Father John Misty “Please Don’t Die” (Live)

I’ve been waking up with this song in my head a lot in recent weeks, as if my brain was searching for a song in my memory that would be almost too on-the-nose for the circumstances of the world at the moment. The sentiment could not be more clear and sincere, especially from a singer-songwriter who deals so often in irony and dark humor: “You’re all that I have, so please don’t die.” It doesn’t take much effort to ignore the parts of this song that are about someone struggling with addiction and nudge it into something more general about being very afraid of losing someone you love. The chorus, which hangs on a gorgeous melodic turn, is so pure in its emotion. The language is unusually plain and direct for a Father John Misty song, partly to convey an earnest wish, but also to let you linger on how helpless the phrase “please don’t die” sounds. It’s tugging on just a strand of hope, but in a lot of cases, it’s all you can really do.

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Childish Gambino “35.31 (Little Foot, Big Foot, Get Out the Way)”

“35.31” sounds like The Dixie Cups version of “Iko Iko” crossed with M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” with lyrics that directly reference OJ Da Juiceman’s “Make the Trap Say Aye.” It’s a song that calls out for annotation, and I’m sure unpacking all the history in the references and musical elements packed into these four minutes would make for a great book. But as deep as this gets, or as bleak as Donald Glover’s lyrics from the perspective of a young drug dealer can be, the song is ultimately a bouncy, joyful bop above all else. The “Iko Iko” vibe suits Glover very well, flattering all the most charming aspects of his voice and giving him a great opportunity to build a glorious dance spectacle around it that would probably invite a lot of annotation too. I get the sense that Glover enjoys being clever, perhaps out of a desire to be taken more seriously, but I think his impulses as an entertainer prevail in a song like this which is so purely musical that the big ideas are all a bonus.

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Pearl Jam “Never Destination”

When Pearl Jam transitioned into a band that was more invested in live performance than anything else around the early 2000s their records lost a lot of the spark and vitality of their first wave of albums in the ‘90s. Whereas those albums – particularly the first three – have a high stakes do-or-die energy to them, the band settled into familiar patterns and the more stable emotions of grown men with great lives. There’s value in that for sure, but I think anyone who grew up with Pearl Jam in their prime could notice that high drama missing in their music even when they delivered some very strong songs here and there over the past two decades. But now, somehow when the cathartic energy of Pearl Jam feels most necessary, they’ve reconnected with their muse on Gigaton, their most consistently vibrant, tuneful, and emotionally resonant work in years. It’s not much like the robust psychodrama of Ten, but it’s in the spirit of the socially engaged and musically restless energy of Vs. and Vitalogy.

A lot of this comes down to Eddie Vedder feeling freaked out by everything any reasonable person is scared of today – the sense that everything is breaking or broken, that every sort of doom is coming at us at once. He doesn’t get bogged down in topicality – these songs have been gestating for years and are definitely meant to played live for years to come – but they’re rooted in a time and place, and the perspective of someone who’s old enough to have accrued some wisdom but still baffled, confused, and angry.

“Never Destination,” an up-tempo number that feels light and breezy despite the tension at the core of the arrangement, is sung from the point of view of someone struggling with the value of distraction and denial in the face of a crisis. Vedder recognizes the need for it, but he’s skeptical too, spitting out the phrase “more denial!” at the end of the chorus. He’s frustrated but knows he’s just as guilty as anyone in playing “a little trick” on his own mind. I love that he allows for this tangle of sanctimonious anger, guilt, and delusional bliss. It feels very true, especially at this particular moment in time.

