alternativeHeadline
stringlengths 2
551
⌀ | description
stringlengths 2
700
⌀ | itemReviewed
stringlengths 6
199
| url
stringlengths 41
209
| headline
stringlengths 1
176
⌀ | reviewBody
stringlengths 1.29k
31.4k
| dateModified
stringlengths 29
29
| datePublished
stringlengths 29
29
| Genre
stringclasses 116
values | Label
stringlengths 1
64
⌀ | Reviewed
stringlengths 11
18
| score
float64 0
10
| id
stringlengths 36
36
| author_name
stringclasses 603
values | author_url
stringclasses 604
values | thumbnailUrl
stringlengths 90
347
⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nobody 2 is on the more unruly end of the musical spectrum for Chief Keef, and his most poorly curated project since 2013’s Bang 2. | Nobody 2 is on the more unruly end of the musical spectrum for Chief Keef, and his most poorly curated project since 2013’s Bang 2. | Chief Keef: Nobody 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21355-nobody-2/ | Nobody 2 | It’s inevitably saddening to watch rappers who once risked international crossover success become gradually regarded as more marginal, release by release. In 2012—Chief Keef’s breakout year—the particulars of the then-teenage, Chicago-reared rapper’s music was as much under scrutiny as his sudden, controversial rise. These days, only stories of career self-sabotage, and legal or financial missteps (most recently, his suspension from his record deal with hologram and online television entrepreneur Alki David’s multipurpose entertainment corporation FilmOn) make for major headlines. The unlikely regional and viral success of "Faneto"—a fiery, rhythmically deranged 2014 mixtape track—was comparatively little commented upon, despite around 60 million cumulative YouTube views, a lengthy paper trail of virality, a 10-minute remix featuring the biggest names in his hometown’s hip-hop scene, and even a Drake cover.
Admittedly, there's a top-heavy static-to-signal ratio on Keef’s mixtapes of the past two years. His default ritual—long days and nights in the studio with his in-house production team—results in plenty of appealing, distinctively styled rap songs, but filling his increasingly frequent projects out to between 15 and 20 tracks necessarily makes for redundancy. The Keef devotee must be prepared to rifle through his tapes, scouting for the buried handful of standalone hits. It’s to be expected, really: The over-saturation business model is the profitable and logical choice for a modern street rapper with a diehard fan base.
Releases like December’s Nobody 2 evidence the downside of this approach. The tape is both on the more unruly end of the musical spectrum for Keef, and his most poorly curated project since 2013’s Bang 2. That’s not to say it's uninteresting. It is, at least, full of inimitable and decidedly bonkers beats from notoriously prickly executive producer 12 Million (formerly 12Hunna), who also masterminded its predecessor—last December’s meditative, AutoTune-drenched Nobody—and is threatening a third installment this month. On songs like "Phone" and "Sex With Me," most elements of the drum loops lag queasily behind the tempo. "Andale," even more extremely, plays out like some untested gear-operated machine lurching into motion and chugging unsteadily along, obscuring twinkling synth constellations in the background. One of 12 Million's hallmarks is his invasive snare patterns, in which wildly backfiring trails of delay become more important that the actual on-the-beat hits themselves. Keef’s terse phrasing holds everything together, demarcating time stylishly, if sometimes to little additional effect.
Keef songs like "Mirror" function like levels of early Nintendo games—not because of the actual bleep-bloop sonic likeness, but because of the mileage they get from the deceptively complex overlap of a handful of miniature, mechanistic moving parts. Keef’s vocal take sounds as assembled from tiny scraps as the beat itself, but packs in just enough in the way of conversational one-liners to lend the track cohesion ("I think you need a chair/ Waiting on me to fail/ You say you seen some money/ N*gga, tell me where/ Is it over there/ Or is it in here?") "Mirror" is enough to make one go cross-eyed after focusing in too hard on any of its particular irregular elements, but falls together perfectly after pulling back and zoning out a bit.
But though 12 Million’s work on this tape is his most compelling to date, Keef, unfortunately, is less present than ever. On tracks like "Sex With Me," he murmurs nearly inaudibly in the background for the better part of the song—more a sound effect than anything else. On the appropriately titled, delay-riddled "In the Stu," it sounds like he’s set foot in the booth without even an embryonic idea or plan of attack. Sometimes, as on the distorted jeremiad of a pre-chorus on "Tony Hawk," he's nearly incomprehensible.
