Piri & Tommy “99%”

“99%” is pretty straightforward – a dance pop song about loving crowded basement dance parties. The title refers to how densely packed the room ought to be, though it’s also played as innuendo. (“It’s a tight fit, but we like it.”) The beat is brisk, and Piri’s topline is a variation on her best musical trick – a strong, ultra-sticky melody that resisters as casual and low-key. This works perfectly well at face value, but I like how the lyrics scan as nostalgia for the recent past and a recipe for a perfect Piri & Tommy night out. It’s the past, it’s the present, it’s the future, it’s the Dr. Manhattan of dance pop tunes.

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Elysian Fields “I Can Give You That”

“I can give you that, I can give you that…please take it,” Jennifer Charles sings in the chorus of this song, sounding sultry and sad but a little serene, like a middle point on a spectrum of vocal affect between her contemporary Hope Sandoval and Lana Del Rey. And what is that? Judging by the verses, in which she zooms out and gets broadly philosophical about intimacy and zooms in on the granular details of a sensual existence, “that” is pretty much everything. The good, the bad, the boring, and the unexpected. All the rewards and perils of true vulnerability and risk. “I Can Give You That” is romantic but also noticeably weary, coming from the perspective of someone who seems to have already experienced all the best and the worst and is willing to roll the dice all over again.

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Ela Minus “Upwards”

“Upwards” is a pop song in the way the songs on Björk’s Post and Homogenic are pop songs – bold, catchy, and propulsive, but rendered with an eccentric palette and general indifference to how things are “supposed” to sound. It’s like the opposite of sugaring a bitter pill, but not the same as self-sabotage. The twists and turns and peculiar tones are essential to how Ela Minus delivers her most enticing hooks, and the harsh, angular stylishness of the production elevates a song that could be a more straightforward dance track. It’s not a pop song in goth/industrial drag, it’s a goth/industrial song with very angsty lyrics that happens to have strong bop tendencies.

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Mura Masa featuring Yeule “We Are Making Out”

It’s exciting to hear new electroclash songs that are just as good or better than the stuff that came out in the early 2000s. “We Are Making Out” is abrasive and raunchy on the surface, but upon closer inspection it’s all sentimental sweetness. This is literally a song about making out on the London Underground on the way to their snogging partner’s place. It’s about conveying the excitement of fresh lust, and the mystery of what comes next, though it isn’t that mysterious. The fourth verse is where Yeule really cranks up the sweetness by giving this scene a little context. How did they end up making out on the Underground? “Because you drew a picture of my heart on a guitar / accidentally said, ‘I love you.'”

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Kim Deal “Crystal Breath”

Kim Deal’s first solo record mostly sounds like a slightly more eclectic and ambitious version of her most recent music released under the Breeders name, but I get why she chose to make it her first solo album. It’s a matter of framing – instead of it just another Breeders record, Nobody Loves You More is presented with the implication that it’s more personal and uncompromising, and without having to exist in the direct shadow of Pod and Last Splash.

“Crystal Breath” sounds like a wonkier, more industrial variation on The Breeders’ sound. The arrangement makes the song feel like a machine that’s been sitting around in disrepair but is back in working condition after a little tinkering. It’s still a little wobbly and almost sputters out, but it doesn’t spin out or crash. The lyrical sentiment isn’t too far off from that notion, with Deal singing about some vague trauma but coming to a clear conclusion: “Let’s start a new life.”

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Alice Phoebe Lou “Better”

Alice Phoebe Lou is very gifted with writing melodies, which is how I could hear this song many times over the past month or so without really noticing the lyrics at all. Up until just recently the only lyrics I was clocking at all was the opening line: “When you finally arrived at the party on Saturday night.” But I wasn’t picking up the following line, which is a solid self-deprecating joke: “I had been waiting in anticipation, so could you forgive my weird vibe?”

“Better” is a song about the romance resulting from that meet-cute, but after it runs its course. The general tone of the song is warm and nostalgic for the early days of their relationship, but Lou cleverly flips the sentiment “things can only get better and better” through the song. The first time the chorus is sung, it’s about feeling like life could only improve while they’re together. Later on, this optimism comes from being rid of them. She flips back and forth a couple more times, but it always sounds true.

