Author Archive

Babaganoüj “Hoping That It’s You”

Power pop is basically rock music about loving rock music, and wanting to turn everything about ordinary life into glamorous, catchy, fun rock music. It’s about wanting action and romance and fun, and having complete faith that riffs and “doo-doo-doos” and hooks and zippy solos is a fast track to feeling those things. “Hoping That It’s You” is an exceptional example of the genre, and I was sucked into this band’s rock fantasy the second the guitar chords kicked in after the first line. I love the way this song is produced – it sounds like they did everything they could to get a Mutt Lange vibe on a budget, to the point that it sometimes resembles Shania Twain at her most rocking. That said, I can’t imagine Mutt being OK with having the flat, mumbly Charles Sale shadow Harriette Pilbeam’s lead vocal like that, but I like the contrast of her assertive, earnest voice and his sorta shy and stoned vibe.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

The Magnetic Fields “’66: Wonder Where I’m From”

“Wonder Where I’m From” is the first song on Stephin Merritt’s 50 Song Memoir, a record with a song for each year of his life up through the age of 50. This is the one that is ostensibly about the first year of his life, but since he can’t possibly have any memory of that time and probably didn’t have much interest in literally singing about being a newborn baby, the song is written more as an intro to the project. The song, which sounds like a luau as imagined by Paul McCartney circa Revolver*, is a meditation on the idea of being “from” a place. Merritt’s family moved so often when he was a child that he doesn’t feel rooted to any particular place other than generally being from the United States and the Northern Hemisphere. But it’s not entirely literal. He’s also wondering about how and why he exists, and what places and things meaningfully contributed to the construction of his identity. As a discrete song, it’s an open-ended thought, but in the larger context of the project, it’s essentially setting up the “plot” for the story of his life.

* Please note that Revolver came out in 1966, the year this song is set. I wonder if Merritt deliberately intended the bass melody to be so Beatles, but either way, I love that it strongly resembles the squarest aspects of the band in that time.

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The New Pornographers “Darling Shade”

Whiteout Conditions is the first New Pornographers album without two key founding members of the band. Most obviously, it’s the first without any songs written or sung by Dan Bejar. You’d think this would be a big deal, but it’s kinda…not? Bejar typically serves as a foil for Carl Newman – the Han Solo to Carl’s Luke Skywalker, if you will – but this record benefits musically and thematically from a more unified aesthetic, and finds Carl moving into emotional and tonal spaces previously occupied by Bejar on their records.

The bigger change is that the band’s original drummer Kurt Dahle left the group before they toured for Brill Bruisers, and Whiteout Conditions features his replacement, Joe Seiders. They’re both excellent drummers, but Seiders has a tighter groove and an approach to fills that’s more crisply mechanical and less fluid. Seiders presence is the foundation for the aesthetic changes on this record – the chilly synths and spiky guitars, a persistent sense of sublimated panic, rhythms that seem to be endlessly moving forward to nowhere in particular.

Newman has said that they were deliberately drawing on the influence of krautrock “motorik” beats on this record, and finding a way to graft their usual harmonic maximalism to that sort of focused, propulsive tempo. I think that’s most obvious and successful on “Darling Shade,” particularly in the way the music seems to coast on the groove in the chorus. The song resembles some previous Newman songs – most notably “Dancehall Domine” from Brill Bruisers and “Secretarial” from The Slow Wonder – but the rhythmic approach shifts where the emphasis usually falls in his melodies. The beat is more robotic, but the vocal feels less heroic and more vulnerable.

The cryptic paranoia and cynicism in the lyrics seem to have different stakes. In “Darling Shade,” and in most of the others, Carl sounds genuinely rattled by the outside world, whereas he’d come off as merely dismissive or entirely inscrutable in the past. Other songs on the record focus on coping, or escaping, or just finding a way to survive. It’s much darker than the other New Pornos albums, but it’s a welcome shift, and a lot more resonant and relevant to this moment in time than most people would expect from a band that’s been around for nearly two decades.

