alternativeHeadline
stringlengths 2
551
⌀ | description
stringlengths 2
700
⌀ | itemReviewed
stringlengths 6
199
| url
stringlengths 41
209
| headline
stringlengths 1
176
⌀ | reviewBody
stringlengths 1.29k
31.4k
| dateModified
stringlengths 29
29
| datePublished
stringlengths 29
29
| Genre
stringclasses 116
values | Label
stringlengths 1
64
⌀ | Reviewed
stringlengths 11
18
| score
float64 0
10
| id
stringlengths 36
36
| author_name
stringclasses 603
values | author_url
stringclasses 604
values | thumbnailUrl
stringlengths 90
347
⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Swedish quartet’s seventh album glows with carefree, mosaic pop arrangements. They sound looser and freer than ever. | The Swedish quartet’s seventh album glows with carefree, mosaic pop arrangements. They sound looser and freer than ever. | Little Dragon: Slugs of Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/little-dragon-slugs-of-love/ | Slugs of Love | Over nearly three decades, Swedish quartet Little Dragon has preserved a refined sense of style. Collectively, bassist Fredrik Wallin, keyboardist Håkan Wirenstrand, drummer Erik Bodin, and singer-songwriter Yukimi Nagano put a light spin on easygoing digital soul and electronic pop, Nagano’s distinctive, acrobatic voice conjuring brisk coolness and intense yearning alike. It’s a recipe they’ve accompanied with an extensive list of inventive, high-profile collaborations, including unexpected names like Kaytranada and De La Soul. On their seventh album Slugs of Love, the band provides another serving of danceable pop-soul and R&B, this time infused with an unwavering sense of optimism. Continuing the playful whimsy heard on their 2020 tour de force New Me, Same Us, here Little Dragon strengthen their elastic sound with wry lightheartedness and lean adjustments, injecting new verve into their songwriting in the process.
Slugs of Love delights in a carefree, mosaic approach. The band dials into a familiar mid-tempo sweet spot on “Frisco” and “Tumbling Dice,” both of which easily slot into their catalog of subdued bops; the latter conjures ’90s nostalgia, with a shuffling drum beat and an elated synth melody that feels lifted from a forgotten video game soundtrack. The band lets loose in other ways too, recontextualizing their typically polished sound: Nagano channels Donna Summer on the thumping throwback “Disco Dangerous,” letting her voice bend into a rapturous coo against loopy bass lines, while the centerpiece “Gold” carries an irresistible pulse that recalls Robyn at her most emotive peaks. The variation works in their favor, as on the tender opener “Amöban.” In a honeyed voice, Nagano admits to being a “neurotic mess” who is anxious about “sharing a song, a poem, a painting” with someone new. Working with a minimalist technique, they balance a simple slide whistle with a drum that knocks like a heartbeat, adding a gentle touch to Nagano’s vulnerability.
The themes of “Amöban” recall Little Dragon’s own trajectory as a band happy to remain on the fringes of mainstream fame; in this relaxed, more comfortable spot, they can experiment at will. “Is success winning a Grammy, or is success putting out music, or is success a feeling, or is it having one person at a show be moved for the rest of their lives?” Nagano acknowledged in a 2020 interview. Here, Little Dragon seem less concerned with existential career problems, instead leaning into the rush of romance and friendship. “Don’t spiral down into worries that visit you,” Nagano encourages during the chipper “Stay,” which recruits Atlanta rapper JID over delicate squiggles and harmonies that linger like a sunbeam. The title track, with a brief saxophone interlude that adds lush jazz textures to its motorik drum beat, casts slugs as a metaphor for indulging in obsessive pleasure, a surrealistic choice that typifies the record’s sense of humor and insistence on finding joy and ecstasy where you can. “Have a feast at the table/Slimy dream maker,” Nagano croons. “Be forever a craver.”
Occasionally, Slugs of Love meanders off course; “Lily’s Call” relies on a dramatic, prolonged buildup with no payoff. “Glow,” featuring a brief appearance from Damon Albarn, is an oneiric, bland ballad with listless oscillating synths and undulating bass, an odd outcome considering Little Dragon provided what is arguably one of Gorillaz’ most unforgettable guest features a decade ago. But the album rebounds on its celestial closing track, “Easy Falling,” a plush comedown that breezes by on gentle guitar and Nagano’s leisurely melodies. Like the album’s best songs, it offers a worthwhile escape with understated grace. | 2023-07-11T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-07-11T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Ninja Tune | July 11, 2023 | 7.1 | 87b6bae2-7896-47c5-a555-950e30196a89 | Eric Torres | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-torres/ | |
The iconic soundtrack marks the beginning of Angelo Badalamenti’s 30-plus-year creative partnership with David Lynch; torn between terror and ecstasy, it is as full of mystery as his films. | The iconic soundtrack marks the beginning of Angelo Badalamenti’s 30-plus-year creative partnership with David Lynch; torn between terror and ecstasy, it is as full of mystery as his films. | Angelo Badalamenti: Blue Velvet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/angelo-badalamenti-blue-velvet-original-motion-picture-soundtrack/ | Blue Velvet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | There’s a chapter of David Lynch’s book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity where he describes the spark of inspiration for Blue Velvet in three simple motifs: “Red lips, green lawns, and the song—Bobby Vinton’s version of ‘Blue Velvet.’ The next thing was an ear lying in a field. And that was it.” (It had to be an ear, Lynch explained in a 1987 interview, because it’s an opening—a tiny portal into the vastness of human interiority.) “Blue Velvet” wasn’t really the kind of song Lynch would ordinarily listen to for fun, but something about it spoke to him. It gave him the feeling of being in the middle of a mystery—the same feeling the film’s protagonist, Jeffrey Beaumont, describes to his crush/accomplice Sandy at Arlene’s Diner: “I’m seeing something that was always hidden.”
Why, of all songs, “Blue Velvet”? I’m not sure there’s ever a definitive “why” to David Lynch’s creative logic that can be explained beyond “Because it felt right,” but there’s something about Vinton’s 1963 rendition of the song that feels complicated in a way that, say, Tony Bennett’s 1951 version does not. There is a sense of cosmic misalignment between the song’s blithe doo-wop shuffle and its lyrics, which grow increasingly miserable: “And I still can see blue velvet through my tears.” That misalignment—an irreconcilable tension between how things appear and how they feel, creating an atmosphere in which your best navigation tool is your gut—is one way of distilling what people mean by the vague, overused descriptor “Lynchian.” And as Vinton’s recording soundtracks our first glimpses of Lumberton, North Carolina, USA—blue sky, red roses, white picket fence—we get one of the all-time great “Lynchian” scenes. Watering his lawn, a nameless man falls inexplicably to the ground, choking as his all-American terrier laps frantically at the hose spraying wildly in his grasp. Vinton’s voice fades into an anxious rumble as we descend below the manicured lawn and into the hissing, roach-infested soil beneath.
But Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” is not the version that appears on the film’s official soundtrack, recently reissued on vinyl more than 30 years after its release. Instead, it is the hushed, haunted cover performed by Isabella Rossellini as Dorothy Vallens, a lounge singer being held hostage by Frank Booth, a sadomasochistic, amyl nitrate-huffing gangster with a soft spot for torch songs. Rossellini was untrained as a singer, so producer Fred Caruso called in a mostly unknown composer from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn to coach the actress’ performance. Angelo Badalamenti, raised under the influence of his Sicilian father’s opera records and his brother’s jazz, was a former junior high music teacher with some experience writing for other artists, under the name Andy Badale, but he’d never been asked to contribute to a feature film of this magnitude. After a few hours practicing at the piano with Rossellini, Badalamenti presented Lynch with a taped recording. “This is peachy keen,” was Lynch’s delighted response (one that had to be translated to Badalamenti in Brooklyn terms, according to a 2014 interview: “You know, I’m from Bensonhurst—we don’t use those words”). Lynch requested that Badalamenti score Blue Velvet in its entirety—the composer’s big break, and the beginning of his and Lynch’s 30-plus-year collaborative brotherhood.
The first order of business was an original theme, one Lynch could not describe to Badalamenti beyond the phrase “mysteries of love” and the suggestion that it “should be a song that floats on the sea of time.” Lynch had desperately wanted to use a song that had proved prohibitively expensive to license: 4AD supergroup This Mortal Coil’s cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren,” sung by Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser. Waterlogged and alien, the cover is so sad it almost hurts to hear. Badalamenti’s “Mysteries of Love” (which appears on the soundtrack in three forms: two instrumental variations and a final version sung by Julee Cruise, whom Badalamenti introduced to Lynch) is fascinating in how drastically it departs from “Song to the Siren”’s mood. The majority of Badalamenti’s compositions for the score set a dark, tense tone offset by pointedly hokey lounge jazz (“Akron Meets the Blues”) and guileless jukebox rock (Bill Doggett’s 1956 instrumental “Honky Tonk Part 1”). The few briefs Lynch provided had referenced Shostakovich’s Symphony #15, the Russian composer’s final symphony—a mortality-obsessed work shaped by the same tensions as Lynch’s own, opening with playful, childlike arrangements that soon become unnerving, corrupted. Badalamenti’s eerie “Main Title,” which scores the opening credits against the rustle of blue velvet curtains, directly quotes the symphony’s increasingly anguished second movement. Shostakovich’s influence is evident on “Night Streets/Sandy and Jeffrey,” too, as nervous strings, warning of impending danger, give way to more mischievous arrangements.
But “Mysteries of Love” is different: radiant, almost religious. Cruise’s vocal version, the soundtrack’s final song, has the mystical clarity of the best haiku poetry: “Sometimes a wind blows/And the mysteries of love/Come clear.” I like to think of it as Badalamenti’s “blinding light of love” music, to borrow a phrase from Sandy’s recollection of a dream she had the night she met Jeffrey: “For the longest time there was just this darkness. And all of a sudden, thousands of robins were set free, and they flew down and brought this blinding light of love. And it seemed like that love would be the only thing that would make any difference—and it did.”
It is impossible to imagine how differently Blue Velvet would have turned out—and how the next few decades of Lynch’s films might have sounded—had “Song to the Siren” been secured and Badalamenti never brought into the director’s world. In that sense, then, the film’s soundtrack is shaped just as much by its alternate-universe permutations as by its final form—an infinitely variable correspondence between what was, and what could have been. In the scene Lynch himself referred to as Blue Velvet’s pivotal moment (or, as he puts it, the “eye of the duck” scene), one of Booth’s cronies lip-syncs Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” into a standing lamp to as Booth mouths along, so moved by the 1963 ballad it seems to enrage him. The song is animated by the same tension that exists in Vinton’s “Blue Velvet”—that irreparable misalignment between the dreamy, naive instrumentation and the lonesome, occasionally chilling lyrics, whose creep-out potential is perfectly illustrated by the stammering, manic Booth, who renders ostensibly innocent lines like “a candy-colored clown they call the Sandman” nightmarish. In fact, Lynch had originally intended to use a different Orbison song, “Crying,” for the scene that’s now considered one of Lynch’s most iconic. I imagine that neither Lynch nor Badalamenti could conceive, any better than you or I, how the story might have shifted had “Crying” been used instead.
And perhaps it is the instinctive, serendipitous nature of the soundtrack’s ultimate form that makes it such an integral part of Blue Velvet’s enduring magnetism, as essential to the film’s mood and storyline as any of the characters. Alongside Lynch’s chosen songs, Badalamenti’s compositions invite the audience to process what they are witnessing not by logic but instinct, even as the mood shifts between terror and ecstasy. That Badalamenti’s “Mysteries of Love” could take the place of “Song to the Siren” seems born of the same impulse that drives Jeffrey deeper and deeper into a dangerous mystery: not to uphold the law for its own sake, nor stamp out some socially-ascribed wickedness, but to pursue some cosmic knowledge that might help him reconcile the complicated emotions he recognizes in himself, too. It’s a soundtrack for a strange world full of strange people unwittingly shaping the courses of their lives with each choice, as they fumble through the darkness in search of the only thing that will make any difference. | 2017-09-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-09-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Fire | September 15, 2017 | 8 | 87c2d2c9-0613-4305-b1b2-676c946f67ee | Meaghan Garvey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/meaghan-garvey/ | |
The second of Prince's HITNRUN series is another underwhelming entry in his catalog. From beginning to end, he seems more interested in establishing his proficiency than his creativity. | The second of Prince's HITNRUN series is another underwhelming entry in his catalog. From beginning to end, he seems more interested in establishing his proficiency than his creativity. | Prince: HITNRUN Phase Two | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21353-hitnrun-phase-two/ | HITNRUN Phase Two | As a thought experiment, it's fun to imagine how classic Prince records might sound to fresh ears, to guess how "Kiss" and "I Would Die 4 U" and "1999" might be received by someone raised in the Spotify era. He's a notoriously streaming-unfriendly artist, after all, and even as his reputation looms larger than ever, his art has become more difficult to obtain. What would someone vaguely familiar with the legend but completely new to the music discover? Well, a millions things obviously—a particular melodic sensibility, the urge to continually reinvent, the indelible stories, his undeniable chops, a restless creativity. But in concrete terms, Prince's best work took new, unfamiliar paths to familiar feelings. Established song forms rebuilt the "wrong" way, Prince's discography has a stiff, funky, uncanny-valley relationship with the pop that came before.
And this is why HITNRUN Phase Two is an underwhelming entry in the artist formerly known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince's canon. Relative to the idiosycratic and all-over-the place first iteration of the HITNRUN series, Phase Two is an organic-textured, polished, and predictable release. From beginning to end, Prince seems more interested in establishing his proficiency with pop forms, demonstrating his facility with the materials to craft, as it were, a sturdy wooden table. Rather than an artist's interpretation, we get a craftman's tracing.
This is in part due to the absence of Joshua Welton, formerly of forgotten R&B group Fatty Koo. Welton co-produced the bulk of the first HITNRUN album, accenting it with EDM flourishes in a way that felt mildly adventurous. Without them, the record feels bland. But ultimately it's a lack of ideas that sinks this record, a point which hits home every time these songs overtly or subliminally recall one song or another in pop music history. Whether the references are knowing (a nod to Prince's own "Kiss" partway through dancefloor record "Stare") or simply dial up favorites from R&B's celestial jukebox (the extended highlight "Groovy Potential" surely recalls Oliver Cheatham's "Get Down Saturday Night"), the songs rarely cohere into unique shapes. Or when they do, there's something quaint and mediated about the whole ordeal: the swaggering protagonists of "Stare," ("Now we got the sound that's popping in the street") may have the "party going ham" but the strutting feels calculated and theatrical.
We also get the waltz of "When She Comes," like an action-figure version of Otis Redding's "I've Got Dreams to Remember," or the ludicrous chorus of garage-rock vehicle "Screwdriver," which was first premiered in 2013 and could have been written for the Hives. Lyrics tend to be forgettably symbolic; "I'm in the big city when I'm in your arms." I mean, sure? This is perhaps most jarring on topical opener "Baltimore," which not only strikes a bum note tonally—the reassuriningly jaunty vibe is miles away from "Alright"—but just seems lazy: "We're tired of crying, and people dying/ Let's take all the guns away." OK, so no one needs Prince to offer policy positions, but in contrast with even the hippy idealism of his incredible '90s anti-gun anthem "Love Sign," "Baltimore" suggests complete creative fatigue.
The redeeming moments are ones which make some unpredictable moves—any shocks are welcome on a record as polite and poised as this. Near the end comes "Revelation," a spare version of an Isley Brothers-style ballad which holds attention by withholding. Prince's vocal performance has a touching grace, but what makes the song work is its subversive refusal to entirely exist: it feels like a shadow. But perhaps the album's true star is "Xtraloveable," a silly record with an amusing chorus conceit: "Whenever you need someone to take a shower with, call me up, please." It strikes a rare relatable-goofy balance, and like 2014's "Breakfast Can Wait" or 2015's "1000 X's and O's," this gives the record some weight and substance. It's a bit odd to imagine that shower sex is the most exciting part of Prince's day—after all, he's still a superstar living in a $10 million Paisley Park estate—but no reason not to take what you can get. | 2016-01-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2016-01-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B / Rock | NPG | January 8, 2016 | 4.7 | 87c73e5d-fd4b-43ae-9395-556c8be143df | David Drake | https://pitchfork.com/staff/david-drake/ | null |
The versatile, prolific techno and pop artist crafts a dark, funk-driven record that may be the best of his career. | The versatile, prolific techno and pop artist crafts a dark, funk-driven record that may be the best of his career. | Matthew Dear: Black City | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14533-black-city/ | Black City | If you've followed Matthew Dear over the years, then you know he doesn't like to stay in one place for very long. Even as a primarily electronic artist in the early 2000s, Dear hopped from label to label, switched aliases often, and made everything from steely microhouse to harder Detroit techno. But his biggest departure was 2007's Asa Breed, the record where he stepped out from behind the decks and reached for the mic. Singing on tracks and leaning more heavily on song structure, he built strange hybrid music that had one foot in techno and the other in pop.
Dear's latest album, Black City, follows this path but pulls a pretty drastic shift in tone. Where Asa Breed was bubbly and squeaky and ultimately dancefloor-bound, this record is dark as night. The music brings to mind blown-out warehouses, desolate alleys, and seedy basement nightclubs; it's some real threatening, grimy shit. The production is as inventive and immersive as ever, but what separates this album from the last is that Dear mostly sticks with one theme all the way through. Asa Breed was all over the place at times, but this album has a cohesive thread to follow and smaller vignettes within it.
It's worth noting on a general level that Black City isn't always an easy listen-- there's a lot of detail that can take a couple of spins to get comfortable with. Part of this is structural. Dear doesn't really do clean electro-pop; his approach is more about pushing contrasting sounds together and leaving the edges jagged. The other part is his vocals. Dear is not a classically strong singer and can often sound pretty flat; importantly he knows how to make up for it. He uses technology to stretch his natural range, wrapping choruses around beats in creative ways and sometimes layering multiple vocals together to create depth.
So the album has a lot of contrast and textural nuance. There's also a good amount of sex. In the first half, Dear explores this really nocturnal, salacious sound. Songs in this section are either slow-paced come-ons or faster club tracks, but they all ooze attitude and lust. Opener "Honey" is a good example of the former, kind of a sauntering R&B number with a gritty noise instrumental at its core. But one song stands out: "You Put a Smell on Me" is just total industrial-dance smut, with Dear soliciting an indecent ride "in [his] big black car." Mechanical synths grind, beats scrape against the wall, and Dear offers up double entendre: "You decide if you want to come." It might just be the raunchiest-sounding track since NIN's "Closer".
Dear gets that there's no point in going any dirtier after this, and he uses the rest of the album to divert the vibe towards something brighter. It's a move that threatens the overall theme, but it ultimately works in maintaining the idea of deep contrast and dark vs. light. So the back-end is more pastoral sounding-- beats don't grind as hard and vocals open up, feel more skyward. Rather than the dark disco earlier on, songs in this portion hew closer toward Eno/Talking Heads ambient pop, and there's some really beautiful stuff here. "Gem", the closer, is one of the album's best. A big, opulent track about loss and regret, it's both deeply sad and optimistic at the same time. And the album needs a big emotional anchor like this, otherwise you might feel a little filthy for enjoying it so much. | 2010-08-13T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2010-08-13T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Ghostly International | August 13, 2010 | 8.4 | 87cc32fb-f106-4993-abb4-ff22cb440cc6 | Joe Colly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-colly/ | null |
Recorded in front of a live audience, the latest from the Brattleboro songwriter is a meditative, idiosyncratic set about the impermanence of all things. | Recorded in front of a live audience, the latest from the Brattleboro songwriter is a meditative, idiosyncratic set about the impermanence of all things. | Ruth Garbus: Alive People | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ruth-garbus-alive-people/ | Alive People | The Japanese concept of mono no aware, roughly translated as “the pathos of things,” has gone on a curious journey through the music underground. Invoked almost two decades ago by William Basinski to describe a set of melancholy piano loops, the phrase provided the title to a landmark compilation of ambient music in the 2010s. Indie rock bands have borrowed it, too. Although its embrace by English speakers could turn out to be at least partly superficial, like wabi-sabi lessons on home-improvement TV shows or kintsugi-branded luxury hairspray, mono no aware feels central to Connecticut-reared singer-songwriter Ruth Garbus’ third solo album, Alive People.
Garbus is no stranger to transience. An avowed high-school dropout who also quit design school one year later, she moved to Brattleboro, Vermont, in 2001, to follow in the footsteps of her sister—Merrill, who would go on to craft her own skewed indie-pop universe as Tune-Yards. Garbus has played in a variety of genres across the town’s bustling scene, from Feathers’ psycho-folk and Happy Birthday’s fuzz-pop, both with local lynchpin Kyle “King Tuff” Thomas, to Gloyd’s free improv, with Western Massachusetts guitar whiz Wendy Eisenberg. Her solo work, however, has always centered on her clean, tuneful guitar and imagistic lyrics, which juxtapose the miraculous and the mundane. Her second album, 2019’s Kleinmeister, introduced subtle electronics and showcased how opera training had strengthened her extraordinary mezzo soprano.
Alive People elevates Garbus’ practice to a rarefied plane. Although recorded live in front of an audience of about 100 at the performing arts venue 10 Forward in Greenfield, Massachusetts, it’s not presented as a live album, and the crowd is barely audible until the end. It benefits from the immediacy of live performance, but rather than capture one evening or one tour, the album calls attention to the impossibility of freezing a live experience in amber. Alive People intersperses its eight proper songs with five improvisatory interludes from the performance, not exactly in chronological order. It’s willful. Sparse. Grand. In both its idiosyncratic form and meditative execution, Alive People is an erudite and overwhelming reflection on the impermanence of all things. That’s mono no aware.
The Japanese idiom is at the forefront of Alive People. Opening track “Julia” is six cryptic seconds of Garbus’s longtime collaborator Julia Tadlock speaking the phrase’s loose translation from onstage, accompanied by a warm ambient hiss, plus a rustle or two from the surrounding environs. After this fleeting introduction, each of the next two songs lasts about six minutes, another way that Garbus toys with perceptions of time passing. “Mono No Aware,” based around Garbus’ measured guitar and slow-motion vocal harmonies with Tadlock, unfolds patiently into a masterful examination of art-making and one’s place in it; verse by verse, she zooms out from the personal act of creation, to her teenage insecurities, to the squirrels outside her window, and on through to naming various aspects of her personality, before she finally sings the title phrase four times. “Healthy Gamer,” built on rudimentary electronic beats and elie mcafee-hahn’s tender keyboard, follows a similar existential progression as Garbus addresses another lost soul, this one “running through the tawny grass of elvish terrain.” With their deliberate pacing and lofty subject matter, both songs seem high-risk, like a breakneck Olympic routine, but Garbus sticks the landing, all cool grace and precision.
The rest of Alive People isn’t as audacious, but it’s similarly impressive in its avant-pop minimalism, like Joni Mitchell fronting Marine Girls. Garbus and her small band commune with their audience over the fleetingness of matters both cosmic and hyperlocal. After a pitched-up interstitial snippet about “buying a houseplant,” Garbus explores the nature of her purchase on “Rubber Tree,” which has a seemingly simple subject and lovely wordless vocal bit that wouldn’t be out of place on Cass McCombs’ recent kids’ album—except few children may fully appreciate the forlorn ambition “that our hearts may intertwine/like an interspecies vine.” A jazz quality animates “Whisper in Steel,” which leaps from comely assonance- and consonance-filled verses to a higher pitch and simpler diction on the chorus as Garbus contemplates ephemerality on the American autobahn. “Waiting on the Sun,” with “atypical” guitar by Julie Bodian, epitomizes Garbus’ languid perspective shifts, as the quotidian particulars of self-care purchases give way to the awareness that “someday the sun will shine so close it hurts.” Garbus faces down our impending annihilation by playing with enjambments: “The scenery reflects this blinding/Lightly, lightly.”
The remaining interludes of playful synth or lyric guitar act mainly as reprieves so all of Garbus’ lightly delivered headiness doesn’t leave us lightheaded. But the songs keep finding new approaches to mono no aware, which after all isn’t so different from saudade, the Portuguese word for nostalgic longing, or perhaps a form of the blues. She moves from blinding light to rainbow pastel on “Pastel Umbrella,” a jarring confrontation between the narrator’s youthful fantasy and adult doubts that highlights Bodian’s twinkling guitar and a mesmerizing spoken-word segment. “I always win when I’m playing alone,” Garbus sings on the introverts’ anthem “Sports,” dragging out the final, melismatic syllable as if the moment could never end. | 2023-08-30T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-08-30T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Orindal | August 30, 2023 | 8 | 87d1ece4-2ab8-4883-b18a-8d670bb40e94 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | |
Sophie Allison’s excellent studio debut is a compact album of clear melodies, plainspoken lyrics, and the impossibly tangled logic of infatuation. | Sophie Allison’s excellent studio debut is a compact album of clear melodies, plainspoken lyrics, and the impossibly tangled logic of infatuation. | Soccer Mommy: Clean | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/soccer-mommy-clean/ | Clean | When Sophie Allison sings, “I wanna be that cool,” you believe her. Coolness would be something to aspire to for a young indie rocker who records music under the decidedly uncool alias of Soccer Mommy. But the 20-year-old Allison, from Nashville, Tennessee, has something more valuable: humble relatability. Her hazy singing can be conversational and appealingly flat. She sounds like a person you might know.
In the summer of 2015, just after she had finished high school, Allison procured a Tascam four-track and collected her raw feelings—like an audio diary of teenaged heartbreak—onto Bandcamp releases with titles like songs for the recently sad and “moving to new york.” Still trading in piercing vulnerability, Clean is Allison’s excellent studio debut: a compact album of clear melodies, plainspoken lyrics, and the impossibly tangled logic of infatuation.
Clean has only subtle flourishes. Allison can be blunt like Liz Phair, or perceptive like early Taylor Swift, but she tells her stories of love and betrayal with a welcomed pop-punk brevity and kick. The melodrama of youth is rendered in sometimes uncomfortable detail—the seemingly innocuous memories that send you spiraling, like a particular way of brushing up against a person. In Clean’s songs, lovers become wolves; crushes linger with world-ending gravity; disaffected stoner girls become godly. Allison is caught between who she is and who she wants to be, singing such self-loathing lines as, “I am just a dying flower,” and, “Why would you still want to be with me?” But her dry voice itself deflects the anguish; it’s empowering.
Things happen on Clean that you wouldn’t expect. In the sad opener, “Still Clean,” Allison likens a greedy lover to a wild animal who literally eats her. It’s a twisted image, like a Grimm’s fairytale: “Left me drowning once you picked me out of your bloody teeth.” The pairing of lilting strums with such a savage lyric makes a statement: This soft music is not precious. It’s gnarly and intense, like the heart itself. When Allison sings that she “checked the window just to see if you’d come back to me,” it’s a crushing depiction of how easily obsession can lead to self-destruction. (Perhaps all this complication accounts for Allison’s simple desire, on “Skin,” to just “be the one you’re kissing when you’re stoned.”)
Over the breezy riff of “Cool,” Allison flips the script, romanticizing a rebel girl who’s equally vicious. She wants to be “Mary [with] a heart of coal,” a girl who treats boys like toys and gets high with her friends. The fiercer “Your Dog,” meanwhile, is not an interpolation of Iggy Pop but rather a total inversion: “I don’t wanna be your fucking dog,” Allison sings with fire. She conveys a sentiment about ownership that women have been shouting since they began picking up instruments without permission. Even when Allison’s strummy music evokes a coffee house open-mic, though, there’s an edge to it.
At the towering center of Clean is “Blossom (Wasting All My Time).” It is so spare as to be almost void-like: just Allison hovering six feet above her quietest strums, a mysticism perhaps learned from Leonard Cohen. When it starts, “Blossom” is so stinging that you might close your eyes. “Wasting all my time thinking about the way you treat me/Wasting all my time on someone who didn’t know me,” Allison sings, evoking a wrenching blues traditional. But the song cracks down the middle like a split locket, and halfway through, the bad feeling is replaced by an optimistic one. New longing replaces the old. And then life goes on.
If the album’s title brings to mind “Clean,” the pristine closing ballad from Swift’s 1989, you’d not be mistaken. Allison admits a devotion to Swift, and it shows in the sweetened ease and biting honesty of her music, in her knowing fixation on un-coolness. This comes into focus on Clean’s slow-burning “Scorpio Rising.” Allison is sitting in the car as the sun comes up with a boy who is going to leave her for another girl—one who’s “bubbly and sweet like a Coca-Cola.” She can’t let go: “You’re made from the stars/We watched from your car,” Allison sings as the song swirls. It’s the sound of knotted nascent love, a snapshot of a person with her messy thoughts. But in all its sonic clarity, Allison’s music contains the promise that these tragic scenarios could still be untangled. Clean is that much-cooler indie record Taylor once sung of. Below the surface, its spark gleams like a secret. | 2018-03-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-03-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Fat Possum | March 5, 2018 | 8.4 | 87d71db9-6f96-4d36-adf3-482f65a09f13 | Jenn Pelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jenn-pelly/ | |
On his first album in 14 years, the drum’n’bass innovator blurs the edges of the genre, putting masterful sound design and playful pacing in the service of cinematic aims. | On his first album in 14 years, the drum’n’bass innovator blurs the edges of the genre, putting masterful sound design and playful pacing in the service of cinematic aims. | Krust: The Edge of Everything | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/krust-the-edge-of-everything/ | The Edge of Everything | An astronaut, a filmmaker, and a drum’n’bass producer. It sounds like the setup to a joke, but these unlikely bedfellows were among the base ingredients of The Edge of Everything, the first new album in 14 years from Bristolian jungle/drum’n’bass legend Krust (perhaps best known as a member of Roni Size & Reprazent). As returns go, it is a suitably ostentatious one: Determined to create music that might reach beyond the confines of a Friday night out, Krust spent four years making the album amid a maelstrom of mood boards and meditation, pondering topics from space travel to Damian Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull.
For listeners whose experience of drum’n’bass stretches little further than the industrial sturm und drang of the contemporary dancefloor, this might sound like an unnecessarily convoluted path for a genre that too often sacrifices innovation for sheer sonic oomph. But Krust has long been one of the style’s vanguardists, introducing jazz to jungle on 1994’s dreamy “Jazz Note” and pioneering the industrial-strength bassline stepper in 1997’s “Warhead,” which remains a sacred dancefloor text.
Confounding expectations and breaking boundaries are key to Krust’s work. At times The Edge of Everything feels like a massive game of bait and switch that plays merry havoc with our expectations of what drum’n’bass should be. A handful of songs—notably the excellent “Constructive Ambiguity” and “Deep Fields of Liars”—flirt with genre convention, thanks to their accelerated breaks and compulsive sub-bass. But Krust teases the listener with agonising pauses and don’t-look-in-that-cupboard! style dramatic silences, holding back the beat in a relentless orgy of suspense. Other songs, like “Negative Returns” and “Space Oddity” (very much not that one), initially bear the hallmarks of a 170 BPM roller, their charred synth lines barrelling along at a promising clip, only for Krust to upend our expectations with beats that sit closer to the distressed electro of early Autechre than jungle’s classic breaks.
Closing with a sampled testament to the transformative power of cinema, the outro to “Negative Returns” highlights one of the album’s key themes. Krust says that he was inspired by filmmakers such as Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese, and he created “Antigravity Love,” which follows “Negative Returns,” with help from director Michael Williams, who wrote a rambling monologue for the producer to build a track around. That this underwhelming collaboration adds up to less than the sum of its parts is symptomatic of an album that shoots for the fictive universe of film without quite landing. Krust’s intended narrative arc relies too heavily on the listener’s interpretation of song titles and the spoken-word passages scattered throughout the album’s 11 tracks.
But if The Edge of Everything isn’t quite cinema, it’s certainly cinematic, thanks to Krust’s masterful sonic design and a musical palette that nods to everything from 1930s horror flicks (the gothic organ drone on “Hegel Dialectic”) to the THX woosh of “Constructive Ambiguity.” If Michael Bay wasn’t so unimaginative, you could imagine the latter soundtracking a particularly stirring Transformers fight scene, liquid metal beats dancing a electric pasodoble as two robots pound the mechanical hell out of each other under expensively rendered nuclear rain.
There is a real elegance to Krust’s musical manipulations, a sort of gentle heaviness that weighs the steely tonnage of heavily processed synth against eerie ambience. And, if you won’t find yourself humming along to the melodies on The Edge of Everything, you will almost certainly discover a favourite sound. (I’ll take the strangled trumpet on “Hegel Dialectic.”) In this masterful precision, The Edge of Everything resembles the radically expansive work of cerebral drum’n’bass producers like Photek and 4Hero while nodding to Detroit techno in its dystopian sci-fi feel.
The Edge of Everything arrives at a moment where drum’n’bass is perched between two stools: hugely popular in its own rather inward-looking niche, and being cautiously revived by a new breed of music producers, from MoMA READY to India Jordan, who dabble at the edges of a junglist revival without jumping in headfirst. The Edge of Everything is perhaps too esoteric for either camp—a 5D rendering of the genre rather than a simple homage. But in calling back to concept-driven works like Goldie’s divisive Saturnz Return or the Japanese swordsmanship references of Photek’s Ni - Ten - Ichi - Ryu EP, The Edge of Everything proves that drum’n’bass can still wield an awesome experimental power as it enters its fifth decade.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-11-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-11-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Crosstown Rebels | November 6, 2020 | 7.6 | 87d7617e-fdb0-48e5-9875-12b0f54e885e | Ben Cardew | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-cardew/ | |
The transatlantic duo of Heems (ex-Das Racist) and Riz MC (actor Riz Ahmed) link up for an album of politically-charged rap that's both thought-provoking and genuinely fun. | The transatlantic duo of Heems (ex-Das Racist) and Riz MC (actor Riz Ahmed) link up for an album of politically-charged rap that's both thought-provoking and genuinely fun. | Swet Shop Boys: Cashmere | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22391-cashmere/ | Cashmere | Even just on paper, Heems and Riz MC are perfect foils for one another. Heems is a rapper (and former member of Das Racist) of Indian descent, though his family has roots in Pakistan. Riz is a rapper (and actor increasingly known for his role in HBO's “The Night Of”) of Pakistani descent whose family history can be traced back over the Indian side of the border. Heems hails from Queens, Riz from London. Heems is sharp-witted but raps with a relaxed cadence while Riz spits in the pointed, rapid-fire bursts that characterize grime. The two MCs make for a formidable pair on record, complimenting each other sonically while seeking out the overlap between their perspectives.
After testing out their chemistry on a four song EP, Heems and Riz have now committed to the Swet Shop Boys project with the full-length Cashmere. Unlike the Swet Shop EP, which enlisted production from Ryan Hemsworth, Lushlife, and others, Cashmere was entirely helmed by London-based producer Redinho. In keeping with the EP’s sound, Redinho constructs propulsive beats from South Asian samples, providing ample fodder over which the Boys trade verses. Clocking in at just 34 minutes, Cashmere is more focused and consistent than any solo release from either rapper. In the push and pull between their styles, they find a compelling balance between hip-hop and agitprop, arriving at songs that are as enjoyable as they are thought-provoking.
Lead single and opener “T5” offers a representative sample: over a screeching shehnai and heavy 808 thuds, the duo catalog the hassles of traveling while brown, skewer euphemistic security speak and situate themselves within the South Asian diaspora (“I run the city like my name’s Sadiq”). “No Fly List” builds a slinky banger around Heems’ hilarious flex, “I’m so fly, bitch/But I’m on a no fly list.” “Shottin” weaves tales about the NYPD’s surveillance of mosques using the time-tested format of true crime boom-bap. Only the goofy club number “Tiger Hologram” really falls flat, feeling like an inside joke we’re not privy to and featuring an entire verse where Heems raps with a comical lack of effort—about as funny as salt in a wound to anyone who’s continued to root for him post-Das Racist. While there are a few moments like this on Cashmere, the hungrier Riz usually picks up the slack. And when Heems does show up on these tracks, he sounds effortlessly charismatic, like when he’s twisting rap tropes into worldly new shapes on “No Fly List” (“Sweatsuit on with an Hermès turban/Pull up on a bad, brown ting out in Durban”).
While both rappers excel at making politics feel personal, Riz comes across as the more academic one, or as he puts it, “Rizzy speaks like Wikileaks investigations.” He raps passionately, though often from a remove, and peppers his lines with citations. For instance, on “T5,” he reaches all the way back to The Iliad to critique anti-refugee fear mongering, though he still manages to clown on less-woke rappers in the same breath (“We’re militant/You’re on a Milli Vanilli vibe”). Heems, meanwhile, takes a more personal tack, empathetically sliding into different perspectives as often as he leverages his own. He delights in erasing the post-colonial line between the Indian and Pakistani identities, tossing his New York rapper bonafides into the blender for good measure. On “Phone Tap,” he’s “Pakistani with a pack,” while in “Shottin,” he’s rocking a “Yankee hat with the kufi on top.” When Heems speaks from his own perspective, it’s often on issues that hit closer to home: racial profiling, tense interactions with authorities or outright racism (“Used to call me curry/Now they cook it in they kitchen”).
This is heavy stuff and as fun as it can be, Cashmere is an unabashedly political record, careening from one geopolitical issue to the next the way that most rap albums treat boasts. Ultimately, though, its most impactful moments lie in the simple act of representation. Album highlight “Zayn Malik” acknowledges as much: behind its clever punning (“Look, Zayn Malik’s got more than 80 virgins on him/There’s more than one direction to get to paradise”) lies a sincere desire to symbolize something (Heems’ aspirational quip “I am a college dorm room poster”). Malik is invoked as more than just a punchline here: alongside M.I.A., he’s been among the first South Asian celebrities to represent something more than a threat, egghead or other in western pop culture. The Swet Shop Boys seek to further broaden our understanding, an ambition that’s right there in the title. To Westerners, cashmere is a luxury textile; to South Asians, it’s the site of a violent territorial dispute between India and Pakistan that hinges on questions of identity. It’s a perfect title for a project that blurs the lines between all of these perspectives, that stunts as much as it elucidates, and which ties up all of these messy ideas into a refreshingly expansive vision of South Asian identity. | 2016-10-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Customs | October 13, 2016 | 7.4 | 87e5c0cb-1036-4cf2-9dd9-e1e51d7018ac | Mehan Jayasuriya | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mehan-jayasuriya/ | null |
This Atlanta five-piece's shimmering Kranky debut is alternately murky and ethereal, drawing equal influence from classic shoegaze, early Factory Records LPs, and the enigmatic ambient recordings with which it shares a label, shifting between impressionistic, reverb-saturated reverie and psych-heavy pop gems. | This Atlanta five-piece's shimmering Kranky debut is alternately murky and ethereal, drawing equal influence from classic shoegaze, early Factory Records LPs, and the enigmatic ambient recordings with which it shares a label, shifting between impressionistic, reverb-saturated reverie and psych-heavy pop gems. | Deerhunter: Cryptograms | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9824-cryptograms/ | Cryptograms | In Dennis Cooper's 1987 novel Closer, young George Miles gets totally fucked. Poor kid probably just wants to be loved-- either that or trip out on acid and live in Disneyland, whichever is more realistic-- but he falls prey to charlatans of all stripes. Old-fart perverts deface his flesh with loveless sexual violence. "Do you know what's inside that cute body of yours?" one asks, then comes brutally close to exposing the answers.
Atlanta five-piece Deerhunter, who hailed Cooper as a primary influence in a recent Dusted feature, show their guts admirably on this vast, visceral second album. Arranged in chronological sequence from two distinct recording sessions, Cryptograms is alternately murky and ethereal, amorphous and incisive, shot through with Sonic Youth guitar squall, Spacemen 3's blissful hymns, the morbidly introspective drum sounds of early Factory Records productions, and the abstract sonic richness of Harold Budd's collaborations with Brian Eno.
The album's willfully cryptic first half opens with a psych-out, both musically and mentally. Out of a nature scene's tranquility, a foreboding bassline and bird-calling keyboards summon singer Bradford Cox, who kicks off the galvanizing title track with a declaration of regret: "My greatest fear/ I fantasized/ The days were long/ The weeks flew by/ Before I knew/ I was awake/ My days were through/ It was too... late." As the song careens toward an increasingly chaotic climax, Cox finds his senses deteriorating until the final, indefinite repetition of the closing mantra: "There was no sound." Underpinned by Josh Fauver's primal bass and Moses Archuleta's paranoid drums, the similarly bleak "Lake Somerset" is a scream-saturated stomper with largely obscured lyrics about murder and pissing. No wonder Cox endured daily panic attacks throughout its recording.
"The skinniest man on the face of the Earth," claim the MySpacers. "He suffers from Marfan syndrome, try not to insult him," others retort. The 1 in 5,000 Americans affected are typically tall, thin, and at risk of heart problems. Source(s): MySpace, March of Dimes.
Deerhunter aren't content just to put their least welcoming side forward. Cryptograms also intersperses its loosely structured songs with a handful of extended, largely instrumental ambient passages. Guitarists Colin Mee and Lockett Pundt know their delay pedals-- the drifting chords on "White Ink" ring with the same washed-out analog shimmer that made Flying Saucer Attack's Further so powerfully nostalgic, gradually filling in with low end as keyboards and vocal effects add layers of texture off in the distance. The dream-like "Providence", written on a Rhode Island tour stop with Lightning Bolt, sounds at once radiant and terrified. "Octet" finds Cox's cries muffled behind the maelstrom, until the drums and bass lock together in the second half, erupting in a static-drenched propulsion that doesn't let up until a busy-signal organ tone segues into the droning, bell-swathed "Red Ink". The album's first half concludes with the tape to which the band recorded literally spinning off its reel.
"She said, 'Dream dreams the dreamer'/ I said it's not my fault." An earlier recording session was scrapped for, among other reasons, a poorly calibrated tape machine. At least one song here was written after several Ambien. Deerhunter's original bass player died in a tragic skateboarding accident; he'd just gotten clean. Source(s): Television, Bradford Cox.
That first 30 minutes of Cryptograms is a slow but steady build towards the vastly more accessible latter half, recorded several months after the first. Opening with the perpetual climax of "Spring Hall Convert", these songs depict a Deerhunter reborn-- if not happy, then at least comfortably numb. Here, all that brooding sludge-psych and those airy backgrounds give way to swooning dream-pop and comparatively lucid songwriting: "Strange Lights" is the first track on Cryptograms with clearly decipherable lyrics, Cox waxing childlike about "walking to the sun," bathed in bright, lambent guitars. The gauzy growing-up reminiscence "Hazel St." asks for protection in pop-glorified sunlight; portentous finale "Heatherwood", with its ramshackle percussion, promises another reincarnation. "Was not seen again," several voices repeat, ending not with a bang but with an enigmatic whistle.
The Deer Hunter is a movie. "Deer Hunter" is a game. Deerhunter are a band that sometimes gets called Deer Hunter. Deerhoof are somebody else. Source(s): Twenty-five years on Earth, Google.
Of course, even the second recording session's highly melodic space-outs aren't fully coherent. As Cox laments in "Hazel St.", "The subject is always just out of frame." At this point, with an album called Cryptograms, you're weird if you haven't been wondering what, exactly, the encoded message might be-- if, in fact, there is one at all. I like to think it's that Deerhunter are a pop band.
After all, while Cryptograms presents its own obstacles, it's easily enjoyed as a whole. Memorable melodies and an awkward, charismatic narrator are often peeking from behind the dissonance-laden mists that self-consciously choke them. From The Velvet Underground & Nico to Sid and Nancy, the sweetest romance of the rock underground's life was always death. And the tragic beauty of Cryptograms, as to an extent with Cooper's novels, is the way something as innocent as pop can be so mercilessly corrupted-- and due to the ensuing tension, emerge as better art for it. | 2007-01-30T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2007-01-30T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Kranky | January 30, 2007 | 8.9 | 87ec02fe-f17f-46b2-af96-1c70bb776e49 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | null |
There isn’t a cut on Paul McCartney's 24th studio album*—*featuring production work from Mark Ronson and Paul Epworth—that doesn’t make a compelling argument for him continuing to produce music. New is an LP that pushes hard against the popular conception of what a Paul McCartney record is supposed to sound like. | There isn’t a cut on Paul McCartney's 24th studio album*—*featuring production work from Mark Ronson and Paul Epworth—that doesn’t make a compelling argument for him continuing to produce music. New is an LP that pushes hard against the popular conception of what a Paul McCartney record is supposed to sound like. | Paul McCartney: New | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18634-paul-mccartney-new/ | New | If there’s one single song that can justify the existence of Paul McCartney’s 24th studio album since leaving the Beatles, it’s track number five, “Early Days". At first blush it seems to be that most heinous of Boomer cliches, the acoustic Those Were the Days ballad where youth-culture narcissism collides with old-people shmaltz, but fairly quickly the song resolves into something much more interesting. While the verses are a rose-tinted reminiscence of McCartney and John Lennon’s brief period of pre-fame friendship in Liverpool, the choruses project something altogether different: “They can’t take it from me/ if they try/ I lived through those early days.” Whereas most of his hippie-era pop contemporaries enthusiastically embraced self-hagiography decades ago, McCartney’s relationship with nostalgia is complicated, and fraught with skepticism, and by embracing these complications he offers an understandably human portrait of a position few of us will ever find ourselves in: watching your life story being converted into mythology by forces outside of your control.
But really, there isn’t a cut out of the thirteen on New that doesn’t make a compelling argument for McCartney continuing to produce music. As his evolving relationship with shmaltz goes to show, he’s continued to stretch out as an artist long after most artists from his generation slipped into a comfortable rut. While it’s not as radical an aesthetic statement his searingly noisy 2008 Electric Arguments, his appearance on a recent EDM banger by Bloody Beetroots, or his stint as frontman for Nirvana, it still pushes hard against the popular conception of what a Paul McCartney record’s supposed to sound like, which is a wonderful thing.
He’s found some enthusiastic partners in this in the album’s four producers, each of whom approaches the collaborative challenge from a different angle. Adele and Florence and the Machine producer Paul Epworth revives the taut, nervy postpunk sound of his early work with Bloc Party for the album-opening “Save Us", and injects the single “Queenie Eye” with aggressively punchy compression and generous splashes of noise. Trad-rock specialist Ethan Johns gives two of the album’s acoustic moments, “Early Days” and Hosanna" an intimacy that’s almost painfully raw. “Alligator” and “New", the two tracks produced by Mark Ronson, are the ones that most closely resemble McCartney’s classic work (late-era Beatles and early Wings, respectively) but he’s given them a modern-sounding density. (He also proves his reputation as an expert vocal producer by stacking McCartney’s voice into a multitracked nod to Pet Sounds at the end of “New.”)
Overseeing the whole project is Giles Martin, son of George, who executive produced the album and directly produced half of the songs. Martin, who was responsible for much of the work on the catalog-spanning Beatles remix project Love, has a natural sense for finding the right balance between McCartney’s sonic ambitions and his established musical identity. As a result, the drum loops and computer-altered electronic sounds and other modern touches that they’ve brought to the table fit comfortably in settings that have over the years become Sir Paul’s trademarks: the jauntily psychedelic faux-classical jingle, the pastoral landscape story-song, the occasional acerbic ripper that he uses to remind us that he’s not all tea and crumpets and quaintly eccentric British aristocrats.
A lot has been made about how busy McCartney’s been keeping himself well past retirement age, and much should be: it’s gratifying and inspiring to see the pop musician who arguably most deserves to rest on his laurels steadfastly refuse to do so. But even more remarkable than his work ethic is the fact that he’s still trying to improve himself as an artist. While the songs on New don’t have the historical import or epic ambition of his best-known work, they also don’t have the same kind of flaws. He’s far less sentimental than he used to be, far less prone to letting his whimsical side carry a song off to cloud cuckoo land, and a much, much better self-editor than he was during the peak of his career. His fellow Boomer musicians could learn a lot from him. As a matter of fact, a lot of the ones from subsequent generations could, too. | 2013-10-16T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2013-10-16T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Hear Music | October 16, 2013 | 7.8 | 87f002ba-222d-462c-a724-34a060df2f35 | Miles Raymer | https://pitchfork.com/staff/miles-raymer/ | null |
The New York composer is an electro-acoustic minimalist who pays special attention to the spaces around her. Her latest album, by turns grounded and disquieting, feels untethered and limitless. | The New York composer is an electro-acoustic minimalist who pays special attention to the spaces around her. Her latest album, by turns grounded and disquieting, feels untethered and limitless. | Lea Bertucci: Metal Aether | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lea-bertucci-metal-aether/ | Metal Aether | Lea Bertucci is a composer in conversation with the world around her. She regards physical spaces as though they were her collaborators. Growing up in New York’s Hudson Valley, she was awed by the defunct cement mines, where her saxophone made deep reverberations. More recently she has described playing the walls of a bunker like an organ.
Bertucci is an electro-acoustic minimalist who works primarily with woodwind instruments, particularly the alto sax and low-voiced bass clarinet. But her most crucial instrument might be space itself: the surroundings and acoustics that naturally augment a sound, altering the way an instrument resonates. Last year, Bertucci co-edited The Tonebook, a collection of graphic scores by 17 contemporary avant-garde composers. Bertucci’s own contribution took the form of a highly contoured topographic map, which she called “an overhead view of the changes and textures within a piece of music,” underscoring her exploratory sensibility.
Metal Aether, Bertucci’s latest full-length, was recorded at a former military base in France as well as the New York art venue ISSUE Project Room. It feels like her fullest statement. Her extended technique for alto sax is at once swarming and clarifying, like dissolving clouds. These droning meditations offer disquieting jolts along with microtones that are hypnotic and grounding. Bertucci incorporates prepared piano and vibraphone, processed with electronics and tape, along with field recordings made anywhere from Mayan pyramids to New York subways. Harmonics accumulate and stretch toward infinity. Bertucci’s noise feels untethered and limitless.
With each repeated sax figure on “Patterns for Alto,” Bertucci mimics the motions of swimming or diving, growing more enveloping with each inquisitive note. “Accumulations,” with an ominous drone hovering in the background, is a reminder of Bertucci’s training in jazz, as sustained notes make way for alarming, high-pitched squalls. When “Accumulations” breaks into passages of noise, it feels like weather, like all the seasons at once. The more ambient “Sustain and Dissolve” tricks you into thinking it is a breath of air, but it pierces and drills as its tones subtly shift, making way for a deep gong sound and then flashes of brutal noise. It moves toward the sound of water crashing, evoking ocean voyages. “At Dawn,” the final piece, contains a peculiar fluttering. If this is birdsong, it is not peaceful. It sounds like birds attempting to reach beyond the sky.
Bertucci has a way with texture that both evokes the room and renders it endless. Perhaps a deep consideration of space is inevitable for a New Yorker such as Bertucci, who inhabits a city where space for artists is increasingly endangered. Bertucci’s work as a booker and curator has also guided her practice: She has said that many artists come to New York and ask, “What can I get out of this place?” rather than, “What can I bring to this place?” Bertucci’s work is accordingly generative; it brings life and voice to her generation of New York avant-gardists in a way that feels personal and rare. In Bertucci’s expanding world, walls are not the ends of spaces, but rather sparks for new ones waiting to begin. | 2018-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | NNA Tapes | February 8, 2018 | 7.6 | 87f08e45-534b-4f0b-a2b9-bf9481b33757 | Jenn Pelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jenn-pelly/ | |
The Hyperdub boss and his reclusive label-mate team up on a split single that highlights their differences, contrasting Kode9’s restless rhythmic energy with Burial’s contented melancholy. | The Hyperdub boss and his reclusive label-mate team up on a split single that highlights their differences, contrasting Kode9’s restless rhythmic energy with Burial’s contented melancholy. | Kode9 / Burial: Infirmary / Unknown Summer EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kode9-burial-infirmary-unknown-summer-ep/ | Infirmary / Unknown Summer EP | Fists and feelings, muscle and moodiness: Kode9 and Burial cut opposite but complementary figures. For years the Hyperdub boss and his label’s elusive leading star have carved out distinct approaches to dance music aimed (respectively) at triggering listener’s fight-or-flight responses and tugging at their heart strings. Both emerged from dubstep as a common starting point. Kode9 ran with the genre’s weighted swing, layering tracks with ultra-fine detail while retaining the style’s punchy dynamism. Burial homed in on the air of romance emanating from garage and 2-step, chasing their space and atmosphere until the beat fell out from his music completely.
Burial is anonymous to the point of caricature while Kode9 is professorial in a politely punkish way; neither artist seems overly concerned with stoking a cult of personality. If the two were a little more complicit in their own meme, they might have wielded their Tom-and-Jerry buddy dynamic with a little more flair. But because there are about three pictures of Burial in circulation and the odds are slim of the duo ever posing for a silly Mike & Rich-style photo shoot, their tandem return has gotten a characteristically low-key rollout: a mysterious London billboard, a re-aired Mary Anne Hobbs mix, and the hushed word of mouth that a new collaborative EP was on the horizon.
London nightclub fabric has brought the two artists together again after their 2018 entry in their FABRICLIVE series to release Infirmary / Unknown Summer. The record is easy listening rather than guns blazing, a laid-back pair of tracks warped around the edges by drowsy July heat. If these songs are meant as a dialogue between the two friends, the subject seems to be the weirder properties of summertime: all of the ways in which time melts and distends as temperatures increase.
In its looped and swelling jazz samples, Kode9’s “Infirmary” recalls another classic of Hyperdub high summer, DJ Rashad’s Double Cup, although at some points it resembles the record a little bit too literally. The sheer massiveness of Rashad’s horn samples aimed to conjure a cityscape in sound, while the same instruments on the oddly titled track don’t telegraph “sickbed” so much as “genre exercise.” Footwork has an obvious appeal for Kode9, presenting an opportunity for him to flex his muscles as a producer and also go really, really fast. His approach is like a particularly elegant Rube Goldberg machine, crafting music that’s more complex than it needs to be, and all the more impressive for how smoothly it fires off. He makes his clearest personal mark on the genre by substituting its relentless hi-hat with a muted hydraulic rattle that he interlaces with streaks of grime synths, imparting an artificial iciness that pairs nicely with the warm swell of the horns. Even if the choice of sample isn’t the most inspired, the interplay between the song’s breezy flow and sophisticated, ultra-kinetic rhythm is compelling in its own right, creating a small temporal rift between sweaty nostalgia and bracing air-conditioner coolness.
Burial swerved into pure ambient with his Antidawn and Streetlands EPs, but “Unknown Summer” is a Burial song with a beat again! The drums remain fairly flimsy throughout, playing second fiddle to his synth washes and processed vocals, but they provide a subtle pulse and, more importantly, solid ground for a listener to sit upon while they stargaze into the mix. Despite its title, “Unknown Summer” is markedly clearer than anything on his most recent releases, which have been as dense and despairing and fog-ridden as Silent Hill or a Goya painting. Over faintly perceptible dub synths, snatches of dialogue melt and smear across the mix, bleeding into muted impressionist fireworks over the emptiness of the track.
Occasionally a little boy intones, “It’s just you alone, peace and quiet—nothing around you but clear blue sky.” It’s a signpost of feeling that’s a little too on the nose about the vibe that Burial aspires to capture—like that old creative-writing no-no, telling rather than showing. That’s been a problem in Burial’s latter-day output, although he recovers lost subtlety in the song’s second half. The beat is more pronounced but dusky, and it dawns on the listener that the light is fading fast from Burial’s summer day. The setting sun over this faded, bucolic landscape is the flipside of Kode9’s sweaty urban rush. | 2023-07-25T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-07-24T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | fabric Originals | July 25, 2023 | 6.7 | 87fb0907-39df-4b26-9478-18ebe060db9c | Harry Tafoya | https://pitchfork.com/staff/harry-tafoya/ | |
The Erika Wennerstrom-fronted Cincinnati blues rock quartet (and Friday Night Lights favorites) strip things down on their crunchy Jim Eno-produced fourth album. | The Erika Wennerstrom-fronted Cincinnati blues rock quartet (and Friday Night Lights favorites) strip things down on their crunchy Jim Eno-produced fourth album. | Heartless Bastards: Arrow | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16285-arrow/ | Arrow | The Heartless Bastards never got tagged as the next saviors of rock'n'roll, although they certainly possess all the relevant traits: a strong grounding not in blues but in blues rock, a conservative aesthetic that nods to rock history but is never beholden to any one particular artist or scene, and most importantly a frontwoman with a commanding voice. Perhaps their name was too misleading or their lineup too precarious, but the Bastards escaped the mantle that's been assigned to everyone from the Strokes to the Black Keys and most recently to the Alabama Shakes. If that has left them out of enviable company, at least they've managed to attract a loyal audience and even star in a crucial "Friday Night Lights".
