Car Seat Headrest “1937 State Park” (Joe’s Story Version)

Car Seat Headrest have re-recorded “1937 State Park” along with the rest of Teens of Denial (give or take a few songs), so I should follow suit and write a new post about that song, right? Not exactly a tall order given that it’s one of my top favorite songs from the 2010s.

I’m a little surprised by my emotional response in my original post from May 2016. I was identifying a lot more with the character in the song, and being a little hard on a past version of myself I don’t remember so clearly today.

It also captures the feeling of being a particularly cynical and depressive sort of teenage boy, right on down to the line about avoiding graveyards because they’re a cliché of his “death-obsessed generation,” which is funny to me because I was exactly the sort of teen to extrapolate way too much from random people I knew just to find new ways to be snobby as an excuse to opt out of social situations. “Ah, I hate my generation, so obsessed with death!” Sure, dude! Whatever. Meanwhile you’re the guy singing about feeling a pressure to commit minor crimes so you can act out a “live fast, die young” narrative.

Now the song strikes me as more obviously comedic, a portrait of a depressed teenager who’s fantasizing about how he’ll be remembered after he dies young. He’s dreaming of being a Kurt Cobain type figure, but doesn’t seem particularly interested in the part where you write songs and play in a band. It’s just a daydream about wanting to be thought of as cool in retrospect, and awkwardly willing his life to match the narrative beats of a young punk tragedy. (“I can’t commit to a crime to commit, I need to get one done for the biography.”)

The kid in this song – presumably the Joe character who’s positioned as the protagonist in other songs on the record – is so recognizable and poignant. He’s at a stage of youth where emotions run hot, and ideas are big but not fully formed. Being perceived matters more at this time than being understood, and being understood feels impossible. But of course anyone with any sort of perspective understands what’s going on in their head.

I think this recording of “1937 State Park” is superior to the original version, and that’s true of the other more rocking songs that have been remade for this revised album. The band have played these songs many times over and have found subtle ways to improve the dynamics without many substantial differences to the music. It’s the same thing, but with maybe 20% more punch to it.

Will Toledo’s vocal is very close to the original take but a little more confident in his phrase, a tiny bit bolder when he sings out. I imagine this song feels different to him in his early 30s, with a lot more distance from being a teen. He sounds dialed into the extremes in this recording – the wry parts slightly more dry in tone, but he sounds more wounded and discouraged as he sings the chorus. The first time around the emotions seemed to fall on an even plane, but there’s more of a sharp contrast between the parts that are cringe for humorous effect and the parts that are connecting with genuine shame.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Meghan Dowlen “New Shoes”

Imagine a version of St. Vincent that retains Annie Clark’s gift for melody, tightly controlled theatrical vocals, and taste for sleek aesthetics, but instead of a guitar virtuoso, it’s an extremely gifted bassist. A bassist who is clearly well acquainted with the intersections of new wave and funk in the early 80s, and has probably spent a lot of time thinking about “Funkytown” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” and ESG and anything Tina Weymouth ever played on.

That’s pretty much what I’m hearing in Meghan Dowlen’s record Dizzy Spell, though there’s other distinctive things going on with it. For one thing, it sounds remarkably clean and precise. There’s nothing padding out or thickening the sounds, nothing to take your ear off the primary elements: bass, vocals, percussion, and dryly recorded bursts of guitar and saxophone for color. I had to acclimate to it a bit – you get so used to songs being filled out with subtle sounds that something this trim and tight can feel slightly alien.

But I think that’s part of the point – to be funky and fun and somewhat relaxed, but also a little uncanny and raw. “New Shoes” often sounds like what I imagine a lot of disco era Michael Jackson music would be like if you got Quincy Jones to silence half the tracks on the mixing board. Which is to say, I think this might strike some people as “unfinished,” but only if you’re not meeting Dowlen on her own terms.

