The Weeknd “Life of the Party”

Rap and R&B songs weren’t always about ostentatious wealth and the hedonistic yet rigid mating rituals of “the club,” but after more than a decade of these ideas being the center of popular music, it’s easy to feel like it was ever thus. The Weeknd belongs to this tradition, but with two caveats: He writes about entering this world as an ambivalent outsider, and he presents even the elements he enjoys as sorta grotesque and soul-deadening. Everything we’re used to hearing as glamorous and sexy gets turned into a horror show. His two albums from this year are essentially the interior monologue of a guy who is trying to satisfy his desires and make use of his social capital while desperately trying to cling to his humanity, and the struggle can get pretty harrowing. This seems to be a thread in a lot of R&B and rap right now – you hear it in Kanye West, though he’s pretty far gone down his crazy rabbit hole, and you definitely hear it in Drake, though he’s so self-absorbed that he rarely includes the well-observed details of other characters and social dynamics that make The Weeknd’s music so rich and compelling.

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The-Dream featuring Big Sean “Ghetto”

Most of The-Dream’s 1977 – technically it’s a mixtape, but it’s as deliberately conceived and constructed as a proper album – finds the singer engaging in some rather bitter rants against his ex-wife. Most of the songs are like the musical equivalent of the crazy, gut-spilling emails you might find yourself writing in the middle of the night in a fit of intense emotion but should never ever ever ever actually send. The-Dream is consistently self-aggrandizing, but apparently has no concern for how he may be interpreted – one way or another, he’s clearly brave enough to be willing to come off like a petty, horrible person on record, because oh boy does he ever. Some of the tracks are a bit too toxic for my liking, but I am very fond of “Ghetto,” a track that grinds through a few different modes as the singer grapples with complicated, wildly conflicting emotions as he gets used to the idea of not having sex with his ex anymore. As on previous The-Dream songs, his excessive investment in his sexual prowess is fascinating – the bravado is so transparent, the raw desperation to assert his masculinity and eagerness to please is impossible to miss.

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Lindsey Buckingham “In Our Own Time”

The character of Lindsey Buckingham’s music has changed a lot as he’s aged. His best-known work from the Seventies and Eighties was always a bit high-strung and angst-ridden; he pretty much specialized in writing bitter break-up songs. In recent years, though, that’s all gone away in favor of a more serene tone. The angst is still there, but it’s focused on issues of mortality and buried beneath gorgeous, cascading finger-picked guitar parts. “In Our Own Time,” from this latest record Seeds We Sow, merges this approach with elements of the bonkers studio-rat production style he developed on his first two solo albums in the Eighties. It’s a fascinating mix of sounds and textures, with fluid, graceful parts set in odd contrast with synthetic keyboard and percussion parts. The best thing here is the way Buckingham treats his guitar, seemingly speeding up his parts to the point of making his arpeggios seem abstract and cartoonish.

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I wrote an entire week of Fluxblog entries about Lindsey Buckingham’s body of work earlier this year. Here are links to all of those posts in case you missed it:

• “The Ledge” / “It Was I”

• “Monday Morning” / “Hold Me”

• “What Makes You Think You’re the One?” / “Walk a Thin Line”

• “I Want You” / “Crying in the Night”

• “Second Hand News” / “Time Precious Time”

Cass McCombs “The Same Thing”

“The Same Thing” sets up a lot of equivalences, with the logic that many seemingly opposite concepts and feelings are flip sides of the same coin. In the spirit of that, here’s an idea: Though “The Same Thing” is rooted in rhythm and Sixties psychedelic pop and “County Line” (the excellent single from Cass McCombs’ other 2011 album) is a delicate, nearly weightless 70s AM radio ballad, they feel remarkably similar. Both songs sprawl out, suggesting slow movement through a a vast, humbling space. They’re both “road” songs, pieces of music that fill out the emotional space of the time you spend in transit, en route to some bigger experience.

