July 25th, 2019 1:58pm
“Thinkin’ ‘Bout You” sounds like it was made in defiance of all current pop trends in favor of thin, dreary melodies and hollow, minimalist arrangements, and in celebration of the sort of up-tempo, cheerful pop that could go much further in the ’80s and ’00s. It’s proudly out of step, and as such, feels more like it’s aiming for the future than looking towards the past. There aren’t that many specific musical similarities, but this song reminds me a lot of “How Do I Know” by Whitney Houston in both energy and sentiment – it’s a perky song about falling in love but dealing with all the anxieties and insecurities that go along with making yourself vulnerable and setting up expectations for what you’d like to happen. Ciara’s voice can’t help but convey optimism and joy in this song, so even the most neurotic lines land in a way that makes it seem more “butterflies” than “nervous wreck.”
July 24th, 2019 2:07am
“Tuesday Feeling” is built around a strumming guitar part that seems to sway gently, suggesting a carefree chill vibe that’s at odds with the anxious and agitated state of mind expressed in the lyrics. The odd balance of neuroses and tranquil vibes carry through the song, though the song shifts out of its strummy mode for a bridge section built around keyboard chords that sound even more relaxed and gentle. Devonté Hynes sells the confusion and angst of the lyrics in his vocal without totally undermining the general feeling of the track, and he sounds particularly good in contrast with Tinashe’s vocal, which sound considerably more warm and grounded.
July 21st, 2019 4:17pm
“Sawzall” is a surprisingly coherent song for something that moves between four totally distinct sections with only Banks’ vocal melody tying it all together. Some motifs do return in the finale, but the general feeling here is of someone adrift in guilt and regret as they reflect on a lot of red flags they’d ignored in a relationship with someone with serious mental illness. Banks performs with both vulnerability and sensitivity – there’s some degree of self-flagellation, but the emphasis is placed on empathy for this other person who’s in even worse pain than she is. The lateral drift of the arrangement simulates being lost in thought, but when the opening piano motif returns it sounds like she’s reconnecting with a feeling rather than just looping around for another cycle.
July 19th, 2019 11:50am
The most immediately striking thing about “Drip” is that slow metronomic two-note motif that opens the song and carries through it like a literal drip from a faucet. The particular metallic tone is quite lovely, and the steady hypnotic quality of it contrasts nicely with Ann Marie and Jeremih’s far more sophisticated melodies, which seem to tangle around the center of it like vines climbing up a pole. This is an EXTREMELY horny and explicit song – it really is nothing more than two people singing about wanting to fuck each other – and while that sort of thing is fairly common now, there’s a gravity and resonance to this track that makes it all feel quite vivid, intimate, and romantically sincere.
July 18th, 2019 1:10pm
“Good Ol’ Night” somewhat resembles Joanna Newsom’s classic “Good Intentions Paving Company” in both tone and style, as Erin Durant sings a lovely, delicate melody around low-key piano and percussion that’s so light and casual that it sounds as though it could be entirely improvised. This is high praise – I believe that particular Newsom song to be her very best, and it’s the kind of song that makes me wish there were more like it. Durant has a similar gift for evocative lyrics and sets a very vivid scene in old bars, casinos, cities, rivers, deserts, and the open road. The song is something of a travelogue and moves in tangents, but the emphasis is always on Durant’s voice and her charting a deep connection between two people as they move closer and further away from each other.
July 17th, 2019 12:40pm
Ol’ Burger Beats makes instrumental hip-hop that calls back to a mid-to-late ‘90s “turntablism” aesthetic – think DJ Shadow or DJ Premier, or a bit later, J Dilla – but pushes further into the realm of jazz. The majority of songs on the Norwegian producer’s new record Daybreaks sound like mellow keyboard-led jazz knocked slightly off balance or out of phase. Familiar sounds, like smooth sax leads, float in but abruptly cut out like a thought that’s suddenly interrupted by nothing in particular. Most of the elements and vocal fragments seem as though they’re presented as quotes and the music has an overall loose and airy feel, but still, it all sounds rather organic and grounded.