Their first for Partisan Records, Arrow is their crunchiest album since Erika Wennerstrom gutted the original trio in 2008 and rebuilt the Bastards as a quartet. Largely discarding the fiddle, pedal steel, and banjo that fleshed out 2009's The Mountain, the band and producer Jim Eno of Spoon strip things down to emphasize guitars and the rhythm section as much as vocals. They open these songs up, both enabling a heavier sound and making room for some weighty jamming. The result is less fussy than The Mountain, with room enough for some Skynyrd Southern rock on "Late in the Night" and Santana percussion on "Skin and Bone". They've developed a larger musical vocabulary, but the results can be cumbersome: With timpani and crackling guitar right out of a Morricone soundtrack, the nearly seven-minute centerpiece "The Arrow Killed the Beast" is more melodramatic than dramatic, weighted down by import and exaggerated ambience.
Perhaps the Bastards have begun courting the rock-revivalist constituency on Arrow. "Whenever you need a pick-me-up, you gotta have gotta have rock'n'roll," Wennerstrom sings on "Got to Have Rock and Roll". Despite the dry classic-rock riff and chugging momentum, the song makes for a tepid endorsement. "Skin and Bone" is much less corny, as Wennerstrom sings, "Oh, I want it to be like when I was young." She may not be speaking specifically about rock'n'roll, but that line succinctly sums up listeners' evolving relationship with music and a desperate desire to connect as strongly as we did in our youth. Most of the Bastards songs address travel rather than age, which is how most touring bands interpret the write-what-you-know adage. "Staring out at the city skyline, a marathon is going down the street," Wennerstrom sings on opener "Marathon". The song is about how life is a "long race home," and dangling participle aside, it's an immensely awkward image to open the album.
Wennerstrom has always been a fairly workmanlike songwriter, although her voice and her band compensate when words fail her. The lyrics on Arrow are best when they settle for serviceable instead of strive for profound, and the line that resonates with the most meaning is also the one of the simplest: "Oh I got you on my mind," she sings throughout "Late in the Night", and the romantic implications become clearer and bolder with each repetition. It helps that the Bastards play loud and hard enough to nearly drown out her vocals, reveling in the musical as well as the sexual tension. That's arguably more rock'n'roll than another song about rock'n'roll. | 2012-02-15T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2012-02-15T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Rock | Partisan | February 15, 2012 | 6.4 | 8802da23-a9fd-4d1a-ba66-8ed3df1d84c2 | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
Featuring Heems, Danny Brown, and Wiki, the young New York MC 's first official album feels like a graduation, with bars and beats that feel both fresh and lived-in. | Featuring Heems, Danny Brown, and Wiki, the young New York MC 's first official album feels like a graduation, with bars and beats that feel both fresh and lived-in. | Your Old Droog: Packs | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22988-packs/ | Packs | In June of 2014, a rapper by the name of Your Old Droog uploaded an eponymous 10-track EP to Soundcloud. Intentionally mysterious, with no photos, videos, or any identifying information, it quickly generated buzz in the rap nerd blogosphere. When he “came out,” he did it in a profile in The New Yorker, and when he sold out the Studio at Webster Hall for his first-ever show, it got written up in The New York Times.
So what powered the hype machine? It’s quite simple, really: Your Old Droog sounds a lot like Nas. At times, his fine sandpaper growl sounds similar enough to be unsettling. And before he revealed himself to The New Yorker, plenty of people were convinced that the 20-something Ukrainian immigrant from Coney Island actually was Nas. Once your brain makes the connection, it’s difficult to disassociate, even if the content of his lyrics (self-deprecating cornball humor) and favorite poetic device (punchlines laden with pop-culture references) don’t resemble anything that Nas has released in the last 20 years. But it’s ever-looming, especially for anyone intimately familiar with the Illmatic one’s oeuvre.
In the years that followed, Droog dropped a couple EPs (the rock-obsessed Kinison and The Nicest) and a collaborative project with Wiki, What Happened to Fire? But as the first collection of songs in his short career packaged and marketed as an “album,” his latest LP Packs feels like a graduation as it connects verses and beats from various collaborators to make a coherent statement. He taps comedian Anthony Jeselnik to provide radio-style interludes throughout; his dry, sardonic wit cements the generally absurdist tone of the LP. And while he’s stacked the deck with features—Heems, Danny Brown, Wiki, Edan, and Chris Crack all contribute verses—he’s never overshadowed. No one would’ve ever confused Your Old Droog with Nas if the bars weren’t hard.
Packs uses beats from a handful of producers—RTNC, 88-Keys, Edan, the Alchemist, and ID Labs’ E. Dan.—but the palette of sounds is relatively minimal. On the standout track “Bangladesh,” Droog and RTNC freak an ill Bansuri loop over a simple boom-bap drum beat. Most of the productions are sparse, but colored by thoughtful flourishes: Harp strings, record scratches, distorted vocals and explosions, even a Frank Zappa sample, removed from the context of his posthumous bizarro opus Civilization Phaze III. He’s riding a nostalgic sonic wave currently being surfed by NYC contemporaries Roc Marciano, Action Bronson, and Joey Bada$$, rappers doing their best to embody the spirit of New York hip-hop without getting stuck in its past. And if there’s any underlying ethos of the city’s hip-hop scene, it’s the merit-based hierarchy that rewards lyrical skill above nearly all else, whether it be sex appeal, skin color, or “gangsta” status. The beats always take a backseat to the bars.
Droog’s punchline-driven style evokes the vicious jabs wielded by Big L, were he less concerned with trapping and more into watching “Seinfeld.” He’s wholly unafraid to be corny; On “Rapman” he plays the part of “a hero with a cape and a mixtape” with a straight face, earnestly out to save the rap game from whack rappers. “Yo I’m sick of sycophants who want to make their idols proud,” he declares. “I want my hero to hear me and shit his pants.”
But much like his buddy Wiki, Droog venerates the art of rap storytelling, weaving colorful street tales of hood characters that make up his perspective of New York City. Each of the three verses on “You Can Do It! (Give Up)” tells instantly recognizable stories of people with failed dreams of stardom: The hoop dreamer, the washed up model/actress, the struggle rapper. His tone is dry but empathetic, the hook evincing a perpetual motivational struggle, the drive to succeed (“You can do it!”) competing with self-defeating loathing (“Give up!”).
And of all the characters in Droog’s raps, New York looms the largest. His rhymes are full of borough references (Funkmaster Flex night, nubuck Timberlands, bodega loosies), and while he doesn’t front as a gangster, he’s unquestionably hood; when his first EP dropped in 2014 he told Rolling Stone he paid for the studio sessions with winnings from playing cee-lo. Packs is a record by, of, and for New York City, espousing the romantic notion it will never change, no matter how much the world does. | 2017-03-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-03-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Fat Beats | March 16, 2017 | 7.7 | 880862d1-6f4f-4177-b5d7-8666f634e946 | Matthew Ismael Ruiz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ismael ruiz/ | null |
The charged debut from the UK post-punks evolves from a band you think you’ve heard a million times before into one you feel like you’re just getting to know. | The charged debut from the UK post-punks evolves from a band you think you’ve heard a million times before into one you feel like you’re just getting to know. | TV Priest: Uppers | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tv-priest-uppers/ | Uppers | When IDLES’ Ultra Mono debuted at No. 1 last fall in the UK, it signaled the end of the current post-punk revival. But the sound of surly Brits armed with rich vocabularies and brawny rhythm sections is not going anywhere anytime soon. Rather, IDLES’ chart-topping coup confirmed that post-punk has evolved long past the point of needing to be revived. It isn’t merely an aesthetic that fades in and out of fashion every 20 years, but a permanent feature of the rock lexicon that, like hardcore or metal, will be sustained by future generations of malcontents in perpetuity.
Still, it’s hard not to view TV Priest as the Stone Temple IDLES of this particular moment. On first approach, the London quartet ticks off all the boxes in the post-punk instruction manual. They’ve got a band name that sounds like it was cribbed from the cover of a Fall live bootleg. They wield a dissonant musical attack that shifts between motorik grooves and strobe-lit industrial clamor at regular intervals. And naturally, they’ve got a brash, melody-resistant frontman who deals in dystopian doublespeak and withering pop-cultural commentary, and who’s blessed with the perfect pubstool philosopher name of Charlie Drinkwater.
But while TV Priest are so new to the party that they only got to play a single gig before COVID came around, their roots run deep. Drinkwater, guitarist Alex Sprogis, bassist/keyboardist Nic Bueth, and drummer Ed Kellan are all childhood friends who previously congregated in the early 2010s quintet Torches, a band that leaned toward the sleeker, more flamboyantly goth end of the post-punk spectrum. And more recently, Drinkwater’s day job as an art director has seen him produce cover art for indie peers like Fontaines D.C. and Sports Team. So what TV Priest bring to the table on their debut album, Uppers, isn’t just a deep familiarity with post-punk conventions, but a keen awareness of their limitations. In almost sequential fashion, the 12 tracks here capture a band trying to wiggle out of an aesthetic straitjacket one buckle at a time, evolving from a band you think you’ve heard a million times before into one you feel like you’re just getting to know.
The TV Priest we meet at the album’s onset are punch-drunk on bull-in-a-china-shop bravado. Pitched somewhere between the slurred, stuttering sing-speak of Mark E. Smith and the gonzo braggadocio of Grinderman-era Nick Cave, Drinkwater unleashes a ceaseless stream of non-sequiturs about the media, consumerism, and narcissism that are a little too steeped in irony and too enamored with their own absurdity to function as cogent critiques. On “Leg Room,” Drinkwater rifles off a laundry list of increasingly silly indulgences (“I’m in love with a holographic representation of a singer we all used to know very well”; “I’m love with an animatronic dog”; “I’m in love with James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke”) that ultimately dilute and distract from the song’s breakneck thrust. And where tracks like “The Big Curve” and “Press Gang” get by on distortion-pedal dynamics and locomotive momentum alone, Drinkwater’s buckshot barrage of cryptic musings provide you with little to grab onto—melodically or conceptually—as the train goes barrelling by.
But Uppers gradually reveals there’s more to this band than free-ranging rant‘n’roll. Initially inspired by Daniel Defoe’s namesake 1772 account of the bubonic plague in London, “Journal of a Plague Year” was actually written before our current pandemic, and the song’s uncanny prescience extends beyond the subject matter to its depiction of cold indifference in the face of abject horror. Over a disembodied bass loop and casually clattering beat, Drinkwater declares, “Hey buddy, normalize this”—a directive that seems all too easy to honor when coronavirus death tolls have become just another humdrum stat on the newsticker like weather forecasts and stock prices. “Powers of Ten” is equally unnerving in its restraint, presenting a portrait of craven, ladder-climbing corporatism that dials up the intensity of its synth-pierced drone, as if translating capitalism’s unsatiated appetite into a single oppressive, unrelenting sound.
For all of TV Priest’s confrontational qualities, the band are ultimately less fuelled by a smash-the-system fervor than a self-effacing recognition that playing in a rock band probably won’t change the world. Amid the turbo-charged throttle of “Slideshow,” Drinkwater sheepishly admits, “Well, all I can do is talk”—ironically, one of the few moments on this record where he actually sings—before adding, “I probably never had an original thought.” Instead, he leaves us with a reminder that the most direct path to a brighter future begins at home. On Uppers’ epic seven-minute closer “Saintless,” he drops the acerbic color commentary and pint-glass-smashing aggression for an exhilarating, open-hearted anthem dedicated to his wife and child. “This world is dark, with saintless few/So guard your love, but give it too,” Drinkwater croons defiantly through a haze of fuzzy propulsion, rendering the song as an “All My Friends” that isn’t so much lamenting lost youth as embracing new parenthood, bottling up both the optimism and insecurities of becoming a father in an age of perpetual political and psychological stress. Never mind the post-punk; TV Priest are redefining dad-rock.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-03T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-03T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Hand in Hive / Sub Pop | February 3, 2021 | 7 | 8808a228-d695-46b9-9716-5d7dd21a4064 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
Noah Weinman’s cloudy, spacious indie folk songs ruminate on the limits of human communication. | Noah Weinman’s cloudy, spacious indie folk songs ruminate on the limits of human communication. | Runnner: Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/runnner-like-dying-stars-were-reaching-out/ | Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out | There are a lot of ways not to say what you meant. Maybe you can’t find the words; maybe you just can’t choke them out. Maybe their intended recipient isn’t here and never will be. Noah Weinman, the singer-songwriter behind the melancholy bedroom-folk project Runnner, lands in all of these positions across his new album, Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out. His official debut for Run for Cover follows a string of Bandcamp releases and 2021’s Always Repeating, a collection of early tracks that reflected on themes of inadequacy and longing. Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out is no less moody, but here, Weinman’s sound is notably developed, prioritizing texture and nuance over the simpler, acoustic-forward approach of his earlier work. Through exhausted introspection and anxious inner questioning, his songs explore breakdowns in communication and how we’re set adrift when words fail.
“I’m an idiot; I cried in your car when I couldn’t find the words I was looking for,” is how Weinman opens one of the album’s catchiest tracks, “i only sing about food.” Self-loathing, and the storing up of unspoken sentiments like kernels of missed potential, is a constant undertone. “I only think about death, I only sing about food,” he eventually admits: If he can’t bring himself to voice his darkest fears, at least he can confess to that inability. As he repeats the line over a warm, shimmering synth refrain, there’s a feeling of relief and redemption. The unostentatious nature of the lyrics leaves room for the song itself to fill the gaps between admission and implication. On the sorrowful “bike again,” as Weinman imagines telephoning somebody he presumably shouldn’t, he simply sings, “Hi, I’m…,” his voice plaintive and rich with harmonies. Twined piano and banjo elevate the unfinished statement into a surrender.
When Weinman’s naturalistic, imperfect recording style picks up the tick of a clock or the hum of an air conditioner, the background noise fosters intimacy even as his layered compositions create distance. Ambient synths populate many of the slower tracks, forming gentle currents of emotional conflict. They sound the opening notes of “plexiglass,” then sit in the background for the whole song, like a nagging reminder. On “scabpicker,” where Weinman describes a lonely drive spent torturing himself with his thoughts, a swell of synth rises from the monotone guitar strum. The quick rush of color soon fades back into depressive apathy, as if a pair of oncoming headlights had suddenly revealed a different perspective only to plunge back into darkness.
As Weinman recounts all the fumbled admissions and unsent letters, the unstated implication is that these songs, almost all addressed to an undefined “you,” take their place. But whether his words ever reach their original targets isn’t really the point. There’s a deliberate artlessness to the songwriting, a cathartic late-night honesty that still feels robust in the morning. While Runnner’s music is easily compared to folk-inspired labelmates past and present (Field Medic, Pinegrove), the bleary atmosphere and humble commitment of Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out mark a welcome delineation of identity. | 2023-02-21T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2023-02-21T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Run for Cover | February 21, 2023 | 7 | 881275a5-8390-4215-8134-10fe9cc0b881 | Mia Hughes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mia-hughes/ | |
Dylan Carlson's return as the Ennio Morricone of metal continues to confound, as he offers up the biggest, cleanest, and most flagrantly melodic record Earth's ever recorded, a true band album as much about drummer Adrienne Davies and organist Steve Moore. | Dylan Carlson's return as the Ennio Morricone of metal continues to confound, as he offers up the biggest, cleanest, and most flagrantly melodic record Earth's ever recorded, a true band album as much about drummer Adrienne Davies and organist Steve Moore. | Earth: The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11218-the-bees-made-honey-in-the-lions-skull/ | The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull | Earth's "Miami Morning Coming Down II (Shine)" is a steady, sedate, chiming march, a primary-colored burst of guitars, organs, drums. For a man whose scuzzy, Melvins-mainlined Earth 2 remains the document for drone-and doom-minded depressives-- some of whom actually named their bands after Earth songs/guitar equipment-- Dylan Carlson's return as the Ennio Morricone of metal continues to confound. The band that borrowed their name from Sabbath's earliest, nuclear-paranoid incarnation have become optimists, purveyors of uplift. Where Earth once pounded chords flat, the newly reconfigured quartet pulls them out like taffy. "Miami Morning Coming Down" nods at Johnny Cash, spaghetti twang, gospel hymns; even Carlson's newest title, The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull, turns his band's fearsome reputation inside out, offering up metal's ubiquitous skull as the birthplace of something sweet.
Earth's hiatus, from 1996 to 2002, turned Carlson into a cult figure, and his return was fretted about by the acolytes he'd picked up while he was gone. Sunn0))), Boris, and Sleep had turned Carlson's sound into a movement-- a slow one, to be sure-- waiting eagerly for his return. Perversely, he came back with 2005's Hex, or Printing in the Infernal Method instead, a demoniacally glacial deconstruction of the post-rock twang that had abounded in his absence. Hex was heavy in the sense that it kept time even as Carlson meandered and detoured and wandered through melodic progressions so spaced out they sounded like jazz; one thing it definitely wasn't was Sunn0))).
Carlson's concept for Bees was even more abstract. "After we did Hex, we thought, 'Let's do a kind of gospel record,'" Carlson told Pitchfork last year. Perhaps Carlson just meant strength in numbers: Bees is probably the most band-oriented thing Carlson's ever done, as much about drummer Adrienne Davies and organist Steve Moore as Carlson's guitar lines, which for the first time were added not first but last. The result is an imperceptible relay between keys, guitars, bass, and drums, with any given melodic line handed off three or four times in the course of a song. Over time, the parts stay the same, the instruments change, and time slows down-- after a while, the songs shrink down to exact moments, static pictures that morph so gradually you never spot the change.
Still, Bees is the biggest, cleanest, and most flagrantly melodic record Earth's ever recorded. "Omens and Portents I: The Driver" has the kind of mildly ominous, lazily distorted tone that soaks Beach House records, while "Omens and Portents II: Carrion Crow" offers up the exact same five-note ascending harmony as the Microphones' "I Love it So Much!" It's left to Davies to provide the weight: "I've always noticed that it's hard to get your playing down towards where your heartbeat is... It's all about keeping your heartbeat down, for me," she told Pitchfork. Carlson's always played slow, but six years of playing with Davies (and touring with bassist Don McGreevy) has given every Earth improv the same massive feel of doomy inevitability. Even as Carlson opens up, and looks up, Davies keeps his compositions anchored to the ground.
But what melodies. "Engine of Ruin" deadpans a kind of flat keyboard line which Carlson expands, alternately following along and filling in, stalking down every harmonic permutation. "Miami Morning Coming Down" has probably Carlson's purest and most ravishing pattern ever, a trebly rise and fall that triggers nostalgia, sunrise, sunset, panic, elation, resignation. For a heavy record, Bees spends a lot of time just staring into space, thinking.
When Earth started, in 1990, it was an oddball project among friends; Carlson was better known for being pals with an aspiring musician named Kurt Cobain than he was for being one in his own right. In a way, Bees feels as quixotic as anything he was doing then: where once he spent his days stripping down Sabbath to a single ringing chord, now he's stripping chords for parts. Amazingly, the results are just as huge. Who knew you could do so much so slowly? | 2008-02-29T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2008-02-29T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Metal | Southern Lord | February 29, 2008 | 7.7 | 8814a020-761c-4bb8-9753-93e37b835901 | Pitchfork | null |
|
The former Oasis frontman’s second solo album is pitched as a re-introduction, but forward motion—whether musical or personal—remains foreign to him. | The former Oasis frontman’s second solo album is pitched as a re-introduction, but forward motion—whether musical or personal—remains foreign to him. | Liam Gallagher: Why Me? Why Not. | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/liam-gallagher-why-me-why-not/ | Why Me? Why Not. | There’s a moment on “Halo,” the fifth song on Liam Gallagher’s Why Me? Why Not., where the rocker breaks down and a flute comes to the forefront in a flourish of purple psychedelia. At that precise moment, it’s hard not to think of “Halo” as a sideways dig at “Holy Mountain,” the pounding, flute-filled first single from Noel Gallagher’s 2017 album, Who Built the Moon? Then again, it’s generally hard to think of Liam Gallagher without thinking of his estranged sibling. More than being just brothers, the pair have historically had complementary strengths, with Noel providing Oasis their songs and Liam giving the band its voice and charisma.
Noel managed to shake off the ghost of Oasis, but that task has proven much harder for Liam to achieve. Why Me? Why Not. is Liam’s second solo album, arriving after a pair of albums by Beady Eye, a group that was effectively latter-day Oasis without Noel. Considering that Noel was the chief songwriter in Oasis, this was a problem. It’s not that Liam didn’t write. He began contributing to Oasis albums in 2000, once rock’n’roll excess and sibling stress started to take a toll on Noel, and Liam continued to contribute a few tunes every few years, always maintaining a respectable level of craft without ever threatening to approach his brother’s level of mastery.
Beady Eye eroded Gallagher’s sales but not his fame. Tabloids continued to pursue Liam not only because he was mired in personal troubles, but because he made good copy. Tales of divorce and illegitimate children kept him in the spotlight as he made the slow transition from lead singer to lone wolf. When he reintroduced himself as a solo singer in 2017 with As You Were, the move made sense, since he needed to draw a clear line between himself, Beady Eye, and Oasis. What is a mystery is why he’s chosen to replicate this same maneuver for Why Me? Why Not.
Accompanied by a documentary film that attempts to justify Gallagher’s wanderings in the aftermath of Oasis—a movie that quickly devolves into an extended press kit, where the moments of high drama involve a late-night Twitter meltdown where friends plead, “Put the phone down”—Why Me? Why Not. scans as a re-introduction, right down to its title. That’s hardly necessary, in part because Liam has spent half of his life as one of the most documented humans on Earth, but also because musical forward motion is a foreign concept to him. Ever since Oasis conquered the world in 1995, he’s settled for singing psychedelic pop tunes, earnest ballads, and glam-rock stompers, a combination that also fuels Why Me? Why Not.
The sound may remain the same but the vibe does not. Oasis were young men dreaming of escape, but Liam Gallagher is a middle-aged man who is happy to be here now; there is no hunger here, no yearning, just classy contentment. Familiarity is a tonic. Now, when Liam nods to the Beatles—“Once” opens with a melodic line reminiscent of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” “Meadow” has a slide guitar straight out of George Harrison—it’s not a matter of arrogance: The fleeting Fab Four allusions are intended as a secret bond between Gallagher and fans. Similarly, nothing on the album sounds exactly like Oasis—it’s all too controlled and studio-sculpted—but not a song here would’ve been imaginable without the Gallaghers’ enthusiastic embrace of classic rock tropes. “The River” rambles along to crunching chords and swirling organs; “One of Us” indulges in a bit of nostalgic mid-tempo melancholy; “Gone” achieves a bit of cinematic grandeur with its spaghetti Western orchestration.
Oasis never attempted to paint with such a colorful palette, and the increased level of professional craft is surely due to the presence of Greg Kurstin and Andrew Wyatt, producers and songwriters who also worked on As You Were. Kurstin and Wyatt were enlisted as collaborators because Gallagher recognized the limitations of his songwriting; he has no shame in this—it’s one of the plot points in the documentary. This pair, along with a handful of other behind-the-scenes musicians, help turn Liam’s ideas into songs, honing their hooks so they snag quickly and painlessly, polishing the production so it gleams like a wall of mirrors. Every trick in the book is here: sawing strings, fuzzy guitars, stacks of harmonies, all with sequenced rhythms that gently push Gallagher right into the mainstream of modern music circa 2009. Maybe it’s not exactly modern, but it’s closer than Gallagher has been in the past.
The team of producers on Why Me? Why Not. helps refine Gallagher’s sonic signatures, but it also pushes him into adult-alternative territory. Which means that Liam, the last great rock singer of the 20th century, is now a pop vocalist. Age has softened his rasp, a change he modulates by singing with precision, not abandon. It can be pleasurable to hear him sing with such restraint—he’s turning into a nuanced ballad singer, as evidenced by the sepia-toned “Once”—but the shift underscores how his musical and emotional range is restrained by his adherence to the past. This fundamental musical conservatism still has its charms, but as he gets older, it’s beginning to be overwhelmed by nostalgia. Where Liam Gallagher once yearned for years he never experienced, he’s now pining for his glory days, a shift that gives his purportedly friendly music an accidentally pensive undercurrent. Despite the shiny, bright surfaces, what’s left unspoken is that Liam is not quite ready to admit that he’s already had the time of his life and is not quite sure what to do next. | 2019-09-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-09-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Warner Bros. | September 24, 2019 | 6.3 | 881957d7-3d2e-4f1f-9ffd-25897d00d08d | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
Six years after leaving Wolf Eyes, Aaron Dilloway releases a collection that feels like a major statement, even if it's made of wordless, sometimes harsh noise. | Six years after leaving Wolf Eyes, Aaron Dilloway releases a collection that feels like a major statement, even if it's made of wordless, sometimes harsh noise. | Aaron Dilloway: Modern Jester | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16330-modern-jester/ | Modern Jester | It's been six years since Aaron Dilloway left Wolf Eyes, and he spent half that time making Modern Jester. That's not all he's done-- he's been involved in tons of other releases too, with my favorite being either 2007's rattling Chain Shot or 2008's The Squid, a collaboration with like-minded noise pal C. Spencer Yeh. But in terms of scope and ambition, Modern Jester is Dilloway's War and Peace. It covers practically all of his sonic obsessions, stretching them to lengths at which he can explore every detail and tangent. The result-- seven pieces encompassing four sides of vinyl-- feels like a major statement, even if it's made of wordless, sometimes harsh noise.
What exactly is Dilloway trying to say? That's open to interpretation, which is probably his intention. He's into ambiguity, both musically and discographically (he already released a tape called Modern Jester back in 2008, though only one track from that survives here). But as amorphous as his message may be, it's always about the power and attraction of loops. Each track here features some kind of repetitive cycle, whether it's off in the distance or up in your face. Some are lopsided and woozy; others are sharp and punchy; still others are so subtle they're more like ambient atmospheres or dense drones. But dig in deep enough, and you'll find Dilloway repeating some sound, whether miniscule or massive.
Those sounds flow together so seamlessly that he's often like a noise DJ, beat-matching his loops so it's hard to tell where each begins and ends. Aptly enough, the piece where he does that best is called "Body Chaos", a 19-minute journey taking up all of side two. Portions are like an alternate-universe dance track, as noises melt into each other, burst into anarchic climaxes, then recede into sparse echo. When Dilloway settles into that steady mode, Modern Jester becomes a travelogue where words and pictures are replaced by sonic textures.
Such naturalism makes sense given Dilloway's obsession with field recordings. He originally left Wolf Eyes to live in Kathmandu, where he amassed an archive of real-life audio. He released some of it in the fascinating 4xCD-R box set Sounds of Nepal, but he's also used it throughout his solo recordings, and I suspect parts are embedded in Modern Jester. Many moments feel environmental-- at points I imagine a train rolling down tracks, a printing press clacking out sheets of paper, and a power plant chugging smoke into the sky. And even when his music sounds more like a broken circuit or a skipping record, it has the primacy of life's routines-- the way the world seems to loop around you in repetitive patterns as you navigate your way through it.
That universality doesn't mean this album is for everyone. It takes some stamina to get lost in these lengthy sound essays. But then Dilloway has never done anything the easy way. If he tried to make his music more accessible, it would likely lose its core power. Instead, he's supremely patient, and he wants you to be, too. If you're up for it, Modern Jester rewards that patience infinitely. | 2012-02-27T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2012-02-27T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Experimental | Hanson | February 27, 2012 | 7.7 | 8820d47b-0969-4a52-83a5-1dd0fb1f759b | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
On her first independent release, the pop star pivots to tamer themes and gives more lethargic performances, losing a lot of her spark in the process. | On her first independent release, the pop star pivots to tamer themes and gives more lethargic performances, losing a lot of her spark in the process. | Tove Lo: Dirt Femme | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tove-lo-dirt-femme/ | Dirt Femme | Dirt Femme is the first Tove Lo album you can play for your grandparents. It’s also her first independent release, which makes the family-friendly tone all the more confounding. On her major label records, Tove Lo blew past the boundaries of respectability: she sped down a highway getting head from a Muppet in the music video for “Disco Tits” and somehow got Universal to pay for it. Now, in apparent full creative control, the most explicit lyric she can muster is, “I prepared for tonight/Ate a pineapple slice for you.” It’s a mere wink from an artist better known for flashing her audience.
Why the shift? Tove Lo married producer Charlie Twaddle in 2020, but this album is no chronicle of newlywed sex. “I’m a pansexual woman married to a straight man,” she said when she announced Dirt Femme. This can be a lonely position for many queer women, who contend with assimilation into the heterosexual mainstream as well as “we get it christa you lived in madrid”-style exile from the queer community. Many tracks find Tove Lo struggling to bolster her own identity. “You’re the love of my life,” she sings, on the Soft Cell-sounding “Suburbia,” “but I can’t be your Stepford wife.” She worries about being obliterated by Hollywood (“Attention Whore”) and disordered eating (“Grapefruit”) but devotes most tracks to serious, stone-faced heteropessimism.
Sex is no longer a playground for Tove Lo, but a drama with life-and-death stakes. There is nothing like the breezy “Glad He’s Gone” or the gum-snapping “Cool Girl” on Dirt Femme. Instead, she offers track after track about the cruelties—and lethalities—of modern love. On synth-pop opener “No One Dies From Love,” she muses, “Guess we’ll be the first.” A corny reverb effect ruins the chorus, just as a Hot Butter (or Crazy Frog) sample sinks single “2 Die 4.” Amid amphibian riffs, Tove Lo and her lover disregard mortality, dancing at midnight on busy motorways. “True Romance,” an homage to the Quentin Tarantino script, manages to make a blown-out Bonnie and Clyde fantasy boring. Tove Lo delivers lyrics about killing and dying for love at the very outer limit of her belt, straining, never varying her volume to build tension. You can hear her gasping for breath between lines. Gone are Tove Lo’s upbeat odes to the little death; these days, her lyrics are genuinely fearful of the real thing.
Tove Lo’s collaborators do her few favors. Producer OzGo, who helmed “2 Die 4,” sanitizes her sexual yearning just as he buffed Marina’s moody edges on the lackluster Love + Fear. Rapper Channel Tres offers a pat verse on “Attention Whore” that adds about as much as Colby O’Donis did to “Just Dance.” Folk duo First Aid Kit are a funny match on the duet “Cute and Cruel,” not blending with Tove Lo’s electro-pop sensibility but keeping the song stuck firmly between gears. SG Lewis, who produced Dua Lipa’s “Hallucinate,” brings a fun energy to “Call on Me” and “Pineapple Slice,” but Ali Payami turns “I’m to Blame” into a country-pop ballad so weak Taylor Swift would have left it in the vault.
Tove Lo herself often sounds lethargic while singing these songs. She is contending with far more serious subject matter here than on, say, Sunshine Kitty; she is not enjoying herself. She is less daring, less awake, less alive to the pleasures of sex and love than she ever has been. When she sings, “I gotta get out of bed/I need a good kick/A kick in the head,” it’s easy to sympathize. It’s even easier to agree. | 2022-10-31T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2022-10-31T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Pretty Swede / Mtheory | October 31, 2022 | 5.4 | 88224d30-9f82-4af9-b630-c6d430ad4fdf | Peyton Thomas | https://pitchfork.com/staff/peyton-thomas/ | |
The singer's full-length follow-up to her influential 2011 album On a Mission finds her trying to write a new chapter in the story of post-millennial British pop: the artist who exploded out of the London underground and then crafted a sustainable career on her own terms, without relying on newer trends or reliable pop heavyweights. | The singer's full-length follow-up to her influential 2011 album On a Mission finds her trying to write a new chapter in the story of post-millennial British pop: the artist who exploded out of the London underground and then crafted a sustainable career on her own terms, without relying on newer trends or reliable pop heavyweights. | Katy B: Little Red | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18907-katy-b-little-red/ | Little Red | In the grand narrative of post-millenial British pop, Katy B is a crucial plot point. London’s culture of pirate radio stations has produced some of the world’s most vital music over this period, but those scenes—be it garage, grime, dubstep, or funky house—inevitably faced the glass ceiling that is the country’s pop charts. To be sure, tracks from the underground did eventually hit big: garage architect Artful Dodger scored massive pop hits with Craig David, while Dizzee Rascal and Wiley did the same for grime. But none of those breakthroughs were as smooth or as sudden as that of the singer Kathleen Brien, whose debut single, “Katy on a Mission”, shot straight out of the funky scene into the top five.
In doing so, she set the precedent for the rapid rise of artists like Jessie Ware, Disclosure, and Rudimental, the latter two of which defined British pop music in 2013 while also making quicker and more legitimate inroads in America than any of their peers before them. Katy certainly benefited from the groundwork laid by others over the years, but she proved that full-on pop stardom could be immediate. But now she is trying to write a new chapter: the artist who exploded out of the London underground and then crafted a sustainable career on her own terms, without relying on newer trends or reliable pop heavyweights.
Well, that second part is more like 98% true. Two songs on her sophomore album, Little Red, find Katy B collaborating with Guy Chambers, the co-architect of obscenely massive singles and albums by Robbie Williams. But you wouldn’t know that without looking closely at the credits; Little Red is purely the work of a singer redefining her voice. Though it can initially feel understated and even closed off, with repeated listens it detaches Katy B from a specific sound and establishes her as a pop star with a coherent point of view.
The most visible example of this, if not quite the best, is the current single “Crying For No Reason”, one of the cuts co-written with Chambers. A ballad that threatens to blossom into a disco song but never does, it'd be hailed as perfectly left-field if it was Adele’s comeback single (and it could be). But in the context of Katy’s career, it strips away the thump of house that has been her essence. She chooses to let the single live or die on her ability to sell the song vocally, and the soft grace with which she hits the slowly escalating notes is something like watching a gymnast: Katy steps carefully but with strength, never launching herself into the chorus but instead opting for a churning build. Her stunning performance of the track on Graham Norton’s late night show is a study in confidence and the power of tension.
Like “Crying For No Reason”, Little Red hangs on moments that reveal themselves over time. “All My Lovin’” sounds at first like one of her most generic songs, a ballad that flirts with American dubstep’s crushing drops. But the way Katy’s vocals rise out of the chorus is sublime, and by the time the synths start to slyly sound like a vocoder, it's one of the album's standouts. “Tumbling Down” is another mid-tempo song, but Katy sings the chorus melody like a feather slowly fluttering to the ground.
There are bangers, too. “Aaliyah”, the Ware duet carried over from Katy’s late-2012 Danger EP, is her most smartly-written song but also works as pure dancefloor euphoria. On “Everything”, Katy dons the crown of the diva over a tech house beat, and there she finds the sweet spot where yearning and control meet. Then there's “Emotions”, the album’s showstopper. It is yet another ballad, but this one turns up the drama almost immediately, with big synth stabs and tightly coiled strings. The climax is the one point where Little Red suddenly seems to become fully aware of the broader musical context: the drum'n'bass beat nods toward Rudimental smashes like “Waiting All Night”, but “Emotions” is constructed as a slow burn and thus has much more emotional resonance.
All that said, Little Red may be seen as a slight step down by many, and that’s not without reason. The album kicks off with the perfectly adequate but hardly spectacular duo of “Next Thing” and “5 AM”; “Sapphire Blue” and “Still” are two more ballads that sandwich “Emotions” and neither quite reveal their charms, with “Still” being particularly gloopy in a Celine Dion way. And though Katy has potentially charted the course for the rest of her career with Little Red, it lacks the inherent thrill of its predecessor On a Mission, an album of UK dance sounds aimed squarely at the top of the charts.
Still, this is a deft step for Katy B. She sheds the schoolgirl innocence that accented her debut and dives deeper into herself, probing love, lust, sorrow, glee, and power dynamics from all angles. Little Red is not the best album it could have been—a few of the bonus tracks should have made the album proper—but Katy displays a vision for her career that suggests an exciting future. | 2014-02-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2014-02-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic / Rock | Columbia | February 10, 2014 | 7.8 | 8825e039-c869-49f7-a03e-bb002dc86c80 | Jordan Sargent | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jordan-sargent/ | null |
The fourth volume in the endlessly innovative group’s long-running series reminds us that they often dropped their best work away from their full-lengths. | The fourth volume in the endlessly innovative group’s long-running series reminds us that they often dropped their best work away from their full-lengths. | Stereolab: Electrically Possessed (Switched On Vol. 4) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/stereolab-electrically-possessed-switched-on-vol-4/ | Electrically Possessed (Switched On Vol. 4) | In his book Retromania, writer (and occasional Pitchfork contributor) Simon Reynolds called Stereolab “the ultimate record-collection rockers” to describe their crate-digging, obscurantist aesthetic. But the label also applies to the group’s approach to releasing its own music. Stereolab’s discography is littered with singles, limited-release EPs, and compilation appearances—manna for their fellow vinyl junkies. The band gathered up this non-LP material for a series called Switched On. Stereolab released three such collections through the ’90s and, to cap off their recent run of deluxe album reissues, have put together a fourth volume, subtitled Electrically Possessed.
The sneaky secret that these comps keep revealing is that the group often dropped some of their best work away from their full-lengths. Bouncy fan favorite “Lo Boob Oscillator” first appeared on a 1993 single on Sub Pop, and the lush soundtrack Stereolab created for sculptor Charles Long’s exhibition The Amorphous Body Study Center was originally only available to purchase at New York’s Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.
Switched On Vol. 4 is no exception. Primarily made up of work Stereolab released from 1999 until their initial hiatus in 2009, this compilation is a bounty of highlights from a rich period when Tim Gane was writing pop songs with multi-layered, almost-proggy arrangements to better support frontwoman Lætitia Sadier’s dense sociopolitical lyrics.
The highlight of this compilation is the band’s 2000 EP The First of the Microbe Hunters. Recording during a particularly fruitful creative stretch that yielded two brilliant full-lengths (1999’s Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night and 2001’s Sound-Dust), it’s a bubbly, groove-heavy rush. The steady motorik drive and incessant marimba melody of “Outer Bongolia” is almost trance-inducing, but reality keeps intruding via a clash of synthesizer and electric piano solos. On “Household Names” and “Barock-Plastic,” Gane, drummer Andy Ramsay, and bassist Simon Johns lay into Meters-like breakbeats that dovetail neatly with the warmth of Sadier’s vocals.
Microbe Hunters proved to be an evolutionary step for Stereolab, bridging the jazzy sprawl of Cobras and Sound-Dust’s thick, complex pop. The best of the tracks that make up the rest of Electrically come from this same time period. “The Super It,” originally found on the 1999 tour single The Underground Is Coming, predicted the sound of Microbe Hunters with its loping funk rhythm and the gloriously knotted-up vocals of Sadier and the late Mary Hansen.
That same year saw the release of “Calimero,” a collaboration with French vocalist Brigitte Fontaine that sounds like an effort to condense Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson into six minutes. And “Free Witch and No Bra Queen,” one of two songs released on a 2001 single, echoes Sound-Dust’s multi-part compositions. It starts with a looped sample of a jazz record that falls out of sync with itself a la Steve Reich’s “It’s Gonna Rain” before smash-cutting to a bit of swinging psych pop that feels constructed from stray pieces of other Stereolab tunes.
Gane would return to this concept of spot-welding two dissimilar sounding songs together throughout Stereolab’s pre-hiatus period, on tracks like “Captain Easychord” and throughout the 2003 EP Instant 0 in the Universe. That extends to work like “Solar Throw-Away,” from a 2006 tour single, which shifts from a canter to a skip to a disco strut, and the marvelous “Dimension M2,” which begins and ends as a Giorgio Moroder homage with a trudging breakdown in the middle. Somehow, even at their most abrupt, Gane makes these transitions feel logical.
As an odds and sods collection, Electrically Possessed naturally doesn’t move along the same deliberate course as a proper album, at least once you get beyond Microbe Hunters. The material compiled here isn’t sequenced chronologically, so the mood and sound jumps from track to track and there are a small number of nonessential inclusions, like a previously unreleased, demo-quality snippet from the Dots and Loops sessions.
But even in this scattershot form, what’s remarkable about this edition of Switched On is how Stereolab was able to maintain such consistency even as they kept cranking out albums and EPs, enduring the death of singer Mary Hansen in 2002 and the dissolution of Gane and Sadier’s romantic partnership. And now that the band has resumed activity along with the reissue of seven of their studio albums, Electrically Possessed feels like a final cleaning of the archives that will hopefully inspire them to look ahead to new horizons.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-27T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-27T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Warp / Duophonic UHF Disks | February 27, 2021 | 7.9 | 88307c32-6711-47f5-928c-bd386af06cd1 | Robert Ham | https://pitchfork.com/staff/robert-ham/ | |
Long, also known as the ambient artist Celer, uses the static meter of deep house to explore themes of inertia and stasis in dance music, politics, and society. | Long, also known as the ambient artist Celer, uses the static meter of deep house to explore themes of inertia and stasis in dance music, politics, and society. | Will Long: Long Trax 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/will-long-long-trax-2/ | Long Trax 2 | For the past couple of years, Will Long has kept up a steady stream of deep-house releases for labels like DJ Sprinkles’ Comatonse Recordings and Smalltown Supersound, and his debut album, 2016’s Long Trax, was mirrored by Sprinkles' own album-length remix. But Long also releases music as Celer and boasts a formidable discography (both solo and with his late wife, Danielle Baquet-Long) totaling over 120 albums worth of ambient abstraction.
It’s that project’s sensibility of restraint and narrowed parameters that drifts over to Long Trax 2, where Long uses the seemingly unchanging meter of deep house to explore themes of inertia and stasis as they pertain to politics, dance music, and society at large. That’s a lot of heavy lifting for some canned claps, a steady kick, sustained chords, and judiciously sprinkled vocal samples to carry, but Long prefers casting a spell with a minimal amount of materials. Across six tracks that clock in at over an hour in total, Long Trax 2 tends to melt in and out of the background, making it an ambient album that almost makes you want to wiggle a little, or a house album content to exist as wallpaper.
In moving away from micro-edition ambient releases and toward programmed dance beats, Long still has a ways to go to get to the level of someone like Theo Parrish or Kenny Dixon Jr., producers who can make something revelatory out of the sparest of kit sounds. “You Know?” is nearly 10 minutes of a stiff, metronomic beat and soft-focus keys that lilt upward and back in the mix. It’s a track that seems unwilling to budge toward dance music’s sense of release; instead it offers something as gauzy and indistinct as a throw pillow’s stuffing. A muffled vocal sample from Jean-Michel Basquiat rustles just beneath the surface, all but inaudible except for the line, “I don’t remember.” It’s a fitting encapsulation of the music itself: a Lethean track that fades away having left little distinct impression.
Long strikes the best balance on the centerpiece “The Struggles, the Difficulties.” The elements—melancholy chords and a beat as low-key and incessant as a ringed finger on a wooden desk—sound like what Boards of Canada might utilize if they were making deep house. As the chords billow upwards, they sound less like a pleasant, drifting cloud and more like an overcast pall. “The struggles, the difficulties, that’s supposed to be in the past,” pleads Angela Davis, her inflection expressing dismay at the ways that racism, injustice, poverty, and suffering continue to shadow us at every turn.
There’s a nonchalant air to the way that Long triggers these samples. When Richard Pryor says, “Sorry, Jack” in the midst of “That’s the Way It Goes,” you can almost hear the shrug emoji in the spaces in between. Yet there’s also a hefty sense of ambition in making a house track featuring the 44th president of the United States saying, “Nothing’s changed.” That 11-minute track summarizes Long’s political outlook in two succinct words, even as he drops in other snippets of Barack Obama’s voice (“Should we pretend that we’ve got a colorblind society?”; “I’m a very angry man”). The detached tone feels telling, and Long’s backdrop—a basic grid of kick and claps—makes these statements feel all the more perplexed and uncertain. Which is to say, if you wake up daily in 2018 and feel borderline despair and a cosmic sense of futility, hearing the former most powerful man in the free world say again and again, “Nothing’s changed,” won’t do much to move the needle.
As mellow as Long Trax 2 presents itself, there is ultimately something that feels disingenuous. Drawing on African-American voices—be they famous artists or members of the Black Panthers and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—and sprinkling them atop lethargic and rote deep house (a music originating from the inner cities of Chicago and Detroit), Long ends up draining both the music and the words of their sense of urgency. It seems a damning luxury to drift off to it. | 2018-03-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-03-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Smalltown Supersound | March 19, 2018 | 6.2 | 88310b9e-46d5-405b-8c8f-0e48491d2221 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
The debut LP from this Canadian folk-pop trio radiates immediacy and approachability. | The debut LP from this Canadian folk-pop trio radiates immediacy and approachability. | Loving: If I Am Only My Thoughts | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/loving-if-i-am-only-my-thoughts/ | If I Am Only My Thoughts | The members of Loving bonded during summers spent planting trees in the Canadian wilderness, giving them an origin story like Vampire Weekend meeting at Columbia or Justin Vernon retreating to a Wisconsin cabin to make For Emma, Forever Ago: it’s so vivid you can imagine the band’s music without hearing a single note. For the British Columbia trio, that means simple, sun-dappled folk-pop, like Whitney after a thimbleful of magic mushrooms. Their full-length debut If I Am Only My Thoughts radiates approachability. It’s easy to imagine these songs beaming from a covered porch or a bandstand in your local park, brought to life by the scruffy guys who tend bar around the corner.
After stumbling into a large online fanbase with an EP that collected little more than polished demos, David Parry and Jesse Henderson — the band’s third member is Henderson’s brother, Lucas — retreated to tiny Gabriola Island to write, setting up a recording studio in a home that had belonged to the Hendersons’ late grandmother. It’s hard to imagine a more idyllic setting in which to make music. The British Columbia seaside is as temperate as Canada gets, with towering evergreen forests edging up to serene beaches and sandstone sculptures, and If I Am Only My Thoughts reflects that beauty through its clean, gentle melodies and lack of clutter. The album also radiates a charming spontaneity, a benefit of the band’s decision to record to tape without a great deal of editing or looping; when “A Mirror for Two Voices” begins with a false start and a quick count into its fingerpicked intro, the band feels close enough to touch.
There are moments when it feels like Loving might be capable of offering more than pleasantries. Opener “Visions” is the band’s sturdiest composition, with a slippery structure and an arrangement that slowly adds layers: snappy drums, a glowing Wurlitzer, plush piano chords, liquid guitar leads. (It also features the album’s most compelling lyrics, including a first verse full of clear, definitive images that sounds like an inversion of Big Thief’s “Not.”) The title track begins with sleepy tambourine and twinkling melodies; when the drums finally kick in after a minute, it feels like throwing open barn doors to flood a space with light. And the meditative “Only She Knows” coasts through its final minute on a series of rippling riffs that crest and recede like deep breaths.
All of these highlights feature a moment in which a song’s essence snaps into focus. In many other spots, however, the music simply lacks urgency. There’s no tension simmering beneath the placid surface, no friction to make the compositions stick. The vocals are invariably heavy-lidded and stick to a narrow range, with no harmonies in sight; closing passages meander without introducing new ideas or cutting loose; the lyrics strike a yearning, inquisitive note but mostly settle into existential word salad. Female companions are mentioned every once in a while, formless as ghosts: “You’re standing in the mirror, I’m watching you get dressed,” murmurs Henderson on “A Mirror for Two Voices.” “Your voice is soft and certain as you fumble with the buttons on your chest.”
The result is never less than amiable, but it also tends to slide past, like a pleasant daydream or an afternoon shadow. No one is demanding that Parry and the Henderson brothers demonstrate more ambition than that, but there’s enough here to justify digging deeper. If this album represents their first attempt to move beyond demos, then Loving’s next challenge is to add some substance. | 2020-01-31T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-01-31T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Last Gang | January 31, 2020 | 6.3 | 8846be99-e4c1-4cde-9135-536892ad8b2b | Jamieson Cox | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jamieson-cox/ | |
Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe-- packed with top-quality extras at a low price-- was a near-perfect example of how to reissue an already beloved record. Matador now gives the same treatment to that album's equally classic 1994 follow-up. The result, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins, is a two-disc remastered reissue, featuring 49 total tracks collecting B-sides, comp tracks and outtakes, including 25 unreleased recordings and 11 unheard tracks. | Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe-- packed with top-quality extras at a low price-- was a near-perfect example of how to reissue an already beloved record. Matador now gives the same treatment to that album's equally classic 1994 follow-up. The result, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins, is a two-disc remastered reissue, featuring 49 total tracks collecting B-sides, comp tracks and outtakes, including 25 unreleased recordings and 11 unheard tracks. | Pavement: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6200-crooked-rain-crooked-rain-las-desert-origins/ | Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins | In a 1994 interview with Option magazine, Steve Malkmus recalled his pre-Pavement band Straw Dog opening for Black Flag in Stockton, California. "I was backstage before the show and all those guys, they looked so scary, I was afraid of them," Malkmus told writer Jason Fine. "Like, Greg Ginn was mixing up this stuff in a glass. It was probably just protein powder or some healthy drink, but I thought it was heroin or something." Observing Henry Rollins squeezing a cue ball to pump himself up, Malkmus compared the Sisyphean ritual to smashing your head against a brick wall. "That's what I thought punk was, you know. That's when I knew that maybe I'm just not punk enough."
No maybes about it. The late-1993 press photos that accompany the lavish 62-page booklet included with this heavily augmented 2xCD reissue of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain tell the story. After original drummer Gary Young split earlier in the year and Steve West, Bob Nastanovich and Mark Ibold joined Malkmus and Scott Kannberg, Pavement looked like a scrubbed-up gang of packaging majors in search of a good tailgate party (jolly Nastanovich in U-Mass windbreaker, clean-cut S.M. in puffy red ski jacket; only West's Harry Carey-style specs suggest that these guys might be hanging with New York hipsters).
The dorkily collegiate look was of no concern to Pavement, because to them, appearances never mattered. That's what all the indie bands said back then, of course, even the ones who threw away the twin-blade, let their jeans wear through the knees, flew the flannel, and became world famous. But from the first Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain single ("Cut Your Hair") forward, Pavement, on the verge of the big time, opted out. Who knew why, really? Kannberg would do some soapboxing when pressed in interviews (he wouldn't deal with Rolling Stone because he didn't like how they covered the 80s), but Pavement was never about principles-- at least not ones you could easily name. An anti-fashion statement is still a fashion statement, but Pavement was on another trip. They liked to make fun of rock iconography, but they were smart enough to avoid offering an alternative. You never really knew where Pavement stood on anything, which kept an air of mystery and made their music malleable.
Pavement's sophomore outing does not contain 12 perfect songs but it is close to a perfect album. Each of the best half-dozen-- "Silence Kit", "Elevate Me Later", "Cut Your Hair", "Unfair", "Gold Soundz", and "Range Life"-- contain Malkmus' catchy and highly unusual melodies ("Silence Kit" cribs from Buddy Holly, but even that's an odd gesture) and would be career highlights for most rock bands. But even the songs that aren't necessarily brilliant work well in the context of the album, moving things along in their own way. The Dave Brubeck send-up "5-4=Unity", for example, is a perfect placeholder between two unbelievably great songs. And the closing "Fillmore Jive" ends an album at least partly about the music industry on an appropriately classic rock note, with an extended group-jam coda on par with "Hey Jude". Not many records are this easy to put on in the car and let play start to finish.
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain has been called one of the great California albums, but unlike most records slapped with that label, it avoids dreams and nightmares and focuses on the banal. This is a suburban California album, and since suburbs are exactly the same from Sacto to Levittown, it's an album to which all suburban kids can relate. To us, the imagery of "Elevate Me Later" ("underneath the fake oil burning lamps in the city we forgot to name") and "Range Life" (the kid on the skateboard is coasting through a winding subdivision, not Brooklyn) is instantly familiar.
But really, though Crooked Rain references the burbs and the music biz, with Pavement it's the sound and feel that matter, not the words or themes. Quoting lyrics to get to the heart of Pavement is misguided. Go online and print some out and you'll see that, taken on their own, they're generally meaningless. Read the track-by-track notes S.M. prepared for Melody Maker at the time of the record's release (reprinted in the booklet here) and it's clear just how unknowable these songs are. "Stop Breathin" is about tennis and the Civil War, of course; "Elevate Me Later" is about political correctness; "Heaven Is a Truck" is "loosely based on the singer from Royal Trux." Whatever.
Judging from the several alternate takes of Crooked Rain songs included on Disc Two, it seems that Malkmus tinkered with words constantly, and that the final versions are those sung on the take that wound up in the can. The "I/they don't have no function" bit in "Range Life", which most people take to be a self-deprecating line to let Malkmus off the hook for ragging on the Smashing Pumpkins fans, was probably just a glitch that he didn't want to go back and fix. The early version of "Range Life" recorded with Gary Young (one of eight such unreleased tracks on the 25-track bonus disc) had no such sentiment, and lyrics-wise, it's a completely different song. "Ell Ess Two", an early version of "Elevate Me Later" from the Young sessions, is also completely different and yet unintelligible in the same way. It's the way words sound and the way Malkmus sings them that gives his songs meaning.
The remainder of the first disc is given over to the B-sides and compilation songs released during the period. I've always thought Pavement's celebrated B-side prowess to be a tad overrated, but certainly the gorgeous and quiet "Strings of Nashville" is one of the best songs in the band's catalog (love that synthesized traffic whoosh), and "Stare", "Raft", and "Nail Clinic" all rate alongside other original Crooked Rain tracks. The two R.E.M. knocks, on the other hand-- the half-cover of "Camera" and the "Tweeter & the Monkey Man"-style goof "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence"-- are in league with "Haunt You Down" as weeded-out experiments for only the most hardcore fans.
The second disc, containing period unreleased material, is an equally mixed bag that turns up a few true gems. The most anticipated tracks are the first eight, recorded in 1993 with Gary Young and never officially released in any form. "All My Friends" is by far the best of these, and could fairly be called a Pavement classic (it would have fit quite nicely on the Watery, Domestic EP), and "Soiled Little Filly" is almost as good. The three alternate versions of Crooked Rain songs from these sessions ("Ell Ess Two", "Range Life", and "Stop Breathin"), and one later re-recorded for Wowee Zowee ("Flux=Rad") are interesting but ultimately show how Pavement had outgrown Young's primitive studio set-up (speaking of Wowee Zowee, early versions of "Grounded", "Kennel District", and two takes on "Pueblo" were recorded at the New York Crooked Rain sessions as well. Since these are three of Wowee's best songs, this was a fertile period indeed.) Jokey experiments, a few strong songs, a couple instrumentals-- including a welcome no-vox version of "Strings of Nashville"-- and four Peel Sessions tracks round out the generous bonus disc. The perfect dusty trunk hauled down from the attic.
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was my introduction to Pavement and I loved it instantly. I was traveling a lot in '92 and '93 and was rarely close to a stereo, so somehow Slanted & Enchanted never made it on my radar. When I finally bought S&E;, my first thought was, all right, sweet, some of these songs are as good as the ones on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. There's no question that S&E; is a fantastic record, but to me, parts of it sound like Pavement wearing a costume. Listen to the brilliant "Summer Babe" and know that Malkmus loves Lou Reed, but East Coast cool ultimately isn't his style. On Crooked Rain, Pavement became a band, opened up (as much as they ever could, anyway), and sounded like themselves: smart, funny, confident, West Coast, suburban. The confidence was key. Malkmus and Kannberg grew up loving bands loved by critics, and in their short history, the critics couldn't stop talking about them. In 1994, they were ready to take on the world, but chose to do so in their own quiet and unforgettable way. | 2004-10-25T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2004-10-25T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Matador | October 25, 2004 | 10 | 8847c617-b53c-47ef-ab8b-fef4faedb16b | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
On their second album, the UK post-punks embrace a more playful, dynamic sound, while acerbic frontman James Smith trades caricature for self-reflection. | On their second album, the UK post-punks embrace a more playful, dynamic sound, while acerbic frontman James Smith trades caricature for self-reflection. | Yard Act: Where’s My Utopia? | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yard-act-wheres-my-utopia/ | Where’s My Utopia? | A cast of lager-swilling characters populates UK post-punk revivalists Yard Act’s songs. On their Mercury-nominated 2022 debut album, The Overload, frontman James Smith took on the perspective of a small-time estate agent who had given up on his dreams of being an international footballer, a greedy landlord named Graeme, and even Yard Act’s own critics, while casting Harry Potter actor David Thewlis to replace him in the “100% Endurance” video. But on the band’s second album, Where’s My Utopia?, Smith turns the focus of his spoken-word lyrics on himself.
His lens has been shifting for a while: In the interim between albums, the band released “The Trench Coat Museum,” an eight-minute caper in which Smith mused on the history of the military-inspired outerwear—a post-punk trope he had in fact recently given up, having come to see something cartoonish in the image it projected. “That’s the thing about pop culture,” he said: “Oversized characters get more attention. I was ready to step away from that because I didn’t want to be trapped by it.” Although Where’s My Utopia? ostensibly began as a concept album about one of U2’s roadies, Smith eventually abandoned that framework—as well as the arch satire of the first album—in favor of vulnerability and candor.
