a real-life Melisandre with an angelic tenor. Her music, a regal gothic folk, is equally soothing and haunting, and like singer-songwriters Angel Olsen and Laura Gibson, Nadler doesn’t need much behind her sonically to make an impact.
In years past, it was simply her and and guitar, singing of loss and regret. She occasionally seemed shy or reserved, but she’s opened up more with each album, and on Strangers, Nadler offers traces of her life—discussing personal friends on “Janie in Love” and “Katie I Know,” and, on “All the Colors of the Dark,” walking us through the house of an old flame. “Divers of the Dust,” the album’s panoramic opener, wrestles with heartbreak, yet as always with Nadler, she leaves the words open for broad interpretation: “Lying here, on the rocks, with the cliffs disintegrating/Last I heard, in the end, the waves were scraping city streets.”
Compared with Nadler’s 2014 LP, July, Strangers moves away from folk into more accessible terrain. Produced by Randall Dunn, who’s worked with Sunn O))), Earth, and the Cave Singers, these sounds are edgier, supplementing Nadler’s bleak aesthetic with layered strings, percussion and guitar, resulting in a rock-oriented sound that lends itself to a wider group of listeners. Even the more pastoral songs like “Skyscraper,” “Waking,” and “Dissolve,” feel heavier, not as gentle as her previous work. Nadler’s music is an acquired taste, but Strangers is probably her most expansive release to date.
As with any Nadler recording, this isn’t a stark turn from her usual vibe. The strength of this album lies in its subtle shifts, the way it casually unfolds without getting stuck. Dunn produces heavy metal, which fits neatly within Nadler's grey-skies approach; even the acoustic songs have a fierceness to them. She's been isolated on her records before, but here the music feels spacious and robust like the workings of a full ensemble in which ideas are allowed to flow. There’s an overwhelming connectivity to her music: As Nadler exorcises her own demons, she brings you along with her, making you feel a little less anxious about your own despair. She sees poetry in the mundane, elegance in the gloom. | 2016-05-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-05-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Sacred Bones | May 21, 2016 | 7.6 | 40f73d9b-33ec-4e3a-93d4-75d11bde6a81 | Marcus J. Moore | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marcus-j. moore/ | null |
The cheekily named compilation includes songs from three solo releases, alongside unreleased tracks and bedroom demos that offer a shining mosaic of the New York singer-songwriters indie-pop acumen. | The cheekily named compilation includes songs from three solo releases, alongside unreleased tracks and bedroom demos that offer a shining mosaic of the New York singer-songwriters indie-pop acumen. | Lily Konigsberg: The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lily-konigsberg-the-best-of-lily-konigsberg-right-now/ | The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now | Last year, Lily Konigsberg said, “I want to write songs that get stuck in people’s heads for the rest of their lives.” As one-third of the ramshackle art-punk band Palberta, that specific kind of stickiness might not sound like Top 40 hits composed by a professional songwriter consortium. Yet the lifelong New Yorker has explored the fringes of the mainstream for as long as she’s made music, both in her solo work and with avant-pop duo Lily and Horn Horse. This cheekily titled compilation collects Konigsberg's recent string of EPs, showcasing her hyper-melodic hooks and disarmingly honest lyrics while remaining left of the dial.
Konigsberg formed her first band at age 9, gathering together a group of girls in her neighborhood of Park Slope and banging on Tupperware until they made enough money for pizza. “Basically I was born and immediately started wanting to be a rock star—like, no other option,” she admitted. Konigsberg first performed solo at 15, before her confidence was boosted by winning a five-borough battle of the bands contest. While studying at Bard College in 2013, she met her future Palberta bandmates Nina Ryser and Anina Ivry-Block when all three were booked to perform separately at the same show.
Since linking up as a trio, Palberta’s free-flowing collaboration has resulted in an onslaught of music beginning with their lo-fi debut LP, My Pal Berta. Yet Konigsberg has explained how her solo work is both more meticulous and deeply personal. “When I’m writing alone I am way more of a perfectionist,” she has said. “It’s also a very solitary and quiet process at first. It’s harder in that I have to be alone with my brain, but it is really crazy and fun.” This introspection results in plainspoken lyrics about Konigsberg’s love and loss, accepting the end of unnamed relationships while longing for the intimacy that is absent from her life.
The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now includes songs from three solo releases, alongside unreleased tracks and bedroom demos. Arranged by mood instead of chronological order, it begins with 2018’s 4 picture tear EP before drifting into 2020’s It’s Just Like All the Clouds, and concluding with Konigsberg’s songs from 2017’s Good Time Now, a split album with Andrea Schiavelli. Early highlight “Rock and Sin” shows off her homespun arrangements with a capella vocal loops sung in the round, before “7 Smile” introduces a sputtering drum machine and fried Neil Hagerty-style guitar solos from Ivry-Block. “The point is not exactly where I am/The point is what I’m not,” Konigsberg repeats like an affirmation.
Konigsberg’s songwriting remains sharp as knives. The peppy indie-pop of “I Said” exploits alliteration in some of her funniest couplets: “Crushing all the bugs that I find in my hairbrush/Crusty but harmless guys/Clustering in a circle.” “Roses” ends with the defeated line “I used to be so good at boys” before switching gears into “North Porsche,” Konigsberg’s most slyly amorous song about following a crush in the speeding sports car of her dreams. “It’s Just Like All The Clouds” is a dancefloor jam with warbled Auto-Tuned lyrics focus on her decision to leave a relationship in the rearview mirror: “Now that you don’t want me, I don’t need your time.”
On the surface, nothing here is as defiantly normal as “Owe Me.” On this previously unreleased song, Konigsberg sings with the starry-eyed romanticism of Carly Rae Jepsen, while Water From Your Eyes’ Nate Amos contributes swerving keyboards and chiming 808s. It could be a bona fide Billboard smash if it wasn’t for the strange moment when Konigsberg thanks an imaginary audience for coming to her show and they respond with canned handclaps. Even at her most straightforward, she can’t resist commenting on the idea at a self-conscious remove, just like this album’s title. It keeps her off the radar, but it’s where she makes the greatest hits.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-05-24T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-05-24T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Wharf Cat | May 24, 2021 | 7.4 | 4100eaa1-3ff3-4122-bffe-f42fe6bad06f | Jesse Locke | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-locke/ | |
Recording live in the studio with just voice, keys, and bass, the trio achieves an almost telepathic connection: three seasoned musicians breathing together as a single organism. | Recording live in the studio with just voice, keys, and bass, the trio achieves an almost telepathic connection: three seasoned musicians breathing together as a single organism. | Arooj Aftab / Vijay Iyer / Shahzad Ismaily: Love in Exile | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/arooj-aftab-vijay-iyer-shahzad-ismaily-love-in-exile/ | Love in Exile | Since 2015, Arooj Aftab has gradually distilled the essence of her work. On her debut album, Bird Under Water, the Pakistan-born, Brooklyn-based composer fused ghazal—a South Asian style focused on loss and love, both romantic and divine—with pop, jazz, and soul, finding the consonance between musical traditions from different corners of the world. On 2018’s ambient Siren Islands, she stripped away tradition, weaving her otherworldly voice between layers of synthesizer. By 2021’s Vulture Prince—her breakout record, an elegiac piece filigreed with voice, harp, and violin—she had learned to squeeze every drop of emotional resonance out of a single elongated syllable, or the vibrato of a gently pressed harp string.
Love in Exile—Aftab’s new album in collaboration with pianist and jazz composer Vijay Iyer and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily—takes that process of distillation even further: coaxing an entire album’s worth of pathos out of a handful of Urdu couplets, crafting complex emotional inner worlds through the ritualistic repetition of just a few lines of poetry. In Ismaily and Iyer, she has found the perfect partners. All three draw from a shared vocabulary that is subtle, intricate, and minimalist, yet incredibly expressive.
Recorded live in a New York studio and released with minimal editing, the album’s six tracks retain the unhurried, conversational feel of improvisation, but without any of improv’s attendant looseness. Iyer’s intricate piano phrases and Ismaily’s pulsing bass and drones move in intuitive cycles, with textures and melodies slowly coalescing out of the interplay between their instruments. Aftab’s powerful voice fits seamlessly into these soundscapes, melancholy melismas languidly unfurling like ink dropped into water. At moments—when Iyer’s piano melody weaves serpentine shapes around Aftab’s voice on “Sajni,” or Ismaily’s sepulchral Moog synth shares space with Iyer’s delicate topline on “Eye of the Endless”—their connection seems telepathic, three seasoned musicians breathing together as a single organism.
This potent chemistry is on display from the opening moments. Synths shimmer like cosmic backwash at the outset of “To Remain/To Return,” occasionally interrupted by the portentous thump of a bass drone. Iyer begins with hesitant, stuttering notes, as if testing the waters, before finally settling into a sinuous piano phrase that loops and loops, subtly mutating as it repeats. Aftab joins three minutes in, her expansive voice slotting into the spaces left by the two instrumentalists. That first disconsolate “Jaa re” (“Go now”) sets the emotional tone for both the song and the record; her voice hints at deep reservoirs of sorrow, channeling centuries of South Asian cultural fascination with romantic tragedy.
On “Shadow Forces,” Aftab sings of existential heartbreak over pensive minor-key piano, her voice dripping with dark disquietude. Iyer’s grim, dramatic keys add cinematic flair (albeit more French art-house film than Michael Bay blockbuster). The almost-15-minute long “Eyes of the Endless,” meanwhile, manages to be both monumental and deeply intimate.
Love in Exile deals with Aftab’s favored themes of love, loss, and longing, but she steers clear of explicit narratives. It might be tempting to look for meaning in the Urdu ghazals and qawwalis from which Aftab borrows her lyrics, but—even more than on Vulture Prince—she seems uninterested in interpolating or re-interpreting them. Instead, she uses a small handful of Urdu couplets as signposts, jumping-off points to explore the emotional resonance of voice, timbre, and stretched-out syllables.
The trio’s music may shed the usual instrumentation of the ghazal tradition, but it retains that style’s sense of metaphysical revelation. Iyer and Ismaily’s hypnotic interplay leaves the listener unmoored in time and space. The grand sweep of Aftab’s voice is a galactic super-wind capable of carrying you off to wondrous new worlds. The force of their collaboration is so much greater than the sum of its simple parts that it borders on the mystical.
These explorations find their apotheosis on “Sharabi,” which again zooms out to cosmic scale. Buzzsaw synths, rumbling bass, and washes of ambient electronics come together in an oppressive vision of infinity. Aftab’s reverb-laden voice rings out in the emptiness, a lonely beacon reaching out for someone to share this vast expanse with—a lover, the divine—but receiving no answer. Yet for Aftab, Iyer, and Ismaily, beauty and deliverance lie not in finding transcendence but in the search itself. The journey requires emotional honesty, the dissolution of the ego, and being open to the best and the worst the universe has to offer. Love in Exile is what happens when three vastly talented musicians embark on that quest together. | 2023-03-28T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-03-28T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Jazz / Experimental | Verve | March 28, 2023 | 8.5 | 4102fabe-7652-4501-b658-9cc2322f0df0 | Bhanuj Kappal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/bhanuj-kappal/ | |
On his third solo album, Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning offers tentative experiments that ape other bands’ styles. It feels like a guy just filling downtime. | On his third solo album, Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning offers tentative experiments that ape other bands’ styles. It feels like a guy just filling downtime. | Brendan Canning: Home Wrecking Years | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22223-home-wrecking-years/ | Home Wrecking Years | What happens when you devise a song so unlike your signature sound that it borders on parody? And what if it’s one of the liveliest tracks on your album? If you’re Brendan Canning, of Broken Social Scene, you openly acknowledge your point of inspiration in the lyrics. The song in question is a jammy number called “Hey Marika, Get Born,” in which the title character does not listen to the Grateful Dead. The song itself sounds a lot like the band he name-checks, regardless of whether or not Marika ever listened to them. It’s a fun moment, but not one Canning commits to entirely, and it ends up being cute, rather than insightful.
There are some solid songs on Home Wrecking Years, Canning’s third solo outing beyond the comfortable crowd of Broken Social Scene. The album captures the sound of a huge group of people having fun together (even if it’s a different huge group than we’re used to), but it doesn’t make the statement that solo albums usually attempt to make, as Canning’s previous two solo albums did. His first—2008’s Something for All of Us …—crackled with an immediacy that felt like he had something to say and something to prove. His second, 2013’s You Gots 2 Chill, seemed to have even more of an air of spontaneity and adventure. (It featured two guitar pieces recorded on voicemail.)
But Home Wrecking Years feels like a guy just filling in the downtime before he gets back to work with his main band. Canning’s approach is playful, but not very meaningful. When the songs don’t sound like they would have been more at home on the long-awaited BSS album, they sound like tentative experiments at aping other bands’ styles. “Once I Was a Runner” paraphrases James Brown in an incongruous way. “Keystone Dealers,” the album’s second single, could be the long-awaited third entry on your “People from the Northern Hemisphere Doing Passable Songs with What Seems to be a Casio-Based Bossa Nova Beat” playlist. “Work Out in the Wash” has a solo that Canning openly acknowledges is a “slick eight-bar late ’70s George Benson-ish guitar solo.” And the final song on the album, “Baby’s Going Her Own Way,” sounds like it could be a gentle deep cut from a Luna album that came out after you stopped listening to Luna.
As with his debut, a couple of BSS members make their way into the army of players here, including Justin Peroff, who plays drums on the entire album, and Sam Goldberg, who plays guitar on “Vibration Walls.” On their most recent summer shows, Broken Social Scene put “Book It to Fresno,” the very BSS-ish wall-of-fuzz single from Home Wrecking Years, on their setlists because Canning isn’t planning on touring solo. In a press release, Canning called the live version “pretty shit-kicking... which felt wonderful.”
It was indeed a shit-kicking version—as is the album take. Still, the whole Home Wrecking Years project seems like Canning has arrived at a photographer’s studio in a reliable old outfit, before shyly dressing up in wacky costumes, and then taking them off immediately after the photo is snapped because he doesn’t feel comfortable in the borrowed clothing. If somebody in Canning’s party had told him that the period-specific hat and goofy scarf looked good, he might have felt the rush of possibility. But at least, with Home Wrecking Years, Canning has archived that he had the nerve to try something on that was way out of character—even if it was just for kicks. | 2016-08-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-08-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Arts & Crafts | August 24, 2016 | 5 | 4104c82f-22eb-4183-b064-8f6ee8cd60e2 | Pat Healy | https://pitchfork.com/staff/pat-healy/ | null |
Pairing blown-out trap beats and industrial noise with deadpan stream-of-consciousness lyrics, Gordon’s second solo album revels in the broken and the mundane. | Pairing blown-out trap beats and industrial noise with deadpan stream-of-consciousness lyrics, Gordon’s second solo album revels in the broken and the mundane. | Kim Gordon: The Collective | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kim-gordon-the-collective/ | The Collective | Kim Gordon, like everyone, is addicted to her phone. Her vicious and brilliant second solo album, The Collective, shares its name with a painting she exhibited at New York’s 303 Gallery last year; 27 iPhone-sized holes had been punched out the canvas, each gap a cute little reminder of every synapse you’ve fried watching parkour clips or chasing the infinite scroll. The album itself is even less subtle: Powered by ear-splitting trap beats and churning industrial guitar, anchored by lyrics in which Gordon recites packing lists or mutters about driving in Los Angeles, The Collective is a maelstrom of mundane thoughts and funny asides and flashes of pure rage whipped into a heavy, unnerving fog. It sounds how TikTok brain feels.
It’s a provocative but fitting new mode for Gordon, who, for over 40 years, has intermingled caustic experimental art with a mordant curiosity about mainstream culture. For every obtusely confrontational side project like Free Kitten, there is a Ciccone Youth, the Sonic Youth alter-ego dedicated to reinterpreting radio confections like “Into the Groove” and “Addicted to Love.” She holds down Body/Head, an elliptical guitar drone project with Bill Nace, yet also serenaded Rufus Humphrey and Lily van der Woodsen at their wedding on Gossip Girl. On The Collective, she lays her trademark breathy sprechgesang over what can only be described as Ken Carson-type beats, diving fully into the trap experiments she first tried on 2019’s No Home Record; sometimes, as on opening track “BYE BYE,” she genuinely sounds like a SoundCloud rapper, nonchalantly distending the names of luxury clothing brands: “Bella Freud, Y-S-L, Eck-haus-Lat-ta.”
No Home Record, Gordon’s first solo album after making music in bands for 38 years, was thematically oblique, but on songs like “Earthquake” and “Murdered Out,” her stoic visage slipped, revealing lyrics that sounded like stinging, unapologetic rebukes to a persona non grata in Gordon’s life. The Collective, made once again with alt-pop producer Justin Raisen (Sky Ferreira, Charli XCX), puts aside the score-settling in favor of fractured, stream-of-consciousness lyrics that mostly eschew poetry or diarism. The unrelentingly noisy vibe is appealingly impulsive and lizard-brained, like you’re hearing someone remind themself to form thoughts: She mumbles about buying overpriced potatoes and leaving out money for the cleaner, stretches the phrase “bowling trophies” into the album’s closest approximation of a melody, and wails something that sounds like a religious prophecy on “The Believers.” While recording, Raisen encouraged Gordon to bring her “abstract poetry shit,” and the resulting album feels simultaneously dense and invigorating; on “I Don’t Miss My Mind,” asides about home furnishings brush up against a goblin-voiced call to “suck it up/fuck it up” and a hazy memory of “crying in the subway.” There’s no lyric sheet, and many songs feel like Rorschach tests asking whether you hear resilience or brokenness, sex or violence, mundanity or surrealism. Often, it’s hard to tell the difference.
Despite the album’s almost dreamlike glaze, it’s easy to discern themes that have interested Gordon for the entirety of her career. Her fascination with the performance of masculinity, which she wrote about in the early ’80s, recurs on the blistering, formless “I’m a Man,” where she puffs out her chest like a drag king and adopts the pose of a slimy playboy: “So what if I like the big truck?/Giddy up, giddy up/Don’t call me toxic/Just cause I like your butt!” “BYE BYE” and “Psychedelic Orgasm,” both essentially interior monologues of someone going about their day, feel only a few steps removed from Design Office, her long-running art project exploring the links between architecture, real estate, domestic life, and fine art. On The Collective, she presents these ideas at their most stretched-out and free-associative—like they’re being read from a note that she typed at 3 a.m.
Some fragments of The Collective sound remarkably current. Raisen’s influence was clear on No Home Record, but here it sounds as if he and Gordon are actively trying to place their work in conversation with pop music more broadly. Toward the end of “The Candy House,” a lo-fi trap-pop track that grinds like heavy machinery, Raisen contorts Gordon’s voice into a garbled, formant-shifted knot that recalls the demonic asides of FKA twigs’ M3LL155X; on “It’s Dark Inside,” she shouts out Pussy Riot and her old collaborator Julie Cafritz’s band Pussy Galore, before caddishly chanting “Pussy pussy pussy!” like Kendrick Lamar on “Doves in the Wind.” There are wounded Auto-Tune trills on “Trophies” that feel drawn from the work of Farrah Abraham or Pop 2-era Charli. None of these moments are given much room to breathe—by the time Gordon introduces one idea, musical or thematic, she’s moved on to the next.
Gordon has said that she was initially introduced to social media by a friend who said it would help her “feel less alone”—an idea that, at this point, feels woefully naive. The Collective, at its most alienated, is hauntingly lonely and solipsistic, to the point that the faltering industrial dirge “Shelf Warmer” ostensibly begins as a come-on but quickly veers into musings on a gift receipt and then into outright conflict (“That’s what you want/That’s not what I want”). The song calls into question the ways our desires have been reshaped by digital dopamine triggers: Is it really sex you’re looking for? Or will any quick hit of interaction, positive or negative, do just fine? If records by 100 gecs and PinkPantheress reflect the feeling of being online in the 2020s, the cacophonous, vexing, endlessly fascinating The Collective represents the experience of logging off and finding that your perception of the real world has been forever altered. Few are better equipped than Gordon—who, at 70, is still cooler, smarter, and more fearless than most—to guide us through. | 2024-03-08T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2024-03-08T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Matador | March 8, 2024 | 8.5 | 410d3d6e-6149-4909-a8bb-21fd0f262904 | Shaad D’Souza | https://pitchfork.com/staff/shaad-d’souza/ | |
This expanded and re-ordered set collects three albums of early material from Daniel Lopatin's synth-based project. He successfully liberates synth sounds from their conventional trappings, placing them in less familiar contexts and coaxing you to hear them in new ways. | This expanded and re-ordered set collects three albums of early material from Daniel Lopatin's synth-based project. He successfully liberates synth sounds from their conventional trappings, placing them in less familiar contexts and coaxing you to hear them in new ways. | Oneohtrix Point Never: Rifts | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17504-rifts/ | Rifts | "Timbral fascism sucks," said Daniel Lopatin in a 2009 interview with The Wire. His point was it's wrong to reject specific sounds-- in this case, the synth tones used in 1980s new age-- simply out of disdain for the genre they're associated with. In one sense, Lopatin's solo project Oneohtrix Point Never is an ongoing battle against timbral fascism. He's tried to liberate synth sounds from their conventional trappings, placing them in less familiar contexts and coaxing you to hear them in new ways.
This laid-back battle began with Lopatin's first album, 2007's Betrayed in the Octagon, which he called "a stoned space epic about one really bad day in the life of an astronaut." His astronaut landed on a strange planet in 2009's Russian Mind and wrote the score to his own death in 2009's Zones Without People. But more interesting than that inscrutable tale was the way that, throughout this trilogy, Lopatin re-imagined synth music for the current era, injecting tension into something normally soft and cheesy. New age got a bad rep because it became too light to resonate, simplifying emotion instead of creating it. But even Lopatin's most beatific arpeggios and most soothing drones avoid sentimentality and easy-listening ambience.
That became clearer when New York noise label No Fun packaged those first three albums together-- along with tracks from smaller-run releases-- into the 2009 double CD Rifts. Listen to one track here or there and it can be tough to hear how lighter moments differ from the saccharine cloud of incidental mood music. But immerse yourself for long stretches, and Rifts sounds more like the hypnotic marathons of Terry Riley than something playing in a store that sells candles and crystals. In that sense, the set was greater than the sum of its original albums. Absorbing all two and a half hours revealed commonalities between Lopatin's disparate constructions-- the kind that aren't apparent when you take OPN in small doses.
The immersion opportunities are even greater on Lopatin's new version of Rifts, issued on his own label Software. This lavish 5xLP/ 3xCD set includes six more tracks from previous releases, stretching it past the three-hour mark. Revisiting Rifts in this expanded (and reordered) form, I've found its stoic sadness even more impressive. Lopatin finds poignancy in wavering tones and rippling notes, conveying a sense of loss mixed with stiff-lipped acceptance. Even the set's one curveball-- an acoustic guitar song called "I Know It's Taking Pictures From Another Plane (Inside Your Sun)"-- carries this tone, and sounds logical squeezed in between synth-scapes.
The rich moods of Rifts persist in the tracks Lopatin adds to this version. Take the hymn-like despondency in the trebly voices of "Memory Vague." Or the slow lurch of "The Trouble With Being Born", which sounds like a defeated army returning home, dejected enough to hang their heads but prideful enough to march in step. Such complex sentiments have marked Lopatin's work even as he's moved to the noisier drones of 2010's Returnal and the glitchier loops of 2011's Replica.
So in retrospect, the path OPN has traveled makes sense. But when I first got Betrayed in the Octagon from No Fun in 2007, it was a bit of a shock. At that point the noise underground was still in an upswing, and the harsher sounds of Carlos Giffoni's label (and festival) led the charge. There was diversity inside the No Fun umbrella, but nothing there sounded like Betrayed in the Octagon. It turns out that Giffoni and Lopatin were prescient, or at least observant, because soon many other underground artists began mining new age styles.
That trend may be less in vogue a couple of years later, but it survives. Just in the past two months, excellent forays into new age-tinted synth have come from noise-leaning types such as Joseph Raglani, Robert Beatty, and M. Geddes Gengras. All of which makes Rifts look like an important touchstone, and it should. The way Lopatin discovered fresh ideas inside of a worn-out genre is an inspiring story for the present age. | 2013-01-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2013-01-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Mexican Summer / Software | January 11, 2013 | 8.7 | 41111556-7b64-4c2f-95d5-6474b322c061 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
Warpaint’s new album is said to be informed by recent hip-hop and R&B but it ultimately hews closely to the moody downtempo rock they’re known for. | Warpaint’s new album is said to be informed by recent hip-hop and R&B but it ultimately hews closely to the moody downtempo rock they’re known for. | Warpaint: Heads Up | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22426-heads-up/ | Heads Up | There’s a difference between sleepy-eyed music and music that just puts you to sleep. If Warpaint have made a career out of walking the fine line between the two, your enjoyment of the band naturally depends on which side of that line you see them. Does the L.A. quartet’s anesthetizing approach to downtempo rock create tension out of restraint or does it simply lack enough friction to generate heat? Heads Up, the band’s third full-length, probably won’t change whatever opinion you already have.
When we last heard from Warpaint on their 2014 self-titled album, they were tucking the cerebral distance of post-rock into tight pop songs. But if that album staked out a middle ground between, say Tortoise and Broken Bells, Heads Up leans more heavily in a pop direction, veering ever closer to the tuneful but overly polite hum of acts like Coldplay. Warpaint have recently name-dropped Q-Tip, Erykah Badu, OutKast, and Kendrick Lamar as influences on this new material. But the album as a whole is more suited for seated, solitary brooding than for anything as lively as moving your body. When Heads Up does increase its heart rate slightly, as on “New Song,” the band actually loses power with a vanilla hook, couched in a typical modern production sheen that has “sync opportunity” stamped all over it. Mood-wise, Warpaint have essentially remained in the same gear since day one.
But Warpaint can slyly rope you in when guitarist/vocalists Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman drop lyrical hints about romantic malaise. Kokal and Wayman express vague indignation without quite lowering their guard enough to come out and tell you how hurt they feel. As such, they rely on the listener’s sense of intuition and empathy to do the work in filling in the blanks, which has a certain effectiveness. You can’t help but apply Warpaint’s elliptical lyrics to your own most recent memories of relational disengagement. The cloudy musical atmospheres that have become their trademark allow the words to attach themselves to a range of sensations from sullen to wistful to yearning. And as much as Warpaint’s songs often address dark figures with questionable intentions, the music never adopts a defeated or victimized posture.
That said, do verses like “Did you come undone?/Did you become someone unknown?” or “I will not be defined/Don’t wanna define myself” give us enough to put ourselves into the shoes of the characters in these songs? Or do they function more as stage lighting without any real action unfolding onstage? Adapting the meaning of music to fit one’s own feelings has its rewards, but it begins to feel cheap when the songs don’t necessarily push you to care about the people in them. “Can’t you tell me all your secrets?/I’ll tell you mine” goes a verse on “So Good.” At this point, though, after enticing listeners to lean in closer for a glimpse at those secrets, we might have to question whether Warpaint have any to tell. | 2016-09-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Rough Trade | September 29, 2016 | 6.7 | 4112e652-b240-4c60-ab93-f4e560debd04 | Saby Reyes-Kulkarni | https://pitchfork.com/staff/saby-reyes-kulkarni/ | null |
Kevin Morby (Woods, Babies) recalls singer/songwriters of the '60s and '70s in his solo work, particularly Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, and Singing Saw is his strongest album. | Kevin Morby (Woods, Babies) recalls singer/songwriters of the '60s and '70s in his solo work, particularly Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, and Singing Saw is his strongest album. | Kevin Morby: Singing Saw | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21681-singing-saw/ | Singing Saw | Kevin Morby speaks the language of records. His spare acoustic sound pulls from the late ’60s and early ’70s, particularly Bob Dylan in baroque country mode, Songs of Leonard Cohen, and Lee Hazlewood. But where the well-read novelist Cohen was comparing mythologies and Hazelwood held forth like a wizened industry cynic, Morby’s earlier work refracted meaning through the lens of his record collection. His debut album, Harlem River, featured one song about a slow train, another about walking on the wild side, and a third with a line about going down to the station with a ticket in your hand, as if were still possible to buy paper tickets ahead of time. But connecting directly to the real world isn’t exactly Morby’s point. His music comes from another place, one where you try and piece together meaning by tapping into a kind of collective unconscious, using whatever tools you have at your disposal. And his references add up to something more than their parts and when paired with his unerring feel for arrangement and style.
Morby’s own albums keep getting better, and some of this we can chalk up to experience. Though he’s not yet 30, he’s been involved with a lot of records—two in his band the Babies with Cassie Ramone from Vivian Girls, four as a bass player in Woods (Morby is to Woods what Kurt Vile is to War on Drugs: a kindred spirit musically whose quirky vision needed more room than a band could provide), and now three as a solo artist. Singing Saw is his strongest album because it shows a process of refinement, and because Morby’s songwriting has become less referential and more grounded. The basic ingredients haven’t changed, but Morby is figuring out how to retain and amplify his strongest points—his weary and wise voice, his understanding of how the musical pieces fit together—and leave everything else behind.
On his debut, Morby’s voice cracked in places, suggesting effort that transcended ability, but Singing Saw finds him cool and controlled at every turn, fully aware of his limitations but confident in what he can accomplish within them. His singing is simultaneously intimate and distant, part conversation and part stylized monologue. He’s got a nasally diction with a tendency to stretch vowels that didn’t exist in the world until Dylan first gazed at the Nashville skyline and a fondness for short, direct statements that could have been written a century ago. The most contemporary piece of technology mentioned on the album is a Ferris wheel; the songs feature gardens and earth and shadows and fire and tears whose prevailing downward trajectory, yes, brings to mind rain. Single lines don’t really stand out, but Morby’s commitment to such elemental concerns has a cumulative effect, and the album’s lack of specificity becomes a strength.
That confidence extends to musical choices, including Morby’s tendency to let the small details of the sound do the work—he would never play five notes if four could get the meaning across. And while the core elements of his aesthetic—his deep voice with just the right halo of reverb, gently plucked acoustic guitar— are a constant, subtle instrumental variety abounds, which Morby sometimes takes great joy in pointing out. On "Dorothy," he sings "I could hear that piano play, it'd go like…" and the buzzing uptempo arrangement falls away leaving a beautiful tumble of keyboard notes, and he follows it a bar later with a paean to a trumpet player that a horn player answers. "Singing Saw" seems to say something about how a single tool can be used either creatively or destructively, and features the titular instrument prominently (and very beautifully).
For Morby, any day-to-day situation or mundane observation could spark something for his next album, and sometimes being that tuned-in can be a curse. "Got a song book in my head," he sings on the album’s title track, and he climbs a hill past the houses to find somewhere quiet where he can leave them behind. He claims in press notes that he wrote the song about his neighborhood in Los Angeles, and his first album, Harlem River, was in part about his stint living in New York. But while many people in L.A. notice the traffic and the food and the sunlight and the celebrity culture, Morby hears the coyotes and sees the moon. | 2016-04-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-04-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Dead Oceans | April 15, 2016 | 8.3 | 411a33ca-aa1c-4331-aa91-fdef95a81fb0 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
With heaps of classic samples and pop culture references, the Michigan rap crew keeps things breezy and showcases their tight-knit power. | With heaps of classic samples and pop culture references, the Michigan rap crew keeps things breezy and showcases their tight-knit power. | ShittyBoyz: Trifecta 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/shittyboyz-trifecta-2/ | Trifecta 2 | Part of the distinct energy of the Michigan rap scene is not just the speed or intensity, but the humor—from Rio da Yung OG’s gross-out punchlines to Bfb Da Packman’s outright comedy rap. But there’s probably no one from the Detroit metropolitan area as consistently funny—or as gleefully delightful—as ShittyBoyz, the trio consisting of half-court jesters BabyTron, StanWill, and TrDee. They can go pound for pound and bar for bar with the likes of Icewear Vezzo and Band Gang Lonnie Bands, but the self-described scam rappers are more transparently goofy than many of their peers, as the name might indicate.
Their new album, Trifecta 2, comes in the middle of a triumphant year for the group, which has included the first Trifecta album and BabyTron solo project MegaTron. BabyTron has experienced the most solo success thus far, including a slot in this year’s XXL Freshman Class, but ShittyBoyz form a tight-knit unit with effortless chemistry. At times, their flows can be difficult to distinguish, but not because they sound alike; each member is so in sync with the others that the back and forth form a collective Voltron. And despite the pounds of runtz and zaza they brag about inhaling, ShittyBoyz never run out of breath.
The fat synths and pounding 808s of “Win or Lose” are pure Detroit, but listening to an entire ShittyBoyz album front to back makes for a high-energy DJ set, with unpredictable sounds that swerve into one another. On “Zeke & Luther,” ShittyBoyz hold their ground over a chaotic piano line, while “Cheers B!tch” approaches acid house. Mixed in with the hi-hats and thumping bass of Drakeo the Ruler type beats like “Going Hyphy” are the wailing quiet storm saxophone of “Getaway” and the tropical guitar of “Most Wanted.” ShittyBoyz don’t make dance music per se, but frequently draw from it, with sampled snatches of ’80s R&B, Miami bass, and freestyle deep cuts, like the interpolation of Cynthia’s “If I Had the Chance” on closing track “GGG.” You could make a dangerous drinking game out of every time the 808 cowbell hits.
No matter what beat is thrown their way, the ShittyBoyz still maintain an impressive number of words per minute—it’s less that ShittyBoyz dabble in different styles, and more that they contort different styles to fit into their own distinctive universe. “Video Games” is the album’s most adventurous piece of plunderphonics, an epic mega-mix that veers through multiple game soundtracks, like a restless kid who can’t settle on which one he wants to play. As the Boyz spit relentless bars, the beat behind them switches from the familiar loading screen music for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to the scores from Donkey Kong Country, Luigi’s Mansion, Ratchet and Clank, and Def Jam: Vendetta. The choice of GTA is especially fitting, as listening to ShittyBoyz’ sped-up throwback samples often evokes flipping through radio stations in Vice City.
Even when the ShittyBoyz aren’t pilfering pop culture for potential beats, they’re referencing it, especially pro wrestling; in fact, the depth and breadth of their wrestling fandom is probably only rivaled in today’s rap game by Westside Gunn. On “WWE,” ShittyBoyz run through an encyclopedia of wrestling superstars, from Rick Rude and the Sandman to Mick Foley and John Morrison—at the end of the song, every line with a wrestler name-drop is repeated and highlighted, just in case you didn’t catch it the first time.
In many ways, ShittyBoyz share something with the wrestlers they idolize, as expertly skilled craftsmen who achieve maximum entertainment value. Like the best sports entertainers, ShittyBoyz are master technicians who don’t show the seams. Their flows are so effortless that you can’t even tell they’re working, the delivery so precise that it never feels practiced or rehearsed. | 2022-08-09T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-08-09T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | The Hip Hop Lab / Empire | August 9, 2022 | 7.2 | 411af78b-7bff-4d5c-a293-6b78db8e7543 | Nadine Smith | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nadine-smith/ | |
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the debut from the B-52s, a bastion of provocative post-punk unlike anything else. | Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the debut from the B-52s, a bastion of provocative post-punk unlike anything else. | The B-52’s: The B-52’s | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-b-52s-the-b-52s/ | The B-52’s | As the B-52’s singer and keyboardist Kate Pierson tells it, guitarist Ricky Wilson introduced the riff for “Rock Lobster” by saying, “I’ve just written the stupidest guitar line you’ve ever heard.” Yet another bit of proof that in rock’n’roll, just because you’re being stupid doesn’t mean you aren’t a genius.
This quintet of mostly gay, party-loving, college-town dropouts—which included Wilson’s sister Cindy on percussion and vocals, vocalist Fred Schneider, and drummer Keith Strickland—had plenty of time in Athens, Georgia to put together weird party outfits and draw from Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies during jam sessions. They absorbed the lean styles of punk and post-punk—a music of provocation, antagonism, anger—and subverted it with color, American postwar iconography, and a gleeful refusal to be anything but who they were. Drawing on the cinematic soundtracks of Morricone and Mancini and the experimentation of Yoko Ono and Captain Beefheart, their 1979 debut, The B-52’s, is a 39-minute transmission from the past, present, and future.
“Rock Lobster” and their 1989 hit “Love Shack” are widely what the B-52’s are known for. Those massive singles, along with the band’s retro-Atomic look, have defined them in the public eye. But they’re so much more than their own tagline, the “world’s best party band.” They’re a band that went almost immediately from playing house parties in Athens to being peers of Talking Heads and Blondie. John Lennon famously told Rolling Stone shortly before his death that “Rock Lobster” inspired his return to music because in it, he heard evidence that popular music had caught up with Ono.
In old interviews, the band says they’d only played a couple of ad-hoc house shows in Athens before trying their luck in Manhattan, driving up and back to play gigs for a few bucks and exposure. They were a live hit almost immediately, drawing fans to Max’s Kansas City and CBGB and getting the dourest post-punk scenesters to at least bob their heads along. Live videos and recordings from those first couple of years convey a wild energy propelled along with precise rhythms and an astounding amount of confidence. When the B-52’s showed up, it was a great party that could go way off the rails.
That was the theme of “Rock Lobster,” which they decided to release as a single to help book more shows and broaden their reach. Danny Beard, the owner of Atlanta’s Wax’n’Facts record store, created DB Records for the purpose and recorded and released the single in April 1978. It sold 20,000 copies and launched DB as a critical part of Georgia’s indie ecosystem that would release albums by Pylon, the Jody Grind, and Love Tractor. By June, they’d gotten their own story in The New York Times. They were irresistible interview subjects, this group of friendly and kind Southern people who told stories about their day jobs as waiters (Fred) and renting land on a farm to keep goats (Kate).
In 1979, they signed to Warner Brothers in the U.S. and Island in the UK, and went to the Bahamas to record their debut at Compass Point Studios with Chris Blackwell. Armed already with a monster single, the band consciously held back a few live hits for their second album, the more slickly produced Wild Planet in 1980. The B-52’s came out sounding raw and live because Blackwell wanted to accurately capture their electric sound in the rock clubs, which had won rabid fans with its danceability and maximal minimalism. It got them mentioned in the same breath as post-punk heavyweights Devo and Wire as art-punk on its release. That rawness worried the band at first, who found it “sterile,” Strickland said much later, but it served the songs well.
It was their performances that really turned fans rabid, and their look almost demanded they go on television immediately. A legendary performance on “Saturday Night Live” reached innumerable young Gen X musicians who were captivated by this outlandish dance band that was a perfect introduction to art rock for children: “Rock Lobster” could both get played on Dr. Demento and make young ears receptive to experimentation.
On opposite sides of the country, pre-adolescents Dave Grohl and Kurt Cobain both watched the band play “Rock Lobster” and “Dance This Mess Around.” They would later refer to the B-52’s as formative music and style influences, and point to the debut as an example of a great album on a major label, since, in 1991, the ability of a major label to release a good record was actually a subject broached in interviews.
Major label or no, it’s still one of the most outright bizarre albums to sell over a million copies. From the opening Morse-code beeps of “Planet Claire,” the band’s interstellar obsession is foregrounded. Its “Peter Gunn” riff, Pierson’s keyboards, and wordless vocals make up the first two and a half minutes of the song before Schneider starts singing. It’s about their willingness to let tension build to the edges of discomfort, to startle a listener who might have thought this was going to be an instrumental only to start yelling at them about a planet where all the trees are red and no one ever dies or has a head. “52 Girls” follows that with as close to a straightforward punk song as anything they’d record with its frantic beat. Cindy Wilson goes from breathy seduction to howling menace within seconds in “Dance This Mess Around,” which then returns to a list format, this time dances instead of girls’ names.
Side A concludes with “Rock Lobster,” which remains the world’s unlikeliest novelty party song. It’s constructed like prog rock, sounds like the avant-garde, has surreal lyrics and one of pop’s most memorable guitar riffs. Several distinct sections make up the song’s nearly seven minutes. After that stupid guitar kicks things off, Pierson and Cindy Wilson chime in with “skee-do-be-dop” and Schneider starts telling the story of this beach party where someone finds a rock lobster. Don’t ask him why, but things are going to get weird because of that. At the point where the song might end if it were a straightforward tribute to beach movies and surf rock, a key change takes it to Yoko-land, where Schneider’s lyrics become more and more surreal and his calls are answered with guttural wails and the sounds made by marine life as processed by a malfunctioning See ’n Say. Those sounds were a conscious tribute to Ono, the ones that caught Lennon’s attention.
Second only to “Rock Lobster” in influence is the band’s intense paean to fandom-as-cannibalism and perhaps the first Riot Grrrl song ever sung, “Hero Worship.” “God give me his soul,” wails Cindy Wilson about her idol, who she intends to devour. Wilson croons and screams her way through this beautifully subversive anthem. The lyrics, far darker than anything else on the record, were written by friend of the band Robert Waldrop who would later pen the words for Cosmic Thing’s inspirational “Roam.” That’s a pretty and touching song, but “Hero Worship” is a raw and primal vocal performance on par with “Gloria” or “Rid of Me.”
To say that one particular singing performance stands out on this album is to really say something. The band’s vocals alone would have created an inimitable audio signature with the acidity of Schneider’s irritated nasal deadpan speech surrounded by the sweetness of Pierson and Cindy Wilson’s earthy belting and unearthly harmonies. But in addition to three frontpeople, the B-52’s were blessed with a guitarist of singular talent. Ricky Wilson’s practice of removing his guitar’s middle strings and using two strings for the low notes and two for the high continues to fascinate and influence guitarists who puzzle over his tunings in YouTube videos and on message boards.
I was 11 years old when I first heard Wilson, after a friend said to me, “You like weird stuff, you should listen to this tape my big sister likes.” She played me “Quiche Lorraine” off of Wild Planet and my life was ruined instantly. I immediately bought every record of theirs I could find over at the local Camelot. At the time, Bouncing off the Satellites was filling up cutout bins and it seemed like they were a band of the past, as this was a couple of years before “Love Shack” and Cosmic Thing served as both comeback releases and the extra security of their place in the canon. My first concert was one of their medium-venue tour dates for that album and I stood there at the front of the stage hypnotized by Pierson’s fringed dress, hair up in a home-dyed beehive that would require an emergency visit to the hair salon the next day for un-teasing, memorizing the sequence of the set list. That show cemented my conviction that bands with both boys and girls in them were always superior to bands that only had boys in them.
Finding out that the other world this album is transmitting from is actually accessible on this earth is key to the joy radiating from it, especially for the young misfit listener who realizes that planet is not in another galaxy but in a sweaty, dancing crowd. It feels like they took to heart the overt message of disco, which said that there’s a place for everyone at this party, and joined it with punk’s lack of care for the straight world’s opinion. That musical and ideological pairing created songs that could light up a dance floor and stir up a pit. It’s the most wonderful thing, the ability to be arty and dancey and have killer riffs. Their peers in Pylon managed to do the same thing. Imagine being Danny Beard, and having your label’s first two singles be “Rock Lobster” and “Cool”!
No one has ever felt not-cool-enough for the B-52’s. That is part of their dance music legacy, possibly: Where underground music was about not being like everybody else, about purposefully staying outside of mainstream society, disco was about welcoming everyone to the party. It’s also part of their queer legacy. The band’s legendary heartbreak was the loss of Ricky Wilson in 1985; suffering from AIDS-related illnesses, Wilson concealed his diagnosis from his friends and family and his death was a shock. His was one of the first AIDS deaths in music at a time when the disease was highly stigmatized and poorly understood and was sometimes reported as being the result of “lymph cancer.”
Until the early 1990s, the B-52’s talked more about their vegetarianism than their sexual orientation. With four queer members out of the founding five, they chose to present themselves as if it were a foregone conclusion, so normal or obvious that it wasn’t worth mentioning. While the conversation around outness has developed since then, their matter-of-factness was a beacon for young and questioning queer people at the time. Writer Clifford Chase used the album as a frame for his struggles with acknowledging his own sexuality in his essay “Am I Getting Warmer?” He found the lack of overt explanation made him feel safe: “In ’There’s a Moon in the Sky,’ Fred assured me that if I felt like a misfit, there were, in fact, ’thousands of others like you! Others like you!’ and since he didn’t specify what those others were, I didn’t have to be afraid.”
With the exception of perhaps the Fall, there’s not another post-punk band that can claim such a consistently positive track record in terms of who they’ve inspired. Steve Albini and Madonna claim them as an influence. “Hero Worship” is all over Sleater-Kinney, who also forego bass guitar and have complementary vocalists, and who recorded a song with Fred Schneider for a 2003 Hedwig and the Angry Inch tribute record and covered “Rock Lobster” (with Fred Armisen) in their live shows.
As both cutting-edge innovators and authors of unkillable party hits, their career resembles a smaller-scale version of those of other artists who’ve been held in both high artistic and commercial esteem, and yet their trashy and flashy visual branding and biggest hits have contributed to a less integrated place in the canon where they’ll forever be the beehive-wearing, cowbell-banging, “TIN ROOF! RUSTED,” “Flintstones”-soundtracking screamers of their biggest hits.
The band has said that their retro wardrobe was a simple matter of cheap access to old clothes and a desire to put together fun and attention-getting party outfits. It’s hardly the worst fate to be known for an iconic look and a couple of huge hit singles, but it’s a shame if the two are seen as a distraction from the greatness of their early output. The fuck-it, let’s-have-fun attitude that drew Fred Schneider to base his early stage look—an undershirt, pencil-thin mustache, and polyester slacks—on a conceptual “hangover” costume, or that got Kate and Cindy to wear fake fur purses as wigs, is part of the same approach that made for such unique music and the ability to synthesize experimentation with pop without judging either to be superior or more or less necessary. Just because you’re dressed like the court jester doesn’t mean you’re not royalty. | 2018-10-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-10-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Warner Bros. | October 14, 2018 | 9 | 411ea309-f7bd-483a-a30d-3a04174b7223 | Susan Elizabeth Shepard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/susan-elizabeth shepard/ | |
The officially licensed chill comp meets the underground's current fascination with yacht rock, space disco, pastoral prog, Pacific Coast synth-pop, fairy folk, and perennially feted Krautrock on Hans-Peter Lindstrøm's new edition of the popular Late Night Tales series, which features tracks from Sly Stone, Dusty Springfield, Todd Rundgren, and Pitchfork's Dominique Leone. | The officially licensed chill comp meets the underground's current fascination with yacht rock, space disco, pastoral prog, Pacific Coast synth-pop, fairy folk, and perennially feted Krautrock on Hans-Peter Lindstrøm's new edition of the popular Late Night Tales series, which features tracks from Sly Stone, Dusty Springfield, Todd Rundgren, and Pitchfork's Dominique Leone. | Lindstrøm: Late Night Tales | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10537-late-night-tales/ | Late Night Tales | Provided you don't find the idea icky, the quality of a chill out compilation is all about the execution. A good chill comp is like a featherweight mixtape from a friend with an ear for laidback grooves; a bad chill mix is just muzak that's been tagged "eclectic" in iTunes. Likewise the recent trendlet where rockers and ravers have been scraping the layer of mold off of forgotten hunks of 1970s and 80s mellow gold can sometimes feel like trying to dress up cheesy listening and weak beats as "lost gems." But mp3 blog scavengers (and producer/artists like the Studio, Quiet Village Project, Map of Africa, and others) have also managed to unearth singles that were unforgivably banished to the bargain bins when punk and new wave trimmed rock back to pop and house shaved away disco's hairy excesses.
The officially licensed chill comp meets the underground's current fascination with yacht rock, space disco, pastoral prog, Pacific Coast synth-pop, fairy folk, and perennially feted Krautrock on Hans-Peter Lindstrøm's new edition of the popular LateNightTales series. Even the tracks recorded a few months ago sound like they could have been heard floating from the window of a young German's flat in 1975--or maybe 1985. As a producer and DJ, Lindstrøm is known for his ProTool-ed upgrades on the cosmic swooshes of Italo disco and the regimented bliss of Giorgio Mororder's mechanistic funk. Though little on his Late Night Tales reaches house's 120 bpm tempo, it's still of a piece with his vision of a world where kids hung Vangelis posters in their lockers and Ralf und Florian got mobbed by Tiger Beat readers.
Hell, Lindstrøm's taste in African-American soul, here represented Sly Stone's "In Time", also burbles to a drum machine beat. Other Yankee inclusions range from the ludicrously slick electronic skank of Carly Simon's "Why" (love the proto-house piano and multi-tracked big harmonies that indelibly date stamp it "mid-'80s") to an electro-disco hoedown from Dusty Springfield (hambone rhythms meet the spotless production of a Donna Summer record). Two future shock novelty tunes from Todd Rundgren and George Benson treat synthesizers like the space age instruments they once were, sounding like a cardboard UFO strafing a small town in a '50s B-movie soundtrack and a slightly new age-y sound FX record respectively. And we should point out that Lindstrom also includes a track from Pitchfork's own Dominique Leone which, even accounting for nepotism, ranks as the compilation's prettiest moment, a fuzzed-out lullaby where Brian Wilson invites Roedelius over for a play date to splash around in his sandbox.
But mostly this Late Night Tales is a European show, whether Lindstrøm is drawing from relics of the era of arpeggiated basslines or young bucks attempting to ape their style. Usually the relics come out ahead. The cod cinematic grandeur of Klaus Schulze associate Rainer Bloss' moistly melancholy synth strings, "Chariots of Fire" piano, and hissing '80s gated drums will bring a tear to anyone of a certain age with warm memories of the era's synth schlock, but the wheedling harmonica (or its computer equivalent) and lite-funk rhythm of Terje and Thomas' "Regnbagn" just sounds like the limp instrumental/dub b-side to a Lionel Richie single.
It's uncomfortable realizations like that where you suddenly remember that much of this era's castoffs were not necessarily forgotten by accident. It also makes you question why modern producers like Terje and Thomas would want to imitate or pay homage to such toothless fare. Unlike Rub-N-Tug's sour riposte to the chill out market, Better With a Spoonful of Leather, where the New York duo slowed down and processed the same sort of raw material that Lindstrøm is working with until it turned downright eerie, Late Night Tales is a straightforward trawl through laidback/featherweight music that often edges too close to muzak. Lindstrøm's ear gets the balance right about half the time, but he's occasionally too proud of showing off his taste in records that should have been left in dad's basement. | 2007-08-15T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2007-08-15T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Electronic | TK | August 15, 2007 | 6.2 | 411f711f-6a55-4c0f-9cf4-2decbcac1eed | Jess Harvell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jess-harvell/ | null |
Heron Oblivion features members of Comets on Fire and Meg Baird, formerly of Philadelphia folk collective Espers. Their self-titled debut LP triggers nostalgia for the mid-'00s moment when bands like Six Organs of Admittance, Dead Meadow, and OM were ascendant, drawing both from underground American noise music and vintage psychedelic rock. | Heron Oblivion features members of Comets on Fire and Meg Baird, formerly of Philadelphia folk collective Espers. Their self-titled debut LP triggers nostalgia for the mid-'00s moment when bands like Six Organs of Admittance, Dead Meadow, and OM were ascendant, drawing both from underground American noise music and vintage psychedelic rock. | Heron Oblivion: Heron Oblivion | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21622-heron-oblivion/ | Heron Oblivion | If you follow loud guitar music or psychedelic rock with any attention, Heron Oblivion’s self-titled debut LP might trigger a bit of nostalgia for the mid '00s—specifically, the era of Arthur magazine and New Weird America, when Sonic Youth name checked Fleetwood Mac and independent music seemed, however briefly, to become more attuned to old-school cosmic energies.
At the time, bands like Comets on Fire, Six Organs of Admittance, Dead Meadow, and OM were ascendant, drawing both from underground American noise music and vintage psychedelic rock. The music was familiar, but strange and extreme—drawing from the past, but not overly reverential of it. And then it just sort of passed out of view, with true believers continuing to plug away in a slightly diminished spotlight.
The members of Heron Oblivion made heavy creative contributions to that scene. Singer and drummer Meg Baird performed in Philadelphia-based folk collective Espers and released three solo records via Drag City. Ethan Miller and guitarist Noel Von Harmonson both played in Comets on Fire, while Miller also lead the breezier Comets offshoot, Howlin Rain. Second guitarist Charlie Saufley played in San Francisco’s Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound. In other words, their pedigree in this small world is without parallel.
Though there’s plenty of common ground, Heron Oblivion is, in a way, an unlikely alignment of talents. Baird’s previous projects were hushed and pastoral, while Comets were unhinged and explosive. It’s the ability to navigate between these two extremes that makes the quartet’s debut compelling. The songs slip easily between dynamics—harmony to dissonance, quiet to loud. Baird’s stripped-down drumming style prevents Miller—a guitarist, here relegated to bass duties in an effort to keep things fresh—from veering into choogling territory. A shared yen for searing fuzz tones keeps extended zone-outs lively.
