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100% Juice opens with the clearest mission statement possible: "There’s too much stupid-ass shit happening right now, it’s time to turn up." From there, it’s business as usual: Despite being almost 40, Juicy J never sounds tired, never phones it in. He’s the consummate pro. | 100% Juice opens with the clearest mission statement possible: "There’s too much stupid-ass shit happening right now, it’s time to turn up." From there, it’s business as usual: Despite being almost 40, Juicy J never sounds tired, never phones it in. He’s the consummate pro. | Juicy J: 100% Juice | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21076-100-juice/ | 100% Juice | We’re often told rap is a young person’s game, but one of the year’s most noteworthy rap albums was helmed by a fifty-year-old. Jay Z is comfortably in his forties; Kanye will be forty in two years. And somehow Juicy J is forty but he seems particularly ageless—there’s When the Smoke Clears-era Three 6 Mafia, there’s Juicy J accepting an Oscar and appearing on his own show on MTV, then there’s 2011 Juicy J, attached to Wiz Khalifa’s Taylor Gang troupe, rapping with Kreayshawn, spawning catchphrases ("you say no to drugs—Juicy J can’t!"), and releasing free music at a furious clip, keeping up with the Lil B's of the world and rappers half his age.
Juicy J didn’t have to come back, but he did, and his career reached a logical conclusion with his third solo record, 2013’s Stay Trippy, which was surprisingly great then, and holds up now. At the time, it wasn’t hard to see some cynicism in Juicy J’s late-career moves—he appeared to be angling for the blog-space that spent so much time covering guys who directly bit his original style (somewhere SpaceGhostPurrp is sighing). But Juicy J is from blue-collar Memphis, all he does is work.
On the heels of the largely forgettable Blue Dream & Lean 2, 100% Juice drops all pretense and opens with the clearest mission statement possible: "There’s too much stupid-ass shit happening right now, it’s time to turn up." From there, it’s business as usual: dense, booming dark beats, hooks that mostly consist of a phrase shouted like a salutation, cataloging of various drugs taken and sexual escapades, then an occasional guest to break it up.
While Juicy J’s re-emergence came on the heels of Lex Luger, Mike WiLL, and Young Chop beats, now he’s playing in a contemporary field consisting of 808 Mafia, Sonny Digital, and Metro Boomin. Juicy J’s greatest asset has been his ability to make his surroundings his own. The same way he ran through those 2011 Lex Luger beats, he slides right into the spacey, trap-noir of 808 Mafia—"Still" runs a piano loop sounding straight out of Halloween as Juicy J sticks the landing on a vivid line like "she got my wife-beater on as a nightgown" and the punchline "you just looking for a quick come-up, I can feel it in the air like Phil Collins." How Juicy J rattles off these lines, in a way not unlike the now-infamous Migos triplet flow, but with an ascending and descending cadence that emphasizes the right syllables, is indicative of how effortless this comes to him. He never sounds tired, never phones it in. He’s the consummate pro.
Juicy J is funnier than most rappers and capable of getting the most ludicrous hooks stuck in your head ("I drop them beans in my lean" will haunt you for days) and he’s the rare rapper who commands respect from the people around him. Boosie’s vicious, borderline-disgusting verse on the "Film" remix is impossible to not run back a dozen times, demonstrating the intensity with which artists approach a Juicy J feature. Same goes for Lil Herb, who pops on "Ain’t No Rapper"; the change of scenery breathes new, vibrant life into the Chicago emcee’s scratchy, traditional gangster tropes. 100% Juice, while not a revelation, is sturdy and solid. A great artist can endlessly remake the same sounds and make it work, and the self-contained good time of 100% Juice adds a few new wrinkles. | 2015-09-25T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2015-09-25T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Rap | self-released | September 25, 2015 | 7.1 | 574a5792-6c64-4385-a3b8-d074028e9d06 | Matthew Ramirez | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ramirez/ | null |
The concept of this album was being discussed long before anyone heard the music: Seven songs, mostly pieced together using ... | The concept of this album was being discussed long before anyone heard the music: Seven songs, mostly pieced together using ... | Matmos: A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5151-a-chance-to-cut-is-a-chance-to-cure/ | A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure | The concept of this album was being discussed long before anyone heard the music: Seven songs, mostly pieced together using sounds recorded during medical procedures. Yes, M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel (the men of Matmos) actually donned surgical masks and brought their DATs into operating rooms to record the sounds of a liposuction, nose jobs, and so on. They then used their computers to shape and process the sounds into actual compositions.
The two made a similar stab at high-concept music-making with their second album, Quasi Objects. I owned that one for a time, but ultimately got rid of it because it seemed too reliant on novelty. On that record, the gimmick-- music based on sounds recorded around their home (e.g. whoopee cushions, etc.)-- smothered the music. The test of any conceptual record is how well it stands on its own, removed from the angle. And A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure is a first-rate work, even if you're unfamiliar with the backstory.
That said, knowing the concept behind this record adds plenty to the enjoyment. Take "For Felix (And All the Rats)", for example. The music alone, which consists of what sounds like Tony Conrad-style detuned string drones and an African thumb piano, is striking and needs no explanation. But when we discover that the track was made using sounds coaxed from an empty rat's cage (Matmos applied a violin bow to the bars to mimic the strings, and then plucked the bars for the thumb piano sound), it adds a rich layer of meaning. As a commentary on innocent life in bondage, it's just as powerful as a photograph of an eyeless monkey in restraints. Both the concept and the execution of "For Felix" are brilliant individually, and taken together, the effect is almost overpowering; it's a terribly sad and heartbreaking piece of music. None of the other tracks feature such a strong conceptual coup, but the rest vary from decent to great.
When Matmos recorded the sound of the instruments used in laser eye surgery, they were smart enough to realize that the buzzing instrumentation bore a marked resemblance to a Roland 303, and hence, we have the wired electro of "L.A.S.I.K." A speech record used to teach enunciation to the hearing-impaired serves as the basis of "Spondee", with the perfect elocution of the therapist used as rhythmic counterpoint to a devastatingly funky house rhythm. There are a few horn stabs interlaced with the clubby groove, but the more punchy accents come from a tool used to clean sinus cavities.
Which illustrates another reason A Chance to Cut is such a success: It uses a fresh sound palette. If you've spent any time listening to the post-Autechre world of IDM, you're probably aware that most programmers aren't getting everything they should out of Reaktor. All those familiar buzzes, squelches and clicks are starting to wear out their welcome; hearing Matmos work magic with material clearly recorded in the field makes me realize what I've been missing. Sounds provide feelings even when they're not playing melodies-- so much of the art in this kind of music is assembling the basic substance.
But if it's melodies you want, Matmos deliver in that department, too. "California Rhinoplasty" takes a bleep from some kind of surgical monitor and pitch-shifts it into something hummable, until the song morphs into an ethereal cloud of gentle chords and cutting machines (no doubt buzzing through some nose cartilage). As with the rest of the record, even if you didn't know the song title or the sources, it would still sound great. | 2001-03-31T01:00:11.000-05:00 | 2001-03-31T01:00:11.000-05:00 | Experimental | Matador | March 31, 2001 | 8.8 | 5753c532-ff99-4065-b4c8-de1e2ca572d2 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
Producer and composer Ryan Lee West continues his practice of turning real-life sketches into ambient techno as ever-shifting moments dip, dive, and refuse to settle. | Producer and composer Ryan Lee West continues his practice of turning real-life sketches into ambient techno as ever-shifting moments dip, dive, and refuse to settle. | Rival Consoles: Articulation | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rival-consoles-articulation/ | Articulation | Producer and composer Ryan Lee West, aka Rival Consoles, makes ambient techno with a volatile soul. His recent records take the same analog approach he developed on 2016’s Night Melody, composing the album using real-life sketches to inform his writing, almost like a self-induced synesthesia. As West explains: “With a pen and paper you can compose and rethink ideas without technology getting in the way.” In this human method of re-attachment, West’s diagrams breathe life into digitized worlds, separating mechanical creation from pure design.
His latest record, Articulation, continues in this practice and rewards complete engagement as ever-shifting moments dip, dive, and refuse to settle. The shaky “Forwardism” begins almost with a dubby industrial soul, but when glimpses of strings shine through, the whole thing becomes slung out, with a marching beat carrying you to catharsis. On the operatic “Vibrations On A String,” melody lines arc in and out of the song at odd angles, and jittering LFOs are cut through by saw-toothed synths into a track that could fill every corner of a symphony hall.
Since his last few records, the production has become knottier and more entangled, layering staccato notes with glimpses of field recordings, flourishes of breakbeats, and sweeping effects. At times, Articulation’s grandiose ideas are deflated by an overwrought execution, particularly on the title track, where the stuttering synths feel out of place with one another. “Still Here” feels slightly insubstantial, revolving around a circular melody which, although pretty, feels vacant. But there are moments of hopeful clarity. The circularity of “Sudden Awareness Of Now,” in contrast, sounds like one epiphany after another; the sustained aquatic notes of “Melodica” carry the weight of Boards of Canada in The Campfire Headphase era. These little ambient gestures are small, but they burn the brightest. The magnetism of Rival Consoles lies in the chaotic warmth created through an intrepid play on rising and falling, conjuring a sense of turmoil that seems to become louder and more definite with each release.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-08-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-08-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Erased Tapes | August 19, 2020 | 7 | 57561cb4-914f-4bc9-8554-4dd7b2a933ef | Esme Bennett | https://pitchfork.com/staff/esme-bennett/ | |
The duo’s collaborative project feels like an interstellar jam session that doesn’t push either of them too far from their comfort zones. | The duo’s collaborative project feels like an interstellar jam session that doesn’t push either of them too far from their comfort zones. | Elzhi / Georgia Anne Muldrow: Zhigeist | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/elzhi-georgia-anne-muldrow-zhigeist/ | Zhigeist | During an interview with Blockstar DVD Magazine in the early 2000s, Elzhi claimed to have cracked the code to the perfect rhyme pattern. The formula he spends the next two-and-a-half minutes breaking down consists of slant rhymes and other technical sleights of hand, and the Detroit rapper makes bending language to his will look as simple as telling someone about your day. This quick peek under the hood illuminates the otherworldly sense of control that endeared Elzhi to J Dilla and the group Slum Village when he joined in 2004 and continues to endear him to bars-first rap fans the world over. In a modern context, he slots neatly next to younger spitters like J.I.D. and fellow Detroiter BabyTron; in their hands, complexity is as seamless as breathing.
A rapper of Elzhi’s skill usually benefits from finding a foil in a similarly minded producer. For his latest project, Zhigeist, that foil is California musician and vocalist Georgia Anne Muldrow. It may seem like a strange combo on paper, but Muldrow herself is no stranger to mixing elements of R&B, jazz, funk, and rap to create everything from full-blown soul epics to beat tapes. In reality, Elzhi and Muldrow are kindred spirits—they both consider themselves artistic aliens, and their styles are mutually fluid and expansive. Zhigeist doesn’t push the duo particularly far from their respective comfort zones, but that’s because both have proven they can thrive just about anywhere. They’re a natural pair, and the low-stakes atmosphere gives Zhigeist the feeling of an interstellar jam session.
Muldrow does an admirable job of curating this vibe. Her beats combine the tight precision of production software and the lush sounds of live instruments without falling into the dry stateliness that plagues most live-band hip-hop. The basslines and piano notes of “Amnesia” and lead single “Strangeland” are Milky Way thick, complimented by hazy synths. In fact, synths and piano echo across nearly every track, giving dimension to the clacking shaker in the background of “Nefertiti” and Muldrow’s ghostly vocals trilling throughout “Already Gone.” “Pros and Cons” starts as a mellow lounge jazz number before a beat switch brings in drums, bass, and sirens suitable for an episode of The Mandalorian. Each beat is its own universe that pops and pulses in unexpected ways, adding as much to the conversation as Elzhi’s words.
As technically formidable as he is, another of Elzhi’s greatest gifts is using those techniques to find the most stylish way to say that he’s nice. Rapping about rap stands the chance of being dull and contrived at its worst, but his vocabulary offers endless possibilities. Take this passage from “Strangeland”: “With the pen, I could turn a name into a number/Shackle you and have you escorted through the right entrance/To be put in a mental prison/So why would I sweat your bars, knowing they coming with a light sentence?” His schemes are as conceptual as they are rhyme-based—there’s as much emphasis on the setups as the punchlines. They range from profound (“They looked for dirt when they dug up my past, but unearthed these diamonds,” he raps on “Amnesia”) to long-winded and tiresome (the Real Hip-Hop screed near the end of “King Shit (Say Word)”). Still, it’s impressive just to hear them unspool, words sliding into place like cards into a deck.
Elzhi’s shit-talking is even more entertaining when he homes in on a specific concept. “Pros and Cons” is a lyrical exercise where he, respectively, crams two verses with as many words that start with “pro” and “con” as possible. “Understanding,” meanwhile, laments the conditions of inner cities and vouches for knowledge of self as the greatest weapon for moving through them. The understanding that Elzhi describes comes as much from embracing the critical race theory currently being phased out of underfunded schools as it does from accepting that sometimes, the Wendy’s 4 for $4 deal is cheaper than a healthier option. Elzhi’s lyrical prowess prospers when it’s attached to his sense of goodwill.
In the album’s description, Elzhi and Muldrow labeled Zhigeist as “a love letter to people of color.” Even when the lyrics aren’t directly addressing Blackness, that love shines through in their respective zeal for the art of creation. Zhigeist isn’t a concept record, per se, but it is propelled by a sense of adventure that feels Afrofuturistic, born from the same stardust as Octavia Butler novels and Rappin’ Max Robot. As a duo, Elzhi and Muldrow have recast themselves as astronomers, using Black musical lineage to reconfigure the cosmos themselves. | 2022-03-15T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-03-15T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Rap | Nature Sounds | March 15, 2022 | 7.2 | 575982bc-0858-4af9-a363-21c426003e6b | Dylan Green | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/ | |
The sister duo takes influence from Fleetwood Mac on a breezy album defined by warm harmonies and easygoing pop melodies. | The sister duo takes influence from Fleetwood Mac on a breezy album defined by warm harmonies and easygoing pop melodies. | Aly & AJ: With Love From | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aly-and-aj-with-love-from/ | With Love From | Aly & AJ occupy a space on the hazy fringe of the pop mainstream. As survivors of the Radio Disney machine of the 2000s, they’re showbiz lifers, entertainers who are eager to try on new fashions and willing to do whatever they need to keep working, whether that means co-opting new sounds or changing their name in hopes of escaping a record contract. They spent a good portion of the early 2010s working as 78Violet, a gambit that didn’t generate any hits but helped them hone their craft. Their growth was evident on 2021’s A Touch of the Beat Gets You Up on Your Feet Gets You Out and Then Into the Sun, their first full-length album in 14 years. Drenched in sounds borrowed from new wave records, A Touch of the Beat showcased a duo who had matured, opting for mellow melodies over effervescent hooks and rhythms. It was deliberately a far cry from the fizzy, processed bubblegum of “Potential Breakup Song,” which gave them their only Top 40 hit in 2007, just as the teen-pop era came to a close.
With its stylized, digitized retro gleam, A Touch of the Beat sounded fresh yet not quite part of the current moment; underneath its shiny veneer, it adhered to tuneful values learned from old soft rock and oldies radio. Aly & AJ’s allegiance to classic tropes only intensifies on With Love From, a brighter, tighter, and punchier record than its predecessor. By every measure, it’s effectively a sequel to A Touch of the Beat. The duo reunites with producer Yves Rothman and several associated songwriters, retaining the mellifluous mood while sharpening the melodies and buttressing the vocal harmonies.
Superficially, these additions could be read as country or folk, particularly when paired with a sighing steel guitar as they are on the ballad “Blue Dress.” Like many Nashville pros, Aly & AJ emphasize craft over confession—there may be deep feelings at the heart of their music but they’re subdued and sculpted into multi-purpose universality—and have an affection for tunes that evoke a desert sunset. Yet these same things are what drove the sun-bleached Southern Californian soft rock of the 1970s. Fleetwood Mac is an obvious touchstone—deep in the fade out of “Baby Lay Your Head Down” is a searing guitar solo that deliberately evokes Lindsey Buckingham—although Aly & AJ convey not an ounce of Stevie Nicks’ supernatural sensuality. They’re a pair of Christine McVies, sweet and steady purveyors of warm, consoling melodies.
Over 40 minutes, With Love From cycles swiftly through pleasingly polished confections. “Open to Something and That Something Is You” surges forward on the duo’s harmonies, a sound that’s at the heart of the intricate web on “With Love From,” an expert evocation of the sparkle of Tango in the Night. Rothman takes pains to make sure Aly & AJ aren’t strict revivalists, helping give the chorus of “Love You This Way” a deep-water, dream-pop shimmer. He muddies eras and smudges styles, dressing Aly & AJ in digital tapestries while keeping the focus on their harmonies and the melodies that tug on the subconscious. Maybe in another decade, these songs could’ve sat comfortably alongside hits by Heart, Elton John, or even Wilson Phillips. But in 2023, they seem like gleaming artifacts from a bygone era.
The sense that Aly & AJ don’t quite inhabit their own era is an ironic byproduct of the professional craft they exhibit on With Love From. A life spent living within the entertainment machine gives the duo crowd-pleasing instincts and no sense of the zeitgeist; it seems purely accidental they’re drawing so heavily from Fleetwood Mac, who also serves as a touchstone for scores of younger, edgier bands today. Raised on classic rock radio and late-era MTV, Aly & AJ are constitutionally driven to deliver a piece of glossy product, the kind of record that would’ve cluttered endcaps in big box stores back in the 2000s. Despite their comfortable distance from the industry machine they came up in, Aly & AJ still gravitate toward brightly-colored, big-hearted pop: an old-fashioned stance that dulls the shine of their new direction. | 2023-03-22T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-03-22T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Aly & AJ Music | March 22, 2023 | 6.2 | 575b5e40-2c81-4cf7-b5a4-e1385353db6e | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
With the Killers, greatness and ridiculousness go hand in hand. Their fifth album contains only a little of both. | With the Killers, greatness and ridiculousness go hand in hand. Their fifth album contains only a little of both. | The Killers: Wonderful Wonderful | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-killers-wonderful-wonderful/ | Wonderful Wonderful | “I feel like I write a lot of solid 6s and 7s,” Brandon Flowers remarked recently. The lead singer of the Las Vegas rock band the Killers is not normally a paragon of humility and perspective, which only makes the accuracy of this recent offhand comment pierce deeper: He’s right. Despite more than a decade of striving, the Killers are inescapably a slightly above-average rock band. The numbers, pitiless as they are, pile against them: Even their Greatest Hits album from 2013 only had five great songs and thirteen other ones.
And yet, they’ve brushed greatness. It might have been an eon ago, but they still wrote “Mr. Brightside” and “All These Things That I’ve Done” and “When You Were Young.” These songs soar over their heads like diamond-encrusted jets at their shows to U2-sized crowds who treat the band like demigods, at least for three or so minutes. With successes like this to haunt you, wouldn’t you spend the rest of your life doubling down on a losing hand too?
They don’t hit their lucky number on Wonderful Wonderful, their fifth studio album. No tens here—sixes and sevens abound, for sure, a few fives, maybe an eight. Even mired among the sixes, though, you can feel the palpable yearning: Every Killers song believes its destiny is to be the festival closer, and that feeling is almost as convincing, on first blush, as encountering a song that actually fits the bill. “Don’t give up on me,” Flowers pleads on their new album, on a song called “Rut.” This is how much Flowers believes in his mission: He will attempt to wring a transcendent anthem from his inability to write them.
If there’s one thing Flowers and his band have internalized about the nature of their greatness, it’s that it requires proximity to ridiculousness. Thus, they start with “ridiculous” and hope that rest takes care of itself somehow, which explains why the first sound on Wonderful Wonderful appears to be a synthesized Ewok horn. The song it announces, the title track, is built on thundering toms and a rumbling octave bassline echoing into the big sky. The stage is appropriately set for an Achtung Baby moment, but Flowers decides, instead of a big chorus, to bleat, “Motherless child, dost thou believe/That thine afflictions have caused us to grieve?” veering right past Achtung Baby U2 straight into “stuck inside a giant malfunctioning mechanical lemon” U2.
Flowers picks himself up and dusts himself, undaunted, for the creamy-smooth falsetto harmonies and Jazzercise pump of “The Man.” The song, like other recent Killers songs, feels ersatz, a gift shop replica of a Vegas recreation of a Daft Punk cover of a Robert Palmer song. But it’s the most fun to be had on Wonderful Wonderful, complete with the sprained-ankle misstep-strut lyric “USDA certified lean,” delivered in that tremulous choirboy tenor of his. It feels, maybe, like a hit, and it’s one of the only moments on Wonderful Wonderful where Flowers bottles his particular brand of fizz before it goes flat.
As always, Flowers brings several gasp-worthy slogans even when he can’t muster classic songs. He has come to understand, deeply, the character he plays in his band and he excels at the sort of winking writing that never spoils the show. On the ballad “Life to Come,” Flowers instructs us to “Drop-kick the shame.” On “Wonderful Wonderful,” he implores us to “Clothesline the shame.” O shame, it bedevils and shrivels us all! By the time he tenderly sings “You got the faith of a child before the world gets in” on “Some Kind of Love,” it feels like the most exalted compliment you could give to someone in Flowers World, and it is only right that he follows this endearment closely with “You got the soul of a truck.” If his heart wasn’t gold, if his ear wasn’t tin, it wouldn’t be the Killers.
There are a couple of unintentionally sad moments on Wonderful Wonderful, moments where the props start to sag, the illusion of grandiosity threatened. On “Out of My Mind,” he announces his plan to “storm the gates of Graceland, to make you realize/I’m back to back with Springsteen,” before adding “You turned and rolled your eyes.” The moment feels uncomfortably like Flowers’ archnemesis, Shame, advancing on enemy territory. This is not why we have the Killers. You don’t go see Rambo to absorb the sobering realities of the military-industrial complex, and you don’t listen to the Killers to feel the sadness and hollowness underlying rock’n’roll dreams. You listen to the Killers for a cleansing blast of unwavering self-belief, to blur the line between oblivion and oblivious.
There are other troubling signs in the eternal bull market of Flowers’ imagination. The band may or may not be breaking apart, member by member. To witness the end of the Killers would be heartbreaking, like watching a foreclosure sign go up on the Magic Kingdom. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so let me break the fourth wall here, Brandon; just you and me here now. As somebody else once said somewhere, don’t stop believing. Please don’t let anything—departing members, declining sales, creeping real world irrelevance, even this middling review—deter you. If you can hold on, you gotta help us out. | 2017-09-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-09-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Island | September 22, 2017 | 6.3 | 575ee734-5273-40cd-aaeb-e4fd429f7d79 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | |
Inspired by the rolling dunes of a Danish national park, the Copenhagen-based musician’s spare, drifting album peeks at unfathomable vastness. | Inspired by the rolling dunes of a Danish national park, the Copenhagen-based musician’s spare, drifting album peeks at unfathomable vastness. | Ingri Høyland: Ode to Stone | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ingri-hoyland-ode-to-stone/ | Ode to Stone | Like a fistful of sand tossed to the wind, Ingri Høyland’s new album Ode to Stone sometimes threatens to disappear entirely. There are seldom more than a few tones playing at any given moment; with the exception of her collaborator Ida Urd’s electric bass, the provenance of her sounds is often unclear. Are they synthesizers? Feedback? Aural illusions caught on tape? They flicker like candlelight, tremble like the last leaves left on a barren branch. For long stretches, nothing happens, except for the decay of two or three notes fading to silence. But Ode to Stone is not minimalist, exactly. That term—any “-ism,” in fact—feels too structural, too knowing, for music this prone to drifting.
This organic, aleatory quality marks a significant shift from Høyland’s last album, There's a Girl Inside My Brain Who Wants to Die, where the Norwegian-born, Copenhagen-based musician grappled with anguish and vulnerability in stark, shadowy electronic pop. Where that album was deeply personal—the first track was called “Ego, Bitch”—Ode to Stone decenters the human. Working in collaboration with Urd, fellow ambient musician Sofie Birch, and visual artist Lea Dulditte Hestelund, Høyland created the album in response to an open call for work themed around Denmark’s national parks. She chose to focus on Husby Klitplantage, a rolling dune landscape fringed by pine forests on the country’s west coast.
Peruse photos of the place while listening to the album, and Ode to Stone’s abstraction snaps into focus. Høyland’s soft, rounded tones mimic the broad sweep of the dunes, the patterns of wind combing across seagrass, the silver of the winter sun on a flat, gray sea. She has spoken of her interest in capturing the “cohesive force” of that coastal wilderness: the interplay of the elements, and the interdependencies that have evolved over eons. To offer a glimpse of deep time in a half hour of music is no easy task, but Ode to Stone does an admirable job, despite its humble, understated materials.
“Forced by its very weight” opens the record with held tones and the faintest shimmer of melody; its languid pace and refusal of anything like a payoff feel like an invitation to slow down and clear one’s thoughts. “Memory in hand” dissolves further into the air, a soft explosion of electronic birdsong. Such forms are too indistinct to follow closely; the mind wanders, not unpleasantly. But should you refocus your attention on the music, you might be surprised at how much variety there is. The effect is akin to the way that a seemingly drab patch of beach, under close examination, begins to reveal a microscopic infinity.
In “Stream of light,” Urd drizzles stark high-necked glissandi into the inky blackness; it’s melancholy, sullen, a little goth—like someone practicing early Cure basslines alone in their bedroom. In “What pressure, what magnetism,” undulating drones hint at Sunn O)))’s seismic doom. But then, with “Our very own sun,” the skies briefly clear: Høyland’s soft, bright multi-tracked vocal harmonies are reminiscent of Ana Roxanne, Low, or even Grouper. Contrasting the chilly drones that have come before, it offers a fleeting glimpse of dream pop, her voice as smooth as driftwood and luminous as beach glass.
The song lasts only two minutes; it’s followed by a penultimate track of sorrowful abstractions and, finally, five minutes of rolling surf and wind scraping against the grill of the mic. But its sweetness and relative warmth are a welcome addition to the album. They are an indicator of human scale against unfathomable vastness: a small, red “You are here” dot on a sun-bleached and wind-battered map whose coordinates might otherwise defy deciphering. | 2023-11-27T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2023-11-27T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Rhizome | November 27, 2023 | 7.4 | 57630594-7468-42fd-8336-89f88979eafb | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
The Bay Area noise-rock quartet's sophomore album shares similarities with the kind of "post-metal" that has often led to critical crossover success, but when they're at their best, Kowloon Walled City don't engage in the indulgences of the bigger names in that field. | The Bay Area noise-rock quartet's sophomore album shares similarities with the kind of "post-metal" that has often led to critical crossover success, but when they're at their best, Kowloon Walled City don't engage in the indulgences of the bigger names in that field. | Kowloon Walled City: Container Ships | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17425-container-ships/ | Container Ships | Kowloon Walled City's Container Ships shares similarities with the kind of "post-metal" that has often led to critical crossover success, mainly recalling early Isis, but when they're at their best, the Bay Area unit don't engage in the indulgences of the bigger names in that field. Most of the songs on their 35-minute sophomore album are lean and compact: Like Canadian noise-rock contemporaries KEN Mode, KWC seem to realize muscular riffs and a little low-end can go a long way. Their straight-ahead character gives the shorter songs a sense of urgency and nervousness, resisting the temptation to meander. Standouts "50s Dad" and "Wrong Side of History", for instance, both show the band can crunch well. ("Dad"'s skronky leads also give it a Deftones-via-AmRep feel.) The more mid-tempo, at times doomy "Beef Cattle" flips the script, emphasizing clean sections amid Scott Evans' drill-sergeant shouts. “Cornerstone” slacks the pace and allows everything to breathe a little, but not with the sacrifice of tension.
These are all interesting variations on a basic template on an album that could've used more of those sorts of shifts. There's a fine line between an established atmosphere and the common complaint that "all the songs sound the same." For Kowloon Walled City, this problem shows up in Ships' two longer songs, the 7-minute title track and 9-minute closer "You Don't Have Cancer". The latter feels like a dragged out version of any given short song on the record-- there's nothing new, or at least fresh enough, to keep the atmosphere convincing. "Cancer", on the other hand, has moments of potential. At the 5:33 mark, for instance, a buildup collapses into a torrent of guitar and dual voices, but it doesn't surge with enough bombast to make it noteworthy. There's potential there, especially with the combatting high-low vocals, a tool that could have been even more of an onslaught then the guitars. In general, Container Ships is heavy, but often doesn't feel heavy enough. As these two longer songs highlight, they don't always make the most effective use of space, which for any band-- no matter how sprawling or how compact-- is crucial.
It's a bit frustrating. Kowloon Walled City are a band with the right stuff, and all the ingredients for a compelling album are present on Container Ships. It's just that they don't make everything come together in the most interesting ways. KWC have shown here and in the past that they've got the tools to be an above-average metal band; next time they need to make a piece of architecture we can all dance around, because considering the elevating demand for shriveling supplies of attention, "ok" is almost worse than "unlistenable." | 2013-01-09T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2013-01-09T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Rock | Brutal Panda | January 9, 2013 | 6.4 | 5765304d-2902-49f9-aec5-bd8c489e1af1 | Andy O'Connor | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-o'connor/ | null |
On these solo piano performances, the musician known for his work with Justin Vernon, Hiss Golden Messenger, and more suggests that peaceful solitude can offer its own high. | On these solo piano performances, the musician known for his work with Justin Vernon, Hiss Golden Messenger, and more suggests that peaceful solitude can offer its own high. | Phil Cook: All These Years | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/phil-cook-all-these-years/ | All These Years | For a keyboardist who predominantly deals in stomping, heartland Americana, Phil Cook has a surprisingly extensive range. Since his early work in the Justin Vernon-helmed DeYarmond Edison and the influential psych-folk project Megafaun—which also featured his brother, the prolific indie producer Brad Cook—he has worked frequently alongside Vernon in bands like Gayngs and with MC Taylor in Hiss Golden Messenger. Beyond those projects, Cook served as musical director on a Blind Boys of Alabama record and even found his way onto a Kanye West album.
Cook’s latest solo album, All These Years, operates in familiar territory, blending elements of folk, gospel, jazz, and blues. This time, however, Cook presents these sounds in the context of intimate solo piano performances. Cook cites a conversation with musical hero Bruce Hornsby as inspiring him to dedicate his 40th year to “relearning” the piano, as Hornsby claims to have done at the same age. Already secluded due to the pandemic, he decided to take on Hornsby’s challenge and reflect on his first and primary musical instrument. He wrote the music during an artist retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains and then recorded the songs in a church in his hometown of Durham, North Carolina.
The follow-up to 2019’s instrumental collection As Far As I Can See is refreshing in its simplicity and nonchalance. Though known to fans as a beacon of outspoken positivity, Cook seldom indulges in his more familiar roots-rock impulses here, focusing instead on the core of his musical and thematic ideologies. By quieting down and highlighting just one element of his sound, Cook draws us closer to the ecstatic love of music and life that drives his art.
Despite the cohesive sound of the record, Cook expresses his wide-ranging influences: a seamless mix of Appalachian folk, blues, ragtime, gospel, jazz, and modern classical minimalism. These styles cohere to suggest something like inner peace, or at least the quiet thrill of brushing shoulders with it. (Fittingly, distant bird chirps, falling rain, and room sounds find their way into the recordings.)
Though mostly untethered to metronomic rhythm, the album is divided between more composed songs and looser improvisations. The early standouts feel more premeditated, though the performances are still pleasantly unrehearsed. “Brothers” is a yearning downtempo jazz ballad with soft but weighty chords emphasizing a lilting melodic structure. “All These Years” is a concise requiem with bright, glinting melodies. Even in the most upbeat moments, like the ragtime runaway solo on “Bicycle Kids,” Cook demonstrates a methodic patience and restraint that feels new to his work.
The second half of the record is more meditative, striving for space and openness, at times recalling the tempered transcendence of Ethiopian jazz pianists such as Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou and Hailu Mergia. The centerpiece “Long Run” builds from a repeated, lone piano note that joins with increasingly emphatic chord changes. Its horizon widens as sustained notes linger and thicken the atmosphere. Similarly, the gorgeous “Alone” spills with nimble and steady trills, triads, and arpeggios gliding into one another with delightful ease.
Where Cook once chased the emotional peaks of Americana jam sessions and singalongs, he now rests in the suspended tension of an emotional film score. In the best of these compositions, he substitutes his potent enthusiasm with quiet joy. Instead of a rallying cry, All These Years is a love letter to a life spent making music, arresting in its intimacy and immediacy. From an artist who once titled an album People Are My Drug, the music on All These Years suggests that peaceful solitude can offer its own high.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-12-08T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-12-08T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Psychic Hotline | December 8, 2021 | 7.2 | 57690775-f7fc-4743-a049-9a29c0cf336c | Drew Litowitz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/drew-litowitz/ | |
On the duo’s debut full-length, DJ Haram’s East Coast club influences meet Moor Mother’s shape-shifting wordplay. It’s a noisy, thrillingly confrontational album. | On the duo’s debut full-length, DJ Haram’s East Coast club influences meet Moor Mother’s shape-shifting wordplay. It’s a noisy, thrillingly confrontational album. | 700 Bliss: Nothing to Declare | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/700-bliss-nothing-to-declare/ | Nothing to Declare | Some of the fiercest political art of the past year can be found in club music. Whether via Loraine James’ cerebral musings, aya’s chaotic outbursts, or Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul’s satirical takedowns, the dancefloor has pulled double weight as a platform to air grievances about governmental neglect, societal dysfunction, and police violence. 700 Bliss, the duo of Philadelphia experimental poet/rapper Moor Mother and New Jersey-born DJ Haram, join the fight on their debut album, marshaling twisted club sounds in a spirited counterattack on the patriarchal powers that be.
The pair’s debut EP, 2018’s Spa 700, stripped East Coast club music down to a gray husk perfectly suited for Moor Mother’s gloomy, off-kilter raps. On Nothing to Declare, DJ Haram challenges Moor Mother with more biting beats, and the rapper responds with a looseness that’s new to her music. Her prophetic delivery retains all its spoken-word eloquence, and she peppers her lyrics with incisive history lessons that highlight America and Europe’s historical pillaging of Black culture. The music is anchored by a mix of frenetic goblet drums and machine percussion, swollen bass, and gristly streaks of noise. There’s hardly a line on the album where the voice isn’t processed or re-pitched, and the result is a hall-of-mirrors twisting of the two musicians’ personalities.
The beginning of Nothing to Declare is the most accessible, if only because other genres are briefly welcomed to the table. They allude to R&B on “Nightflame,” sliding Orion Sun’s chorus in between fast-rolling kicks and Moor Mother’s casual wordplay (“Ima read, newsroom/Pussy good, perfume/Ima teach, classroom/Ima walk, ballroom”). Elsewhere, “Anthology” lays a tapestry of African and Caribbean dance over an aggro techno stomp, and pays tribute to pioneering figure Katherine Dunham, the choreographer and anthropologist who introduced Afro-diasporic influences to American dance.
Two skits section the album into thirds. “Easyjet” is a make-believe bitching session about 700 Bliss that drips with fake sarcasm (“Literally, who wants to hear that shit?”), while “Spirit Airlines” is a big-chested retort that speaks to a level of confrontation seen throughout the record. Throughout, Nothing to Declare hums with an electric paranoia that rustles under the covers like a bedroom monster. Do a double-take and you’ll see it everywhere—in the high-pitched keys of “Discipline” that mimic John Williams’ Jaws theme; the muffled drums of “Sixteen” that blast like gunfire; the slugged-out drum kicks that step like Godzilla over “Bless Grips.”
Over the course of the album, they gradually abandon rigid club beats in favor of noisy abstraction. “More Victories” opens with an abrasive bleating noise that turns the atmosphere claustrophobic, leaving only the tiniest pockets of air for barely decipherable lyrics, pin-prick clicks, and scratchy vocal manipulations. The song represents the album’s noisiest extreme, but other moments are more furious in their political expression. “Candace Parker,” named after the WNBA great and featuring Palestinian artist Muqata’a, is extremely timely, given a recent Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting that Roe v. Wade might soon be overturned. “They rape our mothers while y’all just record,” Moor Mother grunts as grainy breakbeats swarm around her energizing scorn. Meanwhile, “Capitol” summons uneasy memories of the January 6th Capitol attack. Over a sparse barrage of sirens that keeps the listener in a perpetual state of alert, Moor Mother performs the last verse with a preacher’s cadence, recounting the event in the national context as “a call for arms against itself/In the selling of humanity, one war at a time.”
In order to fit her indignant raps into DJ Haram’s blasted, bass-heavy productions, Moor Mother has written with more impactful concision than ever. The best poetry on the record comes on “Crown,” in which one cutting line speaks to the damaging effect of political inaction: “A silence is killing us.” Perhaps this is where that air of paranoia comes from; their response is a chilling noise, a din meant to re-balance the current power dynamics of the world. Further in the same song, Moor Mother scratches off a hidden second part of the album’s title: “I have nothing to claim/But everything to break.” What’s left behind is a righteous wreckage, from which a new world is waiting to emerge. | 2022-06-06T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-06-06T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rap / Electronic | Hyperdub | June 6, 2022 | 8.3 | 576ed492-6bfd-4544-85a6-c387d8458877 | Nathan Evans | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nathan-evans/ | |
Ishmael Butler assembles a crew of interstellar rap voyagers on a brief, echoey mixtape you might expect to find floating amid the space debris of an Afrofuturist universe. | Ishmael Butler assembles a crew of interstellar rap voyagers on a brief, echoey mixtape you might expect to find floating amid the space debris of an Afrofuturist universe. | Shabazz Palaces: Exotic Birds of Prey | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/shabazz-palaces-exotic-birds-of-prey/ | Exotic Birds of Prey | As early as their self-titled 2009 EP, and plenty times since, Shabazz Palaces’ songs have orbited the voice of Ishmael Butler, a smooth, droning instrument in a sea of organic and digital rhythms. It doesn’t matter whether he’s delivering old-school flexes or embodying an astral traveler; Butler’s voice is Shabazz’s center of gravity. Starting from the Quazarz double album in 2017, his raps became more shamanistic, sinking deeper into increasingly airy and synthetic beats. On last year’s Robed in Rareness, reverb and creative mixing made it seem like Butler was phasing through dimensions any time he opened his mouth. His latest record, Exotic Birds of Prey, amplifies that feeling—it’s a mixtape you might expect to find floating amid the space debris of an Afrofuturist universe akin to Saul Williams’ sci-fi musical Neptune Frost.
Butler’s presence is still grounding, but on Exotic Birds of Prey his performances are noticeably more weightless. No longer tethered by the mbira and percussion of frequent collaborator Tendai Maraire—who left sometime around 2020’s The Don of Diamond Dreams—he sounds permanently disembodied. He’s whispering in your ear from another plane, when he’s speaking at all. On “Exotic BOP,” his verse and ad-libs waft like smoke around drums, synthetic chirps, and the more tactile melodies of guest Purple Tape Nate. Butler raps the least he ever has on a Shabazz project; he lets his electro-funk trips breathe, keeping the bars to a minimum and ceding space to guests.
The spacey vibe remains intact even as Butler drifts away. His only contribution to lead single “Angela” is its rolling drum break and skittering synth patterns, which back up Dust Moth singer Irene Barber and longtime collaborator Stas Thee Boss as they unspool thoughts on urgency and Black power, respectively. The only song that doesn’t achieve lift-off is “Well Known Nobody,” a one-minute burst of spiky electric guitar and distortion; it sticks out on a tape otherwise committed to seamless blending. Still, Birds is an elegant and subtle display of Shabazz’s increasingly interstellar range, Butler’s raps providing flavor and body to the rest of the ensemble.
Like its predecessor Robed in Rareness, Exotic Birds of Prey is a more free-wheeling offering from Shabazz. It feels more curatorial than any prior Shabazz project, too, a position seemingly confirmed by penultimate track “Synth Dirt.” Here, Butler—voice still reverberating from the shadows—casts himself as a DJ introducing a grip of artists on a broadcast that could be beaming from his home in Seattle, or from the Crab Nebula. As the geometric tones of closer “Take Me to Your Leader” blip and fold into themselves, it becomes clear that, short as it is, Exotic Birds of Prey still has the loose and expansive feel of a radio show. There’s no easier way to visit outer space. | 2024-04-02T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2024-04-02T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Sub Pop | April 2, 2024 | 7.1 | 576f09db-ff7f-4a0f-9034-8194e13a57c8 | Dylan Green | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/ | |
"Shenzhou", aside from being the name of the Chinese manned-spaceflight vehicles, means "magic vessel", and I can't imagine a ... | "Shenzhou", aside from being the name of the Chinese manned-spaceflight vehicles, means "magic vessel", and I can't imagine a ... | Biosphere: Shenzhou | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/709-shenzhou/ | Shenzhou | "Shenzhou", aside from being the name of the Chinese manned-spaceflight vehicles, means "magic vessel", and I can't imagine a more apt description for Geir Jenssen's latest excursion into ambient deep listening. After following an Aphexian trajectory with his releases on Apollo, the ambient sublabel of Belgium's R&S; Records, Jenssen veered from the padded sci-fi-inspired techno of Microgravity and Patashnik with 1997's Substrata, a genre-defining exploration of drifting soundscapes. Substrata remains for many the album that perfectly expresses the serenity and intensity of Arctic wildernesses, a landscape Jenssen knows intimately, having spent much of his life in the Norwegian Arctic Circle.
In 2000, Jenssen nearly eclipsed the success of Substrata with Cirque, a frequently frosty submerging of excerpted conversations and found environmental sounds that rivals Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project in its rumbling, gauzy beauty. Jenssen again relies on found sound as source material for Shenzhou, but this time, the found sound is old vinyl recordings of the orchestral works of French Impressionist composer and ambient precursor, Claude Debussy. Jenssen lifts fragments of these scratched records in a similar manner as he did for Cirque's "Black Lamb Grey Falcon" and "Iberia Eterea".
The ten tracks (out of the dozen on the album) that follow this model all begin as a barely audible hum, like a small electrical transformer, out of which the dust-dappled loops of Debussy's woodwind, brass, and strings emerge, condense, and fade out into pink noise rustles. Unlike Steve Reich's phase pieces or Brian Eno's Discreet Music, though, Jenssen doesn't set his loops against each other to produce juxtapositions and piquant dissonance; he uses them to describe imagined terrain, at first glance monotonously flat and barren, but on concentration, replete with minute detailing. The overall effect of these pieces is a sense of immensity. The orchestral loops sound distant, abandoned in a vast wilderness, and strenuously battling against Arctic winds. Jenssen sets the listener down in this wilderness as an aloof observer, a witness to the music's futile struggles against entropic forces.
The two tracks not derived from Debussy share the same hypnotic aesthetic. The brief interlude "Bose-Einstein Condension" is a loop of piano chords lolloping in search of coherence, while "Gravity Assist" is a longer voyage into woofer-quaking low-frequency manipulation, bell-like drones, and contrails of subdued noise. I can't help but feel that these tracks fit awkwardly and break up the conceptual flow of the album. This, however, is a minor quibble given the power of this music. Shenzhou is unquestionably a magic vessel, but one that reveals its enchantment only to those who pay close attention. | 2002-11-13T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2002-11-13T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Experimental | Touch | November 13, 2002 | 7.8 | 57743a8a-a5f5-46f4-9613-edd71ed296b7 | Paul Cooper | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-cooper/ | null |
Even as she surveys heartbreak and self-doubt, Jenn Wasner’s second solo album sounds confident. Textural layers of guitar and synth offer depth, yet allow her voice to lead the way. | Even as she surveys heartbreak and self-doubt, Jenn Wasner’s second solo album sounds confident. Textural layers of guitar and synth offer depth, yet allow her voice to lead the way. | Flock of Dimes: Head of Roses | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/flock-of-dimes-head-of-roses/ | Head of Roses | At the start of the pandemic, Jenn Wasner found herself contending with a solitude she hadn’t expected. The self-described workaholic had long participated in the capitalistic churn that equates productivity with worth: In the years since her debut album as Flock of Dimes, 2016’s If You See Me, Say Yes, she’d recorded and released two albums with her band Wye Oak; toured as part of Bon Iver; and written a solo EP, 2020’s Like So Much Desire, among other pursuits.
Absent any tour or project to distract her, and still processing a recent heartbreak, her choices felt hollow. The end of her most recent relationship had set off questions she’d begun asking on Like So Much Desire, but in the solitary echo chamber of pandemic life, they infiltrated her larger sense of self. Doubts about who she’d let herself become, and the failure of that experiment, crowded the empty space.
But work, she knew; work, she could do. Wasner threw herself into writing, a process that came quickly over the spring months of 2020 and exposed her. Where once her ripping guitar solos signified her more vulnerable moments, her new album Head of Roses lets her voice lead the charge, each song refracting its light differently. Her vocals suffuse opening track “2 Heads,” a prismizer effect ballooning their resonance, while on “One More Hour,” she oscillates between reverb’d and dry vocals, claiming both spaces instead of relegating herself to just one.
Across the album, Wasner traces the uncertainty that results from letting someone else define you. “When you dressed me in a different skin/I forgot who I am,” she sings on the electric slow burn “Lightning.” However lost she may feel, her voice serves as a guide. Her vocal sustain resounds long and luxurious, while Adam Schatz’s (Landlady) sax conjures heat lightning. But that same anxiety—about the part she played in her own near-disintegration—returns on the bright, synth-pop track “Two,” turning almost caustic. “And we’re all just wearing bodies, like a costume, till we die,” she sings in her head voice.
What the relationship asked of her, and the ways in which she answered, comes across most clearly on the country-leaning “Awake for the Sunrise.” An acoustic guitar blends with the charred oak grain of her voice, opening stark space for the confession that follows: “I never thought I was a terrible liar/But I am when I need it most/Making a sorry attempt at compersion/With a hand halfway down my throat.” Wasner references the polyamorous trait of compersion, or the feeling of joy for a partner’s relationship with another—but admits it’s beyond her scope. As she sings on “Lightning,” though she envies the wild, dazzling freedom of electricity, it isn’t in her to live like that.
If Wasner needed to be on her own to make If You See Me, her new album benefits from conversation; she recorded it with Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn at Betty’s in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, close to her Durham home. Sanborn’s production clears space for her voice, building each song around it rather than contorting it to fit. He makes Wasner sound fully at home.
Out of that ease, Wasner brings the guitar-centered indie rock of early Wye Oak alongside textural layers and deep synth bass reminiscent of Sylvan Esso; the electro-pop shine of her previous Flock of Dimes work alongside the bass- and synth-fueled sound that defined Wye Oak’s later music; and something new. “Hard Way” was meant to be a demo, something Wasner scaffolded with Sanborn before inviting more players to flesh it out, but the first version was so “perfectly odd” that they kept it. Against pacing synths, her voice fills the frame, searching and sorrowful, an instrument unto itself.
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. | 2021-04-05T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-04-05T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sub Pop | April 5, 2021 | 7.5 | 57778a6c-8fb5-46d8-8c59-d937fd00ec74 | Amanda Wicks | https://pitchfork.com/staff/amanda-wicks/ | |
Harrison Patrick Smith is the poster boy for a small New York club scene, but his sleazy, party-hard songwriting is not as transgressive as he would like you to believe. | Harrison Patrick Smith is the poster boy for a small New York club scene, but his sleazy, party-hard songwriting is not as transgressive as he would like you to believe. | The Dare: The Sex EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-dare-the-sex-ep/ | The Sex EP | Maybe the reason that indie sleaze is back is that it allows you to be really, unashamedly horny. It makes sense that following the prudish detente of the 2010s, there is nostalgia for the era of Terry Richardson sexploitation, smoking a cigarette in your G-Star Raws next to a dumpster, Uffie rapping about popping the glock in a British accent. Indie sleaze brings us full circle to decadence, to licentiousness, to the come-hither gaze of American Apparel ads of yore that seems to say: Let’s fuck.
It is not back for those who were into it the first time, but instead for young people in their twenties—a generation of people who are not really millennials but also not really zoomers, who remember 9/11, just barely, were preteens for the recession, grew up reblogging nose-bleed photos on Tumblr and smoking weed to Odd Future, and then graduated from college between the caution-filled eras of #MeToo and the pandemic. Some of them now party in a crook between East Broadway and Canal, a slice of Chinatown called Dimes Square, a scene that is exhaustingly compared to the Williamsburg of the early aughts, despite the lack of any sort of legitimately serious musical output. It is full of kids cosplaying as pre-existing archetypes from a sexier and simpler time, who wish they were in TV on the Radio but are not. Kids like Harrison Patrick Smith, a 27-year-old musician who fashions himself as indie sleaze incarnate and performs incredibly horny electronic pop as the Dare.
He’s become very popular, very quickly. A few years ago, he was at the helm of the winsome indie rock band Turtlenecked. In the past year, following the release of his debut single “Girls,” he’s quickly ascended to the ranks of guy who DJs Hedi Slimane’s parties, sits front row at Gucci, eats at “every single Keith McNally restaurant, twice,” and after a major bidding war ends up on Republic (home of the Weeknd and Taylor Swift). You cannot read a profile of him that does not compare him to someone like James Murphy or the members of the Rapture. When Smith screams over a drum machine and tells you that he likes “girls who like to fuck” and “girls who got so much hair on they ass, it clogs the drain,” he is doing LCD Soundsystem doing Justice doing Peaches doing Liquid Liquid doing Lizzy Mercier Descloux. All of it is an ouroboros, all of it is connected.
But Smith is not quite the provocateur that the hype would lead you to believe. His debut EP Sex is not a particularly erotic collection of songs, nor is it very cool; it would even be generous to call the four tracks “silly.” It’s less indebted to the DFA maxi single than to the early-2010s megahits that came out when Smith was a teen, like uncle-nephew duo LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem,” or like Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop,” which opens with “What up? I got a big cock.” Indeed, the title track, “Sex,” which is, of course, about sex, features Smith saying things like “Sex! I think I had it once/I think I had a bunch,” over the strident electrical charge of a synthesized click track. The song moves at a breakneck pace, kind of alluring the first time you play it: You might imagine a strobe light chopping up your face as you straddle a stranger in a nightclub bathroom. But play it again, and again, and again, and it kind of sounds like the Right Said Fred song, “I’m Too Sexy,” or maybe an Italian guy from Rimini writing about fornication with Google Translate. In other words: You would not want to have sex to this.
“Good Time” has Smith doing his best “Losing My Edge” impression. The synthesizers sound like someone revving the engine of a motorcycle and blowing through a red light as he yelps, screams, throttles his voice into a falsetto. It all hinges on Smith saying things like, “I’m in the city while you’re online!” and “Hope my set sounds good outside,” feigning some kind of exclusivity. The lyrics seem to suggest: If you listen to this song by the Dare, you will be cool, like me—unlike people who do not listen to the Dare, who are uncool. It is a formulation that looks better on a T-shirt than in a song, where its snarkiness is a little exhausting. It’s trying so hard to not try hard.
Then there is “Girls,” which is offensive, parodically and purposefully misogynistic, but also funny and good. “I like girls with no buns/Girls that’s mean just for fun,” Smith almost-rhymes. It’s an earworm, something to shout at someone when they shove a key under your nose or while you push your tiny sunglasses into your face. But it is not, as some people will lead you to believe, a song that will save rock music in New York. Because Harrison Patrick Smith’s ridiculous horny music is not genius or innovative like James Murphy’s early interventions as LCD Soundsystem. Instead, Smith is only prodigious at one thing, something that took Murphy years to figure out: churning subcultural credo into mainstream publicity, which if you think about it, is not very sexy. | 2023-05-22T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-05-22T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Electronic | Republic | May 22, 2023 | 5.8 | 57798097-1f0d-476c-ae66-e4a5dd4cccf6 | Sophie Kemp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sophie-kemp/ | |
After more than a decade's worth of critical and public relations missteps, the world's biggest-- and at one time, best-- metal band tries to recapture its former glory on this Rick Rubin-produced album. In the real world, it's called a midlife crisis. | After more than a decade's worth of critical and public relations missteps, the world's biggest-- and at one time, best-- metal band tries to recapture its former glory on this Rick Rubin-produced album. In the real world, it's called a midlife crisis. | Metallica: Death Magnetic | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12180-death-magnetic/ | Death Magnetic | Metallica became the world's biggest metal band by doing everything right. Then they went and did everything wrong. Their first four records were classic permutations of 1980s thrash: The ferociously raw Kill 'Em All, the increasingly epic Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, and the toweringly technical ...And Justice for All. Until the latter, Metallica refused to make an MTV video. Self-dubbed "Alcoholica", the band cultivated a blue-collar image. However, on 1991's eponymous album (aka "The Black Album"), they went mainstream with radio-friendly ballads, losing old fans but gaining millions of new ones.
Since then, Metallica have been a comedy of errors. Load and ReLoad wallowed in hard rock dreck. The front of Garage Inc., a covers collection, found Metallica awkwardly costumed as auto mechanics to appear as the everymen they once were. S&M was an overwrought collaboration with a symphony. The band sued Napster, earning the scorn of fans. 2003's St. Anger was laughably bad. The documentary film Some Kind of Monster luridly aired the band's dirty laundry. Singer/guitarist James Hetfield and bassist Robert Trujillo were recently photographed shopping at Armani. Such antics have kept Metallica in the headlines, and not necessarily to their benefit. The anticipation for Death Magnetic has split along two lines: hope for a return to form, and schadenfreude.
The album fulfills neither expectation. It tries mightily to recapture Metallica's former glory, but only does so partially. Producer Rick Rubin told the band to write the unwritten half of Master of Puppets, a ludicrous proposition. But his intent was well-meaning: get rich, fortysomething rockers to recall themselves as hungry, twentysomething metallers. In the real world, this is called a midlife crisis. One can emulate one's younger self, but one can't unlearn one's years.
So it is with Death Magnetic. Self-plagiarization abounds. "That Was Just Your Life" and "Cyanide" harken back to "Blackened" from ...And Justice for All. "The Day That Never Comes" has the clean tones of "Fade to Black" and the machine gun riff from "One". In the 1980s, Metallica wrote hundreds of riffs without repeating themselves. To hear them so bereft of new ideas is disheartening. So is the fact that Load, ReLoad, and St. Anger are indelibly part of their bloodstream. "The End of the Line" and "The Judas Kiss" have bland hard rock riffs à la Load and ReLoad. Like most sequels, the turgid "The Unforgiven III" need not have been made. "Cyanide" tapes a Stone Temple Pilots riff to a disastrous stop-start section straight out of St. Anger. Metallica aren't good at being bluesy or unpredictable. They're best at heavy metal thunder, and they've forgotten that.
Rubin's bone-dry production negates this thunder, but it evokes Metallica's garage band days. These are their most energetic performances in ages. Guitarist Kirk Hammett hasn't ever sounded this vital. While he languished solo-less in St. Anger, he's all over Death Magnetic with fiery leads. They often reprise his old ones, but their wah-fueled intensity is a welcome antidote to their underlying riffs. Hetfield has mostly dropped his bluesy yowl in favor of singing in tune. Trujillo adds solid, supportive low end. Drummer Lars Ulrich is the one weak link. He often resorts to simple oompah beats when complementary or counter-rhythms are necessary. But despite his lack of creativity, he plays the hell out of his drums, aided by a harsh, crunchy sound that renders his cymbals incredibly sibilant.
All the energy in the world can't save these songs, however. They're each about two minutes too long. Most top seven minutes in length; the instrumental "Suicide & Redemption" lasts 10 minutes but feels interminable. Prime Metallica had long songs, but they ebbed and flowed, skillfully playing with layers. These songs, in contrast, merely string together riffs. Clean tones invade "The End of the Line" without warning; many songs have intros that are apropos of nothing. Death Magnetic is essentially St. Anger with better riffs.
The band may be more mentally stable now, but it's irreparably damaged. Years of simplistic hard rock have destroyed its sense of speed. Even the thrashy "My Apocalypse" feels clunky. Hetfield's lyrics are toilet-grade; his younger self, while brash, would never have written tripe like "Mangled flesh, snapping spines/ Dripping bloody valentine/ Shattered face, spitting glass." Ever since The Black Album, his lyrics have been embarrassingly personal. Once Metallica became vulnerable, they never recovered. Death Magnetic is a meditation on death-- but so is every other Metallica record. The best ones spit in the face of death; this album instead finds aging men trying to reclaim their youth. | 2008-09-09T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2008-09-09T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Metal | Warner Bros. | September 9, 2008 | 4.9 | 577ba07a-0cf0-4d35-93fd-fe93cc1cdc3f | Cosmo Lee | https://pitchfork.com/staff/cosmo-lee/ | null |
The first four full-lengths from the hugely influential noise-rock band have been remastered by Steve Albini and Bob Weston and reissued. | The first four full-lengths from the hugely influential noise-rock band have been remastered by Steve Albini and Bob Weston and reissued. | The Jesus Lizard: Head [Deluxe Edition] / Goat [Deluxe Edition] / Liar [Deluxe Edition] / Down [Deluxe Edition] | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13636-head-goat-liar-down/ | Head [Deluxe Edition] / Goat [Deluxe Edition] / Liar [Deluxe Edition] / Down [Deluxe Edition] | While not unwelcome, this batch of Jesus Lizard reissues come as a surprise. After all, these albums were still available and in print. In terms of needing remastering, the CD wasn't exactly a young or uncharted medium at the time, and the guy recording them, Steve Albini, is generally regarded to know what he's doing behind the boards. I'm starting to think that the reissue craze is less about keeping music on the shelves (which is arguably not an issue these days) and more about reminding overwhelmed listeners that records even exist. If someone were to tell me something sounded wrong with the old versions, I would have recommended that the listener locate their volume knob and turn it clockwise.