Smith’s self-reflection is bolstered by a more confident, free-roaming sound. Recruiting another oversized cartoon character in the form of Gorillaz’s Remi Kabaka Jr., who handles production, the record fizzes and grooves with fresh energy, borrowing strokes from hip-hop, Afrobeat, and funk. Where Yard Act were previously best known for snarling post-punk minimalism, here they lean into a bass-driven strut on “Dream Job,” are buoyed by waves of bubbling synths and children’s voices on “Grifter’s Grief,” and bask in the sunset glow of powerful backing singers on the rapturous “A Vineyard for the North.” At every turn, they’re more ambitiously lavish, sounding less like their fellow British post-post-punks than genre-spanning contortionists like Beck, LCD Soundsystem, and Gorillaz. But Smith’s lyrics retain their gritty realism in casually evocative storytelling that lands somewhere between Jarvis Cocker, Mike Skinner, and your mate in the pub. Smith’s vivid observations often seem designed to undercut the record’s luxurious production: In one vignette, over a beachy flourish of guitar, he relays dropping a saliva-coated candy on the floor as a child, and the disappointment of finding it inedible, covered in old crumbs and dead skin.
Even when they take themselves more seriously, Yard Act are never self-serious. Despite the fact that it primarily focuses on the pitfalls of living your “dream job”—hardly new territory for a breakout band’s second album, whether self-aware or not—Where’s My Utopia? manages enough genuine pop finesse and laugh-out-loud punchlines to keep the cliché from grating. On the boisterous “We Make Hits,” Smith traces the band’s origin story, poking fun at their willingness to sell out with an anthemic, hand-clapping chorus that joyfully appropriates the maximalism of indie sleaze. (And if it isn’t an actual hit, Smith hedges, “We were being ironic.”) The more downbeat, grunge-y “Petroleum” addresses an infamous 2023 incident in which Smith turned on his unreceptive crowd during a show at the UK seaside town of Bognor Regis. It may not be the most sympathetic premise—successful rock frontman belatedly feels bad for slagging off his audience—but the song’s relentless groove and layers of Auto-Tuned vocals tell a bodily tale of the anxiety of maintaining a public image.
Where Smith is most compelling, though, is where he turns his attention to knottier subjects that resist simple resolution. On “Down by the Stream” he looks scathingly at his own history as a childhood bully over a clattering hip-hop beat. Halfway through, the song breaks open into a cavernous, beatless reflection on the cycle of abuse, bristling with confusion, anger, and regret. The record’s apex is “Blackpool Illuminations,” Smith’s spoken-word tale of a childhood injury sustained at the northern English seaside town’s annual seafront light show. At over seven minutes long, winding through jazz flute, taut funk bass, and cinematic strings, Smith’s existential magnum opus takes a whistlestop journey from his own childhood to his new role as a parent to his son.
“Are you making this up?” asks an incredulous therapist, also played by Smith, toward the end of the song. “Er, some of it, yeah, why?” he responds. Smith may have abandoned his trench-coat persona in favor of a more honest self-portrait, but the line between the authentic self and the larger-than-life character remains provocatively fuzzy. | 2024-03-13T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2024-03-13T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Island | March 13, 2024 | 7.5 | 885f641b-5189-41ed-bc6c-7cbcf862ac41 | Aimee Cliff | https://pitchfork.com/staff/aimee-cliff/ | |
Marnie Stern's fourth album is an extension of the transition that began on her 2010 self-titled record toward a more controlled, subdued sound. Marnia is still aggressive, busy, and bright, but new drummer Kid Millions gives it a welcome sway, and the relative calm lets Stern's vulnerability shine through. | Marnie Stern's fourth album is an extension of the transition that began on her 2010 self-titled record toward a more controlled, subdued sound. Marnia is still aggressive, busy, and bright, but new drummer Kid Millions gives it a welcome sway, and the relative calm lets Stern's vulnerability shine through. | Marnie Stern: The Chronicles of Marnia | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17721-marnie-stern-the-chronicles-of-marnia/ | The Chronicles of Marnia | Halfway through "Proof of Life", from Marnie Stern's fourth album, The Chronicles of Marnia, she makes an admission she's never made on record before: "I am running out of energy." Her voice is uncharacteristically low, her explosive finger-tapping guitar conspicuously absent. Instead, a piano blocks out melancholy chords over a drum fill that sounds like boulders cascading down a hillside. "Give me a sign," she pleads, exhausted. "Give me a sign."
Two minutes later, she has moved on to a song called "Hell Yes". If Marnie Stern has a cycle, it's this: Fall down, then pick yourself back up-- and up! And up! And UP! Her music-- a frantic, precise sound that can resemble excerpts of Van Halen looped at high speeds-- combats bottomless self-doubt with limitless hope. Nearly every song in her catalog is some reiteration of the idea that even you can do it, probably with an exclamation point. Talking to The N**ew Yorker about her guitar technique in 2011, she said, "Tapping is actually a way of cheating, since you're using both of your hands." Then, like a guru trying to explain the simplicity of her secret to a talk-show audience, she added, "It makes things a lot easier!"
The Chronicles of Marnia is an extension of the transition she started on 2010's Marnie Stern toward a more controlled, more subdued sound. Not that any of her music is a good reference point for "controlled" or "subdued." Marnia still sounds like Marnie Stern: aggressive, busy, bright, with death-defying highs and perilous lows. But where she often used to shriek, now she sometimes sighs, and the frantic, start-stop quality of her early songs has given way to something more like a swoon.
Part of the relative calm on Marnia has to do with personnel change. Until now, she's worked with drummer Zach Hill, first of Hella and most recently of Death Grips; on Marnia, she's backed by Kid Millions, who mostly plays with Brooklyn drone and psych-rock fixture Oneida. Millions plays like a firework display: Big, dazzling and dangerous, but very well coordinated. Hill's approach-- intoxicating as it is-- is more like a nailbomb in a concrete-block basement. Compared to the sway of Marnia, the sputtering sound of 2007's In Advance of the Broken Arm has as much groove as a three-legged race.
For all her positive mental attitudes, Marnie Stern's music is intensely vulnerable, a quality that has always been hinted at in her music but that Marnia makes much clearer. Even in the midst of its most festive moments, like the conga-line rhythms of "Noonan", she's drawn to piercing, almost childlike questions: "Don't you want to be somebody?" Just as she and Millions start to build the vicious "You Don't Turn Down", the drums flare out and the curtain drops. "'What took you so long?' they said out loud," she sings alone. "'Got to get obsessed and stay there now'"-- an image of an artist embarrassed that they aren't capable of kicking as much ass as someone else would like. But the root of Stern's weakness is also the root of her power: The impression that she could fall apart at any second wouldn't be nearly as dramatic if she wasn't moving so dangerously fast.
Under all the noise on Marnie Stern’s albums there has always been a need for some kind of quiet: For the thoughts to stop cycling, for the silence to take over, for the danger, real or imagined, to be replaced by a sense of safety. Though her inspirations tend mostly toward mid-1980s triumph rock and the more agitated end of indie (Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Hella), her most original music sounds like snack-sized versions of Indian raga or Philip Glass: by building intensity until it reaches a peak so humming and hypnotic that the busyness of it turns into some kind of mystical autopilot. It makes sense that her lyrics have been strewn with the kind of inspirational talk that usually applies to athletes: Her music is the runner's high, the moment when physical intensity turns into an almost meditative state.
Until now, Stern has lived an artistic double life, treated like a sensitive singer-songwriter for her persona and some posthuman techno-wizard for the way she plays a guitar. On every album since her debut, these two parts of her have come closer together. On Marnia, they’re one. "Close your eyes," she sings over the grand, noisy waltz of "Still Moving". "Nobody knows when it's gonna be. Nobody knows when it's gonna be. Close your eyes," she repeats, consoling, for the first time in song, someone other than herself.
"Maturity" is a hackneyed trope in songwriting, not to mention a word that doesn't quite suit a grown woman who periodically blogs under the name Marnie's fagina. But Marnia isn't the single touch that shatters, it's the long, steady stare that gives way to embrace. Not obsession, as she puts it on "You Don't Turn Down", but something deeper, solemn, and more lasting. | 2013-03-20T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2013-03-20T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rock | Kill Rock Stars | March 20, 2013 | 8 | 8869ee1f-8289-4e79-88b2-5a58a47aef48 | Mike Powell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mike-powell/ | null |
The West Virginia band Rozwell Kid play power pop with a potentially divisive sense of humor, but their latest album is full of pleasingly straightforward hooks. | The West Virginia band Rozwell Kid play power pop with a potentially divisive sense of humor, but their latest album is full of pleasingly straightforward hooks. | Rozwell Kid: Precious Art | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rozwell-kid-precious-art/ | Precious Art | The West Virginia quartet Rozwell Kid play power pop that recalls Weezer—their most frequently cited influence by far—as much as the sitcom humor of early Fountains of Wayne or Teenage Fanclub’s fuzzed-out jangle. But as with any band who has earned a Weezer comparison, its persistence owes to a collective desire to see someone fill a dwindling role: lovable and nerdy, melodic but not pop, fluent in hair metal tropes without coming off as ironic. Based on those specs, Rozwell Kid fit the profile more than just about any other band in existence. After identifying their strengths over three albums, Precious Art is Rozwell Kid’s first high-profile release—the kind of album that could make prospective new fans wonder just where this band has been all their lives.
Up until now, it took seeing Rozwell Kid live to truly get them. Over the past three years, they’ve opened for just about every single critically-acclaimed pop-punk or emo band in existence, and the simplicity of their hooks has offered a contrast. When playing with the Hotelier or the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Rozwell Kid songs like “Kangaroo Pocket” and “Magic Eye” spoke for uncomplicated singalongs. And even among similarly straightforward bands, Rozwell Kid came off as significantly less aggro—their second LP was named Unmacho, after all. In 2016, they were the middle act in a run with Charly Bliss and PUP and strangely enough, Precious Art opener “Wendy’s Trash Can” is the exact midpoint between the respective leadoff tracks on those bands’ most recent albums. On it, Rozwell Kid frontman Jordan Hudkins hops in a getaway car but can’t escape the tyrannical boredom of touring, and yet, there isn’t a shred of angst or aggression among the Brit-pop harmonies and double-guitar leads. There is, however, at least three hooks sticky enough to last 10 hours, with or without the actual 10-hour version of the song.
Tensions and emotions run high throughout Precious Art, but the stakes do not. Hudkins recently translated the entire album through GIFs; a dramatic piano ballad presumably soundtracks their fruitless search for a parking space at SXSW. Not a single thing on the album qualifies as unequivocally happy, though every shiftless, aimless, or hopeless moment is deflected by food metaphors, semi-ephemera of the 1990s, and blinding melodies that never strive to become ego-driven anthems. Anyone who demands that rock bands act, look, or sound cool even in the slightest probably won’t make it five seconds through “Booger”—a very graphic account of Hudkins’ songs-for-the-dumped emotional bottom. Those that do are treated to a minute-long interlude that exists solely for a punchline that allows Hudkins to bark like a dog.
Rozwell Kid’s humor could be divisive, even when it’s less slapstick. Maybe Hudkins’ life—as depicted in these songs—really is an endless battle of countering depression with “SeaQuest” reruns, MadTV, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Wendy’s, omelets, and velvet blacklight posters. But Rozwell Kid’s attempts to replicate the quintessence of their most frequently quoted lyric—“‘Simpsons’ season three and a thing of hummus/This is all I need/I’m, like, super low-maintenance”—can feel like pandering by the time Hudkins sings, “all I want is to be at home with you/eatin’ tacos and watching UHF on DVD” on what’s otherwise a triumphant lead single. It could very well be his truth, but it can’t help but sound like an attempt at a “quirky” Tinder bio.
The gifts of Precious Art are more apparent when comedy shades the melody instead of overshadowing it. That isn’t to say that Rozwell Kid need to get serious—Hudkins’ self-deprecation adds grit to the bubblegum of “Blow It,” “Total Mess,” and “Boomerang.” And yet, the most serious song on Precious Art results in the only one that really does sound like Weezer. Rozwell Kid close out the festivities with a nearly six-minute power ballad that touches on familial discord like “Say It Ain’t So” (“your parents never seem to care”) and the dynamic indulgences of “Only in Dreams.” Yet, it’s still very much a Rozwell Kid song. For one, its title is “Michael Keaton” and the last few minutes are filled with harmonized guitar solos and multiple false endings designed for the sustained guitar poses that have won over drunken crowds for the past decade. It’s their version of art, but they’re not going to get precious about it. | 2017-06-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-06-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | SideOneDummy | June 27, 2017 | 7.4 | 886eab4e-db20-4dc8-89a8-df41adec1129 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
When hip-hop was split between being an industry force or a niche subculture, the New Jersey trio’s second album proved they could bridge the gap between commercial success and artistic credibility. | When hip-hop was split between being an industry force or a niche subculture, the New Jersey trio’s second album proved they could bridge the gap between commercial success and artistic credibility. | Naughty by Nature: 19 Naughty III (30th Anniversary) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/naughty-by-nature-19-naughty-iii-30th-anniversary/ | 19 Naughty III (30th Anniversary) | With four albums neatly spanning the 1990s, Naughty By Nature is bound in the sonic and cultural fabric of that decade. The group’s original lineup supplied grim portraits of urban decay, visions pithy enough to be packaged and sold to the masses. But for a few years, the New Jersey trio saw into the future. Even if “O.P.P.” now feels like a lab-tested novelty hit—the headlong enunciation, the call-and-response chorus, the verse for the fellas, the verse for the ladies—it was a revelation in 1991. The song’s Jackson 5 sample is offset by winking innuendo; rather than leaning into the buttery groove or courting controversy outright, frontman Treach pursues a sly middle path. A leering toast to infidelity, it’s the sort of artifact the older kids on the school bus had to explain.
At a juncture where hip-hop might have become a commercial force or a niche subculture, Naughty By Nature visualized a global movement and an inclusive community. They also sensed a need for gatekeeping. “Hip Hop Hooray,” the lead single from 19 Naughty III, name-checks critical darlings Nice and Smooth, A Tribe Called Quest, and Leaders of the New School, lauding them over household names like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. Ensuring hip-hop’s health would mean celebrating its triumphs while defending it from interlopers, and 19 Naughty III put a stake in the ground. It supposes a seemingly irreconcilable gulf between credibility and record sales—a gap that, time and again, the trio managed to bridge. NBN perceived rap’s cultural and political ascendance, but they couldn’t have anticipated its looming decentralization.
Grousing about sellouts is the fifth pillar of hip-hop; take EPMD’s finger-wagging “Crossover,” which scaled the Billboard charts six months before “Hip Hop Hooray.” On 19 Naughty III ’s second single “It’s On,” Vinnie denounces Sir Mix-a-Lot, whose “Baby Got Back” spent five weeks atop the Hot 100 in 1992. But the difference between 19 Naughty III and, say, De La Soul’s Stakes Is High is that 19 Naughty III was itself a platinum-selling juggernaut. Buried amidst 19 Naughty III’s nihilistic street anthems is a curious, if contradictory, meditation on art and commerce: How did a hardcore rap group become a staple of middle-school dances?
Hailing from the inland city of East Orange, Naughty By Nature didn’t put on for their hometown so much as for hip-hop in general. “The Only Ones” and “The Hood Comes First” extol authenticity in broad strokes, pledging adherence to the group’s humble roots and artistic standards. That’s not to say they were traditionalists—if anything, 19 Naughty III is defined by irreverence. One of the most advanced technicians of his generation, Treach raps about sex like a teenager who just filched a porno mag. On “Ready for Dem,” he’s a shock jock where guest Heavy D is a smooth operator: “You ain’t ready, remarkable, or regal/You’re the fucking reason that abortion shit is legal.” On multiple occasions across the record, Treach reiterates his wish to paint the White House black. It’s not quite a political statement, but it does suggest a certain Afrocentric retribution.
Even the trio’s signature hits eschewed a steady formula. “Hip Hop Hooray” is a tight mesh of Motown instrumentals and inescapable choruses, the rhyme schemes showcasing Treach and Vinnie’s idiosyncrasies. On it, Treach stretches crude ideas into loquacious patterns: “You put your heart in a part of a part that spreads apart/And forgot that I forgave when you had a spark” is his version of you caught feelings. In the third verse, he’s a Tom and Jerry character inching upon unsuspecting prey: “Tippy tippy pause, tippy tippy pause/Sometimes creepin’ up, I eat ‘em up/Your styles are older than Lou Rawls.” If it’s a space-filler, it’s one of the more evocative couplets of the early ‘90s.
19 Naughty III never approaches the poignancy of “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright,” the emotional climax of the group’s 1991 self-titled album. “Take It to Your Face” and “Knock Em Out Da Box” are lyrical street fights, but Vinnie and Treach shy away from gory violence. (In promo shoots from the 19 Naughty III run, they wield scythes, chainsaws, and baseball bats, but never firearms.) Where NBN’s immediate successors—M.O.P., Smif N’ Wessun, Mobb Deep—offered distinctive portrayals of people and their neighborhoods, the cityscapes of 19 Naughty III lack that degree of local specificity. Still, glimpses of crumbling projects and militarized police speak to broader injustices. On “Daddy Was a Street Corner,” Treach ascribes gang warfare to institutional collapse: “Some kids come home to cartoons on cable/To new clothes with labels/I came home to corners, did homework when able.” These songs could have been set in Brooklyn or Compton as easily as East Orange, making them almost universal.
Even if 19 Naughty III is a big-tent record, NBN’s credibility allowed them to chase pop hits without compromising their ideals. Some of the appeal can be attributed to their refusal to romanticize struggle in spite of their backgrounds. A friend and confidant of 2Pac’s, Treach is a similarly mercurial presence across NBN’s early catalog, his vindictive chest-puffing interspersed with remorseful confessions. (Both artists were accused of domestic abuse during their recording careers, allegations to which the industry turned eager blind eyes.) 19 Naughty III features visceral first-person verses as opposed to sweeping autobiographical accounts; Treach is an in-the-moment narrator, which makes his work feel frozen in time. His double-time delivery, knotty rhyme patterns, and rhythmic precision are as instinctual as his ornate wordplay.
East Orange lies about 15 miles west of the New York subway terminus; producer Kay Gee’s beats feel tailor-made for the Cherokees and Monteros that throttled the Garden State Parkway. Although he’d soon become an R&B kingmaker, striking gold with Next and Jaheim, his production on 19 Naughty III is tense and fidgety. “Cruddy Clique” and “Daddy Was a Street Corner” are layered, full-bodied arrangements, their rough edges assuming a brawniness compared to the wistful keys and smoky breaks of regional contemporaries like DJ Premier and Pete Rock. Nothing resembles a party track outside of “Hip Hop Hooray,” but the exaggerated snares and winding basslines mirror Treach’s nervy energy.
Rap was moving extremely fast in 1993; those who didn’t adapt were left behind with stylistic relics like Kwamé and K-Solo. Arriving in February of that year, 19 Naughty III served as a blueprint for upstarts and established acts alike. Onyx and Lords of the Underground debuted that spring with bolder takes on NBN’s pugilism. Run-D.M.C.’s comeback effort Down With the King is virtually a frame-for-frame remake of 19 Naughty III—right down to the cover art—as is LL Cool J’s groaningly put-on 14 Shots to the Dome. (Kris Kross’s tongue-twisting flows compelled listeners to wonder: What if Vinnie and Treach were 6th graders?) Where Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and Midnight Marauders yanked the genre in new and weird directions, 19 Naughty III straddled audiences in such a way that would’ve been impossible months later. By 1995, the movement captured on “Hip Hop Hooray” had splintered into self-contained scenes, and Naughty By Nature’s moment had largely passed. It’s tempting to say 19 Naughty III reflects the sounds of 1993, when the inverse is closer to the truth. | 2023-02-28T00:02:00.000-05:00 | 2023-02-28T00:02:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Tommy Boy | February 28, 2023 | 8.2 | 886f471a-2c0f-42ac-bf61-5e477dbe85ce | Pete Tosiello | https://pitchfork.com/staff/pete-tosiello/ | |
The Santa Barbara, Calif., quartet Gardens & Villa create synthesizer-heavy naturalistic pop that still gets called “indie rock.” Their second album, Dunes, boasts production from DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy, who ensures they keep things varied and in motion. | The Santa Barbara, Calif., quartet Gardens & Villa create synthesizer-heavy naturalistic pop that still gets called “indie rock.” Their second album, Dunes, boasts production from DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy, who ensures they keep things varied and in motion. | Gardens & Villa: Dunes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18919-gardens-villa-dunes/ | Dunes | If you’re of the opinion that chaotic, bustling, urban melting pots are necessary to facilitate groundbreaking art, Santa Barbara, California will be of great service to your argument. The bucolic, oceanside city of nearly 100,000 is slow-paced, homogenous, and affluent—and since it’s near wine country rather than Orange County, it lacks the stifling suburbia that can generate great punk music as a response. It’s a college town as well, but UC-Santa Barbara ain’t exactly Berkeley in terms of fostering counterculture and political awareness; it’s known as one of America’s premiere party schools. As such, here’s the complete list of notable bands emerging from Santa Barbara since 1990: Toad the Wet Sprocket, Dishwalla, Sugarcult, and now, Gardens & Villa, all acts that tread a similar path. (I’m not necessarily using that as an insult.)
Gardens & Villa sound nothing like the aforementioned, they just happen to run parallel to them, orbiting a very centrist “left-of-center” sound predominantly defining a post-collegiate demographic. What the first three were to their year’s version of khaki-clad alt-rock, Gardens & Villa are to widely available, synthesizer-heavy, kinda naturalistic pop that still gets called “indie rock.” Meaning if the popularity of Beach House or Washed Out was gauged by appearances on MTV and rock radio rather than their font on festival banners, Gardens & Villa would likely get some spins as well.
But how many? The quintet's second album Dunes found them recording in rural Michigan rather than their hometown as a means of avoiding complaceny and sounds more pointedly “pop” than their 2011 self-titled debut. And yet, you can’t take the Santa Barbara out of the band, as Dunes once again shows Gardens & Villa orbiting around the center of discussion at a safe distance, suffering from what befalls the countless populist indie bands running the same route: the affliction of “good enough.”
If you’re pressed to do so, you can describe Chris Lynch‘s vocals and lyrics in a number of kind ways: the former lilting, purified, androgynous, the latter vaguely spiritual, slightly poetic. The one thing you wouldn’t describe either of them as is “distinctive.” Similarly, while Dunes has melodies and choruses, you wouldn’t call it “melodic” or “hooky.” Opener “Domino” is the standout on account of Lynch avoiding the orderly fall of its titular object, the chorus melody going from note to note in the motion of swinging on a set of monkey bars. Otherwise, Dunes prefers to let the listener latch onto unusual words and ones with cool phonetics (“Minnesota”, “Thunder Glove”, “Chrysanthemums”).
Dunes boasts production from DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy, and while his imprimatur isn’t what it used to be, give him credit for ensuring Gardens & Villa keep things varied and in motion. I wouldn’t say it has “grooves” or anything you’d call danceable, though “Bullet Train” is more slinky than your average indie band making it a point to let you know they, like damn near everyone, like Prince. On the other hand, their access to Goldsworthy’s trove of vintage gear can result in puffy slow-jams like “Purple Mesas” that stop Dunes dead in its tracks.
And so this tidy, 10-song collection ends up inspiring the kind of light criticism that calls for the phrase so often accompanying the affliction of “good enough”—none of this means it’s a bad album. Of course it’s not—it’s good enough. But even if the current state of “indie rock” means more visibility for a band like Gardens & Villa than they ever would’ve received in the 1990s, as the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all ships. Think about how you might have encountered a minute-long sample of “Domino” two decades ago—if you randomly heard it at a Sam Goody’s, knowing nothing about who made it, would you ask one of the clerks? Possibly, even if you might forget it the moment you step outside towards the Structure or Babbage's. If a trusted friend lent you Dunes and it was certain to be one of the maybe 30 albums you listened to all year, could it eventually win you over? Perhaps.
But Dunes lives in 2014 and its main concern isn’t competing with the incapacitating amount of music that has nothing to do with it. It’s that they’re one of many bands following this particular path and Dunes’ best hope is that you haven’t heard any of them yet. Judging from the tone of Lynch’s vocals, affable songwriting and studied arrangements, it’s not hard to imagine them starting out back in 2008 as a folkier indie-pop contemporary of early Ra Ra Riot, the Ruby Suns, or the Morning Benders, who also made their synth-y pop records recently with middling-to-god awful results. The good news is that if you shuffled those four albums together in a blind listening test, the songs on Dunes would be best of the lot. The bad news is that most of them sound like the work of the same exact band, so is that kind of “good enough” really enough? | 2014-02-06T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2014-02-06T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Rock | Secretly Canadian | February 6, 2014 | 6.2 | 8876edc1-fbcd-4343-8886-02a9874bad84 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
The El Paso, Texas-based performance artist and musician stages an exploration of popular romance with an album that’s as gauzy and enveloping as a fragrance ad. | The El Paso, Texas-based performance artist and musician stages an exploration of popular romance with an album that’s as gauzy and enveloping as a fragrance ad. | Ziemba: True Romantic | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ziemba-true-romantic/ | True Romantic | While writing his gorgeous defense of gay marriage in the 2012 the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy might have gotten too lost in rhapsodic praise. Without marriage, he proclaimed, same-sex pairs would be “condemned to live in loneliness”; the age-old institution wards off a “universal fear” that you might cry out for company and find no one there. Despite the radical intimacies of spinsters and communal families, those who opt out of legally recognized coupledom are presumed incomplete. Century after century, the ideal of the monogamous pair looms over our cultural imagination: The ancient Greeks believed that Zeus split humans into two, dooming them to roam eternally in search of their other half. The feeling of love may be transcendent, yet our concept of it seems conservative and timid under scrutiny.
Still, there’s something shamefully seductive about the illusion of a singular love—the soft-focus pining and windblown mystery, the bliss of collapsing yourself into someone else. Even its most syrupy manifestations lodge themselves in our memory. In Céline Dion’s breathless “The Power of Love” video, love looks like lounging in bed or smizing in a ridiculously comfy sweater—and who doesn’t want that? On True Romantic, the performance artist, musician, and perfumer René Kladzyk, aka Ziemba, considers how stale archetypes of romance have seeped into her psyche. But the pleasure of big feelings proves irresistible. “I must be a true romantic (or a fool!),” she exclaims on the title track, a song so buoyant and rejuvenated that she might’ve recorded it upon exiting the spa.
True Romantic is as gauzy and enveloping as a fragrance ad. “Feelings Are Real” conjures the chiming, soporific dreamscapes of Enya, like what you’d hear after drinking a potion in an enchanted forest. Ziemba intones the song’s three lines like a spell. From there, she leaps into the sunset heaven of “You Feel Like Paradise,” a moony, glam-rock-inspired song about taking flight into someone else. “Just take a step out of time,” she urges her paramour, advice that doubles as a meta-commentary on her retro sound and grand declarations. In the digital era, we are all semioticians, scrupulously aware of how minor shifts in punctuation can tip speech towards new meanings. Ziemba bypasses all this interpretation, intent on plastering her feelings on billboards. “I will love you until the end of time,” she belts on “Power of Love,” an obvious homage to Dion.
True Romantic is simultaneously a reminder of the allure and the ridiculousness of popular romance. Watch enough power-ballad music videos, and at some point, you’ll hit your capacity for candlelight, linen sheets, and fan-blown hair. Ziemba leans into the absurdity. “Mama” flirts with an archetype one might call “Woman Somberly Playing Solo Piano,” in which musical theatre types like Sara Bareilles confide their most tender feelings while gliding through simple chord progressions. Gaudy wind chimes flutter in the opening, then a pan flute beams in. Oh, come on, you groan delightedly. “Bad Love” poaches twee metaphors from Christmas classics: “A fish can love a turtledove,” Ziemba croons as strings swell in the background. The twirling, 1950s-style pop song could slot into the closing credits of a Meg Ryan comedy. Midway through her version of Ary Barroso’s “Brazil” comes a saxophone passage so cheesy that it could soundtrack a Tommy Wiseau sex scene.
“I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi,” the actress and comedy writer Mindy Kaling once wrote—a world where the governing principles are as foreign as any alien planet’s. Despite Ziemba’s stated intention to process this romantic conditioning, True Romantic is more inclined to frolic in Disney tropes than to prod at their underlying ideology. The most apparent attempt to deflate love’s mythology is found at the outset: “If I’m Being Honest” nods to the destructiveness of constantly chasing beginnings, as well as the irrationality of projecting your hopes onto someone you’ve barely met. Elsewhere, the lyrics devolve into sensory mumbo jumbo: “The word chrysanthemum so warm inside/Suffering sounds divorce voluptuous delight,” Ziemba sings on “Casket and Cradle,” which recalls the sunny pop of the Carpenters. Without more trenchant, sarcastic observations to undercut its dreamy vintage sound, True Romantic can’t offer a truly contemporary spin on romance. The album’s nostalgia and tenderness are enchanting. But floaty, heternormative ideas of love have consequences beyond personal disappointment.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-10-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-10-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Sister Polygon | October 5, 2020 | 6.8 | 888abf52-5e95-411c-97ad-a49f6733d133 | Cat Zhang | https://pitchfork.com/staff/cat-zhang/ | |
Flip through your calendars and count the days: It's been nearly fifteen years since Chicago's Eleventh Dream Day ... | Flip through your calendars and count the days: It's been nearly fifteen years since Chicago's Eleventh Dream Day ... | Eleventh Dream Day: Prairie School Freakout | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2742-prairie-school-freakout/ | Prairie School Freakout | Flip through your calendars and count the days: It's been nearly fifteen years since Chicago's Eleventh Dream Day released the Wayne EP and its accompanying full-length, Prairie School Freakout. And although the manic-panicked smoke of the late 80s/early 90s alt-rock boom has long since cleared, a handful of acts have yet to see their legacy become the namedrop-du-jour for wristbanded up-and-comers or bespectacled college radio purists (see the somehow-still-ubiquitous Sonic Youth, the beloved Pixies, or the soon-to-be-reissued Dinosaur Jr). For whatever reason, Eleventh Dream Day are still waiting to be slapped with a golden sticker of canonical approval, despite the necessary elements already sitting firmly in place (a disastrous major label tenure at Atlantic, distant boy/girl interplay, tons of distorted guitar, and general commercial unresponsiveness). Until now, Eleventh Dream Day have been strangely excluded from the 120 Minutes nostalgia club, which is stupid, considering the band's palpable influence and impressive fury.
Unsurprisingly, Prairie School Freakout eventually fell out of print, prompting Chicago-based indie Thrill Jockey to reissue the record, along with the Wayne EP, as a double package. Recorded in six sweaty hours in a polluted Louisville swelter, Prairie School Freakout is a frantic, occasionally hysterical burst of irrepressible guitar rock that the band admits is "pretty much live," save a dubbed bass note and some extra guitar squeal. Picking up and moving past where the band's eponymous debut left off, Prairie School ultimately solidified EDD's mission as super-distorted Crazy Horse disciples with an overabundance of post-adolescent fervor. And some insanely loud amps.
As sticky and pure as the transplanted living room on its cover, Prairie School opens with boiler "Watching the Candles Burn", a fiery guitar assault in possession of the greatest bad insult ever ("If looks could kill/ Here's looking at you"), and follows up with "Sweet Smell", another prickly guitar throwdown. Nearly everything about Prairie School Freakout is unapologetic, but frontman Rick Rizzo and guitarist Baird Figi's ridiculous guitar solos are just so audaciously wanky that it's almost impossible not to stick your tongue out and air along with them. Janet Beveridge Bean's drums (check her in Freakwater) and Douglas McComb's bass (check him in Tortoise, Aluminum Group and Brokeback) are both driven and perfectly able, although the throbbing rhythm occasionally seems like just an excuse to slather on more guitar. Still, the hyper, overwhelming kinetics at work here are clearly the product of four reeling heads, and while Prairie School Freakout may not be EDD's most accomplished or comprehensive effort, it's certainly their most explosive.
The very best reissues create tiny glitches in our cultural timelines-- conceptually, they challenge music to supercede its original context, and to translate itself into an entirely new (and sometimes drastically different) artistic lexicon. Obviously, nothing is ever realized within a cultural vacuum, but that doesn't necessarily deny records a capacity for timelessness-- the best albums can be appreciated both inside and outside of their founding circumstances. Prairie School Freakout may be instantly recognizable as a holdover from the pre-grunge alt-rock rise, but it's still got plenty of ass-kicking glory left inside. Which, as far as legacies go, really isn't too bad. | 2004-01-28T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2004-01-28T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Amoeba | January 28, 2004 | 7.8 | 88933833-6c72-4f24-98c3-e1a518c95d7d | Amanda Petrusich | https://pitchfork.com/staff/amanda-petrusich/ | null |
Drawing inspiration from symphonic black metal, the enigmatic band’s new mini-album is a gothic dreamworld where virtuosic shredding rules above all. | Drawing inspiration from symphonic black metal, the enigmatic band’s new mini-album is a gothic dreamworld where virtuosic shredding rules above all. | Worm: Bluenothing EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/worm-bluenothing-ep/ | Bluenothing | Phantom Slaughter, the architect behind Worm, wants to make it very clear that his band is here to represent Florida. “The places I dwell in for inspiration are mostly deserted swamplands and heavily forested nature trails,” he told No Clean Singing in 2020, rhapsodizing about his state’s history as a former death metal mecca. The band’s breakthrough record, last year’s enveloping Foreverglade, took its name from the state’s most famous national park, channeling the region’s dank bogs and lurking fauna with its murky, noxious approach to death-doom. Chorus-soaked guitar melodies and ghastly synthesizers weaved through pillars of chugging, funereal sludge, as Phantom Slaughter’s vocals veered between guttural death metal growls and piercing black metal shrieks, swapping styles like a python veering its way through the mud.
This affinity for switching between genres might be Worm’s biggest strength, and their new mini-album, Bluenothing, charts yet another new direction, pulling from the hallowed halls of symphonic black metal. It’s a tricky thing to pull off: Without finely textured production, the style can easily sound cheap in a way that betrays its supposed epicness (perhaps the reason why the subgenre has remained largely untapped even as black metal has surged in popularity over the last decade). But the sound makes a natural fit for Worm’s gloomy, multicolored approach to metal. Bringing their lush, crystalline synthesizers in tow, Phantom Slaughter and his fellow anonymous bandmates adorn their winding headbangers with haunted artificial choirs straight out of Emperor’s 1994 landmark In the Nightside Eclipse, descending into a gothic dreamworld where virtuosic guitar shredding rules above all.
Bluenothing’s first two tracks were recorded during the Foreverglade sessions and carry that album’s looming sense of build. The title track is the standout of the two, clocking in at 11 minutes and trudging like a grim march into a thick fog. After commencing with a wickedly sleek guitar solo (members Wroth Septentrion and Nihilistic Manifesto take turns on lead guitar duty throughout the album), the track slowly sharpens its gaseous atmosphere piece by piece. Lumbering guitars give way to charging blastbeats as the band’s riffs reach a pummeling climax by the halfway point, before a sickly church organ disperses the track into the air, shrouding everything in an unholy light. Worm’s keen sense of dynamics keeps the track breathing as it winds its way through one movement after another, demonstrating all the paths their sound can take in a sweeping reverie.
Worm’s unpredictability is key to their music, which is why the doomy “Centuries of Ooze II” loses a bit of steam as it wades through its seven minutes without evolving much (despite opening with a gloriously chilling wall of cathedral organs). But on the two freshly recorded tracks, Worm push themselves to new extremes. After the misty interlude of “Invoking the Dragonmoon” sets the scene with its bewitching synthesizers, “Shadowside Kingdom” unveils Worm’s more blackened, symphonic sound. Where the music on Foreverglade took us into a world as viscous and overgrown as the marshes that inspired it, “Shadowside Kingdom” is ornate, its shimmering acoustic guitars providing a melodic anchor until three minutes in when the entire track is torn asunder. As craven guitar licks spiral around rapid-fire blast beats, the band builds to a crushing breakdown, suddenly morphing into a thrash metal group for a few bars before reaching a grand, mystifying finale, their guitars soloing as if howling at the moon. Even when they’re pulling from styles outside their wheelhouse, Worm adorn each one in glimmering color until it becomes their own. | 2022-11-02T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2022-11-02T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Metal | 20 Buck Spin | November 2, 2022 | 7.3 | 8893651c-38b9-4e39-95d6-8ceceb4d4d22 | Sam Goldner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-goldner/ | |
The Sonic Youth frontman gets production assistance from Beck on a rich and satisfying acoustic-oriented LP. | The Sonic Youth frontman gets production assistance from Beck on a rich and satisfying acoustic-oriented LP. | Thurston Moore: Demolished Thoughts | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15474-demolished-thoughts/ | Demolished Thoughts | The first words you're likely to hear in relation to Thurston Moore's Demolished Thoughts are "acoustic" and "folk." Indeed, the Beck Hansen-helmed album was made mostly with six- and 12-string acoustic guitars, harps, violins, bass (sometimes upright), and drums. But to call this record "folk" or "acoustic" is to mistakenly suggest that it's relaxed comfort music from an aging dude who still sings about teenage riots with his hoary rock band. Rather, Demolished Thoughts is as immediate and form-warping as Moore's work with Sonic Youth, comprising nine anxious, charged songs about fleeting time and failing happiness, played with veteran resilience. Jokes about old men and their Martins need not apply.
The essentials of this project might recall Trees Outside the Academy, Moore's song-oriented solo album from 2007. (The "song-oriented" distinction is necessary if reductive, as Moore seems to release between one and, oh, 47 experimental discs every year.) Violinist Samara Lubelski is the only Trees alumna on Demolished Thoughts. Moore returns with a consistent, cohesive band-- Lubelski, harpist Mary Lattimore, guitarist Bill Nace, Hansen and his regular collaborators, drummer Joey Waronker and bassist Bram Inscore. As such, this is a much more rigorous and singular album, constructed with a definite, deliberate sonic approach that his previous solo work has foregone. Trees had its moments, but, as a whole, it was uneasy and unsettled, as though Moore finally made it into a studio to record ideas he'd tucked away in notebooks during Sonic Youth tours. Demolished Thoughts feels less like a side-project of afterthoughts, more like a careful album cut with a smartly assembled band.
Instruments aside, Demolished Thoughts isn't built like typical folk music, or even the chiseled chamber folk of the last decade or so. The hazy, nearly seven-minute "Orchard Street", for instance, gets through its lyrics in nearly half its running time; the second, instrumental half sounds like an acoustic reinvention of the glorious codas from Sonic Youth's Murray Street, the role of the pounding drums taken by battered guitar strings, the squall of the electric guitars replicated with harp runs and violin trills. The album's other longer stretch, the appropriately titled "Space", moves in perfectly expanding and contracting waves. Moore enters with the tone of someone who's given up on patience: "I used to have all the time in the world/ Cruising galaxies in search of gold," he sings, the unease in his voice dismissing any back-porch associations. Even at their prettiest, like the slow-rolling and sad-eyed "Benediction" or the gently exhaling closer, "January", these songs move in unexpected ways, whether it's the players pushing into unlikely patterns or the production embellishing some unseen aspect. As with his other band, Moore succeeds by folding great ideas into otherwise good songs.
Beck's production is actually as essential and interesting as these tunes. He stretches Moore's songs without polishing them, giving them a pop number's scope and ambition without seeming obvious or pedantic. "Circulation" is a nervous collage of busy images-- needles hitting records, friends on the move, speakers, lights, cries, shots. Hansen pushes the core pieces of the song close together, so that Inscore's bass lashes violently against Moore's layers of heavy-handed strums. And on "In Silver Rain With a Paper Key", Hansen adds a trail of echo to Moore's plaintive tone, allowing the words to float like dust among guitars and string parts. Not lo-fi per se but purposefully damaged, the recording mimics Moore's loneliness and disorientation if only by way of atmosphere.
Moore, who will turn 53 this summer, is several years older than many of the bandleaders to emerge as indie rock luminaries with his success and staying power-- J Mascis, Henry Rollins, Frank Black, for obvious examples. That's reason enough to be sidetracked by the talk of mellow folk vibes. While Moore's been putting out records for three decades now, Demolished Thoughts feels vital and purposed, more like a debut than an encore. It's the work of a restless artist fighting successfully through his own skin to not only outstrip our expectations of how he sounds but also of the sort of music acoustic guitars and harps can make. With Demolished Thoughts, Thurston Moore solo albums have become more than fields of noise throwaways spiked with the occasional gem, more than Sonic Youth stopgaps. A lot of people retire after 30 years, but Moore has added another great line to an overwhelming résumé. | 2011-05-24T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2011-05-24T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Matador | May 24, 2011 | 8.1 | 8895b6e7-4641-4f66-9e28-ea45fcec79f3 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
Sarah Tudzin’s boundless enthusiasm and bottomless bag of studio tricks dispel the tension of a DIY “mixtape” self-released in part to fulfill the obligations of a label breakup. | Sarah Tudzin’s boundless enthusiasm and bottomless bag of studio tricks dispel the tension of a DIY “mixtape” self-released in part to fulfill the obligations of a label breakup. | Illuminati Hotties: FREE I.H.: This Is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/illuminati-hotties-free-ih-this-is-not-the-one-youve-been-waiting-for/ | FREE I.H.: This Is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For | Already the dominant mode for boundary-pushing rap and electronic music, mixtapes offer artists a way to release new work quickly and with fewer legal hurdles—and they’re increasingly embraced by pop musicians. Charli XCX’s Pop 2 codified her future-pop with an eclectic network of collaborators, freely assembled away from the gaze of Atlantic Records. Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz wasn’t explicitly a mixtape, but by releasing it independently, Cyrus ensured that her fried psychedelia wouldn’t have to pass muster with RCA. For musicians looking to make the best of a strict contract, off-label releases offer an opportunity to evade the pressures of commercialism. Their rawness, real or perceived, acts as a bridge between an artist’s behind-the-scenes creative process and their official output.
But the mixtape format wasn’t how Los Angeles studio vet Sarah Tudzin pictured her second release as Illuminati Hotties. She spent 2019 carefully piecing together a follow-up to her exuberant 2018 debut, Kill Yr Frenemies. Her plans deteriorated when her label, Tiny Engines, began drawing public criticism from its artists, who complained of delayed payments and silence from executives. Like several other musicians embroiled in the alleged mismanagement, Tudzin decided to buy out her contract. When she secured an exit deal stipulating that she give Tiny Engines the royalties payments on a future release, she paused the second record and instead poured her energy into FREE I.H.: This Is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For, a “mixtape” self-released in part to fulfill the obligations of her exit agreement. Clocking in at 12 songs in just over 20 minutes, FREE I.H. collapses the hurried conditions of its creation and the engineering and production acumen of its creator, overflowing with intricate flourishes that hint at the potential of Tudzin’s eventual second full-length.
As with Kiss Yr Frenemies, FREE I.H. spans an impressive range of styles, each self-contained within the internal logic of their own genres and anchored by Tudzin’s sharp, nasally timbre. Tudzin has frequently described Illuminati Hotties as a sort of résumé for her prolific work as a studio engineer and producer, and her bottomless bag of tricks is on full display here. Skits and instrumental tracks pay homage to the mixtape format while reinforcing her range: She churns out Container-esque digital noise on “free4all” and layers sound effects for radio skit “K-HOT AM 818.” There’s the tinny garage rock of “free ppls,” the upbeat jangle pop of “b yr own b,” the pummeling punk of “WATTBL.” But Tudzin also reaches further beyond the boundaries of what she’s dubbed “tenderpunk.” With a motorik bassline that crashes into a cheerleader call-and-response chorus, “content//bedtime” blends disparate styles with exuberance and ease. Even further left field is “melatonezone,” which uses polyrhythms and chirps to recontextualize the sounds of Afropop within her base framework of pop punk and indie pop. FREE I.H. is a lot shorter than Kiss Yr Frenemies, but it arguably packs in more stylistic variation and studio maneuvers.
Online, Tudzin has kept relatively mum about her frustrations with Tiny Engines, but on FREE I.H., she delivers venom on nearly every track. “WATTBL” features thinly veiled references to “crooked finance,” and “K-HOT AM 818” delivers a word of warning with an audible shit-eating grin: “Hold on to your masters, folks!” The vehemence of her accusations suits the exaggerated swagger of the record as a whole. “Let’s smash to a podcast!” she yells with a gleeful sneer on “will i get canceled if i write a song called ‘if you were a man you’d be so canceled,’” a gnarled ode to machismo. Her spirited delivery eases the tension of an album released under inauspicious circumstances—what could have been a morose or awkward subject instead becomes a playful enemy. Tudzin’s boundless enthusiasm evokes a cartoonish protagonist in a series of imagined environments both real and digital, with passing references to “w w dot illuminati hotties” and “Illuminati HotQuarters.” You root for her not only because of the inherent redemption arc, but because of the obvious joy she takes in channeling her fury into pop.
In interview after interview, Tudzin is quick to declare her love for her chosen profession, describing the process of recording and performing as “making art.” Her respect for her craft shines throughout the record, a surprisingly joyful release ostensibly about a bad business deal. FREE I.H. skews louder and gnarlier than its predecessor, for obvious reasons. But Tudzin has a knack for making even quiet moments feel huge. On the smoldering slow-burn “free dumb,” a twee male-female duet escalates into a mountain of overdriven guitars and jangling percussion; just as the errant synth enters the mix, the song abruptly fades away, a spectre of a climactic anthem. It leaves the impression, like much of the mixtape, that these brief recordings are icebergs, concealing entire universes in their shadow.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-07-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-07-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | self-released | July 24, 2020 | 7.6 | 88962e7f-1da7-437d-9817-41a43dcb859e | Arielle Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/arielle-gordon/ | |
On Mark Lanegan’s 10th solo album, his leather voice and slow-burning songwriting play up the pulp and noir that’s been with him his entire career. | On Mark Lanegan’s 10th solo album, his leather voice and slow-burning songwriting play up the pulp and noir that’s been with him his entire career. | Mark Lanegan Band: Gargoyle | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23097-gargoyle/ | Gargoyle | The passage of time has been kind to Mark Lanegan. Since before the demise of his first band Screaming Trees in 2000, Lanegan has kept up a breakneck pace, juggling between solo albums and a string of high-profile collaborations. Back in ’92, when Screaming Trees scored hits with “Dollar Bill” and “Nearly Lost You,” you’d never have imagined that same singer making himself at home one day beside Martina Topley-Bird and Warpaint on a cover of the xx’s “Crystalised.” Lanegan’s voice doesn’t sound remotely out of place on the dance-remix versions either, which suggests that it wasn’t just moxie and elbow grease that prevented him from becoming a grunge/alternative fossil.
Against the electronic thump of his own 2012 solo effort Blues Funeral, for example, Lanegan sounded vital and renewed. Strangely, programmed beats alienate him somewhat on Gargoyle, his 10th solo album and the latest example of how Lanegan sometimes undersells his own natural abilities. As leathery as his voice is, it’s actually a rather pliable instrument. So it’s puzzling that he so often sticks to his lower register as if stuck in an eternal Leonard Cohen afterworld. Ironically, Lanegan sounded more like a musician just being himself in Screaming Trees. Regardless of how well his work with them has aged, there’s no questioning its identity.
By contrast, Gargoyle makes you wish Lanegan had studied Glenn Danzig’s way of emulating Roy Orbison without losing his own personality in the process. Of course, the lyrics don’t help. Lanegan continues to insist on using buzzwords straight out of the film-noir/pulp fiction/goth canon. He might have been able to breathe new life into those forms—as he did on Blues Funeral and elsewhere—but he resorts instead to textbook pictures of darkness. “And though my soul is not worth saving,” he sings on “Old Swan,” “my mistress and my queen/Your spirit is larger than my sin.”
Before you even get to the verses themselves, song titles like “Death’s Head Tattoo,” “Nocturne,” and “Drunk on Destruction” make you wonder whether Lanegan’s just playing a character the whole time. That alone wouldn’t be a bad thing—given the actual range of his vocal inflection, Lanegan is capable of playing the role of compelling anti-hero. Instead, his stylized lexicon of midnights and devils and mamas lands him closer to the singer-songwriter equivalent of Sam Spade. Meanwhile, returning Blues Funeral producer/multi-instrumentalist Alain Johannes and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Rob Marshall opt for programming that miscasts Lanegan as a late-’90s alterna-rocker who’s just discovered techno. We already know that’s not the case.
At times, Gargoyle casts off its own shackles. On “Beehive,” Marshall’s exuberant guitars lift Lanegan out of his doldrums. The change in temperament is so welcome (imagine taking Dostoyevsky to a summer barbecue) it’s easy to overlook the fact that the song is basically a U2 tribute. On “Blue Blue Sea,” a billowing keyboard loop gives Lanegan room to remind us of why he outlasted the likes of Gavin Rossdale. But then, Lanegan reminds us of this album’s main issue when he sings of a “gargoyle, perched on gothic spire.”
The analogy couldn’t be any more fitting, but in case you didn’t get the point there’s a wrought-iron gate on the album cover. Perhaps Lanegan wasn’t conscious of the message he was sending, but like a gargoyle making faces to fend off intrusion, Lanegan all too often prevents the audience from seeing the artist that lives behind his dour exterior. Gargoyle is most engaging when it invites glimpses, however fleeting. | 2017-05-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Heavenly | May 1, 2017 | 6.3 | 889a20b4-2732-41a0-8fef-467673ef3ec3 | Saby Reyes-Kulkarni | https://pitchfork.com/staff/saby-reyes-kulkarni/ | null |
The new album from Cough could have arrived anytime during, say, the last three decades and placed the Richmond doom metal quartet alongside the ranks of Candlemass or Cathedral, Sleep or Saint Vitus. | The new album from Cough could have arrived anytime during, say, the last three decades and placed the Richmond doom metal quartet alongside the ranks of Candlemass or Cathedral, Sleep or Saint Vitus. | Cough: Still They Pray | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21890-still-they-pray/ | Still They Pray | Despite the torpid, brooding doom metal they make, Cough began in something of a hurry. During its first five years, the Richmond quartet issued an auspicious debut EP, a split LP, and two very strong full-lengths, which colored the bleak grays of doom and the lurid greens of stoner metal with rainbow swirls of psychedelic rock. They jumped to Relapse Records, the giant of their field, for 2010’s menacing Ritual Abuse and, suddenly, went silent. One reason for the pause is the success of Windhand, Cough’s slightly-more-sophisticated and cryptic kin. Cough singer and bassist Parker Chandler handles the low-end rumble of that hard-touring and highly productive unit, limiting his time to return to his older band’s harder core. Indeed, a split between the two is all that Cough has released since 2010—at least until now, thanks to the band’s first album in six years.
Never mind the gap, actually: Still They Pray could have arrived anytime during, say, the last three decades and placed Cough alongside the ranks of Candlemass or Cathedral, Sleep or Saint Vitus. It's not looking to dovetail with or participate in any modern scene or moment so much as gather and glorify the tropes of aged genres. They are scary and mean like Eyehategod, hook-driven and magnetic like Electric Wizard. During these seventy minutes, Cough incorporates samples of Lovecraft text, spins into knotty solos, grinds riffs into dust, rages through a splendidly lysergic instrumental, and closes with benighted acoustic blues. When Chandler sings, he seems to inhale and exhale some cocktail of weed and hellfire smoke, as interested in sweet leaf as he is black masses. Still They Pray is a righteous echo of its classic forebears, turned way up and delivered with gospel-like belief.
For their first two albums, Cough handed production duties over to Sanford Parker, the hyper-productive Chicago musician and session overlord who’s worked with many of the most vital American metal acts of the last two decades. For their return, though, Cough went with Jus Oborn, the Electric Wizard leader and a bona fide titan in the form. He helmed these sessions alongside Windhand guitarist Garrett Morris.
The move to Osborn opens up the band’s sound, revealing layers and depths that Parker often pushed toward the middle. During “Possession,” for instance, Oborn meticulously layers the dual guitars of David Cisco and Brandon Marcey, a pair that’s perfected its balance of mantra-like repetition and howling solos. And he brilliantly divides the nine-and-a-half-minutes “Let It Bleed” into two distinct phases, so that the first half suggests some salvaged grunge obscurity, with mumbled vocals about nihilism and low-key, highly muffled guitars. But after an instrumental interlude, Cough charges back twice as loud, the guitars and Chandler now screaming in delirious, demented tandem. It ties together two ends of Cough’s inspirations and ideas.
For the eight minutes of mid-album highlight “Masters of Torture,” Cough pivots between low-tempo, high-distortion terror, rippling blues solos, and mutated-and-drugged thrash. It’s a clear composite of antecedents, a distillation of heroes that’s obvious but no less compelling for being so blatant. Cough slows down one last time in the final minute, and Chandler—voice warped by a web of effects, as if singing from inside a tomb—begins to chant a koan: “Live to hate/Hate to live,” he yells, repeating it until the riff dissolves into feedback. This grim perspective on reality represents a time-honored, timeless thesis for bands like Cough, whose central obsession with demons, death, and the romance of the underworld is, ironically, bound to outlive them. | 2016-06-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Relapse | June 4, 2016 | 7.6 | 88aeb4cb-4645-4ad4-bec0-b0f24a975c53 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
After a run of conceptually focused projects, the Italian musician gives free rein to his atmospheric instincts on an album of immersive ambient techno. | After a run of conceptually focused projects, the Italian musician gives free rein to his atmospheric instincts on an album of immersive ambient techno. | Donato Dozzy: Magda | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/donato-dozzy-magda/ | Magda | Dance music is an outdoor thing for Donato Dozzy. You never get the sense that his music is taking place inside the club: This is a music of rivers, swamps, open ocean. The Italian producer’s 2012 masterpiece Voices From the Lake, with Neel, was conceived for a set at Japan’s mountainside Labyrinth festival, and the music seemed designed to burble from the very environment, as if created by the chirping of crickets and the rustling of birds in the underbrush. Everything has a rhythm, it seemed to say. Dozzy’s solo albums tend toward focused explorations of a single style, sound, or instrument. Hearing him coax the ghost of the club from a traditional Mediterranean mouth harp or the voice of collaborator Anna Caragnano, one suspects he’d be perfectly happy as a hunter-gatherer, bashing out a rhythm on a skin drum and calling it techno.
Dozzy’s new album Magda is less constrained than most of his work, and if these six long tracks stick to a fairly consistent palette of sequencer patterns surrounded by suggestive whispers and peaty squishings, there is tremendous variation within those core elements. Behemoths like “Le Chaser” and “Santa Cunegonda” coexist naturally with more ambient cuts like “Franca,” each one teasing the other. On “Le Chaser,” which sprawls over the entirety of Side B, his machines seem to have been left in the sun too long; Dozzy subtly detunes the signal so it sounds worn and faded, an ancient artifact from a time long before the invention of techno or even synthesizers. Basslines are a luxury, he’s as coy with his kick drums as ever, and when we hear a consistent 4/4 pulse it’s often startling to realize we haven’t heard a bass drum for a long time.
Dozzy has a DJ’s knack for sequencing, always creating subtle setups and payoffs that proceed almost imperceptibly. Because the sequenced synths are mixed so loudly compared to everything else, it’s easy to miss what’s happening in the margins, and you may not notice the addition of a new element until it’s been going strong for two or three minutes. Things that feel almost like hooks emerge imperceptibly from the primordial soup, like the drone on opener “Velluto” that eventually yields to a graceful melody that arcs up and up, or the frantic synth pattern on “Le Chaser” that suggests Carl Craig’s hair-raising remix of Junior Boys’ “Like a Child.” The album requires a few listens to really sink in: first to take it all in, and then to blot out what’s happening in the foreground and pay attention to the details.
Magda is Dozzy’s richest and most complete full-length statement in some time, eschewing the narrow focus of much of his solo work in order to highlight his strengths as a producer. Yet I wonder what Magda would have sounded like had he allowed even more sprawl, indulging runtimes that stretched past the polite nine-minute mark and into the dreaded double digits. “Santa Cunegonda” gains a lot from its extended ambient coda, in which the album’s meanest beat dissolves into a moonlit clearing of distant shakers and ghostly choirs; a few more moments like those might have helped the record feel a bit vaster and more immersive. There is a bit at the end of the title track where everything drops away except an incredible hollow chiming sound, which splinters into a million pieces of delay and becomes a beautiful drone—then suddenly fades out. I wanted to live in that fleeting moment for another 10 minutes. | 2024-01-22T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2024-01-22T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Spazio Disponibile | January 22, 2024 | 7.3 | 88bc435e-2ef2-41ff-83a2-2923e878ef59 | Daniel Bromfield | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-bromfield/ | |
This slow-burning collaborative album from Jesca Hoop and Iron & Wine's Sam Beam recalls healing summer storms more than destructive blazes. | This slow-burning collaborative album from Jesca Hoop and Iron & Wine's Sam Beam recalls healing summer storms more than destructive blazes. | Sam Beam / Jesca Hoop: Love Letter for Fire | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21800-love-letter-for-fire/ | Love Letter for Fire | For almost as long as humans have had fire, they've been writing songs about it. Billy Joel didn't start it, Hendrix wanted to stand next to it, and Jerry Lee Lewis had great balls of it. For Johnny Cash, it burned, burned, burned in an unholy ring. You might expect, then, that a record titled Love Letter for Fire would pay direct homage to the power of those crackling flames. But instead, Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop deliver a gently rolling record that recalls healing summer storms more than destructive blazes.