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Bassvictim “Air On A G-String”

“Air On A G String” has the spirit of true undiluted early ’00s electroclash, but it doesn’t fully register as a retro thing because the synths and programming are firmly rooted in contemporary electronic pop. In other words, it’s like if Miss Kittin or Chicks On Speed hopped on a Brat remix. The title and lyrical conceit is basically a cheeky, pervy pun on Bach’s “Air On the G String,” and I admire vocalist Maria Manow’s commitment to the bit. She has the perfect deadpan for this sort of song – a vague Eurotrash accent, the universal cool girl affect, in on the trashy joke but also legitimately playful and flirty. You could’ve sold so much American Apparel with this song.

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Father John Misty “Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose”

Talking Heads may have written the most popular song about snapping out of a fugue state and having an existential crisis, but Josh Tillman has spent most of his career exploring this lyrical territory in-depth without ever getting a good answer to the question “how did I get here?”

“Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose” is played as dark comedy, with our hapless hero tripping out in a terrible “set and setting” situation – accompanied by a woman he can’t trust and her collection of clown portraits, plus “a publicist and a celibate.” The verses, which roll around a winding piano melody, are funny, but the depiction of ego death is no joke. It plays out like a devil’s bargain over sporadic orchestra stabs, a direct view of “bare reality” in exchange for feeling permanently broken. The string arrangement sounds like dark clouds rolling in over a vast landscape, with Tillman feeling smaller and smaller as the words “you may never be whole again” are repeated and he starts to accept it as truth.

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Father John Misty “Real Love Baby” (Live in Pioneertown, CA 2024)

This is what Josh Tillman said about “Real Love Baby” just after performing it in this show from a few months ago:

“I had this realization about this song recently. Y’know, I was pretty ambivalent about it for a long time, and then it started making me a lot of money. No, I’m just kidding. Not really, not much. But I’ve got all these songs that are just about these humiliating debased scenarios I find myself in on psychedelic drugs and stuff. I was like, this song is an actually really nice thing that came out of taking psychedelic drugs. It’s a little bit of an ego death to have…that’s the only song that will last. If any of these songs has a chance of pollinating the world after I’m gone, it’s that one. And it’s just an incredible cosmic joke that this one song, which in no way fortifies my egoic perception of myself, that I’m this dark cool guy. And I like that, so now I really enjoy playing it.”

The thing is, as sweet as it is, “Real Love Baby” is not that different from his other songs. There’s a lot of lines in it that deliberately undermine that sweetness, just as there’s a lot of earnest feelings that soften the more cynical sentiments. The reason the song works and is so resonant for so many – including Cher! – is because these contradicting feelings about love coexist and overlap. This is most apparent in the later choruses, in which layers of conflicting thoughts and emotions swirl around in the vocal harmonies. It’s a battle between the head and the heart, and given that the most tender and open-hearted lyrics ring the most true as it’s sung, I think it’s a W for the heart.

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Father John Misty “The Ideal Husband” (Live in Pioneertown, CA 2024)

“The Ideal Husband” opens with Josh Tillman in a panic, terrified that Julian Assange is “gonna take my files” and reveal his scandals to the world. Is this character a politician, a celebrity, some kind of captain of industry? Maybe, but as Tillman lays out all his sins and regrets, the guy sounds more like a garden variety loser. Actually, a lot of the lines just make him sound ordinary. That only makes the terror in the song hit harder, because it prods you to imagine everything you’re privately ashamed of becoming public knowledge against your will. And like, would it change how people see you? They might already have a low opinion of you. But keeping these things private allows for a sense of security and some hope that you can actually control what other people think of you.

The final verse of the song is the punchline. It follows through on the premise that this guy is ruined, and he shows up at a girlfriend’s place at 7 in the morning, saying melodramatic things like “I’m finally succumbing” and “I’m tired of running,” and deciding he wants to settle down with her. The “7 in the morning” detail is so funny to me – Tillman probably initially landed on 7 to fit the meter, but this scene happening around when most people wake up is much funnier than if it was in the middle of the night.