Nobody 2 is a far cry from the more lyrically clever and emotionally charged Sorry 4 the Weight, and *Bang 3’*s diplomatic songwriting and sonic clarity. This is chilly, uninviting music, implicitly and explicitly about isolation. "I feel like I need to separate myself from hip-hop, don’t let nobody come around me, don’t let nobody learn from me," Keef intones menacingly on the album’s central skit. A few years into his still-influential career, nobody quite sounds like Chief Keef in rap music. But if he doesn’t let anyone push him to complicate his now-time-tested vision, his songs may never expand back into being something more than fringe experiments, and even the interest those hold may, after a healthy amount of reiteration, wane for good. | 2016-01-07T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2016-01-07T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rap | Glo Gang | January 7, 2016 | 6.7 | 0e136a5a-bfb5-4bcf-8d45-802059f3bd13 | Winston Cook-Wilson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/winston-cook-wilson/ | null |
The Philadelphia group’s metal-tinged style channels the physicality of a hardcore show with propulsive rhythms, call-and-response vocals, and floor-punching breakdowns. | The Philadelphia group’s metal-tinged style channels the physicality of a hardcore show with propulsive rhythms, call-and-response vocals, and floor-punching breakdowns. | Jesus Piece: ...So Unknown | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jesus-piece-so-unknown/ | ...So Unknown | A hardcore show is an intensely physical experience: The kick drum’s shotgun blast to your chest, the locomotive action of distorted guitars driving a crowd into action, the guttural growls of a vocalist cutting their heart out and holding it up for all to see. Philadelphia’s Jesus Piece are masters of this energy: They wield their metallic brand of hardcore with punishing ferocity, delivering breakdowns engineered to coordinate the mosh pit’s chaotic energy. Their latest LP, So Unknown, is more fuel for that fire, a cathartic record colored by industrial-grade distortion and rhythms designed to compel bodies into motion.
Jesus Piece’s talent lies in the way they experiment with the fundamentals of a relatively static genre. Across its 28-minute runtime, So Unknown arranges energetic bursts in intervals that mirror the rhythms and movement of a hardcore show, with tempo changes that slow things down just enough to let you catch your breath before accelerating into head-splitting quarter-note triplets that teeter on the edge of chaos.
Jesus Piece tend to get tagged as metallic hardcore or metalcore, as well as more nuanced variations of the same: beatdown hardcore, hardcore groove metal, “more hardcore than metal.” They boast a unique mix of aggressive East Coast grooves and call-and-response vocals, offsetting metal’s melodic and theatrical tendencies with hardcore’s propulsive energy. Virtuoso drummer Luis Aponte wields punishing kicks, machine-gun snares, and funky, syncopated grooves with equal aplomb.
Much of their energy lies in the breakdowns—the part of the song where the arrangement is stripped to its essential elements to better suit moshers. Despite the tendency for contemporary bands to dress them up with flourishes or flashy solos, Jesus Piece properly break things down, coalescing behind a single beat or riff that concentrates all of their energy for maximum floor-punching impact.
The band draws its name from hip-hop slang for jewelry with Christian symbols, iconography typically used in heavy music as a foil for anti-religious or anti-authority sentiments. The music’s ties to hip-hop are tenuous at best; though Aponte and bassist Anthony Marinaro’s penchant for beats tinged with funk may inspire bobbing heads, the name mostly signifies their desire to distance themselves from metal cliches. (“We didn’t want a stupid metal sounding name,” vocalist Aaron Heard says.) Heard’s lyrics focus on themes of alienation, self-loathing, and violence as a tool for liberation, yet they’re not totally devoid of hope. “Gates of Horn” uses a classic trope from Greek literature to explore the veracity of our dreams, and in “Silver Lining,” Heard clings to paternal love as a way of coping with life’s bleak moments. But Heard’s screams seek to draw others in rather than push them away; even a cry like “Fuck the bullshit!” feels like a call to the band’s comrades in arms.
For a group that started as a “straight-up death-metal band,” Jesus Piece have found a sweet spot between the groove and the violence of music genetically engineered for the pit. Hardcore will never sound or feel as satisfying on record as it does coming from a stage, and experienced from within the pit, enveloped in the release of sweaty rage and other explosive emotional detritus. But the songs have to come from somewhere, and So Unknown, which bottles that rage and passion with a bit of funk, is a decent place to start. | 2023-04-25T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-04-25T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Century Media | April 25, 2023 | 7.3 | 0e18c801-e5ce-4416-88cf-92b0f81969d4 | Matthew Ismael Ruiz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ismael ruiz/ | |
Recording on the same boombox that launched his career, John Darnielle returns to his lo-fi roots for an album of alienation, ancient pagans, and making it through the year together. | Recording on the same boombox that launched his career, John Darnielle returns to his lo-fi roots for an album of alienation, ancient pagans, and making it through the year together. | The Mountain Goats: Songs for Pierre Chuvin | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-mountain-goats-songs-for-pierre-chuvin/ | Songs for Pierre Chuvin | John Darnielle’s music has arrived so steadily and with such consistency that the changes the Mountain Goats have undergone can feel secondary to his own growth as a writer. Over the last three decades, a project with the loneliest of origins—a man at home with an acoustic guitar, a primitive tape recorder, and a pinched, inimitable voice—has grown into a full band with their own distinctive and expanding sound. Their albums from the past 10 years have seen an increased focus on the musicians around him: longtime bassist Peter Hughes, drummer Jon Wurster, multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas, and collaborators that have ranged from a men’s choir to a metal producer, a symphony orchestra and a horn section. You could imagine a trajectory in which Darnielle blends deeper into this foreground, exploring how each new embellishment affects the cadence of his rich, referential storytelling.