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Band Practice “I Want You”

This song is barely over a minute but it’s an incredibly vivid and nuanced portrait of an ephemeral but intense relationship at a specific moment in time. There’s a bit of manic desperation, and a little naiveté, and awkward but genuine lust, and the looming weight of cultural expectations, and the implication of an uneven age dynamic. Best of all, there’s the way the song conveys anxiety in fidgety, increasingly agitated strums, as if playing the guitar was a nervous tic about the same as pulling your hair, shaking your foot, or grinding your teeth.

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Salami Rose Joe Louis “Cyanotype of Blue”

Salami Rose Joe Louis composes her records as suites made up of short song vignettes, sorta like Robert Pollard when he’s in collage-rock mode, so the individual tracks can feel a bit abrupt out of context. I mean, I definitely wish “Cyanotype of Blue” was longer – the mood is so strong and the way it springs out of a sleepy mode into something a bit more swinging and bright could sustain at least another minute or two. But at the same time, there is something very compelling to me about songs that resolve themselves rather quickly, and records that are so full of musical ideas they don’t slow down to reiterate their own hooks.

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This is the fourth in the 1990s survey mix series, which will come out monthly in chronological order through this year. You can find the previous mixes here.

We’re in the thick of it now! This year, along with the next two, are unquestionably the most formative time for me as a young music fan and virtually all of my taste as an adult can be traced to something you can hear in this set. There’s a lot going on here, but there’s basically two dominant narratives here that will carry over into 1994 and 1995 – the explosion of alt-rock and indie rock on one hand, and a renaissance in hip-hop on the other. Younger listeners should keep in mind that a crucial difference between then and now is that alt-rock is very much the mainstream at this point, and Pearl Jam and Nirvana were popular on a level on par with – or greatly exceeding – that of major contemporary stars like Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Drake. They were very much the center of pop culture, though the vibrant rap and R&B scenes were also pretty crucial. I think it’s fair to say that this period of time from about 92-95 is as consistently cool as the mainstream has ever been, or at least as cool as it’s been in my lifetime.

Thanks to Paul Cox, Rob Sheffield, Sean T. Collins, Steve Kandell, Dan Kois, and Chris Conroy for their valuable assistance in putting this together.

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

The Smashing Pumpkins “Cherub Rock” / Pearl Jam “Animal” / Nirvana “Scentless Apprentice” / PJ Harvey “Man Size” / Liz Phair “Help Me Mary” / James “Laid” / The Cranberries “Linger” / Sarah McLachlan “Possession” / Janet Jackson “That’s the Way Love Goes” / Salt N Pepa “Shoop” / 2Pac “I Get Around” / Biggie Smalls “Party & Bullshit” / Cypress Hill “Insane in the Brain” / Wu-Tang Clan “7th Chamber Part II” / The Breeders “Cannonball” / Frank Black “Ten Percenter” / Stone Temple Pilots “Plush” / Red Hot Chili Peppers “Soul to Squeeze” / Porno for Pyros “Pets” / Belly “Feed the Tree” / Radiohead “Creep” / R.E.M. “Everybody Hurts” / Mazzy Star “Fade Into You” / New Order “Regret” / Annie Lennox “Little Bird” / Björk “Big Time Sensuality” / A Tribe Called Quest “Award Tour” / Dr. Dre & Snoop Doggy Dogg “Fuck With Dre Day (And Everybody’s Celebratin’)” / Tears for Fears “Break It Down Again” / U2 “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)”

DOWNLOAD DISC 2

Shudder to Think “X French T-Shirt” / The Flaming Lips “Pilot Can at the Queer of God” / Stereolab “Crest” / Onyx “Slam” / Outkast “Player’s Ball” / Black Moon “Who Got the Props?” / DJ Shadow & Asia Born “Send Them” / Snoop Dogg “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” / KRS-One “Sound of Da Police” / Mary J. Blige featuring The Notorious B.I.G. “What’s the 411? (Remix)” / Mariah Carey “Dreamlover” / Aerosmith “Cryin’” / Counting Crows “Mr. Jones” / Gin Blossoms “Hey Jealousy” / Blur “For Tomorrow” / Pulp “Lipgloss” / Alice In Chains “Rooster” / Tool “Sober” / Aphex Twin “On” / Moby “Move” / Whitney Houston “I’m Every Woman” / Tag Team “Whoomp! There It Is” / Naughty by Nature “Hip Hop Hooray” / The Pharcyde “Passin’ Me By” / Archers of Loaf “Web In Front” / Guided by Voices “Shocker in Gloomtown” / M.O.T.O. “It Tastes Just Like A Milkshake” / Sebadoh “Soul and Fire” / Letters to Cleo “Rim Shack”

