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The Atlanta rapper shows off his ear for vivid imagery and counter-intuitive production on his new project. | The Atlanta rapper shows off his ear for vivid imagery and counter-intuitive production on his new project. | Young Nudy: Anyways | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/young-nudy-anyways/ | Anyways | During his brief career, the Atlanta rapper Young Nudy has managed to stay both versatile and consistent. His demented, hypnotic rhymes, full of violence and drugs, initially made him seem a kindred spirit to his cousin 21 Savage. But just as 21 Savage has broadened his appeal, Nudy has also pushed against the borders of his trap sound. He might not boast the flash or obvious eccentricities of his peers, but the rapper born Quantavious Thomas is quietly one of the more unique artists to emerge from his city in years.
His first tape, Paradise City, appeared in 2014, but his ascendance began in earnest in 2016 with his Slimeball series. Last year, he made his biggest splash yet with the feature-free surprise mixtape Faded In The Booth and Sli’merre, his collaborative project with producer wunderkind Pi’erre Bourne. The chemistry between Nudy and Pi’erre proved electric, and his new project Anyways expands on that mixtape’s jubilant bounce with some of the darker subject matter of his early work.
Young Nudy's taste for experimental production helps distinguish him. The dreamy, cartoonish beat for “Blue Cheese Salad” and the stoned stupor of “A Nudy Story” add unexpected shades to Nudy’s villain mystique, while “Cap Dem” sounds like it was made for Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y rather than a trap artist. These counter-intuitive choices might be off-putting to those who prefer a murkier atmosphere with their street raps, but they keep his music feeling nimble and surprising.
It helps that he raps his ass off. Anyways might be Nudy’s best technical performance, both in the variety of his flows and the calmness with which he croaks them out. On “No Go,” he manages to make giving directions to his frequent East Atlanta hangouts sound exciting. His rhymes bristle with energy, confidence, and vivid imagery (“Yellow tape surrounding you and your team/ I’m Majin Buu with the smoke, I blow the steam” he says on “Deeper Than Rap”). The trance-like quality of the production on the album lures you in, but Nudy’s commanding presence keeps you there.
Anyways likely won’t drastically alter the arc of Nudy’s career or skyrocket him to success. It’s a quality street-rap record, one that should please his fans and maybe convert a few interested parties. But there’s something undeniable about the devotion with which he chisels away at his craft, like a sculptor obsessing over the curves and crevices of his work. He might never hit superstardom like some of his peers, but he keeps finding something worthwhile to say, and surprising ways to say it. | 2020-03-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-03-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Paradise East / RCA / Same Plate | March 6, 2020 | 7.5 | 0a7263ae-b8da-4c5c-ac99-edb081ffb08d | Israel Daramola | https://pitchfork.com/staff/israel-daramola/ | |
America's Greatest Hits, the first full-length by Olympia hardcore act Gag, is a pitch-black album about cackling in the abyss, cracking jokes in the humorless confines of hardcore. | America's Greatest Hits, the first full-length by Olympia hardcore act Gag, is a pitch-black album about cackling in the abyss, cracking jokes in the humorless confines of hardcore. | Gag: America's Greatest Hits | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21338-americas-greatest-hits/ | America's Greatest Hits | America's Greatest Hits, the first full-length by Olympia hardcore act Gag, is a pitch-black album about cackling in the abyss, cracking jokes in the humorless confines of hardcore. They are deeply entrenched in the underground: The album is out on Iron Lung, the quietly reigning West Coast punk and hardcore label operated by a band of the same name; Iron Lung's drummer, Jensen Ward, accompanies members of Gag in White Wards. And Gag's clutch of tapes and EPs, which date back to 2012, demonstrate a rigorously fundamental understanding of hardcore: forbidding thickets of guitar feedback; dour, mid-tempo riffs evocative of dogged trudging and furrowed brows; and rhythmic motifs limited to lumbering backbeat and pugilistic punctuation.
That makes Gag at once highly traditional—wavering little from formal touchstones like, say, Poison Idea's original "Pure Hate"—and at odds with hardcore's prevailing inclinations today. There's none of the studied staccato blitzkrieg of Punch, no d-beat homage à la Ajax or Gas Rag. Rather, America's Greatest Hits is a sturdy and relatively unhurried exercise in stylized hostility: "Steel Forced Twin" is a strident salvo of floor-tom thud, while "Pretty Boy" is all showy strut and bratty leads. Trenchant and thuggish without relief, America's Greatest Hits is predictable but never rote; if contemporary hardcore is less in conversation with originators and more indentured to them, Gag threatens to depose its masters.
Indeed, the ghoulish jester adorning the cover of last year's Locker Room EP looks something like Gag's spiritual advisor. And America's Greatest Hits, like Gag's catalog at large, is distinguished by its humor. Historically, hardcore has prized clarity—rejecting irony and sarcasm in favor of a more imperative and sincere tone—whereas punk is more likely to traffic in farce and black humor. Gag, however, forces an impressive amount of sardonic punch lines, guttersnipe mockery, and macabre wit into its otherwise purist hardcore. In the squelched, scabrous vocals, quizzical references to shrimp, sunglasses, and Wal-Mart abound. "It's Just Me" begins, "There's no justice/ There's no justice—just me*,*" which illustrates how skillfully Gag uses the few syllables allotted each line: there's a simplistic pun, a cynical assertion, and even something of a political statement.
All throughout America's Greatest Hits, Gag fulfills the music's nearly monosyllabic requirement with a rare capacity for invention and play. But they aren't simply clever. They mix mastery and transgression. Perhaps Gag explains its perspective best: Consider one of its finest little maxims, from the 40 Oz. Rule '90 EP: "Ha ha ha/ Blah blah blah/ Either way you die." Like the very most resonant sentiments in hardcore, it's inarguable and essential. And America's Greatest Hits affirms that Gag guffaws in the face of death. | 2016-01-05T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2016-01-05T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Rock | Iron Lung | January 5, 2016 | 7.7 | 0a7311ea-5437-4369-953a-33dac326be40 | Sam Lefebvre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-lefebvre/ | null |
Philly artist PnB broke out last year with an appealing rapper-turned-singer swagger. His major label debut carefully balances his malleable take on R&B and street rap. | Philly artist PnB broke out last year with an appealing rapper-turned-singer swagger. His major label debut carefully balances his malleable take on R&B and street rap. | PnB Rock: GTTM: Goin Thru the Motions | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22809-gttm-goin-thru-the-motions/ | GTTM: Goin Thru the Motions | Philadelphia rap is undergoing a generational shift. Despite all the tabloid drama, Meek Mill remains the city’s biggest star, rapping with the emotional intensity of hometown legend Beanie Sigel, but with a honed ability to land crossover hits. Yet the city’s two up-and-coming stars operate completely outside the street-vs.-pop divide that Meek observes so carefully. Lil Uzi Vert is a bratty rockstar that cannot write a bad hook and and PnB Rock wields a rapper-turned-singer swagger. Meek Mill rapped on Philly street corners and committed years to the mixtape grind, where this new wave was scooped up early by major labels, landing on success that took years for Meek to achieve.
PnB Rock went from catching regional buzz with post-prison freestyles in 2014 to signing with Atlantic Records the following year. In that short time, Fetty Wap, another rapper-turned-singer from the Tri-State area, emerged and crossed over with numerous Top 40 pop hits (“Trap Queen,” “679”). Last year they released a joint mixtape, Money, Hoes, and Flows that highlighted Fetty Wap’s charming vocal quirks set against PnB Rock’s more conventional singing voice.
GTTM: Going Through The Motions, PnB Rock’s major-label debut, carefully balances his malleable interpretations of both R&B and street rap. “Range Rover” fits a boastful trap mold (“Rollie all on my wrist/Bitch I ball no assist/Smoking weed by the zip/Whole squad yeah we lit”), but his smooth delivery pushes the song closer to acoustic Ty Dolla $ign than Migos. On the other side of the spectrum is “Notice Me,” where Rock pines for a second of a woman’s time, whose attention is buried in social media. The sentiment can feel like Drake-style shaming, but his words are empathetic when he wistfully sings: “In your hand all day, on the ’gram all day/You been tweeting, snapchatting/And I feel like I just got to ask you/Do you notice me?” PnB Rock’s delivery convey a simple a desire to find a romantic middle ground more than chauvinistic condemnation.
Song-by-song, GTTM is a charming debut, but when viewed as complete album it falls fairly flat. It opens on a sour note with the Wiz Khalifa-featuring “Attention.” Yet instead of the suave Kush and OJ Wiz, we get the boastful Cabin Fever version, full of to turgid go-nowhere cliches (“Whole lotta weed getting rolled in a paper plane/Whole lotta bitches scream my name”). Either of the following tracks—“There She Go,” “Playa No More,” and “Selfish”—would have been stronger introductions, potential hits that also offer clear introductions to PnB Rock’s worldview.
Unfortunately, tracklisting issues dog the album to its closing seconds. “New Day,” produced by frequent Lil Uzi Vert collaborator Maaly Raw, is buried as the penultimate track, where it could’ve added a bit of energy to the album’s tepid middle section. The album closes with “Stand Back,” an aggressive, calculated classic piece of East Coast street rap featuring Bronx up-and-comer A-Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. The pair share a natural chemistry, but there are no sparks here as the two jockey to see who can act the hardest. Fans in a post-iTunes streaming world can easily cull the best songs, but it’s unfortunate the album places that burden on them. Still,PnB Rock shows more than enough heart and talent; pick through the missteps, and there's still a good new artist here, someone capable of more. | 2017-01-23T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-01-23T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Empire | January 23, 2017 | 6.6 | 0a7635f0-5623-4293-865d-2bbec28050b5 | David Turner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/david-turner/ | null |
This 6xCD, DVD reissue of The Aeroplane Flies High, the 1996 Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness B-side collection, makes it the most difficult Smashing Pumpkins reissue to endure, but it’s actually the easiest to revisit*.* | This 6xCD, DVD reissue of The Aeroplane Flies High, the 1996 Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness B-side collection, makes it the most difficult Smashing Pumpkins reissue to endure, but it’s actually the easiest to revisit*.* | The Smashing Pumpkins: The Aeroplane Flies High | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18259-the-smashing-pumpkins-the-aeroplane-flies-high/ | The Aeroplane Flies High | Let’s can the mock suspense and acknowledge the absurdity of this rerelease as a starting point rather than a conclusion. The Aeroplane Flies High is not a beloved obscurity, nor is it a canonical album celebrating a milestone anniversary. It’s not even an album: it’s a widely available, 16-year old collection of B-sides from a double album. Granted, the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was more judiciously edited than the title would lead you to believe. It was a 28-song double album all the same, and now Aeroplane nearly quadruples in size with 90 additional tracks on top of its original 33, with a bonus DVD to boot. But while the numbers make The Aeroplane Flies High the most difficult Smashing Pumpkins reissue to endure, it’s actually the easiest to revisit. For most listeners, Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie are inseparable from the memories of living with those records at a certain age; it’s tough to rehear “Disarm” or “X.Y.U.” without recalling the specific sensory triggers of your parents' house or the details of a particularly shitty day in 10th grade when [INSERT NAME HERE] didn’t reciprocate your crush on them. Aeroplane simply reminds the listener of what it was like to be a Smashing Pumpkins fan when people were expected to pay money for music.
It was equally exhilarating and exhausting during the band’s prime. If you caught the videos on MTV and chose to take your Pumpkins fanship to the next level by exploring the deep cuts, the bootlegs, the formative guitar tablature sites, and so forth, you realized that Billy Corgan was every bit as excited about the music of Smashing Pumpkins as his audience. In fact, that probably strikes at the root of everything you’ve come to loathe about Corgan as well: he’s the biggest Smashing Pumpkins fan on earth.
So while Aeroplane was always meant as a collector’s item, Corgan made it worth your while. Even if you bought it out of obligation and never even listened to the thing, it was one of the 90s’ most handsome and unique physical packages: five CD singles with their own art design, delivered in a hypno-swirled carrying case. It was a keepsake and a conversation piece, a vinyl era throwback for kids who assumed the CD era would last forever. So even if the songs themselves were dashed off (Corgan claimed “Pennies” took literally minutes to write) or slapped together (the very literal 23-minute guitar collage “Pastichio Medley”), there was nothing half-assed about the actual product.
Separating the B-sides onto five separate CDs ensured that the collection was no mere data dump in terms of quality and presentation. If you let your ears go slack a little, every EP retains some important characteristic of its linchpin Mellon Collie single. It’s not an exact fit; with the exception of the country and western curio “Said Sadly”, Bullet With Butterfly Wings is the “covers” EP and the selections brought the new wave genealogy of that song to the fore. The keeper of the bunch is their take on Blondie’s “Dreaming”; not only does it feature a rare lead vocal from bassist D’arcy, but the requisitely light, billowy arrangement distinguishes it from their competent Cars and Alice Cooper karaoke and a fumbled cover of the Cure’s “A Night Like This” where James Iha can’t decide if he wants to perform it as a country, slowcore, or shoegaze song.
Tonight, Tonight is technically the “ballad” single-- it is the one with the strings and all. Yet, its sumptuous studio arrangement bares no similarity to its attendant outtakes which are mostly solo, acoustic performances from Corgan. Even compared to the spare and wistful lullabies from their previous odds-and-ends collection Pisces Iscariot such as “Whir” and “Obscured”, the songs here sound incomplete rather than realized minimalism. If you’re trying to fashion a four-star Smashing Pumpkins album out of the original B-sides-- and really, that seems like the entire point-- you can skip those two EPs altogether.
On the other side, everything on the 1979 single warrants inclusion. The most-beloved Smashing Pumpkins single gives these songs a certain halo effect, of course. Beyond that, the lightly carbonated college rock of “The Boy” is easily the best thing James Iha has ever written, while the whispered restraint lent to the could-be power ballad “Believe” puts it as the runner up. More intriguing is how in 20 minutes, the fluorescent and fizzy 1979 lays out an intriguing “what if?” for the Smashing Pumpkins. While Adore is known as their synth album and a sonic outlier amidst Corgan’s ambitions for Sistine Chapel art-rock, it’s still a 70-minute opus draped in black and smeared with kohl eyeliner. “Ugly” and “Set the Ray to Jerry” are two sides of a coin and together they present a fascinating alternative to Adore: the former a self-hate song driven by palm-muted, bristling guitar and the latter a love song of swirling, phased ambience. Is it possible they could’ve made a minimalist, melody-driven new wave album following in that vein? I have my doubts-- for all his generosity in the realm of B-sides and miscellany, albums are a huge event for Corgan and we’ll never know if “Set the Ray” would’ve included triple-guitar harmonies or if Jimmy Chamberlin’s barnstorming drum rolls would’ve found a way onto “Cherry”.
If you want those aspects of Smashing Pumpkins, you can head straight to the Zero EP, which, like the titular single, is the most immediately satisfying of the bunch and the quickest to lose its appeal. “God” rages with such Neanderthal impulses, it’s actually fun; it’s basically “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” if you fast forward straight to the avalanche of its coda. The relatively raw glam-grunge of “Mouths of Babes” and “Marquis in Spades” has an underdog appeal if you somehow thought Mellon Collie was hindered by its concept album ambitions or ever mistook Smashing Pumpkins as being a punk or indie band at some point; but as far as riffs or melodies or dynamics go, they’re all second-tier Corgan compositions.
That leaves us with Thirty-Three, the oft-forgotten single from Mellon Collie and the least typical of the lot. The rest of the EP follows suit, as it bears the collection’s most risky and disparate offerings; you get the prettiest cover (“My Blue Heaven”) and the sludgiest, slowest guitar workout (“The Aeroplane Flies High (Turns Left Looks Right)”). The electro-spazz of “Transformer” segues into Iha’s ornate, porcelain art-pop offering “The Bells”. And it’s all preceded by the showstopping closer on your hypothetical Aeroplane single-CD; containing one of Corgan’s most sweet and yearning vocal performances as well as guitar solo from his father, “The Last Song” feels too crucial to be ignored and too personal to make it onto an album with Mellon Collie’s overt commercial ambitions.
And those are all things you can surmise from buying the original version of Aeroplane Flies High; the tracks have been remastered here, though liars and professional audio engineers are the only people who will claim to notice the effect. Like every Pumpkins reissue, Aeroplane is stocked with extras; the difference here is that they’re jammed onto each single seemingly at random, rather than separated into bonus discs. As a result, the tasteful and accessible arrangement of the original is compromised, negating one of its best qualities. For example, why are 15 tracks of instrumental jamming slapped onto Bullet With Butterfly Wings? And these aren’t snippets either, some go on for five minutes, and mostly prove that while Smashing Pumpkins songs are pantheon material, Smashing Pumpkins riffs are fairly easy to come by. As works in progress, they’re nothing particularly special; it’d be more interesting if Corgan granted a Creative Commons License as part of the purchase price and allowed fans to use his scraps to come up with their best Smashing Pumpkins imitation.
Otherwise, do we need the Smashing Pumpkins’ July 1995 performance at Chicago’s Double Door and their rehearsal? The DD rehearsal is spirited and ragged, notable for Corgan cracking up during “By Starlight” of all things and reconfiguring the lyrics of “God”. As far as the actual performance, you almost wish Corgan would get all Patton Oswalt on the dude who’s yelling in the middle of “Stumbleine”. Forget all of those-- head straight to “Special Winner’s Song”, which is five minutes of interactive crowd participation and an improvised rap by James Iha who is presumably drunk as shit. Hearing him yell, “D’arcy Wretzky on the motherfucking bass!” makes the whole endeavor somehow worth it because it’s one of the few times you might imagine the Smashing Pumpkins being four people who enjoyed each other’s company.
With all that said, Aeroplane gives you insight to what a tremendous strain it must’ve been to be a member of the Smashing Pumpkins-- if listening to everything on Aeroplane Flies High seems taxing, imagine playing it. And imagine that what ended up on this still somehow isn’t the sum total of their recorded output at the time. On a basic level, the supersizing of Aeroplane magnifies what it was back in 1996, a point where Corgan’s giving nature felt more like neediness, where the generosity started to lose its altruism and became an oppressive act. The deluxe reissuing of Smashing Pumpkins’ heyday has resulted in upwards of 200 bonus tracks and the ones on Aeroplane are almost entirely inessential. You learn from the eight-track demo of “Zero” that it needs vocals and it needs Jimmy Chamberlain. You learn from the live version that it doesn’t need 50% more whammy pedal soloing. If it’s easy to revisit Aeroplane without getting emotionally attached, it’s harder to talk about for the same reason. But it gets us one step closer to reevaluating Adore, the first Pumpkins record that underperformed commercially and critically, whose legacy is still somewhat in flux. And that’s a worthy cause even if Aeroplane couldn’t possibly justify its price tag. | 2013-07-19T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2013-07-19T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Virgin / Interscope | July 19, 2013 | 7 | 0a7d08f5-f1f3-4192-add2-86cbf4080fbb | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
This compilation of extra smooth, funky, and sometimes very odd songs from the heydey of Japan’s technological boom is a broad yet nuanced introduction to the genre of city pop. | This compilation of extra smooth, funky, and sometimes very odd songs from the heydey of Japan’s technological boom is a broad yet nuanced introduction to the genre of city pop. | Various Artists: Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976-1986 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-pacific-breeze-japanese-city-pop-aor-and-boogie-1976-1986/ | Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976-1986 | Outside of YouTube recommendations and subreddit threads, the most common way for American listeners to discover the loosely defined Japanese genre known as city pop has remained oddly old school: through a pilgrimage to a Japanese record store. In Japan, where the CD still reigns, the Tower Records listening station is alive and well—and nudging visiting Westerners toward city pop classics from the late 1970s and early ’80s, like Tatsuro Yamashita’s For You, Eiichi Ohtaki’s A Long Vacation, Mariya Takeuchi’s Variety, and Taeko Ohnuki’s Sunshower. Though largely sung in Japanese, city pop pulls from many different types of “smooth” American music during that era—from AOR and yacht rock to boogie and jazz fusion—and unites them through meticulous playing and a near-obsessive production sheen. To fall in love with city pop as an American is to find something more interesting in another culture’s souped-up reinterpretation of your own cheesiness.
In the mid-2000s, at a listening station in one of Tokyo’s sprawling Tower stores, Andy Cabic, frontman of folk-rockers Vetiver and one of the curators behind Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976-1986, first stumbled upon city pop. Nearly a decade and a half later, the moment seems primed for this style of music, which despite a lack of official releases available stateside, spread online and helped inspire the internet-obsessed genre vaporwave. As nameless, faceless, genreless “vibe” muzak proliferate online, city pop might just be a kind of ground zero. But the version of city pop heard on Pacific Breeze plays up its more experimental side, via forays into exotica and cutting-edge electronics.
Part of that has to do with the compilation’s positioning of Haruomi Hosono as city pop’s main guiding force. Many of the songs feature or have ties to this ever-changing titan of Japanese pop music, whether the musicians once played in his Tin Pan Alley collective or later joined him in Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). Hosono has been a big focus for the archival label Light in the Attic, from his pioneering native-tongue folk rock with Happy End to his avant-garde adventures in early sampling technology.
That latter period of Hosono’s career inspired Pacific Breeze’s best track, the synthpop squirmer “Sports Men.” Originally found on 1982’s Philharmony, Hosono’s first solo album following YMO’s rise, the song is fueled by a vaguely flute-y sample that loops in an endless cheerful tootle and the musician’s own sneering anxieties over not being fit enough for a very sporty crush. It’s the one moment on Pacific Breeze where the cracks of the city pop fantasy really start to show—the dark side of a genre associated with, essentially, yuppies in Tokyo. As Japan’s post-war industrialization came to fruition as a full-on tech boom and the country ascended as an economic powerhouse, city pop emerged as the slick soundtrack for young, moneyed urban dwellers. In a way, this music was designed for all those brand new car-stereo tape decks and Walkmans being developed in Japan at the time, the pristine recordings splashing a touch of neon on the passing skyscrapers.
Japan’s burgeoning leisure class made an apt audience not just for West Coast American music, but vague, Americanized versions of tropical sounds as well. You can hear the faint echo of exotica pioneer Martin Denny, whose music was broadcast across American military radio stations in Japan following World War II, in tracks like Suzuki Shigeru’s elegant but goofy “Lady Pink Panther.” It’s moments like these—where the desire to sing in English, oftentimes just on the chorus, ends up giving the song a slight novelty feeling—that Pacific Breeze underscores its intended audience. There are a good deal of songs at least partially in English and many instrumentals scattered across the 16-track compilation, offering a slightly skewed view of city pop.
This perspective also highlights “weirder” tracks as well, instead of the more easy-listening, Japanese Doobie Brothers vibe that much of this style of music embodies. “Bride of Mykonos”—a standout synth instrumental by Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi, Hiroshi Sato (what would have been YMO had Sato accepted Hosono’s invitation)—takes the slingshot echoes of cultural exchange one step further: the piece was commissioned for CBS/Sony’s Sound Image Series, which focused on international locales. In this one composition, you can hear traces of American pop music, Japanese technological innovation, and inspiration from both the Greek peninsula and the outer limits of space.
Pacific Breeze works best as a broad yet nuanced introduction to both Hosono’s mid-career and city pop as a whole. The mere access to this fascinating and prescient style of music fills a real void and at times evokes a surreal glee. The opening notes of honey-voiced singer Nanako Sato’s “Subterranean Futari Bocci” might make you feel as though it’s time to come on down, you’re the next contestant on “The Price Is Right.” “Midnight Driver,” from underrated city pop icon Minako Yoshida, is an amalgamation of Chic, the Isley Brothers, and the score to the SEGA Genesis game ToeJam & Earl, all just jamming out for seven and a half glorious minutes. It sounds simultaneously like the future and the past, Japan and America, the shifts of a culture in flux and the fantasy of something far too shiny to be real. | 2019-05-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-05-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Light in the Attic | May 20, 2019 | 8 | 0a804bf3-e1a3-4ff9-8c8a-145fd6a0aee0 | Jill Mapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jill-mapes/ | |
The debut album by this young doom metal outfit from Arkansas is startlingly well realized, with deep, sludgy guitar textures and proggy songs that are complemented by a sparkling melodic sensibility. | The debut album by this young doom metal outfit from Arkansas is startlingly well realized, with deep, sludgy guitar textures and proggy songs that are complemented by a sparkling melodic sensibility. | Pallbearer: Sorrow and Extinction | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16345-sorrow-and-extinction/ | Sorrow and Extinction | Doom is a broad category, one of those descriptors that needs an extra word like "stoner," "funeral," "sludge," "death," or "drone" to help narrow things down a little. It can bring to mind the slower, low-tuned psychedelic metal of post-Sabbath American groups like Saint Vitus, Trouble, and Pentagram along with Sweden's Candlemass, UK act Cathedral, and descendants who are crustier (YOB, Asunder), more flatlining (Sunn O)))), seemingly suicidal (Loss), and exceedingly smoked-up (Sleep). Then come the backward-glancing modern traditionalists like weathered North Carolina crew Hour of 13, Rhode Island upstarts Pilgrim, and now, even more gloriously, Pallbearer.
The Little Rock, Ark., quartet sounds much older than its years on its fantastic debut LP, Sorrow and Extinction. The band released a three-song demo in 2010, but reach greater heights here, due to both sharper songwriting and better production. Really, even though they end their Sorrow thank-you list with a blushing "and, of course, Black Sabbath," they go much deeper than that. You could throw in Saint Vitus and early Candlemass (1986's Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, especially), but it almost makes more sense to reference post-Sleep duo Om for the way each song insistently, specifically reaches for a focused transcendence. That said, there's more variation and catharsis here, despite the occasional Mick Barr/all-nighter riffing. It seems like a simple formula, and maybe it is, but the execution's flawless. It also shifts subtly and continually: They mix in psychedelia, 1970s prog melodies, clean vocal harmonies, and ambient keyboards without sacrificing a certain smoked-up genre purity.
We get five songs in just under 50 minutes, each mountain of slow, majestic chords bleeding into one glorious cathedral of riffs and soaring vocals. Here is where their insistence on an overall flow pays off. The longest and best piece is the scene-setting opener, "Foreigner". It starts with tentative, pretty nylon-stringed acoustic guitars that, after two minutes, are joined by carefully played, delicate drums until everything crashes with a huge distorted crescendo. The riffs are beautiful and memorable, somehow both gentle and crushing, but the real key here is vocalist (and guitarist) Brett Campbell, who I first heard via his soaring (and surprising) guest spot on Loss' beautifully bleak 2011 collection, Despond, an album that more usually features a guttural vocal gargle.
That contrast is an essential aspect of the band, which is why when we posted an "An Offering of Grief", I mentioned the Pallbearer featured "[a] vocalist who sings." Campbell has been described as a young Ozzy Osbourne, and that influence is certainly there, but imagine if a young Ozzy had the ability to transform into Geddy Lee. This is music that would be interesting as instrumentals-- the guitars are that good-- but when you add a singer who can match that kind of dynamic surge, it goes somewhere else entirely. The songs have room to be extra patient in part because Pallbearer possess this weapon. On "Given to the Grave", for instance, we get more than five minutes of the acoustic strumming before the crunch and an ever-escalating Campbell. There's no need to rush when the climaxes are that huge, and with his voice, there's always one new wrinkle on the horizon.
The clean, anthemic feel is reminiscent of 40 Watt Sun's 2011 LP, The Inside Room. That band features vocalist and guitarist Patrick Walker of the 1990s UK doom group Warning taking five songs to just about 50 minutes, but with a more obviously introspective feel than we have here-- The Inside Room's an apt title-- with moments that feel a bit like slowcore heroes Codeine. Sorrow and Extinction isn't first-person in that way, and it's more clearly metal: This is sweeping, outdoor, mountaintop music. The lyrics have a mannered, sword-and-sorcery feel, situating death and sadness in towers, pyres, journeys, and the ancients; but even if you don't follow along with what the songs "mean," Campbell has one of those deliveries that brings shivers regardless of what he's singing.
That's the other thing that sets Pallbearer apart: As "down" and death-focused as the words and band name might be, this is uplifting stuff. (When the overlapping solos and subtle, arcing synth haze of "Given to the Grave" bring Sorrow and Extinction to an ecstatic end, you'll be thinking more about life than death, believe me.) Ultimately, it feels like Pallbearer have created their own version of a traditional jazz funeral march, or like they went ahead and invented some sort of "celebratory doom." Whatever you want to call it, the record's a triumph. | 2012-03-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2012-03-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Metal | Profound Lore | March 1, 2012 | 8.4 | 0a868823-db1c-44c4-9cb5-56aa200ad476 | Brandon Stosuy | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brandon-stosuy/ | null |
Rare is a debut so fully formed and overflowing with music and emotion. Tidal grapples eloquently with loneliness, retribution, and the oceanic ups and downs of being young and being a woman. | Rare is a debut so fully formed and overflowing with music and emotion. Tidal grapples eloquently with loneliness, retribution, and the oceanic ups and downs of being young and being a woman. | Fiona Apple: Tidal | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fiona-apple-tidal/ | Tidal | The second track on Fiona Apple’s debut album, released in 1996 when she was 18 years old, is a ballad about trauma. She describes the paralysis of depression: how the hurt stalks below the surface; how emotions rage and contort out of view. “And there’s too much going on/But it’s calm under the waves/In the blue of my oblivion,” she sings, as if facing a brewing wind, her voice a beacon of dignity, soul, and resolve. And then she digs deeper.
Is that why they call me a sullen girl?
They don't know how I used to sail the deep and tranquil sea
But he washed me ashore
And he took my pearl
And left an empty shell of me
Each word, like rocks tumbling into jewels, falls into the next. The internal rhymes hang onto one another and lift you up. No surprise, then, that spirals of poetry and jazz formed Fiona. She began on piano as an 8-year-old in Manhattan with a collection of standards called The Real Book (Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday were favorites). She was sent to psychiatrists, which she resented; once, staring at ink-blots, she made out the shape of a beetle and so proclaimed that she saw John Lennon’s face. Fiona has referred to Lennon as “God” and Maya Angelou as her “mother.” She slept with a compilation of Angelou’s writings under her pillow. “She had brought me through some tough times and shown me a light,” Fiona once said of Angelou, who she thanks in the liner notes of Tidal’s vinyl reissue “for everything you’ve ever written.”
In Angelou’s memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, first published in 1969, she describes her experience, at 8 years old, of being raped in her mother’s St. Louis home. After, she grows quiet; she is no longer interested in games. “When I refused to be the child they knew and accepted me to be, I was called impudent and my muteness sullenness,” Angelou writes. She is sent to Arkansas to live with her grandma, never knowing if her St. Louis family “just got fed up with my grim presence… There is nothing more appalling than a constantly morose child.” Angelou only warms up to the idea of talking again when a woman tells her that “it takes the human voice to infuse [words] with the shades of deeper meaning.” You can see why Fiona—having also been raped outside her home at age 12, retreating inward and taking solace in the act of writing—would find strength in this. Her music, too, is all words, all messages to decode, a potent mix of literary ambition and raw truth; scaling the depths of her vocal register, she swings and punches and finesses phrases with smoke.
It’s called Tidal, after all, to honor monumental extremes—the highs and lows of a force so awesome it forms waves that can wipe you away. When Fiona was 17, her three-song self-made demo tape famously found its way from her friend Anna, who was babysitting for a music publicist, to Andy Slater—who became Fiona’s manager and swiftly produced Tidal. Slater devised a sound based on Fiona’s interests in hip-hop, classical composers, and “old-school singers,” and with that Tidal contains some of the plushest and most atmospheric music in Fiona’s catalog. Its moodiness unspools slowly, from its wonky trip-hop beats and banged keys to its featherlight trills, marimba, and harp. But more often than not, it is a death stare in the face of a world that doesn’t deserve Fiona’s smile. “Life is tidal, love is tidal,” Fiona said on MTV’s “120 Minutes.” “It’s like the only adjective you could use to describe anything.”
Hers are rigorous pop songs because writing was survival. “I didn’t think of it as a fun thing to do,” she told The New York Times in January of 1997. “I thought it was the only thing I could do.” The songs collectively unpack the pain that hardens young women to the world—revealing Fiona’s thick skin and what she endured to build it; fight songs, and why she fights. It is often merciless. “Carrion” has an unusual tinge of optimism for a song that hangs on a hook of “My feel for you boy is decaying right in front of me like the carrion of a murdered prey.”
“Sleep to Dream” and “Shadowboxer” are the bones of the persona Fiona would come to project: skeptical, sensitive, and very smart; a lone young person betrayed by the ways of the world, summoning a colossal rage to match them. On these songs, she is a woman of herculean strength with her fists out, gloves on, building muscle to chip back at whoever has played her. “Once my lover/Now my friend/What a cruel thing to pretend,” Fiona sings on the latter. “What a cunning way to condescend.” One of the great wonders of pop music: that something so common could inspire a song so spectacular. She once said “Shadowboxer” is about “angry desperation”—“when your mind is fighting with your heart, when you know something isn’t good for you but you want it anyway, you’re trying really hard to do the right thing for yourself, but then finally you’re like, ‘I’m gonna do what I wanna do, I gotta do what my heart wants me to do, otherwise I won’t learn anything.’”
If “Shadowboxer” is her training ground, then “Sleep to Dream” is pure flexing. She rips the truth out of this idiot, she drags this guy who wronged her, all the while sounding self-possessed, feet on the ground, eyes wide, head clear, voice loud. It rumbles open, each word a drum: “I tell you how I feel, but you don’t care/I say tell me the truth, but you don’t dare/You say love is a hell you cannot bear/And I say ‘gimme mine back and then go there for all I care.’” Kanye said he was inspired by Fiona (and “Sleep to Dream” especially) because he wanted to rap like he was “at the top of a mountain.” On “Sleep to Dream,” Fiona sounds eight-feet tall. It’s full of classic Fiona missives, complete sentences of self-respect: “Don’t even show me your face ‘cause it’s a crying shame,” “I have never been so insulted in all my life,” “I got my own hell to raise.”
“Slow Like Honey” actualizes Tidal’s more glacial notes, its reveries that hang thick in the air with the accompaniment of Jon Brion’s vibraphone: “When I’m high like heaven/When I’m strong like music/’Cause I’m slow like honey/And heavy with mood.” In its florid verses, “Pale September” is her most classically romantic Tidal track, as she sings of “autumn days swung soft around me like cotton on my skin.” You might not include these on a mixtape of Fiona’s defining songs, but they turn Tidal into its own suspended universe nonetheless. You get why Solange, with her defiance and intellect and grace, deemed herself the president of the Fiona fan club—and why Perfume Genius once proclaimed that he should like to cover his body in tattoos of Fiona’s lyrics.
Tidal has some piano ballads of deceiving serenity, gentle but weighted by experience, heavy as cement. “Never Is a Promise” is the only Tidal track taken from her demo. In this severe six-minute confessional, you understand that of course Fiona comes from a lineage of stage actors and big band singers; its drama is operatic, with weeping strings arranged by Van Dyke Parks. It sounds so apart from the rest of the album—a song about absolute edge-of-the-earth isolation, about not expecting the world to catch you. “You’ll never feel the heat of this soul,” Fiona sings at its blazing peak, “My fever burns me deeper than I’ve ever shown/To you.” Throughout, she is calling out a person who says they will “never” give up on her. But she sees that “never” is hollow. How telling that this bracingly sad song is, at its core, a linguistic accusation. The last verse goes:
You’ll say you understand
You’ll never understand
I’ll say I’ll never wake up knowing how or why
I don’t know what to believe in
You don’t know who I am
You’ll say I need appeasing when
I start to cry
But never is a promise
And I’ll never need a lie.
Bluntly, which is probably the only way one should talk about Fiona Apple, “Never Is a Promise” reminds me of a dulled, sunken feeling I could rarely shake in high school. It was then a soundtrack to falling on the ground, picking myself up, and seeing the world through blurry eyes. (“Of course I have an eating disorder,” Fiona told Rolling Stone in 1998. “Every girl in fucking America has an eating disorder.”) “Never Is a Promise” was an unlikely life-saver, something to float with and hide in. I had never heard a song this honest, and yet it felt like it was coming from inside of me: A song about the foundations we set for our lives, a snapshot of beginning to see this (bullshit) world a bit more clearly. Listening to it now, I am astonished not by the fact that a teenager wrote it but that the world might make her harbor all of this pain instead of releasing it.
There is an unmistakable, almost comic dissonance between Tidal’s biggest song—the thrillingly misandrist radio hit “Criminal”—and the rest of Fiona’s early catalog. She wrote it in just 45 minutes when her label asked for a clearer single. (“I can write a hit,” she said in 2012. “I know how that shit works.”) On “Criminal” she is the immortal “bad, bad girl” being “careless with a delicate man,” delivering it all with a not-unsubtle wink: “What would an angel say? The devil wants to know.” But “Criminal” is a power play. She is reclaiming hers for all to see.
People would constantly prod Fiona on how an 18-year-old could write songs as mature as these—as if the most horrifying shit does not happen to people when they are teenagers, as if Fiona does not make metaphors of a spider, the clouds, and a lily pad in reference to men. Why did they not ask instead how she became a genius? She sounds preternaturally wise on “The Child Is Gone,” with its cool sway, its knowing ease, evoking the cutting assuredness of Nina Simone. As “the darkness turns into the dawn,” she sounds self-aware, forthright, welcoming a grand revelation. “I suddenly feel like a different person,” Fiona sings, “From the roots of my soul come a gentle coercion.”
Tidal went platinum within one year and yet, Fiona’s best work was still to come. The pleasure and poetry and purpose of Tidal, though, only calcifies with time. So much of it seems to say: You could never feel the pain I feel because only I have felt it. There are things about me that you can’t see at all, because I have buried them so well. You don’t know who I am. But of course, in Tidal, we saw ourselves. | 2017-08-13T01:30:00.000-04:00 | 2017-08-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sony | August 13, 2017 | 9 | 0a89de79-81cb-4905-8132-70ea603db1f5 | Jenn Pelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jenn-pelly/ | null |
Somewhere between a sorta-pop stab and pointedly hook-free, SY’s eighth album is ambivalent and shaggy by design. | Somewhere between a sorta-pop stab and pointedly hook-free, SY’s eighth album is ambivalent and shaggy by design. | Sonic Youth: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sonic-youth-experimental-jet-set-trash-and-no-star/ | Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star | Sonic Youth’s eighth full-length album represents a blind spot in a career with otherwise pretty clear markers. In 1992, they released Dirty, which contained “100%”—a breathtakingly catchy sorta-hit that managed to distill everything great and weird about the band in two-and-a-half minutes, even if it didn’t quite reach the heights of the contemporaries they nurtured. It was their “Cannonball,” in other words, or it could have been, if MTV played it more. By 1995, they’d release an album best remembered for containing a song nearly as long as a sitcom without commercial breaks.
In between was Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, which resisted the relative concision of 1990’s Goo and 1992’s Dirty but still bore the whiff of commercial expectations. Released a month after Kurt Cobain’s suicide and in the middle of a messy alternative-rock culture explosion that Sonic Youth helped usher in but never particularly wanted for themselves, the album was shaggy by design—a concerted effort to loosen up after the rigor of previous studio efforts. You can’t judge an album by its cover and yet: Daydream Nation, Goo and Dirty boasted artwork by Gerhard Richter, Raymond Pettibon, and Mike Kelley, respectively—textbook examples of the band’s essential role as conduit between the underground and the mainstream. Experimental’s packaging, meanwhile, was hastily assembled by an in-house designer at Geffen. Everything about the album reeked of ambivalence.
“We wanted it to be less rock,” Kim Gordon said in David Browne’s Sonic Youth biography Goodbye 20th Century. “Dirty was pretty much the pinnacle of that. I guess we were really disappointed in the label that they didn’t get MTV to play the record. Or we just felt, ‘Well, we’re just not that sort of band anyway.’” Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star is about the limbo between begrudging aspiration for pop success and the relief in discovering it was never meant to be. This isn’t just subtext: “Screaming Skull” shouts out the Lemonheads, Hüsker Dü, and Superchunk, dazed that their albums could be purchased at an SST Superstore on the Sunset Strip.
It is hard to hear, in hindsight, how the album is “less rock”—there are all manner of guitars doing things that seemingly only Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo knew how to make them do. “Starfield Road” is a burst of controlled mayhem that gets in and out in barely more than two minutes. Buzz Bin-worthy single “Bull in the Heather” and “Skink” are Kim Gordon at her Kim Gordon-est, the former enlisting both Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna and one of Steve Shelley’s most infectious beats.
Sonic Youth’s lyrics are generally afterthoughts compared to their acrobatic dissonance, but one album after “Youth Against Fascism,” Moore’s “Androgynous Mind” and “Self-Obsessed and Sexxee” nailed the current social and political moment with 25 years of foresight. The album sold nearly as well as Dirty, which was enough to keep the band in Geffen largesse for years to come, but not quite enough to give the cultural cachet of its three predecessors or even some of the band’s later-career gems. The album is a half-step between the relative restraint and catchiness of the trifecta of Daydream Nation, Goo, and Dirty and the fuck-it experimentalism of A Thousand Leaves and NYC Ghosts and Flowers, and doesn’t feel like it ever quite plowed a lane of its own.
Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star was also the first Sonic Youth album the band didn’t tour behind, which could not have helped its slippery legacy; Gordon gave birth to her and Moore’s daughter Coco soon after the record’s release. By the time 1995’s Washing Machine came out, the band was headlining Lollapalooza and openly grappling with its place as elder statesmen of a scene they both indelibly influenced and wanted to distance themselves from. In that sense, an album marked by ambivalence may have been a definitive statement after all. | 2019-05-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-05-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Geffen | May 9, 2019 | 6.8 | 0a8a50f9-5b11-4c5a-8621-f2436d74d78f | Steve Kandell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/steve-kandell/ | |
Gospel, punk, and noise fuse together for Algiers’ ambitious and chaotic second album. The songs burn with anger and grief, but lack cohesion to get the message across. | Gospel, punk, and noise fuse together for Algiers’ ambitious and chaotic second album. The songs burn with anger and grief, but lack cohesion to get the message across. | Algiers: The Underside of Power | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/algiers-the-underside-of-power/ | The Underside of Power | Algiers seem like a vision from a more progressive future: a mixed-race band from the American South fusing gospel and punk while challenging the capitalist state with righteous indignation. They’re a ragtag group of dissidents confronting the established order with industrial hymnals, raging against the machine through experimental rock epics; a band whose very name refers to the anti-colonial struggle. After releasing their self-titled debut in 2015, the trio of Franklin James Fisher, Ryan Mahan, and Lee Tesche were joined by former Bloc Party drummer Matt Tong. The newly-minted foursome made a pact never to be defined by their roles, and hoped to create an even more ambitious and outspoken work. Their sophomore album, The Underside of Power, strives to be the rallying cry for a tumultuous time.
Sessions for the record began in the UK during Brexit with Adrian Utley of Portishead. Utley was added to bring even greater urgency to the band’s aggressively political recordings. The flint for this powder keg was not only the rapidly degenerating political situation in both the UK and U.S. last year, but Fisher’s more personal experiences with race and privilege. As a 35-year-old black man, Fisher wrote many of the songs while working coat check at a Manhattan nightclub, inspired by observing young white people shout the n-word during rap songs. Much of the album, as the title suggests, spirals outward from these encounters, examining those disenfranchised by the system and eyeing a reckoning.
The reference points and influences for the album are vast and varied. The Black Panthers and Fred Hampton, Che Guevara, Camus’ The Plague, T.S. Eliot, Italian zombie exploitation flicks and horror film disco, PiL, Michael Stipe, Walter Benjamin, Jamaican soul, Dominick Fernow’s Vatican Shadow. The opener “Walk Like a Panther” alone tries to evoke Geto Boys, Afrika Bambaataa, grime, and footwork all at once, while maintaining the industrial gospel core. Mahan described “Mme Rieux” as capturing “the essence of early Portishead, if played with Wendy Carlos.” Then he said the same song was “a Donny Hathaway soul song mixed with the Shangri-Las and Delia Derbyshire.”
These are accurate comparisons as far as they go, but they also point to the album’s central problem: It’s overwrought and wildly overstuffed. In theory, The Underside of Power is the type of politically-charged work that would seem indispensable in times of crisis like the one we face today. It’s an eclectic mix of styles and sounds using protest to sustain its punk thrashers. The blueprint for such an album is out there—in bands that have inspired Algiers, like Bad Brains and the Clash, or groups like Public Enemy, Rage Against the Machine, Fishbone, and Dicks, all of which cross-pollinated genres to create explosive political music. But in practice, very few songs actually hit with the intended force. They’re bombastic to the point of kitsch, even though the issues at hand are a matter of life and death.
Algiers’ self-titled debut managed to weave many styles and sounds and say something powerful. A song like that record’s “Black Eunuch,” which subtly explored the relationship between sex and power, was super-charged with big, harmonic church-choir vocals and smashing guitar riffs. That equilibrium between opposing sonic forces isn’t found here. The songs rarely sound finished, or even like they have complete thoughts (as on “A Murmur. A Sign,” a previously-shelved song where Fisher’s hammy croon and the synth part undermine each other, as if each is only half-written). “Hymn for an Average Man” was inspired by Brexit and written for Trump supporters, imagining how working class complicity in the rise of fascism might square with their choices. An otherwise haunting portrayal powered by solo piano is disrupted by off-pitch synth and choir accents that, in this context, are a needless distraction.
While the production meanders, the songs also struggle with focus. “The Cycle/The Spiral: Time to Go Down Slowly,” which was originally based on a letter written to Fisher’s wife after an argument, somehow becomes a song about cyclical violence with an ending written about his parents’ divorce. Then there’s “Cleveland,” which samples Rev. James Cleveland’s gospel staple “Peace Be Still” and is supposed to invoke the memory of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was gunned down by Cleveland police in 2014, though he's never mentioned by name. Fisher names other victims of racially motivated violence—Sandra Bland, Andre Jones, Kindra Chapman, Keith Warren, Alfred Wright—and sings of karmic justice (“innocence is alive and it’s coming back one day”), but the effect is weirdly impersonal. This contrasts to moving tributes like Blood Orange’s “Sandra’s Smile” or Miguel’s “How Many,” songs that humanize their subjects. Weighty topics and individual stories on The Underside of Power feel more like abstractions, despite the ragged intensity of the delivery.
Cohesion can be overrated. A full-length album can certainly be concerned with building good songs first, and figuring out how they fit together as a whole later. Disorder can serve a record well; sprawl can help build suspense, create powerful dynamics, allow an artist to explore or magnify tensions, or cover varied terrain. But there’s something to be said for focus, particularly when delivering a specific message to an audience is the goal. Algiers have produced a record that is timely and necessary but also scatterbrained and messy, one that is so over the top it becomes a political melodrama, undercutting the issues it seeks to amplify. | 2017-07-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-07-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Matador | July 1, 2017 | 5.8 | 0a8d2304-1b94-4c63-8dca-d04f2990be1e | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | null |
The third album by Oakland, CA's Date Palms rides a foundation of doom metal, psych rock, and mournful country. What separates them from their drifting contemporaries is a distinct sense of composition; these are painstakingly considered, beguiling pieces partially inspired by California's Yuba River. | The third album by Oakland, CA's Date Palms rides a foundation of doom metal, psych rock, and mournful country. What separates them from their drifting contemporaries is a distinct sense of composition; these are painstakingly considered, beguiling pieces partially inspired by California's Yuba River. | Date Palms: The Dusted Sessions | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18158-date-palms-the-dusted-sessions/ | The Dusted Sessions | The vast desert of the southwestern U.S. has been an inspiration for musicians in all sorts of traditions. Increasingly it creeps into metal and psych, with late period Earth being a particularly strong example of rock that incorporates Western-style melodies and languid strokes meant to evoke the expanse. There’s something exotic but familiar about it, a beguiling quality that Oakland, CA's Date Palms nail to a tee. Riding a foundation of doom metal, psych rock, and mournful country, the group (now a quintet) led by Gregg Kowalsky and Marielle Jakobsons builds soundscapes with keyboards, mournful slide guitar, sitar, flute and a powerful electric bass. Their second album, The Dusted Sessions, ties together modern explorations of the Wild West with more traditional forms, infused with Americana but not giving into its clichés.
What separates Date Palms from troves of drifting psych rock bands is their distinct sense of composition. These aren’t lengthy jams but painstakingly considered pieces that ebb and flow. The Dusted Sessions centers around a suite inspired by the Yuba River in California, once central to the Gold Rush and home to a vast Native American tribe that was all but wiped out. There’s a careful reverence to the three-part “Yuba Source”, with its central melody that winds wide like the broad curves of the river itself. As the quintet work their way through the track, they’re propped up by monstrous basslines that provide important momentum without ruffling feathers, and a constant sitar that shimmers like a pool of clear fresh water.
The teasing melody of “Yuba Source”-- a simple three note blues phrase-- appears throughout the record, on “Yuba”'s second part and reprise. The group repeat these ideas like mantras, gently echoing so that an idea passes through each instrument as if it were being purified. Jakobsons’ violin, which emerges as the star of the record, takes these melodies and unwinds them out into long, soft strokes while the slide guitar dovetails gracefully beneath.
Each track is defined by a different instrument, however. As tight of a unit as they are, Date Palms are also pretty versatile. On “Dusted Down”, a searing electric guitar rises above the dusty tumult, and on “Exodus Due West” Jakobsons’ reverbed flute haunts the landscape. Kowalsky’s keyboards play an almost equally important role, especially in creating a wall-of-sound effect, as on centerpiece “Night Riding the Skyland”. Especially breathtaking on the latter, the viola merges with the synth before it’s all broken up by the thrust of Noah Philips’ electric guitar, diving head-first into a blues jam that recalls early-70s Pink Floyd and other psychedelic cornerstones.
That they can do all this on a single album is a testament to Date Palms’ ability and control as an ensemble. Even with 11-minute tracks, there’s not a moment that feels wasted; with so many different sounds and ideas invoked over The Dusted Sessions’ 44 minutes, there’s a clear idea at work even if it’s hard to quantify exactly what it is, which is where their brilliance lies. If the idea of Wild West-style slabs of desert rock doesn’t appeal to you, Kowalsky and Jakobsons will pull you in with their teasing melodies and weeping instruments anyway, their sound rough and immense like a sandpaper sky. On The Dusted Sessions they both deconstruct and reinforce the tenets of Americana and make something transcendent in the process. | 2013-06-20T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2013-06-20T02:00:04.000-04:00 | null | Thrill Jockey | June 20, 2013 | 7.9 | 0a8f546c-3c76-4954-82cb-ca206877322b | Andrew Ryce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andrew-ryce/ | null |
By 1991, Prince's unsurpassed run of brilliance had ended, but he still had a lot of great music in him. Diamonds and Pearls had a clutch of future classics along with some odd experiments. | By 1991, Prince's unsurpassed run of brilliance had ended, but he still had a lot of great music in him. Diamonds and Pearls had a clutch of future classics along with some odd experiments. | Prince / The New Power Generation: Diamonds and Pearls | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21846-diamonds-and-pearls/ | Diamonds and Pearls | Do you know how confident you have to be to wear ass-less pants? Kanye might have the swagger to swaddle himself in rabbit fur coats and bejeweled luchador masks, but cut the ass out of his leather jogging pants and Yeezus suddenly becomes meek. Offer Young Thug the outfit that Prince wore to the 1991 VMA’s and he’d ask for something slightly more modest. It would’ve made Oscar Wilde stammer, and Humphrey Bogart re-consider his right to have a name that starts with “Hump.”
If you’ve never seen the seven-minutes of Marquis de Sade-soul that comprises Prince’s “Gett Off” performance, watch it right now. I’ll still be here when if you return. It’s the lead single from his 13th studio album, Diamonds and Pearls, and the only proper context for Prince’s state of grind.
Can you imagine the conversation between Prince and the awards show producers?
“Okay, I’m going a need a flaming stage that looks like the ruin of an ancient Roman brothel exclusively occupied by senators and their horses. 30 erotic back-up dancers in thongs, sheer negligees, and leotards, and no, I can’t share with C&C Music Factory.
Think the Minneapolis sound meets New Jack Swing meets a Caligulan orgy. I’ll be wearing a ventilated yellow jumpsuit with a plunging neckline and matching guitar. My collar will be silk. My pants will be assless. Tell Amy Grant to leave the room when I come on.”
A quarter-century later, it’s still unbelievable that it happened on cable television in a country with George H.W. Bush as President. These are the things you can’t explain, but can only witness. For every Prince performance, there’s someone who will claim that it was his best, but I’m reasonably certain that the '91 VMAs are superior to all—even that Coachella performance that made Daft Punk look like poseurs. There’s a brief moment of human fallibility as he takes the stage, a split-second fumble of the microphone, then he offers communion via mass orgasm.
Time and place shade the perspective. This wasn’t the first time I ever encountered that Purple: there was the “Batdance” video, where he dressed in full Joker regalia, turned the Batman theme into acid-faced funk, and rivaled Ray Parker Jr. for best song ever written for an '80s film. But Ray Parker Jr. never seduced Vicki Vale, nor recorded them fucking in the studio for a song called “Scandalous Sex Suite.”
The '91 VMAs was the first time I witnessed the real Prince, the original Mr. Steal Your Girl, the one who wrote his first song at age 7 and called it “Funk Machine.” For a 9-year old, it was baffling and awesome—like walking into the second act of a movie, frantically trying to piece together a plot line, but developmentally unprepared to do so. Who was this man? How could he do the splits so easily? How did his vocals effortlessly levitate from sordid lothario to brilliant eunuch? What did 23 positions in a one-night stand mean? (I’m willing to give Prince full credit as a sexual wunderkind, but let’s be real: some of those positions had to be minor variations. Sort of like how he claimed to play 27 instruments but included nine types of keyboards and organs—yet somehow no “woodwinds.”)
Prince’s eccentric genius ensured that he’d never fit into a particular genre or corner of pop music. But it seemed particularly incongruous in September 1991, a world where James Brown and MC Hammer presented the VMA Viewer’s Choice Award to Queensryche. Less than one week later, Nirvana released “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” triggering grunge and teaching a generation how to seem affected and disaffected at the same time. Two weeks later, A Tribe Called Quest dropped Low End Theory. The VMAs heralded the last dry heave of the '80s, where Chris Isaak triumphed over Jon Bon Jovi, George Michael, and Gerardo for “Best Male Video.”
Diamonds and Pearls came on the satin heels of a three-year run where critics gleefully scrawled Prince’s eulogy. A bad ecstasy trip allegedly led him to shelve The Black Album in favor of the uneven Lovesexy. The Batman soundtrack reached No. 1, but felt campy and far removed from his late-’80s apex*, Sign “O” the Times*. While the sequel to Purple Rain, 1990’s Graffiti Bridge completely bombed, receiving five Golden Raspberry Nominations and yielding a soundtrack that failed to go platinum.
The solution was assless pants and obscene funk. The latter arrived via the New Power Generation, the first band Prince used since dissolving the Revolution a half-decade earlier. Until Diamonds and Pearls, Paisley Park’s director had a notoriously contentious relationship with hip-hop. He welcomed sampling but scorned “tone deaf” rappers who talked “silly shit.” Big Daddy Kane contributed a “Batdance” remix, but it never saw official release. Not even Prince could ignore that rap had dethroned R&B and funk as the most vital urban sound.
In response, Prince converted a former backup dancer named Anthony Mosley into the lead rapper of the New Power Generation. That’s Tony M on “Gett Off,” wearing the rattail and purple racing jacket, doing his best Chuck D boom but bringing noise more like the guy who rapped on Snap!’s “The Power.”
Prince famously called Tony M. “the wittiest pen the Twin Cities had ever seen,” but there are currently fourth-string rappers on the Rhymesayers bench with more bars. His “Jughead” attempted to start a new dance craze, but includes the dated slang you’d expect from a Christopher Guest parody biopic of Father MC: (“Get stupid,” “Mack Daddy in the House,” "turn the mutha out,” “clocking a freak in a low pro.”)
As for Tony, he admitted in a 1991 Details profile that the people back in North Minneapolis no longer liked Prince because they saw him as a pop thing. But he quickly added, “They didn’t like Van Gogh, did they?” Then again, Prince didn’t need to cut off an ear and give it to Apollonia. His popular decline mirrored the natural gravity of the music business. Until Prince, almost no solo artist had spent a decade at the top of the charts.
It’s not quite accurate to call Diamonds and Pearls a comeback. If anything, it inaugurated the brief New Power Generation phase of his career, the last in which he was a commercial force. For the first time, Prince found himself chasing trends rather than setting them. On “Daddy Pop,” he urges people to stop “living in the past” when they should be “living the new,” over Teddy Riley drums and wheeling sacral organs.
The juxtaposition of old-world spirituals and contemporary bounce might as well have doubled as a mission statement. Prince reveled in contradiction: demonizing illegal downloading and YouTube while simultaneously being one of the first to leverage the internet to sell directly to fans. He chastised rappers who didn’t say anything, but partially ceded the spotlight to a man who attempted to turn an Archie character into a dance craze. Diamonds and Pearls reflects the minor crises of a man in his early 30s, too agile to be outmoded, but no longer able to depend on the effortless violations of youth. He could still do the splits, but he wasn’t sure for how much longer.
“Thunder” stitches evangelic lyrics to sub-continental sitars, slashing guitars, and chord progressions that Max Martin has swiped for the last two decades. It’s basically a proto-Backstreet Boys anthem for born-agains. There are the classic Prince deep cuts usually only cited by the apostles (“Willing and Able”) and sunny day guitar benedictions to individualism (“Walk Don’t Walk”). “Strollin” pairs George Benson jazz guitars to New Edition adolescent pop, and a story about two teens roller skating, eating ice cream, and buying porn. It’s weird. It’s Prince.
If you’ve heard OutKast’s “2 Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac),” you’ll recognize the extraterrestrial intro of “Live 4 Love (Last Words From the Cockpit”—an anti-gang space-rap exploration about what happened after he got kicked out of his house at 17. Even the afterthoughts betray a brilliant guitar riff, organ lick, or drum coda.
But it’s pointless to pretend that we remember this album for much more than its four Top 40 hits. “Gett Off” led to more unplanned pregnancies than anything Prince had recorded since “Kiss.” His final #1 hit, “Cream” triangulated T. Rex and Robert Palmer into something that rivals only Wu-Tang for the greatest song named after a dairy product. The late night neon jazz grooves of “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night” remind me of Steely Dan if they played it straight. It’s an indictment of greed, self-destruction, and the war machine—ending with the stark image of a child shrouded in a cloud of poison gas.
There is, of course, the title song—the twinkling locket-pop ballad that both Cam’ron and Lil Wayne eventually rapped over. One of those songs they’ll play at weddings until we stop using diamond engagement rings and the ocean runs out of pearls. It’s Prince at his best, blending dizzying romance with an undercurrent of danger. He opens up: “This will be the day/That you will hear me say/That I will never run away.” It’s a utopian promise he knows he can’t keep, an incantation he hopes will become true if he utters it out loud. “Love must be the master plan,” he says, echoing a clichéd sentiment that so many before him have uttered. But Prince had the gift of making you believe whatever he said.
As with all the greatest pop stars, Prince was a master at simplifying life’s most complicated emotions into catchphrases. He encompassed lust, jealousy, fear, spirituality, avarice, the impulse to run away, and the need to strip everything to its core—sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. The man who believed in everlasting love died alone and childless, adored by almost the entire world. A song like “Diamonds and Pearls” illustrates why. For all the flamboyance and idiosyncrasy, Prince just wanted the same things as everyone else. | 2016-04-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-04-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Rock | Warner Bros. / Paisley Park | April 30, 2016 | 8.3 | 0a90672f-d734-4c4e-8751-0fa7e3fff0a3 | Jeff Weiss | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jeff-weiss/ | null |
Light in the Attic’s latest foray into Japanese easy-listening pop has plenty of summery charm, but it offers few discoveries for those already familiar with the genre. | Light in the Attic’s latest foray into Japanese easy-listening pop has plenty of summery charm, but it offers few discoveries for those already familiar with the genre. | Various Artists: Pacific Breeze 2: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1972-1986 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-pacific-breeze-2-japanese-city-pop-aor-and-boogie-1972-1986/ | Pacific Breeze 2: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1972-1986 | There’s no greater comeback story in recent reissue culture than Japanese city pop. About a decade ago, Blogspot blogs and Japanese reissues introduced music nerds to a strain of AOR, funk, disco, and yacht rock trafficked under the amorphous term, a vague descriptor for Japanese music that incorporated jazz and R&B, reflecting city life and consumerism amid the 1970s’ economic upswing until the bubble burst in 1992. The music had largely been neglected by Westerners and derided by many Japanese as cheesy, but as YouTube algorithms launched songs into the wider collective consciousness, city pop surged in popularity; nothing was as emblematic of its second wind as a music video popping up for Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love” 35 years after release.
Light in the Attic’s first volume of their Pacific Breeze series felt like a culmination of all the hubbub. At last, uninitiated listeners could dive into a compilation featuring songs from big-name artists like Taeko Ohnuki, Hiroshi Sato, and Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haruomi Hosono. Pacific Breeze Volume 2: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1972-1986 nobly continues documenting this time period, but it isn’t consistent in highlighting the finest from the era—or offering any real discoveries for those with a cursory familiarity with the music.