July 16th, 2019 11:35am
I did not realize until I’d heard this song several times that Brijean Murphy, the primary performer and namesake of this project, is mostly a percussionist. But that certainly makes sense of this music, which is very much built around rhythm in terms of both structure and texture. “Show and Tell” is a tropical disco tune driven largely by Murphy’s congas. The percussion is busy but there’s no clutter in the arrangement – it all feels loose and airy, and the polyrhythms are more about signaling movement than keeping you consciously aware of the beat. The textural emphasis is more on Murphy’s breathy voice as she entices you to relax and enjoy the feeling, and on the synth melodies that seem to crisscross the track like laser light effects.
July 15th, 2019 11:23am
“Mansion” is one of those songs that arrives at entirely fresh aesthetic territory by building a bridge between two sounds no one had bothered to connect before – in this case, the twitchy minimalist synth-punk of Le Tigre and the throbbing disco sensuality of Donna Summer. Grace Ives’ arrangement is sparse but carefully calibrated so moments of tension and release overlap in a way that keeps the overall feeling ambiguous and the cathartic bits from feeling obviously signaled. Ives’ voice is terrific too, shifting between a spunky defiance in the verses to a gorgeous wordless moan in the refrain that resembles the elegant timbre of Alison Goldfrapp.
July 11th, 2019 4:31pm
Half the sounds in “We Are” seem like they’ve been slightly smudged or blotted out, as if the purely digital tones have been altered by physical conditions. It gives the song a soft, hazy sound – very summery, but the part of summer where the air feels heavy and the sun is more glare than shine. The underlying groove feels right for this atmosphere. It’s a very ‘90s sort of R&B/rap hybrid that is only slightly updated to sound contemporary, and there’s enough English being sung that it can mostly pass for a lost TLC song that just happened to be mostly performed in Korean.
July 10th, 2019 11:15am
“Milionària” is the more joyful half of a pop diptych in which the Spanish singer Rosalía parodies materialism and denounces capitalism in a mix of lyrics sung in Catalan, Spanish, and English. This is the parody half, in which she daydreams about outrageous wealth over a joyful beat, and declares that she knows that it is her birthright to become a millionaire. On its own, it would actually be hard to tell that this is actually an anti-capitalist song – this sort of wealth fantasy is so baked into popular music now that it always just seems earnest, and the English refrain “fucking money, man” signals frustration more than bitterness. “Dio$ No$ Libre del Dinero,” the flip of the double-A side single and second half of the music video, is the full reveal of her perspective – translated to English, it’s “may God save us from money.” From dreaming about it, from needing it, from having it. She likens it to poison, and in this context, “Milionària” can be heard as both seduction and intoxication.
July 9th, 2019 1:17pm
“Venom” opens with a discordant string part that sounds like it’s pulled from a horror film score – trilling, agitated, menacing. Little Simz begins her rapid-fire rap within 8 seconds, but the music has already spiked your anxiety levels. Simz’ verses start at a high level of tension and she only amps that up as she goes along, spitting out syllables with dazzling speed and startling precision. Imagine a ninja hurling a handful of throwing stars and each one hitting a specific target at exactly the right spot. Simz’ rage in this song is perfectly calibrated, with each point landing with a deliberate balance of clear-eyed authority and poisonous spite. The most brilliant moment comes about 40 seconds in as her first verse winds up to the key line – “Never giving credit where it’s due ‘cause you don’t like pussy in power…VENOM” – and the strings drop out on the last word, replaced by heavy, crushing percussion.
July 8th, 2019 1:46pm
John Dwyer approaches songwriting in terms of iteration within constraints. There’s a clear dynamic template in place for Thee Oh Sees songs, and while that can seem very specific and limiting, Dwyer somehow finds room for endless variation. “Henchlock” is one of his boldest excursions yet – it’s a song that extends beyond the 20 minute mark with a groove that nods to Can in their Tago Mago phase, but is filled out with horns that sound as though they’ve been yanked out of a James Brown record and a series of organ and synthesizer solos that have more of a ’70s jazz aesthetic. This song could go over simply on the scale of its ambitions, but it’s also one of Dwyer’s finest compositions, packed with enough top-shelf melodies and riffs to keep it interesting well beyond the point where it should probably get a little boring.