DOWNLOAD DISC 3

Fugazi “Facet Squared” / Bikini Kill “Rebel Girl” / Huggy Bear “Her Jazz” / Bratmobile “Love Thing” / Yo La Tengo “From A Motel 6” / Pavement “Shoot the Singer” / Straitjacket Fits “Brittle” / Royal Trux “Back to School” / Velocity Girl “Here Comes” / Unrest “Make Out Club” / The Lemonheads “Into Your Arms” / Cracker “Low” / Faith Hill “Wild One” / Alan Jackson “Chattahoochee” / Garth Brooks “Ain’t Going Down (’Til the Sun Comes Up)” / Melissa Etheridge “Come To My Window” / Babyface “When Can I See You” / Toni Braxton “Another Sad Love Song” / Ace of Base “All That She Wants” / Robin S. “Show Me Love” / Haddaway “What Is Love?” / De La Soul “Breakadawn” / Me’Shell Ndegeocello “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night)” / 95 South “Whoot, There It Is” / Duice “Dazzy Duks” / Silk “Freak Me” / H-Town “Knockin’ Da Boots” / D.R.S. “Gangsta Lean” / Positive K “I Got A Man” / Arrested Development “Mr. Wendal” / Michael Jackson “Will You Be There”

DOWNLOAD DISC 4

Depeche Mode “I Feel You” / Type O Negative “Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)” / The Afghan Whigs “Gentlemen” / Lenny Kravitz “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” / One Dove “White Love (Guitar Paradise Edit)” / Sunscreem “Love U More” / RuPaul “Supermodel (You Better Work)” / Geto Boys “Six Feet Deep” / Billy Joel “The River of Dreams” / Phish “The Wedge” / Spin Doctors “Two Princes” / Collective Soul “Shine” / Dwight Yoakum “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere” / Matthew Sweet “Time Capsule” / George Strait “Easy Come, Easy Go” / Rosanne Cash “The Wheel” / Jodeci “Lately” / Meat Loaf “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” / Rod Stewart “Have I Told You Lately” / Crash Test Dummies “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” / The Verve “Slide Away” / Suede “Animal Nitrate” / Rage Against the Machine “Bombtrack” / Candlebox “Far Behind” / Shai “Baby I’m Yours” / Tony! Toni! Toné! “If I Had No Loot” / Lords of the Underground “Chief Rocka” / UB40 “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love with You”

DOWNLOAD DISC 5

The Roots “The Session (Longest Posse Cut In History)” / Guru “Trust Me” / KMD “What A Nigga Know?” / Tricky “Aftermath (Version 1)” / Cupid Car Club “Grace Juice Plus” / Jon Spencer Blues Explosion “Afro” / FU-Schnickens “What’s Up Doc? (Can We Rock?)” / Digable Planets “Where I’m From” / St. Etienne “You’re In A Bad Way” / The Loud Family “Inverness” / 10,000 Maniacs “Stockton Gala Days” / Helium “Lucy” / The Juliana Hatfield Three “My Sister” / Grant Lee Buffalo “Fuzzy” / Randy Travis “Look Heart, No Hands” / Doug Supernaw “I Don’t Call Him Daddy” / Frenté! “Bizarre Love Triangle” / Lorrie Morgan “What Part of No?” / Buffalo Tom “Sodajerk” / Dig “Believe” / Melvins “Honey Bucket” / Superchunk “Precision Auto” / Sunny Day Real Estate “8” / Sepultura “Refuse/Resist” / Luscious Jackson “Daughters of the Kaos” / Boss “Recipe of a Hoe” / US3 “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)” / Sting “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” / Duran Duran “Ordinary World”