This was the plan as recently as a month ago, when the quartet gathered to work on the follow-up to 2019’s lush In League With Dragons. But as the effects of COVID-19 made it impossible to continue recording together, and as the material Darnielle prepared began to feel at odds with the escalating news cycle, he returned home and changed plans. In his bedroom, during 90-minute breaks away from his family, he wrote one new song a day, all inspired by A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, a dense text published in 1990 by the French historian Pierre Chuvin. For the sake of immediacy—and maybe familiarity—he recorded each song on the Panasonic RX-FT500 boombox that documented his earliest compositions.
This very boombox, purchased in the late ’80s, served as Darnielle’s first essential collaborator, its harsh, unrelenting whirr once inseparable from his songwriting. It was so integral that a portion of his devoted fan base felt betrayed when he signed to 4AD after 2002’s classic All Hail West Texas and took to professional studios, adopted cleaner textures, and, eventually, recruited a band. For this contingent of fans, his new album, Songs for Pierre Chuvin, might signal a long-awaited return to form; it is a brief but thoughtful collection marked by old-school production, deep allusions to his songbook, and performances that could be placed among those early pillars. Yet it doesn’t feel like pandering. Despite the familiar sound and old-world setting (4th and 5th century, to be exact), these songs never look back for too long. They feel like another step forward.
Over the years, Darnielle has become increasingly adept at summarizing the disparate worldviews of his characters in catchy, unlikely refrains. As with everything he puts to tape, there are a couple here that you could sing along with by the time the second verse starts. The chorus of the opening song, “Aulon Raid,” sets the tone: “We will deeeeal with you/Me and my paaaa-gan crew.” These observations from a collapsing society are at turns hopeful, wistful, and enraged. Alone, Darnielle takes audible delight in finding the right backdrop for each story, from the Casio hum of “The Wooded Hills Along the Black Sea” to the terse grind of “Until Olympius Returns.” Even if you have never been a member of a small community fearing extinction—say, ancient pagans at the hands of Christians, or lo-fi purists bemoaning a more polished technique—his words ring with righteous purpose.
Amid the social distancing and mass cancellations of the past month, I had already been thinking about Darnielle’s music. His catalog is filled with odes to the small communities we build for ourselves: the divine congregations at rock concerts (“Satanic Messiah”) and wrestling matches (2015’s Beat the Champ); among people with similar dependencies (2004’s We Shall All Be Healed) and fashion choices (2017’s Goths). He has also written from pockets of deep isolation. His quiet 2006 album Get Lonely is devoted entirely to this subject, with an opening track that spends its runtime contemplating the inherent danger of leaving the house. Pierre Chuvin finds its place among these desperate stories. “Return the peace you took from me/Give me back my community,” he sings late in the album. In another song, a character casts a skeptical eye from his hillside exile: “Sometimes forget there’s cities down there,” he chants in a matter-of-fact verse, his tone somewhere between self-sufficiency and total alienation.
In moments like these, Darnielle’s writing feels newly political and wide-reaching, a comforting shift from the more insular narratives of his last few concept albums. But he closes the record with a nod to his own mythology. On the climactic “Exegetic Chains,” Darnielle expresses gratitude for the faithful grind of his boombox and repurposes the chorus of his signature song: “Make it through this year,” he urges in a near-whisper, “if it kills us outright.” It’s the echo of a message that’s often shouted through tears at the end of his shows: a personal mantra turned outward, an old prayer sung like intimate advice. This, he suggests, is how we might get by. When he started writing songs, recording to tape was a necessity: a quick, inexpensive way to document his thoughts. Now it’s a gesture of faith. The proceeds from this release go to his bandmates and crew, the people who count on his work for income. The initial run sold out in minutes; it’s currently in its third pressing. He wants to make sure the people who need it can hear it, that they can hold it in their hands. | 2020-04-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-04-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | April 16, 2020 | 8.1 | 0e198e5f-4c5e-4d0f-ba57-b4244093f118 | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | |
PUP's second album is a glorious half-hour of redlining guitars and pile-on group chants that turn self-loathing and self-deprecation into a sort of superpower. | PUP's second album is a glorious half-hour of redlining guitars and pile-on group chants that turn self-loathing and self-deprecation into a sort of superpower. | PUP: The Dream is Over | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21718-the-dream-is-over/ | The Dream is Over | On a surface level, PUP’s second album is this year’s Celebration Rock or The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us: a half hour of capital-R Rock music, nothing but glorious redlining guitars and pile-on group chants that should be banned in cars for safety purposes. It’s deeply unfashionable and equally vital-sounding, the everyman/Superman appeal of all three enhanced by the setbacks in their origin story. Every review of The Dream is Over is obligated to mention the inspiration behind the album title—after literally shredding his vocal cords, Stefan Babcock was told by a doctor, “the dream is over.” The irony is that Babcock would’ve told you the same thing at any point in the past two years if he never set foot in the office. While Beach Slang and Japandroids use rock music to promise salvation for drunk and aimless weirdos, after playing upwards of 400 shows behind their 2014 self-titled, PUP can only write what they know—which is why the first song is “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will”. Ask Beach Slang if they relate.