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Fundido featuring Emma Dufaux “Get A Grip”

This is a new single out on DFA, which is a good thing, as it would be extremely weird if any other label released it. Like, in genre terms, this is a DFA song. Everything about this song is dialed in precisely to “DFA.” You like the particular snap of a DFA records beat? You like a tasteful yet caustic DFA synth tone? You like a cool, disaffected DFA type singer? You’ll like “Get A Grip.” Simple as that.

As much as this conforms to expectations, it’s not all rote and cookie cutter. I like vocalist Emma Dufaux’s tossed-off attitude as she semi-raps lyrics about setting a guy up to succeed and then knocking him down and out of her way. It’s not really bitter or mean-spirited – she just sounds competitive and a little conniving, in a fun way.

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Meg Stalter “Prettiest Girl In America”

It’s not unusual for a comedian to make a novelty pop song, but it’s not common for those songs to succeed as both comedy and music. If anything, Meg Stalter’s debut single “The Prettiest Girl In America” works better as a song than as a joke. The premise is definitely funny, but it hits hard enough as a genuine dance pop banger that the irony and punchlines are besides the point. I mean, Charli XCX is funny too, you know? A lot of pop music is funny, and Meg fits right in.

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Olof Dreijer featuring Toya Delazy “Makwande”

I think that even if you heard this not knowing Olof Dreijer was one half of The Knife, you’d still intuit that he had something to do with it, even if just in an “obvious influence” sort of way. It’s mostly in the tonal palette, which is very much a return to Dreijer’s ultra-bright keyboards in the Deep Cuts era. But it’s also in the perverse approach to pop – the hooks are warped, the shape feels slightly off, the rap feels like it’s laid diagonally against the beat. The best part is in how Dreijer stutters a snyth riff so it sounds like it’s getting bent by digital interference. I’ve heard a lot of variations on that general notion, but rarely has it sounded so naturally funky.

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Smerz “Spring Summer”

I think there’s a tendency to approach brief, minimal, open-ended songs like this as though they’re unfinished sketches, which I think misses the point. It’s supposed to feel off-kilter and unresolved, because that’s the central feeling to convey. And people feel this way all the time in life! The lyrics to “Spring Summer” are very ambiguous in tone, and it’s hard to tell exactly how annoyed or aggrieved the singer is about an apparent situationship. I’m sure someone else could snap right into this feeling, but from my point of view, it’s an intriguing bit of voyeurism.

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ISTA “Crusher”

In the Dune mythos, “fear is the mind-killer.” But what kills fear? ISTA have an answer: “love is the fear crusher.” “Crusher” is sunny and unapologetically corny in its messaging, so much so that I think it loops around to non-corny. The sound is buzzy and super saturated, applying a very mid -90s alt-rock palette to a specifically mid-00s style of cheery alt-rock energy. There’s no way to express something like this without being earnest, but being earnest doesn’t mean you’re being naive and dopey, especially not in an era as fearful and loveless as the one we’re in at the moment.

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Spacemoth “Do We Exist”

“Do We Exist?” moves along on a boppy bass line that’s a center of gravity for all the psychedelic keyboard and guitar parts that swirl around it. It’s a tether for Maryam Qudus’ voice as well as she sings lyrics that loop around to answer one phrase and then contradict another. It’s a clever approach, signaling both confusing and a humble willingness to be wrong. There’s no definitive answers about the nature of reality to be found here, but I do get the sense that she’s rejecting the notion that we’re actually all alone in this world.

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RIP Magic “Screwdark”

There are moments in “Screwdark” that sound like three DJ Shadows DJing at each other like the Spider-Man meme, or someone trying to Zaireeka the entire Mo Wax catalog. It’s a loud and cluttered sound, but the style is bold and the groove is definitely there. The half muttered, half rapped vocals are mixed so low that you could miss them entirely, but I like the Shy Ronnie vibe in the context of this stylish cacophony.