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Bob Dylan “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar”

“The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar,” written and recorded in the tail end of Dylan’s Christian era, is a chugging, manic blues rock song with scattered images and anecdotes that add up to a sense of impending apocalypse. And not “apocalypse” as we tend to think of that word today, but more in the original sense – apocalypse as the revelation, and the arrival of a new order. The song doesn’t convey dread so much as anxious excitement for what’s about to go down. Amidst the violence and chaos, Dylan tracks his character’s relationship with a woman named Claudette. He can’t make up his mind about her, and she seems just as indecisive about him – “finally had to give her up ’bout the time she began to want me.” By the end of the song he’s lost track of her completely, and in context, pondering whatever had become of her is a stray thought as he’s observing Judgment Day.

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Bob Dylan “Mississippi” (Outtake from ‘Time Out Of Mind’ Sessions, Version 3)

A lot of great songs have a very defined architecture, and are specific to a particular palette, arrangement, and production style. A lot of the music I love the most is like that. But then there’s other types of songs that are more like a floating set of alluring lyrical and musical ideas that resist a permanent shape or strict form; ideas that are open to endless interpretation. This is Bob Dylan’s lane, and it’s a lot of why his music has lent itself to being covered by a wide range of artists from the start of his career in the early 1960s. But it’s also how he’s approached his own body of work – songs going through many revisions before he settled on a studio arrangement, songs being reinvented for the stage, songs taking different shapes as his voice has changed through his life.

Bob Dylan worked on “Mississippi” for a long time before landing on the version that appears on “Love and Theft” in 2001. This means there’s a lot of recordings of the song at different stages of Dylan’s writing and arranging process, and this one from the Time Out of Mind sessions is my favorite. Other iterations of “Mississippi” lean more folk or country, but this one feels lighter and sweeter than the others. Of the three recordings of the song from the Time Out of Mind sessions, it’s the one that’s most obviously the work of producer Daniel Lanois. You can hear the Lanois-ness in the sharp tonal contrasts – warm, womb-y bass offset with a crisp, bright tone in the lead guitar and a trebly organ part that guides a few dynamic shifts as the song moves through a long series of verses.

Simply put, this recording feels amazing. It’s the kind of track that can immediately change the atmosphere of a room or cleanse your mood. I figure Dylan thought this version was too Lanois-ish and not quite what he was reaching for, but I think it’s one of the finest recordings in his massive body of work. Or maybe he just wasn’t set on what the song was yet, as about 40% of the lyrics are different from the final studio recording for “Love and Theft.” But I think I prefer the lyrics in this form too.

“Mississippi,” like “Tangled Up in Blue” before it, is essentially a love song that exists on a very long timeline in which the lives of the protagonist and the object of his affection only seem to sporadically intersect. It’s a portrait of a guy who’s been through a lot of turmoil, and has spent a lot of time alone. You don’t really get a sense of this woman, only just that she’s been a safe port in a storm and something for him to hold on to as he makes his way through the world. The beautiful and sad thing about this song for me is that his love for her seems to be more important to him than having a proper relationship with her. But he’s yearning for that, and by the end of the song he’s practically begging her for the stability.

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Tyler, the Creator “Take Your Mask Off”

The lyrics of “Take Your Mask Off” is essentially a series of four character sketches – a well-off kid posing as a thug, a pastor on the DL, the bored wife of a rich guy, an insecure rapper who bears a striking resemblance to Tyler, the Creator – all very critical and “tough love” about their particular self-deceptions, but ultimately empathetic. These are vivid portraits of people exhausted by having to perform their identity 24/7, and either denying themselves what they want or indulging their desires in unhealthy ways. The lyrics are clearly on the other side of some personal epiphany on Tyler’s part, but he’s most brutal in talking about the guy who sounds a lot like him. Or at least the version of him the most negative part of himself sees every day.

I think this is one of Tyler’s best musical compositions. As far as I can tell, it’s built around elements of People’s Pleasure and Alive and Well’s 1976 song “A Feeling Inside,” though it doesn’t seem to be officially credited. (It’s been very difficult to get a copy of Chromakopia on CD.) But there’s sampling and interpolating, and then there’s where Tyler goes with this song, which I think is an even more sophisticated piece of music. He’s basically using this very Stevie Wonder-esque groove as a foundation for something with very different architecture. My favorite touch is the piano figure that gets sprinkled around the back half – possibly another sample but Tyler is a talented keyboard player so it could be all him. In any case, that part sounds gorgeous but slightly camp, like an aggressively fancy and elegant piano bar. It’s a brilliant touch, almost a musical non-sequitor, but a totally logical tangent in context of the lyrics.

