An Inconvenient Christmas

Mitski “I Don’t Like My Mind”

The first several times I heard “I Don’t Like My Mind” I didn’t pay very close attention to the lyrics and just took in the sound of it, which feels essentially like Mitski doing her own variation of Angel Olsen in reverb-heavy country ballad mode. The mix is incredible – her voice loud and clear, the accompaniment slightly blurred into abstraction. I was so taken by the emotion of it all that I just did not notice that the chorus is about eating an entire cake alone. This is funny and unexpected, but also a level of specificity that makes her lyrics about struggling with impulse control and general misery feel a lot more grounded and real. It’s a punchline at her own expense, but also, like, a genuinely concerning detail that suggests some things a lot darker than she’s willing to spell out in the song.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Laurel Halo “Belleville”

“Belleville,” like the rest of Laurel Halo’s excellent new record Atlas, sounds like a very specific kind of nowhere. It’s mostly a piano instrumental but the piano part sounds semi-improvised, as though someone was passing through a house, spotted a piano, and sat down to play for a few minutes. But this is really more of an ambient track so you hear the room as much as the music, making it sort of like an installation art piece that you can only hear and infer what else is in that space. There’s vague traces of violin, non-musical sounds made by the body as the instrument is played, some hint of weather outside. A minute and a half in there’s a sudden burst of layered vocals that brightens the sound considerably and adds implied depth as it sounds like it’s in “focus” while everything before it and around it is considerably hazier.

Buy it from Bandcamp.