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April + Vista “Very Bad News”

April + Vista are basically an R&B band filtered through the aesthetics of the second half of Radiohead’s discography. This may seem odd in the abstract, but in practice it highlights how much oddball R&B was already in that music, and how cool it’d be if Erykah Badu actually worked with Jonny Greenwood. “Very Bad News” is groovy yet grim, and particularly indebted to the ominous orchestration of Greenwood after he’d spent some time writing film scores.

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Chenayder “Wonder”

Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life” and the DNA remix of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” were formative pop experiences for me as a kid, so of course I’m a mark for this song, which has a very similar beat to the former and melodically interpolates the latter. Vega gets a songwriting credit here, which strikes me as overcautious – it’s not quite the same tune, and I suspect Chenayder landed on this melodic flow coincidentally. She’s certainly going for a different feeling as she sings about a torturous unrequited love. Her words are a little more bleak than her delivery, but how upsetting can you be when you stack harmonies this beautifully?

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Isaiah Rashad “M.O.M.”

Have you ever eaten something familiar – a sandwich, a pasta dish, a salad – but there was some ingredient that popped more than usual? Like you’ve tasted a lot of basil in your life, but you’ve suddenly encountered the best basil? Something ordinary becomes something unexpected and magical. The full culinary potential of basil is revealed to you, but it’s not clear why that is. Is it a superior, fresher variety of basil? Did the chef do something to the basil? And if so, why doesn’t everyone do that?

This is how I feel about the snare in “M.O.M.,” which my body and mind immediately clocked as a better, crisper, more kinetic snare hit. I’ve heard so much snare in my life, but Isaiah Rashad along with producers Hollywood Cole, KTC, and Julian Sinfonia found a way to make one of the foundational elements of popular music more beautiful and effective.

I have very limited technical knowledge of how beats in modern pop music are created and engineered, but I happen to know someone with a lot of expertise on this topic: Nick Sylvester, veteran music critic, drummer, label owner, and full-time record producer. I asked him to demystify this snare sound for me.

“The drum sample sounds like it leans on the bottom snare mic a little more to pick up the sizzle of the snares on the bottom head a little more,” he told me. “It has a little more top end, which is how it cuts through so nicely, which is the crispness you’re hearing. A lot of snare samples sound like this but what’s so special here is that the top end of the music is uncluttered, which lets the snare ring out a little more, so there’s no masking.”

I suspected the minimalism of the mix was part of it. There’s not a lot of sounds in the mix, and everything is compelling – a perfect pocket of rhythm, Rashad’s vocal popping off the beat, and a keyboard riff with a distinctive understated tone that’s just as beautiful to my ear as that snare. The percussion sounds urgent enough to insist on physical movement, but there’s also a relaxed feel to the track that sets muscles at ease. It’s built for fluid, natural, steady movement.

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Piri “Cosuluvme”

“Cosuluvme” is Piri’s solo debut – as in, she’s singing, she’s writing, she’s producing, it’s all her. The lyrics basically explain how Piri & Tommy broke up, or more specifically, how they broke up as a couple and then as a band. There are some harsh lines directed towards Tommy (“he’s a baby boy, very young for 26”) but it’s not a bitter or mean spirited song. She mostly sounds frustrated with herself for trying to hold on to the relationship for longer than she should have, and eager to move on. And while he certainly added a touch of vaguely jazzy elegance to their songs together, she’s clearly well-equipped to carry on without him.

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Pearl & The Oysters “Doom Mood”

“Doom Mood” is a breezy bossa nova song, but with a surreal twist. It sounds like it was arranged with dream logic, so all the familiar elements of this sort of song feel slightly off: the guitar and percussion carry a manic, accelerated energy that contrasts with the song’s relaxed vibe, while the overdriven organ is so heavily saturated it evokes the sensation of heavy condensation. It’s not pushed to the point of breaking the mood, but it certainly signals an eccentric point of view.