Between Kurt Vile, Solar Motel, Endless Boogie, and Steve Gunn, there’s no shortage of excellent cosmic-sounding guitar music at the moment. But Heron Oblivion is an outlier— louder, spookier, and less optimistic. The songs are moody and dark, with clear moments of guitar solo-driven catharsis. In that regard, Heron Oblivion feel more indebted to the the original wave of cosmic guitar rock, the one that crested during the political ferment of the '60s. A long guitar solo, at that time, implied a certain spiritual heft, a yearning for transformation. There's a moment at the end of album closer "Your Hollows" where Baird's voice ascends and hovers on a single note, blurring into what sounds like a sustained guitar tone or delay trail. The sound is organic, but unnatural in its timbre and length. It’s a howl that slips seamlessly from the earthly into the supernatural. | 2016-03-03T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2016-03-03T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Sub Pop | March 3, 2016 | 7.7 | 411fd79c-ef58-45a6-a073-0a2fa19c8e95 | Aaron Leitko | https://pitchfork.com/staff/aaron-leitko/ | null |
Watkins Family Hour is an eponymous album born from the decade-plus monthly residency hosted by siblings (and ex-Nickel Creek members) Sean and Sara Watkins at Los Angeles’ Largo. The crystalline covers collection features their takes on the Grateful Dead and country and Americana standards, along with a compelling Fiona Apple guest spot. | Watkins Family Hour is an eponymous album born from the decade-plus monthly residency hosted by siblings (and ex-Nickel Creek members) Sean and Sara Watkins at Los Angeles’ Largo. The crystalline covers collection features their takes on the Grateful Dead and country and Americana standards, along with a compelling Fiona Apple guest spot. | Watkins Family Hour: Watkins Family Hour | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20821-watkins-family-hour/ | Watkins Family Hour | Most people think of "records" as discrete objects, collections of smaller pieces strung together into a whole. But rarely do we think of records as records: documents of specific places, times, people, ideas. Watkins Family Hour accurately falls under both of those definitions. It’s an eponymous album born out of the monthly residency hosted by siblings Sean and Sara Watkins at Los Angeles’ Largo for more than a decade. Now, with this record, those of us outside L.A. can finally get a peek at what they’ve been up to each month.
The Watkins were best known in the early 2000s for their band Nickel Creek, a progressively minded roots trio that took tradition and imbued it with new energy that earned them a Grammy and a large international following. The band’s frontman and mandolin player Chris Thile has gone on to earn more acclaim than his bandmates in the decade since they called it quits (save for a record and reunion tour last year), but the Watkins are no slouches: guitarist Sean remains a tremendously skilled flatpicker, while Sara’s songwriting and fiddling has always been sharp. They’ve both put these chops front and center on the solo records they’ve released over the years.
Watkins Family Hour, an 11-track LP comprised entirely of cover songs, feels like it could’ve been a live recording at any one of the group’s Largo conventions. They begin with Robert Earl Keen’s "Feelin’ Good Again", a mellow celebration of finding unexpected moments of joy. It’s an appropriate opening for a record that feels analogous to a live experience: it’s the obligatory "Hey, welcome everyone, we’re so happy to be here." From there, Watkins Family Hour arcs across toe-tapping numbers—some faster, some slower—before closing with the "fare thee well" reprises in the Grateful Dead’s "Brokedown Palace". All that’s missing is stage banter and some between-song tuning.
While the Watkins siblings lend their name to the marquee, the Watkins Family Hour has always operated under an open-ended definition of "family." Fiona Apple is perhaps the brightest star of the fold on the album, though she never eclipses her cohorts. It’s a pleasant surprise to hear Apple flex her vocal might in a genre outside her usual realm with "Where I Ought to Be", and her execution is immensely satisfying. Where Skeeter Davis leaned more toward self-pity on her original 1961 recording, Apple’s vocals streak the song with anger and hurt, breaking the record’s overall complacent tone. "Hop High", with Sara Watkins taking the vocal lead, injects the back half of the album with more intrigue as a cautious introduction yields to fiery fiddle licks.
Elsewhere, Watkins Family Hour hits a number of country and Americana sweet spots: there’s the plaintive ballad "She Thinks I Still Care", the mournful drinking tune "King of the Twelve Oz. Bottles". And while they also include a Roger Miller song, they made an unexpected choice from his catalog: "Not in Nottingham" is from Disney’s 1973 movie Robin Hood. Greg Leisz’s pedal steel buoys the record throughout—that instrument can help songs soar with a twangy breeziness or damn them to goofy "Hyuck, howdy-y’all!" hell. Similarly, Benmont Tench’s honky-tonk organ and piano contributions are welcome additions to the arrangements.
When bands we like cover songs we love, our best hope to relive those special moments is usually through sideways videos recorded on cell phones and uploaded to YouTube. But with this crystalline collection, Watkins Family Hour offers a more compelling insight. | 2015-07-24T02:00:05.000-04:00 | 2015-07-24T02:00:05.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Thirty Tigers / Family Hour | July 24, 2015 | 7.4 | 4126d999-8fc2-46e7-90be-70d82d485e10 | Allison Hussey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/allison-hussey/ | null |
The prodigal trailblazers of Boston hardcore have reunited, returned, and evolved with their first album in 15 years. | The prodigal trailblazers of Boston hardcore have reunited, returned, and evolved with their first album in 15 years. | American Nightmare: American Nightmare | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/american-nightmare-american-nightmare/ | American Nightmare | A hardcore record is almost always a dress rehearsal, a set of stage directions that prepare the listener for the physical movements they’re expected to undertake when the songs actually come to life at the live show. It’s a means of internalizing the music through repetition until the muscle memory response is effortless and instinctual. And at its best, as on the self-titled release from prodigal Boston hardcore trailblazers American Nightmare, the listener can visualize it in their mind: Here, during this riff, I’ll fling my body just so into the crowd; I’ll shout on this gang vocal prompt. On this breakdown, I’m gonna punch a motherfucker in the teeth.
Fans of American Nightmare have indeed been clenching their fists now for almost 15 years. This record is their first since 2003’s We're Down Til We're Underground, released when the band was known as Give Up the Ghost. After a legal dispute with another American Nightmare, they’ve since reclaimed their name, and reformed their 2004 lineup of guitarist Brian Masek, bassist Josh Holden, frontman Wes Eisold, and drummer Alex Garcia-Rivera. The latter recorded the 19-minute album to 2-inch tape in his Mystic Valley Recording Studio in Boston, where the band traces its roots as an undisputed inductee into the city’s hardcore hall of fame.
Their prior two LPs fit snugly into the archetypical Boston hardcore sound in the tradition of bands like SSD and Ten Yard Fight: each element—vocals, guitars, and drums—coalesces into a singular punishing tumult, then falls out one piece at a time, then comes crashing back together. For American Nightmare, particularly on We’re Down, that formula came with enough moments of musical transcendence that alluded to the band’s self-professed affinity for post-punk, Bauhaus, Joy Division, and The Smiths.
Here there are songs that feel like nods to hardcore tradition intertwined with more melodically expansive diversions. “American Death” is two minutes of riffs and shouting, drum-centric and furious, while “Dream” is a mere 36 seconds of dashed off chaos. Little wonder it’s so short, the intensity would be near physically impossible to maintain much longer. Lead single “The World Is Blue” has it both ways, with relentless snare in a race to the finish all-out sprint, but it’s broken up by introducing hints of disparate song parts: a bass-led breakdown, pulling back the hurtling riff to slower swipes, and the introduction of a lead line that suggests another direction the song might’ve headed were it any longer. “Lower Than Life” still manages to transform halfway through, unclenching like a bloodied fist into a slowed down motif that ends up far from where the song began.
At their best, the band teases at the edges of what hardcore can be, particularly on “War” and “Gloom Forever.” Both songs, standouts here, feature foregrounded guitar leads that provide a musical through-line that hovers over the chaos of the rhythm section below. It’s a fitting tumult for the imagery at work in Eisold’s lyrics, preoccupied with suffering, both bodily and existential in nature. “All my life I’ve dreamed about death,” is the entirety of the lyrics on the quick-hitting “Dream,” but it could pass as a summary of his overarching mindset, with frequent detours into the abyss throughout. “Hell is hot but I'm keeping cool,” he screams on “The World Is Blue.” “I’m in the thorns of the garden with you. I’m in the flames of the fire with you. I’m so alive in the valley of death with you,” he lashes out on “War,” alternating between anger and succor for those who’ve either betrayed him or stood by him.
It’s doesn’t quite have the explicitly new wave-indebted synth punk of Cold Cave—Eisold’s project in the intervening years between American Nightmare records—or the overt romanticism of the Smiths. But the distance between the downright danceable “Gloom Forever” and 1986 song “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others” isn’t too far off. The musical flourishes and pitch-black noir that run like a current underneath American Nightmare bring the album into a wider world. Every hardcore record gives you instructions on how to listen to it, the better ones give you something to think about while your body is instinctively preparing for the show. | 2018-02-22T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-02-22T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Metal / Rock | Rise | February 22, 2018 | 7.3 | 4133f0d5-f4ba-4680-a184-3242c0dd164a | Luke O'Neil | https://pitchfork.com/staff/luke-o'neil/ | |
The L.A.-based Sprague steps away from her indie pop trio Florist for rippling, patient, and redemptive ambient drone works for modular synthesizers. | The L.A.-based Sprague steps away from her indie pop trio Florist for rippling, patient, and redemptive ambient drone works for modular synthesizers. | Emily A. Sprague: Water Memory / Mount Vision | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/emily-a-sprague-water-memory-mount-vision/ | Water Memory / Mount Vision | When Los Angeles-based musician Emily Sprague steps away from her folky indie pop trio Florist to make music with modular synthesizers, her music becomes a tool for perception. Listening to it, you start to notice things. Not just about what’s unfolding in the music itself, but also about what’s going on in the room where it plays, and maybe even what happens when the music stops.
Water Memory/Mount Vision collects two tapes of Sprague’s ambient music, both of which were created in the last two years, and frames them with brief spoken-word pieces. Along with artists like Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Sprague is part of a wave of artists returning ambient music to its spiritual roots, which is to say it’s not afraid of being called new age. Artists like Sprague often use old tools—modular synths instead of computers—and create spaces for relaxation and contemplation.
Sprague is more or less a minimalist, but her work also carries hints of tension. She’s especially adept at taking two compelling elements and exploring how they interact, finding a third “thing” that ultimately becomes the piece. “A Lake,” a slowly unwinding drone consisting of a throbbing bass tone at the bottom and shimmers of high-pitched tones at the top, uncannily evokes the body of water in its title, hinting at lights on a rippling surface and an invisible world spreading out beneath. Its beauty brings to mind the lyricism of Takagi Masakatsu, but Sprague composes with more patience, content to let held tones linger in place for minutes at a time. The primary motif in “Water Memory 1” is a rising and repeating synth tone. Set against a sound that recalls a French horn, it vaguely suggests an orchestrated waltz that got stuck in place, not unlike William Basinki’s Disintegration Loops, but hopeful rather than forlorn.
The Mount Vision half is a shade darker, and also finds Sprague incorporating acoustic sounds. “Synth 1” and “Synth 2” are more focused and intense and also a touch more psychedelic, their fat drones bringing to mind outer space instead of the natural world. The bubbling “Huckleberry” is suggestive of Suzanne Ciani, demonstrating how in the right hands electricity moving through a modular set-up can sound uncannily alive.
“Piano 1” sounds like a recording of the instrument falling apart in slow motion, as Sprague takes a repeating keyboard phrase and pulls it apart taffy, finding a sense of wonder through subtle shifts in tempo and EQ. A variation of the track, “Piano 2,” closes the set, and features the piano sounds mixing with recordings of birds and insects. As it unfolds, a second recording of the piano part appears, slightly out of phase with the first, and the gaps in the notes become longer and it takes on an oblong gait, like a limp. These small, subtle changes define this music. When you return to silence after it’s over, you start to think about what else you might be missing. | 2019-06-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-06-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Rvng Intl. | June 1, 2019 | 8.2 | 41348b75-9a7c-4644-bf74-bb3c353127ee | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | |
The Brooklyn duo's logic-defying new album threads anticapitalist critique, stoner humor, and a hazy undercurrent of fatalism into art-pop so mesmerizing it'll give you a contact high. | The Brooklyn duo's logic-defying new album threads anticapitalist critique, stoner humor, and a hazy undercurrent of fatalism into art-pop so mesmerizing it'll give you a contact high. | Water From Your Eyes: Everyone’s Crushed | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/water-from-your-eyes-everyones-crushed/ | Everyone’s Crushed | Among rock’s underclassmen, Water From Your Eyes’ Rachel Brown and Nate Amos present like back-of-classroom slackers with drool stains on their hoodie sleeves, their minds too clogged with Vine compilations to pay attention to World History. Alongside putzing around the bowling alley and getting their minds blown by Ween, the Brooklyn art-rock duo’s primary activity seems to be smoking a gargantuan amount of weed: “There was not a single drop of work done in the recording, editing, or mixing process that was not preceded by a spliff,” Amos said of their breakout 2021 album Structure. The way they talk about their latest record, Everyone’s Crushed, makes it sound as though they fished it out from their underwear drawer: culled from pre-existing material with only a few weeks of polishing, made from a “broken $100 interface and a dying computer,” their shittiest equipment yet. They purportedly tossed it to their label with no intention of taking edits.
Misdirection is a Water From Your Eyes forte though, and behind Brown and Amos’ oafish exterior is a slanted and singular ingenuity. Their closest contemporaries are the oddball virtuosos Jockstrap, with whom they share a proclivity for audacious sonic contrasts, silver-screen sentimentality, and snipped, inscrutable writing. Structure was a beguiling experiment in form, intricate and patterned as origami: The album split into matching halves—first a pastoral tearjerker, then a dubby basement experiment, then a garbled poem—with recurring motifs. Beyond its clever design, the music itself was mesmerizing, specifically the macerated noise freakout “Quotations” and its inverse, the beautiful stained-glass reverie ““Quotations.”” Structure led them to opening slots with Pavement, Spoon, and Interpol and a record deal with Matador. “Yeah we don’t even smoke weed anymore,” Brown says. “We have meetings now…a lot of meetings.”
Even a packed calendar can’t stop the duo from a good gag. So Everyone’s Crushed launches with a prelude called—they had to do it to ’em—“Structure,” which reappropriates a snippet not, in fact, from Structure but 2020’s 33:44. As if guided by a medieval jester, the song begins with vigorous twiddles of what sounds like a lute, until Brown’s bittersweet voice softens the mood: “I just wanted to pray for the rain/Wishful thinking for sunny days.” The couplet originates from a sound collage where Brown drones bleakly about the squeal of emergency sirens and children growing up to hostile futures—a despair that extends into Everyone’s Crushed, written amid struggles with substance abuse, depression, and pandemic-era hopelessness. “I guess lyrically [the album] is just us thinking about how fucked up things were,” Brown has said.
Nowhere is their fatalism more overt than on the acrid post-punk closer “Buy My Product,” a mock corporate ditty about the endless production of insecurity under late capitalism. “There are no happy endings/There are only things that happen,” Brown announces. “Buy my product.” But their disquiet tends to come through more obliquely, as in the nauseated orchestral loops of “14,” where Brown repeatedly declares intent to “throw you up” but never quite achieves relief. Or the elliptical title track, where almost no matter how you scramble it, “everything hurts.” On the latter, Brown mumbles feebly like a child with a tummy ache, while the doomy, disjointed production foreshadows the arrival of something worse: The synths creep like carbon monoxide, the guitar hobbles on broken legs, and the drums incite mangled bleats as though you’re next up at the slaughterhouse.
Ultimately, it’s not the hazy discontent that makes Everyone’s Crushed indelible but its livewire sound. You can interpret the deadpan counting in “Barley” as a slog through business hours—“another long day at the not killing myself factory,” according to one meme—but the song’s erratic whirl of movement and texture evokes glass shards trapped in a tornado, intersecting with the flat, 2D stitching of Brown’s voice, the up-down scratch of shakers, and the jagged slope of a rock’n’roll guitar riff. Amos has cited color field painter Mark Rothko as inspiration, but his capricious production more directly evokes the transgressive, action-oriented approaches of other Abstract Expressionists, who staged upon the canvas “not a picture but an event.” Likewise, Water From Your Eyes are always thrusting you into the middle of a grand saga you can’t quite grasp: On “Out There,” peals of tropical-sounding synths disappear into mist, the paradise breeze interrupted by a subterranean rumble; midway through, the song screeches like hot-wired car pulling a U-turn. This is music that resists logic, that invites questions like: Where am I? What the fuck is going on?
Who knows, but let me offer another example. “True Life” opens with skronking guitar blasts in alternating tones, like construction workers wreaking havoc on opposite sides of the road. Brown struts, sunglasses on, through the chaos. “You don’t even grasp the zipper/You won’t even ask the question,” they accuse, whatever that means, while the song tumbles and thumps like an off-balance laundry machine. Then Brown begins to plead, “Neil, let me sing your song,” which the band explains in interviews with a long backstory about hoping to interpolate Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” but not being able to get past his lawyers. It’s a highdea if I’ve ever heard one: singing a song about not singing somebody else’s song—Somebody Else’s Song also being the title of one of their past albums, not to be confused with their covers collection, Somebody Else’s Songs—and the whole thing is dizzyingly obtuse and borderline incomprehensible. But in the end who cares, because the music sounds awesome. Neil, give ’em a call. | 2023-05-30T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2023-05-30T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Matador | May 30, 2023 | 8.3 | 4134b394-24f4-4d18-af44-bcf6dc9a3ead | Cat Zhang | https://pitchfork.com/staff/cat-zhang/ | |
On her Tri Angle debut, sound designer and producer-turned-musician Katie Gately twists odd, outré samples into big pop shapes. | On her Tri Angle debut, sound designer and producer-turned-musician Katie Gately twists odd, outré samples into big pop shapes. | Katie Gately: Color | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22512-color/ | Color | The valences of “pop” and “weird” have become increasingly compatible in the last half a decade—Miley Cyrus eschewed her post-“Hannah Montana” trend-hopping for an album co-written by Wayne Coyne, PC Music traded in their outsider art status for an imprint deal with Columbia, and member Danny L Harle released a track featuring vocals by Carly Rae Jepsen. But the mainstream has always cherry-picked from the underground and alternative artists have always had pop proclivities. (Remember The Whitey Album, Sonic Youth’s tribute to Madonna?) Nothing about this overlap is particularly shocking or rebellious anymore—from albums to playlists and beyond, the monoculture always finds a way, and everyone will someday inspire Kanye West.
Sound designer and producer-turned-musician Katie Gately falls into the Avant-Garde Goes Pop category. She works with found sounds and meshes those odd samples with pristine vocals to create more than just tokens of her findings. Her debut full-length Color, out on premiere outré label Tri Angle Records, is certainly exploratory pop but adheres to certain sounds of the mainstream at its core. Gately’s work may not be mistakable with Katy Perry’s, but what sets her apart from the avant-pop pack is that her constructions have the sublime polish of Top 40. Her songs are infectious the way pop should be but without perfunctory lyrics, and they stick to you because what Gately creates ends up sounding just so very big.
Gately benefits from sound design know-how from her film production MFA studies at USC and her professional experience. This skill set benefits the intricacies of her beat constructions—harmonies built on tweaked vocal samples to bolster her own voice (“Sift”); cello and garbage-can percussion eloquently melding to make something reminiscent of grunge, but still reflective of current electronic trends at its core (“Frisk”). But Gately’s work is more in line with Lady Gaga’s theater-kid tendencies than, say, Grimes. Her work is likely to be compared to Holly Herndon and Björk, particularly because of the Haxan Cloak’s involvement with Vulnicura, but its forebear is really Madonna’s Ray of Light (save its sugarcoated title track). That album may not sound particularly revolutionary in 2016, but in 1998, the meshing of ambient, trance and electronica for a massive mainstream audience has helped pave the path for the last 20 years of pop music. Gately, working alone, somehow takes the dark tones of that album, bolds the colors and makes it sound even more expensive.
It’s both something old and something new for Tri Angle. Despite having previously housed artists like How to Dress Well and AlunaGeorge, the label’s name tends to evoke abrasiveness —the deconstructed club destruction of Rabit; Lotic’s silvery violence or the blistering funeral procession led by the Haxan Cloak. Its recent signees, R&B-classical hybridist serpentwithfeet alongside Gately, signal a push away from the acerbic that is still able to straddle the label’s interest in anxiety.
This is what makes Color so remarkable. It boasts the sort of large-scale electronic compositions that can often feel monolithically lonely, and she does it all by herself. And yet the album sounds and feels collaborative, as if it were the product of multiple viewpoints and inputs. It seethes with so many sounds and ideas that it sounds like a conversation, rather than a monologue.
You hear that particularly on tracks like “Sift” and the album’s lead single “Tuck,” as it twists through global influences—some of which are maybe a little bit questionably appropriative, similarly to Madonna’s exploration of celebrity-style Buddhism—that invoke the presence of others. Sometimes those shifts don't always land; “Sire” climaxes with too much distortion, and “Rive” utilizes an orchestra that sounds more demented than inventive.
Tri Angle releases tend to point toward the future, and with Gately’s album, it means that lo-fi pop is bounding for more gloss. But the ultimate takeaway from Color is not just another unconventional vision of what’s to come, it’s circling back to the label’s origins. Despite the gloom or brutality of Roly Porter or Evian Christ, it still has a Lindsay Lohan tribute album in its history. Granted, that mixtape, 2010’s Let Me Shine for You, is comprised of erstwhile witch-house covers and remixes by the likes of Laurel Halo and Oneohtrix Point Never, but it portended so much of the composite dance music to come. Gately’s effort is not just a blockbuster of a debut, it is the next stage in Tri Angle’s obsession with pop music as an influence—and the first that is primed to have the world pop world return the favor. | 2016-10-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Tri Angle | October 20, 2016 | 7.3 | 4134e829-1031-425d-871d-c8facf70d5c7 | Claire Lobenfeld | https://pitchfork.com/staff/claire-lobenfeld/ | null |
The debut solo album from the Daughters vocalist is a left turn: an eerie, improvised collection of industrial music that places you deep in the heart of the abyss. | The debut solo album from the Daughters vocalist is a left turn: an eerie, improvised collection of industrial music that places you deep in the heart of the abyss. | Alexis Marshall: House of Lull . House of When | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/alexis-marshall-house-of-lull-house-of-when/ | House of Lull . House of When | Terror is a key player in all of Alexis Marshall’s music. In the high-throated screams of his early aughts project As the Sun Sets and the gravelly death-and-resurrection of the Rhode Island outfit Daughters, Marshall’s work is melodic but never benign. For his debut solo album, House of Lull . House of When, the vocalist and songwriter takes a left turn with improvisatory drones and religious spoken-word. Balanced between spontaneity and self-flagellation, the record’s experimental, industrial sound places you deep in the heart of the abyss, exploring a cataclysmic kind of desolation.
House of Lull. House of When follows the same chaotic principles of Daughters’ catalog, shedding the band’s melodic structure for a foreboding atmosphere that suggests more dreadful horrors pulsing just below the surface. Marshall works like a mad scientist of grindcore, ornamenting the spoken-word recitations with clogged air vents, crunching paintbrushes, and rumbling padlocks. In “Drink From the Oceans . Nothing Can Harm You,” he bellows the words over a blown-out piano; it sounds as if he is swimming through grime, paddling furiously to keep himself from sinking.
In the lyrics, Marshall questions authoritative patterns, evoking images of confusion, paranoia, and rapture. On “It Just Doesn’t Feel Good Anymore,” he alludes to pandemic anxiety and isolation: “Don’t get up/Don’t go out/Don’t touch anything/Don’t touch anyone,” he howls against pounding percussion and screaming horns, his voice full of worry. In moments like these, it is easy to imagine Marshall, dressed in all black, delivering his lines at a particularly morbid poetry reading.
The peak of the album arrives halfway through with a pair of interconnected tracks. On “Youth as Religion .,” Marshall opens up slowly, as calm pianos and guitars keep pace with his quiet prophecies. “God finds you in such places/Tempest truly knows you,” he sings over thick, swelling drones. The atmosphere leads directly into the factory-hollowed anger of “Religion as Leader,” where Marshall, backed by the writhing vocals of Lingua Ignota’s Kristin Hayter, returns to his heightened rasp, following the thread of the previous song.
With its improvised arrangements—abrasive guitars, junkyard percussion, rotted piano keys—House of Lull. House of When sometimes feels like Aphex Twin leading a Sunday Service inside a locked trash incinerator. The sound is reckless yet attentive, and Marshall’s delivery arrives with operatic bravado. Though you’re not likely to find yourself humming any of these songs after the record ends, the sinister mood lingers. “The past is like an anchor,” Marshall repeats early in the album. Even so, he sounds refreshingly unmoored, in search of new visions to induce the same fear.
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. | 2021-08-06T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-08-06T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sargent House | August 6, 2021 | 7.2 | 4135104e-51a0-40f3-be77-7257de5fd737 | Matt Mitchell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matt-mitchell/ | |
Power pop band the Necessaries are best remembered for counting Arthur Russell and Modern Lovers’ Ernie Brooks as members. But there’s more to the story, as their newly reissued 1982 LP shows. | Power pop band the Necessaries are best remembered for counting Arthur Russell and Modern Lovers’ Ernie Brooks as members. But there’s more to the story, as their newly reissued 1982 LP shows. | The Necessaries: Event Horizon | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-necessaries-event-horizon/ | Event Horizon | One could be forgiven for mistakenly thinking of the Necessaries as an Arthur Russell side project. Posthumous interest in the many disparate corners of Russell’s back catalog—not to mention one semi-tall-tale about the infamously temperamental musician quitting the band by hopping out of their van in the Holland Tunnel while en route to a gig, cello in hand—have been instrumental in digging the art-pop quartet out of relative obscurity. And for a newer generation of Russell completists, this music is, at its surface, an easy extension of the heartfelt jangle on the 2008 compilation Love Is Overtaking Me.
There is, of course, more to the story. The Necessaries were founded in 1978 by Ed Tomney of downtown punk band Harry Toledo and the Rockets. Tomney had received encouraging feedback on a solo demo by John Cale, and he assembled a group that included Jesse Chamberlain (a drummer who had played with Mayo Thompson in his late-1970s UK reboot of the Red Crayola, and also the son of sculptor John Chamberlain) and Modern Lovers bassist Ernie Brooks, already a Russell collaborator in the Flying Hearts. Rounding out the original lineup was singer Randy Gun, who soon departed to work on his own material. After stints with Chris Spedding and as a trio, Brooks recruited Russell.
An initial full-length release with this final lineup, 1981’s Big Sky, was made up of what the band understood to be demos and hustled out by Sire without their final approval. The following year, Event Horizon, a significantly more coherent offering, was released featuring reworked versions of six of the same tracks. The band called it quits not long after Russell’s departure, and this album is the best expression of the short-lived project’s energetic and loose sound, which provides a hinge between the arty leanings of the New York downtown scene and something new that’s both more everyday and more ecstatic.
Songs such as the opener “Rage” and “Like No Other” deliver outright bouncy power-pop, classic in a way that befits teen-movie opening credits or a summer drive through the suburbs with the windows down. But there’s a density of ideas in the way such tracks are built, bright guitar lines fraying at the edge and Russell’s cello winding a somewhat alien texture throughout. The Russell-and-Brooks-penned track “Driving and Talking at the Same Time” is colored in with associative synths that wouldn’t be out of place in one of his disco hits. He and Brooks’ traded vocals meander in and out of conversation; something in their plaintive delivery seems to foreshadow shades of college alt-rock by the likes of R.E.M. (who they played a handful of shows with in 1982). Though they benefit here and there from unruly snarls of punk-rock energy, these songs are also grounded by a willingness to steady themselves, as with the deadpan pacing on “AEIOU” or “Paceways.”
With its self-conscious emulation of radio-friendly sounds and heart-on-its-sleeve emotional bent, Event Horizon is probably not the coolest record of any of these musicians’ careers. Its avant-garde leanings are tucked between earnest moves: side B in particular trades off between straightforward new wave, as with the not-not-goofy geography lesson that is “Europe,” and nostalgic ballads like “Detroit Tonight,” whose all-American guitar licks are complicated by the off-kilter yearning poetics of Russell’s lyrics.
On “More Real,” the best song on Event Horizon, this style provides a structure that makes a specific kind of hopeful vulnerability possible. Over a twangy repeated guitar hook, Russell sings, “She’ll come back I know/Cause our love is more real/I tripped or fell down, but I found myself/In a patch of new grass.” He’s joined by a chorus of his bandmates, and they sing together about experiencing a small, maybe blind faith while looking at the sky from where you’ve fallen to the ground. In that spirit, what makes Event Horizon feel essential is not just the history it collects, but the way one can hear these musicians, wide-ranging as their influences may be, believing in a form. It’s guitar-pop mobilized to its best ends: easy, sweet, and true. | 2017-09-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-09-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Be With | September 16, 2017 | 8.3 | 4137dba7-8e6d-40b5-b6a9-f29e9e962424 | Thea Ballard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/thea-ballard/ | null |
Unlike the wiry, anxious music his brother Jonah writes with the Massachusetts band Krill, Ezra Furman's music hides little behind metaphor or enigma. Perpetual Motion People is a playful, hefty romp through folk, blues, and plain old rock'n'roll. | Unlike the wiry, anxious music his brother Jonah writes with the Massachusetts band Krill, Ezra Furman's music hides little behind metaphor or enigma. Perpetual Motion People is a playful, hefty romp through folk, blues, and plain old rock'n'roll. | Ezra Furman: Perpetual Motion People | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20773-perpetual-motion-people/ | Perpetual Motion People | Nothing about Ezra Furman holds still. He loads his albums with frantic energy and watches them burn down to embers. Unlike the wiry, anxious music his brother Jonah writes with the Massachusetts band Krill, Furman's music hides little behind metaphor or enigma. He'd rather spit out all his problems than wrap them up into something oblique. He's kind of a projectile singer, firing off barb after barb as soon as they come to him.
A playful, hefty romp through folk, blues, and plain old rock'n'roll, Perpetual Motion People marks Furman's first release with London imprint Bella Union. It's his third solo LP, but it matches tempos more closely with Mysterious Power, his 2011 release with his old band the Harpoons. Throughout his catalog, Furman has penned plenty of songs about his struggles with mental illness and self-destruction, and Perpetual Motion People continues that theme with tracks like "Haunted Head" and "Can I Sleep in Your Brain?". It also breaches identity and politics and love and loneliness, and the inherent instability of each.
Furman indulges a couple saloon-ready crooners, like the loose piano jam "Hour of Deepest Need", but Perpetual Motion People shines when it's at its most kinetic. On "Lousy Connection", Furman bemoans the emotional vacancy of a life that moves at lightspeed over doo-wop backing vocals and swinging saxophones; he promises his "undying affection" to whoever will listen, though he's worried that the whole world is caught up in "a game of worldwide karaoke". But Furman is a clever enough lyricist to hit home that paradoxical feeling of manic isolation in just a few words: "There's nothing happening, it's happening too fast."
More than anything else, Perpetual Motion People feels like a rallying cry against boredom. "I'm sick of this record already," he sings on "Ordinary Life". "Let's wreck all the preconceived notions we bring to it." Furman, who publicly identifies as queer and genderfluid, sets ablaze traditional Americana frameworks with a yearning to be seen and heard the same way he feels. The friction between his sources and the direction in which he points them sets sparks flying throughout the album. He calls out for bodily autonomy and self-love on "Body Was Made", while on "Tip of a Match" he barks about never admitting defeat, even in the face of a long overdue apocalypse.
Perpetual Motion People can never sit right in its own skin, and that's largely where its charm comes from. Furman is the kind of singer who seems to have crammed so many ideas into his head he can hardly decide which ones should fly out of his mouth first. While he's deeply indebted to traditional sounds and familiar structures, he comes alive most when he's sewing fissures into the forms he knows so well. Perpetual Motion People comes with its share of misbehavior, but there's still more room left for Furman to thrash. | 2015-07-07T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2015-07-07T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | Bella Union | July 7, 2015 | 6.9 | 413902cb-d2d0-4569-befe-1fd3ad878770 | Sasha Geffen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sasha-geffen/ | null |
Steve Gunn's latest record is the fully formed pinnacle of his career. With a full band and plenty of instrumentation behind him, the care he puts into every nook and cranny of a song is evident. It’s lush but without lacquer, detailed without being dense. | Steve Gunn's latest record is the fully formed pinnacle of his career. With a full band and plenty of instrumentation behind him, the care he puts into every nook and cranny of a song is evident. It’s lush but without lacquer, detailed without being dense. | Steve Gunn: Way Out Weather | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19821-steve-gunn-way-out-weather/ | Way Out Weather | Say what you will about the hyper-speed of modern life—it doesn’t matter to Steve Gunn. He plays his guitar with a traditional precision, his eyes gazing at the neck, his fingers moving limberly around the frets, a thumb pick doing the most economical work. He’s austere as someone with no need to go anywhere anytime soon. His songs stretch and loom like a dust storm. Time, it seems, bows to him.
Gunn’s career shows a similar sense of patience: zoomed out, it looks like a 9-year crescendo, whose highlights include his earliest limited-run solo guitar improvisations, his work as a duo with drummer John Truscinski, a sideman in Kurt Vile’s band, the spine of the psych-folk supergroup Black Dirt Oak, on up to last year’s Time Off. That last record was a statement, casting Gunn as not just an instrumentalist, but a damn fine songwriter, too, as ambling, cyclical guitars loped and folded among verses, choruses, bridges, and his doleful baritone. They were simple songs, produced with plenty of dust and hiss all over the tracks, and Time Off was Gunn squinting at something big on the horizon.
His latest, Way Out Weather, is the fully formed pinnacle of his career. With a full band and plenty of instrumentation behind him, the care he puts into every nook and cranny of a song is evident. It’s lush but without lacquer, detailed without being dense. These songs live in hollowed out holes of America’s past; it’s as easy to imagine him playing in front of a disused gas station off an Oklahoma highway as it is to hear his band booming out of a roadhouse on the Mississippi Delta. At times, there’s so many guitar tracks it it feels like in the middle of a pickup jam session with Jerry Garcia, Duane Allman, and John Fahey.
Among the strides Gunn has made on Way Out Weather is his singing voice. His baritone has a perfect character to it, somewhere between Lou Reed circa Loaded and a toothless barfly who occasionally breaks into song. He falls off the ends of notes as if the energy to sing them is out of reach, yet he avoids the kind of droll, wondering vocal style used so liberally and effectively by his contemporaries Adam Granduciel and Vile. Instead, Gunn hones in on every pitch, like on the the lilting waltz of “Shadow Bros", which is the closest thing you'd call a traditional folk song here.
There's so much space inside these songs: the opening title track is a six-minute stroll through tendrils of guitars—a lap steel in the background, a strummed acoustic just beside it, a picked acoustic just in ahead of that, and a clean Fender lead right up front. Even when these sounds aren't washing over you, like the simple country blues riff that runs through “Wildwood”, hearing these melodies is a delight. He sings of private rivers, slowly moving light, fast nights, long days, and moving inside dreams.
It’s not all swaths of guitars and natural nostalgia, though: Gunn turns it up with “Drifter”, a balled up and electric stomper, and Way Out Weather closes with an excellent climax, “Tommy’s Congo”, a swirl of psych, krautrock, Malian folk, and a slight nod to Bob Dylan’s cadence on “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”. Gunn may have been more experimental-leaning on Cantos de Lisboa, his collaboration with Mike Cooper, but this song gathers up all his improvisational tendencies and eclectic influences, bringing unheard textures to his music that are somehow still cut from the same cloth. He closes the album in a voice that's never sounded more certain: “Steady eyes on the crowd to see what’s going down/ Never once looked down at what they’re playin'/ Never look down at what you need to do.” His eyes are trained far somewhere far in the distance, waiting for what’s next. | 2014-10-07T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2014-10-07T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Paradise of Bachelors | October 7, 2014 | 8 | 41399c64-ccc9-4dfb-8b78-ba5f8b9bc3d7 | Jeremy D. Larson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jeremy-d. larson/ | null |
The Tuareg musician’s first full-band studio album is an incandescent set of guitar music with a spontaneous, celebratory air—and a latent urgency reflecting the region’s very real difficulties. | The Tuareg musician’s first full-band studio album is an incandescent set of guitar music with a spontaneous, celebratory air—and a latent urgency reflecting the region’s very real difficulties. | Mdou Moctar: Ilana (The Creator) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mdou-moctar-ilana-the-creator/ | Ilana (The Creator) | Whether it’s stories about African-American legends reared on plantations in rural Mississippi or the apocryphal tale of a young Jimi Hendrix carrying around a broom until his family could afford a real guitar, blues and rock aficionados love a hardscrabble creation story. So it makes sense that in the discourse around one of the year’s most incandescent examples of guitar music, much ado is made about Mdou Moctar’s first instrument. The Tuareg guitarist was raised in northern Niger by a deeply religious family where music was verboten. He made his first guitar from a piece of wood strung with brake wires from an old bicycle, his many hours of practice kept clandestine.
Moctar’s path to the West has been a peculiar one. He began to make his name playing weddings; his first album (2008’s Anar) featured bits of Auto-Tune and made the rounds via Bluetooth swaps between mobile phones. After one of his songs was included on the Sahel Sounds compilation Music From Saharan Cellphones, label boss Christopher Kirkley set out to track down the young musician. When he did, he cast him in a bizarro remake of Purple Rain entitled Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai, the first feature film in the Tuareg language. The project would be heavy lifting for an artist without the instant magnetism and dazzling chops of Moctar, who easily filled the Purple One’s shoes.
From the opening lick of “Kamane Tarhanin,” Ilana (The Creator) elucidates just why our ears would draw a line from 20th-century blues and rock to another continent and a distinct style of guitar playing known as assouf. His first full-band studio album, it finds Moctar in the lineage of fellow Tuareg artists Tinariwen and Bombino. It also posits him as heir apparent to the mesmeric one-chord boogie of John Lee Hooker and ZZ Top circa Tres Hombres. Despite those antecedents, you can hear Moctar pushing further and higher at almost every turn, as when, around the song’s 4:15 mark, he enters with a streaking, white-hot comet of a guitar solo.
There’s a sense that the West pays attention to Tuareg artists dependent on how many other Westerners pitch in on the proceedings. Tinariwen have been visited by the likes of TV on the Radio and Kurt Vile in the studio, while Bombino has had both a Black Key and a Dirty Projector produce him. But outside of recording engineer Chris Koltay and bassist Michael Coltun, Moctar mostly plays off his fellow countrymen, rhythm guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane and drummer Aboubacar Mazawadje. Most of the songs were jammed out in the studio, and the feel throughout is spontaneous and celebratory, as when the tantalizing but far-too-brief “Inizgam” fades into the galloping chords of “Anna.”
While the band is holed up in a studio, it feels as if they’re playing out in the Sahara, space stretching out around every note. The hushed, dreamy “Tumastin” seems like it’s reverberating off of sand dunes. During the seven-minute centerpiece “Tarhatazed,” Moctar’s daredevil of a solo (bringing to mind Eddie Van Halen’s hammer-on majesty and eliciting background hoots) corkscrews higher and higher, as if he might disappear up into the night sky.
I won’t pretend that I can understand Tuareg, but in interviews Moctar says the songs are both positive-minded but also highly critical of Niger’s former colonists, the French. As he told The Guardian in no uncertain terms: “We are modern slaves,” especially in the way the European power exploits the African country for its uranium and natural resources. There’s a latent urgency and furor in the title track when he sings, in Tuareg, “Our heritage is taken by the people of France/Occupying the valley of our ancestor.”
While Ilana will scan for most listeners as rock, there’s little of the style’s machismo. If anything, Moctar wants to draw attention to the plight of the women in his country. “I want the world to understand that the women of the desert need help,” he told Stereogum. “They don’t have water to drink, there’s no medicine in the hospitals.” It’s neither bootstrapping origin stories nor rock’n’roll fantasies so much as the grim realities facing Moctar and millions of others around the world that give Ilana its considerable power. | 2019-04-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-04-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sahel Sounds | April 1, 2019 | 8 | 413a4f20-574d-4d11-9f07-936cda1b79f1 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
The debut from Auckland indie rockers is just really impressive—hook-filled songs filled with energy and attitude, written with depth and played masterfully. | The debut from Auckland indie rockers is just really impressive—hook-filled songs filled with energy and attitude, written with depth and played masterfully. | The Beths: Future Me Hates Me | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-beths-future-hates-me/ | Future Hates Me | Elizabeth Stokes isn’t what you would call an optimist. The songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist fronting Auckland, New Zealand indie-rockers the Beths told Rolling Stone that she typically writes her lyrics “most when I’m upset” before stating on her own wordsmith prowess: “A lot of it’s terrible.” In a stroke of anticipatory self-disappointment, the Beths’ debut album is titled Future Me Hates Me, the hand-painted cover art displaying a woman who can’t bear to look at her own reflection; on the title track, Stokes states “Sometimes I think I’m doing fine/I think I’m pretty smart” over crunchy guitars, before later conceding, “Then the walls become thin and/Somebody gets in/I’m defenseless.” The album’s brightest, catchiest sing-along? It’s titled “Whatever,” naturally.
Future Me Hates Me is one of the most impressive indie-rock debuts of the year, delivering on the promise of the Beths’ Warm Blood EP from 2016. It’s the kind of record you expect to come from a band’s third or fourth attempt: tight, hook-filled songwriting filled with energy and attitude, paired with lyrics that cut to the bone and a sense of confidence that betrays the record’s at-times slackened vibe. Future Me Hates Me is also but the latest notable guitar-based record in the last 12 months to come from the Zealandia region, joining Alex Lahey’s sugary and delightful 2017 debut I Love You Like a Brother and Camp Cope’s raw, astounding How to Socialise & Make Friends from earlier this year.
In the past, New Zealand indie-rock bands have typically been credited for possessing a distinctively jangly, drone-flecked sound dating back to the collegiate “Dunedin sound” established by 1980s-and-90s indie bands like the Clean and the Chills. You can hear a little bit of that legacy carried on in Future Me Hates Me—especially on “Uptown Girl,” which marries the soft charge of Dunedin classics like the Chills’ “I Love My Leather Jacket” with the melodic tang of Vancouver kindred spirits and Flying Nun signees the Courtneys. Otherwise, the Beths’ reference points aren’t bound to geographical placement; Glasgow indie-pop heroes Camera Obscura are frequently recalled, particularly in Stokes’ occasional vocal resemblance to that band’s frontperson Tracyanne Campbell, as well as the passionate burn of more mature strains of emo and pop-punk.
The type of music the Beths make—specifically, indie-pop possessing the type of easily apprehendable melodies that get stuck in your head all day—is often critically tagged as “deceptively simple,” which seems unfair. The ten songs on Future Me Hates Me are packed with obvious depth beyond Stokes’ evocative lyrics about the fresh smack of love and all the self-doubt that’s attached to it. “Not Running” begins as with brooding guitar before drummer Ivan Luketina-Johnston’s fills rip the song structure wide open to include miles of chugging riffage; “You Wouldn’t Like Me” switches between a handclap-dotted sway of a melody and a building shout-along chorus with the effortlessness of flicking on a light switch.
Prior to forming the band, all four members studied jazz at the University of Auckland, and their well-bound musicality is certainly evidence that they took their studies seriously. Until earlier this year, Stokes taught trumpet to children in Auckland, a job she ditched to focus on the Beths full-time: “The Beths is almost reactionary to jazz school and trumpet,” she told Rolling Stone. “It’s a guitar band. We make guitar music. I like it that way.” Future Me Hates Me is more than proof that she and her bandmates made the right choice on refocusing their musical concerns—and it’s an absolute thrill to think about where this young band will take their talent next. | 2018-08-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-08-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Carpark | August 18, 2018 | 7.9 | 413ce705-2a4f-4182-a7ec-c3463de1ae2d | Larry Fitzmaurice | https://pitchfork.com/staff/larry-fitzmaurice/ | |
The new comp from Skrillex’s label is their brash take on house music, a wide-ranging collection of misses with some hits in between. | The new comp from Skrillex’s label is their brash take on house music, a wide-ranging collection of misses with some hits in between. | Various Artists: HOWSLA | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23225-howsla/ | HOWSLA | In just five or six years, Skrillex has gone from being a dance music underdog to a decoder ring through which, for many Americans, electronic music finally makes sense. Once our prince of dubstep, now he’s one of pop culture’s savviest tastemakers—the rare figure capable of collaborating with Korn and Rick Ross and Justin Bieber—and an equally savvy entrepreneur, thanks to his prolific OWSLA label. Not unlike his onetime collaborator Chance the Rapper, he’s a self-actualized model for the 21st-century music industry.
Part of his upstart appeal has meant standing apart from old sounds like house and techno—vestiges of the fuddy-duddy old school compared to Skrillex’s brash cadre of iconoclasts. But house music’s four-to-the-floor thump has been creeping its way into his sets: At Burning Man’s Robot Heart party last year, he played nearly an hour’s worth of pitter-pat beats from artists like Psychemagik and Four Tet, opting for gradual blends over his usual slash-and-burn style. Now HOWSLA, as its title punningly makes clear, represents his label’s attempt to tackle house music.
So far, so good. There is, after all, room for everyone in house music; house, as Chuck Roberts established way back in 1987, is a feeling. Developed in the mid-1980s as an offshoot of disco, largely in Chicago and Detroit and New York, house music has spread around the world in its three decades on the planet, morphing all the way. Acid, deep house, minimal, kwaito, garage, 2-step, ghetto house, Baltimore club, tech-house, tribal, dirty Dutch—all these subgenres tweak the boom-ticking rhythmic cadence that makes house as sturdily versatile a musical form as you’ll find.
Skrillex’s compilation presents a focused take that’s largely modeled on bassline house, a style from the northern UK that’s distinguished by greasy low-end melodies, hard-thwacked drums, and a slippery, skippy sense of swing. That makes sense: Bassline’s design is in keeping with Skrillex’s own dental-drill sonics, and on HOWSLA, the hi-def low end is the center of attention throughout. Here it’s a doddering bumblebee; there it’s a caffeinated foghorn. The bass on nearly all the tracks is actually two sounds in one: a glowering, ultra-low frequency with a needling high-end counterpoint. They are thunderheads ringed with silver, or elephants dipped in glitter, and their legato settings send them slipping and sliding up and down the scale in seasick fits.
Atop those woozy figures, the compilation’s tracks stitch together a patchwork of dance-music signifiers: disco’s string vamps, garage’s shuffling syncopations, B-more club’s skipping kick drums, and progressive house’s vertiginous drum crescendos, rising in pitch to punctuate each subsequent drop. Roman Flügel’s “Geht’s Noch?” and Mr. Oizo’s “Flat Beat” are distant forebears of HOWSLA’s elastic jack tracks; a closer relation is Claude VonStroke’s Dirtybird label, whose West Coast vibes permeate Alex Metric’s slinky “Freeek” and Skrillex & Habstrakt’s wriggly, good-natured “Chicken Soup.” The garish style of EDM known as “dirty Dutch,” meanwhile, holds sway over the comp’s more beat-you-over-the-head moments, like the rushing snare rolls and blaring police siren of Marc Spence’s “On Air.”
Many of these songs are essentially just one idea mapped to a beat: “On Air” uses its loping drum groove as the vehicle for a single blast of bass; “Lasers” sets up its titular zaps with a spoken-word snippet about the same. Sometimes it works: Wiwek’s lean “Run,” the comp’s most hypnotic track, is a modern-day take on tribal house, complete with a rainforest's worth of squawks and ululations. But too often, the songs rely on gimmicky vocal hooks to keep the listener interested. The quirky nonsense rhymes of “Chicken Soup” are engaging enough, but Dances With White Girls’ hook on Chris Lake’s “Operator (Ring Ring)” wears its Green Velvet influence a little too visibly on its sleeve, while the heavy-breathing come-ons of Lake’s “I Want You” just sound thirsty. And on JOYRYDE's "New Breed," it's hard to escape the impression that the former psy-trance child prodigy is relying on the rapper Darnell Williams’ hardboiled references to lend his music a street patina.
Still, OWSLA fans will probably thrill to the music’s mixture of stonking bass, cracking beats, and hip-hop swagger. Longtime househeads may not; to anyone who prizes the deeper end of house, HOWSLA’s hard surfaces and chatty vocals will be exhausting. The main problem here is the material here doesn’t meet the goal OWSLA set for itself. “MISSION STATEMENT,” reads a block of text in the album’s press materials: “To push the timeless genre of house music forward for a younger generation by showcasing a new breed of producers pushing the boundaries of the genre in every direction.” If he really wants to represent house music’s vanguard, Skrillex and co-curator Chris Lake—whose biggest solo hit is just cornball commercial house with “indie” guitars —might have selected a different crop of artists. But house music doesn’t need pushing forward; it’s moving along just fine on its own. And the house revival has been a thoroughly mainstream phenomenon for years now, ever since Disclosure, Duke Dumont, and even Calvin Harris helped tip the charts away from big-tent EDM and toward house music’s cozier vibe. For the first time in his career, Skrillex feels behind the curve. | 2017-05-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Owsla | May 4, 2017 | 5.8 | 413e38e0-7b62-4c9e-9281-faf9a7e14e7c | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | null |
The soundtrack to Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s new film uses 1980s pop singles and classical pieces to help tell the deliriously romantic story of lovers Elio and Oliver. | The soundtrack to Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s new film uses 1980s pop singles and classical pieces to help tell the deliriously romantic story of lovers Elio and Oliver. | Various Artists: Call Me By Your Name (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-call-me-by-your-name-original-motion-picture-soundtrack/ | Call Me By Your Name (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | “Precious youth is short-lived as a dream,” wrote Mimnermus, six centuries before the birth of Christ, and he certainly wasn’t the first Greek poet to romanticize adolescence. Thousands of years later, artists have so thoroughly weighed down the teenage experience with wistful generalizations that it’s nearly impossible to tell stories about it without resorting to cliché.
Although it is deliriously romantic, the Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s new film Call Me By Your Name is too deeply immersed in the subjective experience of a singular 17-year-old, Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), to rehash conventional wisdom about youth. The movie spends so much time lingering on sensory details, from the taste of freshly picked fruit to the touch of a lover’s hand to the urgency of its dreamy, eclectic soundtrack, that it practically transport us into his skin. Set in Italy during the hottest months of 1983 and adapted from a novel of the same name by André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name tracks Elio’s affair with his first male lover, Oliver (Armie Hammer), from infatuation to consummation to their inevitable parting. A handsome doctoral student who radiates confidence, Oliver comes to live and work with Elio’s archeologist father (Michael Stuhlbarg) for the summer. For an introspective teenager who’s never truly been in love, and whose hobbies include playing and transcribing classical music, falling for this Adonis in a button-down shirt is like discovering a new language to communicate with the outside world.
What’s implicit in his story may be the only genuinely universal truth about adolescence—that it’s a time of blurred borders, when the innocence of childhood starts to chafe like shoes you’ve outgrown, but adult obligations still sound deadening. Identity is at its least stable in these years, when the books and bands you love become your mirror and it only takes a kiss to collapse your unformed self into someone else. The movie gets its title from a scene where Elio and Oliver literally exchange names, as though to annihilate any boundary between them. Its soundtrack translates that electricity, of worlds colliding, into music.
The soundtrack unites Elio’s internal life, with its piano compositions and sheet music, and the ’80s pop hits that represent the external reality he accesses through Oliver. Watching the film for the first time, a viewer lost in cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s overripe visuals might mistake the piano-driven instrumentals for a score crafted by a single composer. In fact, Guadagnino’s journey into his hero’s psyche is accompanied by works that span continents and centuries.
Like Elio—an American Jew living in Italy, who also speaks French with his sometime girlfriend (Esther Garrel)—this soundtrack has an international sensibility and an old soul. Canonical compositions segue into tracks by contemporary innovators like Ryuichi Sakamoto and John Adams. The Canadian pianist André Laplante, as well as the British and Hungarian duo of Valéria Szervánszky and Ronald Cavaye, perform pieces by Ravel. In one scene, Elio plays the gentle “Zion hört die Wächter singen,” from Bach’s chorale cantata “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,” three times in a row for a mesmerized Oliver, tweaking each performance to simulate how a different famous composer might put his stamp on it. (The soundtrack features Italian pianist Alessio Bax’s delicate recording of the movement.)
Because their relationship is supposed to be a secret, the couple’s dialogue is often coded. There are secret messages in the music, too. “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” steals phrases from the Bible’s sensual Song of Songs. One of Sakamoto’s two contributions, the dreamy and then halting “Germination,” comes from Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, a strange Nagisa Ôshima film where the composer stars as a Japanese soldier in World War II who develops a homoerotic fixation on a prisoner played by David Bowie.
Eighties pop singles are scattered amid the classical pieces on a tracklist that looks haphazard but actually represents a thoughtful convergence of sensibilities—one that coheres even without the accompanying images. Most of the songs that blast from speakers at the bars and dance parties Elio and Oliver frequent are cultural hybrids. France’s Bandolero add Spanish phrases, maracas, rap verses, and a dash of English to their appreciation of one Miss Cha Cha Cha on the bouncy “Paris Latino.” Loredana Bertè, an Italian singer who’s known for her eclecticism, brings a throaty nightclub voice, a French catchphrase, and Gallic accordion sounds to her synth-pop gem “J’adore Venise.” You may remember Giorgio Moroder and Joe Esposito’s silky ballad “Lady, Lady, Lady” from Flashdance, which became a teen box-office hit in the spring of 1983. Here, though, lyrics like, “Dancing behind masks, just subtle pantomime/But images reveal whatever lonely hearts can hide,” sound as though they were written just for Elio and Oliver.