Babcock’s homicidal thoughts are countered by panicked, massed vocals that double as restraining orders—“WHY CAN’T WE JUST GET ALONG?” “WHY CAN’T EVERYBODY JUST CHILL?!??” Notice that there’s never any threat to turn the damn van around or just break up. Judging by their insane touring regimen and adrenalized music, this a band that believes it can power through anything by sheer force of will. But even if being in PUP sounds like a living nightmare for Babcock, it’s all he’s got. Gig or no gig, he’s waking up most mornings on the floor with more apologies than dollars in the bank, coming to the same conclusion over and over again: that voice in my head telling me I’m a loser was right all along.
But, as Patrick Stickles once sang, that’s OK. “Now that you’ve finally figured me out/I can go home and rest easier now,” Babcock brays on “Doubts,” one of the many songs on The Dream is Over which retells an involuntary romantic/vocational break up. “What am I supposed to do now?” he asks and it’s not a rhetorical question; The Dream is Over is weirdly pragmatic about hitting bottom. It’s heartening to see PUP’s realm become more mature, mindful and socially conscious, but being constantly broke, hungover and miserable fucking sucks and there’s no way around it. There’s a “don’t fight it, feel it,” philosophy to PUP’s music, validating these emotions with an unapologetically nasty record that lets you work out all of your angst in a safe place.
Babcock yells, “I’ve been blessed with this shit luck,” a sentiment that typically traces back to the Replacements, the patron saints of lovable loser punk. But Babcock’s misery has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with decisions (“And I’m sick and tired of blacking out on my carpet/And waking up all on my own/So I brought you home") and PUP’s music is more based in hyper-aggressive post-hardcore and skate-punk. Babcock’s vocals are clean, yelpy and sing-song melodic, justifying PUP's brief spell on the Warped Tour, but the music takes after the precise assault of Drive Like Jehu in the gymnastic chorus of “Doubts,” Pixies at their most manic (“Sleep in the Heat”), and the hectoring bass assaults of Mclusky (“Old Wounds”). There’s enough self-deprecation to ensure that The Dream is Over never sounds hateful, but the physical violence of the “Reservoir” and “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will” videos isn’t entirely played for laughs. Someone is going to get hurt here.
It’s all very effective because the ultimate message is “misery loves company.” Though a far more accomplished and tuneful record than their debut, The Dream Is Over feels just as much a preview for PUP’s live show. Whereas most music of this sort never tries to sound like more than a couple guys in a room, PUP’s approach is so over-the-top that it can sound as CGI’d as any chart-pop; you have to see it in person just to find out if they can really pull this off. Can they really nail the heart-stopping segue between “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You” and “DVP”? How can anyone play as melodically and as fast as they do on “DVP”? On every single chorus, the four members of PUP sound like 4000, is that really how it comes off in a room or is it because they rightfully expect everyone in the crowd to shout along? Frankly, the energy and intensity that’s channeled into the first half of The Dream is Over feels utterly impossible, especially given the subject matter.
But even at 31 minutes, Babcock’s relentless self-loathing can go from intoxicating to simply toxic; it’s fitting that “My Life is Over and I Couldn’t Be Happier” and “Can’t Win” are immediately followed by a song called “Familiar Patterns.” Babcock finally steps out of himself on the closing “Pine Point.” Inspired by the 2011 interactive web documentary Welcome to Pine Point, Babcock looks back and remembers his brother dying in a drunken car crash, walks around the abandoned Northwest Territories mining town and sees Pine Point as a fate far worse than death or even his current situation ("Imagine if your hometown never changed" goes the tagline). As a sort of pop-punk Greek chorus, the band repeats “I hope you know what you’re doing” over anxious minor chords, cautionary advice that had about as much impact on them as “the dream is over.” They’ve tried so hard and got so far only to find out in the end, it doesn’t even matter. So the only thing to do is keep moving—if that tour didn’t kill PUP, nothing will. | 2016-05-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-05-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | SideOneDummy / Royal Mountain | May 30, 2016 | 7.8 | 0e1a0949-324f-4b5d-a71e-daf7be7fa703 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
Deerhunter make a record about the joy of early music discovery, and in revisiting that youthful enthusiasm, they brilliantly rekindle it. | Deerhunter make a record about the joy of early music discovery, and in revisiting that youthful enthusiasm, they brilliantly rekindle it. | Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14681-halcyon-digest/ | Halcyon Digest | Halcyon Digest is a record about the joy of music discovery, the thrill of listening for the first time to a potential future favorite, and that sense of boundless possibility when you're still innocent of indie-mainstream politics and your personal canon is far from set. In revisiting that youthful enthusiasm, Deerhunter brilliantly rekindle it, and the result meets Microcastle/Weird Era (Cont.) as the band's most exhilarating work to date. Whether those halcyon days were real or just idealized doesn't matter. With producer Ben Allen, who lent a bass-heavy sheen to Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, these four guys-- lead singer Bradford Cox, singer/guitarist Lockett Pundt, bass player Josh Fauver, and drummer Moses Archuleta-- have created a seamless album of startling emotional clarity.