DOWNLOAD DISC 6

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” / Mary Lou Lord “Some Jingle Jangle Morning” / Urge Overkill “Sister Havana” / Primus “My Name Is Mud” / Green Jelly “Three Little Pigs” / Slowdive “Alison” / Cowboy Junkies “Anniversary Song” / Morphine “Buena” / Everclear “Your Genius Hands” / Heatmiser “Candyland” / Fastbacks “Gone to the Moon” / Chug “Flowers” / Pet Shop Boys “Go West” / Leftfield “Open Up” / Underworld “Mmm…Skyscraper I Love You” / Pete Rock “Lots of Lovin’” / Jade “Don’t Walk Away” / Kirsty MacColl “Angel” / INXS “Beautiful Girl” / Dinosaur Jr “Start Choppin’” / American Music Club “All Your Jeans Were Too Tight” / Joe Diffie “John Deere Green” / Denis Leary “Asshole” / Mercury Rev “Bronx Cheer” / Boss Hog “Ruby” / Don Caballero “For Respect” / Manic Street Preachers “La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)” / The Ocean Blue “Sublime” / Elvis Costello & The Brodsky Quartet “For Other Eyes” / Donald Fagan “Snowbound” / Prince “Pink Cashmere”

DOWNLOAD DISC 7

Zhane “Hey Mr. DJ” / Usher “Call Me A Mack” / Portrait “Here We Go Again” / Original Flavor “Can I Get Open” / Shaggy “Oh Carolina” / Madonna “Rain” / Take That “Pray” / Xscape “Just Kickin’ It” / The Auteurs “American Guitars” / Swervedriver “Duel” / The Boo Radleys “Lazarus” / Polvo “Tilebreaker” / Medicine “Never Click” / P.M. Dawn “Looking Through Patient Eyes” / Redman “Time 4 Sum Aksion” / Smooth “You Been Played” / Smooth Touch “House of Love” / Autechre “Bike” / Atari Teenage Riot “Kids Are United” / Curve “Superblaster” / The Catherine Wheel “Crank” / The Verlaines “Heavy 33” / Elastica “Stutter” / Teenage Fanclub “Hang On” / The Posies “Dream All Day” / The The “Love Is Stronger Than Death” / Tracy Lawrence “Alibis” / Coverdale Page “Pride and Joy” / Ethyl Meatplow “Devil’s Johnson” / The Alkaholiks “Only When I’m Drunk” / Butthole Surfers “Who Was In My Room Last Night?”

DOWNLOAD DISC 8

The Proclaimers “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” / 4 Non Blondes “What’s Up” / Inner Circle “Bad Boys” / Snow “Informer” / Boy Krazy “That’s What Love Can Do” / Mr. Blobby “Mr. Blobby” / Cannibal Corpse “Hammer Smashed Face” / Reba McEntire “The Heart Won’t Lie” / John Michael Montgomery “I Love the Way You Love Me” / Brian McKnight “One Last Cry” / David Bowie “Jump They Say” / The Fall “Why Are People Grudgeful?” / Fishbone “Swim” / Big Head Todd and the Monsters “Bittersweet” / Sugar “Tilted” / Paul Westerberg “World Class Fad” / Noise Addict “I Wish I Was Him” / Sheryl Crow “Run, Baby, Run” / Jeremy Jordan “The Right Kind of Love” / µ-Ziq “Iesope” / Illegal feat. Eric Sermon “We Getz Buzy” / Compulsion “Basketcase” / House of Pain & Helmet “Just Another Victim” / Freestyle Fellowship “Inner City Boundaries” / S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. “It’s Gonna Be A Lovely Day” / MC Lyte “Ruffneck” / Ned’s Atomic Dustbin “Not Sleeping Around” / The Connells “’74-’75” / Smog “37 Push Ups” / Palace Brothers “Idle Hands Are the Devil’s Plaything” / Israel Kamakawiwo’ole “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World”

Living “Glory”