But then again...the new digipacs and their fold-out inserts for these records look great, and the remastering job was done by Bob Weston (Shellac) and Albini himself. The bonus tracks included are sparse, but are carefully chosen from singles, soundtracks, and live performances. They're separated by a track of silence from the rest of the record, but their additions make sense in the context of each album. Without analyzing each song's waveform, the drums seem a little louder now (rarely if ever a bad thing), and certain moments may pop out a little more, like the atonal feedback in "Seasick" that sounds like it may swallow your whole head when heard through headphones. If these reissues needed to be done, then they did them right, and if people really need reminding, so be it: At their best, the Jesus Lizard created some of the best rock records of the 1990s.
Head lacks some the high points of later records, save for the essential "Killer McHann", but it shows the pieces in place from the beginning-- especially the fearsome rhythm section that asserts itself from the opening moments of "One Evening" and throughout. "If You Had Lips" also marks the beginning of the satanic rodeo rhythm that would suit them so well throughout their career, often shaking up the second sides of their later albums (see Goat's "South Mouth" or Liar’s "Rope"). The CD reissue includes the Pure EP (as the 1992 CD did), as well as the "Chrome" single and live versions of "Bloody Mary" and "Killer McHann". Guitarist Duane Denison himself calls the album transitional in the new liner notes, and while he's being a little modest, Head can't help but sound a bit thin compared to what would come afterward.
Enter Goat, at a lean and ferocious nine tracks. Singer David Yow is his usually expressive self here: His vocals are tense, funny, and occasionally terrifying, from bullhorn-ready hollering to howls of anguish if the song calls for it. Sometimes he's just making muffled slurping noises, often multi-tracked and through both ears, like some supernatural character in a David Lynch film. Yet it's funny to think that despite how depraved the lyrics may have been (see "Lady Shoes" from this album, among many, many others), Yow's most enduring epithet may be calling someone a "mouth breather." It might have something to do with the track itself, with its elastic, repetitive riff snapping back and forth under Yow's wails and backhanded insults. The appended live version of "Seasick" from 1992 has crowd members audibly calling out for the song moments before it's played, showing how their reputation had been solidified-- and while one song here is called "Seasick", the whole record is unpredictable and queasy. Yow and Denison steal the show here somewhat, but the vicious bob of the rhythm section on "Monkey Trick" goes way beyond a memorable moment; it's a reason to get up in the morning.
Goat and Liar show the band at the obvious peak of their powers. It's splitting hairs to call one record that much better than the other, though Liar's second half is a little slower and moodier than the tour-de-force of the first side. (In fairness, what record wouldn't start to go downhill after something like "Puss"?) The start of "Boilermaker" is like coming out of a blackout to find yourself in the middle of a bar fight. It's weird to hear a moment of nothing but the rhythm section for even a few seconds on the track's bridge-- for most of side one, the band are become one singular, heaving thing; the band is completely in step with one another as Yow is free to bellow, wail and hiss over it all.
You can't overestimate Duane Denison's contribution to these records. Few guitarists in rock this side of Thurston Moore or Gang of Four's Andy Gill did as much to tear down and reimagine the form. His sound on these records is jagged, minimal, and instantly recognizable. It's hard to pick just one example, but listen to "Puss" from Liar, as he uses a wah pedal to make the guitar sound like a hive of angry wasps, and then finds a glassy, piano-like tone in the bridge to let out arpeggios over a rhythm ready for a strip club. Even outside of his tone and feel, the balance he struck between blues-inspired riffs, punk catharsis, and general dissonance is nearly without peer.
Down is a little less celebrated than the earlier records-- I don't know how many fans were looking to the Jesus Lizard for subtlety and nuance, but Down shows they were ready for it as musicians. Not to say it isn't heavy, from the swaggering descending riff of "Fly on the Wall" to oddly melodic bruisers like "Destroy Before Reading" and "American BB". But if the jazzy leanings of tracks like "The Associate" don't throw you, then Yow's earnest croon on "Elegy" indicates they were ready to mature-- and honestly, as they lost very little of their tempo or edge, they were doing it in all the right ways here.
When people continue to mention Chicago in the early 90s or Touch and Go Records as a brand, they often start with these records. It's worth noting band members hail from Texas-- once home to Roky Erickson, Willie Nelson, and Butthole Surfers-- and Austin is a great place to nurture an individualist streak. Moreover, by the time the Jesus Lizard would release Down, their fourth album, Touch and Go and its subsidiaries were already becoming too diverse a label to be summed up by a handle like "pigfuck" or any other name lobbed by journalists at bands like the Jesus Lizard, Shellac, Killdozer, or the many others from that decade. And yet, whenever I try to think of one representative sound for that small pocket of gnashing geniuses, it's the sound of drummer Mac McNeilly and bassist David Sims locking in on the band's heavy, inimitable groove that they perfected over these four records.
For all the breathless praise, the Jesus Lizard weren't necessarily the loudest or the most twisted band out there, or had the singer that exposed himself the most often. (Well, maybe the last one is true.) And that's not why we still talk about these records. Their aggression was taut, minimal, and artful. Even amidst the controlled chaos of "Boilermaker", they hold back for a delicious blink-and-you'll-miss-it full-band rest in the song's final moments, one of countless examples where they asserted themselves as musicians-- not a sideshow-- in all these tracks.
The band thrived in the underground of the 90s, and from the freedom of Touch and Go in particular; under pressure from no one but themselves, the Jesus Lizard raised a bar that few bands have reached since (and, for whatever reason, one they struggled to reach themselves after migrating to Capitol Records after Down). They were raucous and heavy without the rigidity of later hardcore or the meat-headedness of metal; they played art-rock that actually rocked. There's no shortage of good stories about David Yow's stage behavior, which you can swap with those who were really there or just read them from the new liner notes. But there are so many more reasons to pick up these records-- including Yow's talent as a singer and lyricist. Rarely does a band have each member adding something essential to such a united, ferocious whole. (Zeppelin gets mentioned more than once in the new liners; it's not much of a stretch.) It's why after a decade, they're welcome back. | 2009-10-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2009-10-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | null | October 27, 2009 | 8.1 | 577c7d4e-69d0-4f90-a063-4c68a8ccec30 | Jason Crock | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jason-crock/ | null |
The Dominican producer pulls inspiration from a South Dakota Indian Reservation. | The Dominican producer pulls inspiration from a South Dakota Indian Reservation. | Kelman Duran: 13th Month | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kelman-duran-13th-month/ | 13th Month | The first time the Dominican producer Kelman Duran was asked to DJ a party, he opened his set with “Suicidal Thoughts,” the harrowing closer from Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die wherein Biggie rhymes about wanting “to just slit my wrists and end this bullshit,” then ends the song with a loud gunshot. As an integral part of Los Angeles’ renowned Rail Up parties, Duran’s sets have turned decidedly more festive, drawing from the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, while making those riddims push through a haze of reverb and delay. With his 2017 debut, 1804 Kids, Duran showed a knack for low-slung reggaetón, with “6 De La Mañana” becoming a party anthem of sorts. But with his follow-up, 13th Month, Duran forgoes crowd-pleasers for the most part. You can still hear dembow, hip-hop and dancehall—even bits of South African gqom and Lisbon’s batida—but now Duran shoves them far away from the sunshine and good times to the most bone-chilling and emotionally overwhelming space he can find, namely a South Dakota Indian Reservation.
13th Month draws on time Duran spent on the Pine Ridge Reservation amid the Lakota Tribe making a long-form video piece about the lives of the Native Americans trapped on the reservations. While the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock made the national news, life on other reservations was just as grim and impoverished. That Duran is no longer concerned with the dancefloor is evident from the opening moments of “13th Month in 3 Movements.” With a title that nods to both the lunar calendar of the Sioux and a classical composition, the song ranges over 10 minutes, setting an Auto-Tuned voice crying out: “Man solid as a rock/You cyaan move me” atop minor key washes, submerged bass throbs, and an ambient backdrop that seems to be crumbling beneath it all. It takes nearly seven minutes for a dembow riddim (slowed down to a sluggish thud) to emerge out of the haze. Rather than suggest a party in the wee hours, Duran now turns his attention to the desolate dream-states of that time, “13th Month” as likely to bring to mind the likes of William Basinski and Burial.
Burial might be the first name that springs to mind on these sprawling tracks, in that he too daubs disembodied voices across a widescreen soundscape, cloaking everything in reverb and crackle, weaving together such disparate rhythmic elements to create an evocative whole. Even when the rhythms become more pronounced on the 14-minute “CLUB 664B” Duran keeps the uneasiness intact. That telltale dembow riddim flickers in and out of the mix, never quite bringing the beat back, but instead becoming another ambient texture along with pedal steel, sampled strings, and snatches of everything from baile funk to key disseminator of reggaetón DJ Playero. Duran toggles between Puerto Rican reggaetón singer Yandel’s chorus of “Agárrame fuerte y no me sueltes” (Hold me tight and don't let me go) and an echoing of “dura” (harder) before it fades away entirely into a passage of birds and Auto-Tuned voice. Divorced from reggaetón’s libidinous desires and instead slotted into this eerie space, these voices turn into a desperate plea, increasingly isolated and estranged.
The tracks that follow these two grand statements hew closer to the template Duran used on 1804 Kids, speeding up or screwing down reggaeton, gqom, kuduro, hip-hop and the like, offering up more DJ-friendly tracks. There’s the drilling beats of “TU MUERE AQUI (Intro),” but they scan less as sweaty come-on than robotic barks stripped of all their warmth. On “lento x katana 1,” Duran distorts vocal chants until they are as flinty as the beat itself, making it into another percussive element grappling with the contorted dembow riddim writhing under it.
On the penultimate track, “gravity waves II,” Duran puts down a minor key melody that verges on the queasy, adding Biggie’s vocal from “Suicidal Thoughts” to it. It soon gives way to a Lakota Elder talking about tribal suicide rates and the voice of Attawapiskat First Nation Elder Jocelyn Wabano-Iahtail, who since went viral for telling off a journalist. It’s not an flourish of juxtaposition so much as it is Duran’s attempt to draw a parallel between the wretched conditions in inner-city ghettos and life on Indian reservations. It leads into the album’s sorrowful closer, “13th MONTH II In 3 Movements,” weighing down an uplifting reggae lyric until it turns into a plaint: “Sad to see the old slave mill/Is grinding slow, but grinding still.” Wordless hums, sped-up chirps, and choirs all bubble up across the piece, finally landing on a voice quivering at the words “to cry” as it all fades away. Despite the gains made in our society and attempts for equality and inclusiveness, Duran lays bare the social plagues still haunting us. The party is still there, but Duran also keeps close those dark feelings that we also seek release from on the dancefloor. | 2019-01-16T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-01-16T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Apocalipsis | January 16, 2019 | 7.8 | 57800398-8f96-4f5a-8bc5-12764c673a6e | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
The second album from Corin Tucker and Peter Buck’s alt-rock supergroup can’t match the urgency of pre-apocalyptic protest. | The second album from Corin Tucker and Peter Buck’s alt-rock supergroup can’t match the urgency of pre-apocalyptic protest. | Filthy Friends: Emerald Valley | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/filthy-friends-emerald-valley/ | Emerald Valley | Along with Wild Flag and the Good, the Bad & the Queen, Filthy Friends is one of a roster of supergroups assembled this decade from the scattered members of ’90s alternative rock bands. Founded in 2016, just before the latest presidential election, the group formed around Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney and Peter Buck of R.E.M., splicing together two of the college-radio era’s most inventive and energetic acts. Their music sounds like you’d expect, given its genealogy: crisp, guitar-driven indie rock with blues bones, adorned by sunny vocal harmonies. Filthy Friends’ first album, 2017’s Invitation, was a pleasant affair, a document of rock’n’roll veterans enjoying each other’s company. Follow-up Emerald Valley continues the camaraderie of seasoned pros: the current lineup includes Kurt Bloch of Fastbacks, Scott McCaughey of the Minus 5, and Linda Pitmon of Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3.
The new album sharpens the group’s political fangs, letting shiny happy instrumentation serve as a backdrop for protest songs about the pre-apocalypse. Given the heavy subject matter, the band’s delivery feels startlingly light. Tucker sings of exploited migrant workers, of Native activists protesting pipeline construction, of climate change and corruption, all in a placid and occasionally somber tone. Little of the belly-shaking rage that animated her with Sleater-Kinney surfaces here. “Enough, enough/The land is giving up,” she sings on “The Elliott,” a song about the destruction of Oregon's old-growth forests. On “Pipeline,” she ruminates on oil spills (and general white American disregard for the environment) with the understatement of the millennium: “Can't afford to blow it this time.” “Angels,” meanwhile, couches the horrors of the southern border in language so sentimental as to feel mealy: “Suffering of angels/They are torn apart by fools.” There are stronger words for people who steal children from their parents and cram them in cages; even the “devil” Tucker deploys at the end of the chorus hardly seems to suffice.
Some fire does light up behind the coarse and sour guitars of “November Man,” which joins the National's “Turtleneck” in a growing catalog of songs inspired by President Trump’s ridiculous public presence. “Long skinny tie/And hair of gold,” Tucker bellows, creating an “SNL” caricature of the president in case the song’s title didn't make its target clear. The instrumental squall spurs her to some of the album’s most compelling vocal moments, but the song mostly misses its mark, much as the 2014 Against Me! track “Osama Bin Laden as the Crucified Christ” mixed so many political symbols that it became incomprehensible. “You sip White Russians/Or a Moscow mule/The ice in your glass/Tastes like power to you,” Tucker seethes, falling well short of a sick burn.
“Last Chance County” introduces some riot grrrl sprechstimme in between earnestly screamed choruses, which makes it one of the album’s strongest cuts: full of despair, frustration, and fury. But much of Emerald Valley holds distance from its subjects, mourning them gently. In James Joyce’s Ulysses, there’s a scene where a group of men see a child’s coffin in a horse-drawn carriage, and the strongest reaction any of them can muster is, “Sad.” The moment stands in contrast to the Irish tradition of funeral keening, already on its way out by the time Joyce published his book about modernity in Dublin, wherein women would wail horrifically to mourn the dead. Keening was not a pleasant sound of dutiful acceptance. It confronted the full terror of loss, the vast unknowable vertigo of death.
The United States is in the grips of a death cult, and many musicians are opting to issue a prompt and polite “sad” rather than cut open the depths of their grief and wail. It feels so inadequate to listen to rock songs this polished and competent about the gut-churning state of the country. Tucker and Buck remain an electric match, and minus the lyrics, their songs knit together well. They are great and talented musicians. But the subjects they tackle demand more raw nerve than Filthy Friends seem willing to put to tape. | 2019-05-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-05-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Kill Rock Stars | May 10, 2019 | 6.1 | 5780f7e2-aeed-4d46-ba28-a16e82a68f95 | Sasha Geffen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sasha-geffen/ | |
Michigan noise trio keeps plugging along, crafting massive textures, severe sonics, and daunting tension from all kinds of sources. | Michigan noise trio keeps plugging along, crafting massive textures, severe sonics, and daunting tension from all kinds of sources. | Wolf Eyes: Always Wrong | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13320-always-wrong/ | Always Wrong | If you're wondering whether record labels still matter, consider the case of Wolf Eyes. Their last two widely distributed albums, 2004's Burned Mind and 2006's Human Animal, came out on Sub Pop and got lots of media attention, even landing the band on the cover of The Wire. Three years later, Wolf Eyes return with Always Wron**g, a follow-up of sorts after reams of smaller-run releases. It came out on Hospital in May, and I can't find a single review beyond a few blog entries and tweets. Even The Wire hasn't mentioned it.
This probably doesn't matter much to John Olson, Nate Young, and Mike Connelly, and it shouldn't. The workman-like Michigan trio keeps plugging along, crafting massive textures, severe sonics, and daunting tension from all kinds of sources. They must be happier back among their brethren (Hospital is run by their comrade Dominick Fernow of Prurient) than on Sub Pop, but ultimately they must not care much about who pays attention. If they did, they'd smooth out their aggressive, uncompromising noise.
As Always Wrong shows, such change is not an option. Wolf Eyes long ago internalized buzzing static, piercing screams, and crashing cacophony-- basic elements as essential to the band's vocabulary as finger picking is to John Fahey's, or violin drone is to Tony Conrad's. In fact, the most impressive thing about the band at this point in their career is how instantly identifiable their unruly noise is. Reference points remain, such as the industrial bombast of Throbbing Gristle, the gothic dirge of Swans, and the sheer extremity of Whitehouse. But Wolf Eyes now speak their own language exclusively.
On Always Wrong, that language is more literal, at least verbally. Young's vocals are less buried in the mix than before, and his lyrics are not only discernible, they're even printed in the CD booklet. This gives the band the feel of a post-apocalyptic jazz trio, with Young playing snarling bandleader to Olson and Connelly's destructive anti-rhythm section. "All I want is what I see," he moans with a Johnny Rotten-like sneer on opener "Cellar", spitting into the surrounding noise until it rises up and drowns him. On "Living Stone", he slobbers like a stunned David Yow over a mesh of screech and rattle, while the subtly-titled "We All Hate You" is practically a voice-percussion duet between Young and a construction-site beat.
The increased clarity of Young's vocals accompanies a shift in the band's flow. Where Burned Mind and Human Animal relied on cycles of tension and release, alternating sparse lurch with slamming bombast, Always Wrong is more interested in constant build. You won't find many fist-pump moments here, but that doesn't mean the band has abandoned crescendos-- more that the album itself is one elongated climax.
Such descriptions may make the album seem musical, and in relative terms it is. But Wolf Eyes remain as confrontational and forbidding as ever. Take the title track, which bears the rhythmic remnants of a demolished hardcore jam, but to the uninitiated will sound more like a broken hearing test than a song. Yet for anyone attuned to the subtle differences between each overloaded whine, harrowing clang, and psychotic drone, Always Wrong offers a lot to lose your mind in. | 2009-07-20T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2009-07-20T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Experimental | Hospital | July 20, 2009 | 7.4 | 57818acb-0a2d-4616-8a25-254edeea382c | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
Teaming up with Pale Blue singer Elizabeth Wight, the Brooklyn producer explores love and heartbreak in moody tracks that pair back-room house grooves with bedroom introspection. | Teaming up with Pale Blue singer Elizabeth Wight, the Brooklyn producer explores love and heartbreak in moody tracks that pair back-room house grooves with bedroom introspection. | Lauren Flax: Liz & Lauren EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lauren-flax-liz-and-lauren-ep/ | Liz & Lauren EP | For Detroit-born, Brooklyn-based producer Lauren Flax, the dancefloor is a space to work through trauma and experience joyful catharsis. This philosophy crystallizes in dazzling shape on the Liz & Lauren EP, recorded with Elizabeth Wight of 2MR labelmate Pale Blue on vocals. Flax channels her “sad, horny ‘’90s teenage raver” self into four songs (and one remix) that explore love, infatuation, and the dire state of the world today in improbably anthemic fashion.
Flax and Wight first appeared together in 2020, when Flax remixed Pale Blue’s “Breathe,” the title track of an EP that used tough-edged acid-house production and Wight’s hushed tones to explore the impact of domestic abuse. Inspired by her remix’s melodic, surreal, and rather unsettling style, Flax shifted away from the robust Detroit acid of her earlier releases to deliver 2021’s Out of Reality EP, a record that reflected her disappointment at humanity’s lack of progress in a gothic house style.
The Liz & Lauren EP is cut from the same cloth. Desolate chord sequences meet acidic scraps to create contemplative electronic moods that exist somewhere between the dancefloor and the after party. The BPMs, busy bass drums, and clattering breaks incite bodily motion; but the bone-weary vocal delivery makes the listener want to slip back into the comfort of a warm armchair. “Fix Everything” is a reaction to critical issues from the rise of religious extremism to global warming, and a sense of fatigue is audible in the song’s call for change.
There’s nothing here that would have felt out of place among the softer side of Detroit techno or the early-’90s progressive house it later inspired. The breakbeats and blue-note chord changes of “Fix Everything” and “I’d Risk It All to Be With You” are reminiscent of Future Sound of London’s progressive rave heartbreaker “Papua New Guinea” or onetime Andrew Weatherall proteges One Dove. The chugging bass drum and synth riffs of “I Don’t Want to Hurt You” call back to Spooky, a London duo whose early releases helped establish progressive house’s signature mixture of melody, atmosphere, and rhythm.
But thematically—and in terms of overall feel—the Liz & Lauren EP is very much in its own field. Contrasting with the upbeat drive of much club music, the dark subject matter and Wight’s pained-to-the-point-of-tears delivery are reminiscent of the emo rap of Lil Peep et al., albeit rendered far more tenderly. Wight is capable of expressing subtle emotional shifts with the slightest crack of her voice, and her delivery dances an unlikely pas de deux with Flax’s beats, landing halfway between ASMR and the rave. (The “MASC Remix” of “I’d Risk It All to Be With You,” which does away with most of Wight’s vocals, is a far more conventional and less rewarding club number.)
The production is polished to perfection, a notable step up in quality from Flax’s Out of Reality in its ability to communicate complex emotion. “I Don’t Want to Hurt You” manages to convey the pain and guilt of romantic ambivalence in desolate chords, tinkling synth,and a sprinkling of 303, the lyrics topped off with a desperate, addictive chorus. As the song charges toward its climax, Wight repeats, “even if I’m not in love,” and the synths explode in a bittersweet rush of heartbreak; it’s a towering moment of emotional release, like ABBA’s “The Winner Takes It All” filtered through a sobering personal revelation.
Flax says she wouldn’t expect to hear these songs on the dancefloor, and they certainly wouldn’t fit in with the flow of a typical big-room DJ set. But for any and all of us who still feel that sad, horny teenage raver stirring in our DNA from time to time, Liz & Lauren is essential: four sorry anthems for anyone who has danced their way through their pain and insecurity, lost in the anonymity and forgiveness of a sympathetic club crowd. | 2023-12-07T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2023-12-07T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | 2MR | December 7, 2023 | 7.6 | 57834405-03e5-4502-8d13-b46607d642a5 | Ben Cardew | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-cardew/ | |
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 Leonard Cohen at the end of history, wielding the darkest, glossiest, most bizarrely righteous songs of his career. | 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 Leonard Cohen at the end of history, wielding the darkest, glossiest, most bizarrely righteous songs of his career. | Leonard Cohen: The Future | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/leonard-cohen-the-future/ | The Future | In the early 1990s, Leonard Cohen occupied a quantum state in popular culture, a sort of Schrodinger’s singer-songwriter: simultaneously legendary and forgotten. There was no knowing on which of the two he might ultimately land. Twenty-five years earlier, the Montreal-born poet and novelist’s sensual yet unsentimental folk music had made him the urbane wallflower at psychedelic rock’s sweaty be-in, and an intimate of brilliant women from Judy Collins to Joni Mitchell to Janis Joplin. By the early ’80s, he was such a relic that the album containing what has become his most famous song was not initially issued in the United States. His 1988 comeback, I’m Your Man, a masterpiece of cinematic synths and bleakly comedic foreboding, was crucial to what Cohen liked to call his “resurrection.” But the status he achieved by the time of his actual death, in 2016, as a songwriting guru of incantatory power, was far from secure.
Released in late November 1992 as the follow-up to I’m Your Man, The Future was a quest for lasting truth in what he perceived as the schlocky, dehumanized ruins of late capitalism. When Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” and Michael Bolton’s Timeless: The Classics stood atop the U.S. charts, the 58-year-old Cohen’s ninth studio album offered an equally extravagant but more ambiguous soundtrack to post-Cold War triumphalism: lacquered keyboard-rock with strings, a choir, several producers, and hordes of session musicians, recorded in a dozen studios. Cohen’s husky voice sits at the center, growling lyrics that don’t so much blur the sacred and profane as dispassionately report their coexistence. Heaven is in the gutter, and vice versa—hallelujah, what’s it to ya? Its nine-song, hour-long runtime juxtaposes some of Cohen’s finest originals with two unlikely covers and an instrumental. I’m Your Man brought Cohen back to life. The Future showed he would continue to capture life, in all of its messy contradictions, prismatic with meaning.
After a sellout world tour behind I’m Your Man, Cohen initially planned to reunite with the crew behind that album in Montreal. Instead he went to sunny Los Angeles to enlist longtime backup singer Jennifer Warnes, and basically didn’t leave. He swapped blasts of spiritual lyricism with Sonny Rollins on late-night TV. He basked in the glow of a new tribute album, 1991’s I’m Your Fan, which featured R.E.M., the Pixies, Nick Cave, and, fatefully, John Cale’s influential version of “Hallelujah.” He dated and was briefly engaged to Rebecca De Mornay, the Risky Business and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle actress, whom he accompanied to the Oscars.
But songwriting was an agonizing, nonstop process for Cohen, leaving him “wrecked” and darkening thousands of notebook pages with revisions. He struggled with depression. He saw fires blaze through his neighborhood in the uprising after the Rodney King verdict. For four months, he paused all work while his son, the elder of two children from a previous relationship, recovered from a near-fatal car accident. The crash was the rare subject that Cohen found too painful to discuss on the promotional circuit. “If you’re a parent, you don’t have to explain these things,” he reasoned.
For Cohen, songs were living, breathing entities, open to almost Talmudic reinterpretation, all the way through his 2008 farewell tour. Many of the themes on The Future were already percolating on I’m Your Man: Both albums established Cohen as a gallows-humor prophet able to condense the sweep of sex, religion, and social ills into wry synth-rock, willing to write and sing from perspectives that reflect the worst of human nature. The two albums were also proof of concept for Cohen’s dawning conviction that his bitter, mordantly funny proclamations were best served with a syncopated backbeat—or, as he preferred to say, “a hot little dance track.” While The Future hasn’t been the consensus favorite, it’s the zaniest, the most overstuffed, and the most clairvoyant.
One of The Future’s breakthroughs was bringing Cohen’s apocalyptic stand-up routine into the sharper context afforded by the fall, in 1989, of the Berlin Wall. “It was a universal event, like David and Goliath, like the Crucifixion,” Cohen explained. The collapse of the Iron Curtain and the breakup of the Soviet Union were cause for celebration among most liberal Western observers. Not so much for Cohen, who foresaw a “tremendous” cost in human suffering that would come with the shifting political tides.
The Future’s lithely funky, album-opening title song was originally titled “If You Could See What’s Coming Next,” but Cohen ended up dropping the safe distance of the conditional for a grimly hilarious first-person view. The track stands as a gruff, deadpan rejoinder to what political scientist Francis Fukuyama had dubbed The End of History: “Give me crack and anal sex,” Cohen demands in the record’s first minute. “Take the only tree that’s left/And stuff it up the hole/In your culture.” It’s a rich, multivalent song, encompassing references to Stalin, Jesus Christ, abortion, Charles Manson, and Hiroshima, clamoring for repentance like a sidewalk preacher only to fold back around and question the entire concept. Cohen’s narrator calls himself “the little Jew/Who wrote the Bible.” In the so-chilling-it’s-absurd refrain, he announces that he’s “seen the future, baby/It is murder,” and angelic backing vocalists answer him with a wordless melody.
Cohen’s societal diagnosis is grim: “The blizzard of the world/Has crossed the threshold/And it’s overturned/The order of the soul,” he sings, suggesting that the chaotic pace of contemporary life has toppled humanist ideals about the sanctity of the individual. “We’re already in the flood, just the flood is interior,” he told interviewers. “What is it that people can’t take? They can’t take the reality they’re living in.”
The uncanny-valley yacht rock of “Democracy,” with its Chevrolet motorik pulse and military-march trappings, offered another enigmatic retort to Pax Americana smugness. Between pattering snares and a suspiciously soulful harmonica riff, Cohen rasps the refrain that “democracy is coming to the USA,” but leaves open the question of what system of government has been in place for more than two centuries. Rather than redwood forests or purple mountain majesties, Cohen’s imagined land of the free emerges “from the fires of the homeless/From the ashes of the gay”—the latter line a grisly allusion to the hundreds of thousands of people who died during the HIV/AIDS crisis. He leaves room for optimism, nodding to “the holy places where the races meet,” but he ends with a prescient and depressing image: His narrator, who’s “neither left nor right,” sits at home, “getting lost in that hopeless little screen,” “stubborn as those garbage bags/That time cannot decay.” As the song glides off into the star-spangled night, Cohen continues, “I’m junk but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet.”
Democracy, Cohen suggested in interviews, won’t live up to the old Enlightenment goal of a less stratified, more egalitarian culture where everyday people learn to “love Shakespeare and Beethoven.” He said, “It’s going to come up in unexpected ways from the stuff that we think is junk: the people we think are junk, the ideas we think are junk, the television we think is junk.” It’s a testament to the song’s artistry that “Democracy” can be heard both as a dire prediction of a vulgar reality-show U.S. presidency and as a Tocqueville-esque cosmopolitan observer’s stirring celebration of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
When Cohen’s ominous outlook creeps over into the personal realm, The Future really cooks. In the eerie smolder of “Waiting for the Miracle,” with arrangements by his partner De Mornay (who as a teenager had written the title song for a Bruce Lee film), the miracle in question could be a visit by a lover, a muse, or both—hell, maybe it’s democracy. Cohen’s rhetoric reaches across epochs. “I haven’t been this happy/Since the end of World War II,” he observes. And evoking junk again: “The Maestro says it’s Mozart/But it sounds like bubblegum.” His wide-angle lens on the world encompasses the geopolitical and the private both: In the same song, he also proposes marriage.
The Future’s liner notes begin with a quote from the book of Genesis, in dedication to De Mornay, and there are moments across the album when Cohen’s familiar lust hints at something more lasting. The achy-breaky fiddle-country of “Closing Time,” every bit as flush with significance as The Future’s more topical songs, paints an uproarious scene of boozy barroom hookups—someone’s “rubbing half the world against her thigh,” the drinks are spiked with LSD, and the Holy Spirit wonders, “Where’s the beef?”—but a confession of love lies at its heart. The musical-chairs moment when last call ends and single bar patrons couple up acts as a nifty metaphor for how anyone finds a meaningful connection with anybody. Cohen, of course, states his intentions more existentially: “I loved you for your body/There’s a voice that sounds like God to me/Declaring that your body’s really you.”
Elsewhere, Cohen’s tormented search for transcendence leads him in a more self-consciously meta direction. The results can be confounding but also profound. His games with high-gloss production begin to drag on “Light as the Breeze,” a schmaltzy ode to oral sex (“So I knelt there at the delta/At the alpha, and the omega/At the cradle of the river and the seas…”). But the song is most fascinating for how it doubles, once again, as a paean to inspiration itself. Cohen sings about “sleeping in your harness,” a phrase he also used in an interview to describe his all-consuming life’s work: The songwriter as a dog forever tied to his sled, disciplined and attentive even when he’s at rest.
The two covers—a straightforward rendition of Freddie Knight’s obscure ’70s R&B nugget “Be for Real,” which at one point was intended to be the album title, and a bonkers eight-minute bump-and-grind through Irving Berlin’s chivalrous 10-line standard “Always”—aren’t merely ironic. They complement The Future’s other attempts to express endless love in a postmodern world that rejects eternal certainties. If the flood is here, then Cohen is shoring up all of his fragments against the tide. A virtuoso of meanings is saying, in every way he can: He means it, baby. When Cohen at last falls silent, on finale “Tacoma Trailer”—a woozy and lovely drift of Synclavier and upright bass, originally composed for a play, that could float over the titles to Twin Peaks—the decision to remove his voice from the conversation feels portentous and inscrutable, as if he’s declaring, “You’re on your own.”
Like “Tower of Song” on I’m Your Man, The Future also has a song that helps unlock Cohen’s sense of himself as an artist. “Anthem,” a waltzing, gospel-tinged hymn, co-produced by De Mornay, centers on a quatrain influenced by the Jewish mystic tradition of Kabbalah: “Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.” If the album has a philosophical underpinning, Cohen told one interviewer, it’s in those words. The Future often exposes human failings; “Anthem” is a recognition that these failings make us human. It’s also an apotheosis: In the brokenness of the human condition, Cohen glimpses something divine, and you can hear it, too. Not that he was so forgiving of perceived imperfections in his own efforts. Cohen said that “Anthem” took a decade to write, and he tried recording it three times. The “crack in everything” line came to him before 1982, and goes far beyond The Future: “That has been the background of much of my work,” Cohen said. On his final tour, it was the last song he played before skipping offstage for intermission.
Three weeks prior to The Future’s release, President Bill Clinton reclaimed the White House for the Democratic Party. The marketing honchos at Columbia, citing the song’s “obvious tie-in to the election,” rush-released the six-minute “Democracy” as a radio single. In an astounding series of events at the MTV Inaugural Ball in January 1993, comedian Dennis Miller introduced the Eagles’ Don Henley, who performed a ludicrously reverent “Democracy” cover while wearing sunglasses at night. And yet Cohen’s cantankerous vision refuses to be reduced to bland pieties. He wished only the best for Bubba—“especially for his wife, whom I find immensely attractive”—and he wasn’t opposed to saving the rainforests or protecting the ozone layer. But he believed such problems were symptoms of broader malaise: “It’s like trying to tidy up on the Titanic,” he said. Describing “The Future,” Cohen could seem tragically prescient about events like the genocide in the former Yugoslavia and ongoing bloodshed in the former Soviet republics, as well as the sectarian divisions that continue to plague the United States. “When it’s every man for himself, the identification of race arises,” he said. “I think those are very dangerous times. And that is the time we are in.” This was not exactly a mainstream opinion in 1992: Millions of others were watching Aladdin, buying the first Pentium computers, or visiting the newly opened Mall of America.
The Future enjoyed glowing reviews, decent sales, and prominent film soundtrack appearances, particularly in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. A name-check by Nirvana followed a year later on “Pennyroyal Tea,” from In Utero. But in 1994, after another grueling world tour, Cohen’s depression deepened, and he disappeared to a Zen Buddhist retreat outside L.A. Nine years passed between studio albums. He never married. The Future, like all of Cohen’s work, can be heavy—wags at the time variously dubbed Cohen “the prince of bummers,” “pop music’s monarch of bad moods,” and “the Lord Byron of rock’n’roll” (not the bishop of tissues? The rabbi of sad eyes?)—but it endures because of an exquisite balance between hate and love, the worst of humanity and the best, the crack in everything and the light that gets in. “Our real appetite is not for the victory of the white race,” Cohen once said, speaking generally for those who might be drawn to reactionary politics, and countering his own apocalyptic forecasts. “Our real victory isn’t Judaism over Islam, not conservatism over liberalism. There is another appetite that doesn’t involve victory but involves a reconciliation, and that’s where we really long to be.”
When Cohen died, at age 82, though still not a household name, he was roundly recognized as one of the great songwriters, his work admired across the globe. “He said in his last interview that he was ready to die, and he said in his last public outing that he would live forever. Both are true,” De Mornay, then 57, told the press in a statement. “There was no one like him, and there never will be.” The Future is murder, and it’s reconciliation, resurrection, endless love; it’s Mozart and it’s bubblegum. Both are true.
Additional research by Deirdre McCabe Nolan. | 2023-02-26T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2023-02-26T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Columbia | February 26, 2023 | 8.8 | 5787d191-7d16-43a0-bad8-b571577b0b48 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | |
Across three blissfully spaced-out tracks, the New York producer continues to explore the fusion of left-field dance music and reggaetón. | Across three blissfully spaced-out tracks, the New York producer continues to explore the fusion of left-field dance music and reggaetón. | DJ Python : Club Sentimientos, Vol. 2 EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dj-python-club-sentimientos-vol-2/ | Club Sentimientos, Vol. 2 EP | Few in the left-field dance circuit have brought reggaetón into the conversation quite the way Brian Piñeyro has. In a field full of DJs making updates to historically American dance genres like house and techno, Piñeyro has used his DJ Python alias to explore the possibilities of reggaetón’s dembow beat, translating its relentless thump into something heady and hypnotizing. Where dancehall and reggaetón are typically high-energy genres made for igniting crowds and rattling trunks, Piñeyro takes a dubbier approach, emphasizing the atmospheric elements that hang between the rhythms and tunneling into them to see how far down he can go. After a strong run of releases that have balanced the project’s crystalline tranquility with a sinuous sensuality, DJ Python’s latest EP, Club Sentimientos, Vol. 2, is an exercise in ethereal bliss, amplifying all the most heavenly elements of Piñeyro’s music without losing its elastic bounce.
Some of Piñeyro’s strongest tracks so far have been his more extended workouts, where he’s allowed his shuffling beats to spill out into a blurry cloud of psychedelic movement. His last album, Mas Amable, was essentially one continuous 48-minute track, with Piñeyro journeying between pure ambience and sinister illbient while finding new ways to subtly tweak his constant, ever-looping dembow riddim. On “Angel,” the 11-minute centerpiece of Club Sentimientos, Vol. 2, DJ Python applies this tactic to some of his most new-agey sounds yet, carrying the track along on a soothing wave of cresting chords and shimmering synths. After introducing a crisp, handclap-driven groove, Piñeyro launches into an extended mallet percussion solo that breezily drifts in and out, never drawing too much attention to itself while fostering a playful sense of discovery. The track feels closer in spirit to the dreamy output of mid-2010s house labels like 100% Silk, with Piñeyro leaning deeper into sounds that work best on a pair of headphones as opposed to a club soundsystem. In its gentle swell, “Angel” is one of DJ Python’s purest, most satisfying tracks to date.
The other two tracks return to the bassy, reggaetón-inflected riddims Piñeyro is best known for. “TMMD (IMMMD)” revolves around a few sparse elements, just a chopped vocal sample and a couple glassy synths that weave around a tumbling dembow stomp. With no central chord progression grounding the song, Piñeyro lets his samples float freely in empty space, bouncing off one another like bubbles fizzing in an Erlenmeyer flask. Meanwhile, the closing “Club Sentimiental Vol Three” finds DJ Python at his most relaxed; opening on a drowsy, soft-as-clouds synth progression, the track hovers in place for about a minute and a half until, sure enough, Piñeyro’s trusty dembow riddim kicks back in, bringing the whole song to life like a dancehall remix of Selected Ambient Works 85-92. Despite its relative brevity, Club Sentimientos, Vol. 2 shows Piñeyro growing and discovering new depths to his enchanting take on dance music. Rather than accentuating dembow’s powerful, constant lurch, here Piñeyro gives himself room to indulge his more textural impulses, creating a meditative, airy paradise of sound that glides high above the rhythms below. It’s a pleasure to watch him soar. | 2022-01-24T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-01-24T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Incienso | January 24, 2022 | 7.2 | 578a0b40-0b27-45d9-9899-b269353b540b | Sam Goldner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-goldner/ | |
The New York rappers team up with the legendary producer for their first full-length collaboration. Over his thick, sample-heavy beats, MIKE and Wiki brandish a natural chemistry that feels like it’s existed for decades. | The New York rappers team up with the legendary producer for their first full-length collaboration. Over his thick, sample-heavy beats, MIKE and Wiki brandish a natural chemistry that feels like it’s existed for decades. | MIKE / Wiki / The Alchemist: Faith Is a Rock | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mike-wiki-the-alchemist-faith-is-a-rock/ | Faith Is a Rock | The Alchemist is not an unrealistic man; he understands that even his powers have limits. In an interview with Tidal in late 2022, the legendary beatmaker admitted that a full-length collaboration with two artists presents unique challenges. “It’s always a little different when you’re working with two people,” he said. “The result is just so much more unpredictable.” When he and New York rappers MIKE and Wiki announced that they were teaming up for Faith Is a Rock, it was logical to question how the trio would work together on an album. Fortunately, on “Bless” and “Sentry,” two of MIKE’s recent collabs with the Alchemist, his relaxed, almost lethargic raps sounded right at home.
But introducing Wiki’s winding, introspective monologues into the fold created the potential for an overcrowded landscape. Faith Is a Rock soothes any potential fears; MIKE and Wiki navigate the Alchemist’s warped terrain as equals. They achieve a balance similar to Freddie Gibbs and Curren$y on 2018’s Fetti, delivering biting quotables and meandering soliloquies that reveal the full breadth of their powers. Over the 32-minute runtime, their raps never recede into the all-consuming mass of the Alchemist’s thick sample loops.
This year has been prolific for the Alchemist: He executive produced three records (and one deluxe version), including Voir Dire, his most recent joint album with Earl Sweatshirt. But making that much music in succession could deplete anyone’s creativity: At some point, the boom-bap beats might start to resemble each other. Faith Is a Rock avoids that trap, introducing enough mood changes to keep things dynamic, all without sacrificing the overall tenor of the album. There are small but striking details scattered throughout, like the ghostly wails and sci-fi sound effects that adorn “Odd Ways,” the cartoonish chorus that carries the bare-bones background of “Bledsoe,” and the sound of pencil scratching on paper on “Scribble Jam.” The 45-year-old producer also incorporates vignettes, sprinkling in Gil Scott-Heron vocals, Bob Dylan recordings, and narrations from classic Western films as short intros. The focus here isn’t necessarily pushing the envelope, but crafting an environment that’s comfortable for both MIKE and Wiki.
That approach ensures that the spotlight remains on the raps. When MIKE and Wiki on are on the same track, they are like two savvy veterans on the court working in lockstep with each other, expertly assessing their next moves. They grant each other space from the outset; on the opener “Stargate,” which boasts a string sample that sounds like it was ripped from a ’70s Blaxploitation film, is a prime example. Wiki drifts through autobiographical details, reminiscing about “sippin’ 40s at the 40th Pier,” and his words bleed fluidly into MIKE’s bars without losing momentum. Only two tracks here are solo efforts, a welcome homeostasis that allows each rapper to flex their gifts. Whether they’re trading truncated stanzas or spreading their legs out, neither feels rushed. There’s an intrinsic ease that rests in this relationship, a natural chemistry that feels like it’s existed for decades.
That balance is paramount, because MIKE and Wiki have a lot to say. Their knack for lucid self-awareness and radical honesty is only matched by their sharp social commentary. On the standout “Mayors a Cop,” Wiki breaks down his city’s failures with a quiet fury: “The block is hot, shit, this how they chose to use the guap/With this amount of human laws/Could’ve been for schools or parks,” he raps. You can feel the exasperation swelling with every syllable; he sounds like someone sitting on the stoop airing his frustrations to anyone on the street who’s willing to listen. On “Stargate,” MIKE takes aim at the external pressures that caused strife in his upbringing. “And where do pity belong and will the harm fade?/Product of them immigrant laws, infinite heartache,” he raps, recalling how he was separated from his mother for several years after he moved back to the U.S. from England.
Faith Is a Rock’s tracks feel familiar and warm, but never register as retreads of old territory. MIKE and Wiki aren’t swept away in Alchemist’s endless sea of serene, sample-laden beats; they establish themselves as careful explorers, claiming their rightful place in the upper echelon of Alchemist collaborators. On the album’s finale (and lead single) “One More,” triumphant strings and a stirring soul vocal feel like the fanfare of a coronation. Here, two worthy champions sit on a throne crafted from their own excellence. | 2023-09-28T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-09-28T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rap | ALC | September 28, 2023 | 7.6 | 578b35d6-5ae7-4ed8-81a8-152912ec5000 | Matthew Ritchie | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ritchie/ | |
Scottish composer Anna Meredith adds real clarinets, glockenspiels, drums, cello, and even singing to the virtual instruments on her new EP, but otherwise picks up in the same retro-flavored, high-spirited, questing mood of last year's Black Prince Fury. | Scottish composer Anna Meredith adds real clarinets, glockenspiels, drums, cello, and even singing to the virtual instruments on her new EP, but otherwise picks up in the same retro-flavored, high-spirited, questing mood of last year's Black Prince Fury. | Anna Meredith: Jet Black Raider EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18393-anna-meredith-jet-black-raider-ep/ | Jet Black Raider EP | The contemporary composer's life is a complicated thing. Not only are there commissions to be written and personal works to be performed, but there are musicians, academic directors, tony labels, demanding benefactors, and gala-happy chamber arts societies to be placated. Not only is there the classical canon and instrumentation to be managed; there are also all kinds of electronic devices and experiments to be integrated, not infrequently amid multidisciplinary performance settings. And if navigating this demanding new music world isn't enough, there's the indie one it increasingly mingles with, sending you scampering between campus auditoriums and nightclub stages.
Scottish composer Anna Meredith knows what it's like to keep such a complex machine of prestige and exigency humming along. She has been a composer-in-residence at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. She's made classically trained young people perform something like a goofy symphonic version of Steve Reich’s Clapping Music at Royal Albert Hall. She's padded her income with commercial work including, reportedly, music for MRI scanners. That's a terrifying prospect if you consider it through the lens of her solo style, which is shaping up-- understandably, given the aforementioned context-- as a pressure vent for overwhelming, spontaneous, brazen grandeur. Would you want to hear Death Star explosion music while getting your brain scanned in a metal pod?
Meredith unveiled her smart, intrepid electronic music last year on the Black Prince Fury EP, which was steeped in a sense of adventure associated with the fantasy video games and fantasy metal of the 1980s, when Meredith was a child. The EP was spearheaded by "Nautilus", a sentient tidal wave of synthetic brass pulses more gloriously malevolent than anything cooked up by TNGHT or ripped off the Godzilla soundtrack by Pharoahe Monch. "I came up with a bit of it, and thought, 'Well, that's a bit ridiculous, but let's just roll with it!'" Meredith told Pitchfork. On the new Jet Black Raider EP, she adds some real clarinets, glockenspiels, drums, cello, and even singing to her virtual instruments, but otherwise, she picks up in the same retro-flavored, high-spirited, questing mood where she left off.
The 8-bit video game scores of the 80s were influenced by medieval music-- its limited polyphony suited the handful of channels you could get on a chip-- and by hair metal guitar solos, for their built-in adrenaline. Video game composers used these channels as maximally as possible, stuffing them with ghoulish chromatic bass lines, runaway arpeggios, and memorably brave or haunting melodic themes. Meredith's solo work feels couched in this dated techno-cultural moment. Her song titles sound like Zelda monsters; her EP names like Final Fantasy summon spells. With the short hair and puffy shirt she wears in promo photos, she would make a great bard at a LARP session. "Orlok", which fills the monstrous-banger slot established by "Nautilus", begins with a fast sinister progression that makes you feel like you've booted up Wizards & Warriors, then rampages through seven minutes of explosive final-boss music, but with contemplative respites and beats nudged around in time.
As on Black Prince Fury, the new EP's initial shock-and-awe campaign is rounded out by three shorter, lighter pieces, though the mercurial "Unicron"-- imagine if there was such a thing as a pipe organ with a built-in digital sequencer, and it was totally haunted-- nears "Orlok" in groaning weight and playful menace, and often feels, as do many of Meredith's tracks, like the brief moment when an orchestra scrambles for a tempo change protracted for a breathlessly long time. The sparse "Bubble Gun" is as quirkily schematic as its name, with effervescent arpeggios for bubbles, a bass and some brass chords for the gun. Most surprising is "ALR", where Meredith sings ingenuous lyrics in a clear, humble voice over molten electro-pop, melding the breezniess of Au Revoir Simone with the wide-open thrusters of M83.
Certainly, Meredith must share Anthony Gonzalez's love of 80s synth-pop; this is someone who twisted apart "The Power of Love" on her last EP. But rather than a nostalgic embalming of old feelings, this is rough and ready music that bursts with contemporary inspiration, aiming to flood the synapses and master the senses. Though musical subtleties naturally emerge from Meredith's training and practice, the extroverted impact and unserious charisma of Jet Black Raider is even more admirable and rare. | 2013-08-22T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2013-08-22T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Experimental | Moshi Moshi | August 22, 2013 | 7.6 | 57939ac9-8ada-4612-ab86-291c6935dc58 | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | null |
Montreal producer/composer Mike Silver's new EP, a companion to last year's Exercises, was inspired by unspectacular everyday objects, as well as Wim Wenders' 1989 documentary Notebook on Cities and Clothes. On it, he uses saxophone, piano, marimba, and other instruments to deepen his electronic palette. | Montreal producer/composer Mike Silver's new EP, a companion to last year's Exercises, was inspired by unspectacular everyday objects, as well as Wim Wenders' 1989 documentary Notebook on Cities and Clothes. On it, he uses saxophone, piano, marimba, and other instruments to deepen his electronic palette. | CFCF: Music for Objects EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18281-cfcf-music-for-objects-ep/ | Music for Objects EP | For Mike Silver, the Montreal producer who records as CFCF, inspiration comes from simple sources. First garnering attention with his balmy take on beat-driven electronics on 2009's still great Continent, Silver's pushed himself out of his comfort zone with nearly every subsequent release, and in the process reshaping what his music is capable of doing. Just as Continent was influenced by Silver's interest in film, his 2010 EP The River provided a patient, yet somewhat warmed-over alternate universe soundtrack to Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. But with last year's Exercises EP, Silver hit a stride that now continues with Music for Objects, a companion to the exploratory, piano-anchored pieces found on Exercises.
The last EP was inspired by the music of Philip Glass and Yellow Magic Orchestra's Ryuichi Sakamoto, and more amorphously, from the brutalist architecture of the 1960s. Music for Objects, as the Eno-esque title would suggest, subscribes to a similar kind of intellectual curiosity that informed the previous release (this record aims to depict normal, unimpressive things Silver encounters every day), but it isn't a purely eggheaded endeavor. Instead, Silver is able to evoke wide arrays of emotion with mere keystrokes. And while Music for Objects doesn't strictly adhere to "sounding" like the objects examined here-- "Keys", "Lamp", "Bowl"-- he brings things to life in ways that wouldn't feel unfamiliar to OCD sufferers quick to anthropomorphize objects lying around the apartment. But with CFCF, the less literal the better, as the real payoff is experiencing these things from Silver's point of view, with surprisingly moving results.
Despite recently taking cues from tangible items, CFCF's music has always seemed informed by the seasons, like the bone-cold late winter feel of Exercises, which in some ways gives way to the new growth of springtime that Music for Objects inhabits. From the dewy serenity of "Bowl", with its pan flutes and sparse keys, to the shyly sexy saxophone and drain spout plunks of "Camera", to "Glass"'s nimbleness and shimmer, all of it suggests something of a rebirth. The same could be said for Silver, who has found new but sure footing with these complimentary EPs. Just as with Exercises, Music for Objects finds CFCF becoming less of a producer and more of a composer, using more traditional instruments (sax, piano, marimba) to delicately layer and build with. These works are far less busy than the neon-streaked, movement-minded tracks that described his earlier work, but are just as capable of soundtracking some pretty impressive eyelid movies.
Music for Objects came to life after Silver watched 1989's Notebook on Cities and Clothes, a documentary by Wim Wenders on fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto. Silver was particularly struck by the challenge faced by Laurent Petitgand, the film's composer, regarding having to construct a piece of music that expressed something about a piece of clothing. Following in Petitgand's footsteps, Silver has uncovered a good deal more than a project of this nature might reveal, as viewing Music for Objects as merely a functional piece of work is to ignore how emotionally impacting it truly is, no matter what is being depicted. In reinterpreting Petitgand's task, Silver is often able to get a decent amount of mileage out of more concrete depictions of his objects.
It's hard not to hear the romance in something like "Perfume" or "Ring", the closing piano suite that feels eternal in its simplicity. "Turnstile" is even more effective, with its bright pastels and bell tones suggesting a time-lapse video of a Tokyo street during rush hour. The rest of these tracks require a little more effort to unpack-- it's not hard to conjure images of light being refracted off of "Glass", or feel the rounded edges of "Bowl", but they don't come as quickly or easily. But Music for Objects is, above all else, a record about perspective, one that requires you to look at the familiar from a different angle, and in doing so do the most impressive illuminations take place. The playful tug of war on display on "Lamp" doesn't trace a common shape, but sharing a corner of Silver's headspace for a little while is more than half the fun.
But the finest moment on Music for Objects has to be "Keys", which is strange because it's probably the least indicative of the EP as a whole. Carrying the saxophone over from "Camera", it's a humid, almost danceable track that jams in classic house-y pianos, chirping cicadas, and a dizzying little free jazz coda. It ends up sounding like Bruce Hornsby melting into a swamp. But while "Keys" may not be the clearest statement of purpose here, it says something larger about CFCF, offering a condensation of the best bits of Silver's personality, a measured mix of the old and the new all wrapped up into one beatific little four minute segment. It also hints at even greater potential: While it's obvious that Silver isn't the least bit interested in following any set of prescribed rules, the vision of a more complete, multi-faceted CFCF becomes easier to make out. But it's obvious that these smaller steps have all been necessary ones, and wherever he takes his music in the future, there will be plenty to be excited about. But on the subject of Music for Objects alone, it's another excellent chapter in CFCF's story, a strong case for how much unexpected magic can be found in the ordinary and, more importantly, in CFCF's ever-mutating discography. | 2013-07-15T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2013-07-15T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Electronic | Paper Bag | July 15, 2013 | 7.3 | 579607e6-263c-40c4-b105-a98c88648aed | Zach Kelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zach-kelly/ | null |
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today we revisit Anita Baker’s timeless 1986 album, a slow-burning and symphonic piece of quiet storm R&B that floods every sense. | 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 Anita Baker’s timeless 1986 album, a slow-burning and symphonic piece of quiet storm R&B that floods every sense. | Anita Baker: Rapture | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/anita-baker-rapture/ | Rapture | Quiet storm, a Black radio format that developed in the late-’70s around pebble-smooth R&B balladry, is one of the rare subgenre names that suggests the ideal context for itself. Play “Choosey Lover” by the Isley Brothers or even Smokey Robinson’s original “Quiet Storm.” Notice how the skies in those songs are bruised with dark purple clouds, thunder brewing inside them. Indoors, sealed away from the weather, someone sheds their coat and it forms a soft vortex on a bare wood floor. There is a haze of steam in the air, the sound of bathwater running in another room. This is the lifestyle of comfort and intimacy that the genre implicitly sold to its listeners, soul music one could sink into after a long day of work, like a couch or a bath or a steady long-term relationship. The format particularly excelled at simulating the slow-motion atmosphere of romance, a physical and mental connection so strong it could make the molecules in the air around it lag. So even if you didn’t own a nice couch or a large bathtub, you could turn on the radio and settle into the swoon of the music itself, and find yourself drawn into a desire deep enough to seem closer to unconscious dreaming than physical reality.
In the mid-’80s, when Anita Baker was shopping for songs for her second album, she kept asking the publishing houses for “fireside love songs with jazz overtones”—in other words, quiet storm songs, songs that have fireplaces flickering inside of them. Baker wanted a whole album in this mode so the mood wouldn’t be disturbed by the more aggressive and mechanical pop-R&B productions that were in vogue at the time. She returned with five compositions, adding three more she either co-wrote or wrote herself, all of which ended up forming a kind of album-length suite of affirmation. The songs bore titles like “You Bring Me Joy” and “Same Ole Love (365 Days a Year),” tributes to the endurance of love and happiness, to the comfort of repetition when the things being repeated are shared warmth and tenderness. She named the album Rapture, and true to the title, the music is always floating a few inches above the ground, as if being spirited away by the depth of the devotion it feels.
Baker’s taste at the time was like a crosshatching of the music she grew up with as a young girl in Detroit. She learned to sing in church; her first memory of herself as a singer, in fact, takes place in one, standing at a podium, singing a gospel song that a family member taught her so she wouldn’t fall asleep during the service. As Baker grew older, though, her love of gospel would merge with a deepening interest in jazz, her attention lingering on singers whose voices twisted like corkscrews, like her idol, Sarah Vaughan. In the early ’80s, Baker sang for a local Detroit disco/funk group called Chapter 8, who made one record before their label dropped them. Disillusioned, she drifted away from the music industry, waiting tables and briefly working as a receptionist for a law firm. She only returned to singing when she was courted by a new label called Beverly Glen, with whom she released her debut solo album, The Songstress, in 1983.
The Songstress was a mild success on the R&B charts, with one single, an ethereal jazz-inflected slow jam called “Angel,” reaching the Top 5. Baker, seeking more control over her next project, signed with Elektra Records and named herself the executive producer of Rapture, the implication being that even if she didn’t personally write every song on Rapture, there was something personal in her selection of material, in the more seamless environment she was designing for the listener. As the record starts, Baker’s voice—a rich, deep contralto that sounds much older than her 27 years of age—wavers upward through clouds of chords and drums to deliver, with utmost conviction and precision, a line that sets the record’s intentions: “With all my heart/I love you baby.” This is how the first track on Rapture, “Sweet Love,” begins, and it’s enveloping as a symphony, the kind of music that floods every sense. Baker seems affected by it herself throughout the record, sometimes slipping into vocalese as the songs advance, words melting into vowels, phrases going liquid then solid again. The sort-of title track “Caught Up in the Rapture” starts off in this wordless delirium—”ba ba baya ba ba ba bah,” Baker sings before each verse starts, as if the lyrics have to form out of the unshaped clay of the feeling.