Pacific Breeze 2 opens with “Pink Shadow,” one of the most electrifying tunes from duo Bread & Butter’s middling discography. Its syncopated funk-lite grooves are at once tight and loose, thanks to the session crew known as Tin Pan Alley, whose other work—such as on Ayumi Ishida’s Our Connection—also feels like it’s bursting with joy. Also notable is Tomoko Aran’s “I’m in Love,” whose sly hi-hats and bass glide into a chorus in which Aran coos the titular line, her voice like a spray of rose-scented perfume. Best of all is “Rainy Saturday & Coffee Break,” which ambles along in effortless fashion as Junko Ohashi delivers a strikingly clear and crisp vocal performance.
Kyoko Furuya’s moody “Harumifuotou” is an addictive bare-bones pop-rock song, but its spacious production and distinct mixing feel out of place alongside the following track, the hyperslick jazz-fusion instrumental “Bay/Sky Provincetown 1977.” It’s a noticeable miscalculation, but more frustrating is the fact that “Harumifuotou” was previously reissued in 2017; it feels superfluous. Anri’s “Last Summer Whisper” is another standout; it was written by Toshiki Kadomatsu, who has a real penchant for sticky-sweet basslines that allow the rest of the song to breathe, granting Anri’s vocals a tender dreaminess. But it’s also one of her most famous songs, sampled in popular tracks from both Korea and America; hardly a rarity, it feels like low-hanging fruit.
The most disappointing aspect of both Pacific Breeze compilations is the absence of the best city pop artists. Some of these were mentioned in a feature for The FADER by Mark “Frosty” McNeill and Andy Cabic, two of Pacific Breeze 2’s three curators. While billed as a list of “hard-to-find” tracks, the more precise term would likely be “hard-to-license.” The aforementioned Kadomatsu, as well as Tatsuro Yamashita, are the most impressive songwriters and vocalists of their generation, and they’re not found on either compilation (nor Japanese ones released in 2003). These absences are glaring, leaving a gaping hole in any understanding of city pop as a whole; curious listeners would be better off cycling through city pop mixes on YouTube that don’t omit them.
The carefree bliss Pacific Breeze 2 certainly lives up to its title: Listening to these tracks, it’s easy to imagine yourself at the beach or driving around in the summer, windows down. It’s a good collection of songs that capture much of city pop’s charm. Still, it’s hard not to feel like the compilation does a disservice to the genre: It feels incomplete in scope and features lesser songs from many of its artists, such as those from Yumi Murata and Piper. It feels nice to soak in Pacific Breeze 2’s soft, innocuous pop music. Just don’t expect it to represent the luxury and excess that top-shelf city pop did.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-06-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-06-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Light in the Attic | June 2, 2020 | 6.8 | 0a91a512-bb76-43f4-a060-d3e36e96f2b8 | Joshua Minsoo Kim | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joshua-minsoo kim/ | |
A gloomier companion to 2020’s Getting Into Knives, John Darnielle’s latest is patient, tense, and full of empathy. | A gloomier companion to 2020’s Getting Into Knives, John Darnielle’s latest is patient, tense, and full of empathy. | The Mountain Goats: Dark in Here | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-mountain-goats-dark-in-here/ | Dark in Here | Near the end of his 2014 novel Wolf in White Van, John Darnielle wrote, “There are only two stories: either you go forward or you die.” Three decades into his career, it’s easy to see which one he prefers. Darnielle and the Mountain Goats, his one-time solo project which has now solidified into a quartet, have remained in constant motion. After a five-month tour at the end of 2019, the group settled at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis to make 2020’s Getting Into Knives, with a plan of heading south to Muscle Shoals, Alabama shortly afterwards to record the immediate follow-up. After spending a week at FAME Studios, they emerged with Dark in Here, their third studio album in 15 months, sixth in as many years, and 20th overall. Where Getting Into Knives was something of a mixed bag and Songs for Pierre Chuvin, recorded around the same time, was Darnielle’s homemade lockdown opus, Dark in Here is a beacon of light, creeping out of Earth’s darkest trenches.
Like the acoustic dispatches on Songs for Pierre Chuvin, Dark in Here harkens back to Darnielle’s early work about misfortune wreaked on nobodies. He is at his strongest when he balances the soulful vamp of the session players—including Spooner Oldham, whose Wurlitzer was a vital ingredient on Aretha Franklin’s Lady Soul and I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You—with stories of forgotten people wedged in tight, messy crevices of rubble, combating the plagues of loneliness that live on well beyond the limits of calamity, urging even the unluckiest of us to find the beauty hiding in plain sight.
The only conceptual throughline on Dark in Here is the lingering desolation stalking each character, a common theme in the Mountain Goats’ discography. And whether he finds it lurking on the brink or actively upheaving his characters’ paths, Darnielle sounds right in his comfort zone, leaning on velvety piano and Jon Wurster’s tight rhythm to build the tension, allowing the record to feel progressively more on-edge as each track bleeds into the next. On opener “Parisian Enclave,” a throng of men lurk through the sewer system beneath a European city and break out onto the streets, and the darkness hiding on the record takes shape in familiar scenes: a bible verse catalyzing self-sabotage, a quiet train car full of unreadable strangers, or a shoreline blackened by empty midnight.
Dark in Here finds a balance between the catastrophes we face and the catastrophes we create. In the thrashing cautionary tale of “The Destruction of the Kola Superdeep Borehole Tower,” a squadron of drillers dig their way into Hell and forget about their earthly possessions, embracing the beauty sprouting from the ashes. Darnielle has always understood how to make a romantic mess of these kinds of stories, focussing on people who have no say in their own afflictions. On “When a Powerful Animal Comes,” with his deadpan tenor atop Peter Hughes’ oil-slick bass lines, Darnielle gestures toward a grander sense of fallibility—“We’ve made mistakes/Everyone spots their own mess when the dawn breaks”—and extends a hand to his audience, ushering us into the light, assuring it will not burn us alive.
For a record so subtly violent and wretched with anxiety, with Darnielle’s overriding mood pitched between moshpit and battlefield, the music is just as approachable as the lighter fare on Getting Into Knives. The characters in these songs often feel like matured recasts of the ones we’ve crossed paths with throughout Darnielle’s past work. Dark in Here welcomes into the fold a new battalion of teenage metalheads, an embattled music critic, and one metropolitan prophet posing as Jonah. All of these characters are teetering on the edge of death and purgatory, drifting onward toward their “preordained place.”
Although Dark in Here was recorded in the same stretch of inspiration as Knives, and was meant to serve as its muted and gloomy companion, it outshines its predecessor. Instead of circling the drain in despair, these complex characters are steadfast in their resolve. “Swim right through the night/Break the surface and rise like a geyser/When my time is right,” Darnielle sings near the end of closer “Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light,” a patient, sympathetic nod towards the people awaiting the resolutions they deserve. Darnielle has long interrogated the complicated, often tragic journeys of his flawed heroes, cultivating a songbook of loud, exhausted reasons to keep on moving. On Dark in Here, he sings proudly for the ones who dare to stick around.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-06-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-06-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | June 30, 2021 | 7.8 | 0a97a6fd-579a-46f4-ad92-bca71871e230 | Matt Mitchell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matt-mitchell/ | |
Uzi’s latest project comes very close to delivering on the chaotic, sublime promise of “XO Tour Llif3.” It’s the Philly rapper’s most musically developed work to date. | Uzi’s latest project comes very close to delivering on the chaotic, sublime promise of “XO Tour Llif3.” It’s the Philly rapper’s most musically developed work to date. | Lil Uzi Vert: Luv Is Rage 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lil-uzi-vert-luv-is-rage-2/ | Luv Is Rage 2 | “XO Tour Llif3” is the sort of song artists spend years trying to write: pained and poised, tapping into a vein that had previously been found but never fully pierced. The “I don’t really care if you cry” taunt that shouldn’t be believed melting into “All my friends are dead/Push me to the edge” is a stretch of masterful songwriting, but withering in a way that few artists could mimic without tipping into self-parody. Its commercial benchmarks—No. 7 on Billboard, Platinum three times over—don’t come close to capturing the depth with which people feel the song. It will probably define Lil Uzi Vert for the rest of his career.
Which is fine, because artists have been plagued by hits with just a fraction of the pathos “XO Tour Llif3” has. But Uzi has been an ascendant star for at least a year and a half: from promising rookie to SoundCloud darling to rap’s A-list and beyond. He’s proven himself a popular force with solo cuts like “Money Longer” and guest turns on Migos’ “Bad and Boujee” and Playboi Carti’s “Woke Up Like This”; dozens, hundreds of imitators across digital mixtape platforms cite him as a major creative influence, or at least a welcome distillation of whatever’s happening in and around the Atlanta scene. And yet in some small way, Uzi’s long-awaited Luv Is Rage 2 is a referendum on whether he can live up to the standard “XO Tour Llif3” set. The goal isn’t a streaming figure or a chart position, but a feeling.
Lofty as that is, Luv Is Rage 2 comes very close to delivering. At its best, the album mines the psyches of exhausted and exhausting people, searching for the moment where enough drugs or heartbreak or iMessages or sleep deprivation can unlock a new part of the brain. It’s the Philadelphia native’s most musically developed work and features a bulk of his most interesting songs to date.
Take “The Way Life Goes,” which is produced by Don Cannon and Ike Beatz. Uzi opens with a brief introduction to the other half of his failed relationship, punctuated with, “I like that girl too much, I wish I never met her.” From there, he launches into a full interpolation of the first verse from Oh Wonder’s “Landslide”: “I know it hurts sometimes, but you’ll get over it/You’ll find another life to live.” Uzi’s less interested in the granular drama of the breakup than in the fallout, the moment three or four days later when reality starts to set in.
Over and over again, Uzi careens past the edge of convention or good social form. “Pretty Mami” is a desperate missive from a tour bus; the excellent song about his mother, “Dark Queen,” sounds less like an ode to a parent than a supernatural reckoning. The plunges into Uzi’s psyche are mirrored by his delivery. He’s chaotically animated, flitting between short staccato runs and heartfelt singing, punctuated by yelps and bug-eyed ad-libs. The perpetual churn of style and song structure can be a strength, or at the very least helps cover up songwriting that can tend toward formlessness. “444+222,” never finds its footing or has much to say, but at least keeps the listener on his or her toes long enough for Ike Beatz and Maaly Raw’s beat to make its imprint.
Rage 2’s production is almost uniformly excellent, poppy and full of air, but with sinister undercurrents when Uzi summons something darker. (For the brighter side, see WondaGurl’s “How to Talk” or Pharrell’s particularly breezy “Neon Guts,” where he also trades bars with Uzi.) If Lil Uzi Vert is innovating anything, it’s a macro approach to the emotion and perspective in his songwriting. The technical aspects—his flows, vocal patterns, and even his vocal registers—owe plenty to his contemporaries and immediate predecessors from Atlanta and Chicago. Metro Boomin and Pierre Bourne’s propulsive “X,” for example, could be lifted from one of the many batches of Young Thug leaks, down to its operative line: “Yeah, my life’s a mess/But I’m also blessed.”
What makes Uzi’s music his own is that instead of a one-off appraisal, he combs through his heart and Gmail to figure out just how the blessings and messiness interact. Luv Is Rage 2 is ultimately a record about keeping it together when your wits and resolve have been tested and depleted. (The Weeknd-assisted radio play “UnFazed” falls flat precisely because Abel’s practiced stoicism doesn’t gel with Uzi’s risk-it-all performance). Whether he’s full of joy or howling into the void, he pushes his songs to their edge, which helps to deliver on the promise shown in his earlier work. We knew Lil Uzi Vert would become one of rap’s biggest stars, but Rage 2 suggests that he may spend his time on top experimenting rather than retreating to a comfort zone. | 2017-08-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-08-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Atlantic | August 30, 2017 | 7.7 | 0a9828e7-26aa-42aa-81f8-e38a087184db | Paul A. Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/ | |
The duo seamlessly merges their contrasting styles on their new EP, an assured slice of underground rap. | The duo seamlessly merges their contrasting styles on their new EP, an assured slice of underground rap. | Tha God Fahim / Your Old Droog: Tha Wolf on Wall St | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tha-god-fahim-your-old-droog-tha-wolf-on-wall-st/ | Tha Wolf on Wall St | New York rapper Your Old Droog and Atlanta rapper/producer Tha God Fahim have a professional relationship that stretches at least as far back as “Saga City,” a track on Fahim’s 2017 project IRON MONKEY. Over the last four years, they’ve developed a substantial rapport, both reveling in the art of storytelling. While Fahim trades in brass-tacks metaphors, Droog leans more toward punchlines and pop culture-laden double-entendre. Like any effective duo, their contrasting styles dovetail seamlessly on their new EP Tha Wolf on Wall St.
The entire project is an assured slice of underground rap, but the pair’s compatibility shines brightest on the title track. Over a soothing lounge jazz loop, Fahim’s bars land with a deceptively blunt force, considering his nasal tone (“Stepping over devils, they bite like anaconda/Tryna pull drama, you bleeding with mad trauma”). Meanwhile, Droog’s leisurely delivery masks weighty rhyme schemes (“Gordon Gekko in some Jordan retros/‘side the lobby of the five-star telly pouring Prosecco”). Fahim and Droog move back and forth like co-stars on a long-running cable drama, and the former’s production provides a more serene mirror reflection. Fahim laces each of the EP’s eight tracks with sedate loops, splitting the difference between his and Droog’s clashing styles. The horn refrain at the foreground of opener “All Bidness” creates unique pockets, which the duo uses to their advantage. “Meditation” and “Value” settle into soulful rhythms, allowing the raps to chew the scenery. Fahim’s ear behind the boards is as direct as his bars.
There are moments across the project where the duo is as invested in their respective communities as they are in their own wallets. Take “The Poverty Bothers Me,” where Fahim, Droog, and New Jersey rapper (and mentor) Mach-Hommy construct a panoramic view of impoverished communities ignored by the rich, dotted with children hooked on drugs and undercover cops in Yankee fitteds. All three of their perspectives add flavor and heart to a common issue without condescending.
Fiscal intelligence aside, Fahim and Droog just sound dope as hell rapping together. They’ve taken congruent paths to success, appealing to a consumer base eager to buy the brand of polished street rap they’re selling. On “Meditation,” Droog celebrates his wins while directly addressing the chip on his shoulder about entering the rap game on a Nas comparison nearly seven years ago: “Make them wish that they embraced me when they could/All they really had to do was just say ‘he was good’/Maybe then I would relax; now I’m permanently on attack.” Outside of more deeply personal projects like Jewelry or last year’s revelatory Dump YOD: Krutoy Edition—both of which Fahim played a key role in creating—Droog’s verse on “Meditation” stands as one of the most heartfelt of his career. Though, as a whole, the EP lacks the sweeping personal ethos of Dump YOD, it still works as proof that Fahim and Droog’s creative partnership isn’t a fluke.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | self-released | February 4, 2021 | 7.2 | 0a99ec51-c89b-416c-8da0-304d473f6984 | Dylan Green | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/ | |
None of the wild imagination fueling David Ayers’ bloated orc cop epic carries over to its soundtrack, which feels test-marketed to a fault. | None of the wild imagination fueling David Ayers’ bloated orc cop epic carries over to its soundtrack, which feels test-marketed to a fault. | Various Artists: Bright: The Album | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-bright-the-album/ | Bright: The Album | Of 2017’s many examples of how indiscriminate media companies have become in their race for streaming content, none was more conspicuous than Netflix’s Will Smith vehicle Bright, a $90 million eyesore with the budget of a blockbuster but the heart of a Syfy network original. Imagining a fantasy Los Angeles where humans coexist, uneasily, with mythological creatures, it’s the setup for some horrifically bungled social commentary, and a movie so unlovable that even Netflix’s own social media team couldn’t resist taking potshots. Yes, it is as bad as the critics say. And no, it isn’t worth a hate watch.
Thanks to Netflix’s closely guarded ratings metrics, there’s no real knowing how many subscribers actually streamed David Ayers’ orc cop epic, but all available evidence suggests the film wasn’t nearly the cultural event imagined by its soundtrack, which is every bit as gaudy and grandiose as the movie that spawned it. Built from the same mishmash of toothless pop rap, bloated EDM, and battle-montage alt-rock as the soundtrack to Ayers’ previous movie, Suicide Squad, it exists in an alternate universe where Bright became the box-office Goliath its creators conceived it as. For its imagined audience of Bright obsessives, a pair of heavy-handed opening tracks dutifully conjures the gritty, blighted world of the movie: Logic and Rag‘n’Bone Man’s brooding “Broken People” and the weepy Bastille anthem “World Gone Mad.” Like the film, the album takes itself very, very seriously.
Imagine Dragons aren’t actually on the soundtrack, but they loom so large over it that they deserve an honorary executive producer credit. The album’s rock tracks are steeped in the band’s tortured bombast, and their dalliances with other genres provide the model for its seemingly arbitrary crossover pairings. EDM producers Steve Aoki and Marshmello partner with Lil Uzi Vert and Migos, respectively, while Imagine Dragons imitators X Ambassadors share a track with Machine Gun Kelly and Bebe Rexha, one of the many industry bench players peppering an album devoted to the latest, glossiest Top 40 sounds.
The soundtrack’s one true standout is one of its most unassuming songs. Meek Mill, YG, and Snoop Dogg’s fiery East Coast/West Coast team-up “That’s My Nigga” may be less high concept than the deeply silly DRAM/Neil Young head-scratcher “Campfire,” but it has the advantage of performers who have not only chemistry but also genuine interest in each other’s worlds. The same can’t be said of the album’s other collaborations, including the turgid A$AP Rocky/Tom Morello coupling “FTW (Fuck the World),” which imagines how much more awkward the Prophets of Rage album could have been if it made any effort to reach out to a younger audience.
One of the few things the movie Bright has going for it, despite its grim execution, is conviction. There’s the seed of a genuine passion project buried beneath the movie’s hideous makeup, crude racial caricatures, and endless shootouts. None of that wild imagination carries over to its soundtrack. Save for one inexplicable Neil Young cameo, it’s test-marketed to a fault, coasting on popular sounds, top-dollar production, and proven star power. In that regard, though, these songs are just like the movie itself. They openly long to be hits, but they just aren’t any good. | 2018-01-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-01-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | null | Atlantic | January 5, 2018 | 3.2 | 0a99f5e1-055b-4a31-a23e-b8a339dea052 | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | |
Sasu Ripatti—aka Vladislav Delay and Luomo—returns to footwork with his first album-length attempt at the form, translating the genre’s fast-paced syncopations into a harsh, elemental blast. | Sasu Ripatti—aka Vladislav Delay and Luomo—returns to footwork with his first album-length attempt at the form, translating the genre’s fast-paced syncopations into a harsh, elemental blast. | Ripatti: Fun Is Not a Straight Line | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ripatti-fun-is-not-a-straight-line/ | Fun Is Not a Straight Line | The last time Sasu Ripatti was making footwork, so was everybody else. When Ripatti01 EP came out, in September 2013, Bangs & Works was still rearranging people’s heads: Producers like Addison Groove and Machinedrum were fusing the hyper-regional Chicago-house mutation with more internationally established electronic dance styles; young guns like Slava and Thug Entrancer were finding arty uses for its arrhythmic kicks and fearsome snares; and all the while, the genre’s founding fathers were on a roll. Ripatti’s early EPs under his last name weren’t bad, but they felt more like the Vladislav Delay/Luomo guy trying his hand at footwork than an expansion of the conversation. He was still trying things out.
Fun Is Not a Straight Line is Ripatti’s first full-length of footwork music, and it’s a canny time in his career to return to this project. After a short run of Ripatti EPs and a solid Vladislav Delay album, 2014’s Visa, the Finnish electronic musician more or less dipped out for six years, selling his hardware before returning with a new, more violent approach on last year’s Rakka and its sequel from this year. The individual elements of Ripatti’s music have always seemed suspended in midair—drums without a parent rhythm, errant flecks of dub bass, chords lost in space. But there was a heft to Rakka that defied physics; the sounds he used seemed too heavy to be so indifferent towards gravity. As luck would have it, that also describes a lot of the best footwork productions.
Listening to footwork as a non-dancer can feel like standing in a hurricane. On Fun Is Not a Straight Line, Ripatti is the hurricane, lifting errant sounds into his vortex with little regard for where they fall. The polyrhythms on tracks like “everyday” and “movathat” become so dense that the 160-bpm grounding of footwork becomes buried and the music approaches Meshuggah levels of rhythmic convolution. The snares are sharp enough to draw blood, but they adhere to no grid, and the kick drum is subsumed into a blur of toms and machine-gun rat-tat-tats. Pads blow coolly but offer little shelter from the sensory onslaught. One of Ripatti’s strengths is the way his music seems assembled by chance rather than produced, and that’s as true of Fun Is Not a Straight Line as it is of his more abstract work, like Entain or Whistleblower.
The one constant here is the rap samples that form the backbone of almost every track. He’s built up a whole library of them, some easy to spot (Rick Ross’s “Hustlin’,” Ty Dolla $ign’s “Drop That Kitty”), most clipped into unrecognizable bursts. Sometimes, like on “flowers” and “wants interlude,” these samples are melodic enough to allow a flash of color to enliven the album’s monochrome palette. But for the most part, Fun Is Not a Straight Line is a harsh, elemental blast, only marginally less relentless than the Rakka albums, its lean 39-minute length the only thing keeping it from overloading the listener. Both the name of the album and the lowercase, noncommittal-sounding track titles (“motherfuckyou,” “videophonekitty”) suggest this is an album he made for himself more than an auteurist statement. But what we get in turn is a little more challenging than “fun”: a cleansing trial, perhaps, something more like cryotherapy than a night at the club.
Ripatti has had a long career that includes high-water marks in both vocal house (Vocalcity, as Luomo) and ambient dub (Multila, as Vladislav Delay). Like Rakka, Fun Is Not a Straight Line comes across as a rebuke to fans who want sequels to those early achievements. A Bandcamp statement claims Ripatti found himself “frustrated by the inflexibility of the 4/4 house idiom,” which he hasn’t really worked in since Luomo’s Plus in 2011. He might also be frustrated by the albatross of Vocalcity, which he made more than 20 years ago and has largely disavowed. Vocalcity sounds as great now as it ever did, and the road to this new record is dotted with gems. But between Fun Is Not a Straight Line and the Rakka albums, it’s clear he’s in the middle of a white-hot burst of inspiration that’s not to be missed.
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Back to home | 2021-07-14T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-07-14T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Planet Mu | July 14, 2021 | 7.4 | 0aa0da99-c56d-4fa5-b365-6a9005eb246e | Daniel Bromfield | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-bromfield/ | |
The brilliant singer-songwriter's first 10 studio albums, cut during an 11-year span, have been gathered in this import box set. During this run, Mitchell charted one of the most solid career arcs in contemporary music that then detoured into one of the strangest. | The brilliant singer-songwriter's first 10 studio albums, cut during an 11-year span, have been gathered in this import box set. During this run, Mitchell charted one of the most solid career arcs in contemporary music that then detoured into one of the strangest. | Joni Mitchell: The Studio Albums 1968-1979 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17269-the-studio-albums-1968-1979/ | The Studio Albums 1968-1979 | Joni Mitchell once called fame "a glamorous misunderstanding." As America's finest living Canadian songwriter (tied with Neil Young), few musicians have understood its nature so well. In the 1960s and 70s, Mitchell was Mary Magdalene to Dylan's folk-rock messiah, making music that was bittersweet and relatable, carrying what Dylan begat even further. Her work helped birth a new idiom that was personal and poetic, creating a new space for songs that made artistic statements, unbound by cliché and tradition. Such was the strength of her music that Mitchell's lyrics didn't have to make sense. But they did, particularly to women.
Mitchell's first 10 studio albums, cut during an 11-year span, have been gathered in this import box set. During this run, Mitchell charted one of the most solid career arcs in contemporary music that then detoured into one of the strangest, following her muse into places that very nearly cost her career and exhausted her fanbase's patience. Throughout, she was confident and unrepentant in her vision, in an era where that kind of ego was unbefitting a woman, even if she did have the gold albums and Grammys™ to back it up.
This is a basic set-- no frills, just all the albums' original layouts reproduced in envelope sleeves, the fonts so tiny only mice could read them. There are no extras, outtakes or re-anythinged. But taking these 10 records in a row, chronologically, it is a striking reminder no single artist has had a run like Joni (even her acolyte Prince only got to seven albums before he started to fall off). Mitchell was pop's first female auteur, an innovator of singular talent, whose influence was vast, immediate (see: Led Zeppelin's "Going to California") and long lasting (Joanna Newsom, St. Vincent, Taylor Swift's kiss'n'tell cottage industry).
Mitchell was "discovered" c. 1968 when ex-Byrd David Crosby pulled up in a sailboat outside the Florida club she was playing and took her to L.A. At the time, folk was out of fashion yet Mitchell managed to pull down an unprecedented major label deal for a girl and her guitar: total and complete artistic freedom, with the caveat that Crosby would produce her first album. It was rare for a woman to be writing and recording her own material at the time, let alone to be an unaccompanied solo act. Though Mitchell's debut, Song to a Seagull, was a heavy precedent for the era it's a harder listen now, the fin de siècle earth-mama lyrics playing strange against the stilted, formal musical settings. The delicate album suffers under Crosby's intrusive production; Mitchell would self-produce from then on.
Clouds (1969) is the introduction to Mitchell's real deal, shaking folk tradition and giving off a little humor and spirit. The album sounds casual. Lyrically, she was transitioning from the era's de facto hippie sensualism (colors! the weather! vibes!) to the classically prosodic style (Keats! Cohen!) she'd become known for. The album's biggest signs of life are two of her most famous songs-- the kicky "Chelsea Morning", which is about as straightforward as Mitchell ever got, and "Both Sides Now". Though she'd known burden and heartache plenty by her still-tender age (she'd borne a child alone and in secret after dropping out of art school and married singer Chuck Mitchell in order to make a family; he changed his mind a month later and she put the baby up for adoption) she sounds a bit too young and chipper to be singing about disillusionment. Still, Clouds was a landmark, and she landed a Grammy for Best Folk Performance.
Ladies of the Canyon from 1970 is Mitchell's most accessible album and it introduces her earnest folk-pop style. Her voice is newly elastic and expressive, and it's the first record where she sounds like she might actually be fun to hang out with. Ladies also features her generation-defining "Woodstock", "The Circle Game" (Mitchell's answer back to Neil Young's nostalgic "Sugar Mountain"), and her blustery gentrification sing-along, "Big Yellow Taxi". All were hippie-era sing-along staples; it hardly bears remarking that these songs are some of Mitchell's corniest.
The genius of Ladies is often circumscribed by Mitchell's proximity to CSNY; the vocal arrangement and production invariably propped to Crosby's influence, "Woodstock" supposedly inspired by Nash's recounting of the event (she wrote it before he'd even returned from the festival). If Ladies does bear the mark of CSNY, it's to the album's detriment. The fruits of the Nash/Mitchell romance-- his gee-whiz domestic ode, "Our House" and Ladies' "Willy"-- are saccharine at best. Their subsequent break up would inspire much more potent work-- Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and Mitchell's follow-up.
About that follow-up: 1971's Blue is possibly the most gutting break-up album ever made. After Mitchell's relationship with Nash dissolved, she headed to Europe to lose the tether of her fame, eventually taking exile in a cave on the Greek island Crete. The trip would inspire the how-Joni-got-her-groove-back ditties "Carey" and "California". The album is suffused with melancholy for all that is missing: her daughter ("Little Green"), innocence ("The Last Time I Saw Richard"), and connection ("All I Want"). Mitchell bleeds diffidence and highlights it with spare notes plucked out on her Appalachian dulcimer. While her pals Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and Laura Nyro were also pushing the singer-songwriter genre forward, none of them managed to stride the distance that Mitchell did here in a single album.
"Will you take me as I am/ Strung out on another man?" Mitchell pleads on "California". She was (in)famously strung out on other talents that were as mercurial as hers, fueling constant speculation as to whether this song was about Leonard Cohen, or that one about James Taylor or Nash or that puerile heartbreaker Jackson Browne. The year Mitchell issued Blue, an album that would be a landmark in any artist's career, Rolling Stone named her "Old Lady of the Year," a dismissal effectively saying her import was as a girlfriend or muse to the men around her more than as an artist in her own right. Worse still, they called her "Queen of El Lay," and offered a diagram of her supposed affairs and conquests. She'd made the best album of her career and in exchange she got slut-shamed in the biggest music magazine in America.
Mitchell retired to her homestead in Canada and returned sounding confident for 1972's For the Roses. Up until Roses she'd kept things minimal, here she stacked multi-tracks of impossible vocals harmonies, mimicking a horn section ("Let the Wind Carry Me") or interpolating and dueling with jazzer sideman Tom Scott's riffing woodwinds. Mitchell's vocals, fluttering unpredictably and with stunning control between the bottom of her range and the top of her crystalline contralto, were given a new stop; her heavy smoking had given her a heretofore non-existent midrange. There's really no singing along with Roses-- which is a fabulous fuck-you for a pop artist.
Though part of the reason that she'd retired from performing in 1969 was to avoid the default of writing about the myopic rock'n'roll life, Roses' standout track, "Blonde in the Bleachers", shows that she may have understood it better than any of the boys; it is one of the best songs ever written about the rules and (gender) roles of the road. "It seems like you've got to give up/ Such a piece of your soul /When you give up the chase," she sings, about finding identity and meaning in who you fuck. Freedom is an evergreen subject for Mitchell, but "Blonde in the Bleachers" gets beyond the thrill in partaking of what-- or, rather, who-- is offered up, backstage. The quiet story here is the ebbing power of a woman once she's been conquered.
Though Mitchell was criticized for not making blatantly feminist or political (read: sloganeering) albums, her work was always tacitly so. Her songs spotlight the unspoken roles of women ("Barandgrill"), who they were unrelated to men; she gave them names and precise details. There is hardly a more feminist topic than striving for a freedom that life and love has never allowed you. On "Woman of Heart and Mind", it's hard to tell whether she is mocking herself or the man she is singing to (or both): "Push your papers/ Win your medals/ Fuck your strangers/ Don't it leave you on the empty side /I'm looking for affection and respect." On Roses, Mitchell sounds like a woman who's had enough of everyone else's shit, an attitude that certainly put her in line with the libbers.
Her 1974 commercial break-out, Court and Spark, found her backed by first-call jazz session cats L.A. Express. It was her official severance from folk music. Court is her most pop album and gave her three chart hits, going gold five weeks after its release. Mitchell's production features heavy and sudden multi-tracked swells of her voice that spike melodies like a choir of accusing angels and mimic strings and horns. Her arrangement on "Down to You" (aided by Express bandleader Tom Scott) is stunning in its complexity, yet it never shakes you; it is still utterly a pop song.
Now six albums deep on the topic of love and loss, Court has a marked cynicism. It's a grown up album about arriving at the intractable issues of adult love. "Help Me", which was Mitchell's only top 10 hit, is reluctant about romance; she's "hoping for the future/ And worrying about the past." The refrain is pocked by the dawnlight realizations of that post-free love era: "We love our lovin'/ But not like we love our freedom." For the largeness of her band (which included Joe Sample of the Crusaders, and Larry Carlton, soon to be of every memorable Steely Dan guitar solo) they are nimble throughout; their finesse suited her own.
To explain how and what happened next in Mitchell's career-- how much her The Hissing of Summer Lawns was viewed as not a stylistic departure but a betrayal-- we must first look at the run up. While promoting Court, what could easily be defined as the commercial and artistic high-water mark of her career, Mitchell went to go see Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour and wound up joining. At the time, she was a peer of Dylan, commercially and as a songwriter, she was also tight with tour member Robbie Robertson of the Band. She had a song in the Billboard Top 10-- and she was opening. When Mitchell recounts this in later interviews, she talks about how being on the tour was a matter of constantly having to subvert her ego to the men around her.
At this same time, many of her peers were headed further toward the mainstream, towards syncopation, towards rock, towards retro revivalism. Mitchell saw there was not much of a place for her amongst the new talents and the Peter Pan-ing crew she came up with, as a woman in her early 30s, and she saw jazz as a genre that would allow her to age gracefully and expand as an artist-- and so there she went. She was trying to find or develop a place to belong.
Through all of this she arrived at Hissing of Summer Lawns.
The 1975 album marks Mitchell's official departure from the mainstream, her embarking upon her jazzbo journey. It's the album of an artist absolutely assured of herself, and it's addressed to anyone who might not consider her a serious musician, who believed all she could do was confess her heartache. Though it doesn't have the rhapsodic rep as Blue, it's unquestionably one of Mitchell's finest albums, and it is certainly her most timeless.
It opens easy enough with "In France They Kiss on Main Street"-- a soft, linear move from Court. What follows is jarring if you were expecting more of the same: "The Jungle Line" runs over a distorting sample of the Royal Drummers of Burundi tribal pounding and chanting. Mitchell going from husky to her enunciation so precise about "the mathematic circuits of the modern nights," the long, low whirring of a Moog running the melody line under Mitchell's acoustic strumming. The rest of the record is dark, tense, and lilts unapologetically toward something softer and more ornate than jazz fusion (no more than the later Steely Dan records it predated) with Mitchell singing observationally, about the place of women in the world, about the trade-offs they make for power and freedom.
Mitchell and women of her generation had been brought up with the idea that marriage to a man who took care of them would fulfill them entirely and that ambitions beyond that were frivolous. The album is a reckoning reflective of culture at the time; Hissing is an album of women trying to find their real selves in a world that had groomed them for quiet obeisance to men. On "Harry's House" Mitchell sings of a curdling domestic scene, of wives who "paper the walls to keep their gut reactions hid." The song dovetails into the standard "Centerpiece", which she sings in a voice not her own, playacting with this ultra-feminine throwback voice, creating a critical distance when she sings the lines: "I'm building all my dreams around you/ Our happiness will never cease/ 'Cause nothing's any good without you/ Baby you're my centerpiece." And on the subtlety devastating "Sweet Bird", she sings of women wielding power through beauty and youth, and what is lost and gained in that bargaining: "Power ideals and beauty/ Fading in everyone's hand" and "Calendars of our lives/ Circled with compromise."
Mitchell had never made a record that wasn't bigger than the one before and was shocked that her fans and many critics saw her new sound as an abandonment and misguided move, respectively. Reviewers chastised her for her ego. While the album went gold and brought her a Grammy nod, as her 1974 live album Miles of Aisles attests (a wonky fiasco, skip it) there were still plenty of people shouting for "Big Yellow Taxi". But that Joni didn't live here anymore. Hissing was proof. The era of Mitchell doing no wrong was over and if her audience couldn't hang, she wasn't about to do anything to reel them back in.
The two albums that followed are where Mitchell went off the grid. Hejira, from 1976, was written while driving alone from Maine to L.A. and is a meditation on the value and melancholy of being alone, her guitar imitating the rhythms and expanse of the road. In spots it's as emotionally bare as Blue. It's a real grown woman album and may not make tremendous sense to anyone under 30.
Musically, Mitchell says she was trying to see how far she could get from traditional rhythm; the songs are long and lovely, burbling and unspooling. Whether or not you feel this era of Mitchell is unfairly maligned depends on how you feel about Jaco Pastorious and his fretless bass and its many, many notes fardling way up high in the mix. His playing lends a darkly cinematic feeling to the album, but in the decades since his trademark sound and style have been taken to such unpleasant extremes by jam and light jazz bands, it's understandable to experience a visceral revulsion.
Inspired by the rhythms of Brazilian music, Mitchell issued the experimental double-album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter in '77. Her experiments went further than just musical; she appears in brownface and an afro wig as a man on the cover. Less commented on is her in "injun" costume on the back, palm raised, a bubble above her head reads "How!" (Her cringe-inducing arguments about it later on included statements about how she has a "black man's soul"). The album is solidly jazz-fusion, indulgent in length with still plenty of Jaco-dominance. But! there is reward in the album's centerpiece, if you can make it that far: The 16-minute "Paprika Plains" is a freakout of a song suite, inspired in part by a conversation with prickly ol' Bob Dylan. Even if you cannot abide by the album, we must be grateful for it, as it is Bjork's #1 favorite album and source of inspiration. The last piece in the box, Mingus, her 1979 collaboration with Charles Mingus before his death makes her seem like the jazz dilettante that people accused her of being. The ultimate result doesn't serve either of their legacies particularly well.
Though Mitchell's weird escapade through pop doesn't end where the box set does, she never recaptured the thread of popular imagination. Her 80s albums, like many of her hippie-era peers', were overbearing and scolding and featured awkward embraces of technology. She retired for long stretches to focus on her painting. Her last good record was 2000's Both Sides Now, where, her range ravaged by decades of smoking, she sings the definitive version of the titular song that launched her career and finally sounds like she's seen enough to know. | 2012-11-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2012-11-09T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | null | November 9, 2012 | 8 | 0aa48061-4af4-4729-bd86-bfef4489e48f | Jessica Hopper | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jessica-hopper/ | null |
Taken from a rousing 2023 reunion show, the UK stalwarts offer another souvenir double-live album filled with aged and elegant takes from the core of their songbook. | Taken from a rousing 2023 reunion show, the UK stalwarts offer another souvenir double-live album filled with aged and elegant takes from the core of their songbook. | Blur: Live at Wembley Stadium | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/blur-live-at-wembley-stadium/ | Live at Wembley Stadium | Blur’s latest resurgence came crashing down at Coachella 2024, where the reunited quartet encountered an audience indifferent and ignorant to the very notion of Britpop. It was a far cry from the crowds Blur found at Wembley Stadium a half year earlier. Early in July 2023, just weeks prior to the release of their comeback album, The Ballad of Darren, Blur played a pair of shows at the iconic London venue, greeted by punters primed to revisit the glory days of Cool Britannia.
The cavernous confines of Wembley may have been new territory for Blur but reunions are commonplace for the band. In the waning days of the 2000s, they mounted their first return, regrouping not much later to play a Hyde Park concert aligned with the closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics. Both of these events were commemorated with the release of a souvenir double-live album, as is the 2023 show in the form of Live at Wembley Stadium, which is also accompanied by Blur: To The End, a feature-length documentary chronicling the band’s comeback. Available in a plethora of formats, Live at Wembley Stadium is best heard in its double-CD/triple LP incarnation which contains the entirety of the Sunday show, the second and final concert Blur played during its Wembley stint, a performance that carries a tangible sense of triumph: This is a band eager to commune with its devoted followers.
Those listeners were ready to indulge in nostalgia, anxious to bellow “Parklife!” the moment Phil Daniels hit the stage to once again reprise his starring role from 1994. From a certain angle, that’s precisely what Blur delivered, devoting their set to the hits and album cuts that comprise their core songbook. No less than 16 of its 30 songs were also featured on Parklive, the album commemorating their 2012 performance, confirmation that the Blur canon is fairly entrenched. As commonplace as these tunes may be, the music feels considerably different than Parklive, a record that now plays like a jubilant relic of pre-Brexit Britain. Tempos are slower, particularly on such breakneck rockers as “Popscene” and “Advert,” there’s evident gravel in Damon Albarn’s voice, and Blur on the whole seems heavier, thanks in no small part to an added ballast in the rhythm section.
Such subtle differences are part of aging; individual bodies change, as does collective chemistry. Blur certainly sounds older on Live at Wembley Stadium than they did on their previous live albums, yet those scars lend poignance to these familiar songs. The erosion in Albarn’s voice diminishes his impishness, adding a sense of empathy to his cultural observations. This is especially true in “Tracy Jacks” and “End of a Century,” songs written by a twentysomething wondering about “getting past 40” and how “the mind gets dirty as you get closer to 30,” now delivered with a wistful air by a singer on the far side of 50. Instrumentally, Blur accomplishes something similar. They still can play “Song 2” with burly credibility yet they seem mightier summoning cascades of psychedelic noise on “Trimm Trabb,” “Oily Water” and “This Is a Low” in versions that feel earthy and elegant.
It helps that, unlike many modern live records, Live at Wembley Stadium actually feels alive. Albarn fumbles lyrics on “Beetlebum” and “Country House” and becomes overwhelmed with emotion singing “Under the Westway,” an elegy to London. Graham Coxon’s gnarly guitar runs ramshod over the vocals, while the bass of Alex James careens across the steady rhythms of Dave Rowntree. The quartet seems thrilled by the clamor they conjure and they’re able to channel that energy into the ballads, providing a nervy counterpoint to the middle-aged melancholia that underpins The Ballad of Darren. Where that studio affair offered a long meditation on maturation, the concert setting here prevents extended reflection; there’s a crowd to consider, after all. Blur nevertheless brings the bittersweet pulse to the forefront, particularly in the closing stretch that pairs recent single “The Narcissist” with “The Universal,” a song whose premonition of a numb, narcotized 21st Century has come to pass. That shift in the culture isn’t acknowledged outright but it’s felt, providing a wistful undercurrent on an album that’s a ripping entertainment. | 2024-07-27T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-07-26T16:31:19.008-04:00 | Rock | Parlophone | July 27, 2024 | 7 | 0aa5fa67-80ab-4535-855b-c411102d5985 | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
After posting an online message about his financial troubles, and then receiving help from his fans, the Winnipeg producer Venetian Snares posted Thank You for Your Consideration on Bandcamp. The collection bursts with the explosive strangeness and mathematical focus that defines much of his best work. It's also an argument for a more human view of technology. | After posting an online message about his financial troubles, and then receiving help from his fans, the Winnipeg producer Venetian Snares posted Thank You for Your Consideration on Bandcamp. The collection bursts with the explosive strangeness and mathematical focus that defines much of his best work. It's also an argument for a more human view of technology. | Venetian Snares: Thank You for Your Consideration | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21067-thank-you-for-your-consideration/ | Thank You for Your Consideration | "I am suddenly in very serious financial trouble," Aaron Funk, better known as the producer Venetian Snares, posted on Twitter and Facebook at the end of August. "If you've ever enjoyed my music, I badly need your help asap." Two weeks later, his fans had delivered and, shortly thereafter, so did Funk. At face value, Thank You for Your Consideration could be seen as Funk's version of "pulling a Beyoncé"—which, as of 2015, is often shorthand for the way new music is released. But unlike Bey, or Drake, or Björk, the Winnipeg producer's new record was neither accompanied by a plea for remuneration (fans had already donated without any promise of a reward), nor was it part of a larger marketing scheme (the album was posted on Bandcamp, rather than released via Funk's longtime label, Planet Mu). Instead, like much of Funk's work that came before, Thank You for Your Consideration's release was enigmatic, raw, and, one must assume, sincere: "Thanks for having my back and caring about me and the music I make," he wrote.
For about a decade beginning in the late '90s, Funk was a restless creative force—dropping album after album of breakcore beats in a deluge that resulted in some of the decade’s most arresting electronic music. At his creative peak—arguably 2005's ambitious, classically-inspired Rossz Csillag Alatt Született—it wasn’t uncommon for Funk to issue several releases a year. But eventually, his output slowed to more human levels. Four years passed between 2010’s My So-Called Life and 2014’s My Love Is a Bulldozer and, in that time, Funk himself seemed to cede momentum to artists whose own sounds softened or refined parts of the one he helped create (Death Grips, Gobby, the Range, and the Vaporwave aesthetic all owe much to the road he paved).
One might guess, then, because of the nature of its release and Funk's prolific recording schedule, that Thank You for Your Consideration is cobbled together from different stages of his career, or simply a collection of tracks he never planned to release at all. As he told XLR8R last year: "I think I still make the same amount of music, I just barely show it to anyone anymore." While that may be the case, unlike other odds-and-ends albums, Consideration's 14 tracks come off as remarkably—and appropriately—considered when taken as a whole. While last year's My Love Is a Bulldozer saw Funk experimenting with his own vocals to beguiling results and this year's Your Face showed a more condensed side to Snares' sound, Thank You for Your Consideration bursts with the explosive strangeness and mathematical focus that defines much of his best work. The album's intricately programmed drums have the loose feel of much of his mid-2000s aesthetic and Funk's dynamic time signatures spin like rogue gyroscopes feeding off their own entropy.
The album opens with "Smersonality", a wobbly production whose groove is driven by spazzed-out synths and jazzed-up beats. For longtime fans, it's a return to form; for newcomers, it may recall Zach Hill by way of Aphex Twin. Venetian Snares' music is often purposefully difficult to swallow in large doses, but more often than not there's a cleverness and humor that rewards deeper listens. "Koopa Cookies", whose name portends the glitchy chiptune that erupts from the song's placid opening, plays like a boss battle where Mario's mushrooms aren't of the legal variety. Further down the road, "Thousand Mile Stare" is a jungle track with a vocal sample as sinister as its razor-blade synths. Funk has also always been capable of tempering high-octane drum and bass with less combustible fare. "Beside the Past by a Lake", for example, uses a retro-futuristic palette to paint a scene that's as soothing as it is unnerving without feeling disjointed.
While the unnamed circumstances that led to Thank You for Your Consideration are no doubt terrible for Funk's personal life, the fact that a plea can be answered, and that an artist can return that favor in kind just weeks later, is the sort of story that illustrates the adaptability of the Internet. While jaded listeners may view each new leak and mixtape as the next piece of a perpetual PR machine, Consideration is an argument for a more human view of technology. (As is clear from a recent FACT interview, there's perhaps nobody more jaded by the music industry, or music criticism, than Funk himself.) From the patient, apocalyptic drone of "09sept09" to the synapse-sizzling electro of "Ötvenöt 3", Thank You stands for itself. But it's difficult to ignore the context: "Still royally screwed, yet you've made me so feel supported and loved," he wrote when linking to the album. Like much of Funk's best music, it's a statement filled with tension and contradiction. | 2015-09-16T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-09-16T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic | self-released | September 16, 2015 | 7.4 | 0aa9e5dd-6217-4b74-9f54-49af2e8a9d83 | Nathan Reese | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nathan-reese/ | null |
Frank Ocean has quickly proven himself to be among the most gifted singer-songwriters of his generation. His major-label debut swings from Stevie-style keyboard breeziness to 90s R&B to mystic psych rock to crunching 8-bit funk without thinking twice. It already feels like a classic. | Frank Ocean has quickly proven himself to be among the most gifted singer-songwriters of his generation. His major-label debut swings from Stevie-style keyboard breeziness to 90s R&B to mystic psych rock to crunching 8-bit funk without thinking twice. It already feels like a classic. | Frank Ocean: Channel Orange | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16859-channel-orange/ | Channel Orange | Frank Ocean is airborne, looking around, taking it all in. "Up above the birds, I saw the sky like I never seen before," he whispers on his major-label debut, Channel Orange, as avian chirps surround him. "You thought I was above you." The 24-year-old has quickly proven himself to be among the most gifted singer-songwriters of his generation; he's got the type of voice, wit, charm, smarts, and ineffable humanity that's always hoped for, but never promised. And he's got every reason to think he's above the vividly realized lost souls that slouch, preen, and weep throughout his album. But that's not how Frank Ocean works. His lofty gaze is powerful, but not all-powerful. "What's a god to a non-believer who don't believe in anything?" he sang on Watch the Throne's "No Church in the Wild". He's so good at questioning that answers can't help but bubble up in the wake of his words.
Along with Ocean's empathy for his characters is a sense of repose-- he's been there, he's weathered it, and he's come away with his Zen-like calm intact. On Channel Orange, this serene deadpan is splashed with crackling emotion, as though he's alternately narrating and starring in his own Magnolia-style cross-wired-heartbreak epic. It's all there on proper opener "Thinkin Bout You", where he battles his own brain while reminiscing about a first love. He tells himself white lies in the verse before flipping to a falsetto that could make D'Angelo sweat for the endless wound of a chorus: "Do you not think so far ahead?/ Cause I've been thinkin bout forever."
When Ocean dropped an early take of "Thinkin Bout You" on his Tumblr last summer, it was quickly followed by a version from perfectly competent Roc Nation signee Bridget Kelly, who claimed Ocean originally wrote the song for her. The fact that Ocean's take dwarfs Kelly's both artistically as well as in terms of popularity is telling. After languishing as a behind-the-scenes writer for pop stars including Brandy, John Legend, and Justin Bieber, with "Thinkin Bout You" Ocean doubled down on the out-of-nowhere success of his unique and brilliant 2011 mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra., marking his territory as a performer in his own right. And while he's now primarily writing songs for himself, his time toiling in L.A. studios gave him the experience to create a piece as accomplished and varied as Channel Orange, which swings from Stevie-style keyboard breeziness to 1990s bap&B to mystic psych rock to crunching 8-bit funk without thinking twice.
The "Thinkin Bout You" mix-up was telling for another reason, too. As written, it's by-and-large a unisex composition, and the line, "my eyes don't shed tears, but boy they pour when I'm thinkin bout you," didn't seem especially revealing since Ocean wrote the song for a woman. In light of the letter he published earlier this month, in which he stated that his first love, at age 19, was with a man, that line-- and others on the album-- gains some personal and historical context. For a culture that accurately prides itself on sonic progression, hip-hop and R&B can be woefully conservative when it comes to sexuality. This is changing, and Frank Ocean is helping it to change, and if his revelation inspires others to understand themselves or the world more fully, then that could be one of Channel Orange's finest legacies. But it will not be the album's only legacy.
Aside from its bravery, Ocean's letter was, in itself, stunningly written. Its beautiful ambiguities had people reacting with sensational headlines, and then amending those sensational headlines, and then thinking about how and why they personally reacted to such sensational headlines. More questions; more answers. After realizing he was in love with a man, Ocean "reminisced about the sentimental songs I enjoyed when I was a teenager. the ones I played when I experienced a girlfriend for the first time. I realized they were written in a language I did not yet speak." And, whether consciously or not, Channel Orange's language is admirably-- and skillfully-- inclusive. Rather than getting listeners to comb through the lyrics for certain words or references, Ocean mixes things up so well-- and coats the entire affair with heavy doses of disorienting surreality-- that petty pronoun policing is rendered completely useless as deeper meanings reveal themselves at the same time.
While pop is currently in the golden age of exacting self-reflection-- an often beguiling phenomenon spurred on by the internet's infinite mirror-- Ocean is interested in a more selfless pursuit. "As a lifestyle, you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy," Ocean recently told The New York Times. "I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films. Even though it's my voice, I'm a storyteller." Those tales are as wide-ranging as they are engrossing, always benefitting from Ocean's eye for detail and specificity. There are sly California class observations in the vein of Joan Didion or Randy Newman, where latchkey "Super Rich Kids" can't see past their own one-percent "Sweet Life". But once again, Ocean isn't just sniping easy targets; "why see the world when you got the beach?" he asks, a Rorschach test of a hook that leaves its levels of bliss or cynicism wholly up to the listener.
There are plenty of addicts on the back half of the album: the fiend at the center of "Crack Rock" whose family "stopped inviting you to things" and "won't let you hold their infant," or the poisoned relationship between a dealer and his mule on "Lost". On the record's most harrowing cut, "Bad Religion", Ocean is crippled by love and left searching for life's answers in the back of a cab-- the string-bleeding ballad finds the singer offering his most impassioned plea yet: "This unrequited love/ To me it's nothing but a one man cult and cyanide in my styrofoam cup/ I could never make him love me."
While Channel Orange is stuffed with one-of-a-kind details and characters, its overall scope is grand, as is Ocean's. Tape-hiss interludes bind these very hi-fi songs together with a musty analog quality, and a couple of tracks seem to end mid-sentence, leaving you no choice but to keep going. And there's a timeless philosophy involved here, one of hard-won acceptance and the acknowledgement that love and sex and loss will always draw legends to them. How else to explain "Pyramids", a 10-minute time warp that goes from ancient Egyptian wonders to modern strip clubs and essentially reincarnates one of the most storied female rulers in history as a six-inch-heeled woman of the night. But still, the song doesn't read as an indictment of the last 2,000 years as much as yet another attempt to cleverly level the playing field.
"holding my head. keeping it g [...] whatever 'keeping it g' means to me. i've sorta zoned in on my own definition." Frank wrote that on December 27, 2011-- the same day he wrote the "first love" letter he published last week. Both missives, along with Channel Orange itself, carry the same spirit of confident, open-minded redefinition; he's living in his own world, but also fascinated with what's around him. Currently, his Twitter bio reads: "i don't know anything. & neither do you." In Frank Ocean-speak, that's not a statement of ignorance but rather one of wisdom. | 2012-07-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-07-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Def Jam | July 12, 2012 | 9.5 | 0aab4c1d-8eea-4a83-a2e3-16befc05153c | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | null |
Stymied by formulaic collaborations and unmemorable beats, the rapper’s latest has the ingredients of a really good Future album but lacks the depth of one. | Stymied by formulaic collaborations and unmemorable beats, the rapper’s latest has the ingredients of a really good Future album but lacks the depth of one. | Future: I Never Liked You | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/future-i-never-liked-you/ | I Never Liked You | “Toxic” is both the best and worst thing to happen to Future. Over the course of his immortal four-project run in the mid-2010s—Monster, Beast Mode, 56 Nights, and Dirty Sprite 2—the word became the defining trait of his persona. As he emerged as one of rap’s biggest superstars, it was like his conscience was telling him one thing and his masculinity another. But “toxic” also flattened the emotional complexity and thoughtfulness of Future’s songwriting. He wrote brooding sagas about self-inflicted heartbreak; candid reflections on the drugs that he blamed for his pain and relied on to heal it, too; turn-up joints about a life of luxury layered with the sense that he was overcompensating for lost love. Often on these tapes, he could go through all those feelings in one verse, blurring reality and myth.
But since then, despite some great moments—specifically 2017’s HNDRXX—Future has increasingly become a caricature of himself. His writing started to feel one-dimensional, embellishing the Future persona with even more devious lines. His stories used to contain mistakes and melodrama, but lately it feels like the goal is to get one over on the women he sings about. His latest album I Never Liked You—the title sounds like a breakup note passed in the back of a middle-school classroom—has the ingredients of a really good Future album but lacks the depth of one. It plays it safe by continuing to lean too hard on the schtick.
Still, Future is such a slick rapper and vocalist that his songs are pretty fun even when the lyrics feel routine. “I’m Dat Nigga” introduces a bunch of subtle yet exciting change-ups to his flow: He accelerates for a couplet, slows down for the next, and by the end, he’s in full boastful monologue mode. The eeriness of “Puffin on Zootiez” might make you believe Future is saying more than he actually is, but it’s OK because his downbeat yet rapid delivery and the ornate instrumental carry the song. The repetitive but memorable “Chickens” is a highlight, as Future embraces the cartoonish side of his character and gets a fresh burst of energy from EST Gee’s menace.
But Gee is the only collaboration on the album that feels inspired; the others are so formulaic that they’re indistinguishable. Check “Wait For U” with Drake: Sampling Tems’ “Higher” is a cheat code to a catchy song, but Future and Drake are on such autopilot that I’d rather listen to the original. The other joint with Drake, “I’m on One,” wouldn’t have even made the cut for What a Time to Be Alive. “For a Nut,” with Young Thug and Gunna, is the bottom of the barrel. The song is supposed to be a sleazy, darkly funny good time, but the lyrics are so half-assed that they come off more like a parody.
Throughout, it’s also apparent that Future doesn’t have that producer anymore. Here, it’s supposed to be ATL Jacob, who has some hot ones—the operatic “Holy Ghost” might be the best beat on the whole album—but his instrumentals don’t have any signature flourishes: They sound like how a Future album is supposed to sound, rather than how the best ones actually do. Almost all the beats on a tape like 2012’s Pluto share the same Atlanta trap foundation, but depending on who is at the helm, the interpretation is distinct. I Never Liked You lacks that creativity and irreverence.
It might feel unfair to compare ATL Jacob’s work to a few of the best-produced records of the last decade—and possibly the problem lies in the beat selection process—but this is a Future album and the bar should be higher. It’s hard to be excited when you’ve already heard him make music that sounds just like this, except better. No song represents that quite like “Love You Better.” It’s the type of moody heartbreak ballad that formed the pulse of that classic four-project run: There’s the chopped-up vocal sample, the whimpering croons, the lyrics where he sounds like he’s apologizing to a girlfriend but is really trying to manipulate her into feeling sorry for him. It sounds nice, but I feel indifferent. The heartbreak doesn’t have to be real, but it has to feel genuine, and with Future it just doesn’t anymore. | 2022-05-03T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-05-03T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Freebandz / Epic | May 3, 2022 | 6 | 0aaba79a-12a0-42a2-9c1b-8d0e1feccf13 | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
This solo EP from Katie Alice Greer, singer in lauded D.C. punks Priests, mixes industrial textures and synth-pop. Her talent for composing moody collages of unraveling sound is a pleasant revelation. | This solo EP from Katie Alice Greer, singer in lauded D.C. punks Priests, mixes industrial textures and synth-pop. Her talent for composing moody collages of unraveling sound is a pleasant revelation. | KAG: EP A | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22530-ep-a/ | EP A | In the lauded D.C. punk band Priests, Katie Alice Greer’s voice holds a great deal of narrative responsibility. While her politically-inflected lyrics often slide toward the opaque, the quality of Greer’s singing works to make ideas and feelings legible: she hollers her lines, her voice cracking as she bends phrases over her bandmates’ driving basslines and squalls of distorted guitar. Greer’s performances can become soaked in feeling, albeit in a distinctly serrated way. Priests’ music isn’t inviting in the traditional sense, but it acts nonetheless as an invitation to participate in some communal seething.
Alongside the build-up to Priests’ first full-length release, Greer has quietly released a solo EP as KAG, recorded following a move from D.C. proper into the suburbs. The four songs that comprise EP A are built from industrial drum machines, iterative guitar phrases, and a generous amount of metallic squealing and tape hiss—an uneasy composite of unfinished textures, rather than something anthemic. If her output with Priests serves as a rallying cry, Greer’s solo effort is more isolated, better suited for private bouts of anxiety.
Throughout, vocals come in and out of focus, in moments barely recognizable. On “Diana Ross,” perhaps the tensest offering, Greer sings in a haunted falsetto that smears what might be lyrics into pure affect—a poignant act of obfuscation, given that the song is a tribute of sorts to another great, and complex, frontwoman. (In both interviews and her own songwriting—see “Lana,” for Lana Del Rey, on Priests’ 2013 EP Tape Two—Greer appears consistently fascinated with woman popstars as cultural signifiers, sites of something like femme mythmaking.) On “Sister Ruth” and “Narcissus,” her voice is faraway, sometimes picking up to a more insistent pace, sometimes receding below all-but-unintelligible samples of people chattering and other ambient urban noise. Greer’s talent for composing moody collages of unraveling sound is a pleasant revelation. It makes “Baby Judy” an outlier here, a comparatively gentle and sincerely delivered synth-pop song.
Generally, it sounds as if it might be a relief for Greer to dissolve a bit into a self-built world, one where there’s less pressure to signify and, consequently, more room to feel out the contours of everyday life’s disquiet. Her lyrics, though largely unintelligible on the recordings, are published on the project’s Bandcamp and are worth a read. When she references other women’s stories—on “Diana Ross,” or in nods to the film Black Narcissus, for example—she seems to be reaching out to these characters to find form, but succumbing to formlessness is also a theme: “Your sexuality is nothing like you say,” she mutters from somewhere deep within the mix on “Sister Ruth.” “It’s just something that floats away/It’s something you could never really keep at bay/Water that takes shape.” The sentiment is neither strictly political nor strictly personal. In its sung form’s obscurity, it reminds us that sometimes, legibility—and its attendant form, visibility—can feel like a trap, to women onstage and off. | 2016-10-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Sister Polygon | October 21, 2016 | 7.2 | 0ab00f61-ebd7-455e-90bf-a127693010e0 | Thea Ballard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/thea-ballard/ | null |
On his fifth album and first for Fat Possum, the Southern folk singer finds ingenious ways to pull old obscurities into the anxious present. | On his fifth album and first for Fat Possum, the Southern folk singer finds ingenious ways to pull old obscurities into the anxious present. | Jake Xerxes Fussell: When I’m Called | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jake-xerxes-fussell-when-im-called/ | When I’m Called | Not so long ago, Jake Xerxes Fussell was in a hurry. The son of Southern folklorists, Fussell took his family inheritance—that is, an invaluable intimacy with customs and cultures far beyond the mainstream of his ’90s youth—and immortalized it with his earliest records. Fussell played spirited and relatively faithful versions of rather obscure old songs. Sometimes, he sped through them, though, as if he were some folk-festival stenographer, putting down what he’d heard in his own hand before it was all lost to the future’s sweep.
But near the last decade’s end, on his third album, 2019’s Out of Sight, that seeming impatience began to erode, replaced by the desire to transform that inheritance into something truer to his own life and time. With his rhythmically idiosyncratic guitar and his golden mean of a folk singer’s voice, as inviting as a Sunday picnic, Fussell stitched together bits of those old tunes in ingenious shapes. It was as though Fussell finally realized just how much of his source material had made it online, ostensibly digitized forever; that work done, he could now tell his own story by using that source material in his own way and his own time, as slowly as he’d like.
Fussell has never been as patient—or, for that matter, as graceful or compelling, curious or inclusive—as he is on When I’m Called, his fifth and best album. Produced by kindred spirit James Elkington and played by a cast that includes Blake Mills, Joan Shelley, and Joe Westerlund, When I’m Called foregrounds Fussell’s ability to take songs moldering in university archives or reissue label stacks and locate another meaning within them, to imagine some new way to interpret that inheritance.
Fussell’s field of play is broad here, from a 1994 cassette by Maestro Gaxiola, who turned his life into a sort of anti-industry piece of performance art, to an English nursery rhyme about animals that dates at least to 1744 and may be an allegory for a half-dozen historic events. In conversation with what has come before, Fussell creates a space where our own modern malaises, whether loneliness and anxiety or political instability and social suspicion, feel less like our burdens than those of humanity at large. Fussell finds mostly forgotten songs to sing, less now to preserve them than to connect to a past we still share.