Chillwave happened long enough ago that there are many young musicians for whom Washed Out and Toro Y Moi could be formative influences. Which is funny, because it doesn’t feel so long ago to me, but I was already in my late 20s and many years into doing this site when that went down. I can’t say for sure that Living are directly influenced by all of that stuff, but it seems like a very reasonable bet going on their music, which draws on a lot of the same aesthetics and effects but is a bit more early Britpop when it comes to melody. (Which is to say: they write better hooks.) The psychedelic vibe in “Glory” is so strong and seductive that I hardly noticed how strong the melodies were at first – that’s something that became more apparent with repeat listening. Now it’s not totally necessary to actually listen to the thing, since the chorus is lodged in my brain and shows up any time it goes clear. Pretty sure I was dreaming about it last night.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Raekwon “Nothing”

The best compliment I can pay to Frank G, the guy who produced this track, is that when I first heard it I thought “wow, is Raekwon back with the RZA?” “Nothing” reminds me a lot of the eerie barebones minimalism of RZA’s work The W, especially the Raekwon showcase “Hollow Bones.” Both songs focus in on one particularly pained vocal moment from another song and loop it through the track, establishing an emotional baseline that contrasts nicely with Rae’s tough, throaty voice. The “I have nothing” sample is cut up in irregular patterns – it gets extended into a ghostly trill, stuttered or cut off, and sometimes looped in a more symmetrical meter. Even with Raekwon’s presence on the mic, the sample is the focus of the track. To some extent, that’s just the power of treble, but it’s also far more emotional than Raekwon’s sober, gruff rhymes, and the only element that resonates as much is a piano sample that gets dropped in occasionally for punctuation.

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Father John Misty “Pure Comedy”

If you’ve ever been lucky enough to karaoke with Rob Sheffield, you may have seen his take on John Lennon’s “God.” If you’re not familiar with the song, it’s this ballad in which Lennon runs down a list of people and concepts he doesn’t believe in, some of which he pronounces in rather dubious ways. He denounces the Bible, Jesus, Hitler, and Buddha before getting to the big thing in the climax: Holy shit, John Lennon doesn’t believe in BEATLES!!! It’s a good song, but also one that is unintentionally funny in its overeagerness to be provocative. Rob performs the song as if he’s doing stand up comedy, and draws on the spirit of a “truth teller” like Lenny Bruce deliberately trying to rile up a crowd. Rob plays it like someone delighting in a heel turn while having a smug confidence that they’re the one who is right about everything. It’s hilarious.

I think Father John Misty is coming from a pretty similar place with “Pure Comedy.” It’s a similar sort of piano-centric ballad, and though FJM is considerably less self-absorbed and solipsistic in his lyrics than John Lennon, he’s going for the same sort of TRUTH BOMBS in his words. Everything in “Pure Comedy” casts the human condition as a joke, including the fact that it’s a straight white guy from America who’s letting you in on the joke. Even if you’re inclined to think FJM is a douche, his case for the absurdity of humanity is pretty tight and surprisingly subtle for a song that’s expressing a deep alienation from society at large. A lot of what makes this song work both musically and lyrically is that the song is always giving you an indication that Misty isn’t getting much pleasure from this nihilistic outlook, and genuinely wants people to be better than this. Seeing all of this as a big joke is a coping strategy and a defense mechanism against all the horror and idiocy in the world, and you only need to do that if you sincerely care.

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Quelle Chris “Popeye”

Quelle Chris’ Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often opens with “Buddies,” a slightly tongue-in-cheek song about self-love that simultaneously pokes fun at narcissism while embracing a healthy self-esteem. I mention this because I’m not writing about that song, but rather the track immediately after it. “Popeye” is the reverse sentiment, with Chris muttering about failure and frustration. He isn’t beating himself up, but he is looking at his life and his art with clear, unsympathetic eyes and questioning a commitment to something that hasn’t resulted in that much. All of this is set against a track built around a vocal loop that feels melancholy but also kinda heroic, like something you’d play in a flashback to leaner times in the life of someone who later became a big deal. Maybe that’s exactly what Chris is trying to get across here.