Rapture didn’t align with the electro-R&B that was de rigueur in 1986 pop or the increasingly mechanistic and sexually-unbridled explorations of the genre’s most prominent svengalis, Prince and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. On its arrival, the album was dubbed retronuevo by the writer and critic Nelson George, who was trying to emphasize the older Black musical forms that Baker’s songs were rooted in. On the one hand, the emotions that rocketed through them felt enormous and electric enough to be gospel—hear the immensity with which Baker sings “myyyy joy” in “You Bring Me Joy.” But their expression was so controlled and stylized, painted in instrument by instrument, that it just as easily brought to mind the jazz, fusion, and soft R&B that preceded it.
Despite these traces of retro in the music, very little of Rapture sounded old by the standards of 1986. Its production is state of the art; if it were a sculpture it would be the kind where you couldn’t tell if hands had ever touched it. Each note touches down as an isolated unit of clarity, though the instruments are also steeped in enough reverb to sound like they recently walked out of a lake, their footfalls wrapped in wet echoes. The piano’s presence is so simultaneously thick and diffuse in the mix that hearing it feels like being embraced by a cloud of an ex-lover’s perfume. Every other instrument, whether percussion, bass, or guitar, acts as a texture, another beat in the riverlike rhythm, as on “Same Ole Love,” where the effect makes for a little perpetual motion machine of a love song. And though Baker expressed her own antipathy toward synthesizers around the time of Rapture’s release (“The sound is so thin,” she said), there are synths all over the album, and when they mix with the acoustic pianos they encase their tones in a layer of crystal.
Which is one of the reasons why Rapture as an R&B album doesn’t feel like an argument for nostalgia or authenticity as much as it does for continuity. It is not necessarily trying to emulate old soul music, even though it is certainly music with an old soul. Instead, styles from the past—soul music’s bottled feeling, funk’s unhurried step, disco and post-disco’s lush grooves, gospel’s power, jazz’s curiosity—are brought into the present and combined in such a way that one’s sense of time outside of the songs ceases to matter, creating a dream space where all of these displaced musical forms can blossom simultaneously and entangle with each other. Rapture is like a home Baker built, a hearth, a warm safe place where both the mystery of love and the history of Black music can be both explored and preserved.
Rapture’s agnosticism toward the contemporaneous intrigues of pop production made it oddly flexible across different formats and charts; it’s quiet storm trembled onto Adult Contemporary stations like a weather pattern itself, and the record eventually lodged itself in the Billboard Top 40. The presence of Baker’s voice in my childhood home was so constant as to verge on ambient, another piece of furniture in the house, or, in the period before I knew what furniture was, another murky voice cooing in the air above me. Thirty years later, I saw Anita Baker perform at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, one of the stops on her farewell tour in 2018. Her stage presence was surprisingly exuberant, more so than the narcotic pull of her voice would necessarily suggest. She swung her arms around, grasping handfuls of air or strumming it as if she were able to touch her own music as it streamed by. But when she opened her mouth to sing, time collapsed, and I was the same age I was the moment I first regarded Baker’s voice with awe, thinking she was like a magician pulling silk scarves from her mouth.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-03-21T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-03-21T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Elektra | March 21, 2021 | 9 | 57a0e2c9-dde9-4ccd-abac-5dbc6ff916e7 | Ivy Nelson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ivy-nelson/ | |
The long-awaited debut LP from Frenchman Pascal Arbez includes three-fourths of the seismic electro/techno Poney EP, which sits beautifully alongside his less dancefloor-friendly, album-oriented material. | The long-awaited debut LP from Frenchman Pascal Arbez includes three-fourths of the seismic electro/techno Poney EP, which sits beautifully alongside his less dancefloor-friendly, album-oriented material. | Vitalic: OK Cowboy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8538-ok-cowboy/ | OK Cowboy | With the possible exception of a certain French house duo whose name we won't bring up quite just yet, it's difficult to think of another dance act whose career ascent has been as storybook as Pascal Arbez's. After toiling for years in relative obscurity under the aliases Dima (as good as the name suggests) and Hustler Pornstar (uh, ditto), the Frenchman didn't just draw blood with Vitalic's 2001 Poney EP, he lopped a few arteries. Seriously, it's hard to overstate the response to Poney; of its four tracks, three became high-tide dancefloor staples. Along with the dark, yawning electro of "Poney Part 1" and "Poney Part 2", there was the centerpiece "La Rock 01", still the reigning champion of songs that sound like paper shredders orgying in a wind tunnel.
While everyone from 2 Many DJs to Aphex Twin to Sven Väth was busy corking their sets with one (or two, or three...) tracks from Poney, Arbez was studiously lifting a few PR moves from his contemporaries, first by playing up his anonymity and later by concocting an elaborate backstory that involved a Ukrainian upbringing, animal fur trading, male prostitution, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Despite being offered enough shows to keep him busy until the fall of the Wailing Wall, Arbez chose his live engagements carefully. He applied a similar selectivity to his output, issuing only a few 12"'s and a handful of choice remixes over the next few years.
That lull didn't do much to temper the weighty expectations placed on his full-length debut-- Lord knows, the Human After All-shaped hole in a lot of people's springtime playlists probably didn't help either. Happily, I can't imagine anyone who cared for Vitalic's earlier material being disappointed with OK Cowboy. Part of that is because Poney is built into this record's DNA-- rather than feeling like cursory inclusions, the EP's big three tracks sit beautifully alongside Arbez's less dancefloor-friendly, album-oriented material. The result is a much more complete and crafted record than you'd expect from an artist renowned for his killer singles.
Not unlike LCD Soundsystem's best maximalist moments, the bulk of OK Cowboy's action happens in the mid and high registers. In the same way that most indie bands look to guitars to do the bulk of their storytelling, Arbez leans pretty compulsively on his synths-- that probably explains why so many have glommed onto words like "metallic" and "rock" to describe Vitalic's sound.
The big new single here is "My Friend Dario", a jackhammering quiet-loud-quiet-loud guitar workout thing whose biggest fault is that it doesn't sound all that unlike Primal Scream's turn of the decade guitar techno coke freakout schtick. While it's a worthy enough addition as Vitalic burnburners go, it's hardly a patch on "No Fun" and "Newman", both of which boast synth lines that start out as pneumatic wheezes and turn into floor-swallowing squelches.
But we already knew Arbez could do acid for the end of the world. What's more surprising are his slower songs, the plaintive bits and bobs that comprise the album's glue. Equal parts jerky organ workouts ("Wooo"), spacey Baroquisms ("The Past"), and funhouse melodies ("Polkamatic"), these tracks sketch out the other side of a polarity (sweet, charming Gallicisms on one side, four-alarm fires on the other) that, when its all said and done, has us thinking about that one French duo again. Not because Vitalic is a second generation imitation (Daft Punk has always had more grease in their wheels), but because he's made a record that's in the same league as Homework or Discovery. | 2005-04-28T01:00:03.000-04:00 | 2005-04-28T01:00:03.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | PIAS | April 28, 2005 | 8.6 | 57aa31b8-6427-4472-af20-ad33595f818a | Mark Pytlik | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-pytlik/ | null |
Allow me to start by making a rather dorky connect-the-dots between two landmark cultural institutions of our key demographic: Weezer ... | Allow me to start by making a rather dorky connect-the-dots between two landmark cultural institutions of our key demographic: Weezer ... | Weezer: Maladroit | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8613-maladroit/ | Maladroit | Allow me to start by making a rather dorky connect-the-dots between two landmark cultural institutions of our key demographic: Weezer and Star Wars. Check it out: Weezer's self-titled return from hibernation (colloquially known as The Green Album) was The Phantom Menace of indie rock. Both sci-fi epic and alt-rock record were long-awaited events that had even the most jaded hipster hopping around like a small child with a full bladder. However, reactions to Star Wars: Episode One and Weezer: Episode Three were predominantly (and in some cases, absurdly) negative, despite small pockets of supporters slinging the old "just turn your brain off and have fun" argument.
To be fair, the analogy isn't completely fail-safe. After all, The Phantom Menace didn't break the Star Wars hiatus with a skimpy 28 minutes of new material, and The Green Album didn't have some of the worst acting-- human or computerized-- in the history of film. Furthermore, by my standards, Weezer's second eponymous release was nowhere near the memory-raping experience Episode I entailed, nor was it as terrible as judged by this site and elsewhere. Freed from the skyscraper-high expectations surrounding its release, The Green Album on return visits has shown to carry a fair amount of damn fine singalong tunes, while rewatching The Phantom Menace induces more wincing than a Jackie Chan blooper reel.
Now, convenient for my journalistic maneuvering, both franchises have produced their next efforts to get in your wallet-- Attack of the Clones and Maladroit. Regardless of what you might have thought about The Phantom Menace or The Green Album, it's undeniable that the rollouts of their respective followups are not garnering the same kind of delirious Second Coming-level hype. Not surprisingly, the response to Attack of the Clones has fallen along more traditional critics-vs.-the-public lines, with film writers generally turning up their nose at the flick's wooden dialog while normal people celebrate the picture as quality escapism. Maladroit, by continuing in the vein of The Green Album, promises a similar division of opinion, meaning a responsible critic (like myself) should probably submit it to the Mindless Fun Litmus Test.
The MFLT is appropriate because, yeah, Maladroit is definitely not a return to the sound of the band's mid-90s artistic peak. But to give them the benefit of the doubt, it's pretty apparent what the Weez are shooting for with the new record-- a further distillation of their power-pop specialties into short, catchy, big-riff-centered nuggets. Many writers will probably try to lump this incarnation of the band in with Andrew W.K. and the White Stripes for a 'Return of the Rawk!' style feature, but what's truly apparent is Weezer's now-complete focus upon the concert experience rather than studio twiddling. The flying-V guitars and large light-up =W= of their stage act no longer carry the wink that they used to, and these songs are tailored specifically to provoke mosh pits and elicit rampant flashing of devil-horns.
With Maladroit, Weezer has finally given the full punt to the nerd-rock label they sorta invented and always shunned, settling instead for being our generation's version of Cheap Trick. Rockford, Illinois' finest is just one of the classic guitar-worship pop bands invoked by the majority of the songs here, many of which seem like slight musical and thematic variations upon "I Want You to Want Me," and all of which make room for a fingers-flying solo. Things are harder-edged musically than the sunny Green Album tunes, with guitarists Rivers Cuomo and Brian Bell laying on as much distortion as possible over the crunchy riffs that hold up "American Gigolo" and "Take Control" and, well, pretty much the entire affair. But lyrically, things are still anchored in your usual white-man pleading-voice girl courtship, as song titles like "Love Explosion," "Possibilities," and "Slave" clearly indicate.
When this full-bodied attitude accompanies typically gooey Cuomo melodies, it makes for a handful of some of the best in-car rockout material of recent years. "Keep Fishin'" has boisterous call-and-response vocals and at least three different sections catchy enough to serve as choruses, while "Fall Together" is grunge-pop worthy of the late St. Kurt himself. Many songs on Maladroit come off as near-cover version love letters to Cuomo's rock heroes, most noticeably when "December" grafts a replica of the Who's "Love Reign O'er Me" to a souped-up 50s prom theme arrangement.
On the other hand, the Kiss emulation and guitar-god posturing is a pretty thin disguise for a band that's pretty obviously a mere shadow of its former self. Weezer's first two albums were almost unanimously loved, hyper-influential, near-masterpiece collections of quirky, personal, addictive power-pop. Stripping down to the basics is one thing, but removing almost every element and characteristic that separated the band from the other million quartets-with-guitars is a sad, sad sight to see. There's a thin line between homage and unoriginality, and it's hard not to notice that, in their effort to emulate their guitar-rock heroes, Weezer has to some extent become a fairly straightforward, above-average bar band.
Don't come looking for any of the eccentric flourishes of "Undone" or "El Scorcho," as Maladroit is predominantly a one-note, homogenous affair. Deviations from the hard-rock mean are whiffs: "Death and Destruction" slows things down for some nazel-gaving, but can't come close to the emotional weight of a "Say It Ain't So," for example. "Burndt Jamb" revisits the tropical flair of "Island in the Sun"-- and is only a keyboard and a Laetitia away from being Stereolab-- but can't resist falling back on steel-toed overdrive theatrics in the middle. Meanwhile, Cuomo continues to move away from the intensely specific lyrical content of earlier work (I've always wondered if that half-Japanese cellist got a cut of Pinkerton's profits), preferring instead to drop angstful Everyman phrases like, "Get yourself a wife/ Get yourself a job/ You're living a dream/ Don't you be a slob."
Right, so now's the part where I'm accused of underestimating Maladroit's youthful relevancy, missing the possibility that this album might mean as much to today's disenfranchised high school crowd as The Blue Album or Pinkerton meant to me in more innocent times. Maybe so, but it should be noted that I was a late-blooming Weezer fan, having written them off back in their first heyday and only cultivating a true appreciation for them over the last couple years. Given that fact, I have no qualms about taking a stand and pegging Maladroit as the slightest effort yet from the Weez, marking a continuation of their distressing downward trajectory and a perpetuation of their post-comeback complacence. It may have a handful of premium-grade headbangers, but in the mindless fun department, it sure ain't Yoda battling Christopher Lee. | 2002-05-27T01:00:03.000-04:00 | 2002-05-27T01:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | Interscope | May 27, 2002 | 5.4 | 57b02eb6-2fcd-4d1f-beb8-7e3f6cca6a6e | Rob Mitchum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rob- mitchum/ | null |
After the heavy-hearted indie folk of her debut, the Bristol singer-songwriter returns with a scruffier, more far-ranging record about developing a self in your twenties. | After the heavy-hearted indie folk of her debut, the Bristol singer-songwriter returns with a scruffier, more far-ranging record about developing a self in your twenties. | Fenne Lily: BREACH | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fenne-lily-breach/ | BREACH | There comes a time in a disenchanted young man’s life when, unbearably stifled by the bourgeois-ness of his bourgeois surroundings—the competitive schools, supportive parents, constant supply of refrigerated whole milk—he pours himself into the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Ask him to pass the salt, and instead you’ll receive a long-winded sermon on morality and eternal recurrence. “I get sick on second best/You get off to God is dead,” the Bristol singer Fenne Lily sings softly to one such sage on “I, Nietzsche,” nailing the dynamic of so many grim exchanges immortalized on the Instagram account Beam Me Up Softboi. Forget sex; the boy just wants to read.
Lily’s 2018 debut, On Hold, was a breakup album that she hesitated to label a breakup album, lest the narrative be reduced to “girl sad about boy.” It was predisposed toward trembling, somber indie folk in the vein of Daughter, music for wordlessly watching rain collect on a windowsill. Like so many young artists whose work is interchangeably praised as “intimate,” “raw,” and “vulnerable”—elevated under the belief that catharsis equals profundity—Lily wrote pretty, sincere songs lacking specificity and verve. Nearly as cliché as philosophy bros are songwriters with hushed vocals and spare guitar inspired by For Emma, Forever Ago.
BREACH, Lily’s first album for Dead Oceans, is a scruffier, more far-ranging record about developing a self in your twenties. Its version of early adulthood fits within the liberal-arts ethos of a show like High Maintenance: Subjects include self-medicating with weed (“Alapathy”), worrying about social media’s impact on your self-perception (“Solipsism”), and reaching new self-understandings in Western Europe (“Berlin”). Lily wrote “Berlin” after rereading Patti Smith’s Just Kids and embarking on a lone odyssey to the nightclub Berghain, that infamous colosseum of sin and techno. The result is a lulling slowcore ballad that resembles an old Taylor Swift gem and features Lucy Dacus on backing vocals. At its center is a tentative assertion of self-sufficiency: “It’s not hard to be alone anymore.”
For Lily, writing this record meant learning to distinguish between being lonely and being alone. In the absence of a relationship, you cannot flee yourself; you detect unresolved insecurities as if they’re stray hairs on the sofa. The jangling wind chimes at the opening of “Elliot” hint at a new beginning; the innocent baby babbles on “98” offer perspective on just how much she’s grown. There are a few recollections about relationships, too. “Laundry and Jet Lag” deploys a predictable metaphor that compares leaving an ex to quitting cigarettes (“I’m left with the scars/Of you”), although its muted strings are lovely. A song like “Birthday” is wiser. Sprinkled with wry, macabre imagery—“You sent me a head on my birthday/You said it was made with love”—it reveals the retrospective humor to a wobbly relationship, the strangeness of contorting yourself for someone else.
Little on BREACH compares to “I Used to Hate My Body But Now I Just Hate You,” a slow burner that sketches a shitty relationship with impressive economy. “I read all of the books you recommended/I listen to your friend’s band all the time,” Lily recalls, painting crushing as a sad combination of masochism and striving. Each verse is like a work of flash fiction. She fell for this person quickly; they performed intimacy as if for an elevator of strangers; and he moved on before she could play it cool. By the end, the person is long gone, sequestered at his parents’ home. But we still assign meanings to relics. The closer—“I still see you as some kind of reassurance that someday I’ll be understood”—discloses how our identity forms in the push and pull with others. People come and go, and each time, they leave us with a different version of ourselves than before.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-09-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country / Rock | Dead Oceans | September 22, 2020 | 6.7 | 57b07d59-0789-4cf5-ab48-48de573b9f62 | Cat Zhang | https://pitchfork.com/staff/cat-zhang/ | |
On their underrated commercial-flop debut album, the Fugees searched energetically for the voice they would find on The Score. | On their underrated commercial-flop debut album, the Fugees searched energetically for the voice they would find on The Score. | Fugees: Blunted on Reality | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22566-blunted-on-reality/ | Blunted on Reality | Pras Michel first came to Wyclef Jean at his dad’s church in New Jersey looking to join a band, not a rap group. Wyclef was already something of a local celebrity in the mid ’80s, writing raps in a session produced by Kurtis Blow for a group called Exact Change (on a single recording that was never released), and picking up the nickname the Rap Translator. Pras sought out Clef to play trumpet in the church band. As Wyclef tells it, Pras was a dreadful trumpet player, but he introduced Wyclef to two young musicians from his Newark high school: the mononymously known “Marcy” and a choir singer named Lauryn Hill. Even then, Hill was preternaturally talented, with a deep-rooted knowledge of R&B and Motown soul. Pras was an instrumentalist who was privy to rap as a kid but blocked from listening to it, instead spending long afternoons scanning the dials of his family radio for hard and soft rock. And he sought out Wyclef, who was already adapting the music of the Caribbean to fit his own, to add more reggae flavor into the mix. When Marcy abandoned the group after a few sessions, the trio adopted the name Tranzlator Crew, then later, Fugees.
The Fugees, as many have come to know them, appeared fully formed in 1996 on “Fu-Gee-La,” the lead single from the trio’s ground-breaking, major label opus, The Score. But “Fu-Gee-La” predated the polished, finished project, starting as a raw loosie produced on the fringes of a session for a “Vocab” remix. It was created in the early-mid ’90s when the group was still experimenting, on a beat Salaam Remi originally made for Fat Joe. In those moments, before The Score was even conceived, the Fugees were slowly coalescing into a unit. Under the direction of Kool & the Gang co-founder Khalis Bayyan (then Ronald Bell), they were working on their debut album called Blunted on Reality.
Each member had a unique musical history, leading to a sonic information trade of sorts—capitalizing on Lauryn’s internal soul music archive, Pras’ hard- and soft-rock reference points, and Wyclef’s reggae reworks. The smorgasbord of sound registered as rap but only when stripping several layers of context away; the Fugees packed reggae-flecked, raucous romps and remixes into 18 tracks, and attempted to package it as traditionalist hip-hop. The result was a commercial flop, selling (literally) 12 copies, and sending the group back to the drawing board.
For all its eclecticism, Blunted on Reality is still a relic of its era—heavily indebted to rap’s elite samplers and sound-bending maestros De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Main Source, and even Digable Planets—and it's a bit raw and rough around the edges, a mostly croon-free ragga rap opus that’s far less explicit with its social and political ideals than The Score but twice as enthusiastic. The album scans as a style sampler of early ’90s alt hip-hop. But with the benefit of hindsight, it’s a fun, low-stakes gambit straddling the margins of boom bap, jazz rap, and reggae fusion without pause, and it’s a transformative experience for its MCs.
The trio have said in the past that they let producers wrestle away creative control of the record, creating a product they didn't recognize, and they carefully distanced themselves from it during the press junket for The Score. But Blunted on Reality is essential to the myth of the Fugees and to the sonics of their seminal album. Without this commercial misfire, there is no colossal comeback story, no extra push to silence naysayers who wrote the album off as a failure, and they couldn’t have made something as refined as The Score without making this record first.
Despite its status as the underwhelming precursor to a classic, Blunted on Reality is a marvel of pure energy and noise that musters up rage and exuberance in equal measure. It’s clearly a response to racial injustice, xenophobia, and inner-city violence, but the album never wages war with any of these topics directly. Instead, there are one-off references to shootings, to the Klan and black oppression, and to intolerance, amid a party pack. Its zeal is sadly as timely as ever. “Hide nigga hide, flee nigga flee, run nigga run/For I’ve got my hood, my cross, my tree, my gun/My rope, and it’s a long one,” Lauryn recites in the intro. Seconds later, Wyclef puts it even more plainly: “You maintain to put a negro in pain.”
Blunted on Reality sits squarely at the intersection of New York City and Croix-des-Bouquets, mixing big-city swagger with an outsider’s mentality (ideas best articulated by interludes “Harlem Chit Chat” and “Da Kid From Haiti”). The reggae influence lines the seams of songs like “Temple” and “Refugees on the Mic,” which forgo heavy boom-bap for more leisurely, island-friendly tempos. The accents disappear on the shout-rap tracks, but sneak out for the hooks on “Recharge” and “Boof Baf” and in the opening moments of “Giggles.” It’s a triumph of black American immigrants, constantly mixing cultural cues. The breakbeat on the roughneck rousing “How Hard Is It?” is almost New Jack Swing-like, while “Nappy Heads” makes an escapist anthem out of an Earth, Wind, and Fire ballad.
Slowly but surely, the Fugees find their voices on Blunted on Reality, taking turns with bludgeoning verses that do most of their damage with sheer force. Lauryn often sounds MC Lyte-ish in her inflections, less assured and measured in her pronunciations than she would become on later albums, but she is still clearly the group’s X factor, with raps that burst at the seams and a standout solo cut (“Some Seek Stardom”). When the dust had settled, the trio had three hit singles and a platinum album to their name, and Blunted on Reality had been reduced to an asterisk in the Fugee story, Lauryn would later tell Ebony in November ’96 that “kids need to know there’s more to life than a five-block radius,” that the Fugees spoke for the disenfranchised. The Score delivered that in its messages, but before that, Blunted on Reality proved it with an uncompromising sound. | 2016-11-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-11-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Music On Vinyl | November 5, 2016 | 7.6 | 57b163b3-1637-41c4-bb7f-5b261ee79f87 | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | null |
null | For 15 or so years Brian Eno was the Zelig of Western music, popping up wherever new ground was being broken. He was more than just "around," of course; he was also making history on his pioneering pop albums and the records on which he invented ambient music. But Eno seemed to be on hand for a sharp observation even when he wasn't directly involved. From his instant recognition of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" as a watershed moment in pop, his tireless championing of German bands that would later be canonized, to his role as the curator the *No | Cluster / Brian Eno / Dieter Moebius / Roedelius / Conny Plank: Cluster & Eno / After the Heat / Begegnungen / Begegnungen II | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11733-cluster-eno-after-the-heat-begegnungen-begegnungen-ii/ | Cluster & Eno / After the Heat / Begegnungen / Begegnungen II | For 15 or so years Brian Eno was the Zelig of Western music, popping up wherever new ground was being broken. He was more than just "around," of course; he was also making history on his pioneering pop albums and the records on which he invented ambient music. But Eno seemed to be on hand for a sharp observation even when he wasn't directly involved. From his instant recognition of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" as a watershed moment in pop, his tireless championing of German bands that would later be canonized, to his role as the curator the No New York album, Eno was always understood to have exceptional taste. Perhaps that's why he saw such success as a producer, a job that requires above all that one be a good listener.
In the mid-1970s, Eno was particularly enamored with the synthesized music Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim Roedelius were making as Cluster. He traveled to the town of Forst, Germany, where Cluster lived and worked in their home studio, and began a collaboration that would result in two classic albums.
The first recorded material to emerge from this meeting was Cluster & Eno, which was recorded in June 1977 at Conny Plank's studio, and suggested that the collaboration was completely organic. Eno's relentless sound experimentation helped Cluster get the most out of their synthesizers; the record is filled with textures that must have seemed otherworldly in 1977, but still manage to hold up today. The vibrato quiver of the Moog in "Schone Hande", for example, overflows with tension and mystery, soundtracking perhaps a hesitant exploration of a potentially hostile alien planet. Piano is in the foreground on "Wehrmut" and "Mit Simaen"; at that time, a few notes on a baby grand with the sustain pedal to the metal brought to mind the furniture music of Satie and sounded terrific surrounded by wispy synths. On tracks like the warmly percolating "Ho Renomo", Cluster contributed a heightened ear for melody and an interest in repetition that pointed directly to where electronic music would eventually go. Cluster & Eno demonstrates that the parties had developed along parallel paths but discovered something new and fresh by working together.
When they convened again a number of months later, the trio dropped the Cluster name and turned its focus in the general direction of song. After the Heat differs sharply from its predecessor in tone, as well as its English language titles and the occasional vocal presence of Eno. "Most of the day we were at the machinery," he sings on "The Belldog", alluding perhaps to the creative ferment happening in Plank's studio. With evocative synths bubbling underneath, "The Belldog" sounds like a more technically sophisticated update of Another Green World, like the three had happened upon a new sort of music that would one day grow noisier and be called dreampop. For "Tzima N'arki", Moebius and Roedelius constructed an anxious simulation of a modern string quartet while Can's Holgar Czukay adds a dubby bass; Eno's vocals are played backward and somehow don't sound appreciably weirder than they normally do. "If God had listened to me/ None of this would ever had occurred," is what he's actually singing; had they recorded this song in the late 1990s, I'd think he was talking about alternative rock. Eno does his talk/rap thing on "Broken Head", a menacing slab of slowburn funk with an unchanging bass and drums groove and strange noises spinning off in all directions. A few piano-centered instrumentals hint at the sound of the earlier record, but After the Heat exists in a fantastic sphere of its own.
They'd made brilliant records before hooking up with Eno, but Moebius and Roedelius have never shied from acknowledging the impact the association had on their approach to sound. The two compilations bearing the title Begegnungen (German for "encounter") give an idea of the different ways those initial seeds sprouted. Adding Plank to the name of the project, both Begegnungen volumes compile tracks from the sessions with Eno along with contemporaneous solo and Cluster material in a similar vein. "Johanneslust" is a gorgeous solo Roedelius track from 1978, where he combines a simple acoustic guitar pattern with synths in a manner that reinforces the bucolic "back to nature" possibility of electronics. "Nervös" and "Pitch Control", both from 1983, bring the earlier experiments into the realm of 80s electro-pop. The former is solo Moebius with a grim layer of industrial soot, while the latter finds Cluster working with Guru Guru drummer Mani Neumeier to reclaim the stiff funk of Herbie Hancock's Future Shock for the European continent.
In Moebius and Roedelius' favor, they never seemed bound by orthodoxy-- genre experiment came naturally to them, as evidenced by the title of their 1981 album Rastakraut Pasta. "Conditionierer" from Begegnungen II actually moves into the realm of hyper-minimal country & western, with a perky guitar groove and bottleneck slide. And then Roedelius' 1978 piece "Mr. Livingstone" gorgeously combines gamelan-style gongs with indeterminate far Eastern scales. Despite a dull patch or two, both volumes of Begegnungen are constantly engaging and full of surprises.
The late 1970s and early 1980s were a fantastically exciting time to be making electronic music, as technology changed almost daily and possibilities expanded exponentially. In such a chaotic and unfixed environment, it took smart people with a strong musical sense to make the most of it. These guys fit the bill. | 2006-04-06T01:00:01.000-04:00 | 2006-04-06T01:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | null | April 6, 2006 | 8.7 | 57b57fc2-4ec3-4cb6-bd40-b10e6fce4da8 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
The Radiohead drummer returns with a solo album whose beautiful, dramatic arrangements clash with the bland songwriting. | The Radiohead drummer returns with a solo album whose beautiful, dramatic arrangements clash with the bland songwriting. | Philip Selway: Strange Dance | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/philip-selway-strange-dance/ | Strange Dance | In Radiohead’s best music, songs and arrangements have a holistic and nearly inextricable bond. The free-jazz freakout in the middle of “The National Anthem” is just as crucial as the lyrics or vocal melody; “Pyramid Song” wouldn’t be “Pyramid Song” without its drunkenly stumbling percussion. The third solo album from Philip Selway, the man behind that indelible drum part, sometimes comes impressively close to the work of his main band in terms of the ambition and inventiveness of its musical settings. They tend to draw from a similar well of influence: the dissonance and rhythmic pulsation of contemporary classical music, or the forward thrust of krautrock, with various electronics beeping and buzzing at the edges.
But these arrangements don’t stick to the bones of the songs with the same force that they do in Selway’s main band. Swap one song’s power-ballad orchestration with another’s mellow mallet percussion and they might sound just as natural as they did in their original forms. The songs themselves are part of the problem: Slow and somber, with little lyrical specificity or melodic surprise, they give the sense of Strange Dance as a set of beautiful musical accouterments in search of worthy compositions to adorn.
As one might expect from a drummer, Selway fares best as a songwriter when the music is rhythmically active. Strange Dance’s best track by a significant margin is also its most upbeat: “Picking Up Pieces,” which charges ahead in a series of interlocking syncopations, with guitars and bowed strings all acting like percussion instruments, making their brief contributions to the precisely arranged tapestry and then backing away until it’s time to strike again. The title track also foregrounds Selway’s idiosyncratic approach to rhythm, setting his voice against drums that clatter and echo like a digital-age update to Tom Waits’ junkyard blues, with little other accompaniment. (Interestingly, Selway chose not to play his primary instrument on Strange Dance, handing drum duties over to Valentina Magaletti of Vanishing Twin.) In these moments and others—like “What Keeps You Awake at Night,” which begins with percolating vibraphones and dissolves in a flurry of pizzicato strings—it’s possible to glimpse an alternate vision of Selway’s music, which focuses on his and his collaborators’ ears for unusual grooves and striking combinations of sounds, treating these as the main event rather than set dressing.
Strange Dance more often presents itself as a traditional singer-songwriter album, albeit one with some killer sound design. Most of the lyrics seem to describe a breakup of some sort, though the details are fuzzy. As a writer, Selways works in broad, bland strokes: “I couldn’t be alone tonight/I need you here by my side/I’m lost without you now,” goes one representative passage from “Check for Signs of Life.” There are plenty of great pop songs built on platitudes, but Selway has neither the tunefulness as a composer nor the expressiveness as a singer to sell this stuff. “The Other Side” strikes a particularly sour note, addressing a partner at the brink of a relationship’s end. “I’ve seen you in all your faults and doubts/I can’t unsee it now,” Selway sings, his almost cartoonishly mannered delivery and a prim orchestral arrangement reinforcing the notion that the narrator couldn’t possibly bear any blame himself. A breakup song as bitter as “The Other Side” should come with a little piss and vinegar. This one just sounds smug.
Familial, Selway’s 2010 solo debut, was self-consciously low-key, built mostly on voice, acoustic guitar, and occasional electronics. Given Selway’s membership in the biggest and best art-rock band of our era, it’s no surprise that he might eventually aim higher. But as appealing as the arrangements and production of Strange Dance are on a sonic level, they end up harming the songs as often as they help. The dramatic crescendos and ostensibly cathartic payoffs of “Little Things” and “The Heart of It All” suggest profundity but mostly draw attention to its absence. Strip away the bombast and these are humble little songs. Humble treatment might suit them. | 2023-03-01T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2023-03-01T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Bella Union | March 1, 2023 | 5.8 | 57b89215-604e-48f8-a763-173bf1b02082 | Andy Cush | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-cush/ | |
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 David Crosby’s solo debut, a foggy dream of psychedelic folk-rock. | 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 David Crosby’s solo debut, a foggy dream of psychedelic folk-rock. | David Crosby: If I Could Only Remember My Name | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/david-crosby-if-i-could-only-remember-my-name/ | If I Could Only Remember My Name | The ’60s were over and David Crosby was living on a boat. Aside from the recording studio, his 59-foot schooner, named The Mayan, was the only place where things made sense. When Crosby was 11, his parents decided to enroll their son in sailing classes. The wild-eyed, giggling California kid had an anti-authoritarian streak that was starting to get him in trouble, and some time on the docks, they imagined, might give him some discipline, or at least a place to spend his summers. Sailing came naturally, like he had captained many vessels in a previous life. It was an uncanny feeling, comforting and strange. As the decade came to a close, Crosby wrote the title track of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s blockbuster album Déjà Vu about this very sensation.
Around the same time, he experienced his first major loss. In 1969, on her way to take the cats to the vet, Crosby’s girlfriend Christine Hinton swerved her van and crashed into a school bus. She died instantly. Grief-stricken and depressed, Crosby stood at the start of a long spiral that would consume his next two decades. “I watched a part of David die that day,” his bandmate Graham Nash wrote. “He wondered aloud what the universe was doing to him.” He turned to hard drugs. Fifteen years later, he was in prison, almost unrecognizable, the creative spark that had defined him all but dissipated. Crosby seemed to exist only in the past tense.
In the beautiful tragic comedy that is classic rock radio, David Crosby is almost never the protagonist. He’s more like the stoned sidekick—colorful, lovable, always just kind of around. Once in a while, he takes the lead, but his voice remains most recognizable as the one somewhere in the middle—first in the Byrds, next in CSN, and then in CSNY. Much has been said of his ego—and much of it by Crosby himself—but few artists have been so content to have a legacy defined by the people around them. Surrounded by friends, he was happy. “I had never seen anybody who had that much interest and joy and spontaneous reaction,” Grace Slick said of her first encounter with Crosby in the ’60s. “You could just look at his face and be delighted because there was a human being getting that childlike excitement out of stuff.”
Like sailing, music came naturally to young Crosby. His awakening arrived at age four, when his mother took him to see a symphony orchestra in the park. He was transfixed by everything, save for the compositions themselves. He sat in awe of the chaotic murmurs as the musicians tuned their instruments; the syncopated dance of their elbows when they kicked into action; how a vast body of voices could unite, suddenly, in harmony. He noticed the way that none of these sounds would be nearly as powerful on their own. “It just broke over me like a wave,” he reflected. It’s a thread he followed throughout his career.
While 1971’s If I Could Only Remember My Name is the first release credited to Crosby as a solo artist—and for a long time, the only release—it’s an album defined by harmony, community, and togetherness. The backing band is composed of members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, with notable appearances from Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Graham Nash. At the time of its release, these were some of the most popular names in music, nearly all of them coming off respective career-bests and commercial peaks. And yet together, they sound gloriously abstract. The music feels the way a dream sounds when you try to retell it in the morning: foggy, only loosely coherent, dissolving in real time.
This is David Crosby’s fingerprint. Look back at his earliest songs and you can hear an artist fighting against the confines of popular music. He played guitar in strange ways, opting for odd tunings that carried his songs and lyrics to unexpected places. His first great song, the Byrds’ “Everybody’s Been Burned,” sounds a little like a standard, except for the bass soloing through the entire thing. Later, in a cut called “What’s Happening?!?!,” he sang through what sounds like barely contained laughter, like someone exasperated with how much they have to say, realizing how words fail our deepest visions. The band can barely keep up with him.
The story goes, Crosby was kicked out of the Byrds for a few reasons. One, he was a pain to work with. Two, he had taken to indulging in long rants on stage, veering toward conspiracy theories about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Third, he had written this troublesome little song about a threesome. Continuing his nonmonogamous streak, he had also accepted a role playing with Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield at the Monterey Pop Festival. His bandmates took it as a sign of disloyalty—or maybe just an excuse to abandon him. Soon after his dismissal from the Byrds, Crosby and Stills began working with the Hollies’ Graham Nash on a new project focused on tight songwriting and three-part harmony. With Nash, Crosby found his most natural and consistent partner: someone who laughed at his jokes, provided comfort and wisdom when he needed it, and joined him on The Mayan for long treks down the California coast.
Near the end of If I Could Only Remember My Name, Nash and Crosby duet on a gorgeous, wordless piece of music, scatting along to one of the best melodies Crosby ever wrote. “I called it ‘A Song With No Words,’” he announces proudly at a show in 1970, gesturing toward Nash at his side. “He called it ‘A Tree With No Leaves.’ That shows you where he’s at.” The audience laughs. On the sleeve of the record, the song has both titles, Nash’s in parentheses, a symbolic compromise that speaks to the group mentality of the record. Alone with his music, Crosby heard sketches. With his friends around, they became forces of nature.
The creation of the album involved Crosby spending idle time alone in the studio, leaning against a wall or collapsing into tears, before his collaborators arrived to elevate the mood and enliven the music. Jerry Garcia’s pedal steel and Joni Mitchell’s harmony vocals turn “Laughing,” the most conventional song on the record, into the psych-folk ideal: a lazy sunset that gains resonance as it subdues. The kaleidoscopic opener “Music Is Love” was just a plaintive guitar riff before the choir turned it into a commune. “Everybody’s saying that music is love,” they all sing, one after the other, creating a world where it’s true.
Crosby was adamant not to let his pain define the record. “I got no more understanding than an ant does when you pull off his legs,” he told Rolling Stone about his grief. He spoke about his desire to keep the sadness to himself—“It was the most horrible trip of my life and nobody needs to go on it”—so that his music could remain an escape. The album ends up somewhere in the middle. It’s a peaceful but broken sound.
The only song with a narrative arc is “Cowboy Movie.” It tells the thinly veiled story of CSNY dissipating, less interesting for its hippy-comedown mythology than its depiction of a narrator finding himself more desperate and alone with each passing minute. The story is in the music too: a gnarled, paranoid skeleton of Young’s 1969 song “Down by the River” that crackles and fades like a dying campfire. Crosby’s voice is more ragged than usual. “Now I’m dying here in Albuquerque,” he sings at the end. “I might be the sorriest sight you ever saw.”
The record closes with two songs that Crosby recorded by himself. Both are mostly a cappella, his voice layered to sound angelic and vast. “I was sitting there, kind of goofing around,” he said of the experiments, “And then all of a sudden I wasn’t goofing around.” Titled “I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here,” the closing song has since been identified as Crosby’s elegy for Christine. On a record that includes some of his most pointed writing about politics (“What Are Their Names”) and loss (“Traction in the Rain”), this was his clearest statement. He sounds helpless, haunted.
Throughout the ’70s, Crosby slowly fell out of focus. He and Nash made a few strong records as a duo and CSN had several more hits while they drifted apart. Nash knew the band was done when he saw Crosby abandoning a jam after his crack pipe fell from an amp. Things only got worse. At one point, Crosby boarded The Mayan in an attempt to flee from the cops before eventually turning himself in to the FBI. He left prison a year later with his hair cut short and his iconic mustache shaved off. Newly sober, his health began to deteriorate. He nearly died of liver failure in the ’90s, and, when he recovered, diabetes and heart disease followed.
Along the way, If I Could Only Remember My Name garnered a bigger reputation. Unlike anything else in Crosby’s catalog and misunderstood by its generation of critics, it was rediscovered by folk artists in the 2000s among similarly cosmic works by Judee Sill and Vashti Bunyan. Its most notable student, however, is Crosby himself. His last five years have found him returning to the record’s quiet, hypnotic headspace to work with a newfound urgency. On the best of his recent records, 2018’s Here If You Listen, he and his young collaborators return to some of the demos he made during the ’60s and ’70s, finishing the thoughts he abandoned. “If you don’t like the story you’re in,” he sings, “Pick up your pen and then write it again.”
It’s an inspiring new phase of his career, though it also highlights everything that’s been lost: collaborators, friends, time. In 2014, David Crosby sold The Mayan to a California billionaire named Beau Vrolyk. Crosby needed the money and figured this guy could take better care of it anyway. He hasn’t sailed since. The boat, however, has never been better. On a blog dedicated to its maintenance, Vrolyk writes passionately about the Mayan’s second life. He’s since made the boat more habitable for future generations. He got in touch with the grandson of the original builders to learn about its history. He even entered it in some races. “Old boats need love,” he writes. Some find it. | 2019-03-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-03-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Atlantic | March 10, 2019 | 8.7 | 57bd2f59-c3d5-4bb1-9d60-11d7efc1395d | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | |
The Chicago-bred, now Brooklyn-based beatmaker DJ Rude One's ONEderful is a grubby set of blood-in-your-mouth street raps, featuring Roc Marciano, Your Old Droog, Mr Muthafuckin eXquire, and more. | The Chicago-bred, now Brooklyn-based beatmaker DJ Rude One's ONEderful is a grubby set of blood-in-your-mouth street raps, featuring Roc Marciano, Your Old Droog, Mr Muthafuckin eXquire, and more. | DJ Rude One: ONEderful | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22572-onederful/ | ONEderful | As one-half of Single Minded Pros alongside Doc West, the Chicago-bred, now Brooklyn-based beatmaker DJ Rude One compiled a Rolodex of ’90s rap gods with his production work. The intro to new solo effort *ONEderful *lays out his credentials by assembling shout-outs from guys like Kool G Rap, DJ Premier, even DOOM (via a static-heavy audio message, as though recorded in his hidden underground lair). But on the record, Rude chooses not to call in old favors. Instead, he assembles a new list of contacts, all dedicated to the hard-boiled ethics—atmosphere heavy, hooks optional, Wu-Tang reigning over all—of NY orthodoxy. The lean, 10-track ONEderful is a grubby set of blood-in-your-mouth street raps, dusty record scratches and musty, subterranean beats.
On “Mr. Goodbar,” Brooklyn-by-way-of-the-Ukraine emcee Your Old Droog flows with the blunted thump of the Kool Genius. Conway the Machine calls out all studio gangsters on the concrete-cold piano keys and tough drum loop of “Andre Drummond.” Elsewhere, “Street Scenes,” featuring Chicago’s Jeremiah Jae, is built on clinking piano keys that recall the Wu’s “C.R.E.A.M.” Roc Marciano gets two tracks—“Murder Paragraphs” and “Triple Black Benz”—because his rasping voice is suited for Rude One’s gritty sound. Almost everything here is sonically consistent, with rapper and producer perfectly in sync; no small thing when it comes to producer compilations that shuffle through guest spots this quickly.
The best beat, though, is actually out of step with the rest of the tape. The Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire-featuring “Tyrannosaurs eX” is all swarming ’80s synths and Moroder-style pyrotechnics, hinting at a different direction. The only unequivocal disappointment is “Supreme Trunks.” Conway’s Griselda Gang sibling Westside Gunn has recently established himself as one of NYC’s real emerging talents, but he’s hampered here by a grating keyboard stab that’s impossible to navigate, even with his energetic flow.
DJ Rude One succeeds, though, by keeping his focus narrow and his lens firmly fixed. ONEderful is short, snappy and completely disinterested with any kind of traditional song structure. It moves with beat-tape momentum, and has no concerns other than letting its rappers do whatever the hell they want. A low-key release, maybe, but if you just want to just listen to some stalwart rhymes over brass-knuckle beats, Rude One proves an excellent foil. | 2016-10-31T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-31T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Closed Sessions | October 31, 2016 | 6.9 | 57c55108-c503-454f-9bff-ad23b3be88b0 | Dean Van Nguyen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dean-van nguyen/ | null |
On her second album, the Austin singer-songwriter strengthens her voice and broadens her perspective, turning her gaze from romance to a more nuanced view of her own anxieties. | On her second album, the Austin singer-songwriter strengthens her voice and broadens her perspective, turning her gaze from romance to a more nuanced view of her own anxieties. | Molly Burch: First Flower | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/molly-burch-first-flower/ | First Flower | “Any woman that is singing a ballad is my favorite thing,” the Austin singer-songwriter Molly Burch recently confessed when asked about her influences, listing off everyone from Billie Holiday to Dusty Springfield to Britney Spears. Fittingly, on her second album, First Flower, Burch’s voice takes center stage.
On her debut, last year’s Please Be Mine, Burch focused on the tribulations of romantic love. The songs were polished and luxurious, buoyed by jazzy instrumentals and her characteristically smoky vocals. On First Flower, it is clear that her range and control have improved. She deftly pivots from a husky smolder to billowing vibrato to the airiness of tulle blowing in the wind. The subjects of her songs have diversified, too: While she still writes about romance, she also turns inward, exploring what she desires from relationships and how her anxieties affect her interactions with other people.
Burch’s voice is so versatile that she can sing the same phrase over and over, each time giving it new meaning. On “First Flower,” her joy in a blossoming relationship is palpable as she repeats, “You are my man,” over dreamy guitar and angelic backing vocals. On album closer “Every Little Thing,” she begins on a slower and more somber note, garnering assurance and momentum every time she sings, “I’ve worn my body down,” over sparse keys and glittering harp. The way her delivery evolves, ultimately injecting every word with blazing electricity, is both a document of her exhaustion and proof of her determination.
The album’s emotional weight doesn’t come solely from Burch’s vocal delivery; her struggles with anxiety yield nuggets of lyrical wisdom too. When she ruminates, “I hope I learn from my mistakes/I hope I forgive myself one day,” on “Dangerous Places,” she imbues deceptively sunny surf-rock guitars and lackadaisical drums with introspection and self-awareness. And on album highlight “To the Boys,” she articulates a central tenet of third-wave feminism: Women need not emulate masculinity to be powerful. “I don’t need to scream to get my point across/I don’t need to yell to know that I’m the boss,” she sings, revealing the power in quietly but firmly asserting your value in spaces that historically deemed you unworthy of respect. Though the subject is soft-spokenness, her vocals ring crystal clear, demanding that people listen.
But, as with Please Be Mine, the lyrics on First Flower are sometimes too broad to feel poignant. Burch uses grandiose language to describe her relationships but never shows us the details of why those interactions are so meaningful, so her emotional revelations border on platitudes. Phrases like “I never knew love before you, my baby,” from “True Love,” don’t resonate emotionally so much as leave the listener wondering what, exactly, that grand love was like. “I just I want to do everything with you,” from “Next to Me,” is no more evocative, and before going into more detail, the song is off in another direction as Burch laments that her partner needs space.
The songs on First Flower are vibrant and warm—fine dinner party music, if not gripping enough to stop the conversation in its tracks. Still, Burch’s emotional openness and introspection are promising, and her technical skill is undeniable. Her highly versatile vocals add texture, nuance, and depth to everything she sings. | 2018-10-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-10-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Captured Tracks | October 20, 2018 | 6.7 | 57c632db-4f33-4706-a625-23acd66f1b0f | Vrinda Jagota | https://pitchfork.com/staff/vrinda-jagota/ | |
The Iceland-based composer’s score for the Arctic crime drama shivers with ominous uncertainty that’s better appreciated in its original context. | The Iceland-based composer’s score for the Arctic crime drama shivers with ominous uncertainty that’s better appreciated in its original context. | Ben Frost: Catastrophic Deliquescence (Music From Fortitude 2015-2018) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ben-frost-catastrophic-deliquescence-music-from-fortitude-2015-2018/ | Catastrophic Deliquescence (Music From Fortitude 2015-2018) | A choir can produce a heavenly aura as easily as it can evoke the jaws of hell clamping down on sinners. On “Mammoth Suite,” Australian composer and experimentalist Ben Frost demonstrates such a shift in the space of 15 seconds: A hair-raising commotion subsides into whispers and groans, which bleed into the strings presumably sent to serenade the forsaken. It’s a tense moment in what transpires to be almost an hour and a half of tense moments on Catastrophic Deliquescence (Music From Fortitude 2015-2018). The album collects 31 compositions Frost wrote for the British television series Fortitude, a psychological thriller shaped by the forces of climate change and capitalism.
Fortitude is a fictional town in the Norwegian Arctic, but for those who favor the strain of crime drama sometimes called Nordic noir, it will feel highly familiar. Though it’s a UK production, Fortitude shares Nordic noir’s population of families torn apart by secrets, pervasive sense of isolation, and looming existential threat. Partially filmed in Iceland, the series does an impressive job of making a character of the landscape, and this is where Frost, who lives in Iceland, sensibly grounds his score. There’s howling wind, effects that mimic the way snow muffles sound, the squawk of a gull. Whether leaning into classical motifs or pushing electronics to the point of distortion, the music shivers with ominous uncertainty: In this realm, it always feels like something bad is about to happen, even when it already has.
On “Permafrost,” the foreboding is briefly tempered by curiosity. Beneath layers of static and bass, the central melody has the pattern of a bird call, perky and persuasive. For every playful interlude like this on the compilation, however, there are a handful of tracks intent on coming off as more mysterious than the last. The plainly named “Dan” and “Elena” use swathes of synth reverb and choral offcuts to very standard effect. Like anything, mysterious tropes lose their impact with overuse. The real drama on Catastrophic Deliquescence lies in the moments when Frost breaks with genre conformity. The fractal drums and negative space on “Tupilaq (A Shower Scene)” provide a much-needed shot of energy. In the second half of the record, some truly beautiful brass feels warm enough to scoop you up and carry you through the storm. “Snow Like Smoke,” in particular, recalls the heavy heart of Alan Silvestri’s “Theme From The Bodyguard,” from Whitney Houston’s peerless 1992 blockbuster.
But do TV soundtracks need to exist separate from their shows? There is a world of difference between the kind of score required for a film, which has a fixed runtime and a distinct narrative arc, and a TV series, which is deemed successful only if its story is strung out over several seasons. The psychological thriller, in particular, is the perfect template for the streaming age: Just as page-turners worship at the altar of the cliffhanger, binge-watch TV lives or dies by its ability to march you into the next episode. But when taken in aggregate, 31 tracks designed to keep you at the edge of your seat can be exhausting—and 23 of them are under the three-minute mark. It’s not that short scene-length tracks are bad; it’s that the overall emotional tone winds up feeling repetitive.
I’m not convinced that Catastrophic Deliquescence works as a standalone release. That’s a shame, because it’s an accomplished score when experienced as originally intended—within a TV show. Fortitude’s elongated tensions and creeping dread wouldn’t land the way they do without Frost’s musical guidance. Perhaps that’s what he’s hinting at with the title. Deliquescence is a chemical process by which a substance absorbs so much moisture from the atmosphere that it dissolves in the accumulated water. TV shows absorb so much emotional weight from their soundtracks that they cannot properly exist without them. But just because the music can be extracted doesn’t mean something isn’t lost along the way.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-12-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-12-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic / Experimental | Mute | December 7, 2019 | 6 | 57c6d82b-150c-4a7a-b274-090606f9db8f | Ruth Saxelby | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ruth-saxelby/ | |
The San Jose emo band’s debut sounds like various states of alarm, a big statement that leans on the raw impulses of singer and songwriter Shannon Taylor. | The San Jose emo band’s debut sounds like various states of alarm, a big statement that leans on the raw impulses of singer and songwriter Shannon Taylor. | awakebutstillinbed: what people call low self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way that other people see you | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/awakebutstillinbed-what-people-call-low-self-esteem-is-really-just-seeing-yourself-the-way-that-other-people-see-you/ | what people call low self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way that other people see you | The San Jose band awakebutstillinbed have succeeded at being so emo that they necessitated a new Bandcamp genre tag. Behold the dawn of “extremo.” Where some bands will preempt the emo label with a kind of self-reflexive joke about it, nothing about the young band’s debut album is played for laughs. You can’t call awakebutstillinbed “melodramatic” because that would imply overstatement or exaggeration, or that drama itself can’t be a resting state. Both “awake but still in bed” and “what people call low self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way other people see you” are lyrics verbatim from the album and there’s no particular emphasis on either of those lines when they arrive. On average, they’re slightly less acute than anything else that comes from vocalist Shannon Taylor as a coo, a yell, or whatever you want to call the irreplicable moments where it sounds like she’s trying to remove a ball of steel shavings from her throat with a rusty fork. While some albums use a spectrum or rainbow for their emotional palette, low self-esteem needs a fire code: Every moment sounds an alarm, they’re only differentiated by its state of emergency.
This isn’t cinematic music as the term is usually understood, i.e., “lots of strings” or “eight-minute songs.” Rather, it’s a unification of sound and vision, a vivid rendering of a life spent standing on a precipice, where the weight of guilt is somehow the only thing keeping you from jumping. It demands an immediate comparison to the last time a previously unheralded emo band did it this well; “Opener” follows nearly the exact trajectory of the Hotelier’s ”An Introduction to the Album” and low self-esteem shares many of Home, Like NoPlace Is There’s qualities: certainly some of its suburban scenery and themes, but also its brazenly screamed hooks, fitful dynamics, and meticulous sequencing.
But at no point does awakebutstillinbed sound unduly derivative of any band, even if “Safe” and “Saved” are more classic Rainer Maria than the last Rainer Maria album; they’re just drawing from a similar wellspring of emotion. If Taylor’s going to break down at a funeral where she feels somehow responsible, of course it would sound as searching and devastating as “Saved.” Of course a song about freeing oneself from the bondage of patriarchal inheritance would be as feverishly driven as “Fathers.” The full-band plummet of “Opener” hits with seismic impact because what else is supposed to happen when a person just cannot take their depression being invalidated for one more second?
Taylor’s vocals pull most of the focus here, and even when she takes on a more amenable tone, her ability to go nuclear ensures no moment of low self-esteem is passive listening. But she knows when to smash the button, which she does on “Life” before the very first line. Even if it’s couched in one those streaking post-punk arrangements that connect early U2 with Makthaverskan, Taylor’s hook, “I couldn’t get my life back/I couldn’t save myself,” would be notated on sheet music by jamming a pencil straight through the paper.
It’s easy to think of this all as a result of being purely impulsive or serendipitous. That tends to happen in this realm, where even the masterpieces are seen as happening despite themselves: singers who can’t sing hitting the wrong notes just right, guitars chiming in unintuitive yet beautiful harmonies, bands who keep it together for just long enough to create a legacy before they implode six months later. Yet awakebutstillinbed are just freakishly adept at making this creative impulse work for them, especially when these are the first songs they’ve ever released. As the cliche goes, the debut album takes a lifetime to write and the most toxic, profound, and impactful moments were the only ones Taylor saw fit to document. Is it all too much? awakebutstillinbed have a better question: Why would you want anything less? | 2018-01-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | self-released | January 24, 2018 | 7.7 | 57c7df85-b5c5-4261-aa10-afd90cf77f75 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
On his new three-song EP, the Baltimore artist uses his sinuous, stunning voice to navigate a dark night of the soul. | On his new three-song EP, the Baltimore artist uses his sinuous, stunning voice to navigate a dark night of the soul. | serpentwithfeet: Apparition EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/serpentwithfeet-apparition-ep/ | Apparition EP | As serpentwithfeet, Josiah Wise wields his powerful, choir-trained voice to reach for the sublime. His elastic vibrato adds urgency to lyrics about the hazards and highs of queer love, occasionally multiplying into a sweeping chorus to deepen the sense of grandeur. On Apparition, the Baltimore artist’s new three-song EP, he invites listeners into his dark night of the soul. Where soil largely lamented the pitfalls of romance, Apparition takes a more introspective approach, as Wise rids himself of emotional baggage. His outlook remains generous and full of light, and the songs brim with the strength necessary to make it to tomorrow.
Apparition opens with a dancing piano figure on “A Comma,” like a sequence from an étude. It contradicts the weariness to come, in which Wise strains to break free from expectations over heavy, rolling bass and drums. “Someone else’s beasts are riding me/I know this pain isn’t mine,” he sings ruefully, “Yet I feel it all the time.” His vocal delivery is tremulous, the background filled with ghostly, wordless vocalizations and fraught silences. He wants to be an “open book,” to have agency and move the way he pleases, but the churning music beneath him suggests that it lingers out of reach. It’s a mental rut that Apparition’s beguiling eight minutes seek to remedy.
All three songs on the EP were produced by Wynne Bennett, who lent a similarly delicate touch to Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer highlight “Pynk.” Bennett’s understated production is a good fit for Wise, who continues to use his voice to land emotional haymakers. On “This Hill,” he is accented by airy, tinkling piano and clicking programmed drums as he explores a selfish melancholy, angry at the earth for “asking him to live this long” in misery. Wise finds a moment of epiphany halfway through, his voice careening to the fore. The repeated insistence that he’s “better now” feels unshakable, the layers of swooning harmonies giving biblical weight to overcoming self-doubt.