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The Orielles “Wasp”

The Orielles’ music mostly exists within the aesthetic boundaries of post-punk, but there’s a larger ambition to it that nudges their more recent material closer to film scores, conceptual art, and rock opera. The songs imply grand scale and dramatic arcs without providing a lot of clear cut narrative, though it’s easy to track the feelings. “Wasps” is something of an outlier, as it’s not as wistful or digressive as other tracks on Only You Left, but it’s a crucial bit of tension and catharsis on a record that often sounds like a field recording of a melancholy daydream. The arrangment is gnarled and absurdly tight, very similar to a lot of songs by The Smile. Esmé Hand-Halford sounds serene as she sings lyrics that remind me a lot of the detached, clinical, and observational tone of a lot of Wire’s songs. There’s a dense metaphor to unpack there, but the words that ring out feel very raw and direct: “This is you apart from me,” “Now you see that I can’t forget you.”

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Nine Inch Nails “Parasite (Nine Inch Noize Version)”

Nine Inch Noize is essentially Trent Reznor going back to basics as an electronic/industrial artist, but with the X factor of collaborators he’s picked up along the way – the German producer Boys Noize, his regular partner Atticus Ross, and his wife Mariqueen Maandig. It’s all old songs given a fresh jolt of energy, but the approach varies. “Closer,” “Heresy,” and “Copy Of A” feel different, but the bones of those songs are so strong that the changes amount to a stylish makeover. Others shift more dramatically: “She’s Gone Away” is transformed so much that it feels like an entirely new song, and “Came Back Haunted” has mutated into a full-on dance banger.

The new version of “Parasite” is a revelation. The best elements of the original version from the How to Destroy Angels record are intact – the gently harmonized verse melody, a riff that sounds like it’s played on a chainsaw – but it’s otherwise rebuilt from parts mainly sourced from Boys Noize’s track “Xpress Yourself.” This shifts the genre to dance, but more accurately, it sounds like it should be the soundtrack to a chase sequence in a sci-fi horror movie. It starts out tense, and only gets more frantic once that chainsaw riff comes in, and it’s like suddenly you’re being tailed by a xenomorph and Leatherface. There’s no moment of catharsis or relief, just a burst of adrenaline and an eventual collapse. Maybe you’ve escaped?

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Frog “Je Ne Sais Pas”

There’s an interesting tension here between Frog’s high level of songwriting craft and their gleeful disregard for careerism. On one hand, “Je Ne Sais Pas” sounds like it could be the demo of a lost early 80s Hall & Oates song. On the other, they’re opening the song by singing “I want to fuck / I want to sick your duck.”

The track is lo-fi and feels artfully unfinished, as though you’re meant to sorta hear a more fleshed-out and polished version of it in your head while listening to the bashed-out piano chords and chintzy synth accompaniment that’s actually on tape. Part of me would love to actually hear a slick recording of the song, but I appreciate the impromptu vibe. This recording has a lot of character, and has that odd 90s slacker confidence: “Hey, I can knock out elegant songs like this any time, it’s easy.”

Once they get the most juvenile lines out of the way, the lyrics shift to a genuinely funny portrait of a loser guy with no game who’s bitter about a woman who’s left him in the dust. What a couplet: “Jen, I’m appalled that you never called / I was passionate, bald, and enthralled.”

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Ruth Garbus “I Think I’m Ready Now”

• I clearly recall the first time I heard I heard “I Think I’m Ready Now.” Ruth Garbus was opening for Fievel Is Glauque at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, and I was immediately pulled in by the song’s “what the hell did she just sing?” opening line: “When I penetrated that man I felt just like a dog.”

• The song is less lurid than you’d expect from that opener. Garbus’ language is vivid and memorable, contrasting vulgar and mundane imagery with a sort of cosmic philosophy. The lyrics are not narrative or didactic, but I think it’s basically a song about shame mixing with pleasure, and indignity as a path to enlightenment. Something like that.

• The arrangement is minimal: No percussion, the emphasis placed almost entirely on Garbus’ voice and tastefully strummed guitar. But there’s some subtle bits of accompaniment, like that lovely little organ flourish after the first line of the third verse, and the understated keyboard drone that harmonizes with her towards the end of the track.