Much of When I’m Called is a survey of indecision, or at least of not knowing what is supposed to come next. Most obvious is “Leaving Here, Don’t Know Where I’m Going,” a century-old Georgia lament about needing to part from home to get some work. (Another of Fussell’s folklore mentors, the late Art Rosenbaum, captured it for Folkways 40 years ago.) Framed by gentle acoustic guitar that trickles like a country creek and horns that sound like soul-baring sighs, Fussell’s tragic rendition is an existential wrestling match in slow motion. Why does pursuing what we need so often cost us what we love, like “Alabama water that tastes like cherry wine”?
“Gone to Hilo,” meanwhile, sees the forlorn world from the other perspective—the lover whose Johnny has set sail for yet another foreign port to make his wage. That’s just life, but Fussell’s tender phrasing and measured pace feel interminably sad, as if this were the end of a line and a love. A touring musician with his own young family in North Carolina, Fussell seems to step out of his own body and brain here, imagining how it must feel to watch himself leave for adventures that are also just his job. Not good at all, he reckons. The great Robin Holcomb, another Georgia singer who has long mined the past for her own present, softly echoes Fussell, linking this conundrum across generations.
Someone is almost always on the move during When I’m Called. That’s Fussell contemplating his own responsibility and, ultimately, mortality amid the title track’s gentle and brilliant electric ripple. He’s waiting whatever turn is his. There’s the meet-cute of “Feeing Day,” a 19th-century ballad in which a gentleman extends his umbrella to a woman stranded in a rainstorm. They share some drinks, fall in love, and, in the classic version, quickly get married. Fussell omits that last bit here, closing instead on a fanfare of languid horns. They curl like a question mark, an ending shrouded in uncertainty.
It’s hard not to hear the closer, “Going to Georgia,” as the answer: “They’ll hug you, they’ll kiss you/They’ll tell you more lies,” Fussell sings of men at large, his voice deep and warm, like a father offering advice distilled from his own misdeeds. “And the crossties in the railway are the stars in the skies.” (He inveighs against cads with some of the same lines earlier in the album during “One Morning in May”; if it sounds playful there, it sounds like a real warning here.) Betrayal and selfishness are ancient arts, cosmic even. The best we can do is to canter on, then, just as Fussell and his band do through a final corona of wispy strings.
If you spend long enough diving into online repositories, you can find something about most every song Fussell invokes or interprets or recombines here—the complete lyrics of what was then called “Feeing Time,” the bouncy Maestro Gaxiola tape where he lampoons Andy Warhol, even a wobbly file of Virgil Anderson singing that perfect bit about Alabama water, Alabama women, and cherry wine. The sources, then, are mostly safe, so he doesn’t have to be in a hurry to immortalize them anymore. But unless you know what you’re looking for, those antiques are bits of folklorist flotsam locked in an endless data heap, viewed only by the most obsessive and diligent. Reverent and imaginative, Fussell does the work of pulling them out of the pile and making them ring again. No other American singer is repurposing our old folk scripts with so much authority or ingenuity; When I’m Called proclaims—softly, gently, and slowly, with a sly grin and a Southern ease—that what these songs have to say isn’t old at all. | 2024-07-17T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-07-17T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Fat Possum | July 17, 2024 | 8 | 0ab0b546-c6af-46b3-bce3-dbd398addde2 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
A Winged Victory for the Sullen is a collaboration between Stars of the Lid's Adam Wiltzie and pianist Dustin O'Halloran. Their score for Wayne McGregor's ATOMOS recasts the elegant sound of their 2011 debut for McGregor's purposes, with pensive melancholy shading into physical menace. | A Winged Victory for the Sullen is a collaboration between Stars of the Lid's Adam Wiltzie and pianist Dustin O'Halloran. Their score for Wayne McGregor's ATOMOS recasts the elegant sound of their 2011 debut for McGregor's purposes, with pensive melancholy shading into physical menace. | A Winged Victory for the Sullen: ATOMOS | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19868-a-winged-victory-for-the-sullen-atomos/ | ATOMOS | Wayne McGregor has great taste in ambient music. I saw his piece FAR a couple years ago, and hearing Ben Frost's delicate yet concussive score, then unreleased, was as rich a part of the experience as watching the dance. McGregor has also commissioned music from the likes of Max Richter (Sum and Infra) and Ólafur Arnalds (Dyad 1909), and you can add to that list A Winged Victory for the Sullen, a collaboration between Stars of the Lid's Adam Wiltzie and pianist Dustin O'Halloran. Their score for ATOMOS recasts the elegant sound of their 2011 debut for McGregor's purposes, with pensive melancholy shading into physical menace.
If Stars of the Lid's music sounds like a hollowed-out 100-piece ensemble with ether for its innards, AWVFTS is the opposite. Made from strings, piano, the occasional horn, and electric guitars processed into ambient washes and scrawls, it's all inner voices coiled together, more classical than drone. The music is recorded in large spaces, so that between natural acoustic and electronic effects, every instrument seems to float in an ocean-sized force field of harmonic resonance. Minimal melodic information carries maximal tone, the few voices somehow resplendently full and forlornly isolated at once.
McGregor choreographs for a leading modern company, London's Royal Ballet, and, occasionally, Thom Yorke. Rather than making his experimental work challenging and his traditional work beautiful, he makes all of his work both, building modern movement on ballet lines. This classically tempered novelty influences his musical commissions, where chamber music anchors electronic disturbances and asymmetrical structures. AWVFTS adapts, making ATOMOS louder and more mobile than its impeccably tentative predecessor—more volatile and disjointed, with basses you can feel in your body because this is for the body. The duo's signature stasis is now packed with interior movement; particles swarm through drones like dancers suspended in stage lighting.
If the first album was basically slow-moving, deeply sonorous chamber music under a microscope, ATOMOS pumps up elements of discord and chaos. The duo's usual minimalist classical core, formed somewhere between the sacred and nervy repetitions of Arvo Pärt and Philip Glass, is reshaped in accord with influential dance scorers Gavin Bryars and David Tudor. Slabs of hard, bright organ-like tones arc powerfully over dark crags of bass. Strings twist in relentless screw-like figures or creep forward in inexorably widening harmonies. Electronic guitar tones are more pronounced, forming rhythmic throughlines and pulses. Forbidding abstract landscapes rise up into plangent songs, sub-frequencies crumbling apart beneath them.
The best tracks, such as "I" and "VI", wrangle these maneuvers into an anxious, dynamic, almost symphonic sweep. All the song titles are Roman numerals—too bad, as it deprives us of the duo's unusually self-mocking song titles. Grandiose ambient musicians are not known for their sense of humor, so titles such as "Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears", "Requiem for the Static King" and, best of all, "We Played Some Open Chords" (they did!) were refreshing. But there's still something curious about this tracklist. There is no "IV". What went wrong? I like to imagine that one day this lost track will surface, and it will have a kazoo in it. For now, it brings a touch of mystery to a far better than average dance score that refines rather than suppresses the musical identity of its creators. Who will Wayne McGregor call on next? Tim Hecker's phone has got to be about to ring. | 2014-10-16T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2014-10-16T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Experimental | Kranky / Erased Tapes | October 16, 2014 | 7.3 | 0ab3aa05-0099-4aca-b6b9-4cb931681bd2 | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | null |
This young Montreal producer, best known at this point for his remixes and a collaboration with Sally Shapiro, offers an accomplished debut full-length. | This young Montreal producer, best known at this point for his remixes and a collaboration with Sally Shapiro, offers an accomplished debut full-length. | CFCF: Continent | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13648-continent/ | Continent | Much of the music one might compare to CFCF's debut album, Continent, leans on an external medium or function. Like a lush film score, theme for a forgotten Don Johnson TV pilot, or an unused in-house mixtape intended to fill intermission space, Continent at first seems like a throwback record that really opens up only in a specific time and place. And to a degree, that's to be expected coming from a self-professed film geek who is likely keener on the idea of chatting about Cronenberg than Kraftwerk. Michael Silver, the Montreal-based 21-year-old behind CFCF, has garnered a modest following as a producer and prolific remix artist (you might remember him as the guy who won that Crystal Castles remix contest with his ambitious reconfiguring of "Air War"). And Continent, a surprisingly confident debut, suggests that he's equally concerned with how his music sounds as he is with where it's heard.
As successful as Continent is at evoking mood using deliberate pacing and ripe textures, it also managed to wrap its meticulously pruned pop reticence around everything from hushed poser-disco suites ("Invitation to Love") to sexy, swoon-struck soft-rock grooves ("Raining Patterns"). Hell, there's even a great Fleetwood Mac cover wedged in there, too. Since it's so easy to lose yourself in these lithe, languid electronic ruminations, it's no wonder that nearly everything I've read about CFCF-- and more specifically Continent itself-- has focused on the cinematic characteristics in Silver's work. But fair may it be to categorize these dozen tracks as a series of very accomplished daydream canvases, Continent becomes a richer experience when looked at as independent of any peripheral distraction, with its pop-friendly attention-grabbers very much in the foreground.
There's a patient, reserved quality at work that will no doubt land Continent a few iPod gigs in chic bistros. But to water down these beat-bolstered two-steppers-- like the propulsive, joyous Mac cover "Big Love" or the Quincy Jones-styled funk-out "Half Dreaming"-- is to rob them of their inherent catchiness and accessibility. Often a little sad or playing to a kind of ethereal, out-of-body vibe, most of the memorable moments here are ones that are felt with the hips, not the head. And that's likely because these are, for the most part, unapologetically svelte tunes jam-packed with cues taken from body-high inducing ambient atmospherics, beatific house loopings, 70s AM Easy Cheese, and bubbly Balearic turns.
All of this might appear indicative of how we spent our 2009 summer vacation (see "chillwave"), and while there are unmistakable nostalgic underpinnings that help define Silver's music, it's never cloyingly obvious. Where artists like Neon Indian or Washed Out rely on instant gratification to transport a listener back to specific time or feeling, CFCF's music is less concerned with arriving at a discernible destination than it is with detailing the journey. These are lengthy tunes for the most part (a few of the best clocking in well over seven minutes), so it's easy to lose track of every fleeting emotion or quirky little melody that happens to float on by.
Indeed, large parts of Continent may be considered too cautious or circuitous for the casual listener-- Easter eggs like that Prince-in-the-driving-rain guitar solo on "You Hear Colours" or the patient, synth-soaked yearning that plays throughout "Snake Charmer" might not be able to so readily produce any real effusive payoff for some. However, by employing a bit of listener fortitude, you'll hopefully unlock the vibrancy that lies at Continent's core and defines it as the sure-footed, elegantly stated electro-pop record it most certainly is. | 2009-11-17T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2009-11-17T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Electronic | Paper Bag | November 17, 2009 | 7.7 | 0ab4ca50-7fc4-4cf9-8910-9717474f012f | Zach Kelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zach-kelly/ | null |
The London duo's debut EP is a full-bodied, slinky embrace of the weirder end of R&B trailblazed by Timbaland and the Neptunes a decade ago. | The London duo's debut EP is a full-bodied, slinky embrace of the weirder end of R&B trailblazed by Timbaland and the Neptunes a decade ago. | AlunaGeorge: You Know You Like It EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16540-you-know-you-like-it-ep/ | You Know You Like It EP | George Reid, the producer half of London duo AlunaGeorge, has an ear for the slightly warped. His tracks are filled with skittish, hiccuping beats, helium-rush vocals, and vaguely eerie tones that drift in from the corners of the mix. When discussing his influences in a recent interview, he said that he drew inspiration as a producer from a time when "people weren't... afraid to do something a bit weird." Was he waxing nostalgic about some obscure, forgotten micro-scene he'd stumbled upon after endless hours of crate-digging? Nope, he was talking about how much he loves Timbaland and the Neptunes.
We've heard enough of this refrain recently-- from avant-pop artists like Grimes, Nite Jewel, and Purity Ring-- that it's starting to feel representative of a sea change. Artists with DIY leanings have been professing their love of the glossy bubblegum pop and R&B that dominated the airwaves when they were growing up-- the sort of music that a previous generation of indie musicians rejected entirely, or at least admired from a distance. Aluna Francis, the 24-year-old singer who certainly plumbs this sound on the group's debut EP, You Know You Like It, admits she used to feel that way too. "I had a big rejection of R&B for quite a long while, so when I started working for George, I was still trying to be something else," she recalls. "But it was so ingrained in me that our music ended up sounding quite R&B without meaning to." The three slick, glitchy tracks on You Know You Like It also pull from the left-field sounds associated with the LA label Brainfeeder and the Knife's creepily synthetic vibe, but a large part of their appeal comes from their glistening pop sensibility. When Francis coos on the title track, "You know you like it but you're scared of the shame," it feels like more than just a slinky taunt: It's also a pretty succinct summary of her generation's relationship with the mainstream pop that she and Reid so love. Thematically and sonically, that's You Know You Like It's agenda: to strip away the guilt from the guilty pleasure.
AlunaGeorge share some noticeable similarities with Canadian electro-pop duo Purity Ring: they've got a male/female dynamic, an affinity for manipulated vocals tracks that gurgle and burp, and a baby-voiced aesthetic that suggests they remember exactly where they were when they first heard Timbaland sample a cooing infant (by way of Prince's "Delirious") on Aaliyah's 1998 hit "Are You That Somebody?". But the two groups explore different tones, and unlike the Kewpie-eyed wonder of Purity Ring's sound, AlunaGeorge's tracks exude a seductive confidence. "I'm not as hard as a rock, I'm just not easy to break," Francis sings on "Just a Touch", a hint of cool combativeness in her voice. "But don't take it as an open invitation to try."
Though it's definitely not a dud, "Just a Touch" is the least memorable of the three songs, and at worst it feels like a missed opportunity to show some range. But for a debut EP that's just over 10-minutes long, You Know You Like It doesn't last long enough for its aesthetic limitations to become a problem. The commanding and instantly catchy "You Know You Like It" is the obvious single here, but the closing track "Put Up Your Hands" might just do it one better-- twisting and pulling Francis's vocals into otherworldly sounds. "I've got a million emails in a box unread from you," she exhales, sounding noticeably annoyed. "What you trying to prove?" The lyric might look a little banal on paper, but over the course of the song it distends into a bit of dark, fatalistic drama. And that's just what Reid and Francis do on this EP: poke and prod familiar things until they take on the cast of something lustrous, sinister, and ever so slightly weird. | 2012-04-26T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2012-04-26T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Tri Angle | April 26, 2012 | 7.7 | 0ab6b433-2f41-45fb-9947-220f47190cea | Lindsay Zoladz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/lindsay-zoladz/ | null |
The debut EP from the New Paltz duo Diet Cig is a collection of brisk, personal pop-punk. The music recalls '90s bands like Beat Happening or Tiger Trap in its simplicity and Eternal Summers in its tone. | The debut EP from the New Paltz duo Diet Cig is a collection of brisk, personal pop-punk. The music recalls '90s bands like Beat Happening or Tiger Trap in its simplicity and Eternal Summers in its tone. | Diet Cig: Over Easy EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20237-over-easy-ep/ | Over Easy EP | Diet Cig burst out of the Hudson Valley college town and musical hotbed New Paltz, N.Y., this January with a memorable name and an origin story like something from a microbudget romantic comedy. Singer Alex Luciano and drummer Noah Bowman met at a house show when she interrupted a set to ask him for a lighter; a few months later, they were playing shows and getting ready to record their first songs at a studio in New Paltz. Over Easy, their debut EP, is the product of that labor, a collection of brisk, personal pop-punk that recalls '90s bands like Beat Happening or Tiger Trap in its simplicity and Eternal Summers in its tone.
It's not hard to get to the core of the songs on Over Easy. Built mostly out of Bowman's frenzied drumming and Luciano's distorted guitar and vocals, they're simple, propulsive, and monochromatic; they're dense, but not rich with detail. They mostly serve as vehicles for Luciano's reflections on the life changes, relationships, and social anxiety that characterize extended adolescence. It's a time that's served as fodder for more than its share of music, but Luciano comes at it with a keen observational eye and a fresh perspective. She turns opener "Breathless", an anthem for people living independently for the first time, into something with character through her use of location and detail (like the fact that she's still missing a shower curtain). In other moments, she has a knack for memorable and catchy phrasing that reminds me of Dashboard Confessional, specifically the way every song threatened to break into a cathartic group singalong in a live setting. When she hammers out the line, "and I am sweating and I'm/ betting you are, too!" in the chorus of "Pool Boyz", it's easy to imagine a roomful of people yelling it with her and revelling in the song's heat and pent-up lust.
There are moments on Over Easy where Diet Cig crosses the line from relatable young adult angst into petulant, immature whining. There are pieces of "Scene Sick" that are appealing on their own—the way its slow shuffle explodes into a speedy romp, the nicely varied percussive elements—but when tossed together with Luciano's powdered sugar vocal, it's painfully saccharine. It's also based around a complaint that's remarkably insular, namely the oppressiveness of the titular scene; it's a sentiment that likely resonates with people who have spent a lot of time embedded in the music industry, but without that context it hews a little closer to straightforward whining. Closer "Harvard", fuller and funnier and more dynamic, does a better job of conveying that kind of annoyance by focusing on a snobby, jerky ex.
There's obvious talent and light in these songs, though it's also obvious that Diet Cig are still in their infancy. (In spending time with the EP, I kept coming back to Eternal Summers' "Lightswitch" as a best case scenario for songs of this length and complexity: more colour, more depth, more space, more intensity.) There's promise here, but Over Easy barely scrapes the 10 minute mark, and the duo's next release will be the one that really proves their worth. | 2015-02-24T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2015-02-24T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Rock | Father/Daughter | February 24, 2015 | 6.1 | 0ab702fe-98e7-4879-b821-d6b143716e2e | Jamieson Cox | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jamieson-cox/ | null |
The Brooklyn band's newest is a vinyl-only LP consisting of two side-long tracks, both sharing a name with the album. It sounds uncalculated and uncontrived, as if Oneida's playing whatever they feel like playing at the moment. | The Brooklyn band's newest is a vinyl-only LP consisting of two side-long tracks, both sharing a name with the album. It sounds uncalculated and uncontrived, as if Oneida's playing whatever they feel like playing at the moment. | Oneida: A List of the Burning Mountains | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17304-a-list-of-the-burning-mountains/ | A List of the Burning Mountains | Something about A List of the Burning Mountains makes me want to describe it as Oneida getting back to basics. The problem is I'm not sure exactly what "basics" would mean in the context of the Brooklyn band's vast sonic universe. Through a dozen albums in 15 years, they've covered a daunting amount of territory, darting between rock, noise, psych, drone, electronics, and minimalism. Their most recent project, the Thank Your Parents trilogy, was their most sprawling. It began with the kraut/Boredoms super-jam of 2008's Preteen Weaponry, swerved into the all-encompassing 2009 triple-LP Rated O (an even more accomplished statement than their 2002 masterpiece Each One Teach One), and ended last year with one of their most abstract releases, Absolute II.
So maybe there's no "basic" Oneida sound, and if so, that's part of what's made them such an interesting and unpredictable band. Their sonic shape-shifting continues on this vinyl-only offering, A List of the Burning Mountains. But compared to its conceptual predecessors, the album feels simple and frill-free. It consists of two side-long tracks, both sharing a name with the album. And it sounds uncalculated and uncontrived, as if Oneida's just playing whatever they feel like playing at the moment. The result is high-level improvised rock, infused with the assurance and proficiency that comes from 15 years of making so much varied music.
It's also infused with the expert drumming of Kid Millions, who this time out sounds like the band's unofficial leader. My guess is that every member had an equal, unspoken say in how this jam evolved, but Millions' busy beats are like wind blowing Oneida's clouds of noise and drone. When his playing is weighty and grounded, full of kick-drum drilling, his comrades dole out denser sounds; when his beats are more regular, the mix swerves toward rock riffs; and when he gets airier and more impulsive, the guitars lighten and the atmosphere expands. The band fuses these sections seamlessly; you don't really notice that they've made a shift until long after that shift actually began.
The peaks on A List of the Burning Mountains come when Oneida connects the dots so deftly that the differences between their individual contributions is nearly unnoticeable. My favorite instance comes about halfway through side two, when grinding feedback, swaths of electronic drone, and a churning low end all melt into one undulating ocean. Similar passages occur throughout-- take a dark section during side one that evokes Sunn O)))-style drone-metal, or the album's close, a free jazz sprint morphed into the echo of a symphony. But I have to admit I had to scan back through to remember those sections, because there's a unity to this album that's bigger and more indefinable than what individual moments can capture.
The impression I keep coming back to is how basic A List of the Burning Mountains is. As big and bold as it can sound, there's little here that's especially flashy or blatantly attention-seeking. The band never really gets into any obvious repetitions or motifs, content to run where they want to run and drift where they want to drift. Paradoxically, this understated approach means the album might be best appreciated by those most familiar with the band's specific internal language. But I can't imagine anyone checking out A List of the Burning Mountains and coming away unimpressed. | 2012-11-14T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2012-11-14T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Jagjaguwar | November 14, 2012 | 7.2 | 0ac50888-91e0-412c-ae0f-de85d4d7c465 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
Alex Crossan’s debut album is a love letter to multicultural London that’s informed by the 21-year-old musician’s insular upbringing and abetted by a number of high-profile guests. | Alex Crossan’s debut album is a love letter to multicultural London that’s informed by the 21-year-old musician’s insular upbringing and abetted by a number of high-profile guests. | Mura Masa: Mura Masa | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mura-masa-mura-masa/ | Mura Masa | Oscar Wilde once said, “The man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world.” No wonder: A fast-paced haven for people of all nationalities, races, and faiths, the city itself is a kind of conversation between the four corners of the earth. Newly arriving to the metropolis can be a welcome assault to the senses, one that’s both confusing and exhilarating. For a young producer like Mura Masa (aka Alex Crossan), sponging up London’s global flavors and subcultures is part and parcel of the creative process. “It’s a big, confusing, beautiful thing,” he says of London, “and that’s the motivation behind my album too.” It’s an ambitious undertaking for a 21-year-old white kid to appoint himself the voice of multicultural Britain, but in an era in which terrorist attacks and nationalist populism have tested the UK’s inclusive ideals, drawing inspiration from the city’s diversity is a worthy—if admittedly somewhat precocious—way of expressing its resilient, future-forward spirit.
On his self-produced debut, Crossan works the city’s spidery Tube maps into an exhilarating electronic framework where the conflicting sounds of the modern-day Tower of Babel can harmoniously coexist. His interest in the city’s cartography is literal: “Messy Love” opens the album with the sounds of a city bus and deposits us at the stop for New Park Road, near Brixton. From there, Crossan traverses the various ends of his adopted home while also cruising through the genres that have filled its inhabitants’ headphones for the past few years, from big-beat hip-hop (“Nuggets”) to airhorn-assisted calypso (“Love$ick”) and harp-infused UK garage (“What If I Go?”). Some of his musical tourism is more tongue-in-cheek: He ventures as far as the South Pacific on “1 Night,” which adds a steel-drum melody to a sample from “Tahiti,” a kitschy piece of 1960s exotica by the Italian soundtrack composer Piero Piccioni, and sends Charli XCX bouncing about like a drunken reveler in a tiki bar. With so many high-profile guests along for the ride—including A$AP Rocky, Desiigner, Christine and the Queens, and Damon Albarn—there’s a risk that the album could become a top-heavy exercise in A&R. But Crossan never leans too hard on his hired talent as he pieces together house and hip-hop beats with sounds like marimba, steel pans, and kalimba.
Born an outlier himself, he spent most of his youth making music in a remote bedroom on the very white, insular island of Guernsey (population: 60,000), where the main local industries were finance and tourism and his nearest venue was five hours away by boat. The internet was his way out: He built his reputation on SoundCloud, and low-profile releases like 2014’s Soundtrack to a Death collection and 2015’s Someday Somewhere EP led to a production credit on Stormzy’s Gang Signs & Prayer. Like Disclosure’s Lawrence brothers, who began making music before they even reached clubbing age, Crossan is proof that going to raves isn’t a prerequisite for aspiring to start one. Being cut off only piqued his curiosity for all things electronic.
The first record he ever bought, Gorillaz’ Demon Days, was itself a genreless, guest-heavy hodgepodge, and Crossan’s millennial internet upbringing has similarly inspired him to seek connections across far-flung places. Mura Masa’s best moments arrive when he finds rejuvenating takes on old grooves. Take “NOTHING ELSE!,” a song written the day Prince died: Led by Tennessee transplant Jamie Lidell, it manages to channel both the Black Keys and Hercules and Love Affair. “Firefly” balances a finger-snap house beat with the feather-lite vocals of the East London R&B singer Nao. “helpline” pushes double-time drumming, with the faintest hint of classic punk, into sparkling future-garage territory. And on “Second 2 None,” Christine & the Queens' Héloïse Letissier is her exquisite ice-queen self, yet now over skittering drum ‘n’ bass beats. Coherent in spite of its range, Mura Masa never lets its jam-packed contents overshadow a vision that refuses to be boxed in.
It’s Damon Albarn’s willingness to let Crossan guide him, however, that makes for the most significant track on the record. Having his hero share vocals with him on the slow-paced, lovelorn “Blu” feels like a symbolic passing of the baton in the journey to a music without borders. The song embodies a melancholy that runs throughout Mura Masa—reflecting, perhaps, a sense of exhaustion from the challenges of being young and overwhelmed by the city. It’s a love song, but it’s also about the desire for communication and the need to be understood. Toward its close, a few bars of a cappella singing trail off into silence before the jumbled voices of the city rise in the distance. It sounds a lot like Crossan’s vision of home. | 2017-07-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-07-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Anchor Point / Downtown / Interscope | July 18, 2017 | 7.7 | 0ac5c6c5-f2dd-42d2-a6ae-22be97bd3d8b | Eve Barlow | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eve-barlow/ | null |
Captured in 2018, this live set leans heavily on the band’s last two albums but still plays like a greatest hits. | Captured in 2018, this live set leans heavily on the band’s last two albums but still plays like a greatest hits. | Arctic Monkeys: Live at the Royal Albert Hall | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/arctic-monkeys-live-at-the-royal-albert-hall/ | Live at the Royal Albert Hall | Arctic Monkeys’ career can be divided into the periods before and after AM, the smirking after-hours stomp that launched the group to previously unseen international success in 2013. Their boisterous riffs and louche anthems won over a new generation of fans—but in the aftermath, Alex Turner found himself struggling with writer’s block, only overcoming that hurdle by sequestering himself away with a piano. While the loungey follow-up Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino was divisive among fans upon its release, Arctic Monkeys’ new live album shows there’s an enduring throughline between the albums, anchored by Turner’s potent songwriting.
Live at the Royal Albert Hall captures a War Child charity gig that took place near the beginning of the Tranquility Base era, just a month after its release in 2018. (Proceeds from the album will also benefit War Child.) Though it leans most heavily on the aforementioned last two albums, the setlist scans like a collection of greatest hits. Across 90 minutes and 20 tracks, the Monkeys review their nearly two-decade career, refreshing old favorites and working out new material.
Arctic Monkeys were a compelling enough touring act prior to AM, but it was during their 2013-2014 run behind that album that the band truly came into their full powers. Hits from that period, like “Do I Wanna Know?” and “R U Mine?,” feel totally effortless here, irrespective of the occasional transposed key or vocal stumble to remind us that Turner is no longer the bright-eyed 19-year-old who recorded Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. He has a more worldly weariness to his vocal timbre now, which makes the older material feel satisfyingly lived-in.
Even though Tranquility Base was largely a studio project, built upon demos written by Turner while holed up in his Los Angeles home, the songs benefit from the limitations of the live environment. The acoustic guitar and synth overdubs in the slightly claustrophobic studio version of “Four Out of Five” blend into the background in favor of a far looser sequence, led by snarls of fuzz from guitarist Jamie Cook. And for Arctic Monkeys diehards who found their last studio album to be too severe a departure, Live at the Royal Albert Hall might help bring its strengths into focus. Turner’s breathy delivery on the studio version of “One Point Perspective” might scan as a put-on because his vocals are so isolated from the rest of the band, as he slurs into the slap-back. But his voice is commanding on the live version, sounding like a jaded Elton John.
At the time of the performance, Tranquility Base was recent enough that the concert actually marked the debut performance of album opener “Star Treatment,” Turner’s paean to the Strokes and Blade Runner. You wouldn’t know it was a new song from the cheers let loose after the opening chord. The fans might go crazy for Matt Helders’ blistering “Brianstorm” intro and the loping bassline of “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?,” but they’re also right there singing along to newer tracks like “She Looks Like Fun.” Crowd noise can make or break a live album, and with 5,000-some-odd fans acting as de facto backing vocalists, Royal Albert Hall is a great example of the former. (As with any audio-only live document, the cheers can allude to untold stories; in the second verse of “Arabella,” the audience explodes after Turner neatly catches an avid fan’s castoff pair of tights.)
Compare Live at the Royal Albert Hall to Arctic Monkeys’ last official live release, 2008’s At the Apollo, and it’s apparent how significantly the band have grown in that time. After starting the decade in pursuit of a “more poppy” sound, they ended it by taking a chance on Turner’s conceptual songs about taco stands on the moon. From here, they’re free to pursue any direction they wish. | 2020-12-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-12-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Domino | December 10, 2020 | 7.3 | 0ac91e78-a45c-4434-8f63-18673bade810 | Noah Yoo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/noah-yoo/ | |
On the heels of a viral dance and a Drake feature, the Memphis rapper’s latest mixtape is a breakthrough that’s honest, clear, and incredibly fun. | On the heels of a viral dance and a Drake feature, the Memphis rapper’s latest mixtape is a breakthrough that’s honest, clear, and incredibly fun. | BlocBoy JB : Simi | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/blocboy-jb-simi/ | Simi | There are no sure routes to rap stardom in the 21st century, but there are three tried-and-true mechanisms that give young rappers a puncher’s chance: viral dance crazes, out-and-out mixtape saturation, and the Drake feature. BlocBoy JB, an endlessly colorful 21-year-old from Memphis, has spent the past year leveraging all three. The number of tutorials and battles that sprung from last year’s “Shoot” is absolutely jarring, as is the breadth and pace of his work during a manic mixtape run, which saw him drop six records between June 2016 and September 2017. And then, of course, Aubrey: the pair’s collaboration, “Look Alive,” was inescapable earlier this year, conferring on Drake the cutting-edge sensibility he needs to replenish every album cycle, and on BlocBoy the sort of heat that can’t be engineered from a board room.
Simi, BlocBoy’s new mixtape, is named after one of his close friends, who was murdered two years ago. That sort of lingering pain colors the record which, on a textural level, skews toward the bright and danceable. It’s a beautifully executed tape, the type that could be played, uninterrupted, at a house party or in a strip club or on a long drive, alone. BlocBoy has a low drawl familiar to fans of Memphis rap, and often plays coy with the technical aspects of his music: he’ll stumble into a verse, and then lapse into two or three different, precisely syncopated flows. And he’s funny: he’ll crack jokes about Chris Rock and flip-flops and handing out Danimals to his doubters, or punctuate a line about selling drugs to white people with a shouted “A white!” The effect is a breakthrough record that’s honest, clear, and incredibly fun.
A significant portion of the production comes courtesy of Tay Keith, who crafted “Shoot” last summer. Simi has tremendous momentum because the songs, most of which articulate exactly one musical idea before moving on, work at a fast clip, giving BlocBoy rhythms just wonky enough to deploy the shifting, stop-and-start flows that are becoming his signature. “Wait”’s phrases loop back and wrap around one another; “No Chorus, Pt. 11”—which was given an instant-classic video this weekend—is BlocBoy at his most plainspoken, and even with few flourishes, his personality is immutable.
A cameo on a BlocBoy JB record, sunny yet serrated, seems to be a liberating exercise for other artists and Drake is not the only high-profile guest enlisted here. YG (“Nike Swoosh”) and 21 Savage (the remix of “Rover”) are capable; fellow Memphian Moneybagg Yo adds a guttural punch to the, uh, questionably titled “Asian Bitch.” And it must be said that the Floridian viral star Lil Pump is far more acrobatic on “Nun of Dat” than he has been on any of his solo material.
BlocBoy’s “Shoot” dance most recently resurfaced in “This Is America,” Childish Gambino’s ambitiously unsubtle new music video. (BlocBoy’s ad-libs are also included in the background of the song.) Throughout, its star is either dancing—gliding through a centuries-long revue—or murdering people, disposing of his weapons with a delicate care. At its end, he’s fleeing, eyes wide, from a murderous police—the same police that was brutalizing black men and women in the background while Donald Glover and his troupe interpolated some viral dances, including “Shoot.”
The implication—well, one of the implications—is that Americans, especially white Americans, are eager to gobble up black America’s cultural exports while ignoring the social and political contexts that black Americans are forced to endure. What gives BlocBoy’s music its replayability is that those moods and elements bleed into one another. Take “Good Day,” which is danceable but grim, lighthearted but packed with dread. “I just wanna have a good day” is loaded, if you want it to be. There are bright moments for trying times and more than a little menace. | 2018-05-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-05-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Bloc Nation | May 10, 2018 | 7.7 | 0aca9ac0-8389-4f30-8233-a0e8aedd90b4 | Paul A. Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/ | |
Completed after the death of her producer, collaborator, and close friend, the New York singer-songwriter’s album envisions mourning as a form of meditative practice and constant renewal. | Completed after the death of her producer, collaborator, and close friend, the New York singer-songwriter’s album envisions mourning as a form of meditative practice and constant renewal. | Julie Byrne: The Greater Wings | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/julie-byrne-the-greater-wings/ | The Greater Wings | Julie Byrne became a shared secret among music obsessives with 2014’s Rooms With Walls and Windows, a beguiling compilation of two earlier cassettes that blurred the edges of folk and ambient in the manner of Grouper and early Cat Power. She invoked the great outdoors and the open road on her breakthrough, 2017’s Not Even Happiness, which cleared away the lo-fi murk and added graceful strings to serene explorations of intimacy and aloneness more reminiscent of psychedelic folkies like Linda Perhacs and Vashti Bunyan. Six years later, the itinerant Buffalo, New York, singer-songwriter incorporates harp, synth, and piano alongside her nimbly fingerpicked guitar and dusky vocals; the broader palette and cosmic scope—she invokes “distant galaxies” in the first verse—feel like a logical progression of her astral folk.
Byrne’s new album is her most stunning yet; it is also the product of almost unthinkable circumstances. In June 2021, halfway through the making of the album, her producer, synth player, and longtime collaborator Eric Littmann—who was integral in sculpting the tranquil sound world of Not Even Happiness and receives a dedication of endless, unconditional love in its liner notes—died unexpectedly at the age of 31. Largely written before Littmann’s passing and eventually completed with producer Alex Somers, who has skillfully conjured lush atmospheres on recordings by Julianna Barwick and Sigur Rós’s Jónsi, The Greater Wings feels like a leap forward. The songs honor their late co-creator less through melancholy than a hungry attentiveness to the minutiae of desire, loss, and memory. This is mourning as a form of meditative practice, of constant renewal. From an artist who can quote Leonard Cohen’s poetry by heart, here’s an album at which that painstaking observer of love and death might’ve tipped his fedora; it’s also limpid and bountiful enough that it could’ve been marketed under German avant-garde jazz label ECM’s 1970s motto, “the most beautiful sound next to silence.”
Despite the lengthy break between albums, The Greater Wings picks up right where Not Even Happiness left off with its last song, “I Live Now as a Singer,” which introduced sparkling synthesizer as Byrne peered beyond the natural blue skies. “At night beneath the universe, you walk with me/Shall I be ever near the edge of your mystery,” she sang at the record’s close. Littmann’s vintage Prophet synth ripples on “Summer Glass,” whose lyrics are so precise, so stuffed with vivid imagery, and so eccentrically phrased. There’s the joint lit with the end of a cigarette, the vision of the narrator’s skin one day turning to dust so that she may “travel again,” the way Byrne saves the bittersweet title image—“the shape of your hand left in the dust of summer glass”—until the penultimate line. Two phrases zero in on the album’s main preoccupations: “You are the family that I chose,” Byrne declares before an exquisite instrumental bridge, and then, “I want to be whole enough to risk again,” she sings as the song ends.
Few could be entirely whole after losing a family member, chosen or otherwise, but The Greater Wings gleams through the cracks. Byrne’s willingness to take a fresh plunge especially pays off on “Moonless,” self-described as both “a breakup song” and her first song written on the piano. With Marilu Donovan’s harp and Jake Falby’s strings adorning Byrne’s keys and unusually rich vocals, the production has the incantatory power of Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis. The lyrics follow suit in their concise abundance, from “that night at the old hotel” where Byrne’s narrator found “whatever eternity is” to her multivalent reclamation of self, “I’m not waiting for your love.” She ventures further on “Hope’s Return,” a cavernous, strummy reworking of a 2020 collaboration with experimental artist Jefre Cantu-Ledesma in which Somers makes the unexpected, very Sigur Rós-like decision to play acoustic guitar with a violin bow. Or take “Conversation Is a Flowstate,” a gauzy rebuke to a disrespectful romantic partner—an unspecified musician of prominence—that’s once again overstuffed with quotables (“I got blood on the sheets, it’s all right,” she sings, with the gnomic intensity of Destroyer’s Dan Bejar). None of this wayfaring is exactly out of character for Byrne: Following immediately after “Summer Glass,” “Summer’s End” dives headlong into headiness with harp glissandi and lolling chimes, but as a drifting mid-album instrumental it’s not unlike Not Even Happiness’ “Interlude.”
Byrne’s deft fingerstyle acoustic guitar also returns, brilliantly. The opening title track, a gorgeous elegy to Littmann, is silvery chamber folk of Nick Drake proportions: With great economy, Byrne alludes to their earliest shows together before gesturing toward her heartbreakingly positive vision of mourning when she sings, “I hope never to arrive here with nothing new to show you.” Littmann’s absence also looms over “Portrait of a Clear Day,” where Byrne sings in an aphoristic mode, “Love affirms the pain of life.” But wry regret flickers on another guitar-centered song, “Flare” (“I could have done better/You’re not the only one”), while “Lightning Comes Up From the Ground” aches with physical longing (“I tell you now what for so long I did not say/If I have no right to want you, I want you anyway”). This is still the same earnest seeker who once sang, “I’ve seen a double rainbow, I got a complicated soul,” but The Greater Wings is no funeral, and Byrne’s calm assurance renders her words irresistibly commanding.
The Greater Wings ends with an outlier. “Death Is the Diamond” is reportedly the only song on the album that was completely written after Littmann’s death. After a luminous ambient introduction, it is a stark piano ballad cloaked in tape hiss, Byrne’s formidable voice at its most raw. It’s a gut-wrenching final tribute to Littmann, a warm nod to Byrne’s surviving family of choice, and a dazzling encapsulation of Byrne’s implicit argument that love means constantly becoming new. “Alive, moving through dusk/Alive, if only once/You make me feel like the prom queen that I never was,” she sings. In moments of vulnerability like this, Byrne glimpses the sublime. | 2023-07-11T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-07-11T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Ghostly International | July 11, 2023 | 8.5 | 0acbacc9-8780-46e5-994e-35e7c829e8b6 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | |
Retribution Gospel Choir's third album features just two songs, each in the neighborhood of 20 minutes. The trio have finally made a record worthy of a Crazy Horse-inspired Midwestern rock band that includes two-thirds of Low. | Retribution Gospel Choir's third album features just two songs, each in the neighborhood of 20 minutes. The trio have finally made a record worthy of a Crazy Horse-inspired Midwestern rock band that includes two-thirds of Low. | Retribution Gospel Choir: 3 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17533-3/ | 3 | With 3, Retribution Gospel Choir have finally made a record worthy of a Crazy Horse-inspired Midwestern rock band featuring two-thirds of Low. That's not a slam against RGC's previous releases, just that Retribution Gospel Choir, 2, and last year's aggressively minor The Revolution EP were likeable stabs at classic-rock posturing that never really took. For all the sincere affection Alan Sparhawk clearly has for heavy-riffing songs rooted in AOR conventions-- he even dug out a cowbell for The Revolution-- it always seemed more like play-acting than a truly natural guise. There was no question about his desire to write visceral rock songs; what was debatable was whether he was any good at it.
3 is the ultimate RGC record, and the ultimate departure, composed of just two songs-- recorded live in the studio in one take-- that each run in the neighborhood of 20 minutes. It's a bit of a shock coming after The Revolution, the slickest and hookiest RGC record to date, not to mention the shtickiest. The soft-rock affectations of recent Low records like 2011's C'mon got the funhouse mirror treatment on The Revolution, with RGC verging awkwardly on full-blown power-pop and self-conscious 70s rock cheese. 3 is a wilder, woolier, and yet more coherent beast.
Just when RGC seemed to be turning into a borderline jokey chaser for Sparhawk's more thoughtful work in Low, 3 takes a sharp 180-degree turn toward some of the deepest, most exploratory music he's yet made under the moniker. It satisfies Sparhawk's need to crank up the amps away from Low while at the same time retaining the mastery of atmosphere and subtly evolving soundscapes that distinguishes his better known band. "Can't Walk Out" is a fearsome, nearly wordless squall of freeform fury, with Sparhawk oscillating between barely contained chaos and a hard-charging groove that swings between Live at Leeds and A Tribute to Jack Johnson. The point of RGC until now has been about releasing the energy that Low keeps under wraps. But "Can't Walk Out" builds a head of steam and turns it in on itself; the tension only increases as Sparhawk's guitar rages over the stormy, thoroughly submerged rhythms supplied by bassist Steve Garrington and drummer Eric Pollard. The final result is a thing of thrilling, terrifying beauty, like a tornado held on the horizon at a safe distance.
The other track, "Seven", is relatively catchy, though it goes on for a minute longer. "Seven" occasionally wanders back to a pretty folk-rock chorus that's as bleary-eyed as the simple melody that RGC mangles, mends, and mangles again during a sprawling, extemporaneous jam. The wobbly guitar lines that drop into the mix unmistakably belong to special guest star Nels Cline, who exhibits a similar telepathy with Sparhawk that he shares on-stage with Jeff Tweedy in Wilco. For long, wondrous stretches in the back half of "Seven", Cline and Sparhawk lock in to form a breathtaking duet of feedback and slow-motion soloing.
The obvious companion to 3 is last year's Neil Young and Crazy Horse double-LP, Psychedelic Pill. Sparhawk certainly isn't afraid to let his songs go on as long as Young does, and his excellent guitar playing is worthy of comparison to one of rock's all-time great sludgy shape-shifters. But 3 also warrants a nod to Low; it's surprising how well the high points of this record line up with Low's strong suits.
The best parts of Low albums often occur in the spaces between the music; few bands are as good about not filling every cubic inch with sound, allowing the listener to settle in and find their own place inside the songs. Retribution Gospel Choir have achieved the same quality on 3; the landscape is thornier, but equally vast, formless, and inviting for ample exploring over multiple listens. Before now, Retribution Gospel Choir records were a little too straight-forward, spilling all of the information they had to offer too quickly. On 3, they've turned up the noise without spoiling the mystery. | 2013-01-15T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2013-01-15T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Chaperone | January 15, 2013 | 7.5 | 0ad15072-7b35-4e66-a0f1-6d2163c67936 | Steven Hyden | https://pitchfork.com/staff/steven-hyden/ | null |
The Danish musician’s vibrant, uncanny new album gives alt-rock a hyperreal gleam. | The Danish musician’s vibrant, uncanny new album gives alt-rock a hyperreal gleam. | ML Buch: Suntub | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ml-buch-suntub/ | Suntub | On her debut album, Skinned, ML Buch framed wry observations about modern life in futuristic, subtly off-kilter electronic pop. She was touching screens, mulling over online obsessions, contemplating the nexus of technology and desire. Her new album, Suntub, focuses on more abstract and corporeal themes—onomatopoeic words, “strange curves,” elemental forms like sun and sea and wind—teeming with the nitid detail of a Gregory Crewdson tableau. More than anything, Buch seems consumed with the mysteries of biology and the mazelike dimensions of human viscera. “Can I melt in algal bloom/Leak from bladder flower wombs,” she asks on “Solid,” stacking vocal harmonies over neo-grunge guitar. Across three different songs, she sings, respectively, of “flesh on air,” a “fleshless hand,” and a “flesh rag” in a “flesh bag.”
Accompanying this shift from URL to IRL, Skinned’s overtly electronic elements—vaporwave synths, atmospheric sound design, Auto-Tuned choruses—have largely disappeared, replaced by sparkling guitars, frictionless rock drumming, and vocal melodies rendered with airbrushed clarity. Buch leans further into emulating the “dad rock” of blockbuster acts like Dire Straits and the Police: Traces of Roxy Music’s DNA are evident in the chromium glow of her guitar tone, along with the fuzz of shoegaze and the crunch of ’90s indie. She even indulges in a little ersatz vinyl scratching. But more often than not, the reference points feel like a copy of a copy of a copy, emulated so many times that the original inspiration is impossible to identify, leaving only a vague feeling of deja vu.
To create her striking, ultra-vibrant sound—steeped in alt-rock naturalism yet wearing an uncanny sheen—Buch used a number of unusual techniques, including seven-stringed and fretless guitars. She apparently recorded her vocals inside her car, and reamped her instruments through spaces like a swimming pool and a wood-paneled sauna, but her production doesn’t offer a tangible sense of physical space: In an odd twist, it offers the suggestion of a virtual world, something conjured up entirely within the confines of her computer. There’s not a hair out of place in these immaculately polished assemblages. They’re almost too flawless—the lines unnaturally sharp, the colors unnaturally vivid, the rhythms as steady as HDTV with motion smoothing turned on. Yet that hyperreal gleam is also what gives them their magnetism.
Nowhere is the album’s curious airlessness more palpable than in Buch’s vocals. They sound weirdly placeless, perhaps even sourceless—smooth, free of vibrato, soft yet not quite breathy. But where such tactics might have been used to create a distancing effect, Buch’s unblemished tone and intuitive melodic turns never sound arch, affected, or ironic. Her tone may be cool, but her music is bathed in a warm, radiant glow. A similar paradox characterizes the album itself, which swaps the artificial veneer of Skinned for a deeper and more mysterious form of artifice. Outwardly, Suntub is so glossy that it suggests a kind of normcore, a pastiche of gentle alt-rock. Below the surface, however, Buch’s strange curves and fleshless hands point in a far more cryptic direction. | 2023-11-09T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2023-11-09T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | 15 Love | November 9, 2023 | 8 | 0ad1d190-d53e-499a-bc96-9985a639a1e2 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
Sonic Youth followed their first full LP, Confusion Is Sex, with a pitch-black, punishing take on Americana titled after, of all things, a Creedence Clearwater Revival song. The newly reissued Bad Moon Rising is their most explicitly sexual album, and among their darkest, exploring the collision of America's obsession with death with the hopeful ecstasies of the hippie generation. | Sonic Youth followed their first full LP, Confusion Is Sex, with a pitch-black, punishing take on Americana titled after, of all things, a Creedence Clearwater Revival song. The newly reissued Bad Moon Rising is their most explicitly sexual album, and among their darkest, exploring the collision of America's obsession with death with the hopeful ecstasies of the hippie generation. | Sonic Youth: Bad Moon Rising | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20428-bad-moon-rising/ | Bad Moon Rising | On their first LP Confusion Is Sex, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, and Lee Ranaldo established their reputation—noise-obsessed, acerbic, in thrall to subversion and half in love with nihilism. So it came as a surprise that they followed it up with a pitch-black, punishing take on Americana titled after, of all things, a Creedence Clearwater Revival song. Its timing was ripe, arriving amidst the culture wars of the Reagan era: Gordon and Moore cast a shadowy portrait slicked in sweat and blood, not unlike the nightmarish caricatures of American institutions you often saw on the cover art for hardcore bands.
But the band’s fury ran deeper than that. As Gordon recalls in her recent memoir Girl in a Band: "I ... preferred to sing about the darkness shimmering beneath the shiny quilt of American pop culture"—more specifically, "the westward pull, the American romance with death," as well as the collision of this all-American death-drive with the hopeful ecstasies of the hippie generation. Where Time Life Books was busy commemorating and canonizing Woodstock, Gordon and Moore raised up the leering specter of Charles Manson, highlighting the thin lines separating free love from violent sexual anarchy, and how such spaces are often exploited to attain power.
Bad Moon Rising is obsessed with sex and power, specifically with how one informs the other. It is the band’s most explicitly sexual album, and among its darkest. "I Love Her All the Time", "I’m Insane", and "Halloween" (a bonus track that’s since become standard on all CD versions of the album) develop female subjects as supplicants to male authority figures, ceding their bodies (and therefore, their identities) to them as if there’s no other choice. "She’s on my side," Moore coolly says of his strung-out paramour on "I Love Her All the Time", repeating the song’s title with the unsavory enthusiasm of a cult leader who’s finally cracked the code. On "Halloween", Gordon struggles to identify just what it is that makes her succumb to a man’s wiles, finally theorizing "it’s the devil in me": the female sex drive, corrupted.
Bad Moon Rising is not so much a collection of songs as it is an extended, unending uproar, seamless in sound and theme. This is partially due to the band’s recording strategy, which translated the ebb-and-flow of their live show at the time into a singular composition. At this point in their career, Sonic Youth didn’t have guitar techs to assist during shows, and long stretches of feedback between songs allowed them time to tune. On the album, this approach lends itself well to a constantly shifting tableau of American nightmares, beginning with the primordial fury of "Brave Men Run (In My Family)" and barreling towards its final destination: Manson’s Death Valley and the terror of Helter Skelter.
In Bad Moon Rising’s world, the country’s loss of innocence—and its sexual corruption—began with an assault, chronicled in the terrifying "Ghost Bitch". Moore sounds possessed on the following, mournful track, "I’m Insane", a sinister piece assembled entirely of fragments from pulp novels like "a steaming swamp," "murdered angels," and the head-scratching "inside my head my dog’s a bear." It’s less a song and more the no wave aural equivalent of refrigerator magnet poetry, but it functions remarkably well within the album’s overarching narrative.
But what happens when women reclaim their bodies and fight back? Years before riot grrrl, "Flower" (a bonus track released after Bad Moon Rising alongside "Halloween" on 12” and added to the album in subsequent reissues) encapsulated the sex-positive sentiments, as well as the noise, of the forthcoming movement. Gordon's chanted manifesto, delivered over a paranoid, unstable rumble, urges us to "support the power of women" by "us[ing] the power of man." The nature of this power, of course, is sex, but Gordon’s vision encompasses more than the act itself; her culminating directive of "Use the word/ FUCK!" commands a recognition of women as carnal, sexual beings. "The word is love," she adds, completing a circular logic proof of sorts: Power is sex, but sex is love; love is universal, so universal recognition of sex has the ability to empower all. Granted, "Flower" might scan as slightly hippie-dippy next to Kathleen Hanna’s acerbic prose, but its mangled punk instrumentation and feminist politics set a precedent.
Bad Moon Rising reaches both its climax and conclusion with the Manson-inspired madness of "Death Valley ’69", Moore’s infamous duet with Lydia Lunch, and the closest the album comes to producing a viable single. A tortured yell drags the record out of the doldrums of the preceding "Justice Is Might" and into a busted-up Chevy parked in Death Valley on some dead night, in the Summer of Love. Moore and Lunch don’t try to harmonize or sing on key, because their minds aren’t on the melody; they wail over and under one another like coyotes in heat. A single glance over the lyrics suggests another instance of male-on-female violence ("She started to holler/ I didn't wanna/ But she started to holler/ So I had to hit it"). And yet, the ecstasy with which Lunch vocalizes all but says "This is a game, I’m trying to get you, and I’m winning." The balance of power shifts once more as Lunch unleashes that orgasmic shriek at song's end: a brilliant imitation of the whimpering guitars, a final paean to chaos before the fade to black.
Despite its compelling aesthetic, Bad Moon Rising suffers from a few technical shortcomings which become more evident in this remastering, specifically Bob Bert’s tom-heavy approach to the drums. They play a critical role in conveying the primal energy coursing through "Brave Men Run (In My Family)" and "Society Is a Hole", but the atmospheric boost quickly wears thin: not just because he sounds like he’s drumming with crab mallets, but because he can’t be bothered to beef up his fills or do little more than the bare minimum. One can’t help but long for the frenzied kit work of Steve Shelley, the hardcore-schooled, improvisatory percussionist who succeeded Bert. Additionally, your mileage may vary where vocal melodies, particularly Moore’s, are concerned; his grating refrains on "Society Is a Hole" and "I Love Her All the Time" show he hadn’t yet developed the tightness and control he would exhibit later. That said, this dissonance is a defining aspect of early Sonic Youth albums, and some might find it refreshing compared to the straitlaced sound of, say, "Incinerate".
Since its release, Bad Moon Rising has left behind many legacies. Thanks to the mangled mass of the guitars, as well as the lack of anthemic verse-chorus-verses structure that dominated Daydream Nation and Goo, the LP is regarded by many as Sonic Youth's most "difficult" album. Fans of contemporary acts like Swans (who Sonic Youth toured with prior to the Bad Moon Rising sessions) might find in the record’s structure a source of catharsis and narrative strength. Those who became fans post Daydream Nation, meanwhile, will need to re-acclimate themselves to the pitch-black soundscapes. And while the task may seem imposing, it’s also immediate and engrossing; after being immersed in this album's world, it’s jarring to return to the real one—and perhaps, by extension, Sonic Youth’s subsequent catalog, which never quite revisited the sheer alienation of Bad Moon Rising. | 2015-04-15T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2015-04-15T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Goofin’ | April 15, 2015 | 8.1 | 0adaf130-5b68-4a7a-9031-52cfad82240d | Zoe Camp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zoe-camp/ | null |
Noel Gallagher’s latest is the most ambitious of his solo releases, internalizing the heyday of late ’90s Britpop while sounding both urgent and absurd to mostly great effect. | Noel Gallagher’s latest is the most ambitious of his solo releases, internalizing the heyday of late ’90s Britpop while sounding both urgent and absurd to mostly great effect. | Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds: Who Built the Moon? | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/noel-gallaghers-high-flying-birds-who-built-the-moon/ | Who Built the Moon? | They were hard-pressed to top last year’s Potato Wars showdown, but on this season of every Britpop enthusiast’s favorite reality show, The Gallaghers, we’ve been treated to the most dramatic story arc yet. For the first time in their post-Oasis careers, Liam and Noel have each released albums within weeks of each other, setting up the proverbial WrestleMania of rock’s greatest sibling rivalry. Alas, it remains to be seen whether Noel’s latest record with current backing band the High Flying Birds, Who Built the Moon?, will match the chart performance of Liam’s recent solo effort, As You Were, which debuted at No. 1 in the UK. But in the real arena where winners are made and losers are shamed in 2017—i.e., Twitter—Liam has been putting on a clinic, delivering some his best material ever in the wake of what will go down in Gallaghers lore as Scissorsgate.
For his part, Noel seems to be heeding the lesson learned from Oasis’ rivalry with Blur throughout the ’90s. Only, in this case, he’s decided it’s better to be Blur—to brush off the nasty insults, disengage from the war of words, and just focus on making far more interesting records. Where Liam’s As You Were is essentially the perfunctory Fauxasis album that his old band would’ve churned out this year had they slogged it out this far, Who Built the Moon? feels like an attempt to rewrite their post-Morning Glory history.
The album imagines an alternate late-’90s where, instead of trying to make a cocaine-clouded update of Magical Mystery Tour, Noel deeply internalized the adventurous music being made by his peers in Primal Scream, Spiritualized, Death in Vegas, the Beta Band, and David Holmes (whom he wisely taps to be his producer this time out). The new album’s opening track, “Fort Knox” presents an immediate study in contrasts. Like the kick-off to 2000’s Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, it’s more of a crowd-rousing entrance theme than a proper song—but instead of bluesy guitar riffage, we hear screeching cello drones, clanging percussion, gospel chants, a hip-hop-scuffed backbeat, the relentless drill of a jackhammer, and a female backing singer’s ecstatic wordless wails. Call it “Kama Sutra in the Bushes.”
Sure, there are few prizes for being on the cutting edge of circa-1997 British rock in 2017, but Who Built the Moon? abounds with urgency and absurdity—qualities that were sorely lacking on the Birds’ previous albums. For the first time in a long while, Noel sounds like he’s genuinely having a blast, adopting a motor-mouthed monotone on the glam-slammed rumble “Holy Mountain” as if he were Plastic Bertrand doing “Diamond Dogs,” and blissfully skating atop the glacial motorik surface of “She Taught Me How to Fly.” And just as the skittering psych-pop of “It’s a Beautiful World” seems like it’s about to dissolve into the ether, he summons guest vocalist Charlotte Marionneau of indie-pop enigmas Le Volume Courbe to deliver a surprise megaphoned address that revives the song as a Francophone answer to “6 A.M. Jullandar Shere” by former Oasis tourmates Cornershop.
Who Built the Moon? feels like the sort of album where Noel spent way more time mapping out the sounds than writing the lyrics. But “Keep on Reaching” whips up enough manic, soul-stomping gusto to forgive its obvious Stevie Wonder swipes (”Keep on reaching out for that higher ground”), while “Be Careful What You Wish For” oozes enough creeping menace to elevate its title from clichéd phrase to prophetic threat. Alas, in the album’s closing stretch, Noel attempts to inject the proceedings with some conceptual gravitas, deploying a pair of moody instrumentals (dubbed “Interlude” and “End Credits”) to bookend the winsome, swashbuckling pop of “If Love Is the Law” and the climactic foreboding ballad “The Man Who Built the Moon.” With no discernible logic holding it all together, the result is a more of an awkwardly fitting framework than a proper song suite, though at the very least, the latter track’s ominous, In the Court of the Crimson King-style grandeur does raise the not-unwelcome notion of Noel going full prog.
But more than any particular musical experiment, the best gauge of Gallagher’s growth on Who Built the Moon? is the song that didn’t make the cut. Included as a bonus track, “Dead in the Water” is a quintessential Noel solo strummer, an unplugged transmission from the same dark night of the soul that yielded acoustic Oasis outliers like “Talk Tonight.” It’s a great song, right up there with Oasis’ best B-sides. But it’s one whose raw emotion and bare-bones simplicity represent low hanging fruit on the High Flying Birds’ current skyward path. | 2017-11-28T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-11-28T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Sour Mash | November 28, 2017 | 7.1 | 0ae720d1-2143-463b-898d-d3f3e1626c9b | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a03649cec4b2c2177a853cc/1:1/w_800,h_800,c_limit/Noel%20Gallagher.Who%20Built%20the%20Moon?.jpg |
The full-length from singer-songwriter David Kitt moves from moody nighttime flickers to jazz-rooted deep house with Kitt’s pop-focused voice front and center. | The full-length from singer-songwriter David Kitt moves from moody nighttime flickers to jazz-rooted deep house with Kitt’s pop-focused voice front and center. | New Jackson: From Night to Night | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23233-from-night-to-night/ | From Night to Night | Despite the handle of New Jackson, Dublin singer-songwriter David Kitt has been on the scene nearly twenty years. Kitt’s CV includes albums on Rough Trade and Blanco Y Negro, as well as a stint in Tindersticks’ touring band and on 2010 album Falling Down a Mountain. But Kitt also became enchanted with making his own infectious house tracks and released a vocoder-laced EP at the end of 2011. Eight singles have followed on esteemed labels like Permanent Vacation and Hivern Discs.
From Night to Night marks Kitt’s first full-length on the All City Records, a curious Irish imprint that has released albums from breaks-obsessed locals, Parisian boogie producer Onra, as well as L.A. beatmakers like Knxwledge, Daedelus, and Ras_G. That sort of eclecticism plays out on From Night to Night, as New Jackson ranges from moody nighttime flickers to jazz-rooted deep house over its eleven tracks. Opener “Ghost Stomp” has its beat move from muffled to clarified, with bits of worming acid lines and echoing piano blipping into view, but never overtaking the track.
While he has the evident acumen for putting a beat together, where Kitt stands apart is with his own voice and years writing songs. He puts his vocals forward on the title track, a rubbery number with crisp hi-hats. Kitt’s delivery brings to mind Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard, in that it’s aware of and embracing its schlubby, everyman qualities, rather than the traditional, transportive vocalists of dance music’s heritage. He delivers lines like “raging at the details” in a deadpan, singing the refrain with a cautious nudge to a higher register. But Kitt’s voice has a tendency to dampen the effectiveness of his productions, drooping across the otherwise charming bits of sax and woodwind on “Put the Love in It” and unnecessarily interrupting the buzz of instrumental “Blaze All Day.”
Using minutely slivered samples reminiscent of Todd Edwards’ work on Daft Punk’s “Face to Face,” “SP2” stands out as one of the album’s most energetic tracks. Confetti’d bits of strummed acoustic guitar, electro drips and hiccupping voices flit about before Kitt’s kick makes them all cohere. While again using little snippets of sound, Kitt takes a different tack for “On Solid Air,” preferring gurgling ambience and the kind of echoplexed effects on bowed cello that hints at experimental folkie John Martyn’s own Solid Air. Bits of Four Tet-like chimes provide the pulse instead of a programmed beat, giving the track’s glitches and sawed strings a decidedly dreamy air.