“This Hill” radiates a warmth that Wise maintains on “Psychic,” where his playful sense of humor comes to light. Here, he opens up to romance, cooing seductively to a “debonair soothsayer.” Wise chews into his spiritualist romantic object with unabated pleasure: “Shame on those who dread prophecy,” he sighs, “They must not know how hot it can be.” Bounding over echoing drums and a metronomic piano, “Psychic” recalls soil’s friskier songs like “slow syrup” and “fragrant,” where bawdy humor snuck into his poetic verses like glimpses of skin through fabric. Apparition proves that Wise moves in whatever sensuous direction he pleases, reckoning with himself head-on in order to break free and experience true connection. | 2020-05-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-05-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Secretly Canadian | May 9, 2020 | 7.8 | 57d400e6-912e-453d-bc43-8879d0bffc8d | Eric Torres | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-torres/ | |
Joined by players including percussionist Mauro Refosco and guitarist Dave Harrington, the New York bassist takes atmospheric cues from classic ECM productions while evoking relaxed, low-key vibes. | Joined by players including percussionist Mauro Refosco and guitarist Dave Harrington, the New York bassist takes atmospheric cues from classic ECM productions while evoking relaxed, low-key vibes. | Spencer Zahn: Sunday Painter | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/spencer-zahn-sunday-painter/ | Sunday Painter | On his first two albums, Spencer Zahn was alone with a synthesizer. For his latest, he got together some friends. Sunday Painter, the bassist’s first album as a bandleader, features contributions from a range of artists, including Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco (David Byrne, Dirty Projectors, Atoms for Peace) and guitarist Dave Harrington (Darkside). Taking inspiration from the luminary ECM Records, Zahn’s explicit goal was to put together an ensemble nimble enough to turn the recording space itself into a collaborator. But where the whitewashed gallery walls of classic ECM spotlit individual players’ poise and precision, Sunday Painter has the exhausted living-room energy of a group of college buds determined to stay up ’til sunrise: It’s a little sleepy, a little on edge, but more than anything content simply to be in the same place as good people.
As a bandleader, Zahn is far from pushy. Like fellow bassist Sam Wilkes, he seems to take the concept of the rhythm section seriously: His role here is to create stable environments for his collaborators to play around with. This is something they frequently elect not to do, instead working to augment these settings further; there aren’t solos so much as shifts of emphasis. When this works, it can be breathtaking. “Key Biscayne” is as humid as its South Florida namesake, with raindrops of piano tapping away at a looping pattern as distant thunderclaps from Refosco dot the landscape. Everything takes its time decaying. Cymbal crashes, hoarse notes from Spencer Ludwig’s trumpet, casually offered asides from a piano—it all hangs in the room for so long that even the simplest phrases start to carry the weight of maxims.
But the emphasis on world-building, as opposed to soloing or more melodic pursuits, can keep the stakes low in a way that occasionally makes these songs feel stale. “The Mist” is spiked with a splash of organ that comes off like Miles Davis’ “Shhh/Peaceful” moving at a speed-walk pace as the group feels its way along a rocky coastline with only Refosco’s wayfinding bells to guide them. Once the scene is established, Ludwig and Harrington both step into the spotlight, but neither has much to say; with the band having assembled the mood so expertly, their leads both feel like they’re simply reiterating a point that’s already been made.
Throughout, Zahn’s bass resembles a lightning rod, the one tall and sturdy thing that’s always standing, even when the rest of the band bends as low to the ground as they can. His playing is accomplished—he’s toured as a sideman with Empress Of, Twin Shadow, and Half Waif, in addition to Harrington—but never showy, and it’s always in service of the song. He allows himself a bit of indulgence in “Empathy Duet,” where his solo is shrouded in threadbare electronics, and he provides the emotional backing to “Roya,” a song that blooms from a dusky strut into a slow-motion heartbreaker that wouldn’t sound out of place on Broken Social Scene’s self-titled record.
With an emphasis on intimacy, interplay, and enclosed space, this group excels at low-slung love songs, the kind of thing you’d put on to laze away the afternoon with your beloved. On “To the One You Love,” Zahn’s bass takes big gulps of air while the band brews up a pillowy ether. It’s one of Sunday Painter’s most effective tracks, moving from sweet charm to internal dissonance to mature intimacy—a nice mirror of love’s evolution, all unfolding at a gauzy crawl. Even “Promises,” Ludwig’s brief duet with saxophonist Michael McGarril, is little more than a dance between the two horns, each tracing lines around the other.
If Zahn’s goal was to make a record that takes on the characteristics of its environment, he’s succeeded. Sunday Painter never stops feeling like exactly what it is, which is the sound of a group of supremely talented musicians just happy to be in a room together. Zahn has a compelling vision as an arranger and composer, and he’s assembled a group that’s more than capable of carrying it out. Still, the collective playing here can be so entrancing you can’t help but wonder where they might have gone if they’d ventured outside.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-09-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Cascine | September 17, 2020 | 7.2 | 57d6467b-8e61-4c94-8feb-8c8dfefc5399 | Sadie Sartini Garner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sadie-sartini garner/ | |
Nearly a decade after helping revolutionize the sound of UK bass, the veteran Night Slugs producer struggles to maintain the radicalism of his early music on his debut album. | Nearly a decade after helping revolutionize the sound of UK bass, the veteran Night Slugs producer struggles to maintain the radicalism of his early music on his debut album. | Girl Unit: Song Feel | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/girl-unit-song-feel/ | Song Feel | At the dawn of this decade, a new electronic bass mutation emerged from South London, nurtured by the same anarchic spirit that fed jungle in the 1990s and dubstep a decade later. Led by low-end explorers Bok Bok and L-Vis 1990, Night Slugs grew out of a club night; the label collective’s output blended grime’s ominous rumblings with rattling dirty South snares, and pitched-up vocals with sweet, sticky trance synths. In 2010, foundational member Phil Gamble (aka Girl Unit) dropped “Wut,” an absolute monster of a track that became emblematic of post-dubstep’s possibilities but also proved to be the UK producer’s albatross, a sound he’d spend the rest of his career trying to outmatch.
Following the rise of similarly minded producers like Glaswegians Rustie and Hudson Mohawke along with Lunice and the organizers of Montréal’s Turbocrunk parties, Girl Unit answered “Wut” by wisely going in the opposite direction. Gamble deconstructed 1980s funk and freestyle for the minimalist, 808-driven instrumentals on 2012’s six-track EP Club Rez. A handful of DJ mixes, singles, and remixes followed in the years since—along with production work on Kelela’s genre- and club-smashing Cut 4 Me mixtape in 2013 and Hallucinogen EP in 2015—but it wasn’t until earlier this month that the London producer finally released his long-awaited debut full-length, Song Feel.
Gamble has pivoted once again: He said in an interview that he wanted to write structured songs with singers, rather than simple bangers, and Song Feel features a roster of vocalists including Kelela, Nigerian-Lebanese-Jamaican singer Taliwhoah, and Lionel Richie-approved songwriter Rush Davis, with a couple of instrumentals thrown in for good measure. Though the vibe is luxuriously produced and steeped in low-lit R&B and slow, soulful funk, the album lacks the radical instincts that once made Girl Unit one to watch. His music is now nearly indistinguishable from the pop and contemporary club that Gamble cites as an influence.
Atlanta MC Thast’s spicy verses ignite “Pull Up” even though the beat sounds ripped from a Sonny Digital type beats YouTube channel, and on “Sucker Free” Brooklyn MC Ms. Boogie slays over an ominously icy beat that sounds like it was rescued from the cutting-room floor. Gamble’s guests are Song Feel’s saving grace: Kelela sings and emotes flawlessly on album lead “WYWD” as a muted shuffle ticks and snaps in the background, and Davis’ songwriting chops elevate “Evidence” beyond your average Uber-referencing torch song. The album also serves as a showcase for North London’s Brook Baili, who shines on the gospel-tinged “24 Hours.”
When left to his own devices—as on the chopped-and-screwed “Roll” and the Jersey club-indebted “Pure Gold”—Girl Unit rests on formerly niche sounds that have been adopted by more mainstream-facing artists. The tropical sway on “Stuck” has become established on the charts since Popcaan linked up with Drake, and “Head” is an unremarkable take on LA neo-funk, its pillowy percussion and yearning vocal little more than a blank canvas that has yet to be filled out. Instead of rewriting the book, Gamble now seems to be playing by the same rules as everyone else. | 2019-04-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-04-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rap | Night Slugs | April 16, 2019 | 6.3 | 57d6e40b-c721-4307-b292-3b4dfe0d302c | Harley Brown | https://pitchfork.com/staff/harley-brown/ | |
The Oakland rapper known for his standout scam records sinks into a more reflective mood on his latest LP. The cost of this pensive turn is a loss of personality. | The Oakland rapper known for his standout scam records sinks into a more reflective mood on his latest LP. The cost of this pensive turn is a loss of personality. | Guapdad 4000 / !llmind: 1176 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/guapdad-4000-llmind-1176/ | 1176 | In the fall of 2019, Guapdad 4000’s family lost the West Oakland home where he was raised. The timing was crushing. At the top of the year, he’d emerged as one of the standout voices on Dreamville’s Revenge of the Dreamers III compilation, and through the spring and summer, he’d become the colorful face of scam rap. When he got the news, he was just days away from releasing his debut album Dior Deposits. The lost home is depicted as endangered on the cover of 1176: as Guapdad and a woman look at the smoke-tinted sky, fireballs rain down and an inferno looms behind the house. 1176, titled after the home’s address, is ostensibly a chronicle of lost innocence, but it rarely taps into this backstory or pushes Guapdad in new directions.
Executive-produced by !llmind, who helmed most of the songs, the album is something of a reintroduction for Guapdad 4000. Released by Paradise Rising, an imprint of 88Rising that focuses on Filipino artists (!llmind is Filipino, and Guapdad is Black and Filipino), the record is clearly meant to depart from the seedy hijinks of Guapdad’s previous music. Instead of sordid scams and cheeky references to sex and anime over glossy production, the mood is reflective and dreamy.
Brief album opener “10finity” hints at dark thoughts and inner turmoil. “I talk to God at night, I pray/For golden tidal waves/Wash me ashore to another place,” Guapdad sings over a hushed bed of soft keys and warped vocals. “How Many,” which stretches Alice DJ’s springy dance hit “Better Off Alone” into a gloomy haze, is just as introspective, the chorus a series of questions. There’s plenty of his signature alliteration and wit on 1176, but on the whole, Guapdad brings fewer jokes and bars, focusing on his roots.
The cost of this pensive turn is a loss of personality. Guapdad’s scam raps stood out because he balanced shit-talking with curiosity. Where Teejayx6 and Kasher Quon offered scam tutorials and City Girls pitched mantras and capers, Guapdad emphasized play. His scam tales were less about guaranteed scores and more about improvisation and risk, an approach that filtered into his music. From the indie rock of “Choppa Talk” to the steely pimp strut of “Iced Out Cold Chain” to his outre The Little Engine That Could interpolation on “Little Scammer That Could,” he was constantly venturing out. 1176 lacks that sense of adventure.
The record isn’t inert despite feeling nerfed. There are flashes of Guapdad’s wandering spirit in songs like “Muhammad” and “Uncle Ricky.” The former is a fleet rush of wordplay and storytelling, Guapdad blending flexes with autobiography: “Only niggas I fuck with is blue like the Watchmen/Whole body covered in water, but I ain’t washin’,” he raps. !llmind’s RZA-inspired production on “Uncle Ricky” puts Guapdad into storytelling mode. He turns a day with his erratic, street-running uncle into a tense ride-along, honors his relative, and subtly relays his own origin story. The track, which traces Guapdad’s later run-ins with crime to his hectic upbringing, is less about a single, dramatic event that changed his life and more a dive into the anxiety of navigating an unpredictable environment.
“Chicken Adobo,” named after a beloved Filipino dish, is the album’s highlight. Over a breezy acoustic guitar melody and dollops of bouncy bass, Guapdad revisits the summer of 2010, where budding love coexisted with personal trials. His melodies are catchy, his writing is sharp and scenic, and the narrative is heartwarming—qualities that only appear in flashes across 1176. The album rarely sustains the focus of “Chicken Adobo” or builds his recollections into episodes. But when it does, you can smell the peppercorns and bay leaves, can see the world through Guapdad 4000’s eyes.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-03-19T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-03-19T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | PARADISE RISING | March 19, 2021 | 6.5 | 57d751d6-231d-4308-b5b6-b31bb9dd0285 | Stephen Kearse | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-kearse/ | |
Released 12 years after Digital Shades, Vol. 1, M83’s new collection of instrumentals doubles as a playful tribute to classic video-game soundtracks. | Released 12 years after Digital Shades, Vol. 1, M83’s new collection of instrumentals doubles as a playful tribute to classic video-game soundtracks. | M83: DSVII | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/m83-dsvii/ | DSVII | Though it’s rarely singled out for praise, 2007’s Digital Shades, Vol. 1 is a Rosetta stone for the two classic M83 albums that followed: Saturdays=Youth and Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. Anthony Gonzalez’s love of ambient and shoegaze ran throughout the serene collection of minimal soundscapes like digital waves washing up against a pixelating shoreline. The emotional ebb and flow of Vol. 1 was more patient than anything the French musician had attempted before, and those experiments would inform anthems like “We Own the Sky” and “Midnight City” in the decade to come. Twelve years, three LPs, and three soundtrack albums later, M83 return to the Digital Shades series with DSVII, a worthy sequel that demonstrates Gonzalez’s growth as a composer over the past decade.
Where much of Vol. 1 focused on moody pad swells and filter sweeps, DSVII is ornate and loosely concept oriented. The tracklisting suggests that it might be the soundtrack to a high-fantasy video game, in which M83 follows in the footsteps of greats like Yasunori Mitsuda and Koji Kondo. When he first announced the album, Gonzalez admitted that replaying old games from his childhood had been a major inspiration for the record. “There is something so naive and touching about them,” he said of the games. “It’s simple and imperfect.”
Like the best film scores, great video-game music refuses to be relegated to the background. Instead, it aspires to be inextricable from the experience. Because Gonzalez is untethered from the restrictions of an actual game, he’s free to design the universe of DSVII as he sees fit, and the album’s eclectic nature reflects that. The song titles may allude to some larger universe—there are vague references to colonies and temples—but their open-ended nature allows listeners to fill in whatever narrative they wish.
M83 have long been synonymous with neon-drenched nostalgia and a sound indebted to the 1980s, but DSVII feels most captivating when Gonzalez harks back even further, to the earnest 1970s. Acoustic guitars meet proggy arpeggios, expanding upon the dramatic playbook established by Daft Punk’s retro-fetishist masterpiece Random Access Memories: Do what you’re good at, but play it all using analog gear, so it feels real.
There are stunning, plaintive meditations (“Goodbye Captain Lee” sounds like a sci-fi update of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s iconic “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”) and even ambient in the vein of Vol. 1 (“Mirage”), but some moments feel overblown by comparison. Gratuitous drums threaten to topple an already delicate balance of exaggerated chord changes on “Feelings” and album closer “Temple of Sorrow.” The flute solos and Randy Newman-esque balladry on “A Word of Wisdom” might evoke a character wandering into the home of a humble village shopkeep who can give them that elusive quest item. And whether or not you have role-playing games on the brain, you may wonder what on earth an accordion is doing on a M83 record.
Digital Shades began as an outlet for B-sides and ambient music that didn’t fit into the strictures of M83’s proper studio albums. With DSVII, the series evolves into a space for tinkering, where Gonzalez can embrace different influences. With neither someone else’s vision nor any cohesive album statement to fulfill, he reverts to maximalism, melding his two musical identities—synth-pop showman, serious composer for other mediums—to become the director of his own electronic daydreams. | 2019-09-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-09-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Mute | September 23, 2019 | 7.4 | 57d9a115-4619-41ba-b077-b99bb227c36c | Noah Yoo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/noah-yoo/ | |
Taken from a three-night stint in L.A. and recorded by Steve Albini, this live album disavows almost all the rules of the form. | Taken from a three-night stint in L.A. and recorded by Steve Albini, this live album disavows almost all the rules of the form. | Ty Segall / Freedom Band: Deforming Lobes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ty-segall-and-freedom-band-deforming-lobes/ | Deforming Lobes | On his 2018 tour de force, Freedom’s Goblin, Ty Segall provided us with a double-album highlight reel of every aesthetic the restless garage rocker has explored in his first decade as a solo artist, from light-speed hardcore to idyllic psychedelic-folk balladry to 12-minute fretboard-snapping jams. But in an interview conducted on the eve of the album’s release, Segall suggested the album represented the closing of a chapter. “I feel like I’ve barely even tapped anything,” he said, before revealing a desire to experiment with electronic production and make a hip-hop album. It remains to be seen whether Ty actually follows through on the transformation into MC Lil T. But if Segall is indeed laying his rocker id to rest for a while, Deforming Lobes is the blaze of glory in which it’s going out.
Deforming Lobes was recorded live by Steve Albini during Segall’s three-night stint at Los Angeles’ Teragram Ballroom in January 2018, but it disavows the rules of the typical live album. It has no ambition to document the concerts as they happened—the crowd noise has been largely sucked out of Albini’s mixes, to the point where it sometimes feels like you’re listening in on a private rehearsal rather than a performance before a crowd of several hundred people. Its eight selections have been cherry-picked from what were much more sprawling and eclectic set lists and radically resequenced. And with few exceptions, these are not Segall’s signature songs, so it’s not like Deforming Lobes is meant to serve as some sort of de facto greatest-hits overview. There aren’t even any Freedom’s Goblin tracks here to frame this particular moment in Segall’s career.
But there is one crucial quality that connects Deforming Lobes’ random assortment of deep cuts, covers, and early nuggets. And that’s the pulverizing power of the Freedom Band, the four-piece unit—bassist Mikal Cronin, guitarist Emmett Kelly, keyboardist Ben Boye, and drummer Charlie Moothart—that has backed Segall onstage since 2016, and has pushed him to new levels of heaviness and face-melting gnarliness in concert, even as his songwriting on record has become more refined. As such, Deforming Lobes’ closest antecedent would be The Who’s original, equally compact Live at Leeds, where the purpose is less about highlighting the set-list staples than showcasing the band in their most primal, exploratory state.
You can feel the Freedom Band’s imposing presence from the very first note—as an announcer introduces the band, the opening chord of “Warm Hands” comes rudely crashing in like a safe dropped from a high rise before he can even finish uttering Segall’s name. Taken from Segall’s self-titled 2017 release, the nine-minute prog-punk suite serves as Deforming Lobes’ fearsome point-of-no-return gateway, an electric-fence barrier erected to ward off casual fans who prefer Segall’s more playful, melodic side. And where the original eventually dissolves into a tranquil pool of noodly Santana solos, the Freedom Band redirect it toward a turbulent, shredding climax.
That combination of ferocity and fluidity makes Deforming Lobes distinct from anything in Segall’s bottomless catalog. The Freedom Band’s adrenalizing properties are most deeply felt on the songs taken from 2016’s Emotional Mugger, Segall’s demented detour into alien glam-rock. Here, the Morse-code fuzz, tinfoil-chewing guitar frequencies, and stiff robotic rhythms of “Squealer” and “Breakfast Eggs” give way to pure punk-metal muscle, while Segall invests their whimsical vocals with a throat-ravaging theatricality. But some Deforming Lobes revisions simply exist to give Segall’s trashy-sounding early recordings a welcome bottom-end boost—he deviously stretches out the quiet intro to the 2009-era standard “Finger,” presumably to maximize the shock-and-awe factor when the band finally kicks into a psych-sludge groove several tons heavier than the original.
At all three of his Teragram shows, Segall encored with a rendition of the Groundhogs’ 1971 asphalt-ripping classic “Cherry Red,” a song he first covered for a 2011 single. Where Segall tends to corrupt his classic-rock covers with his manic energy—often paring them down and rearranging them as he sees fit—the “Cherry Red” featured here is almost too reverential by his standards, with Segall dutifully mimicking Tony McPhee’s high-pitched melody lines while the band seems extra-careful not to upset the song’s steady hypno-chug groove. But Deforming Lobes smartly repositions “Cherry Red” as a penultimate reprieve that lets you catch your breath before the album’s glorious finale: a version of “Love Fuzz” that stretches out the three-minute Twins thrasher into Segall’s very own “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” complete with a dramatic oscillating-organ breakdown that tees up one last blitzkrieg blast. Over his career, Segall has come up with different ways to wave goodbye and say goodnight, but none as emphatic as this. | 2019-03-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-03-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Drag City | March 30, 2019 | 7.8 | 57dccfa3-93fc-4f8e-9fd0-046fe15a2a40 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
Though fun and at times politically salient, even Metro Boomin cannot rescue Big Sean from his habit of writing the absolute corniest lyrics imaginable. | Though fun and at times politically salient, even Metro Boomin cannot rescue Big Sean from his habit of writing the absolute corniest lyrics imaginable. | Big Sean / Metro Boomin: Double or Nothing | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/big-sean-metro-boomin-double-or-nothing/ | Double or Nothing | Big Sean is the Nickelback of rap. His music is earnest but predictable; he is critically reviled but puts up No. 1 albums. There are as many people who hail his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s Mean Tweets sketch as there are who think he’s got real bars. Earlier this year, Sean released I Decided., the follow-up to his 2015 album Dark Sky Paradise. Both albums suggested he has a bit more to offer than syntactically tangled lyrics and Dark Sky not only had hits that appealed to his detractors—the Drake-featuring “Blessings” and epic kiss-off “I Don’t Fuck With You”—but suggested that, with a little bit of growing up, he could perhaps start to chip away at his long-held place as a bottom-rung rapper. His new collaborative project with Metro Boomin, Double or Nothing, undoes all that good with lyrics so absurd it’s difficult to imagine they were written in this reality.
Why isn’t there anyone in the recording studio telling Big Sean that his lyrics are not good? He opens the album with a track called “Go Legend” where he declares his brother to be like John Legend. On “Who’s Stopping Me,” he offers us this: “I had a dream I rode with Rosa Parks in back of the ’Bach/And we was blowing a blunt and she was packing a strap/Like damn, it do feel good to be black in the back.” While it’s worth noting that Sean’s vocal cadence succeeds where his wordplay fails—he emphasizes the “do” to imply that it now feels good to be black and sitting in the back because being chauffeured is a sign of wealth—his thug fantasia about a civil rights icon is neither trenchant nor funny—just very corny.
There are more failed attempts at woke lyrical tricks throughout the album, particularly on “Savage Time” where he raps, “Beat a white supremacist black/’Till that motherfucker hate his face,” shouts out former San Francisco 49ers quarterback and leader of the “National Anthem” protest movement in the NFL Colin Kaepernick, and asserts that he’s going to take water from Flint, Michigan to Washington D.C. where he knows Donald Trump won’t drink it. These are all great things to rap about! Sean is from Detroit and the ongoing, appalling Flint water crisis is something he should be passionate out; with such a big platform, he has the ability to highlight it for pop audiences who may not be informed about the dark reality that the residents of that town have not had clean water for over three years.
His feeble attempts at political commentary are, however, less unfortunate than his characteristically gross sex raps of which there are plenty. The most vacuous are on “So Good”: “Pussy so good, I never fuck you in the ass/Got a long dick, that shit barely fit/Like O.J. glove, you must acquit”; “I be damned if I didn’t 69/I can hit this shit until I’m 69.” It is, at least, a good reminder that no matter how ironic your “nice” joke is, there has probably never been an actually funny 69 joke ever in history.
Although these gaffes are his own, the person who probably suffers the most from Double or Nothing is Metro Boomin. The 24-year-old producer has had immense success with these kinds of projects before, garnering critical acclaim for Savage Mode with 21 Savage and Droptopwop with Gucci Mane. But the difference is that 21 and Young Thug both know how to make their work with Metro more symbiotic: his production is usually a palette for a vocalist to go bold or unhinged, like Thug on “Hercules,” Future’s “I Serve the Base,” or Tinashe’s “Ride of Your Life,” among many, many others. From the quality of the production, it seems that Metro knows he wasn’t going to get a progressive performance from Sean. Most of the beats on the album are standard fare with a few gems like “Reason,” which recalls Metro’s What a Time to Be Alive production “Jumpman,” and “Who’s Stopping Me” which samples from Brazilian artist Nazaré Pereira’s “Clarão De Lua,” something a little bit different from Metro’s typically modern approach. Sean adds his approval by saying, “This shit sound like ‘Narcos’” before he starts rapping. The television series “Narcos,” of course, takes place in Colombia where they speak Spanish; “Clarão De Lua” is in Portuguese, Brazil’s native tongue. Like most of Double or Nothing, it is just another thing he gets wrong. | 2017-12-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-12-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | G.O.O.D. Music | December 13, 2017 | 5.4 | 57e5493a-f0ec-4cc1-b211-c485f22b9605 | Claire Lobenfeld | https://pitchfork.com/staff/claire-lobenfeld/ | |
For the most part, Near to the Wild Heart of Life sticks to the Japandroids M.O., but the end results are less enticing. | For the most part, Near to the Wild Heart of Life sticks to the Japandroids M.O., but the end results are less enticing. | Japandroids: Near to the Wild Heart of Life | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22778-near-to-the-wild-heart-of-life/ | Near to the Wild Heart of Life | Listening to Japandroids makes me think about Jenga. You have the most basic elements (guitar, drums, and vocals, in this case) delicately stacked on top of each other. The raw materials are so simple, but the more it builds in increments, the higher the stakes become; each move ratchets up the tension partly because you know the whole thing is constantly in danger of buckling under itself at any time.
Likewise, the best Japandroids songs are always threatening to topple over; singer/guitarist Brian King struggles to reach his highest notes, and drummer David Prowse pounds the drums frantically, like they might be running away from him. They teeter forever on a precipice separating transcendence from pure cheese—one of their best songs turns on the cathartic refrain “I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls”—but it’s sold with life-changing intensity. As a lyricist, King takes you to that precipice, invites you to look over, even gives you the smallest nudge—and then he catches you.
Which is why the advance single to their latest record “Near to the Wild Heart of Life” is so disappointing. “Near to the Wild Heart of Life” is too perfect. The grit on King’s voice is gone; the guitar is too cleanly mixed; the drums don’t hit as hard. This is a band whose second album is literally titled Celebration Rock, but this song’s version of a lyrical clincher—“I used to be good but now I’m bad”—clunks off the ear like a tennis ball against a wall.
For the most part, Near to the Wild Heart of Life sticks to the Japandroids M.O. King still writes about drinking, about girls, about the love-hate relationship between himself and the idea of a hometown. King claims Vancouver, although things have gotten slightly more complicated as the band has tacked between Toronto, New Orleans, and Mexico City, taking a three-year hiatus of touring beginning in 2013. This much is reflected in the rollicking autobiographical travelogue “North East South West,” which is one of King’s sharpest songs on the album lyrically. But the mix is too pristine, the acoustic guitar too loud, and it lacks the bite of their best songs.
More disheartening is the sapping of King’s sense of humor. He was often funny in a straightforward way, like Jonathan Richman if he weren’t a teetotaler: “Don’t we have anything to live for?/Well of course we do/But ‘til they come true/We’re drinking,” went a highlight from “The Nights of Wine and Roses.” On “Wet Hair” he gave us the magnificent “Must get to France so we can French kiss some French girls.” There are no similar laugh lines on Near to the Wild Heart of Life, which relies heavily on cliches and platitudes minus the wink or the grin.
Take “Arc of Bar,” a seven-minute story song that is the centerpiece of the record and defiantly unlike anything else in the band’s catalog. But it doesn’t build to a hearty climax, a hallmark of the band. It just lumbers around, as King places hoary cliché on top of hoary cliché about “hustlers, whores” and “the jokers doing the dealing” and “a mistress, to some a muse…for her love, I would help the devil.” For a band that lives by its ability to slam-dunk a moment of catharsis, this song is the ultimate heat-check.
The spruced up modern-rock sound of a song like “True Love and a Free Life of Free Will” has the hollow appeal of “real” rock and roll bands like Foo Fighters or the Black Keys. (King sounds awfully like Dave Grohl on “Midnight to Morning.”) The band that playfully riffed on Thin Lizzy or sustained one riff for five minutes while proclaiming “after her/I quit girls,” now sounds like MOR. It’s a testament to King’s inherent likability and the band’s still-effortless knack for memorable melodies that this album isn’t as big a disappointment as it may seem. They still have the discipline to keep things at eight songs only, and they can still reel off a sparkler like “No Known Drink or Drug,” an incandescent song that flares with the ending “…could ever hold a candle to your love.”
King and Prowse have sustained critical and fan love for eight years now. Both seem to be comfortable in their roles as rock veterans, with a loyal fanbase, a label that allows them years between records. Who am I to begrudge artists who’ve matured? Perhaps it’s age, experience, a new record label, the inevitable artistic instinct to want to switch things up a little, but whatever the reason, Near to the Wild Heart of Life ultimately lacks the urgency of the band’s best music. The tower hasn’t collapsed, but it’s starting to wobble. | 2017-01-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-01-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Anti- | January 24, 2017 | 7.1 | 580264d3-7433-4926-a71d-9ea2612a2ebe | Matthew Ramirez | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ramirez/ | null |
Recorded in a Brooklyn church as the first installment of a trilogy, the new age pioneer’s latest shows him returning to his first instrument—the piano. | Recorded in a Brooklyn church as the first installment of a trilogy, the new age pioneer’s latest shows him returning to his first instrument—the piano. | Laraaji: Sun Piano | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/laraaji-sun-piano/ | Sun Piano | Perhaps the most famous moment of Edward Larry Gordon’s career is his meeting with Brian Eno. The story feels mythic now, like a Disney movie set in the experimental-music scene: Upon seeing him sitting cross-legged and hammering away at open-tuned zither in New York City’s Washington Square park, Eno invited Gordon to perform at a nearby studio, an act of serendipity that culminated with the release of 1980’s Ambient 3: Day of Radiance, released under Gordon’s new moniker, Laraaji.
40 years on, the story still overshadows Laraaji’s legend as a pioneer of ambient and new age music. He’s responsible for more than 50 albums by now, but his evolution as a performer and his status as an innovator are both footnoted by Eno’s long-ago role as a musical (and white) savior. Before that fateful encounter, Gordon had a small acting role in the cult 1969 media satire Putney Swope, directed by Roberty Downey Sr. Later, as a slapstick comedian working at the Apollo Theater in Harlem (where he still lives today), he shared stages with Barry White and Roberta Flack. All of this occurred before his meditative practice revealed a concept of “sound vision” to him and inspired his first album of zither-based works, Celestial Vibrations, which came out under his birth name in 1978.
Laraaji’s newest album, Sun Piano, is the first installment in a trilogy of improvised recording projects. Recorded at a church in Brooklyn, the album is another emanation of Laraaji’s distinctive connection to music—as a source of energy, as a way of being in the world, and as a personal practice. As the title hints, the album shows Laraaji returning his first instrument, the piano, which he studied at Howard University. In a recent Washington Post interview, he described his time at Howard as a period of learning less about formal composition, his specific field of study, and more about acquiring an attitude for approaching the piano. “The piano is an instrument that gives voice to how I hold space for light,” he said.
In their own way, the performances captured on Sun Piano attempt to pass this radiance on to listeners. It’s an act of transference that never fully delivers on the inner escape offered by Laraaji’s more recognizable zither and synthesizer-based performances. On the album’s centerpiece, “This Too Shall Pass,” a plucky and playful ascending progression quickly loses its charm as a theme, settling to hammer its way to a finish. The recording, which is distant and compressed, squeezes all the character out of Laraaji’s soft technique. The gentle arpeggiations of “Temple of New Light” might possess the same kind of solar power found on Day of Radiance, but its brittle sonics will leave headphone listeners feeling sun-poisoned during the louder parts.
The same dynamics nearly mar “Lifting Me,” but then the piece locks into a mantra-like rhythm, notes landing like muted mallet hits. It’s an apex of Sun Piano, offering us the feeling one might associate with a mood-altering ray of sun during a blustery day. At four minutes, though, the feeling doesn’t last.
Laraaji’s playing on Sun Piano isn’t technically ambitious; he opts for short, safe runs and open chords that rub up against some dissonant voicings as he fiddles with the mixture of notes. Harmonies, countermelodies, and complex compositional structures are avoided to better focus on the energy of a given moment. Sometimes, as with the perfect closer “Embracing Timeless,” which moves across the keyboard like a plotless morning walk, you wish Laraaji lingered for his customary 30 minutes or longer.
Sun Piano may just be a minor spark in a career that has emitted sound, and vision, in a slow, consistent burn. Our greatest living practitioner of new age music has lived a life intent on casting light into the darkened recesses of the self and of the spirit. Even if his latest offering is considerably dimmer than his most golden works, it’s still a confident assertion that, even at 77 years old, his pursuit of the sun’s life-affirming light shows no signs of wavering.
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-08-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-08-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | All Saints | August 4, 2020 | 6.8 | 5803d4dd-1031-421c-aa4f-7ca0fa66babb | Nathan Taylor Pemberton | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nathan-taylor pemberton/ | |
On its dauntless and electrifying eighth album, the post-metal trio recharges its familiar sound. | On its dauntless and electrifying eighth album, the post-metal trio recharges its familiar sound. | Russian Circles: Gnosis | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/russian-circles-gnosis/ | Gnosis | Long before the twinkling fifth track of Russian Circles’ Gnosis ends, it is easy to assume how the sixth will begin—a torrent of aggression, the inverse of its soothing predecessor. “Ó Braonáin” is sublime guitar music for the gloaming; each soft note of the 100-second lullaby feels gently warped, like the glow of a summer sun setting behind a thunderhead. The instant it fades, “Betrayal” rushes forward, a blitz of wordless black metal obliterating that sense of twilight languor. It sounds like a street fight. At least in this two-song span, Russian Circles sound like they’ve mastered the expected post-metal script: a ceaseless seesaw of quiet and loud, gorgeous and violent.
But Russian Circles’ eighth album works so well because that flipped-switch dynamic is the sole exception to what seems a new rule for the Chicago trio: The beautiful and the brutal should exist in tandem, not split into stereotypical patterns. Gnosis is a perpetual motion machine, its serrated guitars and blown-out bass forever pirouetting around or slamming into drums that make this music dramatic and restless. Russian Circles debuted nearly 20 years ago, after bands like Explosions in the Sky, Mono, Pelican, or even Isis filled in the blank that followed “post- ” with foundational records. As dauntless as it is electrifying, Gnosis is also efficient and lean, qualities that together recharge a familiar sound that’s not been in vogue for a long time. These nimble and mighty songs close that gap, at least for 40 minutes.
Two logistical hurdles of the pandemic served as surprising boons for Russian Circles. First, rather than collectively constructing songs in a rehearsal room, the members wrote full pieces in the isolation of new home studios. When at last they reconvened to record at Kurt Ballou’s God City and Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio, they mostly knew how this material moved, eliding the compromises that collaboration can introduce. And when they originally handed Gnosis over to their label, it was a double-LP, apparently loaded with the sorts of peaks and valleys epitomized by “Ó Braonáin” and “Betrayal.” Supply-chain woes meant they had to prune Gnosis to one record. In recent years, Russian Circles’ albums have sometimes felt like shaggy-dog stories, loaded with tangents as they explored new ideas; the time constraint doesn’t allow it.
At least until Gnosis reaches its solo guitar reverie, it is total momentum, each song finding a target and doggedly pursuing it. Named for an Inuit totem that was dropped into the sea to hunt down an enemy, opener “Tupilak” could score a chase scene. Guitarist Mike Sullivan and bassist Brian Cook follow the steady acceleration of drummer Dave Turncrantz, their viscous parts funneling through tight grooves like a car navigating hairpin turns. “Vlastimil” begins with magisterial doom, its grim-reaper riff cutting a path through lumbering drums. But Russian Circles alternately slingshot into black metal outbursts, droning breakdowns, and delirious thrash before fading into exhaustion. This is the sensation—compacted into seven minutes—of beating a video game, then collapsing on the floor in a puddle.
In changing their process and trimming the results, Russian Circles didn’t entirely forsake their outbound interests, the sounds that have sometimes adulterated their records. Instead, they folded them inside these tunes, with Cook in particular making striking contributions. His hyper-distorted bass during the title track adds textural frisson, like hearing a favorite song on a half-broken transistor radio. His synthesizer lines often provide a sense of wonder to the taut compositions, gorgeous streaks beneath otherwise-gnarly tones. This carefully layered approach piques interest without interrupting Gnosis’ sheer energy.
Gnosis ends with “Bloom,” the first song Russian Circles wrote for the album. A wistful shuffle with plangent guitars that stretch across an especially wide horizon, it is the lightest full-band fare here, so delicate it sidles up alongside the heavy cinematics of Explosions in the Sky. These respective bands are now surviving exemplars of post-rock and post-metal, twin terms that once suggested unfettered imagination but now mostly connote loud-quiet-loud instrumental guitar jams. Explosions have found subtle ways to creep around such binaries, while Russian Circles have spent much of the last decade pushing directly against old edges. Gnosis, however, represents a return toward the radiant center, to the idea that a power trio can make urgent and emotive music with little but the basics and a reason for revisiting them. | 2022-08-24T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-08-24T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal / Rock | Sargent House | August 24, 2022 | 7.5 | 580588db-f6d1-41ff-8d37-f4d9f9faaf5a | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
The Fiery Furnaces finally put their infamous live shows on record-- and as the band does onstage, the record re-arranges and shuffles songs and moments, with Matt Friedberger and bassist and mixer Jason Loewenstein splicing several gigs into seamless medleys (one per CD) that span all the band's studio albums in two hour-plus marathons. | The Fiery Furnaces finally put their infamous live shows on record-- and as the band does onstage, the record re-arranges and shuffles songs and moments, with Matt Friedberger and bassist and mixer Jason Loewenstein splicing several gigs into seamless medleys (one per CD) that span all the band's studio albums in two hour-plus marathons. | The Fiery Furnaces: Remember | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12122-remember/ | Remember | There's nothing wrong with manipulating a live performance before you cut it to record-- it all depends on what you do with it. The Fiery Furnaces have waited this long to release an official live album, and it's no surprise that they would try to surprise us. The Furnaces' live show is infamous: Instead of just staging the songs, the band rearranges them, reshuffles the parts, and strings them together into lengthy medleys that can run the length of a whole set. And the next time they hit town, they've usually shuffled the deck again, with a new setlist and sometimes even a new band behind the Friedberger siblings, who are the only constant.
On top of all that, the ever-wacky Matt Friedberger and bassist and mixer Jason Loewenstein have added another layer of reinvention: They've taken several gigs and spliced those together into seamless medleys, one per CD, that span all the band's studio albums in two hour-plus marathons. For an added gag, the longer tracks splice tapes of completely different shows into a single performance, so the line-up keeps changing and the sound quality jumps from soundboard to bootleg and back again. It's original, and it's ear-achingly annoying, and for that matter, so is the rest of the album.
Remember's core flaw is its pacing. Disc One in particular is a marathon that's run like a sprint. Those frantic medleys are never as relentless in person as the digital fiction constructed on this record; this is anxious music that's been honed to its most keyed-up sections with no release, endlessly dry-humping your ear. A rare half-minute of downtime during "Don't Dance Her Down" is stomped by a synth blitzkrieg while Eleanor's vocals-- whose scraps of lyrics have become arbitrary and meaningless-- sound ever-more hectoring. And then comes "Single Again", again.
The disc fares better in small chunks. The Blueberry Boat tracks include ferocious bootlegs and classic rock guitarwork, yet the album's long epics fall victim to the most aggressive editing: "Chief Inspector Blancheflower" roars up to what could've been the album's best moment before it cuts abruptly to a deathly quiet recording of the Friedbergers having a sibling moment. "Chris Michaels", opening Disc Two, is the only track to get through unscathed. The Bitter Tea section with added percussionist Michael Goodman comes across with the best flow and the fewest distractions, and the brisker, grandmother-free Rehearsing My Choir material stays just on the right side of manic. But by the end, Widow City is cut to a taster that whizzes by in the last few minutes-- which is ironic, since the that tour has featured straightforward, song-by-song setlists.
Remember disappoints because it cheats us out of the chance to hear a near-miracle. The Friedbergers always go into the studio with erratic ideas and indulgent conceits-- Inuit lyrics, quirk-prog fables, tongue-in-cheek chance compositions, and of course, the underappreciated tale of Olga Sarantos. Yet they always take these disparate ideas and pull them together with a solid conceit, consistent themes, and deliberately naïve bravado. It's something else to see them pull off the same trick on tour, where the stakes are so much higher. The joy of watching them not fly off the rails made even the weaker shows worth hearing. But in turning that experience into a scrapbook, Remember kills the magic.
Put simply, it's strange for such a great album band to make a live record that fails as an album. But give it credit for one thing: It captures the live experience, warts and all. Why else would they include Eleanor flubbing a line right on track two, after they went to such pains making all the other edits? Feel free to invent your own meta-message about the unpredictability of touring, the chaos of tackling ever-trickier setlists for stubborn hipster crowds, and the spirit of taking risks in the moment that could haunt you to the rest of your days. Take it with a sense of humor. Or just trust the sleevenotes, which warn, "Please do not attempt to listen to all at once." | 2008-08-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2008-08-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Thrill Jockey | August 21, 2008 | 4.3 | 58065c96-a43c-4810-9007-bc015ab469b7 | Chris Dahlen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/chris-dahlen/ | null |
On her solo debut, Nai Palm abandons her band Hiatus Kaiyote’s expansive future-soul aesthetic in favor of acoustic intimacy; it is, above all, a testament to the power of the voice. | On her solo debut, Nai Palm abandons her band Hiatus Kaiyote’s expansive future-soul aesthetic in favor of acoustic intimacy; it is, above all, a testament to the power of the voice. | Nai Palm: Needle Paw | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nai-palm-needle-paw/ | Needle Paw | Naomi Saalfield first came to the world’s attention in 2012 as Nai Palm, the frontwoman of Australia’s Hiatus Kaiyote and a wildling rock star with soul-music chops and a steampunk aesthetic. Their 2012 debut album, Tawk Tomahawk, would position Hiatus Kaiyote as key purveyors of future soul—a sound that marries the spacious production values of EDM and jazz with the lush harmonies and boom-bap rhythms of neo-soul. Following their debut’s follow-up, the 2015 epic Choose Your Weapon, Saalfield retreated to the Australian desert, where she recorded Needle Paw, a whisper-close collection of songs that connect the dots between Hiatus Kaiyote’s music and her own inspirations.
Pulling together a smattering of originals, a number of acoustic arrangements of songs from Hiatus Kaiyote’s repertoire, and a few daring covers, it is an unusual proposition for a solo debut—a calculated risk for a two-time Grammy-nominated artist presumably nowhere the end of her career, nor severing ties with her bandmates. But it’s a risk she can afford to take after being cosigned by Erykah Badu, accompanied by Q-Tip, and sampled by Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and Anderson .Paak within the past year.
With Needle Paw, Saalfield turns inward to pull from herself what Hiatus Kaiyote’s massive arrangements could not. She is alone at the wheel in the unenviable but courageous position of bearing sole responsibility for an album featuring songs that people have heard before. Some are fodder for nostalgia, others the stuff of legend. They are songs that would surely haunt her if she got it wrong. Thankfully, she does not. Instead, her performance as vocalist, producer, arranger, and musical director confirms her talents—and, in her interpretive care, reaffirms listening as an act of love.
Needle Paw is a minimalist’s dream. The raw, stripped-down performances are antithetical to Hiatus Kaiyote’s lush, swollen sound. The album breaks down the complex mechanisms driving the average Hiatus record in a catabolic process that isolates the ingredient most essential to Nai Palm: the human voice. Her byzantine harmonies are less important to the final mix than the primal timbre of the voice, whether isolated or in concert with others. There are no concessions to trend or enormous features. Needle Paw is a reliquary for Saalfield’s travels and influences, from Bulgarian choral music and the songs of Saharan nomads to rock and 1990s R&B. There is even a nod to a shape-shifting character from Cartoon Network’s “Adventure Time” series on “Mobius,” where she sings of the “ancient psychic tandem war elephant,” whose power is a healing telepathy.
Saalfield’s conversations with the natural and metaphysical world continue across Needle Paw, from indigenous Yolngu singer Jason Guwanbal Gurruwiwi’s “Wititj (Lightning Snake),” which opens and closes the album, to the whip-poor-will ad-libs that jut from a soothing chant in “Atari.” Leaving it all on the tape, Saalfield closes the track with a sigh of relief—evidence of the physical toll that her passion for song takes.
The album’s greatest flaw is one shared by Hiatus’ recordings. The band’s tendency to vamp on their intoxicating melodies until the ear loses itself in the mix makes it easy to miss where one song ends and another begins. Likewise, the consistency of this album's palette allows its songs to blur together, except upon close listening. What keeps Needle Paw from sinking in sand are the Easter eggs that Saalfield hides in the mix. She sings shoulder to shoulder with her backing vocalists on an enveloping cover of Choose Your Weapon standout “Molasses,” and their rendition of the smoldering Jimi Hendrix ballad “Have You Ever Been (to Electric Ladyland)” is even better. The rework is a lighthouse of a midpoint, with harmonies that burst into muddy blues phrases and runs that border on ecstatic glossolalia. Saalfield’s performance conjures the ghosts of grunge—there’s something in the production that faintly recalls Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”—and places her comfortably in an elite class of soul-music disciples led by D’Angelo and Raphael Saadiq. She doubles down on “Crossfire/So Into You,” pulling a sweet take on a song from Tamia’s self-titled 1998 debut out of the spine of her own tough-as-nails folk.
Saalfield’s evident respect for each composition and voice transforms Needle Paw into an accidental group recording that finds her both singing to heroes and singing with her friends; it’s a utopian environment where equity is the order of the day and each element of the track is central to its success. Though her vocal acrobatics and pop-culture recall are impressive, Saalfield’s reverence for the authors of the material she covers is no less notable. That passion rescued her version of David Bowie’s “Blackstar” from the cutting-room floor. Reluctant to allow any repurposing of Bowie’s work following his death, his estate initially denied Saalfield’s request to reinterpret the song. Devastated, she wrote a letter thanking the family for his work. That letter miraculously convinced them to clear the late icon’s song for the climactic “Blackstar/Pyramid Song/Breathing Underwater,” a medley that also includes a Radiohead staple and features kora player Amadou Suso.
Needle Paw isn’t necessarily the album you might have expected from Saalfield at this point in her career, but it is clearly the album she needed to make. It is a reclamation of self for a singer who has experienced at least two life-altering shocks—orphaned at 11, she left the city for rural Australia; plucked from relative obscurity, in 2012, she and her bandmates found themselves suddenly famous. What has remained constant is her voice. With Needle Paw, Saalfield returns to the sounds, songs, and voices—particularly those from historically marginalized communities, which often go unheard—that helped her to define her own. Needle Paw is, in part, a way of correcting that silencing. Singing in tribute to the voices that are most important to her, she is at her best. | 2017-10-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-10-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Sony | October 27, 2017 | 8 | 580fdcaa-0399-4fb0-807b-8cffd2447c1f | Karas Lamb | https://pitchfork.com/staff/karas-lamb/ | |
On their debut LP, the eager duo fumbles that which makes indie pop so meaningful. It becomes a lively collection of empty gestures. | On their debut LP, the eager duo fumbles that which makes indie pop so meaningful. It becomes a lively collection of empty gestures. | Diet Cig: Swear I’m Good at This | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23014-swear-im-good-at-this/ | Swear I’m Good at This | The origin story of Diet Cig centers around an interaction in which guitarist Alex Luciano interrupted drummer Noah Bowman during a show to ask for a lighter. This anecdote is an odd way to introduce your band. It suggests a double standard that it’s okay for women to interrupt men while they’re playing but you know if the tables were turned Twitter would be all up in arms. Nevertheless, the pair hit it off and began making music together in their then-hometown of New Paltz, NY. This led to 2015’s Over Easy EP, five jangly tracks about young adult anxieties and scene politics. It was an inoffensive introduction that spawned relentless touring, a bubbly social media presence, and Luciano’s trademark high kick off the bass drum.
Diet Cig’s debut record Swear I’m Good at This suggests that little growth has occurred in the time since. As its title implies, the album acknowledges the desire to defend oneself against presumed inadequacies. But there is little here to convince listeners that Diet Cig are actually worth your time. They make music that could be called punk-informed indie pop because it is quick, loud, and simple while asserting the DIY attitude that anyone can play music. It’s not that they sound bad: Bowman is an experienced, tight drummer and Luciano’s bouncy guitar playing makes the duo sound like a four-piece. The larger problem is that over these 12 songs, Diet Cig are the heavy-handed musical equivalent of the pussy hat: a well-meaning feminist gesture that lacks all nuance.
Swear I’m Good at This fumbles that which makes indie pop so meaningful. A melding of thoughtful intimacy, roaring hooks, and arena-level energy delivered in a basement can provide transformative salvation for the underdogs. The strongest songwriters provide a snow globe-sized glimpse into their world. The subject matter can be as simple as a rainy day spent inside building a diorama or as complex as an existential crisis, but for these stories to communicate any value they need to be vivid, deliberate, and fleshed-out by perspective. Simply weaving together a catalogue of small, observational details means nothing if there’s no emotion ascribed to them.
Additionally, there’s a fine line between being honest or diaristic and just sounding self-absorbed. Unfortunately, Diet Cig are stuck in the latter category. They give the most trivially vanilla lyrics the highest stakes, as if anything can be an anthem. On “Barf Day” Luciano exalts to the rafters, “I just wanna have ice cream on my birthday/Blow the candles out and wish all of my pain away.” The cute hook flails in the air, powerful in execution but powerless in its result. The acoustic number “Apricots” offers an anecdote about feeling homesick and besotted, which leads to a trip to the supermarket to take comfort in buying the fruit. The apricots could represent Luciano’s fears of rotting away, but this object lays flat on the surface of the song instead of being woven into its moving parts. This is a running theme across the record.
Luciano and Bowman check off the indie pop boxes on rollicking songs like “Bite Back” and “Blob Zombie,” and though these songs are likable little pop succulents, they lack anything to identify them from the many other indie pop songs who helped bear Diet Cig into existence. Luciano and Bowman sell their music as empowering, rebellious, vulnerable, and life-affirming, but their songs read like hollow, vampiric feminist messages. One of the worst offenders arrives on the closing track “Tummy Ache,” in which Luciano declares, “It’s hard to be a punk while wearing a skirt.” Clearly, this line is meant to acknowledge that those who identify with femininity have always faced adversity. Without negating the sentiment, the line comes off as an uninformed dismissal of the battles femmes have fought and won for decades.
It’s difficult to criticize a band for saying things that are by all means correct and likable on the surface. Yes, you should own everything you are. Sure, you can sell felt Black Lives Matter patches on Etsy. And the line on “Maid of the Mist” that goes, “I am bigger than the outside shell of my body and if you touch it without asking then you’ll be sorry” is absolutely correct. Diet Cig’s audience should find the message in the music liberating, but Diet Cig’s debut is almost entirely made of other people’s gestures hastily collected and cheaply executed. Hand it to Luciano and Bowman, they pull off a caper with impressive energy and confidence. | 2017-04-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-04-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Frenchkiss | April 7, 2017 | 5.1 | 5813069b-06c3-4dda-9caf-9da84d3629f8 | Quinn Moreland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/quinn-moreland/ | null |
The abundance of elder tunesmiths keeping it real is enough to make a youngster want to move to an assisted-living ... | The abundance of elder tunesmiths keeping it real is enough to make a youngster want to move to an assisted-living ... | Tom Waits: Alice/Blood Money | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8564-alice-and-blood-money/ | Alice/Blood Money | The abundance of elder tunesmiths keeping it real is enough to make a youngster want to move to an assisted-living community in Florida, get his hobble on, and stand behind a screen door in a cardigan yelling, "It's my soccer ball now!" Let's check the oldometer's current readings:
Badass: Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Elvis Costello
Still Kind of Mildly Half-Cool, In a Way: David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Neil Young, Robert Pollard, Jagger/Richards
Why, Why Did You Duet with Rob Thomas and Kid Rock?: Willie Nelson
Hack/Dork: Paul McCartney
McCartney almost single-handedly stinks up the whole batch. If only Tom Waits had been given a seat and a microphone beside all those painkiller-and-vitamin-goofy ex-jock anchors at the Super Bowl halftime show, Waits could have responded to McCartney's "Wouldn't it be great if, in these patriotic times, the Patriots won?" blather by howling-- as he does on one of his two new albums-- "Who gives a good goddamn?!" In fact, Waits' new platters offer three rejoinders to "Freedom," McCartney's banal attempt at a post-millennial moment-defining anthem: "Misery Is the River of the World," "Everything Goes to Hell," and "We're All Mad Here."
Tom Waits has been milking the concept of the ramshackle apocalyptic carnival for twenty years now, flaunting a keen otherworldly nostalgia and a preoccupation with freaks that transcends the hell out of Harmony Korine's. In the 80s-- when everything was measured in 'oodles' and forecasts didn't include a 30% chance of terrorism-- Waits rescued himself from his role as a clever lounge slouch by going real weird right about the time he hitched himself to Kathleen Brennan, whose influence has grown with each release (she co-wrote and co-produced both new albums). Back then, fans of the old Waits cried "Yoko!" but let's face it: that barroom-sage thing was getting pretty half-hearted. It's difficult not to hear the new song "Coney Island Baby" as an ode to Brennan, the psycho-circus muse: "Every night she comes/ To take me out to Dreamland."
Both of Waits' new discs are their own concept albums, and both are collections of sick Germanic showtunes resulting from overseas theatrical collaborations with Robert Wilson (the man infamous for staging Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach, and with whom Waits made The Black Rider). Both albums' subjects are headline-fodder: Alice deals with (ahem) (cough) intergenerational desire (reportedly based on Lewis Carroll and the famous little girl whose hand he would squeeze during their walks), while Blood Money (written to accompany the play Woycek) hazards the realm of psychopharmacology via its tale of old-world medical mind-tampering. Waits makes his woebegone statements about the muck of modern life artfully and metaphorically, avoiding the overt outrage that leisure-class sophistos would label tedious.
These albums function in Waits' discography the way the film The Man Who Wasn't There fits into the Coen oeuvre: they are self-homages, full of superceding revisitations, that hone rather than advance. The exotica of Swordfishtrombones, the arch storytelling of Rain Dogs, and the better elements of the hit-and-miss Mule Variations are fully realized here, sustained for 91 cohesively transportative minutes of convoluted waltzes and marches. At one point, Waits even plinks the piano bit from "Innocent When You Dream" with a winking brio that whispers, "Ain't I fun?" Blood Money's clomp-and-stomp and Alice's musty ether represent the osteoporosis of Bone Machine and the senile dementia of The Black Rider, allowed to blossom into terminal malaise.
Both albums are further testament that Waits' inner cryptkeeper is getting sharper, combining disparate instruments with calamitous precision and conjuring worlds in which celebrities are born without bodies and razors 'find' throats. The music is so expressive and confident in its spook-ass vibe that it's flat-out cinematic. The instrumentals serve as aural Rorsharchs (the gorgeous violin of "Fawn" made me see bugs mating-- now you try!) and Waits' voice is warmly recorded on each of the pump-organ-and-stand-up-bass dirges, some of which seem to channel the balcony-leaping spirit of a heroin-shriveled Chet Baker.
The guitar of "Starving in the Belly of a Whale" sounds like an animatronic parasite prancing on your spine. "Lost in the Harbour" captures the creaky havoc of metal bending to the sea. "Lullaby" is a perfect nugget of twilight insecurity, and the nightmare cartoon of "Kommienezuspadt" begs for a club mix. Every syllable of "God's Away on Business" is a seizure, with the Ben-Hur slaveship-rowing coach pumping the tempo to ramming speed. Those of you who first heard Tom Waits, as I did-- that is, over lasagna at the house of a junior-high teacher with a skin disease who was trying to seduce you-- will relish the albums' creepy love songs. They shine a morbid light on how most love-pop reduces the world to a consuming need for one magical person, and how often it's a bum swap: the Alice of Alice brings its protagonist an ounce of redemption and a ton of ruin.
Okay, so you might find the voices silly (there's Ancient-Mariner-on-a-bender, post-pubescent Grover, Golem-in-a-tux, and Gungan Boss Hogg). Okay, so this is the first group of Waits songs where the ingredients seem so familiar that listeners feel empowered enough to try to guess the recipe and write their very own Tom Waits Song (I'm talking to you, Joe Henry). Okay, so a moratorium should be imposed on the kiss/bliss rhyme. Okay, so some of the recombinatory stunts of The Man Who Wasn't There felt autopiloted and didn't satisfy as much as the first time you encountered them. Okay, so Anti's copy editor should have to rescue rabbits from cosmetics testing labs to atone for how badly they transcribed and jumbled the lyrics in the booklet. (What gives? I bet Epitaph has a brigade of undergrad interns that sort out each apostrophe in Bad Religion liner notes.)
Still, you should be ashamed you bought that Cursive, or Pedro the Lion, or Ladytron CD, and get these. Synth-pooh and guitar-flarney doesn't have jack on calliopes, marimbas, chamberlains, cellos, and tubas, all of it in classily surreal packaging that screams "Fuck the Grammys." While the rest of pop culture infantilizes itself with cussing puppets and manufactured bands who willfully dangle like marionettes, Waits is serving up vintage brittle fusion and somehow breaking the law of diminishing returns. Something wicked this way hams, and it ain't afraid to be misanthropic and admit that humans are just monkeys trained to parallel park. Come on, you Disney puds, it's time to let Waits and David Lynch do Kafka's Metamorphosis as a musical. | 2002-05-13T01:00:03.000-04:00 | 2002-05-13T01:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | null | May 13, 2002 | 9 | 581aba88-6703-4d51-b586-1ab85e0ec9c0 | William Bowers | https://pitchfork.com/staff/william-bowers/ | null |
"It really doesn't matter at all
Life's a gas
I hope it's gonna last"
--Marc Bolan, "Life ... | "It really doesn't matter at all
Life's a gas
I hope it's gonna last"
--Marc Bolan, "Life ... | T. Rex: Electric Warrior | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7903-electric-warrior/ | Electric Warrior | "It really doesn't matter at all
Life's a gas
I hope it's gonna last"
--Marc Bolan, "Life's a Gas"
Just before Marc Bolan was killed in a car crash in 1977, he seemed on the cusp of an artistic and commercial resurgence. His death marked one more lost opportunity in a career studded with them. He was the decade's first superstar in Britain, but he never hit it off with America, due in part to a stateside inability to comprehend camp, and in part to Bolan's own carelessness. Just as the support of his native audience was wavering, his ego burst from the pressures of fame and increasing drug abuse. He had missed his chance, and never got another. His few Yankee fans worried that the man unfairly derided as bubblegum by prog-leaning audiences and DJs would have his vital contributions reduced to his lone U.S. hit, filed next to Wild Cherry in the stacks. And with the exception of a devoted cult, that's exactly how the States still see him.