It’s Sufjan Stevens’ contributions—two new compositions, plus a remix of his Age of Adz track “Futile Devices”—that bring the soundtrack into a wiser, sadder present. Guadagnino has said the songs are meant to serve a similar purpose to voiceover narration in the typical literary adaptation. “We wanted [music] that wasn’t as close to us in first person,” he told an interviewer, explaining that he thought of Stevens because his lyrical indie-folk sounds poignant and elusive at once. His whispery voice first appears midway through the film, when “Futile Devices” plays soon after Elio and Oliver have acknowledged their mutual attraction. It’s a moment of reverie, set to a song that revels in closeup images of a relationship that transcends words. The remix elegantly translates the original’s rippling guitar into Elio’s emotional language: somber piano.
Guadagnino only asked Stevens for one song, but he wrote two, and including both is the sole misstep here. “Visions of Gideon,” which plays in the film’s final moments, is stunning. Over twinkling piano and dulled percussion, Stevens nails the surreal experience of reminiscing about an old love: “Is it a video?” he keeps repeating. But “Mystery of Love,” from a happier era of Elio and Oliver’s affair, comes across as twee onscreen and on the album. The rhymes are too neat, the phrasing (“Blessed be the mystery of love”) is too precious, a reference to Alexander the Great’s male lover Hephaestion feels pandering, and Stevens’ coo is so honeyed, it’s cloying.
The film’s most recognizable sync, Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way,” doesn’t just make for a delightful Armie Hammer meme. It’s also a better anthem for this romance—and a more inspired fusion of Elio’s internal and external worlds—than “Mystery of Love.” While the marimba melody burbles like a piano gone giddy, the lyrics sell a vision of love far more iconoclastic than the one in the first movie it soundtracked: Valley Girl. You probably don’t need Call Me By Your Name to introduce you to the song, but once you’ve seen how it liberates Elio, you may never want to hear it outside the context of this deftly constructed soundtrack. | 2017-12-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-12-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | null | Madison Gate / Sony Music Masterworks | December 1, 2017 | 7.6 | 413f6368-1a86-4cd8-b9c9-08973a1ac012 | Judy Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/judy-berman/ | |
The Arctics expand their sound with the help of producer Josh Homme (QOTSA) on this, their relatively relaxed, confident third album. | The Arctics expand their sound with the help of producer Josh Homme (QOTSA) on this, their relatively relaxed, confident third album. | Arctic Monkeys: Humbug | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13374-humbug/ | Humbug | The hype surrounding Arctic Monkeys’ 2006 debut album was so monstrous it threatened to swallow the band and its music whole. And a lesser band might have been swallowed, but it should be clear by now that Arctic Monkeys weren’t undone by a little media frenzy. It’s no surprise: They’re a skilled band that writes complex songs filled with unexpected musical turns, wit, and observational acumen. They have a level of musicianship that hasn’t been fashionable since the ’70s, but they employ it in a modern way, and everyone I’ve heard doubt the group changed their mind when I played them one of their records.
Humbug, the band’s third album, breaks ground in a few directions for the Arctics. It’s their loosest record yet by far, following on the heels of the hyperaggressive Favourite Worst Nightmare, which at times was wound so tight it felt like it might collapse from a heart attack on the next chord change. Part of this looseness can be credited to producer Josh Homme, who brings out the darkness that often underlies Alex Turner’s songwriting. The guitars in particular have a snapping, reverberant desert/surf tone that fuels the band’s descent into night. It’s an interesting look for them, and one that undeniably sounds much better on the third or fourth listen than the first. This perhaps reflects that the Arctics, having established and subsequently defended their place in the UK pop firmament, can now afford to make a record that grows on you rather than walloping you in the face repeatedly.
First single “Crying Lightning” is among the record's loudest, most aggressive tracks. Alex Turner’s Yorkshire accent and penchant for detailed writing—he catalogs the sweets the “you” in the song ingests almost obsessively (pick’n’mix, strawberry lace, gobstoppers, and ice cream) and the song rides its overdriven bass line to a theatrical horror guitar build-up. The song’s heavy hand is oddly off-putting and engaging at the same time. As an antidote, they’d do well to release “Cornerstone” as the follow-up single. The album’s highlight, the song is beyond lovelorn, with Turner delivering a swooning, dreamy vocal, possibly his best to date. He makes a somewhat hokey premise—a guy who keeps approaching women who look like his ex-girlfriend, only to strike out when he asks if he can call them by her name—actually work through clever turns of phrase and his usual flair with detail.
That song feels like a legitimate expansion of the band’s songwriting arsenal, but their usual territory offers its share of good stuff as well. Matt Helders’ drumming on the frenzied riff-fest “Dangerous Animals” is jaw-dropping, and it’s one of things that saves the song from its spelled-out vocal hook. “Potion Approaching” threatens to turn into a cover of Nirvana’s “Very Ape” on its opening riff, but the band instead opts for Zeppelin-ish start-stop passages that read like “Achilles’ Last Stand” recast as a Britpop tune before it shifts completely into a seesawing, mildly psychedelic mid-section.
Their riffier tendencies can get the best of them, as on “Pretty Visitors,” a progged-out song that gets lost in heavy metal thunder, choral vocals (not an actual choir, but the band built up into one), and creepy organ interludes. The balance between songwriting and excess seems to hold across all three of their albums, though, and it’s never undone them yet. Humbug isn’t better than either of its predecessors, but it expands the group’s range and makes me curious where it might go next. It also demonstrates a great deal of staying power for a band that could have imploded before it ever got this far. | 2009-08-24T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2009-08-24T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Domino | August 24, 2009 | 7.2 | 4143873d-e421-442c-8c5d-b738886491cd | Joe Tangari | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-tangari/ | |
For his catchy but charmless second solo album, the pop singer offers a loose-concept record that explores every angle of a breakup through the most pitiful of conversation starters: the weather. | For his catchy but charmless second solo album, the pop singer offers a loose-concept record that explores every angle of a breakup through the most pitiful of conversation starters: the weather. | Niall Horan: Heartbreak Weather | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/niall-horan-heartbreak-weather/ | Heartbreak Weather | In 2010, a wee Niall Horan decided to test his vocal prowess by auditioning for the British singing competition The X Factor. After performing a neutered rendition of Ne-Yo’s “So Sick,” the 16-year-old Irishman was met with skepticism from guest judge Katy Perry, who sagely warned, “Likeableness is not gonna sell records.” Nevertheless, she let him advance and Horan was placed in the group One Direction alongside four other baby-faced fellows. As 1D became the biggest pop group in the world, it was apparent that likability (alongside teenage sex appeal, many genuinely good bops, and a rapidly obsessive fanbase) actually sells a lot of records.
After One Direction announced an indefinite hiatus in 2015, Horan spun his role as the band’s guitar-playing Nice Guy into a pleasant-enough solo career. Three years after his folk-pop debut, Flicker, Horan’s biggest challenge as an artist is to harness his ordinariness into being an exceptional everyman à la Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi. So for his second record, the golf-loving, Eagles-obsessed wannabe boomer turned to a loose-concept album that explores every angle of a breakup through the most pitiful of conversation starters: the weather. Parting clouds, rising suns, cinematic rainstorms, Heartbreak Weather has everything, except soul.
It’s quite a let down from the promise of Heartbreak Weather’s lead single, “Nice to Meet Ya.” Borrowing some strained swagger from former bandmate Liam Payne, Horan entices an elusive would-be lover over a dancey British alt-rock vibe. While the track employs some heavy-handed horniness—“I’m gonna take you somewhere warm, you know J’adore la mer,” Horan purrs because French makes everything sexier, oui?—it’s an easy guilty pleasure that is as charming as it is uncool. Unfortunately, the rest of the record never recaptures this little spark.
On the title track, Horan posits that love has a magical, transformational power that can shift the cosmos and make lonely boys feel complete. He follows this disclosure with “Black and White,” a soaring declaration of eternal devotion. “I promise that I’ll love you for the rest of my life,” Horan belts, in between weepy visions of their wedding day and homely golden years. It’s difficult to feel moved by the stakes of these grandiose statements because their meanings are so cliché, and not in the way that feels refreshingly familiar.
After these blasts of sunshine, storm clouds gather. Across the rest of Heartbreak Weather, Horan is stuck in two mindsets: bereft or coltish, either haunted by the memory of a lover, or desperately trying to scrub her away. There’s no explanation for why the relationship worthy of celestial exaltation dissipates other than that the music starts to move from generic anthems into a confusing mix of bleeding-heart ballads and Fleetwood Mac-indebted pop-rock. As on Flicker, Horan is a co-writer on every song and he is joined by Teddy Geiger, Tobias Jesso Jr., Greg Kurstin, Scott Harris, and 1D regular Julian Bunetta. Horan’s songwriting seemingly works only in unwavering extremes. When he’s blue, like on the painfully maudlin “Dear Patience” or the piano-driven breakup ballad “Put a Little Love on Me,” it’s as if the sky is falling. When he’s hurt by a lover, as on “Bend the Rules” he is the picture of gentlemanly restraint. “I pour myself a glass, it won’t be the last/Just our medicine for now,” he forlornly rumbles. (Confusingly, Horan has referred to this song as his “Streets of Philadelphia” moment, a song written in response to the AIDS epidemic.) When he’s frisky, as in say, “Small Talk,” he invokes feral wolves and roaring flames. Over and over again, he goes through the motions without ever really looking inward.
In an interview with Apple Music, Horan said that despite his intention to cover a variety of perspectives, the songs will “probably still sound selfish.” It’s not exactly that Heartbreak Weather is selfish—Horan sounds too adrift for true narcissism—but it’s superficial. The women in his songs are painfully one-dimensional. Rather than defining them at all, Horan and his songwriters reduce them into faceless placeholders tasked with helping the singer move on. On the boogie-down track “New Angel,” a forsaken Horan craves a distraction from his lovesick psyche. “I need a new angel/A touch of someone else to save me from myself,” he croons, “....I’m hoping you get her out of my mind.” Horan repeatedly writes himself into similar emotional pickles, finding solace in the arms of a stranger while fixated with someone else. It’s a valid post-breakup experience, but it simultaneously limits the already narrow role women have on the record.
After all the sentimental rigamarole, it’s tough to come away from Heartbreak Weather feeling any closer to Horan. He spends too much of the record bouncing between sounds and songwriting concepts to feel distinct. But on the record’s closer, the acoustic ballad “Still,” Horan sounds like he genuinely wants, or even needs an emotional reckoning. It’s the realest, rawest moment on the record and a small bit of proof that Horan has the potential to make it on his own. | 2020-03-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-03-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Capitol | March 20, 2020 | 4.7 | 4145921a-d6b0-4f0a-80e0-073cdc673ce8 | Quinn Moreland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/quinn-moreland/ | |
Since 1989, Oxbow have been releasing some of the most eccentric heavy music albums ever. On Thin Black Duke, frontman Eugene S. Robinson wields his voice as a vehicle for disorder and transcendence. | Since 1989, Oxbow have been releasing some of the most eccentric heavy music albums ever. On Thin Black Duke, frontman Eugene S. Robinson wields his voice as a vehicle for disorder and transcendence. | Oxbow: Thin Black Duke | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23192-thin-black-duke/ | Thin Black Duke | Several months after Oxbow released their sixth album, 2007’s The Narcotic Story, frontman Eugene S. Robinson wrote a book about beating people up. It’s called Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking, and it offers tips for achieving what Robinson refers to as “Zen and the Art of Kick Assertainment,” the ecstasy of sweet aches and bloody noses. The guy’s no casual sock-em-bopper: between his stints as a bouncer and a security guard, his extensive roster of martial arts skills (boxing, Kenpo karate, Muay Thai, wrestling, jiu-jitsu), and his history of choking out hecklers onstage, Robinson’s amassed a resume to rival any career pugilist.
But it’s not Robinson’s fists you should fear. His vocal chords, rather, are unsettling, protean howls defiant of genre, convention, or common sense. The same goes for Oxbow, who’ve spent the past quarter-century or so churning out some of the most eccentric (and criminally underrated) heavy music albums ever made. Now, the Bay Area group are back for another genre-bending fight with their first album in over a decade, Thin Black Duke.
Chaos may be Oxbow’s calling card, but on Thin Black Duke, the insanity is a facade. In a press release, composer and producer Niko Wenner (who co-founded the project alongside Robinson in 1989, as a duo) framed the album as an exercise in “large scale coherence.” It undertakes the classical practice of populating mammoth soundscapes with leitmotifs (a melodic phrase, a lyric, a subject) that function like aural trail markers. Sometimes the details manifest as a chorus, like in the wailed refrain on “Letter of Note.” Other times, it’s with repeated references to the titular character himself—whose story proves nearly impossible to parse out when issued forth from Robinson’s venomous gut.
Robinson wields his voice as a vehicle for disorder, and by extension, transcendence. He doesn’t sing with the music, but against it. On the album’s most immediate song, the turbulent piano-rocker “A Gentleman’s Gentleman,” he traces the performative trajectory of a paradoxical couplet (“And when the Duke talks, he sounds like a mime/With his hands doing all the talking”). The phrase initially clambers out of the bluesy miasma as a rabid, incomprehensible whisper (“Andwhentheduketalkshesoundslikeamime”); it then gets thrown on the rack for some syllable-stretching (“His haaaaaaaands doing all the talking”) before emerging from the torture refreshed.
Lightyears away from the unpredictable, exhausting pacing of their early work, Thin Black Duke reflects a formalism that places it closer to Faith No More than Scratch Acid. Where past albums find Oxbow trapped in the eye of the storm with nowhere to run, Thin Black Duke’s tracklist contains a clear arc: a gnarled beginning, all clattering riffs and piercing screams, a dreamlike middle swath. And the six-and-a-half-minute closer “The Finished Line” is a satisfying climax, uniting the album’s scattered stylistic flirtations under the banner of carnal dramaturgy. With Thin Black Duke, Oxbow once again envision a world domineered by disorder, a carnivalesque arena where music’s most intimidating, grandiose genres (free jazz, high-concept chamber pop, noise, neoclassical, metal) can duke it out like gladiators one minute, and come together for a grotesque group hug the next. It may not be their definitive show of force, but it’s a dazzling spectacle nonetheless. | 2017-05-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Hydra Head | May 11, 2017 | 7.3 | 41477e22-b5ce-4e6d-8959-ee9dd14b1e3a | Zoe Camp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zoe-camp/ | null |
The North Carolina-via-Virginia guitarist Daniel Bachman’s seventh album is his first with a clear purpose and consistent direction. A set of seven unaccompanied guitar instrumentals, it reads like a private love letter to an old home, written and sent from a new one. | The North Carolina-via-Virginia guitarist Daniel Bachman’s seventh album is his first with a clear purpose and consistent direction. A set of seven unaccompanied guitar instrumentals, it reads like a private love letter to an old home, written and sent from a new one. | Daniel Bachman: River | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20433-river/ | River | At their best and worst, solo acoustic guitar albums can feel like workshops, demonstrations meant to spotlight a player’s depth or breadth of knowledge and technique. A genteel folk shuffle cedes to a gnarly blues moan, or a ragtime ditty yields to an extended raga improvisation. Maybe there’s a banjo number, a fiddle tune, or a collage of field-recording abstraction, where crickets chirp or creeks trickle beneath incidental chords. This condition has seemed especially true for the large group of players that has emerged during the last decade. As though to keep stride with our genre-blending times, and to not be bound by old stylistic structures, these young instrumentalists (William Tyler, Steve Gunn, and James Blackshaw among them) have often embraced adaptability more than singularity.
Daniel Bachman has spent the bulk of the six albums he’s released during the last four years showing that, even at the age of 25, he can stretch. For 2013’s Jesus I’m a Sinner, he plucked a banjo on one track, picked meditative lines through a haze of eerie effects for the next, and then pranced and plowed alongside an old-time band. There have been little one-instrument symphonies and unadorned folk beauties, irascible strummers and blissful drifters. The variety has made for wonderful discrete moments and galvanized Bachman’s growing reputation as one of his form’s best new practitioners. But it’s also made for albums that were mostly fine—often dazzling but generally distracted, as if Bachman knew how to travel but not exactly where to go. River, Bachman’s seventh album, is the first with a clear purpose and consistent direction. To date, it’s the best work of his career.
Though Bachman is now based in Durham, N.C., where River was recorded, he is a native of the northern Virginia city of Fredericksburg, near where the Rappahannock River winds out of the Chesapeake Bay. A set of seven unaccompanied guitar instrumentals, River reads like a private love letter to an old home, written and sent from a new one. Named for another nearby town, the short "Farnham" is nostalgic but sentimentally vague, like a winsome feeling in search of the exact childhood memory that inspired it. The two-part, 17-minute suite "Song for the Setting Sun" conjures an array of emotions in one fluid listen. In part one, Bachman seems to express anxiety over the disappearing day in a place he loves but must leave; just before the three-minute mark, you can hear him nervously shuffle in his chair, perhaps even sigh. The nerves soon sublimate into contentment, though, as Bachman plays the sort of bright, gentle melody that suggests a hand-me-down folk standard, a musical home remedy meant to quell unease. At one point, Bachman’s busy, bustling strings imply he’s even throwing a backyard party. This material is like a survey of his experiences, not an overview of his abilities.
River runs so well as a unit that, unless you’re able to spot the tunes or sleuth the liner notes, you likely won’t detect that Bachman didn’t even write two of these numbers. Bachman undercuts the original sliver of menace in Jack Rose’s "Levee", turning what sounds like an ominous threat into a hopeful promise. His chords glow, and his pulse is quick, as if he’s reflecting on a hard place from a safe, removed distance. The same holds for his spry interpretation of William Moore’s patient, playful 1928 delight, "Old Country Rock". Bachman fills the spaces between Moore’s licks with brief notes and radiant overtones; he’s practically dancing with the source material. Though divided by nearly a century, Rose and Moore both lived in the riverine area Bachman extols here; Rose grew up in Fredericksburg, and Moore used to cross the Rappahannock for work. Bachman treats their tales with the same familiarity and fondness he treats the land and his own life there.
The Rappahannock is Bachman’s thematic thread, an animating and unifying concept that helps all of this material work as a set piece, not just a set of pieces. If he wants to keep his albums interesting, of course, it’s unlikely he’ll return to the same geographical feature often. But maybe that’s not necessary now. During the 14-minute opener "Won’t You Cross Over to that Other Shore", it’s clear something has shifted with Bachman’s composition and execution. There’s a little bit of raga and a little bit of ragtime, some rock'n'roll gusto and some bluegrass spirit. But all these elements feel connected and cohesive, like bits moving together with perfectly governed momentum. Even when the song swings from its darkest, slowest drags to its shiniest, fastest flourishes, the results feel more personal than professional, a demonstration of experience rather than education. | 2015-05-19T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2015-05-19T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Three Lobed | May 19, 2015 | 7.7 | 414fb1e7-0e44-45af-a0b5-ced74a7a8ff0 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
The black metal musician Jef Whitehead has become infamous, his name forever linked to domestic assault charges. For some, he will remain a felon convicted of domestic abuse. For others, he’s a dark person caught in a darker situation. But the truth, at least as suggested by his new album, Scar Sighted, is something more complex. | The black metal musician Jef Whitehead has become infamous, his name forever linked to domestic assault charges. For some, he will remain a felon convicted of domestic abuse. For others, he’s a dark person caught in a darker situation. But the truth, at least as suggested by his new album, Scar Sighted, is something more complex. | Leviathan: Scar Sighted | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20094-scar-sighted/ | Scar Sighted | If you don’t subscribe to the controversies engendered by heavy metal magazine covers in 2015, here’s a recap of the drama with Decibel No. 125: Four years ago, Chicago police charged and tried Jef Whitehead for allegedly choking, beating, stabbing, and raping his then-girlfriend and leaving her overnight outside of the tattoo shop where he’d been working. As reported, the incident seemed disturbing enough, but even more so because it actualized a decade-plus of Whitehead’s lyrical and musical malevolence.
Since the late ’90s, working under the name Wrest in one-man, aggression-and-obsession outlets Lurker of Challice and Leviathan, Whitehead had emerged as a pillar of black metal in the United States. He coupled severe misanthropy with idiosyncratic execution to create mesmerizing, barbed records that sounded like little else. Epitomized by song titles like "The History of Rape" and lines like "I will ruin your life... I will fuck you in the sun," Whitehead made his name documenting evil ideas. But with 34 charges leveled against him, it seemed that he had moved beyond simply detailing darkness and into enacting it. And that’s the guy that Decibel decided to put on its March 2015 cover, his seven-month-old daughter Grail cradled in his arms and his new album, Scar Sighted, in promotional tow.
The cover prompted, of course, a rush to judgment: Decibel was accused of rape apologetics, trolling, and using the prurient allure of a convicted felon to sell magazines and Orange Goblin flexi discs. Another, more ridiculous subset accused Decibel of going soft by putting a kid on the cover, since innocence isn’t metal or whatever. But defenders of Whitehead and the magazine—even Decibel managing editor Andrew Bonazelli—clamored to point out that 30 charges against Whitehead had been dismissed and that he’d been cleared of all but one of the remaining accusations. In what essentially served as an embarrassing advertorial for the issue, Bonazelli told Metal Sucks that "both [Whitehead] and Profound Lore label head Chris Bruni hotly dispute [that conviction]." So what? Are convicted felons generally in the business of "hotly endorsing" their verdicts?
But the real resonance of Whitehead and Grail as Madonna and Child is, in fact, a parable that does link up with heavy metal’s ethos. It’s the tale of the vanquished villain returning as the triumphant hero. Whether or not you "hotly dispute" Whitehead’s conviction or call his accuser a liar, as many of his peers have, the scenario turned his music into a morass. From its derisible name to its scattered mess of songs, True Traitor, True Whore—released eight months after Whitehead’s arrest and nine months before his conviction—represented a new nadir in his vast catalogue. "Things were very tenuous," he confessed to Steel for Brains in an interview late last year, "and I wasted a lot of time being as drunk as possible during that period."
Since his conviction, though, he’s moved to Portland, launched a new label and tattoo business with musician and new girlfriend Stevie Floyd, and had Grail. The family has its own Instagram account and a new band. Once infamously churlish with the media, Whitehead has been candid and even optimistic in recent interviews. "Inspiration and energy-wise," he again told Steel for Brains, "I feel like I’ve returned to a personal space where I can attempt to form what I hear in my head." At least for now, Whitehead seems to have salvaged his life—a heavy metal antagonist-turned-protagonist, beating back the bedlam of his existence to push toward something like redemption.
For the most part, Scar Sighted holds up its end of that deal. As strange and surprising as anything Whitehead has ever made, these 10 songs bristle with an exploratory energy that has long been his best (if rather inconsistent) asset. Though Whitehead has built his reputation as a nominal black metal player, his music is more compelling when that serves as its aesthetic core and not its outward bound. Scar Sighted presses hard against that past. Using uproarious blitzes of black metal only as dynamic peaks or plateaus, Whitehead commandeers the rest of the 64-minute record to create a stylistic phantasmagoria. Death and doom, musique concrète and noise rock, harsh noise and industrial sounds collide, bending into each other to create lurid new shapes.
Every few minutes, Scar Sighted takes another turn, but the moves rarely feel like detours here. In a 10-second window, for instance, "Dawn Vibration" pivots from a pneumatic black metal roar to a death metal stepdown to a bridge that sounds like a dying man screaming over a Nirvana demo tape. There’s momentum to the motion. Similarly, the beautiful title track marches toward low-tempo oblivion, ghoulish voices and creeping riffs haunting a funereal lurch. When Whitehead leaps suddenly into one of its most straightforward black metal spans, the move feels only like another part of Leviathan’s current whole, not the inchoate tangents emblematic of Whitehead’s recent letdowns.
Perhaps the most important element of Scar Sighted is the sense that Whitehead is again controlling chaos, rather than letting it control him. He is and has been something of a studio improviser, using the space of a room and a recording to create unique documents. Paired with real-life instability, that process has caused alternately brilliant and disastrous results. That carries over to an extent with Scar Sighted, as parts of these tunes can sometimes feel formless or flatulent. But many of these tracks are thoughtfully layered, so that you’re always peering through the melee to pick out the sound on the other side. "A Veil Is Lifted" is a stomping, stentorian monster, where a cavalcade of drums battles an army of guitars. But the rhythm fights against rumbles of alien bass and noise. In the background, a fluorescent second guitar riff runs counter to the lead. As "The Smoke of Their Torment" rumbles ahead, Whitehead slashes back and forth with counter-riffs that arrive at extreme angles, not unlike Gorguts’ most dense successes. The song exits through an instrumental comedown, where lumbering bass and discursive drums dance with Whitehead’s atonal guitar. Suddenly, you remember that the guy briefly shared a band with Thurston Moore.
Whitehead foregoes shock-value misogyny and tawdry invective here, but he hasn’t softened. Instead, Scar Sighted depends upon an apocalyptic worldview, where extra effort is futile and ruins are all that’s promised. At the start of "Within Thrall", a multi-tracked chorus of one sings about "the death of the gloaming"; at the close of "The Smoke of Their Torment", an extended reading from Revelation boasts of the wrath of god at the end of time. "All our righteous arts are like filthy rags," Whitehead bellows during the bridge of "Gardens of Coprolite". The song, mind you, is named for fossilized feces.
It’s easiest to think about Whitehead and the last five-to-15 years of his life in reductive terms: For some, he is a felon convicted of domestic abuse, and he may never be anything more. For others, he is a dark dude who was caught in a darker situation, and he’s worked to build a new life and to renew his band. But the truth, at least as suggested by Scar Sighted, is something much more complex. It’s not a record of penance, as it’s about as furious as Whitehead has ever been. But it’s not a record of provocation, either, where he’s calling names and making threats. It seems mostly like an imperfect but intriguing attempt to reorganize his life and reassert his craft, to not right his wrongs but to not repeat them, either. | 2015-02-06T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2015-02-06T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Metal | Profound Lore | February 6, 2015 | 7.4 | 4152ce58-3fcd-4f1d-bdc2-ffef2a81a39d | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
Featuring members of Priests and Downtown Boys, the D.C. punk collective’s debut is a driving and tenacious record that never loses its feral appeal. | Featuring members of Priests and Downtown Boys, the D.C. punk collective’s debut is a driving and tenacious record that never loses its feral appeal. | Gauche: A People’s History of Gauche | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gauche-a-peoples-history-of-gauche/ | A People’s History of Gauche | Birthed from Washington D.C.’s punk scene like a manifestation of righteous rage, Gauche—which counts as members Priests’ Daniele Yandel, Downtown Boys’ Mary Jane Regalado, and Jason P. Barnett—emerged from the Mid-Atlantic bog in 2015 with a seven-song EP, coupling social commentary and new wave riffs. Four years later, the band debuts their full-length, with six reworked and re-recorded EP tracks plus five new songs that find the band sharpening its sound to a steely point. The studio gloss occasionally smothers, but A People’s History of Gauche is a swamp creature for modern times, a driving and tenacious record that never loses its feral appeal.
Dalliances with atonality and structural devolution evoke Devo or the B-52s, but lyrically, the record is a burn letter shoved in the locker of history’s victors. “Everybody tries to win/Look who gets away with sin…/White men get away,” Regalado snarls on the final track, “Rectangle.” The confluence of the personal and the political helps the record avoid abstraction and stay planted in specificity. This is not a “Schoolhouse Rock” of contemporary politics and colonialist history, but a fevered airing of grievances, a burning flag, a renunciation of respectability politics in favor of a more bracing alternative.
“Pay Day” rails against the ills of capitalism, repeating the phrase, “I know I can’t survive like this.” The wallop of the drums and the galloping bassline are as exhilarating as the lines, “Income, always think about payday/Always waiting on wages/Always think about systems.” Tell me about it, a freelancer somewhere sighs. “History,” the best song from the earlier EP, still rises to the top of the full-length, but it’s one instance in which all the studio bells and whistles might have been a distracting temptation: the driving bass that kicks off both versions finds a tamer counterpart in the cacophony of sounds, a mix that seems to put every instrument in competition with each other.
The album dips in and out of tempos, themes, and varying degrees of intensity without losing any of its urgency. “Boom Hazard,” an ode to implosion both nuclear and relational, provides a salve against the fury and sadness that bookend it. The avant-garde saxophone trills of “Dirty Jacket” lowers your adrenaline before the inevitable spike one song later. The spectrum of subjects covered, from economic disparity to surveillance, clearly defines an insidious and omnipresent “they,” the monolith of power and oppression against which Gauche beat their fists. It’s the government; it’s the bigots with money; it’s history writ large, the way there’s no erasing erasure.
Early on, “Cycles” addresses the ravages of white supremacy, Eric Garner (“Reading all about how/He can’t breathe/Or walk around at night”) and bodies piled at the border: “Lost in the desert/She is not alive/Cuz impunity lasts a long, long time.” The horn weaves around this human rot, and yet this is the paradox Gauche asks us to contemplate: the clarion call to bear witness to the atrocity of history while writing one anew. A People’s History is not the first musical rejection of modern ills, but it’s one of the most unflinching. It is the soundtrack to both a particular moment and the defiance that’s powered the proletariat since history began. | 2019-07-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-07-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | July 24, 2019 | 7.6 | 4156b3bd-9842-4b4a-89a5-1e5bd1285d01 | Linnie Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/linnie-greene/ | |
Beyoncé parlays her role in Disney’s The Lion King to put out a fine companion album that showcases today’s African stars. | Beyoncé parlays her role in Disney’s The Lion King to put out a fine companion album that showcases today’s African stars. | Beyoncé: The Lion King: The Gift | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-the-lion-king-the-gift/ | The Lion King: The Gift | As Beyoncé’s art has grown outwardly political and pro-Black throughout the decade, she has increasingly called upon African-born artists to participate in and inform her work. She did this with Tofo Tofo, the Mozambican pantsula dancers who appeared in her 2011 “Run the World (Girls)” video. In her self-titled era, she sampled Nigerian feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on 2013’s “***Flawless,” and Griot vocalist Ismael Kouyaté on the Afro-inspired “Grown Woman.” The Lemonade film, which was threaded by excerpts of Somali British poet Warsan Shire’s work, featured ritual Yoruba body makeup work by Nigerian American artist Laolu Senbanjo. During her 2018 set at Global Citizen Fest South Africa, she recruited a local choir to add Zulu backing vocals to a performance of “Halo.” And later that year, her headlining Coachella performance interpolated Fela Kuti, which can be heard on the subsequent Homecoming film and album.
In her ongoing quest to both pay homage to a Black cultural history and contextualize herself within it, she took advantage of her role as Nala in the super-CGI remake of The Lion King and hired a swath of African artists and producers for a new album inspired by the movie. The Gift is an extension of Beyoncé’s work and its themes of ancestry, self-love, spirituality, and family. But its main purpose is to showcase today’s African musical stars, putting their sound on an enormous platform using the commercial reach of one of the world’s biggest pop titans and Disney’s highest-grossing franchise.
Similar to Kendrick Lamar’s Black Panther–inspired album and other recent globetrotting works like Drake’s More Life and GoldLink’s Diaspora, The Gift is thrilling because of the diasporic connections being made through collaboration. African artists from Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, and South Africa all display a wide range of regional genres and merge them with American styles. This works best on tracks like “My Power,” where rap weirdo Tierra Whack and Top 40 songwriter Nija join forces with South African gqom badasses Busiswa and Moonchild Sanelly for a searing DJ Lag–produced track about Black girl determination and resilience. Meanwhile, “Don’t Jealous Me” features a survey of different artists that fall under the oft-misused umbrella term of Afrobeat, as Nigerian stars Tekno, Yemi Alade, and Mr Eazi bring their own signature swagger to a sinister gqom-inflected banger. “Mood 4 Eva,” featuring A-listers Bey, Jay-Z, and Childish Gambino, flips a sample Malian artist Oumou Sangaré’s 1989 Wassoulou song “Diaraby Nene” into a buoyant, hedonistic flex track.
The album also nods to Africa’s influence in Caribbean music with “Already,” a track that draws out the rhythmic similarities between dancehall and Afropop by linking Ghanaian artist Shatta Wale with global riddim fetishizers Major Lazer. Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed “African giant” Burna Boy warns against blindly following the crowd on his solo track “Ja Ara E,” a track that channels Fela Kuti with a laidback dembow groove.
But, as critics and artists were quick to point out, The Gift doesn’t completely cover all the regions and styles that Africa has to offer. There are no featured East or North African artists, which is particularly odd considering The Lion King’s setting is loosely based on Kenyan geographical features and the character’s names originate from the East African language of Swahili. Beyoncé does her best to rectify the lack of representation by including Swahili in the beginning of “Spirit,” the only Gift song that appears in the movie, and even sings in the language at the end of “Otherside,” a glowing H.E.R.-style ballad about the afterlife. But ultimately, The Gift’s emphasis on West African Afropop and South African house seems like a half-measure in an album that presents itself as extremely dedicated to some kind of authenticity, especially coming from the reliably meticulous Beyoncé.
Beyoncé is still at her best when she goes off-book and gets personal. “Brown Skin Girl,” featuring Blue Ivy, Brooklyn rapper Saint Jhn, and Nigerian pop star Wizkid, doesn’t seem to be tied to a particular Lion King plot point. And uncoincidentally, it’s one of the more touching songs on the album. After Blue Ivy sings the hook with growing assuredness, Bey sings directly to her and any other Black girl who might be judged or dismissed based on her appearance: “I love everything about you, from your nappy curls/To every single curve, your body natural… I never trade you for anybody else,” she sings in a truly heartfelt case for self-acceptance. Beyoncé takes care to dole these pearls of wisdom in a way that’s specific, but also universal to those of African descent. “Bigger,” both directed towards her offspring and anyone else who is of the diaspora, is a rallying call to aspire to greatness, because your life is connected to a greater Black legacy and history.
But not every track on the album shakes off the precious Disney vibes. The most lackluster songs don’t have a strong conceptual core, meeting the prompt of being “inspired by” The Lion King and not doing much else. On “Water,” Cameroonian singer Salatiel sings about meeting your love interest “by the river,” conjuring up images of Simba and Nala. But confusingly, Pharrell just chants lines about water wings: “Yes, we can make it far/Don't need inflatables.” “Spirit,” the gospel-bop ballad, makes a lot of sense in the movie when it soundtracks two incredibly realistic animated lions bounding through the desert, but it doesn’t fit well with the other, more loose and ambitious tracks.
Even though Bey has referred to The Gift as “sonic cinema,” the album stands in the shadow of a movie that stands in the shadow of the 1994 original. Though not fully comprehensive or that musically far-reaching (due to its prioritization of African genres that have already experienced crossover success), the album still succeeds in introducing a whole new musical universe to the average American listener. And for fans already familiar with genres on The Gift, it arrives as a crucial, all-too-rare example in which African music and culture are actually being presented in the American mainstream by the artists who make it. It’s an honorable feat for Beyoncé, who has repeatedly put time, money, and energy into recruiting African talents, broadening the scope of what pop can look and sound like. Only this time, it’s a soundtrack for a Disney movie about cats. | 2019-07-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-07-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country / Pop/R&B | Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia | July 23, 2019 | 7.3 | 415c6777-fe66-4d78-a330-5a91f87beb4e | Michelle Hyun Kim | https://pitchfork.com/staff/michelle-hyun kim/ | |
Morgan Geist and Mike Kelley’s first outing as a duo takes in a broad sweep of early-’80s reference points—disco, new romantic, sophistipop—that come together in an opalescent swirl. | Morgan Geist and Mike Kelley’s first outing as a duo takes in a broad sweep of early-’80s reference points—disco, new romantic, sophistipop—that come together in an opalescent swirl. | Au Suisse: Au Suisse | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/au-suisse-au-suisse/ | Au Suisse | Morgan Geist and Kelley Polar (aka Mike Kelley) have been flouting dancefloor orthodoxy for more than two decades. Around the turn of the millennium, as producers on both sides of the Atlantic were stripping house and techno down to their essence, Geist and Darshan Jesrani’s duo Metro Area went the other direction, reviving the buoyant hallmarks of early-’80s disco and boogie—airy flute solos, pew-pew raygun drums, and sashaying Rhodes keys, topped with a splash of Kelley’s insouciant strings. Kelley, a viola prodigy and Juilliard graduate, went even further with his two albums that have inspired feverish devotion, while Metro Area helped lay the groundwork for Lindstrøm, Hercules & Love Affair, and the slowly building disco revival that would bring us, a decade later, to Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. Who knew that a viola and some laser zaps were so revolutionary?
Aside from a fluke UK No. 1 in 2013, Geist has never matched the heights of Metro Area, though he’s remained active with short-lived affairs like the electro-funk side project Baby Oliver and the Jessy Lanza collaboration the Galleria, a freestyle-fueled ode to New Jersey’s shopping malls. Those records were charming if slightly hermetic—loving pastiches of outmoded sounds aimed primarily at fellow dance-music history buffs. But Au Suisse, Geist and Kelley’s first duo outing together after 30-odd years of friendship, feels like a major step: a cohesive and original musical statement that builds on their prior work while breaking new ground for both of them.
Behind the album’s aura of glowing tubes and brushed stainless steel is a carefully assembled tool kit of vintage synth patches, punchy electronic drums, and flickering funk guitar. Many sounds—the gaseous vox pads and trim hi-hat groove of “Thing,” the chugging arpeggios and white-noise snares of “GC”—could have come straight from a Metro Area session. But Au Suisse benefits from two extra decades of engineering know-how; Geist’s music has never sounded more sumptuous than it does here.
More importantly, widening their gaze beyond the dancefloor has allowed Geist and Kelley to expand their stylistic range, taking in a broad sweep of early-’80s reference points—disco, new romantic, sophistipop—that come together in an opalescent swirl. Like the best backward-looking art, their synth-pop amalgam is charged with an air of déjà vu: Here’s a bit of Pet Shop Boys, here’s some early Talk Talk, here’s a wisp of Scritti Politti. (One of the album’s best songs, the ethereal “Vesna,” brings to mind Tones on Tail’s 1984 single “Lions,” an ambient-pop masterpiece that far more artists ought to take cues from.) But thanks in large part to Kelley’s distinctive singing style, they sound, more than anything, like Au Suisse—no mean feat for a group so steeped in tradition.
Kelley’s unaccompanied voice is the first thing we hear, and he remains the album’s guiding force throughout. Often singing in falsetto, his tone is soft and supple, by turns swooning and arch; like the singers he emulates, he’s not afraid of affectation, even indulging in the occasional trace of a British accent. Yet his voice can be surprisingly sturdy when he wants it to be, and even at his most gossamer, he makes bold melodic choices. One of the album’s chief pleasures is the disorienting chord progressions that tilt songs on their axes without warning, and Kelley’s cool, centering presence offers a steadying hand through these moments of giddy upheaval.
He sings, mostly, about lost love, a topic that feels perfectly suited to the duo’s melancholy mien. Some lyrics consist of little more than stock phrases strung together—“All’s fair in love and war/So I ain’t gonna give up,” goes the chorus of the closing “AG,” a contemplative tone poem set to tick-tocking hi-hats—but the meaning of the words matters less than the way the phonemes perfume the air. The least successful songs, like the lilting “Eely,” are those where the synths, chord changes, and vocal tone fail to spark something greater than the sum of their parts. But occasionally, Kelley manages some striking lyrical turns.
In “Thing,” the closest thing here to a dancefloor hit, he distills a story of unrequited love down to a vivid image: “When she came to me I thought I knew enough to hold her/And she gave me pennies, just the little stuff/Not worth the time to add it up.” The opening “Control,” one of the album’s best songs, takes the torch from Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore, spinning power, religion, and sensuality into cryptic verses that are all the more seductive for their ambiguity. And “Vesna” sketches the story of a Serbian flight attendant who, half a century ago, fell to earth from an exploded airplane, the lone survivor of what was either a terrorist bombing or a military attack gone wrong: “Were her eyes closed or open? Clouds rushing past/Did she wonder how far? Did she wonder how fast?” sings Kelley, his voice as soft as cumulus formations, before the song’s meditation on fate takes a movingly empathetic turn: “And I wish I could ask her/Fading into the blue/Did you always know deep down, deep down/That it would have to be you?”
As striking as the lyrics of “Vesna” are, the real pleasure is in the way that Kelley’s hushed, reverberant harmonies gel with Geist’s pneumatic keys. The same goes for “Control,” where synths and voice dance in a graceful pas de deux. Despite the frequent harmonic maximalism, the album’s production is marked by a gratifying sense of restraint. There’s a beautiful moment around the three-minute mark where the music shrinks down to make room for Kelley’s voice; half a minute later, as Kelley sings his final “Hallelujah,” the song builds to a climax that’s unexpectedly reserved given the heart-in-mouth buildup. Even at their most emphatic, Au Suisse’s songs don’t so much explode as unfurl—gracefully, regally, like pennants announcing the anointed heirs to a long tradition of lush, emotive synth-pop: a little dandyish, at times even a little absurd, but still dazzling in their silken finery. | 2022-08-22T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2022-08-22T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Pop/R&B | City Slang | August 22, 2022 | 7.4 | 415d9ea4-f5d6-4e2a-ad4a-d365d2d65397 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
London bedroom producer follows a slew of excellent EPs and remixes with his much-anticipated Ghostly debut LP. | London bedroom producer follows a slew of excellent EPs and remixes with his much-anticipated Ghostly debut LP. | Gold Panda: Lucky Shiner | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14732-lucky-shiner/ | Lucky Shiner | The debut album from British electronic producer Gold Panda is immersed in nostalgia. It's a go-to emotion for every era, but, thanks to the eternal memory bank known as the Internet, this is a particularly fruitful time for looking back. But not all remembrances are created equal. The majority of today's cultural nostalgia is dominated by a cheap, remember-that-show quality that ultimately infantilizes its audience into submission. Shameless nods to yesterday's TV/music/movies are fine for a quick escape, but they can also make tomorrow that much more daunting. Still, when approached with more care, peering into the past can be invigorating. Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig summed up the two sides with characteristic eloquence on this year's Contra, singing about how we're "nostalgic for garbage, desperate for time." Koenig is one of the good guys in the current Nostalgia Wars, and so is Gold Panda.
The London-based producer's main instrument is an Akai MPC2000XL sampler, which allows him to rearrange, repurpose, and recycle previously recorded sounds at the touch of a button. By nature, it's a nostalgic machine. And he uses it to push things forward; he's not just sampling what we know already on Lucky Shiner, he's using sounds that mean something to him-- a tapping keyboard, a sped-up or slowed-down recording of someone saying the word "you," exotic-sounding instruments unfamiliar to a Westerner's experience-- and attempting to universalize them. This process is something of an internal challenge, as the beat maker told me in an interview last year. "I usually find stuff that I hope no one really knows or cares about," he said, talking about his sample selection. "If I'm ripping off something that's already brilliant, what's the point?" Because of this, the dusty melancholia of Lucky Shiner feels earned and lived-in. It's a far cry from just naming your new bedroom-pop band Double Dare.
While this is the first Gold Panda long-player after a slew of EPs and remixes over the last couple years, he just turned 30. Not to get all "respect your elders" with it, but the Londoner's relatively advanced age probably adds depth to his stoic reminisces. As a hushed acoustic guitar/found sounds track, "Parents" is a telling anomaly on the album. The song is introduced by some heavily-accented words from the producer's grandmother, after whom Lucky Shiner is also named. It's an interlude that offers little on its own but offers an irrefutable bit of personalization early on and is invaluable to the album's homespun wistfulness as a whole. Even if you can't understand what she's saying, the voice has the unmistakably kind lilt of a grandmother; it draws you into the instrumental elegance elsewhere.
In sonic terms, Gold Panda breathes the same kind of life into his work as Four Tet. His beats are mechanical but also intensely human. But Gold Panda's trigger finger is a bit itchier. His signature tic involves short, unique samples that burst in rhythmic repetition. So on opener "You", the words "you and me" are sliced into individual pieces and then tapped in brain-screwing succession as a bulbous beat makes the song all too ready for the club inside your head. And "Before We Talked" rides on a quicksilver pulse made up of tiny squelches and glitches that are Aphex-like in precision and scope. Oftentimes, plinking notes from various unique, piano-like sounds add a spotlit solemnity underneath or alongside the drums. A sense of well-thought-out album-style completeness is evident throughout, too, with the two aforementioned tracks coming with their own sequels later on in the form of "After We Talked" and a closer also named "You". But the last track isn't a reprise as much as a hard-won ending point; whereas the opener is fast and friendly, it's "you"s popping quick, Lucky Shiner's finale is noticeably more contemplative with the sampled "you" now stretched-out and slowed. It's always about "you," but perhaps not the same "you" as before.
In some ways, the idea of nostalgia is averse to growth. Mourning the loss of time (even good time) can be intoxicating and stagnant. That's not what Gold Panda is doing. He's recognizing that loss, articulating it with a multitude of finely-placed sounds, and then coming to grips with his place in the here and now. He's making nostalgia work for him without consuming him. "I'm just really happy to be happy for the first time since I was about 20," he said last year. "It's nice to just do my hobby and be able to live." It's easy to hear his joy through those rejiggered memories. | 2010-10-13T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2010-10-13T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic | Ghostly International | October 13, 2010 | 8.3 | 41650b95-48b9-4c1a-b3a6-487d68e048aa | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | null |
After two fine EPs, the experimental hip-hop project helmed by former Digable Planets leader Ishmael Butler steps out with a brilliant full-length debut. | After two fine EPs, the experimental hip-hop project helmed by former Digable Planets leader Ishmael Butler steps out with a brilliant full-length debut. | Shabazz Palaces: Black Up | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15570-black-up/ | Black Up | Shabazz Palaces emerged two years ago with an air of carefully cultivated mystery: Two EPs appeared, identified only by the Arabic patches on their covers. The music was some of the most exploratory hip-hop of the year, an enticing batch of fragmented raps and woozy, disorienting beats. You could find precedents for this stuff-- the amorphous wanderings of cLOUDDEAD, the jazz rap of the early 1990s-- but these EPs were largely on some sui generis shit: Nothing else out there sounded quite like Shabazz Palaces.
The Shabazz Palaces and Of Light EPs featured an MC going by the name Palaceer Lazaro, and he introduced an alternately glittering and gritty urban noir taking place in the unlikely setting of Seattle. That the reedy yet resonant voice behind Palaceer's raps was readily identifiable as Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler of downtempo rap collective Digable Planets (and, later, Cherrywine) did little to lift the shroud. Butler declined interviews and dodged photographers, and when he did speak, his answers were as evasive as his raps were richly, if obliquely, illustrative.
His reticence was an attempt to let the music speak for itself and avoid comparisons to his previous acts (adding some alluring intrigue didn't hurt). And some comparisons are inevitable: The EPs continued the darkening trend that occurred in between Digable's unlikely breakthrough Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) and thornier follow-up Blowout Comb, and which developed further with the sinister funk of Cherrywine. But if Shabazz Palaces' first phase was about building a mystique, their Sub Pop debut is the product of opening up. Black Up lets some sunlight in, breathes fresh air, and finds Butler returning to an occasionally lighter flow, the most unburdened he's sounded since the world first heard him. Which is not to say that these are easy, uncomplicated songs. Butler continues to eschew traditional verse-chorus structures in favor of tracks that unpredictably diverge and then pool into lone, evocative words or concise chants. And if some of Butler's rhymes and sonics are breezier than before, his tracks still retain their moody, hard-thudding, and sometimes psychedelic atmospheres.
Most of these tracks end somewhere very different from where they begin. "Free Press and Curl" opens the album with a down but defiant rap ("Musically and bitch-wise, too/ I lost the best beat that I had") delivered over stuttering crunching drums and bass vibrations. Three minutes in, the tempo slows into a kind of galley song, a murky drift over which Butler fires off a couple of final, biblically imperative ("thou shalt...") verses. "An echo from the hosts that profess infinitum" (the album's track titles throughout are fascinating) begins as a playground chant stretched and smeared into a queasy loop over muffled kick and grainy snare. But then after a minute, everything drops out for a spooky mbira solo from Shabazz sideman and percussionist Tendai Maraire. "Youlogy" starts as a busy, druggy swirl-- a heaving bass, a synth wobbling in one ear, voices cut and pasted, echoing asymmetrically, everything dropping out on the word "high" in "to get you HIGH"-- and then breaks for some jazz trumpet and snippets of stylized dialogue, before proceeding as an altogether different, relatively cleared-out, bass-and-drum track.
That Shabazz Palaces' songs follow such inscrutable routes makes it all the more striking when they coalesce around a repeated word or phrase. "Free Press" builds up to the rousing chant, "You know I'm free!" over a ghosted gospel chorus. On "Are You... Can You... Were You? (Felt)", Butler exclaims, over ringing piano notes, wafting strings, and one great tinfoil handclap that swings in just half a beat later than expected, "It's a feeling!" "Recollections of the Wraith" glides in on two of the album's most effortless choruses, Butler first proclaiming/promising, "Tonight!" over a swooning, oohing female vocal, and then requesting, "Clear some space out/ So we can space out." That last one is about as involved as any chorus here gets-- these are hooks boiled down to their most essential.
Even forays into traditional structure end up typically idiosyncratic. The album's lone loverman song comes out a treatise-- well, actually, "A treatease dedicated to The Avian Airess from North East Nubis (1000 questions, 1 answer)". It's birds and bees rendered as bop poetry, working up to an insistently smooth come-on line that turns from astral to anatomical with the addition of one little two-letter word: "I want to be there/ Let me be in there." The record's dis track, "yeah you", snarls and bites but it also laments and ends as a breathless, headlong exorcism. All this is both in keeping with Butler's track record and indicative of his status as a hip-hop elder, an MC with some well-earned gray in his goatee. And it's deeply refreshing to hear an artist who exudes such depth and consideration.
Still, Butler is hardly yelling the kids off his lawn-- in fact, two of Black Up's best moments come from young guest stars THEESatisfaction, a similarly "afro-eccentric" female duo with whom Shabazz Palaces have been collaborating for much of the past year. Cat Satisfaction lends her rich singing voice to the dusty, repurposed jazz of "Endeavors For Never (The last time we spoke you said you were not here. I saw you though.)", while partner Thee Stasia raps over the hard, roboticized boom bap of album closer "Swerve... The reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding)". That the last sound you hear on the album is one of THEESatisfaction's voices echoing out into the ether feels like an anointment and a look ahead (news that Sub Pop signed the duo leaked back in February).
For all his recent (relative) forthrightness, Butler is still fascinated by art's ability to communicate what conversations cannot. "I can't explain it with words/ I have to do it," he raps on one song; on another, he delivers one of the album's catchiest, most motivating maxims: "If you talk about it, it's a show/ But if you move about it, then it's a go." Beyond the "just do it" swooshing of these lines is a meatier paradox: that Butler uses a lyrical form to decry the limitations of words and exalt the meaningfulness of action. In Shabazz Palaces, Butler enacts the union of these opposites-- words as action, action into words-- and it's no exaggeration to call this transmutation what it is: magic. | 2011-06-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2011-06-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Sub Pop | June 27, 2011 | 8.8 | 4166545e-1c33-4962-9d10-b3a8ab76cdd8 | Eric Grandy | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-grandy/ | null |
Ygg Huur isn’t as punishingly loud as 2012’s Years Past Matter, which only make it easier to notice that this is the densest Krallice material ever, with all those hyperactive and coordinated guitars tucked inside sub-seven-minute windows and accompanied by a rhythm section more audacious and commanding then ever. Most everything works as a wondrous, complicated blur. | Ygg Huur isn’t as punishingly loud as 2012’s Years Past Matter, which only make it easier to notice that this is the densest Krallice material ever, with all those hyperactive and coordinated guitars tucked inside sub-seven-minute windows and accompanied by a rhythm section more audacious and commanding then ever. Most everything works as a wondrous, complicated blur. | Krallice: Ygg Huur | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20904-ygg-huur/ | Ygg Huur | Near the end of the last decade, Krallice and Liturgy were often mentioned in the same sentence as two New York bands changing the face of black metal. They both arrived at around the same time with provocative, fresh-faced takes on the sometimes-stiff sound. The specifics of exactly what they did were, of course, very different. Where Krallice favored long-form dioramas built from two tessellated guitars and a bedrock rhythm section, Liturgy favored shorter, screeching numbers that hinged around the band's ability to make time seem flexible, as though it might be expanded and contracted at will. Still, they were members of the same promising freshman class.
In the seven years since Krallice and Liturgy issued their debut recordings, though, the distinctions between the two have only grown. Liturgy have, as if by design, emerged as the flashpoint, pairing their radical ambitions with a soap-opera-like tendency for drama. Krallice, meanwhile, have become a workmanlike squad, steadily releasing albums that have increased the complexity and scale of their sound without ever recasting it completely. There have been no breakups, no public feuds, no manifestos and no grand announcements. But when Krallice delivered their first album in three years late last month, the riveting and delirious Ygg Huur, the six songs arrived as a simple Bandcamp download, sans all advanced notice. Ygg Huur is by far more nuanced and developed than Liturgy's unsteady The Ark Work—a byproduct, it would seem, of Krallice's steadfast, head-down evolution.