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Margaret Glaspy “You’ve Got My Number”

In textural terms, “You’ve Got My Number” is a departure for Margaret Glaspy. I’s all harsh electronic textures and robotic funk, like a more aggressive garage rock take on Jimmy Jam and Jerry Lewis’s production style on Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814. But the core of the song is pure Glaspy – elegant melodies that come out sounding casual as she sings them in a light drawl, and lyrics that express a feeling in plain language with asides that allow for conditions and complications. Thematically this one isn’t far off from her breakout single “You & I” in the sense that she’s addressing someone she feels an intense lust for, and laying out the terms of the situation. In both songs there’s an acknowledgment that she has no idea how she’ll feel in the future, and allows for that possibility without stamping out the fire of the feeling in the moment. But whereas the relationship in “You & I” is imbalanced on her side, the tables seem to be turned here, and she’s the one with something to lose. With this in mind, the in-the-red funk feels both persuasive and urgent.

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Dirty Projectors “Overlord”

David Longstreth has a very particular style with melody, to the point that his work is immediately recognizable no matter who is singing. “Overlord” is one of his best tunes, in large part because he doesn’t get in the way of how pleasing the melody is and opted to subvert it lyrically rather than musically. The lyrics, co-written and sung by Maia Friedman, come from the perspective of someone fully on board with a fascist mindset and is sincerely selling their point of view to someone else. The warm and wholesome tone of the arrangement and vocal harmonies aren’t necessarily at odds with the lyrics, but highlight the way the seeming safety of fascism can feel welcoming. That is, until the mask slips, and it all falls apart.

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Se So Neon “Go Back”

“Go Back” is a smooth R&B song filtered through a restless, genre-bouncing aesthetic that leaves it sounding like everything but also not quite like anything in particular. Their sound is immaculate and lightly funky, sorta like Phoenix in their underrated Alphabetical phase, but there’s a plaintive and sentimental quality that veers closer to mainstream pop. As always, I’m fascinated by the way Korean artists shift between Korean and English lyrics – in this case, the chorus is sung entirely in English but since it’s mostly just the guy singing “where should I go back if I go back?,” you only just get enough to pick up on the general emotional context. I bring this up over and over mainly because I feel like this strategy cuts to the core of how most people hear pop songs: Lyrics are useful for grounding the feeling of a song, but when it comes down to it people mostly just respond to purely musical elements.

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Westerman “Think I’ll Stay”

“Think I’ll Stay” is warm in melody but ice cold in arrangement, like a Paul McCartney song filtered through the severity of Wire and the palette of Kraftwerk. Westerman’s lyrics suit the ambiguity of the music, with him sketching out a grim scene of someone struggling with chronic pain, but then sort of shrugging that off in the chorus and deciding life is still worthwhile despite the agony. Given the grey tonality and Westerman’s sober, Eno-ish voice it doesn’t sound particularly affirming – at most it’s a sort of neutral cautious optimism. It’s like running life through a cost-benefit analysis and finding out, yeah, it’s still good to be alive.

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Lady Gaga “Stupid Love”

This is the lady Gaga I love the most – joyous, extremely catchy, and heavily indebted to the pop aesthetics of VERY SPECIFICALLY the late 80s. The last time she hit this mark was on the album Born This Way, particularly on the title track, “Fashion of His Love,” and “The Edge of Glory.” Most people hear the similarities to Blonde Ambition era Madonna, but Gaga goes a lot deeper – I hear Erasure, Debbie Gibson, Roxette, Stacey Q, Belinda Carlisle, T’pau, and late 80s Cher in the mix. As with everything Gaga does it’s the result of internalizing a personal canon and synthesizing it into familiar new things.

“Stupid Love” is a jolt of ecstatic, carefree pop in a moment where escapism has never felt more important. Gaga is no stranger to making supercharged dance records that are engineered to overpower the listener, but this time her repeatedly slamming every joy receptor in your brain with a hammer feels especially welcome. It’s a cliche to say you surrender to a dance song, but it really feels that way here. It’s like she’s force-quitting your brain.