From Night to Night’s dynamism picks up as the album goes deeper, leading to the standout “Anya’s Piano.” Beginning with a ruminative loop of stand-up bass that seems to stretch and expand with each successive pass, Kitt puts a skipping snare and watery synth behind it. It may namecheck that echoing bit of piano, but it’s when a horn line winds its way around the track that the track bursts into full bloom. And when Kitt layers more of the horn, it soon looses itself from gravity and elegantly floats through the track, all the elements of the song conveying the sense of suspension in its last minute.
The album’s longest tracks come near the end. The busy, burbling “After Midnight in a Perfect World” may hearken back to DJ Shadow’s track from Endtroducing..., but this nearly 11-minute epic races at a near-techno pace. It sounds like Kitt borrowed Pantha du Prince’s windchimes, but rather than aim for that German’s sterile sense of perfection, he adds vocodered growls, harpsichord and outbursts of snare. Kitt wisely goes with his 2013 single, “Of a Thousand Leaves.” A sidelong slice that brings to mind Caribou’s more wistful productions, it soon toughens with a house beat, with Kitt drizzling more vocoder and strings that impart a bit of drama as the track goes on. Though for a new album, there’s something not wholly satisfying in New Jackson closing it out by resorting to something old. | 2017-05-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | All City | May 22, 2017 | 7.2 | 0aea3c4b-6401-4b94-8089-68bdaa2df398 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
The iconoclastic rappers collide on a JPEG-produced joint album that plays things fast and loose. | The iconoclastic rappers collide on a JPEG-produced joint album that plays things fast and loose. | JPEGMAFIA / Danny Brown: Scaring the Hoes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jpegmafia-danny-brown-scaring-the-hoes/ | Scaring the Hoes | Danny Brown likes to tell the story of how he almost signed with G-Unit. In 2010, around the time of The Hybrid’s breakthrough, the Detroit rapper was palling around with Tony Yayo, workshopping a joint project. 50 Cent liked what he heard, but couldn’t brook the thought of a labelmate who dressed like an emo rocker. Brown’s rhymes were hard, but alas, his jeans were slim—he was on his own. By 2015, of course, 50’s pants were tighter than a drumhead. As G-Unit retreated into the nostalgia circuit, Brown’s blog-era technical showcases gave way to mosh-pit delirium and queasy, kaleidoscopic confessionals, each installment presaging a new avant-garde.
JPEGMAFIA, a genre-straddling iconoclast himself, shares Brown’s pharmaceutical appetites and distaste for culture-industry dross. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force and Baltimore punk clubs, he’s cultivated a comparably broad audience by contrasting frenetic glitch-hop with meme-fluent snark. Their collaborative full-length, Scaring the Hoes, produced entirely by JPEG, is a vehicle for the duo’s irreverent humor and energy that captures a pair of spitballing pranksters who nevertheless maintain perfect GPAs.
In colloquial parlance, “you’re scaring the hoes” is a request to ease up on the sanctimony. It’s a rejoinder for when Canibus stacks five-syllable adverbs on top of one another, for when Common cosplays as a lost Last Poet. The album title is a winking admission: Brown and JPEG are hardly traditionalists, yet their intensity and devotion to mechanics make them impervious to casual playlisting. On the title track, JPEG assumes the perspective of a vexed A&R, rapping over a dissonant sax instrumental: “Play something for the bitches/How the fuck you s’posed to make money off this shit?” He wrangles warped samples into thundering drum patterns on “Lean Beef Patty” and “Steppa Pig,” garnishing the bass kicks with screaming synths. The instrumentation lends the arrangements an industrial quality, but the lurching verse structures are hypnotic.
Brown meets JPEG’s tempos with alacrity, flashing a singsong flow on “Orange Juice Jones” and mirroring the jittery horn fanfare of “Burfict!” The short bursts don’t provide space for Brown to stretch his limbs, yet he remains a virtuoso in miniature: on “HOE (Heaven on Earth),” his desperate narrator reaches out to a therapist, watching forlornly as their iMessage thread turns from blue to green. JPEG’s lower vocal register rings clear, but the mix doesn’t do Brown many favors. On “Fentanyl Tester,” his verses are slathered in unflattering reverb, and the “Milkshake” flip obscures his couplets. Brown’s erratic technique is riveting as ever, but his reedy voice calls for delicacy; on JPEG’s louder productions, the rappers sound like they’re on opposite ends of a shaky long-distance connection.
One song on Scaring the Hoes is pointedly titled “Run the Jewels.” Killer Mike and El-P’s collaboration is a ready analog for the way Brown and JPEG collapse satire and shock-jock dissent into an intoxicating headrush. On “Steppa Pig,” a demolition derby of party drugs and anti-establishment insolence, JPEG celebrates his liberation from the rat race: “It’s like I’ve been workin’ for crumbs, now I’m feelin’ free as my speech.” Still, Scaring the Hoes is only glancingly political. JPEG refers to himself interchangeably as “Black AOC” and “Black Marjorie Taylor Greene”; he denounces Elon Musk and bemoans the dilapidation of Twitter. The defiance is more identity than statement, the topical headline-skimming all but guaranteeing a brief shelf life.
On a recent podcast, Brown discussed the costly process of clearing instrumental samples for 2016’s Atrocity Exhibition. “I would delete Atrocity Exhibition in a heartbeat,” he confessed. “I spent $70,000 on samples and the motherfucker sold 7,000 the first week.” Unlike that album, Scaring the Hoes isn’t quite in conversation with its source material. JPEG maintains a liberal sampling philosophy, drawing from gospel records and hits by Kelis, Mario Winans, and LL Cool J. On “Lean Beef Patty,” the “I Need a Girl (Part Two)” chorus is subsumed by pounding synths; “Run the Jewels” makes similarly short work of “Going Back to Cali,” burying the horns beneath an avalanche of drums and double-tracked vocals. The found-elements approach allows the duo to play loose with institutional deference, threshing familiar sounds in an atmospheric barrage. Brown and JPEG are laughing with them, but they’re also laughing at them. | 2023-03-27T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-03-27T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rap | AWAL | March 27, 2023 | 7.1 | 0aef8502-de10-4f2e-8406-5df6fa113772 | Pete Tosiello | https://pitchfork.com/staff/pete-tosiello/ | |
Horse Feathers’ fifth album finds the Portland chamber-folk group tinkering with new sounds, major keys, faster tempos, and different emotional textures. Their palette is more expansive and more ambitious, drawing elements from tango and doo-wop, jazz and '50s pop. | Horse Feathers’ fifth album finds the Portland chamber-folk group tinkering with new sounds, major keys, faster tempos, and different emotional textures. Their palette is more expansive and more ambitious, drawing elements from tango and doo-wop, jazz and '50s pop. | Horse Feathers: So It Is With Us | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19914-horse-feathers-so-it-is-with-us/ | So It Is With Us | There’s no way Horse Feathers could live up to a song title like “Violently Wild”, the track that opens their fifth album. Over the last decade the Portland chamber-folk group, led by singer-songwriter Justin Ringle, has perfected a gently gothic sound reliant on stringed instruments, painstaking compositions, and muted emotions, as though in direct opposition to the strummy histrionics of the Lumineers and Mumford & Sons. There’s always been something dignified in Horse Feathers’ restraint, even if that didn’t make them an especially exciting band to follow. And the wear of so many depressive tunes apparently began to weigh on Ringle, who followed up the tour for 2012’s Cynic’s New Year with an 18-month hiatus from music.
That break was productive, as So It Is With Us finds Horse Feathers tinkering with new sounds, major keys, faster tempos, and different emotional textures. There are even drums here. So, all things being relative, “Violently Wild” is certainly the most violently wild the band has ever been. Rather than mopey, Ringle’s vocals are heraldic. The music is more celebratory than mournful. The rhythm section sounds like it can actually hold a groove and make the song a kinetic show opener or closer. It’s a joyful noise: Horse Feathers perform the song like they’ve just discovered a new superpower.
On each of their four previous albums, all except debut Words Are Dead released on Kill Rock Stars, Horse Feathers have emphasized rigid song structures and careful arrangements that blend guitar, violin, cello, and voice into melancholy rural song suites. Broadening the tone of the music has opened up new possibilities, which means Horse Feathers play more like a band and less like a Ringle solo project. Their palette is more expansive and more ambitious, drawing elements from tango and doo-wop, jazz and '50s pop. They plays songs like “Old Media” and “Small Melody” with real enthusiasm. “Dead End Thanks” in particular thrums with energy, as Nathan Crockett’s violin spirals around Dustin Dybvig’s piano and pulls the song in unexpected directions.
This is still a Horse Feathers album, which means that underneath the liveliness lurks the same darkness that has informed all of the group’s material. “We’re out of tune, you’ll be gone, and I’ll be leaving soon,” Ringle promises on the sing-along chorus to “Violently Wild”, singing darkly of marriage and commitment and the inevitable end that quells all arguments. Throughout his tenure, Ringle has written eloquently—sometimes too eloquently—about gnawing disaffection and thwarted desires, but the relative sunniness of the music on So It Is With Us suggests higher stakes: The dark makes the lighter sound lighter, and the light makes the dark sound darker.
“Tell me why do you try hangin’ on?” Ringle asks on “Why Do I Try” sounding like a man who might just stop. It’s arguably the most downcast song on the album, as he wonders about the fate of his children, yet it’s one of the band’s most subtly adventurous arrangements. Ringle lays down sharp staccato guitar licks that summon Steve Cropper, and the band moves with a steadiness that gives the song a hymnlike feel, at least until the woozy piano comes in like the ghost of Buddy Holly. As Ringle hits the high notes on the bridge, the song reveals itself as Pacific Northwest soul—which is something completely unexpected from Horse Feathers and a fine answer to the song’s central question. He sounds like a man with renewed faith. | 2014-10-22T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2014-10-22T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | Kill Rock Stars | October 22, 2014 | 7.4 | 0af10312-e31b-448a-a120-c38d0e9a587e | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
J Dilla's second posthumous album features 21 tracks of classically raw Motor City rap. Unlike his first posthumous collection, most of the tracks on Rebirth have rappers on them, a coterie of Detroit MCs who double as Dilla worshippers. | J Dilla's second posthumous album features 21 tracks of classically raw Motor City rap. Unlike his first posthumous collection, most of the tracks on Rebirth have rappers on them, a coterie of Detroit MCs who double as Dilla worshippers. | Various Artists: Rebirth of Detroit | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16731-rebirth-of-detroit/ | Rebirth of Detroit | *"Dilla was synonymous with Detroit for all of us and all of us kind of regarded him as a mythic figure." --*Eothen Alapatt, General Manager and A&R, Stones Throw Records
Rebirth of Detroit, J Dilla's second posthumous album, is a grandiose reclamation, as Detroit wraps the venerated MC and production pioneer into an inescapable bear hug. He's made, once again, into the figurehead and totem for the once-great city. The album holds 21 tracks of classically raw Motor City rap, and all the good and bad that comes with that mythic Michigan territory. Unlike his first posthumous collection, 2009's Jay Stay Paid, most of the tracks on Rebirth have rappers on them, a coterie of Detroit MC's who double as Dilla worshippers. This is occasionally a blessing, but too often subpar rhymes or poor chemistry between multiple rappers disguises what would otherwise be a solid beat.
This fervent Motown loyalty means that the beats on the album are vintage, Slum Village-era production, a sound that may have come to define Dilla if swan song Donuts hadn't added another facet to his legacy. They're pure Detroit tracks and, as such, serve as a more conservative collection than those featured on Jay Stay Paid. For the most part, these are pointed hi-fi beats with bass slaps and sharp snares, samples whittled to a point and deployed with casual precision. This quality, a kind of nonchalant strictness, is a gift of Dilla's-- he has the same kind of genius for making things look easy, as do the greatest athletes. Listen to the way that loop kaleidoscopes on "My Victory" or the rainbow synths and slightly flattened bass on "Ride With It". Check the vintage menace of the Jaylib sound on "Say My Name", "City of Boom", or "Do It Right". Every beat here is perfectly calibrated, reflecting an impressive, inborn discipline, one that Dilla would eventually leave behind in favor of a looser, messier sound.
One of the great things about Dilla's group Slum Village was the way that T3 and Baatin rapped quietly, with plenty of negative space available to give Jay Dee's beats the spotlight they deserved. It makes for a good litmus test to check how true the MC's on Rebirth are to that formula. Sometimes on an individual song, one rapper will stay chilled out, while another will rap his verses completely oblivious to the dynamic-- as on "Detroit Game", where Cool Kid Chuck Inglish exercises restraint to great effect, only to find the second verse ruined by one Boldy James, who raps rigidly, refusing to let the track breathe.
Then too, there's the problem of Dilla dogma. For the best example, take "Dillatroit", on which a trio of rappers sandwich a chorus of Detroit pride with undignified shots at Charles Hamilton, who had the gall to claim a J Dilla production credit on his debut album, This Perfect Life. Just to give you an idea of the way they hold grudges in Detroit, this blasphemy was committed all the way back in 2009. And yet Hamilton (who has all but disappeared from rap) still finds an entire verse dedicated to him on a song that's supposed to pay tribute.
The best moments come when Dilla's music is allowed to breathe, complemented by a competent artist. There's nothing quite like hearing a talented rapper rip through one of his beats. The highlight here is Danny Brown on "Jay Dee's Revenge". There's no perfunctory Dilla or Detroit shoutouts on the song; just an ill beat with a burbling mess of bass, sparkling keys, and a perverted madman rhyming his ass off. Other highlights include the one-two punch of soul and instrumental tracks "Let's Pray Together" and "Requiem", both of which show a bit more of the producer's range. "Let's Pray Together" in particular is a reminder of the best of neo-soul, as Detroit legend Amp Fiddler croons smoothly over slow, descending funk.
There are other worthwhile tracks like the elegant "Detroit Madness" or "Do It for Dilla Dawg", which, despite being saddled with that name, finds Dilla's little brother Illa J and old friend Frank Nitt overcoming cliché and showing real love. But when at least 16 of 21 songs are dedicated to the same subject, it's pretty easy to pick out tracks that should have been pruned.
The quote at the top comes from the Stussy documentary on Dilla, which was released in 2010. Though it seems pretty cut and dry, it shows up in the part of the movie where Dilla's friends and collaborators are speculating on why he moved to Los Angeles, most of them surprised that someone so firmly attached to Detroit would leave his hometown. House Shoes, another Detroit transplant, whose DJing is referenced on the penultimate track, ends up supplying the answer. "The Detroit shit'll wear you out," he says. "Cats want to come out here... and get the love that they never got in their own city."
Six years after his death, Dilla gets that love in full on Rebirth of Detroit. But the exhausting nature of the record, and the somewhat limited portrait of Dilla's work that it leaves behind, reminds us why he moved. Your hometown defines you only as much as you let it-- but when you're gone, those left behind are free to enshrine you, creating hagiography that's at once adoring and dehumanizing. As an artist, Dilla was defined by his need for growth, constantly evolving. But once you're cast in stone, it becomes pretty difficult to move. | 2012-07-05T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2012-07-05T02:00:03.000-04:00 | null | Ruff Draft | July 5, 2012 | 6.5 | 0af287c5-7ddf-4cd0-ad60-c05c61368751 | Jonah Bromwich | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jonah-bromwich/ | null |
On Skepta's long-awaited new album, the grime pioneer is full of sneering contempt for popular culture’s industry of image, the press, the police, and the government at large. | On Skepta's long-awaited new album, the grime pioneer is full of sneering contempt for popular culture’s industry of image, the press, the police, and the government at large. | Skepta: Konnichiwa | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21858-konnichiwa/ | Konnichiwa | In 2012 Skepta found himself at an impasse. He was integral in grime’s early hustle during the halcyon pirate radio days, but the music he was making, from 2008-2012 was soulless, kowtowing to a sanitized version of grime that went hand in hand with the slow-burning corporate ransacking of the genre that started with Dizzee Rascal’s breakthrough almost a decade earlier. He recently compared this dissatisfaction with his role in the mainstream with Britney Spears' infamous shaved head incident. If there is a similar meltdown for Skepta it happened in April of 2012, in a 26-minute video posted to Youtube, titled “#UnderdogPsychosis no.1” with a caption that read: “Break the cycle.” In a monologue by turns manic, vulnerable, self-aware, and inarticulate, he castigated himself, the system, (in DJ Khaled’s parlance the pervasive “they”), the industry, reflected on his forgotten and youthful musical past, and celebrated the life of the underdog. He promised to make music that had meaning. The video was later shown at the Tate Modern, a strange high watermark for the grime renaissance he helped ignite.
It’s been five years since a proper studio album from the 33-year-old Londoner, and after many delays his long-awaited Konnichiwa has finally arrived. It is arguably the first appointment listen in a genre that has never been defined by albums, but by singles, loosies, hotly pressed riddims, and pirate radio broadcasts. This partly comes from an album roll out and rebranding that has lasted almost two years. Last April, he organized an impromptu rave in a Shoreditch car park attended by almost a thousand people via an Instagram post. He helped hijack the stage of the Brits with Kanye West a month before. And even earlier than that Drake had cribbed lines from Skepta’s “That’s Not Me” for “Used To” starting a cross-continental musical love affair, leading to Drake symbolically signing to Skepta’s BBK label. He’s helped unfurl a ocean-spanning red carpet that’s led to wide ranging institutional support prompted magazine covers, documentaries, and a litany of think pieces asking, yet again, if was America ready for grime.
The sudden explosion of cultural cachet seems to have made no dents in his anarchic attitude. Konnichiwa is easily the most blatantly anti-authoritarian statement from rap this year, overflowing with sneering contempt for popular culture’s industry of image, the press, the police, and the government at large. No matter the respect he’s garnered recently, and the friends he’s gained along the way, Konnichiwa proves that Skepta still bristles at the very idea of institutions. He is still flipping the bird, compelling you to help him burn it all down.
“That’s Not Me” was the first song Skepta released off Konnichiwa, and it’s a template for the album's tone: A combination of snarling bravado and earnest self directed criticism—an elegantly brutal volte-face from a previous life. He’s thrown his designer clothes in the garbage, donned his famous black track suit, and disavowed the trappings of the last few years (“I put it all in the bin cause that's not me”). He’s come back out of the thicket of a forced absence, full of self-aggrandizing swagger. (“It's the return of the mack/I'm still alive just like 2Pac”). A year later, at the height of his return to prominence, the music video for the best song on this album,“Shutdown,” was released. Dressed in all white, in the middle of London’s bloated symbol of divisive gentrification the Barbican Centre, Skepta makes very clear that he fears no one: “Me and my Gs ain't scared of police/We don't listen to no politician/Everybody on the same mission/We don't care about your ‘isms and schisms," he rapped, lines that scan as both an indictment and a call-to-arms.
Skepta produced eight of the twelve tracks himself, and they have the same roughly hewn power of his early instrumentals, measured but fiery stews of dancehall, jungle, UK funky, and garage. When it works, it's bone-rattling stuff. Elsewhere, it's a mixed bag, sonically and qualitatively: He caricatures Noah “40” Shebib’s rose-quartz soul on “Ladies Hit Squad;” “Crime Riddim,” produced by Blaikie and Skepta’s brother Jason, has the wild flair of a Death Grips track; and “Numbers” (featuring and co-produced by Pharrell) fails to shoehorn Skepta into Pharrell's bubbly funk universe.
As for his lyrics, there is nothing coded about them, or their meaning: He raps exclusively about distrust and independence. He’s very much aware that London, and the world, will continue to exploit him and erase his individuality. This awareness is why he refuses to appear in pictures with fans or answer press emails in “Man.” It’s why he pulls way back, and samples Wiley’s call for peace in the middle of a battle (“Lyrics for lyrics, calm”) in “Lyrics.” He finds peace, if he finds it at all, in his roots: by remaining loyal to family and friends, by being appreciative of the past, and by incubating a future for his genre. Konnichiwa is as nakedly vulnerable Skepta has ever been, and it represents a tantalizingly wide-open door for grime. It’ll be our job as listeners to step through and discover what we’ve been missing. | 2016-05-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-05-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Boy Better Know | May 14, 2016 | 7.8 | 0af4bc72-bf84-49f8-ae0f-3ba3e7e648f4 | Kevin Lozano | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kevin-lozano/ | null |
I've always enjoyed looking at photo albums. Whether I know the people in them or not is pretty irrelevant ... | I've always enjoyed looking at photo albums. Whether I know the people in them or not is pretty irrelevant ... | Death Cab for Cutie: The Photo Album | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2230-the-photo-album/ | The Photo Album | I've always enjoyed looking at photo albums. Whether I know the people in them or not is pretty irrelevant. There's something about the medium of photography that just strikes me. Maybe it's just the possibility of stumbling across an accidental work of art-- that one shot where all the visual elements are balanced perfectly and someone exposes perhaps more of their personality than they intended. People can't really hide from a camera; it catches everything, be it a touch of nervousness in the smiles of a newlywed couple or the momentary pain of exertion on an athlete's face.
It seems as though Ben Gibbard, on his latest outing with Death Cab for Cutie, the band's third album in just three years, has attempted to capture in his lyrics the verbal equivalent of amateur photography. That's not to say there's anything amateur about the poetry in his lyrics-- quite the contrary, in fact-- but he captures those same little secondary emotions of the moment that cameras capture so well. Add to this the fact that every song here contains at least one vividly rendered image in its lyrics, and The Photo Album, rotten pun aside, seems a fairly appropriate title.
The album opens quietly with the brief, sleepy "Steadier Footing," a glimpse at a relationship that seems fated not to be. The organs, loosely strummed guitar and softly struck floor toms conjure a dead-on after-party atmosphere-- quiet, empty, a little smoky. From there, the band heads into "A Movie Script Ending," which feels the most like a logical extension of their work on last year's We Have the Facts and Are Voting Yes of any song here. The spacious drumming, intertwining guitar arpeggios and Gibbard's impassioned tenor pour forth a thick syrup of melody in the verses and chorus, before an unfortunately awkward bridge disrupts the flow of the song.
Such moments haunt the remainder of the album, as well, though they're generally not too distracting. "We Laugh Indoors" suffers a bit from too-long instrumental passages centering on wandering, loosely connected guitar phrases, but drummer Michael Schorr keeps things moving with his insistent backbeat, and the band finds their way before long. Still, form-wise, the song is oddly constructed and fairly easy to tune out. "Information Travels Faster" kicks off with one of Gibbard's best opening lines. "I intentionally wrote it out to be an illegible mess/ You wanted me to write you letters, but I'd rather lose your address," he sings, as the band provides a steady backing for him and his atmospheric piano playing.
The most gripping song musically, though, is also one of the most lyrically puzzling songs Gibbard has ever penned. I'm curious if Gibbard simply had an especially bad experience in Los Angeles or something, because "Why You'd Want to Live Here" is intensely bitter. Lines like, "I can't see why you'd want to live here," "It's a lovely summer's day and I can almost see a skyline through a thickening shroud of egos/ Is this the city of angels or demons," and, "You can't swim in a town this shallow," make me wonder if he even tried to find something he liked about the city before he wrote the song. But while the unrelentingly negative lyrics may be hard to digest, the music certainly isn't. It's like swallowing arsenic with candy-- the sweet melody and passionate delivery cause the song to jump out of the pack as one of the few actually capable of lodging in your brain.
Similarly malicious is "Styrofoam Plates," though the vitriol expressed toward the narrator's departed father is a little more understandable when you consider the full story laid out in the song's lyrics. "It's no stretch to say you were not quite a father/ But a donor of seeds/ To a poor single mother/ Who would raise us alone/ We never saw the money/ That went down your throat through the hole in your belly," is a spiteful mouthful to be sure, and it seems quite plausible that Gibbard is writing autobiographically, though I won't purport to know his family history.
One thing you may have noticed by now is that Gibbard has a tendency to sing in full, grammatically correct sentences. This marks him as a unique lyricist to be sure, but the downside is that it sometimes forces him to jam a bunch of syllables that don't flow very well into a melodic phrase. This makes for more than a few moments where you wonder if he wouldn't be better off resorting to a more succinct form.
Thankfully, though, he has enough facility with his style that it doesn't hurt the music too much-- witness the pop excellence of "I Was a Kaleidoscope," a song that serves as a good reminder of why Death Cab were relentlessly compared to Built to Spill in the early stages of their career. Chris Walla's guitar hook shares the foreground nicely with Gibbard, who offers lines like, "My teeth chattered rhythms/ They were grouped in twos and threes/ Like a Morse code message from me to me." John Vanderslice and Sean Nelson offer backing vocals to fill out the sound.
The Photo Album comes to a curious close as "Debate Exposes Doubt" collapses into quiet but dissonant piano and guitar figures, eventually petering out completely. Overall, it reads like a look through some stranger's photo album-- there are a lot incredible images contained within it, but there are also a few embarrassing shots and the occasional moment in time that isn't framed quite right. Still, the good outweighs the bad by a fair shot and it's more than enough to wonder what kind of images the band has yet to treat us to. | 2001-11-14T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2001-11-14T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Barsuk | November 14, 2001 | 7.1 | 0af9d3b7-3696-46a0-ae9f-b3784602286c | Joe Tangari | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-tangari/ | null |
The title of Tegan and Sara's seventh album is a reference to how we relate to the objects of our affection as teenagers. Produced by Greg Kurstin (P!nk, Kelly Clarkson, Lily Allen), the concise, radio-friendly collection finds them exploring a populist pop bent. | The title of Tegan and Sara's seventh album is a reference to how we relate to the objects of our affection as teenagers. Produced by Greg Kurstin (P!nk, Kelly Clarkson, Lily Allen), the concise, radio-friendly collection finds them exploring a populist pop bent. | Tegan and Sara: Heartthrob | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17597-heartthrob/ | Heartthrob | It would have once been obvious to say that a band's fans made them what they were. Now there's almost something quaint about it, especially considering (and not in spite of) the hashtagged millions that comprise the Little Monsters, Swifties, and Beliebers, who are as much a marketing tool as the groups being marketed to. Although they get a decent amount of exposure each time they release a record, until now, Tegan and Sara's sustained success has been down to a core fanbase. The title of their seventh album, Heartthrob, is a reference to how we relate to the objects of our affection as teenagers, that obsessive feeling that you live and die by for a few years, and how those crushes usually end up getting replaced by real, mutually loving relationships. Being someone who's liked this band to varying degrees of intensity for a decade, it's easy to interpret the name as the Quins recognizing their own role in their more devoted fans' lives. Doing so at the same time as they decide to make an album with pop impresario Greg Kurstin and dabble in writing for Carly Rae Jepsen might seem a little like selling their cow for a handful of supposedly magic beans.
Some folks have accused the duo of selling out with Heartthrob-- a concise 10 songs, at least half of which could be pop radio singles-- to which I'd argue that accessibility has always been a part of their appeal, in more respects than just working in friendly acoustic, rock, and electro-pop mediums. Surely part of the comfort of their music, at least to a young person quietly negotiating their sexuality without wanting to be obvious about it, is that it doesn't make a big deal of what it's come to represent. It's not like putting on an Ani DiFranco record in your bedroom and the lyrics sparking a parent's ear. One thing they've not been shy about in their songs, however, is ambition-- there's a sweet example of that on the Chris Walla-produced Sainthood's "Someday"-- and more power to them for deciding to explore a populist bent on Heartthrob, which pulls it off with aplomb.
The clearest sign that the Quins would follow this path lies in Sainthood's "Alligator", an insanely catchy, arid little pop song that had become Sara's trademark. ("Shock to Your System" and "How Come You Don't Want Me" carry on that impulse here.) But it was also a sign of the growing disparity between the twins' respective songwriting styles; Tegan's efforts on that record were stormy emo/power pop blasts, and the two didn't gel to the extent that it seemed fair to wonder whether it made sense for them to continue recording together. The Roxette and Cyndi Lauper-referencing, soaring keyboard pop of Heartthrob is a welcome stylistic reconciliation, if one that sacrifices their sonic weirdness.
Kurstin has taken Tegan and Sara's ability to write a solid refrain (some of their old songs were arguably all refrain) and channeled it into rushing, skyward stadium pop songs where their voices are more upfront, and less tethered to their former prickly structures. "Closer" is the killer, starting with Tegan's coy, tightly wound vocal laying out what she's after-- "All I dream of lately/ Is how to get you underneath me"-- the triumphantly shouted chorus coming off brash and charming, as if she knows she's definitely going to get it. It's a gloriously freeing, retrospective retelling of first infatuations, rewriting the script to articulate what you could only think about furiously back when.
"Closer"'s trad structure is typical of most of the songs on the record, but "Now I'm All Messed Up" breaks through its crackly piano and static whirr of a chorus with piercing, layered pleas: "Go! Go! Go if you want, I can't stop you!" It plays like a Wham! ballad repurposed as a glitchy, modern slow jam, which, in case that needs clarifying, is brilliant. The lyrics are a great, tragic portrait of post-split heartbreak-- "Now I'm all messed up, sick inside wondering where/ Where you're leaving your make-up"-- but the song as a whole never sounds anything less than fully empowering.
On Heartthrob, Tegan and Sara sing about solitude, regret, and self-loathing alongside romance, but most of its 10 songs feel amazing. That's not a sign of cognitive dissonance, but their considerable abilities fusing with those of Kurstin to drag their music out of headphones and into zones of unabashed communal euphoria and delight. The dramatic, ravey swish of "Goodbye, Goodbye" and new wavey tick of "I'm Not Your Hero" actually deal with the problem of coming across differently to your true self, and the risks you incur to reconcile that gap, whether that means losing someone or admitting that you're lost inside.
Making a relatively conventional sounding pop record-- not an acceptably hip, minimalist one produced by Devonte Hynes or Ariel Rechtshaid-- is a small risk in itself for the duo; for one, if its charms don't chime with sales, I can't imagine Warners keeping on a band whose last album sold 110k. Its misfires are few, if pronounced: On "Drove Me Wild", Tegan's voice is pitched up to sound unrecognizable, and the blandness of the music doesn't exactly inspire a wild vocal take-- it sounds like the music on an ad for Ibiza package holidays; "Love They Say" dies under slimy 90s production, bland acoustic verses, and a string of clichés about love ("true," "blind") that an actual teenager would probably balk at scrawling on a "Love is..." notelet.
At its best, however, Heartthrob brings the 32-year old siblings' more adult, romantic touch to a record that roundly avoids turning into any old generic, radio-friendly collection: "Love like ours is never fixed," Tegan sings on the classic piano pop of "I Was a Fool". It's hard to believe you could ever feel differently when you're a teenager crushing so hard you could cry at the injustice of your emotions going unrecognized. One of the strongest ideas Tegan and Sara give anyone who's ever plotted their identity by their music is the potential for change and transformation. For the unconverted, a temporary suspension of cynicism may be required. | 2013-01-28T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2013-01-28T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Warner Bros. | January 28, 2013 | 7.3 | 0afc040a-a7eb-42ea-a7d9-29138b29e75e | Laura Snapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/laura-snapes/ | null |
Backed by the revered Philly psych-folk group Espers-- and produced by that band's frontman, Greg Weeks-- singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler's latest outing is her best yet, ensconsing songs of sorrow in impressionistic phrases and careful musicianship. | Backed by the revered Philly psych-folk group Espers-- and produced by that band's frontman, Greg Weeks-- singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler's latest outing is her best yet, ensconsing songs of sorrow in impressionistic phrases and careful musicianship. | Marissa Nadler: Songs III: Bird on the Water | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9955-songs-iii-bird-on-the-water/ | Songs III: Bird on the Water | At first, Marissa Nadler's Songs III: Bird on the Water doesn't seem especially notable. It's a 12-track breakup album detailing Nadler's pervasive loneliness, her gentle finger-style guitar augmented with cello, percussion, mandolin, synthesizers, and electric guitars. Her voice is remarkable from the outset-- a sad, husky air that climbs to perfect grace notes with ease-- but by the time Nadler sings, "Oh my lonely diamond heart/ It misses you so well," 100 seconds into opener "Diamond Heart", you're pretty sure you've heard this one before.
Not so fast: As Nadler and her gorgeous, incredibly isolated Songs III would have it, there's plenty worth waiting for. Nadler doesn't want empathy for the hurt that caused her to write "Diamond Heart" in a hotel room bathtub in New Jersey or "Bird on Your Grave" for a friend who died mysteriously; she's just trying to ease some of that monumental pain into the next space. And-- though its micro-payoffs may come in the form of a solitary harmony here, a hushed mandolin chord there, or the eerie bells lending a richer atmosphere to the beautiful "Dying Breed"-- such a feeling makes Songs III one of the most focused and engaging singer-songwriter releases so far this year.
Of course, that can be a tough sell for folks accustomed to concentrated emotional whomp. Aside from its presiding atmosphere of pain, little about Songs III feels direct. It peels free in slow, steady layers, Nadler's sorrow ensconced in impressionistic phrases and careful musicianship. As a songwriter, she's still painting relationship trauma in grayscale sadness, occasionally calling on stunning images-- "eyes as deep as brandy wine," "red-painted lips and a jezebel crown," "breaking on the daylight"-- to better realize sullen torment. But that latter layer makes Songs III much more effective than Nadler's 2005 debut, The Saga of Mayflower May.
Nadler's a bandleader now: With acoustic wonderment still in place, she brings most of Philadelphia's Espers to bear here. They augment without distracting, building on her gravitas with quietly breathtaking nuance: A cymbal-scrape pallor from Otto Hauser, or Jesse Sparhawk's weeping mandolin; like Helena Espvall's doubled cello parts smeared over Nadler's "rose-colored dreams" on "Thinking of You", these sounds highlight the words. Even the album's loudest moment, Greg Weeks' piercing electric lead on "Bird on Your Grave", won't wow you from afar, but it will pull you close enough to identify with Nadler's pain.
As a vocalist, Nadler stretches this environment towards infinity: By doubling and tripling her vocals and lacing several distinct interpretations of one melody, she implies that her despair is now as it was then as it always will be. During a splendid, organ-and-guitar take on Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat", for instance, the narrator's desolation comes doubled in verses, tripled in the chorus, and chased consistently by the organ. Doom follows her like a rain cloud, it seems, soaking her feelings but powering this, her best set of songs yet. Sure, that's a mundane thing to say about an artist, but on Songs III, it's notable after all. | 2007-03-07T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2007-03-07T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Peacefrog | March 7, 2007 | 8.1 | 0b02a1d3-3947-4dd2-b1e5-370884975038 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
The Brooklyn rapper moves carefully between knotty verses and blunt lines to make some of the most immersive and exhilarating songs of his career. | The Brooklyn rapper moves carefully between knotty verses and blunt lines to make some of the most immersive and exhilarating songs of his career. | Ka: Descendants of Cain | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ka-descendants-of-cain/ | Descendants of Cain | Ka raps as if he’s pulled you into the hallway to talk business. His vocals are often hushed but always forceful, like he’s speaking in a stage whisper and the stage is collapsing. The beats he raps on, his own productions or sourced from a tight circle of collaborators, do away with nearly all extraneous elements—and often with elements that no one would consider “extraneous,” like drums. There are complicated lyrical passages, but some of Ka’s phrasing is disarmingly simple: He’ll say he “saw too much to have blind faith,” or describe the Brownsville, Brooklyn neighborhood of his youth as “the bottom” where “all the tops is slung.” It’s this drive toward the essential that makes Ka’s music singular. He cuts away the sinew from each line, leaving vivid detail and bits of moral code that he will then jam against one another, building a strange latticework of jagged, interlocking bits that he can use to explain or disorient as he sees fit.
Descendants of Cain is the sixth album Kaseem Ryan has released since 2012. Before then, he had taken a job with the New York Fire Department and lost touch with music. But the Ka that re-emerged with 2012’s rewardingly insular Grief Pedigree was inspired, and in the years since, he’s released a string of LPs that has confirmed him as one of the preeminent stylists of his generation. (Although on the fringes in many ways, Ka was big enough by 2016 to be smeared on the front page of the New York Post for his lyrics critical of police.) There are no giant leaps or sharp left turns in his repertoire; there are grooves worn deeper and deeper, facades stripped away.
There have been moments when this near-tunnel vision has seemed limiting; 2018’s Orpheus vs. the Sirens, a collaboration with the Los Angeles producer Animoss under the name Hermit and the Recluse, is an expertly made record that at times feels like the annual Ka album, assembled from a trusty blueprint. Cain, by contrast, exhilarates. Where Orpheus’ Greek-myth motif was an attempt to look at the personal and spiritual struggles Ka often writes about from an abstracted angle, the Biblical story of Cain and his offspring here evokes unshakable feelings about what it means to be damned, what’s learned versus what’s in your blood, and whether clean hands are a luxury everyone can afford. It includes some of the most striking writing of Ka’s career—the knottier verses and the blunter ones, too—and is utterly immersive, whole lifetimes of fear and pain and death and regeneration condensed into 33 minutes.
The Biblical allusions on Cain make the Brooklyn of Ka's memory sound like a fallow land not expected to produce survivors. On “Patron Saints,” he strings simple threads into a complex web of lepers and protectors from his formative years: the tycoons who “moved in vests,” the caregivers who “stole everything we needed.” No one here would be without blame in the eyes of the NYPD, but nearly everyone is daring and principled in his or her own way. “Our yogis did stretches upstate,” he raps, “I saw Lancelots at round tables cutting eighths.” At the song’s end, he does away with the entendre: “Our heroes sold heroin.”
That frankness serves Ka well throughout Cain. The penultimate song, “Old Justice,” opens, simply, “We was living in the living room.” But other tracks move slyly from childhood games to concealed weaponry. See “Unto the Dust,” where Ka remembers that while:
...y’all played the dozens
My favorite cousins spent they youth in prisons
They names known, came home
Now the house got two religions
‘Peace be with you,’ ‘Wa’Alaikum-Salaam’
?Make sure that piece be with you, laced in your palm.
It’s that type of advice—grave but necessary—that guides Ka through one-half of the stories remembered here, and is dispensed by him in the other. Toward the end of “Saints,” he raps about his father shooting a man, then tossing him the gun to dispose of. “He knew how he grew me,” Ka raps, as he flees the scene to deny prosecutors “Exhibit A.” “I was raised to age a few years in a day.”
Cain is a dynamic listen, despite relying on a consistent sound palate: somber pianos, strings, all made to sound like the denouement of a Western you catch on cable at 3 a.m. The exception is the dazzlingly weird beat for “P.R.A.Y.,” which sounds as if a broken elevator’s doors are being pried apart in stereo. Ka has never deployed a wide arsenal of flows or vocal tones; instead of seeming flat, his affectless voice gives the impression of seriousness, of persistence. This is most rewarding on the closing song, “I Love (Mimi, Moms, Kev),” where he writes to his wife, mother, and late friend with a touching vulnerability, but delivers the words with a steely remove, as if he has to gird himself to get through each verse in one piece.
For all the peril of Cain—walks to subway stops that have to be chaperoned, summers full of murder that just won’t end—it retains a strange optimism, in the notion that principled living is its own salvation. It is also something of a capstone on the rapper’s career. The album, and Ka’s entire creative project, is best summed up by the chorus on “Land of Nod.” “You can tell I’m in fact a native,” he raps, “I live this vivid shit—I ain’t that creative.” This is the great trick of Ka’s music: For all the technical wizardry, the innovation in writing style and sound design, he’s made his work seem like the natural, insuppressible product of the blocks that raised him. | 2020-05-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-05-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Iron Works | May 13, 2020 | 8.1 | 0b055d08-d9d7-46d4-b242-afe24b4ec29c | Paul A. Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/ | |
The perfect ending to a recording career, this LP shows a band still in its prime, capable of songwriting and recording feats others could only envy. | The perfect ending to a recording career, this LP shows a band still in its prime, capable of songwriting and recording feats others could only envy. | The Beatles: Abbey Road | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13431-abbey-road/ | Abbey Road | One more "like we used to" was how Paul McCartney framed it to producer George Martin; a chance to make a "good album" was George Harrison's take. They were hoping to bounce back after the serious downer that had been the Get Back sessions, which, months after they wrapped, had yet to yield an album anyone was happy with. But what "like we used to" meant, exactly, was rather hard to pin down: The Beatles' life as a band was so compressed, with such a massive amount of music and change packed into a short time, that there was never a single moment that could be used as a reference point for what a Beatles record was supposed to be. So when they returned to the EMI studios on Abbey Road in summer 1969, it wasn't clear how it would go. They still weren't getting along; their musical interests continued to diverge; John Lennon didn't really want to continue with the Beatles; Paul McCartney did, but on his own terms, which meant that he set the pace and got what he wanted. Though it was unspoken, they all had a good idea that this could really be the end. So what now? One more, then.
And what a finish. The Beatles' story is so enduring in part because it was wrapped up so perfectly. Abbey Road shows a band still clearly in its prime, capable of songwriting and recording feats other groups could only envy. Working for the first time exclusively on an eight-track tape machine, their mastery of the studio was undeniable, and Abbey Road still sounds fresh and exciting 40 years on (indeed, of the 2009 remasters, the improvements and sonic detail here are the most striking). Even if it's ultimately the Paul McCartney and George Martin show, as demonstrated on the famous second-side medley, everyone brought his A-game. Where Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band strained for significance, The Beatles was schizophrenic, and Let It Be was a drag streaked with greatness, Abbey Road lays out its terms precisely and meets them all. There's not a duff note on the damn thing.
This applies even if, like me, you've never quite understood the attraction of John Lennon's "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" and sometimes find yourself skipping ahead to George Harrison's second-side lead-off "Here Comes the Sun". "I Want You" is certainly a singular item in the Beatles discography, with its extreme repetition, stark simplicity, and epic three-minute coda, but it requires a certain kind of mood to appreciate. Yet, along with album-opener "Come Together", it also shows how Lennon finally found a way to square his latter-day interest in leaner and edgier rock'n'roll with trippy studio experimentation. Lennon's two big songs on the first side are raw, direct, and biting, but they're also lush studio creations, in keeping with the spirit of the album. And the sophisticated sheen laid over top has the effect of making them seem more like "Beatles songs" compared to, say, Lennon's White Album output. Abbey Road feels like one thing.
Paul McCartney's "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and Ringo Starr's "Octopus's Garden", two silly, charming, childlike songs in a long tradition of silly, charming, childlike Beatles songs, round out side one. But then, oh: side two. The suite that runs from "You Never Give Me Your Money" through "Her Majesty" finds the Beatles signing off in grand fashion. Gathering scraps of material that had piled up, McCartney and Martin pieced together a song cycle bursting with light and optimism, and this glorious stretch of music seems to singlehandedly do away with the bad vibes that had accumulated over the previous two years. From the atmospheric rip of Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" that is "Sun King" to the sharp pair of Lennon fragments, "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam" (the former given a line about "sister Pam" to join the pieces), and on through the explosive, one-climax-after-another run of "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window", "Golden Slumbers", and "Carry That Weight", the nine fragments in 16 minutes add up to so much more than the sum of their parts.
The music is tempered with uncertainly and longing, suggestive of adventure, reflecting a sort of vague wisdom; it's wistful, earnest music that also feels deep, even though it really isn't. But above all it just feels happy and joyous, an explosion of warm feeling rendered in sound. And then, the perfect capper, finishing with a song called "The End", which features alternating guitar solos from John, George, and Paul and a drum solo from Ringo. It was an ideal curtain call from a band that just a few years earlier had been a bunch of punk kids from a nowheresville called Liverpool with more confidence than skill. This is how you finish a career.
The Beatles' run in the 1960s is good fodder for thought experiments. For example, Abbey Road came out in late September 1969. Though Let It Be was then still unreleased, the Beatles wouldn't record another album together. But they were still young men: George was 26 years old, Paul was 27, John was 28, and Ringo was 29. The Beatles' first album, Please Please Me, had come out almost exactly six and a half years earlier. So if Abbey Road had been released today, Please Please Me would date to March 2003. So think about that for a sec: Twelve studio albums and a couple of dozen singles, with a sound that went from earnest interpreters of Everly Brothers and Motown hits to mind-bending sonic explorers and with so many detours along the way-- all of it happened in that brief stretch of time. That's a weight to carry.
[Note: Click here for an overview of the 2009 Beatles reissues, including discussion of the packaging and sound quality.] | 2009-09-10T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2009-09-10T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | EMI | September 10, 2009 | 10 | 0b06fb9b-fb64-4699-a0f3-b33dc92f272a | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
Pairing the Colombian singer’s voice with the New York producer’s wistful electronic hybrids, this brief but endearing EP feels like a set of missives sent from the depths of a daydream. | Pairing the Colombian singer’s voice with the New York producer’s wistful electronic hybrids, this brief but endearing EP feels like a set of missives sent from the depths of a daydream. | Ela Minus / DJ Python : ♡ EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ela-minus-dj-python-corazon-ep/ | ♡ EP | On paper, Ela Minus and DJ Python are a woefully ill-fitting combination. Minus is a purveyor of combative, hard-edged techno and coldwave; her lyrics, often revolving around calls for rebellion or resistance against amorphous higher powers, give her songs the redolence of protest music, even if they are sometimes too vague to parse on a political level. Python, on the other hand, is prone to giving endearingly shitposty interviews but makes dance music with a soft touch and a gauzy, achingly romantic spirit. Minus’ music is throwback, nodding to New Order and ’80s European electronic styles, but focused firmly on the future; Python’s has a nostalgic and wistful air about it, even though his trademark fusion of reggaeton and house is quietly innovative. Despite their outward mismatch, though, something about their disparate sensibilities just seems to work together: ♡ (pronounced “corazón”), their new collaborative EP, is one of the best projects either artist has put their name to, a deft and moving dance record that feels casual but profoundly intimate.
At three songs, ♡ is all too brief, but it still covers a lot of ground; unlike Python’s most recent record, January’s Club Sentimientos Vol. 2, ♡ works as well as three distinct songs as it does as a suite of plush, wobbly mood music. The record’s final track, “Pájaros en Verano” (“Birds in Summer”) encapsulates the vibe of the whole EP. Over Python’s gentle, marimba-like synths, Minus sings about the relief of experiencing a relationship after an isolating pandemic:
After all the days that never happened
And the nights that didn’t exist
I can’t complain
’Cause I got you
Now I don’t want to live a life without you
Where the vagueness of Minus’ lyrics can sometimes work against her, the empty space she leaves here is welcome; it’s a pandemic-era track that mourns for lost time without getting weighed down by unnecessary specifics. Python’s work—he composed and produced the instrumentals, which Minus wrote lyrics and melodies to—is as tasteful and restrained as ever, but there’s a driving force to his synth melody that, combined with Minus’ soft, guileless vocal, almost makes the track feel like a chic update of Adrian Lux’s 2010 indie-EDM classic “Teenage Crime,” ridding that song of its extremely era-specific build while retaining its weary optimism.
“Pájaros en Verano” is ♡’s most specifically pandemic-related song, but its themes hang in the air on the rest of the EP. On “Abril Lluvias Mil,” Minus stews in regret over past relationships (“Everything you once said and you wish you could take back/Everyone you once hurt and you wish you could hold now”) over a faint, dubby synthline and barely there dembow beat, one of Python’s signatures. Like HTRK, Python and Minus use dub to convey a kind of pervasive yearning: The fractured, decaying synth line mirrors Minus’ lyrics about loss, a musical palimpsest that becomes more amorphous and distorted the closer you get to it.
These songs are simple, and they’re very much within Python’s wheelhouse: Any of these instrumentals, with their glassy new-age synth tones and slight, muffled beats, could easily slot in on Club Sentimientos Vol. 2. But when Minus sings over them, they feel dramatically different—like love letters or diary entries, missives sent from the depths of someone else’s daydream. Even “Kiss U,” little more than a looping beat and a few lines repeated by Minus, has a compelling, romantic softness to it: “My world has ended many times before/But now that you’re in it/None compare.” The lyrics themselves are nothing special—as vague, if not more so, as anything on Minus’ 2020 album acts of rebellion. But the plain, even mournful tone of her voice feels vastly different when set to Python’s spacious, heavenly beat. The softness of Python’s music has unlocked a new depth to her performance; by the same token, the profound sadness that Minus hints at gives his work, which can occasionally feel like vibe music, a new sense of gravity. They may seem like opposites, but the synergy of Minus and Python’s collaboration feels like a testament to what Minus preaches across ♡: The blissful harmony of two souls finding each other. | 2022-09-21T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-09-21T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Smugglers Way | September 21, 2022 | 7.6 | 0b076ca4-b4b9-4148-8878-5c1a8e4bda33 | Shaad D’Souza | https://pitchfork.com/staff/shaad-d’souza/ | |
The Mountain Goats' new LP is dedicated to John Darnielle's childhood pro-wrestling heroes, using the particulars of their lives to explore his own personal mythology. There’s a noble simplicity to these songs, reflecting Darnielle’s warm memories of his fandom. | The Mountain Goats' new LP is dedicated to John Darnielle's childhood pro-wrestling heroes, using the particulars of their lives to explore his own personal mythology. There’s a noble simplicity to these songs, reflecting Darnielle’s warm memories of his fandom. | The Mountain Goats: Beat the Champ | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20381-beat-the-champ/ | Beat the Champ | Take it from French philosopher Roland Barthes, who summarized the appeal of professional wrestling thusly in his landmark essay collection, Mythologies*.* "What wrestling is above all meant to portray is a purely moral concept: that of justice," he wrote. Elemental forces faced off in the form of nearly naked men and women hustling and tussling with each other in the squared circle. There was a good guy and a bad guy, and you cheered for one of them.
Since Barthes’ time, professional wrestling has developed in more complex—and some purists would say less satisfying—ways. But John Darnielle, leader of the Mountain Goats, grew up with the old wrestling. "These were comic-book heroes who existed in physical space," he writes of his formative fandom in the promotional copy for Beat the Champ, the band’s new album. "I was a child. I needed them, and, every week, they came through for me." Darnielle rooted for the heroes. His stepfather, who he’s memorialized as a troublesome if not frequently terrifying presence in many Mountain Goats songs, rooted for the villains.
Beat the Champ is not about Darnielle’s relationship with his stepfather. Instead, it’s about those men and women who were the wrestlers of his childhood, and what they went through while bringing him and children like him their weekly entertainment. These wrestlers don’t make appearances on "Today". Like the hero of "Southwestern Territory", they suffer long drives between sleepy towns for the promise of a few bucks and a patchy broadcast on black-and-white TV. Darnielle crawls inside their heads, his voice switching between his recognizably nasal drill and a tender lower register as he chronicles their camaraderie and willingness to hurl their bodies into each other.
The Mountain Goats have been a proper band for more than a decade, and Darnielle is once again backed by the sturdy rhythm section of Peter Hughes and Jon Wurster, who push him forward without getting in his way. The horns from 2012’s Transcendental Youth return on "Foreign Object", in which Darnielle acts out a promo—those speeches where wrestlers shout threats and taunts at each other—by vowing that he "personally will stab you in the eye" with an improvised shiv made from tape.
The rest of the record isn’t as brassy as "Foreign Object", an obvious crowd-pleaser, but it’s occasionally as bold. Darnielle’s exhortations on "Choked Out" channel the bloodlust of a wrestler ready to risk it all for fame. The down-tuned, menacing "Werewolf Gimmick" echoes "Psalms 40:2" from 2009’s The Life of the World to Come as it eulogizes those "nameless bodies in unremembered rooms," the arrangement rumbling like a car coming apart at the screws. "Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan", which loosely tells the story of real-life wrestler Bruiser Brody (who, yes, was stabbed to death outside San Juan) unfolds like a radio play, as Darnielle’s speak-song delivery is intermittently interrupted by a tremendous crash of strings and organs.
These songs describe the psychological states of the wrestlers ("I try to remember what life was like long ago/ But it’s gone, you know?", from "Southwestern Territory") but they also find ways to fit into the mythology of Darnielle’s life. That tyrannical stepfather does pop up on lead single "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero", which narrates the title character's life from Darnielle's young eyes. The case for Chavo as Darnielle’s personal hero is as earnest as it is heart-tugging, and it explains why he made this record: "You let me down, but Chavo never once did/ You called him names to try to get beneath my skin/ Now your ashes are scattered on the wind."
One of Darnielle’s premier talents as a musician is his ability to cast personal mantras as singalong anthems. At his best, his songs feel as essential as water. Mountain Goats fans will testify to the healing powers of standing arm-to-arm with hundreds of people while shouting "I am going to make it through this year if it kills me." Beat the Champ, however, eschews universality by coming from such a specific point of view. You don't necessarily need to know what a heel turn is in order to connect with "Heel Turn 2", but it doesn't hurt.
There’s a noble simplicity to these songs, though, reflecting Darnielle’s warm memories of his wrestling fandom. The respect he has for these men and women, and what they must have been through, is obvious. On "Unmasked!", a wrestler sings to his costumed opponent, whom he's about to defeat and subsequently unmask before the world. For wrestlers who choose to perform with a mask, hiding their real face is everything. To reveal it is an incredibly serious act. But the pressure of maintaining this illusion for the dwindling crowds has gotten to this anonymous masked man, who is ready to move on. "By way of honoring the things we once both held dear, I will reveal you," his opponent sings. When you’re a kid, what’s happening on TV isn’t very complicated. Then, you grow up and learn the truth. | 2015-04-06T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2015-04-06T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | April 6, 2015 | 6.6 | 0b095634-bccd-417b-a046-ed04426e6cc7 | Jeremy Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jeremy-gordon/ | null |
The latest tape in the West Coast producer’s series is understated, but reveals how good he is at letting genre artists approach the best versions of themselves. | The latest tape in the West Coast producer’s series is understated, but reveals how good he is at letting genre artists approach the best versions of themselves. | DJ Muggs: Soul Assassins 3: Death Valley | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dj-muggs-soul-assassins-3-death-valley/ | Soul Assassins 3: Death Valley | After landing a series of crossover hits, Cypress Hill turned to Indiana Jones for inspiration. Where their early records pulsed with blunted humor and buzzed paranoia, 1995’s Cypress Hill III: Temples of Boom was slower and eerier: DJ Muggs’ spare instrumentals underscored B-Real and Sen Dog’s erratic delivery, the drums echoing like footfalls in a drafty cathedral. Subsequent efforts—including 2000’s Skull & Bones and 2001’s Stoned Raiders—leaned into the same dank ambience and lost-world mysticism, ornamented skeletons glinting on the album art. Throughout their career, Muggs imposed gentle order, wrangling his bandmates’ idiosyncrasies with evocatively bleak production.
When Cypress Hill lost steam, Muggs continued to score increasingly murky soundscapes. His trademark is a deadened gloom—evoking the listlessness that ensues once the anti-psychotics kick in—and his ongoing Soul Assassins series maintains a creeping, hypnotic tension. The latest installment, Soul Assassins 3: Death Valley, showcases regional stylists like Meyhem Lauren, T.F, and 2 Eleven, promoting their expressive quirks. While Muggs’ instrumental loops are fairly static, their ominous chords, spiky guitars, and crafty engineering make for reliably intricate compositions.
Muggs’ discernment elicits striking performances. He knows when to stay out of the way: “Where We At” consists of little more than a bassline and trilling flute, leaving space for Boldy James to parade an anguished, lopsided flow. Scarface has rapped over so many piano dirges that Muggs’ raw snare on “Street Made” is a revelation, revealing the crags and hollows of Face’s cavernous voice. Muggs pairs vocalists for compatibility rather than contrast: Roc Marciano and Crimeapple’s behind-the-beat cadences on “Crazy Horse,” Ghostface and Westside Gunn’s exuberance on “Sicilian Gold.”
Death Valley is understated even by Muggs’ standards, but his steady hand is evident alongside Rome Streetz, whose couplets land in peppery sprays, and Jay Worthy, a gangland chronicler who likes to scribble outside the lines. Each appears twice on Death Valley; Muggs’s production has a humbling effect, centering their musicality and dialing down their usual shit-talking. Slick Rick, of course, requires no coaching—the icon turns in a thrilling, unnerving performance on “Metropolis,” slithering around the drum pattern while mirroring Muggs’s cockeyed sensibility. It’s a moment of mutual recognition, a legendary rapper realizing his percussive capacity on a track tailor-made for his voice.
If Muggs is overshadowed by Madlib and Alchemist, it’s partly due to his collaborative deference, his willingness to cede the stage on his own projects. This quality is one of Death Valley’s many strengths—with Muggs in their corner, genre artists approach the best versions of themselves. The guest roster and sampler format provide entry points to Muggs’ moodier full-length collaborations, glimpsing ideas explored more fully on Death & the Magician, What They Hittin 4, and Champagne for Breakfast. Death Valley is a journey to the threshold, close enough to see the jewels gleaming within. | 2023-08-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-08-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Soul Assassins | August 30, 2023 | 7.3 | 0b09d442-4bc7-4ba9-95d4-1d7ee2f4e05c | Pete Tosiello | https://pitchfork.com/staff/pete-tosiello/ | |
Wiki’s new album is an acidic and vivid manifestation of his city, at times surreal and too real, with contributions from Earl Sweatshirt, Kaytranada, Ghostface Killah, and more. | Wiki’s new album is an acidic and vivid manifestation of his city, at times surreal and too real, with contributions from Earl Sweatshirt, Kaytranada, Ghostface Killah, and more. | Wiki: No Mountains in Manhattan | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/wiki-no-mountains-in-manhattan/ | No Mountains in Manhattan | ”I’m straight New York, what a lot of ya’ll pretending to be!” Thus spat a curly-haired, baby-faced, North Face-clad teen by the name of Wiki back in 2012, his nasally voice sharp and acidic. Two years after “Wikispeaks” appeared on Ratking’s first EP, the trio—featuring poetic philosopher Hak, the MPC-slapping producer Sporting Life, and Wiki minus a few teeth—released their outstanding debut So It Goes and were dubbed the city’s “hip-hop heirs.” Before a proper full-length follow-up ever materialized, the group more or less dissolved with each member pursuing his own projects. But Wiki, born Patrick Morales, has never ceased in his quest to chronicle his New York.
Wiki’s new album No Mountains in Manhattan is a vivid manifestation of the city, at times surreal and too real. After the touring that colored much of his 2015 mixtape Lil Me, Wiki is back in Manhattan shouting out Mario with the bacon egg and cheese, hitting up Chinese joint Noodletown, and getting blunted at friends’ cribs. “I like the 1 train, bagel with lox, crushing the mic/I like the sunset on the Hudson, look at the light,” he spills on the joyous opener “Islander.” No Mountains opens with three of the strongest songs (”Islander,” “Mayor,” and “Pretty Bull”) Wiki has made to date, stories of his “first chapter” and his community. These tracks luxuriate in soul samples and latin rhythms, tones that constantly blast from taxicabs and sidewalk boomboxes. Later on, he’s quick to feature local rappers from ACAB and Slicky Boy to Ghostface Killah, and brings in visiting talent like Earl Sweatshirt, Kaytranada, and DJ Earl to round out the day.
No Mountains in Manhattan would be a great record even if Wiki stuck to this urban bliss, but instead he confronts the city’s shadows to build a complex portrait of himself. While the 23-year-old has never come off as a naively cheerful bloke, his rising fame and professional responsibilities, the addictions and police presence that endanger his community now weigh heavy on him. He often has to snap out of a spiral by reminding himself that he’s no longer spitting in basements: “Alright/Slow down supposed to be the pro type/Tuck in my gold type kid/I ain’t gotta show off shit.” The weight seems to make Wiki decelerate his spitfire pow-pow tempo and savor the thick timbre of each word. The darkest and most dramatic example of this is “Pandora’s Box,” a thinly-veiled meditation on Wiki’s former relationship with rapper Princess Nokia. Over spacey, atmospheric beats provided by Sporting Life and Dadras, he and Vancouver singer Evy Jane recall the intricacies of a relationship that veered into violence as much as it did growth.
But as if emerging from the city’s underbelly, the final moments of No Mountains (particularly the hilariously cheerful “Nutcrackers”) return to the lighter fare. It’s a full-circle that reveals Wiki’s “straight New York” to be one of contrasts: a city that’s vast and small, lonely and overcrowded, hopeless and infinite. No Mountains doesn’t reinvent New York rap, it buries itself in it. Like a passenger on the 2 from Downtown Manhattan to Harlem, Wiki is posted in the corner seat, eyes-wide, cataloguing, getting high, and transforming an earlier visit to a bodega into an existential field study. These are certainly New York images, but Wiki’s attention to detail and personal investment makes it resonate beyond vague concrete jungles. Wiki has called himself Virgil in the past, but on No Mountains in Manhattan he fully assumes the roles of storyteller and leader. | 2017-08-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-08-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | XL | August 30, 2017 | 8.1 | 0b0a7f0d-4b78-4cc6-93ca-d24062b276f2 | Quinn Moreland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/quinn-moreland/ | null |
Composed on hardware and recorded straight to tape without edits or overdubs, Adrian Mojica creates visceral, dystopian techno that reflects the deep thrum of the city. | Composed on hardware and recorded straight to tape without edits or overdubs, Adrian Mojica creates visceral, dystopian techno that reflects the deep thrum of the city. | AceMo: Black Populous | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23255-black-populous/ | Black Populous | As a student at SUNY Purchase, Adrian “Ace” Mojica had the chance to work with Phil Moffa, a producer of gritty techno who holds office hours and teaches classes on mastering techniques. Even though AceMo has been making music for a while (as a member of the New York club-music collective Swim Team, and with a duo of cassettes for Brooklyn’s Bootleg Tapes), Moffa’s hands-on, hardware-centric approach catalyzed an evolution in AceMo’s live techno to a dusty, wheezing beast, now realized more than ever on the visceral, dystopian Black Populous.