Leave it to the saints at Rhino Records to preserve yet another precious slice of our musical heritage. They've now reissued T.Rex's Electric Warrior, the first and best of a trio of brilliant albums. Its two successors-- The Slider (1972) and Tanx (1973)-- have nearly vanished from music shops, and with a comprehensive best-of collection now available, Electric Warrior seemed destined to follow them into the void. Thankfully, this catastrophe has been averted: Bolan may have been known for his singles, but his albums-- and this one in particular-- deserve to be heard in their entirety.
For those hunting down the singles, Electric Warrior does contain the immortal "Bang a Gong (Get it On)", but that's neither the only nor the best reason to pick it up. What makes this record so enduring is its almost accidental emotional depth: When T.Rex is kicking out the jams, they sound like they're having the most gleeful, absurd good time ever committed to wax. There's nothing so glorious in rock and roll as hearing Bolan croon, "Just like a car, you're pleasing to behold/ I'll call you Jaguar if I may be so bold," over his namesake boogie.
The most significant aspect of Electric Warrior isn't its arena rock confidence; it's that Bolan allows his grinning mask to slip. With the incomparable aid of producer Tony Visconti, Bolan sketches a vast, empty room, where, after the party's over, he resides alone, wide-eyed and desperate. On ballads like "Cosmic Dancer", "Monolith" and "Girl", he speaks in the same gibberish as elsewhere, but he's clearly haunted-- by what we can't say. But the gaping, searing question mark that comes at the conclusion of the album-- guitar feedback paired with a string section, holding a shivering and very ambivalent cluster of notes-- is just one of many clues that there's more to Electric Warrior than its surface lets on. This is not simply a man who plays party songs because he wants to: This is a man who plays party songs to fend off darkness.
For this reissue, Rhino remastered the original tapes and added seven bonus tracks (six songs and an interview). The updated sound is a modest improvement over the first-generation CD, but no news is good news, recalling those hotly contested Iggy Pop and Velvet Underground remasters. Though the sound could've been polished more, it's most important that the production hasn't been inflated. Electric Warrior wouldn't be the same album with the meaty tone of The Slider, with all its shadows and doubt chased away or ignored.
The bonus tracks range from decent to very good: "Raw Ramp" stands out for the lurid line, "Woman, I love your chests/ Baby, I'm crazy 'bout your breasts," but none of them are as revealing as the interview, during which a thoughtful Bolan reveals that the album was a self-conscious attempt to win the attention of America. And because he had precious little time to accomplish everything he wanted to, there was a sense of urgency, that if he was ever going to take over the States, he had to do it immediately.
It's a devastating interview, considering how his ambitions deteriorated into addiction soon after, but it offers keen insight into Bolan's mindset at that moment when he seemed poised to finally conquer the entire world. In fact, what makes Rhino's reissue wonderful is that it reminds us of that excitement with its every detail, presenting Electric Warrior to U.S. shores with the love and fanfare it always deserved but never received. It's bittersweet adulation for a tragically lost hero, but as the saying goes, better late than never. | 2003-02-25T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2003-02-25T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Rock | Fly | February 25, 2003 | 9.5 | 581aff42-e7a5-4879-bdd8-e4974376e762 | Brian James | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-james/ | null |
This baroque pop record is pleasant and roomy, but peer inside to find a fragmented portrait of heartbreak shared by the band’s cofounders. | This baroque pop record is pleasant and roomy, but peer inside to find a fragmented portrait of heartbreak shared by the band’s cofounders. | Pavo Pavo: Mystery Hour | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pavo-pavo-mystery-hour/ | Mystery Hour | At first blush, Mystery Hour seems like a nice sophomore effort from Pavo Pavo, a five-piece with a tight, winsome, and dewy approach to psych-pop. It’s not hard to fall for their baroque synthesizer flourishes or the occasional dramatic trill of strings. Cofounder Eliza Bagg, who sings in prestigious new music circles, has consummate control over her soprano; her counterpart, the accomplished string arranger Oliver Hill, isn’t afraid to get weird with his harmonies. The music can sound plucked from some fever dream scenario where She & Him front Spiritualized. When Pavo Pavo were recording Mystery Hour, they were inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou and Breathless, and these songs certainly sport the put-on chic sensibility of the French New Wave.
But what separates Mystery Hour from simply being “pretty” stems from its backstory—the lyrics to be explored, the tension they impart. Mystery Hour documents the breakup of Bagg and Hill, who started Pavo Pavo while students at Yale. So how do you write and sing about how your heart hurts when the cause is in the room? For Pavo Pavo, now based both in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, the songwriting duties were, well, split up. There are Bagg songs and Hill songs—with the exception of the opening title track, the last tune written for this album. “Mystery Hour” hinges on the idea of feeling listlessly unhappy in a relationship to the point of recoiling: “Mon chéri, I’m designed to be unsatisfied,” goes the hook. This unrest pushes against the song’s aura, which radiates warmth through multiple guitars drenched in fuzz. Bagg and Hill effortlessly harmonize while the noise builds around them, glowing like the golden hour in the desert.
Pavo Pavo’s exploration of a relationship’s dissolution is most potent near the record’s midpoint. This constellation of songs finds Bagg and Hill doing their most intimate writing, examining the paint chips of their relationship through poetics and airy composition. This intimacy is never explicit, always lingering on the horizon. Take “Check the Weather,” a song that is fussy in its baroque pop prowess. Bagg follows Hill’s lead here, complementing his narration with a series of misty oohs and ahs. Synths burble like a water fountain, the twin guitars arpeggiated into oblivion. “I’m stuck in your indecision/Pass the bread,” they sing together, a gut-punching line that is so quotidian and delivered so nonchalantly it stings. For “Close to Your Ego,” largely about longing and feeling fed up, Pavo Pavo decide that, when the going gets tough, you ought to offer the sexiest guitar break you’ve got. A polychromatic riff starts out rigid then tumbles through a wormhole of reverb, becoming shaggier as time wrings itself out.
Pavo Pavo’s interest in getting psychedelic can occasionally inch toward kitsch. “Statue Is a Man Inside,” for instance, sounds like it belongs in the opening credits of an arthouse B-movie, streamed after sparking a bowl. The song pulls in elements of astral Pink Floyd and bloated psych atmospheres. “Bleached in the sun/Amid the sandstars/I’ll be fine/Statue is a man inside,” goes one emblematically wacky line. But for the most part, Mystery Hour is a quietly poetic record that explores the stuff of life, love, and loss with a clear head.
There are no explicitly messy endings on this album: No furniture is moved. No plates are shattered. No one leaves the apartment at two in the morning in tears. Mystery Hour instead makes the difficult and deliberate decision to conceal a fair amount of the split, like ABBA’s The Visitors. These 11 songs have the overstuffed quality of roomy indie pop that can easily play in the background of an iPad commercial or happy hour at a hip bar. But peek inside: Beneath all the niceties, there’s an orb of heartbreak deep enough to pump blood into your blues. | 2019-02-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-02-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Bella Union | February 2, 2019 | 7.2 | 58238ca8-ce86-42e3-9c8b-fcc99333e670 | Sophie Kemp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sophie-kemp/ | |
More than 30 years into their career, the Australian experimental trio can still make the mundane feel miraculous. | More than 30 years into their career, the Australian experimental trio can still make the mundane feel miraculous. | The Necks: Three | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-necks-three/ | Three | The Australian trio The Necks has spent over 30 years perfecting a strange sense of locomotion. Drawing on the intersecting traditions of jazz, improvisation, and ambient music, they’ve crafted an ultra-minimal music so obsessed with repetition it can feel like it’s standing still. Bassist Lloyd Swanton prefers a road-trip metaphor: Moving at high speed through a vast, unchanging landscape, it’s hard to notice the moment-to-moment differences in your surroundings. “But then you concentrate on something else for half an hour,” Swanton explains, “And when you look up you realize things have changed completely.” Their music makes the case for the virtues of patience and stillness as a listener. You can’t know exactly when or where the moments of novelty will come from, but there is a pleasure in knowing that they will eventually, and learning to love your surroundings until then.
Three—a triptych of 20-plus minute tracks—does nothing to alter their approach. It is slow, winding, and meditative, composed almost entirely of piano, bass, and drums, and builds outwards from minimal meanderings to overgrown thickets of instrumentation. Though there are instrumental flourishes here and there—a bit of feedback, a synthesizer, and an organ or two—relative to the mutant-rock squalls of 2018’s Body, this is more familiar territory for the band.
The closing track “Further” is in a lot of ways the prototypical Necks piece. It’s luxuriantly arranged, built around Chris Abrahams’ weightless piano lines that increase in density and intensity as the track goes on. There’s no post-rock catharsis or free-jazz climax, just a slow journey through parts unknown. It unfolds so gradually and delicately that you hardly notice that they eventually abandon the piano for the celestial hum of an organ, and then slowly phase both ideas together, into an arrangement more vibrant than you would have thought possible at the track’s plodding outset. Swanton has said that this track was a self-conscious attempt at evoking the band’s earlier albums, but each added layer and slow change still feels like an accident of physics more than any conscious choice.
The record’s other two pieces, though different in tone, are united in approach. “Bloom” is more active, tense with snowballing momentum and potential energy. “Lovelock,” by contrast, is more sparse and distant, suffused with grief for the band’s friend Damien Lovelock of the band the Celibate Rifles, who died in 2019. Each is a slight variation on the themes that the band has explored over the course of their career, and it’s easy to look down on such single-mindedness. But when you get 15 minutes deep into one of these pieces and realize that a few aimless-feeling piano lines have suddenly coalesced into an impossibly lush environment, you can see why they’ve spent so long pursuing the same ideas. They’ve developed the ability to make the mundane feel miraculous.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-04-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-04-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Northern Spy | April 3, 2020 | 7.2 | 582397e5-223c-4965-9be2-67136e9396da | Colin Joyce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-joyce/ | |
Recorded in the space of a few months, the electronic pop duo’s latest album takes a diffuse, improvisational approach that rarely sharpens into anything concrete. | Recorded in the space of a few months, the electronic pop duo’s latest album takes a diffuse, improvisational approach that rarely sharpens into anything concrete. | Sylvan Esso: No Rules Sandy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sylvan-esso-no-rules-sandy/ | No Rules Sandy | In the past, you could turn over a Sylvan Esso song in your mind and uncover something new: a wobble of bass buried in the beat, a cutting line—“Now don’t you look good sucking American dick?”—tucked into the rhythm. Their new project, No Rules Sandy, is more diffuse. They announced the album by playing it in its entirety at this year’s Newport Folk Festival, an apt moment for a duo that’s long sought to fuse electronic pop with its folk roots (singer Amelia Meath is also one third of Mountain Man). On the group’s last album, 2020’s Free Love, the combination occasionally fused into something sublime: “Numb” felt like an inadvertent anthem for pandemic doldrums, with nervously skittering beats and Meath’s repeated entreaties to move the body in any way at all, so long as it “let me feel something.”
Meath and producer Nick Sanborn have described No Rules Sandy as a work of improvisation and experiment, recorded primarily in three weeks at a rented studio in east Los Angeles earlier this year. It is their most discordant album yet, spanning dance tracks, several brief interludes, and an acoustic ballad. Perhaps it could all work if each song had more sticking power; instead, the common denominator is a curated sense of dissociation. Hazy beats accompany Meath’s smeared vocals on “How Did You Know” as she seems to observe herself from outside: “When did I learn to raise myself?…Who was she to carry me?” The questioning continues on “Your Reality,” a track about fumbling at normalcy: “Let me remember how to live my life,” Meath sings over pattering synth and stabs of violin. “Were there rules originally/Or are we learning how to be/Surreal but free?” The hiccups in her voice open staccato blips of empty space, as if the syllables have snagged on something.
Even when Sylvan Esso aim for specificity, No Rules Sandy feels like it’s in the process of dissolving. The shortest of the album’s four interludes is less than 10 seconds, just muffled footsteps, buzzing cicadas, and Meath’s birdlike greeting call: “Yoo-hoo!” As if to underscore the immediacy of its creation, it’s titled “(Betty’s, May 4, 2022)”—a reference to Sylvan Esso’s North Carolina recording studio. Nestled between the swirling flutes of “How Did You Know” and prickly synth chords of “Didn’t Care,” the effect is less a sense of atmosphere than that of momentary displacement. Another interlude, “(Bad Fills),” is twice the length, a patchwork of vocals and vague studio chatter (“Good fills or bad fills?”) that pitches up and accelerates with the cartoonish feel of a video game.
Chaos and free play are the point—a theory that animates some of the best electronic music, but feels limp here. No Rules Sandy includes some of Sylvan Esso’s sleekest, and in some ways, most sterile, production: Songs like “Didn’t Care,” “Sunburn,” and “Alarm” seem to announce their quirks as a defense mechanism. The catchiest track, “Echo Party,” combines Meath’s signature hiccup, a baby-voiced echo, and a popcorning synth into a propulsive dance anthem. But remove the warble of distortion after the chorus, or the minute-long interval that Meath spends repeating the word “by,” and it’s a generic club track. “There’s a lot of people dancing downtown/Yeah, we all fall down,” she sings.
Despite the burst of creativity that inspired it, No Rules Sandy lacks urgency. The songs that do sharpen into concrete images evaporate rather than carry their metaphors forward. On “Sunburn,” Meath lists aspects of the beach—the tide, the air, the blisters that swell on sun-baked skin—over a shimmery, shuffling beat. “Alarm” unfolds like a free association about the concept of alarms in general (ringing, false) while guitar and synth chatter in the background. This is music to float along to, fodder for Park Hang playlists. There’s only one moment when a sense of danger creeps in, a rare emotional anchor for all this experimentation. “Death is near/Cram the night with feelings,” Meath lilts on “Moving,” over glitchy, shifting beats. Any feeling will do, any pulse of emotion—none of it, Sylvan Esso seem to say, means very much. | 2022-08-15T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2022-08-15T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Loma Vista | August 15, 2022 | 6.3 | 582868d2-0144-4b2e-ab67-cad6387a26ef | Dani Blum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dani-blum/ | |
The Memphis alt-country lifers return with an endearing and impassioned album about drinking and the many reasons we do it. | The Memphis alt-country lifers return with an endearing and impassioned album about drinking and the many reasons we do it. | Lucero: Should’ve Learned by Now | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lucero-shouldve-learned-by-now/ | Should’ve Learned by Now | Lucero’s dozenth album opens with drummer Roy Berry banging away on a cowbell, as though this Memphis band is about to launch into a sped-up “Honkytonk Women” or maybe a slowed-down “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Even before Ben Nichols starts singing about a chatty drunk ruining his whiskey neat, you know exactly where you are: You’re back at the bar. It’s the band’s natural environment, and at a moment when bar bands are an endangered species, it’s nice to find them holding down a stool on opener “One More F.U.” Inverting the sentimentality of Tom Waits’ teary barfly laments from the early ’70s, Lucero sound punchy, itching for a fight: “It wasn’t like I came here thinking, ‘Man, this bar is great to drink in’,” Nichols declares before telling himself, “It’s one more ‘fuck you,’ that’s it and I’m gone.” It’s one of his snappiest lyrics, but he knows he’s kidding himself. He’ll be hanging out for a few more rounds, a few more F.U.’s, and nine more songs.
After a handful of albums that prioritized southern gothic atmosphere over southern rock riffs, Lucero are back where they started. They’ve been playing barstool blues and ballads for 25 years now, cutting their teeth in the very joints they sing about and surviving even when most bars have replaced rock bands with jukeboxes or, worse, DJs. While Nichols still insists on referring to the women in his songs as “little girl,” there’s something impressive, even endearing about their longevity. Like the Hold Steady and the Drive-By Truckers—two other unkillable bands associated with the bar-rock trend of the 2000s—Lucero are still making solid albums that expand their catalogs in unexpected ways. Road dogs can learn new tricks, as the Moogs and moodiness of 2018’s Among the Ghosts and 2021’s When You Found Me proved.
Despite the suggestion of self-reckoning in its title, Should’ve Learned by Now is nothing so dramatic as a comeback or a return to form. Instead, they’re continuing to sharpen old ideas and update familiar themes. This is an album about drinking and the many reasons you do it: celebrating and commiserating, numbing yourself or finding perspective, getting your heart broken or breaking someone else’s. Lucero will even raise a glass to bad weather: The frantic “Macon If We Make It” is about waiting out a hurricane in some Florida watering hole while hoping you can get far enough inland before the worst of it hits. “At the Show,” on the other hand, captures the relatively innocent excitement of playing your first gigs at a venue you’re barely old enough to patronize. It’s simply sweet rather than bittersweet, as Nichols sings about catching the eye of a young woman in the crowd and the band conveys the thrill of youthful self-expression.
During their quarter-century together, Lucero have kept essentially the same lineup, beginning as a vocals-guitar-bass-drums quartet before adding multi-instrumentalist Rick Steff. Berry, still one of the most inventive drummers around, allows the band to be slippery, shifting tempo on a dime but never making a big deal of it (they’re a bar band, after all). Steff adds flourishes of E Street piano and Hi Rhythm organ, injecting these songs with a wryness that bounces off Nichols’ lyrics. On “Nothing’s Alright,” a breakup song that plays up the ambiguity of the title phrase, Lucero build tension and drama in small lurches from the rhythm section and sideways glances from Brian Venable’s guitar. There’s no rising action, no traditional crescendo; instead, you just find yourself in the midst of some emotional turmoil, the way a bad memory can come out of nowhere to sour your day.
Lucero have never been known for cracking jokes, but what really distinguishes Should’ve Learned by Now from their previous barroom musings is the humor in these songs. Nichols and the band are alive to the little ironies and indignities that anyone faces while searching for the bottom of a bottle. “Half of what runs through my head is bullshit I sell to myself,” Nichols explains on the title track. “And the other half ain’t well thought out.” And Steff plays his accordion solo on closer “Time to Go Home” with what sounds like an arched eyebrow and a shake of the head, as though he’s asked for Nichols’ keys too many times. They’re always the butt of their own jokes, which makes them good company for a late night but also makes these songs hit a little harder the next morning. | 2023-02-25T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2023-02-25T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Liberty and Lament / Thirty Tigers | February 25, 2023 | 7.5 | 5829ac4b-e077-42b0-a37e-9847cb9db4ca | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | |
The Toronto noise-pop duo specialize in harsh music and heavy topics. Their latest record can be lighthearted, but the resentment at its heart feels more outwardly pointed than ever. | The Toronto noise-pop duo specialize in harsh music and heavy topics. Their latest record can be lighthearted, but the resentment at its heart feels more outwardly pointed than ever. | Black Dresses: Forget Your Own Face | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/black-dresses-forget-your-own-face/ | Forget Your Own Face | As Black Dresses, Ada Rook and Devi McCallion took an unfortunately typical trajectory for trans women online: Rising out of the Bandcamp trenches to cult success and media attention, they broke up under an onslaught of harassment and misinterpretation from fans. But they kept releasing music anyway, continuing their streak of nuanced, heartfelt, and brutally inaccessible industrial noise-pop. “U_u2,” the opener of their new album Forget Your Own Face, feels more disorienting than usual, trading their increasingly effective hooks for brutal screaming and disses like, “You got this record deal but you’re so ugly!” It’s a lighter, less introspective affair from a duo that came to prominence with songs about surviving childhood abuse and living with transphobia. Forget Your Own Face is both their slightest album to date, and maybe the most essential to understanding why Black Dresses keep making music.
There’s distortion as always, but the production feels cleaner, with less emphasis on speaker-destroying bass. It leaves more room to hear the camaraderie between the two members, particularly when McCallion’s tender vocal fry and Rook’s screams go head-to-head on “Let’s Be.” “No Normal” is another standout in this regard, with call-and-response vocals and frantic drums that make good on the group’s stated Linkin Park influence—it’s like “Faint” combined with the stimulant of your choice. Songs like “No Normal” and “Money Makes You Stupid” prove Black Dresses can do nostalgia and goofiness as well as anyone, but they incorporate it seamlessly into their own aggressively blown-out sound.
For a band that often writes about internalized shame and self-loathing, the resentment at the heart of this record feels more outwardly pointed. The delivery is as furious as ever, preoccupied with the frustration of not being properly seen, and the futility of being recognized in a world rife with backlash against trans people. “Try to hope/Try to bear your soul/No choice but degenerate faggot mode,” Rook barks on “Let’s Be”; “T-shirt slogan/I’m a T-shirt slogan/I’m a meme, I know it,” McCallion cries on “No Normal.” On top of online stress, there’s the lingering trauma they’ve spent their time as Black Dresses dissecting. McCallion sounds exhausted when, at the close of “u_u2,” she admits she fails to see a future where she isn’t “fucked up by the past.”
The album’s second half puts that anger to good use. On “Money Makes You Stupid” and “Gay Ugly and Hard to Understand,” Black Dresses take aim at the pandering attitude and self-conscious zaniness of so much current pop culture. On “Hard to Understand,” McCallion makes a deadpan dedication to “New York City drag balls in the ’90s before RuPaul made being gay uncool,” then launches into a diatribe that imagines her early punk demos landing her a Roadrunner Records contract, complete with a Travis Barker feature. The petty antagonism towards Barker-endorsed modern pop-punk is based in a genuine fear: that the same commodification that defanged punk rock will come for hyperpop, while the genre’s actual progenitors get bullied offline. Yet it’s ultimately not the fame or credit Black Dresses want, just the support and comfort: “I want the gentleness that only you were offered/I want a peaceful life.”
Closing track “Nightwish” explores this desire more fully, returning to the softer pop sound heard on “Creep U” and “Bloom” as Rook laments that “people never see the side of you you want to be.” Together, Black Dresses discuss what to do with this project of theirs and decide to carry on creating for its own sake: “Let’s meet back here again/We can do a little show/We can sing a couple songs/We can fight over how the songs go.” “Let’s just have—,” McCallion begins, and then, as if remembering the countless trolls and TikTok kids watching, she corrects herself: “Let’s just still try to have fun.” With the distortion stripped away, the heart of the group is laid bare: just two trans women trading verses and finding solace in one another when it feels like there’s no escape, online or off. | 2022-03-01T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-03-01T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | blacksquares | March 1, 2022 | 7.2 | 583c780b-d709-4012-a20c-01e6fa0b5dc1 | Hannah Jocelyn | https://pitchfork.com/staff/hannah-jocelyn/ | |
At 21, the London rapper Little Simz raps with a shapeshifting hardness and ragged sense of spiritual burden that brings to mind Lauryn Hill and Kendrick Lamar. Both Lamar and J. Cole have cosigned her, and her debut is a tense, terse concept album wrestling with her sense of destiny. | At 21, the London rapper Little Simz raps with a shapeshifting hardness and ragged sense of spiritual burden that brings to mind Lauryn Hill and Kendrick Lamar. Both Lamar and J. Cole have cosigned her, and her debut is a tense, terse concept album wrestling with her sense of destiny. | Little Simz: A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21107-a-curious-tale-of-trials-persons/ | A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons | Little Simz, the rapper from North London born Simbi Ajikawo, is starlike in many ways, including a strict one: having dropped eight mixtapes since 2013, she burns off energy at a colossal, dangerous rate. A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons is Little Simz’s first full-length album, and it marks a change from the catholic, unfurling experiments in her mixtapes. This is a tense, terse concept album: The tracks roll forward in one dark, uniform palette, each providing a different answer to a single line of questioning, as laid out by Simz in the opening track. Technically, she’s phenomenal: She revs up almost off-handedly, like she’s jumping rope, and she seamlessly shifts in and out of her singing voice like Drake. Twinning her meter almost classically, she spits: "They told her women cannot call themselves kings/ They told her fame isn’t made for everyone."
The album that follows is, in effect, a snarling refutation. She might not be a king, but she is certainly a prince, with cosigns from Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, and J. Cole, among others. She’s got fame in her crosshairs, and likely the other way around, too, but the defining note of Trials + Persons is one of ambivalence. Simz seems engaged with the naysayers—"This the type of music that ain’t never gonna sell/ Well, you should’ve never ever told me that," she repeats, in two separate songs—but her real fight is within herself. At 21, she raps with a shapeshifting hardness and ragged sense of spiritual burden that brings to mind Lauryn Hill, and Kendrick too.
Trials + Persons was recorded for free in the London Red Bull studio, and released on Simz' own label, Age 101, a corporate liberation that allowed her to make this 35-minute debut essentially hit one reverberating note. With the bigger producers and broader hooks a label might’ve asked for—even a single bright major chord, just once—Simz, an explosively skilled rapper, could’ve landed straight in the center. But instead, she’s keeping her talent under her own strict control, which means, by one calculus, curbing it. Instead of an album spiked with a big banging single, she offers a looping, obsessively focused experience, with her words providing structure and the pulsing orchestral instrumentation coming second. With a few exceptions, like the unprocessed drums and whining electric guitar on "Full or Empty", the album is a fugue state, unbroken and undifferentiated. It’s dark, but not impenetrable; Simz’s charisma keeps it lit in here, like headlights barreling around the corners of a dark room.
As a writer, though, Simz is less virtuosic. The album’s language is intelligent but wholly straightforward, rarely witty and almost device-less; Simz always says exactly what she means. She’s an original in stance, then, rather than substance or specifics, turning over her central dilemma from different angles, switching between personas from song to song. In "Gratitude", she imagines herself stuck at home with children; in "Tainted" (her "Backseat Freestyle"), she introduces her character and then jumps into a voice of a stone-cold, dead-eyed, alpha bitch. "God Bless Mary" is dedicated to her aggrieved neighbor (though it carries that "Zion"-esque double reading), and it takes palpable effort for Simz to step outside herself; she can conjecture nothing about Mary’s life except the woman’s reaction to this record.
In a way, the album feels radically personal: Simz is her own primary subject, and as a result is necessarily exposed. But the soul of the album is abstracted. Other people are totally figural, practically hypothetical. There are almost no specific objects, no physical places, no set decoration whatsoever. It’s just curtains pulling back on a spotlight and Simz wrestling with her ambitions like Jacob with the angel, reaching no conclusions but activating something deep. | 2015-09-30T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-09-30T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Age 101 | September 30, 2015 | 7.8 | 58401e68-347e-42fb-919a-22ef90d3abd2 | Jia Tolentino | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jia-tolentino/ | null |
The Hamburg DJ applies the energy of her spine-tingling DJ sets to a suggestively lo-fi set of acid-soaked electro-techno jams. | The Hamburg DJ applies the energy of her spine-tingling DJ sets to a suggestively lo-fi set of acid-soaked electro-techno jams. | Helena Hauff: Have You Been There, Have You Seen It EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/helena-hauff-have-you-been-there-have-you-seen-it-ep/ | Have You Been There, Have You Seen It EP | Helena Hauff is drawn to a very specific set of sounds. The Hamburg-based DJ and producer is obsessed with the subaquatic experimentations of James Stinson and Drexciya, and she is equally enthralled by Kurt Cobain’s misanthropic grit. “I’m looking for the perfect sound,” Hauff said in an interview last summer: something “grainy and rough and a bit fucked up. But the sound isn’t my first priority; my first priority is the energy of a track.” Hauff’s energy in her acclaimed DJ sets knows no bounds, and it has resonated. In the past two years, her profile has risen considerably, particularly considering her origins with the Golden Pudel, the deeply underground, decidedly bohemian Hamburg club where she cut her teeth: She earned a coveted residency on BBC Radio 1 and delivered a knockout Essential Mix for the same platform earlier this year, not to mention her blistering closing set at this year’s Dekmantel festival and a proper reissue of her 2015 scorched-beat cassette A Tape.
Hauff’s productions overlap with her artistry in the DJ booth, but Helena Hauff the DJ and Helena Hauff the producer are distinct in intent and execution. While Hauff’s DJ persona lights up clubs with wall-shaking, laser-like beats, breakneck tempos, and gnarly acid lines, as a producer she is a noisy lo-fi expressionist. On her latest EP, Have You Been There, Have You Seen It, Hauff captures the ironclad force she delivers in her DJ sets while further carving out her own space in the electro landscape, shedding the Detroit techno influence of her debut album, Discreet Desires, and offering four arresting and varied tracks in her dark and unforgiving style.
The opening “Nothing Is What I Know” is a booming, spine-tingling 808 workout, suffused in whispers, that slowly unfolds over seven and a half minutes. Her meandering synth melody feels improvised but fully cooked as both the voice and drums drift in and out of focus. “Do You Really Think Like That?” is far more direct and gritty, grooving through controlled chaos with a clenched-fist bassline. Today, hardware-based techno producers are a dime a dozen, but Hauff’s rugged beats and stylish non-conformity give her a unique voice. Using vintage gear within the rhythmic template of 1990s electro-techno, Hauff admits, “I don’t think I bring anything new to the music. Nothing whatsoever actually...But I don’t see that as a problem.” Rather than being explicitly nostalgic, Hauff uses her self-imposed analog limitations as a mechanism to push herself in the studio, shaping noise and distortion into expressive energy.
“Continuez Mon Enfant Vous Serez Traité en Conséquence” is a bristly and vicious slice of low-slung techno. Here, Hauff’s TR-808 is in overdrive, the distinctive drums sizzling with a fluttery crunch, and the acid bass rumbles with distortion. The slow-mo groove only emphasizes the lo-fi wreckage within. “Continuez” is an excellent example of Hauff pushing her machines to their breaking point, their overloaded circuits screaming under the strain. The closing “Gift” is the highlight of the EP. It’s one of Hauff’s cleanest tracks, where lean, snaking arpeggios provide a delicate counterpoint to the steely, chugging beat. It’s a strong turn for Hauff towards a more refined and straightforward sound that still makes no compromises—and still leaves listeners devastated in its wake. | 2017-11-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-11-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Ninja Tune | November 6, 2017 | 7.8 | 58505b24-843a-4c00-8c4c-5af7473b24b2 | Jesse Weiss | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-weiss/ | |
Looping and manipulating voices into strange, lumbering beatbox fugues, Inga Copeland undercuts expectation at every turn. | Looping and manipulating voices into strange, lumbering beatbox fugues, Inga Copeland undercuts expectation at every turn. | Lolina: Who is experimental music? | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lolina-who-is-experimental-music/ | Who is experimental music? | “Who is experimental music?” is not an obvious question; the syntax doesn’t quite scan. But then, Inga Copeland (formerly one half of lo-fi weirdo-pop duo Hype Williams, alongside Dean Blunt) has never been much interested in taking the obvious route. And her self-released album Who is experimental music? is as opaque as we have come to expect from the UK musician—even if it does seem to come embedded with elementary questions that might guide its reception. I’m thinking in particular of the second track, “Good or bad,” which attaches that binary value judgment to a dry swirl of manipulated voice that stops and starts, gallops and stutters, in an off-kilter rhythm whose structure is largely elusive. Copeland has previously shown that she knows her way around a song. The Lolina project, though, has always had more to do with the song’s dissolution: bare-bones, stretched-out synth-and-vocal drafts that bear half-cooked traces of club tropes.
On Who is experimental music, the song dissolves altogether. Instead, we’re presented with a succession of vocal exercises—or, rather, manipulations of recorded voice that dance at the fringes of music, or of the voice’s capacity for human connectivity. It doesn’t always take up much space on her recordings, but Lolina’s voice is one of the coolest and most distinctive in this particular corner of experimental electronic music; she half-sings in low tones, often sounding a little passive, like her melodies have been simplified to conserve energy. Her vocals have provided a way to feel close to her music, which is otherwise reasonably abrasive. It’s funny, then, that this set of recordings is, as far as I can tell, a cappella—pure voice—yet for the most part abstracted to the point of unrecognizability: converted into pure, if ramshackle, rhythm.
First, though, there’s space. “Let Go” begins with Copeland intoning that phrase in increasingly echoey iterations separated, at first, by over 10 seconds of silence. The quiet is filled by a looped track of frenetic beatboxing; the sung vocals come unspooled, dissolving into a trail of digital refuse while the rhythm layers and splits in growing chaos. A two-note hint of bass and a lightly melodic “mm-mm-mm” drift the track somewhere a bit clubby, but in its final minutes it rockets back out into less comprehensible territory.
A trio of tracks—“Skipping,” “Glitching,” “Strobing”—plays with their titular effects, warping that beatbox-like vocal line so that it falters and folds in on itself. There are skeletons of beats, with tempos that slow and pick up at will. The title track scrambles a man’s voice over an unidentifiable groove, creating a bouncing tinny soundscape painted over with masculine vocals that glitch to point of sounding like scat singing. It stops mid-scramble, as if someone’s pulled the plug on the entire project.
Questioning what exactly Lolina means by all of this is, by now, well-trodden territory—simply put, she has weird impulses when it comes to sound, and she doesn’t force upon her listeners the conceptual mechanisms that might motivate her choices. If there’s a formal framework here, it’s inelegantly processing the voice until it’s stripped of its affective and authorial capacities, and that loss begets discomfort for the listener. The good/bad binary winked at on the second track doesn’t do us much good. What’s exciting about Lolina’s approach to experimental music is its casualness, not to mention its sense of humor—its blithe indifference to creating value. | 2019-07-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-07-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | self-released | July 11, 2019 | 7 | 58520e58-449c-44d8-9b1a-781cb732d743 | Thea Ballard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/thea-ballard/ | |
The London producer and label boss’ third album responds to a year of uncertainty with a mixture of club-friendly styles and melancholic touches for the lonely wee hours. | The London producer and label boss’ third album responds to a year of uncertainty with a mixture of club-friendly styles and melancholic touches for the lonely wee hours. | Mr. Mitch: Lazy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mr-mitch-lazy/ | Lazy | When he’s not writing music as Mr. Mitch, Miles Mitchell runs a record label (Gobstopper), raises his growing family in southeast London (they welcomed a daughter last April), and holds down a full-time job. When venues are open, he’s one-quarter of the team behind Boxed, one of the most quietly influential club nights that London has produced in the past decade. In 2020, he released two new EPs, including a collaboration with his two young sons (proceeds went towards their video gaming gear), as well as two Bandcamp collections of older, mostly unheard material. All the while, he continued work on Lazy, his third album.
It should be clear that Mr. Mitch is not lazy. But that doesn’t stop a cascade of self-help books, hustlers’ highlight reels, and “carpe diem” Instagram personalities from making him feel like he’s not doing enough. It’s a feeling most people on social media will recognize, one exacerbated by the extra time many of us spent at home and online over the past year. Mr. Mitch writes his music in stolen midnight hours, while the rest of us are doomscrolling until our eyelids give in; when life delivers a new challenge, he writes through it. So it is with Lazy.
On his previous album, 2017’s Devout, Mitchell explored his feelings around fatherhood; 2018’s Primary Progressive EP was his way of working through his own dad’s diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. Where both of these albums addressed relatively concrete subject matter, Lazy is evasive, flitting about in a sort of mental ecstasy of indecision and unknowns. Musically, the result is a broad scatter of sounds and moods, most of which have a foot firmly planted in clubland: “Black Majik” is a lumbering, acid-dipped Jersey club plod; “Moving Up” offers a lo-fi take on disco. He duets with R&B samples over shining synths on “Proud,” then drops pummelling techno dancehall on “What They Want.” It sounds like the best kind of club set—when the DJ captures the faith of the crowd and then rewards them by darting to newly imagined places.
“Did We Say Goodbye?” is Mr. Mitch’s love letter to shuttered clubs. An evocative music video layers clips from tour life with tweets about what people miss about going out, but the track itself avoids the emotional clichés in favor of a more personal recollection. The drama of the song’s title belies the hopeful lilt in the lead guitar sample; boxy drums and a winding synth line that drifts in near the end conjure memories of indistinct snippets heard through bathroom cubicles. These are small, melancholic touches, and they land delicately. On the title track, veteran grime MC Manga Saint Hilare offers a pep talk—“Just because I love myself a lot, what, now you think that you hate me?”—that’s intimate in its scrappiness.
Dogged by uncertainty last spring, Mitchell thought about abandoning the album. It didn’t feel right. His unease leaks through on the distorted synths of “Sleep” and in the stomach-churning kicks of “Make Time” (where anxious bleeps and high-strung synths hint at the track’s origins in the Primary Progressive era). Mostly, though, Mr. Mitch finds succor in music. When he released “Daydream of Me” (then titled “Daydream of You”) early last June, the song was accompanied by an epigraph: “When the world feels like it’s collapsing around you, sometimes you just need three minutes to realign yourself. I daydream of you.” It doubles as a mantra for Lazy, an understated tonic to the overwhelming everyday.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-03-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-03-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Gobstopper | March 15, 2021 | 7 | 58550c43-eb50-4723-9847-586bcd0e8950 | Will Pritchard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/will-pritchard/ | |
The rapper Jimi Tents seems quietly apart from New York City’s hip-hop scene. His debut EP is solid, streamlined, and thoughtful, an introverted and introspective release from a rapper discovering a powerful voice. | The rapper Jimi Tents seems quietly apart from New York City’s hip-hop scene. His debut EP is solid, streamlined, and thoughtful, an introverted and introspective release from a rapper discovering a powerful voice. | Jimi Tents: 5 O'Clock Shadow | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21378-5-oclock-shadow/ | 5 O'Clock Shadow | Jimi Tents seems like a subdued 19 year old. "I'm depressed and faded," he confesses early on his debut project, a short EP called 5 O'Clock Shadow. That self-medicated crossroads isn't so unique for his age, after all, but the debut's sustained gloom stands out. The release is Tents' lone calling card, and at times he's rightfully fussed with how to frame the project. A couple months after releasing the original 7-track EP the Brooklyn rapper expanded the effort into a full LP of the same name. It seemed like he was testing the waters, and while the album fleshes out a more formal introduction, the streamlined original still carries the best work.
Tents has a breathless baritone that allows him to stretch out long phrases and carry a hook. The production on 5 O'Clock Shadow, overseen by the Vamp, is warm with embedded instrumentation, a brand of soulful easy-listening that begs for the punctuation of a singer. As a rapper Tents sculpts his verses out carefully, sometimes to the unfortunate point of leaning on familiar tropes. Still, he has an obvious sense for structure, and while the EP has several guests they're usually added voices instead of featured characters. On the opener, "The Way," Tents is overly cautious about the prospect of his music career and it's immediately apparent how much pressure he's placed on this outing. It's the Tunji Ige-assisted hook that pulls you in though, a ghostly chant about taking over that hits its mark.
Tents seems quietly apart from New York City's hip-hop scene: geographically he's from way out in East New York, Brooklyn, and figuratively he's adjoined to a crew called SLEEPERcamp, a burgeoning collective taking calculated steps to establish a brand in small doses. (Tents and crewmember Jay Bel were briefly managed by behind-the-scenes TDE coordinator Anthony "Moosa" Tiffith Jr.) The track "All of It" brings in KeithCharles Spacebar of Atlanta's in-the-moment Awful Records, who joins Tents for an uncharacteristic-to-the-project trap sound. It seems like Tents is saying, "I can fit in this lane too," before burrowing back into his own character-building.
"Landslide" is the lone upbeat number here, a cheerful standout that both the EP and Tents use to stay afloat. "Elmer Fudd," Tents' original debut single released almost a year ago, bears out his somberly-executed charms: a knack for melody and precise delivery. "If a body drop in the hood, and no one around, does it make noise?" he asks. The whole debut carries that straight-forward polish; repeated listens won't necessarily bear out lyrical revelations, but the foundation is sound. In that way 5 O'Clock Shadow pulls off a professional introduction like a firm handshake and practiced party chatter, an accomplished first impression more than a winding conversation. | 2016-01-08T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2016-01-08T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rap | Vate | January 8, 2016 | 7.9 | 58563d2e-cd5a-4867-b47d-45424537a9b8 | Jay Balfour | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jay-balfour/ | null |
The second album from the singer/producer duo aims for laid-back but stalls out at sleepy. | The second album from the singer/producer duo aims for laid-back but stalls out at sleepy. | Lion Babe: Cosmic Wind | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lion-babe-cosmic-wind/ | Cosmic Wind | Cosmic Wind, the sometimes-engaging, often-listless second album from Lion Babe (aka singer Jillian Hervey and producer Lucas Goodman) seems crafted with a fantasy in mind: warm summer night, rooftop overlooking the city, Christmas lights, friends laughing, drinks flowing. The focus is vibe and mood, on allowing yourself to—as Hervey sings on “Never Before”—“Sip slow with my eyes closed/I can feel more when I let it flow.”
Free from their major-label deal, Lion Babe returns to the genial blend of R&B, funk, and mellow electronica of their 2016 debut, Begin. To their credit, Lion Babe don’t seem to be chasing hits anymore, and there are moments on this album—like the Pet Shop Boys-sampling, Raekwon-featuring summer jam “Western World”—that feel truly freed from the constraints of their past work.
The album starts off strong with opener “Cosmic Wind.” Hervey sinks into a warm, bass-heavy groove, her Badu-indebted vocals imploring her subject to tell what’s on his or her mind. She even slips into a throaty rap, proving herself more than capable; when she deploys her rapping on Cosmic Wind, like on the minimalist “Reminisce,” it’s a counterweight to her singing, which sometimes feels on the verge of drifting into sleepy weightlessness.
The album is at its best when the pace picks up, effectively canceling out the duo’s desire to set a mood. Standout “Into Me” is a bouncy and effortless electro-bop that finds Hervey operating like a siren: “Intimacy / sexually / emotionally / financially / spiritually / get into me,” she purrs. On the smoldering “Sexy Please,” Goodman deploys muted double-time drums that call back to voguing balls, and with a pulse beneath her, Hervey allows herself flashes of cheeky personality that are otherwise missing throughout the album.
Many of the tracks on Cosmic Wind, however, are undercut by a lack of energy or a distinct identity. They could have been made by a grab bag of alt-R&B artists over the past decade; they meld warbly bass, predictable chord changes, layered vocal effects and nonsensical lyrics to create enjoyable yet inconsequential experiences. In trying to sound laid-back, Lion Babe wind up sounding nearly anonymous.
Single “Hit the Ceiling” is a prime example. “All night, gotta stay up / And I just can’t get enough / Going out, I’ll see you around / Downtown in the scene,” Hervey sings. Much of the album follows this tendency, gesturing at an idea rather than filling it in. Hervey’s lyrics desperately need a dose of vulnerability or color; she’s about as convincing on the subject of love as Flava Flav. Goodman, for his part, frequently almost gets there with his production—slow jam “Different Planet” features a fat bass line that steer the song toward Timbaland territory but gets stranded in Ginuwine-lite.
It’s all passable, but when compared to the charisma and innovation of peers like Nao and VanJess, both of whom released stellar R&B-indebted, genre-bending projects last year, Lion Babe’s attempts to create a vibe that simply isn’t there come off as hollow. Toeing the line between artful restraint and playing it safe can be difficult, and despite the moments where Lion Babe gets it right, they have a long way to go to set the mood they’re so intent on finding. | 2019-03-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-03-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Lion Babe Music LLC | March 29, 2019 | 6.4 | 58572796-4822-4b61-9f47-24982435942f | Jackson Howard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jackson-howard/ | |
This is the second entry in Rufus Wainwright's Want series, which pairs his dreamy voice and droll lyrics to audaciously over-the-top orchestration. | This is the second entry in Rufus Wainwright's Want series, which pairs his dreamy voice and droll lyrics to audaciously over-the-top orchestration. | Rufus Wainwright: Want Two | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8559-want-two/ | Want Two | Of the four albums Rufus Wainwright has released over the past six years, two of them have been part of the Want series, which pairs his dreamy voice and droll lyrics to audaciously over-the-top orchestration. But Wainwright's inspiration has never quite matched his devotion to the project, and this baroque setting is not entirely suitable for his considerable talents. He has a distinctive voice that imbued his first two albums with an instantly recognizable personality; yet, although he seems suited to show tunes and post-SoCal pop, his voice is lost among the flourishes of harp and harpsichord in the Want series. Even Wainwright's songwriting seems to suffer: his usually sparkling wit seems deadened by the weight of the music; his melodies lag, burdened by the profundity of their mission.
The songs on last year's Want One sounded leaden under their overlush arrangements, and Want Two doesn't improve on that formula. If anything, it is a darker, more meditative sequel, less lively but more fragile and sensitive to the cruelties of a vicious world-- tragedy to its precursor's comedy. The album opens unpromisingly-- almost hostilely-- with the nearly six-minute "Agnus Dei", an overture full of gently pulsating strings and Latin lyrics. The song isn't just singularly dull, but it reveals the weaknesses of these sessions. Wainwright's gauzy vocals aren't particularly suited for this style of melodramatic music and often come across as disaffected or, worse, disengaged. Furthermore, the obsessiveness of his artistic vision often threatens to alienate his listeners through overlong songs and esoteric production.
Fortunately, "The One You Love" quickly corrects the album's course, harking back to Wainwright's first two albums. It blends gently swaying pop with an angelic choir and the dulcimer-like guitar on the chorus, and shows off his gifts for introspective lyrics full of biting wit and for arrangements that are all the more dramatic for being understated. Songs like "This Love Affair", "Gay Messiah", and "Crumb by Crumb"-- which could have come from either of his previous albums-- only reinforce this impression.
However, the Want sensibility-- music as theatrical stage setting-- resurfaces throughout the album: in the recorder melody on "Hometown Waltz", in the chamber strings on "Little Sister", in the eddying instrumentation of the Jeff Buckley eulogy "Memphis Skyline". These songs seem uniformly static. Only the live recording of "The Art Teacher" manages to break form: Over a Philip Glass prism of piano chords, a plaintive horn, and a slightly sped-up tempo, Wainwright tells of a woman remembering her first love, the instructor of the title who turned her on to Romantic painter J.M.W. Turner.
In a sense, the Want project sounds perfectly suited to Wainwright's ability to confront his problems through lyrical witticisms and to intensify all emotions-- especially romantic longings-- to an operatic level. But His tragedies remain exclusively personal; they rarely, if ever, extend to any community, gay or otherwise, and the songs derive some power from their insistently individual scope. On "Waiting for a Dream", Wainwright sings in the first verse: "You are not my lover, and you never will be/ Cause you've never done anything to hurt me." The "Gay Messiah" mixes gay and Christian iconography, but the Savior-- who is "reborn from 1970s porn"-- is Wainwright's own personal Jesus; he even proclaims himself "Rufus the Baptist" and turns the refrain "The gay messiah is coming" into frank wordplay.
Wainwright's obsession and self-destructive tendencies extend to his music as well, sabotaging the Want project but making both albums fascinating, even moving, in a peculiar way. Watching such an undeniably talented artist blindly follow such an errant muse can be endlessly compelling, and the failure of these two albums to capture his visions and ambitions with any adequacy possesses the pull of true tragedy. This doesn't necessarily elevate the music, but it does present Wainwright as both the fated tragic hero and the sexually ambiguous victim of the two album covers and it does recast the project as a small triumph within an extended train wreck. | 2004-11-15T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2004-11-15T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | DreamWorks | November 15, 2004 | 6 | 585a0cf5-709e-46d2-9d1b-95651ed73dcb | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
On a warm and crisp new album, the Texas indie-pop duo takes up the mantle of adulthood while remaining preoccupied with the nature of memory and longing. | On a warm and crisp new album, the Texas indie-pop duo takes up the mantle of adulthood while remaining preoccupied with the nature of memory and longing. | Hovvdy: True Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/hovvdy-true-love/ | True Love | There’s an unnamable edge to memory, an agitating pleasure in reviving the thorniest parts of our past. To remember what’s painful, or banal, is to protect against the slog of the present, the mundanity of growing up. It’s within this blurry psychological terrain that indie-pop duo Hovvdy thrive. Will Taylor and Charlie Martin sing longingly of what’s lost and what remains, of the small moments that can epitomize a life: driving alongside your significant other in silence, watching YouTube videos in bed, playing catch with your friends in the front yard. This may sound like typical indie-rock adolescent fetishizing, but the candid reflexivity in Hovvdy’s songwriting and instrumentation guards against oversentimentality. They’re not stuck in the past; they’re moving forward, craning their necks back to see what’s been left behind.
On their fourth album, True Love, Taylor and Martin tame the tremors of youth by embracing their adult commitments. “Even though it’s hard to/I will surely move along,” goes a line on the album’s opener, “Sometimes,” summoning a mantra I’ve likely employed a dozen times over the last year. On “One Bottle,” Taylor laments the distance he feels from his partner while he’s on the road: “If it rings you know it’s me/Talking, words can’t tell you how I miss you.” Even when Hovvdy root into the present, the memory of easier times infects their experience, staining the songs with sanguine ambience. True Love doesn’t so much shirk nostalgia as recontextualize it, transfiguring well-worn memories from longings into lessons, a soil from which to potentially grow.
In a quasi-departure from the lo-fi minimalism of 2016’s Taster and 2018’s Cranberry, True Love flaunts a more dappled and spirited production, an enthusiastic verve also heard sporadically on 2019’s Heavy Lifter. Co-produced and engineered by Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Bon Iver), True Love is full of joyful piano and bright acoustic guitars, a soundscape as crisp and lush as a beer on a late summer’s night. Often, Hovvdy use these warm backdrops as canvases to explore personal growth. “Hue,” an ode to Taylor’s newborn daughter, revels in the insecurity of parenthood: “Am I strong enough for two?/Can I love me like I love you?” On “I Never Wanna Make You Sad,” Martin tries to “lift up” his partner from the depths of his own low. In Hovvdy’s world, vulnerability is cherished and honesty is paramount, though a refrain of “we’ll be alright” or “I love you so much” usually resolves any lingering tension.
This relentless optimism can get distracting. A captivating discomfort lingers on the periphery of Hovvdy’s best work—a knack for locating obscure, difficult feelings, like the placid disillusionment of Heavy Lifter’s “Ruin (my ride)” or the blistering self-pity on Cranberry’s “Brave.” On True Love, generalization occasionally replaces emotional acuity; sing-along hooks substitute for more daring forays into sound or subject. And while Taylor and Martin’s earworm melodies and vocal charisma are satisfying, the record’s resolutory definitiveness sacrifices the delightful ambiguity found throughout their catalog.
One of the album’s strongest moments arrives near the end, on “Junior Day League.” Driving through the country, Taylor shakes off his reticence and finds nostalgia in the present, making meaning out of what’s right in front him: “How you move so patiently, feel your light fade into me/Turn into a memory.” Hovvdy are still craning their necks back to the past, but on True Love they cruise the open road, porous and wide-eyed in the face of new beginnings.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-10-11T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-10-11T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Grand Jury | October 11, 2021 | 7.2 | 585b5284-d822-48aa-89e8-63888ed2c42f | Brady Brickner-Wood | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brady-brickner-wood/ | |
Capping off the Ho trilogy, Flo Milli flexes and shines on some of her best songs yet, even if the album is a little uneven. | Capping off the Ho trilogy, Flo Milli flexes and shines on some of her best songs yet, even if the album is a little uneven. | Flo Milli: Fine Ho, Stay | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/flo-milli-fine-ho-stay/ | Fine Ho, Stay | Who knows what this album would’ve sounded like if Flo Milli hadn’t posted that TikTok last September, fanning out a stack of bills in a sparsely appointed condo, grills glinting as she rapped: “He speed in the Wraith while his hand on my coochie/He touching Emilio Pucci.”
Flo had already released one single, “Fruit Loop,” with another, “Chocolate Rain,” set to drop that week. Those two songs, along with the October single “BGC,” were produced by the up-and-coming Young Fyre, who had previously co-produced Flo’s vindictively bratty bop “Conceited.” According to an interview with Rolling Stone last year, Fyre produced at least 10 tracks for Flo’s “vulnerable” follow-up to 2022’s You Still Here, Ho?
None of those songs appear on Fine Ho, Stay. It’s easy to imagine how the viral success of “Never Lose Me” might have upended the Alabama rapper’s rollout—picture a mid-level label manager breathlessly recounting the metrics to her team, previously closed budgets suddenly reopening. Fine Ho, Stay is accordingly expensive, laced with beats by established hitmakers like Bangladesh, ATL Jacob, and Lex Luger, and offers some of Flo’s best songs yet. It’s a worthy closer to the trilogy set off by 2020’s Ho, why is you here ?, but it’s hard to shake the sensation that Flo Milli can make a better album than this.
That’s mostly thanks to Flo Milli herself, whose nimble flows curl anodyne ideas into pleasingly irregular shapes. On “Edible,” a particularly gifted lover doesn’t make Flo feel perfect or flawless, but “impeccable”; the strobing start-stop of “Tell Me What You Want” will likely leave you muttering “Men like to talk and I hate it” for weeks. Her syncopated flows handspring and pitter-patter towards vivid phrases and sticky earworms, as on the double-dutch trap anthem “Got the Juice,” where Flo alternates hot and cold: “I’m so confusing, he can’t tell if I’m in love or if I’m using/I just lost my eater damn, let’s get to recruiting.”
Speaking of eaters, Fine Ho, Stay is almost exclusively focused on sexual competition. Milli still flexes the karats in her watch and a minor caravan of luxury vehicles, but she’s more concerned with her harem, in particular the assets they offer—cash, comfort, cunnilingus. On “Neva,” Flo makes “a rich nigga go broke”; on “New Me,” she sizes up the guy’s whole friend group to make sure she fucks the hottest one. The hoes bear few to no distinguishing traits, a cast of NPCs who exist solely to confirm the intensity of Milli’s sex appeal.
These nondescript liaisons begin to blur together as the album wears on. Flo has described her raps as “playful nursery rhymes,” but the immediacy of her straightforward approach loses its charm in repetition, particularly compared to her contemporaries. Where Glorilla might “stomp a lil pussy ho with some shell toes” and Sexyy Red flexes the “thong all up in my bootyhole,” Flo Milli’s threats and sexcapades feel perfunctory. Although musically she’s closer to Megan Thee Stallion, Flo’s frisky phrasing recalls the radio-friendly sex talk of Ariana Grande on “positions.”
You can also see hints of Grande in the album’s hedonistic approach to gender relations. Milli doesn’t need these men (except when she’s lonely) and she’s 100 percent for the girls (until she wants your man). These mild hypocrisies mark plenty of rap albums—Playboi Carti and Drake both bounce between a tough exterior and the occasional admission of weakness—but Flo Milli comes off more muddled than multifaceted. As good as the minor-key shuffle of “Neva” gets, Milli undercuts her hook (“Never in my life will I change the way I am”) before the end of the first verse, rapping, “Back then I was hungry but I changed when the mils came.” And this hook about never switching up comes just two songs after “New Me,” where an ex-flame “say he fucked the old bitch this a new me.”
These incongruities might be tolerable if it weren’t for the album’s syrupy lovergirl moments. Harmonious “Can’t Stay Mad” makes for well-executed Sweetener karaoke, but it’s not as fun as hearing Milli smirk, “Know I’m conceited/I had to block a nigga for a reason” on plugg-y standout “Toast” a track earlier. Worst of all is the saccharine “Lay Up,” which funnels 2014-era Nicki Minaj balladry through a bed of whirring synths. “This the real me,” Flo intones at the start. Cool, but who have we been listening to for the last eight songs?
Flo Milli clearly has her own experiences to draw from, even if she prefers not to bare her soul. “Life Hack” strikes a balance between genuine tenderness and pragmatic stoicism—you believe that Flo genuinely regrets leaving this man and that she won’t let him play in her face. Closing track “Not Sorry” is less forlorn, but still packs an emotional wallop thanks to Flo’s fastidious detailing of a floundering relationship. Dating in your early 20s is chaotic and contradictory, but the idiosyncrasies of these songs feel more lived-in than either “Lay Up” or “Can’t Stay Mad.”
The untidiness of Fine Ho, Stay suggests a fundamental uncertainty about the leading lady at its center. Actually, it’s worse than that. Fine Ho, Stay suggests that even a hyper-charismatic star with an established fanbase and a bona fide smash isn’t immune to label meddling. Naturally, the nucleus of the album is “Never Lose Me,” refreshed with a pair of excellent verses by SZA and Cardi B. Both are in rare form, SZA mirroring the construction of Flo’s hook and Cardi rattling off hilarious one-liners (“I got a round ass, I don’t think the Earth flat”). Too bad Flo Milli’s practically nowhere to be found: Her viral verses are truncated to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it four bars. It’s an egregious misstep that betrays an inexplicable lack of faith in the artist who made the song in the first place—a coronation with no heir in sight. | 2024-03-19T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2024-03-19T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rap | RCA | March 19, 2024 | 7 | 585bbc74-11c0-4f2d-9589-8c126fab9cc2 | Vivian Medithi | https://pitchfork.com/staff/vivian-medithi/ | |
The Swedish violinist’s first album-length recording as a solo artist confirms both her uncompromisingly experimental instincts and substantial musical gifts. | The Swedish violinist’s first album-length recording as a solo artist confirms both her uncompromisingly experimental instincts and substantial musical gifts. | Karin Hellqvist: Flock | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/karin-hellqvist-flock/ | Flock | For a classical music recitalist, focusing almost exclusively on contemporary, experimental material requires multiple forms of courage. Most obvious among the challenges is the fact that new works are rarely as crowd-pleasing as the vintage hits. And there are additional dangers to be navigated: When presenting cutting-edge works that might seek to subvert the audience’s understanding of an instrument, a soloist risks allowing listeners to come away thinking that the playing isn’t all that impressive.
