November 21st, 2011 1:00am
It can be so difficult to reconcile the sophistication and sexiness of this music with the fact that it was written and performed by a gawky teenage boy. Archy Marshall’s voice is immediately fascinating – it has the poetic English grit of a Joe Strummer or latter-day Elvis Costello, but a more elastic phrasing than either. “The Noose of Jah City” frames his voice with echoing guitar, shimmering keyboards and a dubby bass line; it sounds like the middle of night. The lyrics get rather morbid, but the sound and feeling is pure romance. And you know, even if the words aren’t about sex and love, there is a romanticism in imagining the end of your life, right?
November 18th, 2011 1:00am
It’s pretty easy to listen to Action Bronson’s debut album and kinda lose track of things and find yourself thinking “Man, this new Ghostface album is terrific.” The vocal similarity is remarkable, but the skill levels are different – Bronson is witty and nimble, but Ghost’s flows are more eccentric and emotionally volatile. Bronson’s obsession with food gives his album Dr. Lecter a lot of color and character, and in “Ronnie Coleman,” he engages the dark side of that obsession with a lot of brutal honesty and humor. It’s almost impossible to find music that frankly addresses the psychological elements of dealing with obesity, so it’s sort of exciting to hear a song that nails it while being quite complex, funny and funky.
November 17th, 2011 1:00am
Cold-blooded country pop. This song benefits from being sung by a trio of vocalists – it might be a bit too static with one singer, but the dynamic improves the piece on a line-to-line level. The Miranda Lambert parts are most compelling, mainly because she conveys the least compassion for her character’s mark, but I think the relative sweetness of Ashley Monroe and the sassy tone of Angaleena Presley balances it all out. It’s a dark fantasy, but the suggestion of three separate faces for the same character adds a touch of humanity to what could just be cartoonish cruelty.
November 16th, 2011 1:00am
My favorite rap tracks are usually posse cuts: a steady, repetitive beat and a series of verses, preferably with no chorus. The instrumental for “Huzzah” isn’t totally static – there’s a few flourishes to accentuate particular lines – but it’s not really the draw here. The dynamics are all in the vocal performances, and the contrast of very different rhyme styles. Despot and Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire bookend the piece with aggressive, rough rhymes, while the Das Racist guys are, respectively, lackadaisical and charmingly sloppy. The most remarkable performances here are by Danny Brown, who sounds more like a maniacal animated character than a human being, and El-P, who delivers a stunningly crafted verse containing a subtle escalating counting theme and a narrative about rioters in London. He might be the least magnetic rapper on the track, but seriously, those lyrics. Wow.
November 15th, 2011 1:00am
The obvious thing that Andy Falkous is very good at is making his making his voice hit the speakers with a blunt, violent force. This is especially powerful when paired with a sharp, stabbing riff, like the one found in the first half of this song. The less obvious thing that Falkous does well – and really, that’s kind of an understatement, he truly excels at this – is in constructing songs that cycle through a series of hooks before moving on to other ever-escalating melodic patterns. It’s an unusually sophisticated strength for a guy who essentially makes heavy, venomous punk rock.
“Polymers Are Forever” is split down the middle – the first half is more bludgeoning, his voice alternating between nasal hectoring and throaty shouts. The second half seems to expand in scale, with a quasi-anthemic chorus that seems to stretch out from close-up to widescreen panorama. (Structurally and tonally, it’s rather similar to Wire’s classic “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W.”) In this section, Falkous’ voice is more distant and pitiless, like an indifferent god. With this contrast, the implied violence of the first part seems almost warm and intimate – undeniably human. The rest of it, though – it’s all science.
November 14th, 2011 1:00am
“Ultra Violet” has been one of my favorite songs for 20 years now, and I find that I as I get older, I only love it more. This makes some sense: It’s a song about adult love, and a connection that endures so that both partners can show each other support in hard times. This could be a very trite song, but it’s not – Bono’s lyrics make it clear that none of this comes easy, and the band successfully convey a sense that this love is genuinely miraculous and invigorating. That passion and excitement comes through in the Edge’s unusually jaunty guitar rhythm, but that’s contrasted with a solemn, gorgeous bass line by Adam Clayton that emphasizes the intensity and romance at the heart of the piece.
The lyric that totally slays me comes at the climax of the final verse: “When I was all messed up and I heard opera in my head / your love was a light bulb hanging over my bed.” The sentiment is one thing, but the specificity of the language is what gets me. I picture this bulb dangling on a cord above a squalid mattress, the light casting about, warping shadows around the room as it sways.
November 10th, 2011 1:00am
There’s a girlishness to the sound of Claire Boucher’s voice on this track that makes the music seem a bit twee, but there’s something a bit deeper and darker going on in the arrangement. The tune seems to tangle itself around a synth part that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Knife or Little Dragon record, the vocal melody sounding a bit like someone trying to sing “I Think We’re Alone Now” but not quite getting it right. The swirling piano-like sound and wordless vocals on the breakdown are another curveball – simple and innocent, but very sophisticated in its construction. The piece subtly mutates a couple more times after that without losing its shape. Tuneful, emotionally ambiguous stuff.