By Krallice standards, Ygg Huur is a tiny album. It's about half the length of each of Krallice's four previous records and short enough to fit on a single LP when it gets a physical release from Gilead Media later this year. Ygg Huur isn't as punishingly loud as 2012's Years Past Matter, either, an album on which all of the instruments seemed pushed firmly against some invisible volume ceiling. Those changes only make it easier to notice that this is the densest Krallice material ever, with all those hyperactive and coordinated guitars tucked inside sub-seven-minute windows and accompanied by a rhythm section more audacious and commanding than ever.
Despite including the dazzling technicians Colin Marston and Mick Barr, Krallice's past releases could seem, if not simple, easy enough to follow, even during 16-minute marathons. But most everything on Ygg Huur works as a wondrous, complicated blur. Lev Weinstein's drums sometimes switch tempos so that you barely notice at all and sometimes redirect the momentum to the point of whiplash. The guitars and Nicholas McMaster's bass spiderweb around his beats, moving up, down and around central riffs so quickly that they appear forever suspended in motion. The switchbacks toward the end of "Tyranny of Thought", for instance, are impossibly precise and precarious. During "Idols", the four pieces slide in and out of sync with one another, gliding past each other only to reconnect like the separate strands of an automated cat's cradle.
Krallice named Ygg Huur for a three-piece suite by late Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, remembered most for his creeping, miniscule movements around a single pitch. His original Ygghur suggests the slow, barely wavering drones of Yoshi Wada's earth horns or Glenn Branca's guitar symphonies, except limited to a single cello. It is a fitting reference point for what Krallice has become. On these six songs, they de-emphasize the rock'n'roll role of riffs to the point that this music works as sets of ever-shifting rhythms, gilded by slight fluctuations in pitch. "Wastes of Ocean" scans like a competition to see who can navigate constant changes of pace the best; even the vocals are forced to slip between the stop-and start volleys. During "Over Spirit", Barr, Marston, and McMaster move so rapidly and exactly between each note that the guitars and drums trade places; the drums provide the movement as the amplified strings provide the more stable framework. A colossus, Ygg Huur reflects the accretion of a thousand minute decisions, not unlike the microtonal work from which it takes its name.
Liturgy's The Ark Work and Krallice's Ygg Huur do reveal one new connection between the fellow former upstarts, however unintentional. In their return to the studio and stage, Liturgy have insisted they are not playing black metal, a point reinforced by Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's strained rapping. And though Krallice have made no special effort to say as much (in fact, their Bandcamp page still describes this and every previous album as black metal), Krallice don't, either. Sure, these six songs examine oblivion and apocalypse, arriving at McMaster's closing proclamation that "No matter what, it ends this way/ With me taking your body to the fire." But there is little atavistic rage here, and there are no grand, horn-lifting moments. Instead, these six songs have as much to do with modern composition and prog rock as they do with the black metal mold from which they came. It's been three years since the release of Krallice's very good last album, the longest gap ever in their otherwise clockwork catalogue. It was time well spent, at least: Ygg Huur is more vivid, vexing, and meticulous than most of what the band's old peers still call black metal—a sentence Krallice no longer need to share. | 2015-08-06T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-08-06T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Metal | self-released | August 6, 2015 | 8.2 | 4168fd22-1ed6-4044-b8f8-7004342e4360 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
Clearing the lo-fi haze of her previous work, the Los Angeles-based songwriter’s third album reveals astral Americana hymns that hover somewhere between the dirt and the stars. | Clearing the lo-fi haze of her previous work, the Los Angeles-based songwriter’s third album reveals astral Americana hymns that hover somewhere between the dirt and the stars. | Eve Adams: Metal Bird | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/eve-adams-metal-bird/ | Metal Bird | Though she tends to sing softly, Eve Adams has never been one to mince words. On her first two records, the Oklahoma native sounded like a natural-born torch singer cocooned in a cloud of smoke, her straight-from-the-heart serenades wilfully corrupted by all manner of lo-fi abstraction. Still, the album titles—2017’s In Hell and 2019’s Candy Colored Doom—provided a crystal-clear indication of where her head was at, and when her words did occasionally cut through the textural haze, they were liable to leave scars. “Loving you is driving me mad/Just like murder/Like a good homicide,” she sang on her debut’s “Good Homicide,” before blithely admitting how desire so often leads to disappointment: “We got married at 23/He left the next year/And I felt nothing.”
Adams’ third album bears a more oblique title than its predecessors, but its inspiration is no less fraught. Metal Bird is the product of a tumultuous period beginning in 2018, when Adams uprooted herself from her homebase in Montreal and relocated to Los Angeles to be with family in the wake of a tragedy, while also traveling to Vancouver to convene with producer Bryce Cloghesy (a.k.a. avant-pop soundscaper Military Genius, and a member of art-punk collective Crack Cloud). Throughout that city-hopping experience, the airplane—the proverbial “metal bird”—came to represent a lot of different things to Adams: a link to familial obligations in a time of sorrow, a getaway vehicle transporting her the studio sanctuary where she could process that grief, and an aerial waystation where she could feel at home at a time when the concept seemed undefined.
Accordingly, Metal Bird feels blissfully unmoored from any sense of time and space, its astral Americana hymns hovering somewhere between the dirt and the stars, between a bygone golden age and our tense present, between raw intimacy and dreamlike splendor. It marks the moment when Adams boldly liberates herself from the off-the-cuff, obfuscating qualities of her previous work to deliver her words with radiant, broadcast-worthy clarity. But while Metal Bird is deceptively spare—only three of its 10 songs feature any sort of percussion—it retains the artful consideration of her earlier recordings, albeit in radically different form. In lieu of her past dream-pop reveries, bedroom beats, and musique-concrète drones, Adams pits her songs against a distant skyline filled in with exquisite strings, psychedelic twang, and subtle saxophone shading: the weightless waltz “You’re Not Wrong” conjures the floating 1940s fantasias of Mercury Rev circa Deserter’s Songs, while the title track cradles its electric psych-folk finger-picking in a hypnotic organ hum like a stripped-down busker version of Spiritualized.
Metal Bird is a nocturnal album, and the further you go, the darker it gets. On the chilling “Woman on Your Mind,” Adams gives voice to the Other Woman who’s no longer content with her secondary status, and is practically hoping her lover’s wife discovers the scent of her cigarettes on his clothes: “Did I say that the smoke will come right out?” she taunts. “We can close the blinds as tight as you like, but the neighbors already know.” For the most part, however, Adams isn’t engaging in dramatic dark-night-of-the-soul reckoning so much as savoring the dead-of-night stillness to reclaim some peace of mind. Over the circular refrain of “Butterflies,” she stretches her syllables out in a series of extended sighs, yielding an all-verse, no-chorus confessional that’s part breakup song, part meditative breathing exercise. By contrast, “Blues Look the Same” is all tough-love therapy, a matter-of-fact lament about lost innocence and cruel twists of fate rendered in sepia-toned Mazzy Star guitar slides.
But with the closing “My Only Dream,” Adams arrives at something resembling inner harmony. Atop cinematic strings, she dispenses a stream of Kurt Vile-style zen philosophies: “It ain’t nothing like what you been watching on the movie screen, and it ain’t free, and you ain’t going to find it on late-night TV,” she confides, before adding, “It’s not a word that I’ve ever heard, it’s my only dream.” She never reveals what that “it” is exactly, but the message is clear enough: happiness can be yours too, if you let go of your traditional conceptions of it.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-03-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-03-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental / Folk/Country | self-released | March 5, 2021 | 7.5 | 41694633-6645-4c00-bf93-63d82ce74fff | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
The young Detroit DJ and producer Kyle Hall makes good on his promise with his latest album From Joy. A three-LP set featuring eight expansive tracks, From Joy is ambitious but warm and approachable, blending the ensemble feel of jazz with the 4/4 drums of house music. | The young Detroit DJ and producer Kyle Hall makes good on his promise with his latest album From Joy. A three-LP set featuring eight expansive tracks, From Joy is ambitious but warm and approachable, blending the ensemble feel of jazz with the 4/4 drums of house music. | Kyle Hall: From Joy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21377-from-joy/ | From Joy | Through no fault of his own, Kyle Hall landed in the somewhat precarious position of having Detroit's hopes pinned to him. Since the young DJ and producer debuted in 2007 on fellow Detroiter Omar S's FXHE imprint, Hall has been viewed as the great hope for the next generation of Detroit dance music. Hall kept up his end of the bargain, fostering the potent Wild Oats label, throwing parties in the city and, crucially, not absconding to New York or London or Berlin. Kyle Hall is doing it all, and his 2013 debut album, The Boat Party, sounded like it, anxiously flitting between a host of styles: electro, ghetto tech, filter disco, beat tracks.
It's against this backdrop of fervent activity that Hall's second album, From Joy, stands out so fully. A richly melodic exploration that expertly balances astral reverie with rhythmic heft, it's the kind of fully realized statement no one was really expecting Hall to make. Not because he didn't have the talent, but because, well, he seemed busy. A three-LP set featuring eight expansive tracks, From Joy is ambitious but warm and approachable. In its openness, imagination, and sense of history, From Joy feels like the child of Detroit's legendary exploratory radio shows. The concept is simple: jazzy pianos, walking basslines, and probing synth explorations welded to house music's 4/4 drum templates.
Jazz has always been valuable in house music—as source material and as a thematic link to another form of (largely black) outsider expression—but From Joy uses jazz a little differently than usual. Hall doesn't sample much here, instead borrowing from jazz its ensemble nature, the sense of unity achieved when the elements of a track lock together just so. Where most dance music feels sequenced, From Joy feels played. Where most machine music employs randomizations and swung notes to remind you of its human nature, From Joy just kind of flows.
Hall is able to achieve this in part because From Joy sounds fantastic. You will pass entire tracks—five- and six-minutes long—zeroing in on the richness of one tone or another. For all of a synthesizer's endless possibilities, it's easy to remember that many of them were conceived with the more conservative purpose of emulating traditional instruments. And From Joy is conservative in this sense, dialing up exquisite, harmonically rich synth basslines—see opener "Damn! I'm Feeln Real Close"—and sonorous leads. One of the album's least dance-y tracks, the contemplative "Wake Up and Dip," is a showcase for a squelchy solo as expressive and felt as any old vanguard. Hall does all this without betraying his dance music bonafides, as side-long tracks such as "Dervenen" and "Strut Garden" offer DJs and dancers ample acreage. The latter track improbably lives up to its name, a whole lawn of little jukes and swaggers. Its bassline makes all the familiar moves, freeing you to make the unfamiliar ones.
From Joy effortlessly functions as both dance music and a home listening experience. Kyle Hall, an artist who has built his young career around doing it all, has made an album that does it all. From Joy, imbued with the past but not overly reverent of it, is Hall cashing in on the prodigious talent glimpsed in his prior work. It's tempting to hold it up as a capital-letter statement, a totem of his hometown. It's equally tempting, and probably healthier, to spin it back and delight in its abundance. | 2016-01-06T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2016-01-06T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Electronic | Wild Oats | January 6, 2016 | 8.2 | 416cbd63-277c-4527-a5a5-e105c0ae48bd | Andrew Gaerig | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andrew-gaerig/ | null |
The spirits of repetition and improvisation color the latest from this guitar, pedal, and analog machine-loving symphonic band. | The spirits of repetition and improvisation color the latest from this guitar, pedal, and analog machine-loving symphonic band. | Growing: Vision Swim | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10172-vision-swim/ | Vision Swim | Laptop composers often reference the arc of the symphonic music, with clear beginnings, middles, and ends. Bands like Growing-- who favor guitars and pedals and analog machines and leave a tail of patch cords dragging behind them as they move from town-to-town-- seem like they're always tinkering, listening to each other, and deciding in the moment what comes next. This analog-based live approach can lead, oddly enough, to heavy use of repetition. Sometimes Growing stay with a certain effect, holding it and letting it spin in place until they figure out where they're going to go next.
Such repetition is key to their latest album Vision Swim, as is the sense of in-the-moment discovery. Here Growing often seem like they're tending a sound garden more than composing. "Morning Drive" begins with a throb of acidic feedback drone that never lets up, giving the tune the 4/4 pulse of mid-tempo techno. And when guitar sounds gradually come in, they're unstable notes flying all over the place, circling and tearing off like flies trying to dodge the tail of an angry cow. Whether or not it was all planned out in advance, the track sounds like something created by listening as much as playing, as if bassist Kevin Doria and guitarist Joe Denardo didn't know themselves exactly where it was going and after eleven minutes just decided to wind it down. This looseness gives "Morning Drive" a nice sense of unpredictability, its emotional ambiguity and zig-zag direction helping to reinforce repeat plays.
Vision Swim makes clear that Growing are at their best when their music has these frayed edges. The pure drone of 2004's* Soul of The Rainbow And The Harmony Of Light* on Kranky, for example, was solid but had nowhere near this amount of personality; a more restless music, away form the quest for the perfect harmonic sequence, is where Growing's strengths lie. Sometimes, as on the 15-minute "On Anon", the various guitar delays, crunching distortion and squiggly notes assemble into a torrent of sound that's loud and frightening with a molten core of beauty that even a kindergartener could appreciate. Here they approach the sublime tension perfected by Black Dice on "Endless Happiness", where they manage to be simultaneously both fuck-you obnoxious and warmly ingratiating.
Nothing else on Vision Swim quite approaches the knockout power of "On Anon" but all of it is at least pretty good. "Emseepee" also creates a bedrock bass rhythm off which playful bits of distortion pivot, "Lightfoot" turns white guitar noise into a wave pool, pushing forward with discrete surges of feedback. I haven't heard quite enough Growing to call this their best record, but it sounds to me like they're thinking hard about what goes where and why, finding new ways to get the most out of their varied sound palette. | 2007-05-02T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2007-05-02T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Experimental / Metal / Rock | Troubleman Unlimited / Megablade | May 2, 2007 | 7.4 | 416ed233-6c77-4de4-af4d-d7448f1052d2 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
Lil Baby’s official debut is technically impressive: polished, efficient, but also kind of nondescript. | Lil Baby’s official debut is technically impressive: polished, efficient, but also kind of nondescript. | Lil Baby: Harder Than Ever | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lil-baby-harder-than-ever/ | Harder Than Ever | One of Lil Baby’s things is that he wears normal clothes, I guess. “Real dope boy I ain’t nothing like the weirdos/Never seen me putting on no weird clothes,” the Atlanta rapper states upfront on his debut Harder Than Ever, though by most accounts he owes his career to some of those same weirdos. Baby came up watching Young Thug and Migos in the studio, and it was Thug’s eager cosign along with the backing of Migos’ label Quality Control that put him on the national radar last year, mere months after he picked up a microphone—an incredible stroke of fortune for someone who’d spent the previous two years “sitting in prison getting no mail,” as he puts it here.
Baby’s rapping isn’t any flashier than his fashion sense. He rhymes in a tuneful, half-sung stream of thought, sort of like a more nuanced Rich Homie Quan. On a purely technical level, he’s impressive. His words are vivid, his emotions pronounced, and his flow is frictionless; he hovers just over every beat like a puck on an air hockey table. In a rap scene suddenly dominated by eccentrics and self-proclaimed rock stars, there’s room for a rapper this grounded, even if that isn’t the most exciting stake to claim. His practical, melodic flow is an alternative to Migos’ staccato patter or the indifference of SoundCloud rappers like Playboi Carti—a respectable option for listeners who like the general sound of Atlanta right now, but find some of those other guys over-the-top.
Harder Than Ever is mostly of a piece with the mixtapes that preceded it, it does flaunt some of the privileges of Baby’s rising stature. The beats are a little better this time, more voluptuous and, yes, harder. Baby leans particularly on producer Quay Global, whose work is a bit like Baby’s delivery: polished, efficient, and kind of nondescript. And most prominently, Baby has landed a Drake feature, the ultimate score for any rapper looking to take their regional act global.
What a debacle their collaboration turns out to be, though. While Drake does just enough to make sure “Yes Indeed” charts, Baby completely flubs his verse, inexplicably adopting a quirky flow that cuts against his entire persona. Pitching his voice somewhere between Young Thug at his whiniest and Pharrell’s deliberately dopey Swae Lee impression from “Chanel,” he even tests a dead-on-arrival catchphrase: “Wahhhh wahhhh wahhhh, bitch I’m Lil Baby.” It’s a complete misrepresentation of what he stands for, an introduction to a far more insufferable rapper than the one who’s been building heat for the last year.
The album’s other features fare better, especially the ones from some of those aforementioned weirdos. Lil Uzi Vert and Young Thug both sweep through their tracks with the crazed velocity of untied helium balloons, and Offset absolutely crushes “Transporter,” sending volts through the track. Lil Baby takes his verse after Offset’s, and dexterous as it is, it’s a bit like trying to follow an incredible magic act with a PowerPoint presentation about fuel economy—highlighting the challenge of being a rapper as low-key as Baby. In a thrilling world of weirdos, it takes more than just showing up to make an impact. | 2018-05-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-05-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Quality Control / Motown / Capitol / Wolfpack Global | May 23, 2018 | 6.6 | 416eea05-be47-44ee-b165-41a960701322 | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | |
The Australian composer weaves ambient music and banjo strums into a meditative record, one that gazes upon the natural world with whimsy and joy. | The Australian composer weaves ambient music and banjo strums into a meditative record, one that gazes upon the natural world with whimsy and joy. | Andrew Tuttle: *Fleeting Adventure * | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/andrew-tuttle-fleeting-adventure/ | Fleeting Adventure | Andrew Tuttle might be Australian, but there’s a sun-drenched tint to his work that calls to mind the American West. Over the course of five releases, the banjo player and electronic producer has mastered a sound that melds gossamer synthesis with dusty organic tones. While his first albums occasionally leaned into familiar musical tropes, by the time 2020’s Alexandra and 2021’s A Cassowary Apart dropped, Tuttle’s work had become a beast of its own: Imagine grubby old outlaw country instrumentals, injected with an ample dose of new-age zen. Yet Tuttle has managed to keep a relatively low profile compared to many of his peers in the cosmic Americana scene. His latest album, Fleeting Adventure, showcases a newfound knack for creating musical worlds. It’s one of his most ambitious projects to date, pushing a well-honed formula into rugged yet fresh emotive terrain.
On paper, an ambient banjo record might sound absurd, pretentious, or maybe even a little silly. But in execution, Tuttle blends these disparate influences smoothly and cinematically. To flesh things out, Fleeting Adventure enlists a slew of seasoned post-country musicians—including Steve Gunn, Chuck Johnson, and Luke Schneider. The final product plays like an alternate version of the earthy soundtrack to director Wim Wenders’ heartfelt 1984 neo-Western film Paris, Texas. On “Correlation,” vast washes of pedal steel smear melancholic streaks atop Tuttle’s intricate plucking. “New Breakfast Habit” weaves subtle slide guitar flourishes and wispy electronics, recalling a muted winter sunrise over a pine tree-surrounded northern lake. “Freeway Flex” is more ethereal and reserved, centered on droning synthesis and fluttering, ephemeral string work. Avant-garde legend Lawrence English mixed Fleeting Adventure, and his impact on the record is palpable throughout, but especially on this airy track.
Fleeting Adventure is effective at world-building, but things aren’t always as temperate as advertised; some of the more contemplative pieces here are reminiscent of smoke, fog, or rain. With eyes closed, it’s easy to picture snowy mountainside campsites and glistening bodies of water. The chillier edges are especially apparent on the subdued closer “There’s Always A Crow,” as well as on the rustic “Next Week, Pending.” But no matter what climate it evokes, there’s a surreal hominess to Fleeting Adventure, like bluegrass musicians taking a shot at Steve Reich-esque minimalism. This singular weirdness is one of the album’s most charming qualities, locating it in the same world as recent instrumental folk standouts from artists like North Americans and Yasmin Williams.
Art often channels a preoccupation with looming devastation instead of hope or awe. In the realm of ambient music, several recent releases (such as Tewksbury’s Brutes, or the Anushka Chkheidze, Eto Gelashvili, Hayk Karoyi, Lillevan, and Robert Lippok collaboration Glacier Music II) have taken a direct approach at grappling with sociopolitical turmoil. But Fleeting Adventure does the opposite. It is the increasingly rare piece of environmentally inspired music that makes a point of distancing itself from collective uncertainty and dread. If those aforementioned records feel spiritually indebted to Andreas Malm’s cult radical text How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Fleeting Adventure more closely echoes the philosophical escapism of Henry David Thoreau. It navigates balmy highs and murky lows, but throughout its peaks and valleys, it radiates wonder and joy. Tuttle and his backing band reconnect with the naturalism of the energy around them, harnessing an ever-present whimsy. Sprawling and varied, Fleeting Adventure uses instrumental music as a way to convey imaginative transcendentalism. | 2022-08-09T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2022-08-09T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country / Electronic | Basin Rock | August 9, 2022 | 7.6 | 417538df-de0b-4e1f-b726-e9f2eb803385 | Ted Davis | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ted-davis/ | |
On her dazzling solo debut, the Toronto multi-instrumentalist proves herself a musical Swiss Army knife, capable of anything and reveling in her multiplicity. | On her dazzling solo debut, the Toronto multi-instrumentalist proves herself a musical Swiss Army knife, capable of anything and reveling in her multiplicity. | Jane Inc.: Number One | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jane-inc-number-one/ | Number One | Over the past decade, the cluster of Toronto artists involved with Meg Remy’s project U.S. Girls has become its own cottage industry. Carlyn Bezic found a spot on bass and vocals in Remy’s latest touring band meant to support her 2020 album, Heavy Light, pre-COVID, but she has been a crucial component for much longer. Bezic first made waves as one half of electronic pop duo Ice Cream, before joining Remy in the hard-rocking quintet Darlene Shrugg. On her dazzling solo debut as Jane Inc., where she plays a Prince-like array of instruments and handles co-production, Bezic proves herself to be a musical Swiss Army knife, ready to be deployed for whatever task is needed.
The cheekily titled Number One initially came together as Bezic layered guitar, bass, synth, and vocals on top of pulsating samples and deeply funky drum breaks. Yet despite her versatility , she is best known as a guitarist, laying down scorching solos on songs like Ice Cream’s “FED UP” and Darlene Shrugg’s “First World Blues.” In interviews, Bezic has explained how this riff worship dates back to her teenage band Golden Ticket (now seemingly scrubbed from the internet). “I spent most of high school learning how to play Jimi Hendrix songs,” she laughs.
Bezic’s songs as Jane Inc. use the building blocks of rock, pop, and dark disco to construct shimmering structures with mediums intertwining like the landmarks of Antoni Gaudí. Alongside co-producer Steve “Tone Ranger” Chahley, the album features thunderous drums from Evan Cartwright (U.S. Girls, Tasseomancy) and a squealing sax solo from Nick Dourado (Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Aquakultre, BUDI) in the back half of “Bloom Becomes Me.” On “Faceless, Bodiless,” Scott Hardware drizzles Wurlitzer keys over Jane Fonda’s dialogue from the 1971 thriller Klute, creating a fractured funk sound reminiscent of My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts.
Fonda’s monologue about the many roles women are forced to play and her desire for anonymity is key to unlocking the themes of Number One. As Bezic has explained, “I think a lot of the songs on the album deal with how we form ourselves and how that gets fragmented and complicated by the societal structures we interact with.” Propelled by a burbling bass line, the stunning six-minute opener “Gem” is about surrendering to the identities we form online and how they manifest IRL. “Honey, I know that modern life is just a drag,” she sings dreamily, “but you can choose a you that never feels that bad.”
Gazing beyond her black mirror, Bezic tackles various collective struggles. “Steel” is about the mounting pressures of living as an artist in a city like Toronto where rent prices continue to skyrocket. “If I don't leave this town I'll burn it to the ground,” she warns, before peeling off another incendiary solo. “Dirt and the Earth” shares conflicted feelings of frustration and an admission of her complicity in the devastation of the environment. By the time she reaches the melancholy groove of “Obliterated,” Bezic has accepted that forms of digital expression will one day outlive her physical body. “Tell my loved ones I'm gone,” she sings. “All my photos and comments will live on/Obliterated by a speeding wave of information.”
Alongside her partner in Ice Cream, fellow U.S. Girls member Amanda Crist, Bezic has handled every aspect of the duo’s creative output down to wardrobe and styling since their earliest videos in 2014. On their latest album, FED UP, Ice Cream explored the tension between wanting attention and subverting the male gaze. “It’s a real mindfuck to be dealing with those ideas while being a performer and also feeling as if the music is sensual in a way,” Bezic explained. “Not wanting to be subject to that gaze but also playing within it.” As Jane Inc., she wields more control than ever before, finding freedom in multiplicity while remaining brazenly herself.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-03-18T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-03-18T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Telephone Explosion | March 18, 2021 | 7.6 | 4176a2ce-e57e-4878-958c-0fae8a089cda | Jesse Locke | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-locke/ | |
The solo debut from the least attention-hungry member of Migos proves what many have long suspected—he is the trio’s best rapper, with the most promising career prospects outside of the group. | The solo debut from the least attention-hungry member of Migos proves what many have long suspected—he is the trio’s best rapper, with the most promising career prospects outside of the group. | Takeoff: The Last Rocket | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/takeoff-the-last-rocket/ | The Last Rocket | If you have only casually watched the rise of Migos, Takeoff is the trio’s most anonymous member. Quavo is the most recognizable thanks to his pop instincts and constant cameos; Offset’s relationship with Cardi B has boosted his profile. But Takeoff has kept his head down. Still, the crew’s youngest, least attention-hungry member is also its most talented rapper. His abilities have been clearly visible since at least No Label II but were perhaps most obvious amid the bloat of Culture II. On songs like “Too Much Jewelry” and the original edit of “Motorsport,” he was the most assured and reliably energetic performer. In the run-up to that record, Quavo was happy to admit his nephew was the superior Migo. Offset agreed.
Takeoff’s solo debut, The Last Rocket, arrives on the heels of Quavo Huncho and just ahead of an Offset album next month. His kinfolk are correct: With a tight 12 tracks, Takeoff’s record is significantly more economical than Quavo’s, revealing more of his personality through a diverse set of strongly rapped songs. The lack of an obvious enormous single likely won’t raise his general star, but The Last Rocket helps to demystify the group by clarifying their explicit connections to Southern rap predecessors from Gucci Mane and Big K.R.I.T. to UGK. Many of the Migos’ best songs have been their biggest hits. The Last Rocket, like its creator, is most compelling at its most offbeat and introspective.
“None to Me” is the first track here to display these qualities, as Takeoff raps about his lack of interest in a mere flex. He begins with a simple boast—“Like looking at my money stacked/That’s why the whip I ain’t bought one”—but inverts it, transforming into an opportunity for reflection. “Not that I can’t get one, or not that I don’t want one/So booked, if I even got it, I wouldn’t have time to drive one,” he continues. These bars exemplify the upside of a solo record: More time to fill means more time to muse, and Takeoff is an interesting person to spend time with. He weds Migos’ slashing digressions to quirky thoughtfulness.
The most endearing and bizarre example is “Casper.” Takeoff is lyrically all over the place atop a gauzy beat from Nonstop Da Hitman. “I want to look at the stars today,” he injects with childlike wonder into a hook that would otherwise seem rote. He shouts out his grandma and requests that those he share dinner with say grace. The cosmos, his elders, an abiding religiosity: These are recurring motifs for the rapper born Kirshnik Khari Ball, and this earnestness even makes the album’s title seem like more than a cheap joke about his pseudonym.
Though he hasn’t quite developed the focus to tell full stories, Takeoff does have the most narrative skills of any of the Migos. “I Remember,” one of the more evocative songs on the album, shows signs of something greater, as he uses each verse to think back to winters trapping, summoning them with vivid details about flushing drugs down the commode or breaking new product down in his mother’s basement. The bludgeoning hook is something of a misstep, and Takeoff generally lacks refined pop instincts. Even Quavo can’t help make “She Gon Wink” stand out. “Infatuation,” which features the relatively unknown but very intriguing rap&b singer Dayytona Fox and opens sounding like a lost Toro Y Moi B-side, has its charms. But it’s also one of the few times on the record that Takeoff sounds sluggish, finally warming up when he’s almost done with his verse. At least the beats, supplied by usual suspects like DJ Durel, Murda Beatz, and members of the 808 Mafia, are always perfect, offering plenty of negative space for Takeoff to experiment.
And whoever chose the record’s lead single, “Last Memory,” did right by Takeoff, ignoring clumsy radio stabs for a song that shows the best of what he can be. Takeoff has a rare combination of skills in that he’s both versatile and unmistakable; he can switch up his flow or register and remain instantly identifiable. Through his continual willingness to reveal himself, Takeoff grants depth to the Migos’ constant rags-to-riches narratives. He’s not haunted, merely human, burdened by the past but optimistic about the future. During closer “Bruce Wayne,” Takeoff confesses to his nervousness about first getting on stage and provides a perfect analogy for his relationship to the rest of the trio: The Last Rocket is the closest we’ve been yet to seeing one of the Migos with his mask off. | 2018-11-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-11-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Quality Control | November 7, 2018 | 7.7 | 417ee780-fa6e-4d07-a2ba-bd7353a7bef7 | Jonah Bromwich | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jonah-bromwich/ | |
The Australian beatmaker has an ear for silky West Coast sounds, and his debut evokes Roger Troutman, P-funk, and G-funk with wide-eyed sincerity. | The Australian beatmaker has an ear for silky West Coast sounds, and his debut evokes Roger Troutman, P-funk, and G-funk with wide-eyed sincerity. | MXXWLL: Sheeesh | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mxxwll-sheeesh/ | Sheeesh | MXXWLL might hail from Sydney, Australia, but the beatmaker has a taste for the same vintage favorites that West Coast legend Dâm-Funk trades in: 1980s R&B, synthetic soul, electro-funk. In his work, you can detect classic P-funk, the spirit of Roger Troutman, “West Coast Poplock,” and the G-funk music those sounds inspired. The video for the single “Light Turn Green,” from his new album Sheeesh, even featured a tour around L.A.’s palm tree-studded streets, as if there could be any doubt where this music is spiritually set.
The album packs 17 tracks into about 30 minutes, giving the record a skittish beat-tape feel (his previous full-length Beats Vol. 1 was precisely that). Sometimes this means tracks cut off abruptly: The sensual “Slow West” taps out just as the temperature starts rising. The impression is that MXXWLL wants you to know as much about him in as little time as possible.
Sheeesh kicks into life with the 8-bit blips of “Player 1 Start,” summoning the spirit of an old Nintendo. It’s a hit of nostalgia that sets the retro tone. MXXWLL has fun making synths squelch on post-disco bop “CRZN”; the wailing key riffs that underpin weed jam “Rollitup” gestures towards West Coast hip-hop before building into a meaty funk-rock jam. In an era of Spotify algorithms and subpar copycatting for licensing purposes, any genuine attempts at retro revivalism must be extremely on-point. MXXWLL brings not just musical chops, but a feeling of wide-eyed sincerity, sliding him next to Thundercat and Anderson .Paak as a modern soul of old-school persuasions.
For all there is to admire, Sheeesh doesn’t quite hold together. The guest vocalists, mostly in the early stages of their careers, don’t always distinguish themselves. Guapdad 4000’s vocals on “Relax” sound slightly strained. Rapper John Givez mirrors Q-Tip’s flow a little too closely on “Light Turn Green,” even parroting the lyric, “What’s the scenario?” Ditto on “Things U Do,” which harks back to Prince’s most slithering sex jams (the abbreviation of “you” in the title doesn’t feel coincidental) with the pretty but perhaps unsuitably delicate falsetto of singer Kyle Dion. These, though, are small grievances in a greater scheme. If you don’t peer in close enough to see the flaws, Sheeesh showcases a rising talent with great taste. | 2020-05-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-05-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Rare Chords | May 23, 2020 | 6.7 | 4180c0a2-3248-412f-a7d3-4f8ed18519ed | Dean Van Nguyen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dean-van nguyen/ | |
Lil Yachty consummates his unlikely relationship with Michigan rap on a mixtape pairing him with mainstays like Sada Baby and Rio da Yung OG. | Lil Yachty consummates his unlikely relationship with Michigan rap on a mixtape pairing him with mainstays like Sada Baby and Rio da Yung OG. | Lil Yachty: Michigan Boy Boat | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lil-yachty-michigan-boy-boat/ | Michigan Boy Boat | There has never been a bag Lil Yachty won’t shamelessly chase. Since the Atlanta rapper arrived in 2016 with his melodic mixtape Lil Boat, he has been equally known for brand shilling as his music. He hit a two-step with Carly Rae Jepsen in a Target ad. He reworked the lyrics for his grating breakout single “Minnesota” for a Sprite commercial. He devised a cursed Chef Boyardee jingle with Donny Osmond. He might have recorded the worst television theme song of all time. Currently he’s working on a movie based around the card game Uno. It’s a reflection of the current climate, where almost any rapper eligible to appear on the top three lines of a Rolling Loud bill is a brand.
It’s because of all this that I was initially skeptical of his longtime intermingling with the shit-talking characters of Michigan’s thriving street rap scene. Was he using them to make his music cool again? Or was this a genuine connection with a fast-growing movement that has long been underappreciated? Likely it was a bit of both. Songs like last year’s “Flintana” (with the animated Flint rappers RMC Mike, YN Jay, and Louie Ray) and “Not Regular” (with Detroit’s robot-dancing Sada Baby) not only revived Yachty as a rapper but also raised the profile of Michigan rap.
Yachty’s new mixtape, Michigan Boy Boat, is an earned celebration of this fruitful relationship. Though it’s important not to position Yachty as Michigan’s rap savior—the music in both Detroit and Flint is so singular that it would have ended up in Atlanta anyway—Yachty has undeniably helped speed up the process. The chemistry Yachty has built with many of the scene’s rappers is real. Yachty sounds comfortable on the posse cut “This That One,” among the patented darkly funny punchlines, grim piano melody, booming drums, and ominous church bells, but he is not the center of attention. He’s more like a host that paves the way for his compelling guests: KrispyLife Kidd beat a dude so bad he thought he got jumped, and YN Jay is selling dope to a customer who has a bald head like Bobby Lashley. Similarly on “Plastic,” Yachty takes a backseat to Eastside Detroit’s Icewear Vezzo and Flint’s Rio Da Yung OG: “My shooter got ADHD, he’ll kill you for a script of Addys/I was finna fuck my bitch mom, but I can hit the granny,” raps Rio, maybe the most unnecesarily batshit consecutive lines on a mixtape full of them.
But the mixtape struggles when the focus shifts to Yachty. He doesn’t have Mike’s commanding voice or Rio’s recklessness, the laid-back swag of Babyface Ray or the out-of-pocket insanity of YN Jay. It’s less noticeable when he’s bouncing off of them, but glaring on solo songs like “Final Form” and “Concrete Goonies,” which are tolerable only because of dynamic beats from mainstays of the scene Helluva and Enrgy. When Yachty invites Swae Lee into this world on “Never Did Coke,” it goes about as badly as when a melodic teenage rapper shows up on a radio freestyle show and they play a DJ Premier beat.
Sprinkled across the 14 tracks are moments where Yachty sounds at home: “How the hell is niggas gangsters graduatin’ from St. John’s?” he asks on “Hybrid,” and on “Dynamic Duo,” he raps “My old bitch was really old, born in ’86,” sending all the ’80s babies into an early mid-life crisis. His best performance of all is on “G.I. Joe,” which coincidentally is the only track on the tape not rooted in the Michigan style.
If you’re already familiar with the state’s street rap movement, Michigan Boy Boat doesn’t add anything new. It’ll be a real success if it leads new fans toward superior modern mixtapes like Babyface Ray’s MIA Season 2, Rio Da Yung OG’s City on My Back, Drego and Beno’s Sorry For the Get Off, Los’ G Shit Vol. 1, BandGang Lonnie Bands’ KOD, and more. But for anyone searching for an entry point, it’s a fun introduction to the fast-paced instrumentals, unpredictable flows, and demented punchlines synyonmous with Detroit and Flint.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-04-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-04-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Quality Control / Motown | April 28, 2021 | 6.8 | 41810fba-cab5-472f-8e68-4b3e68f3fb83 | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
The L.A. skate-punk band's debut full-length is full of snotty songs about cheap beer, cheap cocaine, cheap weed, and "shitty pills." They're not reinventing the wheel, but FIDLAR have their references down. | The L.A. skate-punk band's debut full-length is full of snotty songs about cheap beer, cheap cocaine, cheap weed, and "shitty pills." They're not reinventing the wheel, but FIDLAR have their references down. | FIDLAR: FIDLAR | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17559-fidlar/ | FIDLAR | The L.A. skate-punk band FIDLAR don't make music you'll grow old with, and they won't get an "A" for originality, but that's not really the point. While there's a definite lineage and history here, the quartet's self-titled debut is about today-- being young, broke, drunk, ecstatic, and not worrying too much about what happens next.
The 14-song collection includes a song called "No Waves" that sounds a lot like Wavves (as does the descriptive "Wake Bake Skate"). There's also a song called "Max Can't Surf" about their "ginger" drummer's lack of balance, and plenty of West Coast party anthems. But you're probably right to assume that, while punning on "no wave," the "waves" in that title is also a nod to Nathan Williams' similarly snotty project. Like Odd Future, these guys established their band identity via the internet, and they're savvy about their references.
Toward the end of December, FIDLAR covered the Descendents' "Suburban Home" for Filter's Milo Turns 50: Songs of the Descendents compilation. That classic California punk quartet are obvious influences on the scatological, silly subject matter of FIDLAR; where the Descendents fixated on farts, girls, coffee, and not growing up, though, FIDLAR populate their songs with cheap beer, cheap cocaine, cheap weed, and "shitty pills." And their sound is closer to former tourmates Black Lips and, at times, their early heroes Blink-182 (see the vocal lines of "Five to Nine" and "No Waves" or their cover of "Dammit") than it is 1980s SST. But the spirit is there: While you'd never mistake FIDLAR's playful approach for that of, say, the intense snarl of Black Flag, they'd do a great job with "TV Party".
Despite their youth, you get the sense that these guys have been playing music for a long time. (It's worth noting guitarist Elvis and his brother, drummer Max, are the sons of T.S.O.L. keyboardist Greg Kuehn.) They've operated as FIDLAR since 2009, and released a couple of EPs prior to this collection. That time was spent honing a brand of hopped up, surfy garage punk that comes with more variety than you might expect. They veer from sounds that evoke the Ramones ("LDA", the opening to "Cheap Beer", and the general "Rock 'n' Roll High School" vibe) to poppier take on the Germs minus the danger and the Misfits minus the goth. They also weave in western acoustic elements in a move reminiscent of the Gun Club ("Gimme Something", "Cheap Cocaine," "Whore").
But, again, the way FIDLAR seem to function as their own clique is most reminiscent of the Descendents and their life-philosophy espousing "All-O-Gistics". Though beneath the sunny hooks, * FIDLAR* suggests a darker, more nihilstic worldview. In "Stoked and Broke" they shout: "I just wanna get really high/ Smoke weed until I die.../ There's nothing wrong with living like this/ All my friends are pieces of shit." And as they like to remind you in interviews and at their live shows, FIDLAR is an acronym for "fuck it, dog, life's a risk." That said, across these 39 minutes, they also make life sound like a lot of fun. | 2013-01-25T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2013-01-25T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Mom+Pop | January 25, 2013 | 7 | 41886d91-bd20-4940-976c-76692ddf4efe | Brandon Stosuy | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brandon-stosuy/ | null |
The Kansas City artist better known as Huerco S. continues a recent string of ambient investigations with foggy, ambivalent tracks shot through with a sense of anxiety. | The Kansas City artist better known as Huerco S. continues a recent string of ambient investigations with foggy, ambivalent tracks shot through with a sense of anxiety. | Pendant: Make Me Know You Sweet | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pendant-make-me-know-you-sweet/ | Make Me Know You Sweet | As Huerco S., Brian Leeds got his start producing mottled, inward-leaning house music; several years into the project, he dropped the rhythmic imperative and released a pair of excellent—though sonically distinct—ambient releases. For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have) brought together a series of wandering melodies swaddled in dust and static; a stunning cassette for the Quiet Time label, several months later, was a half-hour-long frozen exhale conjuring an unfussy contemporary spiritualism. For Make Me Know You Sweet, the first release on his own new label, Leeds has adopted the moniker Pendant and further broadened the scope of his experiments in ambient sound.
Make Me Know You Sweet can be disconcerting, in part because it finds Leeds unlacing the sense of focus that structured his two most recent releases. Where For Those of You Who Have Never had its melodies (sometimes resembling a hold-tone sing-song put through the wash), and the Quiet Time cassette its clean, sustained tones, the seven tracks that comprise Make Me Know You Sweet are less direct. Texture and tone accumulate in layers of uneven residue, designating a headspace where ideas spill over—a greyed, dissociative kind of dreamy.
Leeds’ productions have long embraced a kind of sonic clutter, and the relative formlessness here underscores that tendency; the scattering of detail is what makes this album. “IBX-BZC” has a writhing feeling: It both rattles and drones, growing thick with dry samples that chirp in a way that’s half-machinic hum, half-field at night (is that a bird crowing in the distance?). Midway through “BBN-UWZ,” a more insistent synthesizer phrase perforates lilting melodic fog, altering the track’s course without ever overtaking it. “KVL-LWQ,” produced in Kansas with Pontiac Streator, follows a cleaner line but still wanders out from its woozy core progression with wisps of vaguely percussive static.
The mood throughout is one of relative ambivalence. When the pair of quasi-epics that close the album, “OXI-GKK” and “NMQ-HYT,” reach their respective crescendos, it’s not quite clear whether the music is is offering to envelop listeners or threatening to swallow them. That it could be both is part of what’s gently destabilizing about this release, which, for all its hazy sonic niceties, returns often to the flat, persistent tension that characterizes a generalized anxiety.
It’s tempting to talk about this album in the context of a supposed ambient revival, a balm for our world—and dancefloor-weary souls. (I’m still not over a recent Guardian article that, while alleging such a resurgence, called Huerco S. “ambient for the flat white generation.”) But this record, more than its predecessors, doesn’t fit easily within ideas of why we might want or need this kind of music right now. It’s not an escape to some other, better place; it’s not grand or conceptually driven; it’s certainly not regulating or functional, the kind of thing that helps you focus while you read or work. There’s something blissful about that lack of functionality, and in the multiple sometimes-contradictory surfaces these tracks contain: a series of overlapping paths leading nowhere in particular, a lovely reflection of the quietly wild nature of interiority itself. | 2018-01-29T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-29T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | West Mineral Ltd. | January 29, 2018 | 7.8 | 418f1d61-8cef-420f-9d95-0d22135eb8f9 | Thea Ballard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/thea-ballard/ | |
Featuring players from Spiritualized and the Necks, the hushed third album from Jack Cooper’s chamber-improv ensemble slots into a lineage of exploratory groups fusing folk, psych, and post-rock. | Featuring players from Spiritualized and the Necks, the hushed third album from Jack Cooper’s chamber-improv ensemble slots into a lineage of exploratory groups fusing folk, psych, and post-rock. | Modern Nature: No Fixed Point in Space | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/modern-nature-no-fixed-point-in-space/ | No Fixed Point in Space | There is music that feels like it was born out of a white-hot spark of inspiration, and there is music that feels like it has come together gradually, like accrued wisdom; the music that Jack Cooper records as Modern Nature falls into the latter category. Across three studio albums, Cooper—a musician originally from the English seaside town of Blackpool, now located somewhere in the countryside of Cambridgeshire —has invented and refined a quietly introspective, semi-improvised acoustic style that nonetheless feels richly sensual and radical in its approach.
Cooper has lived a few musical lives already. He fronted the scuzzy 2010s punk group Mazes and made sunny psych as part of Ultimate Painting before launching Modern Nature. I’m willing to bet the name of this group comes from the 1991 book by Derek Jarman, which documented the artist and filmmaker’s building of a garden amid the arid shingle of Dungeness on England’s south coast, shortly after Jarman had been diagnosed with HIV. That sounds potentially bleak, but Modern Nature was about finding new ways to live, and Cooper’s music feels born from a similar impulse: an attempt to shed the baggage of the past and create something honest and meaningful by embracing nature’s cycles of renewal and rebirth.
Like Modern Nature’s 2022 album Island of Noise, No Fixed Point in Space draws on the language of free improv, but this is a subtler and more muted record than its predecessor, and somewhat stranger in the bargain. Recorded live to tape with Cooper joined by a loose consort of players that includes Spiritualized’s Alex Ward, the Necks’ Chris Abrahams, the veteran experimental vocalist Julie Tippetts, and members of the London avant-garde group Apartment House, its gently exploratory chamber music occupies a liminal space somewhere between composition and spontaneity; its loosely notated songs are given space to wander and drift.
The title of No Fixed Point In Space comes from Albert Einstein by way of the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham. Cunningham used the term as a way of conceptualizing a group performance without a central focal point, and Cooper borrows it as a guiding precept here, nominating no one leader and empowering his chosen players to find their own route. Take a track like “Murmuration.” Its constituent parts—plucked electric guitar, hushed woodwind, tapped cymbal, and Cooper’s lightly dazed voice—intermingle yet never tethered to one another. The song’s title takes its name from the flocks of starlings that weave and turn as one, a natural phenomenon in line with this album’s affinity with the patterns of nature, but also a useful metaphor for the way the album’s music itself is assembled: each musician a free agent, but all acting together in a state of harmony.
The arrangements are lean and pared back, even as the lyrics erupt with florid descriptions that feel like direct entreaties to the senses. “Sweetness breaks the air in colours/Golden, orange, olive, violet/Feint relief from bent horizon/Withered bow and bramble tight,” Cooper sings on “Cascade,” his voice hushed, like a bird watcher who has caught sight of his quarry through the branches. Thrumming double-bass notes and soft puffs of clarinet hang in the air, or drift softly like pollen on the wind. Moments recall earlier jazz-influenced rock milestones—the melancholic slow burn of Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden, the deconstructed psych-folk of Radiohead’s The King of Limbs. Perhaps most of all, No Fixed Point in Space reminds me of the band that Brian McMahan formed after Slint’s break-up, the For Carnation: another group that spoke softly but still created something of heavy emotional resonance.
Describing his vision for No Fixed Point in Space, Cooper writes that he wanted “the music and the words to feel like roots, branches, mycelium, the intricacies of a dawn chorus, neurons firing, the unknown.” That appeal to the realms of physics and biology indirectly highlights a distinguishing factor of Modern Nature’s songwriting: a near lack of human presence. Where we see people, they're usually passive bystanders, lost in a landscape or sheltering from the rain. Just occasionally, we get a glimpse of how these songs might have been shaped by past trauma. The pensive “Orange” reflects on the tiresome routine of passing days, with a repeated refrain—“Don’t let it break you”—that hints at a state of psychic exhaustion.
Largely, though, No Fixed Point in Space feels sealed off from the concerns of modern society, content to exist in its world of nature. The closing “Ensō” takes its name from a Zen Buddhist symbol, a hand-drawn circle representing enlightenment and quietness of mind. The topic is nightfall, the mood serene, and as gentle strummed guitar and brushed cymbal conjure up a vision of dusk, Tippetts and Cooper sing together one last time. “It’s a lot to take in/It’s impossible to see,” they chorus. And then they fall silent and everything is still. | 2023-10-03T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-10-03T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rock / Experimental | Bella Union | October 3, 2023 | 7.6 | 4192c090-6108-4bac-9279-64aba3b73651 | Louis Pattison | https://pitchfork.com/staff/louis-pattison/ | |
The Philadelphia rockers sign to Third Man, try a few new tricks, and kick out the jams with some diminishing returns. | The Philadelphia rockers sign to Third Man, try a few new tricks, and kick out the jams with some diminishing returns. | Sheer Mag: Playing Favorites | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sheer-mag-playing-favorites/ | Playing Favorites | It is a blessing and curse when a band nails their sound right away. Sheer Mag brought their devotion to the sound of ’70s hard rock to a new generation with their much-hyped mid-2010s EPs, thanks to lead guitarist Kyle Seely’s gleeful and technically impressive playing and singer Tina Halladay’s anthemic sing-a-long melodies that could unite a rally or a karaoke bar. You’d have to squint to see their songwriting evolve from those EPs to their official 2017 debut, Need to Feel Your Love, and 2019’s relatively clean-cut A Distant Call, where the main differences felt like Sheer Mag were able to afford nicer studios. On Playing Favorites, the studio still sounds nice, and the riffs and howls will still get cheers from the rock clubs. There are even a few modest attempts at sonic experimentation. Ironically, Playing Favorites’ few tries at changing up the Sheer Mag formula show the limits of this band’s abilities (or willingness) to evolve from the sound many people fell in love with a decade ago.
Playing Favorites is a how-to-survive-in-this-world album, full of declarations someone might make after the strictest of pandemic lockdowns gives them time to pause and think about how they would like to be treated. In the case of the album opener and title track, Halladay’s first step into happiness is to pack up the van and ride into the sunset with her friends, “Just like the old days, playing the same old songs.” A call to friendship, but maybe Sheer Mag is also getting ahead of the critics who may accuse them of repetition: What’s wrong with playing the same old songs?
Still, “Playing Favorites” is a wonderful showcase for Matt Palmer, Sheer Mag’s rhythm guitarist and lyricist who gives the band its power-pop canvas for the other members to add their heavy rock flourishes. “Eat It and Beat It” has several dirty, prog-like mini movements that drive Halladay to kick and scream through her tough love for the phony rockers who need to learn when to quit. As usual, the feeling of her vocals is more compelling than its literal meaning.
These opening songs are strong enough. Every descriptor you could imagine to describe Sheer Mag here—shimmering guitars, heavy riffs, classic rock boogie—could also apply to every past Sheer Mag album. Most of Playing Favorites struggle to add new sounds to their vocabulary. After a brief acoustic intro, “Don’t Come Lookin’” steps back into the Sheer Mag mid-tempo safety zone of a tipsy 12-bar twang that hinges on generic lyrics about a wishing well. “Golden Hour” also reads generic and worse, sounds muddy and loud, destroying any sense of dynamics that help build up a song’s tension and release. “Tea on the Kettle” is pretty with its power ballad twinkles and some actual lyrical imagery (“The old dog cried behind the bus/You stopped the car cause you hated to see him alone”) and “Paper Time” might be power-pop’s newest peak when it comes to songs about waiting for the newspaper to arrive. However, by the time we get to these songs towards the end of the album, the fatigue of listening to familiar riffs and howls starts to set in.
Playing Favorites is at its best right in the middle. “Moonstruck” is a dreamy and lovelorn cosmic country strut first written for a scrapped disco EP and gives this album its first sense of unique sonic identity. Maybe Sheer Mag should have released that EP instead since “Moonstruck” and the following multi-part experimental jam “Mechanical Garden,” featuring a blast of a Mdou Moctar guitar solo and flourishes by album producer, engineer, and mixer Hunter Davidsohn, feel like the only moments when the band are challenging themselves.
Minor changes aside, Sheer Mag’s mission for Playing Favorites, even now as part of Third Man, remains to put huge and catchy songwriting front and center. Sheer Mag succeeded again, though the band’s issue was never its inability to write compelling and accessible rock songs. As the title track suggests, Sheer Mag are still playing just like the old days and playing the same old songs that make you feel like you’re in 1975 or 2014. It’s not a loss for the guitar rock world. Still, there’s no need to pretend that consistency always justifies a lack of new ideas. | 2024-03-07T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2024-03-07T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Third Man | March 7, 2024 | 6.7 | 419523bc-8058-488c-b920-e9f4372aae90 | Brady Gerber | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brady-gerber/ | |
Gabriel Birnbaum’s urban Americana project intersperses grit and gloom with alluring glimpses of deliverance in the first installment of a planned musical novel on young adult life in Brooklyn. | Gabriel Birnbaum’s urban Americana project intersperses grit and gloom with alluring glimpses of deliverance in the first installment of a planned musical novel on young adult life in Brooklyn. | Wilder Maker: Zion | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/wilder-maker-zion/ | Zion | If New York City is your trap, Wilder Maker will not be your escape hatch. The seven songs that make up Zion—the amorphous urban Americana project’s first album since the series of 2015 EPs that helped the band establish a more cohesive identity—form the first installment of a planned musical novel concerning the exigencies and ecstasies of young adult life in Brooklyn. Artists living in squalor long to find their big break before the city’s low-wage jobs and low-stakes friendships break them. Excitable pals tolerate inconveniences like late movers and rickety stairwells when they find a new apartment, all in the eternal search for adventures and lovers. A tardy cocaine dealer gives the narrator time to ask himself a verboten question: What if this incessant toil isn’t fucking worth it?
In the microcosm built by founder and lyricist Gabriel Birnbaum, there is no definitive answer, only a peculiar mix of gloom and alluring glimpses of deliverance. The lows are debilitating and quotidian, the sort of stuff that will drive you back to the tallgrass prairie unless your ego develops callouses. During “Drunk Driver,” someone gets their heart publicly shattered amid an uncaring crowd, performing a symphony with “the sound of High Lifes popping”; the only possible exit is more booze elsewhere. “Impossible Summer” paints the city as a showcase for other people’s opulence, constantly reminding you of the things brewing coffee and mixing drinks may never buy you. At the other extreme, perfect summer weather and the pleasantness of a crowd at a New York music festival feel like salvation in “Women Dancing Immortal,” a song that springs into a refrain so ebullient it’s hard not to feel lighter.