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Spiral Stairs “Emotions”

The last time Spiral Stairs put out a record was about eight years ago, and I reviewed it for Pitchfork. I know the review bothered him a lot, and I don’t blame him. I wrote about how he served as an important foil to Stephen Malkmus in Pavement, and stand by that. I compared their dynamic to that of Milhouse Van Houten and Bart Simpson, which I think is accurate, but also kinda mean. Again, I can’t blame Spiral for hating that review. (For what it’s worth, Milhouse is by far my favorite Simpons character.)

It’s weird knowing that one of the guys in my favorite band personally dislikes me, especially since I have nothing but good feelings about him. Spiral is an underdog I like to root for, and a talent who has been undervalued for getting on 25 years. Part of the problem here is that it’s hard to stand up for Spiral’s gifts without seeming contrary or overzealous. He’s not an idiosyncratic, one-of-a-kind genius like Malkmus. He’s original and interesting in a less obvious way, and connecting with him requires some degree of identification with his particular type of artsy nerdiness and his oddly evasive approach to expressing himself.

Even at his most direct – which accounts for a lot of his new album, Doris and the Daggers – Spiral seems like a guy who wants to say something straightforward, but gets shy and walks that feeling back a bit. Malkmus isn’t much different, actually. But whereas that guy projects a superhuman ease and confidence, Spiral can’t help but seem awkward and self-effacing. This is not a bad thing! My favorite Spiral moment is when he pushes himself to go louder and more plaintive in “Kennel District” – “I wanted to stay there / but you know I needed more than that” – and conveys an aching regret anyone could recognize. Not every line of that song scans, but he wasn’t afraid to make sure the important bits stand out. “That little look in your eye.” “I was busted in my gut that time I said ‘I know it’s true.’” “Why didn’t I ask, why didn’t I ask, why didn’t I ask?” It’s the closest thing Pavement ever came to something that could’ve been in a John Hughes movie, and there’s no way it could’ve come from Malkmus. I can’t imagine Malkmus ever actually experienced the feeling of that song, or at least he didn’t in the way a guy like Spiral could.

“Emotions,” like pretty much all the songs on Doris and the Daggers, has this crisp, sunny tone that is immediately recognizable as Spiral’s aesthetic. It was there in the later Pavement records, and has carried through most of his Preston School of Industry and solo material. It’s become cleaner over time as his playing has become more confident and precise. The new songs sound like little labors of love, you can hear the patience and care that went into them. The guy who used to be even more off-the-cuff than Malkmus has evolved into the type of guy who lives with songs for a while, and invests each with some personal significance. You really can hear eight years of life in the album – ending and starting relationships, watching a kid grow up, moving across the world. It’s like catching up with someone after too long.

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J.I.D featuring Mereba “All Bad”

J.I.D is primarily a rapper, and he raps very well throughout his new record The Never Story, but when I was choosing a song to feature here I had to go with this track where he’s mostly singing. “All Bad” has the tone of a sexy slow jam, but the lyrics are about a relationship that’s breaking down in slow motion. The emotions are complicated and messy on both sides, and neither seem to be ready to confront the other’s version of “the truth.” Mereba’s verse is a bit more confrontational in tone, but you can still hear a lot of love mixed in with the hurt. Hollywood JB’s production ties it all together with a gorgeous but low-key organ part that sounds like it’s being played slowly with a bit of caution, mirroring the way both singers are treading lightly around the most painful subjects in order to spare the other’s feelings. There’s a woozy feeling to it too, especially at the end when the keyboard part is suddenly pitched up as it’s being played.

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Real Estate “After the Moon”

Nearly all of Real Estate’s songs feel like they take place at some point in the afternoon. Maybe one will feel like 1 PM on sunny Saturday in April, or another more like an overcast 3 PM on a Sunday in September. But there’s something in the band’s guitar tone that has the ring of daylight to it, and something in Martin Courtney’s voice that expresses a very minor sort of melancholy that guarantees a “enjoy this nice moment while it lasts” subtext to every tune. “After the Moon” is the first Real Estate song I’ve heard that sounds like a night song – a little slower, a little more delicate, some suggestion of moonlight in the timbre of the chords. Courtney must agree with this impression of the music, as his lyrics fixate on the night as well. There’s a sadness and frustration in his words, but the sound of it is incredibly placid. Even as the negative feelings come out, they seem to almost immediately dissipate.