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The Flaming Lips “The Gash” (Live in 2011)

Until I heard this live recording, I never noticed how much the keyboard part sounded like something John Lennon might have written – echoes of “Instant Karma” and “I Am the Walrus,” for sure. The studio recording on The Soft Bulletin has an effective maximalist sound – drums that seem physically enormous, vocals multi-tracked into warbling choirs – but this rendition is pared down to the essential elements. To the band’s credit, it still sounds rather epic. I think Wayne Coyne’s vocals are more effective here, allowing his words to ring out with an even greater empathy as he attempts to sell a broken, defeated person on the concept of hope and faith. “The Gash” is a pep talk song that genuinely understands what it means to feel frustrated and despondent, but it demands the listener to rethink their reasons for wanting to drop out of life. The song’s big moment is a rhetorical question: “Will the fight for our sanity be the fight of our lives now that we’ve lost all the reasons that we thought that we had?” It’s a fight, it’s always a fight. You gotta fight to win.

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Big Troubles “Misery”

It’s so irrational, but I feel as though I should in some way apologizing for liking this so much, as if I should distrust myself a bit for maybe succumbing to some cheap Pavlovian trigger where I just hear alt-rock moves from the mid-90s and go “yes, thanks!” But you know what? In this case, yes, thanks. Every little bit of this song could easily be something I half-remembered from CMJ samplers or 120 Minutes, but it’s all put together with great grace. There’s a great emotional tension in this too – a desire for hope and pleasure that’s so close to breaking through, but it’s not fully there.

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Lil Wayne “Nightmares of the Bottom”

I find Lil Wayne most entertaining when he’s spilling random rhymes over a booming beat, but this introspective, gentle track suits him well. He’s doing some soul-searching here, but I don’t think he finds much – he doesn’t dig too deep into his fears of losing what he has, and a lot of the lines are fairly boilerplate. There’s more in the sound of his voice – a little resigned, a little bemused. He sounds friendly, like he’s genuinely confiding with the listener. Even still, the twinkling piano figure carries a lot of the emotional weight, as if he’s leaning on mood to project a feeling where his words fail him. Which is fair enough, because that’s why we have music in the first place.

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Sandro Perri “Changes”

The title and lyrics to this piece are very appropriate – the composition is constantly mutating and shifting, with new textures and tones coming with every turn. The first time I heard this, I was sucked in right away and found myself hanging on every note as the song unfolded, genuinely surprised by its progress. The wonderful thing about “Changes” is that the changes are never jarring, but feel entire organic and logical from moment to moment. It’s like a macro view of your life – sometimes it doesn’t seem like much is going on, but with a bit of perspective it can look like a long, rambling non-narrative with all sorts of strange detours and brief phases that add up something you never fully grasp.

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The Pharcyde “Otha Fish”

SlimKid3’s performance on “Otha Fish” is one of the best I’ve ever heard on a hip-hop record; virtuoso in its technique, original in its style, and overflowing with raw emotion and bitter wit. He delivers all three verses with a cadence that slips gracefully between rapping and singing, the intricate lines twisting and twirling around a fluid beat, but never winding itself too tight. The third verse is perfection, a stream of brilliant lines – “Now, if there ain’t no mountain high enough, why ain’t you climbin up?,” “I slipped and I tripped into a shoe that didn’t fit” – that tumble out with increasing urgency. There’s something particularly compelling about the way he utters the phrase “Elizabeth, this is it,” as though it marks the song’s precise breaking point. Through the whole track, he’s right on the edge of falling out of love, but with that line, the feelings are turned off like a light switch.

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Eleanor Friedberger @ Webster Hall 8/22/2011

My Mistakes / Inn of the Seventh Ray / Heaven / “Never Be Happy Again” / Roosevelt Island / Glitter Gold Year / Early Earthquake / “That Was When I Knew” / Scenes from Bensonhurst / I Won’t Fall Apart on You Tonight

Eleanor Friedberger “Roosevelt Island”

Eleanor Friedberger’s solo debut Last Summer has been slowly becoming one of my favorite albums of the recent past – it’s straight forward in its pleasures, but very subtle in its charms. Without the influence of her brother Matthew, Eleanor plays it very straight in concert. The songs are streamlined down to guitar/guitar/bass/drums arrangements, but very little is lost in the translation. There are sturdy, tuneful pieces with a great deal of heart and character. I was skeptical of how much I’d like Eleanor outside the context of the Fiery Furnaces, but as it turns out, I’m very eager for her to continue making solo discs. The two brand new songs in the set were immediately ingratiating, which gives me hope that we’ll be getting more from her on her own in the near future.