Deerhunter have never lacked ambition. 2007 breakout Cryptograms came as two discrete halves: one front-loaded with ambient drifts and clanging post-punk aggression, the other blasting off into sunny psych-pop. Microcastle turned out to be a sprawling, ghostly amusement park of a double album, with violence and frail beauty never far from each other. And then there are all those EPs, side projects, and rarities. In blog posts and interviews, Cox has shown himself to be a music lover of the highest order, almost a platonic ideal of the artist as fan.
This record marks a distinctly different approach for the band, more streamlined and stripped down, and in its sparest moments, it echoes the stark intimacy and one-take effortlessness of records like Neil Young's Tonight's the Night or Chris Bell's I Am the Cosmos. Fans of the band's earlier stuff may understandably miss some of the old electric-guitar squall, but Halcyon Digest's expanded instrumental palette-- acoustic guitar, electronic percussion, banjo, autoharp, harmonica, vocal harmonies, and saxophone (!)-- creates endless depths of intricacy and nuance to explore in headphones.
In the past, Deerhunter's gift for garbled sonics and Cox's stream-of-consciousness methods made it easy to downplay the group's lyrical ability. That's not the case here. Whether by Pundt, who sings lead on two of Halcyon Digest's best songs, or Cox, Deerhunter's songwriting congeals into a style all its own, with lyrics moved front-and-center. The words fit perfectly together, down to the most trivial minutia: Cox asking, "Did you stick with me?" at the start of garage-pop fist-pumper "Memory Boy", right after the track people are most likely to skip (funny!), or Pundt mentioning a "marching band" on another uptempo proto-anthem, "Fountain Stairs", as Bill Oglesby's sax first appears.
The topical ground covered here is inspired, too: "Revival", a sort of Southern gothic folk-rock baptism, embraces religion. "I'm saved, I'm saved!" Cox exalts, "I felt his presence heal me." Recorded to four-track, "Basement Scene" "dream[s] a little dream" that soon turns nightmarish: "I don't wanna get old" quickly becomes "I wanna get old" as Cox weighs the alternative. And first single "Helicopter" is a beautifully watery electro-acoustic farewell that uses a tragic Dennis Cooper story about a Russian prostitute (graciously reprinted in the liner notes) to support its emotional bleakness.
Then there's seven-and-a-half-minute finale "He Would Have Laughed", dedicated to Jay Reatard, the Memphis garage rocker who died last winter of drug-related causes at age 29. Its lyrics are the most cryptic on Halcyon Digest-- full sentences are rarely formed before Cox closes them off with his usual crisp consonants. A simple acoustic guitar riff repeats as other percussion elements and electronic tones pan across the track, occasionally joined by the full band. Cox admits to growing "bored as I get older," and then goes into a dream-- "I lived on a farm, yeah/ I never lived on a farm"-- until he finally all but asks, "Where are your friends tonight?" The track cuts off unexpectedly mid-note.
Deerhunter unveiled their new album by asking fans to print out a vintage DIY-style poster, photocopy it, and tape it up all over town. In the last couple of weeks, band members have participated in all-night online chats with some of their most devoted fans. We'll never be able to parse every lyric or tease out every technical intricacy-- though somebody will probably try-- but that is what Halcyon Digest is all about: nostalgia not for an era, not for antiquated technology, but for a feeling of excitement, of connection, of that dumb obsession that makes life worth living no matter how horrible it gets. And then sharing that feeling with somebody else who'll start the cycle all over again. | 2010-09-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2010-09-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | 4AD | September 27, 2010 | 9.2 | 0e1cc9fc-e515-4346-be24-b460852cb303 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | null |
With his trailblazing Trap Lord days behind him, the brash former A$AP affiliate returns with a fun, familiar album that is content to chase trends instead of set them. | With his trailblazing Trap Lord days behind him, the brash former A$AP affiliate returns with a fun, familiar album that is content to chase trends instead of set them. | A$AP Ferg: Floor Seats II | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/asap-ferg-floor-seats-ii/ | Floor Seats II | On his 2013 mixtape-turned-debut-album Trap Lord, A$AP Ferg was ahead of his time. Even among the region-defying ranks of his (apparently former) A$AP Mob affiliates, Ferg’s debut stood out as truly weird. His voice and bravado were unmistakably New York, but singles “Shabba” and “Work” pulled as much from Lex Luger’s maximalist aesthetic as they did from Dipset’s uptown swagger, forecasting the stranglehold Atlanta trap would have on rap for the rest of the 2010s. Seven years later, on his latest project Floor Seats II, Ferg’s music no longer sounds avant-garde.