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Spoon “Do I Have To Talk You Into It?”

Spoon is the rare type of band whose style is essentially a sub-genre of their own making, with its own set of formal rules and quirks particular to their musical strengths. Spoon songs fall on a continuum of them stepping outside of their comfort zone while retaining their character – the new sax-based instrumental “Us,” for example – to adapting a familiar song type to their style – “I Summon You,” “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” – to a song like “Do I Have To Talk You Into It,” which is pure, unfiltered Spoon aesthetics. You get Jim Eno’s in-the-pocket yet slightly off-kilter drums; Britt Daniel’s soulful yet playful rasp hovering around the beat; the distinctly dry direct-input tone of the piano setting on an electric keyboard; miscellaneous odd sounds that float through the mix but never occupy the big chunk of negative space at the core of the track. This one’s got it all, folks. It’s Spoon as fuck.

The interesting thing here is that this extremely Spoon-ish song seems to be about Spoon. Britt’s lyrics seem to be about some romantic or sexual relationship on the surface, but a closer read – paired with some basic knowledge of the guy’s biography – suggests that this is actually about his long collaboration with Jim. (Here’s another clue for you all: there’s a verse about someone named Jimmy, and the walrus was Paul.) So it’s funny that the song on the new record that sounds the most like Britt in dialogue with Jim’s drumming on a musical level may also be that on a lyrical level too, with him reflecting on their personal dynamic and dealing with the frustrations of any long term partnership.

There’s also an intriguing aside about the downside of being in a long-running successful band, i.e., people moving on to some other hot new thing: “When the mood of the era’s gone / everybody’s fading me, even my ma!” This explains a lot of Britt’s restless feeling, but the sense of “eh, who cares, let’s just keep doing our thing” sentiment in this song is stronger.

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Your Old Droog “You Can Do It! (Give Up)”

It’s hard to tell whether this song, which details the terrible decisions that wrecked three people who started out in life with great promise, is meant to be taken as a cautionary tale, or just some deeply pessimistic schadenfreude. Your Old Droog sounds genuinely disappointed in the failed basketball star in the first verse, but there’s noticeable bile in the way he talks about the would-be model and the aspiring rapper in the second and third verses. But the song isn’t just “look at these pathetic assholes.” Droog’s lyrics are really about the social pressures and negative influences that derailed these people, and without stressing it too much, draws your attention to how these stumbling blocks get built into black American culture as an end result of institutional racism. The point here isn’t that these people are stupid for trying – trying is a good thing – but are likely irrevocably fucked for life because they failed.

Also: I was going nuts trying to figure out what sample this song was built on, and was thinking it was something from the ’70s but couldn’t place it. As it turns out, it’s Richard Swift’s “Lady Luck,” a song that was featured here a few years ago.

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Faye Webster “She Won’t Go Away”

“She Won’t Go Away” is a country rock song, but Faye Webster’s arrangement keeps the most obvious country signifiers at a minimum. I don’t think this is a case of trying to pretend the song isn’t what it is to bait and switch the audience, but rather that Webster is prioritizing the backbeat by leaving a lot of negative space around the drum track. It’s one of those ‘70s melancholy groove records, like Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” or Todd Rundgren’s “I Saw the Light,” but with the clean, digital tone of keyboard-based rap. The sound of the instruments is remarkably crisp, but Webster’s voice is a lot more raw – not fragile, per se, but certainly more weathered than everything else in the mix.

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The Shins “Cherry Hearts”

As it turns out, all I ever really needed to appreciate The Shins more was for James Mercer to do his regular thing but with, like, 60% more Scritti Politti and Erasure vibes. “Cherry Hearts” is a perky, bouncy synth pop tune about the most synth pop topic possible: A confusing crush that leaves you feeling both euphoric and neurotic. “You kissed me once while we were drunk,” Mercer sings a few times in each chorus, repeating the thought as if it will all become totally logical if he thinks about it enough. He probably wouldn’t even be hung up on this girl if that moment never happened, and there wasn’t some hope for something more. He’s frustrated and flustered, but the song makes it clear that he loves the excitement of it all.