July 7th, 2019 3:19pm
Thom Yorke’s non-Radiohead work is often quite good, but has a way of demystifying his assumed genius and reminding us all that every member of Radiohead is crucial in achieving what they have over the past three decades. When Yorke is left to his own devices he tends to stray from straightforward melody and concise structure in favor of pulsing, gradually building electronic compositions that could easily pass for music released on labels like Border Community, Kompakt, and Hyperdub. To my ears, it always sounds like music that the other members of Radiohead might reject for being too derivative of contemporary artists, or aim to edit into tighter and/or more dynamic songs that would move far away from the apparent emotional and compositional goals of the work. It’s music that exists because Yorke is alone and he’s free to let go of familiar strengths and explore less developed elements of his skill set without having to compromise.
Anima, his fifth solo album including his record as Atoms for Peace and his score for the remake of Suspiria, is the point at which working in electronic music is no longer a “less developed element of his skill set.” It’s been 13 years since The Eraser, and nearly 20 years since he first started seriously working within this tradition on Kid A. Whereas The Eraser now feels somewhat tentative in hindsight and still fairly rooted in Radiohead-ness and both Amok and Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes often felt slightly tossed off, Anima sounds like it comes from a place of full confidence. It doesn’t have a “side project” air about it; it feels like a major career statement that is meant to be taken as seriously as any of his Radiohead work.
And yet I am not terribly moved by it. For the most part this is art I appreciate far more than I actively like it, and the song I enjoy the most – “Impossible Knots” – sounds like a late period Radiohead song that just happened to find its way to this record rather than whatever the band does next. To some extent this is purely a matter of what musical ideas get me going at this point in time: I prefer a busier composition, I want more harmony, I would rather a song move between distinct dynamics than subtly build upon small grooves. “Impossible Knots” has wonderfully jittery groove to it, starting with rattling high-hat sounds and the slow thud of its bass drum and moving into a bass line that seems like a line moving through a series of mazes. Yorke sings in his airiest falsetto, but that’s the only part of the composition that feels loose and free, as the synth drones feel weighty and oppressive like excessive humidity on a hot day. The song doesn’t allow for much in the way of cathartic release, but in the larger context of the rigid and dour Anima, it actually does serve as the climax of the record as the penultimate track. And maybe that’s part of why Anima doesn’t fully connect with me at the moment – this is quite enough claustrophobia for me, thank you.
July 4th, 2019 4:07pm
“Angel Face” is a song about unrequited love, but it’s sung from the perspective of someone who has clearly moved on from being heartbroken about it to a state of bitter acceptance. It’s not an angry song but there’s certainly some resentment in Gena Rose Bruce’s voice as she sings about the object of her desire feeling like “God’s gift to the world,” and while they could be just as arrogant and egotistical as she’s making them out to be, it might just be a matter of her taking them off a pedestal she put them on while she was caught up in infatuation. The composition of the track is brilliant in the way it gradually builds from just a mildly nervous pulse and her fragile, lovely voice up to a sort of muted rock catharsis at the end. In that final sequence she repeats a very familiar line from pop history – “I can’t make you love me” – and her phrasing strips out the usual pathos and replaces it with a cold resolve, like she’s finally just killing the feeling forever.
July 3rd, 2019 1:19pm
Hatchie is an artist whose music always sounds so familiar that it can feel like she’s deliberately trying to give the listener a “deja vu” sensation. Is she lifting a melody and texture from a specific old shoegaze or goth song from the late 80s/early 90s, or is it just generally sorta that vibe? My knowledge isn’t deep enough to go full “trainspotter” on her, but I do appreciate her attention to detail and dynamics. “Unwanted Guest” is her best song to date, and not coincidentally, it’s also her most dramatic. There’s a very Cure sort of bombast to this one – the suggestion of vast scale and enormous noise, but glossy and refined in its tonality. Her voice reminds me a lot of Siouxsie her, mostly in timbre but also in her confidence and authority in how she sings the verses. The most musically exciting bit of the song reminds me a little of Siouxsie too – the ascending melodic hook “put me on your list of hearts to haunt” somewhat echoes the similarly glorious “nothing or no one will ever make me let you down” refrain of “Kiss Them for Me.”