In his defense, Ferg has settled into a comfortable rhythm since 2017’s lively but low-stakes Still Striving mixtape. His insistence on familiarity tracks within our current cultural climate. The coronavirus is still raging across the world, with the United States in particular still struggling with its first wave. Ferg recently told Complex that Floor Seats II is “music to take people’s minds elsewhere, and off what’s happening in the state of the world right now.” The project’s loose concept is geared around sitting courtside at a basketball game, with its loaded tracklist representing the celebrities you might see at a game The Knicks would currently be losing at The Garden if it were open. If anything, it makes me miss the scent of beer and rage that floats from The Garden into Penn Station below every game night.
The concept doesn’t really suit the boisterous nature of Ferg’s music, which can make you feel like you’re milly-rocking at the top of the George Washington Bridge at its best. If there’s one thing Floor Seats II doesn’t lack, it’s energy. You can feel the velocity of songs like “Dennis Rodman” and “In It,” with Ferg’s flows lighting him up like the Human Torch; even his trademark barking and cooing adlibs happen faster. On “Move Ya Hips,” he feeds off of Nicki Minaj and MadeinTYO’s energy, building on his established chemistry with Minaj without recreating their 2017 hit “Plain Jane.”
Ferg takes a few risks on Floor Seats II, and some pan out better than others. The penultimate song “Hectic,” co-produced by TGUT and Ferg himself, opens with a glitchy electronic beat before a mid-song switch reveals a tribal stomp that sounds like Clipse’s “Grindin’” in a wind tunnel. Ferg transitions effortlessly into a verse calling American racism to task: “I lost battles for my peace/Take those shackles off our feet/And we got diamonds in our teeth/But we’re still a nigga to the police.” Ferg’s passionate story of his come up and his claim to the A$AP legacy on closing song “Big A$AP” is softened by a posh piano run almost as silly as the one on Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige’s infamous duet “Now Or Never.” Both “No Ceilings” and “Aussie Freaks” are anchored by Brooklyn drill beats, and while Ferg gives it his all, it would be a stretch to say he sounds natural over this skittering production. It’s one of the few times Ferg has chased a trend instead of trying to set one.
Even with the added variety, Floor Seats II often cedes too much time to its guests. Tyga dominates the first half of “Dennis Rodman” with a forgettable verse before Ferg blows him out of the water on the back half. The flex of inviting Diddy to monologue over “Hectic” isn’t worth listening to his motivational-meme posturing in between verses. Ferg works well with guests, which is why this project exists, but not when they start eating into the runtime.
On the hook for “Value,” Ferg briefly resurrects his Trap Lord persona. It briefly provokes nostalgia for the moment when invisible chains and random merch giveaways on Twitter were the height of cool, when putting Waka Flocka Flame and B-Real on the same album was considered fresh and forward-thinking. This is not that time. Floor Seats II is a fun but familiar distraction where Ferg seems content to ride the wave, for better and for worse.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-10-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-10-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | A$AP Worldwide / Polo Grounds Music / RCA | October 3, 2020 | 6.7 | 0e1d900d-1490-4835-a612-e580c2f28319 | Dylan Green | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/ | |
The ambient dream-pop duo’s fourth album is split between fragile vocal meditations and instrumentals as delicate as origami cranes. | The ambient dream-pop duo’s fourth album is split between fragile vocal meditations and instrumentals as delicate as origami cranes. | You’ll Never Get to Heaven: Wave Your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/youll-never-get-to-heaven-wave-your-moonlight-hat-for-the-snowfall-train/ | Wave Your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train | You’ll Never Get to Heaven’s lucid dream-pop rarely coalesces into recognizable shapes. “We are intuitively drawn to music that occupies a space between intimacy and distance,” says Chuck Blazevic, who shares the duo with his partner, the classically trained pianist, violinist, and vocalist Alice Hansen. Across four releases in just under a decade, the London, Ontario-based couple have developed a strain of ambient songcraft as instrumentally sophisticated as it is hazily mysterious. On Wave Your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train, they replace the drum machine pulse of 2017’s Images with a shimmering, vaporous sound. Inspired by the beatless, delay-drenched free jazz arrangements of Phil Yost’s 1967 LP Bent City (whose closing song provides the new album’s title), this softly atmospheric cycle feels both tenderly tactile and forever out of reach.
From the start, YNGTH’s music has been intentionally incomplete. In a 2014 interview, Nova Scotian experimental musician and Divorce label founder Darcy Spidle recalled receiving the duo’s 2012 debut as a demo. When Spidle heard the sketchy, unfinished bedroom recordings of breath-on-glass pop, he offered to release the record as-is. Hansen has compared the origins of YNGTH to Leyland Kirby’s hauntological project The Caretaker: building songs with symphonic jazz samples from a bygone era to linger eternally in a ghost-filled ballroom.