Before the first note of Black Populous hits, there’s a brief sound of hissing tape. This fuzzy electrical undercurrent runs through the album out of practical necessity. Armed with decades-old drum machines, synths, samplers, and a four-track cassette deck, AceMo forgoes the sharp-edged, chrome-plated possibilities of manipulating and arranging sounds on a computer for a more kinetic and expressive approach to making beats: sessions captured straight to tape, without edits or overdubs. This approach continues in the recent tradition of the New York underground: punk-techno from outlets like L.I.E.S., the dusty, muffled house of Terekke, or the low-slung moods of J. Albert. Call it “lo-fi,” but it’s the grimy byproduct of the city’s incessant throb—the take-no-prisoner beats reflect the necessity of hustling to make ends meet in a place as unforgiving as New York. Make noise with the tools you’ve got.
Mojica’s relentless energy bares its teeth on the grinding, eight-minute “Hip Hop Hoax,” and mid-album cut “X Train.” Both tracks are experiments in noise-wrangling, as feedback stretches and squeals into slimey motifs that sound freshly scraped from sewage pipes. The raw energy in “Hip Hop Hoax” is a guttural scream, anchored by a booming 808-style bass drum, trying to break out of its box. The punishing beat pumps through the overloaded mix, and the track sounds at its best with the volume cranked all the way up, as loud as Ace had it running in his studio when he cut the track. “X Train” zips along at almost 140 bpm, effectively simulating an elevated Brooklyn subway car running an express route, the cabin shakes side-to-side while wheels screech and passengers barrel forward.
Opening track “Acid Pact” features Detroit producer 2Lanes alongside Mojica as they dig into an electrical field of sputtering breaks and distant synths. “Acid Pact” feels more situated in the context of a whirlwind LSD trip than the 303/909 acid techno its name implies. Across seven minutes, fluttering synths and a commanding kick drum shift in and out of focus in a kaleidoscopic arrangement. It’s one of the deeper, less abrasive moments on the album, where softer edges feel like momentary comforts compared to the harsh environments these tracks reflect.
The final two cuts, “Black Populous” and “Time 2 Change (Regular Ass Chord)” dive even further into comforting corners. The title track’s gently bobbing melody recalls Huerco S. or Person of Interest, while rapid-fire, iambic kick drums feel like a heartbeat on the verge of attack. At nine minutes, album closer “Time To Change” offers little variation, while a gorgeous chord anchors the slowly building beat in a blunted haze—a gentle coda to a particularly biting, near-80-minute album.
Black Populous’ energy is only hampered by its length, with most tracks stretching upwards of six minutes. But the idea of a “black populous” has universal implications for AceMo, and the album doesn’t need to be digested all at once. Accompanying the release, Mojica writes: “Black is the color of endearment. Black is of pain, black is of freedom, black is cold, black is warm, black populous is whatever you, want it to be.” Even further, Black Populous is the thrum of New York, and in it, AceMo thrives. | 2017-05-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Bootleg Tapes | May 13, 2017 | 7.3 | 0b0bf6b9-8894-4994-8811-7019973e4288 | Jesse Weiss | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-weiss/ | null |
Robert Pollard's 2013 included a fine Guided by Voices EP, an okay GBV album, an unfailingly sweet solo collection, and a public fight with drummer Kevin Fennell. He closes the year with Blazing Gentlemen, a headier, rockier solo offering*.* | Robert Pollard's 2013 included a fine Guided by Voices EP, an okay GBV album, an unfailingly sweet solo collection, and a public fight with drummer Kevin Fennell. He closes the year with Blazing Gentlemen, a headier, rockier solo offering*.* | Robert Pollard: Blazing Gentlemen | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18802-robert-pollard-blazing-gentlemen/ | Blazing Gentlemen | If there's anything like a normal year for Bob Pollard fans, 2013 wasn't it. These past 12 months did offer a fine new EP and an okay-enough album—their fourth since early 2012—from the reunited Guided by Voices. But it's become increasingly clear that a classic on par with the lo-fi legends' peak-era material might've been a little too much to ask for. Then there was the late-summer tiff between Pollard and drummer Kevin Fennell, whose unsuccessful attempt to peddle the beaten-to-shit drumkit he'd recorded many GBV classics on got him publicly shamed and subsequently fired by his old pal Bob. Bursts of drama notwithstanding, shows were few and far between, and side-hustles have been scant and largely of little consequence. The lone bright spot came this summer, when Pollard issued the rich, graceful Honey Locust Honky Tonk, instantly cementing itself as one of the best records under his own name. Now, Pollard's closing out this weird year with Blazing Gentlemen, a headier, rockier counterpoint to the unfailingly sweet Honey Locust.
For a guy who's made records every which way, the approach Pollard took with Gentlemen's construction is especially peculiar. Instead of appliquéing words onto melodies, he built these songs from the lyrics up, scouring his notebooks line-by-line for titles and lyrics, then writing melodies—and then chords—around those. Pollard's always been a collagist—sometimes quite literally—but this method feels especially piecemeal; every few lines, the underriding melody seems to shift, leaving behind any sense of continuity. Much of Pollard's best work has taken a similarly attention-deficient tack, although Gentlemen's disjointment is at the micro level, all mismatched segments and jarring transitions. And, given the wide range in quality between one segment to the next, your time with Gentlemen's spent waiting around for the good part, only to find it gone before you've been properly introduced.
Ramrodding through 16 songs in 32 minutes and change, Gentlemen may be the least classically pretty Pollard in ages; ballads are scant, distortion's applied liberally, and while the fidelity's fairly high and the instrumentation consistent, the collection—throwing Honey Locust's carefully considered lushness in stark relief—opts for the quick and dirty. Pollard and Gentlemen cohort Todd Tobias—together, responsible for every sound you hear on the record—have certainly arranged a plaintive melody or two in their day, but Gentlemen largely leaves these overexcitable songs to their own devices. Opener "Magic Man Hype" is held together by sheer inertia, rumbling through chord after oddball chord. The title track matches a sludgy verse to a towering chorus, which would be fine, if an out-from-nowhere bridge didn't pop up to derail the forward motion. "His passionless kisses are real hits and misses," Pollard sings on "Blazing Gentlemen", and that pretty much sums it up: song for song, Pollard records are typically a hodgepodge, but the eternally jumpy Gentlemen whittles that inconsistency down to a second-by-second basis.
Whenever Pollard can keep an idea in his head for more than a minute at a time, Gentlemen starts to click. The cowbell-imbued "Faking the Boy Scouts" sports the set's stickiest hook; sure, its verses are a tad on the jittery side, but unlike much of Blazing Gentlemen, they at least seem to be acquainted with the chorus that follows. "Tea People" is one of those effortlessly catchy, totally stupid stompers only Pollard can get away with, and again, its verse and chorus seem to have been in the same room before. But for every song that seems to have been conceived as a piece, there are two more assembled from whatever they had lying around. "Tonight's the Rodeo" is elegant enough at first, but its chorus—all three seconds of it—is given neither time nor space to develop itself as anything but a nuisance. The lyrics are just as scatterbrained as the music, notebook dumps turned not-so-exquisite corpses; Pollard-logic is never an easy path to follow, but Gentlemen gets your head spinning in a fashion that'll have you swearing off the stuff the next morning.
Are two half-formed ideas as good as one complete thought? Gentlemen seems to think so. But, for all of Gentlemen's nervy shapeshifting, its fitful thrills never quite make for a satisfying whole; it's too restless, too scattered, too gangly. Even the record's more-consistent-than-usual sound can't help hold these spasmodic, shapeshifting songs together for more than a couple minutes at a time. Some fans will no doubt revel in Gentlemen's endless discrepancies; after all, part of being a Pollard obsessive is learning to take the bad with the good. But, on Gentlemen, the bad and the good are so manically intertwined, it gets to be a little tough telling them apart. Gentlemen's about as interesting as middling Pollard records get, but it's middling all the same, a fittingly abnormal end to a most unusual year. | 2013-12-09T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2013-12-09T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | Fire | December 9, 2013 | 5.7 | 0b0c0c3b-5ebe-40c3-a236-17f4eefe7f7f | Paul Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-thompson/ | null |
Dipset were always a theater of the absurd. On their first album in more than a decade, Cam’ron, Juelz Santana, and Jim Jones become a trio of almost no effort. | Dipset were always a theater of the absurd. On their first album in more than a decade, Cam’ron, Juelz Santana, and Jim Jones become a trio of almost no effort. | Dipset: Diplomatic Ties | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dipset-diplomatic-ties/ | Diplomatic Ties | If the first Dipset album in 14 years makes you want to retrieve your Blogspot password, hold a beat before you get those computers putin’. In the last decade, Cam’ron, Juelz Santana, and Jim Jones have released massive amounts of music. But when was the last time any of it held public interest for more than a few days—“Pop Champagne,” maybe? Remember when Cam’ron was relegated to Vado’s sidekick for a year or so? Remember that Jim Jones dropped an album called Wasted Talent in April? Does Jim Jones?
This is the phoned-in, diminished version of Dipset that shows up for Diplomatic Ties, an utter lack of engagement serving as its only unifying thread. The posse track with the LOX is titled “Dipset/LOX,” just enough to differentiate from the previous “D-Block/Dipset.” There is a “Dipset Forever,” though unrelated to the Purple Haze closing track of the same name. Diplomatic Ties’ nine numbers clock in just 30 minutes, like they’re suddenly an indie rock band. They couldn’t even bother to pad it out with Cam’ron laughing at his voicemail or an interlude where Hell Rell defends his title as “the Rakim of the jail-phone freestyle.”
Effort has always been tough thing to quantify on a Dipset record, though. Cam’ron can act like the process of rapping is entirely beneath him while smirking at the way the English language bends to his will; Killa Cam deflated the purist enterprise of the Rap City freestyle by counting a stack of bills while letting off the greatest freestyle in the show’s history. The Diplomats were a crew whose disregard for social decorum made them a movement for fans who took their theater of the absurd very seriously—see Das Racist, at times a Dipset tribute act. Juelz Santana referred to himself as the “young Mohammed Atta” of Dipset Taliban soon after 9/11, but they remained New York’s most beloved crew for the next five years. They signed to Roc-A-Fella and spent their entire stay locked in a cold war with JAY-Z. The Heatmakerz flipped Winger and Starship samples into street anthems. Cam’ron’s acts of occasionally unforgivable ignorance have been curated and ranked.
But as they’ve done consistently for the past decade or so, the trio mostly kills time in 16-bar increments over off-the-rack trap production here, putting the bare minimum of work into songs they know will get maybe half a minute of acknowledgment at a live show before returning to something from Come Home With Me. This is supposed to be the fun part of Dipset—Juelz rhyming the same word with itself a dozen times, Jim Jones setting new standards for grandiose ad-libs, Cam finding creative new ways to applaud his car and degrade his sexual conquests. But Jadakiss gets off the most memorable line, if only because “might’ve thought he was Drew the way he bled so” is dorky enough to get laughed out of a Grantland Gchat.
Jones has aged the best because the physical act of rapping always sounded like a draining ordeal, anyway; even at the peak of his powers, he rode the beat with the parking brake on. His new thing is to punctuate half his lines with “#facts,” as if anyone comes to Dipset to foster a healthy relationship with reality. “Inside a catfish/I don’t mean no picture prank,” Cam raps on “Sauce Boyz,” somehow seeming proud of that punchline despite sounding like he recorded Diplomatic Ties while fighting a nasty bronchial infection. As with The Program, Cam’s only impactful lyric comes at Kanye West’s expense, dismissing his claims of mental illness while calling him an Uncle Tom.
Justified or not, this has been standard operating procedure for Dipset, who never crossed a bridge they didn’t later burn. And yet, they continue to forsake everything that made them influential or even entertaining for a last-ditch pursuit of the chart success that eluded them during their critical zenith. Rather than engaging with the rappers they inspired (A$AP Mob, remember, was masterminded by a former Dipset intern, while Roc Marciano has inherited Cam’s throne of deadpan gutter talk), they throw guys like Murda Beatz and Belly on these tracks like they have any chance of filling a RapCaviar gap. Tory Lanez’s cameo on “No Sleep,” meanwhile, is so off-key it’s virtually avant-garde; it’s the most tone-deaf hook to appear on any track from a crew that has already employed Max B and Freekey Zekey.
Diplomatic Ties begins with an interview clip of Drake asking 40 to “make me some Dipset/Heatmakerz shit,” a demand that the actual Heatmakerz tracks from Diplomatic Ties can’t meet. During “Dipset Forever,” they make a Queen sample sound so cheap their only goal seems to be avoiding a clearance lawsuit.
Though noticed by mostly no one except surviving Dipset lurkers, former B-teamers Hell Rell, 40 Cal, and JR Writer united to drop an EP, The Upstage, on the same day Diplomatic Ties arrived. It’s almost entirely unlistenable yet weirdly compelling in its self-regard. During “Presidential,” for instance, JR Writer does his Swaggy P heat-check thing over a remake of “I’m Ready,” from Diplomatic Immunity. “Y’all all in the friend zone/’cause y’all ain’t fuckin’ with me/This shit is straight platonic/Got it?/Cut the shit, dickhead/Lorena Bobbitt.” Yes, these are actual lyrics in 2018, but the way JR Writer treats them like irrefutable proof that he’s the greatest rapper alive is kind of inspiring. We should all listen to it every morning before work.
Meanwhile, the last time Cam sounded even remotely interested in his legacy was on Uncle Murda’s minor Hot 97 novelty hit, “Cam’ron Voice”—a depressing and undeniable acknowledgment of Cam becoming Twitter public domain. If Purple Haze was indeed “the album that launched a thousand rap blogs,” Diplomatic Ties is just more proof that they’ve long been a better source for new Dipset lyrics than the real thing. | 2018-12-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-12-04T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Set Life / Empire | December 4, 2018 | 4 | 0b0f5033-8faf-4482-a3be-30a24275a1df | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
Smog man's first release under his birth name is also his least experimental: Anchored by rich string arrangements courtesy of Royal Trux's Neil Michael Hagerty (who also co-produced), the album is a relatively straightforward collage of country, folk, and classic Austin indie. | Smog man's first release under his birth name is also his least experimental: Anchored by rich string arrangements courtesy of Royal Trux's Neil Michael Hagerty (who also co-produced), the album is a relatively straightforward collage of country, folk, and classic Austin indie. | Bill Callahan: Woke on a Whaleheart | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10139-woke-on-a-whaleheart/ | Woke on a Whaleheart | Like pal and labelmate Will Oldham, Bill Callahan has spent much of the last decade shrouded in quasi-anonymity, recording under the guise of Smog, or most recently, (smog). Appropriately, Woke on a Whaleheart, Callahan's first release under his birth name, is also his least explicitly experimental. Anchored by Callahan's deep, loping pipes and rich string arrangements courtesy of Royal Trux's Neil Michael Hagerty (who also co-produced), the album is a relatively straightforward collage of country, folk, and classic Austin indie.
Callahan may finally be stepping into his own name, but in both narrative and sound, Woke on a Whaleheart is insistently vague, riddled with half-thoughts and muddled images. Accordingly, opener "From the River to the Ocean" flatly implores us to "have faith in wordless knowledge"-- to submit to the nebulous truth inherent to all big things (see: love, nature, and death). Whaleheart's instrumentation follows suit, meandering and slack, with bits of piano and percussion, twisty guitars, and itinerant melodies. Imprecision is hardly the backbone of great art, but it's still strangely easy to be seduced by Callahan's cloud, and if you can learn how to listen to his loose, flowing stories without scouring the sky for a payoff, there are plenty of bits to enjoy here.
Lyrically, themes range from banal (in "A Man Needs a Woman or a Man to be a Man", Callahan finds his rose-addled bedroom kinda girly, declaring "It's pretty womanly in here!") to metaphysical (in single "Diamond Dancer", a girl dances herself into a diamond, "doing the thing as she dreamed it.") The jangly, sweet-faced "Sycamore" finds Callahan crowing hard about the cycle of life over tinny guitar and light drums: "He taught me to love in the wild and fight in a gym/ He taught me the bottle gives birth to the cup/ And you won't get hurt if you just keep your hands up/ And stand tall/ Like Sycamore."
Callahan's voice, meanwhile, is thick and precise, tempered only by the smallest hints of grit-- on "The Wheel" he channels Outlaw composure, sounding like a cross between Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings with all his round sounds and bellows. The track even features gospel-singer back-up (provided by the lovely Deani Pugh-Flemmings) and vaguely biblical spoken proclamations ("The wheel has turned one full circle/ Time for my meal of wood").
Woke on a Whaleheart is a deceptively easy listen-- steady, lulling, and vehemently organic-- but consequently, it can begin to feel invisible. Sound fades into sound, until silence is noise. Still, it's hardly facile: Violinist Elizabeth Warren and guitarist Pete Denton make sparks, and various other players dip in and out, offering Wurlitzer, found sounds, Farfisa, lap steel, glockenspiel, and Hammond organ. Callahan may have ditched the instrumental, uber lo-fi methodology of his earliest days, but Woke on a Whaleheart is still a fully realized event, if not necessarily a game-changing one. | 2007-04-26T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2007-04-26T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Drag City | April 26, 2007 | 6.9 | 0b1132c6-dcc9-45bc-a214-57c803526d3a | Amanda Petrusich | https://pitchfork.com/staff/amanda-petrusich/ | null |
Richie Hawtin's first official studio album in over a decade finds the techno pioneer in an unusually nostalgic mode. | Richie Hawtin's first official studio album in over a decade finds the techno pioneer in an unusually nostalgic mode. | Richie Hawtin: From My Mind to Yours | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21421-from-my-mind-to-yours/ | From My Mind to Yours | The title of Plus 8 Records' 25th anniversary release—which is also Richie Hawtin's first official studio album for over a decade—From My Mind to Yours, directly mirrors a compilation put out by the label in 1991-2, From Our Minds to Yours. That symmetry forms a tidy back to the label's origins, and it also serves as the crowning moment of this uncharacteristically nostalgic chapter of Richie Hawtin's career. Thus far, Hawtin has cultivated a reputation as techno's future fetishist, most literally through Minus, the heavily stylized record label that provided minimal techno with one of its key aesthetics during its mid-2000s heyday: subtractively austere, steely and clinical.
The video interview that accompanied the surprise release of From My Mind to Yours in December found Hawtin in a completely different place. He was positively twinkly-eyed with nostalgia, as he talked of "going back to basics." He credits vintage string sounds and production tricks, while speaking of stripping racks of gear back to the essentials in a Berlin studio that, by chance, replicates the dimensions (and spatial sweet spot) of a former production space from his formative years in Canada. In the weeks leading up to the final reveal of From My Mind to Yours, Plus 8 pressed up a series of album teasers; it was widely speculated that Hawtin, an occasional critic of the "pain in the ass" vinyl format, was behind the anonymous, white-label productions. In the midst of this campaign, he revived his 1990s rave night, Jak, for a one-off reunion party in Detroit, and made arrangements to pull the plug on the Ibiza superclub residency of his popular club night, ENTER.
From My Mind to Yours similarly hints towards some gratifying full-circle moments. "Them," under the F.U.S.E moniker, unfolds with slow-reveal hypnotism, and works as a faithful tribute to the classic blueprint of Midwest techno. Album opener "No Way Back" draws together various strands of Hawtin's production personalities, casting a crystalline modern sheen over a thickened kick drum and twisting 303 line. Yet the album's genuinely compelling moments are scattered out over spotless plains of DJ-tool functionality, mechanically loopy acid, and towering-but-harmless walls of precise techno sound design.
The most Hawtin-esque production tropes since the inception of Plus 8 (and Minus) reappear here, but with neither the vigour needed to push his futurist agenda, nor the dynamic context of his rich back catalog."Stretching" requires a vivid imagination to find an appeal beyond its minimalist bare bones, and Circuit Breaker's only appearance—the curiously unmoving "Systematic"—doesn't begin to approach the gruffness of that alias' industrial past. The clutch of tracks that fall under the 80XX alias play directly to the critical cliches that Hawtin is often accused of creating. Plastikman, the most beloved of Hawtin's identities, fares the best across the two-volume album. His signature hyper drums appear on the bold "Purrkusiv," and its visceral power is undeniable; follow-up track "Gymnastiks" deploys its sleazy bassline and wispy drum echoes to a satisfying yin-yang effect.
Hawtin's '90s techno hero status was cemented with landmark classics like "Spastik" and "Elektrostatik," which in turn assured a spot for Plus 8 in the annals of techno history. The label's only other recent release arrived unannounced last year: an anonymous record that was eventually revealed to be produced by electro house megastar and Twitter hothead Deadmau5. This was an unpopular revelation in certain quarters, but it worked both as a gossip-worthy moment and an effective jolt of renewal for the label's run-up to its 2015 anniversary; the tracks's production standards signalled a revived richness of sound that the label lacked in its latter years. At moments, From My Mind to Yours captures some of that same texture and immediacy, but the spontaneity and looseness that Hawtin speaks of so passionately have been diluted through the process of translation. Rather than feeling like the beginnings of a new phase, From My Mind To Yours presents a version of a fertile past that isn't working toward the benefit of the present. | 2016-01-13T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2016-01-13T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Electronic | Plus 8 | January 13, 2016 | 6.5 | 0b138eb0-b442-4b5e-8def-79377f34ae6e | Christine Kakaire | https://pitchfork.com/staff/christine-kakaire/ | null |
Derailed by a murky copyright claim, Dark Night of the Soul is worth tracking down. Among the many guests are Wayne Coyne, Gruff Rhys, and James Mercer. | Derailed by a murky copyright claim, Dark Night of the Soul is worth tracking down. Among the many guests are Wayne Coyne, Gruff Rhys, and James Mercer. | Danger Mouse / Sparklehorse: Dark Night of the Soul | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13193-dark-night-of-the-soul/ | Dark Night of the Soul | The Dark Night of the Soul, a term coined by the 17th century Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross, describes a point in a pious Christian's life when they are unable to reconcile their relationship to God, and take painful steps to purify themselves. Mark Linkous-- better known as Sparklehorse-- would seem to understand something about trials and endurance. If any current performer has endured traumatic, life-altering experiences-- an early-1990s overdose that damaged his legs and almost killed him, several years in and out of states of severe depression and addiction-- while retaining an optimistic disposition, it's him.
In 2005, Linkous' friends tried to pry him out of a depressed state by playing him new music. One record that struck him was Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, which led to a mutually appreciative relationship between the two artists. Danger Mouse worked on a few songs on Sparklehorse's 2006 return-to-form Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, cutting Linkous' delicate, hermetic songs with a new type of sharpness and color. In interviews for that record, Linkous and Danger Mouse kept dropping hints at a future collaboration: maybe it would be called Dangerhorse, maybe Sparklemouse. It would be something.
It ended up as Dark Night of the Soul, involving more than a dozen noteworthy musical collaborators as well as David Lynch, who signed on to create a 100-page book of original photography inspired by Linkous and Danger Mouse's music. As news leaked the buzz grew louder, and people were excited for a reason: Dark Night combined the best elements of a classic rock event with a very modern strategy. Links between the film, music, and art worlds were established, a ton of stars gathered together under the creative guidance of a couple of relative recluses, a regular old CD was marketed like a Hollywood blockbuster and packaged with a photo album for 50 bucks.
Unfortunately, it's even become a "lost album," as well-- the victim of a record label acting like a lawsuit-happy killjoy. In the last few weeks, it came to light that the record was being shelved due to some sort of mysterious copyright claim from EMI (who weren't too happy with Danger Mouse's first foray into recorded music, either). Danger Mouse, who has emerged as the public face of the project, issued a statement that the book would thus be issued with a blank CD, ostensibly for burning leaked copies of the album.
This is one particular circumstance where a leak-- even at 160kbps-- is a net positive. This project, incomplete as it may be, is certainly worth "possessing," in whatever form that takes. Linkous and Danger Mouse both have proven conclusively in the past that they know how to choose collaborators, and Dark Night is a well-sequenced and unique album that ingeniously balances its contributors' strengths with the overall theme of the work-- self-examination, often under stark circumstances, in the interest of understanding one's own existence.
It's not signaled outright, but Dark Night comprises four sections, and plays like a revue. Linkous has always feared putting himself out there too much, and seeming too "pop." It makes sense that he'd open this collection with a triptych from Wayne Coyne, Gruff Rhys, and Jason Lytle, all of whom frequently sing in Linkous-like registers shot through with delicate, boyish wonder and play with psychedelia in similarly rewarding ways. On "Revenge", Coyne works in a wheelhouse he's not seen since The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi, evangelizing, "Once we become/ The thing we dread/ There's no way to stop," in the form of a plangent ballad. For his part, Gruff Rhys works best at the level of empire, and the fuzzy psych-country of "Just War" could fit nicely on Phantom Power. As is his manner, Lytle's "Jaykub" traces an everyday schlub's dream of receiving official awards for simply being himself-- until the alarm clock wakes him up.
The middle two sections of the record are its weakest, but there are rewards all the same. Julian Casablancas' "Little Girl" opens what could be dubbed the "punk" section, his slick insouciance sounding strangely out of place eight years after Is This It, at a time when punk vocal styles have largely trended toward the amateurish and overdriven. Regardless, he's able to effectively register his everyday/macho character, nonchalantly singing in front needly guitars (and a rock solo!). It's followed by Frank Black's "Angel's Harp", one of the more forced-feeling cuts, and then Iggy Pop's "Pain", on which he ramps up his best, darkest croon, looking back at his life with a mix of regret and pride. The guitars on Pop's piece are strikingly reminiscent of those on the Magazine song "Shot By Both Sides", which is noteworthy because Real Life was re-released in 2007 by, you guessed it, EMI. The guitars are too crucial to the piece to lose, and Iggy's too big of a name to drop from this collection. Perhaps "Pain" is the reason for the forced abandonment of this whole thing?
Either way, Dark Night shifts again after "Pain" to its second psychedelic section, featuring David Lynch himself, another Lytle number, "Everytime I'm With You", on which he is completely resigned to just hanging out and getting resoundingly fucked up, and James Mercer. Lynch's "Star Eyes (I Can Catch It)" is a piece of muddy string-laden psychedelia, but Mercer's effort, the wonderfully titled "Insane Lullaby", is one of the finest moments on the album. Turns out that Mercer is as much a doppelganger for Linkous as Lytle, Coyne, and Rhys, and his cadence and vocal inflections are situated amidst a gently stunning cacophony of glitches, bells, and strings. He sounds like he's lost, but he also sounds like he's loving it.
Dark Night's best sequence is its last one, when Linkous reunites himself with Nina Persson, formerly of the Cardigans, and singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt (both guested on the 2001 Sparklehorse LP Its Wonderful Life). Persson and Linkous split vocal duties on the country-tinged number "Daddy's Gone", the lovely, sentimental sort of "pop" that Linkous has always seemed so afraid of, yet is also exceedingly, seemingly effortlessly, capable of making. Chesnutt finishes the record with "Grim Augury", which, along with the Lynch-feauring title track, is a fitting one-two punch of rural eccentricity that allows Linkous to reengage with the woodshed hermit side of his musical persona.
Dark Night of the Soul has been pitched as a marquee collaboration without precedent, which makes the mundane EMI copyright baloney that scrapped the project all the more depressing. But while Danger Mouse, Lynch, and the dozen or so artists involved with the project contributed their talents, the feeling I get from Dark Night is all Linkous. In genre terms-- punk rock, country, schizophrenic folk, psychedelia, space-rock-- the album neatly indexes his own discography as much as the overriding thematics do. It's fitting, then, that an artist who is on one hand so admittedly fearful of performance, and on the other has such a knack for collaboration, would make an album such as this, on which a group of musical actors present his work while he stands off to the side in the shadows. | 2009-05-27T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2009-05-27T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap / Rock | self-released | May 27, 2009 | 7.4 | 0b158dad-6f31-42d0-b0a9-f6c0eaeff622 | Eric Harvey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-harvey/ | null |
Reportedly recorded in 2 weeks, Late Nights: Europe is a polished, 14-track libertine manifesto, wrapping up a trilogy of odes to the grown and sexy. Featuring Ty Dolla $ign, Wiz Khalifa, and more. | Reportedly recorded in 2 weeks, Late Nights: Europe is a polished, 14-track libertine manifesto, wrapping up a trilogy of odes to the grown and sexy. Featuring Ty Dolla $ign, Wiz Khalifa, and more. | Jeremih: Late Nights: Europe | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22180-late-nights-europe/ | Late Nights: Europe | After celebrating his 29th birthday with a set at the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago, hometown hero Jeremih hinted at some new music, which arrived last Wednesday in the form of Late Nights: Europe. Jeremih Felton has been rather bounteous in recent times, adding this mixtape to his discography just a few months after Late Nights: the Album dropped in December 2015. The latter project was his third bonafide studio effort, for those who observe the distinction strictly, trailing 2010’s All About You by five years. Europe materialized at light speed by comparison. Reportedly recorded in two weeks, it’s a polished, 14-track libertine manifesto. Following 2012’s Late Nights with Jeremih and t**he Album, Europe wraps up a trilogy of odes to the grown and sexy.
The tape’s title indicates a concept, insofar as our protagonist still thrives in the hours after the after party. Rather than a sudden desire to sing over French touch beats, the Europe of it all denotes location—recording sessions took place during the overseas stops of his summer tour. Even then the application is loose, as opener “Dubai” proves that he’s limited by neither geography nor genre. With assists from K Camp and Wiz Khalifa, the trio rides on trap-inspired drum patterns laced with a twinkling piano riff, and we get reacquainted with Rapping Jeremih.
This braggart alter ego shows up again on “Lebanon,” “Amsterdam” and “Oslo, Norway,” flexing with a morning-after rasp in his voice, worn and torn during wild nights on stage and in pursuit of overwhelming women. The production, courtesy of Soundz on all but two songs, provides the perfect backdrop for him to hone his delivery, which is at times reminiscent of the drawling, yelping flow that’s currently in style. Think more Atlanta, less Brandenburg, although track three “Berlin (She Wit It)” is noteworthy for an irresistibly simple refrain that you can find yourself mumbling at random moments during the day.
Unsurprisingly, the best songs are the ones that showcase Singing Jeremih and his velvety voice. “Czech Republic,” a love song with a soft-core slant, is the standout track for that reason. There must be something in the Nordic air: because two of the tape’s winners are “Copenhagen” and the raunchier “Stockholm.” Pillow talk is present throughout but “Paris (Who Taught You)” is essentially sonic porn, thanks to Ty Dolla $ign.
Their collaborations are studies in lewd one-upmanship, with Ty Dolla $ign usually winning. But that’s a huge part of Dolla’s brand, an arguably more knowable one than Jeremih’s. Notoriety in post-Internet pop culture comes from either persistent productivity, or commitment to a level of visibility that generates interest—even in the absence of creative output. Jeremih’s approach lies somewhere in between these two modi operandi.
He’s constant, if not necessarily prolific, while revealing very little of himself via today’s most social media channels. You recognize him from the hook of that one song, and he has independently parlayed his immense talent into platinum-selling triumphs, but he still remains something of an enigma. Jeremih almost never releases videos to accompany his singles, and through your mind’s eye it’s hard to picture his face without sunglasses on—like a less rambunctious Lil’ Jon. On “British Headboardz,” a hazy slow jam complete with bed squeaks that would make Trillville blush, his ideal companion is one who knows that there’s no “a” in his name.
This harks back to 2009’s “Birthday Sex,” Jeremih’s cheeky breakthrough single that was popular long before everyone learned how to pronounce his name properly. His sound has evolved a lot since then, perhaps as a conscious effort to rebrand away from that single, but undoubtedly because of the lifestyle change that followed its chart success. If t**he Album was the realization of his new sound, Europe was his chance to experiment with it away from the label pressures that hounded his previous release.
It’s rare to go through trials without error—the juke-riffing “Belgium (Get Down)” ends up sounding like a reference track in context. But the fault for any missteps on Europe lies for the most part with the tape’s supporting players. Verses from the Game and Krept & Konan are superfluous, although the dancehall-tinged “London” is all the better for a coquettish appearance by Stefflon Don. Fame has taken Jeremih to many different places this summer, and his openness to creative inspiration in far-flung cities has paid off. If this is what he came up with in a fortnight, running on what couldn’t have been much sleep, the wait for what he does next should be worth it. | 2016-07-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-07-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | self-released | July 28, 2016 | 7.8 | 0b19e39f-1f2a-4032-a0f7-2135fb412414 | Vanessa Okoth-Obbo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/vanessa- okoth-obbo/ | null |
Young hypna-delic New Zealander Connan Mockasin's languid, mind-submerged Forever Dolphin Love is the work of someone sounding small but dreaming big. | Young hypna-delic New Zealander Connan Mockasin's languid, mind-submerged Forever Dolphin Love is the work of someone sounding small but dreaming big. | Connan Mockasin: Forever Dolphin Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15716-forever-dolphin-love/ | Forever Dolphin Love | Young New Zealander Connan Mockasin's low-wattage, shuffle-footed, hypna-delic kiwi-pop's a little like shaking Syd Barrett awake from a nap, or maybe Tortoise jamming on Chills songs underwater. Or is it Black Moth Super Rainbow's Haunted Graffiti? Tricky as it is to pinpoint just what's sliding past in Forever Dolphin Love's psyche-mining slipstreams, it's awfully easy to get caught up in its current all the same. Mockasin's languid, drowsy psych-whimsy-- with its occasional brain-bending detours into a self-made language, more Sigur Rós goobledigook than WU LYF cookie monstrism-- seems to emerge from a gauzy dreamland state, only semi-conscious of its constantly shifting positions. But if you don't come to Connan Mockasin expecting too much pep the first few minutes he's up and going, the gears eventually start to turn.
Forever Dolphin Love opens with a gaggle of children shouting salutations at Mockasin: It is, by some distance, the loudest sound on the LP. The stark, almost gestural tunes, Mockasin's wiggly, high-pitched vocals-- whether slathered in Tobacco-style smear or unadorned-- and the record's murky, two-floors-up mix don't exactly get the heart rate rising, but Mockasin's ease around both hooks and arrangements offer plenty to catch your half-attention. Its spindly guitars and squirmy vocals suggest nobody's in any particular hurry to get anyplace, yet Forever Dolphin Love's drifty hooks, when he gets around to them, never seem to wander too far off course. (Once awoken by those kiddies in the record's first few seconds, Mockasin may be a bit crust-eyed throughout Forever Dolphin Love, but he's always got his wits about him.)
Opener "Megumi the Milkyway Above" is something of a slacker samba, its gently descending melody and chipmunk vocals beamed directly from Mockasin's subconscious to yours. It slides into the untethered, almost subliminal "It's Choade My Dear": Half-travelogue, half-come on, the tune wafts its way into the room and seems to hang there like a fog. Mockasin's oft-treated, clarity-averse, dare-I-say-wimpy vocals swallow syllables whole, further lending these slippery, spacious tracks their dreamlike quality. It's probably best, all told, that literal meaning takes a backseat to glorious nonsense on a record called Forever Dolphin Love. To that end, the title track-- all 10 minutes and four seconds of it-- is the album's deliriously comatose highlight, a rusty motorik giving way to a kooky, faux-naif, head-sticking hook. An occasional semi-Floydian found-sound burst swirls around the stereo field: The almost skeletal arrangements occasionally give way to a jazz-rock flare-up, but these eyelid flickers never seem to disturb Mockasin's semi-conscious state.
Dolphin glides casually through song and snippet, its construction almost elliptical, its effect amniotic. As such, its highlights seem to emerge after-the-fact, burrowing in while it's on and bubbling up later. Mockasin's a more ambitious songwriter than his sleepy demeanor would sometimes suggest, though-- the epic unravel of his tracks are proof enough of that. Ultimately, the ever-unraveling, mind-submerged Forever Dolphin Love reveals itself to be the work of a guy who's sounding small but dreaming big. | 2011-08-09T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2011-08-09T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Rock | Because / Phantasy | August 9, 2011 | 7.1 | 0b1d708b-9832-4038-ad3a-a99b57958b96 | Paul Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-thompson/ | null |
Following months of anticipation and hype, Odd Future's anarchic leader drops his second full-length: the bleak and uncompromising Goblin. | Following months of anticipation and hype, Odd Future's anarchic leader drops his second full-length: the bleak and uncompromising Goblin. | Tyler, the Creator: Goblin | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15413-goblin/ | Goblin | A year ago, very few people knew Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. The nihilistic, mostly-teenaged L.A. rap collective has been releasing free mixtapes since 2008, but until recently, they were ignored by most of the rap blogosphere. Full of pathos, humor, and hatred, the group has worked tirelessly to establish their own intricate world online-- from their YouTube account, filled with self-produced videos, to their individual Twitters, Tumblrs, Facebooks, and Formsprings, all of which they update prolifically. To this tight-knit "us," virtually everyone else is a "them," to be mocked, laughed at, and fucked with.
Lots of people have been noticing OFWGKTA lately, though, and no wonder: They're new and exciting and divisive and youthful, a magnet for controversy and commentary, and near-perfect think-piece-generating machines-- due in part to the brutality and stomach-turning sexual violence of their raps. At the fore of OFWGKTA's 10-member army is Tyler, the Creator, whose feral stage presence, distinctive growl, and misanthropic lyrics have won the group a legion of obstinate followers. His 2009 debut, Bastard, with its lush, Neptunes-inspired productions and starkly confessional subject matter, is a transgressive, creative burst of anxiety and absurdity. It was one of Odd Future's early catalysts, and along with 16-year-old Earl Sweatshirt's Earl and the OFWGKTA mixtape Radical, it's one of three underground classics in their pocket.
While critics have attempted to square Tyler's talent with the frequent mentions of rape and murder in his rhymes (Sean Fennessey wrote a piece for Pitchfork early on, and this blog post by Pitchfork contributor Nitsuh Abebe is also essential), fans have pushed his number of Twitter followers well into six figures. And between he and Hodgy Beats' performance on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" and his excellent "Yonkers" single and video, the industry noticed, too: Billboard put OFWGKTA on their cover, a major label secured them to a record deal, and Diddy, Kanye, and Jay-Z all showed interest. Odd Future have earned so much attention so quickly that Tyler, the Creator kicks off his second solo release, Goblin, venting to his therapist about fame, message boards, critics, hype, expectations, media scrutiny, and being a role model-- before selling a single album.
There are a lot of expectations placed on Goblin, namely, that it will serve as a potential crossover. But while that might have been the hope for a lot of those industry co-signers, or even a lot of listeners, it's clearly not Tyler's intention. Goblin does not sound like a record made by the goofy, smiling kid with the pulled-up tube socks riding Jimmy Fallon's back. Instead, it's a natural sequel to Bastard-- a dark, insular indie-rap album. Where Bastard was more accessible and inviting, this album is bleak, long, monolithic, and can be a slog to get through. It's also uncomfortable and brave-- a brutal but honest look at Tyler's image of himself.
Musically, Goblin is essentially a turn-of-the-millennium indie rap record-- abstract, difficult for outsiders to locate a way in to, and bled completely of anything that resembles pop. It features almost nothing that counts as a chorus, making few gestures to the mainstream. It's a purist's record, leaning on inventive production and Tyler's flow and meter. With hindsight, then, it makes sense that the rise of Odd Future started in the avant UK music mag The Wire, which a decade ago was putting leftfield rap groups like cLOUDDEAD and Anti-Pop Consortium on its cover. In another world, before the Internet was the music industry's central delivery system, that might have been the limit of Goblin's reach-- it could have been a well-received indie hip-hop record to place alongside releases on Def Jux or Anticon. (Fittingly, it comes via XL Records, the imprint that last decade signed Dizzee Rascal, another culturally omnivorous, incredibly hyped teen rapper and producer who added a new wrinkle to independent hip-hop.)
Of course, Tyler isn't interested in the political questions that drove many of his indie-rap forbearers. Instead, his primary mode of thought is negation. From the Stooges to Sex Pistols to NWA to Eminem, telling the world to fuck itself can be a compelling, even meaningful or necessary expression. Yet while each of those artists gave a multi-layered voice to specific disenfranchised groups, Tyler sounds underdeveloped when he attempts to articulate for anyone other than himself. His takes on slash-and-burn, knucklehead rap-- especially the "kill people, burn shit, fuck school" refrain of "Radicals"-- is particularly cringe-worthy; stock phrases shouted with no larger purpose. Goblin is at its best when Tyler sounds isolated, frightened, and confused. It's the work of someone trying to figure out the world around him and his place within it, someone who often doesn't like the conclusions he's drawing.
To his core fans, Tyler is accessible and approachable, and not just on record. He's online constantly, forging a unique bond with his listeners, and is probably right now shouting down this and other Goblin reviews. He comes across as an everyday kid. He lives with his grandmother. He likes porn; he hates collard greens. This relatability and strong audience/artist bond, and the diaristic nature of his rhymes, make him as much emo as hip-hop. His place in the indie music landscape is oddly most reminiscent of Salem, another gothic, often-derided group beloved by a core of committed young listeners but shrugged off by those with a more developed perspective. In short, he's made this record for alienated kids like himself. If you don't already like his music, you probably won't like Goblin. And that's apparently the way he wants it.
For everyone else, the album remains an either/or prospect. For one, the record could have used an editor-- it'd be stronger if it were 20 minutes shorter. Yet the highs are very high: "Yonkers" remains a potential frontrunner for song-of-the-year, and tracks like "Sandwitches", "Analog", "Tron Cat", and the Frank Ocean feature "She" work as standalones away from the album as a whole. Tyler's most inwardly focused songs-- the therapy-session set pieces "Goblin", "Nightmare", and "Golden"-- are also fascinating portraits from an unmoored mind struggling to remain grounded.
The record's feeling of drift and desperation also lends a very different tone to the controversial nature of Tyler's raps, which even at their most sickening feel like the ramblings of a lonely outsider. His fantasies and lack of filter are still huge roadblocks for many if not most listeners. They're depraved and despicable, tied in part to a long and unfortunate legacy of gangster and street rap. They're also one aspect of a larger, character-driven story-- a license that we grant to visual arts, film, and literature but rarely to pop music. That's not to claim Tyler is making some broader commentary about the world, or gender politics, or adding multiple layers of complexity to his more violent thoughts; he's not. Instead, his more reprehensible lines come across like a pathetic attempt for an underdeveloped, disconnected mind to locate some emotionality, control, or simply attention.
They certainly aren't jokes for his friends-- there's not a lot of humor on Goblin. The album really compartmentalizes the group's darkness and confusion, which makes sense because Odd Future guys like Frank Ocean and Domo Genesis usually weren't expressing anger or violence anyway. You sort of get the feeling-- since they are officially a package deal now-- that the weed stuff or the laughing-with-your-friends stuff might come out in a group effort. And even here, when other Odd Future members join Tyler, they tend to let a little light into the album-- particularly the Hodgy Beats pairings "Sandwitches" and "Analog". The coziness and camaraderie between Tyler and his cohorts even meets with a nasty end on Goblin, which concludes with a suite of tracks in which Tyler inexplicably kills his friends before suffering a total emotional breakdown.
What is here is more promise than delivery, yet it's still a game-changing record for indie hip-hop-- a singular and sonically complex album neither in hoc to 1986-88 "real" hip-hop nor created by rappers aiming to define themselves in opposition to the mainstream. (It takes about three minutes for Tyler to align himself with other artists here, but he chooses Erykah Badu, Pusha T, and Waka Flocka Flame instead of Immortal Technique.) Alongside Lil B and Soulja Boy, OFWGKTA are harnessing the Internet to communicate directly and often and pushing a new kind of indie hip-hop-- often rambling, not always musical, frequently surprising, and absolutely beloved by some. It takes work to get through, and a lot of its success rests on cult of personality. Those two barriers are particularly why it's so successful: You have to commit to it in many ways. You have to want to be an insider. And that's a club that's quickly expanding. | 2011-05-11T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2011-05-11T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | XL | May 11, 2011 | 8 | 0b1eb5ec-31f1-413c-a6bc-69aa37d3afd0 | Scott Plagenhoef | https://pitchfork.com/staff/scott-plagenhoef/ | null |
Turning their atmospheric soft focus on everyday life, this is as close as the Detroit dream-pop duo has come to making a pop record; it’s an ideal entry point into their sprawling catalog. | Turning their atmospheric soft focus on everyday life, this is as close as the Detroit dream-pop duo has come to making a pop record; it’s an ideal entry point into their sprawling catalog. | Windy & Carl: Allegiance and Conviction | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/windy-and-carl-allegiance-and-conviction/ | Allegiance and Conviction | Ambient and shoegaze musicians often like to cloak themselves in mystery, but Windy Weber and Carl Hultgren, who’ve been toiling at the seam between those genres for nearly three decades, are oracles of the ordinary. There’s no stylized anonymity, no attempt to persuade us that their drones are about the astronomical treatises of Johannes Kepler or whatever. They’re a married couple that runs a shop called Stormy Records in a suburb of Detroit, and while their music sounds enigmatic, it’s presented as a chronicle of domestic life at its most murky and poignant and, sometimes, quotidian: Blues for a UFO was framed by a text that might have been mistaken for a neighborhood-listserv rant. Refusing to put on esoteric airs, Windy & Carl reveal the complex, ambiguous timbre of even the plainest lives.
They aren’t a duo you look to for startling turns. Their dozens of releases since 1993 consist of minutely varied, grayscale watercolor studies of rain on windows, as their current press photo, so on the nose it has to be 15 percent joking, illustrates. But their new record, Allegiance and Conviction, stands out in two ways. The first is that the nine-minute “Moth to Flame” is the exception, not the rule; the other songs are almost half that length, each getting to the point and moving on more briskly than usual. The second is that the majority of them feature Weber’s vocals, which are usually more elusive. It’s as close as Windy & Carl have come to making a pop record (don’t worry, it’s not that close), and it’s an ideal entry point into a sprawling catalog.
Rather than relying on standard songwriting arrangements, Windy & Carl expertly draw out layer after layer from hulking yet delicate walls of quivering pitches and soft-edged shapes. Weber plays bass and sings; Hultgren uses delays, reverbs, and an EBow to multiply one electric guitar into an ambient orchestra, which he’s been doing since before it was a cliché. (He arguably helped invent that tactic, alongside contemporaries like Stars of the Lid.) The duo’s music has traces of 1980s dream pop and 1990s slowcore, particularly Low, another married-couple band. There’s more to the comparison than ink on a certificate. Marriage’s suffering and devotion breed a particular kind of intimacy. Windy & Carl often resemble an ambient version of Yo La Tengo, another group that centers on a long-wed duo and conveys a secret, profound sense of life beyond the music.
The record starts with “The Stranger,” with Weber’s vocals unusually high and exposed in the mix. She affects an almost tuneless Nico style, and your response might change from “This is bad singing” to “This is interesting singing” to “I could listen to this singing forever” in the space of a few lines. The bass is like a growl coming out of a cave, and Weber’s voice is a trail to follow as Hultgren sends shimmering timbres and echoing tones vaulting above. “I’m in plain view/Out looking for you/In the underground/We’ve got a job to do,” Weber sings. She might be talking about her uncharacteristically unveiled performance, her band’s cult-favorite status, or both, but it makes for a sharper, more sinister song than we’ve heard from these peddlers of pure atmosphere in ages.
From there, Weber’s voice sinks down, an unintelligible haunting, or a sound among sounds. But “The Stranger” incites a pressure that lasts through the giant, gentle pieces to follow. On the ravishing “Recon,” Hultgren patiently draws out a gently crying lead from sliding basses and slowly swirling plucks. “Alone” varies the graceful register with some tension, a tinge of desperation creeping into Weber’s voice amid the minor-key smears and anxious guitars. “Crossing Over” is the only time we hear anything resembling riffs, but even the supremely static “Moth to Flame” flickers with interior sparks. Though it’s as comforting as the whistle of a teapot, the music captures the feeling of storms—the atmospheric charge and churning motion—without resorting to volume or force. Being ordinary seldom seemed so wonderfully strange. | 2020-03-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-03-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Kranky | March 30, 2020 | 7.2 | 0b214861-de63-41e6-9f3d-d0b385d54d2e | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | |
The singer-songwriter, inspired by seven national holidays (including Bruce Springsteen’s birthday), finds love, death, and wry humor in a few spectacular originals and a collection of covers. | The singer-songwriter, inspired by seven national holidays (including Bruce Springsteen’s birthday), finds love, death, and wry humor in a few spectacular originals and a collection of covers. | Lucy Dacus: 2019 EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lucy-dacus-2019/ | 2019 EP | Nothing ruins Mother’s Day quite like the death of one’s own mother. I suspect that the month of May has been ruined for me forever, that I’ll be averting my eyes from pastel window-dressings every spring until the good Lord takes me. A friend of mine struggles similarly with Halloween. And no holiday is more fraught, in this era of child separation and travel bans, than the Fourth of July. Taylor Swift went so far as to cancel her party this year, citing a “disillusionment with her country.”
Fittingly, in the holiday singles of her 2019 EP, Lucy Dacus isn’t throwing a party. She adopts a tone similar to Sufjan Stevens’ yuletide songs, sifting through the kitschy refuse of culture for little sentiments only she knows how to share. Mother’s Day becomes a moment to reflect on and heal from generations of matrilineal trauma. The opening lyric of “My Mother & I”—“My mother hates her body/We share the same outline/She swears she loves mine”—never sounded more gorgeous than when she performed the song alongside her own mother, during a Mother’s Day show in Asheville. On “Fool’s Gold,” New Year’s Eve fades into New Year’s Day, and Dacus sits alone and anxious in the ruins of the party she threw. And the Fourth, her favorite holiday, loses its luster as she asks listeners to consider their own complicity in American atrocities. She treats her weighty subjects with careful concision: short lines, simple phrasing. These are among the best songs she’s ever written.
For a host of other holidays, she opts for covers over original compositions, from a wry Halloween rendition of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”—according to her, “the best eerie bop of all time”—to a swooning, utterly sincere take on the Valentine’s Day standard, “La Vie en Rose,” sung first in French and then in English. Dacus’ singular voice—the warm, honeyed quality of her lower register, especially—sounds even better spilling over French syllables than English ones.
Her greatest effort, though, is a punchy romp through Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark,” recorded for the Boss’ birthday. In a recent essay titled “The Queerness of Bruce Springsteen,” critic Naomi Gordon-Loebl praised Bruce as something of a dykon, “so practiced and so precise that he might as well have learned it from the oldest lesbian at a gay bar.” There’s a special thrill, then, in hearing one of his standards rendered so lovingly by a queer woman like Dacus, especially given the long years she spent “in denial” about her sexuality. She comes closest to really celebrating when she’s channeling Springsteen; it’s the sound of a young woman who’s wanted to throw her arms around another girl for the longest time finally allowing herself to do so.
The collection’s one real dud is a riff on “Last Christmas,” which sounds, to borrow Dacus’s own phrasing, “a tad psychotic.” The fast, furious pace of the arrangement is meant to draw out the song’s long shadows, but it’s got about as much bite as one of those mid-2000s Punk Goes Pop compilations. Still, a single misstep in a year full of superb work is easy to overlook, and her “Last Christmas” is far from the most cringe-worthy offering of the season. Dacus intended 2019 EP as something of a diversion from her usual work, a series of stand-alones intended to flex new musical muscles. Perfect as these songs are for our moment, there’s an unmistakable staying power to them, too.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-11-14T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-11-14T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Matador | November 14, 2019 | 7.6 | 0b2c7d7f-4ffb-4474-ae34-7e6d2c14a876 | Peyton Thomas | https://pitchfork.com/staff/peyton-thomas/ | |
On R.A.P. Music, Killer Mike hooks up with El-P and Adult Swim subsidiary Williams Street for the 2012 equivalent to Ice Cube and the Bomb Squad's similarly inspired bicoastal union on AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted. | On R.A.P. Music, Killer Mike hooks up with El-P and Adult Swim subsidiary Williams Street for the 2012 equivalent to Ice Cube and the Bomb Squad's similarly inspired bicoastal union on AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted. | Killer Mike: R.A.P. Music | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16537-killer-mike-rap-music/ | R.A.P. Music | Does a rapper need to make a truly great album before he's considered one of the best alive? It's a question with no objective answer. Some rappers are phenomenal with verses and punchlines but have no knack for hooks or song structure. Some can do all of those things but lack personality. Some never get the production budget they deserve; many do and just have the worst ear for beats. Some fail to capitalize on their buzz, and others are completely incapable of making themselves relevant. And yet, none of that explains why Killer Mike has been able to consistently make some of the most visceral and intellectually potent hip-hop of the past decade and a half without having a true classic under his belt.
On the unimpeachable R.A.P. Music, Mike hooks up with 2012 MVP frontrunner El-P and Adult Swim subsidiary Williams Street to create what's described on the title track as "what my people need and the opposite of bullshit." It's the 2012 equivalent to Ice Cube and the Bomb Squad's similarly inspired bicoastal union on AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted. Limiting himself to one producer, legends-only guest spots, and a real sense that he'd better make this one count, Killer Mike rises to the occasion.
But while this record is sure to please longtime fans, it also works as a compelling introduction. As in the past, R.A.P. Music takes a stand politically without going off the grid into conspiracy theorizing or sounding so circumspect that you'd think Mike himself was running for public office. On "Reagan", he calls out the government for spending billions of taxpayer dollars invading foreign land as "a hobby paid for by the oil lobby." To him, the "War on Drugs" is mostly an excuse for crooked cops to illegally search and seize young black men. But if you happen to be a phony rapper that's dumb enough to spit that "fiction sold by conglomerates" in Mike's neighborhood, you can expect to leave without your chain and dignity. None of this is contradictory to anyone with a lick of sense, but there's a tangible thrill in hearing someone tell it like it is with such conviction.
There was enough spleen vented on the Grind mixtapes to last until the next decade; on R.A.P., there's more heart and soul, both musically and spiritually. In a recent interview with Pitchfork.tv, Mike seemed particularly fond of the scene he sets during "Untitled", wherein the women closest to him in life are placed within an epic historical scale: "Will my woman be Corretta take my name and cherish it?/ Or will she Jackie O drop the Kennedy, remarry it/ My sister say it's necessary on some Cleopatra shit/ My grandmamma said 'no, never that, it's sacrilege.'" It's part of a deep respect for family that runs throughout R.A.P. Music, whether it's to his cop father during the "fuck the police" narrative "Don't Die", or his wife amidst astonishing Southernplayalistic pimp shit on "Southern Fried". He dedicates the last verse to her ("I married a Trina/ Pretty as a singer/ Fine as a stripper"), informing all other girls that if you want a piece of Killer Mike, you gotta service his woman too. It's actually kinda heartwarming.
Let's take a moment and talk about the actual rapping on R.A.P. Music. Dear lord, the rapping on this thing. When he first started appearing on dirtier OutKast tracks like "Snappin' & Trappin'", Mike might've been seen as the devil on Big Boi's shoulder opposite André. It's become clear since then he takes a backseat to no one in the Dungeon Family. Transcribing a jaw-dropping bout of dexterity like, "And what's happenin'/ Ménage-a-nage in my garage/ With these two young ladies is the reason I A.D.I.D.A.S./ That's all day I dream about that sex scene/ You textin' hopin' that they call you/ I just barbecue and call 'em up and say, 'hey fall through,'" feels about as effective as trying to explain Led Zeppelin IV with guitar tablature. Mike introduces himself on "Untitled", saying, "You are witnessing elegance/ In the form of a black elephant," and it's a perfect summation of Mike's muscular yet impossibly nimble vocals. There's no reason for him to make a two-minute, no-hook track like "Go!" other than to prove he can destroy anyone in terms of pure technique "even when I ain't sayin' sheeeit." The sheer sonic effect of the volley of words on R.A.P. could thrill a hip-hop fan who doesn't speak a word of English.
Not that you shouldn't be paying attention to what Killer Mike says throughout R.A.P. Music*.* "Reagan" is the one that names names and cites facts to denigrate the presidency as little more than "telling lies on teleprompters" to serve the "country's real masters." But on "Anywhere But Here", the trickle-down effect of corruption is felt on a more local scale. After solemnly acknowledging the police brutality and economic stratification of New York, Mike takes a look at his home city of Atlanta, seemingly a "black male's heaven" as one the most racially progressive in the nation, "Even though it's blacktop from the mayors to the cops/ Black blood still gets spilled." "Don't Die" shows a vivid example of that: Cops break into Mike's house on a hunch and things inevitably get violent. Though the concept of their being there in the first place because "a nigga on this rap shit" might initially sound trite, if you don't believe the suspicion of being a part of that culture is enough to get you harassed and then killed, you might need to start watching the news. That's really why "Don't Die" can take its place alongside anti-authoritarian classics like "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos": The big picture is timeless; the news fills in the blanks to make it depressing in its timeliness.
There are plenty of hip-hop records with worthy causes but the good intentions don't always make your car stereo knock. That's not an issue here: I don't think we'll hear a better end-to-end production job on a rap record than we do on R.A.P. Music. El-P has managed to make strides in learning to give a rapper like Mike what he needs: on 2009's ATL RMX, he reconfigured Young Jeezy's "I Got This" with a punishing beat that somehow managed to overexert its will on the guy rapping. We get wheezing organs, incessantly ticking hi-hats, guitar skronk, and soul claps tamed to do Mike and El's evil bidding whether it's B-boy boom bap ("Jojo's Chillin'") or chain-swang braggadocio ("Butane (Champion's Anthem)"). I'm tempted to call it "warm," but so is nuclear radiation, and the bass most often sounds like a monstrous, gleefully evil sandworm that could guest star on "Aqua Teen Hunger Force".
On the closing title track, Mike equates R.A.P. Music to something holy, within the lineage of the most legendary black musicians: "That Miles Davis Bitches Brew, that 'beee-yatch' said by playboy Too [$hort]." More appropriate are the multiple lyrical nods to Public Enemy and N.W.A., even if R.A.P. Music doesn't break enough rules or have enough of a platform to reach the levels of Fear of a Black Planet or Straight Outta Compton or Death Certificate. But it does come off as the kind of powerful mid-career album those acts should've been able to make as hip-hop's elder spokesmen-- artists granted an evergreen relevance similar to Bruce Springsteen or Neil Young-- had it not been for their irreparable personnel issues: impervious to trends, passionate about politics and pleasure, something that a college professor could base a lecture on even as his students blast it at house parties later that night. | 2012-05-15T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-05-15T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Williams Street | May 15, 2012 | 8.6 | 0b2e8831-0c3e-4a4c-9a4a-8c56bed5f635 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
For the first Nine Inch Nails release since 2009, Trent Reznor has resorted to the most radical release strategy an independent-minded artist can employ in 2013: he’s re-signed to a major label. But unlike the themes of depression, madness, and addiction that defined his most enduring works, the skeletal Hesitation Marks chronicles a more existential crisis. | For the first Nine Inch Nails release since 2009, Trent Reznor has resorted to the most radical release strategy an independent-minded artist can employ in 2013: he’s re-signed to a major label. But unlike the themes of depression, madness, and addiction that defined his most enduring works, the skeletal Hesitation Marks chronicles a more existential crisis. | Nine Inch Nails: Hesitation Marks | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18443-nine-inch-nails-hesitation-marks/ | Hesitation Marks | In the past decade, Nine Inch Nails have earned more notice for how they release their records than the songs that are actually on them. In his attempts to reach audiences beyond his faithful base of goths and gamers, Trent Reznor has embraced both high concepts (2007’s interactive song-cycle Year Zero) and low overhead (2008’s self-released offerings Ghosts I-IV and The Slip); even a guy who got famous by screaming needed a good news hook to get himself heard over the incessant din of a quick-click online-music marketplace. For his latest Nine Inch Nails release, Reznor is resorting to the most radical release strategy an independent-minded artist can employ in 2013: he’s re-signed to a major label. Those e-commerce experiments proved NIN can remain a viable business in the absence of corporate-funded marketing campaigns, but he presumably wants something that not even 100 per cent royalty rates can buy you: to be a game-changing pop cultural force once again. And despite what tech-topian industry analysts would have us believe, for the time being at least, traditional tools like global major-label distribution and aggressive radio promotion still often mean the difference between an artist being a household name or a merely respected one.
That said, even as Reznor is rallying everyone from David Lynch to Downward Spiral cover artist Russell Mills to heighten the sense of occasion, he’s not giving his Columbia Records benefactors an easy sell: The aptly titled Hesitation Marks is a record that pokes and prods and teases instead of going in for the kill. It’s the first record to bear the Nine Inch Nails name since Reznor announced a hiatus in 2009 but the valorous comeback narrative is undermined by the fact that Reznor often took five years to release new NIN albums anyway. Not to mention the fact that he's remained highly active in the interim, releasing two albums with his trip-hoppy outfit How to destroy angels while embarking on a successful composing career that allowed us to see what he looks like in a suit. And yet Hesitation Marks is stuffed with more knowing resurrection references than Jay Z’s Kingdom Come-- for an artist whose every second lyric has begun with the word “I,” this could be Reznor’s most intensely self-reflexive work yet. But unlike the themes of depression, madness, and addiction that defined his most enduring music, Hesitation Marks chronicles a more existential crisis of relevance. Accordingly, its sound is skeletal and spare, as if picking up right where The Slip’s more subdued second act left off, with Reznor's usual adrenalized aggression replaced with jagged digital tics and queasy atmospheres.