This admixture even follows the kids out of town for “Multiplied,” in which they’re stranded at a venue with no place to sleep after playing for six people. When a stranger rescues them, they snuggle in sleeping bags, watching late-night television. Birnbaum and the great singer-songwriter Katie von Schleicher recount this experience in dovetailing harmony, their easy chemistry and lyrical specificity confirming that they share this (and all these songs, really) from experience, not imagination. This push and pull—between harsh reality and resilient hope, between skipping town and staying put—recalls Craig Finn during the early days of the Hold Steady, mapping the experiences of a wild youth with the perspective of a survivor.
The Hold Steady, however, arrived with an asset Wilder Maker have yet to develop: a consistent and compelling sound that affords their tales the room and resources to flourish. A crisp and clever band, Wilder Maker do offer razor-sharp webs of guitar and a rhythm section that leans back and rushes ahead with refreshing narrative sensitivity. And their hooks are mighty. But the songs themselves pinball among influences that seem vetted for their cultural cachet, shaping a patchwork that resembles the cool corner of a Facebook group where people share pictures of their record collection. The highlife of Ghana, the harmonies of Dirty Projectors, the zigs and zags of St. Vincent, the textural tension of Radiohead, the saxophone of the E Street Band but with the acidic edge of Peter Brötzmann: They all drift through Zion, one by one.
It’s not simply the traces of these artists that pose a problem; entire elements of recognizable songs appear here, as though Zion were some instrumental mixtape with Birnbaum’s lyrics added later. “Gonna Get My Money” pivots from the swaggering belligerence of Neil Young’s“Revolution Blues” to the poignant lift of Bobby Charles’ “Small Town Talk” without a wink. When it happens, I get lost within the song, distracted by thoughts of those masterpieces instead. The same holds for “Drunk Driver,” a tense torch song about the tragedy of casual heartbreak. Von Schleicher is hypnotic here—that is, until the music morphs into a clear riff on the Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs,” with kick drum and snare strutting behind a coruscant drone.
Maybe these borrowed bits are meant as signifiers, hypertext links to songs that tell us more about Wilder Maker’s sojourn through the city. But it often feels like they’re struggling to make sounds worthy of these subjects, to write music as interesting as the times Birnbaum documents. That sensation only grows on the frequent occasions when he over-sings his own lines. It’s as if, caught up in New York’s rush of ambitions, he’s not yet comfortable letting Wilder Maker’s music stand on its own—a conundrum that someone in this map of Brooklyn is bound to face along the way. | 2018-09-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-09-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Northern Spy | September 6, 2018 | 6.6 | 419544c9-129b-4e3b-b465-dce7694f8dae | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
The days of Zeitgeist-shifting Depeche Mode awesomeness may likely be behind them, but that doesn't make their new LP less worthy of the band's legacy. | The days of Zeitgeist-shifting Depeche Mode awesomeness may likely be behind them, but that doesn't make their new LP less worthy of the band's legacy. | Depeche Mode: Sounds of the Universe | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12940-sounds-of-the-universe/ | Sounds of the Universe | "They're a singles band," sniffed a friend, dismissing Depeche Mode's influential career. Even if one were to agree with that blithe assessment, there's no way Depeche Mode could be dismissed as just a singles band, given their track record on the charts and in the clubs, a string of hits that have hung in there to varying degrees of ubiquity. Sure, the singles sometimes remain standouts, but the rest of the tracks-- especially on albums like Music for the Masses and Violator-- are hardly filler. For better or for worse-- and those who miss the band's more subversive early days may think it's for the worse-- Depeche Mode have gotten in the habit of crafting complete start-to-finish statements.
Yet it's still unclear where Depeche Mode fits into today's pop world. The group is currently selling out stadiums around the globe, which attests to its ongoing popularity, and unlike many other acts of its vintage still manages to attract fans that span demographics. But Depeche Mode are also a far cry from the pioneers they once were, let alone the leaders they grew to become. It's almost as if the band has stepped aside to a parallel track, content in its place; more cachet, more cool, more money-- they'll take it if they can get it, but they sure don't need it.
So, yes, the days of earth-quaking, Zeitgeist-shifting Depeche Mode awesomeness may likely be behind them, but that doesn't make Sounds of the Universe any less worthy of the band's legacy. If the album as usual seems to have little or no bearing on anything outside the group's own, um, universe, the wheels and gears are definitely still turning and churning in the Depeche Mode machine. Martin Gore can still be counted on to deliver the goods, and recent songwriting convert Dave Gahan is impatiently nipping at his heels. Gahan's singing, meanwhile, is as strong as ever, always the perfect vehicle for Gore's lyrics, and the glue that holds together even the disc's most diffuse songs.
And really, Sounds of the Universe is, at 60 minutes and 13 songs-- the group's longest player to date-- relatively loose and sprawling, as likely to drift as hit hard. While the group's brought back producer Ben Hillier, Sounds of the Universe is a very different album from its predecessor, Playing the Angel. "In Chains" begins like how one imagines it would feel to be on the receiving end of a SETI signal before stretching into an epic-- satisfyingly dramatic and dynamic despite its leisurely seven-minute gait-- and deceptively full of activity despite what feels like an intentional ear for minimalism. "Hole to Feed", a Gahan composition, is similarly busy yet spare, bounding along a sci-fi take on the Bo Diddley beat while Gahan (his troubled history public record) draws on double meanings and innuendo to project the band's trademark narcissistic portent.
The song doesn't know how to end, but that just makes the entrance of "Wrong" that much more theatrical. That song-- the single-- is short but deliciously sour, hearkening back to the band's synthier days without losing the layer of grunge it's carefully cultivated post-Violator, a strategy also reflected by "Fragile Tension" (which wouldn't have been out of place on the generally noisier Angel). "Little Soul" and "In Sympathy", however, once again echo old-school minimalist Depeche menace and pop smarts, respectively, which makes "Peace"-- sounding like Kraftwerk gone dreamy gospel-- that much more striking. It's a stirring encapsulation of all of Depeche Mode's different sides and qualities, reminiscent of all those other great album tracks lurking throughout the group's catalog.
Yet a funny thing happens next. With the strong but still oddly static Gahan composition "Come Back", the album starts to feel a little fractured, and by the time the effortlessly melodic "Perfect" comes around, followed by the casually industrial "Miles Away/The Truth Is", the synth-lounge "Jezebel", and the fuzzy closer "Corrupt", it's almost as if we've embarked on another album entirely. Either that or the band's simply left us to find our way through their space. Ending with a brief, queasy reprise tease of "Wrong", Sounds of the Universe concludes anticlimactically, an echo of its promising start. | 2009-04-22T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2009-04-22T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Mute / Capitol | April 22, 2009 | 6.3 | 419eaa71-ca68-4335-9057-8b893e34e672 | Joshua Klein | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joshua-klein/ | null |
On their fourth album, Hooded Fang slip away from their garage rock and indie-pop pasts and embrace a weirder, more wired sci-fi horror vision. | On their fourth album, Hooded Fang slip away from their garage rock and indie-pop pasts and embrace a weirder, more wired sci-fi horror vision. | Hooded Fang: Venus on Edge | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21862-venus-on-edge/ | Venus on Edge | Hooded Fang emerged in 2008 like many Canadian bands of the era, crowding the stage with seven players and offering upbeat artisanal indie-pop with the then-requisite glockenspiels and trombones. But in Daniel Lee’s sly, sonorous vocals, you sensed an eccentric streak lurking, and he and bassist April Aliermo weren’t afraid to unleash it through other projects. Outside Hooded Fang, the two have betrayed a fondness for heaving hardcore (as Tonkapuma) and day-glo electro-pop (Phédre), while Lee has flexed some Krautrockin’ funk in his solo Lee Paradise project. Meanwhile, Hooded Fang shed its keyboardists and brass section, and as its line-up got leaner, its sound has become progressively meaner.
Hooded Fang’s fourth album, Venus on Edge, represents the next step in an evolutionary process. The transformation began in earnest with 2011’s Tosta Mista, which scuffed up the band’s formative indie-pop sensibility with a Modern Lovers scrappiness. That aesthetic was pushed deeper into the red with the grotty garage rock of 2013’s Gravez. But Venus on Edge is even more weird and wired, marking the moment where Hooded Fang’s fantastical name ceases to be an ironic counterpoint to the band’s playful fuzz-pop and becomes a guiding principle.
The new record also turns a page on proto-punk completely in favor of weirder turf: industrialized dissonance, sci-fi surf-punk, and tweaked-out guitar frequencies that ring out like a biohazard lab activating the meltdown siren. Lee’s cool, conversational voice melds into the artfully mutated noise swirling around him, as he breaks down his melodies into staccato communiqués.
But as Hooded Fang’s music has grown wilder, their lyrical focus has become more concrete. Venus on Edge is another springtime release from a Toronto act presenting views from the 6, though, as Hooded Fang would tell you, any view view of that city is inevitably obstructed by friggin’ condos. Where Drake invokes Toronto as a visual and thematic backdrop, Hooded Fang treat the city as a target, a place where gentrification, smartphone dependency, and pandering lifestyle marketing have run amok: “Plastic Love” depicts big-business branding as an exercise in Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style mind control, complete with a wonderfully wiggy B-52s-style breakdown; “Glass Shadows” channels the dispiriting feeling of walking among the high-density, high-rise developments that loom ominously over city’s downtown core, with Lee darting around the song’s jabbing riff as if he were trying to avoid the panes of glass that frequently rain down from Toronto’s shoddily built towers.
And while Toronto’s rich multiculturalism is an oft-advertised point of civic pride, Hooded Fang are nonetheless one of the few mixed-race bands in the city’s indie-rock scene, a circumstance that informs Venus on Edge’s most agitated tracks. Where the frantic “Impressions” spins an alien-visitation yarn to highlight the corrosive effects of xenophobia, the pin-pricked, new-waved rave-up “Shallow” sings of unchecked white privilege as a festering disease: “You’re no iconoclast/Blinded all your life by the paleness of your sight/It’s a sickness/You can’t see what’s going on.” The target of the song is unnamed, but it’s not a stretch to assume it’s directed at the band formerly known as Viet Cong, given the instrumental role Aliermo played in mobilizing the protest to get them to change their name.
Over the course of its 10 tracks, Venus on Edge’s warping effects do start to normalize somewhat, like when you stare into a funhouse mirror for an extended period and your eyes get used to the distended shapes. Even as its songs twist into new shapes, the dynamic between the band’s relentless racket and Lee’s casual tone never wavers, to the point where the transformation of the finale “Venus” from deconstructed blues dirge to high-speed sprint feels less dramatic than intended. But, on an album that’s about keeping your cool in the face of mounting frustration, perhaps that resolute stance is just a defense mechanism. With Venus on Edge, Hooded Fang are the stars of their own horror flick, playing the last surviving rational humans in a city overrun with mind-numbed, inconsiderate, glass-eyed drones. And like all good scary movies, there’s a plot twist: this one’s actually a documentary. | 2016-05-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-05-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Daps | May 16, 2016 | 7.3 | 419f949d-5e42-495c-8f7a-c4be505366ab | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
On his excellent and ambitious double album, the tuneful sensibility that Segall has been nurturing for years has fully blossomed, all while keeping his primordial spirit intact. | On his excellent and ambitious double album, the tuneful sensibility that Segall has been nurturing for years has fully blossomed, all while keeping his primordial spirit intact. | Ty Segall: Freedom’s Goblin | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ty-segall-freedoms-goblin/ | Freedom’s Goblin | Near the end of last year, Ty Segall put a bunch of new songs out online, which is a bit like saying water is wet. But even for a guy who has spent the last decade setting the pace for indie-rock prolificacy, releasing 20 albums and more than 30 singles and EPs, these tracks stood out. They sounded like strange one-off experiments, from the heaving hardcore of “Meaning” (featuring lead shrieking from Segall’s wife Denée) to a straight-up cover of Hot Chocolate’s 1978 disco warhorse “Every 1’s a Winner” (with guest percussion from Fred Armisen to boot). It turns out these songs weren't just a stream of orphaned outtakes. Rather, they were setting the far-flung aesthetic goalposts for Segall’s most freewheeling and free-ranging album to date, Freedom’s Goblin.
A year ago, you could’ve said the same thing about the Ty Segall album, which pit some of his most deranged material against his most unabashedly romantic, yielding the scatterbrained folk-punk/psych-jazz suite “Freedom”/”Warm Hands (Freedom Returned).” As the title suggests, Freedom’s Goblin sounds like that 12-minute epic’s evil offspring, spreading its lawlessness across an hour and a quarter. It’s Segall’s second double album to date, but the first one to truly embrace and exploit the possibilities of the four-sided medium. In essence, this is Segall’s White Album moment, a scrapbook of the singer’s many guises, along with a few new ones, too—check the sleazy drum-machine disco of “Despoiler of Cadaver” or the T. Rex-goes-to-E.-Street swoon of “My Lady’s on Fire.” Recorded piecemeal with various line-up configurations in five different cities, its most remarkable quality isn’t the whiplash-inducing, track-to-track variation—it’s that each song works as both a crucial unifying thread in the overall patchwork and as a stand-alone statement.
In marveling at the sheer volume of Segall’s discography, it’s easy to overlook his growth as a writer. He’s often slotted alongside peers like Thee Oh Sees and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard in the pantheon of garage-rockers with exploratory impulses and little regard for traditional promo cycles. But it’s more apt to mention him in the same breath as musicians like Robert Pollard, Ted Leo, or Elliott Smith—expert melody-makers who borrow liberally from the classic-rock canon, but reshape and demystify it in their own eccentric image. And on Freedom’s Goblin, the tuneful sensibility that Segall has been nurturing since 2011’s Goodbye Bread fully blossoms into sky-high hooks and rich, resonant lyricism, all while keeping his primordial spirit intact.
With the grandiose grunge of “Alta,” Segall delivers an ode to Mother Nature with all the valor of a superhero flick, while the opening “Fanny Dog” could be the most badass song ever dedicated to a household pet, summoning a brass section to pummel its rumbling riff into submission. But the album’s ugliest moments only enhance its prettiest: The burning fury of “Meaning” is immediately extinguished by the wistful George Harrison tribute “Cry, Cry, Cry”; the lecherous fuzz of “Shoot You Up” is chased by the cosmic, falsetto-cooed folk-rock of “You Say All the Nice Things.”
As the latter song unsubtly suggests, Freedom’s Goblin is an album made by a guy who’s clearly head-over-heels in love—Segall and Denée married just over a year ago, and through that lens, the “Every’s 1 a Winner” cover sounds less like a cheeky lark than a genuine expression of devotion. But if Freedom’s Goblin was born of a honeymoon period, it’s one where the room-service trolley becomes food-fight ammo, and TVs get tossed out into swimming pools. Even the album’s most unruly turns—like the guitar solo on the motorik metal of “She”—project an exhilarated, anarchic joy that sustains the album’s momentum until its great payoff: the penultimate “5 Ft Tall.” Here, Segall delivers the totemic power-pop knockout that he’s been working toward his entire career, the sort of hair-raising, roller-coaster rocker that you could imagine a contented Kurt Cobain writing.
Following that glorious peak, you can forgive Segall for indulging in an extended comedown. As the closing “And, Goodnight” begins its slack, Crazy-Horsed lurch, it appears we’re in for 12 minutes of improvised guitar skronk. But when Segall’s vocal comes in just before the three-minute mark, it’s revealed that this is no random jam, but an extended, electrified cover of the title track to his 2013 psych-folk opus, Sleeper. It’s a song Segall originally wrote for Denée one night as she was dozing off, but it served as the surreal, dreamlike portal into a deeply meditative album where Segall addressed the death of his adoptive father and subsequent estrangement from his mother. This new version feels even less like a romantic reverie and more like all the intervening years of pent-up sadness and frustration being unleashed through Segall’s scorching fretboard runs. It’s an intensely sobering conclusion to an otherwise intoxicating album and a reminder that Segall’s ascent from garage-punk hellraiser to consummate rock craftsman over the past 10 years hasn’t been without its trying times. But Freedom’s Goblin is ultimately a celebration of Segall’s aesthetic and emotional freedom—a definitive capstone to the first decade of a scuzzy, heartfelt songwriter nonpareil. | 2018-01-26T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-26T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Drag City | January 26, 2018 | 8.1 | 41a0555d-a34e-44dc-ae8f-741001c14017 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
The Puerto Rican singer’s EP is a mix of robot soul and trap beats that sound like he’s just having fun making expensive-sounding records. | The Puerto Rican singer’s EP is a mix of robot soul and trap beats that sound like he’s just having fun making expensive-sounding records. | Rauw Alejandro: Trap Cake, Vol. 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rauw-alejandro-trap-cake-vol-2/ | Trap Cake, Vol. 2 | Rauw Alejandro’s Vice Versa, released last summer, was carefully crafted for the pop charts, punctuated by a cotton candy lead single that managed to soften his rough edges. But it also offered a glimpse of why the Puerto Rican singer can be so exciting, channeling transportive UK rave and drum’n’bass vibes to multiple dancefloor climaxes. If that record suffered from Alejandro’s splitting the difference between pop for the charts and for the club, his latest project, Trap Cake Vol. 2, a genre exercise in Caribbean trap soul, represents clarity of vision.
Maybe the stakes are lower with an EP, but there’s no pandering here. Alejandro just sounds like he’s having fun, a street kid with great taste making expensive-sounding records with his homie (El Zorro, who produced much of Vol. 2) and his girlfriend (Rosalía, who shares a writing credit on “Caprichoso”). Much of the record is a mix of robot soul and dick-swinging over trap beats, but the more narrow palette works in Alejandro’s favor, serving as gentle guard rails for experimentation. On “Red Velvet,” Rauw and Jamaican producer Rvssian craft a moodier vibe for nascent dancehall star Shenseea than we’re used to hearing from her, and the distorted guitar opening “Gracias Por Nada” transcends from radio rock to resplendent when the drumbeat melts into a pool of sub-bass on the chorus.
Even on a dedicated trap EP, Alejandro can’t stay off the dancefloor; “Wuepa” features a minimal palette but a relentless four-on-the-floor bassline, and guest vocalist Ankhal’s grit keeps the song from being too slick. His appearance is not insignificant; it was the remix of Ankhal’s “Si Pepe”—a posse cut featuring Alejandro, Arcángel, Farruko, Miky Woodz, and Jhay Cortez—that launched Alejandro’s beef with Cortez, who had no shortage of barbs aimed at both Rosalía and his music. The project’s standout is the Future/Rvssian trap master class “Fck U X2,” which bounces from Manhattan’s Latin Quarter to Atlanta’s Magic City before meeting somewhere in the middle for a codeine-coated outro. “I showed you the real me,” Future bleats as the song fades out. We believe him.
Trap Cake Vol. 2 is ostensibly a sequel to a similarly named 2019 mixtape, but at most, the two share only a general vibe. Just three years removed, Alejandro is significantly more polished. He’s a heartthrob with dancing skills, an R&B crooner with hip-hop swagger, and the platonic ideal of Chris Brown without the toxic personality. If this is merely the in-between project, it feels like Alejandro’s ceiling remains in the clouds. | 2022-03-10T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-03-10T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B / Rap | Sony Music Latin | March 10, 2022 | 7.2 | 41a3b55f-463b-4c35-924c-f2e5c76c48e8 | Matthew Ismael Ruiz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ismael ruiz/ | |
After years of foregoing recorded music for other pursuits, Jim O'Rourke makes a brilliant return with a subtly complex 38-minute piece of orchestral pop. | After years of foregoing recorded music for other pursuits, Jim O'Rourke makes a brilliant return with a subtly complex 38-minute piece of orchestral pop. | Jim O’Rourke: The Visitor | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13468-the-visitor/ | The Visitor | Pardon the archaic suggestion, but if you've opened a physical copy of Jim O'Rourke's return to glory, The Visitor, you'll understand that it's a demanding release even before you've heard its introductory trace of acoustic guitar. Indeed, if you're legally listening to your own edition of The Visitor, then you're holding either a compact disc or an LP. Whether for reasons of sound quality, tradition, or both, O'Rourke and Drag City forewent an mp3 release of his new album. You have to, like, pick it up. And inside, on the minimal liner notes, O'Rourke makes his second demand: "Please listen on speakers, loud," he entreats, as if now recording under the name Jimm O))). In the end, these prerequisites presage The Visitor, a unified 38-minute instrumental piece that plays hide-and-go-seek with dozens of instruments, textures, and motifs before refusing to deliver the climax you might have expected. An arrogant pop record, The Visitor's intricate, long-form composition rewards repeated close listens through its own insistence on subtlety and craft.
Calling The Visitor a pop record is as much of a stretch as it is a reduction, but it's an important distinction to make here. Despite his involvement with well over 100 albums in the past two decades, The Visitor is just the fifth in a string of highly accessible if equally nuanced O'Rourke releases on Drag City. That series began in 1997 with the rustic instrumental Bad Timing and, until now, ended with 2001's rock opus, Insignificance. Along with Eureka and the EP Halfway to a Threeway, that quartet offered listeners easier inroads to O'Rourke, especially relative to his noise or improvised output, the textural radiance of Gastr del Sol or the kitchen-sink compositions of Brise-Glace. But they weren't your average pop records, either: Bad Timing twisted parochial roots music ideas into a gorgeous four-track cycle, while Halfway to a Threeway paired instrumental elegance and emotional ruefulness in four nearly clinical tunes. Throughout, O'Rourke moved just as deliberately as he'd later move on the long-form laptop record, I'm Happy and I'm Singing and a 1, 2, 3, 4, or with drone masters Tony Conrad and Faust on Outside the Dream Syndicate Alive. Bad Timing, for instance, built for nearly 40 minutes before horns and steel guitar ricocheted against each other like pinballs. And on the wry Insignificance, he'd often open a stanza with a happy sentiment just to present the blade beneath the cloth as conclusion. With O'Rourke, patience is more necessity than virtue. On The Visitor, it is an absolute.
Offering a play-by-play guide to The Visitor, an album that O'Rourke says required over 200 separate recorded parts, would be tedious at best, but a few qualities deserve notice: The Visitor feels polite and dainty, perhaps to a fault. Much of its music, all made by O'Rourke alone in Tokyo, isn't unique or overly complicated, in that one could easily find a guitarist, organist, drummer, banjo picker, and guitarist to play the bulk of this album as a band. As with most of O'Rourke's pop output, you could imagine these ideas on any stock singer-songwriter or Sunday afternoon jazz record. In that way, though, The Visitor is a perfect gestalt, where the connections between the elements and their sum are more important than any one instant. O'Rourke links the melodies across instruments, letting a piano mirror a guitar, adjusting one slightly either by changing its meter or letting it slip away from the melody and into the next variation. Such shifts pull the whole into the next phase, maintaining nothing if not constant motion. Rather than sudden payoffs, The Visitor favors careful, minute shifts that amass over its runtime. To that end, there's no big, terminal peak. Sure, the second half springs forward with a bouncy banjo lick, and the drums, pedal steel and piano dance around each other near the track's end. But, true to its name, as soon as The Visitor begins to lean too heavily toward cerebral textures or more visceral moments, it quickly pushes in the other direction. When the action rises, know that there's always something subdued one groove over.
Such a plan works because, from the acoustic guitars that mix O'Rourke's heroes Derek Bailey and John Fahey to the bright electric guitar leads that suggest Electric Light Orchestra or the Doobie Brothers, every moment here is pristinely recorded and carefully mixed. As with Joanna Newsom's Ys and Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, two masterpieces O'Rourke mixed this decade, each layer sits in its perfectly defined space. Each gesture rings clearly. But these parts are written so that they blend across those spaces, in effect creating a collage without seams. We hear every sound, but we never hear them without the benefit of their accompaniment.
Given its patient development and refusal to climax, The Visitor runs the risk of being labeled boring and bland. Given its use of common instruments and techniques (a cymbal scraped with a drumstick constitutes the album's most "out" sound), it runs a high risk of being labeled pedestrian, too, as if O'Rourke has taken all of his experimental tendencies and finally reduced them into an adult-contemporary instrumental. Ultimately, that's about as silly as it sounds: The Visitor is a defiant record in both sound and spirit. The reluctance of O'Rourke and Drag City to release The Visitor as a digital download, for instance, rebels against our need for instant gratification. You have to work a bit to hear it. Symbolically, it's a potent act for such an anticipated release, even if bit torrents, RapidShare, and the ilk mean it's little more than a symbol. And O'Rourke's request that you listen out loud, loudly, means that you give it your attention, that you let it fill the room with sound. After all, this is soft music-- and graceful and complicated and rich, too. While it might sound polite, though, it's not to be heard passively during your morning walk to work.
That's because, in the end, The Visitor is a one-man show that refuses to be selfish. It eschews spotlight moments and elides our need to be greedy, to be fed captivation. After a decade of bands exclaiming it all in five minutes (The Arcade Fire, MGMT, this list never stops) and a season of bands getting Internet famous with 40 minutes of output where the tape hiss is to my ears more interesting than the songs (Wavves, Vivian Girls, will this list stop soon?), it's redeeming to hear something deliver such development and depth. These 38 meticulously prepared minutes offer dozens of memorable moments. They just demand that you listen. | 2009-09-18T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2009-09-18T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Drag City | September 18, 2009 | 8.3 | 41a50a74-615a-4a88-8d22-1fdb600855b9 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
Featuring demos, outtakes, and a quietly powerful Björk cover, this EP from the Massachusetts songwriter feels like a gentle exhale. | Featuring demos, outtakes, and a quietly powerful Björk cover, this EP from the Massachusetts songwriter feels like a gentle exhale. | Squirrel Flower: Planet EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/squirrel-flower-planet-ep/ | Planet EP | Ella Williams, who records under the name Squirrel Flower, weathers the storms thrown at her. The Massachusetts singer-songwriter’s 2020 debut, I Was Born Swimming, introduced her as a folk-tinged rocker bearing witness to life’s vacillations—the passage of time, seasonal depression, and the shifts within her own heart. One year later, the apocalyptic road trip record Planet (i) elevated these reflections to seismic levels as she envisioned natural disasters like droughts, fires, and floods. Now, Williams has shared Planet EP, a self-produced collection of tracks rescued from the Planet (i) cutting room floor alongside demos and a quietly powerful Björk cover. After releasing full-length albums at a steady clip over the past two years, Planet EP feels like a long-awaited exhale.
Williams has described Planet EP as “an exercise in self trust and experimentation,” a reminder that not every recording needs to reach finality before being shared. As a result, the EP is loose and unpolished, just Williams, a guitar, piano, synthesizers, and the ambient city sounds that spilled through. Williams lingers in the hazy twilight hours with her closely miked vocals wrapping the listener in warmth. “Ruby at Dawn” transports you into this mindset with its sleep-kissed lyrics about a walk home at daybreak. Most of the song is carried by Williams’ gentle multi-tracked vocals and a minimalist organ line until a flourish of synths introduce a subtle sweetness.
“Your Love Is a Disaster” longs for intimacy from someone who seems ill-suited to deliver such care. It is a lovely gesture when Williams’ own multi-tracked harmonies offer the companionship she yearns for. “Live Wire” is more assertive as Williams lists the things she would do “to be with you,” which include cutting her hair, leaving a lover, and killing her friends. “To be with you, I’d fuck it all,” she proclaims with a sudden cruelty before softly adding, “And leave at the first sign of snow.” It’s the EP’s most challenging moment and the only one that breaks through the pensive melancholy that cloaks the release.
For the most part, Planet EP moves patiently as Williams watches time unspool, from the purgatory of traffic, or out in nature as the seasons change. “Open Wound” acknowledges that “healing’s not a straight line,” which justifies her apparent inability to convey the extent of her pain. “You think that I’m a wave/But I’m undertow,” she sings over a delicate acoustic guitar. “Long Day’s Done” begins with the chirping of birds as Williams captures a moment of tranquility as flood waters encroach. (A line off Planet (i) comes to mind: “And I’m not scared of the water/The rain is my parent and I am the daughter.”) Near the end of the song, she takes a moment to question perception: “How to define a horizon linе/Does it have to be a linе,” she wonders. “A meeting of points with no direction/A cease of movement, an intersection.” Williams’ existential searching leads her to cover Björk’s “Unravel,” a staggering meditation on love’s elasticity from 1997’s Homogenic. The reverb-drenched rendition is more lo-fi than the original, but it offers a promising vignette for the territories Squirrel Flower might plumb next. | 2022-02-04T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-02-04T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Polyvinyl | February 4, 2022 | 6.8 | 41a5b9c9-6a31-40a2-a6c9-8f6a1a77108b | Quinn Moreland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/quinn-moreland/ | |
Forty years into his career, Nick Cave emerges with one of his most powerful albums yet, an endlessly giving and complex meditation on mortality and our collective grief. | Forty years into his career, Nick Cave emerges with one of his most powerful albums yet, an endlessly giving and complex meditation on mortality and our collective grief. | Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Ghosteen | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds-ghosteen/ | Ghosteen | On the sublime Ghosteen—the first album Nick Cave has written and recorded entirely since the death of his teenage son, Arthur, in 2015—he sorts through his grief and all the requisite stages, occasionally as though in real time. His mood drifts between domesticity and depravity. He empathizes with the true believers who wept beneath Jesus’ feet at the crucifixion. He latches onto friendship and love in any shape they take. He loses his faith, then fights desperately for any belief that can replace it. Scored by synthesizers, pianos, and electronics, the process is alternately harrowing and comforting for the first hour of the album, Cave’s waking nightmare on full display.
But then, in the album’s final verse, at the close of the dangerous “Hollywood,” he steps back from the edge of a nervous collapse to paraphrase a Buddhist parable in his fractured falsetto: “Kisa had a baby, but the baby died,” he sings. And so begins “The Mustard Seed,” a tale in which a mourning mother, Kisa Gotami, tries to save her baby by asking for seeds from houses where no one has died, as prescribed by the Buddha. Alas, someone has already died in every other house, so Kisa is left to bury her child and manage another home where the specter of death has crept across the threshold. “It’s a long way to go to find peace of mind,” Cave repeats at the end, the bassline’s tension and his wounded tone emphasizing the cold irony of the epiphany. Still, the takeaway is clear: He has not been alone in his sadness, and neither will you when the time comes.
A little more than a year had passed since Arthur’s death when Cave released Skeleton Tree, a masterful record that, like the best of his catalog, used our mortality as way of considering what matters most. Hearing it as anything other than a response to the recent tragedy seemed nearly impossible. But the accident only informed Skeleton Tree, a new solemnity settling over the songs like morning mist.
Ghosteen, however, squares up to the aftermath and to feelings of loss so overwhelming that Cave—“a man mad with grief”—questions the foundations of his sanity. There are moments where he nearly comes apart, holding himself together only by denying that death is final and believing that, maybe on the next train, his child will return. But he slowly wrestles hope from that existential abyss. Cave does not sublimate tragedy into triumph; he simply finds assurance in the knowledge that we’ve all walked through some sort of hell. That realization is the core of what may be the most poignant album of his storied career.
Though Cave has long stood at the edge of darkness and tried to document what he felt there, writing about his family’s own tragedy proved vexing. His new songs didn’t ferry adequate emotional weight, he confided in The Guardian, and the singer who had once contextualized a convict’s trip to the electric chair as a sinner’s visit to confession had tired of the disingenuous tidiness of narrative. Soon, though, he found himself “amassing a stockpile of lines and thoughts, images and ideas,” forsaking his traditional sense of song for an atmosphere of intuition and feeling.
That’s where we find him on Ghosteen, sorting through sensations of despair and persistence. Cave has cryptically said that the songs on Ghosteen’s first half are the children, while the interwoven triptych that follows are their parents. Those final three pieces are discursive and raw, pulling the broad emotional sweep of grief into a series of overstuffed settings. During “Ghosteen,” Cave counterbalances the wonder of being alive at all—broadcast over a sudden surge of strings and the record’s only cavalcade of drums—with the pedestrian cruelty of washing his dead child’s clothes or realizing almost absentmindedly that his family is now smaller. And “Hollywood” begins with seething rage, Cave looking to lash out at anything within reach, to hold even nature itself responsible for his loss while he waits for his own death. In the end, he relays the fable of Kisa, calming his nerves not with the company of others’ misery but with the wisdom that our sadness is but a point on an ancient timeline.
The eight “children” are filtered and discrete, each investigating another side of what it means to bear the unbearable. Cave slips through phases of nostalgia and fantasy, fragments of lullabies and vows of love. He realizes that his art will outlive his body during opener “Spinning Song,” a surrealist rumination on Elvis and Priscilla Presley and their downfall. Cave and his wife, model and fashion designer Susie Bick, navigate their mindsets differently during “Waiting for You.” She wants to confront the truth and stare down reality, while he seeks refuge by longing for an ecclesiastic miracle—if an entire religion can rest on a belief in resurrection and afterlife, cannot fatherhood? Both are reasonable, he concludes, crooning, “Just want to stay in the business of making you happy.” Cave returns to the shores of compromise, finding safety in companionship.
Likewise, the gorgeous “Bright Horses” opens inside a realm of imaginary terror, where horses dash through cities with their manes ablaze. He holds someone’s hand, protecting them from the fires. Even when that alternate world crumbles to reveal a swath of sociopolitical failure, he seeks some hypothetical redemption, some future brighter than his present. “Everyone has a heart, and it’s calling for something/And we’re all so sick and tired of seeing things as they are,” he deadpans in a stunning moment of functional escapism, reminding us that it’s OK to dream of the world we want, not the one we inherited. It’s impossible not to pull for him, to believe in his belief.
As listeners, we mostly hover alongside Cave, floating in a middle distance shaped by Warren Ellis’ sprawling synthesizers and gilded by elegiac piano and scrambled samples, like signals dispatched from the great beyond. The Bad Seeds have long been a mighty rock band, prowling the darkened corners of the blues and the avant-garde. But they bend completely to Cave’s will here, not receding in the background so much as framing his self-portraits. This is the most musically esoteric record they’ve ever made, suspended somewhere between the urgent but obtuse abstraction of Current 93’s Black Ships Ate the Sky and the charged soundscapes of Harmonia. Their restraint strips away all emotional armaments, placing each of Cave’s vulnerabilities at the record’s humming surface. Cave doesn’t blink.
Though secondary to the script, the production is sophisticated and subtle, often augmenting Cave’s words with shades of feeling and meaning he’s omitted from his text. There’s the chiming church bell that keeps the rhythm of “Night Raid,” a half-spoken recollection of Cave’s family gathered in a hotel room, laughing and leaning from the window to take in the streetscape below. The bell’s sound is initially warm and round, a signifier of the bustling city. But by song’s end, it arrives harder and faster, like a beeping alarm clock. It is a warning dispatched from the future, a damning promise that this happiness will end.
Or there’s the choir that echoes his aspirational words during “Galleon Ship,” a song about committing to love, although you know it’s bound to bring pain. The voices are phased between the channels, surrounding Cave so that their pronouncements arrive at different times. The effect is vertiginous and disorienting, just as setting yourself up for hurt can be. The sound is so beautiful, though, you reckon it must be worth the risk.
Ghosteen marks the 40th anniversary of Nick Cave’s recording career, a span that’s especially daunting considering that he has rarely released a clunker. For the uninitiated, it can seem intimidating to tap into new music by this kind of legacy artist, to dive into a massive body of work by someone with such a mythology. We tend to wait, frankly, until they’re dead, so we can more readily see how it all fits together. But you don’t need to be an expert in Cave’s wider cosmology to be swept inside of Ghosteen, to be devastated by its despair and lifted higher by its humanity. You only need the ability to suffer and the desire to survive.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-10-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-10-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Ghosteen Ltd | October 9, 2019 | 8.8 | 41b028ff-048d-40a9-bd97-2c9c64550033 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam is a spellbinding, 16-minute, six-track sequence from Thundercat—an artist who has been in the public eye plenty this year already, thanks to prominent spots on albums by Kendrick Lamar and Kamasi Washington. The songs here are airy, while Thundercat's lyrics reliably invoke death, mourning, and vulnerability. | The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam is a spellbinding, 16-minute, six-track sequence from Thundercat—an artist who has been in the public eye plenty this year already, thanks to prominent spots on albums by Kendrick Lamar and Kamasi Washington. The songs here are airy, while Thundercat's lyrics reliably invoke death, mourning, and vulnerability. | Thundercat: The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20760-the-beyond-where-the-giants-roam/ | The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam | The EP format isn't where artists tend to make big statements, with the possible asterisk-style exception of Robyn (whose Body Talk series eventually resulted in a proper, long-playing release anyway). Instead, a short-form release suggests anxious label-heads putting pressure on an artist to release something, anything, as soon as possible. But that's not at all the aura projected by this spellbinding, 16-minute, six-track sequence from Thundercat—an artist who has been in the public eye plenty this year already, thanks to prominent spots on albums by Kendrick Lamar and Kamasi Washington. While riding that wave, it's hard to imagine members of Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder imprint saying "We need something from you right this second," which leaves us with an alternative explanation: namely, that the brief duration of The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam (he's calling it a "mini-album," which is the euphemism du jour for EPs) is exactly the statement the bassist-singer-composer wanted to make at this moment.
The songs here are airy, and often provisional-feeling, while Thundercat's lyrics reliably invoke death, mourning, and vulnerability. The mini-album opens with an ethereal, vocal-led invocation entitled "Hard Times", and follows this up with a track called "Song for the Dead", which labors under some muffled-sounding percussion for most of its running time before stumbling into a clearer sonic field, near its conclusion. Every composition seems relentlessly aware of its own mortality. The greatest comfort on offer tends to be the nimble power of Thundercat's virtuoso technique on his main axe. That instantly recognizable, feather-touch electric bass sound of his is potent, but also gossamer-delicate in a way that reinforces the mini-album's themes of impermanence.
Even when Thundercat comes up with with a monster, single-worthy groove, as on "Them Changes"—the interlocking bass parts of which recall the supple funk Thundercat has contributed to Erykah Badu's New Amerykah series—he does not allow himself a rousing chorus, instead reverting to the wordless vowel-mewling of the mini-album's initial, more downtrodden tracks. He even fades the track into silence just as Washington starts a saxophone solo. One images that there's an extended "Them Changes" sitting in a folder on Thundercat's computer—though if so, it's obvious how giving listeners an epic version of this song might have thoroughly disrupted the equilibrium of a release as reflective as this one. Likewise, Herbie Hancock's keyboard cameo—which comes during "Lone Wolf and Cub"—isn't the place for guest-star grandstanding. (Though he sounds good.)
In a series of Twitter messages posted shortly after this mini-album's release, Thundercat explained that he is continuing to come to terms with the "insanely brutal" deaths of some close friends, while also attempting to process the larger-scale racist injustices that still occur with disheartening regularity. In the final, almost-sunny-sounding track (over some atypically bright keyboard tones), the narrator encounters a strange but comforting entity. It sounds
like Thundercat finds the figure's presence to be a welcome one—though tellingly, still has to ask "can you tell me who you are?" For those of us also muddling through various grim realities, it's tempting to think of this mysterious and unassuming release—which appeared with little advance notice—along similar terms. As it doesn't behave like many other recordings out in the world, you're at first blush tempted to ask what it's up to, and what it wants. But then the figure puts its arms around you, and you start to feel a bit better, even without a full explanation of what's going on. That's more than plenty of full-length records achieve. | 2015-06-26T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2015-06-26T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz / Pop/R&B | Brainfeeder | June 26, 2015 | 8.3 | 41bee39a-1799-4f7c-9ca3-aef1a168be91 | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | null |
The Japanese jazz saxophonist’s debut arrived at the intersection between traditional and unfamiliar, mannerly and chaotic. A new reissue restores it to its rightful place. | The Japanese jazz saxophonist’s debut arrived at the intersection between traditional and unfamiliar, mannerly and chaotic. A new reissue restores it to its rightful place. | Kohsuke Mine: First | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kohsuke-mine-first/ | First | When Kohsuke Mine led a band into the studio to record First in 1970, the Japanese jazz scene was progressing fast. A new school of artists were testing the limits of composition, arrangement, and improvisation, evolving away from hard bop and Blue Note methodology towards free jazz and a more electric boogaloo. You could say it reflected the post-Bitches Brew world, but Japanese jazz musicians only partially looked to Miles and his fellow Americans for inspiration; they were drawn toward sounds from all over the planet. There are good reasons why BBE’s J Jazz compilation series—the recently released third installment of which includes a cut from First—picks up the story of “Deep Modern Jazz From Japan” in 1969.
BBE’s restoration of Mine’s previously rare debut album ensures it takes its rightful place in the narrative. Born during the Second World War, Mine’s childhood was marked by a temporary evacuation from Tokyo to relative safety in Miyako. An early interest in mambo and cha-cha-cha—music with a bit of swing to it—as well as six years playing the clarinet filtered into a taste for jazz and alto saxophone. Mine spent the 1960s traversing the scene, rubbing shoulders with all its key figures, playing clubs and even U.S. air bases when the opportunity arose. His first recording appeared as part of the live record Jazz in Tokyo ’69, cut at Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall and issued by Nippon Columbia. It wasn’t long before Mine was offered a chance to record his own studio album for the company.
First is the sound of breaking away from old ways in favor of a daring new future. Sure, it feels like an organic jazz LP—a layman would have no difficulty identifying the genre and its typical instruments. But the rich textures, experimental arrangements, and elongated solos predicted the inventiveness to come: Japan’s jazz was about to get bolder and more intense. First arrived at the intersection between traditional and unfamiliar, mannerly and chaotic.
Mine didn’t do it alone. He was joined by two American players, bassist Larry Ridley and drummer Lenny McBrowne, both in town to record a live album with guitarist Kenny Burrell. On electric piano was Masabumi Kikuchi, a venerated figure in the movement who wrote and recorded with artists at a phenomenal rate. (It was Kikuchi who convinced Nippon Columbia to roll the dice on a Mine album.) Each musician brought an original composition to the table—Kikuchi presented two—with a version of Thelonious Monk’s “Straight No Chaser” rounding out the set. The album cover is identical in concept to that of Let It Be, with the casual photography reflecting a shift in Japanese jazz culture from sharp suits and good manners to a more laid-back look.
The quartet recorded in Tokyo over two days in June; they’d never played together before and would never do so again. Yet First is incredibly well-tuned and measured. The music rarely swells; it grooves. The peppy opener “Morning Tide” features dueling keys and bass that nonetheless maintain smooth synchronicity, as if Kikuchi and Ridley were moving in opposite directions in matching patterns, a musical palindrome. The blustering “Love Talken” keeps up the energy, with McBrowne’s drum rolls and rapped cymbals driving the song from the corner of the room. On “Straight No Chaser,” Mine launches straight into the famous blues riff—played a little more hastily than Monk’s famous version from the album of the same title—before indulging in a zigzagging solo. Kikuci’s keys and Ridley’s bass appear in opposite speakers, battling in glorious stereo sound, as if each man were attempting to elbow the other out of the way.
First might be an illustration of uninhibited studio collaboration, but it would be wrong to minimize the input of the man whose name adorns the cover. Mine’s sax work is cast in the spirit of Coltrane’s post-Ascension freedom, soaring around the room in fluttering flight. The sleek, sly “McPhee” begins with Ridley’s fingers creeping up and down his double bass like a cat burglar on an uneven roof; Mine joins him in creating the rhythm, before cascading away without losing the song’s sense of collectedness. His performance on “Little Abbi” is a clinic in midnight-cool jazz sounds. The album ends with “Bar ‘L’ Len” and some eccentric orchestral stabs that make way for a huge drum solo. It’s like finishing the night with a shot of hard liquor before dashing out the door.
In a recent conversation about First for the reissue’s liner notes, Mine admitted that he “cannot remember that much response or assessment received around the time of release.” Nevertheless, his influence grew. Recorded just a few weeks later for the prominent Three Blind Mice label and released first, the more kinetic Mine incorporated spiritual jazz and futurist post-bop. For Mine and for Japanese jazz, it was another step towards the new-fashioned. The orchestration became more intense; artists began incorporating a wider range of global sounds. First helped set the table for all of that. It is a critical album in a crucial period for Japanese jazz—the sound of everything changing and a new order taking form.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-05-13T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-05-13T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | BBE Music | May 13, 2021 | 8.1 | 41bfac28-c177-4320-a31d-f81f0eaaee88 | Dean Van Nguyen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dean-van nguyen/ | |
On their long-awaited follow-up to their breakthrough sophomore effort, the pop-punk band embraces the liberating power of anger. | On their long-awaited follow-up to their breakthrough sophomore effort, the pop-punk band embraces the liberating power of anger. | PUP: Morbid Stuff | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pup-morbid-stuff/ | Morbid Stuff | In PUP, there is only one rule: the People’s Champ can never win. The Canadian quartet's sophomore album, the loudly beloved The Dream is Over, brought them perilously close to the kind of success that would strip them of underdog status forever: They made an album about the comprehensive mental, physical, and financial toll of touring constantly for two years straight, and their reward was...getting to do the same exact thing for even longer, in larger venues. The dream wasn’t over, it just stuck around long enough to prove hollow. As a result, Morbid Stuff is the angriest PUP has ever sounded. But it’s not a cry for help. It’s a cry of freedom, the sound of a band realizing that anger is liberating when depression is intractable and incurable—we’re not broken, so why bother trying to fix it?
Many PUP songs thrash towards a record-scratch/freeze frame moment where frontman Stefan Babcock becomes far too pissed off to bother with singing anymore. On Morbid Stuff, a lot of songs just begin at this place. During the bridge of “Full Blown Meltdown,” Babcock hectors, “I’m losing interest in self-help/Equally bored of feeling sorry for myself.” It’s Morbid Stuff distilled to an emotional concentrate, and a song that sounds like nothing they’ve ever done before: As the last great band to ever appear on Warped Tour, PUP have always boasted profoundly unfashionable influences, and “Full Blown Meltdown” wraps itself in sonic JNCOS—slap bass as thick as Tim Commerford’s lat muscles, a chugging circle pit coda scented by Toxicity, the unchecked aggro lyricism of nu-metal.
Though PUP are from Toronto, they’ve always channeled the perspective of the sheltered suburban loser for whom every social interaction is a chance to stoke their inferiority complex. “I was getting high in the van in St. Catharine’s/While you were rubbing elbows in the art scene,” Babcock sneers at an unnamed frienemy on the title track. However, the greatest and most frequently suffered indignity in PUP songs is simply seeing someone getting on with a relatively normal existence. On “See You At Your Funeral,” Babcock is in the grocery store, presumably living his best life— “buying organic foods/making healthy selections”—until he spots an ex; by the end of the song, he’s rooting for a televised apocalypse. Minutes earlier on “Free At Last”, Babcock is at Tim Hortons at 5 AM, prompting Charly Bliss’ Eva Hendricks to deliver 2019’s greatest one-line cameo: “Have you been drinking?” Babcock: “Well of course I have!”
Punk bands dedicated to the most immediate impact aren't expected to take three years between albums, but PUP justify the long hiatus after The Dream is Over with a craftsmanship that’s the only subtle thing about them. Even if guitar solos and hyperspeed drumming are welcome in this kind of punk rock, outright technical proficiency is viewed the same suspicion as a keg of Michelob Ultra. PUP balance wrath and math on Morbid Stuff’s most agitated songs—their favorite trick is faking a 4/4 riff and cutting measures a beat short, turning “Morbid Stuff” and “Blood Mary, Kate and Ashley” into highlight reels of every time a guy in a skate video faceplants after catching a curb a split second too soon. Before releasing their single “Free At Last,” they posted the song’s chord charts and lyrics, to see if any of their fans would cover it “without hearing it first.” Of the 253 bands that responded, none were boy bands, but I wish one had dared to try—on their biggest choruses, these guys are like Max Martin with gang vocals.
Still, it's somehow possible to miss the challenging message PUP are trying to get across. Their acceptance of anger as a gift is nonetheless a bold gesture at a time when the language of self-care has become fetishized and commercialized—the gang yells “just cause you’re sad again, it doesn’t make you special at all” at least a dozen times during “Free At Last,” and we can take the song’s rapturous reception as proof that it’s a message that fans wanted to hear as much as they needed to. It’s possible to work towards improvement while feeling like a total fucking loser—your shrink calls that a dialectic, and Morbid Stuff is 37 minutes of safe, sweaty space to process your worst feelings when a half-assed meltdown just won’t cut it. | 2019-04-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-04-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Rise | April 5, 2019 | 7.9 | 41c42690-cadd-4387-bd96-2d8403bb10f3 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
Jeezy is less effective these days, as his new album attests. But he covers gaps in his writing with a few tricks and guest appearances from Kendrick, Rick Ross, YG, 2 Chainz, and others. | Jeezy is less effective these days, as his new album attests. But he covers gaps in his writing with a few tricks and guest appearances from Kendrick, Rick Ross, YG, 2 Chainz, and others. | Jeezy: Pressure | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pressure/ | Pressure | For nearly a decade, Jeezy was an unwavering pusher. His guiding principles have always been candor and clarity, sharing action sequences from inside his coke-fueled world. But Mr. 17.5 has changed his tune in recent years. It isn’t the trafficking he relishes; it’s the entrepreneurialism, meeting demand with a high-quality product. “I don’t wanna be known as the World’s Greatest Trapper,” he told Billboard. “I wanna be known as the World’s Greatest Hustler.” To that end, his new album, Pressure, forgoes Jeezy the wholesaler in favor of Jeezy the tycoon and socialite, taking stock of his various ventures (rap among them) and the new life they’ve bought him. Jeezy fully embraces his role as a paragon for dealers trying to escape the game clean and profitable.
As a younger man, Jeezy was a trap extraordinaire so ruthlessly blunt and efficient that he was exhilarating. He was in the thick of it, moving weight by the trunk load and defending his turf accordingly. As a rap elder statesman, he mostly enjoys the benefit of hindsight, less concerned with the act of trapping and more concerned with his legacy. “Fuck these niggas talkin’, I’ve been ballin’ for a century/Niggas think of quarter kis and scales when they mention me,” he raps on “Spyder,” all but likening his raps to a corporate ledger. He doubles down on “This Is It”: “The champ here, yeah you niggas gon’ fall back/Funny dressin’ ass nigga, where you sold crack?/Them alternative facts, that’s just a mystery/Bought my first 8-ball, the rest was history.” Every line is meant as a grand gesture. Yes, Jeezy was an elite trapper, they seem to intimate, but then he turned that into all of this—penthouse suites, luxury cars, exotic women, a modest rap empire.
The issue isn’t so much the message as the delivery. Jeezy really is among the greatest hustlers because he keeps selling listeners something they’ve already bought—the same larger-than-life coke saga he’s always peddled—just with minor adjustments and diminishing returns. The dealing is all past tense on Pressure, as if he’s reliving his glory days, or simply marveling aloud at all he’s been able to accomplish with his credentials. Most of what he does now could be defined as adjusting to the bed of roses—picking up his car from the valet, fully bejeweled and popping bottles in VIP sections, showing up on the big screen courtside at an NBA game—activities that don’t lend themselves to his explosive dispatches. His raps continue to depreciate in value.
There can be power in directness, as Jeezy knows well—many of his best threats and boasts were emphasized by how plainly he put them, and how effortlessly they connected: think “Go Getta”’s “Risk it all you can lose your life/What else can I say? That’s a helluva price.” He’s less effective these days but there are still flashes. He covers gaps in his writing with a few tricks. Sometimes verses are shorter and more compact. On “Valet Interlude,” there’s only one. Diddy (credited as Puff Daddy) ad-libs nearly every moment on “Bottles Up.” Jeezy lets 2 Chainz, rap’s most devastating puncher, take “Floor Seats,” and he bends to fit the courtside theme. YG, who trades on the same kind of efficiency Jeezy does, totally soaks up all the space on “Pressure.” Jeezy is mostly comfortable doing the same things he’s always done and letting others take the leaps.