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Of Montreal “When”

I say this with the greatest admiration and respect: Kevin Barnes is a messy bitch who lives for drama. Following his career over the long term means you get the highs and lows of his love life as it progresses through stages happiness and despair. He’s exceptionally good at capturing the best and worst feelings in vivid detail, to the extent that the darker records can be very difficult to listen to. The new Of Montreal record finds Barnes in a fairly manic moment – fresh out of a long-term relationship, newly relocated to Brooklyn, and searching for new connections. I initially assumed “When” was about the collapsed relationship because Barnes was singing “I just wanna fuck you again! / when can I fuck you again??” in the chorus and sounding kinda spiteful in the verses. As it turns out, it’s meant to be heard as an expression of extreme neediness in the context of a new relationship, a desperate plea for affection. I suppose this is a kinder vibe than wanting to have sex despite a relationship falling apart, but in either case, it’s Barnes being radically vulnerable and willing to appear pathetic and ugly.

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The Strokes “Going Shopping”

I like a bunch of songs by The Strokes but have never been a big fan, which I think largely comes down to how quickly their recordings wear out my ears with severe compression and narrow dynamic range. I get the appeal of their intricate, treble-heavy arrangements and sing-songy melody, but I can only take it in small doses. “Going Shopping,” the first single from their forthcoming seventh record, is much more to my taste. The tone is warmer and richer, and there’s a more of a casual feel to it. Like, it’s not loose, per se – they’re still doing their signature tight harmonic interplay, but it’s possible to suspend disbelief and think the leads are made up on the spot. I love the guitar tone on the rhythm part in the chorus enough to let the unneccessary AutoTune on Julian Cassablancas’ voice slide. I’d prefer the song without that effect, but I get the appeal of having this uncanny tonality in the middle of a track that otherwise feels so smooth and natural.

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Sofi Tukker featuring J Balvin “Cook”

“Cook” is a song for the body and not the mind. The track is pure adrenaline and sensation. It probably sounds great in a club, but I know it sounds amazing in a gym. That said, I find it kinda funny that the members of Sofi Tukker are singing innocuous lines about cooking up a fun song and wishing a loved one could see how successful they’ve become while J Balvin raps in Spanish about being a nymphomanic rock star/porn star who’s constantly on a mission to bust. And really, it’s the poignant aside that feels out of place – this is absolutely the most appropriate music for rapping about wanting to fuck.

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U2 is ground zero for me. They weren’t the first act I loved as a kid, but they were probably the first that I took seriously. Achtung Baby wasn’t my first album, but it was certainly the first that I absorbed as such – a world unto itself, sophisticated rock music for adults just a bit beyond my full comprehension as a 12 year old boy. It’s still one of my all-time favorite records, and I’m somehow still growing into it now even though I’m a lot older than U2 were at the time they made it.

U2 were one of the first acts where I learned all the lore, in part because I had an older friend who was an absolute fanatic and had read all the books and collected all the b-sides. I’d do the same with other artists as a teen – R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Pavement, The Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Blur, Radiohead – but U2 had some different tensions.

U2’s decisions could be extremely frustrating; their choices could be vexing. They have a tendency to overthink everything. I first encountered them at their creative and commercial apex, so I’ve spent decades witnessing their gradual decline. I love Pop, but they don’t and most other people dislike it, so that appreciating that record has always been a little fraught. I think All That You Can’t Leave Behind has some good songs but it’s mostly corny and mawkish, and I like How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb a bit more, but it’s kinda stale.

From there it gets trickier. I think most of No Line On the Horizon is clumsy and awful, and while I appreciate the concept of Songs of Innocence, only three or four of those songs actually hit the target. Songs of Experience is pure flopsweat, a band deep into middle age pushing back against waning commercial relevance by chasing the worst aspects of 2010s mainstream music by collaborating with the vile Ryan Tedder. What a depressing record – The Edge stripping away everything that made him an interesting musician in order to be more like OneRepublic. At least aim for Coldplay!