And yet the more austere, minimalist approach allows Reznor to explore the outer limits of the Nine Inch Nails sound. Notwithstanding the ambient excursions of Ghosts I-IV, NIN’s song-based post-millennial discography has mostly functioned within the sonic parameters laid down by Reznor’s all-time favorites-- Depeche Mode, Berlin-era David Bowie, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Jane’s Addiction, and a pinch of Prince-- while seeming impervious to shifts in the contemporary dance-rock landscape. Hesitation Marks is much more in tune with the spartan grooves of the xx and the elastic electro of the Knife than his usual arena-rattling influences: “Copy of A” follows an uncannily similar trajectory as the latter duo’s “Full of Fire”, locking into a motorik beat that remains coolly resolute in the face of all the intensifying textural disorder mounting overtop of it. In a world where there are no more Stabbing Westwards to kick around, Reznor directs the song’s critique of conformity at himself: “I am just a copy of a copy of a copy/ Everything I say has come before.”
For a song that acknowledges the predictability of lapsing into old patterns, “Copy of A” ironically marks an intriguing change of pace for Nine Inch Nails, stripping down their metal machine music and rebuilding it with only the most integral scraps. The best songs here follow a similar process of gradually fleshing out a skeleton, from the fidgety funk of “Satellite” to the disquieting drive of “Disappointed”, where wondrous, Indian-inspired string swirls -- a la the Beatles’ “Within You, Without You”-- cut through the song’s claustrophobic clap-track. And even when the threadbare presentation casts a harsh light on the odd underwritten lyric (“Hey!/ Everything is not/ Okay!”), Reznor introduces new melodic changes to push a song in unexpected new directions: just when you think “All Time Low” can’t get any closer to “Closer”, the song detours into a kaleidoscopic coda that introduces a brief flash of radiant colour to Nine Inch Nails’ typically grim and grimy terrain.
But the danger of stretching your sound out to its extremities is that it will eventually snap back in your face, and the completely incongruous “Everything” overcompensates for Hesitation Marks’ ominous mood with a wincingly bright pop-punk chug-- and unflatteringly strained vocal from Reznor-- that sounds like a second-stage Warped Tour act trying to cover “Just Like Heaven”. And the album is ultimately lacking in the concision and sequential logic that made The Slip such an invigorating late-career triumph. For every circuit-overloading workout like “Copy of A” and “Disappointed”, there are a number of tracks where Reznor reverts to the teeth-gnashing angst of old without the pig-marching blitzkriegs to back it up, applying undue pressure on the the songs’ brittle structures. The all-too-aptly titled single “Came Back Haunted” is just that, a ghost of Nine Inch Nails’ more convincing ragers, while the album’s second half in particular is bogged down by dead-weight plodders (“Various Methods of Escape”, “I Would For You”, “In Two”) whose predictably amped-up choruses can’t enliven their sputtering tempos and flagging energy.
Alas, their presence mutes the impact of the strategically placed penultimate piece “While I’m Still Here”, which, with better lead-in tracks, could’ve served as a more dramatic comedown moment, but here feels like a pained stumble to the finish line; when Reznor says, “I’m still here”-- overtop a synth line that flickers like a dying fluorescent light tube-- it feels less like a statement of survival and defiance than the ennui-ridden admission of an office drone. But in the album’s dying moments, an encouraging sign of life emerges: a surprisingly playful series of saxophone blurts give way to the closing “Black Noise”, a slow-motion 90-second swell of grueling guitar noise that feels like all of this album’s simmering tension bubbling up to the surface and ready to erupt. Hopefully, next time, Reznor will unleash it without hesitation. | 2013-09-03T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2013-09-03T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Columbia | September 3, 2013 | 7 | 0b390ba6-ab97-44ae-a5cf-057072573dc1 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
Eighteen musicians? In this economy? The Michigan post-minimalist recasts Steve Reich’s landmark composition as a solo project with a sleek, dark-hued electronic palette. | Eighteen musicians? In this economy? The Michigan post-minimalist recasts Steve Reich’s landmark composition as a solo project with a sleek, dark-hued electronic palette. | Erik Hall: Music for 18 Musicians | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/erik-hall-music-for-18-musicians/ | Music for 18 Musicians | When Erik Hall decided to record Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians by himself, he didn’t know he would be releasing it into a world where a traditional rehearsal of it, let alone a performance, would be illegal. (Technically, it should be called Music for at Least 18 Musicians.) And if it’s tempting to cast Hall as a prophet of social distancing, it’s even more tempting to cast him in terms of hubris: Here’s a young post-minimalist from Michigan who not only thinks he’s equal to the most influential American composer’s most iconic piece, but dares to recast it in a sleek, dark-hued electronic palette.
But unless you regard 18 Musicians as a sacred text—and maybe you do—there’s nothing that audacious about someone recording it layer by layer with electronic instruments. If Hall had strapped mallets all over his body and tried to play it in the usual way, that would have been hubris. Still, there were more ways for this to go wrong than right. The only prior solo recording of any note, by Rough Fields in 2014, fell prey to some of them, with a misconceived palette that emphasized blurting repetition. Hall’s version feels shiny, new, and self-contained, but its continuity with Reich is clear—both musically, in its close attention to the structure and spirit of the score, and culturally, in its repayment of electronic music’s debt to the minimalist composer.
Music for 18 Musicians premiered in 1976, a big year for a small genre, which also gave us Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach. The piece was a turning point for Reich, who flooded his severe, unpopular minimalism with 18 musicians (some of them playing two parts at once) and toothsome harmonic motion—more of it in the first five minutes than in the entirety of any one of his prior works, he said. You didn’t need to appreciate the mysteries of tape loops or unaccompanied clapping to get it. The piece solidified minimalism in the public consciousness and even pushed it to the edge of pop: Robert Christgau’s glowing review of the 1978 recording was reprinted in his guide to 1970s rock albums, an odd but telling context for a work without a single guitar, bass, drum, lead vocal, riff, verse, chorus, or lyric.
What it did have was melody and motion, and listening to it makes you feel immortal. At the outset, 11 chords are played through two breath cycles each. Then, each becomes a stage for a study in interlocking pulses that kaleidoscopically glimmer and whirl. The changes are marked by a rare non-repeating metallophone phrase (watch the tall man with glasses waiting so patiently in the terrific Eighth Blackbird performance). The metrical patterns don’t seem to respire, they do respire, measured by the players’ breath, the bass clarinet pumping away like a great lung.
It takes a certain kind of person to perform the repetitious underlying pulses on pieces like 18 Musicians and Terry Riley’s In C without going slack or mad. Reich assigned the task to pianos and mallet instruments, roles that Hall, a pianist and percussionist, was well-prepared to merge. Discarding the mallet instruments that make 18 Musicians hover, Hall instead makes it zoom. He rivets the core pulse to a muted piano, translates violin to electric guitar, and constructs the bass clarinet on a Moog synthesizer, sometimes swapping these voices around, as Reich does. It amounts to a series of shrewd tradeoffs: prismatic color for shapely contours, organic breath for mechanical power.
Yet the signature details and passages of the piece—which moves similar material through many moods, from sprightly to raucous to mystical—are all in place. Hall captures not just the layered clockwork motion, but also the specific loopy timbre of a clarinet here, the sudden appearance of a maraca there, and the character of a vocal phrase in a Moog sweep. Though his version clocks in just under the appointed 55 minutes, it feels fast, borne along by scudding bass lines, and its reference points are as modern as they are arch-minimalist. The opening piano pulse comes on with the scrambling urgency of LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends,” and Colin Stetson fans will appreciate the percolating urgency Hall wrenches from the score.
Removing the human breath that fundamentally governs Music for 18 Musicians required that Hall replace it with some other animating force. He found it by approaching the piece not as what it had been—the capstone and turning point of a musical era—but as what it had become: an idea that a broad spectrum of electronic musicians absorbed deeply into their hypnotic arpeggiations and busily interacting musical cells. His take is legible in history but assertive of the moment, propelled by its own vigor as much as anything else, and it makes a minimalist standard freshly thrilling to revisit.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-05-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-05-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Western Vinyl | May 11, 2020 | 7.8 | 0b39305a-7582-4ec6-9b6a-7535aecf1f14 | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | |
The German band’s first album since 2014 revives their introspective blend of indie rock and electronica, while simultaneously looking outward for new voices and perspectives. | The German band’s first album since 2014 revives their introspective blend of indie rock and electronica, while simultaneously looking outward for new voices and perspectives. | The Notwist: Vertigo Days | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-notwist-vertigo-days/ | Vertigo Days | Nearly two decades have passed since the release of the Notwist’s Neon Golden. An ingenious synthesis of indie rock and electronica, the album was a shining example of “plinkerpop,” Morr Music founder Thomas Morr’s term for a wave of delicate, humanistic electronic pop music that emerged around the turn of the millennium. The Notwist’s core duo of Markus and Micha Acher—two brothers from old-world Bavaria in the south of Germany—have at times tried to tweak their formula, with mixed success. Ricocheting between guitar rock, shoegaze, and downbeat ambience, 2014’s Close to the Glass felt somewhat jumbled and unfocused. But Vertigo Days, their first in seven years, uses a long period of absence and a rupture in the lineup as a route to reinvigoration. New to the fold is Cico Beck, who replaces Martin “Console” Gretschmann, the master programmer who aided the Notwist’s evolution from indie rockers to electronica mavens. On Vertigo Days, this introspective, somewhat hermetic band looks outwards and engages with new languages, perspectives, and voices.
Last year, Markus Acher joined forces with Saya, vocalist of the veteran Japanese pop group Tenniscoats, to curate Minna Miteru, a compilation of contemporary Japanese indie pop. It’s refreshing to hear Saya’s brass band Zayaendo appear on “Into Love Again,” and she even takes the mic for album standout “Ship,” a slinky, pulsating track that—like a few on this record—taps into the controlled, trance-like music that Can were making circa Ege Bamyasi.
Markus Acher’s voice remains one of the Notwist’s essential elements. Thin like tracing paper, with a tender emotional quality that borders on sentimentality, it might feel twee if it were placed over jangling guitars. But against the Notwist’s textured, electronic backdrops, Archer’s voice lands just right. “Where You Find Me” is a perfectly pitched take on what was once called emotronica, a patchwork of acoustic guitar, cascading synths, and live percussion with a sung chorus that provides a sense of gentle uplift. But Vertigo Days delights in taking moments of uncomplicated beauty and skewing them: Hear how “Into Love/Stars” commences as a gentle romantic homily for voice, guitar, and synth before a drum machine barges in like an unwelcome housemate and whisks the song off into the stratosphere.
Elsewhere, a selection of guests add welcome color, taking the Notwist’s core sound and patching it out to a variety of global scenes and sounds. Argentine vocalist and producer Juana Molina guests on “Al Sur,” her voice weaving in and out of hectic spasms of percussion. The jazz polyglot Angel Bat Dawid brings flurries of clarinet to “Into the Ice Age,” a foray into limber krautrock percussion. The loping groove of “Oh Sweet Fire” pairs Acher with an inspired vocal foil, jazz luminary Ben LaMar Gay. Written by LaMar Gay, the track’s lyric twines the personal and political, imagining two lovers taking part in a march or uprising: “The sound of drums reflecting off buildings/As high as the fist that has risen,” he sings. Their vocals share a melody and an intonation, but LaMar Gay’s voice is insistent and muscular whereas Acher is softer and more diffident. From this contrast springs nuance, the track jittering with a heady mix of fear, excitement, and righteous resolve.
Like its predecessor, Vertigo Days at times feels scattershot. Across 14 tracks, there is droning Silver Apples worship (“Exit Strategy to Myself”), haunted-house jazz (“Ghost”), and, on the closing “Into Love Again,” an extended coda that feels like it’s sobbed itself dry a couple of minutes before it finally throws in the towel. Markus Acher has talked about the sequencing of a Notwist album as being like a collage or mosaic, and there are places where Vertigo Days might benefit from a sterner edit. By and large, though, the guest spots and experimental excursions feel less contrived than the stylistic zig-zags of records past, and more the natural consequence of a band engaging with the world. After all this time, the Acher brothers are still digging into their sound, turning up moments of sweetness and pathos.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic / Rock | Morr | February 1, 2021 | 7 | 0b3954de-0af3-4deb-819d-cbd2971bb743 | Louis Pattison | https://pitchfork.com/staff/louis-pattison/ | |
The Long Island quintet's debut LP is a crisp-sounding, nuanced album that highlights all the right things about the band, further proving there's more to the group than pretty bedroom pop. They run the gamut from Stereolab-like lounge-pop to R&B-flecked Young Marble Giants minimalism. | The Long Island quintet's debut LP is a crisp-sounding, nuanced album that highlights all the right things about the band, further proving there's more to the group than pretty bedroom pop. They run the gamut from Stereolab-like lounge-pop to R&B-flecked Young Marble Giants minimalism. | Twin Sister: In Heaven | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15857-in-heaven/ | In Heaven | When Long Island's Twin Sister put a picture of a shabbily decorated dollhouse on the cover of their 2010 Color Your Life EP, it seemed like a mission statement: Here is small, intimate music meant to feel comfy and lived-in. And from the pillowy indie-pop numbers to the more stretched-out, soft drone pieces, it was the kind of record that just felt nice to hear. You wanted to cuddle up with it. But then there was "All Around and Away We Go", the slice-of-genius, introverted disco gem that suggested there was more to these guys than just pretty bedroom pop. In Heaven, their debut LP, very much supports that idea. It's a crisp-sounding, nuanced album that highlights all the right things about the band.
The most obvious difference between In Heaven and Twin Sister's two previous EPs is that they've cleaned up their sound and tightened their arrangements considerably. Where individual sounds sometimes used to get swallowed in an underlying hiss, instruments now have room to breathe. Guitars sparkle, synthetic drumbeats strike with purpose, and singer Andrea Estella's charming vocal squeak is closer to the fore. Increasing the production value is more than just a technical upgrade-- it lets the band open up creatively and try different kinds of new sounds. And they do that with grace. From Stereolab-like lounge-pop to R&B-flecked Young Marble Giants minimalism, these guys run the gamut.
While the sonic palette is definitely a lot wider, Twin Sister still keep the songwriting focus small and detailed. More interested in documenting life's minor moments than the big, transformative ones, they sing about things like recommending movies to friends or having an awkward crush go unspoken. Little stuff, but meaningful in its way. Take "Stop", for example, a track breathily sung by guitarist Eric Cardona and featuring a sultry R&B thump. It reads heavy romance on first listen, but that's actually not the case. "I keep telling myself to stop, to feel if I like it," Cardona sings, describing a new relationship he's trying to be responsible about. It seems he doesn't want to rush into sleeping with this person-- someone's feelings could get hurt that way.
This type of narrative might skew a little twee for some (and there is an element of that here, for sure) but it's one of the things that gives the band a sense of identity. Also, it's important to point out that they buoy these bashful sentiments with some really outward, bouncy music. "Bad Street" is set over choppy 1980s electro-funk, "Daniel" takes its cues from zoned-out space disco-- the songs have legitimate grooves. In the end, what's really impressive is that the mousey quality of their music doesn't work against these nimble, cosmopolitan arrangements. If anything, it makes the songs richer, gives them more of a backstory. Because Twin Sister operate with a good amount of subtlety, it can take some time to absorb all that, but give yourself over to this record, and it gives back. | 2011-09-26T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2011-09-26T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Domino | September 26, 2011 | 7.8 | 0b3977f8-b144-431a-a3fb-f8cb32a2122c | Joe Colly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-colly/ | null |
With production from Blake Mills, the Mumford & Sons frontman goes solo with a hushed, searching record anchored in trauma. | With production from Blake Mills, the Mumford & Sons frontman goes solo with a hushed, searching record anchored in trauma. | Marcus Mumford: (Self-Titled) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/marcus-mumford-self-titled/ | (Self-Titled) | Nobody can blame Marcus Mumford for stepping away from Mumford & Sons, the blockbuster folk act that bears his name. By 2018’s Delta, they seemed weary of their own bag of tricks, looking beyond the confines of old-timey string-band revival by hiring producer Paul Epworth to process their acoustic instruments so they sounded electronic. The musical restlessness was compounded by banjoist and guitarist Winston Marshall’s increasing embrace of right-wing cultural commentators, an interest that first surfaced when he invited controversial Canadian professor Jordan Peterson to hang with the band in the studio. The group withstood the furor when Peterson posted a picture of the rendezvous on social media, but when Marshall took to Twitter to praise a book by alt-right author Andy Ngo, the band decided to part ways with him.
All this public controversy disguised how Mumford spent the years since Delta wrestling with his own demons. Persistent issues with drinking and binge eating led him to therapy, where he finally came to terms with the sexual abuse he experienced as a child—a situation he chronicles on “Cannibal,” the first cut on his solo debut, (self-titled). The hushed, searching set functions as an exorcism while gently suggesting the singer-songwriter may be poised to leave Mumford & Sons behind.
If gentle seems a curious word to describe an album anchored in trauma, it’s also fitting. Mumford’s defining musical gift is his soft touch: Even when Mumford & Sons's signature hit “I Will Wait” ascends to its urgent ending, he’s the earnest, empathetic rock at its center. (self-titled) places these characteristics at the forefront. By choosing to open with the quiet creep of “Cannibal,” a song where Mumford directly addresses his abuser (“I can still taste you and I hate it/That wasn’t a choice in the mind of a child and you knew it/You took the first slice of me and you ate it raw”), he draws a distinct line between the gregarious stomp of Mumford & Sons and his solo work. The atmosphere feels different, too. The lyrics are murmured slowly, deliberately, forcing the listener to lean into the speaker to comprehend the horror unfurling, at which point the tension breaks with a surging, echoing gale of guitars.
“Grace” carries over that sense of urgency with another cascade of strums, and we hear the adult Mumford begin to processes the trauma he’s kept so hidden that his own mother wound up learning about the abuse by listening to “Cannibal.” Mumford sums up this situation by singing “I coulda sworn I dropped that bomb on you already,” a graceless lyric that speaks to the blunt and specific approach throughout (self-titled), a noted change from the broad strokes of the tunes he wrote for his band. This emotional directness cries out for some texture and shade, which is what producer Blake Mills provides. Like his work with Jack Johnson on Meet the Moonlight earlier this year, Mills accents Mumford’s earnestness with flair, relying on pros like bassist Pino Palladino and drummer Jim Keltner for color while inviting a host of duet partners to give the singer-songwriter needed foils.
All these duets appear on the second half of (self-titled), the portion of the record where the arrangements teem with detail and drama, coalescing around some of the boldest melodies Mumford has written to date. “Better Angels” simmers to an insistent pulse that conjures new wave ghosts. On “Dangerous Game,” Clairo offers soft support, helping to undercut its sense of dread, while former PHOX member Monica Martin provides harmonies on “Go in Light,” a cut where Mumford comes across like a Justin Vernon eager to be loved. Phoebe Bridgers lends “Stonecatcher” spectral grace, and Brandi Carlile grounds the hushed “How” with tenderness, her harmonies underscoring Mumford’s quest to forgive his abuser. Each of the guest vocalists opens up the inward (self-titled), providing grace notes to his melodies while accentuating the warmer aspects of his voice.
On “Cannibal” and “How,” the bookends that are also the quietest moments on the record, the open emotions are impossible to avoid, whereas it takes effort—or at least a lyric sheet—to realize that the rest of (self-titled) chronicles the aftermath of processing trauma as an adult. That’s the confounding thing about (self-titled): Its strongest qualities as a record occasionally contradict the emotional thrust of the songs. Mills’ production gives the recordings dimension and depth, inevitably tempering the pain at the heart of the songs. The sumptuous, cinematic sound is almost soothing. While that’s more appealing than the buttoned-up folk of Mumford & Sons, it also undercuts the rawer journey that (self-titled) could have been. | 2022-09-20T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-09-20T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Capitol | September 20, 2022 | 6 | 0b39aa36-20ae-4194-9bb9-fc3a5f972625 | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
The Marshall Mathers LP 2, featuring Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and executive producers Dr. Dre and Rick Rubin, offers a second helping of the celeb-hating, self-deprecating juvenalia of Eminem’s beloved third album peppered with samples of and references to the source material. It also revels in its predecessor’s worst behaviors. | The Marshall Mathers LP 2, featuring Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and executive producers Dr. Dre and Rick Rubin, offers a second helping of the celeb-hating, self-deprecating juvenalia of Eminem’s beloved third album peppered with samples of and references to the source material. It also revels in its predecessor’s worst behaviors. | Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18733-eminem-the-marshall-mathers-lp-2/ | The Marshall Mathers LP 2 | The more the triumphs of Eminem’s world beating Slim Shady/Marshall Mathers/Eminem Show trilogy recede into memory, the more each subsequent release struggles to strike a tone that leverages an audience raised on the crass iconoclasm of “My Name Is” and “Kill You” with the aging, now sober father of three behind the music. As such, Em’s last decade worth of albums has suffered under jarring shifts in tone. After showing his first signs of wear with 2004’s patchy Encore, Eminem rebounded with 2009’s Dre-beats-and-horrorcore-rhymes retrenchment Relapse. Relapse sold well but its serial killer shtick was uninspired, as Eminem openly admitted on the next year’s “Not Afraid” (“That last Relapse CD was ‘enh’”). 2010’s Recovery maneuvered out of Relapse and Encore’s chum bucket humor by detailing the artist’s struggle to overcome a long-simmering prescription drug dependency. Serious Eminem proved a drag despite Recovery couching its penitent 12-step dispatches in rivulets of the usual Slim Shady chicanery, so here we are staring down a once-more radioactive blonde Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP 2.
The Marshall Mathers LP 2 is an album-length bout of moral recidivism, Recovery’s motivational rehab narrative ditched wholesale for a second helping of the celeb-hating, self-deprecating juvenalia of Eminem’s beloved third album peppered with samples of and references to the source material. Opener “Bad Guy” is a sprawling epic that finds the brother of “Stan”’s titular obsessed fan hatching an elaborate revenge plot, and “Parking Lot” inexplicably revisits the heist in the middle of “Criminal” to inform us that the getaway driver split, and the shooter died. “Rap God” revisits a crass joke about the 1999 Columbine school shooting initially censored on the first LP’s “I’m Back”. Old nemeses like Insane Clown Posse, Everlast, and the Backstreet Boys are lampooned as well. But MMLP2 revisits more than just the characters and stories of the first installment. It also revels in its predecessor’s worst behaviors, bandying about misogyny and gay slurs as if Eminem’s conciliatory 2001 Grammys performance with a pink polka dot suited Elton John never happened.
“Rap God” is a gobstopping display of Eminem’s champion technical prowess that’s waylaid in every verse by brazen homophobia. “Love Game”, the hotly anticipated team up with Kendrick Lamar, is similarly assailed by lunkheaded chauvinism, both in Eminem’s gross rendition of a woman giving him oral sex and Kendrick’s barbs about a guy who “drowned like an abortion” and a clingy ex for whom “chlamydia couldn’t even get rid of her.” Elsewhere two songs are dedicated to crucifying the mother of his children and anyone else foolhardy enough to get involved with him. (“Bitch, you complain when you listen to this/ But you throw yourself at me/ That’s what I call pitching a bitch.”) Earlier in his career, Eminem delivered similarly gutbucket content with the shock of incredulity that anyone would find it offensive. It was an error of youthful carelessness. But in 2013, in the wake of the message of redemption he feverishly pitched us just an album ago, Eminem’s return to ruffling feathers carries the stink of desperation.
The only salvation for a lot of these songs is Eminem’s alchemical control of rhyme and diction, but even that can be a liability. Thirteen years after the original Marshall Mathers LP, the grating cadence-over-substance ethos of “The Way I Am”, once a stilted outlier on an album packed with otherwise limber wordplay, has now become the rule. “Legacy” pulls all manner of cockamamie pronunciation gymnastics just so Eminem can end every line with the same rhyming syllables, and the song’s decision to dispense with proper word accents and splay sentences haphazardly across the middle of lines makes for a flow that comes across overwrought and labored even as it plays Frankenstein with conventional word choice and rhyme patterns. Filler words frequently clutter lines just to make the rhymes look more dazzling, and in the process we end up with well-executed but empty lines like “I been driving around your side of this town like nine frickin’ hours and forty five minutes now” from “Bad Guy” and “The day you beat me pigs’ll fly out of my ass in a saucer full of Italian sausages” on “Legacy”. Play half of these songs alongside even the clunkiest Marshall Mathers LP cut, and the god of rap’s powers appear noticeably diminished.
MMLP2 does step out from under the shadow of its predecessor in its choice of collaborators. Dr. Dre sits this one out, appearing as an executive producer but steering clear of any actual grunt work. In his place we get a spate of productions from Eminem himself (often aided by pop heavyweights like Alex da Kid and Emile) alongside a newly in-demand Rick Rubin. MMLP2’s production mostly hews toward the expected stadium rap sounds, but the Rubin cuts award the album a measure of old school rap-rock flair. Unfortunately what sounded like invention for the 1986 Beastie Boys often plays like butt rock in the hands of 2013 Eminem. “Berzerk” turns Billy Squier’s “The Stroke” into questionable back-to-basics posturing, and “So Far…” grinds Joe Walsh’s winding 1978 epic “Life’s Been Good” and Schoolly D’s “P.S.K. (What Does It Mean?)” into fodder for Eminem’s middle-aged finger-waving. (“Fuck I gotta do to hear this new song from Luda, be an expert at computers?”) “Rhyme or Reason” cleverly flips the “What’s your name?/ Who’s your daddy?” refrain from the Zombies’ “Time of the Season” into a tongue-lashing for an absentee father, and “Love Game” makes good use of Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders’ “The Game of Love”, sexist lyrical putrefaction aside, but by and large, Eminem and Rubin are not a match.
Eminem is a titan with wordplay, but MMLP2 once again finds him at a loss for how to apply his talents. For three albums in the early aughts he devilishly rewrote the rules of pop music to shoehorn hip-hop into the national spotlight, but here he’s winded, struggling to keep up with modern pop conventions, genuflecting to trap on “Rap God” and EDM on “The Monster”, dragging his biggest competitor Kendrick into one of the worst songs of his young career, and soldering on hooks from singers of varying anonymity wherever applicable to ensure this patchwork monstrosity is too big to fail, all of this under the guise of a return to form, his second in three albums. Eminem’s too talented a rapper with too good a Rolodex for this to flop, but damned if Marshall Mathers LP 2 doesn’t give it a go. The lesson here, if there’s one to be gleaned from this 80 minutes of cold, clinical lyrical acrobatics, is that rap sequels are a lot like trying on old prom clothes: chance one if you dare, but the only thing you’re liable to display is how much you’ve let yourself go since your glory days. | 2013-11-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2013-11-06T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Interscope / Shady / Aftermath | November 6, 2013 | 4.7 | 0b3c8143-d6f3-403f-85ec-79ea5eb55afa | Craig Jenkins | https://pitchfork.com/staff/craig-jenkins/ | null |
The singer-songwriter’s debut expands beyond bedroom R&B to traverse genres with dimension and control. He can shift from wizened soul belter to ’90s boy band innocence in a heartbeat. | The singer-songwriter’s debut expands beyond bedroom R&B to traverse genres with dimension and control. He can shift from wizened soul belter to ’90s boy band innocence in a heartbeat. | Omar Apollo: Ivory | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/omar-apollo-ivory/ | Ivory | On paper, Omar Apollo’s journey to the release of Ivory, his first official album, has been rockier than most. As a teenager in Indiana, he’d first garnered buzz with languid, homemade R&B songs uploaded to streaming platforms from his bedroom. He followed up with a string of singles and EPs, including 2018’s brief but impactful Stereo, whose gently plucked electric guitar solos, expert falsetto, and lyrics about love and yearning made him a poster child for atmospheric, lo-fi R&B. The path ahead seemed clear. But in 2020, Apollo scrapped an earlier version of Ivory that he felt didn’t do his vision justice, replacing it with the nine-song Apolonio. Nearly a year later, with the album still unfinished, he postponed a 2021 U.S. tour to finally have the time to put Ivory to bed.
If Apollo were any up-and-coming SoundCloud artist, perhaps none of these delays would have been remarkable. But though early in his career, he’s already racked up collaborations with peers like Kali Uchis and Joji, as well as legends like Bootsy Collins. His own early music sometimes contributed to a sense of unrealized potential: Those mini-releases retained an adolescent uncertainty that prohibited him from reaching new heights. Now that Ivory has finally arrived, Apollo can put any decision he made (or didn’t make) regarding his career behind him. With its deep dives into multiple genres and studied vocal stylings, his debut full-length sounds like a deliberate effort to reach those uncharted peaks.
Within seconds, Ivory slices through preconceptions about the woozy electric guitars and reverb-drenched vocal runs that have been emblematic of bedroom R&B for over a decade. “Talk” is built around a scuzzy, loosely strummed guitar melody and rollicking drum machine. It sounds like nothing Apollo has released thus far, yet the style fits his vocals and aesthetic to a T. Some of his less arresting songs have a tendency to blur together into an indistinguishable streak of teary-eyed bedroom soul. “Talk” is a new beast entirely, down to its final acetone guitar solo, which could have been cribbed from a Room on Fire-era Strokes session (Albert Hammond Jr. being yet another of Apollo’s past collaborators).
Conspicuous genre-hopping can sometimes veer into gimmickry, but Apollo has such a firm grasp on his creative identity that these complementary flavors blend effortlessly. Ten years ago, the wobbly synths and bouncy basslines of “Go Away” might’ve been tagged as chillwave. Elsewhere, on the Neptunes-produced “Tamagotchi,” Apollo takes on Latin-infused trap, with Spanish guitars and skittering beats enveloping a tongue-in-cheek, hypersexual posturing that feels more fun than fiery. His raw talent and expansive storytelling allow him to glide easily through a plethora of moods and atmospheres.
While the musicianship on Ivory remains lush and intricate throughout, Apollo’s voice has always been his ace in the hole. He can shift from wizened soul belter to ’90s boy band innocence in a heartbeat, and nowhere is his range on better display than “Evergreen,” a Motown tribute with the same germ of old-school know-how that marked Amy Winehouse as a legend in the making. Apollo bares his heart, then rips it off his sleeve and throws it at his lover’s feet: “Was there something wrong with my body? Am I not what you wanted, babe?” he pleads. The object of the lyrics’ address is a man who is in love with a woman, and Apollo taps into the kind of indulgent queer tragi-fantasy that only those who have experienced rejection-by-circumstance can truly understand. “She could never love you more than me,” Apollo croons, and whether he really believes that or not, you feel the pain.
Unsurprisingly, Apollo has been dodging Frank Ocean comparisons from the jump, and while it’s sometimes warranted (the elusive paramour on “Mr. Neighbor” could be a spiritual cousin to Ocean’s “Forrest Gump”), Apollo isn’t trying to emulate anyone but himself. As Ivory reaches its close, it gives you “Bad Life,” a bittersweet duet with Uchis and a full-circle moment that harks back to Apollo’s downbeat early output. But whereas tracks like his 2017 breakout “Ugotme” are content to keep it simple, “Bad Life” expands into widescreen technicolor against rich string production and a last-minute beat drop that bring a new dimension to Apollo’s work. While he’s never outright fumbled, it’s clear now that Apollo’s sheer talent has strained against the limits of the micro-genre he came up in. With its amalgam of genres, tones, and tastes, Ivory goes beyond thinking outside the box: It’s as if the box were never even there to begin with. | 2022-04-18T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-04-18T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Warner | April 18, 2022 | 7.6 | 0b3ed2f0-5104-4693-b775-85d707d308fb | Cameron Cook | https://pitchfork.com/staff/cameron-cook/ | |
Stop me if this gets sappy. And it might. | Stop me if this gets sappy. And it might. | Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works 85-92 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/223-selected-ambient-works-85-92/ | Selected Ambient Works 85-92 | Stop me if this gets sappy. And it might. Because Selected Ambient Works 85-92—recently reissued by PIAS America—was the very first electronic music I ever bought, and certainly the first I ever heard over and over again. Long ago, before I was old enough to drive, I would sit in a small, cluttered bedroom in my parents’ suburban ranch house, absorbed for hours by the sounds contained on this disc. The creeping basslines, the constantly mutating drum patterns, the synth tones which moved with all the grace and fluidity of a professional dancer, the strange noises that I’d be unable to identify even if I tried. Back then, Aphex Twin was making music like nothing I’d ever heard before.
What’s become apparent since is that I probably wasn’t the only one affected. After last year's disappointing Drukqs, it’s easy to forget that, back in the Warp Records heyday, Richard D. James was to this new breed of ambient and electronic music what Babe Ruth was to baseball. Sure, there were upstarts; µ-Ziq, Squarepusher, and Autechre were all on the scene by the time this collection hit shelves. But James was still the poster boy, the presumed ringmaster, single-handedly defining a style of music in the minds of many. Now, as a new wave of mostly twentysomethings step to the forefront of IDM, redefining electronic music for the third time in a decade, it becomes more and more obvious just how far reaching James’ influence was.
There’s nothing new about this re-release, aside from improved availability and decreased cost. But then, improving on this package would be near impossible. Sure, the music on Selected Ambient Works 85-92 may sound a bit dated (as does, to be fair, most electronic music more than a few years old), but there’s no denying it was the defining statement of Warp’s early years, and the foundation for the careers of bands like Boards of Canada and Plaid.
The songs here are not ambient in the same way as those on this disc’s sequel. Technically, most fall into Brian Eno’s broad definition of the style—it can be appreciated in small segments just as much as in its entirety. The music develops slowly, unafraid to linger on a particularly effective sound for as long as necessary—the creeping keyboard loop of “Schottkey 7th Path,” for example, is continually modified throughout the course of the song, but never once eliminated from the mix—but James would never be content as a mere follower in anyone’s footsteps. His work here serves a model for what would come to be known as traditional IDM. A simpler version of the style we’ve grown accustomed to, certainly, but IDM nonetheless.
James’ early work is heavily indebted to early dance music, filled with beats so eminently danceable as to confuse those who only know him from the spastic drum patterns that came later. There’s little of that here, though. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is, rather, an album stretching back to the days before software allowed for heavy sampling or glitch technology. Drum machines serve as its backbone and synthesized bass and keyboard sounds provide the meat. Most of the songs follow a relatively basic formula as well. One element—say, a synth melody—is introduced and repeated, and as new elements are added with each go round, the song gradually builds to a dense, multi-layered swirl. This Ravel-esque approach flavors much of James’ older material, and yet, despite the simplicity of his equipment and approach, the songs here are both interesting and varied, ranging from the dancefloor-friendly beats of “Pulsewidth” to the industrial clanks and whirs of “Green Calx.”
Indeed, these early works do a fine job of showcasing James’ ability to transform even the most seemingly mundane patterns into something unique and interesting. “Hedphelym,” for instance, is built around a relentless headache-throb cliché of a house beat. But James surrounds the pulsation with an ethereal feedback that bleeds all over the track, leaving the percussion awash in a murky solution of synth tones, pairing dance music with ambience in ways the Orb never dreamed possible.
Slightly more structured (and equally enjoyable) is “We are the Music Makers,” a track which follows a drumbeat and a bassline past a pair of intertwined synth loops and a repeated Willy Wonka vocal sample as simple keyboard melodies pour down from overhead. But the aforementioned “Green Calx” is the closest Selected Ambient Works 85-92 comes to the spastic trickery of which James would become such a pioneer. It matches pitchshifted tones and drum machines with a burbling bassline, assorted machine-gun synth interjections, the slightly effected tones of various pistons, motors, and machines, and even the occasional cartoon spring noise. Moments like these serve to foreshadow both James’ later work, as well as the infinitely more complex twists and turns that IDM would make in the years that would follow.
They say next to no one heard the Velvet Underground’s first album when it was released, but everyone who did went on to start a band. Listening to Selected Ambient Works 85-92, one can’t help but imagine the seeds being planted in the imaginations of the lucky few who were there when it all began. Nestled in these simple, undeniably danceable tracks are the roots of contemporary IDM. And despite its somewhat primitive origins, the final product remains among the most interesting ever created with a keyboard and a computer. | 2002-02-19T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2002-02-19T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Electronic | Distance | February 19, 2002 | 9.4 | 0b4d7a91-fbcf-4130-bc9e-553ff5a16b17 | David M. Pecoraro | https://pitchfork.com/staff/david-m. pecoraro/ | null |
The legendary modern jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton has released more than one hundred albums in his career. For those looking for an entry point, he recently released several box sets highlighting his charming, insightful approach to the avant-garde. | The legendary modern jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton has released more than one hundred albums in his career. For those looking for an entry point, he recently released several box sets highlighting his charming, insightful approach to the avant-garde. | Anthony Braxton: 3 Compositions (EEMHM) 2011/Trillium J: The Non-Unconfessionables No. 380/Quintet (Tristano) 2014 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21535-3-compositions-eemhm-2011trillium-j-the-non-unconfessionables-no-380quintet-tristano-2014/ | 3 Compositions (EEMHM) 2011/Trillium J: The Non-Unconfessionables No. 380/Quintet (Tristano) 2014 | Anthony Braxton contains multitudes—perhaps to a greater extent than any other composer alive today. The saxophonist hasn’t demonstrated this merely by playing with a diverse range of icons that includes Dave Brubeck, Max Roach, and Cecil Taylor. Nor has he done so solely by serving as a teacher and mentor to younger talents like Mary Halvorson and Steve Lehman. Instead,Braxton’s hybrid-sound identity is due to the staggering variety of projects he has undertaken as a bandleader.
In the 1970s, while recording for the major label-funded Arista imprint, Braxton signaled an intention to play in multiple creative arenas, sequencing his madly accelerated bebop compositions alongside electronic-music explorations. He composed music for multiple piano virtuosos. He produced one of the great post-Ellington big band albums, with Creative Orchestra Music 1976. Toward the end of his Arista contract, Braxton submitted a triple-LP recording of a modern classical piece "for four orchestras." (His major label deal was not renewed.)
When Braxton lost corporate support, he reacted by expanding his ambition. He began composing a twelve-opera cycle, titled Trillium. Though each one sounds like nothing else in the classical catalog, works in this series do bear traces of European modernists like Iannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen. At other points, Braxton has interpreted early-jazz standards (sometimes furrowing the brows of period specialists). And he’s fielded a succession of smaller ensembles focused on his original music and growing catalog of "systems"—which often bear mystic monikers like "Ghost Trance Music" or "Diamond Curtain Wall Music." Some of his most recent concepts require collaborators to handle the intercession of electronics, or to navigate scores that look like paintings.
For those who are interested, this all begs the question: Where to start? Picking up the box set that collects all the famous Arista projects remains a solid bet. Those looking for a less-expensive opening gambit can opt to sample the winning run of albums Braxton recorded for the Black Saint label, in the 1980s. The Complete Braxton 1971 is another comparatively bite-sized, double-album look at the madcap idea factory. Though there is also now a new contender on the scene for the curious-but-uninitiated. (Or, as Braxton prefers to call such listeners, "friendly experiencers.") And this record hails from a much more recent concept.
3 Compositions (EEMHM) 2011 is a triple-CD/download release that includes the first studio realization of Braxton’s "Echo Echo Mirror House Music." Here, Braxton and six bandmates play their usual instruments, while also "wielding" iPods that contain the bulk of Braxton’s discography. Each musician uses their hardware to pipe selections of old recordings into the live-performance mix. Over time, the resulting blend of improvisation, score-reading and fragmentary drops from past albums has a compelling, hypnotic effect. Prior live-concert recordings of the "Echo Echo" concept have sounded comparatively tinny. But the studio where this was recorded, which also doubles as an intimate venue, affords Braxton a well-separated stereo mix that rewards listener exploration. (There’s also a "pure audio" Blu-ray version of the album available.)
The hour-long performances on each disc often suggest installation art soundscapes more than they recall past composed-and-improvised landmarks like the Free Jazz LP led by Ornette Coleman—a saxophone mentor who gave Braxton housing, early on, in New York. And unlike the environment-heavy sound works you’ll find in some contemporary museum exhibits, Braxton’s miasma is built from a rich variety of source materials that can make misty experimentalism feel fully active and alive. Chalk it up as a side benefit of 50 years spent in the avant-trenches, working to discover new sounds.
On an initial listen to the first disc—aka "Composition No. 372"— I started out by trying to keep track of all the old-school inserts. I noticed a piquant ensemble march that sounded like recent "Ghost Trance Music,"as well as the more clearly identifiable, hard-riffing lines of "Composition No. 40M" (as played on the album Five Pieces 1975).This endeavor soon started to seem like a point-missing exercise, and after letting go of the effort to distinguish past from present, the overall wash of the experience quickly seemed like the best possible way to experience this setting.
Braxton suggests as much in the section of his liner notes that bears the heading "How To Listen to This Music," where he writes: "Don’t worry about it - have a fun listening experience in a music that more and more is like life itself. Suddenly something will emerge that was composed 40 years ago, and that something will be placed next to something composed last year. It’s OK, just let it happen. This is a ‘dream state’ sonic environment that is constantly changing. I find myself thinking of the movie Prometheus where the cyber hero has discovered an image projection hologram that he can walk inside of and manipulate, or play with." (Braxton’s liner notes, like his music, can turn sharply from academic phraseology to colloquial joking and vernacular references.) So, with the composer’s blessing, you’re invited to tune in and out at will. Put on 10 minutes from a set while getting ready to leave the house. Let a different section score a subway ride. Or clear an evening and sink into the aggregate experience.
Throughout, tricky chorus-writing from Braxton operas like Trillium E dances with classic solo-saxophone explorations as well as live-guitar work by Braxton bandmates like Mary Halvorson. Sometimes you get a group of vintage Braxtons, wailing on different saxophones at once, that is interrupted by the in-studio vibraphone playing of Aaron Siegel. By braiding together the artist’s music dramas, large-ensemble jazz opuses, and freer group-improvisations, 3 Compositions (EEMHM) 2011 ultimately achieves something that no "Braxton Sampler" album has ever quite managed to pull off. By giving us an aerial survey of a large and varied sonic landscape, it cuts down on the cognitive stress that can result from trying to "process" such a defiantly diverse career. It’s such an elegant solution to the contemporary anxiety about information overload that it might have made John Cage crack a Zen smile.
And if you find yourself wanting more, you can definitely get more. With some artists, 16 CDs and two Blu-ray discs would be sufficient for capturing a career—though that’s merely the physical-media tally required to hold Braxton’s early-2016 releases. Two other box sets, released simultaneously with (EEMHM) 2011, appear on the composer’s own New Braxton House label. The more noteworthy effort is Trillium J, the composer’s most recently performed four-act music drama. The librettos of Braxton’s operas blend his philosophical analysis of culture-at-large with absurdist comedic setups that often refuse to resolve. That postmodern dramaturgy fits with the orchestral language, which can lean heavily on thick, atonal cadences, before sliding into a square dance without warning. (Seriously, that happens in Act I.)
Braxton’s ability to independently field an orchestra that can produce compelling performances of complex, multi-hour works for the stage is a testament to his impresario’s pluck. Fittingly, Braxton cites a range of dramatic influences that includes Wagner, Stockhausen and Walt Disney. (So Kanye West has company, on that last one.) This recording of Trillium J benefits from a Blu-ray supplement that presents a full live-performance version from the Brooklyn venue Roulette, as well. In general, the CDs in the box offer crisper performances—with the orchestra in particular savoring details in the studio that were missed in the live moment. But since opera is also a visual medium, and because it has so occupied this composer for decades, the Blu-ray version offers a rare chance to fully appreciate the seriously oddball aesthetic of his ongoing Trillium project.
Switching lanes again, it’s the legacy of swing—specifically, the music composed by midcentury pianist Lennie Tristano and his associates—that anchors another 7xCD box, titled Quintet (Tristano) 2014. This is the release that is most explicitly for the Braxton-diehards who have kept track of his prior "jazz standards" projects. Though for those listeners, there is idiosyncratic value here, too. In contrast with an earlier investigation of this composer’s work (the much easier-to-digest Eight (+3) Tristano Compositions 1989), here Braxton plays not a lick of saxophone, instead holding down the piano chair in the group. In conversation, he’s straightforward about his limitations on the instrument. (“I don’t kid myself!" he recently told The New York Times. "I’m a self-taught piano player who tries to continue learning more.") But he is capable of bringing a blocky, Sun Ra-derived touch to Tristano compositions like "Lennie’s Pennies."
If you’re wondering whether Braxton still reserves any time for shredding on his main axe—the answer is yes. It’s just that he’s not currently using his own distribution channels to feature an aspect of his art that’s already been documented on the hundreds of recordings that fill his Echo Echo Mirror House Music iPods. So it’s up to a small Brazilian label, Selo SESC, to bring us a notable recent live performance from São Paulo.
Generically titled Ao Vivo Jazz Na Fábrica (Google Translate renders this "Live Jazz at Work") the album features Braxton on multiple saxophones—alto, soprano, and sopranino—as well as his regular guitarist Halvorson, trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum, and another saxophonist, Ingrid Laubrock (who often focuses on tenor playing). This group navigates the painting-scores and electronics of Braxton’s "Diamond Curtain Wall" music with the assurance of seasoned collaborators. (A consistent highlight of the first set is Braxton’s interaction with Halvorson’s rock-ish guitar progressions.) While his solos can careen with rapid groupings of notes and harsh rhythmic patterns, the tone of Braxton’s playing sometimes feels feather-soft. The disparity between the aggression of the melodic line and the lilt of its execution makes for a frequently thrilling experience.
Even more impressive than this protean output is the way these aesthetically diverged aspects of Braxton’s art all seem to converge on a central, spiritual impulse—one that he outlined in the liner notes of his 1968 debut, 3 Compositions of New Jazz: "You are your music. … If you try to vibrate toward the good, that’s where your music will come from." It's a simple sounding idea. Though because the world is more complex than inspirational koans commonly allow, realizing the objective can require multiple modes of effort. Contemplative sound-installations, humorously experimental operas, reinterpretations of classic swing, and serene, small-group free-jazz with electronics: the common thread here is Braxton’s curious and warm-hearted openness, perceptible even when his music verges on extreme cacophony. It’s a charming, insightful approach for an avant-garde sound artist to pursue. And it can prove addictive for "friendly experiencers," too. | 2016-03-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-03-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Jazz | null | March 28, 2016 | 8.2 | 0b52241b-4f9a-430c-a16c-366d12362aff | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | null |
Jason Killinger of the Philadelphia lo-fi rock'n'roll band Birds of Maya, the group that also birthed Purling Hiss, delivers a compulsively listenable, spaced-out set. | Jason Killinger of the Philadelphia lo-fi rock'n'roll band Birds of Maya, the group that also birthed Purling Hiss, delivers a compulsively listenable, spaced-out set. | Spacin': Deep Thuds | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16659-deep-thuds/ | Deep Thuds | There's a Philadelphia band called Birds of Maya, who released two must-listen albums of extremely lo-fi rock'n'roll with plentiful shredding: 2008's Vol. 1 and 2010's Ready to Howl offered up guitar riffs that could've been lifted from 1970s hard-rock radio, but they sounded smothered, and, in the case of Ready to Howl, were stretched out over 20-minute songs. Both Birds of Maya albums rule, but more importantly, they offer essential context for the band's two offshoots: Mike Polizze's Purling Hiss, and most recently, Jason Killinger's Spacin'.
Spacin' is Killinger, Sean Hamilton on bass, Paul Sukeena on lead guitar, and Killinger's wife Eva on drums. While Purling Hiss' sound doesn't stray far from the aesthetic presented on the Birds of Maya albums (except for more direct hooks and warblier production), the debut Spacin' album, Deep Thuds, offers two distinct sounds: extremely direct rock'n'roll with muddy production and spacier tracks that stretch out for several minutes. Killinger's implementation of both techniques makes Deep Thuds compulsively listenable. "Chest of Steel", for example, is driven by a sunny, catchy, triumphant guitar solo, so even while the lyrics are semi-unintelligible, the hook dominates. Compare that to the second track on the album, "Some Future (Burger)"-- over five minutes of quiet, meditative, melody-free atmosphere, which is satisfying in its subtlety.
Impressively, the album never sounds stilted or uneven. The moment "Some Future" ends, we get "Wrong Street", which features a thudding bassline and a ripping, psychedelic guitar solo (and a brief, two-bar guest appearance from Polizze). Then there's the quiet jungle groove of "Oh, Man", which features intricate, subtle guitar tinges over its almost seven minutes. The album has seven tracks; each one offers a different soundscape, and somehow, the songs never clash with one another or sound out of place. That's a testament to how beautifully arranged Deep Thuds is.
Here's the other thing about this album: When Killinger delivers a song that's led by a dominant hook, it hits every time. Sometimes, it comes from a bare bones three- or four-chord melody, like the driving power chords of "Chest of Steel" and "Empty Mind". And sometimes, it's from a central guitar solo that pulls an entire song's weight. "Ego-go", for example, rides a hypnotic riff that creates an atmosphere akin to the Stooges' "Gimme Danger", and similarly, the song culminates in a huge guitar solo. "Sunshine, No Shoes" offers a breezy melody, crunching guitar, and verse to match the track title. And because those songs are bookended by some palate-cleansing atmospheric tracks, stuff like that riff from "Chest of Steel" get a much deserved spotlight.
But honestly, how can an album called Deep Thuds by a band called Spacin' with a drippy Rolling Stones logo on its cover not be remotely funny? Everything about the band's presentation says the album should be frontloaded with irony or snotty humor, but there's nothing like that here. Instead, it's a record that's patient, flows beautifully, offers sludgy production, and is packed with killer hooks. It's an album that uses fuzzed-out guitar for bursts of gutter shredding ferocity. It's a record that sounds like it could owe as much to Grouper as it does to the Velvet Underground or Hawkwind or the Stooges. No, it's not a nonstop shredfest like Birds of Maya's albums, but each deep thud rules. | 2012-05-23T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2012-05-23T02:00:02.000-04:00 | null | Richie | May 23, 2012 | 7.8 | 0b523c7a-6176-47c0-b847-aee692c2e778 | Evan Minsker | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-minsker/ | null |
The rap iconoclast returns with his best album since Barter 6, daring and chameleonic, filled with hooks about identity, love, and that undefinable future swag. | The rap iconoclast returns with his best album since Barter 6, daring and chameleonic, filled with hooks about identity, love, and that undefinable future swag. | Young Thug: JEFFERY | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22329-jeffery/ | JEFFERY | As an artist, Young Thug thrives in between spaces. His chic, fresh-off-the-runway looks flirt with androgyny. Entire sequences of his raps unspool as nonsequiturs forcing listeners to extract meaning from bars of source code. Even the assorted ad-libs in his songs maximize the slightest pocket of air, exploding and retracting back through crevices in his unpredictable flows. He is constantly balancing opposing forces: masculine and feminine, light and dark, playful and humorless, pirouetting on a razor’s edge at all times. Modeling alongside Frank Ocean for Calvin Klein in July, he was as plainspoken about fluidity as he’s ever been. “In my world, of course, it don’t matter: You could be a gangster with a dress or you could be a gangster with baggy pants,” he said in his campaign video. “I feel like there’s no such thing as gender.” It’s this freedom, this refusal to define or label himself, and this progressive spirit that makes everything he does so daring and so mystifying. When industry mogul Lyor Cohen argued with Thug about being more accessible to listeners and more purposeful in thought and action on CNBC’s “Follow the Leader,” his response was simple: “I don’t want everybody just to know, like, ‘Oh, we know.’” The remove is everything to him. When he says or does something, he’s usually daring you to figure out why.
Existing on incomprehensible terms has made Thug recherché to the casual rap fan, which is why his debut album turned retail mixtape, Barter 6, remains his greatest pivot of all. It’s cohesive, understated, and about as accessible as Thug gets, an ingenious turn from oddball rap archetype to intuitive master craftsman. Every release after it lives in its shadow: aimless hard drive dumps attempting to combat a massive data breach that leaked hundreds of Thug songs online last May.
In the months since he eulogized his Slime Season trilogy (“All good things must come to an end, this is the birth of something new”), Thug teased snippets of new songs with captions that just read “JEFFERY.” Not long after, Cohen announced an official name change: No, My Name is Jeffery. A trailer for the mixtape found Thug in an interrogation room explaining to cops who he was. He wasn’t a young thug anymore. “I feel like I had a long-term relationship with Young Thug, and I’m kind of picky, so I felt like I didn’t want to be in front of a Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey,” he explained at the Jeffery listening party. “I didn’t want my kids to grow up and call me Thug because in real-life terms Thug is thug.” It’s impossible not to interpret that as some sort of response to the current racial climate, where the word “thug” is used as a racist dog whistle; it’s his most obvious statement in ages. Jeffery is the first Young Thug release that considers identity. But the rapper is rarely ever literal in verse; he always opts to show, not tell.
Though just as carefully sequenced and well-executed, Jeffery isn’t as tranquil, distant, or harmonious as Barter 6, which had cleansing, almost spiritual properties. Young Thug doesn’t often attempt the same thing twice, but this is perhaps his most chameleonic outing to date. The songs here are all named for his “idols”: Kanye West, former Fugee Wyclef Jean, pound-for-pound boxing king Floyd Mayweather, producer Swizz Beatz, Future, Rihanna, Gucci Mane, Webbie (of “Independent” fame), and Harambe. A careless listener might mistake them for actual song subjects. But these are all just misdirections. Outside of revealing small context clues about his origins as a stylist, and sometimes hinting at his mode or setting (like on “Future Swag”), this isn’t actually about any of those people. “Jeffery is all about Jeffery,” he explained at the listening party. “It ain’t even about Young Thug. Ain’t no Young Thug songs on there.” These are Jeffery songs, and from the sound of things, Jeffery’s greatest influence is his fiancé, Jerrika.
The songs on Jeffery are brimming with romantic subtext—Skyping a lover while she’s overseas, doing things together (“bae drink your lean with me, bae fall asleep with me”), and simply being head over heels for her (“she know she got a nigga bad”). In the opening verse of “Guwop,” he digs everything she says, everything she does, and even the way she looks at him. At one point on “Harambe,” he straight up belts out, “I just want to have a baby by you, girl!” The mixtape swoons and swells, heart fluttering, as Thug waxes poetic about his baby. This is the primary thread woven through the tape, which isn’t so much a love story as a sex tape with loving inscriptions.
Romance is at Jeffery’s core, but it’s driven by dynamic vocal performances others wouldn’t dare attempt—the pleading, bloodhound-ish yowl on “RiRi,” the breathless sprinter’s wheeze on “Harambe,” which explodes into a full-bodied Louis Armstrong impression, and the slinky yips on “Swizz Beatz.” The raps are delivered as mutters, shouts, and gasps, and flows are administered decisively and effectively. His wordplay is nimble and sharp, often using clever associations to create vivid imagery (“I picked my diamonds out a honey tree,” on “RiRi”; “I just got a family pack of Jimmy Choos” and “I got six brand new foreigns on my wrist/I got six Forgiatos on my fist,” on “Floyd Mayweather”). He has longstanding working relationships with every guest but one, and that repetition-built muscle memory shows in the results. He effortlessly passes the baton back and forth with Gunna and mentor Gucci Mane on “Floyd Mayweather,” picking up wherever the last trailed off. Duke, a standout guest on the Barter 6 cut “Dome,” smartly follows Thug’s lead on “Webbie.” The sole newcomer, Wyclef Jean, soothingly coos “Jeffery” over Thug’s shoulder on “Kanye West,” and it’s the optimal complement. There isn’t a word or note out of place.
Despite his growing reputation as a flamboyant eccentric who lives outside the boundaries of traditional songcraft making quirky “post-verbal” rap defying convention, Thug understands the modern pop song construction better than anyone: anything and everything can be a hook. Finding hooks keeps the mind stimulated and euphoric, creating something John Seabrook calls the “bliss point” in his book, The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory. What separates Young Thug songs at their peak from other pop confections is how seamlessly the transitions occur, where they materialize, and what he’s using them to do. He doesn’t want to numb the brain; He wants to super-charge its synapses. Changes happen every few bars, they turn sharply, and they make big dramatic gestures. Take “Future Swag,” which uses repetition, rapidly alternating rhythms, and ad-libs to remain constantly mobile, shifting and morphing six times in the first minute. Or “Swizz Beatz,” where he creates his own echo, repeating phrases within verses (“with me, with me”; “‘bout it, ‘bout it”; “turn up for the”) and within the chorus itself (“love”) while creating alternate hooks with melody. Micro-hooks are hidden inside of hooks and it’s all brain candy.
For nearly 42 minutes, Jeffery explores spacing, lines, form, texture, and beauty—all of which are exhibited in the mixtape’s mesmerizing artwork. The Atlanta rapper seemed to breathe life into the ideas first articulated at the Calvin Klein shoot with the cover, posed in a ruffling dress styled by Alessandro Trincone. While some people’s brains shut down at simply the sight of a man in a dress, the cover exhibits some of Thug’s strongest artistic traits: His eye for composition and stylishness, and his knack for testing limits and hurdling norms. Jeffery embodies these attributes in essence and detail. It’s rangy and stunning, an exciting new curve in the fascinating Young Thug arc. | 2016-09-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Atlantic / 300 Entertainment | September 1, 2016 | 8.5 | 0b558926-0252-43c8-83b2-0edf0b44b90a | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | null |
Following the dissolution of the White Stripes and his marriage to model/singer Karen Elson, Jack White releases his first solo LP. Rife with songs about fear and loss, Blunderbuss feels unusually personal. | Following the dissolution of the White Stripes and his marriage to model/singer Karen Elson, Jack White releases his first solo LP. Rife with songs about fear and loss, Blunderbuss feels unusually personal. | Jack White: Blunderbuss | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16534-blunderbuss/ | Blunderbuss | The sleeve of Jack White's recent single "Sixteen Saltines" shows the man in a mirror, a straight razor near his neck. Two signs sandwich his reflected face. They read: "IF YOU TALK TOO MUCH... THIS MAN MAY DIE!" The image references an actual WWII poster from 1943 that encouraged soldiers to be mindful of giving up important information. And, for White's first proper solo endeavor, the image couldn't be more suiting and cleverly self-aware; will his entrance into the typically-confessional solo realm effectively kill the mythical Jack White, the red, white, and black virtuoso who's captured our imagination more than any other rock star over the last 10 years?
Fittingly, the answer isn't short. The fascination with White has endured partly thanks to his mastery of traditional rock'n'roll skills: power, volume, dexterity, charisma. But his talent for untangling and confusing those same tried-and-true ideas is just as vital. He's playing a frightfully sincere take on the blues wearing frightfully silly outfits. He's singing truth and authenticity while fibbing about his backstory. He increasingly seems like a legacy-minded, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame buff, and yet is prone to whimsical novelty like releasing a single via balloons and working with Insane Clown Posse (on a profane Mozart redux, no less). He's famously tough to pin down and, at a time when more people are going out of their way to define themselves on a minute-to-minute basis, this slipperiness holds a heightened currency.
So while Blunderbuss is the first album with the words "Jack White" on the spine, it's not exactly a great unveiling. After all, Jack White was born John Anthony Gillis; White's idol and friend (and fellow confuser) Bob Dylan was born Robert Allan Zimmerman. Talking about reading Dylan's memoir to The Guardian, White said, "It was painful-- it would bring me to tears or it was like looking in the mirror. It was like a son that had never met his dad." Considering the kinship, an old Dylan quote from 1978 seems particularly relevant; when he was asked about his "purpose," Bob quoted Henry Miller: "The role of an artist is to inoculate the world with disillusionment." And indeed, Blunderbuss is filled with White's own disenchantment. He's loathe to talk about the personal-life specifics behind his songs, of course, but it's hard to ignore two major events that occurred in the months leading up to the album's creation last year: the dissolution of the White Stripes as well as his marriage to model and singer Karen Elson. As White skips eclectic through early rock, folk, and country styles in a casual and capable fashion reminiscent of The White Album, he moans of voids and angst and violence. Just as we're sucked in by his unknowableness, this meticulous artist is drawn to the things he can't quite get his head around, too.
In Josh Eells' brilliant recent New York Times Magazine profile, White opened up about the inner workings of his old band. "Meg completely controlled the White Stripes," he said. "She's the most stubborn person I've ever met, and you don't even get to know the reasons. [...] That band is the most challenging, important, fulfilling thing ever to happen to me. It's something I really, really miss." That kind of poignant frustration can be heard throughout Blunderbuss, though, true to form, White often masks these crushed feelings with bouncy instrumentation and arrangements. This juxtaposition is most pronounced on the album's most hummable track, "Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy", a self-deprecating juke-joint number in which he manages to kiss off himself and, quite possibly, his former bandmate/sister/wife. Along with mentions of "using your name" (Jack got his surname from Meg), he sings, "And you'll be watching me, girl/ Taking over the world/ Let the stripes unfurl/ Gettin' rich, singin' poor boy." Only a few people know precisely how cutting the song is, but its playful defensiveness carries an undeniable sting. It also features the best and simplest explanation for White's extreme work ethic thus far: "But I can't sit still/ Because I know that I will."
More often, though, White sings about a vaguer, deeper emptiness. "But sometimes these feelings can be so misleading," he admitted on "Fell in Love With a Girl". Now, he sounds like he's through being misled-- he's more fallen than fell. On the simmering, slyly threatening "Love Interruption", he's fed up: "I want love to grab my fingers gently/ Slam them in a doorway/ And put my face into the ground." It isn't some masochistic fantasy as much as a form of self discipline. "I won't let love disrupt, corrupt, or interrupt me anymore," he concludes. The sentiment dovetails with another quote from the Times piece. "I've always felt it's ridiculous to say, of any of the females in my life: You're my friend, you're my wife, you're my girlfriend, you're my co-worker," he said. "This is your box, and you're not allowed to stray outside of it." But this post-love ideal sounds like wishful thinking in the context of Blunderbuss-- not to mention White's well-noted affection for hard structure and self-limitation-- which uses the breakup emotions of hurt and fear to get its best points across.