With a patient process that requires three or four years between releases, YNGTH have continually tweaked their time-suspending formula. The 2014 EP Adorn paid direct tribute to the duo’s influences with a cover of Cluster and Eno’s “By This River,” followed by a solo piano performance of Erik Satie’s “Enfantillages Pittoresques: Berceuse.” On Images—released by Maryland label Yellow K the year after Japanese Breakfast’s debut—YNGTH found a sputtering propulsion that resembled synth-pop, allowing Hansen’s soft, wistful vocal melodies to be tugged forward by analog and electronic beats. Wave Your Moonlight Hat continues their use of chiming metallophone percussion (also a feature of Blazevic’s solo project Slow Attack Ensemble), but in comparison to the duo’s previous output, it feels weightless.
The eight songs of Wave Your Moonlight Hat are split between fragile vocal meditations and instrumentals as delicate as origami cranes. With poetic economy of words, Hansen uses natural imagery (a setting sun, a creeping dawn) and sound elements (an infinite echo dancing in and out of phase) to evoke spiraling emotions that never quite come into focus. On “Eye, Soul and Hand,” she lowers her voice to a muffled ASMR whisper, making it almost impossible to discern some of the album’s most affecting lyrics: “Fear is a pale gray shadow, and now that you’re gone it takes its form.” Even if she doesn’t reveal specifics, the world weighs heavy as it disintegrates around her.
On previous releases, Blazevic has earned attention for his use of the Monome, a grid-based control panel of blinking squares that requires the user to define its function. For these songs, his primary tool is the fretless bass, which glides between grooves and punctuates Hansen’s vocal hooks with twinkling harmonics like Jaco Pastorius. Wave Your Moonlight Hat’s other core instruments include marimba and the watery, Grouper-like pianos that bob to the surface on closer “Predawn Visions.” The final effect is like Julee Cruise produced by Ivo Watts-Russell, or Elizabeth Fraser produced by Angelo Badalamenti. Four releases in, You’ll Never Get to Heaven have crafted a sound that is comforting and familiar but never predictable.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-12-09T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-12-09T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Séance Centre | December 9, 2021 | 7.4 | 0e1ee725-c8a9-49be-a924-3cbba35de58b | Jesse Locke | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-locke/ | |
After a seven-year absence, a band whose quest for rock’n’roll fame always mixed a piss-take with genuine aspiration return in charmingly humbled fashion. | After a seven-year absence, a band whose quest for rock’n’roll fame always mixed a piss-take with genuine aspiration return in charmingly humbled fashion. | Art Brut: Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock Out! | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/art-brut-wham-bang-pow-lets-rock-out/ | Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock Out! | On Art Brut’s 2005 debut, Bang Bang Rock & Roll, Eddie Argos made gaming the system look so easy there was almost no sport to it. These were the early years of the indie rock bubble, an era when NME was still anointing new kings every week. Argos took advantage: He formed a band, immediately wrote a song about forming the band, and became the critical favorite he never doubted they were destined to be almost overnight.
During that breakout single, the loudmouthed Argos declared his intentions to write “the song that makes Israel and Palestine get along.” But 13 years later, underground-indebted rock is no longer much of a commodity. On Art Brut’s charmingly humbled fifth album, Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock Out!, Argos’ ambitions are decidedly modest. He’s traded youthful delusions of grandeur for dispatches about the indignities of being a nearly middle-aged rocker with no avenue left for world conquest. “Cult band!/Cult band!/Kultfigur!/Don’t snigger/It’s not about making the audience bigger,” he sings, channeling Mark E. Smith’s agitated caw. On “She Kissed Me (and It Felt Like a Hit),” which is neither a Spiritualized cover nor another modern attempt to reckon with the weight of the Crystals landmark, he’s surprised to discover that romance scratches the itch he once assumed only rock stardom could, likening his partner’s peck to an appearance on “Top of the Pops.”
Wham! Bang! follows the Frank Black-produced Brilliant! Tragic! by seven years, a gap that Argos chalks up to circumstances beyond his control. He was hospitalized, for instance, for nearly a month with a life-threatening bout with diverticulitis, a torturous experience he jubilantly vows never to repeat on “Hospital!,” even if better health requires precautions as dull as eating greens and drinking water. The brush with death renders him unusually agreeable: “They tried to make me go to rehab,” he bellows, “and I said… That is probably a very good idea!”
In the interim, guitarist Toby Macfarlaine and the Wedding Present drummer Charlie Layton joined the band. They’re ace players who understand the band’s trick of breathing life into music that’s not nearly as one-note as they’d like you to believe. Taking advantage of the talent, Art Brut shamelessly dial up the pop, constructing hooks with a cheeriness usually reserved for songs about birthdays. Elated horns and backing bah-bahs kick off the opener “Hooray!,” while dreamy harmonies sweeten “Veronica Falls.” It’s a lovely lament about a platonic relationship that could have been something more. Argos saves his less-wholesome admission for the final reveal: “This is a song about longing, wishing I’d done wrong, and missed opportunities to be bad/It’s a song about not cheating on your girlfriend/When you wish that you had.”