U2 have been semi-dormant for a long time. They haven’t released an album of new material since 2017, and aside from a few aggressively bad stand-alone singles, they’ve been solidly in retrospective mode. They put out Songs of Surrender, a collection of 40 new acoustic arrangements of old material, in 2023. Bono wrote a memoir with the same title. They played an Achtung Baby-themed residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas, which was the first run of shows they’ve ever performed without a core member of the band, as Larry Mullen Jr was recuperating from surgery at the time. I’m extremely jealous of everyone who got to see that show, by the way. I should’ve seen it, not you.

U2 quietly returned this year with two EPs of new material that were dropped without announcement or fanfare at the start and conclusion of Lent. Days of Ash, released on Ash Wednesday, a fairly dark set of songs meditating on grim recent events – the ICE occupation of Minneapolis, the genocide in Gaza, the Mahsa Amini protests in Iran. Easter Lily, released on Good Friday, is a brighter set of tracks focused on friendship and faith. The two EPs are a return to form, at least in that they’ve let go of chasing hits and have allowed themselves to simply sound like U2. If they’ve felt any anxiety in the past about relying on their stock moves, that’s gone now. This is factory settings U2.

This is a mixed blessing. It’s very nice to have new U2 songs that are embarrassing in some way, and even better that a few of them are among the best tracks they’ve released in the 21st century. But it’s a little deflating to notice how much this new material relies on iteration rather than inspiration. The Days of Ash tracks mostly sound like How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb but with Achtung Baby guitar flourishes. Easter Lily revisits the tonality and aesthetics of The Unforgettable Fire, but with a touch of All That You Can’t Leave Behind-era spiritual bombast. The Edge is mixing and matching elements of his established palette, but there’s nothing “new” here. I can’t tell whether that’s intentional or not.

U2 “Song of the Future”

I don’t want to damn this music with faint praise, but given the context, what else can I do? These songs aren’t anywhere near as excellent as what U2 produced between 1984 and 1997. “Song of the Future” is good U2 music, but it’s not great U2 music. If you already like U2, the lead guitar part will scratch a very specific Edge-itch. I definitely think mediocre U2 is better than a lot of other bands at their best. But if you don’t have a lot of affection for them, I don’t think a song like this will move the needle. I think this requires an existing investment in the band, and possibly also some sunk-cost mindset. Like, you sorta need to be impressed that they can still do it. You need to see them as rising above lowered expectations.

Buy it from Amazon.

U2 “Easter Parade”

“Easter Parade” is more interesting to me, and I think it has more to offer than nostalgia even if The Edge is going full The Unforgettable Fire mode with the composition. Mullen Jr’s drums feel especially brisk, and I love the bounce in Adam Clayton’s bass part. It all clicks together beautifully. I hope they have the sense to perform this one in concert.

Bono sings “Easter Parade” with the earnest and dramatic tone of his younger self, but where there was once a fiery urgency, he now conveys patience and certainty. People generally don’t think of Bono as being a humble guy, but there’s always been a true humility in his many songs of faith and devotion. “Something in me died but I was no longer afraid,” he sings in the chorus. Maybe this is where the growth and change is for late stage U2. Bono shedding the showmanship, stripping away his artifice, and standing before us as he’s always truly been: a believer.

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Rostam “Like A Spark”

“Like A Spark” feels loose and wide open from the start, with Rostam’s gentle strumming offset by a meandering lead played on acoustic guitar. It sounds like the two parts are wandering in the same general direction, in conversation but not necessarily locked together. It’s a lovely illustration of Rostam’s lyrical sentiment about loving someone without wanting to possess them. His guitar part is structured but easygoing, providing some space for the noodling lead to do its own thing without necessarily containing it. His voice is soft and relaxed, conveying gratitude, appreciation, and generosity. He sings “I only ever wanted you to feel freed of it” in the chorus, but he sounds like the one who’s been liberated.