November 9th, 2011 1:00am
When I interviewed Bradford Cox last week he told me that of the songs on his new album Parallax, “Mona Lisa” didn’t mean all that much to him and that it mainly served a musical purpose in the overall composition of the record. This took me by surprise because since I got a copy of the album a month or so ago, it was the track I zeroed in on and listened to repeatedly, at the expense of the other songs. But thinking on it now, I can see why he’d feel that way: Whereas other songs on the album express specific anxieties and desires, “Mona Lisa” is very vague. It’s all melody and feeling. And that’s why I’m responding to – the way it sounds like a vague echo of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord;” the understated beauty in the piano part and vocal harmonies. I’ve projected a lot on to this tune, but if pressed, I don’t think I could really explain what I’ve projected upon it. It’s one of those songs I know I’ll hear a few years ago and identify with this particular period of time.
November 8th, 2011 1:00am
I love the crispness of Pusha T’s voice – even aside from the careful construction of his rhymes, there’s something about his verses that brings to mind freshly laundered and neatly folded clothing. There are more nimble and graceful emcees, but I like the way he hits his marks – even, careful, obviously proud of his meticulous craftsmanship. He shines in tracks like this one, where the beat and accompaniment is just as clean as his vocals, and nothing crowds out the sound of his voice.
November 7th, 2011 1:00am
Slow Club @ Rock Shop 11/4/2011
Where I’m Waking / Our Most Brilliant Friends / Never Look Back / Horses Jumping / Beginners / If We’re Still Alive / Only If You’re Certain / The Dog / Two Cousins // Giving Up On Love
There are a lot of cute, energetic indie-pop bands out there, and I worry that Slow Club gets lost in the shuffle somewhat, and that people just think of them as another twee Matt & Kim thing. But while Slow Club may have some superficial similarity to other contemporary acts, their skill level as songwriters and musicians is a cut above. As I wrote in my review of their new album Paradise on Pitchfork, Rebecca Taylor has blossomed into an outstanding vocalist – confident and bold, but with a degree of subtlety and restraint. Though the band is a bit more wild in concert, this nuance carries over to the live performance.
“Beginners” is the band – and Taylor – at their best. The arrangement has some force and intensity, but the rumble of the percussion doesn’t over shadow the vocal melody. It’d be such a shame if it did – so much of what makes this song totally heart breaking lies in the way Taylor’s voice inflects on lines like “of all the things to lose / it’s you I choose” and “I know I haven’t got all the answers / if I did I would be screaming them out!” This is clearly a song about complex feelings, and just enough gets spelled out that you can infer a lot more just from the feeling.
November 4th, 2011 1:00am
St. Vincent @ Webster Hall 11/3/2011
Surgeon / Cheerleader / Save Me From What I Want / Actor Out of Work / Chloe in the Afternoon / Dilettante / Cruel / Just the Same But Brand New / Champagne Year / Neutered Fruit / Strange Mercy / She Is Beyond Good and Evil / Northern Lights / Year of the Tiger / Marrow // The Party / Your Lips Are Red
I wrote a review of this show for Rolling Stone. Go read it.
There are a few pronouns scattered through “Chloe in the Afternoon,” but it’s hard to get a read on the perspective. Maybe that’s the point, though: The BDSM prostitution scenario described by the lyrics is a fantasy played out as a strictly professional transaction, and so both parties are at some distance from the experience. The woozy atmosphere and sterile electronics contrast nicely with violent, highly gestural guitar parts and perhaps the most overtly sexy vocal performance of Annie Clark’s career to date. It’s exactly the right tone for a song that evokes equal parts kink and disassociation.
November 2nd, 2011 1:00am
I was concerned that SBTRKT’s show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg would be little more than some guy putting on a mask and treating the audience to a glorified album listening party, but thankfully he and his partner Sampha put in the effort to do an actual live show. Granted, a lot of the show involved hitting buttons on a wide array of equipment laid out on stage, but Sampha’s live vocals and SBTRKT’s live percussion went a long way towards providing a physicality beyond that of the audience, who responded to the throbbing bass and busy beats with great enthusiasm. (I was in a balcony, so I had a good few of the people up front losing it, and a patch of people in the middle who kept inexplicably moshing.) Interestingly enough, though the vocal-centric material is what connects best on record, the instrumental digressions were often the most compelling bits in this set.
November 1st, 2011 1:00am
You don’t get a lot of songs like this anymore. As much as people have mined the Eighties for dance pop inspiration, I find that musicians tend to shy away from “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” levels of jubilation, much less mix it up with programming that sounds like something Vince Clarke would come up with on an especially perky day. This may be Gaga’s most gleeful song, and the words match the tone – she’s basically singing about how much she loves a guy, and framing it all in the context of fashion and clothes because, well, she’s very passionate about that too. Boil this down to it essence, and it’s really a song about being excited and inspired.