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Tennis “How to Forgive”

There is a voyeuristic quality to Tennis’ music, in that they are a married couple and Alaina Moore seems to mostly sing autobiographical lyrics about her life with her husband and collaborator Patrick Riley. There’s never anything particularly revealing in the lyrics but a song like “How to Forgive,” which is about letting go of anger built up towards a partner, makes me wonder what it’s like to work in this sort of arrangement. It must be odd to work on a song that’s putting you on blast, right? It’s likely this song was written after a conflict was resolved and a lot of things had already been discussed, but it’s still an interesting form of shared catharsis. I suppose it’s also notable that this is not at all an angry song – the music is deliberately sweet and girlish, as if to sugar the pill of negative emotions, and Moore’s lyrics are mostly just her questioning the logic of dwelling on anger. It’s very very conciliatory, and I wonder if that would be the case if the song was not written and performed with her partner.

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John Carroll Kirby “Blueberry Beads”

“Blueberry Beads” is tightly composed but heavily atmospheric, with John Carroll Kirby leaning hard on sustained piano chords and a constant patter of cymbal hits to evoke a misty haze in the negative space between lower pitched riffs. The feeling of it reminds me a lot of Herbie Hancock on his Sextant record, which aimed for a fusion of spiritual jazz and hard funk. It’s a very cosmic vibe, but there’s also a heavy earthiness to the arrangement, mostly in the way Kirby keeps a very deep and lurching low end. This only ends up exaggerating the brightness of the high notes he plays, so the lead accents pop like lights on a dark skyline.

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Lil Mosey “Blueberry Faygo”

“Blueberry Faygo” sounds about as colorful and fizzy as its title suggests. Lil Mosey’s chorus is so catchy it borders on sounding like a jingle, and Callan’s track has the bright and joyful sound of early Kanye West productions. This largely comes down to Callan’s very clever use of a sped-up sample from Johnny Gill’s early 90s hit “My My My,” which was produced by LA Reid and Babyface. It’s interesting to hear a Babyface track get the “Chipmunk soul” treatment – it’s not tremendously different in effect from a 60s or 70s R&B cut through this filter, but his particular slickness and smooth chords hits differently. The track feels extra breezy.

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Lil Uzi Vert “Venetia”

A very large amount of rap is built on the premise of wish fulfillment but with Lil Uzi Vert, the dreams of endless money, flashy clothes, expensive cars, and unlimited sex seem warped and surreal. A lot of it’s in his low-key Afrofuturism, or the way he openly wants to be a cartoon beyond the limitations of reality. But it’s mostly in the extreme elasticity of his voice, which seems to glide through busy melodies and bounce through speedy rhymes with uncommon grace. His style and cadence is unmistakable, and his melodies are as robust as they are eccentric. “Venetia” is pretty much boilerplate on a lyrical level – he’s just boasting about being rich and spending money, you’ve heard it all before – but with the combination his voice and Brandon Finessin’s sparkling synths, you get something magical and effervescent. Maybe it’s the same logic behind the value of the designer clothes he’s singing about in the chorus – OK, sure, they’re just shoes and shirts, but high levels of craft and personal flair can elevate even the most mundane things.

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Denzel Curry “Diet_ – A Colors Show”

Denzel Curry is blessed with a perfect voice for rap – commanding in tone, wildly expressive, convincingly aggressive, crisp diction. He’s very aware of this and knows how to use it well, pulling together tricks accrued from 40 years of rap history, but mainly focused on the 90s. He’s not as overtly retro as a Joey Bada$$ or focused in mimicking one specific rapper like Action Bronson, but he does sound like you could drop him into a lot of classic rap records from the 90s and seamlessly blend in. “Diet_” highlights the most aggro side of his style, with his voice shifting into a full-on holler as he gets worked up through the verses. Kenny Beats’ raw production style seems to egg him on, nudging him towards increased theatricality. The odds are good that Curry is just starting to hit his stride, but if he’s actually reached a peak on his new EP and last year’s Zuu, it’s a higher pinnacle than most ever achieve.