Opener "Missing Pieces" has White bleeding and losing appendages after an unwanted departure, all while a Rhodes skips along without a care. He's beaten up and forced to walk on salt with bottomless feet by what seems like the entire iPhone generation on the rumbling "Freedom at 21", a song that perfectly fits the video for "Sixteen Saltines", which has him consumed by a chaotic world filled with kids. At 36, this is Jack White battling with his encroaching elder-statesman role, knowing the odds aren't in his favor. He's trembling in front of an almighty Delilah on a cover of the Little Willie John track "I'm Shakin'", a song that-- like much of the album-- finds White backed by a group of highly qualified women (including Elson). Though the high-wire element that fueled the White Stripes is absent here, the female accompaniment suggests White knows what brings out the best in him-- even when he's pleading about the infinite pain brought upon him by the opposite sex. He might be vengeful but he's not dumb.
Within White's oeuvre, Blunderbuss hangs in a kind of limbo-- it's closer to earth than his fantastic White Stripes yet further away than the sometimes-pedestrian Raconteurs or Dead Weather. It's got some of his best pure songwriting yet, but no earth-cracking riffs. Still, as a treatise on loss and its schizophrenic aftermath, Blunderbuss is a purposeful success. The eloquent title track dreams up a love affair where White, finally, gets the girl. But there are complications-- she already happens to be spoken for. Slide guitar smudges the picture as White wishes for a world based on desire instead of consequence. Throwing his hands up, he finishes the song: "Doing what two people need is never on the menu." The veracity of the tale is anybody's guess. Its disillusionment, though, is real. | 2012-04-23T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-04-23T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Columbia / Third Man | April 23, 2012 | 7.8 | 0b582f62-1f95-442e-b4bf-0bbdb3065dc4 | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | null |
Each song on Ty Segall's eighth album seems to be an oblique short story about cheap thrills. The album's populated with addicts—people engineered to come back for more despite how shitty it may ultimately make them feel. Segall seems less focused on hitting the exact right notes and more concerned with establishing a strange, offbeat vibe, a match for the disembodied menace of the smiling doll heads on the sleeve. | Each song on Ty Segall's eighth album seems to be an oblique short story about cheap thrills. The album's populated with addicts—people engineered to come back for more despite how shitty it may ultimately make them feel. Segall seems less focused on hitting the exact right notes and more concerned with establishing a strange, offbeat vibe, a match for the disembodied menace of the smiling doll heads on the sleeve. | Ty Segall: Emotional Mugger | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21434-emotional-mugger/ | Emotional Mugger | Whether under his own name or from various side projects, Ty Segall has kept new music waiting around the corner for years. Over a mountain of releases, he's proven that he can shred multiple times over, and that he can match that intensity in his acoustic singer/songwriter mode. It's fair to ask what else he can do at this point. With Emotional Mugger, we've arrived at a turning point for Segall: After inundating us for years, what can he do to keep people listening?
Emotional Mugger needed to be special to stand apart—a shock to the Segall system—and he hints at a new aesthetic direction from the outset. Where his last album Manipulator opened with stately organ, the synthesizers on Mugger are abrasive and off-kilter. Throughout the album, he is less focused on hitting the exact right notes and more concerned with establishing an offbeat vibe, one matching the cheerful menace of the smiling doll heads on the sleeve. The pace and structure of "California Hills" is briefly upended a few times for short bursts of frantic guitar work, and throughout the album, he switches between his traditional singing voice and a throaty, affected mystic dirtbag caricature.
There's also an underlying narrative, although it would be a reach to call it a full-on "concept album." Each song seems to be an oblique short story about cheap thrills, and throughout, his metaphor of choice is candy. The album's populated with addicts—people engineered to come back for more despite how shitty it may ultimately make them feel. Sub out the word "candy" for pretty much any other vapid, hollow pleasure in the world (and sometimes you wish he would—I respect his wish to keep his metaphors consistent, but occasionally his repetition of the same words leads the songs to blur together).
Since it's an album sending up society's constant demand for instant gratification, it feels petty and impatient to occupy its world thinking, "This hook was cool at first, but it's losing my attention." But that's the truth of Emotional Mugger—a few songs just churn over the same hook, and ultimately, there's just not enough happening to hold interest. Despite an assist from Mikal Cronin and Melvins' Dale Crover, Segall's take on Eddy Grant's Equals song "Diversion" is repetitive, unvarying, and notably less interesting than the source material.
Thankfully, it's a Segall album, which means his missteps are tempered by a few phenomenal performances. "Candy Sam" features one of his best big-tent guitar solos on record, though the album's best song is "Mandy Cream"—there's not much else that sounds like it in Segall's discography. The drums root the song in funk (courtesy of Segall's frequent collaborator Charles Moothart) while a droning synthesizer and his guitar solo bring both percussive supplements and weird punk hooks into the fold. Also worth noting: There are vocals from King Tuff.
That's another major departure for Segall on Emotional Mugger—his team. In addition to his usual co-conspirators Cronin and Moothart, he's surrounded himself by heavy-hitters like Kyle Thomas, producer F. Bermudez (who helmed recent records by Gun Outfit and No Age), Wand's Cory Hanson and Evan Burrows, and the Cairo Gang's Emmett Kelly. And with his collaborators (dubbed "the Muggers") at his side, he's done an excellent job of establishing an unsettling tone across the album—one where cooing moans of pleasure on "Baby Big Man (I Want a Mommy)" are bulldozed by him grunting the words "BIG MAN."
When Segall rolled out the album by mailing VHS copies to writers, he shared a clinical definition of "emotional mugging," explaining, "The over-communication relayed in cell based technology and content driven media further detaches passengers of our modern society from deep emotional understanding." Put more simply: The Internet makes everything and anything immediately available, and that's probably fucking up how people interact and have their desires addressed. It's a relevant subject without question—one he addresses on the album with varying degrees of success. Maybe its diciest moments can be chalked up to the album's inherent feeling of uneasiness, but Emotional Mugger still feels transitional—either the moment before he tucks in and gets way weirder or another stepping stone before he switches gears all over again. | 2016-01-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2016-01-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Drag City | January 19, 2016 | 7.3 | 0b5852e8-19d8-4549-96a6-44af286e6f81 | Evan Minsker | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-minsker/ | null |
Member of Black Moth Super Rainbow makes his full-length debut, displaying a knack for forceful beat-driven arrangements while hewing closely to his main gig's sound. Aesop Rock guests. | Member of Black Moth Super Rainbow makes his full-length debut, displaying a knack for forceful beat-driven arrangements while hewing closely to his main gig's sound. Aesop Rock guests. | TOBACCO: Fucked Up Friends | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12367-fucked-up-friends/ | Fucked Up Friends | Tobacco is the pseudonym of Tom Fec, architect of the reclusive (and frequently masked) Pittsburgh psychedelic pop outfit Black Moth Super Rainbow. Known for a tendency towards the peculiar (he recently made a mix for XLR8R.com entitled Songs To Get Killed in the Woods To and is rumored to produce tracks somewhere deep in the Pennsylvania forest), Tobacco employs old-fashioned electronic instrumentation such as analog synths and tape machines to create the hallucinatory sounds behind BMSR and his eponymous solo recordings. On Fucked Up Friends, his first companionless LP, Fec puts those toys to use for an effort that veers from his fulltime group's sunny-but-warped electronica and creeps towards a darker brand of instrumental hip-hop.
Displaying a knack for forceful beat-driven arrangements that were absent on BMSR's accomplished Dandelion Gum, Tobacco shows here that he can pull off capable leftfield hip-hop, but as an album, Fucked Up Friends lacks focus and variety. On a large majority of the record's 16 tracks (roughly five too many), Tobacco offers only slight variations on the same formula: bend analog synths into twisted melodies and set those atop puddles of tape hiss and clattering, lo-fi boombox beats. It's an intriguing approach that yields a few great songs, but because of the glut of similar material, these standout tracks tend to get lost in a neutralizing fog of sameyness.
Fucked Up Friends is at its best when Tobacco lets his beats thump hard, like on mechanical opener "Street Trash", which combines gritty ghettoblaster thuds with an industrial, engine-revving groove. Halfway-point overachiever "Berries That Burn"-- a track that starts on a stolen Boards of Canada astral hum before blasting off with aggressive drum patterns and pitchy siren synths-- also succeeds because of its beat-centric methodology. Friends' lone collaborative contribution comes courtesy of Definitive Jux rapper Aesop Rock-- as always, he's equal parts cleverness and eccentricity-- who lends rhymes to "Dirt", another strong cut. While the duet show offs each musician's singular talents, "Dirt" also brings into question the album's dearth of guest lyricists elsewhere ("Hawker Boat" is one of several tracks begging for an MC).
Most frustrating, though, is Friends' excess weight; Tobacco seems unwilling to excise material that doesn't contribute to the record's overall vision. "Hairy Candy", for instance, is a perfectly decent track, but despite a finger-snapping rhythm, it's virtually identical to the psychedelic stuff on Dandelion Gum-- down to the vocoder-ed chorus. Meandering late-album tracks "Little Pink Riding Hood" and "Tape Eater" siphon energy away from earlier, stronger material and test the listener's patience with lazy Air-like lunar synths. Utterly pointless "Get My Nails Did" and "--", meanwhile, comprise just 16 seconds of total album time and seem to exist only for their kooky track names.
Ironically, these lackluster songs help to conjure an image of what a better Friends could have been-- namely a shorter LP or a potent EP keeping only the good bits. It's also surprising that Tobacco didn't consider a full-album collaboration with Aesop Rock or invite an assortment of visiting rappers to try on his beats as a traditional hip-hop producer might. Any of those records would have likely garnered more fan interest and provided a more compelling bridge to the next BMSR full-length. | 2008-10-31T02:00:05.000-04:00 | 2008-10-31T02:00:05.000-04:00 | Electronic | Anticon | October 31, 2008 | 6.2 | 0b58c09b-b789-4a4e-8c86-7249c2d0eeb0 | Tyler Grisham | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tyler-grisham/ | null |
Swedish has-been self-finances her comeback album and winds up making one of the year's finest, smartest, and most engaging pop records. | Swedish has-been self-finances her comeback album and winds up making one of the year's finest, smartest, and most engaging pop records. | Robyn: Robyn | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6949-robyn/ | Robyn | Can you resist a girl who calls you a bum before offering to knit you mittens and make you pie? Who sings like a Pound Puppy while agreeing to push your bail bonds when cash was tight? Who compresses the entirety of this year's Fannypack record into one 2:35 track? Who exudes so much offhand sass she might strip the chrome off your bumper if she parked her "gifted, all-natural, and bursting the seams" keester on it?
Robyn Carlsson gets confused with Robin S of "Show Me Love" fame. (Not helped by the fact that she also had a U.S. top 10 called "Show Me Love.") But she's best known for "Do You Know (What It Takes)", which also went top 10 over here in that late-90s moment when anything with a fake r&b; beat and a sunshine attitude charted as a welcome relief from, like, the Toadies and stuff. She's disappeared from our radar for the past eight years-- as Euro pop stars tend to do-- but Robyn is as stupidly ebullient as any record released this year. "You wanna rumble in my jungle?/ I'll take you on/ You wanna rumble in space/ I'll put my laser on stun/ And on the North Pole/ I'll ice you, son." Uh-oh!
Over canned synbeats and zaps, she struts her stuff, castigating silly boys who think they're playing in her weight class and generally acting like the shit. "Who's That Girl" sez "no, no, no" like Destiny's Child to institutionalized sexism-- or something. "Handle Me" tells bar star douchebags with flipped polo shirt collars that she's too much. Okay, so "Robot Boy" is pretty much insufferable, a swerve too sickly for Radio Disney and kinda creepy when you factor in the songs about coming on tongues. (Those nails she's sporting on the cover don't look designed for wiping tears and mending broken hearts.) But "Be Mine", which I blathered on about in the tracks section a few weeks ago, is a disarming heartbreaker perfectly poised between twee and tuff, like if Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley and the Neptunes got trapped in Jeff Goldblum's Fly pods.
"Crash and Burn Girl" is kiddie disco (I like to imagine the party wreck she's addressing is Lindsay Lohan, but yr mileage may vary) with added early Madonna quotes. "Konichiwa Bitches" suffers from a bad Dave Chappelle joke title (not that it'll matter in 10 years), but redeemed by the fact that it's 2:35 of boasting so compressed you'll rewind it three or four times in a row. "Bum Like You" isn't a ballad, really, but it is slow and acoustic guitar driven. It's also nice to know that someone out there was willing to rewrite "No Scrubs" with a modicum of humanity granted to the scrubs in question.
Robyn is already being called "this year's Annie," which is horseshit because she actually emotes. And unlike the aforementioned Fannypack, she's got a range beyond "ripping off L'Trimm." Her pop fun is a bit knowing-- she's 26 after all. But trust the Swedes. They know what they're doing with this sort of thing. Plus it's all over in 35 minutes. If you think people should be fined for albums over 60 minutes-- is that ballad really worth it?-- you'll appreciate this. | 2005-10-02T01:00:02.000-04:00 | 2005-10-02T01:00:02.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Konichiwa / Interscope/Cherrytree | October 2, 2005 | 8.2 | 0b597888-951f-4231-82ae-8ecb05c0c29e | Jess Harvell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jess-harvell/ | null |
Matmos’ Drew Daniel extends the collaborative thrust of his solo project, imbuing dynamic, shape-shifting disco and deep-house tracks with a warm sense of community. | Matmos’ Drew Daniel extends the collaborative thrust of his solo project, imbuing dynamic, shape-shifting disco and deep-house tracks with a warm sense of community. | The Soft Pink Truth: Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This? | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-soft-pink-truth-is-it-going-to-get-any-deeper-than-this/ | Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This? | Matmos’ Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt have recounted how they originally met on Halloween, and musically, they still resemble the couple that goes all-in on a haunted house every year—across more than a dozen albums and countless side projects, they’ve maintained their kooky charm, commitment to DIY craft, and eerie tastes. They could mic a bowl of peeled grapes and convince you that they’re witch eyeballs. Daniel’s dance music project the Soft Pink Truth has carried the same mischievous spirit, flipping covers of black metal, hardcore, and crust-punk classics into glitzy disco and house.
While the Soft Pink Truth has often felt like Daniel trying on different ingenious costumes, 2020’s Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? was framed not around genre but instead around a thought-provoking question. Released at the isolating peak of the early pandemic, and framed as a response to the global rise of fascism, it took the form of a soft blur of ambient, house, jazz, and chamber music—a somber salve against darkness. Daniel created the record by collaborating virtually with friends, imbuing the dynamic musical interplay with an inspiring sense of community. Now, with the effervescent follow-up Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?, Daniel successfully recaptures the lightning-in-a-bottle spirit of those sessions while boldly moving the Soft Pink Truth in a new direction, shaping kinetic performances into joyous disco marathons.
Where the preceding album took its title from a quote by Paul the Apostle, Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This? is indebted to the philosophical wisdom of a random clubgoer. Years ago, Daniel heard a woman ask the question while watching his friend DJ, and the funny, elusive phrase lived on as a kind of mantra. True to form, the new album is brighter and lighter than its predecessor, each sprawling disco and deep-house epic introducing its own special lineup and trajectory. Once again, Schmidt is joined by pianist Koye Berry, singer Angel Deradoorian, and saxophonists Andrew Bernstein (Horse Lords) and John Berndt, while longtime Matmos collaborators including guitarist Mark Lightcap and bassist Jason Willett add to the fine-tuned band. Ulaş Kurugüllü’s glitzy string arrangements hang off tracks like streamers; Obadias Guerra brings a dreamy harp to the joyful closing cover of Willie Hutch’s “Now That It’s All Over”; and noise artist John Wiese shows up with a well-timed crash of broken glass. Meanwhile, Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart and Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner star on the excellent one-two punch of “La Joie Devant La Mort” and “Wanna Know,” each getting a disco-diva spotlight that completely transforms their distinct voices.
While this summer’s preceding mini-album Was It Ever Real? introduced this new direction (along with a scintillating cover of Coil’s “The Anal Staircase”), Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This? sidesteps that record’s careful sequencing in favor of dramatic highs and lows in nearly every track. Lush standouts like the 11-minute opener “Deeper” or the propulsive “Trocadero” feel like a dive into a luxurious pool, offering submerged contemplation before rising back up for air. “Moodswing” kicks off the album’s middle section with a popping champagne cork as its peak-time disco gradually loses bubbles and drifts towards the hypnotic arpeggiated synths of “Sunwash.” This leads to the album’s softest and perhaps most striking moment—“Joybreath,” a sensual mood piece carried by tender piano and Rose E. Kross’ delicate vocalizations.
For all the brilliant playing of Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?, one of its surprises is that the album was largely constructed remotely. This album’s ability to make you forget all the work involved speaks to Daniel’s skill as an editor but also to the passion and precision of its wide community of contributors as they nail every take. More than a side project or a solo moniker now, Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This? joyfully cements the Soft Pink Truth’s era as a band—and one that throws a hell of a party. | 2022-11-04T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2022-11-04T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Thrill Jockey | November 4, 2022 | 7.8 | 0b59c598-46bf-4136-bc42-5edd7e76d3c6 | Miles Bowe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/miles-bowe/ | |
The Band Formerly Known as Twin Sister return with a new album that possesses a distinctly nocturnal vibe. Mr Twin Sister is a 37-minute tribute to the way night allows people to discover who they are and who they want to be. | The Band Formerly Known as Twin Sister return with a new album that possesses a distinctly nocturnal vibe. Mr Twin Sister is a 37-minute tribute to the way night allows people to discover who they are and who they want to be. | Mr Twin Sister: Mr Twin Sister | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19799-mr-twin-sister-mr-twin-sister/ | Mr Twin Sister | You’re free to listen to Mr Twin Sister’s self-titled, not-quite debut whenever, wherever and however you damn please. But at the risk of assuming authorial intent, the Long Island band would prefer you wait at least until the golden hour before getting started, as no one here is liable to be awake before then. Mr Twin Sister is an exclusively nocturnal being, though it’s not picky about time and place; it seeks quiet nights on the town, wild nights in, twilight, starlight, dusk, dawn, living after midnight, working for the weekend. You can imagine it soundtracking runways, clubs, and kitchen-drinking sessions alike, as Andrea Estella is surrounded by the crisp, luminescent glow of disco balls, streelamps, fluorescents, and anything but natural sunlight. For 37 minutes, Mr Twin Sister pay tribute to the way night allows people to discover who they are and who they want to be.
Transformation and self-discovery would be primary concerns for this band: though the former Twin Sister maintained the same personnel, the context around them has changed to the point where “Twin Sister” is a closed chapter. They’re one of the last remnants of a time when people still used the word “buzz band” to describe up-and-comers, often applied to playful, savvy, photogenic acts that served as a bridge between chillwave’s deconstruction of guitar-based music and the refurbishing of indie as a pop and R&B-based idiom.
Next to Cults’ “Go Outside” and Sleigh Bells’ “Crown on the Ground”, Twin Sister's wonderful 2010 single “All Around and Away We Go” was the definitive song of the time, and they were expected to follow suit toward the verge of modest stardom. When In Heaven dropped on Domino in late 2011, it did a lot of great things, but “coming on strong” wasn’t one of them—it may have been considered too wispy, too twee, and too weird for mass consumption. The past three years have been marked by a terrible, debilitating van accident and minor successes unrelated to In Heaven: early single “Meet the Frownies” was sampled by Kendrick Lamar, while Estella subbed in for Leighton Meester in the Kickstarter-funded Veronica Mars movie. Within the first five minutes, Estella admits, “Finding out the actual year/ Made me realize how much happier I was not knowing.”
In any other year, the album art for Mr Twin Sister would be likened to a demo and taken as foreshadowing of a raw, plaintive reintroduction, a negation of what came before. In 2014, though, it looks a hell of a lot like the Yeezus cover, and while Mr Twin Sister is pretty much the exact opposite of that record’s harsh and uncompromising sound, it is similarly fashion-forward, an amplification of what preceded it and proof that “DIY” doesn’t necessarily have to mean “lo-fi.” Opener “Sensitive” takes two minutes to fade in from a gorgeous blur of whirled synths and chiming ambient sounds, and once its supple, seductive beat drops, Mr Twin Sister blind you with their newfound taste for aggressive opulence. Throughout, Mr Twin Sister is every kind of luxury—it’s more pillowy and firm than the spindly, spiky dance-pop of their past, crystalline on the outside and glittery on the inside, a snowglobe of a Times Square celebration.
Mr Twin Sister sounds flawless, and the fact that they co-produced the album and put it out on their own label aligns with a lyrical streak of independence that runs throughout. A withering dismissal of aggressive men set to assured, lolling pop-funk, “Rude Boy” inverts the dynamic of the Rihanna song of the same name, addressed most directly to narcissists and pickup artists using any public space as a sexually-charged proving grounds. But considering the band’s retreat from indie rock’s buzz-making machinery, the more general barbs ("What makes you so certain that I wanna be forced to notice you?") could be aimed at any kind of attention seeker or dude trying to blow smoke up your ass. Estella curtly sings, “I’ve got all the drinks that I can handle,” a statement that takes on a more sinister connotation during “In the House of Yes”. The title is a bait and switch—it’s uplifting, up-tempo and communal dance music, and the narrative takes place entirely within Estella’s head. It might be a reciprocation of their loan to Kendrick, fusing the uneasy cautionary tale of “Swimming Pools (Drank)” and “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe”’s glorification of “me time.” Dancing alone in her room, Solo cup in hand, Estella jokes, “Now that I’ve had two or three/ I can get a little free,” and that taste of freedom leads to four, six, and eventually, a quick spiral to the floor. The perfect night out would actually take away everything involved with "going out," and “In the House of Yes” is an escape from the world and its surrounding problems.
In spite of the disparate situations presented, both “Rude Boy” and “In the House of Yes” are unified by a desire to have some time to one’s self, to figure out what you really want out of life. “Out of the Dark” and “Twelve Angels” follow suit in a more confrontational and direct manner and underline the intent of Mr Twin Sister’s androgynous rename. Amidst the thick, liquid groove of the former, Estella observes and admires women who can naturally put on lipstick, a skirt, and a smile, but its chorus calls into question what “the dark” actually is, and whether the song is meant as a means of shedding more than social anxiety: “I am a woman/ But inside I’m a man/ And I want to be as gay as I can.”
This idea is presented even more literally on “Twelve Angels”, where Eric Carmona takes on the role of a bar-hopping woman in drag. Unfortunately, the band actually plays things too straight, utilizing the most common forms of electro dehumanization—that is, pitch-shifted and doubled vocals getting tossed down into a metallic airlock. In terms of topic, tone, execution, you name it, it’s perfectionist Silent Shout homage. But the derivation makes it a strange fit into such an otherwise idiosyncratic record; immediately after, the instrumental “Medford” serves as a bridge to “Crime Scene”, an acoustic sunrise where the record comes to an abrupt, but satisfying closure.
But Mr Twin Sister doesn't play out as a narrative arc as much as it does like a lifelike, disconnected series of situations. It isn’t a record about being young and love, just one about being romantic in all senses of the word. Its intentions are put most bluntly on the emotional and literal centerpiece “Blush”, when Estella sings, “Is there even a real me/ Or am I just a series of nights?” The band evokes the most sentimental idea of city nightlife on a record full of them—a slowdance on a rooftop, overlooking the skyline, an intimate moment interrupted by saying something foolish and trying to define it: “Have you felt like you would always be alone?” With one line, Estella amplifies the underlying worry behind every feeling of isolation, joy, regret, and excitement that's expressed throughout Mr Twin Sister. But during the duration of “Blush”, the fleeting perfection of the moment makes that a concern for another time; for now, the night is young, and anything is possible. | 2014-09-16T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2014-09-16T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Infinite Best / Twin Group | September 16, 2014 | 8.1 | 0b5a6dfa-b0af-4306-b5df-df9a64a4ccd2 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
In this 2015 set marking his retirement from live performance, the veteran improvising guitarist explores the simpler, starker side of his abstract, purposefully formless music. | In this 2015 set marking his retirement from live performance, the veteran improvising guitarist explores the simpler, starker side of his abstract, purposefully formless music. | Keith Rowe: Absence | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/keith-rowe-absence/ | Absence | One of the many innovations of AMM, the influential improv group co-founded by Keith Rowe, was their use of silence. Formed by three restless young artists with jazz backgrounds, the group found an audience in the burgeoning London art scene of the mid-1960s, although their work often barely scanned as music. A painter as well as a guitarist, Rowe took inspiration from Jackson Pollock and laid his instrument across a table, striking its body and strings for textural effect. Played with unorthodox equipment like bows and needles, it sometimes emitted a low, electric hum; other times, it was an onslaught of noise. Musicians who weren’t on their wavelength found it difficult to collaborate. Concertgoers expecting entertainment were forced to sit with their discomfort.
As a solo artist, Rowe has maintained his vision into the 21st century. Keeping up a steady stream of releases and collaborations, he has served as a vital, inquisitive presence among a generation of electroacoustic artists, like Fennesz and Oren Ambarchi, who took inspiration from his inventive approach. His most recent solo album was a four-hour set from 2016 called The Room Extended. An uncompromising epic that sampled his own recordings dating back to the ’60s while sounding unlike anything else in his catalog, the music felt cumulative and deeply personal. On the cover was a scan of Rowe’s brain, an image taken from the medical examinations that would reveal a positive diagnosis for Parksinson‘s, in early 2015.
Less than halfway into a show that same year—captured here on his new album, Absence—Rowe decided to retire from live performance. He noticed a tremor in his right hand and immediately recognized the way it compromised his sound. (On the record, it plays like a dizzy, pulsing wave of static, lasting about 10 seconds, beginning at the 12:10 mark.) Even for those attuned to the cadence and rhythm of Rowe’s abstract, purposefully formless music, this moment might not stand out. But for Rowe, whose work has always been filled with cryptic references and well-kept secrets—right down to the name AMM, an acronym whose meaning he has never explained—it felt like a sign, a definitive stopping point.
The resulting album—which Rowe has decided to release, in his characteristically irreverent terms, “before it too departs for the dustbin”—is focused on a simpler, starker set of tools than The Room Extended. But it is just as intense. When asked about his relationship to the idea of “harshness,” a word often used to describe his art, Rowe meditated on the varying degrees of the term. “Going out into the vineyard very late on a winter’s night, when it’s cold, it can feel very harsh, but there’s only silence,” he replied. “Harshness is comparative.” As opposed to the industrial fanfare of his noisier material, the music on Absence falls on the alone-in-a-vineyard-on-a-winter-night end of the spectrum: subtle, solitary, beautiful in theory but a little unnerving in practice.
By now, the sound of Rowe’s live setup has become familiar: the scraping of strings, the busted-cable buzz, the whirring of fans. You can hear all these trademarks during this single-track, 33-minute performance, which proceeds with the blurry momentum of a slow walk through heavy snow. In his usual way, Rowe intersperses his guitar playing with radio transmissions, adding an additional dusting of spontaneity, even dark humor, to the proceeding: the oblivious speakers blasting from a passing car just as you receive troubling news. Among the samples that turn up are a Nelly Furtado single about regret, a Justin Bieber hit about puppy love, and a euphoric ’70s funk deep cut about losing yourself to rhythm, which cuts off so abruptly that it sounds like half commentary, half punchline.
Absence concludes with a recording of a symphony by Haydn, and it’s the longest sample here. When asked about his interest in improv over composition, Rowe spoke about his appreciation for both forms, asking why we listen to music in the first place: “When you go to hear a Haydn string quartet, there are no surprises, are there? In terms of newness. People listen for the exquisite exposition of the quartet.” While his usual process involves cutting the sample before your brain has time to place the melody, this time he lets it run. You might find yourself slipping into the music, even forgetting about the larger work around it. Then it fades: a minute of near silence, someone coughing, a few shifting chairs, and applause. As a listener, we hear the audience lift from their trance, respond, and move on. Then we do the same.
“Retirement, or stepping away, is difficult and painful,” Rowe writes in the liner notes. “It requires a recognition of certain realities, that you are not important, that the world does not care that you have stopped performing solos, actually the world does not notice that you have stopped, life outside your bubble continues, get used to it, you are not at the centre of anything.” His words are a blunt reminder of the ethos at the heart of his work, which values exploration for the greater benefit over any mere sense of achievement or personal fulfillment. He wants the ideas to be what lives on. At the same time, it feels natural to hear this one, more than any other album he has released, and consider the gravitational force at its center, to miss it when he leaves the frame. It is a portrait of an artist slipping the borders between the silence he can control and the silence he cannot.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-06-16T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-06-16T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Erstwhile | June 16, 2021 | 8 | 0b5c5edd-2eff-489c-b85e-a600f8a4681d | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | |
The British producer’s detailed yet frictionless house bangers are full of reverence for the dancefloor, though too controlled to match its catharsis. | The British producer’s detailed yet frictionless house bangers are full of reverence for the dancefloor, though too controlled to match its catharsis. | SG Lewis: times | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sg-lewis-times/ | times | To a newcomer discovering SG Lewis’ music—on a Spotify-curated playlist called “Serotonin,” in a YouTube DJ set where he bobs his head in an empty studio for an hour—the 26-year-old singer and producer might appear to be a blithe trendhopper, poised to capitalize on the nu-disco renaissance shimmying through pop. His funk-flecked house tracks fit right in with Dua Lipa’s slick ’80s basslines and the Weeknd’s retro glitz, Jessie Ware and Kylie Minogue’s strobe-lit resurgences. But Lewis has braided disco into dance music for years. In 2014, he signed to the same label as Ware, PMR, after remixing one of her songs. Since then, his flickering singles and trio of concept EPs have revolved around obvious, easy themes: We’re young, dancing’s fun, tonight is all we have.
His full-length debut, Times, arrives nearly a year after most clubs closed, when the minutiae of what used to be a normal night out have taken on a kind of reverence. In the blank expanse of quarantine, music made for dancefloors becomes a eulogy and a prayer, an act of mourning and a symbol of hope. Times is compact and glossy, competent and earnest. The first song opens with a muffled declaration about the power of house music: “There was harmony in the music, there was harmony in the behavior of the people, and we had a good time.” Lewis rejoices in the mundanity of nightlife with surprising tenderness and grace.
His influences are blatant—the burble and glide of labelmates Disclosure, the packaged funk of the Neptunes—and sometimes homage slips into imitation. The bassline at the start of “Chemicals” is a dead ringer for Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” and it lingers long enough to miss the source material. Once the track unfolds, though, it reveals more: glittering snarls of synths, an intricate layer of strings in the background. “I might be seeing double, but I need you both,” Lewis croons, wrenching intimacy out of drunk desperation. “Time” builds off a Dennis Edwards sample, sliced and warped as Rhye writhes his voice over the tingling beat.
Nile Rodgers stops by for a kinetic blast of guitar on “One More,” a glistening ode to party flirting and the best track on the album. Lewis distorts and layers his vocals, smearing them over cinematic synths and a twirling drum pattern. He focuses on the tiny, fleeting choices that stitch together a night: a cigarette on the balcony, a move to another bar. “I know you’ve got friends in the bathroom stall,” he sings, pleading. “Can we just stay here for one more song?”
Small production details propel these songs. “FeedTheFire,” a shuffling, insistent track Lewis wrote the same day he helped produce Dua Lipa’s standout “Hallucinate,” features subtle but shimmering strings. The drums throb on “Impact,” a Robyn and Channel Tres duet that twists and reverbs their incandescent harmonies. Even during a mostly forgettable track like “Back to Earth,” the background texture gleams. The clatter and whoops of a crowd or a party are just audible over the thumps and flute, a clever reminder tucked into the drums.
That’s why it’s frustrating when Lewis retreats into safety—the Chainsmokers-esque twinkle of “Heartbreak on the Dancefloor,” or the plodding closing track. Times is a pristine album of frictionless bangers, but these songs are so controlled that they never come close to catharsis. Lewis is clearly an expert student, absorbing and refracting the history of dance and disco with the ache of the present moment. Imagine what he could do if he aimed for the future.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | PMR / EMI | February 19, 2021 | 6.9 | 0b5cc89b-47af-4f33-9eac-7eddf8366917 | Dani Blum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dani-blum/ | |
In 1985, Los Angeles performance artist Anna Homler recorded a series of shamanistic dream-songs with Southern California composer Steve Moshier, who accompanied Homler's chants with watery synthesizers and rubbery electronic pulses. If anyone is going to make sense of this 31-year-old séance in 2016, it's the New York label RVNG Intl., which has just reissued it. | In 1985, Los Angeles performance artist Anna Homler recorded a series of shamanistic dream-songs with Southern California composer Steve Moshier, who accompanied Homler's chants with watery synthesizers and rubbery electronic pulses. If anyone is going to make sense of this 31-year-old séance in 2016, it's the New York label RVNG Intl., which has just reissued it. | Anna Homler / Steve Moshier: Breadwoman & Other Tales | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21414-breadwoman-other-tales/ | Breadwoman & Other Tales | "The creation story was just me having the overwhelming desire to wear bread, and hollowing it out and putting it on my head," says Anna Homler of the genesis of Breadwoman, a long-running work that is exactly as the Los Angeles performance artist describes: a woman dressed in peasant clothes, with bread for a mask—a specter at once primitive and majestic, ancestral and eternal.
The chanting, meanwhile, started in 1982: She was driving through Topanga Canyon in a 1961 Cadillac she called the Whale when a song came to her, but not a song in any language she knew. She sang along, a faithful receiver, and those transmissions eventually became the material on Breadwoman & Other Tales, in which she gives voice to shamanistic dream-songs rendered in a style partly reminiscent of Meredith Monk and Joan La Barbara. "It's a found language," she says of the tongue that she began channeling in her Breadwoman songs. "I used to say it was invented, but I didn't really invent it; I found it. It bubbled up."
The recordings here come from a 1985 cassette, but if you believe Homler, the songs themselves may be thousands of years old. Noting how certain "words" in her lyrics later turned out to resemble words in other tongues (various African languages, or Serbo-Croatian), she ventures that perhaps she taps into something ancient in her songs—a universal language, a mother tongue passed on to us via her harvest god.
If anyone is going to make sense of this 31-year-old séance in 2016, it's RVNG Intl., a New York label that has made bridging generations an integral part of its practice: linking up psychedelic noisemakers Sun Araw and M. Geddes Gengras with legendary Jamaican reggae outfit the Congos, for instance, or getting Julianna Barwick in a room with no wave legend Ikue Mori. Homler's musical partner for these '80s sessions was Steve Moshier, a Southern California composer who accompanies Homler's chants with watery synthesizers and rubbery electronic pulses, fusing distant past with deep future. (That collision brings to mind Craig Leon's work of stargazing primitivism Nommos, which, as chance has it, RVNG Intl. reissued on 2014's Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music.) It would be easy to imagine a project like Homler's getting wrapped up in New Age packaging—birdsong and pan flute and synth pads as airy as spun sugar. Fortunately, Homler and Moshier had something far different in mind, and, consequently, the music on Breadwoman & Other Tales sounds as alien now as it must have then.
On "Ee Chê," Homler's chanting, sung in a mode that's not quite blues but not quite not blues, either, flows in multi-tracked circles over a slow railroad chug of white noise punctuated by plunging bass glissandos. Moshier has a knack for finding a single, spellbinding sound and sending it swinging through the void like a pendulum, and here, it is a lone, wavering bass tone that feels less like a musical figure than something inadvertently picked up by a space telescope. Two long, meditative songs, not on the original cassette release, might be the most spellbinding selections here. On the 12-minute "Sirens," Homler squeals and clicks over queasy synth drones, and on "Celestial Ash," delay and multi-tracking are used to stretch Homler's voice into a luminous mist, as she sings a patient, mournful song over looped whispers and coos. It is mesmerizing; 17 minutes pass by in a flash. Whatever your feelings about divining speech from ancestral voices, you don't have to take any of Homler's theories literally to recognize the power in these songs. Wherever they may have come from, they have the power to take the listener far beyond the limits of the known musical universe. | 2016-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2016-02-19T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Rvng Intl. | February 19, 2016 | 8.1 | 0b608e6c-60b7-4946-be3f-fd8412cc182c | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | null |
On his first full-length under the Leech alias, Brian Foote dissects his electronic music until it evokes the wide-open spaces of early drum’n’bass. | On his first full-length under the Leech alias, Brian Foote dissects his electronic music until it evokes the wide-open spaces of early drum’n’bass. | Leech: Data Horde | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/leech-data-horde/ | Data Horde | For the better part of the last 20 years, Brian Foote has been behind the scenes and at the perimeter of the stage, calmly making sure everything goes smoothly. With work for both the celebrated Kranky label as well as his own Peak Oil imprint, studio credits ranging from production for Zola Jesus to drum programming for a pre-Ableton Stephen Malkmus, or catch-all auxiliary electronics duties in Valet, Fontanelle, and a touring configuration of Atlas Sound, Foote’s roles tend towards the understated but indispensable. A patient, exacting approach guided even the mossiest work from his electro-acoustic collective Nudge, and he applies that same precision to Data Horde, the first full-length from his dancefloor-minded alias Leech.
In the liner notes for a Leech cassette release from 2017, Foote shouted out trailblazing early ’90s UK jungle labels Moving Shadow and Good Looking Records, and some of the material feels influenced by jungle’s early, more minimal days. With Data Horde, Foote pays more direct tribute, exfoliating his tracks until the skeletal elements of dissected drum’n’bass are left in a vast, empty field. Within these dubby, wide-open spaces, Foote steadily unravels tightly controlled productions.
As the title might imply, Data Horde has a labored-over feel, as if the sessions were refined repeatedly over the course of months or even years. The slowly blooming first few minutes of “Nimble” feel disorienting until accumulating layers of polyrhythms and interlocking synth lines click into place to reveal the purpose of every sound. Clearly a fascinated student of techno history, Foote plays with the boundaries of where one microscopic subgenre of electronic music becomes another. A brief passage of fuzzy bass stumbling drunkenly through choppy drum patterns in “Bit Rot” suggests IDM, but stops short before making any predictable moves. Vaguely familiar jungle breaks slither in and out of focus and acid basslines drool across “Delysid,” rolling in waves of anticipatory tension that never fully break. In every track, the expected turn is sidestepped, and the drop never happens.
Most interestingly, even with its nods to rave’s early prime, Data Horde is neither a nostalgic love letter to the golden era of drum’n’bass or an academicized archeological dig of a ’92 warehouse party. Foote aims for a specific sweet spot of jungle’s gilded days, but also explores beyond those constraints. With the same steadfast demeanor that touches all of Foote’s work, his first fully formed collection of Leech material creates a breathing environment where fragments of the past joyously corrode into whatever comes next. | 2019-08-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-08-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Peak Oil | August 5, 2019 | 7.4 | 0b61a581-a713-4635-9323-a3bb41a8bb98 | Fred Thomas | https://pitchfork.com/staff/fred-thomas/ | |
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today we revisit the pop star’s singular 2007 album, her oft-misunderstood comeback and a defining cultural artifact of the dark, trashy, celebrity-driven essence of the aughts. | Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today we revisit the pop star’s singular 2007 album, her oft-misunderstood comeback and a defining cultural artifact of the dark, trashy, celebrity-driven essence of the aughts. | Britney Spears: Blackout | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/britney-spears-blackout/ | Blackout | A woman drives fast along the California freeway with the radio screaming, delirious with grief. She does this every morning, dressing quickly in her Beverly Hills home so as to leave no time to think. Changing lanes is like a dance the way she’s trained herself to do it, seamlessly and to the beat. She walks barefoot into gas stations, rinsing down pills with warm Coca-Cola and chatting mindlessly with the attendants. Her marriage is over. Her showbiz career is dead. Her child has been taken away. She is known to cry at parties or get carried home; close friends have come to believe she’s insane. It is only on the freeway, when the music is loud, that she can forget what’s become of her life. To fall asleep she imagines herself on the road: “The Hollywood to the San Bernardino and straight on out, past Barstow, past Baker, driving straight on into the hard white empty core of the world.”
How chic the story sounds the way Joan Didion tells it in her 1970 novel Play It as It Lays. The woman is a trainwreck but a sharp and glamorous one, numbing out on pills as a critique of moral rot in 1960s Tinseltown. Books are great that way. Played out in real life in the year 2007, the tale loses its cool; now the woman is a punchline whose endless personal disasters keep a burgeoning new media economy afloat. It seemed that every week, or sometimes even every day, brought a hysterical new headline regarding the downward spiral of America’s pop princess. (“HELP ME!” “INSANE!” “OUT OF CONTROL!”) “We serialize Britney Spears. She’s our President Bush,” said TMZ founder Harvey Levin in a gruesome Rolling Stone cover story from early 2008, which began with Britney wailing in a San Fernando Valley shopping mall as a crowd closed around her with their Sidekick smartphones brandished. “I don’t know who you think I am, bitch,” 26-year-old Spears snarled to a shopgirl approaching for a photo. “But I’m not that person.”
What had become of the Southern sweetheart was not a symptom or appraisal of a new century’s decay but the foremost emblem of it, or possibly its cause. A New York Times essay that summed up 2007 as the year of the trainwreck, in which “prominent figures from every arena of public life did harm to their reputations and livelihoods in devastating fashion,” led with a description of Spears’ lifeless performance at the VMAs that fall. “Is there any measurable way to prove what many of us feel in our gut,” the article went on, “that 2007 was the year when the excesses of our most reliably outrageous personalities finally started to feel, well, excessive?” Or was it that the billion-dollar gossip industry, newly powerful online, had willed this chaos into being? It was the dawning of the era of perpetual surveillance, and websites once considered too sketchy to break news were scooping the “real” outlets when it came to all things shallow and macabre.
It had been nearly four years without new Britney Spears music. She remained the defining figure of American pop culture, only what that meant had changed, and by then the image of the happy blonde from Kentwood, Louisiana, had been replaced a few times over. “Have you ever gone further than you wish you had?” Diane Sawyer asked the singer gravely on Primetime in 2003, whipping out the pages of a recent Esquire shoot which styled her in little more than a dozen strings of pearls. Its accompanying story, written by Chuck Klosterman, opened with the sentence, “Britney Spears is pantless,” and went on to conclude: “She is not so much a person as an idea, and the idea is this: You can want everything, so long as you get nothing.” On the cover she was made up like Marilyn Monroe, with whom she shared a knack for articulating her own myth with more profundity and wit than most smug writer types.
In the years since her last record, 2003’s In the Zone, Spears had married a dancer from Fresno, gave birth to their two sons, negotiated a divorce, lost custody of the babies, went twice to rehab, shook off her management team, and spent her days hunted by cameramen through the gas stations, pharmacies, and drive-thrus of L.A. She also wrote a blog. For $25 a year, you could read the singer’s musings on the fearsome beauty of tigers (“their eyes, their stripes, their constant quest for survival”) or poems she’d written: “Manipulation is the key/They screw it in/Because you’re naive,” went one from 2006. Other times she’d weigh in on her latest dramas with good humor and startling self-awareness. “Recently, I was sent to a very humbling place called rehab,” she wrote in spring 2007. Three months before, she’d shaved her head bald at a hair salon in the Valley as the paparazzi snapped on. Headlines called her crazy, but she looked strangely serene. “It felt almost religious,” Spears described the moment in her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me. “I was living on a level of pure being.”
In a blog update from June 2007, Spears appeared in a cheap wig and elbow-length white gloves, posing like she might have circa Oops!... I Did It Again. “I’m asking my most die-hard fans for some assistance in order to name my upcoming album” the post read, presenting the following titles for fans to vote on:
1. Omg is Like Lindsay Lohan Like Okay Like
2. What if the Joke is on You
3. Down boy
4. Integrity
5. Dignity
As a riff on her own image, it was better satire than the cheap shots at the star that pervaded late-night TV. In any case, she named the album Blackout.
⚜ ⚜ ⚜
In a ritualistic deflowering ceremony stretched out across three years, millions watched as Spears transformed from a shy schoolgirl to a sweat-slick jungle queen, writhing beneath a python onstage at the VMAs. I can’t count the times I’ve replayed these performances—1999, 2000, 2001—trying to articulate what made her such a star. Her melismatic voice, sung from her nose and not her chest, lacked the power of the divas of the ’90s, trembling instead with plucky naivety. But beneath her confidence and cheery disposition, the pathos of her best songs (“Sometimes,” “Lucky,” “Everytime”) always seemed to trace back to the loneliness of being misconstrued. “Notice me,” she whimpered on the first line of the latter. In the 2004 video, she drowns in the bathtub of a hotel room from injuries sustained in a paparazzi chase while a baby is born in a hospital nearby. Spears wrote the treatment herself.
By September 2007, four years had passed since Spears’ last VMAs appearance, where a campy kiss with Madonna had triggered lesbian rumors and conservative talk show ire. Compared to the promo blitzes for her previous albums, she had so far done almost nothing to advertise the long-awaited Blackout, her fifth album to be released later that fall. Her performance of its lead single that would open the awards show was hyped as the equivalent of Elvis’ 1968 comeback special. “My team was pressuring me to get out there and show the world I was fine,” wrote Spears in her memoir. “The only problem with this plan: I was not fine.”
Sleepless, under-rehearsed, and fresh off a backstage run-in with her ex Justin Timberlake, who’d take home more awards than any other artist that night, Spears had a panic attack. With messy hair and denim-blue contacts, she staggered around the stage, shimmying miserably to a song called “Gimme More.” “I knew it was going to be bad,” she described in the memoir. “I could see myself on video throughout the auditorium while I performed. It was like looking at myself in a funhouse mirror.” The camera panned the crowd: Rihanna stifled a giggle, 50 Cent arched a brow. Spears looked so tragic up there that I doubt too many viewers were paying much attention to how nuts the music sounded. Her voice stretches and smears and splinters, interrupted now and then by a man who sounded like Satan, or perhaps Dracula. It’s a song about surveillance in the guise of a song about sex, showing you how it feels when the two topics are entwined—a pole-dance number for the panopticon. “They want more?” she gasps over the beat’s zombified thud and the creepy oohs and ahhs of the spectral background choir. “I’ll give them more,” she promises, whispering it like a threat.
At home, the song’s producer, Floyd Hills, watched, waiting for a sign: “Just give me that one pop to let me know you back.” The beatmaker better known as Danja had come up under Timbaland, the most influential producer of the century thus far; they’d shared credits on Timberlake’s 2006 album FutureSex / LoveSounds, which ran the charts and earned the former boy band member newfound cred. That summer, Danja had begun to work with Spears on the album that would mark his solo breakthrough, which she’d call in her memoir “the thing I’m most proud of in my whole career.” The producer had become obsessed with the dance music he’d heard in the nightclubs of Miami, a year before the Daft Punk tour that brought their French touch to the American mainstream in 2007. “Everyone was bouncing around to Benny Benassi’s ‘Satisfaction’ and Tiesto, literally in a trance,” Danja recalled of one night at Club Space. “I was like, that’s it. If my music doesn’t make you feel like that, what are we doing?”
The Blackout sessions flowed without direction or distraction, with Spears estranged from her old team and unburdened by the notion of “pop.” “She might have been going through more in her personal life than what we knew at that time, and it got a little crazier when we were deeper in the project,” Danja said a decade later. Still, the crew of writers—among them Keri Hilson and T-Pain—were struck by the singer’s instincts. She knew exactly what a Britney Spears record should sound like at that time. “You would know how she felt about a song by pure body language,” said Danja. He stuck to beats that made her dance in the booth: “Something hard and edgy with hip-hop undertones. Once I realized that was what she wanted to do, that’s where I stayed.”
A synth on the fritz, an animal shriek, and the slap of a bag of quarters on the folding counter of Hell’s only late-night laundromat: so begins Blackout’s second single, “Piece of Me,” the coolest song of Britney Spears’ career. “I’m Miss American Dream since I was 17,” she sneers, her voice thrown and refracted, sinking through Auto-Tune ooze into a beat from Bloodshy & Avant, the Swedish duo who’d helped her win her first Grammy for “Toxic” in 2004. You could simplify the song as a piece about the obliteration of selfhood as the cost of mega-fame, its decayed sound paired perfectly with its rotten subject matter. But that description makes it sound like Spears would play the victim. Instead she rolls her eyes, already bored with your obsession.
“Piece of Me” is among the great works of American art about fame. But at the 2:08 mark, it becomes a masterpiece as Spears’ voice glitches, stutters, and doubles over the throb of a synth line as elegant as the 2000’s iciest grime. It is rightfully here that the careers of Charli XCX and PC Music begin, with music that still sounds like the future of pop 17 years later. Most critics at the time attributed Blackout’s radical sound to the non-Britney Spears names among its credits, where she is listed as executive producer. (“She has done almost nothing, in the recording studio or outside it, to convince fans that Blackout is really hers, or really her,” wrote Kelefa Sanneh in a New York Times review.) But in ways that anticipate Kanye West’s Yeezus six years later—the treatment of the human voice, the purpose behind each sound—such an alarming album on fame’s shattering potential could be made only by this artist at this moment.
And what exactly did Blackout emerge from? Taking notes to write this piece, bullet points played out like a mid-aughts version of “We Didn’t Start the Fire”: “BIMBO SUMMIT / BLING RING / PORNHUB / WILL.I.AM / ROCK OF LOVE / CINESPACE// KIM K SEX TAPE / SOULJA BOY CRANK THAT / JUICY ON MY SWEATPANTS / DEADMAU5 / BLOGHOUSE / ANNA NICOLE SMITH” It’s the era’s naughty qualities that most stand out today. But the trashy-fun abandon never quite made it to pop, which still felt quaint beside the bacchanalian club rap and stadium R&B. (“It’s been boring,” Spears said in 2006 regarding the pop scene. “Nothing’s been wow to me.”) Cher’s “Believe” had brought Auto-Tune’s post-human sparkle to the radio in ’98, though songs by T-Pain and Lil Wayne that normalized the plug-in as an expressive tool were still mostly seen as gimmicks. Blackout took the concept further, going beyond naughty to feel genuinely sinister: a glimpse inside a life from which every bit of normalcy had been stripped away.
“I’m crazy as a motherfucker, bet that on your man,” Spears sing-songs on Blackout’s weirdest song, “Get Naked (I Got a Plan).” The track buzzes like a lightbulb dangling from a string as Danja assumes the role of a maniacal wizard, smearing his cackling vocals across space and time. Spears’ chants and teases are stretched and pulled to the limits of what is recognizably human; still, she rides the beat. It’s a song about sex that makes you consider abstaining from it forever, and that’s before Danja slips into a terrifying trance, grasping mechanically at Spears like a demented pervert robot.
The year before, Spears’ superstar ex had made a promise to bring sexy back. I listen to FutureSex/LoveSounds today and cringe, less for the pleasures of millennial misandry than for how purely wack it sounds when played next to Blackout. Why is it that Blackout sounds vital today where FutureSex sounds limp, though Danja’s fingerprints are all over both records? You could call it a vibe shift: FutureSex marked the end of Timbaland’s 10-year reign as urban radio innovator, while Blackout looked ahead to our synthetic future. (Timbaland’s slick beats in the late ’90s and 2000s conjured images of hoverboards and flying cars, but it’s the melancholy futurism of TLC’s FanMail that resonates today in its 1999 vision of lonely androids refreshing their inboxes.) More than that, Spears understood something Timberlake didn’t: Abjection is a powerful aphrodisiac, and desire requires a void.
Venture too far down the rabbit hole of 2007 Britney cliché and you might end up at the idea of Blackout as an evil album, an exploitative document of a woman at rock bottom. The cliché extends to the well-intended but condescending coffee mugs emblazoned with the catchphrase “If Britney Survived 2007, You Can Make It Through Today.” But to view Blackout through a lens of victimhood is to miss how fun and wild the album can be. Irksome on the first few listens, “Radar” becomes addictive in its counterintuitive swing, her vocals just behind the beat like today’s rap avant-garde. On “Freakshow,” Spears raps in a campy-cool mode between Peaches and Fergie (“On some superstar ish, pushing hot Bugatti whips”) before her voice is chopped to smithereens as Bloodshy & Avant try their hand at dubstep wobbles. Even harder is “Toy Soldier,” an amped-up K-Fed sneak diss co-written by Sean Garrett, the pen behind Ciara’s “Goodies” and Beyoncé’s “Upgrade U.” (Call me crazy, but I hear glimmers of Azealia Banks’ “212” in its bratty bounce.)
The only press Spears did for Blackout was a live radio interview with Ryan Seacrest that October. KIIS-FM had told her it would be about the record, until the questions began: Do you feel like you’re doing everything you can for your kids? How often will you see them? “It felt like that was the only thing that people wanted to talk about: whether or not I was a fit mother,” Spears remembered in her memoir. “Not about how I’d made such a strong album while holding two babies on my hips and being pursued by dozens of dangerous men all day, every day.” Still, she managed a quick mention of her favorite track: “Heaven on Earth,” the nearest Blackout comes to a love song. Its inspiration (Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”) is all climax, but Spears works the other way, surrendering the final minute to freefall. “I falllllll off the edge of my miiiiiind,” she exhales, spiraling to a level of pure being.
Where her previous CD booklets had arrived with gushing “thank you” lists, Blackout came with none at all. It was the first Britney Spears album without a No.1 debut when a last-minute Billboard rule change bumped the Eagles’ seventh album, sold exclusively at Walmart, to the top. Even the glowing reviews wondered whether this nihilistic album was by Britney, or about her. Why not both? Years later, a leaked email from Spears demanded co-direction credits for the “Piece of Me” video. “I am learning more and more to take charge of my own life for a change,” she wrote. “If that bothers you then go sign another artist.” (She signed off: “Cheerfully yours.”)
“Do you feel out of control in your life?” asks an interviewer off-screen in Britney: For the Record, the MTV documentary on Spears’ “post-breakdown” life released at the end of 2008. That February, she had been placed against her will under the conservatorship of her father and former business manager, which would last for the next 13 years. “No, I don’t feel it’s out of control. I think it’s too in control,” Spears answers without pause. “There’s no excitement. There’s no passion. It’s like Groundhog Day every day.” The camera pulls in close as she wipes away her tears. “When did you last feel free?” the man asks later. “When I got to drive my car a lot,” she wistfully replies. “I haven’t been able to drive my car.” | 2024-08-04T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-08-04T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Jive | August 4, 2024 | 8.1 | 0b6367ba-072b-45ca-ba81-3f4d235ef489 | Meaghan Garvey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/meaghan-garvey/ | |
The Return of East Atlanta Santa leans on the lighter, more playful side of Gucci’s personality. You can hear him settling into his clean post-prison lifestyle and his new, clearer voice. | The Return of East Atlanta Santa leans on the lighter, more playful side of Gucci’s personality. You can hear him settling into his clean post-prison lifestyle and his new, clearer voice. | Gucci Mane: The Return of East Atlanta Santa | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22692-the-return-of-east-atlanta-santa/ | The Return of East Atlanta Santa | The unifying thread in Gucci Mane’s music since being released from prison this past May after serving nearly three years for drug and gun charges can be summed up in one word: readjustment. His stunning physical transformation—which included losing 75 pounds and the emergence of an enviable six-pack, the results of a healthier drug-free lifestyle—also impacted Gucci’s rapping itself. Aside from the usual sort of rust that needed to be shaken off, his dramatic weight loss affected his delivery in other tangible ways (which only stoked the fires of the clone conspiracy theories): the new Gucci was less congested, less slurred, and less guttural.
July’s Everybody Looking felt like an exploratory mission, as if he was unfamiliar with his own voice and testing out his new physical presence for size. Three months later, Woptober followed, which found the prolific Atlanta rapper increasing his familiarity with his vocal register, his rapping tighter and more assured. On The Return of East Atlanta Santa, his final release of 2016, Gucci has caught up with his new normal, sounding fully acclimatized to the new version of himself.
No longer is he searching for his footing: on opener “St. Brick Intro” he immediately slips in the pocket of Zaytoven’s funhouse minor-key rework of “Jingle Bells” and paints himself as the trap Kris Kringle: “Middle of the winter, I pull up in a vert / It’s the middle of December, she pulled up in a skirt/ Santa Claus of the hood, I pull up with the work / They call me East Atlanta Santa, run up on me, get murked.” Irreverent and silly as hell, the only thing that might prevent it from joining the pantheon of unconventional Christmas bangers is the slightness that comes with acting as an album’s welcome mat.
The holiday cheer extends no further, but the album’s remaining twelve tracks benefit from similarly locked-in performances. Whereas Everybody Looking and Woptober mirrored Gucci’s new lifestyle in content as well as form—he opened Everybody Looking by introducing himself as a “recovering drug addict”—here it is reflected in the clarity of his performance. The allusions to cleaner living are mostly oblique. “Last Time” features Travis Scott in support mode—which also happens to be his best mode—and preaches conscientiousness in recreational drug use. It contains some of the few direct references to Gucci’s erratic last decade: “See I’m an ex-X popper and online shopper / Niggas thought I was a clone, they heard me speak proper.” The other nod to his self-destructive past arrives in the chorus of “I Can’t,” one of the stickiest in his post-prison output: “You can talk about homicides, but I can’t.”
Gucci himself remains as magnetic as ever. He isn’t overwhelmed when Drake shows up to pull double duty on “Both,” lending his voice to the song's chorus as well as contributing a verse of his own. It’s more successful than the last time the two linked up—“Back on Road” off Everybody Looking—on which a phoned-in Drake hook added little. Gucci’s also still capable of rattling off deceptively poetic turns of phrases like “Now my watch so fucking bright it look like sunlight in the night,” as heard on the Mike WiLL Made-It-produced standout “Nonchalant.” On the same song he raps “In a whip so new, valet scared to park it,” an example of his sense of humor, which doesn't always get enough credit. The Return of East Atlanta Santa leans on this lighter, more playful side of Gucci’s personality, proving along the way that back to business doesn’t have to mean an absence of fun. | 2016-12-21T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2016-12-21T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | 1017 Brick Squad | December 21, 2016 | 7.6 | 0b6a52eb-d0a0-415b-aecf-a464d019dce1 | Renato Pagnani | https://pitchfork.com/staff/renato-pagnani/ | null |
Okay, can someone please remind me why The Strokes were such a polarizing force about two years ago? Listening to ... | Okay, can someone please remind me why The Strokes were such a polarizing force about two years ago? Listening to ... | The Strokes: Room on Fire | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7538-room-on-fire/ | Room on Fire | Okay, can someone please remind me why The Strokes were such a polarizing force about two years ago? Listening to Is This It last week had me scratching my head over how it managed to become the Roe vs. Wade of the rock crit world in 2001, with everyone forced to choose sides: "saviors of rock!" or "everything that's wrong with music today!" At the time, I found myself in the latter category, ironically earning myself a spot on this very staff with a lengthy diatribe against the band's hype machine, socioeconomic background, and rampant influence-pilfering. You know, basically everything but the music.
I feel pretty silly about such grandstanding nowadays, having finally listened to, and embraced, at least the show-stopping middle third of The Strokes' debut. But with the release of Room on Fire, both sides of The Great Strokes Debate look a little foolish; NYC's finest have all but given birth to an identical twin. In the interim, a perplexing flirtation with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich ("you know, 'Last Nite' was just a few lasers away from being perfect!") was scrapped, and the band's relentless touring failed to lead them down the cockier, arena-rock path some suspected they'd travel. Instead, Room on Fire is eleven songs sharing DNA with its predecessor, a follow-up of more sleepy, contagious mono-pop that doesn't sound diligently recorded so much as yawned out.
This is far from a bad thing, largely because The Strokes seem almost pathologically unable to write a song that isn't immediately catchy. Tracks like "Reptilia", "Meet Me in the Bathroom", and "Under Control" take their place alongside the highlights of the band's debut, all hitting that perfect contrast of woozy nonchalance and taut guitar work that appears to be the alpha and omega of their stylistic inventory. That there's nothing new or innovative to be found here is sure to be a common complaint, though only those who prize evolution over knowing one's strengths will cry fraud.
Speaking of the originality quotient-- and not to add more historical tinder to the fire of what bands The Strokes supposedly owe a debt to, but-- lead guitarist Nick Valensi is sweating The Pixies' Joey Santiago something fierce here. His development is the only newish detail I can detect on Room on Fire, and it's an inspiration that lends improvement; Santiago's beautifully simple lead lines were The Pixies' secret weapon, and Valensi employs a similar humble style to lend a melodic counterpoint to the proceedings. Whether showing up at the Halloween party as The Cars' keyboard on "12:51" or contributing slow-hand solos to "What Ever Happened?" and "You Talk Way Too Much", it's an extra spritz of tuneship that only assists The Strokes' infectious ways.
Of course, Julian Casablancas is a far cry from Frank Black as vocalists go, but it can at least be said that he knows his place through Room on Fire. Wisely avoiding the unbecoming screaminess of subpar Is This It tracks like "Take It or Leave It" and "New York City Cops", he instead applies a cough syrupy croon to "Under Control" and "The End Is No End", its bum notes smoothed out by his payphone vocal effect addiction. Casablancas also appears to have moved beyond the smirking misogyny of his early lyrics, just as the cover art is sagely chosen to continue the abstract graphic theme of the Stateside edition of Is This It rather than the Smell the Glove-style UK version.