But times are changing and Jeezy is still clearly struggling to adapt to them. He gets outmaneuvered by newcomers Tee Grizzley and Payroll Giovanni, who are just a bit nimbler than he is. Sometimes he’s out-paced by the big, lavish D. Rich production. Jeezy used to command even the most extravagant beats, but he occasionally gets swallowed up here or is a step out of sync. His collaboration with longtime rival and one-time enemy Rick Ross, “Like Them,” is a cheap attempt at romanticism from two of the least romantic men in rap by a wide margin. “American Dream,” Jeezy’s big team-up with Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole tries to do a lot at once: reconcile capitalist ideals with a broken political system, make sense of the War on Drugs, consider trap music’s side effects. The song revisits the shallow political activism of The Recession highlights like “Crazy World” and “My President,” as if to respond to the current climate and Trump. Cole has the most to say, but the track as a whole is overstuffed and tonally imbalanced. Where “My president is black, my Lambo’s blue” was impactful, “First my president was black, now my president is wack/I ain’t never going broke, what’s American in that?” is considerably less so. Really, what’s the point of being direct when you’ve run out of things to say? For all Jeezy’s posturing as a savvy businessman, he doesn’t seem to know what he’s even selling anymore. | 2017-12-22T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-12-22T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Def Jam | December 22, 2017 | 6.3 | 41cdae33-0bd6-4c10-9f6b-c2c5c1292daf | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | null |
DJ Shadow trades in his turntables and MPC for a copy of Ableton and embarks upon a freewheeling, low-stakes journey through the contemporary sounds that inspire his practice. | DJ Shadow trades in his turntables and MPC for a copy of Ableton and embarks upon a freewheeling, low-stakes journey through the contemporary sounds that inspire his practice. | DJ Shadow: The Mountain Will Fall | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22019-the-mountain-will-fall/ | The Mountain Will Fall | Josh Davis passed a milestone recently: the artist known as DJ Shadow now has a greatest hits collection to his name. This suggests, of course, that he’s had a fruitful career; it also suggests that his best work is in the rearview mirror. His enduring masterpiece, Endtroducing is now 20 years old, its cover art accurately dating the music contained therein: two men thumbing through the same dusty crates where Davis himself once sought out obscure samples. In an era where beatmaking revolved around physical hardware, vintage records and vinyl manipulation skills, Shadow stood at the vanguard. In the years since, however, he’s struggled to find his footing, even as a younger generation of producers have successfully adapted his omnivorous sampling approach to suit the current climate.
It’s been a while since we’ve heard a full-length from Shadow, but wherever he’s been for the last five years, he’s been keeping his ears open. He hinted at as much on “Ghost Town” from 2014’s Liquid Amber EP, a fizzy trap instrumental that’s more reminiscent of current trendsetters like Hudson Mohawke than the reverent classicism and breakbeats for which Shadow is known. Tellingly, “Ghost Town” appears again on The Mountain Will Fall, and serves as a sort of statement of purpose: this is a record where Shadow seeks to draw as much inspiration from contemporary artists as they have from his back catalog.
Opening number “The Mountain Will Fall” announces as much by exploring the distance between Shadow and his progeny. Given the hazy sonics and flutes, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a Clams Casino beat, until the errant record scratches that punctuate the track whirr into the frame. The song closes with the sound of a cassette being flipped—a cheeky reminder that Shadow has been in the game since before many of today’s producers were born.
Davis has had too few collaborations with rappers over the course of his career, so “Nobody Speak,” a collaboration with Run the Jewels is sure to raise eyebrows. Unlike some of his past work with emcees, however, this is a laid back affair, more boom-bap spaghetti western than furious rapping workout. Killer Mike and El-P don’t quite bring their A-game here--“I don’t work for free/I am barely giving a fuck away” is the best quotable you’re going to get this time around—through there’s an undeniable thrill to hearing these three elder statesmen in a room together, building a Run the Jewels track atop what is decidedly not an El-P beat.
Elsewhere, Shadow invites in collaborators who can pull him out of his comfort zone. “Bergschrund,” a collaboration with experimental producer Nils Frahm, is the album’s most sonically adventurous song and one of its best. In the marriage of their divergent approaches, the pair manage to find a middle ground between IDM and EDM: warped, decaying tones that ping-pong between channels, a pleasantly tactile beat and an almost dabke-like keyboard run that cuts through the song’s final section.
As contemporary as much of The Mountain Will Fall sounds, there are still a few reminders that we’re listening to a DJ Shadow record. The second half of “Three Ralphs” is the closest thing here to vintage Shadow: echo-laden minor key piano chords, sputtering synths, a morbid snippet of movie dialog. Still, the drums fire off in inhuman machine gun blasts, an immediate reminder that what we’re hearing wasn’t built on an MPC. “The Sideshow,” however is a period piece through and through, a track where Shadow shows off his scratching ability over a cache of enigmatic samples, as surface dust crackles in the foreground. While the vocal sounds like it’s pulled from hip-hop’s golden era, it’s actually an original performance from relatively unknown Sacramento rapper Ernie Fresh. The song feels like a particular kind of flex: a reminder that Shadow’s ear for and knowledge of musical history runs deeper than most of us will ever be able to fully comprehend.
Admirably, Davis takes a lot of risks on The Mountain Will Fall; unfortunately, not all of them pay off. “Depth Charge” is a bit too goofy for it’s own good—built around an ominous surf guitar line, it comes out sounding like a trap remake of the Jaws theme. “Pitter Patter” chases some easy thrills, with a breakdown that nods toward stadium EDM; worse yet is the iTunes bonus track “Swerve,” a dubstep number constructed from Pac Man chirps and cartoon sound effects. If Shadow continues to push in this direction, one imagines the offers for multi-million dollar Vegas residencies won’t be far behind.
Even these flops are revealing in a sense, though: they point to a playfulness that Davis has managed to maintain despite the heavy yoke of expectation that he’s worn ever since Endtroducing. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that Shadow is a foundational figure in hip-hop; with Endtroducing, he helped elevate both sampling and hip-hop instrumentals to the art forms they are today. And yet here he is, more than two decades in, experimenting, having fun, trying out new sounds and not being afraid to fail. Far from aiming for some grand unified statement, The Mountain Will Fall feels a lot more like a DJ set—a curated grab bag of ideas that overlap and collide, sometimes in unexpected ways. It’s as if Davis has no agenda beyond putting his own spin on the music he finds exciting—what higher calling could there be for a DJ? | 2016-06-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Mass Appeal | June 25, 2016 | 6.6 | 41cee72c-4bb4-4b60-be8f-c4af6d41007b | Mehan Jayasuriya | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mehan-jayasuriya/ | null |
The debut LP from the duo Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden is a warm-blooded exploration of the sensuality of the artistic process. | The debut LP from the duo Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden is a warm-blooded exploration of the sensuality of the artistic process. | Lost Girls: Menneskekollektivet | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lost-girls-menneskekollektivet/ | Menneskekollektivet | Drafting, more often than not, is terrifying for an artist. You can spend your whole life on a draft, ideating endlessly, never arriving at a finished product. It feels like an especially strange place for Jenny Hval, the avant-garde Norwegian artist who has been making rigorously theoretical, supremely varnished records under her own name for a decade. Hval primarily deals in feminist exegesis, in fully fleshed-out ideas about aging in a female body, or menstruating, or choosing whether or not to be a mother. Listening to her music can feel like reading Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto after drinking three espressos. Her work with Håvard Volden as Lost Girls is different; it is more freeform, improvised. The duo’s debut LP, Menneskekollektivet, lives almost exclusively in the draft stage, and the music itself seems to relish in the experience of its creation.
Menneskekollektivet is primarily a dance record, a heady cocktail of muted drum machines and hypertrophied synthesizers. The first sounds on the album are Hval’s voice and a womb-like synth. They remain in stasis for nearly three minutes, when a drum machine that moves like a dinghy on choppy water comes to disrupt things while Hval speaks about selflessness. The song, the title track, is over 12 minutes, but the length is hypnotic rather than monotonous. Hval and Volden use the passage of time to simulate processing, to capture themselves figuring out what they are trying to say as they move through soft corners and harsh lighting.
It is a joy to witness someone like Hval, normally purposeful and direct with language, to let loose, and that joy is carried over into the flickering, warm-blooded music. This is not to say her words are meaningless, just that her emphasis is more on sound than sense. On “Carried by Invisible Bodies,” Hval talks about storytelling. “Right now,” she says, her voice inquisitive, as if she were looking for her words in the air, “there are two—there’s like double fiction.” She continues, sounding more assured, as she goes on to explore the feeling of writing music—its layers, its unreality. As she probes her way through, the drum machines sail through space like a perfect tennis serve. She sounds almost like Robert Ashley on Automatic Writing, softly grasping onto particles of phrases, watching them atomize, and taking as long as she needs to arrive at a destination.
Of course, like all drafts, there are less-successful moments. Jenny Hval’s aimless musings on pork, lettuce, and cucumber over the minimalist drum machines of “Losing Something” are a bit nonsensical, and not in a particularly interesting way. This moment, however, is one of very few. More often than not, Menneskekollektivet’s inherently unfinished quality makes it feel naturalistic, deeply human. If Menneskekollektivet is about the sensuality of meandering through one’s artistic process, then “Real Life,” is the record’s most fully realized, gorgeous cut. Here, improvised guitars glow like sun rays, and the emphasis is placed on Hval’s vocal arrangements. She sings of writing a letter, of what it means for life to be real. Her voice is vibrant, blissful, bursting with bright color. Ironically, the lack of surtext makes Menneskekollektivet as conceptually rich as anything Hval has ever done. It is a statement about the beauty of slowing down, of not worrying about what you say and instead focusing on how you feel.
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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. | 2021-03-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-03-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Smalltown Supersound | March 30, 2021 | 8.4 | 41d5d469-cf5e-4a3e-9fc1-f94e511b1b84 | Sophie Kemp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sophie-kemp/ | |
With a playful mood and a wide range of collaborators, the debut full-length from the outlandish pop duo subverts trends with ease. | With a playful mood and a wide range of collaborators, the debut full-length from the outlandish pop duo subverts trends with ease. | Coco & Clair Clair: Sexy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/coco-and-clair-clair-sexy/ | Sexy | Coco & Clair Clair sound like someone gave a record deal to the band formed by the cool girls in your seventh grade class. They’re weird, bitchy, and a little self-obsessed, but they’re charming enough to pull it all off. Coco’s brazen rap and Clair’s hushed vocals have a childlike quality, accompanied by noisy production and whimsical lyrics about the power of friendship. Since forming in 2014, the band has risen to fame off slyly addictive singles like “Knife Play,” “Crushcrushcrush,” and the viral hit “Pretty.” The duo’s debut full length album, Sexy, continues in the vein of these tracks, melding the aloof and the outlandish.
Coco and Clair Clair coalesce and subvert trends with ease. Their music has the airy beats of cloud rap, the breathy vocals and reverb of dream pop, and the Auto-Tune and genuinely funny songwriting of hyperpop. On Sexy, the pair works with even more sounds and a wide range of collaborators, including Lagos-based rapper Deto Black and NYC indie band Porches. This experimentation is promising, but Sexy shines brightest when it builds on the duo’s strengths, creating a playful mood that seems designed to welcome new listeners into their all-star clique.
On Sexy, the pair sings over and over again about being hotter and cooler than everyone they know without managing to alienate anyone. They look flawless from all angles, they insist on “Tbtf”; on “Pop Star” they brag about being paid to show up to parties in their pajamas. Everyone wants to be them, everyone wants to get with them. It’s a cliché, but the silliness makes their pose feel original and genuine, inviting us to live vicariously through their inflated confidence. The record’s upbeat atmosphere encourages a physical response, asking fans to dance, sing along, or laugh out loud. More lackadaisical songs such as “8 Am” or “Love Me” weaken the album not because they are bad but because they feel out of place.
The duo’s cheeky self-obsession translates into a boredom around romance: They only have time for each other. Several songs address men who can’t keep up with them—they are ghosting Tinder matches and swerving exes who are still obsessed. “He wanna sync up to my period/Meanwhile he’s saved on my phone as ‘idiot,’” Coco raps on “Bad Lil Vibe.” Sexy feels like listening to the funniest, most confident people at a party making fun of everyone else in attendance because they just can’t keep up. “Realest bitches in the room always, me and Clair,” Coco quips. Despite their harshness, Coco and Clair Clair have surprisingly wholesome intentions. Sexy is an ode to two best friends against the world, finding a way to make it work when they are leagues above everyone around them. | 2022-11-07T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2022-11-07T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | self-released | November 7, 2022 | 7.4 | 41e1c90f-2f02-4c13-b87d-409c712c134f | Mary Retta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mary-retta/ | |
On their seventh album, the moody trio drafts in vocal contributions from Cat Power and Sally Timms. | On their seventh album, the moody trio drafts in vocal contributions from Cat Power and Sally Timms. | Dirty Three: Cinder | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2332-cinder/ | Cinder | Everybody likes one Dirty Three album but nobody likes all of them, and your favorite is probably the record you heard first; this fine and original band engenders an odd sort of fanship fatigue. For a while it seemed as though the records sounded too much alike, but Dirty Three found ways to change up the sound through multi-tracking and shift of focus, so that's not quite it.
The weariness has I think more to do with the inherent drama and love of dynamics in the trio's approach to their respective instruments. You think violin, guitar, and drums, and you figure there's something in there that might work as background music, but Dirty Three albums ask a lot. With their inevitable crescendos, every song eventually butts its way into whatever you're doing. You're either paying close attention or you're listening to something else.
On Cinder, Dirty Three seem ready to pare back and let the songs inhabit comparatively modest worlds. Most of these 19 tracks are relatively short mood sketches that will likely be pushed in grander direction in a live setting. There's a bit more instrumental variety, too, with Warren Ellis adding mandolin and piano to some tracks, and Mick Turner contributing bass and organ. "Doris" surprises by beginning with huge drums (turns out Jim White knows how to play a straight backbeat) and angular, almost funky guitar, before reaching a moment of jubilation with a jagged blast of bagpipes from guest Mark Saul. "The Zither Player" is an extrapolation of a theme by Hungarian fiddle player Félix Lajkó, and its jittery upbeat rhythm and Gypsy melody is unusually danceable for the D3. On the other end of the spectrum are quiet set pieces like "Ever Since" and "Amy", on which restrained playing by Ellis allows the simple beauty of trio's group interplay to gel.
Another first: Cinder has vocals. "Great Waves" has Dirty Three backing Chan Marshall to lovely effect; as with her 1998 record Moon Pix, Marshall's hushed ethereal leanings sound particularly convincing stitched up in the rhythms of Turner and White. And she remembered to bring her newly sharpened sense of melody. Sally Timms' wordless cooing on the shapeless "Feral", on the other hand, is far less satisfying, bordering on pointless. Still, on their seventh album, any expansion in approach is welcome, and even the excesses of traditional D3 builders like "She Passed Through" are easy to swallow. If much of it is merely pretty, this is easily the most diverse and wide-ranging Dirty Three record yet, absolutely the right thing for them to be doing at this time. It doesn't ask for or promise nearly as much, which is just the breather needed. | 2005-11-09T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2005-11-09T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Rock | Touch and Go | November 9, 2005 | 6.7 | 41e6a5af-187f-45a8-b163-f5ca0120df02 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
The Seattle indie rockers’ debut album places them in the lineage of bands like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill, wrapping majestically dejected songwriting in ambitiously atmospheric production. | The Seattle indie rockers’ debut album places them in the lineage of bands like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill, wrapping majestically dejected songwriting in ambitiously atmospheric production. | Special Explosion: To Infinity | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/special-explosion-to-infinity/ | To Infinity | Special Explosion’s debut album has the specs of an advanced degree in Pacific Northwest indie rock: It’s schooled in a syllabus of classics and supplemented by mentorships with the genre’s hallowed institutions, and it even took four years to complete. To make the record, the Seattle band set up shop in their hometown’s Hall of Justice, Portland’s Ice Cream Party Studios, and Marin County’s Panoramic House. The first two are respectively helmed by Chris Walla and Modest Mouse, while Band of Horses’ Why Are You OK was recorded in the latter. To Infinity spends most of its time triangulating the ornate fretwork, jittery rhythms, and widescreen splendor of those exact artists, while plucking from basically everything else in the regional canon: Beat Happening’s unnerving twee lyricism, the Spinanes’ alternately brash and cooed co-ed vocals, the Shins’ meticulous architecture, you name it. The first two tracks earn their titles of “Wet Dream” and “Perfect Song”: To Infinity is indie-rock wish fulfillment, the kind of record that inspires “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore” plaudits even if they never were exactly like this in the first place.
The atmospheric To Infinity is true to its surroundings in all aspects: verdant, spacious, and ever-changing. Maybe it’s irresponsible of Special Explosion to make their crippling dejection sound this romantic, but that’s the Pacific Northwest for you. “Tears that fall like rain on a sunny day” is the kind of lyric that should be completely off the table 99.9% of the time, yet it’s a testament to Special Explosion’s synesthetic powers that no other phrase would fit better into the second verse of “Waterfalls,” a song both bleak and blindingly bright that reimagines Sufjan Stevens’ Oregon album made in the frilly folk style of Illinois.
Special Explosion self-produced the record with the assistance of Mike Vernon Davis, a young engineer who worked on Modest Mouse’s Strangers to Ourselves and whose voicemail should be overflowing in 2018—despite all of the vibraphones and treated drums and sweetened vocals, To Infinity never sounds overproduced or expensive. Similar to Death Cab for Cutie’s Barsuk albums, the sound is crisp and tactile, the instruments deftly layered, the textures active participants in determining the emotional tenor; it earned the ultimate “game recognize game” endorsement from Chris Walla himself.
True to its inspirations, To Infinity is meditative and constantly in motion. Jacob Whinihan’s inventive drumming functions as a lead instrument throughout, pushing the impatient chorus of the otherwise mesmerizing “Cats” (“I’d like you to like me more than you’d like to”) and taking “Going My Way” from crestfallen slowcore to a sad skip around around the maypole. The first single, “Fire,” is the likely byproduct of Special Explosion’s contribution to Foxing’s bejeweled post-emo opus Dealer, a mesmerizing incantation of desperate hope building to a brassy, white-knuckled crescendo. “Your Bed” is the only callback to the liquid, mercurial Built to Spill-esque guitar of their promising 2014 EP The Art of Mothering, at least until it hits the phaser pedals and blisses out completely.
But unlike Isaac Brock or Doug Martsch, Andy Costello isn’t beset by having nowhere in particular to go, nor is he overwhelmed by his cosmic insignificance. They place their creative drive on the same level as astronauts and ancient warriors on “Gladiator,” but shortly thereafter, Costello moans, “I don’t even know if it’s worth it at all,” pulsing with the muscle soreness that follows a convulsive crying fit. “I’ll never have the guts to stick with what I do,” he admits on closer “So Long,” and in light of the band’s perfectionism and depressive streak, “I can’t do anything right” is a fitting final line for To Infinity.
Especially given the album’s painstaking creation, there’s a sense that the greatest underlying fear of finishing the record is figuring out what comes next. It’s not unusual for bands to inscribe the labor pains of an album’s creation in the songs themselves—writer’s block can serve as its own kind of inspiration. To Infinity is certainly in that class: “I can’t believe all the pain I would go through to say it’s not exactly going my way,” Costello sings, awestruck at his willingness to to compound his despondence. If Special Explosion have no more left to give right now, it’s only because they gave To Infinity everything they have. | 2018-01-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Topshelf | January 9, 2018 | 7.5 | 41f826d4-44bd-43c6-8cf0-20cfd795636b | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
On his debut album, the uncategorizable Chicago musician knits together experimental jazz, funk playfulness, Brazilian rhythms, and the sensuality of Prince. | On his debut album, the uncategorizable Chicago musician knits together experimental jazz, funk playfulness, Brazilian rhythms, and the sensuality of Prince. | Ben LaMar Gay: Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ben-lamar-gay-downtown-castles-can-never-block-the-sun/ | Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun | If you’re worried that you’re a latecomer to the work of uncategorizable Chicago musician Ben LaMar Gay, take solace in the certainty that you’re not alone. Gay’s new album, Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun, supposedly draws from seven of his previous records, with curious names like Grapes, Benjamim e Edinho, and Confetti in the Sky Like Fireworks. But when you start googling, not one of these albums surface. In this age of Bandcamp and Soundcloud, the cornetist, composer, and vocalist recorded seven albums in seven years but never let anyone outside of his inner circle hear them. Instead, he worked with jazz and experimental artists like Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society, Nicole Mitchell, Jaimie Branch and Bitchin Bajas while allowing his own songcraft to incubate to maturity.
Both a debut and a compilation, the confident Downtown Castles is a showcase for Gay’s eclectic sensibility. Fractured, giddy, funky, and meditative, each song and sketch spotlights a different aspect of his talents. The pulsations of “Music for 18 Hairdressers: Braids & Fractals” allude to Steve Reich’s minimalist masterwork Music for 18 Musicians, even as Gay’s buzzing reeds evoke free jazz. Named for iconic Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians co-founder Muhal Richard Abrams, “Muhal” would seem to situate Gay firmly in the Chicago jazz tradition; cornet and bass clarinet creak as he croaks lyrics woven from Abrams’ album titles. But, unlike an Abrams composition, the track throbs, tightens, droops, and flutters like a Prince B-side.
His Purpleness also makes his influence felt on the sensuous highlight “A Seasoning Called Primavera.” An ode to a paramour in braids that melts into an extended cooking metaphor (spiced with Gay’s knowing aside “I get it”), the song bounces atop a fidgety, broken beat, never staying put for long. There are nods to baile funk, footwork, the percolator dance, Thundercat, and D’Angelo, along with a dash of banjo and sawed fiddle. That may sound like a pretentious jumble of references, but Gay knits them so they all sway together.
Downtown Castles picks up sounds from all over the map—and the challenge of tracing those global influences is more fun than it is frustrating. A spoken-word interlude situates Gay in some Southern swampland; the layered voices and sputtering electronics of “Kunni” conjure early TV on the Radio. He finds the sweet spot between New Orleans Dixieland and Rio samba on the jubilant “Miss Nealie Burns.”
That Brazilian rhythmic sensibility weaves its way into most of the music, probably because Gay lives there when he isn’t in Chicago. He melts together violin, shakers, and synth bass on the beautiful “Uvas,” his voice never rising above a whisper. A crackling static pulse provides the bossa nova-inspired beat, as though Gay is transmitting the breezy, murmured music of João Gilberto from another galaxy. This is but one indelible moment among many on Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun, an album that is less about fusing jazz, funk, and other genres than it is about elevating the diverse sounds of Earth to the heavens. | 2018-05-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-05-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | International Anthem | May 10, 2018 | 7.9 | 41faa7df-8817-42b5-a12b-c6195b3d6ffc | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
On this brief EP, the duo of Ariel Pink and Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering collaborate on strange folk-synth hybrids, evoking the ’80s Paisley Underground and X. | On this brief EP, the duo of Ariel Pink and Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering collaborate on strange folk-synth hybrids, evoking the ’80s Paisley Underground and X. | Ariel Pink / Weyes Blood: Myths 002 EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22810-myths-002-ep/ | Myths 002 EP | Ariel Pink is a misogynist; he’s not funny; he’s the worst thing ever; Ariel stinks. Paint him as provocateur and raging narcissist, but as the past few years have proven, he’s also a team player, down for boosting his friends and game for collaborations of all stripes. And so tapping him for the second installment of Mexican Summer’s Myths series seems like a no-brainer, especially since he’s worked with Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering previously, her voice gracing “Early Birds of Babylon” on his 2012 album Mature Themes.
With the breakout success of last year’s Front Row Seat to Earth, Weyes Blood’s profile ticked up considerably, and while four songs clocking in at 14 minutes is slight by design, Ariel is wise to accentuate Mering’s voice. Only on opener “Tears on Fire” does Pink take the lead. It begins with guitar jangle and what is either a warbling synthesizer or else Mering doing her best Yma Sumac impersonation in the background. For the first 40 seconds, it’s the gentlest I’ve ever heard Ariel—only for an operatic metal stomp, like a gate of hell, to rip open immediately after at the chorus. The song jags between pomposity and modesty, with Pink lurching between lines about “roasting pigs on the pyre” and how “the joke was from the heart.”
Then Mering takes over on “Daddy, Please Give a Little Time to Me” against a queasy synth gurgle and a snare that cracks from a room over, all of it swaddled in a haze of reverb and echo. It’s a peculiar song, as weirdly stilted and stylized as that of Pink, as Mering moves from a high quaver to delivering her lines like lost a Shangri-Las soliloquy.
In tandem, they do a hazy approximation of the early-’80s L.A. Paisley Underground on “On Another Day,” as if some demo from 1983 suddenly bobbed to the surface. It’s a slow burn of a duet between the two, at times evoking X’s John Doe and Exene Cervenka. Even though the end of the song reveals it’s played live in front of a crowd, there remains that tactile sense of distance that Pink’s sonics readily tap into, as if echoing not just from the past but from a parallel dimension.
But the clear standout of this brief collab is “Morning After.” Another strange folk-synth hybrid, Mering’s voice sounds like Fairport Convention’s Sandy Denny doodling around on a Moog; she stuns while barely climbing above a purr. “Here it comes/A cure for the night I’ve been waiting/To let you inside,” Mering sings of a long-anticipated love. But as the sinewaves quiver in the background, the moonlight-tinted love song turns into a vampire tale: “When I saw you I knew I was cursed/I’m the one who got bit first.” Short-lived as Myths may be, one hopes that Pink and Mering—odd, kindred spirits—have the chance to commune again. | 2017-01-27T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-01-27T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Mexican Summer | January 27, 2017 | 6.6 | 41fb77ec-a49d-4d00-ad6e-259b7a105967 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
Marie Davidson is a spoken-word poet and electronic artist who is also one half of the duo Essaie Pas. Her third solo release, examining club culture, shows near-exponential growth in her abilities. | Marie Davidson is a spoken-word poet and electronic artist who is also one half of the duo Essaie Pas. Her third solo release, examining club culture, shows near-exponential growth in her abilities. | Marie Davidson: Adieux Au Dancefloor | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22493-adieux-au-dancefloor/ | Adieux Au Dancefloor | For a brief pocket of time in the beginning of the 2010s, spoken-word poetry was surprisingly prevalent in music. Spanning Jamie xx’s remixes of Gil Scott-Heron, to Brian Eno and the poet Rick Holland’s Drums Between the Bells, and the lowbrow masterpiece of Paris Hilton’s “Drunk Text,” this little bumper crop did not go unnoticed: The Guardian clunkily called the shared musical space “poetronica.” While reading poetry over sweet-toned beats always felt kitschy, there is something undeniable linking the two forms: As the poet Jodi Ann Bickley has said, the forms are exceptional at creating a sense of “place,” and both inherently are dictated by a primordial sense of rhythm.
One of the most successful and captivating practitioners of spoken-word electronic has been Marie Davidson, one half of the Montreal coldwave duo Essaie Pas. Her two previous solo releases (Perte D'Identité and Un Autre Voyage) mingled gothic ambient music, poetic repetitions, and analog synthpop to great success. Her work has never felt campy, but is darkly rendered, probing, and redolent of Lizzy Mercier Descloux. In her third solo release, Adieux Au Dancefloor, Davidson presents a project that indicates exciting and near-exponential growth in her ability as a writer and producer.
The project started to gestate last year, after Davidson returned to Montreal from Berlin, having completed a recent European tour with Essaie Pas. She says that the music was informed by a dualistic relationship to “dance music and club culture”; a fascination and disgust that emerged after the conclusion of her trip. “Touring and playing live late at night can lead to destructive habits and behaviors,” she said. Adieux Au Dancefloor (“Farewell to the Dancefloor”) is the result of redirecting the chaotic energy of constant clubbing towards creative ends.
In line with it’s inspiration, Adieux Au Dancefloor is much more informed by club music than her previous releases. The sounds and their presentation are pleasing and spacious and and made to appeal to a dancefloor sensibility, aligning it with Essaie Pas’ recent release Demain Est Une Autre Nuit, a fantastically shadowy and phantasmagoric album of analog dance music.
In the album’s opening moment, “Dedicate My Life,” Davidson conjures the beautifully unhinged spirit of Throbbing Gristle, with pointillist synths, relentless drums, and needles of heated noise that recall the profane and industrial heartbeat of “Hot on the Heels of Love.” When Davidson begins reciting her poem, she introduces the album’s narrator, an empowered, effortlessly cool, feminist badass. “People ask me/What I do with my time/Listen/I dedicate my life,” Davidson says. At one point her voice disappears beneath the swirling noise, as a tempo change provokes ecstatic body motion. It might feature a poet as its narrator, but this is not a "contemplative" album; this is dynamic, kinetic music wants to provoke a flurry of action.
The album retains this speedball excitement as it weaves it’s way through instrumental tracks and poems in both English in French. In tracks like “Denial,” Davidson explores the upper limits of her analog gear, pumping up the pace and pulsations of her synth to a point that finds the song almost unravel on itself. It reminded me of the chaotic beauty of watching viral videos of washing machines self-destructing.
Even in its drapery of fog and acid, Adieux Au Dancefloor consistently finds feel-good moments. Take for example, “Good Vibes,” which lifts up Davidson’s call to arms (“This song is dedicated to all the jealous people”) with a pleasantly jarring and rough-hewn synth loop. Or “Naive to the Bone,” the album’s funniest and most writerly number with lines like “Let me picture my future, a large room where you can hear the silence/No space for arrogance, no pain in my chest/Just the beating of my heart” conjuring Anne Sexton. She also flashes a sharp and quotidian sense of humor, castigating an unnamed enemy’s fashion choices: “In The Middle Ages, people used to wear clocks, it's 2016, get real.”
The album culminates in its title track, which gathers together her wit into an unreal screed and personal exorcism of nightlife’s inescapable vapidity. Singing in French, she starts the song by painting a hellish scene: “A stranger taking a picture of himself with his phone/A girl lying on the floor, her eyes rolled upwards.” She shrouds the burn of her words with the most exciting and seedy sounds of the album. It smartly distorts the content of her poem with the sensation her music produces, making those lines seem even more affecting. As the song reaches it’s at end, Davidson says “There are no more reasons to celebrate/Who will pity me in the morning if I lose my mind?,” presenting a hard question for the brain already sapped of serotonin.
Throughout Adieux Au Dancefloor, Davidson constantly turns these moments of powerful doubt and bad mojo into joyous dance music, making the album a strenuous mental and physical exercise. The music here presents a criticism of the very place it is meant to live. What Davidson does here is not just a piece of music, or a set of poems, but a critical dialogue framed as a brooding electronic epic. | 2016-10-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Cititrax | October 15, 2016 | 8 | 42013ae5-e259-4053-bf34-af12a4da8acd | Kevin Lozano | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kevin-lozano/ | null |
The new Hunky Dory-era box set offers a tantalizing peek behind the curtain of Bowie’s theatrical persona during arguably the most pivotal moment in his life and career. | The new Hunky Dory-era box set offers a tantalizing peek behind the curtain of Bowie’s theatrical persona during arguably the most pivotal moment in his life and career. | David Bowie: *Divine Symmetry * | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/david-bowie-divine-symmetry/ | Divine Symmetry | In 1971, radio host John Peel introduced the 24-year-old musician featured on a broadcast of Pick of the Pops as “a young man who writes good songs and makes good records, but never seems to get the recognition he deserves.” In his early career, the artist born David Robert Jones didn’t seem like he was headed toward stardom. His first instrument at age 13 was not guitar or piano, but saxophone. He hopped from small band to small band in high school, rebranding as Davy Jones and then, to avoid confusion with the Monkees singer, as David Bowie. In 1967 he released a self-titled album of music-hall-style rock on a small label, but they rejected some of his singles and the partnership collapsed. He stayed at a Buddhist monastery in Scotland, joined a mime troupe, and dabbled in experimental performance art. He landed at Mercury thanks to some lucky connections, and remained relatively off-radar until five days before the Apollo 11 launch in 1969, when his cosmic single “Space Oddity” briefly catapulted him into mainstream consciousness. But the following year his third album, the eclectic and single-less The Man Who Sold the World, found most of its success in his town of Beckenham, England.
Talented but creatively disarranged, Bowie found himself at a crossroads. “In the early ’70s, it really started to all come together for me as to what it was that I liked doing,” he reflected in 2014. “What I enjoyed was being able to hybridize different kinds of music…. I didn’t really see the point in trying to be that purist about it.” With this revived perspective, along with a transformative trip to the United States in 1971 where he rubbed elbows with creative muses like Andy Warhol and Lou Reed, Bowie became “more cynical” about the boundaries of the artistic world and more inventive about his place in it. When he returned home to England, back to his newborn son and a piano gifted by a neighbor, the young artist pieced together what would become his fourth record, the first he ever co-produced and his first after signing with RCA: Hunky Dory. In his words, it was “the album where I said ‘Yes, I understand what I’ve got to do now.’”
Divine Symmetry, subtitled An Alternative Journey Through Hunky Dory, is the latest box set to explore Bowie’s oeuvre. The 4xCD collection surveys the year leading up to the album’s release; it includes previously unreleased tracks, demos, live recordings, and studio sessions from the era, as well as updated mixes. The music is accompanied by a 100-page book featuring facsimiles of primary documents, insights from insiders like co-producer Ken Scott, and liner notes by Tris Penna; there’s also a separate booklet in Bowie’s own hand that gives an intimate look at his process through sloppy footnotes, scrapped chords, and fashion doodles. It’s a look into his mind during the most consequential transition of his career, a retrospective peek at him rehearsing the character of himself.
Divine Symmetry is by no means the first attempt at chronicling Bowie’s musical development, but it feels especially personal, perhaps because of its smaller size (Five Years was a whopping 12 discs), perhaps because of the volatility of this time in his life. The stakes feel higher: We want to see his path to the success we already know exists. In this collection, we hear him begin to construct the theater of Hunky Dory: He’s practicing, testing lyrics, workshopping different arrangements, messing up, joking around. He’s also stitching together the tapestry of his next record, a little project called The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.
Divine Symmetry’s demos and offcuts strip back the warm, piano-centered framework that makes Hunky Dory feel like it always belonged on Earth. On Ziggy and albums to follow, Bowie would reinvent the interstellar, guitar-centric sound of “Space Oddity” and The Man Who Sold the World with a mature glamor that grew from Hunky Dory’s grounded orchestration. The piano offered a palette that was both rich and mellow, allowing Bowie to play around with a malleable and unique yet still classic tool. Songs like the forgotten “How Lucky You Are (aka Miss Peculiar)” are early examples of him working on the keyboard; his playing is rudimentary, with buoyant hits on every beat in the waltz. A curious vaudevillian spirit was brewing that would appear more fleshed-out on tracks like “Fill Your Heart” (a Biff Rose tune ultimately recorded by Rick Wakeman on a Bechstein grand). A similar bareness can be heard in the “Life on Mars?” demo, a short piano skeleton of the cinematic masterpiece to come. Before he was venting about a “God-awful small affair” in crystal-blue eyeshadow and auburn hair, he was just a man at a piano singing softly about a “simple but small affair.” His growth as a lyricist can be seen in the melodrama of one line.
The live recordings offer special insight, illustrating which of his instinctual choices Bowie opted to keep. With just gentle guitar strums below his voice, the John Peel version of “Kooks” is a lullaby compared to its oom-pah-driven final product; though recorded for broadcast, it feels as though Bowie is singing directly to his son. It’s a souvenir of the song’s emotional essence—an eccentric new father’s playful imagination of his child’s future—that adds an endearing new dimension to the Joplin-esque veneer of the studio version. The “Queen Bitch” demo and live recordings are tame and melodic compared to the acrobatic talk-singing of the album cut, where the verses take on an intensity already present in the chorus. Though his performance on Peel’s show sounds tightly wound, Bowie’s liberated “In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat!” is a glimpse at the song’s intended character. As the jealous narrator watches a male lover court a sex worker on the street outside his window, we get a closer look at Bowie’s evolving relationship with sexuality and identity, one that sounds less campy and more heartfelt.
The box set also includes early versions of songs that were later sidelined, like the folky, harmony-stacked “Tired of My Life (Demo)” and the previously unreleased “King of the City (Demo).” They draw attention to his growth as a lyricist, even within the span of the album’s creation: “Come back to the real thing, baby/I’ll make it all slow down, baby/We’ll tell our friends we’re finding our own way” is underwhelming beside the mind-bending novelty of watching the ripples change their size. We get to know the battle-satirizing “Bombers” better than ever before; the caricaturistic track that Bowie described as “kind of a skit on Neil Young” was left off the original Hunky Dory at the last minute. The demo sounds like it went through a food processor, but the 2021 remaster on Disc 4 allows for proper redemption. These mixes (including remasters of the seven-track 1971 promotional album BOWPROMO) avoid sounding unnaturally clean; with Scott reprising his role as producer, they retain some of the dirt and charm of their earlier, less professional iterations.
Divine Symmetry is forgiving of Bowie’s transitional trials. For a box set focused on a single album, it doesn’t feel as self-indulgent as it might have; the multiple versions of songs are perhaps excessive for a passive listen, but the collection represents an invaluable document of his artistic growth. Hunky Dory is an approachable record: playful and earnest, a musician’s self-rejuvenation that bursts with palpable curiosity. The album’s conception comes across as rather anti-rockstar and endearingly human, a glimpse into the workshop of Bowie’s vaudeville theater before it turned into an arena. | 2022-12-10T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-12-10T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Parlophone | December 10, 2022 | 9.2 | 4204c8f7-b693-41f1-bc4e-76978401df72 | Jane Bua | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jane-bua/ | |
On their third album, Mammoth Grinder, who share members with Hatred Surge and the now defunct Iron Age, offer a manic blend of death metal, crust, and punk. It's a savage collection that finds the Austin quartet coming into their own as genre-bashing geniuses. | On their third album, Mammoth Grinder, who share members with Hatred Surge and the now defunct Iron Age, offer a manic blend of death metal, crust, and punk. It's a savage collection that finds the Austin quartet coming into their own as genre-bashing geniuses. | Mammoth Grinder: Underworlds | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18262-mammoth-grinder-underworlds/ | Underworlds | Reading metal reviews would be a lot more entertaining if we'd occasionally pause and allow our imaginations to run wild through some of the album titles and band names. Monikers like Palace of Worms and Lake of Blood capture the mind’s eye, while Ride for Revenge, Pig Destroyer, and diSEMBOWLMENT send chills down the spine. While a Skeletal Spectre haunts your dreams and a Front Beast with One Tail, One Head lurks in the shadows behind your bedroom door, a Mammoth Grinder sounds like a fearsome contraption in a scene from some wintry Neolithic Fargo, a sputtering metallic beast cranking out ropes of dark, bloody flesh and orchestrating a chorus of deafening clangs, frenzied roars, and whirring blades as the show turns crimson beneath it.
You could describe the Austin band Mammoth Grinder's latest album in much the same way. It's been four years since the release of Extinction of Humanity, but Mammoth Grinder’s third full-length Underworlds maintains that forward momentum-- it's a savage collection that sees the four-piece (who were a trio the last time we heard from them) heading straight for the jugular from the first note and tearing through the title track in under two minutes. It’s the kind of entrance that catches you off guard, and the intensity doesn’t let up. When they go slow, it’s all sludgy, bludgeoning breakdowns and Stockholm grooves; when they speed up, it’s a torrential storm of gutter thrash and hardcore punk that aims to fuck things up faster than a Sharknado. The band have long incorporated death metal elements into their songwriting, and the 2011 split with a grind-heavy Hatred Surge (with whom they share key members) may have dropped some major hints, but on Underworlds, Mammoth Grinder have fully come into their own as genre-bashing geniuses.
“Wraparound Eyes” stomps in with a big fat groove and dips in and out of the same, padding out the rest with Disfear-driven d-beats and Entombed riffs, while “Revenge” sounds like Bolt Thrower’s “... For Victory” sped up to 45 RPM with a few lines of yayo laid out on top. “Roperide” has the album’s best moshpit anthem-- you can almost see the bodies fly. Three-minute burner “Cog in the Machine” is an epic by Mammoth Grinder’s standards, and they use those extra thirty seconds to hammer their message home (hint: it’s not a very nice one). “Born in a Bag” is pure Swedish death down to the guitar tone and whiplash guitar solo, and album closer “Moral Crux” drags it all back down, a stoned stomp towards oblivion. (You can’t go wrong with a good “bleah!” grunt.) When not indulging his inner Matt Harvey, vocalist Chris Ulsh’s hoarse throat erupts again and again as a gravelly warning or enraged bellow; you can hear the spittle flying out and feel his white knuckle deathgrip on the mic.
The album is peppered with the kind of wild-eyed, squealing guitar licks that’d make Jeff Hanneman proud, and a big, hollow drum sound acts as a powerful backup generator for when the guitar and basslines need a bar or two to breathe. Brevity is the soul of wit, after all, and much like a particularly cutting Oscar Wilde diss, the short lengths of the songs come off as calculated and clever. Nothing feels hasty or rushed. Mammoth Grinder know exactly how to get in, cause a ruckus, and get out in three minutes or less, and aren’t interested in belaboring their point. They've earned the right to keep it tight. | 2013-07-30T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2013-07-30T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Metal | 20 Buck Spin | July 30, 2013 | 7.3 | 4215c3aa-756f-426d-9fd2-060fcd9a54c5 | Kim Kelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kim-kelly/ | null |
It’s been 19 years since the Gothenburg death metal band At the Gates released Slaughter of the Soul, one of the best, most innovative, and most influential metal albums of the '90s. The long-awaited follow-up, At War With Reality, rocks with fury and passion. | It’s been 19 years since the Gothenburg death metal band At the Gates released Slaughter of the Soul, one of the best, most innovative, and most influential metal albums of the '90s. The long-awaited follow-up, At War With Reality, rocks with fury and passion. | At the Gates: At War With Reality | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20022-at-the-gates-at-war-with-reality/ | At War With Reality | It’s been 19 years since At the Gates released Slaughter of the Soul, one of the best, most innovative, and most influential metal albums of the '90s. Maybe it was a little too influential—because now that Slaughter’s "will-it-ever-come?" follow-up, At War With Reality, has arrived, it’s got a big cross to bear. The Gothenburg death-metal titans have reconvened at a time when their precise, abrasively melodic sound has been repurposed—and re-repurposed—by about a zillion mediocre melodeath and metalcore outfits. That shouldn’t have any bearing on At War With Reality, but it does: Any seminal band that resurfaces after so long an absence are prone to be called on the carpet not only for their own accomplishments, but for the zeitgeist they’ve unleashed, better or worse. Luckily for At the Gates, they don’t seem to care one way or the other. Though maybe they should have.
Heavy bands making stunning comebacks has become nearly routine over the past few years; look no further than Amebix’s Sonic Mass, Carcass’ Surgical Steel, or Godflesh’s A World Lit Only by Fire. At the Gates have earned a spot on the ladder, but on a lower rung; At War With Reality is crisp, concise, and tastefully technical, but it isn’t tear-your-head-off incredible. The production, for one, is miles better, with a fuller, fleshier attack, and frontman Tomas Lindberg’s feral rasp has been coarsened even more by his tenure with his resurrected d-beat group Disfear. On "Order from Chaos", a simmering, tribal rhythm augments his apparent attempt to throw up his own lungs; lead guitarist Anders Björler installs atmospheric melodies and nearly gothic arpeggios. It’s one of the few glimpses of dynamism to the album. Mostly it sticks to a clipped, cold, chunky groove that might as well be a melodeath plug-in.
The lack of highs and lows aside, At War With Reality sticks to a solidly savage middle. "Eater of Gods" and "The Conspiracy of the Blind" are meaty, marauding, and righteously irate. Too bad they’re also practically interchangeable. At times, they sound more like the Haunted, the long-running outfit that’s been a halfway house of sorts to various members of At the Gates following their 1996 breakup. That’s not always a good thing, as the Haunted ran out of steam and ideas years ago; At War With Reality tracks like "Heroes and Tombs" seethe and shred, but they might as well be Haunted tunes with a few more flourishes (and a lot less cartoonishness). At a time when At the Gates should be doing everything it can to set itself apart from the pack, it’s leaned on the most obvious—and most insular—signifiers imaginable.
At War With Reality unquestionably rocks with fury and passion, and that’s its saving grace. What doesn’t work is the album’s concept—in essence, an homage to the elliptical, magic-realist short stories of Jorge Luis Borges. Basically, the concept involves shuffling around various Borges motifs—labyrinths, mirrors, mysterious cities—and making a patchwork of them. It’s a shallow approach to one of literature’s greatest writers, and while Lindberg should get credit for not, say, being yet another metal band singing about H. P. Lovecraft, the opportunity to rise above feels squandered. Not only does Lindberg directly, lazily lift the titles of two Borges stories wholesale—for the songs "The Circular Ruin" and "The Book of Sand"—the music doesn’t in any way connect with or evoke the otherworldliness of the author’s work (aside from the shadowy, sumptuous instrumental "City of Mirrors"). It’s funny that one of Borges’ primary themes is self-reference—because At War With Reality is, above all else, an At the Gates album that feels like a pastiche of At the Gates. At least it’s a spirited one. | 2014-12-03T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2014-12-03T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Metal | Century Media | December 3, 2014 | 6.9 | 421d26cc-6bb3-45dc-a01f-0e6d449e13d6 | Jason Heller | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jason-heller/ | null |
The British singer and producer delivers a satisfying little blast of club-pop bangers, channeling the big-room bliss of mid-’00s dance hits. | The British singer and producer delivers a satisfying little blast of club-pop bangers, channeling the big-room bliss of mid-’00s dance hits. | Shygirl : Club Shy EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/shygirl-club-shy-ep/ | Club Shy EP | Whether you like it or not, the mid-2000s are back, their pungent odor hanging in the air like the stale Red Bull fumes in your hometown’s worst club. The 2006 dance mashup “Perfect (Exceeder),” by Dutch musician Mason and American rapper Princess Superstar, is trending on TikTok, thanks to its inclusion on the Saltburn soundtrack; Charli XCX’s new single sounds like it’s trying to resuscitate the legacy of British house duo Bodyrox and singer Luciana’s 2007 hit “Yeah Yeah”; and Kanye has reportedly hired disgraced American Apparel founder Dov Charney as the new CEO of Yeezy. Blane Muise, aka Shygirl, has been on this tip for a while, and her new EP, Club Shy, suggests that she’s more equipped than most to bring the sound back into the mainstream. It’s a fairly conventional set of club bangers done right: This is an alluring, nonchalant flex between albums that’s weird enough to drop in the hyperpop Discord, but satisfying enough to play at your next birthday party.
At 16 minutes, Club Shy is short, but it covers a lot of ground. Across the record, Muise cedes a lot of space to like-minded collaborators; much of the time, they emphasize her vaporous vocals, but there are a few scene-stealers in the mix. Empress Of, on a hot streak after memorable collaborations with Rina Sawayama and MUNA, sounds charged and sinuous on the stripped-back house jaunt “4eva,” practically upstaging Muise with a half-sung, half-rapped verse that’s charismatic and catchy. Irish musician Cosha adds earthiness to the EDM throwback “thicc,” her rich vocals surging over the breakneck big-room production.
These songs offer simple pleasures, but they’re not uncomplicated. “tell me,” a simmering deep house cut produced by Boys Noize, plays like a club track written from the point of view of your wallflower friend, all libidinous desire and desperation without physical payoff. On “thicc,” the promise of a club hookup isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; Muise flits between intensity and coolness, but the focus is always on her sense of introspection, rather than the passion of the moment. Once you move past the brash exterior, it’s clear that Shygirl’s music is powered by tension and ambiguity as much as it is by spine-tingling drops.
In this sense, Muise’s clearest antecedent isn’t necessarily Madonna or Róisín Murphy, two progenitors she’s cited as influences, but Katy B, another south London diva who tapped into the yearning potential of the city’s slinky underground club music. Club Shy, with its dual impulses towards confessionals and crowd-pleasers, often recalls Katy’s classic debut On a Mission, enough that you leave hoping there’s a Shygirl/Benga link-up on the horizon. Like Katy, Muise seems to understand that shyness and ravenous desire aren’t at all mutually exclusive: Tears might just look like sweat under flashing club lights.
On Club Shy, this feeling manifests most clearly on “mr useless,” a wistful breakup song made with British pop producer SG Lewis. Muise’s vocals are placed front-and-center here, unlike the rest of EP. If you took away the slick electro house production, it would sound more like a feisty life-after-love ballad: “I’m the best I ever been and I’ll ever be,” she sings with a shrug. Of course, were it actually a ballad, it would be the defining moment of this record, but Muise is smart enough not to give Mr. Useless so much space. Instead, on Club Shy, he becomes fodder for the smokers’ area—a little extra energy to burn up on the dancefloor. | 2024-02-13T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2024-02-13T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Because | February 13, 2024 | 7.5 | 42243885-ea34-4bca-b70d-bcd81612b2fb | Shaad D’Souza | https://pitchfork.com/staff/shaad-d’souza/ | |
The debut album from the duo of John Talabot and fellow Barcelona producer Velmondo spins a shadowy, subterranean web. | The debut album from the duo of John Talabot and fellow Barcelona producer Velmondo spins a shadowy, subterranean web. | Mioclono: Cluster I | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mioclono-cluster-i/ | Cluster I | Beneath John Talabot’s catalog runs a pipeline tunneling from euphoria to dread—from sunset reveries to midnight rituals. In just over a decade, the Catalan electronic musician (aka Oriol Riverola) has gone from being a serenader of beach parties to a paranormal medium presiding over death-disco seances. His early singles and 2012 debut album burst with sun-kissed vibes and supersaturated colors—Mediterranean house music’s answer to chillwave. Yet since then, virtually everything he has done—almost all of it collaborative—has run progressively toward the shadows.
There was the darkly lustrous cosmic disco of Quentin, with Barcelona’s Marc Piñol, and the languorous Italo chug of Lost Scripts, with his old pal Pional. Under the fortuitous portmanteau Talaboman, with Swedish house miscreant Axel Boman, there were oily motorik escapades and ominous flashbacks to ’70s Berlin. Early in the pandemic, Riverola and his girlfriend hid out in the countryside with another couple and cooked up Drames Rurals, wringing chilly, claustrophobic funk out of cabin fever. Cluster I is the debut album from Mioclono, Riverola’s duo with Velmondo, aka Arnau Obiols, an associate of Riverola’s label Hivern Discs. It might be his most sumptuously eerie release yet. Across eight long tracks covering nearly an hour and 20 minutes, Mioclono go spelunking in a slow-motion underworld, wrapping haywire synths around lysergic drum circles.
Following an ominous spoken-word introduction—“You know, my wife has never seen blue sky in her entire life,” says a man who sounds like a drunk Mel Gibson—opening track “Blue Skies” introduces the elements that dominate the album. Loping congas and shakers establish a tentative rhythm; a bleepy arpeggio stretches across the track from end to end, like a clothesline hung with ragged electronic tones and fluttering drum fills. There are few melodies to be found anywhere, although tuned drums like the djembe and darbuka lend rich tonal resonance, and on “Myoclonic Sequences,” steady marimba patterns flood the song with color, like a Balearic take on new age. Mostly, though, Mioclono favor buzzing harmonies and grinding, ring-modulated timbres—rough, tactile textures that complement the innumerable layers of percussion in play.
Occasionally, Cluster I’s quivering oscillators and sour synth tones seem determined to unsettle: The atonal buzz and explosive drum fills of “Pell de Serp” are about as cuddly as an erupting termite mound. But the most satisfying tracks are immersive and enveloping. “Fog and Fire,” which evokes the occult rites of Craig Leon’s Nommos, probably doesn’t need to be 16 minutes long, yet Mioclono don’t waste a second of it, fleshing out their pitter-pat congas and metallic clang with air-raid sirens, dubby squalls, and a gravelly voiceover that brings to mind Vincent Price muttering spells over a bubbling cauldron. “Acid Rain” is the highlight, braiding multiple TB-303 lines over meditative hand percussion. In the fashion of Plastikman tracks like “Plastique,” it tips uneasily between slow and fast, balancing 4/4 plod with flickering 32nd-note fills, and spinning its acid melody into a stream of quicksilver beads. It’s mysterious, lithe, stealthy.
Given the music’s krautrock overtones, it’s tempting to assume that the title is a reference to Cluster, the astral-traveling ’70s duo of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. Certainly there is something of that group’s eerie frug in Riverola and Obiols’ seesawing oscillators and hypnotic pulses. But another association can be found in the duo’s name, which is the Spanish term for a rare type of epilepsy experienced by both musicians: Myoclonic seizures—sudden muscle spasms that may feel like a jolt of electricity, and can be accompanied by brief moments of unconsciousness—tend to come in clusters. As the duo notes in a text accompanying the album, epilepsy was historically believed to have mystical overtones. In this reading, Cluster I is an attempt to peel back the surface of the rational world and explore the unknown forces swirling just beyond science’s reach. | 2023-03-06T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2023-03-06T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Hivern Discs | March 6, 2023 | 7.4 | 42267343-5068-4457-8f15-d481eef54c22 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
Tirzah and Mica Levi bore deeper into their strange and unique style of music. This time it is even more cramped and claustrophobic, a minefield of fitful rhythms and rain-filled craters. | Tirzah and Mica Levi bore deeper into their strange and unique style of music. This time it is even more cramped and claustrophobic, a minefield of fitful rhythms and rain-filled craters. | Tirzah: trip9love…??? | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tirzah-trip9love/ | trip9love…??? | “I’m not dancing,” Tirzah Mastin proclaimed on her debut EP: “I’m fighting.” That might have come as a surprise, because the music—produced by Mica Levi and released on the Hot Chip-affiliated Greco Roman label, no stranger to club culture—sounded more or less like dance music, albeit a rough-hewn variant of house at its most minimalist and homespun. But in the years that followed, the two collaborators largely abandoned anything approaching dance-music convention—indeed, convention of any kind. On 2018’s Devotion and 2021’s Colourgrade, they delved instead into the smoky textures of Tirzah’s voice, the unnerving intimacy of her lyrics, and Levi’s tenderly gothic production. Those records sublimated the idea of struggle into a battle with form itself. They bristled with broken rhythms, bent notes, and flat expanses of empty space. Tirzah’s new album—once again produced by Levi—has been billed, loosely, as a return to the club, but take that with a grain of salt: It is the most challenging and pugilistic record of her career. If she was fighting before, this sounds like all-out war.