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Deerhunter @ Webster Hall 8/22/2011

Basement Scene / Desire Lines / Hazel Street / Don’t Cry / Revival / Little Kids / Memory Boy / Nothing Ever Happened / Cover Me Slowly / Agoraphobia / Spring Hall Convert / Green Fuzz // Helicopter / He Would Have Laughed

Deerhunter sound better and more confident every time I see them play. This time around, Bradford Cox hit the stage looking like a 80s teen heartthrob reject, with a hair-gelled pompadour and a sharp polka dot blouse. The band have developed their voice and sound quite a bit since the Cryptograms days – the word “professional” seems like an insult, but frankly, I’m thrilled to hear these guys pushing themselves and evolving into one of today’s finest live rock acts.

Deerhunter “He Would Have Laughed” (Live)

I don’t like the word friend very much. Its meaning has been devalued by our culture; in my mind it connotes a positive but mostly superficial relationship, like a more sentimental version of a “buddy.” When people tell me that I am a good friend or something like that, part of me has to remind myself that the person is probably being very sincere and giving me a nice compliment, so I shouldn’t feel insulted or marginalized. The classic values of friendship — of close friendship — are very important to me. I just wish we used better, more precise words to do justice to these kinds of relationships. “Friend” seems so small, trivial, and empty to me. We can do better, especially if we just describe connections with others on the terms of those particular relationships rather than use any one word to describe a wide variety of relationships.

“Friend” is the word that rings out most in “He Would Have Laughed,” the final song on Deerhunter’s new album. “I know where my friends are now,” “Where did my friends go?,” “Where do your friends go?” These lines cut to the emotional core of the piece — loneliness, confusion, the self-defeating isolation of someone who keeps everyone at a distance. The song was written in memory of Jay Reatard, who was by most accounts a rather difficult and angry guy. I hear the song as being about the loss of a frustrating person, the kind who shuts you out, rejects your sentimentality, and behaves like an asshole. The kind of person you love and respect in spite of themselves, or how they treat you. I don’t hear judgment, or even grief in this music. All I hear is empathy and kindness.

I think this song is a major breakthrough for Bradford Cox and Deerhunter. To my ears, this is their most sophisticated and graceful piece of music. The arpeggiated guitar parts and synthesizer tones in this are almost certainly the most beautiful sounds Cox has set to tape; the way the percussion gently guides us from section to section is subtle and lovely, especially for a band whose drummer is commonly derided as a weak link. “He Would Have Laughed” is as pretty as it is devastating. It seems to stretch out in all directions, follows a tangent into a distinct second movement, and abruptly stops, all in the pursuit of answers to its many questions. The sudden conclusion is the punchline of a cosmic joke. He would have laughed.

(Originally posted on 10/6/2010)

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Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks “Forever 28”

The past few Malkmus albums have been heavy on perspective and sage advice, but the songs on Mirror Traffic are more cranky and restless. He still drops a bit of wisdom here and there – “no one is your perfect fit, I do not believe in that shit” – but he quickly undermines his pragmatism by admitting that he’s a contrary buzzkill who can’t help but spoil any good time. “Forever 28” is a perky, upbeat number about being snarky and miserable, but it’s not making that out to be a virtue. The chorus, which is much bigger and more soaring than what you’d normally get from this guy, cautions that “it just might hurt.” It, in this case, is having the generosity of spirit to be open to possibility and not slipping into the comforts of being jaded and negative. And it really can be a comfort – the path of least resistance. This song is pretty sympathetic to that, but it’s still trying to shake out of familiar patterns.