You'll know Sam Beam as the bearded fellow behind Iron & Wine, while Hoop is an American singer-songwriter who now calls Manchester, England home. The two co-wrote the thirteen duets that comprise the record, and they're all seamless amalgamations of each writer's poetic songwriting style.
Some of these tunes are a little dark at times, like the lonely and hopeful "Soft Place to Land,” but these songs never feel beholden to any particular sadness—or for that matter, joy. Even with its moment-to-moment ups and downs, the album keeps an even keel that refrains from ebullient delight or languishing sorrow. It's a surprisingly fertile middle ground that's only effective thanks to the pair's beguiling lyrics.
Love Letter for Fire sounds lush and gorgeous from its outset, with arrangements that do the songs justice without being overwrought. They're rich and earthy, with Glenn Kotche's gentle percussion grounding airy string parts. Beam's voice sounds far more at home among low-end strings and piano than it did on Ghost On Ghost, his jazz-inclined Iron & Wine LP from 2013. And though the instrumentation is more or less the same across the record, subtle shifts in tempo keep it from becoming a gray lump of indistinguishable, uninteresting songs. "One Way to Pray” sways like an old porch swing, while "Bright Lights and Goodbyes” steps lightly as it ambles along.
The duo's exquisite vocal harmonies are the crown jewel of Love Letter for Fire, with the centerpiece and single "Every Songbird Says” maximizing each singer's strengths. Her voice is high and taut against his lower, billowing warmth. They circle each other from line to line and soar upward together gracefully on the song's high notes. The tune is a patient ode to a partner, finding satisfaction in the small stuff: "We know when it's enough to be walking with you,” they sing. Their voices fit together so uncannily that it's like each was made to sing with the other.
Only one of Love Letter for Fire's songs stumbles: the plunking, pointed "Chalk It Up to Chi.” Compared to the elegance of its counterparts, "Chalk It Up to Chi” feels clunky and cartoonish, especially with Hoop's exaggerated English affectation. The rest of the record is so pretty that it teeters on the edge of precious, but fortunately, this is the only one of thirteen tracks that falls over the edge. Instead of a love letter to consuming blazes, Hoop's and Beam's collection appeals to our individual internal pilot lights: those softly smoldering flames that illuminate moments of beauty in ourselves, in each other, and beyond. | 2016-04-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-04-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country / Pop/R&B | Sub Pop | April 18, 2016 | 7.5 | 88d24edb-5992-4112-8ab9-64d575546913 | Allison Hussey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/allison-hussey/ | null |
One half of the brother act Inc. makes his solo debut with a satisfying collection of ambient-funk instrumentals that sound easy without being facile and chill without ever becoming soporific. | One half of the brother act Inc. makes his solo debut with a satisfying collection of ambient-funk instrumentals that sound easy without being facile and chill without ever becoming soporific. | Daniel Aged: Daniel Aged | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/daniel-aged-daniel-aged/ | Daniel Aged | Inc. arrived whispering. Billed as veteran session players, brothers Daniel and Andrew Aged approached their own duo as though reluctant to finally assume the spotlight. Their arrangements drew from the softest, silkiest aspects of quiet-storm R&B—muted drums, muffled bass, languid curlicues of clean-toned guitar—and their voices never rose above a murmur. Even their self-presentation felt like a publicity strategy devised by wallflowers: In photos, they looked past each other or gazed at the ground, and between 2010 and 2016 they changed the name of their act from Teen Inc. to the blandly corporate Inc., and ultimately to the inscrutable inc. no world.
They were not the only artists pursuing this aesthetic in those years. The xx, who formed as actual teenagers, banked on their underdog charm and shy innocence. Even more press-averse than the Ageds, Rhye dialed up the lust. But the brothers have not enjoyed the same success as their peers. You might think their mood-heavy, slightly anonymous brand of R&B would thrive in the era of streaming playlists. But on Spotify, where the xx’s most popular tracks have generated over 100 million plays, the majority of the songs on Inc.’s 2013 album no world have racked up streams in the low-to-mid six digits, and 2016’s As Light as Light has fared far worse. Daniel Aged’s solo debut is also unlikely to be a commercial smash: It is a collection of ambient-funk instrumentals—a niche proposition if ever there were one. But it’s also remarkably satisfying—easy without being facile, chill without being soporific. The stakes may be low, but the payoff is generous.
It takes a while to figure out what exactly you’re listening to here: The swirled synths, rough-hewn drums, and submerged melodies don’t immediately suggest obvious comparison points. If pressed, you might look to Wally Badarou’s 1984 album Echoes, a Balearic touchstone by way of the Bahamas’ Compass Point Studios; the dreamy, slowly unfurling synth pads and pneumatic funk grooves also bring to mind the more tranquil pockets of Seal’s debut album. But those similarities have more to do with mood than form. Above all, Daniel Aged’s ruminative loops and mercurial drift give the impression of a lone musician working late into the night, torn between melodic flights of fancy and analog rabbit holes.
If there is a center of gravity to this album, it is Aged’s electric bass. Lithe, lyrical, and playful, it’s muscular but never disruptive. In the opening track, “UNTLD1,” it bumbles like a fat, fuzzy bee that’s trapped in one of Konono No. 1’s amplifiers. On “BASS.INT,” it vacillates between quicksilver riffs and bright, declarative chords played high on the neck, clear as a bell. But there’s nothing showoffy about these performances; this is not an album likely to form the basis for any routines at this year’s Air Guitar World Championships (four-string category). Sometimes the bass goes into stealth mode: You can detect it worming its way through the back half of “KAWAI SQ,” but it’s an unobtrusive presence there, sneaking along under cover of jazzy keyboard noodling and springy drum programming. The beat nods toward hip-hop, but the time signature feels volatile, and in the background, a bright, blippy sample drips unsteadily, fast then slow then fast again, steadily eroding the groove.
It’s a short album, just eight tracks that wrap up in under 24 minutes, but Aged makes the most of that brief running time. Themes develop, then abruptly shift to become something else. In “BH,” wispy guitar ambience gives way to a trim bass-and-drums groove from which high-pitched synth riffs spring like soft-focus fireworks; by the closing coda, you feel like you’ve crossed two or three state lines in just four-and-a-half minutes. Aged’s pedal steel comes to the fore in “STEEL.INT” and “BREATH2,” giving these interludes the taste of glistening, liquid palate cleansers. (They also hark back to Daniel Lanois’ work on Brian Eno’s Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks; held up alongside recent albums from Lanois and Chuck Johnson, Daniel Aged suggests that pedal-steel ambient is becoming a surprisingly fruitful subgenre.)
The final track, “12.21,” is the most songlike of the bunch: A swirling, atmospheric introduction morphs into spongy, minimalist soul in the tradition of D’Angelo’s Voodoo, electric bass and wah-wah guitar warily circling each other over a crisp, skeletal drumbeat. It’s a departure from the preceding tracks, but it’s also a continuation; “12.21” suggests that Aged is working his way back to the more emphatically soulful style of inc. no world—except that it doesn’t sound much like any other music being made right now. This time around, he’s not whispering. He’s flexing his muscles and showing his teeth. | 2018-07-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-07-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Quality Time | July 28, 2018 | 7.3 | 88d2e9d9-ee6b-4235-987e-7ad6a4361054 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck team up for a crisp, allusive record that taps into their gnarled indie rock and punk roots. | Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck team up for a crisp, allusive record that taps into their gnarled indie rock and punk roots. | Filthy Friends: Invitation | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/filthy-friends-invitation/ | Invitation | Joined by Fastbacks guitarist Kurt Bloch, King Crimson drummer Bill Rieflin and multi-instrumentalist Scott McCaughey of the Minus 5, Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck have recorded as Filthy Friends—imagine a shaggier, angrier Traveling Wilburys with several decades’ worth of gnarled rock and punk roots among them. Their debut album sounds good. The playing is crisp. Nevertheless, like some latter-day R.E.M. albums after the departure of Bill Berry in 1997, Invitation depends on its lack of surprise. In its clean, straightforward grooves, the album betrays no cynicism or enervation. It is a good time, and not much more.
The exceptions are pungent and allusive enough to wonder what the hell it takes to chart on what’s left of rock radio. “The Arrival” isn’t the first song but should be: a serpentine riff kicked around, with Tucker’s habit of pricking syllables for blood. “Got something to prove, got something to say,” she sings as if she needed convincing. She and the guys aren’t defensive, though. A jangle variant on that riff provides the backdrop for more Tucker testifyin’. There’s even a bass solo.
”Come Back Shelley,” Filthy Friends’ take on T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong” is even better: an ode to a slinky little woman with a “new wave” haircut who loves wearing her boyfriend’s clothes. With crucial help from McCaughey’s boogie-woogie piano, Tucker delivers her most lascivious vocal since Sleater-Kinney’s “Milkshake and Honey”; she knew a Shelley and wanted a Shelley, or she was Shelley, giving her admirers one more chance to figure her out.
A similar calling-all-stations approach, however, lets down the single “Despierta.” A callback to Sleater-Kinney’s Dubya-era One Beat, “Despierta” has it both ways: an expression of disbelief laced with terror inspired by what our fellow citizens had wrought on November 2016 that sounds neither terrifying nor unbelievable. It offers platitudes that dissolve in the air and it’s about as vital as a protest sign left on a lawn. If “The Arrival” represents a thrilling showcase for Tucker, “Any Kind of Crowd” ventures too comfortably into the winsome for my taste, despite the efforts of the guys’ enthusiastic background vocals—imagine Tucker singing R.E.M.’s “Sitting Still” off a karaoke monitor.
The tour for this record will be a trip, and I hope Tucker, restrained and almost decorous throughout, blasts audiences to cinders with her voice. Similarly, I have faith that Filthy Friends, having made a good album, return to the studio to make a wonderful one. Appreciate the snap of Rieflin’s drumming. Savor the interplay between Bloch and Buck. They’ll be back. | 2017-08-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-08-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Kill Rock Stars | August 26, 2017 | 6.5 | 88da65c8-e2fa-445d-bd1c-7103a68e7cf5 | Alfred Soto | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alfred-soto/ | null |
Last year, Tim Kasher turned 40 and toured behind a reissue of Cursive's 2003 collection, The Ugly Organ, a record that played up the distasteful, compelling tics of its lead to provide gripping conflict and perverse pleasure. On his fifth album fronting the Good Life, he softens his takes on modern life with gentle, PG-13 humor and a tremendous lessening of stakes. | Last year, Tim Kasher turned 40 and toured behind a reissue of Cursive's 2003 collection, The Ugly Organ, a record that played up the distasteful, compelling tics of its lead to provide gripping conflict and perverse pleasure. On his fifth album fronting the Good Life, he softens his takes on modern life with gentle, PG-13 humor and a tremendous lessening of stakes. | The Good Life: Everybody’s Coming Down | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20897-everybodys-coming-down/ | Everybody’s Coming Down | Taking the long view, Cursive frontman Tim Kasher’s trajectory appears more like that of a Hollywood journeyman than a musician. His most renowned work could be described as "reality programming"—Domestica, The Ugly Organ, and Black Out played up the distasteful and compelling tics of their narcissistic leads to provide gripping conflict and perverse pleasure. His brief residency in Los Angeles coincided with his "screenwriting" period, Happy Hollow and Help Wanted Nights creating self-contained, fictional cities filled with multi-dimensional characters and their questionable motivations (the libretto-assisted *I Am Gemini *was a one-off in musical theater). Since releasing music under his own name in 2010, Kasher has shifted to "sitcoms"—as with The Game of Monogamy and Adult Film, the Good Life’s Everybody’s Coming Down softens his takes on modern life with gentle, PG-13 humor and a tremendous lessening of stakes.
Last year, Kasher turned 40 and toured behind a reissue of 2003's The Ugly Organ—a means of celebrating his most beloved record and reckoning with a "perspective shift" that made it difficult for him to relate to the guy who sang "The Recluse". And yet, present-day Kasher doesn’t achieve much distance from his brash, idealistic, and self-destructive former self, as the entirety of Everybody’s Coming Down puts the two in direct, unflattering comparison. While Kasher’s platitudes are presented as hard truths forged from experience, most of the time, it just sounds secondhand, scripts written by someone whose worldview has been shaped mostly by Cursive records.
There’s the inevitable talk of the futility of artistic expression—maybe Burst and Bloom's "Sink to the Beat" and The Ugly Organ's "Art Is Hard" were cynical, but there was convincing conflict between Kasher’s ego and his soul. The self-evisceration has given way to bellyaching on Everybody’s Coming Down. Rather than busting down the fourth wall and providing insider intel as to what happens in "The Troubadour’s Green Room", Kasher diffidently states what was always implied—he’s singing for any kind of attention and the only original thought results from two cliches soldered together as non sequitur—"I was chasing the big fish/ And all the wine and roses that come with it."
There’s the inevitable talk of the futility of human coupling. As with Happy Hollow's "Big Bang" and Mama, I'm Swollen's "Caveman", "How Small We Are" sees procreation as a zero sum game with lyrics not punched-up enough for laughs nor plain enough to be anything anyone might actually say ("propagating teensy human beings is a must"). And there’s the inevitable talk of the futility of human existence itself (most notably "Holy Shit"), with nearly every song finding some way to rehash the album title: "With the proper dosage I can feed my ego/ Once the buzz wears off I feel so hollow"; "Each ticker tape parade/ Is followed by a broom brigade"; "Every candle lit for every god or cancer kid/ Has flickered out and no one ever heard the prayer"; "If my body's a temple, it’s crumbling/ It can’t be renovated"; "Another carousel through the nothingsphere"; "Everybody’s riding the Ferris wheel/ And the pinnacle’s gorgeous...once the ride is done, they’re back in line again."
The increasing generality of Kasher’s lyrics is matched by the Good Life’s evolution into a tuneful, spirited, but extremely conventional indie rock outfit. The plodding, bashed-out alt of "Everybody" or the friskier pop-punk of "Holy Shit" and "Ad Nauseum" are hooky enough and they’re the kind of songs you could hear every hour, on the hour just walking through Philadelphia or Boston these days. Kasher’s sardonic tone at least prevents them from anonymity, though the true highlights happen when he takes a supporting role—bassist Stefanie Drootin-Senseney’s aqueous vocals lend "Diving Bell" an eerie psychedelia and when its lyrics fail, a worldless, harmonized moan on "The Troubadour’s Green Room" properly evokes the weariness of a veteran half-assing it on stage while looking over a half-filled venue.
Cursive had been increasingly shearing off the nettlesome vocal tics and jagged edges of their prickly post-hardcore, while the Good Life had developed from Kasher’s nocturnal synth-pop project to a hearty Midwestern rock act—the distinction between the two has been all but eliminated at this point. And that’s what makes Everybody’s Coming Down disappointing in a way that 2012's seventh Cursive album I Am Gemini or the 2013 solo album Adult Film never managed. The Good Life had once felt like Tim Kasher’s necessary relief from Being Tim Kasher. Not that 2002's Black Out or 2004's Album of the Year were lighthearted—but they could be cloaked in gothic hues or the assumption of fiction. But whether it’s Cursive or Good Life or Tim Kasher, it’s all sitcom at this point, his version of "Mulaney" or "Mr. Robinson"—a barely fictionalized, deadened version of his own life starring him. Or, "Shit Tim Says". | 2015-08-19T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2015-08-19T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | Saddle Creek | August 19, 2015 | 4.4 | 88da786c-ce1e-4fd6-85c0-bdb6c314eb4d | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
This eight-song EP, comprised primarily of tracks from Wilco's most recent album The Whole Love, also finds them unearthing older song-oriented material that suggests they're getting back to the business of being a pop band. | This eight-song EP, comprised primarily of tracks from Wilco's most recent album The Whole Love, also finds them unearthing older song-oriented material that suggests they're getting back to the business of being a pop band. | Wilco: iTunes Session | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16227-itunes-sessions/ | iTunes Session | An eight-song iTunes Session EP hardly seems conducive to taking in the full scope of a band's career, especially when the tracklist primarily comprises songs from the most recent album. But we've got a few months' perspective on The Whole Love now*,* and this new release unearths a track from Wilco's 1995 debut, A.M., which suggests they're getting back to the business of being a pop band. They aren't curtailing their experimental urges so much as they're putting more emphasis on tight songs they'd want to play and you'd want to hear in a semi-live setting. There is, in other words, a retrospective undercurrent to iTunes Session, which, instead of including the 10-minute krautrock jams and noise-rock punctuations of their early-2000s heyday, looks to the song-oriented period just before and just after.
Rethinking what it means to be Wilco has always been a big part of being Wilco, so the inclusion of the 17-year-old "Passenger Side" suggests a band seriously reassessing its past and drawing strong connections between the Wilco of 1995, the Wilco of 2002, and the Wilco of 2012. The band has exhibited an enduring propensity for noisy undercurrents, concise vocal hooks, and unexpected nods to pop history, all of which are animated by Tweedy's lyrics, which range from invigorated nonsense ("I Might") to semi-tragic lucidity ("Passenger Side"). Toward that end, iTunes Session emphasizes the immediate over the arty, omitting the rambling Whole Love opener "Art of Almost" in favor of that album's catchiest tracks and choosing the direly hooky "War on War" instead of some of the strident tracks from their catalog.
For those of us who prefer Wilco's pop songs over their avant-garde numbers, this is a strong, short set, emphasizing buoyant momentum over digressive din. The tracks don't sound quite as full in this setting as they did on The Whole Love, but there's still a lot of charm and dynamism in the way the bass and keyboards trade off the ascending/ descending riff on "I Might", like kids taking turns on the playground slide. If this version surpasses the studio take, it's largely due to Tweedy's exaggerated sighs. Only "Black Moon" suffers in this setting, becoming so lax that it threatens to dissipate altogether. It's clear the band is less interested in that sort of high-concept noodling than they are in simply jamming.
In that regard, Wilco have hijacked the iTunes Session and turned it into a document of the Whole Love tour. These are, ostensibly, crowd favorites, tightened and refined in front of big crowds. They even bring out avuncular opening act Nick Lowe for a workmanlike rendering of his 1979 hit "Cruel to Be Kind", a regular encore over the last few months. It's a fine song, a bit redundant and not quite as relevant to the band as their B-side cover of Lowe's "I Love My Label", but you can hear how much fun Wilco (or "Wilc-Lowe," as Tweedy introduced the band at a recent show in Chicago) are having just singing those doo-doo-doo's.
Lowe is, in fact, an intriguing forebear for Wilco, a man who transformed himself seemingly effortlessly from a post-punk smartass into a genial country crooner. More recently, he's settled into a gentle nostalgia that lends his recent albums-- specifically At My Age and That Old Magic-- a wistful gravity that pushes against any notion of granddad rock. Similarly, Tweedy seems intent on forging a lengthy career with just as many twists and turns, dark corners, and bright avenues. Which is where this new version of "Passenger Side" comes in: Just as Lowe's country material has proven every bit as sturdy as his Stiff Records output, Wilco are pointing to some hidden gems in their own catalog, rehabbing forgotten tunes to prove that the band hasn't gotten better or worse, just different. That old song, so straightforward and unassuming, settles in remarkably well among their more recent, more celebrated material, so how long till dBpm releases a deluxe reissue of A.M.? | 2012-02-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2012-02-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Anti- / dBpm | February 2, 2012 | 6.7 | 88e060b9-8366-4aa5-8865-c5a9150ae89b | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
A fixture of New York’s experimental scene, the vocalist Amirtha Kidambi makes her bandleading debut on Holy Science, fusing classical Indian music, drone, and free jazz with an original perspective. | A fixture of New York’s experimental scene, the vocalist Amirtha Kidambi makes her bandleading debut on Holy Science, fusing classical Indian music, drone, and free jazz with an original perspective. | Elder Ones: Holy Science | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22706-holy-science/ | Holy Science | In New York’s experimental scene, the presence of vocalist Amirtha Kidambi on a concert bill has been a consistent indicator of quality. In 2013, she impressed in a live appearance with the legendary composer and improviser Muhal Richard Abrams. At the 2014 Whitney Biennial, she was part of a youthful ensemble that gave the premiere of one of the final operas by the late visionary Robert Ashley. Until forming the group Elder Ones, though, Kidambi had yet to create a vehicle for her own compositions.
The quartet that plays on her bandleading debut includes some familiar talents. Drummer Max Jaffe’s jabbing power has been heard in the high-complexity pop of the band JOBS. Soprano saxophonist Matt Nelson’s work has proved critical to recordings by tUnE-yArDs and Battle Trance. But Kidambi is the clear driving agent of the group.
While her mostly wordless vocal parts on Holy Science are influenced by the South Indian devotional singing groups she participated in as a child, they also call to mind her past work with composer Darius Jones. Kidambi’s simultaneous harmonium playing reflects her ongoing study of India’s Carnatic classical tradition, as well as her appreciation of modern drone music. And the feeling of free jazz—in particular, the high-intensity blast of late Coltrane—is often present here. That’s a lot of material for any composer to process usefully, but Kidambi and Elder Ones distinguish themselves by fusing these influences with a point of view all their own. With each lengthy track titled after a yuga (or “eon”) in Hindu scripture, Holy Science clearly has significant thematic ambitions. Yet Kidambi’s 64-minute suite contains lively, minute-to-minute variety, in addition to a grand overall design.
The title of the opening movement, “Sathya Yuga,” references an ancient eon in Hindu mythology—one in which spiritual enlightenment was widespread. The track opens with the leader’s voice and harmonium playing, and the texture is meditative. Kidambi’s singing has the feel of mantra, with certain groups of syllables receiving devoted repetition. But she also adds to the lines as she goes along, creating a searching quality.
When Jaffe enters, he plays in free-time, often using cymbals to accentuate the vocal lines. After Nelson’s soprano sax joins, nearly three minutes in, he and Kidambi begin experimenting—very softly—with unusual harmonies. After a brief solo harmonium drone, a rhythmic vamp is introduced, via Brandon Lopez’s bass. And then the entire band carries this new material to a full boil, with “Sathya Yuga” climaxing in a fiercely swinging, post-minimalist melodic progression. This is a happy intensity: full of a community vibe as well as opportunities for individual expression. But it is not the end of the story.
Since subsequent yugas narrate a descent into fractious conflict, the album’s next movement (“Treta-yuga”) incorporates a greater sense of alarm. Here, the free jazz riffs are more anxious sounding. Nelson’s soprano sax language adds in some of the piercing effects heard in the music of virtuosos like Roscoe Mitchell. But still, in moments when the players’ parts fall in-line together, there’s a sense of hard-won beauty.
Things fall apart more completely during the third movement, “Dvapara Yuga (for Eric Garner).” Kidambi composed this piece in the hours after first seeing the horrifying cellphone video of Garner’s death at the hands of police officers in the summer of 2014. And Kidambi’s choice to place this contemporary reference in this album’s evocation of the Dvapara eon is smart, and chilling. In Hindu scripture, this is only the second most destructive epoch—and the one in which the Bhagavad Gita is recited. That text, influential to a wide range of thinkers that includes Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, centers on a cosmic battle between warring factions in society: a span of carnage that often results in empty victories.
Here, the evocation of ancient and contemporary questions about violence and moral response proves gripping. At the end of this cacophonous movement, Kidambi sounds depleted. Nelson’s saxophone lines are similarly strained—a harrowing reference to Garner’s own increasingly desperate struggle to breathe, as seen on the video that documents his death. At all times, this track works as an oath. In its opening section, it swears memory to a victim. By its close, it promises enduring opposition to unjust outcomes.
Even though the suite still has one more era to explore, Holy Science’s relationship to the legacy of free-jazz protest is most pronounced in that third movement. And by this point, it’s clear that Kidambi has managed to house all of her influences in a project that is original. This sound isn’t merely the product of well-chosen reference points; in its abstract way, it makes a unique argument for the virtue of cross-cultural curiosity. Appropriately, the nature of this music is constantly morphing. When a muted introduction gives way to a more celebratory aesthetic, the change is achieved gradually, through small changes in the arrangement. When a demonstration of rage reaches a peak that cannot be sustained, the musicians in Elder Ones are able to navigate back to a more stable feel, without losing the passion and awareness that has animated those foregoing blasts of harshness. The result is an astonishing debut for a composer, and her band. | 2016-12-28T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2016-12-28T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Northern Spy | December 28, 2016 | 7.8 | 88e1de14-4ce2-4a1b-a216-9bc9ef697612 | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | null |
Rallying against aggravating, absurd political realities with passion and humor, the Leeds post-punks offer a tongue-in-cheek counterpoint to dourer contemporaries. | Rallying against aggravating, absurd political realities with passion and humor, the Leeds post-punks offer a tongue-in-cheek counterpoint to dourer contemporaries. | Mush: Lines Redacted | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mush-lines-redacted/ | Lines Redacted | Mush’s Dan Hyndman savors every syllable. On the Leeds post-punk band’s second album, the vocalist and guitarist delivers five-dollar phrases with obvious glee, offering acerbic commentary ripped from international headlines. Songs about Russian bots meddling in elections and drinking bleach to cure COVID-19 could only be written in the present day, but Lines Redacted also serves as a monument to the band’s late guitarist Steven Tyson, whose versatile shredding defined their sound.
Mush first earned attention with their 2017 single “Alternative Facts,” named for the nonsense phrase Kellyanne Conway used to justify former White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s lies about the size of the crowd at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Nearly 10 minutes long, the song became a surprise favorite of BBC Radio 6 DJ Marc Riley, showcasing both the group’s duelling six-string pyrotechnics and topical takes on current events. At the time, Hyndman explained how his vocal delivery had evolved from a generic post-punk monotone into his self-described “shrill and cutting” style.
Those vocals provide a tongue-in-cheek counterpoint to contemporaries like IDLES, Shame, and Fontaines D.C., whose gruff, dour frontmen appear to take themselves deeply seriously. Hyndman’s yammering yelps, by comparison, have a frenzied urgency like Art Brut’s Eddie Argos and an exaggerated enunciation like a sarcastic impression of Bob Dylan. By acknowledging the aggravating, absurd reality, then rallying against it with passion and humor, Mush’s lyrical themes share more with New York bands like Parquet Courts or BODEGA.
In 2019, Mush’s debut album 3D Routine reflected a feeling of political optimism in the UK before Boris Johnson’s Conservative party crushed the dreams of a socialist future under Jeremy Corbyn. On the new album, Hyndman sings from the perspective of various narrators on either side of the aisle, cynically celebrating dead cat strategies (“Positivity”), doomsday preppers (“Hazmat Suits”), and the “sleepwalking breed” who would prefer to remain apathetic (“Seven Trumpets”). He reveals his personal beliefs in the rollicking highlight “B2BCDA” (that’s “Back to Back Consecutive Dark Age”), shouting at politicians who refuse to fight for change in the midst of crisis: “Smug anesthesia no time for their complacency/Walking around like their history’s redacted.”
Just when they start to sound like a meat-and-potatoes post-punk band, Mush save their musical experimentation for the album’s back half. “Morf” is a welcome palette cleanser, with a primarily instrumental wash of oddly tuned riffs and buzzing amp noises ripped from one of Sonic Youth’s shinily produced DGC albums in the early 1990s. “Hazmat Suits” continues to fuck with the formula as drummer Phil Porter grooves on a baggy beat, but even here Tyson can’t help but add chiming shards of No Wave guitar. Album closer “Lines Discontinued” attempts to repeat the trick of Mush’s breakout “Alternative Facts,” stretching out across almost eight minutes. Yet instead of sounding totally wired, they drift through dreamy passages reminiscent of the sleepier moments in Stephen Malkmus’ discography.
The album’s closing track is also its greatest showcase for Tyson, Mush’s late guitarist, with a loping instrumental hook giving way to wild solos that would make his hero Robert Quine proud. In a Facebook elegy for their bandmate, Hyndman describes the “life-changing bond” the trio formed while living together in their early 20s. The lyrics of Lines Redacted may be forever tied to our present moment, but the album is simultaneously a tribute to the kind of youthful friendships that are difficult to savor before they’re gone.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Memphis Industries | February 12, 2021 | 7.4 | 88ecce59-b737-4b59-a4c3-405be854422f | Jesse Locke | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-locke/ | |
Rising Def Jam star follows his huge "Hustlin'" single with a debut album that leaves us no closer to learning anything about the MC. | Rising Def Jam star follows his huge "Hustlin'" single with a debut album that leaves us no closer to learning anything about the MC. | Rick Ross: Port of Miami | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9300-port-of-miami/ | Port of Miami | Rick Ross is a great rapper. Just ask him and he'll tell you. Weird, though: For such a blowhard, we hardly learn anything about Ross on Port of Miami, his lavishly promoted Def Jam debut. If anything, the album proves you can listen to someone expatiate on himself and walk away feeling like you've learned nothing about that person; it is-- not insignificantly-- a paean to saying a lot without saying anything.
Credit Def Jam for an admirable con job. Port of Miami sounds so good, you might be duped into thinking Ross can actually spit. The first line of its first single, "Hustlin'," is a fucking beast, the best 12 words Ross ever strung together: "Who the fuck you think you fuck-in' wit' I'm the fuck-in' BOSS." Ross accents against the beat, giving the line a free-falling feel. His "boss" is the sound of a trillion-pound weight hitting the ground.
But that's about the deepest this guy runs. In a gross perversion of lyric-writing fundamentals, Ross usually eschews the specific for the general. We know he made big bucks selling coke but (unlike Young Jeezy) he glosses over the dark side of black market entrepreneurship. We know he spends liberally and audaciously but (unlike Pharrell) he spares us colorful sketches of his favorite wardrobe items. We know he took a woman home from the club last night but (unlike Lil' Wayne or Art Brut) he withholds prosaic details like how many times they stumbled making it to the bed or what was breakfast the next morning or even, God forbid, what she wore. We never learn for sure where Rick Ross came from, and that prevents us from truly knowing where he's coming from. He's that rare, mythical creature: a rapper without a back story.
As if digesting trap-hop wasn't beguiling enough, here's an album presenting perhaps the starkest gap in quality between production and personality since Puff Daddy and the Family's No Way Out. The first six tracks are absolute titans, all sweeping synths and hypnotic organs and Scarface samples. "Push It" flips the same-named track from that movie's soundtrack, slowing the beat to match Ross' phlegmatic gait. Grim, creeping arpeggios lend themselves to opening tracks, and this song's twinkling piano line recalls the menacing string plucks Young Jeezy used to open Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101. The similarity's no accident. "Blow" sets gale force tuba farts against Dre's fairy dust hook. To call Ross' verses redundant, however, would be just that: "Mo' trips (mo' trips)/ Mo' whips (mo' whips)/ Mo' money (mo' money)/ I'm mo' rich (mo' rich)."
"I'm Bad" contains some of the album's most syllabically ambitious stanzas, but also some of its worst stumbles. Which is a shame, because the hook Ross delivers over the song's speedboat bass and sparkling horn hits is legendary: "I'm bad (I'm bad)/ I'm back (I'm back)/ I'm mad (I'm mad)/ I'm strapped (I'm strapped)." For a few, thrilling seconds, Rick Ross is Mr. T. "Boss" offers a blueprint for a successful slow jam, emphasizing the first and third beat as much as possible without grinding the song to a complete halt. It's the kind of track Lil' Wayne would absolutely obliterate, but Ross fades into the background, overwhelmed by Cool & Dre's euphoric flybuzz synths. "For Da Low" might be the record's biggest surprise: a "jazze phizzle pro-duck shizzle" with exactly zero (0) sine wave synths. Jazze Pha, probably under instructions to keep the mic away from Ross as long as possible, does a particularly belabored version of his homicidally annoying intro drop. If anything his voice reminds us how bad we could have it.
Port of Miami is a case of invention begetting necessity. Sure Ross needs these beats-- he has all the charisma of a cold meatloaf. But they need him all the same. He's a supporting actor, second fiddle to the real, Pro-Tooled stars, desirable not for his authority or presence but for his utter blankness. Def Jam could heli-drop any bozo into such glorious ambiance and score some hits; the album facilitates sedentariness. By contrast, Trina's "Told Y'all" is a quicker, snappier production than anything on Port of Miami. No coincidence Ross sounds a hundred pounds lighter in his guest verse on that track from four years ago.
Rick Ross may be bumbling and redundant and charmless, but he's not a disease. Drugs juke and jive with the zeitgeist, in and out of authority's searchlights, and this fall's college freshman won't blow lines or not because of Rick Ross. The fact he can't articulate himself for shit makes him more joke than jailbird. He's simply incapable of portraying the coke trade with Jeezy's glamour or Clipse's fatalism, of making a persuasive endorsement either way. Ross' real danger is the type of effort he countenances for mainstream rap. His girth belies his drive: He's not hungry at all. | 2006-08-11T02:00:05.000-04:00 | 2006-08-11T02:00:05.000-04:00 | Rap | Def Jam | August 11, 2006 | 5.4 | 88f04b0a-e749-46b9-809e-6e0b143b16c2 | Pitchfork | null |
|
Portland indie supergroup focuses on its strengths and boils its songs to their most essential ingredients on their best album in years. | Portland indie supergroup focuses on its strengths and boils its songs to their most essential ingredients on their best album in years. | Quasi: American Gong | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13942-american-gong/ | American Gong | For a band with such an illustrious pedigree Quasi have strangely remained a niche act: Its primary members are Heatmiser's Sam Coomes and Sleater-Kinney and the Jicks' Janet Weiss, and it released records on Touch and Go and Kill Rock Stars. Perhaps that's due to other band commitments; perhaps because Quasi rarely perform outside of the band's Portland hometown. (Though they are about to embark upon a fairly extensive tour in support of this new effort.) Or perhaps it's because Quasi's lyrical content-- from the overt politics of Hot Shit to the silly-yet-obtuse children's poems of When the Going Gets Dark-- can be too arch for some. Or maybe it's just that the band's tricky mixture of jazzy piano honky-tonk, Southern blues guitar, and rambling psychedelica is a jarring concoction that can, for some, be an acquired taste. Whatever the reason, it seems like even the band's best reviews seem to note the band is unlikely to convert new fans.
Well, that is not the case with American Gong. The band's eighth album (and first with bassist Joanna Bolme) is both a summation of its career and an accessible introduction for new listeners. American Gong showcases Weiss' textured, musical fills and muscular beatkeeping and Coomes' bar-piano melodies and bent-note blues guitar riffs. But here they focus on those strengths and boil their songs down to their most essential ingredients: knotty, seasick melodies, heavy riffs, surprisingly sugary harmonies, and virtuosic drumming.
Quasi have always been enamored of repetition, both lyrically and musically, but often to a monotonous effect. Here that becomes a draw. "Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez", a mid-tempo rocker featuring barely more than its titular lyrics, makes Coomes' nasal, keening delivery as much a part of the song's syrupy groove as Weiss' undulating drum rolls. And the fuzzy guitar arpeggios anchoring "Bye Bye Blackbird" and cyclical structure and central refrain of "Rockabilly Party" accomplish the same thing.
American Gong is also blessedly free of typical Quasi jams-- which work live, but can drag on record. There are still lurching, aggro guitar solos and hints at foundations for what will become showcases for improv on tour, but the album's arrangements are simplified and mostly serve their vital hooks. There are some surprisingly quiet moments-- from the subtle, acoustic track "The Jig Is Up" to the mournful opening of piano-peppered "Everything and Nothing at All"-- that show off the band's dexterity. But with an experimenter's adventurous spirit, they eschew pure prettiness by adding a shambolic solo or acidic harmony to keep things from getting predictable. And 16 years into their career, that's a valuable thing. Here, a rewarding one, too. | 2010-02-22T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2010-02-22T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Experimental / Rock | Kill Rock Stars | February 22, 2010 | 7.2 | 88fa84b7-5ae0-429a-8c2b-2616fc3fee73 | Rebecca Raber | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rebecca-raber/ | null |
On his most substantial solo release to date, the longstanding club MC slots into Manchester’s rich lineage of maverick dance musicians. | On his most substantial solo release to date, the longstanding club MC slots into Manchester’s rich lineage of maverick dance musicians. | Chunky: Somebody’s Child | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/chunky-somebodys-child/ | Somebody’s Child | For at least 15 years, Chunky has been the unofficial voice of Manchester’s underground club scene: a toasting host in the old tradition, but with a soft humor and musical demeanor that eschew the usual macho trappings of club MCs. He dips and bobs over hip-hop and grime with the same ease as drum’n’bass and leftfield techno, and his nasal soundbites and cheeky aphorisms—about rude basslines, the price of a bag of weed—are often the sound left ringing in clubbers’ ears as they make their daybreak journeys home.
Manchester has changed a lot since Chunky started spitting, with billions of pounds being pumped into the construction of new glass-and-steel monoliths throughout the city center, driving locals out and luring yuppies with a penchant for noise complaints in. And while the city’s cultural baggage still swings heavy—Factory Records, the Haçienda, those Gallaghers and their legions of parka-and-square-haircut acolytes—the hum of envelope-pushing electronic music has remained constant. With Somebody’s Child, the rapper-producer’s most substantial solo effort to date, Chunky slots into a rich lineage that runs from A Guy Called Gerald to Anz: one that emphasizes character, charisma, and, sometimes, just being a little odd.
In spite of where it was incubated, Somebody’s Child feels removed from the open hustle of the club or the itch of the afters. Instead, those nighttime influences arrive like solar flares, sparking aurora in scatters of color and light: The production is spare, particulate, and trippy, led by a kind of childlike curiosity that matches the gentle intimacy of Chunky’s vocal delivery.
He skips between metallic shards on “RNS,” rants over the sofa-slumped bassline of “GNG,” and claws through a foggy gloom on “Meh.” Opener “YES I” doubles as a mesmerizing stream-of-consciousness manifesto that leaps without hiccup between stage shows and Rosa Parks, Napoleons Dynamite and Bonaparte, shoulder barges and rounds of cards. He weaves candid interviews with younger family members between the broken dancehall of “Long N Strong,” collapsing the aloof, tinny percussion arrangements into moments of homely intimacy. In doing so, he applies the same qualities that have helped him warm up crowds in the dance, nudging them to move to the front, fill out the space, connect with strangers.
This freeform approach does have its limitations. There are sketches that feel like they’re still in the draft stage. The jazzy bop of “Giv U,” a tender dedication to his mother, struggles to hold up the golden weight of Lemn Sissay–esque lines like “If I could’ve chosen, know that I still would’ve made you my mam/Woulda stole, woulda killed, woulda found an excuse/To still go and make you my dukes.”
But it all, eventually, leads back to the dancehall, whether in the slick delivery of the slinky-hipped “@Me” or the dubwise ambience of “Spare the Rod.” Somebody's Child is every bit of Chunky distilled: soaked through the fine silt layers of thousands of hours helming booths, spinning records at the afters, sinking deep into YouTube rabbit holes, and then breaking bread with his family the next day. | 2023-03-08T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2023-03-08T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Eglo | March 8, 2023 | 7.3 | 88fe2df4-86d5-48f5-811e-bef32353a737 | Will Pritchard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/will-pritchard/ | |
The Houston rapper’s first mixtape since 2016 is full of unsparing storytelling, pusher anthems, and a dynamic array of trap production over which Maxo delivers some of his most effective writing. | The Houston rapper’s first mixtape since 2016 is full of unsparing storytelling, pusher anthems, and a dynamic array of trap production over which Maxo delivers some of his most effective writing. | Maxo Kream: Punken | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/maxo-kream-punken/ | Punken | Emekwanem Biosah, better known as the gritty Houston rapper Maxo Kream, is full of dark revelations. He often sounds unrepentant and unforgiving, but he comes off like a realist; exposed to the cruelties of life early, savagery and lawlessness became his standard. Set-tripping and hustling made him money and granted him a measure of power, and so he doesn’t regret the terror he’s caused, just the people he’s lost. There’s no going back: fast money is what he knows, and he’s cultivated a taste for violence. Punken, his first mixtape since being arrested in a 2016 drug and money laundering sting, takes a peek inside his operation and provides backstory. (Members of his Kream Clicc Gang were arrested for shipping drugs from California to Texas, and a narcotics task force seized 85 pounds of marijuana, 2,000 Xanax pills, and 13 guns.) The tape is family-oriented in the sense that shootouts and trafficking treat organized crime as a family business. This is “trap philosophy,” as he calls it on “Capeesh.” Punken is chock full of his most unsparing storytelling and unflinching raps that preach commitment to the mob, the mantra of a gang lifer.
Being loyal is the moral of almost all the stories on Punken. This principle shapes the way scenes play out on the tape. Songs like “ATW” and “Janky” relive scenarios where snitches destroyed families or crews. When the songs aren’t focused on those around him, they’re about distribution or his enterprise, packaging and moving work. “Maths teacher ask me Maxo why I’m always skippin’/I was trappin’ fractions after school like detention,” he raps on “Work,” the mixtape’s pusher anthem. When he isn’t moving drugs, he’s using them recreationally (“Love Drugs”). On “Pop Another,” he binges on Xans and lean, as each line slips into the next. But don’t lump him in with his peers, who he labels addicts. “All these rappers junkies talkin’ like they dope dealers,” he raps, scoffing, on “Roaches.” “One song they scammers the next song they killers.” Identity and authenticity are everything to him, which is why he’s so hell-bent on affirming his rep.
Maxo has always been an impressive rapper and an imposing force, maximizing his thunderous voice, but Punken has his most effective writing, his most complete performances, his most engrossing setups, and his most enduring images. His cadence constantly shifts on “Hobbies,” packing internal rhymes into choppy schemes before stringing individual phrases out. On “Janky,” the sentences all run together, but the messages are clear, sharply turning and segueing into each other. The single long verse builds to his indictment of the criminal justice system: “Court gettin’ judged by 12 whites/Who never had to struggle in they goddamn life.” He’ll often add a splash of color to liven a scene (“Little nigga, 13, got the older niggas plotting on him/Wrinkled ass tee even though he got the iron on him”). Then there are the potent mini profiles, delivered with a straight-faced, nearly wooden demeanor, like this of a coked-out uncle: “Petty thief and junkie, but he always had my most respect/When I was six I seen him stab a nigga, and he bled to death.”
So much of Maxo’s sharpest scene-setting happens when he’s reflecting, and Punken thrives on these moments. As a teenager, after he was kicked out of his parents’ home for arousing police suspicion, he moved in with his grandmother, and this transition inspires much of his writing. “Grannies,” a clear standout, features a rotating cast of characters traveling in and around her house, his grandmother being the only acknowledged authority. The song sketches vignettes of his relatives, revealing how they shaped his worldview: In one scene, he boosts his aunt’s car to commit a robbery, and when the cops come knocking, she follows protocol: “Never snitched, betrayed her family, but she always told my Granny.” Each snapshot is intense and effective.
As on past tapes, the content of Punken is plenty violent, but the beats aren’t as disquieting and feel far less dire than those on Maxo 187 and The Persona Tape. He’s replaced the gloom with more viscous and diverse beats, and the change of pace suits him. There’s even a Tame Impala sample. Newcomers like the Wilderness, Beatboy, and Mexiko Dro contribute colorful productions. Trap veterans Sonny Digital and Honorable C Note effortlessly share space with oddballs Tommy Kruise and Ethereal. His booming raps cut through any noise.
In the album’s closing seconds, “punken” is revealed to be Maxo’s family-given pet name. Only minutes after lamenting the damage Hurricane Harvey did to his mother’s home, and the toil his cases have taken on his family, his parents reiterate how proud they are of him. It’s a powerful few moments. The subtext is that everything he’s done, from juuging to making music, is in service to them, to the memory of the brother he lost, to the ones still living. After 43 minutes of criminology, Punken establishes itself as an autobiographical look into a hustler’s motives. | 2018-01-16T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-16T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | TSO / Kream Clicc | January 16, 2018 | 7.6 | 89086778-7ea4-4d71-b5d4-ecdc3b49e854 | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | |
null | Between 1980 and 1982, the Cure switched lineups, switched producers, made friends with the pop charts, and steadily toured Europe. They also got drunk, got weird, got in fistfights with one another, took loads of drugs, walked off tour, and generally danced through some surreal Kabuki version of the Libertines' recent press. We're looking for a word and the word is "tumult."
Which makes it kind of striking that they also, during those same years, released three remarkable records that represent the first phase of their many-phased career. These albums are the latest in Rhino's series of two-disc deluxe-package reissues: Stylish | The Cure: Seventeen Seconds / Faith / Pornography | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11706-seventeen-seconds-faith-pornography/ | Seventeen Seconds / Faith / Pornography | Between 1980 and 1982, the Cure switched lineups, switched producers, made friends with the pop charts, and steadily toured Europe. They also got drunk, got weird, got in fistfights with one another, took loads of drugs, walked off tour, and generally danced through some surreal Kabuki version of the Libertines' recent press. We're looking for a word and the word is "tumult."
Which makes it kind of striking that they also, during those same years, released three remarkable records that represent the first phase of their many-phased career. These albums are the latest in Rhino's series of two-disc deluxe-package reissues: Stylish smoke-and-mirrors new-wave on Seventeen Seconds, dark pop drama on Faith, and all-out emotional assault on Pornography.
What's so remarkable about them? Start with Seventeen Seconds, which is a perfect example of the kind of record that's been subdivided out of existence-- a lying-in-bed-dreaming record, a guitar record that make no distinction between pop pulse, rock catharsis, and the atmospheric space we now mostly get from computers. With this album, it's all three at once-- all the austere, spooky grace of Robert Smith's Asian-art fixations gathering up to inhabit a clean, minimalist new-wave package. Album-accounting types might get antsy over how many of these tracks are about building mood, slinking along as the exact opposite of today's amaze-me-now aesthetics. But even the shiftiest of iPod types, buried beneath the covers some morning, will remember that an album like this doesn't work any other way. The sound is like a bare room with four guys in black occupying just enough space to let you wander on your own, and when they stop slinking around and let the pop move-- see "Play for Today"-- they do it with incredible elegance, winking and posing from behind the smoke machine.
And then there's Faith, which sounds best of the three in about 60% of normal human moods. It's best in those bean-counting album-consistency more-for-your-money terms, sure, but that's hardly the big draw; the thrill here is hearing the Cure shape up into the singular band that trailed on through the next couple of decades. This is a band, after all, that did something indie guitar bands haven't lately been so great at-- tapping into vivid emotional drama in a form that felt entirely unpremeditated, creating a fantasy world coherent and accessible enough that your average 13-year-old didn't need to be up on any scenes to get sucked into it. A band whose career highlights were all about shading one intense emotion into another-- blurring the line between severe depression and total joy, making bright colors and Christmas seem like the mopiest things ever, and eventually, with Disintegration, making an album that was both oceanically bleak and entirely sparkly-beautiful, to the point where you imagine ghost-couples ballroom dancing to it.
It all takes shape on Faith. Just listen to "The Funeral Party", a gorgeous, slow-moving synth wash that anticipates both Disintegration and the theme from "Twin Peaks". This album winds its way from ultra-sophisticated pop thrills ("Primary") to synth mope ("All Cats are Grey") to fierce snarls ("Doubt") to snakey exoticism ("Other Voices"), all without ever changing its raw, minimalist instrumental setup or really seeming to shift course at all. It's packed with effortless old-fashioned emotional communication; it's a stone-cold classic; and here we reach the point where critics temper fan-boy impulses and leave well enough alone.
All that emotional richness just brings us back to all that tumult, which somehow manages to color every inch of this material without laying hands on the performances: No matter how much the songs reek of crisis and desperation, the band seems as calm and on-point as a ballet troupe. That's precisely what makes Pornography-- which totally owns that other 40% of human moods-- work. This is one of those records where a band walks into the studio feeling stripped and grim and dedicates itself to creating something exactly as big and frightening, yelling at the producers that they really want that part to sound that ugly; Smith himself says he wanted the album to be "virtually unbearable."
Which would make this the best possible failure. The result isn't as double-dark bleak as people like to pretend, thanks to the same streaks of vigor and beauty that make it such an obvious precursor to Disintegration. Smith's said the two records are part of a trilogy, and you can hear exactly that: The minimalist sound gets abandoned for just the kind of big, booming drama they came back to at the end of the decade, and the tired wailing of a track like "The Figurehead" sounds perfectly natural next to something like "Fascination Street". The record's most harrowing moment turns out to be a single: "The Hanging Garden", which is mostly just the relentless pounding of a single drum, with Simon Gallup's signature bass sound (the moves of a snake and the same scaly texture) rumbling beside it. If Smith wanted "unbearable," he should have hired a different singer, because his voice makes this-- and just about everything else-- completely thrilling.
Listen through any of these recordings, in fact, and you'll find yourself hanging on his every breath and moan, every word sounding as perfectly in-place as the well-groomed claps and trills of a chart-pop production. On "The Hanging Garden", he makes an understated wail hit you like a scream, which isn't a bad lesson for the world's hammier Iggy-wannabes: Half of the this stuff's wild intensity comes from how calm and steely-eyed and purposeful and just plain sweatless he sounds, and I can't imagine any other approach that could make a listener feel comfortable singing along with lines like "Cover my face as the animals die." Run the mood over to forlorn, and it's "I could lose myself in Chinese art and American girls"; run it back to fierce, and it's "It doesn't matter if we all die"-- just three of countless phrases that come out of his mouth sounding way more important than anyone else could manage.
So that's three of the discs; the bonuses are a whole other animal. With so much of the Cure's single and B-side output already heavily compiled, this series has mostly restricted its extras to the kind of source material that proves a serious feast for box-set-owning Cure geeks: Scratchy home demos, rough studio takes, live performances, and associated rarities. Most notable on Faith and Pornography are the mood-setting instrumentals from the films that introduced the band on tour ("Carnage Visors" and "Airlock"); with Seventeen Seconds it's the A- and B sides, studio and live, of the sole single by Cult Hero, the project Smith and Gallup used to test their musical compatibility. (It sounds like either Ian Dury or Jilted John.)
The rest of the Seventeen Seconds set offers some terrifically-recorded live material, as does the second disc of Faith; the Cure put a lot of studio time and echo-pressing power into giving Smith's voice the huge open-air sound these performances get pre-packaged. Across the rest of Faith's extras, the rarities pick up into material that seems more than just archival. There's the much-loved "Charlotte Sometimes" single, but the real gems are a quartet of studio out-takes-- three surprisingly sprightly instrumental tests (Smith mostly just moans) and an early version of "Primary" that's pretty much a whole other equally good song. (Current acts who aren't Radiohead may take note of what writing in the studio can accomplish.)
Fullest of all, for obvious reasons, is the Pornography bonus; we're still working our way up to the sets of alternate takes and shelved songs that will probably accompany late-80s albums. Instrumental sketches of songs like "Demise" and "Temptation" can let you play Robert Smith at home (you are all of you welcome to record your own vocal tracks and send the results my way), and a totally-different early version of "The Hanging Garden" gives another weird look behind the tumult: Dysfunctional as the band may have been, they clearly still had the work ethic to write and rewrite songs until they turned out perfect. The live tracks here, sadly, aren't nearly as hi-fi as elsewhere.
And that, in six discs and too many words, is phase one of the Cure, neatly packaged and neatly slipcased. When Rhino started this series, the timing seemed appropriate: The new-wave revivalists may not have tried copping these moves yet, but bands like the Rapture certainly had. Listening through these albums, though, you might come to a different realization. Old-fashioned and rockist as these criteria may be, the fact is that these albums have a raw resonance that frees them almost entirely from time and trend. The next few packages, after all, will see them dance through any number of timely styles without losing that center. And by the time we reach the ones beyond that, they'll have created the teenage-escapist fantasy world for which they're most remembered-- one whose singular thrills haven't changed with time or age. I'm looking over the stacks, and I can't spot any other band I can say that about. | 2005-05-12T01:00:01.000-04:00 | 2005-05-12T01:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | null | May 12, 2005 | 7.5 | 8910cfa8-905c-4fd1-92fe-38a4b55b4178 | Nitsuh Abebe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nitsuh-abebe/ | null |
The NYC rapper YL’s music is full of slice-of-life details that capture the feel of aimless youth. | The NYC rapper YL’s music is full of slice-of-life details that capture the feel of aimless youth. | YL / Zoomo: Born Again | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yl-zoomo-born-again/ | Born Again | YL’s personal, stream-of-consciousness raps are composed of the small and inconsequential moments that make life in New York City special: eating at the Dominican spot on the corner with the good breakfast, subway rides from Broadway to Bushwick, the little feeling of relief as the NYPD van doesn’t notice the smoke that you just exhaled. Born Again, the NYC rapper’s second collaborative album with the producer Zoomo, feels like you’re aimlessly drifting through the city by his side, seeing what he sees.
It’s easy to tell that YL has spent much of his life absorbing all of the hip-hop the five boroughs have to offer: colorful, post-Illmatic Queens rap like Capone-N-Noreaga, Tragedy Khadafi, and most specifically, Mobb Deep; the superficial swagger perfected by Cam’ron and Dipset in Harlem; the cinematic Wu-Tang classics.
Each song on Born Again feels like a slice of life. You won’t experience YL’s New York through the romanticization on a NYU student’s Instagram feed or the pages of a high-brow newspaper or the episodes of a television series that might as well be a fairytale. Whether he’s “Smoking eighths to The Purple Tape” on “It’s Gonna Hurt,” or reflecting on the “Nike SBs, pre-hypebeast era” on “Mike Bibby,” YL manages to capture the feel of New York, where anything might be possible but most days feel mundane and basic.
There are moments when YL’s songs are too humdrum. Occasionally it’s because his bars are unmemorable, like on “Stop Bag Splitting,” which could use a splash of hyperbole. Other times Zoomo’s production can sound overfamiliar—the beat on “All Change Isn’t Growth” brings to mind the smoky production on Pink Siifu’s ensley, but not as cozy. Fortunately, over the course of the album’s 10 tracks (not including two bonus cuts), the chemistry YL and Zoomo have built since Sunday Holiday, their 2019 album, is apparent. On “Price Tag,” Zoomo’s mellow loop is the good kind of familiar, like a home-cooked meal from your grandparents, and it lays the foundation for YL’s frivolous reflections: the time he was posted up on 125th street in Harlem, or the time his friend pulled up in the cleanest Polo outfit.
For the most part, YL is able to capture the intimacy of the New York hip-hop he grew up on. His imagery is invaluable, on “Youuu” and “Ragatoni,” a pair of cuts assisted by fellow New York rapper Starker, we’re aware of what he’s wearing, smoking, and drinking at all times. And on “Memory Bank,” it’s like you’re shadowing the emcee; there’s always a rough idea of his whereabouts on the New York City map. Listening to these tracks my mind constantly shifts between three reactions: I’ve been there; I’ve done that; I’ve felt that, too. But chances are, even if you grew up outside the city, you’ll still hear a piece of yourself, a moment you recognize. Born Again might be grounded in the five boroughs, but aimless youth is universal.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-09-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | RRR | September 4, 2020 | 7.1 | 8912ae6c-3304-4fb3-9342-9d3a9893d9a3 | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
Japanese all-female group and Boredoms offshoot continues to refine its unique, experimental voice. | Japanese all-female group and Boredoms offshoot continues to refine its unique, experimental voice. | OOIOO: Armonico Hewa | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13750-armonico-hewa/ | Armonico Hewa | Japanese all-female group and Boredoms offshoot OOIOO's fifth album, 2006's Taiga, holds a more than respectable score of 78 on Metacritic, but it split Pitchfork listeners. The percussion heavy, often amelodic beast came off as needlessly difficult and even lazy to some staffers, yet Dominique Leone claimed it to be, in so many words, the easiest entry point in the OOIOO catalogue. I don't begrudge either extreme viewpoint: OOIOO's output is divisive for the simple reason that the band has a unique capacity to both wow and disappoint. To call the new Armonico Hewa one of the band's best mostly acknowledges the group has refined its curatorial voice.