July 2nd, 2019 2:03pm
“Ghostride” is a slow, gentle, hazy song about living in a daze. Lila Ramani sings about feeling stuck “on automatic” and being reminded she’s alive by mundane stimulation in the back of a car. She’s passively going along with moving from place to place, but her mind is either somewhere else or entirely turned off, depending on the moment. There’s a bit of sadness and introspection, but it’s mostly just a pleasant sort of disassociation. The sound of the song is psychedelic, but without a lot the usual atmospheric signifiers of that vibe – it’s like the ambience has been cut out entirely in favor of a dry, clean, uncanny recording aesthetic.
July 2nd, 2019 3:17am
“I Don’t Wanna Lose” has a light, easy-going feel to it, but under the seeming tranquility of the music is a tangle of confusion, fear, and insecurity. Kate Bollinger confronts all of this with modesty and self-deprecating wit – “so what if it’s all my decisions / or my indecision / oh, I just can’t pick one” – but doesn’t deny herself the weight of her emotions. Given the tone of her words and the graceful and relaxed tone of her arrangement, the anxiety at the heart of the song is placed in a greater context. There, but ultimately at scale with the rest of her life, and what’s around her. It’s like a coping mechanism set to music, like she’s carefully guiding herself through a maze of emotion to get to the desired point: “I just wanna win.”
July 1st, 2019 12:58am
“Cheerleader” is a very charged word, one that evokes a lot of overlapping anxieties about status, conformity, femininity, commodification of teen girls, and how Hollywood has packaged teen archetypes for generations. Kelsie Hogue gleefully dives into all of that in this bombastic and melodramatic pop song, but adds a few extra layers of angst by centering it on latent homoerotic desire and a fraught frenemy relationship between two girls. Hogue sings the song with a touch of irony – you’re certainly meant to hear it in the context of previous iterations of teen pop culture artifacts, and she’s aware of the heightened emotion of the characters. But even still, the level of commitment in the lyrics and vocal performance make it clear that this is coming from a very raw emotional place that’s only just getting filtered through glossiness, camp, and archetypes.
June 28th, 2019 3:27pm
As Miss World creates more music and videos, it’s clear to me that she’s a true auteur who is gradually creating her own distinctive aesthetic and iconography out of kitschy elements of the past and present. She’s kinda like the Anna Biller of indie rock, building fun but cleverly pointed art that on the surface comes off as frivolous because she’s mostly making references to junk culture made for women and the less glamorous elements of the internet.
“I Found A Girl” is Miss World in curatorial mode. The song was originally performed by an amateur singer called Roye’l on a public access show and spread as a minor video meme back in the early days of YouTube. Miss World’s cover of the song is not devoid of irony – she layers images of herself over the original footage in the video – but it’s very clear that her love for this song is entirely earnest. This is her best vocal performance to date – her timbre is uncannily similar to that of a young Madonna, and that along with the particular tone of the synths makes it sound like it could be a great lost mid-80s Madonna ballad.
The real joy of this recording is in how much she embraces the purity of Roye’l’s song, and sings it like the hit it ought to be. The hook is truly gorgeous, and I feel like my heart is glowing every time I hear her sing the phrase “I found her a girl, her name is Jikokoa!” The subtle tension in her version comes down to a bitter knowledge of how the world can be, and how first loves can go, but singing it all like she’s just trying to will more purity and kind-hearted joy into the world.
June 28th, 2019 12:34pm
Knxwledge’s remix of this song by the Japanese producer Mabanua is so drastically that it’s surprising to go back to the source material and find something rather boppy and twee. Knxwledge takes the vocal Chara and turns the melody sideways in a deep, humid funk track. His arrangement remakes her breathy performance as an R&B vocal, and brings out a raw sensuality that’s far more Adina Howard or TLC than anything remotely like J-Pop. It’s a cool trick, but also an assertion of Knxwledge’s powerful aesthetic. Listening to this, you get the sense that he could will most any song into his low-key but intensely sexual vibe.
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