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Thundercat “Walkin'”

While I don’t necessarily mind Thundercat in instrumental mode, there is just no question that he’s at his best when he’s working in vocal pop mode. “Walkin’,” my favorite track from The Golden Age of the Apocalypse, is an impeccable approximation of ultra-slick 70s mellow funk glamor, with elements that recall the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder and several other greats of the era. It’s a spot-on replica of a distinct yet slippery vibe, but it’s not merely a genre exercise – there’s a genuine emotional spark here. The incredibly sweet and lovey-dovey lyrics may not be especially profound, but it comes out sounding so unguarded. A lot of people can sound direct or heart-on-sleeve, but to do so while seeming so chilled out can take a lot of confidence.

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Beyoncé @ Roseland Ballroom 8/16/2011

I Wanna Be Where You Are – No No No (Parts 1 and 2) – Bugaboo – Bills Bills Bills – Say My Name – Independent Women – Bootylicious – Survivor – 03 Bonnie and Clyde / Crazy in Love / Irreplaceable / Single Ladies / 1+1 / I Care / I Miss You / The Best Thing I Never Had / Party / Rather Die Young / Love on Top / Countdown / End of Time / Run the World (Girls) / I Was Here

Beyoncé “End of Time”

We were close enough to see the nuances in Beyoncé’s facial expressions. This is actually pretty crucial, as she makes a lot of amazing faces when she performs. (Maybe you’ve seen some GIFs?) It was especially great when you could see how awed and bemused she was by the response to a lot of the newer songs, which clearly mean a lot to her. Before she launched into “Countdown” – easily the most crowd-pleasing number in a set that also included “Single Ladies” and “Crazy in Love” – the audience sang the entire countdown part, entirely unprompted. People basically lost their minds when they actually played the song. I was beyond thrilled, as it is without question my favorite song from 2011 so far.

The first half of the set was a revue-style medley in which she told the story of her career with a sometimes unintentionally hilarious degree of false modesty. It’s sort of strange that she would feel compelled to recap her narrative and sell us on her achievements. Isn’t it a bit redundant? It was a given that everyone in the room idolized her. Granted, this concert was filmed for an eventual DVD (or whatever), but I can’t imagine there is an audience out there – even those not inclined to enjoy her music – that really needs to be sold on the talent of Beyoncé Knowles. Relax, Bey! Just pummel us with your greatness. It’s more than enough.

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The Rapture “It Takes Time To Be A Man”

I do not know the provenance of the piano and bass part that is cut and looped through this composition – it could be a sample, it could be original – but the sound is warm and calming, in part because of the fact that it’s DJ’d, produced, recontextualized. I can’t remember a time when this sort of sound wasn’t being reworked. I’m more attached to this sound in artistic quotation marks than in its original context. (This doesn’t have to be entirely about post-hip-hop music, by the way – I have a consistently powerful nostalgic/sensory response to hearing Barbara Acklin’s “Am I the Same Girl” entirely because it was used as bed music for a lot of ads on the talk radio I heard as a teenager.)

“It Takes Time To Be A Man” has a warm, generous sound that matches the kindness of its words. It’s a song of reassurance – you don’t grow up all at once; you get what you want and what you need if you work for it; patience is a great virtue. There’s a touch of religion in these lyrics – and most of the new Rapture album in general – but the idea of faith put forth in this song isn’t a matter of embracing Jesus or looking to God. It’s just about holding on to a positive vision of the future and moving toward it, letting it guide you every day toward enlightenment, maturity, success, genuine connection with other people and anything else that could enrich your life.

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Sonic Youth @ Williamsburg Waterfront 8/12/2011

Brave Men Run (In My Family) / Death Valley 69 / Cotton Crown / Kill Yr Idols / Eric’s Trip / Sacred Trickster / Calming the Snake / Starfield Road / I Love Her All the Time / Ghost Bitch / Tom Violence / What We Know / Drunken Butterfly // Flower / Sugar Kane /// Psychic Hearts //// Inhuman

I have seen Sonic Youth play at least once per year every year since 1995, with the exception of 1999 and 2001. As a result, I have seen the band play pretty much every song in their live repertoire in that time. This show on Friday night was special in that a majority of the selections were either songs I have never seen the band perform, or had not seen them play in many years. It was the first SY gig I’ve ever seen where I truly had no idea what they would do next, and it was a real thrill. I spent a lot of the show beaming with joy as they played songs I had always wished for (“I Love Her All the Time,” “Kill Yr Idols,” “Flower”), never expected (“Psychic Hearts,” “Brave Men Run,” “Ghost Bitch”) or hoped would return (“Starfield Road,” “Cotton Crown”). I’d been exhausted on hearing the same oldies in recent years, and they went above and beyond all expectations in this show. I hope this is a taste of things to come as they celebrate their 30th anniversary – they have one of the largest and most consistently brilliant back catalogs in all of rock music, and should fully embrace that in concert.