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Mach-Hommy “Sonje”

Sometimes I do a little research about artists I don’t know a lot about, and let me tell ya, I was not surprised at all to find out that Georgia Anne Muldrow is the child of session musicians. Muldrow, who produced this track under the alias Hephzibah, creates music with the casual sophistication of someone born into jazz. “Sonje” is a rap track and operates on those terms, but even within the relative rigidity of a hip-hop beat you can find her getting playful with the bass. It’s a very busy bass line for a rap track but Mach-Hommy maneuvers around it with ease, sometimes lining up in tandem and at other moments cutting between the bass notes, like dancing between raindrops.

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Freddie Gibbs “Wolverine”

Freddie Gibbs raps through this track in a straight shot with only a few seconds between verse breaks. His writing is a little too composed and structured to feel like a freestyle, but he does sound like he could keep rapping over this drowsy, jazzy track indefinitely. Gibbs burns through a few topics here, but the stuff that stands out to me is him musing on how he might make money after his rap career goes dry, a riff about basketball, and the bit towards the end where he admits that he’s still into R. Kelly’s music even if he doesn’t condone what he’s done.

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Crimeapple & Michaelangelo “Nikki Beach”

“Nikki Beach” is a good example of one of my favorite types of rap track – a kinda-sorta love song in which obvious earnest affection is obscured only somewhat by the rapper’s vulgarity. Crimeapple and Michaelangelo mostly come off as sweet guys who are very eager to brag about their cool, sexy girlfriends. It’s cute stuff. It’s the rap guy equivalent of carving a pair of initials on a tree.

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The Cure “Drone:Nodrone”

Robert Smith has been dwelling on his mortality since the start of his career, and as a young man seemed to operate on the assumption that he had to get as much done as he could before he ran out of time. This is why hearing him ponder his “one last shot at happiness” in “Drone:Nodrone” hits me so hard—it’s very dramatic but doesn’t sound hyperbolic. He seems genuinely concerned that he’s running out of opportunities to find peace and joy, and doubtful that it’s possible in the first place.

“Drone:Nodrone” is something of an outlier on Songs of a Lost World—an aggressive and relatively up-tempo song along the lines of 1997’s “Wrong Number” on an album that mostly feels like “Oops! All Plainsongs.” In this context it provides a dynamic shift away from grandiose expressions of grief and zeroes in on Smith’s frustration. He sounds exasperated by getting to his age without having “answers,” and warns the listener that the answers he does have “are not the answers you want” because the only conclusion he’s come to with any confidence is that he doesn’t know anything. There can be peace and joy in embracing this humility, but he mostly seems horrified by the pointlessness and endless mystery.

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Cleo Sol “Fear When You Fly”

The majority of people making traditional 20th century-style R&B music today are young enough that, almost unavoidably, their frame of reference for the music has been filtered through five decades of sampling in rap. I feel like this gets filtered back into the traditional music in different ways – Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill keeping one foot firmly planted in hip-hop, or Amy Winehouse going full retro but with a post-rap attitude. This Inflo-produced track by Cleo Sol is a little more subtle – it basically sounds like a new soul song comprised entirely of the “good parts” of old songs that would’ve ended up as samples on top-shelf rap records. I’m not sure if this is a deliberate thing, if this is something Inflo is consciously thinking about in the studio. But it’s hard to imagine that on some level this post-rap filter is informing how the song is written, or how individual parts have been recorded so they feel more like a Madlib or Kanye West production than 60s or 70s soul records. It ends up sounding like a product of creative reverse-engineering.

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Lola Young featuring Lil Yachty “Charlie”

“Charlie” is, at its core, also a traditional R&B song, but the execution is much weirder. The production by Solomonophonic & Manuka makes the track sound like a Quiet Storm-era soul track with the middle torn out, leaving Lola Young sounding like she’s belting her vocal over a bigger sound that isn’t there. There’s bass and drums and guitars, but they feel slightly off and naked in the mix, like they’re deliberately drawing your ear to textures that would ordinarily get ironed out in the mixing. It sounds very cool and feels fresh to me – familiar but a little alien, and with lead guitar flourishes that have a little extra flamboyance and sparkle in this context. Lil Yachty shows up near the end to give voice to the titular Charlie, which adds some dimension to the lyrics, but given how often he’s appeared on R&B-ish songs with peculiar arrangements, it seems like he’s mostly come by to give his blessing to another artist doing something he’s into.