While not overtly acknowledging Boredoms comparisons, the group (founded by original Bore Yoshimi P-We in the mid 1990s) teases expectant Boredom-crazed trainspotters by sonically orbiting the mothership but never quite giving in to the white-hot bombast of its predecessor. At the same time, the group frustratingly "rewards" the careerist patience of its growing fanbase by fiddling with band dynamics with every release. You really never know what you're going to get, but it usually ranges between a take on Slits-esque post-punk to the incomprehensible stutter-start No Wave splendor pioneered by the antecedent Boredoms catalogue, all meaning abstracted out into pseudo-lingual screech. The first track on Taiga, for example, is a mess of jungle drums falling over one another, Yoshimi belting out like a megalomaniac cheerleader and announcing the abrupt (if brief) renunciation of the group's melodic sensibilities. What results is often ballyhooed, sometimes brilliant, but it almost always leaves sonic travelers all packed up for one of the group's pop-tinged psychedelic sojourns out in the cold.
Armonico morphs between musical touchstones but engages the listener much more directly. "O O I A H" updates spacy funk with guitars in full face-melt mode and supporting members belting out a falsetto chant, but "Ulda" proffers a wonky, new age keyboard chord preset before morphing into a more familiar guitar-driven drone. Space-age rock guitar riffs remain a prominent signpost, but up against the monolithic axe slabs rub such dated synthesizer lines lifted from progressive electronic pioneers. Manic drumming abounds, metronomic but paradoxically indebted to the languid beatkeeping of centuries of world cultures. A notable referent is not only the rhythms of Africa, but those as transposed by progressives sharing an equatorial gaze such as Bruford-era King Crimson. OOIOO's drummer, Ai, came on board for 2006's Taiga, a record which arguably let its new percussive weapon direct the group's usually holistic jams. The group's previous record, Kila Kila Kila, suffered a similar problem in aimless, almost tuneless guitar riffage. Thing is, OOIOO operate best as a democratic entity, forming compositions out of the blind ambiguity of improvisation and the relative economy of instrumental balance. On Armonico Hewa, for the first time in years, the balance struck by the group's best work is approximated while largely preserving the same display of technical chops on their last two records.
The group is also best served by developing the possibilities of their constituents' voices as instruments. Highlights like "Be Sure to Loop" from Feather Float and the incomparable, uneven singsong chorus of Gold and Green's "Mountain Book" elevate the female voice, sometimes to endless heights and sometimes to fall off false plateaus. Armonico casts the molten steel of meaningless syllables into machine-gun bursts, sonar echoes, radioactive dirges, and girl-group coos of the group's best work. It's a monument to the endless possibilities afforded by an improvisational spirit, but more importantly it highlights Yoshimi and her band's tireless and ever-evolving voice. | 2009-12-04T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2009-12-04T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Experimental / Rock | Thrill Jockey | December 4, 2009 | 7.4 | 8914770f-a91a-498d-ae38-7e1bc96fa64c | Pitchfork | null |
|
Performed almost entirely at the piano, the follow-up to Tamara Lindeman’s 2021 breakthrough Ignorance raises dizzying questions with sensitivity and quiet hope. | Performed almost entirely at the piano, the follow-up to Tamara Lindeman’s 2021 breakthrough Ignorance raises dizzying questions with sensitivity and quiet hope. | The Weather Station: How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-weather-station-how-is-it-that-i-should-look-at-the-stars/ | How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars | Tamara Lindeman recorded How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars in a short stretch of days as the world tipped into stillness. A year after completing her stunning fifth album as the Weather Station, Ignorance, the singer-songwriter returned to Toronto’s Canterbury Music Company to put down another LP. Since 2017’s The Weather Station, she had shifted her songwriting foundation from acoustic guitar to piano, a change of framework that she expanded upon with woodwinds, strings, and tumbles of percussion. Between March 10 and 12, 2020, Lindeman recorded live from the room where she’d made Ignorance, with sax, lap steel, clarinet, and electric organ adding dashes of shimmer and glisten.
Though the ringing “Ignorance” didn’t make it to the album of the same name, that song and the rest of Stars further her questions of what possibilities remain amid clouds of uncertainty. The songs, performed almost entirely on the piano, predicate a world undergoing permanent, devastating changes, but they float with delicate sensitivity. They add more nuance to a body of work that already teems with vivid detail.
The open air of Stars occasionally feels like an echo of the early Weather Station LP All of It Was Mine, returning to lighter arrangements that place Lindeman’s details in central focus. But now with a decade of adulthood behind her, Lindeman’s perspective is steadier, less springy, more careful. The cool, fluid movement of the album recalls the quieter periods of prolonged reflection between the dramatic flushes of passion. The gravity of the piano’s hammers and the airy lift of Lindeman’s voice feel like complementary forces, glassy like reflections in clear water.
Within her songwriting, Lindeman interrogates how her attempts at understanding the world around her can become an impediment. She raises dizzying questions: What in life is worth understanding? What should just remain a mystery? On “Ignorance,” she wrestles with finding meaning and the reality that naming something beautiful is another way of restraining it. She confesses, on “Sleight of Hand,” that she’s tired of unfulfilled promises and pretending to be amused by them. “Endless Time” is surprisingly graceful and gentle in how Lindeman addresses living in what could be the sunset of humanity.
The struggles she describes extend beyond the boundaries of personal circumstances or ruling institutions: We’re uniquely limited—and increasingly unwilling—in our capacities to understand one another, which breeds situations like bellicose school board meetings and snarling trucker caravans. Throughout Stars, her songs pull focus between the common threads of all relationships, from the platonic to the political. “Close your eyes/Go ahead and pretend it is how you see me best,” she sings on “Taught.” It’s a line that could be said in the heat of an argument or written in block letters on a sign at a protest.
When Lindeman permits herself to sidestep her worries, she reveals more of the heart that she so fervently protects. On “Sway,” she turns her attention to an overflowing love, and the metacognitive “Song” shines quietly with the hum of possibility. In the closing cover of John Southworth’s “Loving You,” Lindeman transforms a slice of AM gold by her fellow Canadian into a small buoy of cautious optimism, a pledge of endurance in fragile conditions. Like so many of her songs, Southworth’s writing suits intimately attuned and wide-angle views of the world. And though she highlights a vulnerable edge in “Loving You” by veering away from the original’s percussion and layered backing vocals, she adheres to its sentimentality enough to end the album with a slight uplift.
About halfway through the record, Lindeman raises the question in its title: “How is it that I should look at the stars?” One way is to consider that, by the time they become visible to us, they may no longer actually exist. In her songwriting, Lindeman assumes a similar perspective: She illuminates the world while acknowledging the fractures, and what we might have already lost. “I swear to god, this world will break my heart,” she sings, an observation that feels more true with each passing day. But hope streaks through Lindeman’s work, a reminder that even in the darkness, there’s still a reason to look up. | 2022-03-07T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-03-07T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Fat Possum | March 7, 2022 | 8 | 89162c15-dc34-499e-aeed-bc18dc51c708 | Allison Hussey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/allison-hussey/ | |
The Melbourne-based songwriter’s debut is sparse and hypnotic, drawing connections between her experiences of leaving a relationship and leaving a religious upbringing. | The Melbourne-based songwriter’s debut is sparse and hypnotic, drawing connections between her experiences of leaving a relationship and leaving a religious upbringing. | Maple Glider: To Enjoy Is the Only Thing | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/maple-glider-to-enjoy-is-the-only-thing/ | To Enjoy Is the Only Thing | Tori Zeitsch’s music aches with loss. The threadbare folk the Melbourne-based singer and songwriter makes as Maple Glider is skeletal in the most literal sense—absent of flesh, only intermittently lively, spare by necessity rather than choice. Her debut album, To Enjoy Is the Only Thing, conveys the hollow ache of being alone, the way loss wastes away at one’s very being. Early on in the record, she sings, plaintively: “I’ve served coffee in five different cities now.” Although she delivers the line with a smile—as an aside to a friend with whom she’s fallen out—it’s a vivid, visceral depiction of loneliness.
To Enjoy Is the Only Thing’s narrative throughline is transcience. Written during a period Zeitsch spent travelling in Europe and Asia while undergoing a protracted breakup, the album is rich with markers of unfamiliar places and experiences: a harsh, black-and-white coastline, a chilly Northern Hemisphere December, uncannily delicious red wine. But these vignettes are in service of something larger: To Enjoy Is the Only Thing draws connections between Zeitsch’s experiences of leaving a relationship and extricating herself from her religious upbringing. The album is less concerned with how it feels to lose another than how it feels to lose the feeling of devotion itself, and the act of finding yourself anew.
The way Zeitsch layers her metaphors—physical rootlessness as romantic rootlessness as spiritual rootlessness—could be impenetrably heady. But despite their sparseness, the album’s songs are hypnotic and tightly structured. On the chorus of “Swimming,” words cascade like beads cut from a string as Zeitsch translates a look from a lover into something dangerously liturgical: “Tell me my body has/Been so beautifully lived in/I almost fell apart/When you looked straight at my heart.” The lyric is ingratiating and incantatory, a deft translation of the way casual words from a partner can feel all too controlling. “Friend” plays like a Carpenters song slowed down and stripped bare; Zeitsch’s lyrics about the dissolution of a band and a friendship are made deceptively bright through their gorgeous, sighing melody: “Friend, you were on both sides/Pulling me up and dragging me down.”
As on “Swimming,” To Enjoy Is the Only Thing finds tension in parallels between submission to a lover and submission to a higher power, a kind of inversion of pop’s longstanding obsession with the sex-as-prayer metaphor. On opener “As Tradition,” the comparison is simple and discomfiting (“You and God, baby, love me the best/When I’m laid to rest/And only my body is left”) but on “Performer,” sex becomes a site of self-determination: “I do not know this man/But he is in my bedroom unfurling/And I am uncertain I can play as I have played before/But I am a performer, of course I’ll perform.” Neither song is particularly condemnatory; instead, they act as gentle explorations of meaning, ways of replacing one long-held belief with another.
To Enjoy Is the Only Thing is produced by Zeitsch and Tom Iansek, co-founder of Zeitsch’s Australian label Pieater. They practice careful, admirable restraint, barely expanding the record’s palette beyond gently fingerpicked acoustic guitar, piano, and a muffled kick; more leftfield details, such as the scramble of an AM radio on “Swimming,” are often only perceptible with headphones. There is one exception: On “Good Thing,” the record’s sweltering highlight, electric guitar and a full drum kit provide outsized heft. Zeitsch lets her voice rise to a rich, resonant belt, cutting off a relationship for the good of herself and her partner: “I guess that’s how we learn/By setting fire to things that bring us life/Before we’ve got to watch them burn.” In contrast to the uneasy ambiguities of the rest of the album, “Good Thing” provides a resolute, cathartic ending. The revelation, as hard-won as it may be, feels profound: There’s meaning enough in one’s own self-possession.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-06-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-06-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Partisan | June 28, 2021 | 7.4 | 89185e83-a8d0-4981-bbcb-ab3c41fc0d54 | Shaad D’Souza | https://pitchfork.com/staff/shaad-d’souza/ | |
This Philly group skated on the edges of post-punk and no wave in the late 1970s, releasing just one 7". Thurston Moore shepherds their surprise comeback LP. | This Philly group skated on the edges of post-punk and no wave in the late 1970s, releasing just one 7". Thurston Moore shepherds their surprise comeback LP. | Notekillers: We're Here to Help | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15087-were-here-to-help/ | We're Here to Help | It's hard to think of a more surprising reunion than that of instrumental trio the Notekillers. The Philadelphia-based group skated on the edges of post-punk and no wave in the late 1970s, releasing just one 7" ("The Zipper" b/w "Clockwise") during a five-year career. What they didn't know when they broke up in 1981 was the single had a big effect on Thurston Moore and the band he was starting at the time, Sonic Youth. 20 years later, Moore cited that influence in Mojo magazine, sparking a renewal that led to an archival Notekillers release on his Ecstatic Peace label, and the reforming of the band, whose members were now split between Philly and NYC.
Flash-forward another nine years, and the Notekillers have finally crafted their first album of new music since reuniting*.* That may seem like a long time, but it's understandable given how busy the three musicians are-- especially guitarist David First, who has forged a three-decade career as a minimalist composer and sound artist. Besides, time seems rather irrelevant for this band. The sound of the 10 chugging tracks on We're Here to Help is as vital and distinctive as those they originally crafted the first time around.
It's a sound that's accessible and welcoming, but not easy to pin down. This is ostensibly structured punk rock, with melodic shapes that resemble verses and choruses. The closest reference point is another underappreciated instrumental outfit, Pell Mell. Some songs also recall the brain-vs-brawn math-metal of Don Caballero. But where both of those groups colored within their own designated lines, a good bit of Notekillers' appeal comes from their willingness to play rough and loose, and let their sounds spill around a bit. Sometimes they even stretch into feedback-drenched free jazz. And the band's melodic curves are deceptive-- often a catchy hook becomes a repetitive mantra before you know it, no doubt due to First's highly-developed feel for the powers of minimalism.
If that sounds too theoretical or abstract, don't worry-- We're Here to Help is way more fun than educational. The Notekillers make energy and momentum their main priorities throughout, and every song-- even the loosest and noisiest-- has its share of head-nodding beats and air-guitar-worthy riffs. For me, the best tracks feature a wide range of twists, leaps, and crescendos. Take "Papers": opening with a snaky guitar line akin to Pete Townsend's wiry intro to the Who's version of "Shakin' All Over", the trio swerves from rising rave-ups, to hypnotic chord repetitions, to fiery noise, to even a bouncy middle section begging for hand-clap accompaniment. Such fresh diversity makes it seem like the Notekillers could-- and hopefully will-- keep churning out this ecstatic music for a long, long time. | 2011-02-09T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2011-02-09T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Rock | Prophase | February 9, 2011 | 7.4 | 891ad5c2-02b8-4ada-91b4-a8c250100298 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
Originally self-released during lockdown’s first wave, these unpredictable modular-synth pieces toy with rhythmic convention while perpetually throwing time out of joint. | Originally self-released during lockdown’s first wave, these unpredictable modular-synth pieces toy with rhythmic convention while perpetually throwing time out of joint. | M. Geddes Gengras: Time Makes Nothing Happen | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/m-geddes-gengras-time-makes-nothing-happen/ | Time Makes Nothing Happen | Roland Barthes’ Mourning Diary—a posthumously published set of fragments written as the French literary critic grieved his mother’s death—is a tumult of disembodied musings, one of which synthesist and producer M. Geddes Gengras repurposed for the title of Time Makes Nothing Happen. Originally self-released on Bandcamp in May, Time Makes Nothing Happen has been reissued six months later on experimental label Hausu Mountain, and the title increasingly reads more like a koan. If the pandemic lockdown in spring seemed to slow life to a crawl, how has our perception of time been further distorted, half a year on?
Recorded live by Gengras on modular synthesizer, Moog, and Elektron Machinedrum, the set’s teeming, sputtering morass of blips and squiggles has a mesmerizing effect. If every day since mid-March has felt a bit like Groundhog Day, this might be the soundtrack for it, reveling in the drudgery of quotidian routine.
Throughout Time Makes Nothing Happen, Gengras toys with the tropes of electronic dance music (repetition, meter, gridded quantization), only to gradually veer off into unkempt wilderness. The visuals accompanying both releases hint at that opposition: The cover of the Bandcamp release is a pane of glass that replicates a pattern of corrugated metal, while the Hausu Mountain art is a dense collage of video-game foliage. Building up and then erasing each component, the album can feel manicured in one stretch, corroded the next. Gengras’ approach makes his modular setup seem more like a terrarium in which total control is impossible; the would-be world-builder is resigned to patience, careful pruning, and a willingness to live with the outcome.
The title track summarizes the cumulative effect of the whole album in five minutes, presenting a seemingly impenetrable surface of bleeps, glassy timbres, and subliminal thumps. Gengras plays with expectations and anticipation as elements go blipping out of earshot and then fall back into place, to the point where you question if they ever actually vanished or were there all along. Rather than build toward release, the track instead dissolves into purgatory, like waiting on a subway platform for a train that scrapes and echoes down the tunnel yet never pulls into the station—and unexpectedly finding yourself standing not on concrete, but dirt.
In Gengras’ hands, motion itself becomes illusory. There’s a tingling electronic pulse at the start of “Time Is a Marble in a Bucket,” and the introduction of a deep bass throb conveys a quickening sensation. But just when a breakthrough feels imminent, you’re instead bundled in a staticky wool blanket, all crackle and dark space. Lullaby-like chimes are soon distended and paired with an approximation of a cowbell clonk on “Slip the Tape Through a Corkscrew, Pull and Repeat,” widening into a roomful of cuckoo clocks going haywire as they strike the hour.
The final tracks on the album add the Elektron Machinedrum and wind up in slightly more conventional territory; the only real surprise amid the straightforward, club-friendly thumps of “Bend (Edit)” and “Throttle” is that the floor never really drops away. Which feels a bit like an inversion of expectations, if only because after nearly an hour of dizzying befuddlement in the tangle of Geddes Gengras’ machines, when something finally happens on Time Makes Nothing Happen, it winds up feeling a little less interesting.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-11-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-11-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Hausu Mountain | November 18, 2020 | 7.4 | 891d41a6-4079-4c95-a78e-a7910adfc219 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
The American DJ, known for her breathtaking, hyperkinetic club anthems, delivers a wide-ranging, shape-shifting set of techno, breakbeats, and leftfield pop. | The American DJ, known for her breathtaking, hyperkinetic club anthems, delivers a wide-ranging, shape-shifting set of techno, breakbeats, and leftfield pop. | Avalon Emerson: DJ-Kicks | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/avalon-emerson-dj-kicks/ | DJ-Kicks | When Avalon Emerson and her girlfriend made a cross-country road trip from Los Angeles to New York this summer, they shot a set of impromptu videos that neatly encapsulate Emerson's musical choices and mixing style: kinetic, evocative, and deeply personal. The terrain is both ever changing and continuous; speed is its own reward. Rarely veering away from 132 BPM, Emerson constantly blurs the line between the ecstatic and the anxious.
In recent years, Emerson has been more active as a DJ than a producer, but her DJ-Kicks set slots in four new tracks from her (as well as a remix of Austra), swiftly roving between breakbeats, abstract techno, electro, and leftfield pop, and even detouring into sweaty dance punk. For those familiar with her run of breathtaking techno tracks, the opening selection is the equivalent of screeching brakes. “I’m not a vibeman,” Emerson has said about her DJ style, and the startlingly faithful cover of the Magnetic Fields’ “Long Forgotten Fairytale” that she kicks off with dares to infuriate techno purists while speaking to Emerson’s ear and sense of craft. No matter how wild and abstract her productions can get, there’s always a melodic thread that holds it all together. Those diametrically opposed yet sympathetic elements are evident as the arpeggios of “Long Forgotten Fairytale” morph into the anthemic swirls and stretched putty of another new production, “Wastelands & Oases.” The chopped blips and snares of Waveforms’ “Breakers in Space” recall classic breakcore, but with a dreamy synth line undulating just beneath the hectic surface. So when the mix opens into the broad vistas of Emerson’s own “Rotting Hills,” the effect is especially lush, like clouds breaking to reveal a sunny day.
Throughout, Emerson gravitates toward synth textures that can feel crystalline and lucid one moment, barbed and abrasive the next, as when a glassy background turns gnarled as the Knife member Olof Dreijer’s techno side project Oni Ayhun lurches to life. Distorted, dark, and jumbled, it just as quickly veers right back into the sleek, SOPHIE-like pop of Oklou’s “Just Level 5 Cause It’s Cute.” Pulled from the artist’s Soundcloud page, it’s a giddy early highlight; Emerson reaches this plateau without any kick, her ascent powered by delirious arpeggios alone.
Sweet little lyrical snatches give off a feeling of contentment, as when the sped-up vocal lifted from S.O.S. Band’s “The Finest” hammers home the admission: “Time flies when you’re with me.” But just as often, what would otherwise sound heart-quickening intensifies into something anxious: The distorted disco strings of Smith & Hack and Soundstream are ratcheted up until their high frequencies trigger bouts of vertigo.
Release comes in the form of the two scruffy dance-punk cuts that pay tribute to two crucial dance-music scenes. Considered one of the founding tracks of Detroit techno, A Number of Names’ “Sharevari” gets a loving, sweaty, spot-on cover from the Dirtbombs, right down to Mick Collins’ European-by-way-of-Dracula delivery. Emerson blends that into !!!’s psychedelic “Hello? Is This Thing On?” A song by the Sacramento band remixed by a former member of San Francisco’s Wicked crew (though dating from when both parties had decamped for early-’00s NYC), it’s a claustrophobic highlight that gives way to another Emerson original. Burbling and bright, “Poodle Power” suggests she may have been spending time with Mort Garson’s early synthesizer experiments like Plantasia.
Emerson’s remix of Austra’s “Anywayz” winds down the set. Much like the Oklou track at the mix’s midway point, it favors a nearless beatless atmosphere, giving way to Katie Stelmanis’s Enya-like vocals and the ambient sound of rain. Though the set rarely lets up, Emerson finally takes her foot off the gas at the end, giving us a moment to breathe deep and take in the landscape. Only then can you see how far and fast her DJ-Kicks set has really traveled. | 2020-09-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | !K7 | September 18, 2020 | 7.9 | 8921869d-40ab-4f19-9c36-587aa2041371 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
On her most rap-oriented release yet, Nicki jettisons all the industry madness, drowns out the noise, and creates rap the way she believes it should sound. | On her most rap-oriented release yet, Nicki jettisons all the industry madness, drowns out the noise, and creates rap the way she believes it should sound. | Nicki Minaj: Queen | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nicki-minaj-queen/ | Queen | To reign over the charts, the critics, and the streets, a hip-hop star with pop ambitions must be everything to everyone while holding on tight to their identity. This balancing act is especially unforgiving for women, and Nicki Minaj has contended with these double standards and sky-high expectations for over a decade. Her biggest chart successes have come with songs like 2014’s bawdy “Anaconda,” and the effervescent “Super Bass” from her 2010 debut, but there are still incessant calls for some combination of the take-no-prisoners snarl of her breakout verse on “Monster” and serious art made up of reflection and maturity. But with Queen, Nicki jettisons all the industry madness, drowns out the noise, and creates rap the way she believes it should sound.
Due to hip-hop’s sexist, one-at-a-time cap on women dominating the genre, this is the first time Nicki has ever released an album with another commercially successful woman also climbing rap’s ranks. And whatever pressure—whether real or spectator-projected—is there, she rises to the occasion with Queen, her most rap-oriented full-length to date. Never lacking for charisma and attitude, her flows and cadences are a whirlwind of husky aggression and bouncing animation. She sends shots in every direction (“Don’t duck if it don’t apply,” she sneers on one track) with the confidence of a woman holding court in a kingdom she conquered. From Michael Jackson to Sizzla to Patti Labelle, she drops so many names and references that someone could get a halfway decent music (fashion and sports too) lesson if they Googled them all. They spill out as both venerating homages and a testament to her high-powered lifestyle.
With the album’s contentious rollout, marred by social media drama and middling singles, Nicki really buried the two big ledes here. “Barbie Dreams,” which adapts Notorious B.I.G.’s “Just Playing (Dreams)” and updates Nicki’s own “Dreams 07” cut from her 2007 mixtape Playtime Is Over, is a flamethrowing pink slip delivered with a wink. Positioning some of rap’s biggest names in her crosshairs, she playfully jabs at her peers, turning their reputations into reasons they won’t be seeing her in the bedroom. It highlights the kind of quick wit and humor that earned her the spotlight to begin with. And in a proud display of her Caribbean background, she enlists fellow Trini-rhymer Foxy Brown for the patois-flavored “Coco Chanel.” The two share a magnetic synergy as they trade verses over a dancehall production that interpolates the classic Showtime Riddim. The cross-generational collaboration is significant—particularly for Nicki, who is rarely caught on wax with other female rappers and considers Brown an idol.
With those peaks coming at either end of the album, the middle faces an impossible task of keeping the pace over an hour-long hike. The lows range from fine (“Bed”) to forgettable (“Thought I Knew You”), but the highs are immaculate: The electrifying “LLC” and the twerk-ready “Good Form” showcase the rapper’s inimitable technique, the one that turned heads in the first place. Little tricks, like her play on the phonetics of “good form,” which she alternates to sound like “good for him,” are the kind of flourishes that set her apart. On the slow-burner “Come See About Me,” she gives the bravado a rest and, over a swelling piano-laced production, reminisces about a past lover in a manner more hopeful than heartbroken. Like the sappy The Pinkprint closer “Grand Piano” or the yearning “Save Me” from Pink Friday, there’s always a moment of pause when she goes full-ballad. But even though singing isn’t exactly Nicki’s secret weapon, it offers an additional emotional texture that isn’t available to her when she’s flowing.
Nicki has spent her career engaged in a battle against being boxed in. The bubbly pop markers that separate her albums from her early mixtapes were evidence of her fear of becoming just another rapper. Queen is the safe and sturdy middle ground. The lyrical barbs are there, but nearly every song is glossy enough to spend some time in the Top 40. The album offers hints of nearly every era and iteration of her career thus far: the razor-tongued Nicki the Ninja, the sexually-charged Nicki Lewinsky, and even the zany Roman teases an appearance at the tail end of “Barbie Dreams.” The connections between past and present, between style and form, make Queen feel like her most creatively honest album. She remains a force—whether you’re willing to bow or not. | 2018-08-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-08-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Young Money Entertainment / Cash Money / Republic | August 14, 2018 | 7.6 | 89241fe4-cb16-49e0-aab8-07d9f7751664 | Briana Younger | https://pitchfork.com/staff/briana-younger/ | |
The London trio follows its now-classic 2009 debut with an album that's even more stripped down and minimal. Coexist takes the most distinctive things about the xx and eliminates virtually everything else. | The London trio follows its now-classic 2009 debut with an album that's even more stripped down and minimal. Coexist takes the most distinctive things about the xx and eliminates virtually everything else. | The xx: Coexist | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17022-coexist/ | Coexist | The xx's self-titled debut was the kind of record that filled a void most of us didn't know existed. Several currents of music flowed into the work of this London band to create something that felt strangely new. Singers Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim treated the pop song like a whispered secret, an achingly intimate exchange best understood in the general vicinity of a bed. And the xx foregrounded the hushed voices by process of subtraction, creating music with a daring sense of space. Under the production direction of third member Jamie Smith (now known as Jamie xx), the xx created a sound world where the simplest chord change was freighted with emotion. xx's minimal production reacquainted listeners with the expressive possibility of the guitar. Croft's gently picked lines, ultra clean with a tasteful mist of reverb, were quietly devastating in their own way, connecting the music with indie rock proper. The final piece of the puzzle was Jamie xx's careful beat programming, which was aware of up-to-the-moment trends in UK bass music but never pandered to them. These parts came together in a debut that sounded great at the time and has become a landmark. Channeling the spirit if not the precise sound of the softer and more cerebral end of R&B (Sade Adu is the spirit mother, Aaliyah the holy ghost) and mixing it with a pinch of DIY guitar music and a smart underpinning of rhythm, the xx created music rich with possibility. And while they didn't change the way music was made, they did have an effect on how it was heard. Without them, we'd be coming at music by artists like the Weeknd and Jessie Ware with different ears.
But you knew what was coming with album number two: Where do you go next? Do you light out for new territory or refine what's already there? The xx have chosen the latter tack, if you consider further stripping of their already-naked sound a refinement. Coexist takes the most distinctive things about the xx-- "shh" vocals, guitar patterns that feel like faint line drawings, lyrics that detail the most essential aspects of yearning-- and eliminates virtually everything else. It didn't seem possible that the arrangements on the debut could stand to have even more taken from them, but that's what's happened here. In that regard, the album feels in its own way brave. They're doubling down on what makes them stand out, which brings with it the real possibility of self-parody. Fortunately, the xx aren't at that point yet. So the most appealing thing about this record is that this band, having created a brilliant and moving sound, returns to it again for another 38 minutes. "Angels" drips with austere beauty, "Tides" begins a duet so stark it's breathtaking, the evocative piano in "Swept Away" is a nice wrinkle. This is still gorgeous stuff, and it's hard not to enjoy it while it's on. But while the edifice of their aesthetic still stands, in a few places it's getting a little rickety.
If generally successful on its own terms, Coexist also serves to remind us why exactly the debut was so brilliant. For one, xx had a very subtle and effective sense of dynamics. I'm thinking in particular of songs such as "Islands", with its halting beat that mapped the push-pull production of Timbaland onto an indie pop context. There are no such moments on Coexist, an album that moves from one song to the next like a slow-rolling fog. You can't help but wish Jamie xx had experimented a bit more and borrowed ideas hatched from his creative run of production work since the debut. With his remixes, DJ sets, mixes, and a brilliant single, he's proven to be one of the more adventurous and open-minded young producers going, hungry to incorporate all kinds of sounds and approaches into his music. The only real evidence of those explorations here is the steel drum that pops up on "Reunion", which brings to mind his use of the instrument in his single "Far Nearer" and gives Coexist a rare crack of light. There's no reason why the xx have to try something new sonically. But bands with a unique signature generally stick around by growing as songwriters and staying open to the possibilities of production. Coexist shows no such growth. With the music so focused and constrained, the album becomes slightly claustrophobic; where the first made you think about the different sounds that came from outside, this feels closed off.
In terms of lyrics, the xx have done away with specificity and chosen to focus on the travails of relationships using the broadest possible language. If I were to say, "You know the song that mentions a look in a lover's eyes?" you'd say, "Which one?" because some variation of the phrase pops up repeatedly. I see it in your eyes... the feeling in my heart... something has changed...the feeling goes on... never again... A handful of images and thoughts are shuffled like a deck of cards and doled out, seemingly at random. And while Croft or Sim don't need to get near Frank Ocean's level of sophistication for their music to work, with music so minimal, I find myself yearning for a line as pedestrian and relatable as "We watch things on VCRs." Too often, these words feel like placeholders.
Shortcomings aside, I find myself enjoying Coexist and returning to it. It's hard not to be disappointed given what came before, but the xx are still a special band, and time could possibly be kinder to their second LP as its place within a longer career comes into focus. For now, they've earned the right to make this record. Every band that creates a new world deserves a chance to return to it, to play around some more and see how much inspiration still exists. Asking for a third shot at it, on the other hand, is generally a harder sell. | 2012-09-10T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-09-10T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Pop/R&B | Young Turks | September 10, 2012 | 7.5 | 8929d2dd-b079-4903-8323-7c134c79b56f | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
The divisive and highly personal Welsh group continues to grow up, embrace its inner punk, churn out amazing lyrics, and sharpen its edge. | The divisive and highly personal Welsh group continues to grow up, embrace its inner punk, churn out amazing lyrics, and sharpen its edge. | Los Campesinos!: Romance Is Boring | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13879-romance-is-boring/ | Romance Is Boring | One of the earliest Los Campesinos! singles came with a daisy chain of paper dolls tucked into the sleeve, each Campesino! holding hands and smiling wide. Had a razorblade popped out of 2008's We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, I doubt anyone would've blinked an eye. Over the past three years, Los Campesinos! transformed themselves from a smart, spry, neon pop group possessed with a seemingly boundless everykid exuberance to a bunch of noisy, angry, funny weirdos. Their near-blindingly bright debut LP, Hold On Now Youngster, sat on shelves for a scant eight months before the group followed it with We Are Beautiful, a squalid spleen-venter. They started touring with noise-rock bands. Gareth Campesinos!, lead shouter/songwriter, began barking for heavy stuff like Xiu Xiu and Parenthetical Girls on their Twitter; then, they got the guy from Xiu Xiu to guest on their latest record. In practically a year's time, Gareth went from phrase-turning, scene-critiquing clever kid to a sadsack of Steven Patrick Morrissey proportions, while his band loosened up and billowed out, their grandiose pop growing at once messier and more symphonic. It's all been pretty good.
And it all comes to a head here on Romance Is Boring, their third proper LP. All that they've managed to do over the three short years-- the not-so-quiet confidence and compositional precision of their earlier work, the weary weather-beaten sound of We Are Beautiful, and of course Gareth's hilarious, grotesque, and immensely affecting character sketches-- finds its way onto Romance. And Gareth, poor hilarious Gareth, though still very concerned with the goings-on around his navel, has turned his gaze outward just a bit; heck, the first line on the record has him pleading to "talk about you for a minute." They're still utter musical maximalists, still keen to shout when the time calls, and still led by a perpetual malcontent, but Romance Is Boring feels like the payoff of three years of extremely hard work; Gareth may never settle down exactly, but his band's sure getting some stuff figured out.
On sonics alone, Romance Is Boring is a triumph; bringing back We Are Beautiful's John Goodmanson as producer, they've expanded their already sizable instrumental palette, thrown a little more space into the still-crowded mix, and figured out a way to make the big moments count even more by pulling back during the ones that mean less. Whereas before, it occasionally seemed as though they were piling on instruments just to keep idle hands busy, they've learned not to do everything at once. Gareth's been badmouthing their early reliance on glockenspiel to just about anybody who'll listen these days, and there's definitely a deemphasis on the cuter side of things; that's clear as soon as you hit the turgid electronic breakdown of "In Medias Res". Those still-great old numbers from the Sticking Fingers Into Sockets EP sound like they were written by some gifted children, the jarring wallow of We Are Beautiful like young adults; the comparatively subtle Romance Is Boring feels almost full-grown.
Gareth, too, is showing off some of the wisdom of his not-so-advanced age; a limber, funny, and often uncomfortably direct lyricist, he's a little less concerned with being clever here. One striking thing about Romance is how little concern there seems to be with rhyme schemes, as if expression of these thoughts couldn't be relegated to some prescribed formula. Because he writes well over the lines, songs start and end in strange places-- "Straight in at 101" kicks off with a knee-slapper about post-rock and winds down with a televised countdown of worst breakups ever-- but it has the naturalistic feel of a stream-of-consciousness confessional written by a dude who's been through a lot and spent even more time thinking about it. He's always managed to find the humor in the tragic, but here, he finds time for both. He begins one song detailing a friend's struggles with eating disorders, then leads off the next with a unison scream urging one and all to "calm the fuck down." Because so much of this seems ripped from the pages of Gareth's journal-- and because he still sings like he's gonna blow up at any moment-- the urgency of all that he's trying to convey can knock you flat. There may be slicker songwriters, and there are many more economical, but there are few more honest, more willing to put it all out there, and for many, more relatable.
For some, the cohesive, self-assured Romance will be their favorite Los Campesinos! record; others will continue to prefer the extremity of what came before. That's the breaks with an intensely personal band like this, I suppose; you're going to get intensely personal reactions. Speaking as somebody a little older than your average Campesino!, I can tell you I'm glad to be out of the shitstorm of my early twenties on display here, but I do remember it well; never better than when I'm listening to this band, for better and worse. I can remember at that age feeling constantly on the verge of something, but not knowing sure just what. Romance Is Boring smacks of that feeling, knowing more than before but still trying to hash out just where to go with it. It's fun watching bands grow; it's been a pleasure watching this band grow up. | 2010-02-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2010-02-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Arts & Crafts | February 1, 2010 | 8.3 | 892bc8d4-7785-4c5c-a714-d0641df5a998 | Paul Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-thompson/ | null |
The cool, shimmering* blackSUMMERS’night *is probably Maxwell’s most cohesive effort since Embrya, fit to soundtrack sessions of sex so exquisite and transcendental, tantric comes off as boring. | The cool, shimmering* blackSUMMERS’night *is probably Maxwell’s most cohesive effort since Embrya, fit to soundtrack sessions of sex so exquisite and transcendental, tantric comes off as boring. | Maxwell: blackSUMMERS’night | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22057-maxwell-blacksummersnight/ | blackSUMMERS’night | Though consistently excellent, Maxwell has always sailed forward with a quiet confidence and little controversy, and he’s never really received the fanfare that fellow neo-soul progenitor D’Angelo probably wishes had skipped him. Their pioneering careers launched simultaneously, but *Brown Sugar, *D’Angelo’s studio debut, was released in July 1995 to immediate success. Maxwell turned in his first album, Urban Hang Suite, around the same time, but it was shelved for almost a year and when it finally did drop in April of 1996, it gathered steam slowly. You want both in your boudoir, but Maxwell is the yin to D’Angelo’s yang: While D’Angelo’s steamy devotion makes you kick off the covers, Maxwell is the cool side of the pillow.
Twenty years after his masterpiece of a debut, Maxwell proves he’s as chill as ever with the elegant *blackSUMMERS’night, *another collection of shimmering love songs that pushes on the limits of R&B and proudly embraces the “grown and sexy” label. With forever-sophisticated lyrics sung in his still-creamy voice over a band so tight they sound loose, *blackSUMMERS’night *is probably Maxwell’s most cohesive effort since his sublime (critics panned it; they were wrong) sophomore album, *Embrya—*and the first since then with no skippable tracks, the better to soundtrack sessions of sex so exquisite and transcendental, tantric comes off as boring.
Of course, thematically sound records have always been Maxwell’s strength. Urban Hang Suite is a concept album that exalted monogamy; the prequel to the current album*, BLACKsummers’night, *details another emotionally complex romantic relationship. Seven years later, *blackSUMMERS’night *picks up where that left off, with Maxwell writing yet another album that explores the full spectrum of love. Curiosity—the desire to dissect and examine a partnership—has always set him apart; Maxwell wants to push far past the surface, almost clinically so, of any easily won emotion. Here, that means he doesn’t shy away from vulnerability (“Feel like I’m average, the pressure’s so savage,” he sings on “The Fall”). His attempts at “happily ever after” continue to serve as musical inspiration, perhaps never as heart-wrenchingly so as in “Lost,” where he observes a former lover from a distance and takes note of her growing children and doting husband. Still, he somehow remains miraculously open, or maybe just fated, to falling in love: As he insists on “III,” “Cupid keeps targeting me/Arrows are flying, I can’t see.”
Maxwell’s head is usually in the clouds, and his music reflects that. Even “Pretty Wings,” a song about a breakup, is as light and airy as any ode written to a new crush. On *blackSUMMERS’night, *at least half of the album is drenched in sunshine. He juxtaposes sparkling chords with fed-up lyrics on “Gods.” His aching on “Of All Kind” contrasts with glittery synths. Through it all, his voice remains effortlessly calm.
In fact, there are moments when you worry that Maxwell might lose listeners because he’s so cool. Heat emanates off D’Angelo not just in “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”; Prince turns positively primal by the end of “The Beautiful Ones.” Maxwell is more esoteric, however, often appealing to your mind as opposed to your body. As delicate as “Hostage” is, it can skew negative when you really consider lyrics like, “I’m free inside the cage of your heart of gold/The prison of your love, it makes me so.”
Which is why a song like “1990x” stands out as necessary. Musically, it brings to mind Embrya, which found the singer diving deep into glistening oceans of sound, undulating bass lines, gurgling synths, with his sweetly effortless tenor floating and glinting atop. “1990x” is similarly submerged, with plops of steady and strong percussion echoing the line, “Lay here closely beside me, feel my heart as it’s pounded.” Along with lead single “Lake by the Ocean,” the perfect song for a summer wedding’s first dance, it grounds the whole album. The album may be musing or abstracted, but that’s his hallmark, and blackSUMMERS’night is polished to a blinding sheen. “I just want to live and do what I can to be my best/Nevertheless, never settle for less,” he sings on album opener “All the Ways Love Can Feel.” Mission accomplished. | 2016-07-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-07-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Columbia | July 12, 2016 | 8.4 | 8939fb47-25ce-4dbf-91aa-69d95c84e718 | Rebecca Haithcoat | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rebecca- haithcoat/ | null |
With a 30-song record, the rising country star takes a closer look at Music Row clichés, writing in easy, idiomatic shorthand that plunges you directly into his world. | With a 30-song record, the rising country star takes a closer look at Music Row clichés, writing in easy, idiomatic shorthand that plunges you directly into his world. | Morgan Wallen: Dangerous: The Double Album | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/morgan-wallen-dangerous-the-double-album/ | Dangerous: The Double Album | Morgan Wallen’s voice can be as abrasive as the bottom-shelf liquor he sings about. When he auditioned for a short-lived stint on “The Voice” in 2014, Shakira called the aspiring country singer’s vocal tone “as manly as it gets,” a distinction he later built on with a testosterone-forward look that combines cut-off plaids, a mullet, and a party-starting catchphrase, “GAHT,” something like a good ol’ boy’s “dale.”
Wallen’s raucous side first got him noticed in Nashville, but baring his soul on songs like “Cover Me Up,” a bruised take on a Jason Isbell song, made him into a superstar. Even before the release of his second album, Dangerous, the Sneedville, Tennessee native had racked up 3.4 billion streams, including four country airplay No. 1s and a Billboard top 10, culminating, infamously, in being disinvited from Saturday Night Live after video surfaced of Wallen not wearing a mask at a party. Dangerous has 30 songs, two discs, and two modes: the “rowdy redneck” raising hell in the boondocks, and the downhome romantic dreaming of his own piece of sky. Though Wallen’s idea was to split the album according to theme, things aren’t quite as delineated as that. Even at his most boisterous, Wallen is given to introspection, and he can make the straightest love song gnarly.
The clichés of Music Row are well-worn; Wallen looks at them closer to find a new grain. On “865,” he is a poet laureate of boozy desperation, coming closer to drunk-dialing with each shot; on the Thomas Rhett co-write “Whiskey’d My Way,” he has the pathos of a wounded pup, apologetically approaching a crush over pedal steel. For all their intimacy, these are songs made to fill football stadiums; Dangerous’ sole producer Joey Moi provides a sheen that can make Wallen’s music feel as epic as anything by Adele. With its rousing chorus and super-sized guitar solo, “Silverado for Sale” makes a love song to a truck feel fresh, as Wallen realizes, glassy-eyed, that his memories are etched into each wrinkle of its bench seat.
Part of what makes Wallen’s writing so magnetic is the easy, idiomatic shorthand that plunges you directly into his world. Take the tongue-twisting lines that open “Somebody’s Problem,” a tender ballad to a free-spirited woman that’s among Dangerous’ very best songs: “A ’Bama-red 4Runner pulled into the party/With a 30A sticker on the back windshield,” he sings, an image so vivid you can practically smell the gasoline. He has a riddler’s ear for wordplay and an enchantment with the everyday that makes “dodging potholes in my sunburnt Silverado,” as he sings on the piano-led opener “Sand in My Boots,” sound downright alluring. Wallen’s biggest crossover hit to date, the Shane McAnally co-write “7 Summers,” is lit by the rosy glow of lost love. The daydream is not without bite: Wallen spells out the lyrics’ double meaning with a stand-up comic’s knack for timing. “That was seven summers of coke..../And Southern Comfort,” he sings, a hook that plays innocently enough for country radio but holds a knowing wink for those who really like to rage.
As Wallen’s audience has broadened, so has his taste. Dangerous’ big and breezy title track is a maximalist flip of the angular art-pop that packed out Scottish indie discos in the ’80s, and the booming drums and ’80s synths of “This Bar” wouldn’t sound out of place on Taylor Swift’s Red. A weaker spot is “Wasted on You,” with a blend of trap snares and guitar twang that isn’t quite as fluid as the country/hip-hop hybrids of, say, Hunt. But among the album’s 30 tracks there are few skips. You could lose the slightly formulaic “Only Thing That’s Gone,” which wastes a Chris Stapleton feature, and the overly literal “Outlaw.” The boisterous “Country A$$ Shit” riffs on the fun-dumb ethos of Wallen’s 2017 Florida Georgia Line collaboration “Up Down” but loses its knockabout charm.
Wallen’s best songs need less adornment, as with the album’s bookends “Quittin’ Time” and “Sand in My Boots,” a heartbreak kid’s confessional that echoes as if he is singing from a church’s pulpit. “Somethin’ ’bout the way she kissed me tells me she’d love Eastern Tennessee,” Wallen sings, as his barnacled voice cracks into a howl that could reach up to the neon moon. The sentiment is familiar enough, but when Wallen sings it, it’s enough to make you shiver.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-01-14T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-01-14T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Big Loud / Republic | January 14, 2021 | 6.9 | 893c41fa-edbb-4daa-a852-a395f0bf87aa | Owen Myers | https://pitchfork.com/staff/owen-myers/ | |
With her fourth album, the pop songwriter reaches a welcome sense of self-assurance. But if this was supposed to be an introspective record, that’s not what’s happening musically. | With her fourth album, the pop songwriter reaches a welcome sense of self-assurance. But if this was supposed to be an introspective record, that’s not what’s happening musically. | Ellie Goulding: Brightest Blue | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ellie-goulding-brightest-blue/ | Brightest Blue | A folktronica artist who pivoted to mainstream pop, Ellie Goulding stumbled upon longevity in the 2010s with one fluke hit after another. Both “Lights” and “Burn” began as bonus tracks from modestly performing albums (2010’s Lights and 2012’s underrated Halcyon, respectively) before gradually crossing over. “Love Me Like You Do,” a one-off from the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack that she didn’t even write, achieved nearly a billion Spotify plays—but the subsequent album, 2015’s Delirium, yielded only one outright hit. Its formulaic songs rarely took advantage of Goulding’s malleable, oft-sampled warble, leaving her with a distinctive voice in only the most literal sense. A half-decade of EDM collaborations and false starts later, Goulding returns with Brightest Blue, an album about taking control of her life and identity—with a few proven hits tacked onto a bonus EP billed as Side 2. Pop music hasn’t been fun for some time, so a quieter record makes sense commercially as well as spiritually. But Brightest Blue has a unique problem: Its suffocating production undermines the more grounded lyrics.
If Goulding intended to make an introspective record, that’s not what’s happening musically. This is a crowded, obscenely expensive-sounding album. Though the crew is small by pop standards (including previous collaborators Jim Eliot and Joe Kearns), multiple songs feature real orchestras and real choirs competing with synthetic orchestras and Goulding’s own multi-tracked vocals. This isn’t always a bad thing; “Love I’m Given” updates the post-Adele songs from 2012’s Halcyon, even mimicking the looped vocal riff from “Only You.” But after five or six other electronic-gospel hybrids, the title track doesn’t stand out. When “Tides” breaks through the monotony, the skittering, trebly production feels too small to compete against the surrounding density.
Beneath that density, there are genuine strides. “Woman” works by focusing on Goulding herself and how she’s grown, rather speaking for everyone else. It’s hard to hear over the Inspiring, Motivational string arrangement and the Pasek-and-Paul chorus, but there are lovely sentiments about aging in public: “Free-falling through the photographs that paid my bills” might be the most evocative line on any Goulding album. On “How Deep Is Too Deep,” a clear standout, she sneaks in some unconventional but welcome metaphors: “You cast me in your thriller just to cut the scene out,” and, “You wanna wash me off but you want me as your tattoo.”
That kind of emotional depth feels like a necessary correction from Delirium, but while Blue is thoughtful and beautiful, it’s a drag to sit through. The interludes have more personality than the full-length songs; the hyper-processed sketch “Wine Drunk” is more memorable than “Bleach,” the song it precedes. Serpentwithfeet’s verbose opening stanza on “Start” offers the kind of quirkiness missing elsewhere: “Every summer my friends prevent me from using the grill/They believe Cancer men don’t have the will/To play with fire.” The other collaborations, concentrated on Side B, can’t match the album’s soul-searching. Goulding gives as much as she can when her duet partners are pop sadboi Lauv and veteran edgelord blackbear, but without the insight of the proper album, all that’s left is underwritten background music. These songs aren’t actively bad, but their trend-chasing is distracting, and a collaboration with the late Juice WRLD makes for an oddly melancholic closer. Continuing the contradictory streak of Goulding’s career, Brightest Blue’s often compelling narrative of self-assurance still ends with an identity crisis.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-07-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-07-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Interscope | July 22, 2020 | 6.4 | 893f25ef-0ce6-4486-80e8-36cd366bdb91 | Hannah Jocelyn | https://pitchfork.com/staff/hannah-jocelyn/ | |
If Twelve Reasons to Die was based on a comic, then its sequel is the cinematic adaptation or a reboot of the franchise; the source material is the same, but the execution is tightened in places. It has a bigger-budget feel—stronger guests, better pacing, and a more careful consideration for its audience. | If Twelve Reasons to Die was based on a comic, then its sequel is the cinematic adaptation or a reboot of the franchise; the source material is the same, but the execution is tightened in places. It has a bigger-budget feel—stronger guests, better pacing, and a more careful consideration for its audience. | Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge: Twelve Reasons to Die II | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20722-twelve-reasons-to-die-ii/ | Twelve Reasons to Die II | The first Twelve Reasons to Die scanned like gangster fan fiction. It's Wu-Tang revisionist mob history, the rap equivalent of retroactively inserting Captain America into the World War II timeline. Longtime Ghostface Killah alter ego Tony Starks—Marvel's Iron Man, repurposed—acts as the enforcer for the DeLucas, a Cosa Nostra-esque crime family terrorizing 1960s Italy. He decides to set off on his own, falling in love with the boss's daughter in the process, and he is subsequently murdered by his former employer for his perceived treachery. Starks' ashes are then pressed into a dozen records, and when they are played he is resurrected as Ghostface, an embodiment of the departed's thirst for vengeance.
It sounds like something out of a comic because it is—this is the same rapper who named his debut after an Avenger and commissioned a Marvel artist to ink the artwork for Wu-Massacre. Ghostface has always been enamored with the medium, and his colorful storytelling lends itself well to sequential framing. But Twelve Reasons to Die was rough around the edges, trying to fit too many moving parts into its ambitious conceptual framework. It was limited by obtuse exposition and lazy transitions as transparent as a strip's "meanwhile…" panel. The second installment in the saga, Twelve Reasons to Die II, hits the reset button, hopping decades and time zones, recycling the original blueprint but recasting Ghostface as an anti-hero.
If Twelve Reasons to Die is a comic, then its sequel is the cinematic adaptation or a reboot of the franchise; the source material is the same, but the execution is tightened in places. It has a bigger-budget feel—stronger guests, better pacing, and a more careful consideration for its audience. RZA narrates the passages too tricky to rap. Adrian Younge warps thick '70s soul sounds into a concrete jungle. But mostly, T**RTD II is simply able to succeed where its predecessor failed with the benefit of hindsight. With a proper framing device, more capable bit players (Scarub and Chino XL), and closer attention to detail, Ghostface and Younge do a better job sketching out an alternate universe.
The key to TRTD II is Raekwon, who stars as Lester Kane, an upstart New York City kingpin at war with the DeLucas in the mid-'70s and a foil for Ghostface's Starks. Here, unlike on his recently released gaudy solo album, Fly International Luxurious Art*,* he is noticeably comfortable, penning engaging underworld scenes. He remains an asset to modern Ghostface, whose yarns don't string quite as far these days.
Peak Ghostface could tell an entire story in footnotes; this Ghostface is less subtle. But something happens to him rapping next to Raekwon: On "King of New York" he is as graphic as ever describing Kane ("the New York mob scene is just scared of his suits"). Seconds later, Rae chimes in as Kane, and the exchange breathes real life into the character, who plays a pivotal role in the plot. Raekwon's dense, barreling lyricism is perfect for the action sequences of "Return of the Savage" and "Blackout," where gunfire is exchanged in flurries. Ghostface is still sometimes hilariously literal on TRTD II ("Bash him with a disco ball/ It's the '70s!"), but when challenged, like on the Vince Staples-assisted "Get the Money", he still comes up with great writing.
Ghostface is the visible star at the center of the production, but he is backed by Adrian Younge, the silent star who stitches TRTD II together at the seams with his evocative soul instrumentation. His murky production does a lot of the heavy lifting dramatically: He creates the worlds in which these characters interact, and his work gives everything that happens texture. He chops sequence amplifiers all the way through the finale.
At the end of TRTD II (spoiler!), Ghostface Killah is reborn as a mortal man in the body of Lester Kane, opening the door for a potential third and closing act to this trilogy (RZA: "This is not the last we'll ever hear of Tony Starks/ In actuality, this is just the beginning"). If there is to be a TRTD III, hopefully it embraces the format and flow of this record. | 2015-07-07T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2015-07-07T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Linear Labs | July 7, 2015 | 7.2 | 8945944f-7fa0-4c5a-b447-9bf95966e4e4 | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | null |
The Boston band’s second and final album is a bright explosion in every atonal direction from math-rock breakdowns to sludgy noise, like virtuosos pushing the self-destruct button. | The Boston band’s second and final album is a bright explosion in every atonal direction from math-rock breakdowns to sludgy noise, like virtuosos pushing the self-destruct button. | Birthing Hips: Urge to Merge | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/birthing-hips-urge-to-merge/ | Urge to Merge | Birthing Hips’ whirlwind of a career teaches a lesson in the second law of thermodynamics, which basically boils down to a), nobody has control over jack shit, and b) any attempt to impose order on energy, be it through law, border, or binary, will eventually fail. The principles may sound dire, but they give us a reason to throw caution to the wind. They also form the scaffolding of the Boston group’s head-spinning melanges, noxious stews of punk, jazz, avant-garde rock, metal, and pop, gesturing wildly across the entire sonic spectrum—from Slayer and Shonen Knife to the Slits and Celine Dion.
Less than two years after their inception on the heels of 2016’s tape No Sorry, the quartet now gleefully reach for the self-destruct button with Urge to Merge, their second and final full-length. As with the rest of Birthing Hips’ modest discography, the 11-track album, which the group recorded live at Brooklyn DIY haven Silent Barn, is anarchic by design: “We wanted to explore just how far we could explode every genre,” the band told Boston music magazine DigBoston, “and see how tenuous the links between improvisation and composition really are.”
Whereas No Sorry shaped these deconstructionist tactics as a protest to formalism, Urge to Merge takes aim at the superseding structures of time, memory, and pleasure wired to pop’s reptile-brain with a relentless barrage of atonal chatter (“I Want This Place Impeccable”), incomprehensible math-rock breakdowns (“24 Million Views”), and ear-splitting sludge spurts (“Internet”).
It’s not that the group are incapable of churning out virtuosic solos, affable vocal melodies, or earworm hooks. All of them, save drummer Owen Winter, attended area conservatories and work part-time as music instructors (or in vocalist Carrie Furniss’ case, a choir director) in their spare time (Winter, meanwhile, cut their teeth manning the kit for Rochester punks Tapehead). Guitarist Wendy Eisenberg and bassist Andres Abenante, in particular, stand out as marvels, provided you can muster up the aural stamina to hone in on their individual performances from amid the racket; their polyrhythmic riff-off on latter-half highlight “HEP” is an avant-garde nerd’s dream, as are the math-rock cascades on “24 Million Views.”
Birthing Hips’ ephemeral invocations of immemorial tunes, such as Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” and the familiar schoolboy singalong “Frère Jacques” provide much-needed footholds amid the unrelenting racket: universally-accessible reference points that embolden the maddening contrasts surrounding them. (That the former’s buttoned-up refrain is queasily invoked on a song called “Strip Tease” is exactly the point.) One can’t help but smile at the wry turn of phrase.
Like all products of this cold, absurd universe, Urge to Merge derives its strength from an ever-draining of borrowed energy. Fortunately for us, the foursome have more than enough to sustain every turn of their swan song’s maddening gyre; what’s more, they’re not afraid to spend it all—at least when it comes to this band, anyway (all four members of Birthing Hips plan to continue making music, either as solo artists or in side projects). Even as the musical equivalent of a dead star, Urge to Merge is a supernova, and no law of thermodynamics can change that. | 2018-01-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | NNA Tapes | January 6, 2018 | 7 | 8951336d-79f1-417e-a127-9b19554e16c4 | Zoe Camp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zoe-camp/ | |
Leading her thorny rock trio, Clementine Creevy keeps her themes broad and her anger specific as she reflects this moment’s feelings and fatigue. | Leading her thorny rock trio, Clementine Creevy keeps her themes broad and her anger specific as she reflects this moment’s feelings and fatigue. | Cherry Glazerr: Stuffed & Ready | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/cherry-glazerr-stuffed-and-ready/ | Stuffed & Ready | Stuffed & Ready—the third album from Los Angeles trio Cherry Glazerr—is a document of exhausted fury. On these 10 songs, the founder, singer, and guitarist Clementine Creevy sounds like she heard about some unacceptable bullshit and came into the studio the next morning, red-eyed and short-tempered and uninterested in hiding it. In this economy, if you’re tough and vulnerable, Creevy tells us, you’re not going to get much sleep with so much fighting to do. In her breathless way, she’s running on fumes.
Stuffed & Ready doesn’t just betray a deep distrust of the world; Creevy sounds skeptical of herself,too. Fighting out from behind the droning introduction of “Stupid Fish,” for instance, Creevy uses her meanest voice to offer, “I’m a stupid fish, and so are you.” In an adrenalized release, she arrives in a rugged scream: “I see myself in you/Maybe that’s why I fucking hate you,” dissolving the enemy into herself. On “Wasted Nun,” she performs a similar double-twist. She coos that she’s going to “make myself tough” before softly pleading, “Let me in through the door/I can’t find it if you hide it under my skin.” Power dynamics shapeshift throughout Stuffed & Ready, as Creevy crystallizes the ambiguities in the way women talk about power—being left out of it, but containing so much.