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Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble featuring Alexis Taylor “Love Captive”

“Love Captive” begins with Laetitia Sadier and Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip repeating a line that is about as Laetitia Sadier as it gets: “Like so many other things, love has to be reinvented.” It’s the syntax, it’s the succinct statement, it’s the way she makes revolutionary ideas seem both urgent and sensible. This could easily be something she would have sung in Stereolab, but I don’t think the sentiment would have suited that band’s aesthetic as well as this loose, gently swaying arrangement. Stereolab songs were so tight and geometric; they don’t feel much like the sort of free love Sadier is proselytizing here. Sadier is encouraging freedom, kindness, and generosity, not a lack of responsibility. She’s imagining a world with fewer hang-ups, less destructive jealousy, fluid sexuality, and abundant love for all. It’s a vision of utopia, and the music helps make her argument by feeling so incredibly relaxed and vaguely spiritual.

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Laura Marling “Nothing Not Nearly”

Laura Marling always sounds so certain, and since so many of her songs are reflecting on something in the past, her records sound like the product of months – or even years – of quiet contemplation. “Nothing Not Nearly” is essentially a report on a romantic relationship gone right. She’s recalling shared moments and little displays of affection, and coming to the conclusion that, in an otherwise dark time for her, this love was necessary and crucial. This being a clear-eyed Laura Marling song, there is a catch: She’s already concerned that the “afterglow” is fading, and she can’t help but imply that this person not being “afraid of trees or bears or anything with tendencies to wanna hurt you good” extends to her too. Even the way she sings the song suggests she’s trying to enjoy this while it lasts, as packs as many words as she can into the meter of the verses, and sings the chorus with a bit of a melancholy sigh.

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Karriem Riggins “Bahia Dreamin'”

Instrumental hip-hop is such an odd space – a logical and satisfying presentation for a lot of musical ideas that might otherwise need to compete with a rapper for your attention, but also vaguely unsatisfying as your ear is trained to expect to hear a rapper rapping. For every DJ Shadow or Prefuse 73 track that stands out as a powerful and thoughtfully composed piece of music, there’s a bunch of interesting beats that make you nod and go “huh, [some rapper you like] would sound great over this.”

Karriem Riggins’ Headnod Suite can sometimes veer into the latter category, but his best compositions have a rhythmic and harmonic density that’s emotionally resonant and a bit too busy to pair with vocals. The main hook in “Bahia Dreamin’” is a call-and-response between a slightly clipped up keyboard riff and wordless vocals, but within two minutes the rhythmic thread holding it all together is unraveled, tangled, and unwound again while some odd bass notes and unexpectedly lovely piano melodies fill in the more chaotic moments. It’s just barely over two minutes, but it’s a flood of good ideas.

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Matt Martians “Alotta Women/Useless”

Speaking of instrumental hip-hop, this song by Matt Martians could just be a loop of the beat and that slightly distorted keyboard hook and I would be perfectly happy. But Martians keeps the track moving through two minutes of he said/she raid rap verses and a couple runs through a chorus before flipping the beat entirely. The “Useless” section is more overtly funky and melodic, spinning through busier keyboard parts and vocal melodies while the “Alotta Women” section was mostly static on an instrumental level. I like this diptych structure – this could easily be cut up into discrete tracks, but keeping it this way deepens either side by suggesting a parallel narrative and a more complicated set of emotions.

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Note: I’m posting these two songs together because I sorta accidentally discovered that they sound fantastic back to back, as if the Riggins track was always meant to transition into the Martians tune. Try it yourself.

Jay Som “1 Billion Dogs”

Melina Duterte’s voice blurs slightly into the treble haze of her guitar on “1 Billion Dogs” – not enough to obliterate its character or totally obscure her words, but just enough to make the sounds feel like they’ve merged into one big wave. The song begins in a state of acceleration and never really lets up for nearly three minutes. The only real break is a solo near the end, but that has a broken, shambling quality that sounds as though Duterte is scrambling to get the notes out before the weight of all the guitar distortion comes crashing down on her. It’s always nice when a rock song feels like a chase sequence in a film.

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