October 31st, 2011 1:00am
Florence and the Machine are generally considered to be a secular act, but their new album sounds like straight-ahead modern gospel, complete with overt references to God, salvation and transcendence. It’s modern gospel, for sure, and the religion manifests itself in agnostic-friendly ways – you don’t really need to buy into too much dogma to relate to her singing about feeling like she’s going to be denied salvation because she’s been making too many mistakes. The point of divergence, really, is in that she sings about feeling good about her hedonistic ways with the same ecstatic intensity as when she gushes about deliverance later on in the album. There’s a lot of faith in this music, but that yearning for the divine gets mixed in with a true passion for the glories and foibles of being merely human.
October 27th, 2011 1:00am
“Too Cool” moves in hypnotic circles – oddly-pitched electric squiggles, rhymes that cycle through talking points like a Mike Jones rap, hype man utterances that snap into a subtle repetitive pattern. With each revolution, you get one heavy bass boom. The first several times I heard this song, it was on laptop speakers and I didn’t notice. It’s overwhelming on decent headphones, rattling on my good stereo speakers. It probably feels insane in a club or through a top-end car stereo. Be careful with this thing.
October 26th, 2011 1:00am
Justice’s second album is a great surprise – it’s not a carbon copy of their debut, but carries enough of that record’s general aesthetic to seem like a totally natural progression. I like the faux-metal dance music angle, but I favor the cuts that merge their sensibility with the sound of 70s lite pop. “On’n’on,” a lightly funky number featuring the vocalist Morgan Phelan, is the closest this record comes to replicating the magic of “DVNO,” but its tone is much more mellow. There are similarities in the melody, but I think the more striking thing is in how both numbers convey a very sexy sort of optimism that’s a bit scrambled by odd lyrics and a vocal melody that’s secondary to the instrumental hook.
October 25th, 2011 1:00am
A lot of producers could get away with coasting on the droning keyboard hook in “It This Power,” and you’d have a fine if somewhat flat track. The beauty of the Field’s arrangement is that while it lets you meditate on a repetitive part, it’s always moving. The beat mutates as it goes along, never getting too busy but often suggesting an aggressive physicality. The bass is what makes this, though – reserved funk in combination with the main groove, oddly forlorn when that sound drops out, deliriously melodic when it returns.
October 24th, 2011 1:00am
Coldplay’s music has a strange emotional resonance – it conveys huge, universal feelings with minimal detail or specificity, which has a way of making me wonder if the music is really about expressing emotion rather than actually experiencing them. It’s easy to be cynical about this band’s body of work, but at this point they’ve written too many good songs to be written off so easily.
“Hurts Like Heaven,” the opening track on their latest record, is one of their all-time best. It nods in the direction of hits by Belle & Sebastian and LCD Soundsystem, but the scope and emotional focus is very much Coldplay – a touch of melancholy adding flavor to an uplifting, swooning melody. Unlike their current single “Paradise,” which sounds like it was written to be used in the most pompous and overblown Oscar-bait movie trailers, “Hurts Like Heaven” has a lean arrangement that flatters the easy-going yearning of Chris Martin’s voice and the sparkle in the guitar.
As much as this song conveys a world-weary romanticism, it still suggests an odd hollowness. Notably, the most emotionally stirring lines in the song are quotes, bits of (very emo) graffiti that Martin is reading off walls and signs. There’s a few lines about feeling anxious, but otherwise he doesn’t say much. What does it mean to use your heart as a weapon? How does it feel to hurt like heaven? The music gives you no answer for the former question, but does a pretty great job of filling you in on the latter.
October 20th, 2011 6:54am
The Society of Rockets’ tribute to the late Trish Keenan is built upon a keyboard part with a tonality that will be immediately familiar to fans of her work with Broadcast. This sound, like a sci-fi warning siren repurposed as an accent for languid melodies, was a key part of that band’s aesthetic: Grim modern and futuristic sounds contrasted with Keenan’s understated melancholy. Joshua Babcock conveys sadness in his vocal performance and melodies here, but he doesn’t even attempt to approach her icy persona. He couldn’t if he tried – for one thing, Keenan was a one of a kind talent. More importantly, Babcock can’t help but express an open-hearted sweetness in his music.
October 19th, 2011 1:00am
Patrick Stump seems very eager to impress on his first solo album. This isn’t coming from desperation, but rather a desire to show off a pretty wide-ranging musical skill set – he plays every instrument on the record, and very well at that – and a talent for glitzy, hyperactive modern pop songwriting. Though there are points on Soul Punk when the ambition, performance and general razzle dazzle of the production values are more impressive than the actual hooks, Stump mostly succeeds in his attempt to hold on to the cerebral charm of his Fall Out Boy while fully embracing the aesthetics of R&B-centric chart pop. Listening to the record, it’s clear that this is exactly what he wants to do, and that at the same time, he’s unwilling to give up any part of his personality to fit into another genre. His obvious confidence carries over to the sentiment of his lyrics. He spends a lot of time grappling with the diminished expectations of post-recession life, but he projects his can-do spirit and enthusiasm on the rest of the world, insisting that there is a real possibility that things will get better. It’s escapist, feel-good pop, but he leaves you feeling convinced that something positive is just around the corner.