Last year, Cherry Glazerr lost synth player Sasami Ashworth to her own solo projects, so they’re back down to three, with Tabor Allen returning on drums and Devin O’Brien on bass. This iteration of Cherry Glazerr is tempestuous, using the extra room to lash out and match Creevy’s moods. There’s an arm-flinging quality to the drums, while Creevy’s shrieks and brash guitar have a vital, live sensibility. Glum and abrasive, Creevy’s guitars have graduated from sludge-pop hooks. On Stuffed & Ready, she uses them to shape turbulent atmospheres, pushing recklessly against the melodies.
In the tradition of the inflamed patron saints before her like PJ Harvey, Creevy keeps her themes broad and her anger specific. Coming in hot with sarcasm, the album’s most provocative and sticky single is a showcase of this withering attitude. During the lightly BDSM tune, “Daddi,” Creevy asks with vacant-voiced irony, “Where should I go, daddi?/What should I say?/Where should I go?/Is it OK with you?” There is a slipperiness to her tone, as if we’re all just standing here holding our tits until the patriarchy gives us an order. For the song’s final move, Creevy whimpers, “Smoking makes me taste like metal/To keep you away.” She’s assertive, but at a cost. Stuffed & Ready often does this tango of self-doubt, laying bare insecurity only to doubt the admission.
Ever since 2014’s romp “Had Ten Dollaz,” Cherry Glazerr have loved to stretch out with a repeated line. On “Self-Explained,” Creevy again finds energy in this insistence: “I don’t want people to know how much time I spend alone,” repeatinng the last phrase. In the final section of “Daddi,” she lingers on “smoking makes me taste like metal,” turning what seems like a non sequitur into an absolute declaration. On an album of doubt, repetition reinforces Creevy’s hardest feelings.
Stuffed & Ready might seem pouty or self-indulgent, and Cherry Glazerr accept this. They add a cloud of boredom to these feelings, as if to recognize the low-key stakes of it all. In “Pieces,” Creevy whispers, “I hold my tongue so I don’t repeat myself/Instead I beat myself.” Our emotions might not always be interesting, she implies, but they’re ours. Cherry Glazerr want us to lash out and lose our temper, to show up exhausted and irritated and ready for the fight. | 2019-02-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-02-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Secretly Canadian | February 5, 2019 | 7.5 | 89577ec3-7c23-41dd-9e5b-db754c2b8fe3 | Maggie Lange | https://pitchfork.com/staff/maggie-lange/ | |
On his second solo album, the My Morning Jacket guitarist finds comfort in the slow lane of life, eschewing guitar fireworks for easy-chair folk. | On his second solo album, the My Morning Jacket guitarist finds comfort in the slow lane of life, eschewing guitar fireworks for easy-chair folk. | Carl Broemel: 4th of July | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22311-4th-of-july/ | 4th of July | In certain circles, My Morning Jacket’s Carl Broemel is a bona fide guitar hero, especially among guitar magazine subscribers and jam music enthusiasts most likely to appreciate an inventive solo. It was only after Broemel joined the group for 2005’s Z that they cemented their reputation as a powerhouse live outfit, and his dynamic shredding has propelled their most memorable shows, including the rain-drenched, nearly four-hour 2008 Bonnaroo set that’s taken on nearly legendary status among fans. Among casual listeners, however, Broemel is virtually unrecognized, and even many My Morning Jacket fans don’t give his contributions to the group much thought. Despite the mountains of evidence that My Morning Jacket is a true band, Jim James looms so large over his peers that it can be hard to think of the group as anything other than a vehicle for its enigmatic singer.
For his part, Broemel has shown little interest in challenging that perception. If he wanted to make the case for his talents, his solo albums would give him the outlet to prove that he’s the clear savant of the band—that he deserved his own entry in that Rolling Stone New Guitar Gods list, rather than having to share one with James. Yet Broemel seems perfectly content where he is, even if that means being in James’ shadow. Instead of showing off the same guitar heroics he brings to My Morning Jacket’s Das Boot-length live shows, Broemel opted for a more understated, songwriterly approach on his 2010 record All Birds Say, and his follow-up 4th of July is a similarly folksy affair, another pleasantly low-key outing from a musician with absolutely nothing to prove.
Just once does 4th of July toss some red meat to My Morning Jacket fans, hinting at the guitar lover’s record it could have been. On the panoramic, 10-minute title track, Broemel cycles through one buttery solo after another, each richer and more textured than the last. With Neko Case bolstering the soaring chorus, the whole thing feels that much more decadent. Those fireworks are the exception, though. Opener “Sleepy Lagoon,” with its drowsy tempo and sighing keyboards, is more representative of the record’s sticky, late-night feel (he kicks off the record by literally greeting the moon). From the finger-picked “Snowflake” to the Elliott Smith-esque “Rockingchair Dancer,” a lullaby that Broemel wrote for his young son, the whole thing sounds like it was recorded in an extremely comfortable chair.
Laura Veirs lends some harmony vocals to that last song, while My Morning Jacket keyboard Bo Koster and bassist Tom Blankenship sit in on much of the record. And although James is absent, it feels like he’s there in spirit. Broemel’s serviceable tenor may not have the feral majesty of James’ howl, but his cadence and phrasing are similar enough that many of these songs feel like they were written with James’ voice in mind. Mellower numbers like “Crawlspace” and “In The Dark” invite listeners to color in the empty spaces in their head, imagining how these songs might have been fleshed out if My Morning Jacket had tried to slip them onto The Waterfall.
It’s a safe bet they would have been a lot wilder. 4th of July makes the case for Broemel as the classicist of the band, avoiding the experimental detours into prog, psychedelia, and funk that have made My Morning Jacket’s records so rewarding and/or frustrating. Its pleasures are modest but dependable. Even Broemel’s lyrics are easygoing, dotted with repeated observations that things are just fine the way they are. “I keep telling myself that it’s all the same/ Whether someone is humble or big and grand,” Broemel sings on “Landing Gear.” It’s not the same at all, of course, but where the rest of the world celebrates music’s most restless spirits, 4th of July offers the gentle assurance that there’s merit in being the guy who gets a solid eight hours a night, too. | 2016-08-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-08-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Thirty Tigers | August 26, 2016 | 6.3 | 895a1cc5-3c2d-4066-8da1-46bba3edf063 | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | null |
The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer draws inspiration from shifting tides and centuries-old hymns for a piece that reckons with the unease of feeling adrift in the universe. | The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer draws inspiration from shifting tides and centuries-old hymns for a piece that reckons with the unease of feeling adrift in the universe. | Caroline Shaw: Narrow Sea | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/caroline-shaw-narrow-sea/ | Narrow Sea | Few common experiences are as frightening and disorienting as getting taken out by an ocean wave. It starts with the surprise of lost footing, the sudden weightlessness followed by the panic of trying to find breath and bearings. Elbows, knees, and knuckles scrape against sand and craggy detritus as you attempt to right yourself, hoping to beat nature’s clock before another salty sheet crashes upon your head. Emerging intact can feel like a bewildering victory.
Caroline Shaw’s approach to oceanic immersion is less fraught, but the Pulitzer-winning composer’s newest work is a similarly upending force. With Narrow Sea, Shaw draws inspiration from shifting tides and centuries-old hymns for a piece that reckons with the unease of feeling adrift in the universe.
Shaw composed the five-part Narrow Sea in 2017 for Sō Percussion, a New York-based quartet that deploys a deep kit of rhythmic tools. With an array of drums, blocks, marimbas, vibraphones, and shakers alongside repurposed cans and ceramic bowls, they approximate the sounds of maritime bells, prayer chimes, busy machinery, heartbeats, and distant drones. Even flowerpots are fair game, bringing a pleasant, plunking timbre to the project. The music feels fascinated with approximating the shape-shifting capabilities of water—notes ebb and flow, coursing forward or gently trickling over one another.
Taxidermy, which Shaw composed for Sō Percussion in 2012, makes for a fitting counterweight. The flowerpot tones of Taxidermy connect it with Narrow Sea, deploying a chopped-up piece of T.S. Eliot poetry that appears in the composer’s Pulitzer-winning Partita for Eight Voices from 2013. Throughout Narrow Sea, pianist Gilbert Kalish binds Sō’s four-person rhythms to the ascendant melodies of celebrated soprano Dawn Upshaw. The sublime tumble of piano that opens Narrow Sea’s third chapter gives the piece its most serene moments, animating the illusion of water in motion.
Shaw drew Narrow Sea’s text from a 1991 edition of The Sacred Harp, a standardized collection of American hymns dating back to the 18th century. With songs constructed from basic four-part harmonies, sacred harp or “shape note” singing requires little training to pick up and abides by a cheerful rule of “the more the merrier.” The form is built around participation, not performance; by design, the music gets richer and wilder as the group of singers expands and the bonds among them deepen.
On Narrow Sea, however, Shaw relies on Upshaw’s lone voice to carry forth The Sacred Harp’s lines about being a wayfaring stranger contemplating the banks of the River Jordan. Her vocals break from the straightforward tradition of sacred harp singing, leaving behind its more plaintive elements while slicing between the piano and percussion. As a soloist, Upshaw brings a powerful sense of loneliness to Narrow Sea, given how the root of sacred harp singing is finding spiritual unity through communal expressions in song. Whether the mother and father Upshaw sings about meeting are secular or celestial matters less than the sense of yearning in her voice.
Even when Sō and Kalish slide into a near-mechanical whir in Narrow Sea’s second part, humanity prevails when the percussionists start to sing, too. Their voices swell upward as sanguine layers of hums, sounds that can only be made by bodies pumping with blood and oxygen. Sartre may have proposed that hell is other people, but Narrow Sea quietly makes the case that the intimacy people build among one another remains a great comfort.
Even amid the longing, Shaw’s melody-focused approach to percussion brings a lightness to Narrow Sea that ameliorates the crushing weight of feeling alone. The warmth and twinkle of Shaw’s work suggests a sparkle worth following, a beacon that signals a safe place for those still seeking safe harbor.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-01-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-01-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Nonesuch | January 25, 2021 | 7.6 | 89624c7a-61d7-4793-af3e-c1e3ffc1a655 | Allison Hussey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/allison-hussey/ | |
null | There are four small miracles in Can's "Chain Reaction"/"Quantum Physics", from 1974's *Soon Over Babaluma*. The first occurs at about 40 seconds into "Chain Reaction" when the 4/4 stomp of Jaki Liebezeit's drums line up with Holger Czukay's bass pulse, alongside tambourine and percolating drum machine; I realize that this song is closer to trance techno than the minimalist funk or psychedelic motorik of the band's earlier records. In fact, the first time I ever heard "Chain Reaction", I was mostly unfamiliar with trance, and wondered if Can had actually invented the music. I'd never read anything to that effect, | Can: Future Days / Soon Over Babaluma / Unlimited Edition / Landed | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11699-future-days-soon-over-babaluma-unlimited-edition-landed/ | Future Days / Soon Over Babaluma / Unlimited Edition / Landed | There are four small miracles in Can's "Chain Reaction"/"Quantum Physics", from 1974's Soon Over Babaluma. The first occurs at about 40 seconds into "Chain Reaction" when the 4/4 stomp of Jaki Liebezeit's drums line up with Holger Czukay's bass pulse, alongside tambourine and percolating drum machine; I realize that this song is closer to trance techno than the minimalist funk or psychedelic motorik of the band's earlier records. In fact, the first time I ever heard "Chain Reaction", I was mostly unfamiliar with trance, and wondered if Can had actually invented the music. I'd never read anything to that effect, but it seemed obvious they must have had at least a hand in its creation. In any case, the only music I've heard since that approached their primal, impressionistic romp has been by bonafide dancefloor shamans like the Orb or Orbital, or even Aphex Twin's ambient stuff. Of course, I loved Can a lot more: They seemed subtler and messier, like Claude Debussy's ghost tripping over a Mayan ruin mid-thought.
The second miracle occurs at the 6:28 mark in "Chain Reaction", when the swirling mass of synth and Michael Karoli's brain-fried guitar solo is brutally interrupted by a chime and black void of metallic, echo-chamber ambience. The beat stays intact (Liebezeit couldn't stop playing that pulse on a bet), but the mood goes from proto-jam-band orgasm to stark ambience with drums of death. Had Terry Riley not nabbed the Phantom Band moniker for one of his records, Can could have stolen it here-- and Liebezeit did for one of his solo projects in the 1980s! Unlike virtually any other band on the planet, Can were able to straddle the line between primal and progressive, popular and avant-garde in a way that made both extremes seem like the best possible end for Western music.
The third occurs five-and-a-half minutes into "Quantum Physics", when Irmin Schmidt's Alpha 77 synth cluster chord suddenly becomes a fully-fledged major one. By this point in the song, the raging, percussive momentum of the previous track has almost completely evaporated into only the hint of a beat, as if the spirit of the piece had long since been shot out into space, left to dissolve into what popular physics author Nick Herbert once described as "quantumstuff"-- the one true matter of the universe, of which we and everything we see or feel is made. Schmidt lets his tones sustain, and I can hear the overtones forming, one by one, until the chord is more than just major. In fact, the physics of sound dictate that if you let a note ring long enough, you'll get the minor-7th harmonic, and eventually a 9th-- exactly the notes old Debussy liked to insert into chords to make them all pagan and erotic.
The last miracle occurs as the song is fading away from us entirely, when even Liebezeit's drums have dried up and the only discernable sound comes from Schmidt's endlessly spiraling synthesizer overtones. Mid-period Can is arguably the band's most interesting because it witnesses them having to explore more than just the backbeat of experimental rock, more than just the ambience of the space music they helped create. "Quantum Physics" is what happens when discipline and intelligence rams head on with divine inspiration. It is understated and refined, but glowing with life. It's not the kind of song you put on to start a party, but if you want to send a few of your best friends home like angels, you'll put it on at the end. It sounds like the music of the spheres to me.
Can had approached this territory before with 1973's Future Days. After the band's modest success with the "Spoon" in 1972 (buoyed by its use as the theme to a popular German gangster show), they were able to afford a short summer holiday. When they came back to record, it was a collective idyllic, sunshiny aura that most informed their efforts. The title track, fading in on the back of seaside ambience and distant accordion, was Can's smoothest production yet, sounding either like they'd successfully amputated the pulse and precision of Ege Bamyasi, added a lush veneer and forged a new kind of pop music, or somehow invented the greatest tropicalia known to man. Damo Suzuki's cooing ("You hide behind a borrowed chase / For the sake of Future Days") never sounded so alluring, and Can's music had never seemed as sensuous or divorced from gravity. Likewise, the epic "Bel Air" featured Can at their most impressionistic, if not always focused. Czukay once described his band as an "electric symphony group", and the heavily edited and structured "Bel Air" betrays a dedication to long-form statements and an almost painterly sense of blended colors and landscapes.
Following Future Days, Suzuki got married to a Jehovah's Witness and left the band. After trying out several singers, Can eventually decided to keep things to themselves for Soon Over Babaluma, as Karoli took over vocals in most cases, with Schmidt helping from time to time. Due to circumstances, the record sounds obviously transitional, and was in fact the last one Can would complete using their tried and true straight-to-stereo method, before upgrading to more modern, multi-track methods afterwards. However, even beyond the aforementioned "Chain Reaction"/"Quantum Physics" highlight, it's a good record. "Dizzy Dizzy" is something like Can's version of ska (kraut-skank?), and features the first of several future Karoli forays using violin, on which he's surprisingly competent. His refrain of "got to get it up, got to get it over" serves the insistent, space-bounce of the track, and though the band would misstep on world music attempts in later years, this was pretty interesting. The murky electro-bossa "Come sta, La Luna" is also cool, featuring Schmidt's vocals and ominous piano lines. Only "Splash" leaves me underwhelmed, seeming tired and directionless in comparison to the rest of the record.
Unlimited Edition is the CD expansion of the Limited Edition LP, featuring various unreleased tracks from 1968 to 1974, all recorded in Can's private Inner Space studios. Given the nature of the collection, a general lack of cohesion is to be expected, but for my money, Unlimited Edition is one of the most underrated items in the band's catalog. From the heavenly climates of "Gomorrha" and "Ibis", to the more cutting, rock-edged tracks with Malcolm Mooney ("The Empress and the Ukraine King", "Mother Upduff", "Connection", "Fall of Another Year"-- all of which could have comprised a classic EP) to the sometimes bizarre, sometimes funny "Ethnological Forgery Series", wherein Can raid the world's various indigenous music and make stuff that would make both Steve Reich and Boredoms proud. And of course there's "Cutaway": an epic, spliced-together piece that might sound more at home on a Faust record than here.
1975's Landed was the first Can record to get what Czukay describes as a "professional mix", as the band upgraded to 16 tracks and had the opportunity to bring out many more layers of sound. However, what might have sounded like a godsend to fans craving as much Can magic as they could get didn't quite turn out as we expected. Gone were the epic, funky ambient songs or minimalist rock experiments in favor of some pretty straightforward jam-band tunes. "Full Moon on the Highway" bursts out of the gate with a deft pace and Karoli's thin, decidedly non-rock chipmunk chorus. Luckily, his guitar is front and center, though it was clear the band weren't playing space age physics music anymore. "Half Past One", "Vernal Equinox" and "Hunters and Collectors" are variations on the idea of bare-basic chord progression and high-speed beats serving as launching pads for lengthy solos. I give Can credit for having the chops to pull it off, but did I really need to hear them do it? "Red Hot Indians" is more interesting, sounding like bizarre tropical jazz-pop, and featuring Olaf Kübler from Amon Düül guesting on dual sax solos. The 13-minute sound-art closer "Unfinished" doesn't really fit with the rest of the record, but does at least give Can the chance to stretch out their most experimental ideas into 16 tracks, and is reminiscent of "Cutaway" or some of the more out-there moments on Tago Mago.
Like the previous Mute remasters, these albums now sound incredible. Listening to "Chain Reaction", "Gomorrha", and "Future Days", I was constantly surprised at how clear everything sounded, as if the band had recorded all of this stuff in one fell swoop during an unbelievably inspired, marathon session. One of the great things about Can, even in their off moments, was the attention to detail and realization that the affect of each tiny moment in the course of a song can affect the momentum of the entire piece. No small miracles here: even if it's sad to think these albums represent Can's last great gasp, none of their moments have ever sounded better. | 2005-07-12T01:00:03.000-04:00 | 2005-07-12T01:00:03.000-04:00 | Experimental | null | July 12, 2005 | 8.8 | 896ad554-8a97-4784-a690-e8b753591ae8 | Dominique Leone | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dominique-leone/ | null |
The only record by Drexciya’s James Stinson as the Other People Place is prescient in imagining our current connected-yet-disconnected state. | The only record by Drexciya’s James Stinson as the Other People Place is prescient in imagining our current connected-yet-disconnected state. | The Other People Place: Lifestyles of the Laptop Café | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22869-lifestyles-of-the-laptop-cafe/ | Lifestyles of the Laptop Café | Last year, Ian Fenton (the man behind the Frozen Reeds label responsible for reissuing Julius Eastman’s Femenine) pointed out a parallel between the artwork that adorned Detroit electronic duo Drexciya’s albums and the illustrations made by Emory Douglas, artist and Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party. It came as a history rediscovered, re-connecting the black roots of techno back to its heritage of protest. Listen closer to the frenzied tracks that James Stinson and Gerald Donald crafted over their ten years as Drexciya and the anger is audible. For all of their electro and techno roots, Drexciya’s live wire tracks (some clocking in at two minutes) always felt closer to the furious outbursts of punk. Which made sense, as the group’s origin story was a brutal one: Drexciya was the duo’s name for an underwater country colonized by the unborn children of pregnant African women thrown off of slave ships during the Middle Passage. It read less like science-fiction/fantasy and more about the modern horror and cornerstone of our American reality.
But by the time James Stinson released what would be his lone solo album as The Other People Place, that anger had been somewhat tempered. By turns luminous and melancholic, low-key and sensuous, wry and soulful, Lifestyles of the Laptop Café hinted at new vistas for Stinson. He had talked about touring, a rarity for the reclusive duo. But Lifestyles couldn’t have had a more star-crossed release, coming out on September 3, 2001 and vanishing soon after. Less than a year later, Stinson would be dead due to heart complications, *Lifestyles *the last record to be released during his lifetime.
For the duration of Drexciya, neither member revealed their names, so attempting to draw a biographical connection is haphazard at best. That said, there’s a gentleness and humanity to Stinson’s programming and production as The Other People Place that makes it sound like a reconciliation of fate, a looking back at the world around him not in anger but instead with a twinge of heartache and a smile. That sensibility seeps through Stinson’s machines and makes it stand apart in Drexciya’s catalog. As such, it’s the perfect gateway for those standing at the banks of their oceanic body of work looking for a way into its depths.
Stinson conveys rich sentiment with the slightest of gestures. With a few hums, the tap of a ride cymbal, and rippling pads, “Eye Contact” casts a spell, both seductive and a little silly. “Something’s happening to my transmitters/Starting to overload/Sitting here in this café/Drinking my latte,” he purrs two minutes in—adding some Chicago acid vocals (think Adonis’ “No Way Back”) reconfigured for the Starbucks set.
By 2001, the “Second Wave of Coffee” was upon us and Starbucks seemed to be on every street corner, one of the few places to enabled users to have high-speed internet access. Stinson looks out onto a world increasingly disassociated, communicating by computers instead of voices. Rather than replicate café society and its public conversations, said cafés now feel eerily sterile and near silent, patron faces lit by the glow of phones and laptops. It makes for a sad state—or as the last single from The Other People Place put it—“Sorrow & A Cup Of Joe.”
Beneath the skittering 808s, unsettled chords and fidgety songs, a sense of melancholy and resignation flow. The twinkling keys Stinson sets atop “It’s Your Love” set off his digitally treated voice, so that he sounds like a heartbroken alien, wistfully sighing: “It’s your love that’s keeping me so lost.” A female vocalist whispers across the snares and swelling synths of “You Said You Want Me,” but as the track flickers its seductiveness gets balanced by sadness and failure to connect, that “want” turning into the past tense. Even the anthemic electro of “Let Me Be Me” has a bittersweet tinge, its chords opening little wormholes of doubt.
The title itself cheekily suggests a room full of people, mute and withdrawn into themselves and their devices, so that even a song like “Eye Contact” reads not as eyes interlocking on the dancefloor but rather two people who can only connect via their laptops. It’s prescient in imagining our current connected-yet-disconnected state, our daily lives increasingly valuing FaceTime over face time, and the album itself anticipates a shift in how people even interact with electronic music, geared more towards home listening than the club. The album ends on a hopeful note though. “Sunrays”—with its bubbling melody, placid ticks and a female voice whispering “relax your mind/slowly unwind”—sounds like Roy Ayers’ “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” for the new century. It’s a warm sunbeam that can best be felt away from a laptop screen. | 2017-02-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-02-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Warp | February 13, 2017 | 8.8 | 896d45e7-510f-46ea-869a-81bf1e6c79d4 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
The young pianist makes an impressive debut as bandleader, with an expansive sound that folds elements of hip-hop, R&B, and ambient into the broad outlines of spiritual jazz. | The young pianist makes an impressive debut as bandleader, with an expansive sound that folds elements of hip-hop, R&B, and ambient into the broad outlines of spiritual jazz. | Jamael Dean: Black Space Tapes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jamael-dean-black-space-tapes/ | Black Space Tapes | To the chagrin of purists, in the late 1960s jazz musicians began to turn an ear to pop radio and Motown chart-toppers, fusing those and similar styles into soul jazz. Drummer Donald Dean could be found on some of the best sessions, like Les McCann’s Invitation to Openness and Layers. Watching his grandfather play, Jamael Dean took cues for his own approach to the piano. “That’s what made me want to play jazz,” Dean recently told Bandcamp. “Watching him interact with his buddies—that was something I could see for myself.” Just 21 years old, the younger Dean already has quite the resume, backing Kamasi Washington on Heaven and Earth, gigging with fellow Angelenos Thundercat, Carlos Niño, and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and now studying jazz performance at the New School.
Black Space Tapes announces Dean’s arrival, and it is an impressive debut, revealing a wide-eyed view of jazz as broad as his grandfather’s. Allowing jazz to imbibe hip-hop, electronic, R&B, and ambient, Dean orients the century-old artform firmly toward the future. All these ingredients are there from the jump in the astonishing, amoebic “Akamara.” The song takes its title from Yoruba cosmology, a concept that Dean breaks down as “the spirit of nothing that expanded the universe into what it is now,” which the piece resembles in form and sound. Across 11 minutes, Dean confidently mingles spiritual jazz and primordial ooze, tension and release, darkness and light. Wordless ululations from vocalist Sharada Shashidhar, field recordings of birds, shamanic percussion from Niño, and looped brass create a vast amount of space at the start, which Dean’s piano whirls through and fills up. It sounds fidgety at first, but as the piece continues to unfurl, Dean nudges the band into uncharted realms, imparting energy during the calmer moments, then easing back as it grows in chaotic density. Throughout, he keeps a firm sense of control, even in those outer-space moments when his touch on the keys is at its airiest.
A quarter of an hour later, “Akamara” returns in a decidedly mutated remix, exhibiting more of Dean’s skill set. As a modern jazz player, his talents extend beyond chops to the ability to chop a beat, and his remix proves him as cagey as Makaya McCraven and Karriem Riggins. Dean flits between dizzying upper-register piano loops and a muted horn, mixing it all with a muddy, low-end wobble; in the song’s back half he takes flight with one of the album’s sweeter solos. “Olokun” continues down the eclectic path, with Dean sussing out a head-nodding beat in ocean waves and seagulls, every warped element Silly-Puttying around like some sort of Flying Lotus soundscape.
Despite Dean’s knack for conjuring weird ambient headspaces, the most contemplative moments of Black Space Tapes arise when they hew closest to the jazz tradition. “Adawa” simmers and assuredly builds, and Dean is at his lyrical best, his solo bringing to mind the restraint and mindfulness of icons like Ahmad Jamal and Andrew Hill. He structures the piece so that every instrument—from Atwood-Ferguson’s nimble five-string viola to Tim Angulo’s deep-pocket drums—can shine. That sense of balance is integral to his approach. It’s a short album—just six tracks, not even 38 minutes in all—but the brevity works in its favor. As far out as Dean and his group travel, they ultimately remain gracefully grounded.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-11-21T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-11-21T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Jazz | Stones Throw | November 21, 2019 | 7.5 | 897beb43-5cbe-4c55-85a2-106e0e52bc5d | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
Accompanied by strings, horns, and more, Haley Fohr has crafted her most expansive work to date, capturing a sprawl of emotions too complicated to be named. | Accompanied by strings, horns, and more, Haley Fohr has crafted her most expansive work to date, capturing a sprawl of emotions too complicated to be named. | Circuit des Yeux: -io | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/circuit-des-yeux-io/ | -io | The French are credited with coining the phrase l’appel du vide, naming the intrusive thought of the urge to step off of high ledges. It’s an instinct supposedly born from crossed wires between the primal brain and the conscious mind—not one of self-harm necessarily, but one that reflects the conflict and chaos of human nature. Canyon edges, deep-sea trenches, black holes: They all captivate the imagination with the magnetism of being subject to nothing but gravity.
For -io, her sixth album as Circuit des Yeux, Chicago experimental fixture Haley Fohr faced a creative void. Reeling from the death of a close friend, she accepted a subtropical artists’ residency that backfired in the short term as she spent the first weeks of 2020 on “the saddest beach in [her] life.” The subsequent year-plus of mass death and forced isolation only compounded the woe. She manifested her anguish as 23-piece orchestral arrangements that captured the enormity of her sense of loss, building the small universes that make up her most expansive work yet.
From an opening wisp of breath, Fohr quickly shifts into the dense, thriving energy at -io’s core. Thick layers of organ and grandiose strings feel both devotional and introspective, drawn toward dramatic internal churning. “Vanishing” courses on strings with an innate swagger, like a shark cutting through the open ocean. Inspired by one of Fohr’s PTSD memories, “The Chase” channels the helpless dread and tension of a nightmare, its rhythm bolting under prickling guitars and Fohr’s harrowing whispers.
-io closes the gap between the elegant environs of 2017’s Reaching for Indigo and the oblique, seedy glamour of last year’s Jacqueline, released under Fohr’s neo-outlaw alias Jackie Lynn. Jacqueline’s “Dream St.” and “Casino Queen” danced in the darkness, and on -io, Fohr plunges even deeper. Her distinct baritone remains one of her most powerful assets; amid the roar of strings, drums, and horns, her fantastic vocal sweeps create vast space.
Fohr cuts through the din, singing, almost bellowing, buoyed by a boundless ferocity rarely afforded to women in any other context. Her maxims demand attention with the same gravitational intensity as the cosmic imagery she invokes: “Descend bold traveler and attain the center of the earth,” she intones at the end of the cycloning “Neutron Star.” Though the song begins as a loping country ballad, Fohr races upward into a braid of fuzzed-out guitar and strings made fiery by flares of brass.
At the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida, Fohr was enthralled by the vivid coastal sunsets, a daily shock of color that she described as “a reminder to step outside myself.” To that end, she takes care in her arrangements to recreate the feeling of separating awareness from ego. She distinguishes the concept of a space for entrenched grief from one of all-encompassing darkness, further emphasized in the cover’s bright scarlet border and Fohr’s orange vestments. Her sensory world-building extends beyond the songs, and in an accompanying listening guide she advises set and setting: a lit candle, bubbly water with bitters, a long walk, scents of sandalwood and amber. Surrounding the high stakes of her compositions, she prioritizes degrees of warmth and comfort as part of her immersive design.
The capacious environments offer the relief of suspension, held by sorrow, joy, and calm all at once. There’s room for the sprawl of emotions that are too vast, too complicated, and channeled too deeply to name. “I’m changing while I try to hold the reins,” she confesses on “Walking Toward Winter” against liquid edges of reverberating organ, as if trying to get a grip on a moving stream. As Fohr howls on “Stranger,” the song feels close to an exorcism.
Fohr backs away from heavier orchestration with the breathtaking closer “Oracle Song,” where she gestures at teenage trauma and warns of imminent danger. As Fohr sings about treacherous men and uncaring state institutions, “Oracle Song” fans out over a lilting cradle of acoustic guitar and humming strings; though the resilient spirit can be restored, she sings, “I’d give you every inch I had/To keep that first soul from going bad.” It’s a gentle and poignant lullaby for those tangled in an expanding web of harm.
-io’s sonic mass is enveloping, making for an album that’s both difficult to approach piecemeal and hard to swallow in one sitting. (In her listening guide, Fohr advises taking a break after “Sculpting the Exodus” or “Walking Toward Winter.”) But in claiming such a wide swath of space for herself, Fohr makes room for listeners to release themselves, too. By diving headlong into the yawning internal chasm, it’s possible to find a new autonomy in the freefall.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-10-26T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-10-26T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Matador | October 26, 2021 | 7.8 | 899db051-1702-42b1-9f38-cb142f9f5f1e | Allison Hussey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/allison-hussey/ | |
Following two previous archival collections, Challenge Me Foolish dusts off unreleased tracks from the late 1990s, when the Planet Mu founder was making breakbeat-laced IDM with a strange sense of humor. | Following two previous archival collections, Challenge Me Foolish dusts off unreleased tracks from the late 1990s, when the Planet Mu founder was making breakbeat-laced IDM with a strange sense of humor. | µ-Ziq: Challenge Me Foolish | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/-ziq-challenge-me-foolish/ | Challenge Me Foolish | Unlikely as it may seem today, there was a time during IDM’s heyday when Mike Paradinas’ copious output as µ-Ziq was on par with that of his good mate and one-off collaborator Richard D. James. Through the mid 1990s, the two kept pace with annual album releases and heaps of singles, all shot through with an off-kilter sense of humor. Perhaps if Virgin had properly marketed µ-Ziq’s 1997 album Lunatic Harness, Paradinas wouldn’t have had to take matters into his own hands with his independent imprint Planet Mu. In the 21st century, focusing more on A&R than his own productions, Paradinas had a hand in spreading breakcore, dubstep, and footwork globally, helping to establish the careers of RP Boo, Traxman, Pinch, Venetian Snares, and others. Since the release of his 2013 comeback Chewed Corners, Paradinas has also dug deep into his old hard drives for archival forays like RY30 Trax and Aberystwyth Marine.
Challenge Me Foolish could be considered the third entry in this unofficial trilogy. Where RY30 Trax dates back to 1995 and Aberystwyth Marine covers the two years between Lunatic Harness and Royal Astronomy, Foolish culls tracks from 1998 and 1999, right as he was finishing Astronomy and Planet Mu was taking form. It was a heady time for Paradinas, who was drawing on rapid-fire IDM, breakbeats, and even English folk music. Unlike James, Paradinas also mixed in a hefty dose of American hip-hop, weaving all of it together at a furious pace. He recently said that he recorded as much as he could in those days, often a track or two a day, and a sense of redundancy shows. The wincing Ren Faire melodies from Astronomy (like “Gruber’s Mandolin”) return as Paradinas pulls the green tights on again for tracks like “Robin Hood Gate” and “Perfame,” and 20 years in mothballs hasn’t made them any less annoying.
But in the intervening years, breakbeats have become fashionable again, so a dusted-off track like “Undone” doesn’t sound quite as dated, with Paradinas playfully bouncing between tympani boom, percolator bip, and dramatic background strings. The snare drum swagger of “Playbox” reminds us that he always had a knack for balancing between IDM and hip-hop breaks. But “Bassbins” also shows that the more aggro and cartoonish take on it (which anticipated the rise of breakcore) remains out of fashion for good reason.
The Japanese vocalist Kazumi, who featured on the Royal Astronomy highlights “The Fear” and “Goodbye, Goodbye,” reappears on five of the album’s 14 tracks. Paradinas stretches and warps her voice into an array of shapes—though as is his wont, even that becomes overkill. For the drill ‘n’ bass dizziness of “Lexicon,” Kazumi’s coos get buried under a rockslide of goofball drums and chipmunk-fast vocal chirps. Same when he speeds up the “Amen” break, only to dump it atop her dulcet vocals on “Sad Inlay.” But Paradinas is more playful in chopping up her doo-dahs on “DoDaDu,” and the loungey “Durian” imagines what a µ-Ziq remix of Stereolab or Pizzicato Five might have sounded like back in the late ’90s. On the title track, Kazumi’s voice echoes against a spare, queasy backdrop, for once not overcrowding the song’s space. It’s a rare instance of Paradinas exercising restraint—and all the more effective for it. | 2018-04-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-04-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Planet Mu | April 16, 2018 | 5.8 | 89a5b9f5-5258-4fba-a306-70ed486bcbb1 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
Latest from Chicago-based Numero Group focuses on Joni Mitchell-influenced coffeehouse folk, mostly recorded during the first half of the 1970s. | Latest from Chicago-based Numero Group focuses on Joni Mitchell-influenced coffeehouse folk, mostly recorded during the first half of the 1970s. | Various Artists: Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies From the Canyon | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2080-wayfaring-strangers-ladies-from-the-canyon/ | Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies From the Canyon | Released in 1970, Joni Mitchell's third album Ladies of the Canyon was a crucial document of the gradual segue of the tradition-based folk revival into a new movement of breezy, more introspective singer-songwriters. And while Mitchell obviously doesn't bear sole responsibility for creating the archetype of the long-haired, coffeehouse folk chanteuse, there is no question that her success quickly inspired hundreds of similarly reflective young female songwriters to pick up their acoustic guitars and join in quixotic pursuit of lucrative recording careers. As a result, the following years witnessed a deluge of regionally produced and distributed folk albums-- the vast majority of which eventually found their way to family basements and Salvation Army stores, as their winsome authors returned unceremoniously to quiet obscurity.
Now, in order to better demonstrate the breadth of this movement and the astonishing reach of Mitchell's influence, the inveterate crate-diggers of the Numero Group present Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies From the Canyon. Diligently researched and compiled with the label's characteristic attention to detail, the collection gathers 14 impossibly rare tracks by female folkies from every corner of the nation, covering an era which spans roughly from 1971-76. Variously funded by parents, church groups or community organizations, these songs originally appeared on private-press albums that were issued in pressings as small as 50 copies, and each retains a certain undeniable handmade charm.
The compilation appears at a time when reissues of unjustly overlooked folk singers like Judee Sill, Vashti Bunyan, Bridget St. John, and Linda Perhacs are still fresh on the shelves. Unlike those performers, however, few artists on Ladies From the Canyon project a musical personality distinctive or eccentric enough to carry an entire album. (Nor, it should be noted, are there any truly psychedelic notes ever played or sung.) In fact, the most striking aspect of this collection is the utter uniformity of its perfomances, not only in sound but in mood and spirit. Nearly all of these vocalists sing in a rich, Joni-like alto over spare arrangements of guitar and piano. And despite their differences in geography and background, each performer achieves a nearly identical sense of dreamy, melancholic longing, sounding content to leave the wider dynamic range of rage, lust, joy, and defiance (not to mention humor) to a separate generation of female artists.
It would take a hardened heart, however, to ignore the simple beauty evident in tracks like Collie Ryan's gorgeous, haiku-like "Cricket" or Priscilla Quinby's nautical "With All Hands". And, as one might expect from such a "real people" collection, a couple of these tracks possess that indefinable, unschooled strangeness that is peculiar to outsider art. The most engaging such example is Shira Small's eliptical "Eternal Life", with its casual declaration that "Eternal life is the intersection of the line of time and the plane of now." Not to be outdone, the haunting "Maybe in Another Year," is sung by Peoria teen Jennie Pearl with a clear-eyed innocence that recalls the best moments of the Langley Schools Music Project. Also noteworthy is 15-year-old Ellen Warshaw's surprisingly forceful and harrowing take on the Stones' "Sister Morphine", one of the few cuts that feels out of keeping with the collection's overall earth mother vibration.
Most of the performers on Ladies From the Canyon have long since retired from the music business. One notable exception is Barbara Sipple, who has since gone on to a successful career as an opera singer, and whose "Song of Life" is one of several here that is tinged with the mystic, soft-focused Christianity typical of the era. As further evidenced by tracks like Carla Sciaky's "And I a Fairytale Lady", there is constant yearning that courses through nearly all of these songs, a yearning for some external force-- be it Jesus, a waylaid Prince Charming, or simply a record contract-- to come and deliver each singer from her lonesome solitude. But as Ladies From the Canyon amply illustrates, these scattered, isolated voices were actually far from alone, and maybe their inclusion here within this fascinating time capsule can provide some small echo of the communion they once sought to gain through their long-neglected music. | 2006-03-29T01:01:40.000-05:00 | 2006-03-29T01:01:40.000-05:00 | null | Numero Group | March 29, 2006 | 7.5 | 89a5d3bc-7a86-4732-bf34-1ec1f50aee83 | Matthew Murphy | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-murphy/ | null |
Despite its title's implied politeness, The Airing of Grievances qualifies more as existentialism wrapped in an anti-suburban screed from a killer live band whose music is at times violent, overblown, and irreverent. | Despite its title's implied politeness, The Airing of Grievances qualifies more as existentialism wrapped in an anti-suburban screed from a killer live band whose music is at times violent, overblown, and irreverent. | Titus Andronicus: The Airing of Grievances | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11202-the-airing-of-grievances/ | The Airing of Grievances | Before writing the bulk of his legendary canon of plays and sonnets, William Shakespeare penned the charmingly flawed revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus. Due to its laughable bombast and over-the-top violence, its influence on contemporary culture has emerged mainly in dark comedies like Sweeney Todd or "South Park", and many Shakespeare scholars still balk at seriously analyzing the work. Of course, all these factors make the play a perfect moniker for an indie band as violent, overblown, and irreverent as Glen Rock, New Jersey's Titus Andronicus.
Despite its title's implied politeness, The Airing of Grievances qualifies more as existentialism wrapped in an anti-suburban screed. Frontman Patrick Stickles howls with anguish way beyond his 22 years, often cramming lyrics into tight spaces just to make sure he gets the last word in. Plus, as anyone who's heard five seconds of this band already knows, he sounds like Conor Oberst screaming from the bowels of hell. However, to peg these guys as "emo" would be sadly inaccurate. Sure, torn diary page scribbles clutter Airing's heart-on-sleeve, fist-in-air anthems, but the drama's more Boss than Bright Eyes, fueled by blue collar frustration and, most notably, beer.
So far Titus's rowdy live shows have generated the most buzz around the group; check your local listings, they're probably playing in a friend's tool shed near you. Those small venue acoustics translate wonderfully on the band's debut, its muffled mixing reminiscent of listening to a bar band from the men's room. Yet this inebriated aesthetic only intensifies the literary streak running through Stickles' easily excitable veins. A brusque "fuck you!" cues the band on Pogues-like opener "Fear & Loathing in Mahwah, NJ", but once the rubble clears it's a villainous quote from Titus Andronicus's Aaron the Moor that most elegantly expresses Stickles' bile: "I have done a thousand dreadful things/ ...And nothing grieves me heartily indeed/ But that I cannot do ten thousand more." As if the dreary title and playful, mock-optimistic guitar riffs of "No Future Part II: The Day After No Future" aren't enough to wrench your soul, the song ends with the closing passage from Albert Camus' The Stranger, in which the narrator wishes to be jeered by a large crowd on the day of his execution.
Of course, none of these highfalutin' shout-outs will grab your ear as powerfully as the demonic E Street Band arrangements, rife with constant builds and breakneck rhythms. Nearly every track here starts innocently, usually with a straightforward eighth-note strum or folksy melody unaware of the beating it's about to go through. Whereas a band like Arcade Fire likes to gradually crescendo to enhance the dramatic oomph, Titus can't enjoy that luxury-- not when Stickles is already screaming by the second lyric. Fortunately the band finds unconventional ways to heighten its music, like "Arms Against Atrophy", which waits three-quarters of its duration to unveil a killer, song-altering guitar riff, or the outro on "Upon Viewing Brughel's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'", when the band corrals a maelstrom of stop-start solos into a steady, almost rockabilly groove.
Three-minute war cry "Titus Andronicus" best encapsulates Airing's pathos, and serves as a fitting primer for an otherwise hefty and (initially) inscrutable album. Bemoaning the creativity-crushing effects of his environs ("I'll write my masterpiece some other day"), Stickles imagines a conformist nightmare of no sex, no booze, and no cigarettes, blurting "fuck everything, fuck me" in between two verses just for effect. As Airing's most memorable moment, the song's taunting chorus maxim "Your life is over!" becomes to these guys what "In the name of love!" was for early U2. On a lyric sheet, Titus Andronicus may appear to espouse the sort of wrist-cutting histrionics emo's typically lambasted for, but the magic lies in the band's oddly enthusiastic grass roots delivery. They've studied their philosophy and found that life actually is pointless, so why not go down swinging? | 2008-04-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2008-04-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Troubleman Unlimited | April 25, 2008 | 8.5 | 89a69e34-8712-4d2f-925d-38ef67c92bf4 | Adam Moerder | https://pitchfork.com/staff/adam-moerder/ | null |
On her third album, Julien Baker’s self-lacerating storytelling gets a more expansive canvas to work with. The big, full-band sound makes all the small moments of pain surreptitiously devastating. | On her third album, Julien Baker’s self-lacerating storytelling gets a more expansive canvas to work with. The big, full-band sound makes all the small moments of pain surreptitiously devastating. | Julien Baker: Little Oblivions | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/julien-baker-little-oblivions/ | Little Oblivions | Julien Baker turns being way too hard on yourself into its own genre. The Tennessee singer-songwriter and producer’s debut album, 2015’s Sprained Ankle, delivered gut-wrenching tales of injury and substance abuse while setting Baker’s prayerful voice over little more than twinkling acoustic guitar and a smattering of piano, with a title track that echoed Baker’s real-life experience of running herself ragged. Her follow-up (and Matador debut), 2017’s Turn Out the Lights, added woodwinds, strings, and other flourishes, but at its emotional core was a lone character convincing herself just “not to miss any more appointments.”
With Baker’s third album, Little Oblivions, her self-lacerating storytelling gets a more expansive canvas. Maybe the blockbuster success of Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license” has turned the emotionally specific introspection of young women into pop’s latest zeitgeist, but Baker has been doing this all along. The 25-year-old has become a de facto generational spokesperson who grew up gay, Christian, and hardcore in the American South and survived teenage addiction. Her profile has enjoyed an extra boost lately thanks to the triumph of 2018’s self-titled EP by boygenius, her supergroup with Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers. Over the past several months, in a grueling gauntlet of fascinating interviews, Baker has talked openly about the relapse and heartbreak that inform her new record, where she hones her craft during a notoriously difficult time.
Although Baker still plays nearly every instrument herself, the biggest change on Little Oblivions is a full-band sound. The shift is most jarring on opener “Hardline,” where organ-like whorls are upended by newfound rumbling, but it’s restrained in a way that softens the sting of a song that begins with Baker’s narrator “blacked out on a weekday” and ends with her asking, “What if it’s all black, baby, all the time?” The jaunty banjo that opens the next track, “Heatwave,” is a much-needed breather before Baker darkly vows, “I’ll wrap Orion’s belt around my neck and kick the chair out.” Particularly given all the mannered singer-songwriters springing out of Indieville in recent years, the jolt of distorted guitar on “Ringside” feels as welcome as the central image is unsettling: “Beat myself till I’m bloody, and I’ll give you a ringside seat.”
A more significant and nuanced development is Baker’s growth as a songwriter and vocalist, particularly noticeable on the piano ballads. Where her melodies once seemed more like vehicles for her words, fine-tuned for emo singalong refrains, on “Crying Wolf” she soars with a dignified aplomb fit for an Oscar contender’s closing credits—never mind that it starts out with another unnerving line: “Day-one chip on your dresser, get loaded at your house.” The album’s musical peak and emotional nadir is another slow, keyboard-based track, “Song in E,” which throws in a fancy chord or two as Baker’s narrator fesses up to having only herself to blame for her drinking, then twists the dagger into herself even further: “It’s the mercy I can’t take.” Over and over again on Little Oblivions, the paradox is that Baker’s craft is most realized when her lyrics are most disturbing.
As skilled as Baker is at this tasteful bleakness, it’s still not easy listening. Reunited with boygenius bandmates Dacus and Bridgers, who lend swooning vocal harmonies to “Favor,” she implores, “What right had you not to let me die?” There’s a huge, thrumming chorus on “Relative Fiction,” but it’s not the feel-good sort (“I don’t need a savior/I need you to take me home,” she insists). Baker’s trauma may not be yours, but if you can recognize a piece of yourself in her soul-searching and despair, Little Oblivions can be surreptitiously devastating.
Since Sprained Ankle, when a 19-year-old Baker sang, “Wish I could write songs about anything other than death,” her work has had an interesting meta quality. Here that’s manifested on “Faith Healer,” a bristling radio-rock anthem that I hear as commenting on the seductiveness of not only drugs, religion, and sex (little oblivions, indeed!), but also the Total Entertainment Forever that is today’s opiate of the masses. Artists are unfairly held up as saviors, especially in an always-on social media world fixated on portrayals of authenticity. Turn Out the Lights ended with Baker proclaiming no difference between demons and saints. Little Oblivions closes, on the trudging “Ziptie,” with an even more bracing dose of iconoclasm: “Good God, when’re you gonna call it off/Climb down off the cross and change your mind?” Her “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” becomes her “I don’t believe in Beatles.”
Baker excels at turning self-mortification into art, but it’s her prerogative as an artist not to have to keep doing it in perpetuity. I’m reminded of someone like Perfume Genius, whose early lo-fi flagellations morphed into glossy art-pop fantasias. As tempting as it is to imagine Baker fully unleashing in one direction or another, the studiously crafted messiness captured here still feels like a compelling next step. Although Little Oblivions describes mainly unhealthy forms of escape, it sounds like something Baker might be embarrassed to admit: true faith in herself.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-26T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-26T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Matador | February 26, 2021 | 7.6 | 89aaa328-b701-4ceb-bc38-37d360b5e6f6 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | |
On Wolves in the Throne Room's earliest releases, they repurposed the furor of black metal, reshaping its sprints into half-marathons and adding classical overtones. Their latest foregoes the former volume and tempo for a liminal mix of synthesizers and beat machines, droning guitars and cascading horns. | On Wolves in the Throne Room's earliest releases, they repurposed the furor of black metal, reshaping its sprints into half-marathons and adding classical overtones. Their latest foregoes the former volume and tempo for a liminal mix of synthesizers and beat machines, droning guitars and cascading horns. | Wolves in the Throne Room: Celestite | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19497-wolves-in-the-throne-room-celestite/ | Celestite | When, during the first decade of their existence, have Wolves in the Throne Room not been over it? From the beginning, the music that Nathan and Aaron Weaver made thrived on inherent unease with expectations. On their earliest releases, they repurposed the furor of black metal, reshaping its sprints into half-marathons and adding classical overtones—operatic vocals, instrumental denouements, recurrent themes—to fashion arching, dramatic epics. “Our black metal is the product of our personal and specific history,” they said in an early, telling interview, “irrespective of other bands that share certain stylistic elements.” They wanted to be anonymous. They wanted to cordon themselves from their closest stylistic peers. They wanted separation.
That distance, in turn, became one of music’s great recent press hooks: Wolves in the Throne Room lived on a farm, not off the grid but wanting to be while growing a wide variety of vegetables and raising livestock. That tale became part of most every Wolves in the Throne Room story—how the band couldn’t wait to leave the road, to return “to living in a rhythmic sort of rural way.” Otherness was the very core of their creation myth. True to form, though, that jig was soon up, too; after the agrarian fable had been recounted countless times and driven more than one album cycle, the band admitted that maybe homesteading wasn’t such an imperative, that Nathan Weaver didn’t even like sunlight very much. Still, following the release of 2011’s Celestial Lineage, their most compellingly restless album to date, they announced with some pomp that they were taking a break—not so much breaking up as “reconnecting to hearth and home.” With Wolves in the Throne Room, most everything has always been an antagonistic, reactive event.
Given that steady tradition of ever-shifting defiance, Wolves in the Throne Room’s first album in three years, Celestite, represents a logical oxbow. The 46-minute record foregoes the band’s former volume and tempo for a liminal mix of synthesizers and beat machines, droning guitars and cascading horns. There are no propulsive blast beats or breathless tremolo guitars, no whispering-then-rushing song structures or majestically interjecting vocals. Instead, the Weavers used a panoply of modular and analog synthesizers to improvise collage-like instrumentals that pivot between the legacies of a dozen obvious predecessors. Those heroes come scattered between New Age and doom metal, industrial and electronica: Brian Eno, Coil, John Carpenter, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Wendy Carlos, Mark Isham, Stephen O’Malley and so on. Backed by horns and woodwinds and assisted by producer Randall Dunn, Wolves in the Throne Room weave these five pieces together through slowly cycling beats and gradually decaying tones, attempting to create a seamless if very separate corollary to Celestial Lineage.
“We didn’t want to have songs in that traditional sense,” Aaron Weaver recently told the blog Steel for Brains about the material on Celestite. “We wanted to have soundscapes, and we wanted to have washes. We wanted to have planets moving past each other.” But Celestite isn’t quite the about-face it may first seem or that the Weavers might have you to believe. Ambient and exploratory passages have always been an intriguing part of Wolves in the Throne Room’s approach, from the ululating female vocals that served as preludes to the field recordings and granulated sounds that functioned as interludes. In the past, those moments were mere window dressing, accessories that emboldened the power of everything else. Here, though, they become the main event, the off-ramp from outright rampage to crystal healing. Celestite is a small sample of the Wolves in the Throne Room aesthetic, writ large and with aplomb.
But Celestite falls far short of the canonical references it invokes, offering an attenuated version of the trips that its predecessors once provided. The same dogged mercury that made Wolves in the Throne Room interesting even when frustrating for the last decade turns Celestite into an indecisive mess. The operative pieces of opener “Turning Ever Towards the Sun”, for instance, are the first two words of its title; a montage of notions and ideas, it swivels between twinkling minimalism and droning languor, full-volume noise and movie-theme melodies, icy drift and humid electronica. During the 11-minute piece’s second half, a phantom beat emerges, throbbing beneath the shifts overhead. The pulse intensifies and quickens, suggesting that all this harried motion might lead to one magnetic moment. But the momentum stalls out, the possibility falling either to the band’s technical failure or philosophical non-commitment. It’s less a singular, captivating journey, a la Cluster or Popol Vuh, than a jumble of unsorted notions.
“Celestite Mirror,” the album’s other long haul, suffers the same shuffle mentality. The band moves between colossal organ roar and flute-led New Age vibrations, kill-switching the sounds as though the very concept of transition were poison. The piece ends with the record’s heaviest moment, as horns that could be sampled from a harrowing John Williams score undergird large-pawed guitar riffs. It’s flimsy, though, the Fisher-Price-sized version of Sunn O)))’s Monoliths & Dimensions. That coda is the doom analogy of the effete krautrock and horror soundtrack approximations that litter most of Celestite—the sound is there, just not its spirit.
In the past and at their best, Wolves in the Throne Room have been able to overpower the seams in their composite music, to rely more on the romance of their clamor than their middling skills as composers. They managed to retrofit black metal to post-rock by force, not finesse. But Celestite’s instrumental expanse provides no such quarter. Wantonly skipping between sounds with a dilettante zeal, Wolves in the Throne Room seem woefully under equipped for this music. It’s hard not to get the sense that they’ve simply been reading The New York Times.
Since word of Wolves in the Throne Room’s shift in sound began to spread earlier this year, there’s been a seeming quest for meaning in the decision, a search for profundity in their sudden deviation. Those who haven’t followed along have been dismissed as gate-guarding philistines, limited by definitions of metal or music or meaning at large. But why? Does a band deserve a free pass for making the “bold” decision to alienate its traditional fans, especially if that band’s reputation is built on a history of alienation at large? Apart from your allegiances to or apathy for black metal, isn’t it possible to see Celestite as a middling modular synthesizer record, where occasional moments of grace and power come swallowed by gyres of hesitation, especially when that electronic scene is now mining darkness on its own? Sure, Wolves in the Throne Room might be over black metal, but at least on Celestite, their next step remains far beyond their grasp. | 2014-07-10T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2014-07-10T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Artemisia | July 10, 2014 | 4.7 | 89ae36a3-c5a9-439e-9417-86dffe919cc0 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
In 2014, Peaches Geldof was found dead at 25, the result of a heroin overdose. After a few lost months, her husband Thomas Cohen finished a '70s singer/songwriter record about his wife and children. | In 2014, Peaches Geldof was found dead at 25, the result of a heroin overdose. After a few lost months, her husband Thomas Cohen finished a '70s singer/songwriter record about his wife and children. | Thomas Cohen: Bloom Forever | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21877-bloom-forever/ | Bloom Forever | In spring 2012, Thomas Cohen appeared on the cover of trashy celebrity rag Hello alongside his pregnant fiancée, Peaches Geldof, daughter of the Boomtown Rats frontman and Live Aid founder Bob. Domestic bliss was a lens twist for Geldof, who until then had been a notorious indie socialite—imagine Paris Hilton rewritten by Diablo Cody. And even more so for Cohen: A year earlier, he had been fronting serious post-punk teens S.C.U.M., who were named for Valerie Solanas' manifesto, and cited the likes of avant-garde Japanese band Les Rallizes Dénudés, Pharoah Sanders, and Throbbing Gristle as influences. They signed to Mute, and were feted by Brian Eno and Portishead. You can't buy that kind of credibility—or sustain it once you're pictured next to a photo splash of Prince William and Kate Middleton's "night of glamor and tears."
This wasn't how things were meant to go. S.C.U.M. split, presumably as a result of Cohen's new celebrity life, and he decided to pursue a solo career, writing about the strangeness of being a young father of two in a British rock dynasty. But the script wrinkled again when Geldof was found dead at 25, the result of a fatal heroin overdose. After a few understandably lost months, Cohen got back to writing, and finished his record, which unfolds in chronological order. All things considered, Bloom Forever (the middle names of their second son, Phaedra) is unexpectedly upbeat: a '70s singer/songwriter record indebted to Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Elton John, and Lou Reed's Berlin.
Mostly recorded in Iceland, the arrangements are at once utterly relaxed yet over-the-top. (If you can't temper a story of being widowed at 23 with a little absurdity, when can you?) But like Cardinal's Eric Matthews, Cohen strikes a fine balance between sweet wooziness and cathartic guitar/saxophone/flute soloing. Where Bloom Forever could easily—and justifiably—have been dark and oppressive, instead, it's filled with inviting warmth and light, and sharpened by Cohen's reedy, Byronesque tone.