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Squeeze “What More Can I Say”

Squeeze’s new record Trixies was written well before the band existed, back when Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook were teenagers in the mid-1970s. The record, a concept album about a nightclub set in the far-off 1980s, was shelved and the band pivoted to the new wave-adjacent sound of their initial run of classic records.

I can’t imagine they deliberately planned to keep a stockpile of songs written close to their prime to fully realize very deep into their career, but that’s effectively what they’ve done. The songs on Trixies aren’t quite up to the high standard of Cool for Cats, Argybargy, and East Side Story, but they’re not far off either. As it turns out, Difford and Tilbrook were pretty much fully formed songwriters from the start. The melodies are sharp, the songwriting is sophisticated, and the lyrics are vivid and witty. It’s basically exactly what you expect from Squeeze, but with some very obvious mid-70s influences – Bowie, solo McCartney, Roxy Music – in the mix.

Knowing that they wrote these songs so young adds an extra layer of charm to the material. They were teen boys fascinated by adult nightlife, imagining a fun and seedy world just beyond their experience. Even when the lyrics don’t quite gel, it’s still a fun glimpse into the minds of young guys who were clearly very excited to enter the world of adulthood, performed from the perspective of their much older selves.

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Lee “Scratch” Perry & Mouse On Mars “Rockcurry”

Who would’ve guessed that a “Hallagallo” groove would go so well with the stoned mutterings of dub reggae legend Lee “Scratch” Perry? Not me, but I’m not surprised, since I love pretty much anything with that distinct motorik groove. Mouse On Mars and the late Perry are an unexpected pairing but make sense when you consider how much of either’s body of work comes down to tweaking recordings until they become a bit surreal. Mouse On Mars also gravitate to odd vocal tones and cadences – they made an entire record with The Fall’s Mark E Smith back in the 2000s, and a lot of their best tracks include cartoonishly distorted vocals.

“Rockcurry” mixes familiar elements into a vaguely alien new form: Perry’s sleepy phrasing melting into the zoned-out groove, but contrasted with bright, super-saturated keyboards and a slightly-too-brisk tempo that adds a touch of garage flavor to the mix.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Slayyyter “Yes Goddd”

What if Justice circa 2007 went even harder? What if Kesha was kinda metal and way more unhinged? What if you combined those things, and drenched it in the musical equivalent of hot sauce? That’s basically what “Yes Goddd” is, but I feel like that’s still underselling its hyperactive maniac charm. It’s sleek and pop, but also brutal. Slayyyter used to be more of a novelty gay pop thing, but now she’s making music that would make me worry about the safety of people in the pit at her shows.

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Grace Ives “Neither You Nor I”

Grace Ives is a musical shape shifter, but her shape only shifts so much. Her voice and palette is consistent, but her songwriting mostly comes across as her writing her own version of “types” of songs. And it’s rarely obvious archetypes or particular popular songs. She’s a little more esoteric, like she’s trying to create a vision of pop that’s exclusively the sort of interesting non-hits that have been filling out pop records for a few decades now.

“Neither You Nor I” has the unmistakable feel of a trip hop-adjacent track circa 2000-2003. It’s mostly in the sound of the central loop, which has the semi-ironic cosmopolitan vibe of so many samples from that period. There is no credited sample in this song, which either means the label is being cagey about clearances or that Ives, John DeBold, and Ariel Rechtshaid created it from scratch. I would love for it to be the latter – it’d be the musical equivalent of people who bake Oreos from scratch at home.

The Ives-ness of the song comes through in the lyrics, in which she sings somewhat cryptically about a relationship with someone who’s interested in exploring kinks, but can only go so far with it. Which is nice, I guess, because it means they’re on the same page. The word that really stands out to me is “chubby,” which comes up a few times over. (“chubby little knife,” “stab in my chubby side”) It’s an interesting choice – it’s cute and mildly self-effacing, one of the more gentle words for fat, a little sexy for some people – but it’s also directly attached to violence in this context. You can infer a lot of mixed feelings and erotic tension in that juxtaposition.