Meanwhile, the rhythm section, the band's Achilles' heel, continues to miraculously scrape by, lending these tracks a vaguely new wave air despite slack-limp playing (hey guys, trade Godrich's number for the DFA's and you might be onto something). Drummer Fabrizio Moretti has always tended to sound a bit like a drum machine, and here his best work happens when he shares the drummer's stool with a sampler-- "The Way It Is" and "Meet Me in the Bathroom" shuffle with the best technology 1983 had to offer. Bassman Nikolai Fraiture, mostly relegated to backbone status on this outing, carries less of the band's melodic weight than he did on Is This It but gets a front-of-stage moment on the perfectly choreographed breakdown of "Reptilia".
It remains to be seen whether old white men will continue to trumpet The Strokes as leading the cause of hiphopicide, and if young white idealists will stand firm on the opposite side, regarding the band as the Nike of indie rock (and no doubt fixating their conspiracy theories on Casablancas' sarcastic aside "keepin' down the underground, oh no!"); what's clear is that The Fab(rizio) Five neither deserve, nor desire, either status-- their goals are about as unpretentious and uncomplicated as possible. They may not be able to get away with milking this formula for many more albums, but for now, Room on Fire's eleven songs find them drowsily getting away with what they do best. | 2003-10-26T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2003-10-26T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | RCA | October 26, 2003 | 8 | 0b6e5182-23b1-4eaf-ab59-de45f8d8b80f | Rob Mitchum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rob- mitchum/ | null |
Eleanor Friedberger's solo music has long made New York City its stage, but she moved to upstate New York to write her third solo album New View. The record’s no-fuss, featherlight acoustic pop songs weave into one another seamlessly, Friedberger’s melodies familiar and redolent of artists like Harry Nilsson and Neil Young without playing like nostalgia. | Eleanor Friedberger's solo music has long made New York City its stage, but she moved to upstate New York to write her third solo album New View. The record’s no-fuss, featherlight acoustic pop songs weave into one another seamlessly, Friedberger’s melodies familiar and redolent of artists like Harry Nilsson and Neil Young without playing like nostalgia. | Eleanor Friedberger: New View | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21380-new-view/ | New View | This past October, Eleanor Friedberger released "False Alphabet City," a groovy one-off single all about the "city that betrayed her." Like many musicians before her, Friedberger has long made New York City her favorite stage. Her songs, which roll with a bouncy '70s pop nostalgia, are peppered with stories of getting sick riding the Coney Island Cyclone, snapping pictures in front of a sweet Lamborghini on Manhattan Avenue, and the small, poignant act of muting Taxi TV. But with a bitter edge in its tone, "False Alphabet City" played like an earnest goodbye, to the noise, to whoever hurt her, to the false glamour of urban spaces.
So after over a decade of Brooklyn dwelling, Friedberger moved to upstate New York and wrote her third solo album New View. And while Personal Record was populated with energized, electric rock songs and party-hopping anthems, New View’s territory is far more easygoing, more traditional in its structure. The record’s no-fuss, featherlight acoustic pop songs weave into one another seamlessly, Friedberger’s melodies familiar and redolent of artists like Harry Nilsson and Neil Young without playing like nostalgia. But even if New View’s overall aesthetic may pair nicely with your laziest summer Sunday morning, there’s an undercurrent of serious melancholia in Friedberger’s writing here, setting it apart tonally from her previous two records.
What’s palpable on New View is a sense of loneliness. You might even say hermitry, as Friedberger’s writing here suggests, at times, a mindset distanced from physical society. The hazy "Open Season" plays like Friedberger writing a letter to a long-lost friend or lover whose whereabouts she doesn’t know. "Is it freezing over there? I’m opening a tree museum, that’s my new hobby," she sings, seemingly poking fun at how settled her life has become. On "Cathy With the Curly Hair," a bopping, synth-laden outlier, Friedberger goes through the calendar months recounting memories of an unraveled relationship. In a year when catching up on an old friend’s whereabouts is as easy as Googling their name, New View’s ponderings might seem anachronistic, too reliant on in-person communication. But perhaps we all know by now that loneliness can be just as prevalent in a hyper-connected present.
An interesting thread throughout New View’s equal parts wistful and frustrated tales of breakups is how often Friedberger explicitly refers to writing about them. She mentions that she knows she'll write about someone, to the experience of listening to her own songs when she has nothing more to say, to her own stage fright. On "Never Is a Long Time," Friedberger invokes the cynical energy of Lindsey Buckingham’s Tusk cuts, particularly "Walk a Thin Line," as she sings of a relationship's undoing in an uncharacteristically low and trembling voice, a single drum banging haphazardly in the background. "We are less than nothing, nothing is a perfect rhyme," she sings.
In the past, Friedberger has loaded her music with little pedestrian anecdotes that feel specific to her songwriting, bits of wordplay and vivid descriptions of acquaintances and locations. Sometimes she gets there on New View, particularly on "Does Turquoise Work?" and "All Known Things" which includes kissing in a mausoleum, but the album is largely devoid of these lyrical quirks. In their place is a kind of self-aware storytelling that plays like Friedberger is letting us in to a very personal process. At times New View can seem like a concept record detailing Friedberger's ambivalence about her main gift: spinning fragile memories and feelings into accessible songs. | 2016-01-20T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2016-01-20T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Frenchkiss | January 20, 2016 | 7.8 | 0b736581-5f89-48b1-a477-da479eeafa69 | Hazel Cills | https://pitchfork.com/staff/hazel-cills/ | null |
Co-produced by Adrianne Lenker, the Australian songwriter’s debut is a dark little star of intimacy and intensity. The atmosphere is rapt, the silences charged. | Co-produced by Adrianne Lenker, the Australian songwriter’s debut is a dark little star of intimacy and intensity. The atmosphere is rapt, the silences charged. | Indigo Sparke: Echo | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/indigo-sparke-echo/ | Echo | The Sydney-based singer-songwriter Indigo Sparke makes the kind of spare folk that can quiet a room. Circumstances being what they are, she hasn’t had the opportunity to quiet very many. Last year, though, she was joined by a kindred artist, someone else who does not have to raise their voice to command attention. A few songs into her March 2020 performance at NPR’s Tiny Desk, Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker sauntered out. The pair were briefly involved in 2019, and as with Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek, Lenker and Sparke seem to have forged an enduring musical connection. At NPR, Lenker looked both self-effacing and worshipfully attentive, offering tasteful filigree: David Rawlings to Sparke’s Gillian Welch.
Sparke prefers to keep her music at a soft glow, brushing the strings with her fingertips to draw the barest whisper of sound. Her voice is often breathy, recalling dreamy folk artists like Hope Sandoval, Julie Byrne, and yes, Adrianne Lenker. If you didn’t pay close attention, you could probably slot her into a Soft Sounds playlist without pausing to observe the undercurrents running through her work.
But as with Lenker, there is a weird magnetism just beneath the surface. Sparke sings with quicksilver emotional ferocity, flickering out of her head voice into a lower register that hints at wilder, more elemental feelings. She acted briefly before breaking into music, and although her songs are simple, she has a performer’s instinct for how to transmute a rudimentary blob into a Rorschach blot. The atmosphere is rapt, the silences charged. The longer you spend sinking into her music, the more you realize its essence is not airy, but inky and dense, and Echo is a dark little star of intimacy and intensity.
By her own account, Sparke taught herself to play guitar in her 20s, and most of these songs are nothing but a few open chords broken into rudimentary fingerpicking patterns, the sort of playing you could more or less figure out in an afternoon. But on songs like “Wolf,” “Bad Dreams,” and “Everything Everything,” she hauls big feelings, dripping and alive, from the depths with just a few tangles of notes. Finger-picking is an intimate form, one that gives you a window into a musician’s consciousness—hearing the little inner voicings ripple out is like hearing a mind at work. It is subtle, ongoing magic similar to sentence-making—the way the words fall in a line, the places where the notes land. Sparke’s finger-picking patterns are so careful, so expressive, that they constitute little songs themselves.
“Bad Dreams” takes up a rolling quasi-flamenco pattern that recalls Leonard Cohen’s earliest work, or Angel Olsen’s 2014 Cohen tribute “White Fire.” “Everything Everything” pairs another basic pattern with an otherworldly-sounding piano, floating in from a blue-black darkness redolent of Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon.” “Everything everything, everything is dying,” Sparke whispers, and the mood is not gothic but serene, even comforting.
Conversely, Sparke’s lyrics make love and human desire sound perilous and self-devouring: “You broke all of my ribs in a dream the other night/You said you were not hurting me, just trying to hold me tight,” she sings on “Bad Dreams,” drawing out the last word and sounding for all the world like someone having the air throttled out of them. The sex on “Wolf” is indeed sexy, but also terrifying in its enormity: “Come upstairs, let me show you all the parts you haven’t seen/There’s a hell, there’s a heaven, there’s a universe exploding...I am wet, I am burning, I am an ocean for you.”
Her stark imagery serves the same purpose as her playing—setting the stage and ceding it. Everything is in service to her voice, which mingles sensuality and menace, soothsaying and foreboding. At the close of “Carnival,” Sparke dips again into her voluble middle and lower range. The song reaches a peak when the strumming quiets, and her voice quavers: “Oh mom, please hold my hand ’cause I feel like I can’t feel,” she sings, breaking again into her head voice, and simply keening. The moment feels alive, unbidden, a current let loose into the world and vibrating out into the absorbing dark.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Sacred Bones | February 25, 2021 | 7.6 | 0b741e95-6464-4f1f-b9b9-0ec370025a74 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | |
Mos Def's long-awaited sophomore full-length was five years in the making, but perhaps unwisely uses too many scraps from the nixed recording sessions of his rap-rock group Black Jack Johnson. And don't even get us started on Jay-Z killer "The Rape Over". The what?! | Mos Def's long-awaited sophomore full-length was five years in the making, but perhaps unwisely uses too many scraps from the nixed recording sessions of his rap-rock group Black Jack Johnson. And don't even get us started on Jay-Z killer "The Rape Over". The what?! | Mos Def: The New Danger | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5441-the-new-danger/ | The New Danger | I know I'm in denial, but I'm still hoping that the first five minutes of The New Danger were unintentional. Perhaps Mos Def, still lit after a performance of Top Dog/Underdog, wandered into the studio during Living Colour's reunion jamboree, recorded five minutes of talking, and walked out with some sort of leather-induced amnesia. How else to explain the jarring transition between Raphael Saadiq's floating keys on "The Boogie Man Song" and Dr. Know's hyper-machismo axe-wielding on "Freaky Black Greetings"? How to explain an awkward, ill-advised stumble through Durst-style rap-rock? After exactly five years of waiting for the follow-up to 1999's magnificent Black on Both Sides, Mos Def opens by rehashing the final minutes of "Rock 'n' Roll" with the less-than-subtle assistance of Black Jack Johnson. Mos, say it ain't so.
Curiously, despite Mos' on-the-mark vocalizing about the neglected acknowledgment of the Afro-American influence on rock, he chose the arguably least "black" form to express himself. Granted, more African-American creative input in modern rock would be a wonderful thing-- and Mos' attempt is laudable-- but as he says, "I ain't try to fuck with Limp Bizkit," suggesting that rap and rock are two very different beasts whose collusion could be disastrous. Yet both "Freaky Black Greetings" and "Zimzallabim" borrow heavily from the Chocolate Starfish playbook. Suffice to say, Mos' cry, "We show you how to really make a moshpit bounce" is unconvincing at best.
"War" regurgitates a similar tune, adding a fairly benign critique of its titular subject, depressingly offering the impression that Mos believes a loud message makes an acceptable substitute for a thoughtful one. On the record's rock-tinged tracks, Know's overpowering licks seem to render a stop payment on Mos' creativity. "Life Is Real", for example, finds a terminal case of logorrhea infecting an uncharacteristically awful Mos verse: "My whole life is ill/ My whole life is real/ Mornings, noons, nights/ Birthdays, work days, holidays, funerals." What's more, Know's material fails to connect thematically or musically to the rest of the album, causing an unfortunate fit of dysrhythmia.
It's unfortunate that a phenom like "Sex, Love & Money"-- with its fat Dick Tracy horns, whimpering jungle flute, and marching band percussion-- is lost in the melee. Here, Mos tantalizes us with a glimpse of his past ebullience as he hums: "Lay back and relax your mind/ About to double the dosage in the half-time/ Master physical mastermind." Likewise, "The Panties" and "Modern Marvel" revel in the sleepy genius of "Umi Says" and deliver their respective messages of love and sadness with quiet, erupting impact. These, however, are the lone highlights of this otherwise disappointing release. For an artist whose stage moniker literally translates as "the highest certainty," Mos Def's newest release carries the unfortunate weight of indecisiveness. | 2004-10-18T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2004-10-18T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Geffen | October 18, 2004 | 5.4 | 0b795fa0-f706-450a-bc82-9ab4575445e9 | Jamin Warren | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jamin-warren/ | null |
Spanning tender acoustic ballads, silky R&B performance, and contemporary urbano swagger, the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s second LP unites the facets of his own artistic identity. | Spanning tender acoustic ballads, silky R&B performance, and contemporary urbano swagger, the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s second LP unites the facets of his own artistic identity. | Gabriel Garzón-Montano: Agüita | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gabriel-garzon-montano-aguita/ | Agüita | Some electronic musicians use a handful of aliases, recognizing that their fans—and the industry at large—can have difficulty reconciling new sounds coming from familiar names. Jazz artists form fresh ensembles to explore different lanes. Punks start new bands. None of those options seem to suit Gabriel Garzón-Montano. Instead he’s populated his latest album, Agüita, with three characters, each a different facet of a three-dimensional self-portrait that examines the origins of his sense of self. The son of a Colombian father and French mother, born and raised in Brooklyn, he’s at once of Europe and Latin America, of New York and the United States. The first two characters, the “wistful impressionist” rooted in European theatre and fashion and the “leading man” studied in American soul and R&B, will be familiar to those who’ve heard his first two records, the 2014 EP Bishouné: Alma del Huila and the 2017 LP Jardín.
But the third, an “urbano hitmaker” with the contemporary swagger of a reggaetonero, is something new, an illuminating view into how GGM constructs his own id. Debuted in a stunning medley for the Colors video performance series, the character feels like connective tissue between the others, slithering across the sexual spectrum as he tries on urbano’s egocentric hypermasculinity, minus the misogyny. These are also his first songs in Spanish; the challenge of writing in another language is amplified by the fact that he’s not just singing, but rapping, and the flow en español comes with its own unique challenges of diction and cadence. His fractured sense of self serves him well here, as he uses second-generation Spanglish to connect troublesome bars.
Still, it doesn’t always work. The “look like a book/stack like books” line on “Mira My Look” reaches Travis Scott levels of goofy. But the experimentation is admirable, even if the transition from romance to raunch can feel awkward at times, like when the “soaking wet” metaphor in “Agüita” manifests as a literal firehose in the video. From a production standpoint, the new direction is promising. For the Sly & Robbie-sampling “Muñeca,” Garzón-Montano studied plugins and compression techniques in an attempt to match the frequencies of J Balvin’s “Reggaeton,” itself an homage to OGs Tego Calderón and Daddy Yankee; the result is a thumping bassline in lockstep with the classic riddim’s drums and a horn melody that’s somehow both blaring and subdued. The most successful contemporary reggaetón finds ways to breathe new life into the classic riddim, but reverse-engineering the formula is a good start.
The rest of Agüita feels more in line with the aesthetic Garzón-Montano has spent much of the past decade crafting. A multi-instrumentalist with an ear for sound design, his aesthetic is that of a deviant with a touch of sweetness, like a freak in the sheets who still sends your mom flowers on her birthday. His analog instruments have distinct textures, from dampened drums to willowy strings and carefully placed negative space. They complement the album’s most tender moments, like the despair of his mother’s passing on “Moonless,” or the juxtaposition of his cracking voice and the gorgeous, meticulously arranged strings on “Fields.” And “Someone,” with its depiction of a one-sided tryst, pairs sexual generosity and emotional vulnerability in a way not often seen from a “leading man.”
Separately, the songs on Agüita don’t seem to fit together. But Garzón-Montano’s touch as a producer is deft, and his masterful track sequencing produces fluidity. It’s how a song like “Bloom,” a sparse, lyric-driven track in which he toys with homonyms at the beginning and ending of each verse, can precede the swinging-dick vibes of “Agüita.” He likes to refer to the album as “anti-genre,” but really, the genre is Garzón-Montano. Even as he reaches for disparate sources of influence, his gaze is still directed inward, his songs an examination of the various elements of his own artistic identity. The album credits, which feature guest vocals from Nick Hakim (“With a Smile”), Ana Tijoux (“Muñeca”), and a coterie of guest musicians, are evidence of frequent collaborations. But much of the production was solitary, and Garzón-Montano’s vocal tracks were recorded in near isolation on the family farm in the foothills of the Andes, deep in Colombian coffee country.
At a glance, Garzón-Montano’s work would seem incompatible with the hyperspeed of the contemporary music industry and its constricting metrics of success. His embrace of Colombia’s language ironically pushes him further to the margins; though Agüita’s reggaetón songs warrant inclusion on the Latin charts, the album doesn’t have enough Spanish lyrics to qualify for Latin Grammys. Yet with each release, it’s clear he is wholly unconcerned with playing that game. Instead, his music radiates self-reflection—each song carefully considered and delivered with intention.
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-10-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-10-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Jagjaguwar | October 5, 2020 | 7.7 | 0b7b4bf1-0a1c-4110-8745-e2e996d7e081 | Matthew Ismael Ruiz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ismael ruiz/ | |
Compton rapper YG and producer DJ Mustard have forged the type of symbiotic producer-rapper bond that's scarcely been seen on a mainstream field of play since Drake and Noah "40" Shebib. On YG's major-label debut, Mustard’s production and YG’s songwriting have both gone deliciously widescreen. | Compton rapper YG and producer DJ Mustard have forged the type of symbiotic producer-rapper bond that's scarcely been seen on a mainstream field of play since Drake and Noah "40" Shebib. On YG's major-label debut, Mustard’s production and YG’s songwriting have both gone deliciously widescreen. | YG: My Krazy Life | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19164-yg-my-krazy-life/ | My Krazy Life | Much ink has been spilled over the death of regionalism in rap: New York's A$AP Mob fusing Harlem rap with Memphis and Houston aesthetics, Chief Keef and Chicago's drill kids building on the blueprint crafted by Waka Flocka and Lex Luger in Atlanta, and Drake up in Toronto shrewdly cherry-picking styles from everyone. However, a group of Cali savants are eking out a body of work that gives the lie to the current proclamations of post-regionalism. Up north, the Bay area hyphy sound's morphed into something sleeker and poppier thanks to LoveRance and Heartbreak Gang’s Iamsu! and Sage the Gemini. Down in L.A., DJ Mustard’s elevated the profiles of third-tier YMCMB star Tyga, singers TeeFlii and Ty Dolla $ign, and Compton rapper YG.
Mustard's sound peruses the common ground between the chunky low-end synths of seminal house hits like Robin S.’ “Show Me Love” and the orchestral pomp of g-funk-era Dre. He and YG have worked closely on mixtapes such as 2012's 4 Hunnid Degreez and the Just Re’d Up series, forging a symbiotic producer-rapper bond the likes of which has scarcely been seen on a mainstream field of play since Drake and Noah "40" Shebib. YG’s major-label debut My Krazy Life marks a turning point for the duo; here, Mustard’s production and YG’s songwriting have both gone deliciously widescreen.
Mustard’s still working with the melodic economy that has drawn shrewd trend-watchers Drake, Young Jeezy, and 2 Chainz to his fold, but here they’re lighter and brighter. The opening fanfares on My Krazy Life's tracks are gossamer but massive, like a blindside smack from a pillow. Typically, Mustard’s productions lay their wares out early and drive home simple hooks flanked by little else but 808 kicks and claps, occasionally throwing in a weird embellishment or nod to his forefathers. Strip club anthem “Left, Right” doubles down on its colossal three-note theme with a fiddle midway through each verse, “BPT”’s air raid siren keys are accented with orchestra hits like Dre and 50 Cent’s “In Da Club”, and “Do It to Ya” plunks out piano and Moog melodies on loan from Tha Dogg Pound’s “Let’s Play House”.
But by and large, Mustard’s game is achieving ecstasy through simplicity and repetition, hooks and drums thundering through each measure with scarcely a note gone to waste. YG could’ve shit on a mic with Mustard as co-pilot and still turned out a halfway listenable hour of music, but to his instead he’s used My Krazy Life to play with the gun-toting lothario rubric he pieced together on the earlier mixtapes. The album is very much an exercise in genre (gangsta rap, natch) beholden to all the structural touchstones of a modern-day mainstream rap release, but this time YG’s classicist read on Southern California gang life comes with a refined flair for storytelling.
Stylistically, YG says he was aiming for Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle, and you can hear faint traces of that record on My Krazy Life, especially in the way that songs that touch on his background as a convicted residential burglar (“1AM”, “Meet the Flockers”) collide with decadent good life numbers like “I Just Wanna Party” and “Who Do You Love?” to paint a picture of a young gangster who works hard and plays harder. My Krazy Life periodically eases off its unsettlingly gleeful blueprinting of breaking-and-entering scenarios through YG’s ace hook construction and a selection of comical interstitial skits—and hang around for the deep cut “Really Be (Smokin N Drinkin)”, which pulls the listener inside the loss and desperation that provides the impetus for such extralegal escapades.
My Krazy Life also finds YG flexing a greater comfort in regards to songs about women. It might be unreasonable to expect a guy who rose to fame on “Toot It and Boot It”, whose body of work is rife with vengeful pith like “Bitch Betta Have My Money” and “Youzza Flip”, to care about his bedside manner—but he makes inroads. “Do It to Ya” is the requisite sex jam, but this time the focus is on reciprocity instead of conquest. “Me and My Bitch” chronicles the souring of a relationship after a girlfriend cheats, but he intimates that he still carries a torch for her when they slip into a nebulous friends with benefits arrangement after breaking up.
My Krazy Life’s most engaging relationship song is familial: “Sorry Momma” closes the album with an apology to YG’s mom for a laundry list of petty misdeeds and a pledge to do better by her now that he’s rich and she’s not doing so well. On a certain level, the softer touch of these songs ticks off the expected major label song-for-the-ladies pandering—they’re replete with syrupy hooks from ratch&B crooners Ty Dolla $ign and TeeFlii—but they also reveal a songwriter who remains captivating even when he pushes his trademark tough guy posturing to the side.
From classic Compton set-repping rhymes, to guest spots from TDE’s Jay Rock, Kendrick Lamar, and Schoolboy Q, to production that boils g-funk down to its requisite elements, My Krazy Life breathes new energy into West Coast gangsta rap. YG holds summits with out-of-towners throughout, exchanging bars with Drake on “Who Do You Love?”, taking a beat from ATL maestro Metro Boomin for “1AM”, and celebrating friendship with Jeezy and Rich Homie Quan on the platinum-selling buddy anthem “My Nigga”.
But this album’s sense of place and time isn’t amorphous and dependent on collaborators, as it's been with YG’s peers: My Krazy Life is always kicking back under roadside palm trees or darting through back alleys, shaking foes that give chase. It's a record that's always posted up in sunny SoCal, and whether it's serving up carefree party anthems or dispensing crass advice on whose houses to knock over and what to take, L.A. feels like the capital of the country when it’s playing. YG and DJ Mustard have been dress rehearsing for nationwide stardom all along, but My Krazy Life is ratchet music’s Technicolor reveal. | 2014-03-26T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2014-03-26T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Def Jam | March 26, 2014 | 8.1 | 0b806b3d-4595-4c5e-8f27-25b83f33f49d | Craig Jenkins | https://pitchfork.com/staff/craig-jenkins/ | null |
On their winsome debut, the duo Whitney make a warm, simple and profoundly enjoyable rock'n'roll record, evoking the earnestness and innocence of Girls. | On their winsome debut, the duo Whitney make a warm, simple and profoundly enjoyable rock'n'roll record, evoking the earnestness and innocence of Girls. | Whitney: Light Upon the Lake | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21871-light-upon-the-lake/ | Light Upon the Lake | Can a duo be a supergroup? Maybe that’s a tongue-in-cheek designation for Whitney, the band composed of former Smith Westerns guitarist Max Kakacek and former Unknown Mortal Orchestra drummer Julien Ehrlich. Both were standout members of their former bands; Kakacek never got his due in Smith Westerns, as singer Cullen Omori’s presence soaked up much of the adulation. Ehlrich, who looked about 11 years old behind the kit with UMO, was a long-limbed beast. Whatever reasons for their previous acts’ dissolution and split, the two have found each other and put together something simple but always invaluable: a great warm weather rock’n’roll record.
It’s hard to talk about Whitney without first talking about Girls, another sweet-and-sour rock duo that both UMO and Smith Westerns spent time on tour opening for. Girls breathed life into earnest folk-rock by writing simple, powerful songs about being in love with life and learning to enjoy the basic things. But they broke up after two albums, and their absence left an empty space that has never been filled. Whitney come closer than any band since.
Light Upon the Lake, their debut LP, is a short collection of short songs; half of them are made up of easygoing guitar flourishes, the other half feature woozy strings and slurred brass. This is the Corona of rock records, as Whitney consistently walk that fine line between identifiable and platitudinal. Take the chorus from most recent single “No Matter Where We Go”: “I can take you out/I wanna drive all around with you with the windows down/And we can run all right.” It’s so generically wistful that it could provoke an eyeroll, but it’s delivered with such gentle earnestness that it’s improbably touching. Light Upon the Lake operates in a universe of endlessly repeatable joy, with a touch of melancholy to keep it interesting. The songs could be about romantic love, but they’re open-ended enough to be whatever you want them to be.
The vocals are a harder sell. Ehrlich, assuming vocal duties here, is on the whinier, Muppet-ier side of things. The overall muffled effect of the recording doesn’t help to crystallize anything, either. It’s like someone’s stopped at a stoplight singing their heart out in their car with the windows up and you hear it from the sidewalk. It works great in terms of expressing earnestness but possibly not in terms of pleasantness. I like it because it feels very true. That said, I wouldn’t hold it against you if you weren’t turned off, at least initially.
Make it past that, though, and you’ll find most songs to be near flawless on a small scale, working the way a great short story does. The crisp edges of these songs betray people who really know how to play their instruments, but instead of flashing that fact, they back up, writing only in vivid, broad, easygoing pop-rock strokes. “Golden Days,” has all the elements of showiness—a guitar solo, extraneous brass, a singalong—but the song stays small and hummable. Low-key perfectionism is perhaps a humbler virtue than seeking the big, dynamic splash. But it has a way of sneaking in past our defenses and lingering longer—before we know, we’ve been singing that song under our breath for the better part of a year. Whitney might not reinvent anything, but they sound perfect right now, and it’s hard to argue with being in the right place at the right time. | 2016-06-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Secretly Canadian | June 6, 2016 | 8.3 | 0b80b514-1b28-4d78-a97e-9381910dc950 | Matthew Schnipper | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-schnipper/ | null |
On the final entry in a trilogy that began with her Polaris Prize-winning 2020 album, the Montreal rapper seeks elusive redemption in cacophonies of tense noise and gothic samples. | On the final entry in a trilogy that began with her Polaris Prize-winning 2020 album, the Montreal rapper seeks elusive redemption in cacophonies of tense noise and gothic samples. | Backxwash: *HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING * | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/backxwash-his-happiness-shall-come-first-even-though-we-are-suffering/ | HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING | On “Mukazi,” the closing song from her latest album, Backxwash attempts the conventional aesthetics of a triumphant hip-hop track. “It’s like my life means something, less stress these days,” Ashanti Mutinta yells over the kind of Kanye-ish victory lap beat that millennial rap fans grew up on, with a soul sample that sounds like heaven opening its gates. But don’t bother checking your headphones, because the track’s eerie deterioration is part of Mutinta’s production. Interrupting an outpouring of beneficence to loved ones, Mutinta suddenly decides “tell my homies I love ’em, even though I don’t trust ’em.” Then a redacted name gets flipped off and Mutinta lets out one last shout and just dips, letting the sample play unadulterated.
Is this parody? Not quite. This is, after all, the concluding note of a trilogy that includes 2020’s God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It and last year’s I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES. Rather, Mutinta seems unable to bear the farce: It’s as though she deeply wants to make a song like this, but far from being unable to keep a straight face, she can’t do it without breaking down. When she gets on the track, it crumples and distorts. At the end of the trilogy’s journey, hoping to achieve something like transcendence, she can only manage a hollow performance of it. Throughout HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING, Mutinta seems to strain for faith without relief. The album begins with the ring of an unanswered telephone, followed by a pastor’s voicemail message. In his absence, unhappy voices start to fester and protest.
Mutinta spends most of HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING in cacophonies of tense noise and gothic samples, over which she and her companions yell in voices of frustration. “Vibanda” opens on a towering, end-of-days sample of the famous Lacrimosa portion of Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor—you know, the part of the Requiem Mass that begs mercy for sinners being cast into hellfire, never to feel the sanctity of God’s love. Mutinta’s voice is cloaked in a filter straight from The Exorcist as she raps the refrain, “I’m a dog, I’m a pest, I need help, I’m possessed!”
In hip-hop sample selection, it’s traditional to reach for obscurities, but though Mutinta takes a relatively experimental approach to rap, she laces her work with familiar references: Mozart, Malcolm X in “Muzungu,” the drums from “When the Levee Breaks” on God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It. These are sanctified figures, the kind we’re used to turning to for guidance, the ones that ought to contrast the absent pastors and malevolent priests. Here, they seem to be chosen for the exact opposite reason: They can’t offer the relief Mutinta needs, only punctuate her spiral into despair and self-loathing. By the penultimate track, “Kumoto,” between refrains of “my evil deeds, my evil deeds,” Mutinta recalls saying something cruel to a sick classmate in their final conversation before the classmate’s funeral. The admission of sin should be cleansing, a show of repentance followed by absolution. But even after she’s done addressing specifics, Mutinta can only sputter “my evil fucking deeds,” as a piano riff beckons down, down, down.
That’s when the final track, “Mukazi,” arrives. It promises the grail, the holy truth behind the fanatical farce, and the reward for this brutal journey into the hellish depths of Mutinta’s psyche. She addresses herself with a list of things she wants to say, like, “I wanna tell you that even though it was hard/You really know who you are, no need to don a facade.” It’s left ambiguous whether she can truly bring herself to say these affirmations, whether this is the triumph she has earned. It could be. | 2022-12-06T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-12-06T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Ugly Hag | December 6, 2022 | 7.6 | 0b8605b2-c61a-4ba2-abca-cc26c3089db3 | Adlan Jackson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/adlan-jackson/ | |
Zach Condon continues to surprise if not amaze on this intriguing and disparate 2xEP. | Zach Condon continues to surprise if not amaze on this intriguing and disparate 2xEP. | Beirut/Realpeople: March of the Zapotec / Holland | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12689-march-of-the-zapotec-holland/ | March of the Zapotec / Holland | After the remarkable efforts of Gulag Orkestar and The Flying Club Cup, Zach Condon's offbeat hybridization of traditional Eastern European motifs and Western indie pop reached a glorious pinnacle. But where take things from there? Rather than resting on his laurels, the 23-year-old Santa Fe native packed his bags, hopped on a plane to the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, and began recording a selection of new material with local 19-piece collective the Jimenez Band. Aided by a translator to help communicate their compositional ideas, Condon and his cohorts worked tirelessly on March of the Zapotec, a slew of songs composed in the small weaver village of Teotitlan del Valle during the spring of 2008.
Condon's self-confessed Francophile leanings still run strong, particularly in his Jacques Brel-meets-Serge Gainsbourg vocal delivery, and Balkan folk patterns continue to remain at the core of his musical references. Yet his flourishing interest in Mexican wedding and funeral music, highlighted by the animated huffs and puffs of a "barely rehearsed" brass band, inevitably takes these recordings somewhere different. March of the Zapotec is the sound of a musician continuing to evolve and, most importantly, allowing himself to be persuaded by his inspirations without losing sight of his own creative personality. Like many young, culture-hungry travelers, Condon seems to be embracing as much as possible, re-shaping his interior musical landscape as he continues to learn the tricks of the trade from masters and street performers in various parts of the world.
Just as Mexican funerals are known not only for reflection and mourning but also for the celebration of life, the six songs that comprise March of the Zapotec sound as joyous as they do melancholy. The jolly three-step-waltz of "La Llorona" and "The Shrew" wouldn't sound out of place on a soundtrack to Emir Kusturica's dark and memorably shambolic wedding scene in the film Black Cat, White Cat. "The Akara" is similarly expressive, introduced by a bold but despondent trumpet fanfare that slips into a lively melody as Condon sings through his malaise, "so long, my fate has changed, it's hindering."
But March of the Zapotec is just one half of this intriguing and disparate 2xEP. The second is very different, and closer in sound to Condon's pre-Beirut bedroom recordings, when he went under the alias Realpeople. Having spent years making electronic music as a teenager before focusing on the elaborate acoustic inventions he is now known for as Beirut, it seems only natural for Condon's older methods to finally see the light of day. Although he has more than proved his mettle as a masterful, highly visionary musician, it will perhaps be a relief to fans of Beirut that Holland does not feel out of place beside the material that initially drew Condon to popular attention. It is after all, an extension of an already strong musical direction or, in his words, "different aspects of my personality."
These five songs, mostly recorded alone, begin with the lyrically superb "My Night With the Prostitute From Marseille" and take more than a few notes from the Magnetic Fields and, perhaps a little surprisingly, Boards of Canada. "Venice", with its dreamily atmospheric intro, which gracefully crackles in the background like old letters burning on a fire, is a fine example of Condon's apparent knack for constructing a home-- whether permanent or temporary-- on a wide range of melodic turf.
As a concept, this EP could be seen as rather puzzling with its marrying of such stylistically different material. However, listening to the two discs back to back allows insight into the development of Condon's burgeoning ideas. Rather than re-tracing the path that made him popular, he has hacked into the wilderness of his new inspirations, no matter how divergent, and emerged triumphant. As another of his favorite French luminaries, Jean-Luc Godard, once famously said: "It's not where you take things from, it's where you take them to." | 2009-02-20T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2009-02-20T01:00:01.000-05:00 | null | Pompeii | February 20, 2009 | 8.1 | 0b88ac51-fbb6-48a7-a88b-af1a631eda3e | Pitchfork | null |
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Tove Lo's second album offers a platform for her to argue that self-destructive affairs of a particular sort of woman are a subject worthy of four-part concept albums. | Tove Lo's second album offers a platform for her to argue that self-destructive affairs of a particular sort of woman are a subject worthy of four-part concept albums. | Tove Lo: Lady Wood | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22578-lady-wood/ | Lady Wood | For the lead single of her second album, Tove Lo chose as inspiration one of the most-circulated and least-understood literary quotes of the past decade, the “Cool Girl” monologue from Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl: “Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.” People circulating this quote almost always leave out the fact that the woman delivering this soliloquy is a psychopath who will go on to rack up a body count. But why they circulate it is more telling: that in her misanthropy she’s elucidated something very real about relationships, and very bleak.
Tove Lo knows a bit about bleakness and misunderstanding; she’s courted both from her first single. The bluntness of “Habits (Stay High)” ensured it’d cut through the crowd of anodyne rising pop stars but also ensured that for the next year Lo would field interviews about whether she actually lurked in sex clubs and picked up daddies on the playground. As a student of confessionalism, she knows audiences have an endless appetite for scandalous female writers, from Mary McCarthy to Cat Marnell to Fiona Apple to Britney Spears, and that they crave their honesty less than they do their imagined autobiographies, their self-destruction and bare flayed skin. As a student of pop, she knows that her industry parses women's vulnerability as empowerment, their pain as sexiness, their point as pop as usual. Lo certainly leaves herself open to misinterpretation—her Sticky Fingers-via-creepshot album art, her music’s endlessly quotable debauchery. Perhaps knowing this, she practically spells Lady Wood out: putting an explanatory interlude in the outro of “Imaginary Friend” (“I don’t know... I guess it’s kind of like a voice in my heart reminding me that there's nothing to fear”), all but defining “lady wood” on the title track, or addressing the audience on “Cool Girl”: “Now you can’t tell if I’m really ironic,” Lo sings, absolutely correctly.
“Cool Girl” is equally a pop song, a delivery device for a sassy, stuttery chorus about being a cool girl. It's the line all smart music walks, and Lady Wood walks at album length. The album’s a showcase for Wolf Cousins, the Max Martin-affiliated songwriting collective that includes Lo and nearly a dozen others, including Swedish writer Ilya Salmanzadeh, Iranian producer Ali Payami and production duo the Struts. They’ve written about half the charts, but Lady Wood is as concentrated an outlet for their sound as you’ll find. But it’s equally a platform for Lo to argue, as she did on Queen of the Clouds, that the self-destructive affairs of a particular sort of woman are a subject worthy of four-part concept albums.
Lady Wood is the first two parts: the high and the comedown, the party and the afterparty. The structural resemblance to the Weeknd’s EPs isn’t accidental. When Abel Tesfaye worked with the Scandinavian claque he became Lo’s direct colleague, and the debauched tableaux and nervous vocal tics of tracks like “Don’t Talk About It” and “Keep It Simple” sound almost tailor-written for him. The sound is basically the same, too: nocturnal, minor-key synthpop, less suited to dancing with tears in your eyes than waking up alone and disheveled the morning after. It’s the same sound the Wolves have worked for over a year, but in Tove as in Abel they’ve found an ideal collaborator, one who goes as dark as they do.
For the most part, Lady Wood abandons the shock value of its predecessor; the title track and a couple nods to being “under the influence” are about as explicit as things get. But her ruminations and obsessions are the same: the fleeting freedom found in bad behavior; the compulsion of her women to tamp down their desires and their inability to do so; envy of the men in her misadventures, who have it easy. It’d be easy to play this as melodrama, but Lo sings most of the album without affect, so when she *does *emote, it counts for more: sneaking cutesy Betty Boop inflections into the backing vocals of “Cool Girl”'s chorus, belting into the void on the ballads, exclaiming “I’m gonna get hurt!” like it’s her deepest desire. That’s on standout “True Disaster,” which begins as Marr-like feedback haze and turns into one of the year’s best pop songs, a perfectly wrought instrument of self-laceration. (The effect’s somewhat ruined when the titular disaster reveals himself two songs later as mealy-voiced Joe Janiak, who barely sounds capable of manipulating a coffee machine, let alone a woman. This is why “True Disaster” should be a single.)
That said, “True Disaster” isn’t a perfect pop song. It suffers from Tove Lo’s primary weakness as a songwriter: her compulsion, at least once per track, to include a line that her Scandinavian colleagues might call “juicy” but that comes off more like a brand saying bae. At least on a track called “Lady Wood” you know what you're getting, but nothing about “True Disaster” prepares you for the line “I can’t hide my feels.” Even the tracks free of such nonsense are so unrelentingly bleak and so professionally done that, at album length, they become interchangeable well-produced malaise. Yet when Lady Wood tries to go upbeat—as on “Imaginary Friend” and “WTF Love Is”—the resulting tracks are the weakest by far. The bridge to “Cool Girl” is designed to be the emotional core of the whole album, the moment Lo lets her guard down and reveals her true desires, but it just sounds like she’s emulating Sia.
Proportionally, these are trivial complaints. Lady Wood is short, but Lo finds ample darkness to plumb. “Don’t Talk About It” recasts the girl squads so ubiquitous in pop culture as nihilistic cliques hazing each other into empty highs and dead-eyed selfies. “Flashes” does the same without the squad, Lo lamenting the effect on friends back home of so much mining her life for content: “When I fuck things up in front of camera flashes, what about you?” “Vibes” is deceptively chill, the supposedly lighthearted flirting of two parties with nothing between them but contempt. “What's your line, though?... Heard that before,” Lo teases, only to be negged down by Janiak. And “Keep It Simple”—befitting the title, just Lo and Cousins standout Payami—presents a scenario both hyper-specific and likely relatable: lying in bed with a rebound at some garbage hour of the night, flipping through an ex’s old sexts, feeling nothing. Payami’s synths land fast and loud like thunderclaps, and Lo pushes any impending connection or intimacy back into the dark. Then she pulls herself together for the drop, the cool girl once more. | 2016-11-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-11-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Island | November 1, 2016 | 7 | 0b8ad173-ea6c-46f8-b41f-58e9fe7e510e | Katherine St. Asaph | https://pitchfork.com/staff/katherine-st. asaph/ | null |
In the six years that have passed since King Khan and his band the Shrines last released a new album, Arish Khan’s sassy self-deprecation has turned to sobering introspection, and with good reason. Idle No More, his first proper record with a U.S. label, evinces a new sense of purpose. | In the six years that have passed since King Khan and his band the Shrines last released a new album, Arish Khan’s sassy self-deprecation has turned to sobering introspection, and with good reason. Idle No More, his first proper record with a U.S. label, evinces a new sense of purpose. | King Khan and the Shrines: Idle No More | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18448-king-khan-and-the-shrines-idle-no-more/ | Idle No More | Arish Khan may surround himself with an army of nine and call himself a king, but at heart, he's a court jester. For all the voodoo mystique and sex-machine swagger he wields onstage, his songs brim with anxiety and humility, whether he’s lusting after cute record-store clerks, professing his weakness for plus-size paramours, or measuring his commitment in food stamps. It’s the sort of charm offensive that comes naturally when-- as a brown man in the traditionally white world of garage-punk, not to mention in Khan’s adopted hometown of Berlin-- you’ve lived your life as an outsider among outsiders. But in the six years that have passed since he and his band the Shrines last released a new album, Khan’s sassy self-deprecation has turned to sobering introspection, and for good reason. He’s endured the death of three close friends (including punk-rock pal Jay Reatard), and a reportedly nasty falling-out with long-time collaborator Mark “BBQ” Sultan (his frequent partner in crime since their late-90s tenure in Montreal’s the Spaceshits); the cumulative effect of all this turmoil saw Khan seeking solace in psychiatric hospitals and Buddhist monasteries alike. If his 2011 solo release for Scion’s A/V series-- released under the ad-hoc King Khan Experience banner-- sounded like a mess, that’s because, well, at the time, he felt like one.
But if you need any proof that Khan is back to fighting trim, just look at the spine of his latest record, which bears not only the imprimatur of the Shrines-- the band that brings out the show-bizzy best in him-- but the logo of his first proper U.S. label: Merge Records. (Khan’s 2008 Vice Records issue, The Supreme Genius of King Khan and The Shrines was a compilation culled from various European releases.) Khan’s work with the Shrines has typically drawn from the funk, psych, and soul of the turn-of-the-’70s black-power era, but seemingly had little use for its ideological intent. Idle No More, however, takes an inverse approach: its fusion of Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones paisley pop and Spectorian pomp pushes Khan and the Shrines beyond their usual JBs jones, but the album’s title speaks to a burgeoning social consciousness. It’s named for an emergent Canadian Aboriginal-rights protest movement, one Khan particularly identifies with after spending his teen years hanging on reservations in Quebec with a Mohawk friend (one of the aforementioned casualties). Though there’s not a single song here that explicitly addresses the plight of First Nations people, Khan has essentially donated his album title to the cause as if it were an advertising billboard-- the first indication of the album’s more sanguine, openhearted spirit.
Even in the absence of any overt political sloganeering, Khan evinces a new sense of purpose here. The album’s first side counts as the most majestic music the King has produced, blowing up his garage-rock roots to a cinematic scale without losing the ballsy attitude. The Shrines bring the brass, of course, but this time they’re bolstered by sweeping strings and ba-ba-da-ba choruses that transform songs like “Born to Die” and “Thorn in Her Pride” into the stuff glitzy 60s prime-time variety specials were made of. But the more opulent environs don’t dilute Khan’s finely tuned sense of irreverence: When he cops Lou Reed’s “and all the colored girls sing” directive prior to the latter songs’ “shoobie-doo-wop” finale, it becomes immediately clear he doesn’t have the budget to hire an actual troupe of back-up singers, so he just pitches his voice up and sings the hook himself. “Luckiest Man”, meanwhile, is a cheeky account of his soul-searching sojourn and recovery set to the buoyant groove of Archie Bell & the Drells’ northern-soul classic “Tighten Up”. But even when there’s a lightness and congeniality to the songs that Khan has rarely evinced before, the Shrines’ big-band effect lends them an imposing wall-of-sound grandeur and fierce Motown momentum.
That is, until the brooding ballad “Darkness” brings the album’s vigorous pace to a screeching halt. A dark-soul-of-the-night document of his recent breakdown, it should be Khan’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World”, a slow-burning, show-stopping set piece that prompts the singer to his knees and bring the house down with him. Instead, he opts for a campy, drag-queen croon that saps the song of its emotional impact by constantly drawing attention to how far Khan is singing outside of his usual raspy range. From there, Idle No More never fully regains its footing, as the album tries to balance deeply personal subject matter and the Shrines’ party-hearty energy with inconsistent results: “Pray for Lil” (featuring a beautifully yearning guest lead vocal from Jena Roker) is a winsome tribute to Khan’s wife and the support she provided in his hour of need, but the songs dedicated to late Atlanta garage-scene fixture Bobby Ubangi (“Bad Boy”) and Reatard (“So Wild”) feel a touch too slight and undercooked, given their inspirations. However, the closing Hendrixian ballad “Of Madness I Dream”, peacefully reconciles Idle No More’s overarching themes of remorse and renewal--for King Khan, the premise of mourning and the promise of morning are one and the same. | 2013-09-04T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2013-09-04T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Merge | September 4, 2013 | 6.8 | 0b8cad26-7119-42c0-aa2e-fa4eaa1911a0 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
Colin Meloy's theatrical and hyperliterate band makes an unexpected move to Capitol Records, and delivers a record that matches the ambition of its new imprint. | Colin Meloy's theatrical and hyperliterate band makes an unexpected move to Capitol Records, and delivers a record that matches the ambition of its new imprint. | The Decemberists: The Crane Wife | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9472-the-crane-wife/ | The Crane Wife | For a few years now, the Decemberists' stagey, hyperliterate folk-rock has played well at indie labels Hush and Kill Rock Stars. The quintet has occupied a small community-theater space with gleefulness and confidence, but now it's accepted a scholarship to Capitol Records, which means a larger stage and a bigger audience. Can the band still project, or will its voices be lost in a cavernous auditorium, rejoined only by crickets and barely stifled coughs of boredom? Will nine-minute mariner epics play in Peoria?
Given the band's graduation from minor to major leagues, The Crane Wife may prove to be the most crucial record the Decemberists will release in their lifetime. Fortunately, their fourth album further magnifies and refines their strengths. Winsomely balancing frivolity and gravity, the Decemberists assemble an oddball menagerie of the usual rogues and rascals, soldiers and criminals, lovers and baby butchers-- but they've got a lot more tricks up their sleeves than previous albums had hinted. The Crane Wife employs an impressive variety of styles and sounds to tell Meloy's imaginative stories: There's the band's usual folk-rock, honed to an incisively sharp point, but they also deploy a smuggler's blues ("The Perfect Crime"), a creepy lullaby ("Shankill Butchers"), a Led Zep stomp ("When the War Came"), and, perhaps most divisively, a multipart prog track ("The Island") that stretches well past the 10-minute mark. No epic chantey this time, though.
Meloy's inventive songwriting is the binding force, emphasizing character but remaining ever in thrall to stories, savoring the way they always play out to the same conclusions. Along with the homosexual undertones that have informed Decemberists songs from every album, he jettisons most of the archetypes that inspired Picaresque and cuts his characters loose in their own tales. They still do what they're fated to do-- the thieves thieve and run amok, the lovers love and die tragically, the soldiers soldier on and pine for peaceful homes-- but they seem to do it more out of free will than authorial design.
Meloy focuses mainly on matters of war ("But O did you see all the dead of Manassas/ All the bellies and the bones and the bile?") and love ("No, I lingered here with the blankets barren/ And my own belly big with child"). On the duet "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)", Meloy plays the part of an errant, possibly dead Civil War soldier while singer-songwriter Laura Veirs cameos as his "sweetheart left behind." It's Cold Mountain writ poignantly small, its sweet, wordless chorus perfectly life-size. Lumbering menacingly, the martial march of "When the War Came" smells of gunpowder and singed hair, although it sounds like it's anchored in Neverland despite trying to comment on real-world events.
Meloy's taletelling will always define the Decemberists, but The Crane Wife puts as much weight on the music as on the lyrics, and here the band gels into a tight, intuitive unit. The musicians give each song a particular spark and character, not just reinforcing the lyrics but actively telling a story. They create a breezy eddy of guitar strums and piano chords to enhance a windborne melody and an undercurrent of peril on "Summersong", and the tragedy of "O Valencia"-- any good song about star-crossed lovers must end in death-- is countered by the pep of the music, especially Chris Funk's ascending and descending guitar, which seems to take a particular glee in the inevitable denouement. The band isn't just able-bodied, but ambitious to boot. It makes the brainy prog of that monster second track, a distillation of the musical reach of their 2003 EP The Tain, sound like a natural extension of their base sound. They troll confidently from the rumbling overture and heated exposition of "Come and See" to the final rueful notes of "You'll Not Feel the Drowning". The song is chockablock with progisms-- organ runs, dampered cymbals, laser synths-- but manages to shake off the genre quote marks as the band jam with convincing menace.
Their range allows them to be precociously diverse, but everything fits naturally. The Crane Wife sounds like their most shapely album to date, resembling a spirited story arc in its set-up, rising action, climax, and resolution. In this structure the three title segments, despite essentially bookending the tracklist, form the album's thematic centerpiece, the music and story meshing gracefully and tenderly to retell a Japanese fable. "The Crane Wife 3" opens the album with a ruminative flourish as John Moen's drums push the sensuous thrust of the music and Meloy's delivery of the lines "each feather it fell from skin" colors the resignation of "I will hang my head hang my head low." It opens the album en medias res, setting up the subsequent story-songs as the narrator's rueful reminiscences.
"The Crane Wife 1 and 2" comprise a medley towards the album's end, starting slow and soft but gradually reaching crescendo in an unfurling finale, with Meloy breaking the word "heart" into multiple syllables over an unraveling drum beat. Restrained yet resonant, the song's (and album's) climax is a remarkable moment. As it segues into the rousing coda of "Sons & Daughters", the Decemberists sound like a band that knows exactly where they're going and won't be satisfied until you come along for the trip. | 2006-10-03T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2006-10-03T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Capitol | October 3, 2006 | 8.4 | 0b901b90-9ad6-4af9-ba6c-4e297185cf22 | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
On his wonderful and grief-stricken new album, the Bronx rapper pays tribute to his late mother and proves that his voice grows stronger even in sorrow. | On his wonderful and grief-stricken new album, the Bronx rapper pays tribute to his late mother and proves that his voice grows stronger even in sorrow. | MIKE: Weight of the World | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mike-weight-of-the-world/ | Weight of the World | The essence of MIKE’s music remains his late mother. She’s mentioned often on his wonderful and grief-stricken new album, Weight Of The World, after being the centerpiece of last year’s Tears of Joy, released not long after her passing. The 21-year-old MC is still very much battling the pain and confusion that comes with losing a parent, and he uses World to dig further into the fragmented memories of their past. It’s a raw and captivating glimpse of a young artist whose pen has grown sharper as his heart has grown heavier.
MIKE presents that heaviness through a familiar lo-fi lens. He and his sLUms associates have developed a distinct vision by now, centered on samples that sound like they were downloaded over a dial-up connection. (MIKE produces 12 of the tracks here himself under his dj blackpower pseudonym.) They rap in methodical deadpan, no doubt inspired by the drawl of Madvillain-era DOOM (MIKE’s first-ever verse was written over the instrumental for “ALL CAPS”). The combination can be both mesmerizing and misleading, as it doesn’t necessarily alert the listener when something special occurs.
But that’s why you’ll always be rewarded for listening closely to MIKE. On the self-produced “alert*”, he evokes his pain over a bare-bones piano riff: “Back then my diet was shrooms if it wasn’t herbal/And threw some violence towards the blues 'cause the wound eternal.” Later, on “delicate,” he paints a childhood spent between London, Philly, and New York, rhyming, “We used to freeze up in the winter, the summers, we rose/From nights we used to sleep through dinner, and others we toked.”
So much of World is centered around his family. His dad worries about his sadness and substance abuse (“Papa knows it’s doom I need to work through,” he says on “alert*”). Siblings and old friends are protectors who helped him navigate life on the street. “Brodie got the .30, only clean 'em with detergent,” he raps on “222,” adding “hope I never need the service.” Just a few lines later on the same song, he describes the moment his mother passed: “Walked her out the Earth, just me, a couple nurses.” He circles back to her departure often at the end of verses, sometimes sweetly, like how their laughs were the same. Other times, he just breaks your heart, as when he recalls her shouldering much of the family’s burden. “And you still grievin’ over moms,” he raps on “Weight of the Word,” like he’s being accused of being unable to let go. “Nah, I’ll never forget,” he declares with pride in his voice.
Amongst all the pain, MIKE’S confidence still seeps through in his artistic growth. “get rich quick scheme” may be one of the most immediate songs MIKE has ever released, with a crushingly fierce beat provided by the Chicago-bred producer and singer KeiyaA. And Earl Sweatshirt, the man who turned to MIKE and sLUms to craft the sound of his masterful third album, adds some star power to the project by finishing it off with a long, heady verse. On World you feel for MIKE, but you never quite worry for him. Even in sorrow, his voice grows stronger. | 2020-06-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-06-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | 10k | June 27, 2020 | 8 | 0b94fce1-0f8c-4cc3-a926-c3fca4b69e47 | Reed Jackson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/reed-jackson/ | |
Soul Jazz has released two new anthologies of Ohio proto-punk, punk, and post-punk from the late '70s and early '80s: Burn Rubber City, Burn! (centered on Akron) and Extermination Nights in the Sixth City (centered on Cleveland). Together, they portray less a scene than a free-for-all mix of inspired amateurs, ambitious opportunists, and serious, self-styled artists. | Soul Jazz has released two new anthologies of Ohio proto-punk, punk, and post-punk from the late '70s and early '80s: Burn Rubber City, Burn! (centered on Akron) and Extermination Nights in the Sixth City (centered on Cleveland). Together, they portray less a scene than a free-for-all mix of inspired amateurs, ambitious opportunists, and serious, self-styled artists. | Various Artists: Punk 45: Extermination Nights in the Sixth City / Punk 45: Burn Rubber City, Burn! | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20188-punk-45-extermination-nights-in-the-sixth-city-punk-45-burn-rubber-city-burn/ | Punk 45: Extermination Nights in the Sixth City / Punk 45: Burn Rubber City, Burn! | "East Coast, West Coast, you can jump in the sea/ I don't need no ocean, I got industry." So sneers Rod Firestone, frontman of Akron, Ohio's seminal punk band Rubber City Rebels, on the group's self-titled theme song. "Rubber City Rebels" also appears on The Akron Compilation, a platter issued by England's legendary Stiff Records in 1978 in an attempt to capitalize on the growing notoriety of Akron's most infamous weirdos (and Stiff signees), Devo. But "Rubber City Rebels" represents Akron circa the late '70s far more passionately. Where Devo started out with a noise that was simultaneously punky and abstract, Rubber City Rebels had zero trace of art in their DNA. Their theme song says it all: Firestone's big "fuck you" to both coasts celebrated Ohio's flyover status and admittedly crumbling industrial infrastructure, boosting the Akron scene in much the same way the Stooges and the MC5 did for Detroit a decade before in the process.
Soul Jazz has released two new anthologies of Ohio proto-punk, punk, and post-punk from the late '70s and early '80s: Burn Rubber City, Burn! (centered on Akron) and Extermination Nights in the Sixth City (centered on Cleveland). Of the two, Burn Rubber City, Burn! has a clear blueprint in Stiff's The Akron Compilation. Four songs from the Stiff disc have found their way onto Burn Rubber City, Burn!, but that slight overlap isn't enough to make the album redundant. Instead, the record fleshes out the portrait of Akron past. Bizarros and Rubber City Rebels blurred the line between bluesy, hard-rocking, keyboard-spiked proto-punk; in particular, Bizzaro's own slithery theme song, "I Bizarro", dramatizes the shift between Detroit stoner-snarl and punk's frantic animosity. And although "Rubber City Rebel" doesn't appear on Burn Rubber City, Burn!, the group is well represented by "Kidnapped" and "Such a Fool", two tracks taken from their '77 split with the Bizarros that demonstrate the no-holds-barred ethic of the time, before punk became petrified by its own image; the former is a raw, blistering spasm that predicts the coming hardcore storm, while the latter sounds as if it could be a raucous Alice Cooper demo.
Any Akron comp without Devo, however, would be disastrously incomplete, and Burn, Rubber City, Burn! includes the 1974 demos of "Mechanical Man" and "Auto Modown". Robotic, withdrawn, synth-twiddling, and playfully bleak, these two songs set the tone for later comp highlights such as Chi-Pig's "Apu Api" and "Ring Around the Collar". Neither would have been out of place on a contemporaneous Rough Trade comp, and members of the Slits-esque Chi-Pig would go on to co-write Devo's "Gates of Steel". (Mark Mothersbaugh, meanwhile, penned the lyrics for the group's "Ring Around the Collar".) Their presence helps pinpoint the big bang of Akron's more experimental contingent.
But for every gem like Jane Aire & the Belvederes' "When I Was Young"—in which Aire belts out gutsy and righteous tirades over jerky math-punk—there are oddities like "Narrow Road" by 15 60 75 Numbers Band—a listless, jazz-fusion meander that seems to have been listed for historical purposes only, seeing as how the group's lineup consisted, at one point or another, of Gerald Casale of Devo as well as Chrissie Hynde, an Akronite who moved to England and launched the Pretenders just before the Akron scene took off. It's unfortunate, also, that this completist spirit didn't spill over to the Cramps, who recorded a definitive batch of punkabilly demos in Akron in 1979 and whose frontman Lux Interior was a native.
Akron has been honored with two documentaries about its punk heyday—2003's It's Everything, and Then It's Gone and 2005's If You're Not Dead, Play. Cleveland, meanwhile, has had none (with the exception of 2007's Cleveland Screaming, covering the city's '80s hardcore scene). Yet Cleveland's leading band of the era, Pere Ubu, were every bit as trailblazing as their Akron counterparts Devo. The fresh context of Extermination Nights in the Sixth City gives the anthology's two Pere Ubu selections—"Heart of Darkness" and "Final Solution", plucked from their first two singles circa 1975 and '76—even more stark power. Leader David Thomas was still going by the ominous moniker Crocus Behemoth, and his mystique pervades these remarkable documents, which foreshadow the poetic tension and asperity of post-punk before punk itself had even solidified. Pere Ubu's predecessor, Rocket from the Tombs, gets a single song, "Life Stinks", but that's all they need; the anti-anthem remains as haywire and nihilistically disjointed as the day it crawled out of Thomas' feverish brain.
Cleveland contained plenty of protean talent besides Pere Ubu and kin. The Dead Boys, featuring former members of Rocket from the Tombs, may have broken out of Cleveland and headed for New York's CBGB scene, but plenty other punk-rock provocateurs stayed behind and flourished like blacktop weeds. Among them were the Pagans, Cleveland's answer to Rubber City Rebels. Their pulsing, Iggy-like conniptions are represented on Extermination Nights by three raging tracks, most notably the garage-rock-on-glue-fumes desperation of "Dead End America"—a beer-swilling, blue-collar rallying cry in the midst of socioeconomic collapse.
The artist side of the Cleveland scene finds expression on Extermination Nights, too. The Electric Eels, trafficking in punk savagery on "Splittery Splat" and avant-rock deconstruction on "Bunnies". The Mirrors' jangling, atmospheric "Hands in my Pockets" parallels Television's dreamy vistas as well as England's Swell Maps; Poli Styrene Jass Band's twisted "Drano in Your Veins" is a fit of Syd Barrett-meets-Frank Zappa whimsy. These quirks help make for a more solid, consistent listen than Burn Rubber City, Burn!—a higher batting average aided by the fact that Pere Ubu's tracks here reflect some of the best and most important music the group ever created, while Devo's contributions to Burn Rubber City, Burn! amount to mere marginalia.
Ironically, one of the most popular bands to emerge from the collective ooze of Burn Rubber City, Burn! and Extermination Nights in the Sixth City were the Waitresses. The quirky, lackluster, blues-rock oddity "The Comb"—which appears on both The Akron Compilation and Burn Rubber City, Burn!—in no way prepares us for the new-wavers who eventually charted with "I Know What Boys Like", performed the theme song to "Square Pegs", and were covered by the Spice Girls and on "Glee". Their success underlines the lack of cohesion to the Akron and Cleveland scenes. They were a free-for-all mix of inspired amateurs, ambitious opportunists, and serious, self-styled artists. In that way, Ohio wasn't all that different from any other place, then or now.
Still, there's an underdog pride and a furious invention to this music that unites these anthologies. The ache of doomed ambition, of a creative spirit pushed to the limit of endurance, and often well beyond, is palpable. Industrialized civilization may have been crumbling in the Rust Belt in the late '70s and early '80s, but Burn Rubber City, Burn! and Extermination Nights in the Sixth City prove just how much decay, disenfranchisement, and the specter of encroaching dystopia can fuel the fiercest of sounds. | 2015-02-19T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2015-02-19T01:00:01.000-05:00 | null | null | February 19, 2015 | 8 | 0b955ea8-1c6b-448f-b38e-56ebfddc4e3b | Jason Heller | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jason-heller/ | null |
Subsets and Splits