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Two Shell “(rock✧solid)”

Two Shell make exciting music about feeling excited. Like, if there’s any other point to a song like “(rock✧solid),” I can’t discern it. They want to make people excited, so they built a track that piles on exciting sounds so it sounds like the excitement is eternally escalating, and you can feel their excitement in the studio come through the speakers. Good energy is contagious. Also, it was only a matter of time before someone made a great track mixing that Go Team/Justice “kids chanting” trick from the 2000s with PC Music tricks from the 2010s. It works!

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Mouse On Mars “zeHrog”

This track is part of a score Mouse of Mars made for Werner Herzog’s film Fata Morgana, but was ultimately never approved by Herzog. I’ve never seen this film, so I can only hear it for what it is – music that Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma composed and performed in real time. It’s the real time aspect I find fascinating, particularly on this portion of the score which is relatively chill and groovy in context. It’s interesting to hear this knowing there’s a significant degree of improvisation going on, and that the two of them are switching up instruments and other gear while moving through the composition. I like the looseness, and I especially love when the song picks up tricks from dub reggae, most obviously on the reverb-drenched blasts of vocal sounds.

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Katrina Ford “World On A Wire”

I’ve been writing about songs most days of my life for over 20 years and one thing I’ve learned from this is that a lot of the music I love most resists description. And of course it does – music is ultimately an abstract medium, something that exists to evoke and express things beyond words. There is something specific about the keyboard tones and Katrina Ford’s vocal performance “World On A Wire” that pull up very strong emotions in me, but I strain to describe these feelings that really ought to remain indescribable. But I can tell you what I hear: The voice of a woman who has experienced a lot, but is open to much more. Keyboard tones that are comforting but slightly alien, nudging the “adult contemporary” qualities of the song into a stranger realm. I picture bright colored lights filtered through misty air. I hear lyrics that are sometimes too obscure to parse, but mostly convey the feeling of knowing you’re in a precarious position but focusing on a sense of equilibrium to find your balance. She’s not focusing on how easy it is to plummet, she’s in awe of how many things don’t fall.

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Cameron Winter “Vines”

Cameron Winter’s first solo single outside of Geese isn’t just a Geese song released under his own name. It’s also not solo in the sense of him just making music with some other musicians. He sounds solitary and isolated on “Vines,” like he’s responding to the absence of bandmates. The palette is sparse, just his voice, his piano, and a string arrangement that kicks in midway through to add a touch of poignancy and miserable grandeur. But the song is really about Winter’s voice – all raw nerves and unfiltered emotion, soulfully undisciplined, unabashedly dramatic and romantic, but with just a little bit of a smirk. The lyrics are direct and a little brutal, he sounds like he’s spilling his guts about the most fraught relationship in his life. But there’s also just enough ambiguity that it’s unclear who that might be – I wouldn’t blame anyone for reading this as a romantic song, but there’s some lines that make me think this is more about parents.

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Kelly Lee Owens “Dreamstate”

There’s not a lot of lyrics to “Dreamstate” beyond variations on the phrases “feel the dreamstate” and “dream to live,” but Kelly Lee Owens gets a lot out of those words. It’s in the repetition, the re-arranging of the words, and how she seems to surf the waves of her synth grooves and keyboard washes. Most of all it’s in her vocal phrasing – mostly softly spoken with a sense of wonderment, or a little bit bolder, like she’s the spokesperson for a high-end product with some woo dogma attached to it. It’s all very calm until the end, when the music reaches a climax and she starts shouting with some passion. I love how at the end of the song, when it feels like you’re about to wake up, feeling the dreamstate becomes incredibly urgent and important as opposed to just a suggestion.