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Cornershop “St. Marie Under Canon”

I’ve always quite liked Cornershop but have the feeling I’m always missing about 25% of their songs in the sense that Tjinder Singh’s music is so heavily coded with shibboleths hyper-specific to Indian culture, British culture, and his own personal canon of music history. Singh’s songs benefit from annotation but succeed just as well on pure sensation, as the best of them are rich with groove and melody, and radiate a warmth somewhat at odds with his often cynical and sarcastic lyrics. “St. Marie Under Canon,” the lead-off song from the band’s first proper album in over a decade, leans hard on the group’s long-established fascination with ’60s psychedelia and early ’70s glam. It feels instantly familiar, but the contrast of the ambling Dylan-esque organ riff and the crashing Iggy-ish urgency of the beat suggests a tension beneath the nostalgic vibes. Singh’s words play off that, juxtaposing prosaic but highly specific imagery with a constant threat of institutionalized violence.

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Little Dragon featuring Kali Uchis “Are You Feeling Sad?”

“Are You Feeling Sad?” is a very noble sort of song, the kind that exists on every level to console the depressed and stimulate joy. It’s basically a very mid-90s type of house/R&B hybrid, but with a relatively relaxed tempo that sounds uplifting rather than overbearing. The keyboards have a bright tone, but they use it somewhat sparingly so every chord change feels like a little jolt of serotonin. Yukimi Nagano and Kali Uchis keep their lyrics simple and direct, offering words of encouragement and kindness to someone who seems to be mourning a loss. Uchis is at her best here when she grounds her words in her own experiences – “my sorrows have a million layers and I’ve been told I wear them well” – and finding peace in simple pleasures, like feeling the sun on your skin, and the smell in the air after rain.

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Winter “Say”

Samira Winter’s aesthetic falls somewhere on the psychedelia scale between Broadcast and Tame Impala – keyboards that seem to glow like neon tubing and crisp fill-heavy percussion, but contrasted with a cold vocal tone that signals a shy intelligence. “Say” is thick with appealing atmosphere but the real draw is in the bass groove, which is lightly funky in a very early ‘90s sophisticated European pop mode. The song is adjacent to shoegaze with its emphasis on abstracted sensuality, but there’s no soft-focus haziness to this. Winter’s arrangement is remarkably clear and vibrant, and every little detail pops rather than blurs together.

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Stephen Malkmus “The Greatest Own in Legal History”

I wrote about Stephen Malkmus’ new record Traditional Techniques for NPR Music. Here’s an excerpt from that piece about my favorite song on the album:

The album’s finest track, the country ballad “The Greatest Own in Legal History,” is one of Malkmus’ prettiest compositions ever — and also the moment where this record’s folky aesthetics make a sharp intersection with his Pavement mode. Writing from the perspective of a depressed, sleep-deprived small-time lawyer, attempting to land a young client with the promise that he can’t possibly lose the case, he sings in a plaintive lilt: “I’ll be there to vet the jury / Make sure there’s a couple softies on our side / They’ll see their own kids in you / Their empathy will go a thousand miles wide.” The character tries to seem noble, but there’s an overwhelming pathos to him that makes his boldest declarations ring hollow, like he’s hoping you’ll buy his shtick even if his heart’s not fully in it. Malkmus is writing with a fair amount of irony here, but not enough to undermine the ache at the center of this song. If you were ever going to sit at home and cry to a solo Malkmus tune, this is the one.

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U.S. Girls “Denise, Don’t Wait”

Meg Remy’s craft hasn’t changed much since her creative and commercial breakthrough on 2018’s In A Poem Unlimited, but her style has shifted towards a refined aesthetic that removes all distractions from her evocative and economical lyrics, her elegant melodies, and the expressive soulfulness of her voice. “Denise, Don’t Wait” aims for a Phil Spector/Brian Wilson sort of aesthetic but with a dry tone and uncluttered arrangement, which connects the song to a history of teen ballads but without any implied nostalgia or sentimentality. Remy’s lyrics suggest a troubled young woman – a teen mom, I think? – who feels abandoned and alienated by everyone in her life, most especially her own mother who’s too embarrassed by her to show her any sign of empathy. The chorus is beautiful but haunting as she sings about how “in another 24 hours from now I’ll be gone” with deliberate ambiguity, leaving you to wonder what the definition of “gone” might be in this story.