Sonic Youth “Cotton Crown” (Live in Portugal, 1993)

If you look over the setlist, you’ll note that the band went very heavy on love songs. (Thurston finished the show by making some parting comment about love, but I can’t recall exactly what it was.) “Cotton Crown,” always and forever their best love song – and quite possibly the best indie rock love song ever penned – was one of the highlights of the show. Unlike most previous live renditions of the song, Thurston and Kim sang it together as a duet as they do on the studio recording. The beat was also faster and vaguely danceable, lending it a sort of Echo and the Bunnymen-ish quality. When the instrumental break finished and the main melody came back around, I looked over my shoulder at the Manhattan skyline as Thurston sang “New York City is forever kitty / you’re wasted in time and I’m never ready” and smiled. Feel free to carve that line couplet on my gravestone.

Sonic Youth “I Love Her All the Time” (Live in Germany 1991)

The sentiment of “Cotton Crown” is sweet and generous; pure affection mitigated by stoned coolness. “I Love Her All the Time,” though, is basically starry-eyed infatuation rendered as a horror film soundtrack. Which makes perfect sense, you know?

Sonic Youth “Starfield Road” (Live in Germany 1996)

I had long assumed that this mid-90s setlist staple had disappeared forever after the band lost a lot of equipment back in 1999. I suppose not! They approached this one with a bit of trepidation – they joked that only Mark Ibold knew the chords because he was in the audience back then, which is funny because I didn’t realize this song even had proper chords! I would love it if they tried doing more songs along the lines of this one on their next record – atypical structure, groove-based, extremely noisy, all forward momentum without doubling back. The past few Sonic Youth records have been pretty middle-of-the-road; I’d love for them to get back to being this gleefully weird and abrasive.

TV on the Radio “You”

Dan Savage is fond of saying that every relationship you have fails until one doesn’t. In a way, that’s the thematic core of this song: Tunde Adebimpe is singing about a failed love, giving it something of a post-mortem while lamenting “you’re the only one I ever loved.” The chorus is more bittersweet, as each line looking back on what they had together is proceeded by the phrase “constantly wrong.” That’s often how it seems in retrospect, like you have the answer now and can’t imagine why it wasn’t obvious back then. But in the moment, even the most idiotic love feels like the only truth.

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Kanye West and Jay-Z “Gotta Have It”

One of the most interesting things for me about Watch the Throne is listening to Jay-Z, the most imperious rapper in hip-hop, essentially bend to the artistic whims of Kanye West, the genre’s most ambitious auteur of the past half decade. The record is clearly the product of West’s distinct vision, with Jay-Z doing his professional, precise Jay-Z thing. But part of his professionalism extends to adapting to his surroundings, which means that on some tracks, he makes some effort to be revealing and emotionally direct, because that’s Kanye’s thing. And it’s weird and not tremendously convincing.

Kanye can’t help but project his intense insecurities – he’s emotionally transparent at all times, and it’s part of what makes him such a fascinating and magnetic pop star. Jay-Z, however, is the radical opposite – his every word and movement is focused on controlling your impression of him. His songs are essentially a never-ending PR campaign in verse. Even when he’s trying to seem “open,” like on “Welcome to the Jungle,” you can tell how deliberately he is controlling your access and guiding your perceptions. He just can’t spill the contents of his head out on to the tape like West. This guarded quality is interesting in its own right, and I certainly relate more to this attitude than Kanye’s chronic oversharing, but I find that I don’t really care to know much about Jay-Z’s inner life. He’s more compelling as an icon. (In this way, Kanye is analogous to the Marvel Comics model of whiny, introspective, persecuted superheroes [Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Hulk] and Jay-Z is more like DC Comics’ Superman and Batman, who thrive when creators trade on their stoic, iconic qualities.)