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McLusky “As A Dad”

Anger is real. It’s arguably the strongest emotion we can feel, and it’s certainly the most destructive. There’s lots of ways for anger to be righteous and sensible, something that fuels constructive behavior. But I think more often than not, we experience anger in stupid, pointless, petty ways. It manifests in ways that make us look foolish. It can be hilarous.

This is basically the foundational premise of McLusky’s music. They convey earnest rage through pummeling distorted bass lines and gnarled guitar hooks, but Andrew Falkous’ lyrics and sneering vocal affect present that anger as absurd dark comedy. Sometimes he’s peevish and snarky, but mostly he comes across as someone who’s stepped outside himself just enough to get how funny and ridiculous his own rage is, so he leans all the way into it. The magic trick is that he doesn’t totally undermine the fury in the music. You get to have it both ways in McLusky songs.

“As A Dad” takes this approach to a natural conclusion, with Falkous singing from the perspective of a child taunting their father. It’s mean but mostly quite silly, the capricious cruelty of a mind that hasn’t developed empathy or a greater sense of context just yet. Falkous slips easily into this mindset, which feels very specific to a little kid, but is obviously still commonly found in adults.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

The New Pornographers “Votive”

Back in 2007 it felt like a big swerve when The New Pornographers’ fourth album Challengers was about 55% ballads. Up to that point, the band specialized in up-tempo bops. I saw shows early in their career which ended with a third of the audience dancing on stage with them. Even with a few notable ballads on Twin Cinema, the Challengers record came as a surprise. But in retrospect this seems crazy. There wasn’t that much of a change between the third and fourth record, and the shift towards variation in texture and tone was an inevitability as the band transitioned from supergroup project to ongoing band.

It’s almost 20 years later, and The New Pornographers have changed again. The Former Site Of, their tenth album, is pretty much bop-free. The tone is icier, the mood is fairly somber, and according to Carl Newman, the lyrics are interconnected song cycle that culminates in the the title track. (I’m taking his word on that–even with this narrative intention, his writing is as oblique as it’s ever been.)

The New Pornographers used to be one of Canada’s crop of too-many-people-on-stage bands, but they’ve shed some members in recent years. Kurt Dahle and Dan Bejar both departed after the group’s masterpiece Brill Bruisers in 2014, vestigial keyboard player Blaine Thurier bounced not long after, and the less is said about the ejection of their disgraced post-Dahle drummer, the better. The band’s been boiled down to essential personal: Carl Newman as sole songwriter and primary vocalist, Neko Case on vocals, Kathryn Calder on keyboards and harmony vocals, Todd Fancey on guitar, and John Collins on bass. Collins used to be more active as a producer, but that’s fallen by the wayside a bit as they’ve moved towards a mostly-remote recording process.

It’s not surprising that Newman would move towards slower, more atmospheric songs as The New Pornographers have become more of a recording project. And it’s not as though they need more rockers, since they’re already locked into a dozen or so of those that they always play live. But beyond matters of practicality and logic, it just sounds like this is where Newman is as a person. He sounds pessimistic and uncertain. There’s a sense of loss that permeates the new material, but not necessarily in the sense of literal mourning. It’s more like a frustration of knowing something is gone, but not quite knowing what it is or how it went away.

The opening verse of “Votive” genuinely bums me out:

My hands are cupped around a match
I’m just trying to keep the lights on
But a lighthouse should not be
In league with the rocks
Though at some point it’s all
Uncharted waters

I suppose I hear people sing more upsetting things all the time, but this degree of weariness gets under my skin. I listen to this and wonder, am I headed towards seeing everything as futile? Is it futile to resist a pull towards this feeling?

Buy it from Bandcamp.