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Ratboys “My Hands Grow”

“I can’t tell you how hard I tried to love what I can’t describe,” Julia Steiner sings, as though she’s surprised by her own level of open-hearted optimism in this song. The lyrics of “My Hands Grow” mostly come across like reporting the details or a dream that, despite a lack of linear logic, resulted in a deeper and more joyful understanding of the world. The music is sunny but laid back, and feels a bit like the song might have been a little more bright and overbearing at first but the band opted to make it more gentle and chill. Steiner sounds so earnest, especially in the moments where it seems like she’s just trying to will a good vibe into reality. The closing line strikes me as particularly poignant: “I know that it’s hard to feel my love, just trust that all we’ve learned tonight is real.”

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Mazzy Star “Disappear”

David Roback, the man who composed all the music for Mazzy Star, passed away earlier this week at the age of 61. He’d been a figure in the L.A. neo-psychedelic scene for years before forming Mazzy Star at the very end of the ‘80s, but his work in that band in collaboration with singer Hope Sandoval is his most inspired and historically crucial, particularly as their song “Fade Into You” became a crossover hit in the mid ‘90s. The sound of Mazzy Star, and of that song in particular, was not unprecedented, but it was rare and distinctive in a mainstream context. It was overwhelmingly romantic and unmistakably sexual; erotic in ways that were heightened in dramatic terms but not sensationalized or prurient. Gen Xers greeted the song as the perfect thing for their crush tapes and make-out mixes, and it’s never really gone away. There’s an entire lane of indie music built upon the foundation of what Roback and Sandoval accomplished on their first three records, and even Taylor Swift draws on their influence – what is her recent hit “Lover” if not “Fade Into You II”?

Mazzy Star was the synthesis of two perfectly simpatico romantics. Sandoval seemed mysterious and aloof, and sang everything like an old soul trapped in the role of the ingenue. She always sounded like she’s overcome with feelings, but too shy to express it outside of the implied hyper-intimacy of their songs, and even then, only just scratching the surface of everything in her heart. Roback played often simple parts with a poetic feel. He could make a churning drone sound remarkably sensual, and bent the notes of his leads in ways that suggested a depth of feeling beyond the expressive range of words.

“Disappear,” one of his finest compositions, displays most of his finest moves and is an especially good example of how effectively he could build a potent atmosphere. The song opens their third album Among My Swan, and within ten seconds you’re just fully transported into their world. The sound makes the air feel different, it makes time feel like it’s slowing down. You put these records on to enter Roback and Sandoval’s world, and hope to feel more like how they feel, and if you’re lucky, absorb some of their sentimentality and romanticism into your own life.

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Real Estate “Friday”

One risk of hearing a song performed live before it is released as a studio recording is that you can end up being disappointed by the decisions the artist made when finalizing the arrangement. This is somewhat the case for my relationship with “Friday,” the outstanding opening song from Real Estate’s fifth album that is nevertheless a bit of a let down for me in that the version I’ve seen them play on stage is far more bass-centric, and much closer to the vibe of Air’s “La Femme D’Argent” from Moon Safari. The bass part is still there and quite good, but more subtle in the mix as the more recognizable elements of Real Estate’s aesthetics – jangling guitar treble and Martin Courtney’s soft, sensitive voice – are foregrounded. And I get it, I do – this is what Real Estate do! This is their entire thing, and this mix is very good on its own terms. But I think it could still use more warmth, and it wouldn’t hurt to lean harder on its most remarkable melodic element. I don’t think that would have taken the focus off of Courtney’s melancholy tone and lyrics about searching for a new path, but rather just cast it in relief as the music subtly shifted away from the band’s comfort zone.

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