In some ways Watch the Throne is disappointing in that it doesn’t do enough to stress the contrast in Jay and Kanye’s personalities. Even when both rappers stick to a basic thematic conceit within a song, they seem like they’re not quite relating to one another. I’m particularly fond of “Gotta Have It” because it’s a major exception to this rule, as both men are actively engaged with each other through the entire piece as they trade off lines. This song finds West stepping more into Jay’s comfort zone — whereas the more Ye-centric tracks have a neurotic buzz about them, “Gotta Have It” has the triumphant, dominating spirit of Hov classics like “U Don’t Know” and “Public Service Announcement.” They don’t really say much of substance to each other, but it’s still exciting to listen to these guys in a dialogue.

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Cymbals Eat Guitars “The Current”

“The Current” is rather epic for a song that barely cracks the two minute mark. For the first minute and a half, the song is all forward momentum and delicate gesture, with subtle rhythms and instrumental harmonies that recall Sonic Youth in Daydream Nation mode and Radiohead’s fixation with atmospheric arpeggios on In Rainbows. Once the song cycles through all its twist and turns, Joseph D’Agostino sings a brief passage that comes out sounding like a sci-fi prayer. He relaxes his mind by imagining a multiverse full of infinite alternate versions of himself, and thinking that among those countless iterations of his life, there’s at least one duplicate of himself without any problems. It’s a humbling, calming thought. And then there’s silence.

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Neon Indian “Fallout”

Neon Indian’s first album trafficked mainly in blunted nostalgia, with fairly slight but sometimes mesmerizing tunes filtered through self-conscious faux-cassette aesthetics. “Fallout,” the first song released from his second album Era Extraña is far more mature and resonant in a way that doesn’t seem as though it could be a happy accident. There’s still a haziness to the sound, but the atmosphere is secondary to the music, which touches on the epic, melodramatic romance of a particular strain of 80s radio hit. “Fallout” has some distant echoes of tunes like Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away,” but the its most compelling for the way it updates the deep-voiced masculine romanticism of bands like OMD and Love and Rockets. Even compared to that stuff, Neon Indian is stoic and restrained, but there’s a genuine yearning at the core of this song. “If I could fall out love with you,” he sings, only just barely holding back the passionate love anthem buried under woozy psychedelia and emotional defense mechanisms.

Rewards featuring Solange Knowles “Equal Dreams”

I like that Solange is carving out this interesting little niche for herself as this boho R&B singer who turns up on all sorts of arty little records. This is one of her more interesting one-off collaborations – she’s a little bit outside of her usual comfort zone, but makes the most of being the warmest element in a cool DFA 12″ disco track. There’s actually very little in her vocal performance that comes off as particularly R&B – there’s a trace, but it’s filtered through an icy Euro vibe. It’s funny, really, that she’s dialing down her natural inclinations to arrive at a similar place as singers who have to deep dig to put as much soul in their work. At any rate, it’s a very nuanced vocal that contrasts very nicely with the more hushed male lead part and a track that shifts very intuitively between very stark and richly detailed sections.

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Shabazz Palaces “A Treatease Dedicated to the Avian Airess from North East Nubis (1000 Questions, 1 Answer)”

If you want to cut straight to the emotional center of this song, advance to 0:38 for the “oooooo weee” at the start of a new verse. You only hear that digitally processed swoon once in the piece, but it sets the tone for the lovestruck banter through the rest of the track. The song perfectly captures the feeling of trying to balance a desire to come off cool and suave with this geeky, enthusiastic urge to just ask a million questions because you’re so fascinated and enchanted by someone that you just want to know everything, and every little detail is exciting and interesting. Their mystique is alluring, but you still want to get beyond it. I love the way the music floats around in a relaxed haze, but gets grounded by the bass when his language becomes more assertive and decisive. Then there’s the questions, spilling out and fading into infinity: “What’chu reading?” “Did you see City of God?” “Do you fuck with Kobe or LeBron?,” et cetera…

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See Also: I interviewed Shabazz Palaces for Rolling Stone.