Violinist Karin Hellqvist doesn’t just brave these roiling waters. She seems to enjoy being submerged in them. She’s secure in her art, and doesn’t need an audience to be constantly thinking about her virtuosity. On Flock, her first album-length recording as a solo artist, Hellqvist takes her time before showing off her chops. But when the fast, arpeggiated patterns of composer Henrik Strindberg’s “Femte strängen” (“The Fifth String”) finally appear, as the third track on this daring, engaging record, they merely confirm a fact that close listeners will have already identified—namely, that Hellqvist is a player of substantial gifts.
One of those gifts is a subtle feel for bow pressure. During “Femte strängen”—a piece that has some of the profound, minimalist calm of Arvo Pärt’s music—Hellqvist resists the temptation to join fast-flowing riffs with more dramatically forceful sound production. The result is a kind of airy, pensive calm, even during the more animated passages. By showing this kind of restraint, the violinist makes sure that when a composition gear-shifts into a new level of dynamic intensity, the change really smacks you in the face.
That ability to make even minute variations in intensity register as big events underlies the first two tracks on Flock. Both Carola Bauckholt’s “Doppelbelichtung” (“Double Exposure”) and Jan Martin Smørda’s “flock foam fume” are texture-first compositions. This is electroacoustic music heavily influenced by early musique concrete, using field recordings of birds (in the first case) and layers of pre-recorded sound (in the second) to create delicate forms of drama. Some of the scraping textures might tempt you to ask, “Is this even violin playing?”
The short answer is, sure—though this isn’t contemporary classical music you can put on while cooking. You probably shouldn’t even try to listen on earbuds; any ambient sound from your environment that intrudes into these pieces has the power to cover up some fine detail. Yet despite the hothouse-flower delicacy of these soundscapes, they reward close attention, thanks in part to Hellqvist’s sensitivity as a player.
The track that closes the album—“Sagittarius A*,” by Natasha Barrett—is decidedly the highlight. Barrett is an international star in the niche contemporary-music circuit of “spatialized sound.” (Think surround sound, squared, with dozens of channels of sound refracted in high-density speaker arrays, around an audience.) While she’s a specialist when it comes to using newfangled programs to disperse and spin sound in ultra-high-tech environments, she’s also just a flat-out interesting composer—a trait that comes across well in a two-channel stereo recording of this extended work.
Over its 29-minute span, the piece has something like a three-act structure. Seemingly beginning in the middle of things, with a pleasing ambiguity regarding which parts are live violin and which pre-recorded, the first third of the work rests in a simmering state of near-quiet that Hellqvist clearly enjoys. But there are stark shifts to be relished throughout, as Barrett’s electronic designs put on a master class of their own: harmonizing with Hellqvist, contributing bell-like chimes, and playing with spatial perception. Though the causes of all these sonic fluctuations are sometimes hard to parse, the pace and intensity are not difficult to understand at all, with emotional effects not unlike those found in other relentless styles of music. That it can all transpire in a relatively hushed environment is merely a testament to the skills of both Barrett and Hellqvist.
Around the 10-minute mark, we start to hear intimations of rising conflict—particularly when a droning background pattern of electronically adapted violin suddenly flowers into white noise. The last third of the work represents a relaxing or unwinding. But for all that broadly understandable structure, “Sagittarius A*” eludes pat understandings. It’s an experience worth taking, multiple times, without trying to conscript it into association with other things you’ve heard before. Who knows—in a few decades, it could even be a crowd favorite. | 2020-01-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-01-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Lawo Classics | January 8, 2020 | 6.8 | 585d04c5-83a3-41a0-b3d4-ab04d22b2156 | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | |
Produced entirely by PC Music's Sophie, Charli XCX's Vroom Vroom EP is pointedly uncommercial and abrasive. | Produced entirely by PC Music's Sophie, Charli XCX's Vroom Vroom EP is pointedly uncommercial and abrasive. | Charli XCX: Vroom Vroom EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21683-vroom-vroom-ep/ | Vroom Vroom EP | Charli XCX hasn’t quite enjoyed the mainstream crossover she’s obviously capable of, but her influence looms over pop as a songwriter and a test site for daring ideas. The Vroom Vroom EP is her latest experiment: Produced entirely by PC Music's Sophie, it finds Charli in her trademark middle-finger-flipped repose. But here, the 23-year-old Brit veers away from the marketable rebellion that underpins her poppier work: Vroom Vroom is pointedly uncommercial and abrasive. The title track sounds like a rickety clown car whose horn toots Missy's "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)"—a blocky, disjointed paean to fast rides and good times. "Boom boom boom/ Hear me coming through the radio," she speak-sings with affected enunciation, referencing her hit song from The Fault in Our Stars soundtrack. "Watch me go zoom zoom zoom/ Try to catch me but you're too slow."
The lyrics to Vroom Vroom deal with being young, free, hedonistic, and ambitious in ferociously trite terms, and to a tinny soundtrack. "Cute, sexy, and my ride's sporty," Charli sing-songs on "Vroom Vroom." "Dance while we're young on top of the mountain," she trills on "Paradise," a Eurotrance duet with Hannah Diamond, one of PC Music's leading faces. Is she sending up pop’s shallow triumphalism? Or reinforcing it? As Charli sees it, audiences are smart enough to detect the artistic intent at the heart of this collaboration—to "be sharp, potent [and] deadly," as she said in a statement, and be "number one," as "Trophy" puts it. But few things are as wearying as pop culture that constantly congratulates you on how clever you are for "getting it," and Vroom Vroom is nothing if not exhausting. Spring Breakers is a good litmus test here: If you were a fan of Harmony Korine's 2012 exploitation flick, you'll probably love the intentional shallowness and plasticky transgression of Vroom Vroom. If (like me) you would have walked out had you not spent $18 on a ticket, you'll probably hate it.
Charli and Sophie do push each other here, though only one of them really benefits: Paired with an actual songwriter, Vroom Vroom is the closest Sophie's ever come to making viable pop songs. "Paradise" at least feels complete, a trance ballad indebted to East 17 and Avril Lavigne that continually peaks without offering much of a payoff, other than a horrible processed baby-voice refrain, and some brief, lovely harmonies between Charli and Hannah Diamond. Hooked around a sample from Pulp Fiction, "Trophy" pits Charli’s confrontational rap ("bitch I’m here to fuck you up") against a glitchy dancehall beat reminiscent of Major Lazer. It’s relentless and dispiriting, too shallow to pass as sincere, too obvious to work as satire—if that is the intention, then it comes off closer to a cheap "Weird Al" Yankovich pop rip than, say, the KLF or ZTT Records’ early output.
At times, Vroom Vroom recalls Britney Spears' Blackout, made in the wake of Spears’ public breakdown. Spears was always assumed to have little agency in her own work, and on that record she toyed brilliantly with ideas of autonomy and unwholesomeness, using sharp lyrics and sharper production to play with the idea of disintegrating identity. These same ideas underpin the PC Music project, and you can hear them at work on Vroom VroomEP. But no one is being done any favors reducing Charli XCX to a vapid cypher, particularly as it drains her vivid personality from the work. The EP bottoms out on the final track "Secret (Shh),” a grime-indebted ooze where she does a generic good-girl-gone-bad routine that yanks all the joy out of misbehaving. Sucker was thrilling because it felt like pop with a death wish, its creator giving her all in the name of sheer recklessness and pure kicks. Vroom Vroom just sounds dead behind the eyes. | 2016-03-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-03-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Vroom Vroom Recordings | March 23, 2016 | 4.5 | 5862c113-7c71-40ca-a7cd-cd31d1027ebc | Laura Snapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/laura-snapes/ | null |
On its second album of 2021, the London group fastidiously projects electronic music, pop, and jazz through the twin prisms of post-rock and classical minimalism. | On its second album of 2021, the London group fastidiously projects electronic music, pop, and jazz through the twin prisms of post-rock and classical minimalism. | Portico Quartet: Monument | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/portico-quartet-monument/ | Monument | Portico Quartet’s music should be easy to describe, but it turns out that it’s not, even for them. They often call it “widescreen,” which is the kind of cinematic metaphor that music reviewers resort to when they can’t think of anything else. They named themselves Portico Quartet because they first played under a portico as a quartet. When they released Terrain earlier this year, saxophonist and keyboardist Jack Wyllie explained, “The core of it is having a repeated pattern, around which other parts move in and out, and start to form a narrative.” But that is practically a textbook definition of music itself, and the vagueness of his description mirrors the faint sense of blankness that mysteriously blankets this group’s consistently fine work.
To be fair, Wyllie also said that Terrain was inspired by American minimalism, which is obvious, and the Japanese composer Midori Takada, which is a fresh surprise. Monument, Portico Quartet’s second album of 2021, really is a change of pace, in that the pieces are short instead of long and starched with electronic dance music instead of ambient. But the overall schematic seems largely the same, as it does across their albums. Their gifts for melodic immediacy, rhythmic precision, and supple finishing allow them to iterate on a slender template so pleasingly that you feel like Richie Rich whining if it gets predictable: Aw, Mom, filet mignon again?
The group, based in London, features Wyllie leading percussionist Duncan Bellamy, bassist Milo Fitzpatrick, and keyboardist Keir Vine. Everyone has at least a little something electronic in their setup, and the rhythm section prominently features the hang, a UFO-shaped steel drum that was invented about 20 years ago. They generally start a track by weaving a long, flashing pattern of interlocked ostinatos from the threads of the minimalist canon. After caressing and washing it with drums, they eventually drop a roomy beat, cueing the saxophone to lyricize freely. This is almost unvarying. Still, the musicians riff on their elected straits as adeptly as seasoned sonneteers.
Monument lies at some remote waystation between ECM and Ninja Tune (which actually did release Living Fields, an electronic pop album by three of the group’s members), with a coolly smoldering wind blowing in from somewhere in Scandinavia. “Opening” seems to suffuse the questing post-rock of Jaga Jazzist with the gradual glow of Jóhann Jóhannsson. The glassy club music of “Impressions” is fogged with solos that recall the gentler side of Arve Henriksen. “Ultraviolet” is Terry Riley trying drum’n’bass. Afterimages of Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada overlay those of Philip Glass and Ryuichi Sakamoto. The ratios change; the music somehow doesn’t. The ensemble fastidiously conjures shades of electronic music, pop, and jazz from the center of its comfort zone as an elegant post-rock band transfixed by Steve Reich.
It’s odd, then, that they’re usually reviewed and discussed as jazz, despite this being their haziest association. Yes, the hang plays a wafting, vibraphone-like role; the ensemble is more or less a rhythm section built around a soloist; and Art in the Age of Automation did reach No.1 on the UK jazz chart a few years ago (though, as Wyllie gamely conceded, that doesn’t take a lot of sales these days). But the pieces feel too tightly composed to have much room for meaningful improvisation, and it’s impossible to imagine Portico Quartet’s airlocked minimalism as an interpretative device.
Though the members have outside projects—such as Paradise Cinema, where Wyllie plays with percussionists in Dakar—they mainly collaborate with one another. They don’t seem to have much to do with the bustling London jazz scene in which they are ostensible veterans, 13 years after their Mercury Prize-nominated debut; their minimalist fixation is not really in step with the diasporic innovation happening there in recent years. The title track of Monument starts with a boom-bap swagger, but like most surges of inspiration here, it’s quickly tamed into a mild crescendo by the slow, simple intervals revolving through the saxophone. Without traditional training, the band has its origins in busking in front of London’s National Theatre rather than getting into Juilliard. I’ve hardly ever read them mention another jazz artist, outside of putting Pharoah Sanders on an XLR8R mix that botched the spelling of his name (which, to be fair again, probably wasn’t their fault). None of this is a knock; they simply demonstrate relatively few of jazz’ outward signs—least of all its mutating, evolving nature in the current century.
Portico Quartet are hard to define not because they defy external conventions, like jazz does now, but because they hew so closely to internal ones. While Monument is probably one of their best albums, the narrative beneath their deeply carved patterns remains as elusive as ever. In a way, the group is well symbolized by its lone distinguishing quirk, the hang: a mesmerizing instrument without a rich historical or cultural tradition, floating lightly, for better or worse, without that ballast.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-11-23T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-11-23T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Jazz | Gondwana | November 23, 2021 | 6.6 | 586824d3-d42b-4b9d-a0c6-224df50604e1 | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | |
Darren Cunningham's fourth album as Actress is a record that takes his fascinations—Detroit techno, Chicago ghetto house, rap—and repeatedly kicks them in the ribs. After three collections that played Jenga with genre rules, Ghettoville is content to wallow in the ruins of the musics its predecessors so fascinatingly deconstructed. | Darren Cunningham's fourth album as Actress is a record that takes his fascinations—Detroit techno, Chicago ghetto house, rap—and repeatedly kicks them in the ribs. After three collections that played Jenga with genre rules, Ghettoville is content to wallow in the ruins of the musics its predecessors so fascinatingly deconstructed. | Actress: Ghettoville | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18946-actress-ghettoville/ | Ghettoville | After nearly a decade of cryptic transmissions, Darren Cunningham, aka Actress, is packing it in. He's doing this both professionally—alluding to the "conclusion of the Actress image" as well as retirement—and artistically. Ghettoville, his fourth album, is a scorched hard drive, a dour drone record that takes his fascinations—Detroit techno, Chicago ghetto house, rap—and repeatedly kicks them in the ribs. This was a calculated move. The album arrived with a press release that sounded roughly like Sarah Connor's opening monologue from Terminator 2: "The machines have turned to stone, data reads like an obituary to its user." After three slew-footing albums that played Jenga with established genre rules, Ghettoville is content to wallow in the ruins of the musics its predecessors so fascinatingly deconstructed.
It's difficult to tell how much of Cunningham's end-times blather is bullshit. He's a savvy marketer—he famously referred to Splazsh as "R&B concrète"—and way funnier than his high-art-golden-boy reputation would lead you to believe. (A recent interview describes Cunningham as lifting up "a hefty glass of cognac and look[ing] through it at the flames"; let no one accuse this man of not knowing exactly what he's doing.) But if Cunningham is bluffing, the opener "Forgiven" is one hell of a poker face. Seven minutes of plodding, gray loops, "Forgiven" refuses to pick its feet off the ground, pouting like a child protesting bedtime by moving as slowly as possible. Lacking any hidden alleys or tricky variations, the track ensures that anyone who hears the remainder of Ghettoville really wants to hear it.
Ghettoville's darker, nastier tone is its defining trait, but the album's lack of dynamism is what's truly alarming. Never before has Cunningham built his tracks out of so few ideas, and never before have those ideas seemed so barefaced and plain. The lumpen funk bassline of "Rims" recalls Excepter's more staid moments. "Towers", featuring a slow, pulsing kick drum and a single, distorted tone played on-beat, is simple and inelegant. "Time" plays like a parody of experimental music: six minutes—and it feels like double that—of wintry stasis interrupted by a flat, lifeless voice repeating the track title. It's probably a joke, the type of musical prank Cunningham has laced his albums with in the past, but it's one performed at our expense.
Ghettoville frustrates most when Cunningham offers the type of transfixing delights he's known for. "Birdcage" is a taut piece that allows a flute-like melody to worm in and out of a baffling rhythmic stew. "Gaze" proves Cunningham hasn't lost touch with the dance floor, as a sweet, light synth pad ushers along a grimy piano riff and a pattering house rhythm. The deranged mumble that passes for a melody on "Contagious" is the one thing sickly enough to justify Cunningham's rhetoric. The spectacular closer "Rule" dices MC chatter into an undeniable earworm and places it on a bed of grubby organ chords; it stands as Cunningham's finest and most complete reworking of hip-hop.
Cunningham's work has always offered a crucial interactive component, giving listeners the opportunity to unpack the origins of his musical baubles. If you failed, or just weren't up for it, you were still left with something pleasantly cryptic. Ghettoville's leaden, idle tracks reject this interaction, so you're forced to take Cunningham at his word: we live in a brittle, addicted world, and this is what a brittle, addicted world sounds like. Ghettoville is a lecture, at least inasmuch as a largely beatless, voiceless work can be. Self-contained, Ghettoville refuses to commune with anything but itself, including the broken and disadvantaged world it purports to represent. Cunningham's perplexing persona has always been overshadowed by his ability to confound us with his records; Ghettoville, disappointingly, shifts that balance. | 2014-01-28T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2014-01-28T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Electronic | Werk Discs | January 28, 2014 | 6.7 | 586890ca-af9d-4877-92a7-02698ae80d52 | Andrew Gaerig | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andrew-gaerig/ | null |
Sigh. For obscure acts of the 90s finally sucking some surface air, subpar is the new par. Those of us ... | Sigh. For obscure acts of the 90s finally sucking some surface air, subpar is the new par. Those of us ... | The Mountain Goats: We Shall All Be Healed | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5455-we-shall-all-be-healed/ | We Shall All Be Healed | Sigh. For obscure acts of the 90s finally sucking some surface air, subpar is the new par. Those of us who have long pursued John Darnielle's bronze crumbs will head down to our record stores today in our scarves and messenger bags, expecting an opus, but we will leave nonplussed. We Shall All Be Healed is like an ugly, hollow sports victory for a team anticipated to blow away the opposition. If this had been our first game, we would never have become such huge tailgating losers.
And we are full-on fans. We cling to Darnielle's early cassette-only releases for reasons, we are starting to think, more biographical than qualitative. We mail-ordered, awaited, and then owned everything listed on his Internet discography (except the annoyingly "never released" projects), but were reduced to eBaying most of our archives to pay for our divorces. We started bands that ripped off the "Going To __________" titling habit he kicked long ago, and many of our sophomore efforts contain a song called "FM", embarrassingly attributed to Darnielle due to our ignorance that he was covering Steely Dan. We are thankful for how Darnielle expanded our definition of "punk" to contain acoustic odes to cartographers and unsexy species. We gather Darnielle's bootlegged covers (most recently of Suede and Neutral Milk Hotel) to survive the winter. Though Darnielle now maintains a degree of prodigality, we no longer view the fattening of his man-and-machine "production" as an evil on par with Converse's selling out to Nike, even if we're still unsteady about its political ramifications.
We always love to hear Darnielle again, though he never stays gone for long. On this album, he still decrees (rather than "sings") his lyrics with the adamancy of the virgin, as if he'd been a preoccupied town crier in a past life. Producer and friend John Vanderslice may lower the vocals and distort them, but Darnielle thankfully still sounds as if he's reporting from some Protestant, pre-compromise utopia under siege. But the only surprises Healed holds is that Darnielle has nothing new to teach us, and that the album triggers our memory of Donald Gibb's character Ogre, from that movie about the misfits with the same goals as the meatheads, rumbling "Nnnerrrds!"
Healed begins passionately enough, but by now we have a right to take Darnielle's consistency for granted: He has become that boring but dedicated partner whom we must leave because we can hear the club down the street, and we fear that we're missing some of the too-much that is going on. "Slow West Vultures" is an indictment of unsustainability that establishes the album's pace, tone and scope, but I don't buy any of it, with its "urgency" (the full-band Mountain Goats attempt rock to the extent that The View attempts in-depth current-events analysis), and its lyrics that go down like Maoist slogans with a sense of privation (except for "get in the goddamn car"), and its Aguilera-caliber vocal shudders, and its timid impression of a big finish.
"Palmcorder Yajna" manages more intensity, and a great image, though Darnielle will recycle it: "Reflective tape on our sweatpants." But the song's unjangly R.E.M.-ness never changes, sending the hungry collector back into his/her (okay, his) archives of Midnight Oil. "Linda Blair Was Born Innocent" proves to be a tease of a title, and fails to analyze how her most famous film was about the church's demonization of female sexuality; it's a ho-hum ching-a-linger about being "hungry for love" and "going downtown." Nora Danielson (who also played with Darnielle on 2001's Devil in the Shortwave) acquits herself on this song, and throughout the album, with her violinistry, but not distinctively: Except for the few seconds when she apes The Dirty Three, she evokes Alastair Gailbraith's earlier Goat complements.
"Letter from Belgium" and "Your Belgian Things" constitute the most prominent examples of Darnielle's trademark globalization, and they're limited to the land that hilariously tricked all of us into watching Marxist fantasia The Smurfs during the commie-blasting 80s. The second of these songs is the more effective, but Darnielle's nasal-Donahue emerges intermittently, and is less digestible than in previous years.
The rest of the album wallows in similar okayness (I am forgetting the name of the critic who wrote, in Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, that television's success rests in its ability to provide 24-hour partial satisfaction). "Mole" is a cousin of Guided by Voices' "I Am a Tree", and it breaks from its Hill Street Blues-theme homage for a climax that has nothing to do with the rest of the song. "The Young Thousands" is, you know, rousing (dig that wall of Darnielles!), and boasts one of the album's few soul-rending lyrics, but we fans have heard this kind of heralder before.
So "Cotton" features a decent bebop breakdown, and we hangers-on can't complain about "Home Again Garden Grove"'s patented hyperharmonizing, anxious chords, and war/suicide/jellyfish imagery. As much as we may be proud that Darnielle has graduated from the Crayola artwork of Shrimper to 4AD's hegemonic cursive, as much as we may internalize his shoulders' evocation of our mother's osteoporosis, as much as we respect the Vanderslicing that coheres "Against Pollution", We Shall All Be Healed is complacent, formulaic for a trailblazer, lapped by Destroyer, optimistic-but-joyless in that it is pessimistic-but-punchy, and gooped with the silly putty of vagueness and cliché. Aw hell, this feels like narcking on a chum, but Darnielle has perhaps been made ironically complacent by his suspicions that humans are getting the world that they deserve. Either that, or his folk has outmatured us. | 2004-02-02T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2004-02-02T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | 4AD | February 2, 2004 | 6.9 | 586afb47-8958-475f-b5ad-92b0892df65f | William Bowers | https://pitchfork.com/staff/william-bowers/ | null |
They would go onto greater fame with Velvet Crush, but the duo of Ric Menck and Paul Chastain first reached indie pop perfection with the Springfields. | They would go onto greater fame with Velvet Crush, but the duo of Ric Menck and Paul Chastain first reached indie pop perfection with the Springfields. | The Springfields: Singles 1986-1991 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-springfields-singles-1986-1991/ | Singles 1986-1991 | If the name The Springfields doesn’t mean much to you, you’re probably not alone. One of three different bands Ric Menck and Paul Chastain had going in the ’80s (the others being Choo Choo Train and Bag O’ Shells), it was their only collaboration with Menck center stage and singing. They only released five singles before the project ended—a quiet life for a small indie pop band.
Yet here they stand, with Slumberland Records lovingly collecting their scant but glorious discography. Singles 1986-1991 fully frames the Springfields; two earnest dorks from Champaign, Illinois offering a loving and deeply earnest tribute to shiny jangle pop both of the ’60s variety (their name was curbed from an early Dusty Springfield band), and their fellow power-pop revivalists of the late ’80s. “Sunflower,” the opening cut from their debut single and many people’s first introduction to the band, is sublime, from the earworm opening riff and shuffling drum beat to the layered melodies that were uncommonly advanced for the DIY records of the time. It’s immediately evident why the band would go on to release singles on the indie pop titan Sarah Records.
Their output is slim, but every song is this good. On “Wonder,” Menck sings with childlike astonishment at the betrayal of a lover; “Reachin’ For The Stars” effortlessly shifts from power pop to a psychedelic outro that also doubles as a sly demonstration of the serious chops underneath these three-chord songs. “Scatter Good Friends,” the last song recorded under the Springfields name, is the only deviation, a melancholic meditation on past mistakes performed entirely on acoustic guitar. But even here Menck’s knack for bittersweet melody shines through.
Of the 12 songs that make up The Springfield’s discography, nearly half of them are covers, from the obvious choices like the Hollies’ “Clown” to covers of contemporaries like Primal Scream and The Clouds. But Menck and Chastain were so attuned to melody that less knowledgeable listeners would be forgiven for thinking they were all originals. The uncharitable read would be to suggest The Springfields were nothing but the sum of their influences. But they infuse Matthew Sweet’s “Are We Gonna Be Alright?” with quiet ache that only comes from having lived through what you’re singing about.
Menck and Chastain would still collaborate after finishing the Springfields. They became bigger and louder under the name Velvet Crush, a project that would do well and would even get signed to the home of several of their influences, Creation. Yet The Springfields remains maybe their most treasured work, and for good reason. Indie pop, as maligned as it is for its simplicity, is at its most glorious when artists make something that sounds both timeless and sincere. The Springfields, over a few brief years and with only a few people noticing, pulled it off.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-11-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-11-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Slumberland | November 25, 2019 | 7.9 | 586ba9a2-9050-455f-97ca-04da37462580 | David Glickman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/david-glickman/ | |
Burn Your Fire for No Witness finds the singer-songwriter inhabiting a fuller, louder sound and embracing punchier song structures. The blown-out, full-band energy enlivens Olsen, kindling an intensity that’s always been present in her songs and fanning the flames even higher. | Burn Your Fire for No Witness finds the singer-songwriter inhabiting a fuller, louder sound and embracing punchier song structures. The blown-out, full-band energy enlivens Olsen, kindling an intensity that’s always been present in her songs and fanning the flames even higher. | Angel Olsen: Burn Your Fire for No Witness | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18956-angel-olsen-burn-your-fire-for-no-witness/ | Burn Your Fire for No Witness | “Hi-Five”, the third song on Angel Olsen’s second album, Burn Your Fire for No Witness, has got to be one of the most cheerful songs ever written about being lonely. A twangy electric folk tune that begins with an invocation of its muse, Hank Williams, the song is all stomp-and-rollick until it stops to catch its breath for a moment in the bridge. “Are you lonely too?” Olsen warbles. A beat later, her band’s back in full Technicolor, and the next line hits like a title card in an old “Batman” episode: “HI-FIVE!/ SO AM I!”
Olsen’s voice is enchanting; it sounds like the result of a spell that called for Leonard Cohen’s blood, Buffy Sainte-Marie’s larynx, and a still-operational old-timey microphone emblazoned with radio call letters. Her songs are powered by a strange, anarchic electricity, always flickering on the edge of blowing out. By the laws of the unique universe she creates on her records, Wanting, Waiting, and (probably the most popular pastime in her songs) Thinking are not passive stances but active ways of being in the world; unruly emotion is a virtue. “You don’t sing so high and wild,” she sneers at one point to a detached lover, and in an Angel Olsen song this is an insult so harsh it’s almost obscene. This guy may as well be dead.
Olsen first gained notice as the stand-out eccentric in Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s mysterious band the Babblers (given that all six of them were known to perform in hooded pajamas and sunglasses, this is saying something). In 2010, she released an arresting tape on Bathetic called Strange Cacti, which gave off the impression that she’d recorded it after falling down a well, trying to sing loudly and cavernously and urgently enough to be found. And she was, more or less—her cult following multiplied with the release of 2012’s excellent Half Way Home, a surreal and lyrical collection of folk songs that sounded a bit like Vashti Bunyan playing a midnight game of Ouija. Most of the songs on Half Way Home were driven by Olsen’s hushed acoustic guitar, so her 2013 single “Sweet Dreams” was a thrilling left turn—a swirling, psych-pop reverie. To overpower the percussion and charred electric guitars, she sang even wilder.
Burn Your Fire for No Witness picks up where “Sweet Dreams” left off, blossoming into a fuller, louder sound and embracing punchier song structures. It’s not as weird or raw a record as Half Way Home, but producer John Congleton manages to sand the rough edges off Olsen’s music without quite taming it. She and her band (Joshua Jaeger on drums and Stewart Bronaugh on bass and guitar) talk to each other effortlessly: On the great lead-off single “Fogiven/Forgotten”, the kick drum accents her open-hearted declarations like expertly placed exclamation points (“I don’t know anything!/ But I love you!”), and as the energy of “Lights Out” mounts, she passes the baton to Bronaugh for a perfectly timed solo. The blown-out, full-band energy enlivens Olsen, kindling an intensity that’s always been present in her songs and fanning the flames even higher.
On repeated listens, subtler highlights emerge. "Enemy" hangs like a spiderweb in the album's quietest corridor—an intricate wisp of a song that she patiently spins into something hallowed and heartbreaking. Then there’s “White Fire”, a sparse, nearly seven-minute incantation that sounds like a lost Songs of Leonard Cohen cut but gradually accumulates an atmosphere of its own. When Olsen switches into ballad mode, she fares best with hushed, minimal arrangements. The echoing percussion and shimmering chords of “Dance Slow Decades” cloak the song in a relatively ill-fitting grandeur; the demo is probably more of a gut-punch. Same goes for the indistinct closer “Window”, which sounds a bit too much like someone trying to write a Feist song. Still, that last one feels like such an anomaly that it only underscores how distinct Olsen’s songwriting is across the rest of the record. Burn Your Fire for No Witness conjures the past without ever imitating it, swirling its influences into something intimate, impressionistic and new.
“I wish it were the same as it is in my mind,” Olsen laments in “Enemy”; this is pretty much the central conflict in every Angel Olsen song. The people she writes about daydream vividly, mumble reassuring mantras to themselves ("Some days all you need is one good thought strong in your mind"), and get so caught up in the songs stuck in their heads that they accidentally walk past their own houses. And yet, even as she longs for deep connections and hi-fives from strangers, Olsen knows too well that dreamers are usually loners. Not that she really minds. If she seems unafraid of—even superhumanly amped about—loneliness, it’s because her songs find an almost beatific peace in solitude. “If you can’t be psyched about your own thoughts,” she said in an interview a few years ago, “Then how are you supposed to have a meaningful interaction with anyone?” It’s a point she’s carried over into her music, honed in seclusion but now ready for more people to bear witness to its peculiar charms. | 2014-02-17T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2014-02-17T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Jagjaguwar | February 17, 2014 | 8.3 | 586e6044-8dea-4245-81b6-d392ed5d3a6a | Lindsay Zoladz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/lindsay-zoladz/ | null |
Newly signed to Temporary Residence, Guillermo Scott Herren reboots the Prefuse 73 name with a series of EPs which constitute his best work in well over a decade. They prove exactly how well he fits alongside his new labelmates, old friends The Books' Zammuto and Paul De Jong, William Basinski, Grails and Rachel Grimes and others. | Newly signed to Temporary Residence, Guillermo Scott Herren reboots the Prefuse 73 name with a series of EPs which constitute his best work in well over a decade. They prove exactly how well he fits alongside his new labelmates, old friends The Books' Zammuto and Paul De Jong, William Basinski, Grails and Rachel Grimes and others. | Prefuse 73: Rivington Não Rio / Forsyth Gardens EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20415-rivington-nao-rio-forsyth-gardens-ep/ | Rivington Não Rio / Forsyth Gardens EP | The beats Guillermo Scott Herren has been constructing as Prefuse 73 for 15 years resemble the work of a master graphic designer. The way a skilled Adobe Creative Suite architect takes old, obscure fonts and images and re-appropriates them against a backdrop of razor-sharp typesetting and wide-open white space is retro-futurist art of the highest order, and it is similar to the way the Miami-born, Atlanta-bred producer builds his beats from fragments of voices, instruments and found sounds reprocessed through his MPC. And while he got his start in the experimental/post-rock realm under his Delarosa and Asora and Savath y Savalas monikers, it was Prefuse 73 that exhibited Herren's true skill set as a producer and composer. His grooves were not so much chopped up and flipped, in the DJ Premier sense, as they were shattered like an antique plate, only to be reassembled with the delicacy of a day-camp craft project.
His debut under the Prefuse handle, 2001's Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, harnessed the energy of Radiohead's Kid A and planted its formula smack in the middle of a white-hot hip-hop New York City underground, in the midst of Def Jux's heyday. It also gave Herren's label at the time, Warp Records, the credibility it so desperately sought out upon moving their offices to New York City: In the years that followed, Warp would come to depend on Herren's uncanny knowledge and talent as a de facto A&R guy to help the label transcend its rep as a purely IDM imprint by introducing them to some of their most popular acts, including Anti-Pop Consortium, Battles, and a young DJ out of Los Angeles by the name Flying Lotus.
Here in 2015, FlyLo is one of the biggest names in abstract hip-hop. Meanwhile, the man born Steven Ellison and the curated roster of acolytes on his own boutique label—Brainfeeder Records—are inspiring a whole new generation of DJs and beat junkies to smash their preconceptions of rhythm and piece it back together as they like. For Warp, Flying Lotus has become an event artist on par with Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin. Meanwhile, the man who brought the kid to the party found himself dropped from his longtime label.
In 2013, he launched his own micro imprint Yellow Year, yet couldn't sustain the funding to keep the hustle going. Now, fully empowered by a new deal with Temporary Residence, Ltd., who picked him up on the good word of pals Kieran Hebden and Nigel Godrich, Herren reboots the Prefuse brand for the first time since 2011's dicey The Only She Chapters with not one but three new titles. Some have criticized Herren in recent years for falling too deep into the chasm of his own wild ambitions, exploring his Catalina heritage with Savath and losing the plot of Prefuse on such lackluster fare as 2007's Preparations and 2009's Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian. With this past April's Forsyth Gardens and new full-length Rivington Não Rio, Herren returns to the essence of what made works like Uprock, The 92 vs. 02 Collection and One Word Extinguisher such essential sonic backdrops for walks along the chain-linked fences of shady, grass-patched lots in pre-"Girls" Williamsburg.
Following the meh response to his Warp swan song, it seems like Herren has reckoned that the human voice works best for his beats when it is diced into a million fragments, and he juggles the oohs and aahs of random vocalists on Forsyth highlights like "Genderations", "Still Pretending" and "Sará Teflón" with the same deftness he showed to Erykah Badu back on Uprock in 2001. Elsewhere, his ties to the old Chicago indie Hefty Records can be heard in the Tortoise-esque sway of such heady LP jams from as "Applauded Assumptions" and "Jacinto Lyric Range". "Mojav Mating Call" is the closest you will ever hear to an aesthetic compound of Prefuse, Delarosa, and Savath yet, as if he is utilizing Rivington's penultimate track to fuse them all together permanently.
Meanwhile, Herren's multi-dimensional ear remains firmly affixed to what's hot with the limited guest list space made available for these works, Rivington in particular. "Infared" is featured on both Forsyth and Rivington, and is enhanced by the stoned soul wobble of Sam Dew, formerly of the severely slept-on Atlanta art-rock outfit Cloudeater. Former Savath associate Roberto Carlos Lange of Helado Negro fame helps Herren dive back into the science of their old outfit's sole Stones Throw LP, 2009's La Llama on "See More Than Just Stars", and flexes his newfound affiliation with Temporary Residence by recruiting Rob Crow on "Quiet One", a mellow synthpop gem that's more Pet Shop Boys than Pinback. The supreme assist happens on "140 Jabs Interlude", which features the criminally, perennially overlooked Busdriver and his longtime associate Milo, who uses his "middle finger to smear shit on far-fetched idols."
The relationship between Prefuse 73 and Temporary Residence has certainly inspired the producer to peel off his best work in well over a decade, while proving exactly how well he will fit beside the likes of old pals from the Books Zammuto and Paul de Jong, William Basinski, Grails, and Rachel Grimes on one of the best label stables going right now. But ultimately, what Forsyth Gardens, Rivington Não Rio and the upcoming trilogy finale, the more ominously hued Every Color of Darkness EP, accomplish is to provide a memento on where all the long division that factors into today's beloved L.A. beat science originates. And not to take anything away from FlyLo, the Brainfeeder squad, or their advances in bringing the fusion of jazz and hip-hop to its most progressive and organic period in years, but it is rewarding to have Herren's voice at the table again, to remind the world where a sizeable chunk of this sound derived. | 2015-05-14T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-05-14T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic | null | May 14, 2015 | 7.8 | 586eccc7-3fcc-4640-9722-aea16d57c866 | Ron Hart | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ron-hart/ | null |
The latest album from Carey Mercer's frenetic and prolific project came with the news that the singer-songwriter has throat cancer and the album is haunted by that initial revelation. It's probably the most straightforward album Frog Eyes have ever released, with shorter songs and less tangled verbiage. | The latest album from Carey Mercer's frenetic and prolific project came with the news that the singer-songwriter has throat cancer and the album is haunted by that initial revelation. It's probably the most straightforward album Frog Eyes have ever released, with shorter songs and less tangled verbiage. | Frog Eyes: Carey's Cold Spring | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18632-frog-eyes-careys-cold-spring/ | Carey's Cold Spring | One of the greatest favors and greatest injuries an artist can give his music is to give it a story before releasing it. It's a habit employed frequently these days, when setting up and talking up context has become increasingly easier to amplify: The secluded cabin. The intense personal trauma. The soul-searching sailboat adventure. On one hand, these narratives create a world around the music, painting a lush backdrop. But sometimes the backstory can be deceiving, a crutch that distorts a work's value. Considering how often we impart our own meanings on the music we love, should it matter at all?
In the case of Carey Mercer's Carey's Cold Spring, the latest album from his frenetic, prolific project Frog Eyes, it's hard to know how his own heartbreaking preview affects how it's heard. Last month, the Victoria, B.C., native announced the record with a letter explaining that (a) this, unlike many of his previous releases, would not be a concept album; (b) his father recently died and he played the record's final track "Claxxon's Lament" for him in hospice as "the last song that went into his ears," subsequently adding the song to the album at the last minute; and (c) no sooner had Mercer finished the record than he was diagnosed with throat cancer, prompting him to self-release the album and postpone touring indefinitely. A few weeks later, the record was dropped on Bandcamp, along with a FAQ. It was an intimate and honest introduction that is now nearly impossible to separate from Cold Spring itself, regardless of how incidental the tragedies might have been to the actual record-making process.
Without those words to contextualize the record, Carey's Cold Spring is probably the most straightforward album Frog Eyes have ever released. Excepting a typically long-winded opener in "The Road Is Long", the album's tracks have settled into surprisingly consistent, manageable lengths. Melanie Campbell's idiosyncratic drumming is absent, replaced by more traditional percussion; songs have recognizable bridges, even lines that pass for choruses. The music is still rife with the imagery and thick, twisty metaphors that have endeared Mercer to critics. Themes like the evils of materialism and war power it; women pepper its landscape like wispy, mythological creatures. (Either he has revived one of the supporting characters from Paul's Tomb: A Triumph opener "A Flower in a Glove", or he knows multiple skittish women named Judith.) "Don't Give Up Your Dreams" is the saccharine ballad; its beginning is its most gripping moment, its closer the most important.
But on Cold Spring, Frog Eyes' carefully crafted fever dreams have been replaced by orderly instrumentals and disordered almost-thoughts. Without Frog Eyes' conceptual concentration, it all becomes slack and rambling, its mumbled poetry less crucial to grasp. It's less inventive, less urgent, almost incidental; Mercer's wild-eyed, commanding sermons have softened, and the only true bombast lies in the album's first 60 seconds. It's an awfully quiet album, especially for one "made over a period of three years" with a mind on "riots, occupy, revolutions, storms, floods, melodramatic gestures, leftist factions, mass marches in the streets, the sheer and shocking crookedness of our political and economic system, fear of the right, fear of torture, of murder, of future firing squads, of the consequences of idealism, of the consequences of having no ideals or ideas."
If you refuse to separate Mercer's life from his art, the record's discontent is eerily weighted by events that came to pass after its recording. On "The Road Is Long," when he sings, "Evil, I want you to know that I know that you have no plans," it feels like a new challenge. And on "Claxxon's Lament", the song that now belongs to the late Mr. Mercer, he repeats "nobody shall die" and it's crushing; even if he wrote it long before he lost him, the heartbreak is fresh and palpable. In his FAQ, Mercer writes that he is "supposed to get better," and has "the kind of cancer you fight." When he returns, Carey's Cold Spring, an album that gazes uncertainly toward an uncertain future, should serve as an appropriate turning point. | 2013-10-15T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2013-10-15T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | self-released | October 15, 2013 | 6.9 | 58706006-1d63-4898-8aad-e97bdfd65c77 | Devon Maloney | https://pitchfork.com/staff/devon-maloney/ | null |
The Canadian folk duo partners with the New Zealand singer-songwriter; together, they mix blues, murder ballads, and Indigenous lore, updating traditional forms in unexpected ways. | The Canadian folk duo partners with the New Zealand singer-songwriter; together, they mix blues, murder ballads, and Indigenous lore, updating traditional forms in unexpected ways. | Kacy & Clayton / Marlon Williams: Plastic Bouquet | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kacy-and-clayton-marlon-williams-plastic-bouquet/ | Plastic Bouquet | The North and South have a storied history in Americana, but unfurl the map and that dividing line tells a different tale across continents. Canadian folk duo Kacy & Clayton (second cousins Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum) and New Zealand singer-songwriter Marlon Williams crossed hemispheres to work together, guided by a compass that pointed to the diverse traditions that have informed their respective work.
Both acts have shown an abiding interest in traditional, character-driven and confessional folk narratives, though they’ve branched out in recent years. Kacy & Clayton stretched their sound on 2017’s The Siren’s Song, which Jeff Tweedy produced, adding a 1950s rock twang, and Williams looked to baroque pop on 2018’s Make Way for Love. Now they have combined what they learned on those sojourns to create Plastic Bouquet.
After meeting on tour in 2017, Anderson and Williams began trading songs they’d written individually, eventually gathering in Kacy & Clayton’s native Saskatchewan to record with a full band. Plastic Bouquet marries their remarkably timeworn voices, entwining threads from country-folk, 1960s British pop, and even rockabilly to stitch a retro flare into their modern lore.
“Isn’t It” harkens back to blues traditionals about cheating and how all that sneaking around eventually eviscerates a person. “You took my shadow, wiped it right off the floor,” Anderson sings in a high, mournful register. Linthicum’s guitar backs her, metallic and sharply rendered, before Williams joins her on the chorus. At times their harmonies fit hand in glove; at others, they stand at arresting odds, their voices weaving together different textures that suit their ominous tales.
The title song updates the murder-ballad tradition, with a reckless driver playing the central villain. Done as a morbid waltz turned warning, “Plastic Bouquet” recounts the dangerous crossroads where a young driver killed three girls in a tragic accident that also claimed his life. On “Arahura,” the trio look to New Zealand’s past and the Ngāti Toa warrior Te Rauparaha, who was said to plunder the Arahura, a river on the country’s west coast, for greenstone. The song’s narrator hovers like a ghostly presence solidified only by the environment. “I know I am bound/To the river I love/And in a million years/I’ll be a rock on that hill,” Williams sings, his voice becoming more reverent against hazy pedal steel in the background. The bounty of New Zealand’s lush geography has limits, however: “But in a million more/I don’t know that I will.”
The album favors solemn matters, but the playful arrangements and Linthicum’s whimsical organ prevent it from slipping into a dour retreading of the past. “Devil’s Daughter,” arguably the most doleful song, opens with Anderson offering a very Canadian “sorry” for laughing before an acoustic guitar scaffolds a stage for her rich voice to mingle with Williams’.
Both vocally and narratively, Anderson and Williams have found a songwriting partner to push them in unconventional directions. Plastic Bouquet feels like the kismet of finding a kindred spirit halfway across the world.
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. | 2021-01-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-01-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | New West | January 7, 2021 | 7 | 5872daa0-58c2-42a1-9997-85ccce88a3cb | Amanda Wicks | https://pitchfork.com/staff/amanda-wicks/ | |
Arthur Lee's paranoia-soaked 1967 masterpiece is again reissued and expanded-- just seven years after its previous rollout. | Arthur Lee's paranoia-soaked 1967 masterpiece is again reissued and expanded-- just seven years after its previous rollout. | Love: Forever Changes [Collector's Edition] | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11429-forever-changes-collectors-edition/ | Forever Changes [Collector's Edition] | If I were reviewing only the original material that forms the basis of this Collector's Edition of Love's Forever Changes, I'd certainly give it a 10.0 and praise it in the most glowing terms possible. Such as: Fuck the Doors. This is the truer sound of late-1960s Los Angeles, which was neither a trippy paradise nor a Lizard Kingdom, but a purgatory characterized by paranoia and grievance. Already veterans of the local scene when they released their third and best album, Love captured the city in all its grizzled glory on Forever Changes-- or, rather, Arthur Lee did. A charismatic black singer/songwriter in a mixed-race band but a generally white scene, he had soured on the hippies and sunshine mentality, and instead saw the Vietnam War, his friends' drug addictions, and the end of the world. Sequestered in a house high in the Hollywood hills, he could look down at the city below and nurse a curious dread. Eventually, he became convinced that his death was looming and that Forever Changes would be his final statement to the world. So he became a rank perfectionist, expressing all his unhappiness, fear, blame, and hope not only in his dark, discomfiting lyrics, but in the music itself, which draws from rock, pyschedelia, folk, pop, classical, and even mariachi. Ultimately, the album belongs to none of those genres.
That's certainly a compelling story, but it also points to a larger anti-story, one specifically bound to Los Angeles during the late 1960s. In her essay "The White Album", Joan Didion experienced a similar detachment from the world around her, piecing together fragments of scenes with the Doors, an interview with Manson girl Linda Kasabian, transcripts from the Ferguson brothers murder trial, and vivid descriptions of her own brittle mental state. *"*I was supposed to have a script, and had mislaid it," she writes. "I was supposed to hear cues, and no longer did. I was meant to know the plot, but all I knew was what I saw: flash pictures in variable sequence, images with no 'meaning' beyond their temporary arrangement, not a movie but a cutting-room experience." Forever Changes is similarly a thicket of tangled story threads, which of course shows in Lee's lyrics. Has rock music produced a stranger, more alarming cry for help than "Sitting on a hillside, watching all the people die/ I'll feel much better on the other side"? Lee sings those lyrics on "The Red Telephone", and the calm in his voice, the matter-of-factness with which he delivers those lines, makes them the more worrisome.
Lee's faltering grasp on any overriding narrative, however, comes through more strongly in the shape of the music, which is diverse and logical, but tricky-- full of feints, blind alleys, unusual passages. The traditional structures that served the band so well on its two previous albums (Love even covered Bacharach-David) are jettisoned in favor of more circuitous arrangements like "A House Is Not a Motel", which moves linearly, but repeats almost nothing. Even the most direct, lucid songs convey a sense of vague menace, the first sight of the storm out to sea. "Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale", perhaps the catchiest song here, surveys Los Angeles' music scene from Lee's perspective as he seems to bid conspicuous farewells to the venues and audiences. There's an acceptance and perhaps even a relief in his resignation: Listen to Lee sing along with the trumpet solo, his excitement driving and driven by the music.
Forever Changes is both context and text, but none of it is academic. It's a rock album and, despite its tangles of meaning, a surprisingly accessible and enduring one. Nevertheless, as amazing as these songs are, this particular edition of Forever Changes is definitive only by default. Its similarities to the 2001 edition suggest an obligatory undertaking, offering few revelations about the album or the musicians who made it. The new liner notes were written by Andrew Sandoval, who produced the previous edition and contributed a short introduction. His access to the band members is valuable (he interviewed Lee many times before the singer's death in 2006), but he seems more interested in detailing the creation of the record than in exploring what it means or why it persists. The bulk of the bonus material consists of an alternate mix of the album, which pushes Lee's vocals to the forefront, deviates occasionally from the well-known stereo version, and generally recalls those Elektra anniversary editions of Love's previous albums. Otherwise, six of the 10 new bonus tracks appear on the original reissue, while one track is noticeably absent. Several are tracking sessions, full of count offs, false starts, and abrupt stops. This is by definition for-fans-only material. The only real discovery is their lackadaisical take on "Wooly Bully", which begins and ends so unceremoniously that it sounds wholly improvised, the byproduct of too much downtime in the studio.
Of the two, this new edition is superior to the 2001 one if only because it relegates all the bonus material to a separate disc and presents the full album by itself on the first disc. The well-earned valedictory "You Set the Scene" closes Forever Changes as intended instead of leading into outtakes. On the other hand, this Collector's Edition lacks the impact of the 2001 version, which rescued the then out-of-print album and introduced it to new legions of listeners. In retrospect, however, timing may have been the most crucial aspect of that release, considering the events of 2001 and the outrage that has simmered since then. Inspired by the 1960s, Forever Changes may actually be the perfect soundtrack to the 2000s, when the stories we tell ourselves in order to live began to make even less sense. To say that Love's music has lost none of its power is beside the point: It has actually gained new gravity, as Lee's paranoia, far from unwarranted, has become frighteningly easy to identify with. | 2008-04-25T01:00:01.000-04:00 | 2008-04-25T01:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Elektra / Rhino | April 25, 2008 | 8.6 | 58734c6a-a673-45b3-8e1b-80cc2aa6a403 | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
Never before issued on CD, Rhino expands Talking Heads' classic 1982 live document to two discs-- the second of which captures the 1980-81 Remain in Light tour, which saw the band fleshed out to 10 members. | Never before issued on CD, Rhino expands Talking Heads' classic 1982 live document to two discs-- the second of which captures the 1980-81 Remain in Light tour, which saw the band fleshed out to 10 members. | Talking Heads: The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8266-the-name-of-this-band-is-talking-heads/ | The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads | The liner notes to the long-awaited CD debut of Talking Heads' 1982 live release, The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads, recommends other albums by the New York four-piece. The list includes each of the band's studio albums, plus Rhino's four-disc box set Once in a Lifetime; perhaps conspicuous in its absence is that other live Talking Heads album, the far more popular and legendary Stop Making Sense.
It may not have been a confrontational omission, but the soundtrack to Jonathan Demme's Talking Heads concert film has long overshadowed The Name of This Band-- so much so that fans have long doubted that this earlier (and superior) live album would ever make it to compact disc. Thankfully, however, Rhino has now not only reissued The Name of This Band, but has also taken a cue from the recent "Special Edition" of Stop Making Sense by adding 13 tracks which weren't on the original version.
Part of the charm and power of Stop Making Sense the film is that it almost purely translates the live experience of a rock show audience rather than the experience of a touring band. There is no backstage fly-on-the-wall stuff, no dressing room preparations, on-the-bus interviews, caterers, hotel clerks or road managers. Rather, it's the snapshot of one live document with the camera playing the role of a punter, trained completely on the band in an attempt to recreate the experience of attending the show. It works so well that it's almost jarring when the camera finally closes in on audience members dancing in the aisles during the show's finale.
Musically, this approach is a bit limiting. As powerful as Talking Heads were at the time, Stop Making Sense still functions as a live document of one band at one moment in time (well, not technically-- the film was actually recorded over three nights). For a group such as this, who paid attention to the musical world around them, deftly and quickly folding outside influences as seemingly disparate as disco, afrobeat, funk and new wave into their already unique sound, The Name of This Band's approach-- collecting various live performances over a four-year period-- is more revelatory and rewarding. It functions as both a timeline in which a listener can trace the band's development and definitive proof that some of their supposed great departures-- particularly an accomplished and complex rhythm section-- were there from the onset.
The result is both the best career-spanning snapshot of and single-purchase introduction to Talking Heads-- odd accolades for a live record-- and a treat for longtime fans. The record's title refers to band leader David Byrne's dry, cheeky, no-nonsense stage patter in the band's early days, the years documented on the set's first disc. "This song is called 'New Feeling' and that's what it's about," Byrne begins, leading the four-piece group with both his animated, acrobatic vocal tics and affectations and the band's nervous, twitchy music.
All bugged eyes and neurosis, Byrne spits and churns his way through the best tracks from the band's first three albums. His oft-criticized, stream-of-consciousness language (best illustrated by the "Busy Doin' Nothin'"-like driving directions and matter-of-fact descriptions of the benefits of his apartment building and favorite federal laws in "Don't Worry About the Government") ground the band's more aggressive, robust playing music. At times, Byrne gets a little punchy as well, injecting anger and bemusement into "I'm Not in Love" and adding a bitter tone to "The Big Country", transforming it from the hazy thoughts of an airplane traveler to a more combative rumination on the urban/rural divide. It would be a candidate for the official anthem of the mythical Blue States if the so-called culture wars and other right-wing chicanery continue to drive their regrettable wedge into the country.
When required, however, Byrne can craft an expressive lyrics, as indicated by the literate detail of tracks such as "Psycho Killer", "Life During Wartime" and "Found a Job". And on an early version of "Electricity (Drugs)"-- one of three tracks first released on a rare Warner promo release-- the band is sleepy and drony, countering the lyrical claims that "I'm charged up." That track is also one of only three that is repeated on both discs, although on Disc 2, it's in as the more familiar "Drugs (Electricity)".
The second disc borrows a page from Stop Making Sense's playbook and recreates the entire set from stops along the band's Remain in Light tour, including a handful of tracks from the much-bootlegged February 1981 performance at Tokyo's Nakano Sun Palace. Expanded to a 10-piece band that included Adrian Belew on guitar and Bernie Worrell on keyboards, the bulk of Disc 2's material gives its studio versions a run for the money. Belew's nuanced guitar work, more confident contributions from the core members, and the added rhythmic dimension and heft are frequently jawdropping, but the loose beats and a playful Byrne keep claims of muso nonsense at arm's length.
The set itself is ordered nearly chronologically, which neatly and accidentally conforms to the logic of the album's running order. Within the set, the band builds the rhythmic density of their tracks, kicking off with a quartet of songs from their first two albums (including second appearances by "Psycho Killer" and "Stay Hungry"), before the funk-influenced "Cities" and African rhythms of "I Zimbra". Those two fractured, beat-heavy and offbeat tracks guide the audience into the final two-thirds of the set, which is mostly built from the polyrhythmic Remain in Light. Along the way, a melodic "Animals"-- perhaps the set's weakest track in its studio version-- easily surpasses the original, led by a gorgeous harmonic middle section.
Last week, Rhino also released an 18-track Best of Talking Heads set. Spanning the band's entire 11-year career, it's well-selected considering its considerable limitations and is arguably more inclusive than The Name of This Band, but it is also unnecessary as anything other than a grab bag of familiar radio hits. This live album, on the other hand, is not simply a fans-only document or a curio or a means of padding the discography or exploiting fans. In many ways, it's the best one-stop document of what made Talking Heads one of the post-punk era's most dynamic and urgent bands, and a succinct argument for the merits of synthesizing rock with emerging, potentially oppositional sounds. The latter is a lesson that will hopefully be learned by today's rock artists. | 2004-08-24T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2004-08-24T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | Sire | August 24, 2004 | 9.2 | 58772124-c157-4c79-812a-ba46b600e47b | Scott Plagenhoef | https://pitchfork.com/staff/scott-plagenhoef/ | null |
The second album from guitarist Betsy Wright and drummer Laura King revels in a good time, backing up their bite with instrumental brawn. | The second album from guitarist Betsy Wright and drummer Laura King revels in a good time, backing up their bite with instrumental brawn. | Bat Fangs: Queen of My World | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bat-fangs-queen-of-my-world/ | Queen of My World | There is something sublime about a monster truck flying through the air. Behemoth vehicles outfitted with intimidating paint jobs and names to match—Bigfoot, Grave Digger, Monster Mutt—launching themselves from tall dirt plateaus, a nose thumbed at God and gravity and any other challengers as they become airborne. Queen of My World, the second album from the East Coast duo Bat Fangs, arrives with the same power and pomp, bearing a flamboyant edge all their own. Guitarist Betsy Wright and drummer Laura King form a sleek, rip-roaring unit that revels in a good time, backing up their bite with instrumental brawn.
Bat Fangs draw gleefully from the biggest excesses of rock‘n’roll, delivering the postures of hair metal and late-’80s rock without any of the lechery, heroin, or sticky dessert metaphors. Where blowhard ego ruled the arena-glam heyday, the pair instead manage an air of cool that seems effortless. As the bassist for Ex Hex, Wright oversaw their strongest numbers like “Radio On” and “How You Got That Girl”; in Bat Fangs, her capacity as a hook-minded lead guitarist is front-and-center. King and her rhythmic sensibilities have long tended toward the hard, fast, and loud (with the snarling trio Flesh Wounds, the double-drum outfit Speed Stick, and in Mac McCaughan’s backing band), and they add muscle to the songs in tandem with Wright’s ferocious riffs.
The pair’s songs tend toward supernatural associations—mentions of spells cast, creatures in the shadows, cosmic forces—which serve more as a thematic springboard than a goofy gimmick. In contrast to the direct shots of the band’s self-titled debut (“Wolf Bite,” “Rock the Reaper”), the more prismatic Queen of My World feels beamed in from an alternate universe where Lisa Frank made her fortune designing airbrushed-wizard panel vans. Wright matches her lines about far-out curiosities with shredded guitar, her shout-along yeahs, whoas, and ohs soaring around solos that feel directly aimed at serotonin centers.