The music that Tirzah and Levi make together has always been stripped down, even austere. By Colourgrade, it had evolved into an arte povera version of R&B—an almost sculptural assemblage of splintered drumsticks, metallic lumps, and Windex rainbows streaked across dusty glass. But their new record takes that asceticism to new extremes. Colourgrade was an outgrowth of Tirzah’s live shows with Levi and Coby Sey, and for all its restraint, it moved with the spontaneity of friends in conversation; its empty spaces signaled an openness waiting to be filled. (“We made life, it’s beating,” she sang on “Beating,” marveling at the miracle of procreation.) The world of trip9love…???, in contrast, is cramped and claustrophobic. Hammered out on a watery, out-of-tune piano and hard-scrabble drum machine, it sounds like the artists might have holed up in an attic crawlspace, armed with just an iPad and the gnarliest tube-amp plugin they could find. Levi called Colourgrade “sort of unpolished,” but trip9love…???, crusted with distortion, is flat-out damaged, a minefield of fitful rhythms and rain-filled craters.
The musicians have said that they wanted the album to feel like one long song, and in many ways it does. Track after track features the same somber piano, the same overdriven drum machine. Not just the same drums, but the very same beat. It’s a curious pattern, slow and lumbering: brittle trap hi-hats, battered snares, a kick drum ominously shifting its weight. But Tirzah and Levi’s generous vision allows them to wring considerable variety out of this simple setup. (Perhaps it’s because the EQ changes slightly from song to song, but it took me a dozen or more listens before I realized that the drum programming is the same across the entire album.) The tone of the piano doesn’t change much either; it’s cloaked in echo and distance, like an upright discovered at the bottom of an empty well. Sometimes they cut up dissonant phrases and heap them in soggy layers; sometimes a single figure repeats without variation for the duration of the song, like a condemned soul resigned to its fate. The two elements create an unsettling contrast. The piano is distant and mournful, while the drums are confrontational, in your face, charged with latent violence. One broods while the other lashes out.
In between, Tirzah might be Atlas with the world on her back, serenely shouldering the weight of that heavy, heavy music. Her voice is nestled low in the mix, which has the effect of making you lean in close, and it is as beautiful as ever—soft, smoky, elegant but unshowy. She takes a gestural approach to her melodic lines, tracing them over and over, finding small variations in nimble melismatic trills and accidentals. She has a hypnotist’s talent for drawing out her words—she stretches the seven meager syllables of “Smile ’cause you’re right here with me” over the span of seven sprawling bars—and she favors mantra-like melodies that have the familiar cadence of speech, patiently laying out short, choppy phrases as though retracing her steps, looking for something she has lost. “Me there/Easy/Bathing/Heated,” she muses in “he made,” her voice rising and falling in pitch: “Deep rooted/He’s patient/He made/Me late.”
The actual subjects of these songs are rarely clear. But the beauty of Tirzah’s voice, and the ease of her delivery, stand at odds with the undercurrent of sorrow in her songwriting. It frequently sounds like she is facing down demons. In “Promises,” she muses about finding safety and comfort in a relationship before driving home a chorus infused with the dreary realism of a business transaction. “u all the time” resembles the interior monologue of someone lying awake at night, seething over an unhealthy relationship: “Taking u back/taking ur crap/Pieces of time/Counting mistakes/Keeping receipts.” Some tracks, like “2 D I C U V,” scan as love songs, but even the love songs are shot through with ambivalence, warm-hearted lyrics offset by chilly dissonance.
trip9love…??? is an audacious gambit: a theme and variations that worry away at its material like a dog gnaws a bone. Yet nestled within this coiled, feral sound is some of the loveliest music that Tirzah has yet written—like the beatless “their love,” which might be a tribute to all the doomed relationships in the world. “Their love/Only a dream you know/They love they lose,” she sings, her voice imbued with impossible grace, as the piano trickles like water down the drain. The anguish is exquisite. trip9love…??? is tender as a bruise, the kind of bruise you press down on now and again, just to confirm that it still hurts—and to take secret pleasure in the ache. | 2023-09-06T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-09-06T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Domino | September 6, 2023 | 7.8 | 42276ccc-9755-4d67-9ba3-1ba41b11b03f | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
With her self-produced fifth album, Kate Bush became a total auteur, embracing the possibilities of digital sampling synthesizers and creating a perfect marriage of technique and exploration. | With her self-produced fifth album, Kate Bush became a total auteur, embracing the possibilities of digital sampling synthesizers and creating a perfect marriage of technique and exploration. | Kate Bush: Hounds of Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21964-hounds-of-love/ | Hounds of Love | When Kate Bush debuted in early 1978 with “Wuthering Heights,” arguably pop’s most uncanny ballad, she arrived as England’s first and perhaps only out-of-the-box pop genius. Several years earlier, a publicist and Bush family friend gave Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour a demo of over 50 songs recorded when she was only 15. Impressed, Gilmour bankrolled Cockney Rebel arranger Andrew Powell to produce three tunes, one of which, “The Man with the Child in His Eyes,” would become her second surrealist smash. EMI signed her at 16 so no other label would snag her, then kept her under wraps. By the time she released The Kick Inside at 19, Bush’s songwriting had already achieved a sophistication reserved for Bacharach-level vets, while her keening soprano, literary references, and wide-eyed silent-film-star presentation positioned her firmly left-of-center—not the usual place for a prodigious pianist singing symphonic soft rock.
On this and ’78’s follow-up Lionheart, Bush sang fearlessly of religion, incest, murder, homosexuality, and much more. “There’s room for a life in your womb, woman,” she crooned with the earnestness of a Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival radical, and did so while much of Europe was watching. She exuded brains and beauty and suffused both with an unyielding otherness that made her an LGBT icon and spiked her international cult with aliens of every stripe, from African-American bohos like Prince and OutKast to Johnny Rotten. Despite her overnight success, she would never conform to conventional stardom: Instead, she reversed the usual rock ‘n’ roll process where once-provocative artists cave to commercial pressure and shake off the quirks that initially made them distinct: Maturity would only make Bush more daring.
But by 1985, the year of Hounds of Love, she needed to reaffirm her appeal. Thanks to MTV, UK pop had exploded in worldwide popularity since The Dreaming, her self-produced record that EMI nearly returned for lacking potential singles; its only hit, “Sat in Your Lap,” was 15 months old by the time the album finally reached stores in 1982. Raging and experimental, it was akin to Public Image Ltd. and Siouxsie and the Banshees, not early Sheena Easton, and sold far less than its predecessors. So Bush and her romantic partner/bassist Del Palmer abandoned London for a 17th-century farmhouse, spent the summer gardening, and built a 48-track studio in her family barn where she doubled down on the Fairlight CMI, the pioneering digital sampling synthesizer that ruled The Dreaming.
The Fairlight was a notoriously expensive and complex computer; the few who could afford and figure out how to play one during their ‘80s heyday were either established stars like Peter Gabriel and Stevie Wonder who were invested in cutting-edge sounds, or similarly brainy upstarts who funded their techno-pop through production. One such boffin, Landscape’s Richard James Burgess, helped program Bush’s Fairlight on the very first album to feature it, 1980’s Never for Ever, which was also the first UK chart-topping album by a British female solo artist, one that marked a transition between the symphonic sweep of Bush’s earliest albums and what followed. On Never for Ever, the instrument was mostly a means to wrangle the sound effects that heighten her melodrama. By Hounds of Love, she’d mastered it as a musical instrument unto itself.
What set Bush apart from Fairlight wizards like Thomas Dolby, who made a point of their geekdom, was that she also drew deeply from the world music that captivated her older brother Paddy Bush. His balalaika, didgeridoo, and other centuries-old folk instruments tempered her Fairlight’s inherent futurism. She didn’t employ it to create walloping beats like the Art of Noise, or use it to spew out orchestral blasts like the Pet Shop Boys. She used the Fairlight the way Brian Wilson used cut-up tape and how today’s avant-garde exploit Pro-Tools—to create perfectly controlled cacophony.
Take, for example, Hounds of Love’s lead cut, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God).” The song was Bush’s first U.S. hit, and it brought to the mainstream gender-equality issues that female-led post-punk acts like Au Pairs had been thrashing out for years in the underground. She delivers the bulk of it tenderly like a love song, but also poses pointed questions: “Is there so much hate for the ones we love?/Tell me, we both matter, don’t we?”
But as the track climaxes, weaving in and out of perception is the Fairlight-manipulated sound of Bush screaming, as if trying to escape her body, sex, and consciousness. “If I only could, I’d be running up that hill,” she sings once again at the end, but this time her soprano is joined by a down-pitched rendering of her own voice, to suggest technology had made her trans-gender prayer come true. Armed with equally advanced machines and melodies, Bush now creatively trumped nearly every mid-’80s rocker; only Prince and a few others were in her league.
This was a striking achievement for a quintessentially femme star: Among her gender-bending UK generation, Bush had the highest chirp, the most flowing locks, and the tightest leotards; when she shed the latter for the fantasy segments of her “Babooshka” video, she transformed into a scintillating windblown warrior with disco levels of exposed flesh and shameless camp. Both “Breathing” and its video is set in a uterus; “In the Warm Room” exalts vaginas the same way Led Zeppelin sang about dicks.
Hounds of Love proved there were no compositional mountains Bush couldn’t climb. While the second side asserted her vanguard bent, the first side yielded four UK Top 40 hits. Neither synth-pop nor prog-rock, Hounds of Love nevertheless drew from both with double-platinum rewards on her home turf, and yielded her first U.S. hits, even without a tour. And its idiosyncrasies have only fueled Hounds’ lingering influence: Florence and the Machine cribs its Gothic angst. Anohni mirrors its animal divinity. St. Vincent draws from its sexual politics and sonic precision. Utah Saints sampled it and the Futureheads covered it, both with UK Top 10 results. Coldplay’s “Speed of Sound” goes so far as to paraphrase “Running”’s rhythm, chords, climax, and highland imagery. It’s the Sgt. Pepper of the digital age’s dawn; a milestone in penetratingly fanciful pop.
Bush’s talent was so undeniable that she could sneak into contemporary music’s center while curbing none of her eccentricities. The album’s second single “Cloudbusting” celebrates Wilhelm Reich, a brilliant Austrian psychoanalyst but crackpot American inventor. Full of details gleaned from his son Peter Reich’s A Book of Dreams, it’s specific to their teacher/pupil relationship, which is played out further in its video featuring Donald Sutherland. But “Cloudbusting” also deals with a much more universal situation: Children long to protect their parents, despite having no adult power to do so. Accordingly, Bush resorts to the one thing all children possess in abundance—imagination. “I just know that something good is gonna happen,” she sings, a string sextet sawing insistently as martial drums beat a battle cry that morphs from helplessness to victory, however imaginary. The son she portrays wills himself into thoughts nearly delusional as his dad’s, and the result is optimistic yet poignant, as he ultimately believes, “Just saying it could even make it happen.”
Imagination’s pull is the subtext to Bush’s entire oeuvre, but that theme dominates Hounds of Love, and not least in the title track. Whereas her piercing upper register once defined her output, here she’s roaring from her gut, then pulling back, and the song shifts between panic and empathy. “Hounds of Love” boasts the big gated ’80s drum blasts Bush discovered while singing background on Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers,” and yet its cello just as percussive: It builds to suggest both her pulse and the heartbeat of the captured fox she comforts and identifies with. She fears love: “It’s coming for me through the trees,” she wails. Yet she craves it, so desire and terror escalate in a breathless Hitchcockian climax.
On Hounds of Love, the singer who started directing her own videos at this point becomes total auteur, and takes such a firm grasp on every aspect of the recording process that she often replaces Del Palmer, her own lover, on bass. On “Mother Stands for Comfort,” an all-knowing maternal contrast to the delusional papa of “Cloudbusting,” she duets with German jazz bassist Eberhard Weber, who plays yielding mother to Bush’s wayward daughter. Her Fairlight clatters with the crash of broken dishes while her piano gently wanders, but Weber’s fretless bass maintains its compassion, even when Bush lets loose some freaky primal-scream scatting toward the end.
Skies, clouds, hills, trees, lakes—along with everything else, Hounds of Love is also a heated paean to nature. On the cover, Bush reclines between two canines with a knowing familiarity that almost suggests cross-species congress. She honors the sensual world's benign blessings on “The Big Sky” even while Youth’s raucous bass suggests earthquakes. Bush references its elements with childlike awe: “That cloud looks like Ireland,” she squeals. “You’re here in my head like the sun coming out,” she sighs in “Cloudbusting,” and her stormy emotions are reflected by the music’s turbulence. But nature’s destruction can also inspire us to seek solace in spirituality, and that’s what happens on Side Two’s singular suite, “The Ninth Wave.”
Bush plays a sailor who finds herself shipwrecked and alone. She slips into a hypothermia-induced limbo between wakefulness and sleep (“And Dream of Sheep”), where nightmares, memories and visions distort her consciousness to the point where she cannot distinguish between reality and illusion. Is she skating, or trapped “Under Ice”? During her hallucinations, she sees herself in a prior life as a necromancer on trial; instead of freezing, she visualizes herself burning (“Waking the Witch”). Her spirit leaves her body and visits her beloved (“Watching You Without Me”). Then her future self confronts her present being and begs her to stay alive (“Jig of Life”). A rescue team reaches her just as her life force drifts heavenward (“Hello Earth”), but in the concluding track, “The Morning Fog,” flesh and spirit reunite, and she vows to tell her family how much she loves them.
As her sailor drifts in and out of consciousness, Bush floats between abstract composition and precise songcraft. Her character’s nebulous condition gives her melodies permission to unmoor from pop’s constrictions; her verses don’t necessarily return to catchy choruses, not until the relative normality of “The Morning Fog,” one of her sweetest songs. Instead, she’s free to exploit her Fairlight’s capacity for musique concrete. Spoken voices, Gregorian chant, Irish jigs, oceanic waves of digitized droning, and the culminating twittering of birds all collide in Bush’s synth-folk symphony. Like most of her lyrics, “The Ninth Wave” isn’t autobiographical, although its sink-or-swim scenario can be read as an extended metaphor for Hounds of Love’s protracted creation: Will she rise to deliver the masterstroke that guaranteed artistic autonomy for the rest of her long career and enabled her to live a happy home life with zero participation in the outside world for years on end, or will she drown under the weight of her colossal ambition?
By the time I became one of the few American journalists to have interviewed her in person in 1985, Bush had clinched her victory. She’d flown to New York to plug Hounds of Love, engaging in the kind of promotion she’d rarely do again. Because she thoroughly rejected the pop treadmill, the media had already begun to marginalize her as a space case, and have since painted her as a tragic, reclusive figure. Yet despite her mystical persona, she was disarmingly down-to-earth: That hammy public Kate was clearly this soft-spoken individual’s invention; an ever-changing role she played like Bowie in an era when even icons like Stevie Nicks and Donna Summer had a Lindsey Buckingham or a Giorgio Moroder calling many of the shots.
It was a response, perhaps, to the age-old quandary of commanding respect as a woman in an overwhelmingly masculine field. Bush's navigation of this minefield was as natural as it was ingenious: She became the most musically serious and yet outwardly whimsical star of her time. She held onto her bucolic childhood and sustained her family’s support, feeding the wonder that’s never left her. Her subsequent records couldn’t surpass Hounds of Love’s perfect marriage of technique and exploration, but never has she made a false one. She’s like the glissando of “Hello Earth” that rises up and plummets down almost simultaneously: Bush retained the strength to ride fame’s waves because she’s always known exactly what she was—simply, and quite complicatedly, herself. | 2016-06-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | EMI | June 12, 2016 | 10 | 4227a238-0f88-48e4-b069-491d5470d0ca | Barry Walters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/barry-walters/ | |
After a couple of free passes, the third album from the 21st century incarnation of Weezer uses up the band's last shred of nostalgia-driven goodwill. | After a couple of free passes, the third album from the 21st century incarnation of Weezer uses up the band's last shred of nostalgia-driven goodwill. | Weezer: Make Believe | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8614-make-believe/ | Make Believe | If you're one of those poor souls who while away the day job by keeping a scorecard of music review sites, there's one thing you already know: There are two distinct groups of bad albums. The more prevalent kind is the fodder that fills a critic's mailbox, bands with awkward names and laser-printed cover art that don't inspire ire so much as pity. The second group is more treacherous: Bands that yield high expectations due to past achievements, yet, for one reason or another, wipe out like "The Wide World of Sports"' agony-of-defeat skier.
Often, these albums are bombarded with website tomatoes for reasons you can't necessarily hear through speakers: the band changes their sound and image to court a new crossover audience, perhaps, or attempts a mid-career shift into ill-advised territory. Or maybe they start writing songs about Moses in hip-hop slang. But sometimes the bad album in question is none of the above; it doesn't offend anyone's delicate scene-politics sensibilities or try to rewrite a once-successful formula in unfortunate ways. Sometimes an album is just awful. Make Believe is one of those albums.
Weezer have been given a lot of breaks in their second era-- both The Green Album and Maladroit were cut miles of slack despite consisting of little more than slightly above-average power-pop. The obvious reason for this lenience has to do with the mean age of rock critics, and the fact that most of these mid-20s scribes were at their absolute peak for bias-forming melodrama when The Blue Album and Pinkerton were released. Even for someone like me, who came late to the Weezer appreciation club, it was impossible to hear these "comeback" albums without the echoes of the earlier alt-rock pillars ringing in our ears.
But now there's an antidote to that nostalgic interference. Right from the start of Make Believe, when Weezer lurches into a flaccid take on Joan Jett's "I Love Rock N' Roll" with an unfathomably horrible speak/sing vocal from Rivers Cuomo (think "I like girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch"), you can hear hundreds of critics mouthing "no no no" and going into crumpled shock. What's more disconcerting is that the song gets worse over the course of its three minutes (let's just say "Framptonesque voicebox solo" and get back to repressing the memory)-- and it's the album's first single.
Hearing a song like "We Are All on Drugs", which nicks the classic melody of the schoolyard "Diarrhea" song (you know, "when you're sliding into first..." and so on) for an anti-drug message stiffer than Nancy Reagan's "Diff'rent Strokes" cameo, it calls into question whether The Blue Album was really that great, or whether it just stood out as a rare beacon of guitar pop in a grunge-obsessed era. Trying to wrap your mind around the land-cliché-record lyrics of songs like "My Best Friend" and "Haunt You Every Day" leads me to wonder how Pinkerton could ever have seemed like such a cathartically resonant treatise on unrequited love. Was Rivers Cuomo always on the notebook-scrawl level of "I don't feel the joy/ I don't feel the pain," and did we not notice because scrawling in notebooks was the depth of our emotional knowledge at the time?
Okay, let's not be so hard on ourselves here: I'm pretty sure this is all Rivers' fault. Pinkerton triumphed by being an uncomfortably honest self-portrait of Cuomo. On Make Believe, his personality has vanished beneath layers of self-imposed universality, writing non-specific power ballads like he apprenticed with Diane Warren, and whoah-oh-ohing a whole lot in lieu of coming up with coherent or interesting thoughts. Coupled with his continued obsession with tired power chords and bland riff-rock (surprisingly not sonically boosted by producer Rick Rubin, whose post-"99 Problems" grip on relevance is now officially spent), the creative driving force behind the Weez is asleep at the wheel.
Considering Weezer supposedly went through hundreds of songs and several discarded albums to arrive at this final product, the laziness of this songwriting borders on the offensive. Whether recycling dynamics from the band's back catalog (see: "Perfect Situation") or taking the easy Mother Goose rhyme (see: every fucking song here), these 12 tracks sound as if they were dashed off in an afternoon's work, maybe with Rubin holding the band at gunpoint. The one half-decent song on the record, "This Is Such a Pity", fails to even maintain its status as a pleasant Cars homage, interjecting a guitar solo that sounds like it was cut from the original score to Top Gun.
So does Make Believe completely ruin not just present-day Weezer, but retroactively, any enjoyment to be had from their earlier work? I don't know-- I'm too scared to re-listen to those first two albums-- but it certainly appears that Make Believe will expertly extract the last remaining good graces the critical community has to offer latter-day Weezer, unless my colleagues' memories of slow-dancing with Ashley to "Say It Ain't So" are more powerful than I can possibly imagine. Of course, if Ashley went on to break your heart, fellow critic, Make Believe might be just the medicine you need; put it on repeat and watch your emotional scar be obliterated as collateral damage in the torpedoing of Weezer's legacy. | 2005-05-08T01:00:03.000-04:00 | 2005-05-08T01:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | Interscope | May 8, 2005 | 0.4 | 42306fa3-7f34-4cf3-9066-ff685d3f9ed3 | Rob Mitchum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rob- mitchum/ | null |
The Philadelphia quartet’s full-length debut showcases their defiant brand of noise-pop, a big rainbow of chaos. | The Philadelphia quartet’s full-length debut showcases their defiant brand of noise-pop, a big rainbow of chaos. | Empath: Active Listening: Night on Earth | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/empath-active-listening-night-on-earth/ | Active Listening: Night on Earth | The ecstatic gestures of Empath’s noise rock tend to fall in and out of focus. At first, the band lets you get a firm grip on the shape of their songs; then the songs lose their shape entirely. In the first 30 seconds of their full-length debut Active Listening: Night on Earth, Empath weave together synth-pop bass, a rock’n’roll backbeat, and a muted funk guitar. Tying together the ensemble is a sour whistle whose tone lands somewhere between Clinic’s ubiquitous melodica and Neutral Milk Hotel’s singing saw. It’s loud, it drowns out everything but lead singer Catherine Elicson’s voice, and it immediately marks Empath as a group who’s not interested in tidying their music up into easily digestible categories. They are here to make a mess.
In 2018, Empath released a single called “The Eye” that worked a little like a mission statement. It’s an inexhaustibly catchy song that mixes frosty synth tingles with a breakneck drum part (Empath’s drummer, Garrett Koloski, used to play with the punk band Perfect Pussy). Nothing on Active Listening feels quite so urgent or alive as that one gem of a track, but Empath set themselves a ludicrously high bar.
The same destabilizing dopamine rush behind last year’s Liberating Guilt and Fear EP courses through this album. Songs bleed into each other; disparate elements clash in thrilling displays of color and irreverence. A militant beat runs beneath shoegaze-ready vocals and wiry, fingerpicked guitar chords on “Decor.” “Roses That Cry” begins with a couple bars of carnival piano and ends with a squall of feedback bleeding out into silence. By mixing tooth-gnashing drumbeats with light, playful synthesizer touches, Empath dig away at the absurdity of feeling both helpless and completely stressed out. Teenagers feel this way, but so do adults locked into exploitative labor situations teetering on the edge of financial downfall. Late capitalism infantilizes, and Empath responds by throwing hardcore punk and Kidz Bop in the same rusty garbage disposal.
While many bands with similar aesthetic strategies (like their forebears in No Age or contemporaries in American Pleasure Club) tend to chase abjection as a primary effect, Empath never succumbs to self-pity. Rather than wallowing, they fight tooth and nail through their own personal hell to clamber up to a place of relative freedom. “I just want to get to heaven,” Elicson sings on “Heaven,” a rework of a song originally released in 2016. She sings it without bitterness in between earnest fits of screaming like a true article of faith.
When you’re exhausted, there’s a point where everything starts to get hilarious. The body’s crumbling resolve starts to seem like a big joke, and a euphoric daze starts to glimmer around the edges of your suffering. No band working today simulates this state as well as Empath, whose music finds explosive beauty in the bare fact of survival. They’re the oasis in the shitstorm of your life, a welcome reminder that there’s always something waiting to rise above the horizon of your pain. | 2019-05-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-05-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Get Better | May 7, 2019 | 8 | 4233e45c-298c-49ee-b312-473d1959a7f8 | Sasha Geffen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sasha-geffen/ | |
Meet Jeremy. Jeremy likes Sonic Youth. His favorite album by the Youth is Goodbye 20th Century, their self-released cover album ... | Meet Jeremy. Jeremy likes Sonic Youth. His favorite album by the Youth is Goodbye 20th Century, their self-released cover album ... | Sonic Youth: Murray Street | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7343-murray-street/ | Murray Street | Meet Jeremy. Jeremy likes Sonic Youth. His favorite album by the Youth is Goodbye 20th Century, their self-released cover album of avant-garde works by various modern classical composers. The CDs currently in his five-disc changer are Shalabi's St-Orange, Xiu Xiu, Merzbow, the Boredoms, and Fennesz.
Meet Erica. Erica likes Sonic Youth. Her favorite album by the Youth is Dirty, the band's most direct flirtation with mainstream rock. The CDs currently in Erica's five disc-changer are the Breeders, Blonde Redhead, Wilco, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Sleater-Kinney.
Oversimplified personifications? Sure, but chances are, if you're a fan of the twenty-year-old Sonic Youth franchise, you probably exist at some point on a continuum between my little creations above. The band itself has been running a zig-zag pattern on the same scale its entire existence, constantly oscillating between their art-noise laboratory and major-label rock band personae while covering all points in between. As a result, you don't see the Jeremies and Ericas of the world coming together over a single Sonic Youth record too often-- if one is jammin', the other's likely scoffin' or wincin'. Not since the sprawling Daydream Nation (and arguably, its predecessor and follow-up) have the two been able to slow-dance to the same song collection.
Movie Trailer Voiceover Guy: "Until now...!"
Yup, Murray Street is Sonic Youth's first successful convergence of envelope-pushing guitarwork and accessible songery since 1988. I'm smart enough to not go too far down the dead-end alleyway of Daydream Nation comparisons, but I'll admit it reminds me a helluva lot of that masterwork-- more so than any of their records between then and now. And I don't think it's coincidental that the two albums showcase a band more relaxed than elsewhere, letting songs stretch out to their maximum length while still coming back for a singalong-able section or two.
As everyone probably expected, that whole 'this is our classic rock album' gambit was a big goof. While the band's new quintet structure offers the potential for some Skynyrd-style three-guitar freakouts, the guys and gal limit themselves to the occasional old-school namedrop (Lou Reed, "Tiny Dancer") and a handful of FM-ready riffs. No, Sonic Youth still sounds like good ol' Sonic Youth, albeit with a focus on melodic improvisation only rarely heard before.
If the band is revealing its roots to any oldies act, it's to Lee Ranaldo's long-cherished Grateful Dead. Three tracks here run long-distance events in the six-to-nine-minute range, and one (Ranaldo's "Karen Revisited") rides a long ambient section all the way up to 11:00. Sonic Youth's always had long songs, but not too many that stay as tightly focused and listenable as these; they're finally capitalizing on the jammy possibilities suggested by "The Diamond Sea." "Rain on Tin," for example, gets the singing over with in a hurry and dwells mostly on long, instrumental passages that intertwine the three guitars like a fourth-grader braiding friendship bracelets.
Importantly, these astral flights are usually filling in the space around semi-traditional song structures, avoiding the spoken-word incantations and directionless instrumentals of recent albums on both DGC and SYR imprints. If vocal duties can be considered representative of songwriting leadership, it's Thurston Moore who's leading the charge here, as he takes the mic on more than half of Murray Street's songs. His twisty "The Empty Page" and spooky "Disconnection Notice" are certainly no new directions for the lankiest man in rock and roll, but offer up foundations as exciting to hear as the unscripted passages.
Kim Gordon's contributions, meanwhile, are curiously backloaded to the end of the album-- a sequencing that would have been merciful on the last few albums, but is surprisingly unnecessary for the double shot of goodness found here. "Plastic Sun," which may or may not be about Britney Spears (have we forgotten our Madonna fetish, Youthies?), packs more rhythmic punch than anything since the "Eliminator Jr." portion of "Trilogy." Likewise, her "Sympathy for the Strawberry" hits slow-motion crescendos as bombastic as Godspeed, with a mere fraction of the personnel. The centerpiece, "Karen Revisited," finds Ranaldo again claiming his crown as the band's best hook-writer before exploding into ultraviolet feedback-- a segment that'll have Jeremy doing cartwheels, but'll have Erica jumping for the fast-forward button.
And then, there's Jim O'Rourke. Ahhh, Jim; say what you will about the guy, but he's now worked his mysterious influence over not one, but two of the year's finest albums (and it's only June)-- I fully expect him to announce production duties on some kind of afterworld-bridging Beatles reunion any day now. It's hard to tell exactly what he's doing or playing on Murray Street, but for the stop/start bassline of "The Empty Page" alone he's a valuable addition. Hardcore fans may resist his presence like baseball traditionalists despise interleague play, but Murray Street is good enough to mercifully displace memories of the band's wobbly first steps with the omnipresent O'Rourke on NYC Ghosts & Flowers.
At the very least, the perplexing twenty-years-along addition of a fifth member seems to have given the Youth just the kick in the ass they needed to stop making merely good albums that hit with segments of the fan population and get back to making great ones that resonate with everybody. Journalistic integrity aside, it gives me great pleasure to be able to like a new Sonic Youth album without having to force it, and to finally give their back catalog a nice, long rest. You can bet your hat there's gonna be Jeremies who say Murray Street isn't far-out enough, and Ericas who would prefer the band kept things under four minutes, but a whole lot of in-between folk are going to be pleased as punch with the results. | 2002-06-25T01:00:01.000-04:00 | 2002-06-25T01:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Geffen | June 25, 2002 | 9 | 423ddff1-f975-4b00-b5de-4333c19b2fb0 | Rob Mitchum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rob- mitchum/ | null |
This sequel to last year's vault-digging Alone is less revelatory than the first volume, but it nearly matches its predecessor in quality. | This sequel to last year's vault-digging Alone is less revelatory than the first volume, but it nearly matches its predecessor in quality. | Rivers Cuomo: Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12507-alone-ii-the-home-recordings-of-rivers-cuomo/ | Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo | Sequels to vault-clearing compilations tend to dip in quality, to no fault of their compilers: An initial volume of demos and leftovers should be the cream of the crop-- who knows if there will be interest or time for a second? For Rivers Cuomo, there naturally was plenty of interest. Thankfully, Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo-- the follow-up to last year's Alone-- is nearly as good as the earlier volume: There's less deep-vault revelation this time around but there's more variety in style and sound.
Bad news first: Despite a flashy guitar solo and some laborious harmonies, "I Want to Take You Home Tonight" plods, and "The Prettiest Girl in the Whole Wide World" would have been better left in the garage. Alone had its silly spots, for sure, but they at least revealed a lot of Cuomo's personality and charm. There's not a lot of replay value in marching-band interludes and song snippets played into answering machines, and while covers are fun, the Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby" is a choice and an arrangement that will surprise no one, ably performed or not.
The best Alone II offers is straight-ahead, no-nonsense power-pop-- not that anyone's ever complained about that from Cuomo. "My Brain Is Working Overtime" joyously rides a scant few chords into the ground, "Walt Disney" sparkles gently but confidently, and "I'll Think About You" is a staccato acoustic jig with Cuomo sounding, for once, relaxed. More pieces from "lost album" Songs From the Black Hole are revealed yet again with a full-blown song suite: Longing ballad "Oh Jonas" features some vocal schizophrenia, which segues into the lurching "Please Remember", and ends on the playful and slightly-seedy "Come to My Pod". All of them are goofy, off-the-cuff, and charming.
Bleeding-heart Weezer fans will still find at least a few tracks to pin their fond memories on. "The Purification of Water", a strident Blue Album-worthy ballad, pins familiar low-end riffery on some Hammond-esque organ. "I Don't Want You Let to Go" has lovely acoustic instrumentation, and even the maudlin piano bitch-out to critics, "My Day Is Coming", is believably wounded. Any of these would fit onto any of their records with a little more time and attention, but the instrumentation and faux-Romantic lyrics of "The Purification of Water" is the only one that distinguishes itself in this early form.
The novelty acoustic rap cover might be the most odious trend of my generation, but previously-unreleased track "Can't Stop Partying" subtly bucks the trend. A lack of irony doesn't make it less awkward, but it's certainly more palatable: it's a collaboration with Jermaine Dupri, for one, has an oddly striking melody (even if it's a little close to Smashing Pumpkins' "Disarm" for comfort), and made slightly more interesting in a sad-libertine sort of way for a mournful tone behind it's party-ready lyrics.
"Can't Stop Partying" doesn't sound awkward from Cuomo, necessarily-- but it does sound heavily labored. Cuomo isn't the type of artist to wait around for divine inspiration-- he's a worker, songwriting is his job-- but as we get deeper into the vaults, more of the material sounds like actual work, or daily exercises without a spark of fun or unpredictability (outside of a woebegotten space-themed rock opera, of course). Alone was worth the occasional cringe to show Cuomo's experiments and sonic baby photos through the years, especially after three studiously formulaic records. The weird part is that, after the Red Album, Cuomo's day job is actually more unpredictable than these demos-- for better or for worse. | 2008-12-08T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2008-12-08T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Geffen | December 8, 2008 | 6 | 4240a977-cf37-414b-9106-3242dbb8ce84 | Jason Crock | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jason-crock/ | null |
Nearly a decade since their last album, Superchunk crank out snarky bruised-romantic pop-punk anthems without any dip in energy level or quality control. | Nearly a decade since their last album, Superchunk crank out snarky bruised-romantic pop-punk anthems without any dip in energy level or quality control. | Superchunk: Majesty Shredding | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14642-majesty-shredding/ | Majesty Shredding | The last time Superchunk released an album, you could've conceivably called them an emo band, or at least a proto-emo band, without starting a fight. Here's to Shutting Up came out in 2001, when bands like the Promise Ring and the Get Up Kids were indie fixtures. Those bands stole plenty of winking heartfelt whoa-oh-ohs and ragged sugar-rush tempos from Superchunk's playbook. Since then, emo has gone through at least five or six sea changes; it now sounds absolutely nothing like Superchunk. The world has changed. Superchunk haven't.
Majesty Shredding isn't a reunion album, though bands break up and reunite in way less time than Superchunk took between albums. And it's not an album that Superchunk needed to make to keep their collective name out there. After all, Superchunk's Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance founded Merge Records; these days, they're making that Arcade Fire and Spoon money. So for at least a few years, Superchunk have operated something like a fun hobby; the band accepts whatever shows it feels like playing, and it has no pressure to crank out another album every few years. Even though Majesty Shredding has been a long time coming, it's not some grand statement. It's not some stylistic leap forward, either; the band still sounds very much like the one who released Here's to Shutting Up in 2001, which in turn sounded very much like the band who released its self-titled debut in 1990. Instead, it sounds like McCaughan had another 11 Superchunk-sounding songs sitting around, and the band finally found time to record them.
Pretty incredibly, this band has cranked out snarky bruised-romantic pop-punk anthems for two decades now, without any dip in energy level or quality control. They've made a few tweaks and improvements over the years, but they've all been in service of these scrappy, frantic singalongs. The only real new wrinkle on Majesty Shredding is McCaughan's newfound upper register; his yelp verges on Ted Leo status a few times here. But the real joy on the album lies in the little details, tiny and brilliant songwriting choices that bespeak all Superchunk's years in the game. The gorgeously liquid jangle-riff that kicks in just at the very end of "Winter Games", the whooping "yeah! yeah!"s that close out "Crossed Wires", the viola that heroically fights upstream on the excellent ballad "Fractures in Plaster"-- younger bands might be able to come up with stuff like this, but they rarely execute these tricks with this level of confidence.
There's not a whole lot at stake on Majesty Shredding, but there never has been for Superchunk; their biggest anthem, after all, is a matter-of-fact rail against an annoying co-worker. Much of Majesty Shredding seems to concern the importance and difficulties inherent in maintaining a fantasy life as you get older, but it's not a morose or self-involved album. Instead, they've made a total wheelhouse record, and a very good one. The same qualities that make Majesty Shredding sound perfectly at home in Superchunk's discography also make it stand out in today's climate, where nobody really does straight-ahead wide-eyed power-punk well anymore, give or take a Surfer Blood or Japandroids. When lead Mountain Goats barker John Darnielle sings backup on one song and you don't even notice him, you're dealing with a band whose members know exactly who they are. So: A fine entry in a fine catalog. They aren't wasting that Arcade Fire money. | 2010-09-21T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2010-09-21T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | September 21, 2010 | 8 | 4241cf8b-c1f2-44dc-a6ff-2333507f8792 | Tom Breihan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tom-breihan/ | null |
Two of the most famous pieces of musique concrète by French composer Luc Ferrari are reissued in all their aleatory and surrealist clamor. | Two of the most famous pieces of musique concrète by French composer Luc Ferrari are reissued in all their aleatory and surrealist clamor. | Luc Ferrari: Tinguely 1967 / Hétérozygote / Petite symphonie intuitive pour un paysage de printemps | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23185-tinguely-1967-heterozygote-petite-symphonie-intuitive-pour-un-paysage-de-printemps/ | Tinguely 1967 / Hétérozygote / Petite symphonie intuitive pour un paysage de printemps | “It’s a sculpture, it’s a picture, it’s an accompanist, it’s a poet, it’s decoration—this machine is a situation.” So Swiss artist Jean Tinguely described one of his large kinetic sculptures, art pieces that recycled metal scraps and mounted them in chunks of wood, cement blocks, or oil barrels. When triggered, these motorized sculptures shivered to life in art galleries, making a clamor not unlike musique concrète, the post-war sound conceived by French composer Pierre Schaeffer in a studio that during the war served as a center for the Resistance movement in French radio. It was a sound as malleable as Tinguely’s descriptor and none of the composers responsible for such music pushed the definition more than Luc Ferrari.
Ferrari encountered the likes of Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and John Cage in the early ’50s before joining Schaeffer at the newly established Groupe de Recherches Musicales near the end of that decade. Musique concrète could manipulate recorded sound, the human voice, musical instruments, or synthesizers, but while Schaeffer and his fellow composers favored a more academic approach, Ferrari’s music was impish. His most famous piece of musique concrète, 1970’s Presque Rien, replicated dawn in a Yugoslavian fishing village, which Matmos’ Drew Daniel once described as “a letting go of the standard purposes of musical sound…in favor of a quietly focused experience of listening to the sounds of the world on their own terms.” But he also did fidgety orchestral minimalism and a Sapphic encounter set to African drums and his own whispers.
Tinguely 1967 reveals two previously unreleased soundtracks from the first decade of Ferrari’s output, including one rendered from recordings made of Tinguely’s epileptic sculptures to soundtrack a 1966 television piece on the artist. “Tinguely” clangs to life, sussing out a rhythm from a sound like a screen door slamming against a bird cage over and over again. What scans as just an unorganized din, slowly reveals a peculiar sensibility making sense of it all. There are staccato outbursts of typewriters, looped voices, whirring motors, metallic scrapes like picking at a lock, and what might be a tuba burbling. At one point, Ferrari combines some of them in such a way so as to suggest strolling through Tinguely’s workshop, though a blast of heavy alien reverb reveals it to be a sonic construct.
“Dernier Matin d'Edgar-Allan Poe” dates from three years prior, a piece for a short 33mm black-and-white film. It’s the subtler of the two and rather than Ferrari’s telltale slyness with musique concrète, it sounds more like a free improv trio: a bow scratches against strings, a drumstick moves across a cymbal, a chord organ lurches. It grows even quieter to include the small sounds of a creaking chair and what might be the man himself humming into a kazoo. Both pieces reveal different iterations of Ferrari, but they aren’t the best entry points into the man’s peculiar sound-world.
A recent reissue on Mego’s vital Recollection GRM series is a better introduction to Ferrari, presenting two of his more important sound-works. “Hétérozygote” dates from around the same timeframe as “Dernier,” but it’s the more masterful piece, what Ferrari in the liner notes deems “anecdotal” music, wherein “the listener is then asked to imagine their own story.” Sounds arise, their source scarcely identifiable before changing and roaring past. Bell-like notes distort into something eerier. Whistles and brass are sounded, but Ferrari breaks them into small fragments and reconfigures them, not like a pique assiette. A woman whispers as she walks along the shore and flutes get stretched into coyote howls. A rocket roars across the stereo field. Party laughter and goat bays intermingle with electronics. Ferrari provides distinct scenes, though just what that story might actually be is evocative if inscrutable, a Donald Barthelme short story filmed by Luis Buñuel.
“Petite symphonie intuitive pour un paysage de printemps” comes a decade later and finds Ferrari seamless in his blending. He calls the piece an “imaginary soundscape” and it’s as luminous as anything in his catalog. An aural approximation of sunset in the Gorges du Tarn in southern France, Ferrari approximates a walk through the countryside: voices arise and move off, crickets, birds, and dogs sound, Ferrari placing some in the distance, some near the ear. All while a few flute loops around at the edges playfully, though over the course of its 25 minutes, it slowly takes over the piece. First encountering the piece many years ago, with its snippets of voices, hazy melody and increasing density, it struck me as what Boards of Canada might sound like had they ever made a sidelong track. Returning to it now, it feels more complex than that. For as alien as musique concrète can be, in the hands of Ferrari, he was able to render it into something that felt warmly familiar. Here he paints a stunning vista at dusk, capturing the expansive horizon with sound rather than sight. | 2017-04-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-04-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rock | null | April 27, 2017 | 8 | 4245458f-7ec1-4790-aced-70c5d9e01d26 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
The Copenhagen composer’s second album this year, and her first for Oakland’s Constellation Tatsu, offers a dynamic take on ambient music, one meant for active listening. | The Copenhagen composer’s second album this year, and her first for Oakland’s Constellation Tatsu, offers a dynamic take on ambient music, one meant for active listening. | Sofie Birch: Island Alchemy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sofie-birch-island-alchemy/ | Island Alchemy | For the better part of the past decade, the Oakland label Constellation Tatsu has put out experimental electronic music in accordance with a simple motto: “adventurous with spiritual artistic sensibilities.” They’ve collected a lot of different sounds under that umbrella—the catalog includes austere drone pieces, downtempo techno, and windswept shoegaze, among a whole lot of other stuff—but most releases are united around a similar disposition. Steven Ramsey, the label’s founder, said that the music is meant to take people outside of their comfort zone, then give them “space to breathe.”
Even before Constellation Tatsu released the Copenhagen composer Sofie Birch’s new album Island Alchemy, she has long been a steward of similar ideas about how to approach slow, sad, synth-led music. Both under the moniker Birch and her full name, she’s released pieces that feel complex and studied—full of labyrinthine arpeggiations, collagist textural work, and dizzying melodies—as well as intentionally peaceful and welcoming. Island Alchemy, Birch’s second album of 2019, shows just how engaging this approach can be.
The album’s second track, “Myg,” is its longest, and over the course of its 10-minute runtime, kosmische synth arpeggios overlap and intersect with wheezy, stretched-out samples, seasick bass drones, crunchy found sounds, and what might be the distorted ringing of an outgoing phone call. It’s dense but it moves freely from one idea to the next; each layer is a new hook for your brain to latch onto.
The record’s shorter pieces aren’t as grand or sweeping, but they offer their own pleasures. As a synthesist, Birch wields a palette that is varied and playful. On “Net (Neverendingthing),” she dabbles in a misty style associated with recent new-age revivalists like Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Emily A. Sprague, along with the tape label Sounds of the Dawn. But elsewhere, her sounds are more unpredictable and otherworldly. “Loph” is both Baroque and surreal; the animated opening harpsichord-like melodies could soundtrack a Saturday morning cartoon, followed by what might be a classical guitar strung with rubber bands. Each individual element feels deliberately colorful and bright, to an overwhelming degree. It’s vibrant in a way that’s almost hard to process, like you’re staring at a Magic Eye poster a mile wide.
Ambient music is often heralded for its functional purposes. It is self-consciously soothing; it comes with an implicit invitation to drift away. And Island Alchemy can offer that, if that’s what you’re after. The pieces are paced methodically and meditatively. The melodies are elliptical and hypnotic. But like many Constellation Tatsu artists, Birch seems to have more active listening in mind. You can hear it in the movement and diversity of the sounds she chooses, in the thought put into the way textures overlap. If this is music for dreamers, it’s for the ones who pay close attention to the details in their nighttime reveries, for whom every small moment is full of meaning. | 2019-12-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-12-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Constellation Tatsu | December 12, 2019 | 7.5 | 424b7a11-d6ee-4395-a474-a1f009d0ef24 | Colin Joyce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-joyce/ | |
Producer Delroy Edwards combines the faded ‘80s vibe of Ariel Pink and John Maus with a sharp eye toward what moves bodies on dance floors today. | Producer Delroy Edwards combines the faded ‘80s vibe of Ariel Pink and John Maus with a sharp eye toward what moves bodies on dance floors today. | Delroy Edwards: Hangin’ At the Beach | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22152-hangin-at-the-beach/ | Hangin’ At the Beach | Delroy Edwards has a knack for turning the past into the future. Through his label L.A. Club Resource and online store Gene’s Liquor, he unearths old underground rap and techno tapes that sound remarkably fresh, and his own music, be it his pumping house jams on L.I.E.S. or the cassette-sourced mixes he calls Slowed Down Funk, is drenched in a similar kind of creative nostalgia. His two proper LPs, 2014’s mini-album Teenage Tapes and now the 30-track Hangin’ at the Beach, both combine the faded ‘80s vibe of Ariel Pink and John Maus with a sharp eye toward what moves bodies on dance floors today.
The retro aspect of Hangin’ at the Beach is refreshingly irony-free. Edwards’ songs, most of which run under two minutes, sound like muffled AM radio because he likes working with hissy cassette tapes, not because he’s making cultural commentary a la James Ferraro or Daniel Lopatin. “For us there’s no kitsch value, there’s no gimmick in it,” he has said of his label’s music. “If we put it out, it’s because we like it.” As a result, there’s an eager joy in many of Edwards’ songs, which can be as fun as a goofy ‘80s comedy and movement-inspiring as a sped-up workout video, while simultaneously rattling club walls.
Not everything on Hangin’ at the Beach is simple and sunny, though. There are dark sounds here, and dense layers of lo-fi fuzz that reward repeat listens. The way Edwards weaves more abstract moments with passages of pure retro-pop gives the album the feel of a lost soundtrack. He can follow something as openly dramatic as “Brothers in Arms,” which could fit in a John Carpenter thriller, with the formless near-noise of “Tunnel Vision,” and make the two tracks feel like sides of a coin. He makes “Surf’s Up!” evoke waves crashing on Mars, and the electronic ripples of “Safe Places Pt. 1” sound like Fennesz in a basement closet. Tracks like those suggest that the beach at which Edwards hangs exists more in his mind than anywhere near his Los Angeles home.
If Hangin’ at the Beach is indeed a mindscape, then it reveals Edwards’ musical imagination to be much wider than his main reputation as a house-music maven. That’s what makes it a thrilling listen, too: you get the sense that he can go pretty much anywhere sonically, and the brevity of each track combined with all the driving rhythms makes the record feel like a roller-coaster tour of his firing neurons. Ultimately, Edwards is at heart a beat-maker—he was classically trained in jazz drumming and explicitly says his music is “fueled for clubs”—but on Hangin’ at the Beach he treats those genre parameters not as lines to color inside, but barriers to obliterate. | 2016-08-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-08-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | L.A. Club Resource | August 3, 2016 | 7.5 | 424ee071-d8ce-42d4-a440-5a4d15f9f553 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
On the Portland rapper’s surprise “EP/LP/Mixtape/Album,” his feel-good music starts to lose some of the stained, lived-in quality that once made it so rich. | On the Portland rapper’s surprise “EP/LP/Mixtape/Album,” his feel-good music starts to lose some of the stained, lived-in quality that once made it so rich. | Aminé: ONEPOINTFIVE | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/amine-onepointfive/ | ONEPOINTFIVE | Aminé crashed the rap ranks two years ago with an offbeat tease called “Caroline,” which went quadruple-platinum and positioned him as an outsider star. His songs had a knowing wit and a kind of brightness that made him a beacon in an era of rap gloomcasters. But his music has become more vainglorious this summer, for what he's dubbed flexing season. His optimism has waned and he's turned his attention to expensive things—owning them, flaunting them, seeking comfort in them. His new “EP/LP/Mixtape/Album,” ONEPOINTFIVE, the follow-up to 2017’s Good for You, was released on a whim, as if merely a trifle, another casual flex. (“Mixtapes are albums and albums are mixtapes. Niggas call they albums mixtapes cause if it flops, it’s an EP,” he joked in a promo video.) Regardless of classification, ONEPOINTFIVE is a project about adjusting to a new class of rapper, how shifting tax brackets come with a new outlook on life. But in these songs of excess, Aminé’s feel-good music starts to lose some of the stained, lived-in quality that once made it so rich.
The songs on ONEPOINTFIVE aren’t rapped with the same joy as those on Good for You. They are significantly less interesting, less curious, and less story-driven. His swaggering is all bluster, no charm. On songs like “Hiccup” and “DapperDan,” he loses sight of his reflection admiring his jewels, and on “Chingy,” his boasts lack imagination. He’s less clever writing from this space, basically not saying anything Migos haven’t said already.
Aminé used to judge rappers for this kind of talk. Good for You’s “Money” was a thoughtful consumerist critique that weighed tipping the personal scale against the scourges of late capitalism. He imagined stacking coins as a fool’s errand, like drinking salt water to quench one’s thirst. “Money don’t make you happy, it just makes you wanna get richer,” he rapped. He’s richer now, but no less anxious: “Birthdays these days be the worst days/’Cause I know I’m gettin’ older and not happier.” And yet, the new album still devolves into aimless materialist raps that feel empty. There are brief pivots toward the prudence of previous work, to be sure: The opener, “Dr. Whoever” is a frank admission of grief and on “Why?” he raps, “I need love, I’m depressed/I’m a fool, I’m a mess.” But these are tiny thought bubbles popped by shiny objects, blips along a half-hour cruise through new-money trappings.
Positivity has been sold as Aminé’s defining trait, but he is slowly shifting away from that energy. Money can turn friends to hangers-on; turn suitors to opportunists; turn lovers to liabilities; turn a light-hearted upstart rapper into a cynical big shot. Even the palette he and his producer Pasqué are working with is darker, the scenes in his songs more overcast. Aminé once seemed like an outlier, the fun-loving Portland boy content to be himself on rap’s fringes. Now his songs tuck neatly into the contemporary trap fold. That isn’t to say they can’t be satisfying, because Aminé, Pasqué, and Tee-Watt have delivered one of the better-produced trap records of the year with quirky, off-kilter beats that shift and patter in cool ways. But where it felt like only Aminé could make the vibrant Good for You, ONEPOINTFIVE falls squarely into a bracket with the rest of his flex-rap colleagues, and many of them play the showboat better and more convincingly. | 2018-08-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-08-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Republic | August 21, 2018 | 6 | 424f78f2-0583-428a-ba52-b082359457f8 | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | |
Following an accident that took the life of their tour videographer, the California emo band finds new meaning in old ideas, while J. Robbins’ production nudges them toward newfound confidence. | Following an accident that took the life of their tour videographer, the California emo band finds new meaning in old ideas, while J. Robbins’ production nudges them toward newfound confidence. | I'm Glad It's You: Every Sun, Every Moon | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/im-glad-its-you-every-sun-every-moon/ | Every Sun, Every Moon | Grief casts a shadow over the past. It lends new meaning to old photographs, text messages, and inside jokes, all indelibly colored by loss. On I’m Glad It’s You’s Every Sun, Every Moon, grief leads the Redlands, California band to revisit lyrics and song titles from their 2016 album The Things I Never Say. It was while touring that record, in 2017, that a van accident killed the band’s concert videographer and close friend Chris Avis. I’m Glad It’s You canceled the remainder of their tour; it would be another year before the group performed together in full and began the process of recording a new record. Every Sun, Every Moon is a lustrous document of that healing, casting the aftermath of shared pain in radiant piano and synths.
The first words sung on Every Sun, Every Moon call back to the band’s first full-length: “Another long last look from the back of the ambulance,” frontman Kelley Bader croons on “Big Sound,” echoing a memorable line (“Take a long last look”) from 2016’s “Curbside.” But where once he sounded decidedly resigned, almost sighing, here his delivery is remarkably full-throated, riding brightly over searing guitars and synths. Similarly, “The Things I Never Said” casts a regretful glance back at The Things I Never Say, the title of their debut, the song’s introspection bolstered by piano interludes and surf-pop vocal harmonies. More than just Easter eggs, these references highlight the contrasts between then and now. It’s as if, spurred by the experience of unspeakable tragedy, the only way to return is louder.
The album’s more mature palette was honed with the help of veteran producer J. Robbins. The former Jawbox frontman has spent the past three decades elevating scores of sheepish, shrugging bands to new melodic heights, leaving a legacy of adventurous, potent emo in his wake. The album is full of allusions to his highlights reel: The dense guitars that swirl around “Ordinary Pain” recall the Promise Ring’s classic Nothing Feels Good; the chiming chords on “Lost My Voice” bring to mind his work with Midwestern stalwarts Braid. Robbins’ direction suits the band, who had previously experimented with electronics on a “Redux” version of their 2016 record. Here, drawing on his experience producing similarly ambitious artists, he chooses studio techniques designed to flesh out the record’s narrative. On “The Silver Cord,” ethereal synths complement the song’s vision of a visitation from the afterlife; on “Death Is Close,” a fluttering Mellotron sets an appropriately elegiac tone. In his diverse palette, Robbins reinforces the many moods the band traces throughout the record.