In contrast to the music's opulent wallowing, Cohen's plainspoken lyrics initially evoke the closed idyll of a new, young family unit. "As the rivers make their beds, our love will be holding onto each other," he vows in opener "Honeymoon," where smoky, drifting guitar and languid sax ride to a storming climax. On the title track, about Phaedra's birth, he evokes their "lonely weather," new parenthood's sweet and tiring fug. "Let's find a place to hide/One where we'll never sigh," he sings, over loose guitar that recalls the relaxed stateliness of Nick Cave's Push the Sky Away. It's a really lovely space to spend time in—so much so that it's hard to begrudge him "Hazy Shades," a sunny and shameless rip-off of America's "A Horse With No Name" coupled with the lyrics to Neil Young's "Love and Only Love."
Traces of that Americana lilt make it into "Country Home," the one song on Bloom Forever that deals most directly with Geldof's death. Although the lyrics are brutal ("My love had gone, she'd turned so cold/Why weren't her eyes covered and closed?"), it's remarkably measured, cascading on waves of pedal steel and vocal harmonies. Cohen has obviously had to grow up incredibly fast, but even so, the sophistication of the writing, and his resolve within those songs, is pretty extraordinary. His children give him reason to keep going on "Ain't Gonna Be No Rain," and the rollicking sea shanty feel (and flute solo!) of "New Morning Comes” evokes the "sun still shining on, even though it's cold."
"Only Us" is a cavernous, Pink Floyd-indebted piano lament for the intimacy the couple once shared, but on "Mother Mary," Cohen promises to keep everything he's lost inside of him. "I will hold onto the part of me that is in love with you," he sings softly, as graceful as the silvery strings and gentle piano. Without warning, his voice expands, and the song storms to another never-ending crescendo, buzzing and burning like a rocket burning off layers as it breaches the atmosphere. The blurry quality that characterized the record's first half is gone, the focus sharper; the end of a very strange dream. Cohen will never be able to escape the context surrounding Bloom Forever, but he refuses to let himself be defined by tragedy. His bold, distinctive debut album stands a million miles from the celebrity circus, and will endure far longer than mawkish titillation. | 2016-05-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-05-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Stolen Recordings | May 14, 2016 | 7.9 | 89aed08f-6f2a-47ea-b7e8-a0aea12b6520 | Laura Snapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/laura-snapes/ | null |
The Atlanta rapper’s new album swings seamlessly from upbeat to disruptive without being one-note. It’s her best work yet. | The Atlanta rapper’s new album swings seamlessly from upbeat to disruptive without being one-note. It’s her best work yet. | Bktherula: Love Black | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bktherula-love-black/ | Love Black | Sometimes, Atlanta’s Bktherula cuts raging headbangers big and polished enough for her city’s mainstream machine. Other times, the 19-year-old’s songs are melodic and ethereal, with a demo-like feel that has more in common with the local underground scene. On her fun-enough 2020 mixtapes—Nirvana and Love Santana—that versatility sounded cooler on paper. The problem with both projects was that the lush tracks felt derivative, and her lovestruck lyrics and sweet-sounding melodies weren’t interesting enough to elevate the records beyond vibes. Meanwhile, the haymakers were fully formed, sparked by a no-bullshit attitude and chaotic energy that too often disappeared on her softer songs.
Bktherula’s newest album, Love Black, is her best yet because those two moods—upbeat and disruptive—bleed into one another more seamlessly. “Hit Me” is hummable and, at the same time, sounds like Bk is ready to superkick a hole in a wall. Similarly, Rxlvnd’s beat on “Ye Ho” is so spaced out it might freeze you like sleep paralysis. Bk layers the hazy instrumental with a hypnotic spell of adlibs—“huh,” “yeah,” “uh”—that are more impactful than any lyrics she could have written for the song. The Digital Nas-produced “Incredible” opens with a bang (“I run up them bands and get that guap, that’s what I had to do/You can’t call me Black right now ’cause bitch, I’m fucking mad at you”), and Bk raps as if she could rip a phonebook in half with her hands. The lyrics aren’t as memorable on “Through 2 U,” and they’re maybe even bad (“I got all my niggas in the bus with me like Scooby Doo”), but the ear-splitting drums and her punishing delivery could inspire a fulfilling spree of vandalism and destruction.
Love Black has its fluff, too. Bk half-heartedly coos about some unspecific love over a Mac Demarco sample on “IDK What to Tell You,” a song seemingly designed in a TikTok lab to go viral. “Placement” is dragged down by the demonic filter Matt Ox puts on his vocals and feels like it’s trying to be weird rather than actually being weird. Then on “Nah,” Bk croons over the type of airy Surf Gang beat that would typically go to BabyxSosa, but her whiny melodies are tired. There seems to be a part of this album that wants to slightly clean up the edges and get her swooped up into the algorithm, but her music is more about her city than it is of the internet.
What’s most exciting about Love Black is the way so many feelings coexist on a track; it’s not as one-note as similarly vibey rappers like Ken Car$on—and to a lesser extent Yeat—who swear they’re the ultimate ragers. On “Hide Your Hoe,” Bk is smitten with someone and yet returns to her trifling ways; she’s bitter and doesn’t give a shit on “She Choose Me.” These emotions may seem relatively simple, but it’s the wrinkle she missed too often before and now commands.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-10-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-10-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Warner | October 28, 2021 | 7.4 | 89af9d60-142c-4b46-8625-3bb197441371 | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
The New York songwriter’s fourth album sacrifices spontaneity for the sake of a character-driven concept, but her sense of humor remains as strong as ever. | The New York songwriter’s fourth album sacrifices spontaneity for the sake of a character-driven concept, but her sense of humor remains as strong as ever. | Caroline Rose: Superstar | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/caroline-rose-superstar/ | Superstar | In the opening scenes of her video for “Feel the Way I Want,” New York singer-songwriter Caroline Rose stands outside a Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in Hollywood, California, and receives a phone call. It’s her agent. That audition she has? It’s in Hollywood, Florida. Off she goes on a cross-country dance trip to Florida, where she nails her audition for the role of a bug-eyed lobster.
This is the beginning of a gag Rose sees all the way through her fourth album, Superstar, which tells the story of a character based off an exaggerated version of herself, mixed with bits of Kanye West and 2007 Britney Spears. This character, or “anti-hero” as Rose often calls them, is a study in contradictions—confident and insecure, anxious and optimistic, ambitious to the point of delusion—who, having recently experienced the rush of success, now craves fame and riches.
Looking back, it seems obvious Rose would make such a character-driven album. By the time of her breakout third LP Loner in 2018, she had already started dressing in all red and refining an irreverent onstage persona. Loner was a hybrid offering: Americana-esque stories that played out from multiple perspectives, told through indie-pop melodies that carefully folded in programmatic drums and synthesizers. By contrast, Superstar is a single narrative. Chronological storytelling means the album has only one direction to travel; it’s easy to predict the main character’s impending undoing. Like a book whose author has overcommitted to her outline, the album’s linear structure sacrifices opportunities for spontaneity along the way.
Superstar also lacks some of the musical restraint that made Loner such a balanced listen. Armed with new studio tricks and the desire to create something from scratch, Rose played every position—songwriter, producer, engineer, guitarist, flutist, field recording supervisor. While her intentions are admirable, Superstar suffers from an excess of overwrought effects (reverb! panning!) that an outside collaborator might’ve trimmed. Still, when Rose manages to find the right balance on her own, as on lead single “Feel the Way I Want,” it’s clear she’s a fiercely talented artist with omnivorous taste that extends from the hyper-pop of Grimes to the abstract electronic music of Suzanne Ciani. The opening riff of “Back at the Beginning” recalls the wiry guitar solo from Dandy Warhols’ “We Used to Be Friends.” Given her wide range of source material, it’s easy to understand how Rose could struggle in the editing process.
What remains strong throughout the album are the lyrics. Rose is an undeniably gifted songwriter, capable of cleverness without sacrificing clarity. Her sense of humor is strong as ever, especially on “Do You Think We’ll Last Forever,” a sparse dance track about new-relationship anxiety. “I’m alright, I’m alright, I’m alright/It’s just a heart attack,” Rose insists. Later, on the standout “Freak Like Me,” she describes the object of her affection as a “split-level home,” a “brick through a broken window,” a “skin-tight suit,” a “vicious dom,” and a “drunk conversation.” Cobbled together, the evocative descriptions reveal a person ready to relish their freakiness in front of a lover who’s equally down.
These personal-feeling moments are the album’s strongest, and Superstar could use more of them. By clinging to the never-ending blank page of the bit, Rose winds up in shallower waters. Her previous albums demonstrate her gift for thinking critically about knotty concepts and turning heady observations on subjects like monotony and loneliness into indie-pop gold. Here, each song is a variation on the same ultimate theme: the fine line between aspiration and delusion. And while Rose mines the topic for all it’s worth—exploring the many side-effects and surprises that stem from unchecked ambition—her reluctance to explore perspectives beyond that of her neurotic anti-hero limit the experience.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-03-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-03-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | New West | March 7, 2020 | 6.7 | 89b2f825-296f-4071-b54e-99991c74604b | Abigail Covington | https://pitchfork.com/staff/abigail-covington/ | |
Briana Marela’s third album of effervescent synth pop is her punchiest effort yet, full of songs that portray the anxiety of falling in and out of love. | Briana Marela’s third album of effervescent synth pop is her punchiest effort yet, full of songs that portray the anxiety of falling in and out of love. | Briana Marela: Call It Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/briana-marela-call-it-love/ | Call It Love | Briana Marela’s third album Call It Love punches harder than any of the airy, effervescent synth pop she’s released before, but her newly energetic beats and surging arpeggios still frame the same gentle vocalizations that have marked her work to date. She originally intended the album to have two distinct halves, an ambient side and a pop side, with corresponding “sister songs.” Instead, she melded the two together; drones and echoes float under her drum patterns and multi-tracked vocal hooks, resulting in a work that can paradoxically feel agitated and sedate in the same moment.
Unlike 2015’s All Around Us, which was recorded in Iceland and reflected its serene landscapes, Call It Love renders the anxiety of falling in and out of love both in its restless beats and its lyrics. Marela, who majored in audio production and music technology at Olympia’s Evergreen State College, makes great use of her vocal processing to that end. One second there’s a single Marela, of a single mind; a second later, she’s everywhere, singing to herself across a dozen vocal tracks at the speed your thoughts might race when you’re teetering at the precipice of falling for someone new. “Be in Love” blooms with the giddiness of a new crush, while “Call It Love” digs for emotional clarity in the midst of an ambiguous relationship.
Marela also explores the darker side of that romantic coin. The album’s lead single “Quit” paints the end of a relationship in somber tones; her voice is corroded and stuttering, while the drum machine lacerates the track’s background ambience with a harsh, almost industrial beat. “You quit calling my name/You quit,” she accuses. Though the song hints at feelings of loneliness and abandonment, its desolation comes through more clearly in its spacious production and echoing instrumentation than in Marela’s vocal delivery. She’s skilled at multiplying her voice across an infinite plane, but whether she’s singing about new love or love dead in the water, she sings in the same gentle, tentative register.
The sameness in her voice lends Call It Love a soothing quality, as though her vocals were a pleasant keyboard patch she used consistently across its tracks, tracing square, unchallenging melodies the whole way. She’s not the first vocalist to employ uniformity in this way; My Bloody Valentines use it to great effect, but they also let their guitars do the singing. The lack of anything like a pained or ecstatic voice in Call It Love can make its emotional core tricky to access. Instead of reading it in her voice, you have to read it in her lyrics and the environments in which she’s chosen to nestle them.
That doesn’t detract from Call It Love’s prettiness; it just means it’s not the kind of record you’re likely to bury your pain in after a breakup or your excitement in at the start of the next relationship. It’s not that active. But there’s a third note it hits best on “He Knows”: a quiet insecurity you can’t help enjoying. “Are you my friend?/Oh, don’t answer yet,” Marela sings over keys heavy with reverb. Here, she sings toward the top of her range, stretching out the word “temporary” to at least seven syllables. “Will I ever see you again?/Would I get one more chance?” she asks. She has no idea, but her asking invites us to treat Call It Love more like an ambient record than anything else: a dreamlike space, a seeking. It’s a map to subliminal states that pop, in its loudness, tends to stamp out. | 2017-08-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-08-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Jagjaguwar | August 4, 2017 | 6.9 | 89bf8000-a66c-4b19-8569-bd8f94e1d962 | Sasha Geffen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sasha-geffen/ | null |
Quickly recorded in 2002 to fulfill a publishing contract, this archival trove cements the singer-songwriter and her steadfast partner, David Rawlings, as modern masters of American folk. | Quickly recorded in 2002 to fulfill a publishing contract, this archival trove cements the singer-songwriter and her steadfast partner, David Rawlings, as modern masters of American folk. | Gillian Welch: Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs, Vol. 1 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gillian-welch-boots-no-2-the-lost-songs-vol-1/ | Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs, Vol. 1 | By the end of 2002, when Gillian Welch recorded the tunes that constitute Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs, Vol. 1, she had fully arrived as an unexpected popular apostle of Appalachian folk music. A California kid raised by showbiz parents and inculcated in songcraft at the Berklee College of Music, Welch cut a promising figure in the teeming alt-country landscape of the late ’90s. Her keening voice made her songs about hardscrabble folks and imminent hellfire feel as old as the hills from which she hadn’t come. But her upbringing prompted puritanical concerns about authenticity and appropriation, as if she should apologize for sincere interest in one of her country’s bedrock forms.
For some, though, as the United States quivered with the onset of endless war in 2001, Welch and her steadfast harmony partner, David Rawlings, seemed a national salve. Pushed into the spotlight by the frame-shifting soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the concert film that followed, the couple felt trustworthy and inspirational, a charming portrait of aspirational America that might have been plucked from Grant Wood’s imagination. Welch didn’t shy from darkness, either. Her contemporaneous album, 2001’s Time (the Revelator), explored the country’s vile underbelly, particularly the sense that we were exploiting one another into oblivion. One of the young century’s first masterpieces, Time (the Revelator) tapped the past to contextualize present anxieties and offer the occasional jubilee. What other role should modern folk music play?
Buoyed by this sudden success, Welch resolved she could finally break from the publishing contract she’d signed nine years earlier—she was a successful singer-songwriter now, not merely a writer for hire. During one productive weekend at home in December 2002, six months before releasing the aching Soul Journey, she and Rawlings pored through more than 100 notebooks. They turned scraps of discarded songs into enough quick recordings to fulfill her contract before it renewed January 1.
Those 48 tunes languished in storage boxes for nearly two decades, until the tornadoes that swept through Nashville in March and the financial uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted Welch and Rawlings to excavate them. Taken together, the resulting three volumes of Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs—a nominal follow-up to 2016’s Boots No. 1: The Official Revival Bootleg, a collection of outtakes from her 1996 debut—will effectively double the painstakingly patient musician’s catalogue. (Volumes two and three are to follow in coming months.) Singing and playing just to get the job done, she and Rawlings have never sounded so nonchalant on record as they do here, delivering these songs with the candor of an afternoon band rehearsal. Effortlessly balancing light and dark, this first batch of 16 songs is an essential distillation of her ability to tell detailed stories open for endless interpretation.
Welch’s best songs have always evoked mystery. Ambiguity and intrigue are her essential inheritance from the old records and songbooks she internalized. For Welch, the listener should come away from a song with more questions than answers. Time (the Revelator) was her masterclass in that regard: Its elliptical epics teased connections between the Dust Bowl, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and the sinking of the Titanic, and then (presciently) asked what music might become when stripped of all value. Boots No. 2 plays like a workbook of exercises on that enigmatic mode, a set of three-minute delights that reveal just enough of a story to electrify the imagination.
You may ask, for instance, what exactly happened to the downtrodden protagonist of the tender “Chinatown,” neglected by the postal service and ignored by sunshine until even flowers became phantoms. Why were the Bonnie-and-Clyde couple of “Honey Baby” on the lam, and how did they arrive at the gallows? You’ll pity the exhausted outlaws in “Apalachicola” and “Shotgun Song” while wondering about their crimes. Even “Mighty Good Book,” which first scans as a bounding gospel tune fit for a churchyard picnic, revels in equivocation. “Are you gonna wish you read the story/Of when Jesus paid it all?” Welch sings, rendering commandments as questions, as if to tell you she doesn’t have the answer, either.
There are simpler pleasures, too. “Little Luli” is an irrepressible ode to a proud woman who shakes down traveling men while shaking for their dimes. “First Place Ribbon” relates the story of the shoeless and itinerant Kathy, wooing the boys and evading the preachers as she travels with the fair. Such anachronisms may sound like cosplay, but, for Welch, they’re echoes of the past made resonant again. These are glorious tributes to the wiles of rebellious women, sung in solidarity by someone pushing back against a powerful industry herself. And Welch seems to have reserved “Back Turn and Swing,” a lithe country dance tune, for the perfect moment. Above spring-loaded guitars that beg for a bluegrass band, Welch acknowledges life’s troubles but celebrates the thrills of dancing with friends and guzzling wine. It’s a testament to perseverance and the promise of better days—a timely reminder that hard times come and, with luck, go.
Good news for the music industry has been particularly illusory in 2020—canceled tours, scrapped sessions, delayed releases, Spotify investing $100 million in Joe Rogan. One unanticipated boon has been a change in temperament among some typically exacting artists, who have lowered their guards to put out music, long-shelved and new alike, with less premeditation or preciousness. (What else do you do during endless quarantine?) The same impulse has compelled Taylor Swift’s folklore, a high volume of low-stakes live albums on Bandcamp, and a stream of hard-drive (or tape-reel) dumps just like Boots No. 2. In July, Welch and Rawlings released an off-the-cuff covers album, imperfectly captured on tape during quarantine.
Welch and Rawlings are a famously fastidious pair, self-proclaimed perfectionists who once spent eight years fretting over an album. This meticulousness has sometimes been fodder for critics who say authentic folk music shouldn’t be so calculated. Boots No. 2 should quell that gripe once and for all. Here they are at home during a wintry Southern weekend, churning through songs good enough to be standards by the dozen. They play and sing with an intimacy so easy it seems as if they’ve forgotten the tape is rolling at all.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-08-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-08-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Acony | August 12, 2020 | 8 | 89bfbf72-eda1-4ee5-992a-b114c457e318 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing, Ubiquity’s long-gestating compilation of highlights from Gloria Ann Taylor’s brief career, gathers five singles recorded between 1971 and 1977. Original copies of these releases—featuring dance music with an unusual touch of dubby psychedelia—are among the most coveted of soul/disco rarities. | Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing, Ubiquity’s long-gestating compilation of highlights from Gloria Ann Taylor’s brief career, gathers five singles recorded between 1971 and 1977. Original copies of these releases—featuring dance music with an unusual touch of dubby psychedelia—are among the most coveted of soul/disco rarities. | Gloria Ann Taylor: Love Is a Hurtin' Thing | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21269-love-is-a-hurtin-thing/ | Love Is a Hurtin' Thing | A month before the release of their debut album on 4AD, U.S. Girls dropped the video for the Slim Twig-produced single "Window Shades". For most listeners, it was a song about the emotional breakthrough of a woman finally confronting her unfaithful partner. But its production, with looped strings, piano, and hand drum, was startling to deep soul fans. "Window Shades" incorporated a licensed sample of Gloria Ann Taylor's 1973 single, "Love Is a Hurting Thing", a song found on a privately-pressed 12" called Deep Inside You featured one of the more anonymous spirograph sleeves from that era. Seen in the racks, the 12" might have looked like any number of local gospel or marching band albums from the mid-'70s, but this one came with a twist: a copy of the release, credited to Gloria Ann Taylor and Walt Whisenhunt's Orchestra, routinely tops four figures in online auctions, making it one of the most coveted soul/disco albums of its ilk.
Deep Inside You is the centerpiece of Love Is a Hurtin' Thing, Ubiquity's long-gestating compilation of highlights from Gloria Taylor's brief career, gathering five singles recorded between 1971 and 1977. For those of more modest means who've relied on mp3s culled from long-deleted music blogs, Hurtin' Thing fills in her discography as well as her biography. The mystery inherent in her music has led to some strange speculations online. Even her Discogs page puts her birthplace as Alabama, saying that she formed gospel group Sweet Honey in the Rock and passed away 10 years ago (no doubt conflating her with one Gloria Ann Taylor-James). As these liner notes clarify, though, Taylor was actually born in a coal-mining town in West Virginia and is still very much with us.
That Gloria Ann Taylor didn't become a household name isn't of much concern now. It's difficult to become a star, much easier to be star-crossed, to find your music lost to time. So the fact that she never made it is not cosmic injustice so much as the actual indifference of the universe. It was in fact at the start of Taylor's career as a soul singer based in Toledo that she had her best shot at stardom. Compared favorably to Aretha Franklin, she had a powerful, church-bred voice that caught the attention of one of James Brown's arrangers and associates, Walt Whisenhunt, fresh off of working on Doris Troy's "Just One Look". They became both musical partners and a couple.
The number of forgotten, obscure, or lost soul singers revived in the 21st century runs long and deep, the "personal sacrifice, failed relationships, and missed opportunity" that these notes describe are all attendant of this peculiar genre. But before allowing hard-knock biography to color the reception of Love Is a Hurtin' Thing, just listen to the opening seconds of the title track. A blistering psychedelic guitar solo, like something left off of Nuggets, flares across the opening 10 seconds, but 20 seconds in, we're awash in opulent strings, piano, and Taylor's voice, a powerful instrument that seem to be echoing from a subterranean tunnel.
As production choices for a potential hit single in the early 1970s go, it's baffling, one part psych-rock, one part Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra, all competing with the fresh wound of Taylor's voice. There's a raw pain and cavernous hurt in Taylor's every exhalation, the lyrics questioning how love could bring such joy and pain. And the music itself is bent on evoking all of the ecstasy and agony, the crazed jags of adoration and confusion that stems from a dysfunctional relationship.
"How Can You Say It" has Taylor talk about giving her lover her last dime, then finding tears on his pillow. That wrenching whiplash of emotions are scored by lush orchestration and percussion swaddled in so much echo so as to suggest the sound Lee Perry would get out of the Black Ark in a few years' time. Same goes for "Deep Inside of You", where the strings, vibraphone, and Taylor's voice are all doused in heavy reverb, and for an instant, everything becomes disorienting and indistinct.
No other soul producer in that era would smother their vocalist in so many effects or arrange backing harmonies at such cross purposes to the main melody. So while Taylor voices heartbreak and anguish, Whisenhunt's idiosyncratic productions suggest something close to madness. But his choices—which no doubt made mainstream success impossible—are staggering 40 years on. On the haunting dirge of "Burning Eyes", Taylor's voice frays before our ears, shadowed by a muted trumpet and a horn section that seems to have lurched up from a graveyard. "World That's Not Real" is ominous yet ephemeral, buoyed by xylophone and Taylor's desolate voice. Almost a minute in, the piano hits a chord that Oliver Wang at Soul-Sides once deemed "Death's ringtone," yet at that, the song briefly brightens, only to sidle back into darkness, perching at the edge of the void.
Harrowing and feverish as these sides are, the most uncanny song remains the seven-minute version of "Love Is a Hurtin' Thing", a befuddling megamix comprised of the original version of the track as well as chunks of previous singles "How Can You Say It" and "Music", all cobbled together in the studio by Whisenhunt. To the mix he adds more stinging wah-wah guitar, silken orchestration, and a re-recorded drum track not quite in sync with the original that trainwrecks the whole thing (no doubt an attempt to cash in on disco fever). With funds low, it had a minuscule press run and was soon forgotten. Yet somehow, it all works. It's glorious and bewildering, magnificent and forlorn, defiant and defeated, an emotional speedball. Heard in 2015, the music is as indelible and inscrutable as ever. Or, as Taylor once sang about love: "It's a mystery no one can explain." | 2015-12-01T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2015-12-01T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Ubiquity | December 1, 2015 | 8.7 | 89c382de-1dc4-404e-bc04-562e1e1cee78 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
Across two studio albums and three discs of unreleased live material, the late-1960s Swedish free-music collective goes in hard on repetitive, mind-expanding psychedelic jams. | Across two studio albums and three discs of unreleased live material, the late-1960s Swedish free-music collective goes in hard on repetitive, mind-expanding psychedelic jams. | International Harvester: Remains | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/international-harvester-remains/ | Remains | In the late 1960s, a pioneering Swedish collective made music so free and open-ended that even its identity fluctuated. Sprouting from the mid-’60s left-wing group Mecki Mark Men, they began in 1967 as Pärson Sound, rebranded a year later as International Harvester (soon trimmed to just Harvester), and finally landed on what would be their best-known moniker, Träd, Gräs och Stenar (Trees, Grass, and Stones). In each incarnation, this wildly creative gathering of musicians, poets, artists, and writers made mossy improvised jams that began simply—a few chords, a basic beat, some singing—then trekked into the stratosphere.
Since those heady times, the work of Pärson Sound and Träd, Gräs och Stenar has been collected into box sets, and now it’s International Harvester’s turn. Remains joins their two previously released albums with three discs of recently unearthed live material. Mapping the musical differences between the group’s iterations is somewhat futile, as they have many more commonalities than contrasts. This is especially true when comparing Pärson Sound to International Harvester, who shared the exact same six members. But the latter proved both a crucial fulcrum between past and future and a distinctive entity on its own.
Where Pärson Sound were more overtly experimental—inspired largely by Terry Riley’s minimalist trips and the corresponding experiments of co-founder Bo Anders Persson—International Harvester sometimes used traditional folk forms. They also were more political. In an interview in the notes of Remains, saxophonist Thomas Tidholm says their name was a critique of “Western profit-hungry engineering,” and some songs—such as “Ho Chi Minh,” which could’ve passed for a protest chant—were explicitly rooted in the events of the era. Their music was more timely too, dovetailing with hippified ’60s rock and hinting at the psychedelic strains that Träd, Gräs och Stenar would fully embrace.
On their two proper full-lengths—International Harvester’s 1968 album Sov Gott Rose-Marie and Harvester’s Hemåt, from 1969—the group’s melange of interests and influences creates music that continually grows despite rarely deviating from initial repetitive sounds. They rarely changed key, or even chords. “Everything was usually left to evolve by itself and from itself,” Tidholm says. “It was all about listening, answering, filling in.” It’s a trippy thrill to hear how far the group can go without making huge moves, as if they’re playing their single-minded jams while sitting on a flying carpet.
The most extreme example of this peculiar magic is “Harvest Times,” recorded in 1968 at the Nacka Aula auditorium in Stockholm. Clocking in at 25 minutes, it’s the longest piece on Remains, and it sure does take its time. A slow, lazy beat plods along for a good 10 minutes while small elements—vocal hums, horn bleats, stray guitar notes—wind around it. Eventually, the intensity increases, inch by inch, until the group generates a massive swirl of howling guitars and blasting horns. Despite its duration, the extended climax develops so gradually that it still sneaks up on you. The effect is similar to a drug high that doesn’t so much kick in as wash its way through you.
There are other long songs on Remains—six of the 33 tracks last over 10 minutes—but this group could build arcs in smaller spaces too. Side one of Sov Gott Rose-Marie offers 11 shorter pieces and hits many highs: the straight-up rock riffs of “There Is No Other Place,” the atmospheric balladry of “It’s Only Love,” the proto-metal lurch of “It’s Getting Late Now,” the orchestral swing of “The Summer Song.” On Hemåt, the group stretches further, riding their repetitions into mantras. They indulge their sense of humor more too, playfully grinding out the drunken carnival song “Cock Polksa” and the woozy “Everybody (Needs Somebody to Love),” which evokes the Rolling Stones traipsing through mud.
All these sides of International Harvester get play on Remains’ three live LPs, which are on a par with the band’s two official albums. They even stretch the band’s purview, adding styles like the rootsy blues of “Dada Babble Boogie” and the cinematic woodwind essay “Blowing the Wind.” The more epic tracks, like the aforementioned “Harvest Times” or the 19-minute tower of psychedelia that is “Streets of Stockholm,” are complete works that could’ve been albums themselves.
Throughout Remains, the group shows its jam-until-we-break-through approach to be so productive, it comes off less like jamming than spontaneous composition—perhaps even an eternal suite of variations on one vibrational theme. That may sound overly mystical, but it’s hard to listen to Remains and not believe that International Harvester tapped into something elemental. | 2018-04-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-04-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Silence | April 20, 2018 | 8.4 | 89d24efe-bc72-4850-acf8-217d694d032e | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | |
Veering from claustrophobic sci-fi dioramas to meditative synth drones to nakedly expressive confessionals, Laurel Halo's Hyperdub debut is unified by an underlying perspective and personality that commands attention yet still leaves plenty to the imagination. | Veering from claustrophobic sci-fi dioramas to meditative synth drones to nakedly expressive confessionals, Laurel Halo's Hyperdub debut is unified by an underlying perspective and personality that commands attention yet still leaves plenty to the imagination. | Laurel Halo: Quarantine | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16692-quarantine/ | Quarantine | When an artist "finds her voice," it's meant as a figure of speech and signifies a certain kind of greedy perspective from our end that values neat narrative arcs and easily identifiable resolutions. It's typically reserved for someone like Laurel Halo, who's darted and dashed rather than having followed a simple trajectory over the past couple of years, recording a vast and diverse amount of material under her own name and as King Felix for six record labels (and counting). Her Hyperdub debut, Quarantine, appears to acknowledge the need for something definitive, and by intricately arranging and shrewdly sequencing her C.V. on a micro scale, it's her best and most cohesive work to date. And it's largely because Halo finds her voice in a literal sense. She foregrounds vocals to a far greater extent than on her previous material, and while Quarantine veers from claustrophobic sci-fi dioramas to meditative synth drones to nakedly expressive confessionals, it's unified by an underlying perspective and personality that commands attention yet still leaves plenty to the imagination.
You find out fairly quickly that Halo is setting all the rules of engagement on Quarantine. Opener "Airsick" introduces many of the tricks Halo uses from there on out-- oddly stacked and constantly shifting harmonies, portamento pitch-bending, narcotic melodies, a prevailing sense of technological dread-- before the nearly a cappella "Years" leaves her completely exposed. Halo doesn't exactly yell or scream on "Years", it's something like a boundary-pushing exhalation after a long and self-imposed silence, sung in an uncomfortably loud and flat tone. Some will find it, to put it lightly, hard to deal with, and by most standard metrics of evaluation, it's not proper singing and borders on ugly. But consider the combative content of the lyrics: "I will never see you again/ You're mad 'cause I will not leave you alone." There's purpose to all of this, reminding me of Jeff Mangum's approach on the opening devotional from "King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 2 & 3", where the volume signifies an artist pushing against internal and external repression with necessary, confrontational force.
Halo's vocals only occasionally go back into attack mode, but "Years" is indicative of Quarantine's prodding and provoking nature and how it subverts the typical ideas of how we brand aggressive and intense music. The instruments of war are almost completely absent here: The digital dissonance is rarely abrasive, there's nothing resembling a true bassline, nor is there anything that scans as a snare or kick drum perhaps outside of the almost tropical pitter-patter outlining "Airsick", or the jetstream whir of "Thaw". If anything, it resembles the beatless, zero-gravity voids created by Oneohtrix Point Never on Returnal, and similarly, the extraterrestrial quality of Quarantine's terrain heightens your senses and makes your nerves sit a little more on edge to counter the unfamiliarity.
Though often melodic, it doesn't really ever come off as pop. My experience with Quarantine feels more like an interactive, multimedia affair, as though I'm listening to a record while simultaneously trying to solve a puzzle or challenge the CPU in a video game. I don't hear verses and choruses so much as Q&A, stimuli, and open-ended responses, challenges presented, accepted, and accomplished. I can't really hum the melody of "MK Ultra"; the thrill is in finally being able to trace its strange, boomeranging path in real time. The tension created by the juddering undercurrent of low frequencies and Halo's octave-shifted vocals on "Carcass" is unnerving enough, and her use of the phrase "my carcass" rather than "my body" intends to provoke an entirely different and gnarlier set of emotional responses.
Indeed, while much of Quarantine's futuristic production and man-machine interface conjures science fiction, much of the lyrical approach reads like scientific or Socratic method. Beyond the blurry delineation between devotion and revenge on "Years", what to make of something like "Holoday"? Structurally, it feels like an interlude, a free-time juxtaposition of scrambled circuitry and a high-pitched sample of Halo singing, "just wanna be with you!" like an errant, synaptic trigger. Is it a love song or a neurological study of the feeling? Likewise, it certainly has to be intentional that the titles signifying expressions of rapture ("Wow", "Joy") are given to compositions in thrall to the dehumanization of Halo's voice. The most pointed example of Halo's painstaking production appears on "Tumor": The illuminant vocal processing accompanying the lyrics, "Caught behind the wall of tears/ Distorted liquid image of you/ The signal keeps cutting out but one thing is clear/ Nothing grows in my heart, there is no one here," evokes a radiant sadness. Seconds later, stripped of all effects and affects, Halo menacingly deadpans to the object of her desire, "you are my target."
There are plenty of disarmingly pretty moments too on Quarantine, yet even those strive for unsettling effect, finding beauty in uncertainty, confidence in the embrace of the unknown. There are already subtle hints at discord during the spacey lullaby of "Thaw", milky synths and samples beaming in and out of an odd time signature as Halo sings in a strangely conversational timbre, "Don't get addicted to anything/ Just keep on walking/ One foot in front of the other/ Forward motion's the only answer." The closing "Light + Space" is Quarantine's most conventionally performed keys-and-voice piece and also the most gorgeous, though a rare glimpse at Halo's more lush, jazzy phrasing is dedicated to the admission that "words are just words that you soon forget." Coming at the tail end of a diffuse, exploratory second half, it's a disquieting and ultimately weighty epigram for Quarantine, a record created in the image of its author in its ability to dodge easy explanations and comparisons. After all, the greatest pleasure of Quarantine lies in its being a world unto itself, a self-contained vortex where influence is nearly impossible to project or extract, leaving only the alternately frightening and reassuring state of solitude. | 2012-06-07T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-06-07T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Hyperdub | June 7, 2012 | 8 | 89d5a8d8-2f7b-4a97-82a7-2d8521919bf9 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
Throat-singer Tanya Tagaq could be Canada’s unlikeliest crossover act. At a time when Canada is reckoning with the historic mistreatment of its indigenous population, her new LP demands retribution. | Throat-singer Tanya Tagaq could be Canada’s unlikeliest crossover act. At a time when Canada is reckoning with the historic mistreatment of its indigenous population, her new LP demands retribution. | Tanya Tagaq: Retribution | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22324-retribution/ | Retribution | Before Tanya Tagaq is about to perform, she takes a few moments to speak to her audience. There’s the usual business of thanking everyone for coming out and introducing her band, though she also likes to talk about what’s on her mind—sometimes for a good 10 minutes before we hear a note of music. In the context of what follows, the preamble feels less like an introduction than a farewell, like the sort of address you hear from astronauts before they’re launched into space, or an escape artist who’s about to pull off an elaborate, death-defying stunt. That’s because Tagaq goes to places in her music that few others dare to tread. And when she’s in the throes of her violent, carnal, gesticulating concerts—which feel more like séances than performances—you’re not sure if that sweet, cheerful woman who was just bantering with the crowd will make it back alive.
Tagaq hails from the Arctic territory of Nunavut in northern Canada, raised in a remote island town called Cambridge Bay that’s inaccessible by road. Her Inuk mother introduced her to their culture’s tradition of throat-singing, which is less a musical artform than a community pastime where two women square off face-to-face in friendly competition, producing heaving, gnarled, guttural sounds in responsive rhythmic patterns. But through Tagaq, this interactive activity has become a vehicle for primal, personal, political expression. Onstage, Tagaq doesn’t so much sing as plug herself into the Earth, transforming herself into a mood-ring manifestation of a ravaged planet squealing in pain with each oil-drill jab and earth-scorching heat wave. Atop her band’s swelling, screeching soundscapes, Tagaq’s sleeping-giant purrs mutate into death metal-worthy growls—and when she snaps out of her trance an hour later, it feels like you’ve just borne witness to Godspeed You Black Exorcist.
Tagaq belongs to a lineage of iconoclastic vocalists that includes Yoko Ono and Diamanda Galás—artists notorious for pushing both musical and physical limits in their work. And her extreme approach has engendered collaborations with the likes of Björk, Kronos Quartet, Mike Patton, and Fucked Up. But Tagaq’s new album arrives at a moment when she’s on the verge of becoming Canada’s unlikeliest crossover act. Her previous record, Animism, won the Polaris Music Prize in 2014, leading to several high-profile festival appearances and TED Talks; she can even currently be heard on mainstream Canadian radio singing back-up on the latest single from Toronto alt-rockers July Talk. But most crucially, the restless, raging Retribution emerges at a time when Canada is reckoning with its historic, government-sanctioned mistreatment of the country’s indigenous population—a long-simmering, long-suppressed topic that’s now become an explosive flashpoint in the national conversation, much as systemic, anti-black racism has in the U.S.
In Canada, the operative word right now is “reconciliation,” the process by which the government hopes to make amends with the indigenous community for the awful legacy of Canada’s residential-school system. From the mid-19th century till 1996, the system separated indigenous children from their families and forced them into church-led classrooms as a means to assimilate them into white, Christian, Canadian society. And the coercion, sadly, went beyond the curriculum—students were subjected to horrific, unchecked abuse at the hands of their supposed educators, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 6,000 children over the years. For Tagaq—an alumnus of the system—reconciliation has been a slow, ineffective, bureaucratic process. As the title of her new record makes clear, she wants retribution. And not just for Canada’s under-the-rug history of cultural genocide, but for the current plights of her people: the epidemic number of indigenous women who are abducted, raped, and murdered in Canada each year, and the environmental havoc wreaked by the country’s tar sand-sucking oil industry.
As a singer who deals mostly in wordless expression, Tagaq’s most pointed political statements have been broadcast through extramusical means: her fearlessly profane interviews, her hyperactive Twitter feed, and her jaw-dropping Polaris-gala performance, where she used her national stage to project the names of 1,200 missing or murdered indigenous women. And to top it off, she used her acceptance speech to flip off PETA for its opposition to seal hunting, on which Tagaq’s isolated community depends for sustenance.
But on Retribution, the messaging is baked right into the music. Much like those aforementioned pre-show speeches, Retribution provides instant exposition in the form of its title track, where, over a panting vocal pulse, Tagaq offers a spoken-word treatise: “Our mother grows angry/Retribution will be swift/We squander her soil and suck out her sweet, black blood to burn it.” But Tagaq isn’t preaching to the choir. She’s stirring the beast, alternating her voice between a panicked yelp and an esophagus-shredding grunt, while piercing violins horsewhip the band into a furious gallop.
Like Animism, Tagaq recorded Retribution with the core duo of violinist Jesse Zubot and percussionist Jean Martin, whose free-form sound-scraping blurs the lines between folk, classical, klezmer, post-rock, musique concrete, and slasher-flick soundtrack. The new album trades in queasy atmospherics for a more robust rhythmic attack, with Tagaq feeding off the band’s energy as much as vice versa. “Aorta” explodes with a disorienting swirl of seagull squeals, foghorn-like drones, and vocals that sound like they’re being sung backwards. But the song’s brawny groove indulges the fantasy of hearing Tagaq unleash her gnashed-teeth roar in a hard-rock context. And there’s even a straight-up, boom-bap throwback in “Centre,” on which guest MC Shad’s circular rhymes ruminate on humanity’s infinitesimal place in the universe at large, while Tagaq’s melodic counter-vocal celebrates our own microscopic, menstrual origins by coining her own genre: “wombcore.”
By more readily embracing rock and rap forms, Retribution stands to lure a wider audience into Tagaq’s unsettled sound world—but only to ensnare it like prey as she goes in for the kill. “Cold” is the most harrowing science-class lecture you’ll ever hear: Tagaq recites the effects of global warming on the Arctic, before ominously declaring, “Human civilization as we know it will no longer exist… because Gaia likes it cold.” The song’s stalking groove then goads her into a symphony of screams that renders melting ice as burning flesh. And where Retribution’s more muscular moments are countered by amorphous, aggro-ambient pieces like “Nacreous” and “Sulfur,” the centerpiece track “Summoning” bridges the extremes. Over the course of nine tumultuous minutes, the song unfolds like a found-sound radio opera, with Toronto’s 50-strong Element Choir gradually taunting and prodding a terrified Tagaq as if she were being offered up for ceremonial sacrifice.
Retribution is very much a mirror image of Aninism: Where the latter record opened with a reverential, orchestro-folk cover of the Pixies’ “Caribou” and closed with the disturbing, nightmarish moans of “Fracking,” Retribution’s turbulent journey settles onto familiar turf with a cover of another alt-rock classic. Tagaq’s “Caribou” was a cheeky, celebratory act of cultural reclamation from someone raised hunting the namesake animal (not to mention someone who can out-scream Black Francis). Here, her eerily calm cover of Nirvana’s “Rape Me” transforms Kurt Cobain’s narrative role-play into unflinching autobiography, with its disturbing allusions to the multiple sexual assaults Tagaq was subjected to as a child.
But when Tagaq sings, “I’m not the only one,” she’s speaking for more than just fellow survivors. “Rape Me” marks the moment where the intersectional relationship among Retribution’s primary concerns—feminism, environmentalism, indigenous rights—is laid bare, with a hushed Tagaq staking out the liminal space between feeling defeated and feeling defiant. And by the end, the song’s incessant drum beat sounds more like a death rattle—a tick-tock reminder that retribution is not some distant prophecy, but a looming inevitability. | 2016-10-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | null | October 25, 2016 | 8.2 | 89d805bb-4c42-4247-9d24-2091127deba8 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
Jessica Pratt's gorgeous second record plays like acoustic dream-pop, with a warm, home-recorded atmosphere*—*finger-picked psychedelia, lucidly layered harmonies, hissy tape effects, an overcast haze—more dramatic and distinctive than her debut. | Jessica Pratt's gorgeous second record plays like acoustic dream-pop, with a warm, home-recorded atmosphere*—*finger-picked psychedelia, lucidly layered harmonies, hissy tape effects, an overcast haze—more dramatic and distinctive than her debut. | Jessica Pratt: On Your Own Love Again | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20130-jessica-pratt-on-your-own-love-again/ | On Your Own Love Again | Jessica Pratt is only 27 years old, but still her music carries the footnote that it was ever-so-close to being lost in time forever. As modern rock tales ought to go, it was one of the San Francisco garage scene's leading local weirdos, Tim Presley, who saved her from relative obscurity. Though Pratt was born in Redding, Calif., her poised, homespun folk songs feel beamed from another time and place, specifically hippie-era Britain; as a teenager, Pratt says, she honed her craft by playing along with T. Rex's Electric Warrior glam riffs and singing early Marianne Faithfull melodies. When Presley stumbled upon a batch of her recordings from 2007, he allegedly dumped his life's savings into releasing them as her 2012 debut. And yet, it took something more for Pratt's spirit to truly be found.
Pratt's gorgeous Drag City debut quietly rejects tradition. For all its folk touchstones, Pratt is more an aesthete than a poet—she sings of bleeding watercolors, blue geraniums—and accordingly On Your Own Love Again plays like acoustic dream-pop. Its warm, home-recorded atmosphere is more dramatic and distinctive than Jessica Pratt: finger-picked psychedelia, lucidly layered harmonies, hissy tape effects, an overcast haze. But Pratt's songwriting is more cohesive and concise, her whispered secrets more alluring. The record's cyclical nature gives On Your Own more momentum, as she sings sticky rock'n'roll hooks learned from Brian Wilson or the Hollies. (Pratt says she listened to Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle while at work on the album, like her Drag City labelmate Joanna Newsom did when making Ys). Her soprano is hard to pin in a folk context—it variously recalls the high-pitched eccentricities of Kate Bush, the grave depth of Nico—but she ultimately sounds like Vashti Bunyan or Nick Drake as found in the sleepy subconscious of Ariel Pink. "Sometimes I pray for the rain," Pratt repeats near the end of this wintry album, which feels designed to soundtrack the slow-falling snow or any steadied act of nature.
Much of what Pratt communicates is abstract, elliptical, or wordless. Sometimes her crystalline guitar strum sounds like a harp, each note falling quick and elegant like one of said snowflakes; sometimes the songs melt. On the astral "Moon Dude", Pratt makes chord changes evocative as neo-psych time-travel, like Tim Presley's own White Fence project. On Your Own Love Again was made in sunny West Coast terrain, but it captures the somber shades of isolated urban life. Pratt worked on the record in the wake of several difficult endings: a move from San Francisco to L.A., the end of a longterm relationship, and the death of her mother. Occasionally, it sounds like Pratt is plaintively, playfully singing stoned "da-da-da" tunes just to drown out the sorrow or numb the chaos. On "Game That I Play", for one, she imbues, "I often try to leave my thoughts of you behind," but her wish is left hanging; there is no resolve. And on "Jacquelyn in the Background", Pratt similarly drifts, struggling for the right words: "Deep inside my lonely room/ I cry the tears of never knowing you," she sings before a stream of vocalizations. On Your Own Love Again has more earnest moments, but its unadorned emotional uncertainty is profound and relatable.
Elsewhere, Pratt's austere meditations conjure confusion, wrongness, illusive realities. She sings of lonely outsiders and starry-eyed boys she wants to love but audibly cannot. Pratt understands her own flaws and so seems to better understand those of others; it's humanizing. She might call out a guy's disloyal tricks and lies, but she also points to her own: "I don't wanna be changing the game that I play," Pratt sings early on, "But I see that you're leaving, so what can I say." She doesn't airbrush her faults. The title track, a 95-second epilogue, appears last on the record, and it's the album's most confessional song—"I try to believe in you somehow/ But every time I do I get down and out"—as if, after working through her clouded thoughts, she's emerged from the fog to think clearly. The "love" in On Your Own Love Again could be a noun, pointing outward, or a verb, pointing in, but it regardless has a way of romanticizing aloneness, as the album does throughout in more impressionistic terms.
But there is a vessel to that clear-headed solitude: "Back, Baby" is the record's penultimate track, the brightened moment at which everything becomes focused, giving physicality to the record's wandering spirit. One would expect "Back, Baby" to come at the end of a film as the credits roll—closure at the end of an ill-fated romance. There is an understated power to it, not just because Pratt is cutting off a person who no longer serves her, but because she is staring at the open space to become someone new. Fifty years after Dylan sang pop's greatest "don't look back" moment, Jessica Pratt offers an even more emphatic "can't go back," but she belongs to no one. On Your Own Love Again spends its 31 minutes in dialogue with the past, but it plays in perpetual motion forward. As with all break-ups, its end is a beginning. | 2015-01-28T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2015-01-28T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Drag City | January 28, 2015 | 8.1 | 89dad17f-de3f-49a0-a8a8-851fd62a6dd8 | Jenn Pelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jenn-pelly/ | null |
The full-length debut from the shapeshifting UK duo is a virtuosic display of theatrical mayhem, dazzling production, and surprisingly lustrous pop music. | The full-length debut from the shapeshifting UK duo is a virtuosic display of theatrical mayhem, dazzling production, and surprisingly lustrous pop music. | Jockstrap: I Love You Jennifer B | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jockstrap-i-love-you-jennifer-b/ | I Love You Jennifer B | The obsessed performing arts student is one of Hollywood’s favorite clichés. Movies like Whiplash, The Perfection, and Nocturne verge on melodrama, detailing the oppressive confines of classical training to varying degrees of absurdity. Their tortured protagonists meet one of two fates: triumph or crack-up. UK duo Jockstrap sound like they are flailing toward both. Graduates of London’s prestigious Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye have made a career of tearing down the academy walls. Their early revolt was scrappy and hardheaded; 2020’s Wicked City EP sounded like two star pupils lashing out, constructing jagged sculptures of string instruments and synthesizers. On their long-awaited debut album, I Love You Jennifer B, they refine their plan of attack. With the help of an 18-piece orchestra, Jockstrap stage elaborate, theatrical scenes atop the conservatory rubble.
Jockstrap’s earliest music was clever but disjointed. Ellery, who studied jazz violin at Guildhall, is the duo’s principal songwriter, and since the release of their first EP, 2018’s Love Is the Key to the City, it’s been clear that she has an advanced ear for pop structure of a certain vintage. In the opening minutes of “Joy,” she invoked the orchestral balladry of Van Dyke Parks and Harry Nilsson before Skye hijacked the song. He stripped it down to a few programmed bleeps and pitched up Ellery’s voice until she wheezed like a helium huffer: “Kiss me, fuck me, make much of me!” On Wicked City, Jockstrap plunged deeper into identity crisis; the songs were more intricate, lurching from gnarly EDM beats to impressionist piano sketches.
The band is still rummaging through a trunk of masks, but the characters in I Love You Jennifer B’s vaudevillian drama have better lines. Ellery stands downstage, discreetly changing costumes as a backdrop rolls in for the next scene. On the medieval dirge “Lancaster Court,” she plays the chamber-bound maiden plotting her escape. Plasticky rattles and whomped war drums jostle a plucked guitar phrase, as Ellery tiptoes from whisper to chapel soprano. On highlight “Greatest Hits,” she reigns as Disco Queen, dripping in sequins and rotating on a motorized bed. As Ellery does Donna Summer-at-La Scala, Skye slips in raygun synths, salt-shaker snares, and piano pulses straight from Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You.” It’s a pop soap opera shot with a smear of Vaseline on the lens. In a pivotal scene, Ellery spoofs celebrity:
Imagine I’m Madonna
Imagine I’m Thee Madonna
Dressed in blue
No—dressed in pink!
Gabbana,
Feather boa,
Marie Antoinette,
You wanna know her
“Greatest Hits” is a sublime model of Jockstrap’s future-retroism. It feels opulent but easy to slip into, like a beaded Halston unearthed at a roadside thrift store. It may be draped in cinema strings, but the song is far from stuffy. Ellery and Skye are playing dress-up, nodding to Old Hollywood glamour and discotheque pomp. Their manner of digesting these references makes “Greatest Hits” feel fresh; it winks at the ’70s by way of the ’90s, and it mashes up biblical imagery with 20th-century pop stars and a certain queen of Versailles. The song title scans as wry self-commentary, while Jockstrap’s detailed production adds a contemporary edge and a flash of humor (especially with an incessant chirp that sounds like “baby daddy”). After releasing a pair of somewhat exhausting remix EPs and being diagnosed as “ironic” by a former teacher, Ellery and Skye now prove that they are fully capable of writing lustrous pop music: Even the abstract expressionist can paint photoreal portraits if the mood strikes.
“Glasgow” is actually Jennifer B’s greatest hit. It’s a thumping road ballad driven by acoustic thrums and Ellery’s violin, which arches like a comet. Sweet and rapturous, it is primed for a singalong—the track that could land them a slot at Glastonbury. Even if they are hacking a trail to the festival tents, Ellery and Skye remain freaky. Jennifer B’s best tracks thrust open-hearted melodies to the fringes of madness. “Concrete Over Water,” the album’s high-drama centerpiece, morphs from bedroom confessional to souped-up circus theme. Eerie vocal stabs pierce the song’s perimeter, giving the whole thing a whiff of satanic ritual. On “Debra,” Skye lays down a colossal Bollywood riff, technicolor streamers that sound like they’re shooting from a parade float. With its wavering, distorted mix and scrapbook construction, “Debra” shares DNA with Jai Paul’s glorious “Str8 Outta Mumbai.” The song also contains Ellery’s most concise and poignant lyric to date: “Grief is just love with nowhere to go.”
The album is teeming with sharp turns and fakeouts, but instead of abandoning them as on earlier recordings, Jockstrap loop around to complete each theme. The title track kicks off with clinical key jabs and bizarre spoken interludes (one line, “Shifting about in her goddamn crochet pants staring at God knows what,” is seemingly uttered by a robotic Hank Hill). But the duo build on this creaky foundation, layering processed vocals and a synthesized horn melody. By the song’s end, the landscape looks different, but we can trace the path that led there. On Jennifer B, plot twists play out like a delicious art school scandal. Just when you think these orchestra enfant terribles will stick to their notation books, Jockstrap scurry to the bridge and chuck every page into the Thames. | 2022-09-08T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2022-09-08T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Experimental / Pop/R&B | Rough Trade | September 8, 2022 | 8.4 | 89fc8a77-2a86-4160-886b-f27854a82be9 | Madison Bloom | https://pitchfork.com/staff/madison-bloom/ | |
Lorely Rodriguez returns with a short collection of disco- and house-inflected pop songs about tormented emotions and burning desire. | Lorely Rodriguez returns with a short collection of disco- and house-inflected pop songs about tormented emotions and burning desire. | Empress Of: Save Me EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/empress-of-save-me-ep/ | Save Me EP | After three albums about unstable, intense relationships, Empress Of’s Lorely Rodriguez closed her 2020 record I’m Your Empress Of with some distressed revelations: “I get off on being awful to myself/I need some help, I need help/I need myself.” Upon that record’s release, Rodriguez took a pandemic-induced break from her own music, composing for the Amazon show The Wilds and contributing a song to an Ad Council campaign bringing music to struggling middle schoolers. A year and a half later, she’s reunited with producer BJ Burton for the new Save Me EP, a transitional moment for an artist who’s continually shifted between straightforward pop and more experimental music. Released on her own label Major Arcana, Save Me represents an opportunity to consolidate her sound while exploring less intense territory.
Several songs here are outright disco-inspired, a new sound for Empress Of. At first, the title track’s wistful intro sounds like it could slot unnoticed onto a Banks record, but when the beat properly kicks in, there’s a more interesting desperation simmering underneath. The sensuality never reaches a full boil, save for a moment when Rodriguez breathlessly exclaims, “If you need me, baby, take me/In the back of the room for the night.” She doesn’t go into more detail than that, but the maniacal string stabs and a garbled call-and-response vocal convey the emotion when the clipped mix falls short. “Turn the Table,” produced by Jim-E Stack, is a straightforward foray into house, with dramatic dynamic shifts serving a narrative about an imbalanced relationship: “I feel my body/On a pedestal/I want to tell you/But now I don’t know why.”
The frustration comes when, even as an EP, Save Me becomes repetitive. It’s one thing to write songs about desire and another to lean on nearly identical choruses in “I want you to save me” and “I want you to keep me up.” Almost every song climaxes with a section alternating between a synth riff and a title drop—each effective on their own, but noticeable when clumped together. When Rodriguez breaks from that formula, it’s rewarding: The 909s-heavy “Dance for You,” a post-breakup recovery song with the urgency of her weirder material, is the EP’s most accomplished composition. Closer “Cry for Help” returns to the lyrical explorations of fear and insecurity that closed I’m Your Empress Of: “You don’t have to see tears to hear a cry for help/You don’t have to be near to know I’m not myself.” Yet it’s one of Rodriguez’s most aggressive songs in years, the woozy melody sliding in and out of sync with the thudding beat. There’s more than one form of confidence. | 2022-07-08T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-07-08T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Major Arcana / Mtheory | July 8, 2022 | 6.7 | 89ff7c46-75f7-45dc-8739-d786a6fdd10a | Hannah Jocelyn | https://pitchfork.com/staff/hannah-jocelyn/ | |
The second album from these New Jersey-based Grateful Dead devotees is still indebted to familiar reference points, but finds the band pushing to expand. | The second album from these New Jersey-based Grateful Dead devotees is still indebted to familiar reference points, but finds the band pushing to expand. | Garcia Peoples: Natural Facts | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/garcia-peoples-natural-facts/ | Natural Facts | You won’t get far with New Jersey quartet Garcia Peoples before noticing the unambiguous Grateful Dead associations. For a lot of bands, Grateful Dead worship stops at a reverent cover or a t-shirt design; Garcia Peoples commit. This begins with the band’s name (inspired by just being really, really into the Dead) and continues in slippery guitar leads, dusty vocal harmonies, and elongated song suites connected by untethered jams. On their 2018 debut Cosmic Cash, they looked not just to Jerry and co. but to a range of psychedelic masters: high-energy shredding channeled a lineage of nerdy technicality from Zappa to NRBQ to Phish, while gentler moments hinted at time spent studying private-press acid-folk records. The influences could be glaring at times, but substantial songwriting and a sense of giddy euphoria helped the album to transcend.
Arriving just seven months later, second album Natural Facts is still indebted to familiar reference points, but finds the band pushing to expand. The tandem guitar work of founding members Danny Arakaki and Tom Malach guides most songs, providing as much narration as their woozy vocal harmonies. Daydreamy and swaying, “High Noon Violence” constructs an intricate patchwork of acoustic and overdriven guitar tones before liquefying into a puddle of wailing dual leads. “Weathered Mountains” taps into the noodly pseudo-prog of the Dead’s studio output circa Blues for Allah, transposing that energy to a higher pitch and reimagining glassy-eyed Weir/Garcia lead lines as played by Television. Though it’s impressive to hear a young group fly so close to their key inspirations, some moments verge on psychedelic cosplay, teetering between devout admiration for iconic jam bands and too many hours spent comparing audience recordings of the 9/19/70 “Dark Star.”