For all the big thrills, Bat Fangs keep Queen running lean under 35 minutes, and from the opening strut of “Action,” not one of their songs ever has the opportunity to sour. “Psychic Eye” is its own rollercoaster at the middle of the record, cooling with a slithering melody before Wright rips a note that crackles like lightning over King’s thunderclouds. Building from a tumble of light, knotty guitar, the instrumental closer “Into the Weave” shifts from a springy, borderline psychedelic number into a fuzzy, scorching climax before wafting away.
Though subtlety is not the ruling order of Bat Fangs, their wholehearted approach to everything gives Queen a sanguine undercurrent. “I act like I don’t care but/I don’t wanna dance alone,” Wright admits on the punchy “Talk Tough.” The record’s title track is an admiring recollection of youthful friendship with a strong spiritual affinity to Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl.” Bat Fangs’ vibrancy would make for a good time even if Wright were singing a technical manual, but the top-down, unabashed enthusiasm of their material makes it shine. The heavy expectations of Serious Rock Music and mortal existence turn featherweight in their hands, a neon-tinged shift in perspective that leaves a glowing halo behind.
Bat Fangs are light on their feet while sticking the landing on songs that could fill football stadiums. A single, angelic “aah” ends the album, another good-natured wink that lasts just long enough to ring with sincerity. Bat Fangs offer a mix of high spirits, gut-rattling guitar jams, and escapism, a combination best captured in one of the holiest two-word phrases in the English language: hell yeah.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-12-02T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-12-02T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Don Giovanni | December 2, 2021 | 7.5 | 5878f91b-e94e-4fe4-9a9b-bceed856631e | Allison Hussey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/allison-hussey/ | |
Singer-songwriter Josh Tillman reaches far, far back to the golden age of Hollywood for a dreamy, lushly orchestrated, wryly comic collection of vignettes that all depend upon the timelessness of a love song. | Singer-songwriter Josh Tillman reaches far, far back to the golden age of Hollywood for a dreamy, lushly orchestrated, wryly comic collection of vignettes that all depend upon the timelessness of a love song. | Father John Misty: Chloë and the Next 20th Century | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/father-john-misty-chloe-and-the-next-20th-century/ | Chloë and the Next 20th Century | Two things recur with peculiar frequency around Father John Misty: films and dreams. You’ve heard his wife Emma is a filmmaker; or you might recall that wild story he made up about the time Lou Reed appeared to him in a dream; or you’ll remember his songs, the way the Warner Bros. logo looms over “Leaving LA.” Like David Lynch, Josh Tillman dreams in absurdity, a glamorously mundane world populated by seedy characters hidden beneath the surface. This is the Misty land, the dreamscape, and everyone who encounters his work crosses into it, consciously or not. He’s the folk singer for these times because the aura of unreality follows him around like a stench.
Anyway, here we have Chloë and the Next 20th Century, from the mind of an auteur who specializes in oneiric theory and mid-century film scores. His latest album is another collection of story-song vignettes arrayed in loose opposition to the pointless absurdity of modern society; or it’s an elaborate study in the life of a sad sack helplessly ensnared in doomed romances with a whole series of women, starting with Chloë, an unfeeling socialite whose previous boyfriend met a mysterious end in the first of, by my count, six tragic deaths in 51 minutes; or it was a dream all along.
What Chloë looks like, though, is a film. The old-timey opening credits roll for five minutes in the “Q4” video, but the action never begins. There are uncredited cameos: You can read “Funny Girl” like a blind item about Drew Barrymore from the perspective of a delusional fan, and in my mind the umlaut hovers over the image of another generationally famous Chloë, Sevigny. From the first sour trumpet, Misty is working overtime to entertain, tapping into a strain of golden age Hollywood jazz and swing that feels at first like a ludicrous posture for a folk-rock star. Few in our present era of obsessively nostalgic pop have dug all the way back to mid-century big band orchestration and jazz crooners like Johnny Mathis and Chet Baker. Misty looks here because it represents the period when movies were the most advanced and important popular multimedia form—easier than writing for the metaverse, in any case, and just as transportive.
Still, it’s a record, so you’ll have to watch in the dim theater of your own mind. The new album shares a number of themes with 2017’s Pure Comedy, Misty’s last great throwing-up-of-hands, but instead of manifestos and literalism, Chloë has the amnesiac effect of a film without phones or calendars. It feels designed to age well because it sounds a bit ageless, trimming back the earlier album’s instrumental interludes and replacing its curdled, Trump-scented atmosphere with melodies and stories of no era in particular. From this point, things get slippery: There’s no clear narrative, and the stories are riddled with innuendo and unanswered questions. In place of Pure Comedy’s logorrhea, Chloë suggests the framework of an ambitious novel: Perhaps the story begins with the wedding band of wooly closer “The Next 20th Century,” and ends, 11 songs earlier, as poor Chloë leaps off a balcony.
But Chloë is ultimately a background character, more like a concept, a sometime foil and frequent obsession for our determinedly dislikeable leading man. The narrator never gives a name, though he shares a few habits with someone we’ve met before, such as a tendency to save the big reveal for the final stanza, or to express some genuinely affecting sentiment like, “Love’s much less a mystery/Than who you give it to,” and subsequently make a pass at a celebrity. In “Funny Girl,” he falls for a comedian: She’s barely over five feet tall, a vivacious interviewee who once “charmed the pants off Letterman.” Convinced she returns his affections, he asks her to meet and arrives at the appointed time, but she’s nowhere to be found; it’s not clear she ever knew he existed.
Most songs share a similar tenor: pompous and sordid and really terrifically campy. If you subscribe to the narrator’s continuity, you’ll also have to accept that the guy who’s filching Chloë’s pills and stalking talk show guests is the same one singing “Kiss Me (I Loved You)” and cradling his dying cat in “Goodbye Mr. Blue,” easily the saddest death of them all. The pleasure of making his acquaintance is a sensation between schadenfreude and pity, and Misty knows it, because he writes the “Glory Days” scene right in, on a bitter dive bar weeper called “Buddy’s Rendezvous,” as in, “I’m at Buddy's Rendezvous/Telling the losers and old timers/How good I did with you/They almost believe me, too.”
Look closer: Nothing about the Chloë story adds up. The album is full of unfinished arcs, open questions that could turn the ship in an entirely new direction if only someone were steering. On “Olvidado (Otro Momento),” when Misty starts singing bossa nova in Spanish and not Portuguese—where are we? The unhappy couple killed en route to a one-night stand on “We Could Be Strangers”—who were they? And what did he say happened to Chloë’s last boyfriend—were we ever sure? Give the record half an ear and the stories are a little too clever and intricate to register; devote full attention and their meanings start to evaporate because there’s nothing solid there either. This isn’t the structure of a script but the logic of a dream.
Except for “Q4,” when we briefly wake up to reality, maybe. It’s the album’s most self-contained episode, the only one you couldn’t call a love song: a scandalous story of an author who steals the life story of her late sister as fodder for her own new “semi-memoir.” If the peacocking instrumental is a little over the top, it’s befitting of these characters’ preening attitudes. “It was just the thing for their Q4/‘Deeply funny’ was the rave refrain,” Misty crows, a fictional plagiarized bestseller standing in for a whole history of tension between art and commerce. “What’s ‘deeply funny’ mean anyhow?” he asks the next time the chorus comes around, and then, later, tosses out another of those lines that threaten to give up the whole charade: “The film adaptation was a total mess.”
It can feel like Misty is in danger of spinning out, but for most of the album, what’s so impressive is the subtlety of his control. The band—including frequent collaborators Drew Erickson and Jonathan Wilson, plus a string quartet and eleven orchestra members—play with silvery poise and high drama. The characters may be odious and dissolute, but the way Misty sings about them is delightful, from the debonair delivery of “Chloë” to the little retro-microphone vibrato that creeps into “Kiss Me.” “Only a Fool” plays like an aspiring songbook standard, its timeless romantic premise flirting with the sly, overeducated Tillman setup: “The wisdom of the ages/From Gita to Abraham/Was written by smitten, lonely sages/Too wise to ever take a chance.” He’s no longer the oldest man in folk rock but the youngest lounge singer in 1950s California.
But like a big Hollywood production, what’s sparkle and pizazz on camera is pain and doubt behind the scenes. The playfulness dissolves with album closer “The Next 20th Century,” a moody, hallucinatory dirge that slinks through the shadow of Leonard Cohen’s “Death of a Ladies’ Man” with the gimlet eye of Howard Hughes in an empty theater. We’ve finally reached the perspective of the viewer and it’s not looking good: Oppression looms like original sin and love pays “for like a thousand different wars.” “And now things keep getting worse while staying so eerily the same,” Misty croons, spinning a karmic wheel and landing on the creeping suspicion that the next 20th century is this one. He’s come, jeembles and all, to ask if entertainment is the best sustenance we have left, and for the first time, he says yes. “I’ll take the love songs/And give you the future in exchange,” he offers, not too generously. It’s a familiar idea from Misty’s past songs, that in the last analysis we have only each other, and perhaps music, but it feels more hopeless somehow, here at the end of this modern relic of an album with no happy love songs at all. The past is irretrievable, the present wasted, the future doesn’t exist: onward to the dreamland. | 2022-04-08T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-04-08T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sub Pop / Bella Union | April 8, 2022 | 7.9 | 587b3bda-80d9-46a7-b149-7cb148c1a241 | Anna Gaca | https://pitchfork.com/staff/anna-gaca/ | |
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 Teena Marie’s third album, an essential document of R&B that shined a new light on her voice and artistry. | 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 Teena Marie’s third album, an essential document of R&B that shined a new light on her voice and artistry. | Teena Marie: Irons in the Fire | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/teena-marie-irons-in-the-fire/ | Irons in the Fire | The year is 1980, and Teena Marie is breaking a sweat on national television. It’s the singer’s second appearance on Soul Train, and she’s well-versed in the show’s electric, stylish theater, wearing a belted yellow turtleneck and high-waisted bell-bottoms. A corona of curly hair bounces along as she gyrates across the stage, performing the slinky R&B hit “I Need Your Lovin’,” the opening track from that year’s Irons in the Fire. She resembles an infinitely cooler version of Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing: Marie is always on the move, two-stepping across the stage between verses before hitting the sustained, sky-high note at song’s end with the gusto of an opera queen. When she bounces over to chat with Don Cornelius afterward, he chuckles, obviously impressed.
“You tired?”
“No,” she answers. “Want me to do it again?”
That performance—plus the next “nine, ten, eleven” times she appeared on Soul Train over the course of her career, as she remembered it—is testament to many facts about Teena Marie: her tireless brio onstage; her robust and layered vocal talents; her infectious, easygoing personality. Marie’s music was steeped in the gospel, R&B, and soul traditions she heard growing up in “Venice Harlem,” a melting-pot, working-class neighborhood in west Los Angeles. It was a street cred she carried through her entire life, even name-checking the locale by name on the title track to Irons in the Fire. By the time she made the album, her third, and the first over which she had full creative control, the singer had secured a rarified place that no white entertainer in R&B had ever reached, before or since. “My skin is white, but I’m not looked at like that,” she said in a posthumous 2012 documentary on her life. “I’m a Black entertainer, and I always have been.”
Before all of the success that led to Soul Train, however, Teena Marie was simply Mary Christine Brockert. At 8, she began singing in church and at local functions, growing up with parents who played jazz staples like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan at home. They encouraged her hobby early on, and as a youth in Venice her love for soul and R&B ran deep. She would haul her battery-powered turntable and Smokey Robinson 45s outside to play and sing along while she and her friends ran track, earning her the nickname Lil’ Smokey for how closely she could mimic the timbre of his voice.
Marie knew even then that she wanted to write love songs modeled after her favorites from Smokey, the Dells, and Al Green, whose lush, heartbroken “Tired of Being Alone” stopped her in her tracks as a sophomore in high school. You can hear the seeds of Marie’s swooning music in Green’s vocals especially, the way he holds his breath for a beat before letting loose a maelstrom of emotion.
Marie attended Santa Monica College and wrote music on the side with friends, eventually landing her first break with Motown, which had expanded from Detroit to Hollywood. Despite earning Berry Gordy's approval, she worked with an assortment of songwriters over nearly three years with no luck. While rehearsing at the label’s L.A. studio one day, Marie finally got the right person’s attention: Rick James, fresh off 1978’s Come Get It!, his debut Top-10 R&B album that would launch his outrageous, sequin-studded “Super Freak” era. The funk-rock svengali took an instant shine to Marie. “I expected to see a writer-producer," James told People years later. “And instead I found this short, tiny white body sitting at the piano, singing like the gods had come into her spirit.”
Marie wasn’t Motown’s only white artist, but she was the first at the label to write music that was undeniably made for Black listeners, especially once James stepped in. He produced her debut, 1979’s Wild & Peaceful, a set of silky R&B punctuated with James’ signature horns and percussive guitars. The album art featured a drippy, pastel painting of the sea, a marketing bet by Motown brass to mask Marie’s race that paid off: the album netted her first top-ten R&B hit, the buoyant, call-and-response James duet “I’m a Sucker for Your Love.”
On Lady T, her follow-up a year later, Richard Rudolph stepped in on production duty. Marie dedicated it to Rudolph’s late wife Minnie Riperton, one of her idols, and the album resembles some of Riperton’s most nimble music as driven by a disco polish and Marie’s vibrant enthusiasm. Released on Valentine’s Day 1980 and emblazoned with regal cover art that put Marie’s face front and center, Lady T was the first time many people had seen the woman behind the music. “I tell them I’m white but they think I’m Black and I’m trying to pass for white,” she said in an interview that year. “This is white skin. I’m not trying to fool anybody.”
Lady T’s swinging glamor set the stage for the passionate Irons in the Fire, recorded immediately afterward and released within the year. Having closely studied both James and Rudolph at work, Marie was now prepared to take total control over hiring, arrangements, and production, with the full support of Gordy and Motown label head Hal Davis behind her (“Mr. Gordy just gave me a shot at producing and turned me loose,” she said). She recruited fellow Motown groups Ozone and Rick James’ Stone City Band to provide the rhythm and horn section, allowing for her sturdy, bottom-heavy arrangements to flourish. Marie played keyboards and recorded most of the album’s backing vocals herself. “Being a woman or being a young woman doesn’t matter if you can do the job,” she told The Los Angeles Times around the album’s release, her confidence on full, fabulous display. “People ask me, ‘How do you handle men in the studio and tell them what to do?’ That’s not a problem. Being in charge is natural for me and I do it well.”
The proof is spread all across the album. Irons in the Fire is an exercise in sleek early-’80s excess, but it feels completely natural in Marie’s hands. The album’s come-ons and recriminations are bound in synthy R&B songs (“First Class Love”) that sit comfortably beside straight jazz standards (“Tune in Tomorrow”). On the irrepressible “I Need Your Lovin’,” small details come together like a tapestry: the rubbery bassline guides Marie’s ascending backing vocals, which melt into a robust, double-tracked chorus as Ray Woodard’s saxophone flit in and out for solos. The effusive “whoo!” that opens the song became something like her equivalent of a producer tag, reoccurring most famously on her successful 1981 rap single “Square Biz.”
Every bespoke choice turns Irons in the Fire into a decadent listening experience, but the smoldering title track, with plucked harp and gentle percussion, is Marie’s most moving performance. Where “I Need Your Lovin’” and the bounding “You Make Love Like Springtime” rely on over-the-top exuberance, here she sounds utterly relaxed, tearing through high vocal runs and then back down with olympic agility. The song presages some of her stormier ballads and collaborations, especially “Fire & Desire,” her 1981 Rick James duet that stands as one of the most heart-rending, soulful collaborations of all time.
Irons in the Fire was Marie’s first record to break into the R&B Top 10, which is inextricable from her involvement with every aspect of the record. Her production and songwriting prowess has been instructive for generations of musicians Marie has influenced over the years: Faith Evans, who collaborated with Marie on her 2009 album Congo Square, recalled admiring seeing her name listed as a producer and writer in the liner notes when she would look through her mother’s LPs as a child. Marie’s reach extended to hip-hop, too: Missy Elliott adopted Marie’s “Square Biz” flow for her guest feature on Ciara’s “1,2 Step,” and the Fugees sampled 1988’s “Ooo La La La” for The Score’s “Fu-Gee-La,” the group’s highest-selling single. Mary J. Blige, another powerhouse of R&B, cites her as a formative influence constantly. “It bugs me out that only 1 out of 20 people knows about Teena Marie,” she protested to Entertainment Weekly in 2004.
After one more album for Motown, 1981’s It Must Be Magic, Marie split from the label, disclosing that they were holding her to her contract while simultaneously withholding her from releasing music. When she signed with Epic, Motown sued, so her legal team countersued citing a state law that required record companies to pay their artists a $6,000 minimum per year. She won the case, resulting in a legal statute that gave artists more power when negotiating contracts with labels known as “the Brockert Initiative.” Artists like Luther Vandross and Mary Jane Girls cited the statute to get out of their contracts afterward; by standing up for herself, Marie had changed the entire landscape for recording artists going forward.
Marie’s career places a singular emphasis on authenticity that fortified her both personally and with audiences. She earned respect because of her pure dedication and respect for the craft, which simply can’t be faked. Irons in the Fire captured the singer at a moment that still feels rare and unprecedented today: a woman in her early 20s taking full control in the studio to establish her personal vision of soul and R&B music. “I think people have embraced me because they really can feel that I’m real,” she said in an interview in 2004. “And that I’m who I am and I play the music that I love.”
Get the Sunday Review in your inbox every weekend. Sign up for the Sunday Review newsletter here. | 2020-10-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-10-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Gordy | October 4, 2020 | 9 | 5883cfae-8d29-4a2b-8dd6-67158624b5ce | Eric Torres | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-torres/ | |
On Doug Paisley's third album Strong Feelings, featuring guest vocals from Mary Margaret O’Hara, the Toronto alt-country artist seeks refuge in the beauty of the romantic lyrical metaphors that have populated the country genre since at least the heyday of Hank Williams. | On Doug Paisley's third album Strong Feelings, featuring guest vocals from Mary Margaret O’Hara, the Toronto alt-country artist seeks refuge in the beauty of the romantic lyrical metaphors that have populated the country genre since at least the heyday of Hank Williams. | Doug Paisley: Strong Feelings | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18853-doug-paisley-strong-feelings/ | Strong Feelings | For Doug Paisley, a tender-hearted stoic from Toronto whose songs land on the sweet spot between Kris Kristofferson and Gordon Lightfoot, the language of country music puts poetry into the mundane heartbreaks and setbacks of daily existence. On his third album Strong Feelings, Paisley seeks refuge in the beauty of the romantic lyrical metaphors that have populated the genre since at least the heyday of Hank Williams. “The ice it breaks the midday sun / in springtime when the river runs,” he sings in “My Love”, one of the album’s most bracingly pretty numbers. Essentially, Paisley is saying, “Nature tends to stay in motion, so no matter how hard or deeply you love something it’s going to leave you eventually.” But it sounds so much sweeter the way he says it.
Mortality is Paisley’s central theme; every life is overshadowed by the omnipresence of death, every romantic relationship dimmed by the inevitability of eventual separation. This is the subject matter of a zillion country songs, of course, but unlike that other, more famous country singer named Paisley (whose song “This is Country Music” extols the virtues of songwriting limned with the tangible directness of everyday language), Doug Paisley hears a song on the radio and feels suddenly lifted toward transcendence. “I turned the radio on 25 years ago/ And they were playing your song/ I looked for you on the town, thought I was tracking you down/ But you were there all along,” he croons on the gently chugging “Radio Girl”, and he’s either addressing an actual woman or equating what he’s just heard grace the airwaves with a long-lost love. In Doug Paisley’s songs, distinguishing between what’s “real” and what’s felt scarcely matters.
After a dues-paying tenure as a classic country covers act and the release of his understated self-titled 2008 debut, Paisley broke through in 2010 with his sophomore effort, Constant Companion, which was helped along by high-profile co-stars like Leslie Feist and the Band’s Garth Hudson. For Feelings, Paisley retains producer Stew Crookes and Hudson, who contributes crisp and cozy organ lines to five of the album’s 10 tracks that are so warm you want to rub your hands over them. (His playing on “Song My Love Can Sing” is by itself the worth the price of admission.) Subbing in for Feist on harmony vocals is legendary Canadian singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O’Hara, who adds another layer of winsome melancholy to “It’s Not Too Late (To Say Goodbye)”. The album’s main musical ingredients—finger-picked guitar, lightly brushed drums, relaxed though subtly emotive vocals—knowingly recall the quietest, most pained cuts on 70s outlaw country records and the twangiest numbers on that era’s rock-leaning singer-songwriter LPs.
Musically, Strong Feelings reiterates Constant Companion, which is fine, because it’s a good formula and Paisley’s songs are stronger this time. (He even musters up something resembling swagger on the steadily rocking “To and Fro”.) It’s a sound that comes wrapped in a warm glow of nostalgia that’s undercut by lyrics revealing the slow poison of lingering too long on your memories. “I turned the ground and found the roots still burning/ A night moon that lingers in a blue sky brings a yearning/ If it takes a waterfall to drown all my doubts/ Sometimes it takes a lie to let me know what it’s all about,” Paisley says in “Old Times”. Sometimes a song on the radio can feel like self-delusion in the cold, hard light of experience. No matter the short-term pleasure it provides, life marches inexorably toward an uncertain destination. But Paisley seems content to turn it up anyway and let the music carry him away to a better place. | 2014-01-21T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2014-01-21T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | No Quarter | January 21, 2014 | 7.5 | 588926ec-7b00-4e8d-947c-42fd558f60f7 | Steven Hyden | https://pitchfork.com/staff/steven-hyden/ | null |
Emeralds' Steve Hauschlidt's new compilation S/H features rare and unreleased tracks, much like his Emeralds companion Mark McGuire's 2011 odds-and-ends collection. Its tones and moods are devoutly consistent, yet it’s richly engaging throughout. | Emeralds' Steve Hauschlidt's new compilation S/H features rare and unreleased tracks, much like his Emeralds companion Mark McGuire's 2011 odds-and-ends collection. Its tones and moods are devoutly consistent, yet it’s richly engaging throughout. | Steve Hauschildt: S/H | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18540-steve-hauschildt-sh/ | S/H | Did Steve Hauschildt consider naming this 2CD set A Young Person’s Guide to Steve Hauschildt? I ask because there are lots of similarities between S/H and his Emeralds colleague Mark McGuire’s 2011 double-disc A Young Person’s Guide to Mark McGuire. Both are compilations of rare and unreleased tracks; both offer everything from short vignettes to fleshed-out, 10-minute-plus journeys; and both paint a pretty comprehensive picture of the ideas and skills each artist brought to their work in now-defunct Emeralds. Both even use a fluorescent blue color palette on their covers.
This isn’t to say that Hauschildt ripped McGuire off—tons of artists have put out similar compilations—nor that his work should automatically be judged next to that of former comrades. But the two share a musical method that remains fascinating. As noted in Pitchfork's review of the McGuire set, the guitarist finds “remarkable flexibility” in a narrow stylistic range. The same goes for Hauschildt’s synth-based work on S/H. Its tones and moods are devoutly consistent, yet it’s richly engaging throughout.
Part of that is due, somewhat paradoxically, to the lower-stakes nature of S/H. Many of its pieces have a work-in-progress feel, moreso than the developed, honed material on Hauschildt’s previous albums. There was a lot to like on those—especially 2011’s Tragedy & Geometry—but I prefer him in this kind of lab-rat, see-what-sticks mode. Nothing here sounds tossed off, but Hauschildt doesn't always feel obligated to stretch each idea into an ebb-and-flow song. He’s happy to focus on a single sonic concept, then pursue another one on the next track rather than forcing them to work together. This tack has the added effect of making Hauschildt’s wallpaper-y pieces, which can sometimes feel like filler, more integral, serving as transitions and pace-changers between more gripping tracks.
The draft-ish quality of S/H also makes it more personal than Hauschildt’s previous releases. These are instrumental, sometimes abstract pieces in which the human action that created each sound isn’t always obvious. Yet I often feel I’m getting a glimpse at the machinations of Hauschildt’s mind. His particular way of toying with ideas and sketching patterns is probing without sounding rushed. Ripples, squiggles, waves, beats, and rising chords all unfurl with the patience of a meditation. But I don’t picture Hauschildt reclined behind his instruments when I listen. Instead I imagine him leaned over his tools, pushing them to replicate the sounds in his head.
That image is most vivid on disc one, comprising 21 previously-unreleased tracks recorded between 2010 and 2012. Everything Hauschildt is good at gets covered here, especially his way of generating emotion and tension with ostensibly mellow tones. Sprinkled throughout are some more outward-bound pieces, like the field-recording-like “Flyswatter” and the sci-fi stunner “Flatbed Scanner”, that extend Hauschildt’s reach without diminishing his grasp. Disc two generally feels more settled. Drones and longer tones are more frequent in these pieces made between 2005 and 2009. There’s still some forward-moving stuff to dig into, and lots of ways to become transfixed by Hauschildt’s extended sounds. But anyone inclined toward his pulse-heavy side will likely set disc one on repeat before drifting into disc two.
It seems just as likely that any Emeralds followers underwhelmed by their 2012 swan song, Just to Feel Anything, will find reasons in S/H to renew their optimism about Hauschildt's musical future. I imagine he would welcome that response, since, as with McGuire’s solo work, S/H is music designed for positivity, even when it sounds solemn or melancholy. By the end of its two and a half hours, negativity is about the farthest thing from my mind. | 2013-10-08T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2013-10-08T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Electronic | Editions Mego | October 8, 2013 | 7.5 | 58894c09-8e05-4a9e-9af5-c2f2d4453bc0 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
The Oakland singer-songwriter looks to experimental synth and new age music on her self-produced fourth LP, a serene and reflective take on the breakup album. | The Oakland singer-songwriter looks to experimental synth and new age music on her self-produced fourth LP, a serene and reflective take on the breakup album. | Madeline Kenney: A New Reality Mind | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/madeline-kenney-a-new-reality-mind/ | A New Reality Mind | Madeline Kenney sings like she has a lump in her throat: Every time you think she might be on the cusp of sliding into a note that’s soaring and clarion, she hovers for a moment, then falters and drops down into a mumble. The Oakland singer-songwriter’s fourth album, A New Reality Mind, is a lucid exploration of self-doubt and insecurity, inspired by a sudden breakup that left Kenney reeling. Its lyrics hew toward the obliquely analytical—this is an internally focused post-mortem, not an airing out of dirty laundry. It’s a uniquely placid breakup record, but Kenney’s vocal tell says as much as her lyrics ever could.
On Sucker’s Lunch, Kenney’s prior album, co-producers Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack of Wye Oak built a bed of plush, winsome indie rock beneath Kenney’s honey-smooth voice. The sound of that record put Kenney in conversation with a generation of young indie musicians—Faye Webster, Barrie, Helena Deland—writing plainspoken lyrics and placing them against loose, lazing arrangements. A New Reality Mind is self-produced, and it sounds vastly different to Kenney’s previous work, drawing clear inspiration from contemporary new-age musicians like Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and the skew-wiff synth experiments of Arthur Russell.
This kind of synth music has long been associated with meditation and higher consciousness, and it’s a conceptual match for Kenney’s lyrics, which are self-interrogative but kind. “When will I see myself again? In what direction, and with what friends?” she wonders on “The Same Again.” But as a producer, Kenney is prone to throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, making her quest for clarity seem, ironically, cluttered. On “HFAM” and “Superficial Conversation,” fussy polyrhythms overwhelm Kenney’s relatively sparse lyrics. The acerbic, achingly bitter one-liner that caps “HFAM”—“I’m not a fool, and never was/But I refuse to be the one/Who writes the play around the gun”—should read as a moment of hard-won defiance, and instead feels overwhelmed by a bombastic arrangement. Wasner and Stack’s production, even at its busiest, smartly let Kenney’s hiccuping vocal lines breathe, adding a sense of direction and flow to intentionally meandering melodies. Here, she’s often competing against herself.
Occasionally, Kenney’s controlled, expressive vocals salvage otherwise unmoored songs. On “I Drew a Line,” a heady throwback to Angel-and-Amber-era Dirty Projectors, Kenney’s multi-tracked chorus (“I had a vision I would die!”) injects a jolt of panic into diffuse jazz-pop. When, on “The Same Again,” she sings, “Move slow when you speak, so you really get to say what you’re meaning,” sounding as if her face is scrunched into a grimace, she turns a fairly oblique phrase into a razor-sharp barb. These moments, although far between, suggest that A New Reality Mind could have been a more dynamic record if it had zeroed in on Kenney’s intentional, suggestive performances. Kenney’s greatest talents lie in her songwriting and vocals—not all the bells and whistles that surround them. | 2023-08-08T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-08-08T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Carpark | August 8, 2023 | 6.3 | 588abb21-f28a-4a85-9b52-a23d70b76e3b | Shaad D’Souza | https://pitchfork.com/staff/shaad-d’souza/ | |
Burial's new EP, Rival Dealer, arrives almost exactly a year after the release of Truant/Rough Sleeper, but the stylistic leaps made on this release are wider, more jarring and revelatory, than anything in Burial's catalog. It's unquestionably the strongest release of his since 2012's Kindred, and his most satisfying statement of purpose since 2007's Untrue. | Burial's new EP, Rival Dealer, arrives almost exactly a year after the release of Truant/Rough Sleeper, but the stylistic leaps made on this release are wider, more jarring and revelatory, than anything in Burial's catalog. It's unquestionably the strongest release of his since 2012's Kindred, and his most satisfying statement of purpose since 2007's Untrue. | Burial: Rival Dealer EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18820-burial-rival-dealer-ep/ | Rival Dealer EP | Few electronic artists from the last decade have been pigeonholed like William Bevan. Since the London producer behind Burial gained widespread attention with 2007's epochal second album, Untrue, listeners and critics alike have spoken of "the Burial sound"—pitched-down vocal samples, rustling noise, blocky garage rhythms in perpetual decay—as if it were straight gospel. This is partially Bevan's fault: four years passed before any new solo material saw release, which allowed plenty of time for Untrue's singular aura to seep into the collective consciousness. As imitators big and small have lined up to pay respect, the phrase "sounds like Burial" escaped the connotation of wishful thinking and started sounding almost like, well, an insult.
Insulting because, as this decade so far has proven, one person who doesn't sound like Burial anymore is Burial himself. 2011's Street Halo EP, which followed a 12" collaboration with Four Tet, offered a few engaging structural tweaks to Untrue's formula, but it was the collab EP with Massive Attack that followed later in the year, "Four Walls" b/w "Paradise Circus", that hinted Bevan was ready to explore truly new territory. Essentially a pair of Burial edits of songs from Massive Attack's 2010 LP Heligoland, each cut pushed past the 11-minute mark and embraced a proggy, amorphous structure that was worlds away from the contained environments of previous Burial releases. If the Massive Attack edits suggested a shift away from the past, 2012's astounding pair of EPs, Kindred and Truant/Rough Sleeper, broke free of any previously set constraints, as Bevan wielded his newfound appreciation for side-long track lengths and added splashes of sonic color—arpeggiated synths, chunky house motifs, rickety windchimes, bursts of beatific melody—to his established palette of blues and grays.
Over the last few years, the only consistent aspect of Burial's music is the frequency of when it's been released—typically and almost too fittingly, in the dead of winter—so the excitement that arrives with the announcement a new Burial release in 2013 is no longer "It exists!," but "What is this going to sound like?" Rival Dealer arrives almost exactly a year after Truant/Rough Sleeper, but the stylistic leaps made on this new release are more jarring and revelatory than anything in Burial's catalog. It's unquestionably his strongest release since Kindred, and his most satisfying statement of purpose since Untrue.
The seismic stylistic shift that Bevan's made on these three tracks—two of which, true to recent form, run well over the 10-minute mark—is immediately apparent on the opening minutes of Rival Dealer's title track, when a distorted vocal sample of adult-contemporary cheeseball Gavin DeGraw's "More Than Anyone" (yes, really) gives way to a furious drum break, making for Burial's most straightforwardly uptempo move to date. The rhythm simultaneously sounds crisp and hissing, eventually disintegrating in a blare of police-scanner noise before everything goes truly pear-shaped with a monstrous, buzzing bassline, as a woodblock rhythm from the Untrue days clicks and clacks below the chaos. In the few interviews that Bevan has given throughout his career, he's outlined Burial's conceptual aims as a tribute to the rave music he didn't get a chance to grow up with but experienced second-hand; the unbridled intensity of "Rival Dealer" is arguably his most explicitly rave-y move yet.
"Rival Dealer"'s final, impressionistic third is the one section on Rival Dealer that dips into familiar Burial territory, with meditative synths and stray vocal samples briefly interrupted by a radiant saxophone line. It's a necessary comedown after all the preceding intensity, as well as a teaser for what follows: "Hiders" and "Come Down to Us", the EP's following two cuts, are the source of Rival Dealer's most mind-blowing moments, as well as being the closest that Bevan's come to total accessibility since Untrue's earwormy lead single "Archangel". The EP's other side-long epic, "Come Down to Us", takes cues from the crawling sense of pacing established on the Massive Attack edits, with a rhythm so slow it barely registers on the BPM scale stretched across 13 minutes, as a slinky sitar-like figure and piping synths give way to a sparkly, unnervingly sentimental soft-rock melody, the sounds of drizzling rain coating the whole thing.
If "Come Down to Us" is Bevan laying out conventional melodic forms across his template of psychedelic sprawl, "Hiders" is 2010s-Burial in miniature form, his only sub-five-minute solo cut of the decade thus far and one of the only true standalone tracks in his catalog (not an insult—he's a deep-listening artist at this point). It opens with an anthemic synth figure that starts and stops several times, returning each time with varying fidelity, before a splashy arena-rock drumbeat crashes through the ambience, stepping in time with the cascading synth figure and a vocal sample that seems to hover just slightly above everything else. The beatific, neon "Hiders" is Bevan's take on the more loved-up element of rave music—if "Rival Dealer" is a tip to the days of Kool FM, then this is more along the lines of the stuff spun by DJs like Scott Hardkiss and Danny Rampling—but even those without a lick of dance history know-how will be wowed by "Hiders"' magnificent aura, a down-to-the-buzzer entry as one of 2013's most surprising musical moments.
Rival Dealer has some of the most immediate music from the Burial project, but it's worth noting that this is also a noisy, dissonant work. Tape hiss and static smother large sections of the EP, and Bevan seriously tips the scales when it comes to one of the staples of Burial's style, as well as rave music at large—the vocal sample. He liberally applies voices all over the three tracks, both as a structural anchor and to create a pleasing cacophony; during "Rival Dealer"'s coruscating midsection, he throws in a sample of New York rapper Lord Finesse's "You Know What I'm About" in a showoff-y, very un-Burial fashion. Burial has often been praised for restraint; the wild-eyed, play-anything nature of Rival Dealer shatters that notion for the better.
Speaking of vocal samples: a theme that runs through Rival Dealer, upheld by the many voices that dot its landscape, is self-acceptance. Phrases concerning sexuality and personal reflection abound—"This is the moment when you see who you are," "It's about sexuality, it's about showing a person who you are—to me, this is who I'm about," "This is who I am," "Who are you?". "Come Down to Us", in particular, ends with an extended lift of a passage from transgender filmmaker Lana Wachowski's painfully moving speech while receiving the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award last year.
Some have already speculated that Bevan's framing here is intentional, possibly speaking to his own personal experiences. Whatever the case, "Come Down to Us" is Rival Dealer's nucleus, as its titular vocal sample appears throughout the EP. The fact that such guesswork takes place to begin with is evidence of how, after nearly a decade of making music, William Bevan continues to fascinate and create intrigue. Here, he provides plenty of exciting material to pore over until he returns, further changing our perspective on an artist we're still just starting to understand. | 2013-12-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2013-12-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Hyperdub | December 13, 2013 | 9 | 5890758c-0f06-4933-95bc-f9570c1a3bac | Larry Fitzmaurice | https://pitchfork.com/staff/larry-fitzmaurice/ | null |
Common teams with Karriem Riggins and Robert Glasper for an album whose best moments suggest a dignified, modern maturation. | Common teams with Karriem Riggins and Robert Glasper for an album whose best moments suggest a dignified, modern maturation. | August Greene: August Greene | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/august-greene-august-greene/ | August Greene | The cluster of songs that open August Greene’s debut album offer a precious glimpse into how a 40-something rapper can continue to sound modern and, more importantly, dignified. The MC in question is Common, who heads up the trio alongside pianist Robert Glasper and drummer Karriem Riggins, two longtime collaborators who share his interest in the places where jazz meets hip-hop. The first track, “Meditation,” is, simply, a beautiful rap song. Over nothing more than gently wavering Mellotron synth lines, droplets of acoustic piano, and a shuffling, clipped drum pattern, Common recites sage lyrics, even twisting a rowdy party-starting anthem made by Redman in the ’90s into rap-referential commentary on the mental health of the world: “They body-snatching black girls in D.C./Politics and propaganda on the TV/Distractions distracting us from action/It’s time for some, time for some passion.” The song is a testament to economy: It’s impressive to hear experienced musicians like Common, Glasper, and Riggins let the emotional essence of a song glow rather than swaddle it with unnecessary trinkets.
This restrained, compassionate tone makes the first part of August Greene a poignant listen. On “Black Kennedy,” Common connects families and dynasties through a simple but emotional hook that moves from institutional politics to a warm memory of hanging in Detroit with the departed hip-hop icon J Dilla. “Let Go” performs a similar trick, linking political movements to introspective thoughts as Common invokes a Michelle Obama speech to confess, “I’m supposed to go high when they go low/I forget the big picture and snap like a photo.” He’s left dealing with the ensuing “clouds of doubt and gloom” that form in his head before hollering, “I yell freedom ‘cause I’m free to be dumb.”
At this point, you’re struck by the feeling that you’re listening to three wizened souls taking a step back to reflect on the world around them while younger generations buzz by chasing after trends. Experience is being channeled through music. In Common’s case, this involves the maturity to develop from someone who rapped some of hip-hop’s most misogynistic lyrics in the early ’90s to landing philosophical observations like “forgiveness is a synonym for live and live again,” as he does on the melancholic “Practice.”
But just as the album looks like it’s about to settle and prosper in this zone, in comes “Piano Interlude,” and the tone of August Greene shifts messily. When Common moves into spoken-word territory and rolls out the debatably deep line “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears the sound, did it really ever happen at all?,” it’s like he’s uprooted all of the carefully considered words that have come before in favor of reciting a motivational poster. What plays out next is an uneasy mix between a jam session and something you might unkindly suggest has the timbre of coffee-shop muzak. The more the songs’ vibe is fleshed out, the lesser the emotional impact. Case in point: “No Apologies” is a punchy, funked-up workout, but the call-to-arms hook feels like it’s waiting to be experienced at a live show, and it punctures the nuances of the tracks that came before. (Common’s revolutionary bent isn’t helped by lyrics that outline a plan of action that also involves watching Amélie.) Likewise, “Optimistic” is a cover of the 1991 Sounds of Blackness hit that drafts in a vocal cameo from Brandy. The song certainly hits that ’90s R&B vibe, but it stands out instead of contributing to the grand fabric of the album.
The 11-track album closes with the patience-trying “Swisher Suite,” a song that features guest vocals from Brandy, Estelle, Bilal, and jazz musician Samora Pinderhughes. For the most part, it sounds like a 12-minute ramble about scouring a city in an attempt to hunt down some weed. Even before the track settles to a close with Riggins’ bare drum outro, the only craving it musters up is a wish to return to the bucolic fresh air of August Greene’s graceful opening moments. | 2018-03-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-03-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | August Greene, LLC | March 14, 2018 | 6.5 | 5892c765-6a61-4ec4-8b1d-16413963965c | Phillip Mlynar | https://pitchfork.com/staff/phillip-mlynar/ | |
Kesha’s musical career has been defined by her work with Dr. Luke. On her third album, she begins something new and promising. | Kesha’s musical career has been defined by her work with Dr. Luke. On her third album, she begins something new and promising. | Kesha: Rainbow | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kesha-rainbow/ | Rainbow | The story of Kesha Rose Sebert can be told with two songs from her first demo tape. They were written in her teens after she moved to Nashville with her mother, country songwriter Pebe Sebert. The first, Billboard described as a “gobsmackingly awful trip-hop track... at one point toward the end, Ke$ha runs out of lyrics and starts rapping, for a full minute or so: ‘I’m a white girl/From the ’Ville/Nashville, bitch.’” The other? “A gorgeously sung, self-penned country ballad that hints at what could've been had Ke$ha pursued a different path.” Former producer Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, with whom Kesha is embroiled in a series of lawsuits about his alleged sexual and emotional abuse, preferred the high-octane rapping track. This choice would define Sebert’s sound, image, and career as the flagship artist for his label Kemosabe—a career she’s grappled with ever since. The fact that Rainbow exists at all is a feat unto itself.
In the years since her 2010 debut Animal—which housed the massive No. 1 club-pop hit “Tik Tok”—much has changed in the greater music world. Virtually every pop star of the early ’10s has written off the gonzo sound just as Kesha has. Rihanna released an album proclaiming herself “anti”-it all. Lady Gaga shed glamour and gimmicks for a guitar-based album with her middle name instead of her noble sobriquet. Miley Cyrus quit twerking in a butter costume, made lite-rock, and called it a spiritual awakening.
Kesha has more claim to this career trajectory than some—her Nashville roots are established, and any new music by her would basically have to depart from Gottwald’s sound. For the past few years, Kesha was legally barred from releasing music, a clause she bypassed with a series of unofficial-ish concerts. Yes, it’s remarkable that Rainbow exists, but the fact that it’s pretty good is even more remarkable. The album could easily have been designed to fail, like a vengeful Sony Music fulfilling the letter of their responsibilities by foisting upon Sebert C-list producers. Just as perilously, it could have been a stolid album, Kesha as the prodigal pop star, apologizing for her past hits via self-consciously “authentic” tracks that snuff her personality.
There is still some of that; Rainbow is inevitably heavy with subtext and a need to prove something, especially on “Praying.” Kesha commits emotionally and vocally (one high note spawned actual reaction videos); the lyrics—righteous warnings that tiptoe up to the line of litigation (“We both know the truth I could tell”)—execute their intention precisely. But it’s still a pro forma piano ballad, produced by collaborator Ryan Lewis (of “Macklemore &” fame) with a plodding track and sloppy comping of Kesha’s vocals, particularly on the verses. It works more as a statement than a song. The title track, a collaboration with Ben Folds that blooms into a string arrangement, is an improvement, but still sedate.
Thankfully, the rest of Rainbow lets Kesha be her usual OTT self. Studio banter is left in; on some tracks she breaks down into laughter like her ad-libbed, “I like your beard.” Since Warrior, Kesha had fought for rock tracks, with limited success; Iggy Pop made that album, but a very toned-down version. Rainbow substitutes Eagles of Death Metal. The exuberant “Let ’Em Talk” is like closing-credits music for her own story, and “Boogie Feet,” despite the inauspicious title, is surprisingly beefy, culminating in a glam call-and-response as fun as anything she’s done. Kesha tears through country as she does rock. “Hunt You Down” is a blatant June Carter homage—it name-drops “I Walk the Line” halfway through, for those who hadn't gotten it before—and its goony stalker glee makes for something like a rockabilly version of her song “Stephen.”
If there’s a reason that Rainbow doesn’t seem cohesive or an album that autonomously belongs to Kesha, it’s more a byproduct of her situation. Kesha still owes two more albums to the label she fought to leave, and here she grapples with her commercial whims. While “Praying” is hanging on at adult pop radio, very little is positioned to follow it. One promising direction is, of all things, twee: “Bastards,” “Godzilla,” and “Spaceship” land somewhere between Kacey Musgraves and freak-folk, lightweight campfire songs that make monster rampages and profanity sound wholesome and weirdly touching. Sebert could also return to her roots, as on “Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle to You),” Pebe Sebert’s biggest hit, popularized by Dolly Parton. Parton, always known for supporting her acolytes, guests on this fuller arrangement, and there’s an appealing sense of a legacy passed on.
Perhaps the most promising direction on Rainbow is “Woman,” featuring the Dap-Kings Horns. The mere existence of this song is something of a conceptual coup. Kesha has replaced the producer who once suggested that “A-list songwriters and producers are reluctant to give Kesha their songs because of her weight” with the backing band beloved by Mark Ronson, not to mention the late Amy Winehouse and Sharon Jones. Like most artists would, Kesha inhabits this lineage a bit tentatively, and “don’t touch my weave” is a lyric perhaps best delivered by someone other than Kesha Sebert. But she’s having fun: laughing through the song, proclaiming herself a “motherfucking woman” on the colossal hook. Her early records, of course, were meant to be fun; here, one can unequivocally say Kesha has joined in. | 2017-08-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-08-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | RCA / Kemosabe | August 11, 2017 | 6.8 | 58970940-4cff-4a68-b510-2f9db6cedb18 | Katherine St. Asaph | https://pitchfork.com/staff/katherine-st. asaph/ | null |
On their 13th album, the Canadian indie lifers play to their strengths with classic rock worship and power-pop hooks. | On their 13th album, the Canadian indie lifers play to their strengths with classic rock worship and power-pop hooks. | Sloan: Steady | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sloan-steady/ | Steady | Since signing to Geffen at the apex of the grunge explosion, Sloan have succeeded at writing timeless songs that don’t sound “hysterically 1993 twenty years later.” They’ve occasionally tweaked the formula—like the 30 short songs of Never Hear the End of It, or their tributes to hardcore—but on Steady, their 13th album, the Halifax-born, Toronto-based quartet play to their strengths, returning to a seemingly bottomless well of power-pop hooks and unabashed classic rock worship. With the variation provided by four primary songwriters, Sloan reign in the frills and achieve an unlikely accomplishment for a veteran band: aging gracefully.
Before they settled on the name 12, Sloan’s previous album had the working title Essential Services. Its concept of reaching into the vault to rework old ideas with fresh ears resulted in songs like the Smeared-inspired shoegaze of “The Day Will Be Mine” and the self-referencing “Don’t Stop (If It Feels Good Do It).” Focusing on the core of their sound was a step in the right direction, but it occasionally felt like staring into the rearview mirror. The sound of Steady is no less nostalgic, but its lyrics about COVID masks and fossil fuel dependency keep these songs painfully set in the present.
Bassist Chris Murphy has written many of Sloan’s most enduring hits, and he takes the MVP title with four songs on Steady. His love of the Beatles flows through the Lennon-esque piano pop of “Human Nature,” with lyrics about how being infamous is better than being ignored, and the jaunty bounce of “I Dream of Sleep,” an exhausted response to “I’m Only Sleeping.” Guitarist Jay Ferguson shares a love of retro rock with the softest touch of the group, packing his songs with handclaps, tambourines, and sweet vocal harmonies. Midway through Steady’s “Dream It All Over Again,” he describes the band’s core ethos: “If you wait a while/Then we’ll be back in style.”
Drummer Andrew Scott is Sloan’s George Harrison—the soulful outlier who quietly makes the most interesting artistic choices. His song “Panic on Runnymede” is a case in point: No one besides him would choose to interrupt its hazy groove with the sound of barking dogs. The cooing sunshine pop of “Close Encounters” is relatively straightforward by comparison, but Scott’s politically incisive lyrics contrast the song’s laidback melody: “It’s so depressingly sad/How held hostage we are/By the wifi bars/And all the gas in our cars.” In an album full of diaristic songs from four middle-aged dad rockers, Scott’s contributions still feel the sharpest.
Guitarist Patrick Pentland has always excelled at writing Sloan’s biggest, catchiest singles, tailor-made for a beer commercial or hockey arena. He continues with “Scratch the Surface,” a song about finding solace from existential dread through “peace and love, liquor and drugs.” (It’s not the first time he’s referenced Iggy Pop.) Pentland’s other two songs for Steady were written in the wake of a divorce, with musical responses on opposite ends of the stylistic spectrum. “Spend the Day” escapes into the man cave of his mind with bombastic drum fills and a soaring guitar solo. “Simply Leaving” is one of the saddest songs he’s ever written, gingerly pushed forward by the “Be My Baby” beat—musical shorthand for epic melancholy.
From their second album, 1994’s Twice Removed, onwards, Sloan decided to move past the My Bloody Valentine influences of their debut, “so that you wouldn't know what year it was from.” On Steady, they accept their position as indie-rock elder statesmen. Without Murphy’s sardonic humor, Ferguson’s power-pop wimpiness, Scott’s psychedelic odysseys, and Pentland’s rock anthems, they wouldn’t be Sloan—and thankfully, they’re not trying to be anything else. | 2022-10-25T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2022-10-25T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Yep Roc | October 25, 2022 | 7.1 | 58977237-6d57-4f4e-bd0f-cda5848a9283 | Jesse Locke | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-locke/ | |
Hailed as a UK buzz artist for her blend of folk and pop sensibility, this newcomer is more akin to Scandinavians Lykke Li and Jenny Wilson. | Hailed as a UK buzz artist for her blend of folk and pop sensibility, this newcomer is more akin to Scandinavians Lykke Li and Jenny Wilson. | Ellie Goulding: Lights | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13995-lights/ | Lights | In the UK it's hard to hear Ellie Goulding above the hullaballoo of the hype-cycles. Tipped in January as the sound of 2010 in two tastemaker polls, she's received distinctly underwhelmed reviews now her album has been released. It's an odd record to have been caught in the crossfire: There's no high concept or big personality, it doesn't ride any particular fashion wave or nostalgia agenda. Instead critics have seized upon a sense of contrivance, the idea that UK pop culture is meme-splicing from the recent past, and that Goulding has been cynically designed to hitch the nu-folk fad of 2008 (Laura Marling) to the 1980s pop vogue of last year (Little Boots) and achieve full-spectrum media approval from Mojo to Popjustice. And so she's getting shot by both sides: not folky enough for purists, not sensational enough for the pop crowd, but mid-market, middlebrow-- the new Dido.
If she'd been born Else Goldsdottir, and hailed from Helsinki rather than Hereford, Goulding probably wouldn't have these problems. Maybe it's because ABBA started out in folk groups, but the Scandinavians seem more comfortable with the idea of a confessional pop that marries immediacy with intimacy. Goulding would fit in perfectly alongside Lykke Li, Jenny Wilson, even Robyn.
Outside of its immediate context, Lights is a sometimes great, always promising debut. It's an album about leaving home, and it works best when the contrast between the folk singer and the pop production chimes with the tensions between the pull of home and the allure of the city. "Guns and Horses" may be the best opening invitation for travel since "Two Divided by Zero" kicked off the Pet Shop Boys' Please: "Let's join forces, we've got our guns and horses...." It builds from spare acoustics to urgent trance pop-- "I left my house, left my clothes, door widen open, heaven knows, but you're so worth it, you are..."-- concluding with a desperate a cappella coda, and a brief breathless chuckle at her casual audacity.
"Wish I Stayed" is apparently the first song that Goulding emailed to Vincent Frank (aka Frankmusik, south London's bedroom pop auteur) as an acoustic songwriter. It's still the song that best captures the tensions of Lights, with Goulding singing of "skipping ropes, trampolines" and crafty schoolgirl smokes. It's reminiscent of the suburban pop of the Sundays (if they'd had an electro makeover like their forbears Everything But the Girl)-- the details of small lives and sitting room triumphs, the low horizons and "the carelessness of running away."
Lights is mostly produced by Frank's protégé Starsmith, and he does a largely good job, notably on the euphoric e-rush of "Starry Eyed" and "Under the Sheets", a grand, almost Björkian hyperballad. On the negative side, "The Writer" is a big bluster of a song, with a chorus where the spectre of the Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan is all too vivid, whose future success could be Goulding's undoing. The cheap tinsel backing track to "I'll Hold My Breath" is reminiscent of Wham!'s "Last Christmas", while "Your Biggest Mistake" could be a Frankmusik cast-off.
But at its best Lights feels remarkably uncontrived, cantering across genres, following personal whims and visions rather than marketing agendas. Unusually for a British pop debut album, it doesn't seem desperate for the immediate approval of chart success. You get the feeling Goulding could write another album or two (after Lights, Cameras, and then Action) before she really gets going, becoming the sound of 2012 or 2015 or whenever. Whether the UK pop industry has the patience to bear with her remains to be seen. | 2010-03-05T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2010-03-05T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Electronic | Polydor | March 5, 2010 | 6.8 | 589e682d-5029-4e51-b4cf-260119f763da | Pitchfork | null |
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On its straightforward but deeply felt sixth album, the Ohio rock band positions music itself as a salve against the horrors of the world. | On its straightforward but deeply felt sixth album, the Ohio rock band positions music itself as a salve against the horrors of the world. | Heartless Bastards: A Beautiful Life | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/heartless-bastards-a-beautiful-life/ | A Beautiful Life | Erika Wennerstrom succinctly lays out the Heartless Bastards’ motivation on “Revolution,” the epic opener to the band’s sixth album. “Big Brother’s watching you and trying to sell you something new,” she sings, as though she’s trying to warn you away from a cliff edge or a Facebook questionnaire. “And I just want to take away, take away the blues.” Music has always been her salve against the horrors of the world, a means of buttressing her mental health, and now on A Beautiful Life, it’s a corrective to late-stage capitalism. The song’s sentiment—“The revolution is in your mind”—might sound straightforward and her nostalgia for the days before fake news a bit pat, but the music is ambitious, even thrilling. The song opens with just Wennerstrom’s voice and guitar, then builds gradually to a crunchy, jangly payoff that’s one of the best and most bracing moments in the Bastards’ catalog.
Like their fellow Ohioans the Black Keys, the Heartless Bastards started out as a fairly spartan throwback rock band, pounding out sturdy, bluesy plaints on their 2005 debut, Stairs and Elevators. But they have grown beyond that sound with each album, dipping into country music on 2009’s The Mountain and classic rock on 2012’s Arrow. Through it all, Wennerstrom’s voice has remained the most distinctive instrument in the band’s sound, although she has had trouble calibrating that mighty instrument to quieter moments, especially on 2006’s All This Time. A Beautiful Life is her best album as a vocalist, as she finds new ways to bend her voice to different styles and sounds. She’s not trying to drown out all the bad news; instead, she sings her lyrics like mantras, as though constantly reminding herself to take deep breaths and find perspective. “You got to let go of your worry,” she tells herself on “Doesn’t Matter Now.” “Oh honey, you didn’t do nothing wrong.”
Leading a band of session players and sidemen—including members of Okkervil River, White Denim, and My Morning Jacket, not to mention longtime Bastards bassist Jesse Ebaugh—Wennerstrom dips into the 1960s to create a kaleidoscopic palette. Situated at the center of the album, “The River” and “Photograph” are free-floating, hallucinogenic forays into crunchy psychedelia. “You Never Know” takes it back a few years, piling on the lush orchestration and staccato strings of mid-decade bouffant pop, and Wennerstrom layers her voice to sound perfectly at home channeling Dusty Springfield and Cilla Black.
A Beautiful Life is inevitably grounded in the worries of the here and now. “Have you forgotten when there was a time filled with hope instead of fear that’s in your heart?,” she asks on “Revolution.” It’s a misnomer, however, to call it a political album, because Wennerstrom internalizes all of that fear and anxiety. Her songs are less about specific issues and more about her own personal responses to them. Her lyrics occasionally sound like talking points (“Oh, the world is filled with so much greed”) or, worse, like cliches (“If at first you don’t succeed/ Try, try again”), and she ends the album by deferring to the Beatles’ most overused line: “All you need is love.” But every song here poses the same essential questions: How do you keep living in a world that presents nothing but ugliness? Where do you find something nurturing, something sustaining, something beautiful? “Music” might sound like too easy an answer, but at its best this album makes it sound like an epiphany.
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. | 2021-09-16T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-09-16T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sweet Unknown Records | September 16, 2021 | 7 | 58a36f68-2e91-439c-be7e-5d208c9b072e | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | |
Weezer’s 1994 debut, filled with geeky humor, dense cultural references, and positively gargantuan hooks, took alt-rock in a striking new direction. | Weezer’s 1994 debut, filled with geeky humor, dense cultural references, and positively gargantuan hooks, took alt-rock in a striking new direction. | Weezer: Weezer (Blue Album) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22858-weezer-blue-album/ | Weezer (Blue Album) | Weezer mastermind Rivers Cuomo was such a somber kid that his second-grade teacher trained the other students to tell him, in unison, “Let me see the smile.” Childhood in Yogaville, the ashram and Integral Yoga HQ led by “Woodstock guru” Swami Satchidananda in eastern Connecticut, was isolating, devoid of much pop culture and adventure—until Cuomo heard Kiss. When a family friend brought their fifth album, 1976’s Rock and Roll Over, to the Cuomo house, it sent Rivers and younger brother Leaves launching off furniture in a way only formative music can. “I’ve pretty much based my life around that record,” he has said. With their comic-book personas and distorted riffs, Kiss cracked Cuomo’s young brain wide open and rewired it for good. He had little idea what debauchery they were singing of, but from that point on, Cuomo began having intense dreams about becoming a rock star, and he began obsessively studying the work of his songwriting heroes.
For Rivers, music offered both a coat of armor and an identity. As a pre-teen enrolled in public school for the first time, Cuomo went by a different first name and his stepfather’s last name (Kitts); his chosen moniker—Peter Kitts—was awfully close to that of Kiss drummer Peter Criss. And while Cuomo was still picked on as he made his way through puberty, he eventually found his people: the metalheads. In 1989, Cuomo moved from Connecticut with his high school band to Los Angeles, ground zero for the AquaNetted and Spandexed. There, he found himself in the midst of shifting tastes, both culturally and personally. He started working at the Sunset Boulevard Tower Records, where he was schooled on quintessentially “cool” music like the Velvet Underground, Pixies, and Sonic Youth.