Robbins’ production also serves as a welcome, weighted counterbalance to Bader’s writing, which leans on metaphorical imagery to describe the complex mechanisms of mourning. After that early, ominous reference to an ambulance, the focus turns to the more ambiguous, amorphous project of healing. Often, Bader leans on his Christian upbringing; this comes to a head on “Lazarus,” which pits the Biblical miracle of rebirth against the permanence of death. “The second coming savior running late this time and now I think I see/What Lazarus taught me,” he sings meekly, the ache in his voice burnished by smoldering guitars. As opposed to the tinny, bare-bones production of their prior EPs, the song’s textured facade takes note from British shoegaze, couching dark, nihilistic topics within a thick, protective coating of distortion.
But where a Christian metal band, or emo peers like Reliant K, might find solace in God, Bader eschews facile resolutions. “Myths,” despite its repetitions of “hallelujah,” finds an easy savior not in prayer, but in the glacial passage of time: “Someday soon the day is going to come,” he pleads, his voice picking up as the drums kick in. It’s an ambitious song, not only for its plaintive piano arpeggios and liquid, reverb-heavy guitar, but for the careful, slanted rhythms in its verses: “My flickering flame/Dancing for rain that doesn’t pour.” The rhymes come unexpectedly, a destabilizing effect that forces a close listen and mimics the uncertainty of grief. “It’s a hallelujah/And I’m learning how to sing” might not be the typical shout-along chorus that I’m Glad It’s You expected to write when they first set out on the road three years ago. But through trauma, they’ve landed on the profoundly triumphant note that so many emo bands spend their careers angling to reach.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-05-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-05-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | 6131 | May 18, 2020 | 7.4 | 425033e9-4183-46b0-8558-031ef7b23ad6 | Arielle Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/arielle-gordon/ | |
On their debut album, Guillaume and Jonathan Alric make big, staid dance music tailored for main stages at music festivals where subtlety falls victim to the pursuit of big moments. | On their debut album, Guillaume and Jonathan Alric make big, staid dance music tailored for main stages at music festivals where subtlety falls victim to the pursuit of big moments. | The Blaze: Dancehall | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-blaze-dancehall/ | Dancehall | Guillaume and Jonathan Alric, the cousins behind French duo the Blaze, aim for big themes on Dancehall. The very first sounds you hear are piano chords so rich and full you want to wrap yourself up in them like a very expensive coat. The bass throughout is among the heaviest you’ll hear on any record this year, yet it never sounds ugly or rough. Even at its most forceful, the Blaze’s music never bangs you over the head; it’s enveloping, like a wave.
But their insistence upon capturing great passion works against them. For one thing, there’s not a lot of variation on the album: Virtually every song rolls out a boom-ticking drum machine beat and drapes it in sumptuous synths and pulsing 808 toms; their grooves rarely budge from the syncopated cadence handed down by classic piano-house anthems like “Strings of Life,” filtered through heartstring-tugging bass musicians like James Blake and SBTRKT. And you can make out the outlines of their songwriting from a mile away: First comes the pensive intro; then the drop, and a surging build until the track’s end. This is music tailored for the main stages at music festivals where subtlety falls victim to the pursuit of big moments, where only the punchiest, boomiest, most obviously emotive sounds are accommodated. Even Dancehall’s sonics evoke the sound and feel of the festival experience, with low-end that threatens to overwhelm the bass cabinets and overdriven mids that run together in a kind of ooze.
Also gloopy: the vocals. As they were on Territory, their debut EP, the Blaze’s vocals tend to sound like they’ve been pitched down by 10 or 15 percent—not enough to make them sound like Salem or DJ Screw, but just enough that they don’t quite sound natural, either. Who knows why they keep doing this. Perhaps they simply like the way it tends to thicken the sound of their voices, like a dark liqueur chilled toward the freezing point—it’s a deeply embodied sound, suggestive of throats and lumps in throats. Perhaps they’re compensating for their weaknesses as singers, in which case, not a bad idea: They can indeed be pretty pitchy. On “She,” an untreated near-falsetto recalls Robert Smith’s quavering wail, but where the Cure frontman’s yelp feels like an essential part of his band’s desperate, unhinged mien, the curdled sound of “She” just sounds cartoonish.
It doesn’t help that their attempt to capture big emotions too often verges on caricature. From “Breath”: “You’re my reason/In this wonderful life/A super weapon/For stopping the fight.” Do I need to tell you that they go on to get “sight” and “light” in there? Elsewhere, “Trust in me” is rhymed with “Set me free”; “Crazy and insane” finds its match in “Forgetting the pain.” It’s all a bit much, especially when combined with such rafter-shaking, breast-beating grooves. At the same time, it’s nothing at all: a placeholder for a sentiment with any actually meaningful resonance. Coming up with something to say would do more to rescue their vocals than the most CPU-intensive pitch-correction software.
What’s frustrating is that the Alrics have proven themselves to be talented filmmakers. With their eyes trained on young French people of color, they specialize in moody treatments of youthful passions, star-crossed lovers, communities thriving as the world breaks down. Their skill lies in sketching out a certain provocative ambiguity: What kind of couple is this? What is their history? Is this a story of love or anger? And, most importantly, what kinds of truths can be expressed without words? It’s a shame that their music doesn’t capture anything near that level of nuance. Too often, it’s a simulacrum of passion: feel-good house music as daily affirmation. Unlike the broad scope of their videos, their songs feel squashed, like an inspirational message made for Instagram’s tiny window. | 2018-09-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-09-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Animal 63 / Sony UK / RCA | September 12, 2018 | 5.7 | 4253e16d-8004-4724-aae6-0e9ba918dba9 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
Bedhead, a five-piece band from Wichita Falls, Texas, were one of the '90s bands who pushed rock into new places. They were sometimes called slowcore and sometimes post-rock and they had elements of both of those sounds. Bedhead more or less slipped out of the conversation after winding down at the end of the '90s, but this box set from Numero, which gathers everything they recorded in a deluxe remastered set, is designed to change that. | Bedhead, a five-piece band from Wichita Falls, Texas, were one of the '90s bands who pushed rock into new places. They were sometimes called slowcore and sometimes post-rock and they had elements of both of those sounds. Bedhead more or less slipped out of the conversation after winding down at the end of the '90s, but this box set from Numero, which gathers everything they recorded in a deluxe remastered set, is designed to change that. | Bedhead: Bedhead: 1992-1998 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19717-bedhead-bedhead-1992-1998/ | Bedhead: 1992-1998 | Most of the rock subgenres we reference today were coined between the 1980s and '90s. If you were living in the English-speaking world, rap aside, music played with guitars was still more or less the main game in town during this era, so "rock" in the broadest sense had no choice but to mutate: noise-rock, post-punk, dream-pop. In lieu of entirely new tools—no computers yet—independent rock got more specific and it got weirder, splintering in any number of different directions.
Bedhead, a five-piece band from Wichita Falls, Texas, a town about a two-hour drive from Dallas, were one of the '90s bands who pushed rock into new places. They were sometimes called slowcore and sometimes post-rock and they had elements of both of those sounds. They were only around for about five years, they put out three full-lengths, a few EPs, and some singles, and, despite making music with the same guitar/bass/drum set-up everyone else was using, they had a distinctive aesthetic. Bedhead also more or less slipped out of the conversation after winding down at the end of the '90s. People who were there remember them fondly, people who were not have probably never heard of them. This box set from Numero, which gathers everything they recorded in a deluxe remastered set, is designed to change that.
Bedhead had certain parallels with Galaxie 500 that are hard to deny: Both groups put out three LPs plus a handful of other releases, both often played in slower tempos, both featured quiet/loud surges, both covered Joy Division on record convincingly, and both have the guitar at the center of their sound. But Bedhead were never "dreamy"; their music was dry and clear and grounded. Though it probably sounds very good on certain kinds of drugs, it’s not drug music. Despite the explosions of guitar and surges of grandeur, this wasn’t psychedelia; Bedhead were about the beauty of form, what happens when every note and every sound is in the right place.
When a band mixes vocals low so it’s hard to hear the words, I tend to trust that they have their reasons, and I’m less likely to spend time trying to figure out what the words mean. Which is to say I was able to get deeply into Bedhead years ago without really knowing what the lyrics were about. The vocals, sung by one of the two brothers on guitar and voice, Matt and Bubba Kadane, were delivered in kind of a half-whispered sing-speak register. At times, they were reminiscent of how Brian McMahan used his voice on Slint’s Spiderland, but Bedhead seemed less performed, more about executing a composition than inhabiting a moment. Every time you hear Bedhead vocals you imagine them coming from behind a black curtain, and in the case of this band that curtain was made up of the 22 strings—three guitars, one bass.
Returning to the albums with this set I learned that, despite how quiet the vocals could be, Bedhead songs are filled with interesting thoughts, and more to the point they seem like exactly the sort of lyrics that should be gracing this sort of music. In my head I’ve always bracketed Bedhead with Talk Talk—sonic perfectionists who aren’t afraid to be serious and studied and trust their audience to hear sincerity instead of pretension. And like that band, their lyrics are about existential questions and spiritual emptiness, about feeling like a tiny speck in an endless universe. The title of "Liferaft" actually refers to a bed, a place for sitting alone in the dark and dreaming and wondering about the nature of your own existence; "The Unpredictable Landlord" and "Unfinished" alternately get angry at God and then poke fun at him; "Bedside Table" zeroes in on a moment where the physical world meets the life of the mind. There’s something about all of these songs that is both evocative and just slightly out of reach, making you wonder if unsolved puzzles can be true.
But Bedhead were always about music first. Each instrument had its role to play. I’ll start with Trini Martinez’s drums. Where a funk band plays off the hi-hat and a heavier rock band leans on the crash, Bedhead were all about the ride cymbal, steadily marking time, never in too much of a hurry, always aware that something big is looming in the distance but certain that they’ll get there. The ride points the way through many of the best tracks here, and its linear presence reinforces that Bedhead songs never had much in the way of verses, choruses, and bridges; instead, their music was about addition and subtraction, exploring the terrain between potential maximum volume and utter silence.
Above all else, Bedhead were about composition, the way the guitar parts overlapped and braided around each other and fell away at just the right time. The earliest recordings, 7''s gathered here on an album with EPs and B-sides, found them having their sound completely mapped out from the jump. Every song on this singles/rarities set, for better or worse (and I’d argue it’s much more for the better), even the cover of Joy Division’s "Disorder", is instantly identifiable as Bedhead. They staked out the boundaries of an aesthetic, and they were not particularly wide boundaries; differences between their albums are subtle. But they explored every inch of terrain inside of them.
After those early singles they assembled for WhatFunLifeWas, their debut full-length. With a band like this, who made records of uniform quality and never deviated much from a core sound, the first record you hear by them tends to be your favorite. In my case, that is WhatFunLifeWas, which also happens to be their most intensely dynamic. Relative to the two albums that followed, WhatFunLifeWas is less about mood and precision and more about extreme shifts in volume and density. Some of the most beautiful guitar parts they ever created are here; the nature of Bedhead’s genius, and one of the serious advantages they had in having three guitarists, is that they could take several things that make guitars such a powerful instrument and make them happen simultaneously. So a track like "Powder" might have furious strumming, a soft drone, and a lead line in counterpoint all happening at once, growing and changing as it unwinds.
Beheaded, their second album, from 1996, is the hardest of the three to get a handle on. Much of the brightness and surges of joy found on the first album are gone, but the space and precision of their third, Transaction de Novo, haven’t quite arrived. The thorough (and very good) notes by Matt Gallaway describe it as their darkest record, but that feels like a question of a half a shade or so. It was recorded by Adam Wiltzie, of fellow Texans Stars of the Lid, and it’s probably their least distinctive recording on a purely sonic level, but the highlights—"Roman Candle"’s gentle jangle, the searing throb of "Withdraw"—are up there with anything the band did.
Given the kind of music they made and their aesthetic values, it was inevitable that Bedhead would work with Steve Albini. Both band and engineer agreed on how to make a great recording of a rock band: You get a decent guitar, pair it with the right amp, figure out how to play it. You put the amp and guitar in a room that gives it a certain resonance. You find the right microphone, and you put it in the place where it will give you the desired mix of direct and reflected sound. Then you set your levels and record until you get the performance you’re looking for. It’s a process based on getting the essentials right rather than figuring out the latest tricks.
The subtle differences on Transaction show how small changes in an environment of great consistency can evoke a disproportionate amount of feeling. The glockenspiel that rings so clearly in the opening is so fragile it almost hurts; they’d used the instrument before, but never with such clarity, and the tiny shift is devastating. Transition is also more judicious with its massive crescendos; there are fewer, but when they come, they hit with much greater force. The album is a tapestry of interlocking single-note parts, a celebration of the emotional possibility of guitar tone. Here they finally started to explore genre: "Extramundane" showcases the jittery Feelies influence that was always lurking beneath the surface, and they never rocked as convincingly; "Forgetting" adds some slide guitar and finally adds a country and western wrinkle. The closing "The Present" finished the album—and Bedhead’s recording career—in brilliant style, with a lyric that riffs on both gifts and moment-to-moment alienation, while the music features bowed strings, formalizing the classical undercurrent that was always there. Together, Albini and Bedhead made the band’s best record, going out on a high note.
Numero is embarking on an interesting project with boxes like this one, and the ones for Unwound and Codeine. These are American indie rock bands that have mostly been missed by people now under 30. They didn’t play the reunion tours, and they weren’t all that high profile in the first place. They were also bands that just barely touched on the early Internet, meaning they were a little too new to be canonized in, say the Spin or Trouser Press guides, but old enough that only a small percentage of the online coverage they received early on still remains. For people who loved these records then, having them back in print, in high quality sets, is welcome. They serve as a reminder of how interesting guitar music could be at this particular time and place.
As to how this Bedhead set might strike your average listener born in the 1990s, it’s harder to say. The beauty of the guitar arrangements of, say, Real Estate, sometimes reminds me of what Bedhead were up to; but even Real Estate is anomalous now, the band you go to for this sort of sound instead of being one of many. Some of that is up to how big these bands were in the first place, and some of that is up to whether or not they had any kind of sexy mystique; Bedhead had no time for or interest in anything extraneous to the music, which in itself is a marker of another era. And this is what it sounded like—serious, intense, smart, beautiful, occasionally frightening—when a band approached their work with that kind of deep focus. | 2014-11-14T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2014-11-14T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | null | November 14, 2014 | 8.5 | 42574cd4-6c8d-40af-9ee6-ebe638e5efb8 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
The British dance pop trio Years & Years’ debut album marries thematic precision with the broad kinetics of anthemic pop songwriting, mingling self-loathing and doubt with a redemptive, near-bloody-minded push to prettiness and uplift. | The British dance pop trio Years & Years’ debut album marries thematic precision with the broad kinetics of anthemic pop songwriting, mingling self-loathing and doubt with a redemptive, near-bloody-minded push to prettiness and uplift. | Years & Years: Communion | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20831-communion/ | Communion | Almost all forms of music seek to speak, from time to time, of love, and from time to time of sex. But pop music stands alone in its obsession with their convergence point, where they become interchangeable or indistinguishable or simply confused with one another. "Is it desire, or is it love that I’m feeling for you?" Years & Years singer Olly Alexander asks, in characteristically dramatic fashion on "Desire", and the law of pop melodrama demands that the question go unanswered. So it goes with the music: is it the easy populism of Years & Years’ honed, slick dance-pop that intoxicates, or a transmission of deeper truths? But why separate the two?
The majority of the songs on the British trio’s debut album Communion marry thematic precision with the broad kinetics of great pop songwriting, mingling self-loathing and doubt with a redemptive, near-bloody-minded push to prettiness and uplift. Only the excellent single "Shine" is as upbeat as it is up-tempo, and even then the happiness feels so hard-won it can’t help but imply its opposite. The songs carefully map the contours of gay sensuality, filtering lust through a variety of counterparts: not just shame, but vulnerability, self-awareness and annihilating self-abandon. Where Bronski Beat once crafted colossal club-pop out of tales of marginalization and abuse, Years & Years occupy a more subtle, liminal contemporary world, one of feeling isolated amidst a crowd of bodies. "I’ll do what you like if you stay the night," Olly bargains on "Real", and then later offers on the seductive slow-grind of "Take Shelter", "do what you want tonight/ It’s alright." On "Worship", he promises "I’m not gonna tell nobody ‘bout you," and finally, on the wracked, gorgeous closer "Memo", he begs, "Let me take your heart/ Love you in the dark/ No one has to see." In each case the character of the song is made small and powerless by the asymmetry of desire, which renders the stadium-chant backing vocals and sun-from-behind-clouds synth bursts more perverse and exhilarating than they have any right to be on their own.
Remove or ignore that contradiction, and Years & Years’ musical familiarity might breed contempt. You could dismiss their overblown choruses and sculpted electro-house arrangements as just the most commercial manifestation yet of a decade’s worth of also-ran bands reimagining '80s and '90s club-pop; MGMT’s "Electric Feel" strained through Disclosure’s snappy post-garage percussion and Sam Smith’s middlebrow wallowing. But Years & Years don't dilute this formula, they distill it: Communion’s biggest hit thus far, the high-gloss anthem "King", attains a kind of formal loveliness not witnessed in this genre since Madonna’s "Get Together" almost a decade ago.
Here, and on the album’s other highlights, the air of mercantile anonymity feels generous rather than cynical, the music as anxious to accommodate its imagined audience as Olly is his lovers, to be the song that made you dance all night even though you can’t remember a word of it now (i.e. to be the best song ever, as One Direction rightly observed). How else could you end up with a song like "Worship": a bright xylophone bounce for the verses, and a chorus that references gospel via diva-house via the Wanted’s "I Found You"? Appropriately, the band sounds too delirious to feel any shame.
Years & Years are weakest when seeking to project dignity, a noble bearing up in the face of life’s torments and disappointments ("Eyes Shut", "Gold", "Without"). Then, the arrangements veer towards placating grand gestures, and Olly’s "soaring" vocals threaten to become cloying. Conversely, the ballad "Memo" is perhaps the album’s pinnacle, at least in part because of its defiant specificity. Over slow piano chords and halting percussion, Olly describes in fragile falsetto his infatuation for a straight male friend ("You see yourself in another way/ I try my best but I don’t ever change"), doomed to be unrequited although perhaps not unconsummated (the repeated refrain, "I want more", works either way). Although its lip trembles with the tremulousness of its longing, at another level "Memo" is ice cold: what kind of love, it asks, would place lovers in such an impossible bind? Again, there's no answer on Communion, but you can always return to the dancefloor and try to find it again. | 2015-07-16T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-07-16T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Interscope | July 16, 2015 | 7.4 | 425a36dd-9956-4ea2-8351-96878666e1e9 | Tim Finney | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tim-finney/ | null |
This self-released 3" CD-R features four tracks recorded in April 2004 as elevator music for the French Ministry of Culture building, and adds some miscellaneous material from the duo's extensive sound library. | This self-released 3" CD-R features four tracks recorded in April 2004 as elevator music for the French Ministry of Culture building, and adds some miscellaneous material from the duo's extensive sound library. | The Books: Music for a French Elevator | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/857-music-for-a-french-elevator/ | Music for a French Elevator | Books guitarist Nick Zammuto has said that early in the band's development he was challenged by a friend to make music that couldn't possibly be used on a film soundtrack. Whether or not it was intentional, the Books have in a sense followed through on this request. By seeding their tracks with voices-- many actually drawn from obscure movies-- the Books have ensured that their music exists as a self-contained world of its own, one that doesn't easily lend itself to reinforcing an unrelated image. Their songs are their own little movies.
Even so, the Books continue to take on other sound-related projects in addition to their records. In April 2004 they recorded four short tracks to be used in conjunction with a work created for the French Ministry of Culture; the Books were charged with crafting music for the building's elevators. Giving in to repeated requests for this material, the band compiled the music on a homemade 3" CD-R, along with some miscellaneous material from their extensive sound library.
Ranging from about 30 seconds to almost 90, the four elevator pieces are, though short, prime Books material. Though lighter and quieter, "Fralite", through it's layering of guitar and cello, captures the whimsy and ache of longing of "Tokyo". The stately ballroom piano of "Egaberte", which can be heard as the soundtrack when visiting The Books website, is in a sense the quintessential elevator music, localized by the sampled voices speaking French throughout. "Liternite" is a surprisingly complete little piece, with an intro of bass, wooden fish and a singing voice pulled from a folk song building steadily to a small crescendo that fades quickly after its peak. "It's Musiiiiic!" captures the phrase from a lounge crooner and loops it.
The remaining nine tracks on this 15-minute release are mostly collages, with only hints of instrumentation added throughout. "Meditation Outtakes" plucks all occurrences of the word "meditation" from a speech and lays them end-to-end, demonstrating the way meaning changes with minute changes in inflection. "Of the Word God" uses the same technique with "god," sourcing this time from a woman preacher's sermon. You can follow the story she presents through the emphasis on this single word, beginning quietly and moving steadily toward a histrionic scream. Even though they consist mostly of voices removed from their original context and carefully edited, these odds and ends actually demonstrate rather well one of the things that makes the Books so distinctive: their ear for the musicality of the spoken word. | 2006-03-19T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2006-03-19T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Experimental / Rock | self-released | March 19, 2006 | 7.2 | 425d8ed0-a0fb-4ef2-8536-8784f376d45a | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
Whether it's a reaction against the MP3's pending usurpation of the album format or just simple coincidence,\n ... | Whether it's a reaction against the MP3's pending usurpation of the album format or just simple coincidence,\n ... | The Streets: A Grand Don't Come for Free | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7533-a-grand-dont-come-for-free/ | A Grand Don't Come for Free | Whether it's a reaction against the MP3's pending usurpation of the album format or just simple coincidence, the concept record is enjoying a small comeback at the moment. But perhaps careful not to echo the supposed sins of bloat and misbegotten puffery that characterized the psychedelic and progressive rock eras, many of the artists responsible for the best recent concept records-- Sufjan Stevens' Greetings from Michigan, the Magnetic Fields' i, and The Fiery Furnaces' upcoming Blueberry Boat-- share a willful intimacy that borders on the quaint.
On A Grand Don't Come for Free-- the follow-up to his internationally acclaimed debut, Original Pirate Material-- Mike Skinner audaciously weaves an 11-track narrative over an often bare and inert musical backdrop, one that acts more like a film score than the foundation of a pop record. The plot is pretty bare-bones: boy loses money, boy meets girl, boy loses girl. But by focusing as much on the minutiae of life as on its grand gestures, the impact of Skinner's album-- essentially a musical update of "The Parable of the Lost Coin" peppered with Seinfeld's quotidian anxiety and, eventually, a philosophical examination of Skinner's lifestyle and personal relationships-- transcends its seemingly simple tale.
Cynics and/or detractors could sneer that Skinner's sonics are too slight and that his flow is too rigid-- particularly when compared to "other" hip-hop artists-- without being entirely off the mark: Skinner's awkward, sometimes offbeat delivery is even more charmingly/frustratingly clumsy here than it was on Original Pirate Material, and the record's beats and melodies are subservient to its story. But while those perceived weaknesses may make A Grand a non-starter for those who disliked Skinner's debut, trying to place his square peg into the round holes of either hip-hop or grime/eski seems a mistake. After all, this is a record that starts with its protagonist trying to return a DVD and ends with him chastising himself for improperly washing his jeans. In between, he spends time at an Ibiza burger stand, smokes spliffs on his girlfriend's couch, grumbles about a broken TV, sorts out his epilepsy pills, philosophizes about the nature of friendship, and grumbles about the failures of mobile technology. Clearly, Skinner is on a singular place on the pop landscape.
Echoing his ability to compensate for his own musical weaknesses, Skinner manages to turn his character's personal shortcomings into A Grand's strengths: Communication failures, both technological and human, allow Skinner to deftly examine body language and small gestures. His character's lack of prospects and disconnect with work and family highlight the importance of friendship (especially, perhaps, to young urban adults). His crippling self-doubt (at the record's start, any hiccup in his day is proof that he should just spend it in bed) and need for approval from others makes his solipsistic epiphany all the more heart-wrenching. The album's ultimate contradiction may be that while Skinner's life is seemingly driftless, his understandable attempt to tether it to another human being-- any other human being-- often causes him more harm than good.
Considering that Skinner showed such a gift for post-laddish humor on Original Pirate Material, the most surprising aspect of A Grand may be that, here, he's at his best when he's at his most sentimental. His love and/or relationship songs overflow with melancholy and the inability to express emotion at crucial moments. In short, they're pretty truthful and sometimes painfully familiar. Along with the drug haze of "Blinded by the Lights", A Grand's best moments are a pair of tracks that bookend the story's main boy/girl relationship: The first-date track "Could Well Be In" ("I looked at my watch and realized right then that for three hours we been in conversation/ Before she put her phone down, she switched to silent and we carried on chatting for more than that again") and the dissolution of that same relationship on "Dry Your Eyes", a tongue-tied, heart-in-throat ballet of non-verbal expression.
That Skinner is able to coax so much from a cliché-heavy, 50-minute examination of solipsism and self-pity is a tribute to his ability to reflect and illuminate life's detail. By stressing his paranoia and doubts ("It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them," he blubbers as he loses a domestic dispute), he deftly avoids the melodrama of today's network reality TV. Instead, his approach echoes the faux reality of The Office (which shares a non-ending ending with A Grand) and the me-first neediness of its "star" David Brent (whose final-episode self-actualization echoes Skinner's). Like The Office, Skinner's anthropological humanism typically focuses on either the mundane or disappointing-- and, let's face it, life is most often one or the other--- but he does so with such endearing intimacy and bare honesty that it's easy to give yourself over to the album's narrative on first listen and, perhaps just as importantly, to want to revisit it over and over again. | 2004-05-17T01:00:04.000-04:00 | 2004-05-17T01:00:04.000-04:00 | Rap | Atlantic / Vice | May 17, 2004 | 9.1 | 426b35a1-00e5-4156-b047-abe7f3e90934 | Scott Plagenhoef | https://pitchfork.com/staff/scott-plagenhoef/ | null |
The latest album from the Atlanta metal titans finds them stuck traversing two separate paths: the straightforward wallop of Foo Fighters-style rock records, and the hard, nasty sludge of their older work. Mastodon have jettisoned the overarching concepts of old for a simpler mission: to be a hard rock band making hard rock records. | The latest album from the Atlanta metal titans finds them stuck traversing two separate paths: the straightforward wallop of Foo Fighters-style rock records, and the hard, nasty sludge of their older work. Mastodon have jettisoned the overarching concepts of old for a simpler mission: to be a hard rock band making hard rock records. | Mastodon: Once More 'Round the Sun | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19471-once-more-round-the-sun/ | Once More 'Round the Sun | From the beginning, it was clear that Mastodon were never meant to be just another sludge band. Had they decided to get perpetually stoned and cycle through a minimal sequence of drop-A power chords, the quartet could have gone on to earn Down-level renown based on instrumental ability alone. Instead, they took the transcendent route, using their filthy guitars to conjure terrifying worlds. Remission from 2002 explored the concept of death through the prism of fire, inspiring a four-part sequence of concept albums with one of the most compelling cast of characters in rock history.
There was Leviathan’s terrifying Moby Dick, his arrival heralded by high-pressure riffs that seemed to issue forth from the Mariana trench, and the anti-hero of the earthy Blood Mountain, a direct invocation of American mythologist Joseph Campbell’s concept of “The Hero With a Thousand Faces”—and, of course, there was Crack the Skye’s Rasputin, a historical villain recast as an otherworldly sage. Ambitious as Mastodon’s concepts were, they avoided pretension by grounding their lofty thematics in crunchy, timeless riffage and a cross-pollinated sound combining Black Sabbath’s doom, Electric Wizard’s gloom, and King Crimson’s hyper-literate mad genius. And so, four guys from Atlanta quickly earned the reputations as metal’s smartest, most unstoppable band of barbarians. If anyone could cross over, they could.
So it's easy to understand why, when Mastodon’s elemental epic reached its conclusion in 2009, they were tempted to set aside the prog epics in search of a new aural identity, one that could sublimate the esoteric monoliths of old into an accessible and mature sound. To some, the end product of that venture, 2011’s Mike Elizondo-produced The Hunter, constituted Mastodon’s jumping-the-Megalodon moment: too poppy, too giddy, and downright flimsy when compared to the steely grooves of the past. The prospect of a major metal album overseen by a superproducer like Elizondo struck many as sacrilege, but after a decade of weak-tea rock on the major labels, one couldn’t help but feel thrilled at the prospect of four storytellers re-shaping the world of popular heavy music.
Once More ‘Round the Sun, the band’s latest, tempers the mixtape approach of its predecessor. Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Alice in Chains) was tapped to produce this time, and he brings a comparatively raw sound. Troy Sanders returns with a vastly improved vocal range, one honed in the groove-driven supergroup Killer Be Killed, and Brent Hinds remains the best screamer of the group—though it’s a shame he doesn’t get more opportunities to show it off. Occasionally their tag-team approach matches Mastodon’s lofty standards, as on the title-track, which deserves special mention for that goosebump-raising chord progression in the bridge. But the thin, uninspired harmonies gets taxing by the album’s proggier second half, and on the whole, Once More ’Round the Sun is easily the band’s weakest effort to date.
For two records now, Mastodon have jettisoned the overarching concepts of old for a simpler mission: to be a hard rock band making hard rock records. Clearly, though, they’re not willing to abandon their proggy roots entirely, leaving listeners (as well as themselves) trapped between two modes: the straightforward wallop of Foo Fighters-style rock, and the hard, nasty sludge of old. They never fully commit to either extreme, resulting in a frustratingly liminal listen.
Throughout the majority of the album, those mammoth styles remain in constant collision with each other, often within the same song. Opener “Tread Lightly” sets the template: Mastodon churn out a slithering groove, segue into a good-not-great verse-chorus-verser adorned with some cool flourishes, and then launch headlong into a warped solo from guitarist Brent Hinds and some psychedelic noodling, culminating in a satisfactory raucous conclusion. Frequently, however, the band simply shrug and end with a bridge to nowhere (“Feast Your Eyes“), a lazy fade-out (“Chimes at Midnight”), or worse.
Sudden transitions are certainly not without precedent in Mastodon’s case—they’re one of the reasons why, even a decade later, Leviathan remains so memorable. But where that album used abrupt transitions to lead the listener further down the chute toward the abyss, Once More ‘Round the Sun leaves us with some undecipherable head scratchers, like the "Hey-ho/ Let’s fucking rock and roll" coda provided by Mastodon’s Atlanta punk pals the Coathangers, on the math-y “Aunt Lisa”.
Once More 'Round the Sun is also marked by an overarching aimlessness. Brent Hinds has said that the band pushed for a “stream-of-consciousness” approach on this LP, but too often, the looseness diminishes the possibility of catharsis. “Aunt Lisa” and closer “Diamond in the Witch House”, a collaboration with recurring guest Scott Kelly of Neurosis, pack plenty of momentum, but they waste it on clumsy transitions and Kelly’s directionless conclusion. Lead single "High Road" fares far better, proving the band's alt-rock worthiness in a rare show of discipline combining crunchy guitars, a belt-ready chorus, and a cheekily victorious solo.
“This time things’ll work out just fine,” sings Dailor as he pummels the kit into submission on “The Motherload”, probably the band’s vaguest rocker to date. “We won’t let you slip away.” That's not the kind of promise you’d expect from a band so previously obsessed with white whales and holy grails, but as the Georgia titans continue their slow-but-rightful ascent to the throne of mainstream heavy music—a prospect that necessitates a less caustic approach—it’s understandable they’d want to stick their heads over the fourth wall. As proud rejectors of such restrictions, metal fans are all to quick to conflate heightened accessibility with a deliberate betrayal of their extreme upbringing, and surely the quartet are aware of this.
With all that in mind, it's possible to view Once More 'Round the Sun as a vow to honor their roots, even as they set out in search of broader horizons. So far, however, Mastodon’s paradigms simply don’t mesh the way they should. Evolution takes time, and Mastodon continue to publicly work out their growing pains as they determine which traits best represent the unified sound they’ve been chasing this decade. | 2014-06-25T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2014-06-25T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Reprise | June 25, 2014 | 6.3 | 4275ff2f-0da0-4815-a2e1-1e68d50f1d0c | Zoe Camp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zoe-camp/ | null |
No matter how much effort Dollanganger injects into her morose sixth album, little on here manages to dig past the surface. | No matter how much effort Dollanganger injects into her morose sixth album, little on here manages to dig past the surface. | Nicole Dollanganger: Heart Shaped Bed | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nicole-dollanganger-heart-shaped-bed/ | Heart Shaped Bed | Nicole Dollanganger doesn’t aim to romanticize melancholy, but her music can’t escape it. In 2012, the Canadian singer (born Nicole Bell) uploaded her first record to Tumblr and Bandcamp while recovering from a serious illness. She quickly gained a cult following for her doubly depressive and suggestive-lollipop acoustic songs, which appeared on records with campy titles like Ode to Dawn Wiener: Embarrassing Love Songs. Supposedly, Grimes heard one such song and formed Eerie Organization, a label specifically to release Dollanganger’s fifth record, 2015’s Natural Born Losers. Dollanganger remains the label’s only signee.
On Natural Born Losers, Dollanganger fancied herself a sadistic naif who hunted angels with her father’s rifle, carved a lover’s name into her leg, and suffered endlessly from an assortment of cruelties. It could be an uncomfortable listen, but its explicit depictions of female sexuality subverted the notion that vulgar desire is shameful. Delivered with breathy ennui over hushed, barren instrumentation, Dollanganger made her horrors feel inescapable; violence, she seemed to say, is inherent in romance.
There’s still plenty of guns and blood on her follow-up, Heart Shaped Bed, but Dollanganger has traded backwoods horror for a more chilled romance. She dreams of honeymooning at a seedy Poconos hotel, gives a lap dance in a“backyard full of dying flowers,” and imagines herself as a silent movie starlet. Though there’s less masochism, pleasure remains a means of reclaiming power. On the title track, she asks a lover to help “Make something gross feel romantic/Make me so no one will ever want me again.” But no matter how much effort Dollanganger injects into her morose yearnings, little on Heart Shaped Bed manages to dig past the surface.
It opens with “Uncle,” an incest fantasy inspired by a short story called “I Slept With My Uncle On My Wedding Night” by gothic horror novelist V.C. Andrews (from whom she also borrowed her stage surname). Over a spindly piano melody, Dollanganger submits to this forbidden, and honestly nauseating, romance. Though less disturbing, “Lemonade” follows a similar course. As a housewife whose husband is having an affair, Dollanganger’s narrator decides to quench her own carnal thirst. “Take you upstairs to the swan bed/Let you fuck me hard as you can,” she murmurs impassively over the arrythmia of a lobotomized drum machine. The foggy-dawn-in-the-graveyard production only enhances the sluggishness of the songs, muddling Dollanganger’s lyrics into shapeless murmurs. Even when they’re describing moments of ecstasy, the first five songs on Heart Shaped Bed can’t seem to escape their lethargy.
Side B is immediately more varied and compelling, even if the results are mixed. “Snake” overhauls the gothic monotony with a wash of whispers and static noise. She channels a sadistic bruiser on the ominous “Beautiful & Bad,” promising to punish those who cross her (“And the next time you hit, I hit back/Do you hear me, mother fucker?/Can you dig that?”) before diving into a digital abyss that sounds like a flurry of bats being drowned in a deep fryer. But then “Chapel” returns to the fantasy wedding of the first title track, and the glitchy background sparkles and booming drums prevent Dollanganger’s dreams from hitting home once again.
On Heart Shaped Bed, Dollanganger is too veiled behind the gloom to be accessible. When Heart Shaped Bed closes with “Lacrymaria Olor,” Dollanganger emits a pitch-shifted cry. Even though it is distorted beyond recognition, it is the record’s first real articulation of life. As on Natural Born Losers, Dollanganger’s apathy never wavers, whether she is embodying a self-described “crazy bitch” (“Tammy Faye”) or a devout bride (“Chapel”). Nor should it have to; disaffection can speak wonders for itself. But if the content behind the distance isn’t poignant, the message is moot. | 2018-11-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-11-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Crystal Math / Eerie Organization | November 8, 2018 | 6 | 4280a18a-d577-4656-b25a-c5976a96d92e | Quinn Moreland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/quinn-moreland/ | |
Released through Third Man’s record club, Jack White’s 3xLP live set takes some of his knotty, obtuse songs from this year’s Boarding House Reach and lets them breathe on stage. | Released through Third Man’s record club, Jack White’s 3xLP live set takes some of his knotty, obtuse songs from this year’s Boarding House Reach and lets them breathe on stage. | Jack White: Live at Third Man Records ||| Nashville & Cass Corridor | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jack-white-live-at-third-man-records-ororor-nashville-and-cass-corridor/ | Live at Third Man Records ||| Nashville & Cass Corridor | Earlier this year, Boarding House Reach became Jack White’s third solo album to reach the top of the Billboard 200. Its speedy sequel Live in Nashville ||| Live in Detroit won’t even reach the charts but that’s by design. The triple-record set belongs to an exclusive club, the Vault of Third Man Records, the label White launched in 2001. Live in Nashville ||| Live in Detroit is the 37th release in this limited-edition, subscription-only series, following the celebrated 36th installment—a splashy vinyl-only reissue of Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band’s Trout Mask Replica—by a matter of months.
Servicing Jack White fans with live souvenirs of recent gigs is a fairly common practice for the Third Man Vault, but this particular release sequence is noteworthy. Trout Mask Replica was the first time the Vault dipped its toe into reissuing an artist outside of the Third Man empire and as it was the first vinyl repressing of a celebrated classic in nearly a decade, it brought eyes to a club that was previously the province of White diehards. And Boarding House Reach—with its 37,000 copies sold on vinyl, the largest number of any album released in 2018—underscored just how many diehards there are in the United States and, just as importantly, these figures hint at how White fans embrace the same philosophy as the rocker: They’re fighting to preserve old-fashioned ways.
Boarding House Reach notably found White battling this instinct within himself. He recorded most of the album on his lonesome, letting himself indulge in stiff funk workouts, operatic prog, and obtuse poetry. Live in Nashville ||| Live in Detroit explodes through his self-imposed confines through the simple act of transferring these experiments to stage in collaboration with a new touring band. Not all the players in the current group are new to White’s world—the rhythm section of drummer Carla Azar and bassist Dominic Davis supported him during the tour for 2012’s Blunderbuss, albeit in two different bands—but a fresh lineup energizes White, letting him squall and lurch as he fiddles with old White Stripes tunes and puzzles-out translating his recent fever dreams for an audience.
By definition, the crowds at these two concerts—one held at Third Man Records Nashville at March 16, the other a private show at Third Man Records Detroit on April 18, the day before he played the town’s “pizza arena,” Jack’s winking name for Detroit’s Little Caesar Arena—are very different than Live at Bonnaroo 2014, the last full-band live record he released. That was a set designed to thrill a festival, but the audiences here are subscribers to the Vault, ready to hear White in an intimate setting. To his credit, White decided to skimp on familiar songs—“Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” is the only White Stripes hit to appear on both sets; the much longer Nashville LP finds space for a twisted “Fell in Love With a Girl,” a full-throttle “Hello Operator” and a valedictory “Seven Nation Army”—in favor of finding out what makes his new songs tick.
Especially when heard in contrast to the leaner Stripes tunes, the new material seems ornate. But instead of wrestling the weirder new songs to the ground, White peppers his older tunes with squalls emanating from his throat and guitar. He lurches forward, trying to push himself into the future. Compared to Boarding House Reach, which wore its self-styled weirdness as a badge of honor, these modern overtures are subtle but they’re apparent, particularly as he threads his art-and-R&B inclinations with lashing guitar. While some of the songs still seem a bit ungainly—draped in its Freddie Mercury harmonies, “Over and Over and Over” always collapses underneath its own weight—his generic exercises, such as the wannabe power ballad “Connected by Love,” gain definition through live collaboration.
More than the songs themselves, this instrumental interplay is the reason to listen to these two concerts. Like Boarding House Reach itself, Live in Nashville ||| Live in Detroit already feels like a document of a transitional period for White, a time when he’s pushing and prodding, attempting to redefine his sound without losing his signature. Although it is certainly of primary interest to the devoted, it’s a shame the set is only available to subscribers because it’s a more compelling listen than the studio set and the reason why is simple: Jack White is always at his best when he wrangling with other musicians. | 2018-08-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-08-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Third Man | August 9, 2018 | 6.6 | 42852914-9ec4-4635-a23c-28f45f5f6f1d | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
They're still working with an overriding concept, but this time Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel of Matmos focus on a simple aesthetic limitation: using only synthesizers as input sources. While there's little in the way of outside text to grapple with as a result, the decision opens the door on some gorgeous sonic shifts. | They're still working with an overriding concept, but this time Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel of Matmos focus on a simple aesthetic limitation: using only synthesizers as input sources. While there's little in the way of outside text to grapple with as a result, the decision opens the door on some gorgeous sonic shifts. | Matmos: Supreme Balloon | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11492-supreme-balloon/ | Supreme Balloon | Ever since the IDM scene they emerged from in the late 1990s withered away and died, Matmos have thrived, in the process making a compelling case for themselves as electronic music's resident white coats. Beginning with 2001's A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure, the combined output of Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel (a Pitchfork contributor) so far this decade has seen them work within the form of some pre-established conceptual constraint. A Chance to Cut saw them fashion malformed, sideways techno out of samples culled from the operating theater; 2003's The Civil War was a blissfully uncool meditation on medieval instrumentation and American folk history; and 2006's The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast, their most audacious and satisfying record, was a collection of bespoke sound and thought experiments dedicated to a cast of gay or closeted figures: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Larry Levan, Valerie Solanas, King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
It might be tempting for non-fans to imagine these conceptual parameters as being too intellectually grounded to yield much in the way of, oh, you know, fun, but fans have come to embrace them as part of the deal. That's partly because of Matmos' inherent sense of playfulness, humor, and energy-- they're just as comfortable being buffoons or instigators as they are intellectuals. But it's also because there's something strangely engaging about their transparent working process. If you know the backstory to a particular record, it's impossible to hear it and not entertain questions about how they might work within those bounds. By the simple act of listening, you become a participant.
But unlike The Rose Has Teeth, which might easily have come with an annotated bibliography of assigned supplementary reading, the underpinning idea behind Supreme Balloon revolves around a simple aesthetic limitation. This time around, Schmidt and Daniel stashed away their DAT recorders, microphones, and idle hurdy gurdys and vowed to record using only synthesizers as input sources. While there's comparatively little in the way of outside text to grapple with as a result, the decision opens the door on some gorgeous sonic shifts; spanning everything from standard-issue old-school Moogs, Arps, and Waldorfs to slightly more obscure modular antiques (indeed, if The Rose Has Teeth underlined Schmidt and Daniel's day jobs as accomplished academics, this exposes them as shameless gearsluts), Supreme Balloon is a woozily beautiful-sounding record, as crystalline, gleaming, and full-bodied as vintage Terry Riley.
That throwback spirit is underscored by the album's sequencing. Supreme Balloon comes split into two discernible sides, the former a collection of five "pop" numbers that includes the futzed-up circuitry of opener "Rainbow Flag", the punchy, almost-techno of the sprightly "Polychords", and the carbonated, 8-bit harp glissandos of "Exciter Lamp" (which features, weirdly and wonderfully, a brief passage from "O Canada"). Side two begins with the album's obvious centerpiece; clocking in at over 23 minutes long, the eponymously-titled "Supreme Balloon" is a chasm-wide, slow burning bit of analog psychedelia that conjures up very obvious comparisons to Vangelis and Tangerine Dream in their mid-70s heyday. A bubbling drone piece called "Cloudhopper" acts as the closer, and we're done.
Supreme Balloon features contributions from Keith Fullerton Whitman, Jay Lesser, and Sun Ra Arkestra's Marshall Allen, among others, while Riley himself appears on a bonus track of the iTunes version of the record. In the end, those appearances point to the album's only downside, which is the nagging sense that there's too much straight homage/pastiche and not enough of Matmos' considerable cleverness on display. Ultimately, though, it's a minor quibble; as Matmos surely know, beautiful sounds are their own kind of reward. | 2008-05-08T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2008-05-08T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Experimental | Matador | May 8, 2008 | 7.5 | 4289fcae-b2c1-4476-81c0-afcb82057c77 | Mark Pytlik | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-pytlik/ | null |
On this collection of classic punk covers, La Sera’s Katy Goodman and the Hush Sound’s Greta Morgan defang purposefully messy music with honeyed duets and pleasant arrangements. | On this collection of classic punk covers, La Sera’s Katy Goodman and the Hush Sound’s Greta Morgan defang purposefully messy music with honeyed duets and pleasant arrangements. | Katy Goodman / Greta Morgan: Take It, It’s Yours | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22254-take-it-its-yours/ | Take It, It’s Yours | Whenever Katy Goodman and Greta Morgan hang out, they dream big. After hiking past Los Angeles’ Griffith Observatory one night, the former Vivian Girl and Hush Sound leader, respectively, stayed up for hours discussing astrophysics, science fiction, and the perils of inter-dimensional love. The next morning, Goodman and Morgan—the latter also makes atmospheric pop as Springtime Carnivore—turned that intergalactic brainstorm into 2013’s “Space Time.” It was an intense, Spectorian ode to zero-gravity heartbreak: “While our souls seemed to fit/The planets weren’t aligned,” they sang, “And so we’ll never meet in this space-time.” The song marked their formal debut as Books of Love—but with Goodman hard at work on La Sera’s dreamy Hour of the Dawn and Morgan gearing up to tour with the Hush Sound, they couldn’t stay long (or perhaps, the planets weren’t aligned).
By early 2016, another laid-back jam session ensued in Morgan’s backyard. The women were playing around with harmonies, ad-libbing over their favorite songs. Morgan tore into a Misfits cover—the crude, foreboding “Where Eagles Dare”—and Goodman followed suit, prompting a dramatic transformation. Danzig’s uniform snarl (“I ain't no goddamn son of a bitch”) had blossomed into a honeyed, if foul-mouthed, duet.
Intrigued by this contrast, Goodman and Morgan started looking at other punk songs through a pop prism: a study presented on their new collaborative punk covers album, Take It, It’s Yours. Besides the aforementioned “Where Eagles Dare,” the record includes reinterpretations of Bad Brains’ “Pay to Cum,” the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” and the Replacements’ “Bastards of Young,” among other famous tales from the gutter. Some are gussied up with marimba and vibraphone; others sound straight out of Laurel Canyon circa ’65. All of them are prime listening for a late-summer pool party, and none of them sound punk at all. Yet, by hitching unruly sentiments to pleasant arrangements, Goodman and Morgan gesture towards a wider disconnect between text and subtext. And one could argue that unity by way of disunity—a mentality of *us vs. them—*is what punk’s all about.
Across Take It, It’s Yours, the duo leave the lyrics and broader melodic outlines of its source material alone. They’re more interested in thematic reconfigurations than they are musical re-enactment: how does punk’s visceral, acerbic sentiment manifest when it’s incubated in a loungier space? As it turns out, this palette is largely owed to the project’s cinematic spirit: “We wanted these songs to fit on the soundtrack of a desert-noir mystery film,” Morgan joked in an interview, going on to cite the lauded composer Ennio Morricone as a key influence on the album’s expanded soundscapes. Tarantino should give it a look: between the twangy slide guitar leads on “Pay to Cum” and the Jam’s “In the City,” and the spaghetti-western shuffle grafted onto Gun Club’s “Sex Beat,” he would find plenty to work with.
Goodman and Morgan’s shared penchant for ’60s pop remains a cornerstone of their collaborations, manifested in dulcet point-counterpoints and bubblegum hooks. They’re covering bands that represent the opposite, but these friends have more in common with their heroes than you’d expect. After all, listening to the original versions of the Buzzcock’s “Ever Fallen in Love?” or Blondie’s “Dreaming,” with their impassioned choruses and deft chord progressions, you might never guess they arose from the underbelly. Regardless of scene or background, everyone can appreciate a spirited ode to fallin’ in love with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with, because who hasn’t? The problem is that the duo’s version isn’t exactly spirited: a wan, lazy tango wiped clean of the Buzzcocks’ panic-stricken tempos and manic chatter. Here, Pete Shelley’s frantic lamentations (“We won’t be together much longer/Unless we realize we’re the same”) scan as glum resignations; it’s hard not to yawn as the hand-wringing sentiments drift off on the women’s soaring contraltos.
Their mission proves more successful on the opener, a haunting, slide-heavy take on Wipers’ “Over the Edge” that gracefully exposes the aching heart of the Portlandians’ war against the establishment. “Grow up and be a man,” Morgan croons, Goodman echoing in her stead, “Drop dead right where you stand.” When Greg Sage spat that screed in 1983, he was chastising society. That two women are now the ones casting out this sardonic, hyper-masculine directive only provides further testament to their clever choice to reinterpret not only this song, but similarly carnal numbers like “Where Eagles Dare” and “Sex Beat.”
Take It, It’s Yours may be one of the comfiest cover-sets in recent memory, but beneath its chilled-out façade lurks an identity crisis. On one hand, the duo’s stylistic declawing of Danzig and company offers new ways to revisit and expand upon the decades-old punk canon—in terms of sonic contrast as well as gender and generation gaps. But in taking inherently gnarled, messy songs—ostensibly composed in opposition to the status quo—cleaning them up, and having them play nice, Goodman and Morgan have relinquished the urgent energy that made them feel so impactful to begin with. Think of the record as a well-behaved, happy-hour riot: the rebellion doesn’t amount to much, but at least there’s the escape. | 2016-08-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-08-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Polyvinyl | August 27, 2016 | 6.7 | 428a2bcd-b0b6-41a7-8263-b543f2e787b2 | Zoe Camp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zoe-camp/ | null |
Rufus Wainwright's Mark Ronson-produced seventh album represents the singer's return to more formal song structure, but it also marks a break from the florid, operatic pop that defined his first five albums. | Rufus Wainwright's Mark Ronson-produced seventh album represents the singer's return to more formal song structure, but it also marks a break from the florid, operatic pop that defined his first five albums. | Rufus Wainwright: Out of the Game | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16516-out-of-the-game/ | Out of the Game | Though he's had a handful of releases since 2007, Rufus Wainwright hasn't made the last five years easy on his listeners. Between two live albums (one of which was a double-length tribute to Judy Garland), a startlingly immodest and premature career retrospective (a whopping 19-disc limited-edition box set called House of Rufus), and a collection of ponderous and meandering Shakespeare-influenced piano demos (2010's studio album All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu), the casual fan might be forgiven for wondering if Wainwright had any interest in expanding on his uniquely composed and orchestrated brand of pop.
The answer is, well, sort of. While Out of the Game certainly represents Wainwright's return to more formal song structure, it marks a clean break from the florid and operatic pop that more or less defined his first five albums. Thanks in no small part to the presence of producer Mark Ronson, the bombastic orchestral pieces and the fluttering ariettas have been swapped out with an armory of peeling guitar licks and 1970s-inflected AOR grooves. Anyone with a mildly frayed birth certificate and a passing history with FM radio will get the touchpoints; Steely Dan, 10cc, Wings, ELO. If we were on a boat, you know what kind it'd be.
It's a look that Wainwright wears well, not only because he's always worked partly in the tradition of the very literate and offbeat West Coast 1970s singer-songwriter Randy Newman, but also because the relatively tighter forms of these songs prevent him from indulging in the pomp and grandiosity that often undermined his recordings. Game is certainly no less produced than any of his previous albums, but there's a lightness of touch throughout that nicely offsets its bigger moments. The sound's inherent moldiness also allows the 38-year-old Wainwright to stretch more fully into a pose he's been toying with for a decade; that of the cynical and conflicted older guy increasingly perplexed by a younger generation. Take the lead single, a statement piece that shows him proudly wearing his fusty new threads while simultaneously thumbing his nose at the hipster set: "Look at you, look at you, look at you-- suckers!" he sneers. "Does your mama know what you're doing?"
While it's a welcome update to his sound, Game isn't a straight genre exercise either. In fact, some of the album's best moments come from the songs that edge just outside of the blueprint. Boasting a pipe organ and a wormlike hook, the three minute "Bitter Tears" is an arch pop song that channels Wainwright's inner Falco; the simple "Sometimes You Need" is a surefooted ballad that rests on an acoustic guitar arpeggio before gently layering on the strings; and album closer "Candles" is a slow-burning torch song that's been re-routed through a Scottish pipe band.
When Wainwright falters, it's for familiar reasons, usually some combination of overindulging and oversharing. With its drain-circling piano arpeggios, fussy falsettos, and mildly cringeworthy lyrics ("One day you will come to Montauk/ And you will see your Dad wearing a kimono"), "Montauk" is the worst offender in this regard. Ultimately, though, it seems a bit churlish to ding someone for being uncool on a record celebrating that very fact. Even with a producer like Ronson at the helm, Wainwright will never be cool, or even popular. One thing's clear, though: He doesn't mind if you don't. | 2012-04-18T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2012-04-18T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Polydor / Decca | April 18, 2012 | 6.8 | 42918348-c2e0-4d6c-8e1a-fb57741b0066 | Mark Pytlik | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-pytlik/ | null |
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