As they move away from one-dimensionality, Garcia Peoples trace a line between ’60s West Coast psych and Jersey indie roots. Natural Facts explores this intersection, volleying between considered songwriting and ideas that sound born of all-night jam sessions. The lazy amble of “Rolling Tides” draws on meandering guitar figures, but tucks them into the background of a less elaborate structure. As the song moves through traditional soft verses and loud choruses, Arakaki’s sheepish vocals sound descended from the warm mumble of Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan. Garcia Peoples’ less jammy material can be as straightforward as the bounding feel-good melodicism of “Break Me Down” or as jagged as the thunderous, off-time riffing of album opener “Feel So Great.” Where the breezy Cosmic Cash found Garcia Peoples on a stoned countryside drive, here they sound trapped in stop-start city gridlock. Engineer Jeff Zeigler’s modernized production amplifies the contrast, with sharper mixes and enormous drums adding newfound nerviness even to even the most subdued tracks.
When the blissed-out perma-grin gives way to frustration, Natural Facts takes on more depth. “Patient World” slogs through themes of stress and defeat, but its smoky grunge vibe feels confrontational by comparison to other songs’ contented drift. When the band ventures into this less comfortable territory, they display an individuality sometimes buried beneath the tripped-out reverie. Already in possession of telekinetic players and a distinctive fusion of indie-rock hooks and jam-band dexterity, Garcia Peoples grow more intriguing as they step out of the shadows of their inspirations. | 2019-04-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-04-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Beyond Beyond is Beyond | April 6, 2019 | 7.2 | 8a015826-ff78-46c2-9d72-3a3c3d8727fb | Fred Thomas | https://pitchfork.com/staff/fred-thomas/ | |
The Nashville-based hardcore punk band’s exhilarating debut is a call-to-arms that could inspire even the most acquiescent to take action. | The Nashville-based hardcore punk band’s exhilarating debut is a call-to-arms that could inspire even the most acquiescent to take action. | Thirdface: Do It With a Smile | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/thirdface-do-it-with-a-smile/ | Do It With a Smile | Though hardcore loves to pretend it’s averse to deifying its individual participants, the genre’s history proves that’s a good dose of bullshit. Entire careers were built on the backs of unpredictably energetic singers and guitar players’ distinct, thundering riffs (or lack thereof). Thirdface aren’t interested in continuing that tradition. On their debut album, Do It With a Smile, the Nashville-based hardcore punk band—comprised of vocalist Kathryn Edwards, bassist Maddy Madeira, guitarist David Reichley, and drummer Shibby Poole—refocus on hardcore as a collective action, bringing it from the idealized cultural imagination into the tangible present. The result is an intense, rapid-fire call to arms that inspires even the most acquiescent listeners to take action.
Thirdface prioritize melodic clarity in their songs in a way that brings to mind the creative fury of Los Angeles hardcore group Dangers or the exhilarating build-ups of Modern Life Is War, but whereas those peers do so in a way that embraces hooks, Thirdface opt for shape-shifting guitar passages more akin to Converge or Drowningman. In 22 minutes, they use this sound to tackle covert racism and clout-chasing men while invoking cultural touchstones like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Black westerns, and Fist of the North Star. On “Ally,” Edwards mocks those who misunderstand the point of racial support (“I read all the books/Where is my medal?”) and on “Chosen,” calls out institutionalized practices that uphold misogyny.
These themes aren't just armchair criticisms. Outside of the band, Edwards strives to bring her ethical beliefs to life through Drkmttr, an all-ages music venue she co-founded in East Nashville. Dubbed “the center of the city’s growing indie, punk, and hardcore scenes” by Rolling Stone, Drkmttr transformed over the past year from a DIY club into a community hub championed by the likes of Soccer Mommy and Hayley Williams for its involvement in grassroots activism, mutual aid work, and voter education. When Edwards screams about frail allyship and wage suppression in Thirdface, she’s doing so with the type of well-versed speech that comes from someone who does the work and then questions how to improve upon it. In a way, it’s like a modern-day version of The Lumpen, the funk band started by the Black Panthers after realizing that youth meal programs, community health clinics, and police accountability wouldn’t revolutionize the fight for racial equality without simultaneously spreading the word.
If Thirdface use music to advocate for change, then “Villains!” is undoubtedly their opus. Clocking in at three minutes, it’s a lengthy screed compared to the rest of Do It With a Smile’s songs, and Thirdface wisely divide it into sections: an introduction guided by Madeira’s guttural bass, a punk speedrun dominated by Poole’s maniacal drumming, and a metalcore-tinged breakdown that alternates between head-banging riffs and dexterous triplets. Throughout, Edwards rails against the exploitation of low-wage slavery with vein-bursting barks meant to provoke a communal uprising. “We could put their backs against the wall/Keep us all divided, fighting over pennies,” she screams. “Back into it now/You have no choice/Do it with a smile.” It’s a rousing poem set to an inspired blend of subgenres, and the combination epitomizes hardcore punk at its best.
Do It With a Smile captures the feeling of a live band battling for the audience’s attention. Thirdface forgo screeching feedback or the crackling hum of an amp to instead employ graceful transitions between songs, like using bass drum kicks to segue from a claustrophobic burst of power violence in “Legendary Suffering” into the open-air breakdowns of “No Requiem For The Wicked.” With the exception of a lone ambient interlude, it’s an unrelenting album meant to purge listeners of their indifference towards the struggles occurring around them. As with all great orators, Edwards knows that making a lasting impression comes down to what you say and how you say it. On Do It With a Smile, she handles both with the ease of a veteran speaker helming a rally. “Blood/On our children/Blood/On my people,” she shouts on “Buck” before her bandmates join in a communal warning cry: “Tonight we ride the fuck out.”
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-03-18T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-03-18T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Exploding in Sound | March 18, 2021 | 8 | 8a0c4ec9-f09b-47e9-9685-f38e222abc83 | Nina Corcoran | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nina-corcoran/ | |
Following on the success of the novelty song "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell", Das Racist return with a smart, funny, and engaging mixtape. | Following on the success of the novelty song "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell", Das Racist return with a smart, funny, and engaging mixtape. | Das Racist: Shut Up, Dude | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14376-shut-up-dude/ | Shut Up, Dude | When you first heard "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell", did you wonder what a full-length Das Racist album would sound like? Did you even think they were capable of an album at all? Maybe you expected a whole mixtape filled with bewildered yelling about name brands on some postmodern Fatboy Slim shit, or one of those hipster-rap records filled with a bunch of half-serious post-crunk/booty bass homages. But if you were a bit more curious, maybe you went to their MySpace page and heard the elaborate reference-fest "Rainbow in the Dark" and a deconstruction of co-opted dancehall dialect called "Fake Patois" and caught on to something deeper. Maybe you started wondering if they were a bit less trivial than you suspected.
As it turns out, "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" has as much to do with the whole of Shut Up, Dude as the Beastie Boys' "Cooky Puss" does to the referential overload of Paul's Boutique. Das Racist's Brooklyn-buzz affiliations and humorous bent might mislead you into thinking it's an exercise in cheap laffs for people who don't take rap seriously, but this album feels a lot more like the irreverent hip-hop fanboy mania of ego trip magazine than smarmy genre tourism.
Himanshu Kumar Suri aka "Heems" and Victor Vazquez have something elaborate going on, toying with and subverting the rules of hip-hop lyricism even as they pay them respect. "Who's That? Brooown!" uses A Tribe Called Quest's well-worn "Scenario" as a reference point, but Heems mutters his callbacks to Busta Rhymes' verse in a sleepily cocky voice that sounds like the exact opposite of Busta's off-the-charts energy. The repetition and recursiveness that made "Combination" so polarizing crop up in odd places; one otherwise-complex line in "Ek Shaneesh" simply ends "drinkin' beer, drinkin' beer/ prolly drinkin' some more beer" before teasing an obvious Tears for Fears-referencing internal rhyme that never actually comes. Familiar hit-sourced hooks are self-sabotaged with trailed-off mumbling (the Juelz Santana-sourced, Billy Joel-jacking "You Oughta Know"), the spiritual presence of Bob Marley is called into the not-so-lofty service of soundtracking their tribute to dollar cans of iced tea, and they actually named one of their tracks "Deep Ass Shit (You'll Get It When You're High)" as a rib-jabbing mission statement. (No points in guessing which prolific Oxnard-based underground producer gets his beat used for that one.)
If they were just fucking around, those gags would wear off and leave you with nothing but a series of smug hey-get-it? nudges. But Heems and Victor are serious enough about coming up with memorable lines that they come across like some kind of lyrical stealth operatives. The fact that they often go from water-treading repetition to intricately built phraseology mid-verse is a great riff in itself. One of the shortest and simplest lines on the album is one of the cleverest-- "W.E.B. DuBois/ We be da boys," from "Hugo Chavez"-- but there are also moments where you're left wondering how they could make so many unexpected linguistic connections look so easy. Their go-hard rampage on "Nutmeg" is 1990s-reared, cipher-honed style gone berserk, turning a funhouse mirror on Ghostface's finest moment of abstract pyrotechnics, as it starts with the unlikely couplet "Queens Boulevard/ Kierkegaard" and gets even more dizzyingly ridiculous from there.
Granted, there's a certain information-overload college-student bent to their humor, evident in cross-genre namedrops like "Richard Hell Rell" or the mentions of Tao Lin and "and Dinesh DiSouza. But Das Racist push past mere signifying to come across as straight-up literates with a way of making cultural studies out of entertainment and vice-versa. Several lyrics take offhand references to Bollywood stars and Cuban sandwiches and extrapolate stream-of-consciousness ethnographies out of them, while "Shorty Said (Gordon Voidwell Remix)" draws out punchlines and commentary about identification by listing all the racially divergent celebrities that women supposedly claim Victor and Heems resemble (Egyptian Lover; Amitabh Bachchan; Slash without his hat). Das Racist approach this idea of otherness in a way that feels both playful and provocative, asserting their identities in a way that both reinforces their individuality and goofs on their stereotypes. And if it hits a certain nerve, it's probably the same one that got tweaked by the sociological b-boy stoner comedy precedent of "Chappelle's Show". Fast-food hipster-rap, my ass-- these dudes are the truth. | 2010-07-02T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2010-07-02T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rap | Greedhead / Мишка | July 2, 2010 | 7.8 | 8a1d30a9-c9b9-43d8-8276-5a7f4ae1bf8b | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
While indie rock icons Guided by Voices' recent albums—five in two years—have by no means tarnished their legacy, they haven’t exactly expanded upon it either. So it goes with Motivational Jumpsuit, though it's the shortest and strongest of the recent batch. | While indie rock icons Guided by Voices' recent albums—five in two years—have by no means tarnished their legacy, they haven’t exactly expanded upon it either. So it goes with Motivational Jumpsuit, though it's the shortest and strongest of the recent batch. | Guided by Voices: Motivational Jumpsuit | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18957-guided-by-voices-motivational-jumpsuit/ | Motivational Jumpsuit | From the Pixies to Pavement to Neutral Milk Hotel, the most notable indie-rock reunions have transformed merely influential bands into actually successful ones who can headline large theatres and festivals for audiences five times the size of the ones they entertained in their former lives. But the success of the rebooted “classic” Guided by Voices line-up of 1992-96 can be measured not by ticket sales (they’re pretty much playing the same sized venues Robert Pollard frequented before he first deep-sixed GBV in 2004) but stamina. Not only have they channelled their 2011-tour momentum into making new records, their current rate of production makes their industrious 90s incarnation seem lazy, as if Pollard needed to maintain his reputation for being crazy-prolific even by the standards of our current, hyper-accelerated musical culture. And now that the initial reunion buzz has subsided, Guided by Voices essentially find themselves in the same position they were in 20 years ago, before 1994’s Bee Thousand turned them into national authorities on Tascams and tape hiss. Long removed from their moment as a major-label-courted leading light on the Matador Records roster, Guided by Voices once again resemble a Dayton secret society that self-releases records how they want and when they want, impervious to prevailing trends, industry promotional timetables, and concerns over whether a song comprising just a single verse and half a chorus is a song at all.
Of course, the big difference this time out is that the classic GBV line-up has several classic albums under their belts to live up to, and though their recent albums have by no means tarnished their legacy, they haven’t exactly expanded upon it either. And so it goes with Motivational Jumpsuit, which, for those keeping score, is the band’s sixth release in two years. While each of the post-reunion records may lean more heavily on a specific aspect of GBV’s psychedelic/pop/prog/post-punk amalgam (Let’s Eat the Factory is the weirdest of the bunch; English Little League is the one overstuffed with ballads; and so forth), they’ve all yielded a killer-to-filler ratio that’s respectfully above average but not exceptional enough to truly distinguish them amid the band’s sprawling discography. But while the “classic line-up” billing technically no longer applies from hereon out, the shake-up suggests that GBV will remain a going concern for the foreseeable future, reinforcing the idea that Guided by Voices is not a particular group of players, but whoever the hell Bob Pollard says it is.
As much as Pollard’s songbook has historically drawn from the former school teacher’s daydream fantasia of elves, demons, and robots, many of his signature tracks also function as the allegorical, self-aware musings of an accidental rock star cast out of the garage and onto the treacherous terrain of the music industry—the lost soul who shoots himself on rock ‘n’ roll trying to navigate a game of pricks. And so it’s safe to assume that Motivational Jumpsuit’s excitable opener—“Littlest League Possible"—isn’t about baseball at all, but rather the cheeky musings of a former major-label contender who’s happy to be back among his cult. (“To be the biggest fish in the smallest pond/ On the littlest island where I shall reside.”) That enthusiasm proves infectious—packing 20 songs into 37 minutes, Motivational Jumpsuit is the shortest LP amid GBV’s recent avalanche of albums. But, most importantly, it’s also the most briskly paced of the bunch, reaching Alien Lanes-levels of expediency in its peaks: “Planet Score” replays “Game of Pricks”; “Difficult Outburst and Breakthroughs” gets close to “Closer You Are”; and the charming “Vote for Me Dummy” cruises down the same open interstate as “Motor Away.” And where most GBV records don’t so much stage grand finales as simply peter out once the song tap is turned off, “Alex and the Omegas” is the rare exception that feels like it was designed as both a record and show closer, an amplified-to-rock charge that doubles as a victory lap.
But even as Motivational Jumpsuit faithfully approximates the grainy fidelity and 60-second dosages of Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, it can’t maintain the same dizzying standards of pop euphoria throughout. Those records may have had their share of tossed-off tracks, but they were usually deployed as brief, absurdist interludes connecting key songs. On Motivational Jumpsuit, however, the most undercooked songs are often the longest, with the keyboard-jabbed psychedelic sludge of “I Am Columbus” and the jack-hammered meta-jokes of “Writer’s Bloc (Psycho All the Time)” encroaching on the three-minute mark without really earning the right to stick around that long. And though Pollard’s long-time foil Tobin Sprout dutifully turns up to provide his George Harrison/John Entwistle-scaled songwriting rations, his contributions are inconsistent, ranging from the radiant, Clean-style motorik jangle of “Record Level Love” to the workmanlike T. Rex-ian rumble of “Jupiter Spin” to the overwrought balladry of “Some Things Are Big and Some Things Are Small,” whose melodramatic chorus delivery feels at odds with the matter-of-fact titular lyric. Of course, by this point in the current campaign, GBV fans know that finding the gold will take a little more digging than before. Motivational Jumpsuit does have this going for it: If there is to ever be a greatest-hits compilation culled from this modern GBV era—and I’m willing to bet a fervent rockologist like Pollard has already thought up the name and cut up some old Sears catalogue images for the cover art—Motivational Jumpsuit is the frontrunner to have the greatest representation.
[Editor's note: This original version of this review incorrectly stated that Kevin March played drums.] | 2014-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2014-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Guided by Voices Inc. / Fire | February 19, 2014 | 7.3 | 8a226a41-c886-4427-868f-b3733a475b86 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
Chief Keef's Nobody, his long-awaited sophomore album, finds him experimenting and steering clear from his conventional hits. | Chief Keef's Nobody, his long-awaited sophomore album, finds him experimenting and steering clear from his conventional hits. | Chief Keef: Nobody | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20087-nobody/ | Nobody | The anthropomorphic cartoon moon is in the seventh house, and Glo Gang has entered its Age of Aquarius. The evidence is all there on Chief Keef’s Instagram which, in recent months, has been filled with dozens of commissioned and original works of art. They’re mostly portraits of himself and his friends, in varying degrees of trippiness. Often, they’re depicted (by what seems to be Glo Gang’s in-house artist, a silver-bearded Angeleno called Bill Da Butcher) as members of a cheery cartoon solar system; Blood Money, Keef’s cousin and the Gang’s eldest member, who was shot and killed in Chicago last spring, is memorialized as a tattooed moon with angel wings. There’s a collage of Keef as a Viking skeleton holding America in a cage (he calls it "Americun Shakedown"); a sketch of a dread-headed Mount Rushmore; a triptych depicting a G-rated Keef engaging in water sports. Last month, Keef helped curate a gallery show in collaboration with media company FRANK151, to which he also contributed original artwork. He’s turned his Los Angeles home into his own private museum, obsessing over the minutia of presentation ("Trying to see if I should keep what’s up up?")—this from the guy whose preferred mode of self-expression, not so long ago, was "Emojis".
Then again, Keef’s thorough immersion in his own universe of aesthetics echoes his musical agenda since the release of his divisive major label debut two years ago. Since then, the Chicago ex-pat has refused to be understood on any terms other than his own, rejecting anything remotely resembling his 2012 crossover hits in favor of abstraction and obscurity. He drowned the crowd-pleasing hooks of Finally Rich in Auto-Tune and promethazine (he’s blamed critically panned 2013 mixtapes Bang 2 and Almighty So on the latter) and probed the outer limits of vocal performance. Yips, skrrrrts, and gurgles took the place of coherent language. He became obsessed with making beats, an entirely non-verbal mode of expression; on October's brooding, distorted Back From the Dead 2 tape, released a week after the announcement that Keef was dropped from Interscope, he produced 16 of its 20 tracks. Nobody, his long-awaited sophomore album, released suddenly and without much fanfare, is similarly experimental, and equally devoid of any conventional hits. But where Keef’s spent the last two years attempting to hide in plain sight, stubbornly obfuscating his own thoughts to compensate for his discomfort in the spotlight, Nobody is, at its best, strikingly lucid. Maybe his recent passion for visual art has rekindled an interest in direct expression. Maybe he’s just growing up.
Finally Rich, as an album title, was aspirational as much as it was declarative, harnessing the laws of attraction to will fortune into existence. Nobody is a similar statement of purpose, but this time, the goal is to disappear. It’s not hard to understand Keef’s preoccupation with obscurity. Thrust into the public eye in 2012, he became a stand-in for Chicago’s ills more than an artist in his own right. His music had always been characterized by themes of loyalty and betrayal (trust only your inner circle—the rest are dangerous); hysterical media attention only reinforced that. If you’re going to be misunderstood anyway, why not ensure it? Equal parts knee-jerk trolling (he’s still a teenager) and defense mechanism, he hurtled towards oblivion, in what looked a lot like a downward spiral.
Nobody, much like BFTD2, is a dispatch from this void. But BFTD2 functioned as a submersion into his new aesthetic, more concerned with style than meaning; it narrowed in on weird grooves, unorthodox rhyme patterns, mood over everything. Almost in spite of its mission statement, Nobody is sharper, clearer, and more purposeful. It’s a neat 12 tracks, some of them less than two minutes long, executive produced by Glo Gang’s 12 Million. A handful feel more like sketches than completed works. But its high points have a clarity unmatched within Keef’s last two years of work; at times, he’s straight up vulnerable. He may not be coming back to earth any time soon, but he’s looking his audience in the eyes.
Keef’s lyricism has gotten slyer. His wit seems sharper; sometimes he cracks subtle jokes at his own expense. On "Pit Stop", an album cut on par with any of Finally Rich’s, he quips, "Watch out, I’m 18 and I’m driving fast!" In the context of his public traffic arrests (in 2013, pulled over for driving 110 in a 55, he told police, "Well, it’s a fast car, that’s why I bought it"), it’s the equivalent of Taylor Swift winkingly acknowledging her reputation as a crazy girlfriend on "Blank Space". "Twelve Bars"—a hypnotic burst of chimes that, like much of Nobody, is a closer descendent of cloudy cult favorite "Citgo" than anything else on Finally Rich—is a play on the drill canon as much as it is an exercise in wordplay. It nods to the drill canon, only to subvert it with novelty bars like, "Driving 12 cars at one time!"
But on "Hard", one of the album’s two emotional cornerstones, Keef goes beyond crafty in-jokes and bares his soul. Over a beat somewhere between 40’s sulky symphonics circa Nothing Was the Same and the wispy New Age chirps of Lil B’s Rain in England, Keef delivers two of his most vulnerable verses to date (along with some pretty impressive bar-for-bar lyricism). "She don’t accept me, but she speak to my watch/ She won’t look at me, but she see I go hard," he sings, honing in on the romantic insecurities that have emerged in Keef’s work for years now, from 2012’s "Save That Shit" to 2014’s "No". He shrugs at his success, recognizing it as more of a burden than a blessing—everything’s pointless anyway. "Money ain’t that much, I’ll give it up... Life ain’t that much, I’ll live it up." He’s at once proud of his ability to support his people and wary of being used: "Everybody eat, I’ll bill it up/ Baby I’ll keep my mouth closed, I’ll seal it up." Even its title references the unflinching ubermasculinity that characterizes drill and its proponents, and beyond that, the temperament expected of black men from a young age. In early interviews, Keef claimed to be 16 going on 300; he’d long since been a man, but in many ways remained immature. These days, he’s just a world-weary 19.
It’s Nobody’s title track, though, that gives the sharpest insights as to where Keef’s at these days. Initially teased on Instagram last summer, with its Kanye West feature and threadbare Willie Hutch sample, "Nobody" hinted at a return to the old, coherent Keef. Instead, it’s as sonically inscrutable as ever. The snares are decidedly off. Kanye’s contributions don’t go too far beyond that 15-second clip. Listeners wondered if there’d been some mistake, if the track was unfinished, if Kanye had signed off on this at all. It doesn’t matter: "Nobody" isn’t about Kanye, it’s about Keef at his rawest and most honest. "They thought I was a joke," he burbles with a melancholy that suggests he reads the comments. It’s Keef’s most clear-eyed dispatch yet from the void into which he’s hurtled himself. "I can’t fear nobody… I can’t hear nobody… I can’t see nobody," he mewls, almost giddy with loneliness as he watches his surroundings fade to black, romancing the abyss. Things aren’t perfect, but they’re better than the alternative. It was awfully dreary, anyway—being Somebody. | 2015-01-12T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2015-01-12T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rap | self-released | January 12, 2015 | 7 | 8a250f72-6ab9-400f-a104-3c76a4b03a21 | Meaghan Garvey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/meaghan-garvey/ | null |
Former Harry Pussy guitarist returns from a decade-long hiatus with a set of acoustic improvisations that recalls the best of his electric guitar work. | Former Harry Pussy guitarist returns from a decade-long hiatus with a set of acoustic improvisations that recalls the best of his electric guitar work. | Bill Orcutt: A New Way to Pay Old Debts | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14989-a-new-way-to-pay-old-debts/ | A New Way to Pay Old Debts | It's always impressive when artists make radical shifts without losing any of the intangible qualities that make their approach recognizable. What's more remarkable about Bill Orcutt's stylistic transformation is that it comes after a decade of dormancy. His inimitable electric guitar sound-- a brittle howl akin to knives breaking glass-- was silenced by the late-1990s demise of his notorious noise trio, Harry Pussy. But in 2009, after starting a family and a career, he picked up an old acoustic he's owned since college and channeled his muse into raw improvisations equally indebted to blues legends like Lightnin' Hopkins and abstract experimenters like Derek Bailey.
Those might not be the first names that come to mind when you hear the word "noise." But on two self-released 2009 records-- a two-song 7" and a six-song LP, both packaged here by Editions Mego with four unreleased tracks-- Orcutt uses such inspirations to create acoustic cacophony that retains all the trademark rattles and blasts of his electric playing. That's partially due to his instrument, a vintage acoustic so fragile that its four strings have to be wound loose or the neck will break. This gives the guitar a brittle, steely quality that Orcutt mines for all kinds of racket.
But there's also noise inherent in his methods-- his way of attacking and diving into his ideas-- which has been there since he first started playing. As he told me in a recent "Out Door" interview, "Once I actually have a guitar in my hands, I think I disappear into the same black hole that I was disappearing into when I was 15." On A New Way to Pay Old Debts, he rips out sharp plucks, strums in blurry bursts, and strangles his strings as if they were a threat. His playing is so urgent and exhaustive, you get the sense that he could coax blare from a feather.
Not that everything here is noise. Orcutt mixes in minimalist repetitions and quieter passages, owing as much to pianists Glenn Gould and Cecil Taylor as to his guitar forefathers. He also adds atmospheric textures (you can hear a phone ring on opener "Lip Rich") and wordless singing, similar to Loren Connors' hums and moans on his early acoustic records. When Orcutt barks in time to his buzzing chops on "My Reckless Parts" or melds his shriek into "High Waisted", he sounds roughly like Connors sped up and set on fire.
Which means this album is a challenging listen, even when it's not noisy. If you're not inclined toward acoustic improvisation or unstructured abstraction, Orcutt won't change your mind. But anyone can admire the raw soul of his playing and the way he shoots out ideas in real-time, reacting so quickly it's as if he's creating a new language as he speaks it. Either way, it's impossible to listen to A New Way to Pay Old Debts without being affected by it. | 2011-01-17T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2011-01-17T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Experimental | Editions Mego | January 17, 2011 | 8 | 8a28e362-8e13-43bd-a918-ad92358d4003 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
Youth Lagoon follows his heartfelt 2011 debut The Year of Hibernation with an album that is bigger, bolder, and more emotionally resonant, thanks to production from Ben Allen. Trevor Powers' project is firmly in the lineage of bands like Mercury Rev, Sparklehorse, and Modest Mouse. | Youth Lagoon follows his heartfelt 2011 debut The Year of Hibernation with an album that is bigger, bolder, and more emotionally resonant, thanks to production from Ben Allen. Trevor Powers' project is firmly in the lineage of bands like Mercury Rev, Sparklehorse, and Modest Mouse. | Youth Lagoon: Wondrous Bughouse | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17672-youth-lagoon-wondrous-bughouse/ | Wondrous Bughouse | Trevor Powers doesn't come off as older and wiser than his 23 years: just look at any picture of him, with his slight build and cherubic mop of curls, or take one listen to his nasal, keening voice. Likewise, his heartfelt 2011 debut The Year of Hibernation dealt more in truth and honesty than profundity or authority, skirting cliché while affecting people in meaningful ways. These qualities are about the only things that haven't changed for Youth Lagoon on Wondrous Bughouse. This record broadens Powers' musical and lyrical scope into something universal in a literal and figurative sense, evoking the cosmos, heaven, and hell. But Powers sounds curious and awestruck rather than naïve, someone who explores this lush and frightening soundworld instead of explaining it.
The cosmetic changes are obvious. If you've been paying attention to sonics over the past couple of years, you'll recognize the saturated, bottom-heavy production as that of Ben H. Allen. After hearing Allen give a subwoofer shape-up to previously brittle bands like Deerhunter, Animal Collective, and Washed Out, the pairing seems almost inevitable. But while the production is an upgrade, the real growth is thematic. Hibernation obsessed over escape and became defined by its limitations, whether it was its meager recording budget or just the sense that Powers felt trapped by his surroundings in Boise. But Bughouse looks inward and discovers the endless possibilities of imagination and introspection.
Youth Lagoon is still very much an internally-focused project and, with its abundance of effect pedals and stereo panning tricks, Wondrous Bughouse will likely be branded as a headphones album. Don't believe it. As with Hibernation, this is a record that's meant to be cranked as loud as possible; for one, volume decompresses these thick songs, amplifying the crucial addition of live drums on "Raspberry Cane" and "Mute". More importantly, Wondrous Bughouse needs room to breathe from a songwriting standpoint. With Powers' lyrics and Allen's production striving to create a celestial whole, Bughouse is meant to conjure infinite space.
This much is conveyed by the sonar blips that take up the three-minute opener "Through Mind and Back" before fading into the spellbinding "Mute". Nearly every song on Hibernation began quietly, so it's jarring to hear Youth Lagoon take a more widescreen turn-- echoing drums, gleaming peals of delayed guitar, all washed by ocean spray reverb. This lasts for one minute before a detuned loop of bells recasts "Mute" as a juggernaut, a steady, booming drum beat framing a strident vocal performance from Powers, a guitar solo that recalls Doug Martsch's expressive, longing leads, a minor-key piano loop that appears ready to take the song to a completely different plateau before cruelly cutting out.
These songs are all bigger and bolder without being unnecessarily complicated. While Powers' melodies are simple and immediately memorable like nursery rhymes, everything surrounding him is in flux. The songs on Wondrous Bughouse are continually subjected to flange and phase effects, and it's not the gentle, headswimming "whoosh" that typified recent records such as Lonerism or mbv. The cranked oscillation gives these songs a proper sense of danger and hyper-alertness. The combination of the processing and Powers' devious lyrics ("'I won't die easily'/ That's what they say when I erupt into laughter") gives the calliope-like melody of "Attic Doctor" a fitting, monstrous overtone. The synth progression that emerges during the anthropomorphic grotesquerie "Pelican Man" would be a perfect evocation of Elephant 6's Beatles obsession, but the pulsing modulations turn into something closer to slasher-flick fare.
It's often scary stuff, more reminiscent of Syd Barrett's bad-trip fairy tales. Though Powers isn't dealing with death in a manner that conveys gravitas or experience, Wondrous Bughouse is very much about mortality, albeit filtered through surrealism, parable, and metaphor. Rather than a simple longing for the past, Powers feels obsessed with human frailty and decay. Similarly, the songs of Bughouse aren't subject to tangents so much as following a dream logic working where any thought, regardless of how awesome or fearsome it is, doesn't end until it reaches a conclusion it sees fit.
Powers' choice to write most of these fanciful flights in waltz time gives everything a properly anachronistic feel. The hopscotch melody on "Dropla" makes it sound like a playground chant and the lyrics see its narrator dealing with death in a selfish, forgivably childlike way, hanging on to faint hope ("you'll never die, you'll never die") and lashing out when the prayers go unanswered ("you weren't there when I needed"). Between the threatening taunts of "Attic Doctor", we hear vast stretches of music for the Peanuts gang to ice skate to: "Third Dystopia" refracts a sea shanty through multiple funhouse mirrors; the submerged second half of "The Bath" places Powers somewhere between a baptism and a drowning. On "Raspberry Cane", Powers sees himself as irredeemable ("I'm polluted by my blood/ So help me cut it out and rinse it down the drain") and while closer "Daisyphobia" views humanity as "mortals on the run" from an all-seeing God, Wondrous Bughouse slinks towards an disturbing and unresolved conclusion, a slow fade of distant synth whinnies and stumbling, inexact beats.
Though unnerving, it is familiar, albeit in a style of indie rock that was prominent when Powers was, by his own admission, listening to Bad Boy records Allen might've played a part in. Think of the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Grandaddy, Sparklehorse, Modest Mouse, Built To Spill, all bands who in some way combined a projected naivety with grand designs: adolescent vocals picking at metaphysical mysteries, an insatiable curiosity with the capabilities of the studio. But Youth Lagoon is also a spiritual progeny in terms of geography. All these bands emerged far from media centers-- Oklahoma City, upstate New York, Modesto, central Virginia, Issaquah, Wash., and of course, Powers' own Boise. Listeners often try to discern something special about creating art in places like these, whether the scarcity of live shows and bands makes music more important or a lack of urban stimuli allows for deeper meditation on the big picture. Though the songs themselves are wonderful, that's the powerful source Powers taps into here: if you feel like the dark center of the universe or simply need a little space, Wondrous Bughouse obliges. | 2013-03-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2013-03-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Fat Possum | March 4, 2013 | 8.7 | 8a29dce1-7469-4ded-88b7-4501b245c93f | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
One of indie pop's most promising bands navigates the tension between its populist and insular tendencies on its sure-to-break-out LP. | One of indie pop's most promising bands navigates the tension between its populist and insular tendencies on its sure-to-break-out LP. | The Drums: The Drums | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14333-the-drums/ | The Drums | As the Drums' recent appearance on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross suggests, frontman Jonathan Pierce is not a man who is concerned with looking cool. Bearing a passing resemblance to Ralph Macchio's Karate Kid nemesis William Zabka, Pierce prances and preens through a performance of recent single "Best Friend" in a series of stilted robot dance moves, sweeping game-show-host hand gestures, and bug-eyed facial expressions, while delivering the arch, Morrissey-worthy lyrics ("You were my best friend/ But then you died") in a hammy, lounge-singer baritone. But then, given Pierce's track record, it's not surprising he has a healthy appreciation for the absurd; this is a man, after all, who called his old band Goat Explosion.
In 2005, Goat Explosion-- also featuring future Drums co-founder Jacob Graham-- changed its name to the somewhat less ridiculous Elkland and were snapped up by Columbia Records during the post-Franz Ferdinand/Killers major-label rush to sign any new wave-inspired band with swooping-fringe haircuts. However, the failure of Elkland's glossy, stadium-sized synth-pop to connect with the masses would seemingly account for the Drums' more modest, minimalist reinterpretation-- and reinvigoration-- of the same 80s mope-pop inspirations (New Order, the Cure, the Smiths, Orange Juice), one that's more likely to ingratiate itself to fans of the Labrador and Sincerely Yours rosters than KROQ programmers.
It says a lot about the Drums' confidence that they've left two of their best (and best-loved) early songs, "I Felt Stupid" and "Submarine", off of their full-length debut-- and they're not entirely missed either. (The band did retain its biggest blog hit-- "Let's Go Surfing", a cheeky retort to the recent blissed-out, beach-crazy strain in indie pop.) However, other songs that try to build upon the "Stupid" template-- accelerated click-track drum beats, one-string Barney Sumner guitar riffs, and woe-is-me verses that lead to cloud-parting choruses-- don't always improve on it, with the cutting observations of "Me and the Moon" ("you still sleep with your back to me") overshadowed by the annoying shout of "eeyoh!" that punctuates each chorus run. And there are times when Pierce's outsized persona meshes awkwardly with his band's understated approach, like when he uses the stark arrangement of 50s-throwback ballad "Down By the Water" as an excuse to test out his back-of-the-arena wail.
More so than their well-curated influences, it's this tension-- between the band's populist and insular tendencies-- that most defines the Drums at this point in their career. Conventional wisdom dictates that the Drums will simply follow the New Order evolutionary path toward writing big-tent festival anthems (a future prophesied by the anthemic, widescreen synth-pop of "Forever and Ever Amen"). But there is just as much evidence to suggest-- particularly in the album's less exuberant but more revelatory second half-- that the band this band truly excels in more intimate spaces, like the affectingly desolate motorik pop of "I Need Fun in My Life" and the wonderful "I'll Never Drop My Sword", a winsome, jangly ode to perseverance featuring an appealingly effete vocal that Pierce should adopt more often. No surprise then that the suggestively titled closer "The Future" provides little indication of what it holds for the Drums: Pierce's chesty bellow sees him prepping himself for a lifetime of camera-mugging late-night talk-show appearances, but the symphony of glockenspiels ringing throughout the song projects an air of snow-globe serenity, and of a band that's eager to insulate itself from external hype and pressures.
Like the Strokes, another fast-rising band of pretty-boy New Yorkers, the Drums have successfully answered the challenge of parlaying buzz-generating singles into an album that's well stocked with instantly appealing pop songs. Unlike the Strokes, however, the Drums lack a certain element of surprise-- they so faithfully adhere to 80s post-punk and new pop influences even after a decade where those sources have been thoroughly milked. But then that could ultimately be to the Drums' benefit-- in that they're so behind the curve, they're practically ahead of a new one. | 2010-06-08T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2010-06-08T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Island / Moshi Moshi | June 8, 2010 | 7.5 | 8a2e1276-b38d-4008-a070-3fb2cf6d71b0 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
A warm and even-keeled collection of ballads, this is James Blake’s most traditional album, but it offers little in the way of emotional insight. | A warm and even-keeled collection of ballads, this is James Blake’s most traditional album, but it offers little in the way of emotional insight. | James Blake: Friends That Break Your Heart | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/james-blake-friends-that-break-your-heart/ | Friends That Break Your Heart | James Blake’s songs were once so fragmentary, so structurally disrupted, that when he even gestured at conventional song structure, it was show-stopping. This was the trick of his early records: lulling a listener through a rush of clicks, whirrs, and sub-bass before going in for the kill with a gut punch like “Limit to Your Love” or “Meet You in the Maze.” It’s this tension that brought him renown, notably among artists like Beyoncé and Frank Ocean, pop stars seeking to invert Blake’s formula by suffusing their own music with his atmospheric touch. It has also brought its fair share of criticism from detractors who equate his dogged evocation of a single mood with monotony.
Blake’s last record, 2019’s Assume Form, was all fragments, no show-stoppers: Working with vibe-first artists like Travis Scott and Metro Boomin, and trimming back the jagged spontaneity that brought electricity to his earlier records, the album tended to get lost in itself. Its moments of ingenuity were overshadowed by monochromatic production and occasionally platitudinal lyrics that suggested a kind of self-interrogation: “I will assume form/I’ll leave the ether,” he sang on the title track, “I will be reachable.”
Friends That Break Your Heart, Blake’s follow-up, seems to apply that vow from “Assume Form.” Lighter and more straightforward, it feels like Blake’s most traditional album: a collection of ultra-linear, lyrics-first ballads that are plaintive and softly beautiful. Seemingly drawing inspiration from the folk songwriters who influence the edges of his work—the early songs of his friend and past collaborator Moses Sumney come to mind—it brings warmth and texture to music previously slicked with a cool varnish. It’s touchable, reachable, and even kind of relatable, its lyrics now doing as much emotional heavy lifting as Blake’s reedy falsetto.
Coming from Blake, a collection of songs that travel from point A to point B without detours is actually something of a departure. On the title track, he sings without vocal processing over gently-picked acoustic guitar and Mellotron whirr. The sparse arrangement makes room for a mournful vocal performance that carries none of his usual warble. As is the case for many of these songs, he’s singing about losing friends with a twinge of bitterness in every word. “As many loves that have crossed my path,” he sings, “In the end it was friends/It was friends who broke my heart.” He sounds exhausted but resigned to his fate; although there’s a simplicity to these lyrics, their directness is stark in comparison to the rest of Blake’s catalog.
The new straightforwardness, though, exposes a weakness in Blake’s lyrics: a tendency toward emotional neutrality, no matter the context. On “Friends That Break Your Heart,” he sings with the remove of hindsight; his venting in “Foot Forward,” is couched by admitting, “But it’s not that bad.” The closing “If I’m Insecure” opens on a note of uncertainty—“If this is what we always wanted, how’s the signal so weak?”—but true love saves the day in the end. Even if these are some of Blake’s prettiest, most direct songs, they offer little in the way of emotional insight.
While the lyrics lack tension, there is new warmth and levity to the music. “Coming Back,” a collaboration with SZA, opens with bright piano chords that flutter like butterfly wings; a looped piano sample on “Foot Forward,” co-produced with Metro Boomin and Frank Dukes, creates a mid-tempo groove that Blake rides playfully. His use of repetition is in service of rhythm and forward motion, not to create an atmosphere of anxiety. Over these backdrops, Blake sounds so plainly at ease that you’re inclined to take him at his word in moments like “Say What You Will,” the most arresting song here, when he writes about his growing distant from pop’s center: “I’m OK with the life of the sunflower,” he sings. “And I’m OK with the life of a meteor shower.”
These even-keeled observations mark a noted improvement on the self-seriousness of Assume Form, even if it causes the record to fade from memory in a way that his more resonant work never did. Still, this breezy quality is partially by design: “I do genuinely want to make music for people who are just sitting by the swimming pool,” he recently confessed. Even if the music remains more ambitious than that aspiration, perhaps the most groundbreaking thing about Friends That Break Your Heart is that James Blake has never sounded so safe.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-10-08T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-10-08T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Republic | October 8, 2021 | 6.6 | 8a3c9816-7143-43c8-b19d-dff117438061 | Shaad D’Souza | https://pitchfork.com/staff/shaad-d’souza/ | |
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today we revisit the Ohio new wave band’s 1982 debut, an arch yet sincere sendup of humdrum modern life. | Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today we revisit the Ohio new wave band’s 1982 debut, an arch yet sincere sendup of humdrum modern life. | The Waitresses: Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful? | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-waitresses-wasnt-tomorrow-wonderful/ | Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful? | Chris Butler hadn’t actually formed the Waitresses when Village Voice columnist Robert Christgau came to watch them play a showcase of local bands in Akron, Ohio. It was 1978, and Butler had been mailing Christgau every issue of his self-published art zine Blank purely out of admiration. Within a month, he got a call from the New York rock critic, who was eager to report on the Akron scene chronicled in its pages. Butler scampered around, secured dingy dive bar JB’s as a venue, enlisted the Bizarros, Chi Pig, and Tin Huey to pad out the lineup, and “spent a feverish two weeks trying to locate every piece of PA in the area,” as he recalled in Sounds magazine a few years later.
The Waitresses were also on the bill at JB’s, even though they weren’t much more than an elaborate practical joke. The bit dated back to 1977, when one night Butler and his friend Liam Sternberg, a songwriter and producer, were kvetching about commercial pop over diner coffee and pineapple upside-down cake. At the time, Devo were the reigning artistic force in Akron, attracting curious, twitching eyes to a city best known for rubber and tire production. Butler, who was playing in experimental blues outfit the Numbers Band and had attended Kent State University around the same time as Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale, was feeling the pangs of DIY ambition. As the cartoonish local legend goes, he looked around the restaurant and declared that he should just start a band called… the Waitresses.
Butler put the Waitresses’ name to wax for the first time some point between ’77 and ’78, when he cut the In “Short Stack” 7" for Akron indie label Clone. Side A was “Slide,” a jangly bit of blues rock reminiscent of Lou Reed and T. Rex. Side B was stamped with a Devo knockoff called “Clones,” complete with warbling robot vocals and lyrics like, “We are not men/We’re just clones.” On the record’s back sleeve, an androgynous figure sports a T-shirt emblazoned with Butler’s prank promotional slogan: “Waitresses Unite.” The schtick was slowly becoming a reality.
In the summer of ’78, the UK pub-rock imprint Stiff released a sampler called The Akron Compilation, which originated when Mothersbaugh dragged label co-founder Dave Robinson into a basement to pitch him on some homegrown bands. The 14-track LP included cuts by bands like Tin Huey, the Bizarros, Rubber City Rebels, Sniper, Idiots Convention, and Chi Pig; the insert was printed with images of local factories, and topped with a scratch-and-sniff sticker that smelled like a tire. Robinson thought he’d discovered the Liverpool of the late ’70s.
Butler offered up “Slide” and “Clones” for the Akron Compilation tracklist, but it was “The Comb,” a strutting rock track about ditching guys who won’t dance, that solidified the Waitresses’ sound. Relinquishing the microphone, Butler enlisted singer Patty Donahue, a Kent State student and an actual waitress; in a span of six years, she’d worked at joints like the Colosseum, Parasson’s, and the Brown Derby. Butler too had paid his dues waiting tables, once joking on daytime television that his foray into music was merely a ploy to “get out of the restaurant business.”
As he recalled in the 1990 liner notes to The Best of the Waitresses, Butler met Donahue in a bar when he was scouting someone to track vocals. “I stand on a chair and bang a beer bottle for attention and declare: ‘I need a chanteuse to coo a tune,’” he wrote.” When he asked the packed room of “liquid lunchers” if anyone was interested in the job, a voice in the back let out a deadpan “uh-huh.” It was Donahue—the lanky, blasé, chain-smoking leading lady who would act out Butler’s mundane vignettes for the next six years.
While frantically planning the concert at JB’s, Butler had also managed to learn most of Tin Huey’s repertoire, kicking off his brief tenure in the group. Toward the end of Tin Huey’s set, Butler—wearing his “Waitresses Unite” T-shirt—called Donahue to the stage to sing “The Comb,” marking the Waitresses’ semi-official live debut. For most of the audience, this group of new wave art punks seemingly sprouted onstage. But the band wouldn’t really congeal until 1979, when Tin Huey rejected Butler’s idea for a new song called “I Know What Boys Like.” Instead, he brought the tart and sadistic bubblegum tease to Donahue, who played the part expertly, whining and taunting in a vocal style that seemed to predict riot grrrl’s conversational rage. Tin Huey’s loss was the Waitresses’ gain; by spring 1982, “I Know What Boys Like” had climbed to No. 62 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band’s only single ever to crack the chart.
The modest success of “I Know What Boys Like” eventually got the Waitresses signed to Polydor and it undoubtedly propelled sales of their 1982 debut, Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful? By that point Butler had joined the wave of Midwesterners—like the Contortions frontman James Chance and saxophonist Ralph Carney—who’d carved a niche in New York’s underground arts scene. To complete the Waitresses, he rounded up keyboardist Dan Klayman, ex-Television drummer Billy Ficca, saxophonist Mars Williams, and bassist Tracy Wormworth. Donahue, who was finishing her degree at Kent State, still lived in Ohio. After she graduated, Butler mailed her 50 bucks for an eastbound bus. By January 1981, the Waitresses were playing at Manhattan’s famed Peppermint Lounge.
Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful? is a study in post-punk “hypernormalism,” as Butler put it in an interview with Rolling Stone at the time of its release. “It’s like a photorealistic painting of the reflection of a street in a hubcap,” he said. Reporter David Fricke wrote that Butler “positively reeks of normal,” and that Donahue “is so normal, she recently opened a bank account in New York and is still waiting for her free electric percolator.” Butler’s songwriting wasn’t interested in abstract pretensions either. Rather than writing a breakup song bloated with metaphor, he’d sketch scenes of a couple having a front seat spat over driving directions. Sometimes, he blamed this chronic relatability on being Midwestern.
Each song on Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful? is a miniature diorama of daily life, rendered in the highly saturated palette of pop art. Butler, the band’s core songwriter and lyricist, made a spectacle of the ordinary, satirizing office drudgery and detailing the minutiae of romantic squabbles. The gingham tablecloth on the album cover, overlaid with a photo from Donahue’s high school graduation, suggests generic, middle-class America. This checkered, laminated fabric could be at any restaurant, on any street, in any town. It is ubiquitous and unspecial, like so many situations on Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?
Opener “No Guilt” is a litany of tedious chores elevated to grand achievements: paying the phone bill, fixing the toilet, washing a sweater. The song is set in the wake of a breakup, and Donahue’s shrugged-off delivery sounds like someone who’s hiding from heartache by deep-cleaning their oven. But the bouncing ska arrangement frames each task as a triumph of perseverance. “Every day at seven, I’ve been watching Walter/I’ve been reading more and looking up the hard words,” Donahue recites over skanking guitar and bulbous sax blurts. Her character privately refuses to feel helpless, congratulating herself on escaping “a vicious cycle” with her dignity intact, but Butler’s Ohioan expression of that subtext can be summed up thusly: “I feel better if my laundry’s done.”
The pithy jazz-punk track “Wise Up” swaps the suburban apartment for a drab and purposeless office. The saxophone is sharper, the drums crisper as Donahue relays montages of cubicle life, recites minutes from a business meeting, and acts out scenes from a job interview. It’s a spoof of bureaucratic banality on par with Office Space; no one knows what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, or who’s really in charge. There are looming threats (“We are listening for slip-ups”) and feigned compassion (“We’re concerned about our members”), but the company motto is a command: “There must be order!” A fed-up employee, voiced by Butler, bashes his head against the wall until he reaches a state of Bartleby-like enlightenment: “I know better now,” he sings in chorus with his bandmates. “Won’t do it again.”
As a lyricist, Butler swerved between satire and sincerity. Donahue communicated that paradox brilliantly, sounding at once like your high school best friend and the bratty cheerleader who put a wad of gum in your hair during chemistry class. Some of the Waitresses’ best songs morph from absurdist “hypernormalism” into simple tenets of positivity. If you removed a few key lines, Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful? might read like a dystopian critique of yuppie aspiration. But Butler knew that real life is a tad more complex—you do what you can to get by, and relish small moments of contentment. The verses on the closing cut “Jimmy Tomorrow” are spare and bleak, with Donahue griping over muffled voices, brittle guitar, and Wormworth’s rubbery, dextrous bassline. In its initial three-and-a-half minutes, Donahue plays a cynic clinging to a scrap of hope:
There’s nothing left wrong with me
That money can’t cure
But I don’t want to be somebody else’s
Learning experience
Some rich kid’s way to spend his allowance
I want magic in my real world
In the song’s final third, the other Waitresses chime in with a series of existential dilemmas; ever the pragmatist, Donahue offers humble solutions. “Found a cure for daylight yet?” the band goads the frontwoman. “Tom Tomorrow and sermonette,” she quips, referring to the comic strip author and religious broadcasts on late-night TV. Gravity, Donahue proposes, can be cured by an affinity for roofs and jets. And what about hunger? “Black coffee, cigarettes,” she deadpans. Every one of Donahue’s words is somehow sharp and weary at the same time, making her the ideal interpreter of Butler’s covert optimism.
Donahue’s bristly, dour-yet-glamorous affectation defines the Waitresses’ sound—so learning that she didn’t write the lyrics can come as a surprise. “I felt like someone had pulled a rug out from under me,” critic Lindsay Zoladz wrote in a 2013 essay about the band for Pitchfork. “This album that my friends and I thought spoke so meaningfully to ‘the female experience’ was written not by Donahue, but by the guitarist, Chris Butler. A dude.” Publications in the early ’80s often mentioned the supposed discrepancy; others merely lumped the Waitresses in with the Go-Gos and other “women-dominated bands,” as Vogue phrased it around the release of Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful? “The band has six members, of whom only two are women and whose songwriter, Chris Butler, is a man,” David Sargent wrote for the magazine. “But the lead singer, Patty Donahue, is a woman, and the songs are written from a woman’s perspective.”
But Donahue hardly saw herself as a puppet for Butler’s male projections. “I’m relating my experiences, too,” she told Fricke in the band’s ’82 Rolling Stone interview. “[Butler] wrote the songs, but I’m not just singing what he feels. It’s like, ‘I feel this way, don’t you feel this way, too?’” Butler didn’t pretend he had some magical insight into the private lives of women: He’d ask them. The songwriter, who was working as a freelance reporter in the early ’80s, interviewed several of his female friends while working on lyrics. “I have pages of explanations of the songs, giving the backgrounds, the nuance,” he told Creem at the time. “I sit down and ask my lady friends and men friends, ‘If you were in this situation, would you react this way? What about this reaction?’” Many of the songs, he felt, could work from any perspective.
Rather than functioning as songwriter and mouthpiece, Butler and Donahue’s relationship was more similar to that of an auteur and an actor—Butler may have written and directed the material, but Donahue wrangled the character off the page. The irony of the hit single “I Know What Boys Like” was not lost on Donahue, who didn’t see the song as a reprimand of modern temptresses, but as a sendup of the dating ritual, with its exhausting predator-and-prey dynamics. Jagged funk cut “Pussy Strut” is a bit more frank, as Butler contrasts meaningless physics jargon with catcalls. “Sideways is called horizontal/Up and down, vertical… This is very scientific,” Donahue sings, playing a pedantic dick. The following couplet shreds that thin scholarly veil: “Look at the butt/Pussy strut.” You get the sense that Butler is mocking men for their brutish sexism as much as their need to mask emotional depletion with empirical certainty.
A wildly underappreciated singer, Donahue was a frequent target of critical reviews penned by predominantly male writers. Jim Sullivan of The Boston Globe once wrote of Donahue: “Her voice lacks range; her tone is limited by irony; her stage presence—fussing with her hair, pointing her finger and pouting—is dominated by an overuse of artifice.” But Donahue was a calculated performer whose gestures and props animated her jaded character. She’d twitch her head to the side, shimmy her hips robotically, and drag on cigs like a Marlowe dame (the cigarettes weren’t just a prop—Donahue sadly died of lung cancer in 1996). The press might have overlooked her theatrical talents, but Alice Cooper took note, tapping her to sing on his 1982 track “I Like Girls.” Her deliciously sneering performance was credited as “vocals and sarcasm.”
Donahue’s nonchalant sass has echoed for decades—in the ’90s with Elastica, Daria, and Bikini Kill; today in Olivia Rodrigo’s casual angst. She viewed her character in the Waitresses as an autonomous woman navigating mid-century expectations. “She’s trying to land on her feet,” Donahue once said, coolly adding: “Her desires clash with society sometimes.” Like Donahue, the Waitresses found purpose in the jagged, grimy cracks that cut beneath a polished surface.
Additional research by Deirdre McCabe Nolan | 2023-10-15T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-10-15T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Polydor | October 15, 2023 | 8.2 | 8a3d1045-c56a-4bdb-bd69-869ccb4f09e8 | Madison Bloom | https://pitchfork.com/staff/madison-bloom/ | https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/652459968a3a5b8c01cf4e41/1:1/w_1500,h_1500,c_limit/The%20Waitresses%20-%20Wasn't%20Tomorrow%20Wonderful |
Under the influence of French philosopher Simone Weil, the Oakland quartet Acephalix offer the immediate hook of classic death metal on their third full-length. | Under the influence of French philosopher Simone Weil, the Oakland quartet Acephalix offer the immediate hook of classic death metal on their third full-length. | Acephalix: Decreation | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/acephalix-decreation/ | Decreation | By the time the Oakland death metal quartet Acephalix released 2012’s Deathless Master, they had already moved on to exploring their chosen sound in other ways. Vocalist Daniel Butler and bassist Luca Indrio focused on Vastum, which honed in on slower tempos and themes of sexual depravity, and Indrio also formed Necrot, influenced by the dingy, sewer-like filth of their Bay Area forefathers Autopsy. Acephalix insist they didn’t disband per se, but it did feel as though they went on hiatus at the height of their powers.
Death metal is as much about mental fortitude as it is physical. On Master, Acephalix embodied that with a fusion of the Sunlight Studios guitar tone—used by Swedish bands like Entombed and Dismember, and razor-sharp in its brightness—with American aggression. Their lyrics were influenced by Georges Bataille as much as tropes like death and dismemberment. In that way, they were and still are ahead of much of this decade’s American death metal revival. Five years after Master, their third album Decreation brings back some of their old crust sound while feeling like they never took a break in the first place.
On Master, drummer Dave Benson cut back on his punky d-beat attack—the snare-and-kick pattern pioneered by Discharge, like a polka beat’s trance infused with hardcore jitters. But shortly into Decreation’s “Upon This Altar,” he’s ripping into the d-beat again, five years of inactivity finally cracking. As much as it’s a punk staple, that break feels fresh and liberating, like hearing Discharge for the first time. While Decreation is still a death metal record at heart, much more so than their debut Aporia and their demo tapes, it’s got a looser feel thanks to Benson’s drumming. He gives space for guitarist Kyle House to express a wider range of death metal influences. The album also evolves by looking back, striking a balance between their punk origins and Butler’s growls, which have gone up an edge. House is a riff chameleon, never quite shaking off his crust grime.
Acephalix are still indebted to Swedish sounds, though Decreation also pays more heed to their American influences. “Excremental Offerings” recalls the Chicago band Cianide’s lineage from Celtic Frost’s mid-paced stomp. In fact, “Offerings” might be Acephalix’s slowest song ever, a rare moment when they’re not at your throat constantly. House can conjure Cianide as well as he can the meaty riffing of Swedish bands like Entombed and Grave, showing versatility that isn’t flashy. The track “Egoic Skin” invokes Obituary’s subterranean yet nimble grooves as much as Motörhead-like directness.
The title track of Decreation was inspired by the French philosopher Simone Weil’s concept of the same name, which Butler summarized as “the power in surrendering yourself to spiritual dismemberment.” And while Acephalix’s influences might be heady—they’ve mentioned Artaud and surrealism as well—they still consider themselves “a primitive death metal band.” In a genre like death metal, which has its own distinct word salad, there is a value in simplicity, in getting your message across as clearly as your deeply growled vocals will enable. And Acephalix’s simplicity is a deliberate choice, with Butler articulating it as “letting my body do my thinking for me.” It’s served them well, as Decreation has an immediate hook of classic death metal that offers a lot more than many traditionalists can muster. | 2017-10-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-10-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal | 20 Buck Spin | October 3, 2017 | 7.4 | 8a42926b-adb3-4048-b347-5d0aabe25eb2 | Andy O'Connor | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-o'connor/ |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.