Also in the mix at this time was a new band called Nirvana. When Cuomo first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the radio in late 1991 while washing dishes in an Italian restaurant, he was sorta pissed he didn’t write it himself. “Rivers says, ‘I should have written that,’” remembered early Weezer guitarist Jason Cropper in John D. Luerssen’s band biography, River’s Edge. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah. That’s totally true.’ Because the music he was writing was improving in quality every day.” Cuomo’s interest in Nirvana became an obsession. He’d taken notes from Brian Wilson, the Beatles, Scorpions, Yngwie Malmsteen, and, of course, Kiss. But for all his knowledge of rock history, he still cared deeply about writing anthems that spoke to his generation, even if he had trouble looking his peers in the eyes.
Weezer anthems were destined to be different. In 1994, the acts dominating the modern rock charts were pushing against something, from the British aesthetes (Depeche Mode, New Order, Morrissey) to the singular weirdos (Beck, Tori Amos, Red Hot Chili Peppers) to the disenfranchised youth (Nirvana, Green Day, Pearl Jam). With rebellion came a facade of cool, and that was something Weezer could never manage, at least not in the traditional way. Cuomo always tried a little too hard. He would become the fidgety anti-frontman with a thousand “revenge of the nerds” taglines and a Harvard degree to prove it. That dichotomy—the big-time rockstar in khakis and Buddy Holly glasses, who never seems totally comfortable in his own skin—is what launched his cult and anchored his unlikely sex appeal. And his band—drummer Patrick Wilson, bassist Matt Sharp, and guitarist Brian Bell—played along, accentuating their innate geekiness to make Weezer feel like a unified front.
By the summer of 1993, Cuomo had written a number of songs strong enough to convince the alt-rock major DGC to sign Weezer (this despite a lack of buzz around the L.A. scene) and have the Cars’ frontman Ric Ocasek produce their first album. When the group’s self-titled debut—typically known as The Blue Album—arrived in May 1994, Cobain had been dead for a month. A feeling of dread hung over the alternative rock world whose prominence was ushered in by the Seattle sound. With their wired energy, effortless power-pop-punk hooks, and Beach Boys harmonies, Weezer took the alt-rock explosion in a new direction. You couldn’t quite tell if Cuomo was mocking his song’s regressive narrators or sympathizing with them. But once you got past his defense mechanisms and sorting through the humor and cultural references, you found a portrait of a young man’s psyche, riddled with angst and insecurity. And it arrived on the wings of massive riffs and gnarled guitar solos that sounded like they were emanating from a Flying V—on every single song.
The Blue Album’s exploration of the fragile male ego is in full swing by the record’s second track, “No One Else.” Taken at face value, this is likely the most misogynistic song Weezer has ever released. “I want a girl who will laugh for no one else,” Cuomo sings while the band rushes through the fuzzy pop-punk changes, evoking the hyperbole of masculinity. But there’s more beneath the surface. “‘No One Else’ is about the jealous-obsessive asshole in me freaking out on my girlfriend," Cuomo has said. The song acquires even more resonance in the context of its sequencing on the record. Cuomo described the following song, “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here,” as “the same asshole wondering why she's gone.” In actuality, he spends most of “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” muttering to his ex’s wallet photograph and masturbating to her memory, getting in a joke along the way, saying she enjoyed the sex “more than ever.” It’s an absurd scene, but imagine the sentiment coming from the wrong person and it’s suddenly not so funny. Weezer were masterful at walking this line between knowing jokiness and legitimately creepy dysfunction.
This base kind of arrested development shifts back and forth between the narrator’s relationship with girls and his views on himself. If “No One Else” and “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” are mirror twins, so are “Surf Wax America” and “In the Garage.” Given that Weezer were named after a common term for asthma sufferers, no one expected them to be out on a board riding the waves. That tension animates “Surf Wax America,” a well-crafted jumble of harmonic puzzles and barreling punk guitars where the hedonistic surfer lifestyle is both celebrated and chided for its simplistic worldview. Even while the song sneers, the ferocity of Cuomo screaming “Let’s go!” juxtaposed with the solemnness of the band’s Wilsonian harmonies make you believe, once again, in Weezer’s sincerity. Meanwhile, “In the Garage” is an homage to that happy place where no one judges you for your comic books, D&D figurines, and Kiss posters. It seems like over-the-top self-parody, but the garage was indeed a real place where early Weezer practiced and recorded when Cuomo, Sharp, and original guitarist Justin Fisher lived together in the “Amherst House” near Santa Monica. The hopeless ambition of “In the Garage” would make it the defining song of nerd-rock.
In between “Surf Wax America,” a fantasy about someone completely different, and “In the Garage,” a hyper-detailed song about himself, lies a song about his father. There are two more nakedly emotional songs on Blue, which are set off further by Cuomo’s rare embrace of laid-back guitars. Atop a bluesy jangle, “Say It Ain’t So” details the moment when Cuomo’s deepest worries are realized: He sees a beer in the fridge and, remembering how his father drank before he walked out, he senses his stepfather is doing the same. He fears now that he, too, is destined for this fate. Pinkerton, Weezer’s sophomore album, is often described as the tortured confessional to end all tortured confessionals, essentially a diary of Cuomo’s notorious Asian fetish. But “Say It Ain’t So” is just as raw, and arguably has more that its listeners can use, throwing its arms wide open to anyone who’s known the trauma of dad issues. The music is constructed perfectly, building and building until what's left of Cuomo's vulnerability comes out as a bitterly frayed "yeah-yeah," all capped by a guitar solo worthy of the Scorpions.
The desire to write a perfect song can drive some songwriters mad, as their belief in music as a vehicle for emotional expression reconciles itself with the belief that pop is a puzzle that can be solved. On Blue, Cuomo found the ideal balance, as he rarely has since. He understood the rules so well that he also knew when to break them, from Sharp’s super silly new-wave keyboard in “Buddy Holly” to the mumbled dialogue that runs through “Undone” (the band and their friends chatting were a backup plan after DGC refused to clear dialog from an old sci-fi film, “Peanuts”) and more.
The fact that “Only in Dreams” is eight glorious minutes long is Blue’s greatest example of self-indulgence gone right. It confronts the two most perilous teen-boy anxieties—talking to a girl you really like and dancing in public. It’s fiery, gorgeous, well-played, and devastatingly sad. Sharp’s trudging bassline guides the way forward for the narrator, whose fear of stepping on his crush’s toenails is temporarily silenced by the band’s total calamity. Rock’n’roll teaches us that extreme volume can quiet the voices of doubt inside our heads and numb the pain of living inside our awkward bodies. In this sense, the climaxes on “Only in Dreams,” starting around the song’s midpoint, are rock’n’roll lessons of a lifetime. But it’s the big build at the 6:45 mark that plays like a beta male transfiguration. Having re-recorded Cropper’s guitar parts in one take after essentially firing him following Blue’s 1993 recording at Electric Lady, Cuomo ends up axe-battling himself until he’s soloing like the metal gods he grew up worshipping. Wilson’s drumming—an underrated and idiosyncratic force throughout Weezer’s discography—drives home the catharsis. His cymbals crash from every angle and his tricky rolls play like percussive triple axels. By the end of the song, you’re back to reality, exhausted but ready for a fight—even if it’s just against your own doubting voices.
For all the talk about Rivers Cuomo’s anemic masculinity, The Blue Album has a unifying thread of identity that supersedes gender. An essay on the Smiths pointed out that, “Asking people about their interest in the Smiths is another way of asking this question: ‘How did you survive your teenage years?’” The same could be said of Weezer’s debut. Blue quivers with isolation if you look past the pastiche, the deflective humor, and the guitar lines that make you sit up tall. The emotion Weezer tapped into is echoed in music sometimes considered distinctly millennial due to its high levels of anxiety, from Death Cab for Cutie and Car Seat Headrest to Mitski’s Puberty 2 and even Drake at his most neurotic.
For as classic as the album is considered now, Blue didn’t make the 1994 Pazz & Jop year-end critics’ poll. Back then, Weezer were considered alt opportunists or even Pavement ripoffs—a comparison that seems silly now, looking at the distinct rock strains since indebted to Cuomo. But MTV and radio airplay for “Buddy Holly” and “Undone — The Sweater Song” made Weezer huge, and The Blue Album went double-platinum within 15 months of its release. Over the next three years, as Weezer 1.0 slowly imploded (bye-bye Matt Sharp, hello rotating door of bassists), the record would sell a million more and be well on its way to canonization. By 2003, Pitchfork named it one of the best records of the 1990s; two years later, Rolling Stone heralded it as the 299th greatest album ever. And so Blue now sits in a sweet spot of commercial accessibility and critical adoration, a combination that guarantees the album will make its way into the hands of a certain kind of bespectacled teenager for decades to come—the ones who really need it. Cuomo never wrote a song as indelible as “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” but he did reach generations of rock kids, proving that coolness is optional if you study hard enough. | 2017-02-26T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-02-26T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | DGC | February 26, 2017 | 10 | 58a50c1f-4a8e-4205-b408-1744308fc54e | Jill Mapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jill-mapes/ | null |
Jack Tatum’s Los Angeles album finds him expanding his ambitions, but neither his songwriting nor his mood-setting measure up to the polish or the scale of his aspirational, accessible indie pop. | Jack Tatum’s Los Angeles album finds him expanding his ambitions, but neither his songwriting nor his mood-setting measure up to the polish or the scale of his aspirational, accessible indie pop. | Wild Nothing: Indigo | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/wild-nothing-indigo/ | Indigo | “I’d rather live in dreams,” Jack Tatum sighed, one minute into his Wild Nothing debut, and as one of the great philosophers of our time would say, who can relate? As long as a functional definition of “dream pop” exists, its adherents looking to opt out of reality will find Gemini to be a readily accessible escape hatch. But in the time since, Tatum appears to be the only guy who’s taken the message of “Live in Dreams” literally: Indigo opener “Letting Go” is basically a rewrite of 2010’s “Golden Haze,” and the lo-fi limitations of his early solo set-up—synth-string drizzles, low-res drum-machine patter, and fuzzy evocations of transcendent romance—have all been replaced by the real thing. In all senses, Tatum’s fourth LP is his “Los Angeles” album: It presents him as another New York indie-rock transplant flipping LA’s “Welcome to the Jungle” stereotype and relocating after becoming successful, settling down, and starting to say “synergy.” In other words, living the dream.
Indigo takes Wild Nothing to places Tatum likely couldn’t have imagined from his Virginia Tech dorm. Whereas Gemini earned an honorary induction in the lineage of UK indie-pop shut-ins, the wave-running acoustic guitars on “Oscillation” merge with a string section to recall the lavishly produced and largely anonymous Brit-rock acts that emerged to fill the post-Kid A void. “Partners in Motion” sways to a Balearic breeze, saxes blare from the lido deck on “Through Windows,” and “The Closest Thing to Living” recalls not just the sound of Hounds of Love but also a budget big enough to earmark a Fairlight. Tatum co-produced Indigo with Jorge Elbrecht, a guy whose recent resume includes the most polished Ariel Pink, Japanese Breakfast, and Frankie Rose albums to date—the guy knows how to give former bedroom acts a stylish redesign worthy of Dwell: aspirational and accessible.
Yet Tatum himself can’t tie the room together. Just about everything on Indigo serves as a testament to both Tatum’s increasing facility in the studio and his limitations as an actual frontman. This wasn’t an issue on Gemini or Nocturne because Tatum didn’t make it one: His gauzy, glimmering guitars set a mood where you could follow his prompts about Heather or running away with clouds in your eyes or whatever to blot out whatever mundane bullshit was keeping you from your daydreams. In 2012, Tatum even admitted, “I don’t place too much importance on words… I didn’t try and say anything terribly meaningful.” His position in that regard has evolved as well, as Indigo sorta-kinda dabbles in Being Extremely Online—phrases like “heartbreak 2.0,” “swiping through the headlines,” “when I look at you, it’s a screen turned blue,” and “the age of detachment” all roll past like matter-of-fact tweets from your Sorta Online friend, favorited out of obligation. He notices these things, but does he really care about them? Hell, why should we?
It’s a rhetorical question that defines Indigo. “Through Windows” and “Shallow Water” are song titles and concepts that would have fit on any previous Wild Nothing album, but they’re grounded in reality by Tatum’s increasingly specific but inert lyrics—play them against “Through the Grass” and “Summer Holiday,” and there’s the distance between imagining a life together with your crush and having a frank discussion about whose turn it is to take out the trash. Role-playing an obsessive voyeur on “Partners in Motion,” he sounds like he’s channel surfing from his couch. On “Letting Go,” he’s on the verge of truly holding nothing back when he bellows, “I wanna be happier now.” But minutes later, Tatum’s emotional tenor remains fixed in place while singing of a love, “Pulling me close/Pushing me back.” Indigo is rife with these kinds of pop platitudes—“Let’s stay together, baby”; “Now and forever”—that can be taken as universal truth if you can at least believe that the singer believes it himself. Maybe Tatum felt this all very deeply when writing Indigo, but he’s either unwilling or just unable to modulate his delivery enough to distinguish whether he’s singing about the love of his life or simply filling up space.
But Indigo isn’t sunk by Tatum overreaching; much like the similarly lovely and insensate Life of Pause, its failures stem from Tatum being betrayed by his one true strength. When Gemini emerged in the transitional phase between chillwave and beachy indie, Tatum was unrepentantly vibe-first and continues to claim as much, even when that mindset is a narrative liability. But while it’s easy to get the gist of every song on Indigo, Tatum never sets an actual mood.
It’s the kind of perfectly listenable and unchallenging album that inspires critics to go on autopilot and rely on noncommittal terms like “accomplished,” “ambition” and “craft”—the kind of language that hides a sense of frustration in grappling with material that doesn’t return the favor. Nothing makes the fifth or tenth listen more impactful than the first; a close listen is no more revelatory than hearing it in a Crate & Barrel. The only time Tatum sounds fully engaged is when he plays his most unexpected role to date: the already over-it LA native on “Canyon on Fire,” snickering at the “Needless palaces kissing the hillside/Take your pick/Every dream exactly like the last.” That’s the thing most people in Los Angeles realize awfully quick: “Living the dream” is what people say when they’re going through another boring day at the office. | 2018-08-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-08-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Captured Tracks | August 30, 2018 | 6.3 | 58a58aea-02e1-454d-b882-741a4f531593 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
The Minutemen's classic double album is unlike any punk record, or double album, before or since. It is a compact explosion of ideas and a prism for the energies coursing through the ‘80s underground. | The Minutemen's classic double album is unlike any punk record, or double album, before or since. It is a compact explosion of ideas and a prism for the energies coursing through the ‘80s underground. | Minutemen: Double Nickels on the Dime | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22506-double-nickels-on-the-dime/ | Double Nickels on the Dime | When hardcore punk emerged in the early ’80s, it was partially a reaction to the tired old rules of bloated commercial rock’n’roll. But it didn’t take long for hardcore to start devising its own rules, which is why the Minutemen were such a welcome jolt to the scene. They weren’t outsiders; formed in 1980 in the southern Los Angeles community of San Pedro, they often opened for neighboring hardcore trailblazers Black Flag, whose guitarist Greg Ginn signed the Minutemen to his SST label after the first time he saw them play. They had punk bona fides, too: bassist Mike Watt, guitarist D. Boon, and drummer George Hurley were working-class kids, sons of a sailor, a mechanic, and a machinist. They all held onto day jobs and stayed loyal to San Pedro throughout the band’s existence.
In outline, the Minutemen’s sound fit with punk’s minimal, straight-to-the-point ethos. One of their most quoted lyrics—“We jam econo,” later used as the title for a 2005 Minutemen documentary—referred literally to the cheap Econoline van that they drove and slept in to save money. But it perfectly characterized their taut, efficient music, doled out in quick jolts —most tunes lasted less than two minutes—in order to move onto new ideas as fast as possible. Even the short, sharp sound of the five-syllable “we jam econo,” which the band would sometimes shorten further to simply “econo,” demonstrates its own point.
Yet as compact as they were, Minutemen songs sounded nothing like hardcore punk. Boon’s guitar was scratchy and wiry; Watt’s bass was busy and melodic; Hurley’s drumming was polyrhythmic and syncopated. Some tracks were like fractured jazz, some like moody folk, some like off-speed funk. They weren’t interested in pure volume or aggression; what drew the trio to punk was the chance to play anything they wanted. “Punk rock doesn’t have to mean hardcore or one style of music,” Watt told Flipside in 1985. “It can mean freedom and going crazy and being personal with your art….it really blows people’s minds because here we are the most hardcore-looking bunch out there and our music is the furthest from it.” In a scene that was already drawing lines in the sand about what was and wasn’t hardcore, declaring that kind of liberation was pretty rebellious.
One of the most famous Minutemen songs, “History Lesson (Part II),” sounds like a homage to the hardcore milieu that birthed them. “Me and Mike Watt played for years/and punk rock changed our lives,” Boon sings matter-of-factly, over a gentle melody inspired by the Velvet Underground’s “Here She Comes Now.” But the tune was also a plea for acceptance into hardcore circles that didn’t know what to make of the Minutemen. As fan Mike Brady said in Craig Ibarra's San Pedro punk oral history A Wailing of a Town, “The Minutemen shocked everybody when they first saw them, because you went to punk gigs expecting poor music. A lot of the bands weren’t that good back then, they could barely play.” Or as Erik Korte of fellow punk band Throbbing Members bluntly put it, “They just weren’t that hardcore.” That opinion was often shared by audiences. The first time they opened for Black Flag, the Minutemen were showered with spit from the crowd; even two years later, during a headlining set in their own hometown, they were booed off the stage.
“I wrote (History Lesson - Part II) to try to humanize us,” Watt said in Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991, Michael Azerrad’s book on punk history whose title comes from a “History Lesson - Part II” lyric. “People thought we were spacemen, but we were just Pedro corndogs... You could be us, this could be you. We’re not that much different from you cats.”
“History Lesson - Part II” appeared on the Minutemen’s third album, 1984’s Double Nickels on the Dime, a two-record set that showed this band actually was pretty different, even when they fit in. Most of the album’s 45 songs were fast and short, but Double Nickels as a whole is not really “econo.” It’s as much an art record as a punk record, using found sounds, off-the-cuff experiments, cut-and-paste lyrics, radical politics, and references to all kinds of art that influenced the trio. It reveals a band eager to try things even if they don’t work out (one side is self-deprecatingly called “Side Chaff”). Double Nickels’ closest parallel isn’t any punk album, but the alternately tight/loose sprawl of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band’s Trout Mask Replica.
The concepts underpinning Double Nickels came about partially by accident. In early 1983, the Minutemen had recorded enough songs to make a single album. But before they finished it, their friends and SST labelmates, Minneapolis trio Hüsker Dü, came to town and recorded the two-LP set Zen Arcade in less than a week. Watt took this as a dare: if their pals could make a double album, why couldn’t the Minutemen? (He would later add a playful “take that, Hüskers!” to the liner notes of Double Nickels).
They were certainly up to the task. They had already made seven records in just three years as a band—two full lengths and five EPs—and songs continued to pour out of them. They wrote and recorded 20 more in just a few weeks, with all three band members contributing music and lyrics, though Boon sang on most tracks. In total, Double Nickels took just six days of recording and one all-night mixing session. But because the double-album idea emerged in the middle of the process, finding a unifying concept was a tougher job. Zen Arcade had an overarching story—that of a young boy running away from home—but the most the Minutemen could come up with was two smaller schemes.
First, Watt borrowed a concept from Pink Floyd’s 1969 double album Ummagumma: each side included a solo song by one band member, and the rest of that side’s songs were chosen by that person (side four got all the leftover songs, and was thus deemed the “chaff” side). Second, Watt chose the album title and artwork as a response to Sammy Hagar’s insipid 1984 hit “I Can’t Drive 55.” “Double nickels” meant the 55 mph national speed limit that Watt is seen driving on the album cover—a way to say he’d rather live safely and play radical music than the other way around. The two concepts overlapped in snippets of car engine sounds at the head of each side—a suggestion from SST’s Joe Carducci—which were recorded directly from each band members’ own vehicle.
These ideas were clever but perhaps too subtle (Watt has admitted that few outside of the group caught onto either reference). The Minutemen’s aesthetic was never about grand concepts anyway, but about curiosity and openness and hunger for something new. They were interested in highbrow and lowbrow, mainstream and underground, influenced as much by Blue Oyster Cult and Creedence Clearwater Revival as Wire and the Pop Group. They were also as political as any punk band at the time, but their songs were more about complex issues that you had to research than generic anti-Reagan rants.
Take the opening lines of Double Nickels’ “Viet Nam”: “Let’s say I got a number/That number’s 50,000/That’s 10% of 500,000.” As Michael Fournier points out in his 33/3 book on the album, that sounds at first like random math, but it turns out that roughly 50,000 Americans were killed in the Vietnam War, as opposed to over 500,000 North Vietnamese. These kind of granular details were the work of homegrown intellectuals, DIY aesthetes: when the Minutemen argued about history or culture during band practice, they’d jump in their van and drive to the library to settle the conflict.
On Double Nickels, this mindset produces songs that are concrete and abstract, bold and subtle, workmanlike and postmodern. “Shit From an Old Notebook” sounds like a blunt screed: “Let the products sell themselves!/Fuck advertising and commercial psychology!” screams Boon over a circling Watt/Hurley rhythm. Yet its creation was less about protest than chance technique: Watt pieced together the song’s words from scraps of notebook pages he found in Boon’s van. Similar juxtapositions arise in “One Reporter’s Opinion,” which at first seems to be Boon’s critique of Watt: “What can be romantic to Mike Watt?/He’s only a skeleton!” But Watt wrote the song himself, inspired by the perspective-switching narrative voice in James Joyce’s ultra-dense classic Ulysses. (Watt’s obsession with Joyce also emerges in the instrumental “June 16th,” titled after the date on which Ulysses takes place.)
Throughout Double Nickels, chance experiments and artistic influences abound. “Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Truth?,” a slow acoustic song with hard-biting lyrics, is a study of how words are manipulated —“should a word have two meanings? Should a word serve the truth?”—inspired by the semiotics theories of Umberto Eco. Watt’s solo song, “Take 5, D.,” was a response to Boon thinking his lyrics were too far out. To be more “real,” Watt read words from a note that a landlady left for a friend—“Hope we can rely on you not to use the shower”—followed by passages of improvised guitar. Hurley’s solo tune—which he chose to open his side, to the surprise of Watt and Boon—is a smattering of cycling percussion and wordless scatting.
Some of the experimentation on Double Nickels was born from necessity. Forced to generate lots of songs quickly, the Minutemen turned to San Pedro comrades for help. Some lyrics were written by non-band-members (Watt admitted that the band never even met one of the contributors, Joe Brewer, cousin of fellow San Pedro musician and Saccharine Trust singer Jack Brewer). They took other input, too. Though they had recorded a version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Don’t Look Now” in the studio, Carducci suggested including a live version instead. He liked its field-recording quality, particularly the way the crowd chattered casually throughout. Watt agreed without even hearing the tape first.
The Minutemen’s use of outside contributions on Double Nickels wasn’t just about experimentation. It was also an attempt to foster community. Watt wanted the band to be, as he put it, “a prism” for the whole San Pedro punk scene. “Mike was asking everybody for lyrics,” explained Jack Brewer, who contributed a lyric to Double Nickels. “It made people feel like they were a part of it. ‘Hey, I have some lyrics on the Minutemen record!’ They were sharing their success; they didn’t just keep it to themselves.’ ”
If Double Nickels had been nothing but experiments and collaborations, it would have still been interesting, but it wouldn’t have sold out of its original 10,000-copy run nor gotten near-universal acclaim for decades. Most of the album’s 45 songs are tight, catchy, and infinitely repeatable, with D. Boon’s knifing guitar and untethered vocals reacting to Watt and Hurley’s complex yet pogo-ready rhythms. The music is spoken with a vocabulary the Minutemen created themselves and were fully fluent in by just their third full-length. That’s perhaps clearest when they take on other bands’ songs: on the “chaff” side they translate Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” and Steely Dan’s “Dr. Wu” into a new language.
That language was so developed and distinct that it’s proven hard to mimic in the three decades since Double Nickels came out. Watt predicted this a bit in his 1985 Flipside interview, discussing why the Minutemen don’t get airplay. “I think one of our problems with radio is that we don’t write songs, we write rivers,” he said. “We play against each other, guitar and bass; we don’t set up a background for our narrative.”
As a result, few bands who’ve come along in the decades since actually sound much like the Minutemen. (The band would go on to make two more full lengths and a handful of EPs—including one Project: Mersh that somewhat-jokingly tried to exploit some of the poppier sides of their songwriting on Double Nickels—before D. Boon died tragically in an automobile accident in late 1985). They have influenced many: the Red Hot Chili Peppers dedicated Blood Sugar Sex Magik to Watt, Pavement was named after a line in the Minutemen song “Fake Contest,” Unwound and Sebadoh recorded Minutemen covers, and Jeff Tweedy wrote a song called “D. Boon” for Uncle Tupelo’s Still Feel Gone.
They’ve likely inspired more people with their ethics and attitude than their sound. As a model, they are one of the purest DIY punk bands, on a par with groups famous for independence like Minor Threat and Fugazi, Beat Happening, and the Minutemen’s godfathers Black Flag. But the legacy of Double Nickels on the Dime isn’t just that the Minutemen did things themselves. It’s also that they tried everything, ignoring artificial barriers between forms of art, classes of culture, and kinds of influence. “One of the reasons we play all these kinds of musics is for them—to see how seriously they take ‘No Rules’ and ‘Anarchy,’” Watt said to Maximum Rock’n’Roll in 1984. “We throw all this soft music, folk music, jazz, etc. not only to avoid getting caught in just one style, but also to show them that ‘see, you didn’t want any rules— this is what you wanted.’ I know it’s hard for them. It’s easier when it’s all set up for you.” | 2016-11-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2016-11-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | SST | November 13, 2016 | 9.5 | 58ad4db5-6d04-48d6-a860-1daa3bae9cd6 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
On their first album in 16 years, the Scottish duo situates themselves in the current moment, teasing out new modes of songwriting while remaining as wry, dark, and self-lacerating as ever. | On their first album in 16 years, the Scottish duo situates themselves in the current moment, teasing out new modes of songwriting while remaining as wry, dark, and self-lacerating as ever. | Arab Strap: As Days Get Dark | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/arab-strap-as-days-get-dark/ | As Days Get Dark | Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat will never come up with a more striking opening line than the one that introduced 1998’s Philophobia: “It was the biggest cock you’ve ever seen/But you’ve no idea where that cock has been.” However, the lyric that ushers us into As Days Get Dark comes awfully close: “I don’t give a fuck about the past/Or glory days gone by,” Moffat seethes in his signature surly monotone. Like the best Arab Strap lyrics, the line is candid, confrontational, and highly amusing all at once. But it’s not just funny because it kicks off the Scottish duo’s first album in 16 years, a gap that inevitably forces listeners to consider their past and how this record measures up against it. No, it’s funny for Arab Strap to invoke the phrase “glory days” because they have always sounded like defeated old men fixating on the most awkward, embarrassing, painful moments of their lives while staring down the bottom of another empty pint glass.
Among the contingent of indie bands that briefly turned Scotland into the next Seattle in the late ’90s, Arab Strap were always the most daunting proposition. They were respected enough to earn a side-eyed nod from Belle and Sebastian in the title of their most beloved song/album. But while the two bands may have shared an affinity for detailed and intimate storytelling, Moffat was ultimately the anti-Stuart Murdoch, forsaking wistful melodies for grimly spoken monologues. And even if you viewed Arab Strap through the lens of post-rock rather than indie-pop, they were still a freakish anomaly: Though Moffat and his multi-instrumentalist partner Malcolm Middleton could challenge their fellow countrymen Mogwai for the title of Biggest Slint Fans in Scotland, they rarely displayed the same penchant for noise-rock crescendos and catharsis, preferring to let their songs stew in discomfort and dread.
But if their former labelmates-turned-label bosses can lay claim to a No. 1 album in 2021, then surely Arab Strap can be embraced as patron saints to the current generation of melody-allergic sing-spielers detailing the minutiae of life. And so, on As Days Get Dark, Arab Strap are reborn as Sleaford Mods on meds, taking stock of a world whose soul has been rotted out by internet addiction, xenophobia, and toxic masculinity. But as much as it resituates Arab Strap in the current moment, As Days Get Dark is not a work of observational social commentary—as ever, Moffat aims his most lethal blows at himself.
Back in the late ’90s, few writers in indie rock put male behavior under the microscope as eagerly and unflinchingly as Moffat, exposing all the fragile egotism, insecurity, and regret that lurks in the hearts of men. And with As Days Get Dark, he continues to interrogate those traits in equally hilarious and heartbreaking ways—with the added weight of an extra decade-and-a-half of middle-aged pathos. On “Another Clockwork Day,” he frames his inadequacies in the context of shifting online porn trends: “And the films these days, with their surgery scars and bad tats/And it’s all stepmoms and stepsisters now/What the fuck’s all that about?” But what begins as a comical caricature of some (literal) wanker slowly reveals itself to be something more devastating when Moffat’s protagonist starts pleasuring himself to bygone digital images of the same woman he still sleeps beside every night, but no longer finds as attractive. “When he removes his glasses/She looks just the same as she does in the pixels of those old JPEGs,” he notes. In an Arab Strap song, this is what passes for a heartwarming love story.
If “Another Clockwork Day” coaxes tragedy out of comedy, “Tears on Tour” works the other way. After Moffat chronicles the debilitating grief he felt when learning of two grandparents’ deaths while Arab Strap were out on the road, he starts cataloging the somewhat less traumatic events that have reduced him to an equally blubbering mess: “I cry at rom-coms, dramedies, the news and children’s films/The Muppet Movie, Frozen, Frozen 2.” But that revelation is less of an expression of embarrassment than pride, an admission that crying is a healthy, cathartic act all men should undertake more regularly. And in that sanguine, open-hearted spirit, As Days Get Dark embraces the old misery-loves-company adage by wrapping Moffat’s wounded words in Arab Strap’s most accessible and near-danceable songs to date.
Of course, with Arab Strap these are relative concepts—this is, after all, a band less interested in soundtracking your Saturday-night bender than in giving voice to the street cleaner who has to sweep up your used condoms and syringes in the wee hours of Sunday morning (see: “Kebabylon”). But while the duo jokingly gave this album the working title of Disco Spiderland, the steely drum-machine grooves of “The Turning of Our Bones” and “Compersion Pt. 1” seriously deliver on that promise, investing their respective narratives of tribal resurrection rituals and open-marriage sexual exploration with an even more salacious, sinister edge. And in the surprisingly anthemic “Here Comes Comus!”, we get a glimpse of the more streamlined indie-rock band Arab Strap could’ve become had they opted to chase that Interpol money back in the day, while the forlorn electro-folk of “Bluebird”—a deceptively serene account of shitposting—suggests this group’s true legacy was preparing the world for the brooding romanticism of the National.
As Days Get Dark doesn’t just honor the past, it also forecasts a possible future. On the six-minute epic “Sleeper,” Moffat closes his laptop and retreats into the theater of the mind, weaving an eerie, vividly surreal narrative about a stranger on a train, while Middleton piles on the clamoring piano chords, dramatic strings, and five-alarm saxophone squeals. The purpose of our hero’s journey is never made clear, though it becomes pretty obvious that his “final destination” is an early grave. But while the song represents a bold leap beyond the band’s usual hyper-analytical narratives, it nonetheless remains true to subversive form: In this portrait of impending death, Arab Strap have never sounded more alive.
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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. | 2021-03-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-03-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Rock Action | March 11, 2021 | 8 | 58b2c915-14d6-4183-9186-c7d9c70973f4 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
Foals’ streamlined seventh album does away with their trickier instrumental interplay and subtler emotions, leaving nothing at all open to interpretation. | Foals’ streamlined seventh album does away with their trickier instrumental interplay and subtler emotions, leaving nothing at all open to interpretation. | Foals: Life Is Yours | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/foals-life-is-yours/ | Life Is Yours | Though they’ve long served as a more thoughtful alternative to the Big Britrock Lads with whom they’ve shared festival stages, Foals aren’t trying to be the thinking person’s alternative to anything anymore. If not exactly dumbed-down, Life Is Yours is Foals for Dummies—a breezy, step-by-step simplification for people who want to get the gist and don’t mind being talked down to a little. They’ve gained far more fans than they’ve lost on the path from “math rock” towards algorithmic pop-rock, now fitting snugly between Glass Animals and Måneskin on KROQ. And Life Is Yours is not a hard left turn but the end result of a gradual streamlining: from a quintet to a trio (keyboardist Edwin Congreave departed last year); from an indulgent, self-produced double album (spread out over seven months) to a propulsive, Dan Carey-assisted 41 minutes; from the stadium-scale, wooly funk of the Cure and Red Hot Chili Peppers to Chic and Duran Duran’s sleek, subversive pop.
What remains in the first half of Life Is Yours are songs that do away with Foals’ trickier instrumental interplay and subtler emotions and leave nothing at all open to interpretation. Yannis Philippakis sings earnestly and often clumsily about positivity, nostalgia, sex, dancing, and drugs in songs with appropriately blunt titles: “Wake Me Up,” “2AM,” “2001.” Their impact is entirely based on how much the listener is willing to give Foals the benefit of the doubt: The feeble jabs against climate crisis and Trump on 2019’s Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost shouldn’t have been taken as a mandate for more of the same, so isn’t counterprogramming a better use of Foals’ skill set? After establishing their own formula over six albums, aren’t Foals justified in seeking liberation in someone else’s?
Or is this style of music a path of least resistance—more accommodating of Philippakis’ increasingly generic songwriting? Rhyming “fire” with “burning up my desire” instead of “burning higher” on “Wake Me Up” is what passes for a surprising turn of phrase here. There’s dissonance between the darker sexual impulses of “2AM” (“No I can’t sleep alone/I just want to go home and it’s 2 a.m. again”) and its chipper backing track, but no tension; I don’t hear a desperate nightcrawler so much as someone casually flirting in an afternoon beer queue at Glastonbury.
Then again, those are the spaces which Foals have always occupied; no actual dance DJ was likely to reconfigure their playlist to accommodate a “2AM” 12" remix. If the goal is to keep the party going for people who entered the tent during Total Life Forever and Holy Fire, Foals absolutely have the right idea. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost didn’t serve a double album’s typical function of either securing a band’s legacy or exploding its boundaries; if anything, it proved that, left to their own devices, Foals probably could’ve filled a quadruple LP with lesser takes on “Spanish Sahara” or “Inhaler.” No longer saddled with the windswept ballads and aggro riffing that kept them firmly in the good graces of UK rock mags, Life Is Yours is the most consistent Foals album almost by default.
If it doesn’t achieve the long-promised outcome of “filler-free” Foals, Life Is Yours unexpectedly thrives when it reintegrates the studio trickery that used to weigh down previous side Bs. The one-step solution: applying all of these things to higher BPM. “Flutter” shifts from a vaguely urbano bump to full-on screamadelica, a bold new context for the same old octave-shifted riffs. Philippakis’ falsetto becomes fully entangled in the elastic groove of “Looking High,” the one instance where Foals remember they have one of popular rock’s most inventive drummers. While invoking a band that’s been far more successful at reconciling their club- and arena-rock influences, even the title of the penultimate “The Sound” suggests a lesson that came too late: The more Foals lose themselves in the joy of pure sonics, the more they remind us who they actually are. | 2022-06-23T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-06-23T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Warner | June 23, 2022 | 5.5 | 58b92c88-3103-46c6-9b4e-210278548540 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
Band's third album of convincingly vintage-sounding soul is slightly smoother and more refined than its predecessors, tending to evoke late-1960s Motown rather than early-70s r&b. | Band's third album of convincingly vintage-sounding soul is slightly smoother and more refined than its predecessors, tending to evoke late-1960s Motown rather than early-70s r&b. | Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings: 100 Days, 100 Nights | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10789-100-days-100-nights/ | 100 Days, 100 Nights | From the first notes of 100 Days, 100 Nights, it's apparent that Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings are in a different mood than the one they were in when they made their first two albums. Where Dap-Dippin' and Naturally were full-on heavy funk workouts that perfectly captured the spirit of early 1970s soul, this record draws more of its feel and atmosphere from late-60s Motown. It may seem like a fine distinction, but it results in a slightly smoother, more refined record that nonetheless bursts with raw emotion and stinging grooves.
The opening swirl of horns sets up the darker, airier vibe right away, settling your ears into the sound before the rhythm section kicks in and Jones drops in with her powerful, gospel-trained voice. Jones shows her Augusta, Georgia, roots at the song's mid-point when she pulls a classic James Brown move, calling on the band to slow down and give her time to think, a command they dutifully obey.
Among the biggest keys to the Dap-Kings' success is that Jones is a fantastic singer, a masterful soul vocalist in the best tradition of Etta James, Bettye Lavette, and Irma Thomas. She can wail when she needs to, has access to a gentle falsetto when the song requires it, and has impeccable control, with a full-throated tone that grabs your attention. Jones isn't a fresh-faced youngster imitating her heroes, either-- she was at it in the 70s, singing backup on funk and disco records while seeking her own big break, but moved to gospel in the 80s when her style fell out of favor. In between her early career and her revival in the mid-90s, she worked as a prison guard and also did armored vehicle security work, and she brings the same tough, no-nonsense approach those jobs require to her music.
The band, and lead composer Gabriel Roth (aka Bosco Mann) in particular, has a firm understanding of the material they're channeling. This is not pastiche-- it's soul music that came along about thirty-five years late. The production is so spot-on it's like a time warp, and drummer Homer Steinweiss inhabits his decades-old beats so thoroughly he makes them feel fresh again. You get the sense of musicians in a room together, and the horns blend in the air of the studio before ever reaching the mixing board. This music is a throwback for sure, but it's so uncontrived that it doesn't come off like one.
Jones and the boys have grown quite well into their spot at the forefront of the old-school soul revival, ahead of fellow travelers like the Poets of Rhythm, Lefties Soul Connection, Nicole Willis, the Budos Band, and Amy Winehouse, who's become the movement's commercial and tabloid face. They follow their muse across the soul map, cutting a sublime Motown groove on "Tell Me", jumping on a nasty funk vamp on "Nobody's Baby", slowing things down for a burning southern soul ballad on "Humble Me", and going back to Jones' gospel roots on the jaw-dropping closer "Answer Me".
Anyone with a taste for old funk and soul will love this record, from the most dusty-fingered crate diggers to kids who just like what they hear on the oldies station. They may not be doing anything especially new, but Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings are the very best at what they do, and they've made another excellent album. | 2007-11-01T01:00:03.000-04:00 | 2007-11-01T01:00:03.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Daptone / World's Fair | November 1, 2007 | 8 | 58bb1c33-3784-4e67-890c-c73fc7ee59f9 | Joe Tangari | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-tangari/ | null |
Her third album in two years searches for peace, tracing the quiet work of piecing yourself together and delighting in giddy new romance at the same time. | Her third album in two years searches for peace, tracing the quiet work of piecing yourself together and delighting in giddy new romance at the same time. | Ariana Grande: Positions | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ariana-grande-positions/ | Positions | During the spring of 2019, in the interval between two titanic releases, Ariana Grande posted her brain on Instagram. The image was from a scan, and it showed regions of her mind lit up from the effects of PTSD, the disorder revealed in clear, screenshot-able form. “That’s why her hair’s so big,” she joked, referencing a line from Mean Girls, “it’s full of trauma.” The grace with which Grande has navigated horrors—the ability to name their impact and steer towards healing, to make a top-charting song about a panic attack—has become fundamental to her music. Sweetener dazzled because its joy was defiant. thank u, next caromed through phases of glee and grief, moving from pink Champagne bravado into stark confessions. Positions, her third album in two years, searches for peace. It traces the quiet work of piecing yourself together, the terror of re-learning how to trust. “All them demons help me see shit differently,” she sings 20 seconds into the album, “so don’t be sad for me.” That statement clears the way for some of the record’s goofier moments; it also functions as a kind of thesis.
The giddiness that propels the album also heightens its tension. She’s both in love and scared of it, and the frenzy of new romance animates the contrast. “Just give me them babies!” she yelps on “34+35,” a track constructed around an almost-subtle joke until the final seconds. (“That means I’m trying to 69 with you,” she hums. “No shit.”) A slew of slinky sex jams—the title track, “my hair,” “nasty”—drape her harmonies over hazy synths. On “just like magic,” she ticks off her calendar: meetings, meditations, “read a fucking book,” ardent manifesting. The song is both winking and not, a sequel to sweetener’s “successful” that shimmers from behind volleys of drums. But then she sings about writing “love letters to heaven,” and the instruments dissolve. The song quiets for a moment, and the gravity of what she’s said sinks in.
Grief sneaks up on you, and on Positions, it’s woven into Grande’s attempt to process love. Musically and spiritually, much of the album builds off of “ghostin,” a delicate, pulsing track from thank u, next about navigating a lost love with a new partner. “Though I wish he were here instead/Don’t want that living in your head,” she sang then, before diving into the mantra-like refrain: “We’ll get through this, we’ll get past this.” On the new record, the hopeful conclusion is less immediate. You hear her wrestling for control, asking instead of answering. The stunning Ty Dolla $ign-assisted “safety net” interrogates and negotiates with fear: “Don’t know if I should fight or fly,” she sings, the physiological language set over constant, murky sighs. “Will I ever love the same way again?” she cries on “off the table,” a syrupy ballad with The Weeknd. “Do I just sit this one out and wait for the next life?” The song blooms over wisps of strings and heavy, heady drums, like an artifact from his Trilogy mixtapes. “I’ll wait for you,” he sings, “Even though it feels like I’ll always be number two to someone you can’t hold anymore.” On “six thirty,” Grande’s silky harmonies glide in over and over to ask, “Are you down? What’s up?”, but the lyrics framing it reveal the weight of the question. “I know this shit kinda heavy,” she murmurs, wondering if her lover’s equipped to support her, and if she’s even ready to ask.
Many of these songs stem from hesitancy, from rejecting risks or articulating their costs, and their production is largely sleek and muted. The flourishes live in the transitions between tracks—the Broadway-eque orchestral burst at the end of “shut up,” the burbling synths that close “obvious.” Grande’s voice remains nestled in a breathy sway, occasionally stretching into a rap-adjacent cadence. If these songs lack the sticking power of her stadium power ballads, there’s still dimension to their glazed reveries. (“west side” in particular is an understated, simmering highlight.) In any other year, “motive” might have been written as an internet-breaking banger (Murda Beatz! Doja Cat!), but here it’s twinkling and hushed. Positions suffers a bit from its sanitized precision, the way slippery harmonies wind around trap-drum exoskeletons; you wonder what the title track would sound like if London on da Track’s presence were actually felt, instead of a fun fact for the credits.
But maybe this isn’t the place for that. Positions doesn’t broaden Grande’s sound the way her past few albums have, and it isn’t buoyed by a heroic anthem, like “no tears left to cry,” or guided by a specific mission, like how “thank u, next” honored her relationship history. The record resonates partly because it doesn’t weld grand statements out of living with trauma; it narrows in on the wobbly path of pleading with yourself, the begging and bargaining of healing. “I want to trust me the way that you trust me,” Grande belts on “pov,” her voice throbbing and raw. This is the root of every love song on Positions, the ache at the album’s core. It’s the urge to take tangible pain and make something from it, to feel safe—again, at last—in your own head.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-11-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-11-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Republic | November 2, 2020 | 7.4 | 58c2398f-beb8-4932-a0c9-2835a96f3f20 | Dani Blum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dani-blum/ | |
Grime saw a major resurgence in 2013, and Butterz heads Elijah & Skilliam are central to London's scene. Their second official mix CD, for Fabric's Fabriclive series, serves as an overview of the producers and tracks in their orbit rather than as a representation of their DJ sets. | Grime saw a major resurgence in 2013, and Butterz heads Elijah & Skilliam are central to London's scene. Their second official mix CD, for Fabric's Fabriclive series, serves as an overview of the producers and tracks in their orbit rather than as a representation of their DJ sets. | Elijah & Skilliam: Fabriclive 75 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19348-elijah-and-skilliam-fabriclive-75/ | Fabriclive 75 | Last summer Simon Reynolds published an update to his seminal book on rave music, Energy Flash, that included his thoughts on, among other recent trends, dubstep. "Instrumental music goes international so much easier," he mused, explaining how one knobby, London-centric bass sound—dubstep—had elbowed another—grime—out of the spotlight. Reynolds looks prescient now: grime, minus its thickly accented MCs, saw a major resurgence in 2013. The sound went global, too, as producers from Texas to Tokyo aided a gaggle of UK artists in re-introducing grime's cagey melodic contortions to club culture.
As heads of the Butterz label (and the eponymous recurring party), Elijah & Skilliam have been central to London grime's re-emergence. Their imprint outstrips newfound interest in the style: since 2010, their label has housed grime veterans (Terror Danjah) and fostered new talent (Royal-T). Their weekly radio show on Rinse FM has served as a hub for the sound's widening pallette. Alongside Keysound Recordings, Hyperdub, and Night Slugs Butterz has erected a platform for grime more durable and prominent than that of its heyday, clearing space for veterans such as Wiley and Footsie to co-habitate with the upstarts.
The genre now encompasses everything from Visionist's nimble dub mutations to Preditah's reptilian lumber, but it's generally characterized by stabbing mid-range synthesizers, spare, idiosyncratic percussion, a deep-space sub. The mark of a good grime track seems to be just how unstable it can sound, taking a childlike glee in contrasting pretty, ethereal melodies with amoeba-like sub-bass.
Fabriclive 75 is the pair's second official mix CD, following their 2011 effort for Rinse's series. They're unique in that they're not producers, instead functioning as true scene stewards. As such, Fabriclive 75 serves as an overview of the producers and tracks in their orbit rather than as a representation of their DJ sets. They peddle a distinctly UK sound, largely focusing on grime's chunky mid-range gymnastics but also incorporating the clubbier house sounds of UK Funky while ignoring recent trap and footwork influences. There are lots of dark, outre sounds on Fabriclive 75 but the overall effect is cheeky and effusive. It's difficult to imagine dancing to much of Fabriclive 75, but it is party music, better suited for having some beers and bouncing around than getting stoned in your living room.
When you listen to old grime tapes (the Wire has a potent collection here), their roughness is inescapable: awkward cuts, run-backs, dropped sound, lots of airhorn. Even more recent efforts, such as DJ Slimzee and the always golden Flow Dan's Radio 1 mix, have a homespun, improvisational quality to them. Grime MCs, like the jungle and UK Garage MCs before them, emerged from the storied tradition of reggae soundclashes: a constant dialogue with the selector interspersed with boasts and taunts. In retrospect, it's obvious why grime MCs never made good hip-hop records: these guys are inveterate shit-talkers, not storytellers. (Grime as a pop phenomenon, though, has also experienced a resurgence in the UK.)
The 70-minute mix DJ mix, in comparison, is a relatively ascetic, formal environment, one where rough cuts can't simply be attributed to the DJs playing to the crowd's energy. Fabriclive 75 suffers at times, due in part to Elijah & Skilliam's choice to showcase such a wide variety of sounds. Mixing in and out of tracks such as Joker and Swindle's blockbuster anthem as 040 "Let It Be Known" and Murlo's slinky lullaby "Into Mist" is difficult even under more forgiving circumstances. Some of the best cuts the duo selects—DJ Q's "Two Faced" into Sir Spyro's grind-worthy "Pull It Up"—have more to do with house and R&B than grime.
Fabriclive 75 survives some rough patches, though, because it's a bounty of vibrant, creative music. A couple of proper dubs—with grime MCs hyping Elijah & Skilliam over familar tracks—are a nice touch and a nod to the increasing frequency with which MCs are being invited back into the booth. It's a bit difficult to recommend in light of Elijah & Skilliam's Rinse mix—less comprehensive but fiercer—and, more importantly, their weekly (and downloadable) show for Rinse, which is both free and a more natural way to follow the ebbs and flows of the scene. As a jumping off point for further exploration, though, you won't find a more concise or considered collection of grime's talents. | 2014-05-21T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2014-05-21T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Electronic | Fabric | May 21, 2014 | 6.7 | 58ccf9ed-16b6-49be-8768-4b784fe80cf2 | Andrew Gaerig | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andrew-gaerig/ | null |
The disgruntled member of Griselda Records is often overlooked, but he remains a secret weapon. The couplet is his canvas, and few can challenge him on his turf. | The disgruntled member of Griselda Records is often overlooked, but he remains a secret weapon. The couplet is his canvas, and few can challenge him on his turf. | Big Ghost Ltd / Conway the Machine: If It Bleeds It Can Be Killed | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/big-ghost-ltd-conway-the-machine-if-it-bleeds-it-can-be-killed/ | If It Bleeds It Can Be Killed | Sometime in 2018—after signing a distribution deal with Shady Records, before the thunderous arrival of Westside Gunn’s Supreme Blientele—Griselda became too big to fail. Having cornered a lucrative premium-vinyl market, the overachieving Buffalo trio swiftly established primacy within the realm of loop-based neoclassical rap. Soon, everyone in this crowded lane of East Coast hip-hop—from legacy acts like Roc Marciano and Smoke DZA to upstart revivalists like Flee Lord and Estee Nack—was funneled through a barrage of free-wheeling Griselda projects, the group’s cosign functioning as a tastemaker’s imprimatur. On their solo efforts, Griselda’s members have pushed their own visions, even if they don’t always cohere: Gunn inhabits a Scorsesean coke dream of Virgil collabs and art-world gravitas, while Benny the Butcher aspires to the assured verbosity of a young Jay-Z.
Amidst rumors of discord within the trio’s ranks, Conway the Machine continues to bring his hard hat and lunch pail to work. Still lacking a landmark full-length of his own, his profile is analogous to Styles P’s—a prolific genre artist, an invaluable group member and guest rapper, and such a self-possessed technician that, if you aren’t careful, you might take him for granted. On his new tape If It Bleeds It Can Be Killed, Conway’s verbal precision makes for snapshots that linger even after he’s flitted on to the next idea. He plows through knotty rhyme patterns with conversational ease; not only does he make every bar count, but his grunts and hesitations convey expressiveness even when he’s pausing for breath.
If It Bleeds reunites Conway with Big Ghost Limited, a blogger who achieved notoriety for prickly criticism written in the voice of Ghostface Killah (you had to be there) and parlayed it into a production career of his own. Like Griselda’s in-house composer Daringer, Big Ghost is a spiritual disciple of the Alchemist, pulling samples from film scores and dusty B-sides. Ghost’s atmospheric instrumentals advance with the slow force of a Humvee: the bass is low, the guitar chords scuzzy, snares optional. Dramatic violins highlight the early standout “J Batters,” and a bright piano sample buoys the Knowledge the Pirate duet “Sons of Kings.” On “Losses to Blessings,” a slick beat change kicks in just as Conway’s second verse reaches its emotional climax. Ghost’s loops, like Daringer’s, can feel like abridged takes on the obsessive tinkering of The Alchemist—by now, Griselda has the real Alchemist on speed-dial—but Conway’s continued loyalty to the next-gen producers is emblematic of the group’s D.I.Y. ethos.
There aren’t many surprises on a record like this, but If It Bleeds brims with sparkly little thrills. “Highly Praised” showcases Conway’s ability to find pockets even in the most unyielding production, his syllables stretched into a languid cadence that mirrors the slowed-down vocal sample. His free-standing couplets unfurl with the weight of narrative crescendos rather than simple punchlines: On “J Batters,” he boasts, “I don’t need rap, I’ll just contact my guy/He throwin’ bricks like Shaq at the line when he was past his prime.” For the most part, he’s just talking shit (“Lotta blemishes on your record, it’s a few errors/So you built a brand off a cap, like New Era”), and the seeming effortlessness is key to his appeal. Gunn and Benny often sound like they’re exerting themselves, but Conway never tries to be someone he’s not; If It Bleeds is yet another accomplished project that sounds like it was knocked out over the course of a weekend.
The couplet is Conway’s canvas, and few can challenge him on his turf. That he hasn’t attempted the sort of interrogative, high-concept album typically associated with prestige rappers isn’t a shortfall so much as a recognition of his particular genius, his adeptness with blunt tools. Nor does it diminish his star capacity—like Styles, he’s thrilling in bursts, his bars are resplendent, and he doesn’t need 50 minutes to get his point across. If It Bleeds is for the die-hards, but that was kind of the point of Griselda in the first place.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | self-released | February 18, 2021 | 7 | 58d0f18b-72c6-4567-aceb-6a1ec4d45b7b | Pete Tosiello | https://pitchfork.com/staff/pete-tosiello/ | |
Oakland rapper G-Eazy seems unafraid to wrestle with mature ideas and his work is well-crafted and considered. While one does get the feeling that there’s a better album somewhere inside of him, his new These Things Happen shows promise. | Oakland rapper G-Eazy seems unafraid to wrestle with mature ideas and his work is well-crafted and considered. While one does get the feeling that there’s a better album somewhere inside of him, his new These Things Happen shows promise. | G-Eazy: These Things Happen | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19479-g-eazy-these-things-happen/ | These Things Happen | In Macklemore’s wake, there’s a hardened consensus that hip-hop is whiter, the old patterns of cultural co-option well underway. G-Eazy slid easily into this old new world, building an organic, devoted fanbase without the explicit mass support of hip-hop’s original audiences. This isn’t a strike against the quality of G-Eazy’s work; his new album is well-crafted and considered. He seems unafraid to wrestle with mature ideas—about himself, or the sobering realization that living a dream is no exemption from life’s daily indignities. While one does get the feeling that there’s a better album somewhere inside of him, These Things Happen shows promise. If Macklemore is the first white rapper to find mainstream success with a mainly caucasian audience, G-Eazy will be the first to do so without relying on a dated notion of hip-hop’s sound. But ultimately These Things Happen’s strongest statement concerns the seismic impact of the artists who influenced its creation.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that G-Eazy hails from Oakland—although, he went to school in Albany, California, according to this early interview, which is closer to Berkeley. But regardless of the specifics, Bay Area hip-hop is historically a diverse ecosystem, so it makes sense as the first frontier for middle class-appealing white rappers to express themselves in a way that scans authentically. With a fertile independent scene largely cut off from hip-hop at large, the Bay was one place where regional stars were popular across cultural boundaries, with white kids as familiar with Mac Dre as Jay Z.
So it was with G-Eazy, whose early work shows the evident influence from the Bay’s cultural blender. His lyrics on These Things Happen include references to growing up on Mac Dre and the hyphy movement, and the album features appearances from E-40 and Bay producer Jay Ant. But outside of guest spots and textural references, the Bay Area influence feels absent G-Eazy’s current music, never mind the Oldies revivalist single that sparked his rise. Instead, the record is consistently moody and atmospheric, with a chilly downtempo ambiance less reminiscent of E-40 than Drake’s producer of a similar name.
This is not a record of hits, and there are no real pop moments. It's solemn, sincere, and deliberate, seemingly more influenced by self-serious auteurs like Kendrick Lamar than G-Eazy's hometown heroes. It’s not the only place Kendrick’s influence looms; the way G-Eazy’s voice dips in “Opportunity Cost” is a deadringer for his delivery, and “Downtown Love”’s moralizing comes complete with a hammy chorus that would have fit comfortably alongside similar records on Section.80. “I Mean It", meanwhile, suggests Big Sean may have had a bigger influence on millennial rap fans than has generally been acknowledged. Even the appearance of his mother’s voicemail at the end of “Opportunity Cost” can’t help but recall Chance the Rapper’s dad’s cameo on Acid Rap.
Perhaps most distracting is a song like “Tumblr Girls", where a Dom Kennedy flow can’t save him from Drake’s blurry, neurotic solipsism. Here his writing is at its most cliched. He drinks with a beautiful nameless woman who’ll soon be forgotten, a story that borders on parody in 2014. All in all, These Things Happen’s sonic fingerprint feels like an unconscious echo of meteoric impact of post-Kanye rap stars of the past five or so years.
This is, after all, the sound of “respectable” sustainability: perhaps a bit of a flatline, These Things Happen is at its best when it twists the lens onto G-Eazy’s more personal writing. Although his fanbase was built on a grind that included the Vans Warped Tour and accompanying frat rapper Hoodie Allen, his immersion in hip-hop’s artistic language is real. His actual rap style is somewhat plain, but not distractingly so, and—”Tumblr Girls”-records aside—his writing is often purposeful. He’s started to emerge as a distinct voice: humble yet confident, the record is at its strongest when he’s taking stock of his rapidly shifting world and finding his place within it. On the album’s opener and title track, security stops him from going backstage, embarrassing the rapper: “Wait up, who the fuck are you?” These moments of humanity—the album’s best writing, that is—are only here in pieces, and to release a truly great project, he will either have to explore them in more depth, or start having a little more fun. | 2014-07-10T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2014-07-10T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Sony | July 10, 2014 | 6.1 | 58d4c85b-f265-4222-b349-3a5b9d0f0802 | David Drake | https://pitchfork.com/staff/david-drake/ | null |
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