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Weak Signal “Chill”

Weak Signal triangulate a lot of top shelf influences – just in this song, you get a little Ramones, a little Jesus and Mary Chain, and the answer to “what if Calvin Johnson fronted Yo La Tengo?” But they have a very clear personality and point of view, a lot of which comes down to Mike Bones’ dry wit and droll vocal style. (“Everything is cool, everything is chill,” sung with maximum deadpan delivery.) They err on the side of minimalism, but not in the way that can seem like the best choice for amateurish players. It’s more in the way a good editor will push you towards consolidating ideas, streamlining structures, and chopping out anything that isn’t strictly necessary. The writing is high craft, the performance is totally…chill.

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The Hard Quartet “Six Deaf Rats”

I’ve been enjoying The Hard Quartet’s debut record, but was having trouble digesting it as anything more than a late-period Stephen Malkmus album that happened to include some other songs by Matt Sweeney and Emmett Kelly. Seeing the band perform at Webster Hall last night made it all click into focus for me, certainly on a formal level.

Malkmus, Sweeney, and Kelly trade instruments constantly, each getting a few turns as bassist, rhythm guitarist, or lead guitarist. As with The Smile, they all seemed delighted to get a chance to be the bass player, and Malkmus in particular was very interesting in that role. I recall some very busy melodic bass lines in the tradition of Paul McCartney or James Jamerson, but with his characteristic relaxed, slack physicality rather than their bold, assertive playing. In terms of guitar, there’s nothing too surprising from Sweeney or Malkmus, but I like the way Kelly’s bright leads and Byrds/R.E.M.-ish jangle constrasts with Malkmus’ approach. I can see what these guys are getting from playing with each other, and how a lot of these songs emerged from this particular set of players.

The key thing is Jim White’s drumming. Malkmus has never worked with a drummer who plays like him, more focused on creating ambience and building drama than holding down a steady 4/4. This band is a little out of White’s comfort zone too, much more of a regular rock group than his more typical avant lane. The most exciting and interesting moments come when either White makes atypical rhythmic choices in fairly straight ahead rock songs, or when Malkmus opens up space in his songs to let White create a little jazzy storm he can play around.

“Six Deaf Rats,” which going on audience response is most everyone’s favorite song on the record, is in the latter category. It’s very much a late period Malkmus sort of song both musically and lyrically, but White’s percussion gives it a completely different feel. I love all of Malkmus’ records, but White’s style makes me realize how tight Wig-Out At Jagbags and Sparkle Hard could get. This isn’t a complaint – part of why I love following Malkmus through the years is hearing him change – but White allows for a type of looseness that connects Malkmus with his looseness without dialing his progress and proficiency all the way back to Pavement era.

Towards the end of “Six Deaf Rats,” Malkmus sings the line “I’ll geek out on your amazing quirks.” This tickles me, becuase I can’t think of a better way to describe my relationship with his music since I was 13. I just never get sick of this guy’s amazing quirks.

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La Femme “Clover Paradise”

“Clover Paradise” would fit in very well on the What Was Schaffel? playlist I made earlier this year, which collected electro-glam music from the early 2000s. I’m a sucker for this aesthetic, particularly the way a severe grayish palette and ultra-precise shuffle beat complements a lusty, perverted vibe. It’s like the musical equivalent of someone dressed in latex fetish gear. In the case of this song, the lyrics are enticing the listener to experience some sort of psychedelic awakening, but with the caveat that not everyone can handle this and it must be taken very seriously. I like this twist on a classic theme – scary instead of welcoming, seductive in a dominant sort of way, and actually pretty sensible and responsible in its messaging.

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BigXthaPlug “Lost the Love”

BigXthaPlug is one of those guys blessed with a perfect voice for rapping. This can go a few different ways, but in his case, he’s got that Biggie Smalls/Tupac/Killer Mike type of BOOMING voice that signals grit and authority. There’s a sorrow in his voice too, some wounds you can hear through the bravado. “Lost the Love” is essentially a list of grievances – people who have wronged him, people he’s judging, people who’ve disappointed him, people who aren’t showing him enough love. Sometimes this sort of thing is all a big flex, a way to position your greatness, but BigX sounds bitter and frustrated. Sure, there’s some parts where he sounds grateful or humble, but the last line is a matter-of-fact bottom line for the whole song: “Rapping my pain, this is the shit y’all wanted.”

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