On Art Brut’s last two albums, Argos’ act soured a bit, as he lashed out at a world that was buying less and less of what he was selling. Wham! Bang! is good-hearted in a way those records weren’t, and the newfound humility flatters him. On “Too Clever,” he even holds a mirror to his signature wit, conceding that being a smartass isn’t the happiest way to lead your life. As always, Argos’ speak-sing delivery lends an air of disingenuity to his lyrics, implying satire even when he’s being honest. To the extent he is joking around, though, he’s learned the joke is funniest when he’s his own the target. | 2018-11-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-11-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Alcopop! | November 24, 2018 | 7 | 0e1fb1c9-3f28-45c7-9e69-7d83cb5738a5 | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | |
The-Dream self-released this intensely personal fourth solo collection for free. It's out under his birth name and titled for his birth year, and though he's been coy about the subject, the specter of his divorce from singer Christina Milian looms over it. | The-Dream self-released this intensely personal fourth solo collection for free. It's out under his birth name and titled for his birth year, and though he's been coy about the subject, the specter of his divorce from singer Christina Milian looms over it. | Terius Nash: 1977 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15792-1977/ | 1977 | 1977 is-- to quote Terius Nash himself-- an "Internet album." Nash (aka The-Dream) released it for free on his website on August 31, with the begrudged blessing of his bosses at Def Jam. It's his fourth solo album, but his first released in this manner, and it raises the question of whether or not we are supposed to alter our expectations. Is this a tossed-off re-packaging of demos? Is he merely trying to satiate a fanbase waiting for an album that he promised to drop this past June? We don't know the answers to those questions (although my guesses would be "no" and "maybe"), but it would seem foolish to hold 1977 to a lower standard. It's no longer unusual-- especially in the world of rap, and to a lesser extent R&B-- to put a full album on the Internet for free. If Nash had included a way for fans to pay what they wanted for the album, he would've been adopting a strategy utilized in previous years by Radiohead and Girl Talk.
And yet, Nash is asking us to adjust our expectations. Crucially though, he's not asking that we alter our notions of what we expect of him, just what we expect from him. 1977 represents not a conscious change in quality, but a conscious change in style and sound, at least for the time being. A few days before he released the album, he tweeted, "When I'm 40 ill write Myself a Pop Smash just so I can Perform on National TV. Not that hard to do. But that's not who I am right now." True to his word, 1977 often strays far from Nash's few solo pop smashes. Instead, it is a deeply personal and presumably therapeutic album. It's one that he fought with his label to release, that he's putting out under his birth name and titled for his birth year, and for which he has put the lyrics of every song up on his website. Though he was predictably coy about the subject, the specter of his divorce from singer Christina Milian looms over it.
In its sparseness and unrelenting directness, the album's most recent precedent is Kanye West's break up opus 808s & Heartbreak, and much like that record, it's already proven to be a divisive if misunderstood album. It showcases a bitter and angry Nash, and though he has previously dabbled in acidic and unflinching break-up songs, 1977 is his first album to largely focus on something other than his sexual prowess. Like West, his vitriol is mostly spewed outward, with seemingly little regard for the feelings or reputation of whoever is on the other side. There is Spanish guitar, as if Nash imagines himself readying for a duel. There is acoustic guitar, as if to accentuate his confessionals. And there is guitar feedback, as if his heart were screaming out.
As a portrayal of a broken relationship, 1977 at its best is as vivid as it is one-sided. "Wake Me When It's Over", which effectively utilizes the glacial R&B of Drake and his producer Noah "40" Shebib, opens the album with a wrenching portrait of a romance falling apart in plain view of friends and the public. As Nash coos the chorus we find him frozen in amber, unable to shake a break up for which he claims he would've taken bullets. Even tracks like "Rolex" and "Wish You Were Mine", which don't hew as close to the theme as others, have a spitefulness that hint at an intense desire to throw your recovery in your ex's face.
But of course, writing songs from this point of view presents some problems. Mainly, one has to be able to stomach the one-sided bile and Nash's likely half-truths. To that end, 1977, like West's 808s, functions best as a look inside the mind of a man wrecked by a trying relationship and a worse break up. His failings should not be excused, but the feelings exist, and have likely existed inside most of us at some point (regardless of gender), and to that end, they're understandable even if they're not completely acceptable.
There are also essential moments on the album where Nash perhaps unwittingly reveals the more aggressively resentful songs to be a sort of Pyrrhic victory. One is on "Form of Flattery", where he addresses the ex he hates and seethes, "I'm not better than that." Another is "Wedding Crasher", the absolute standout here, wherein Nash shows up at his ex's wedding and admits, once and for all, that his attempts to replace her have been futile. Sonically, it recalls the buoyant lightness of Love King's "Florida University", though it's less cloying, and this time he's basically saying, "fuck you" back at himself.
All that said, Nash still misses a huge opportunity. One of the legitimate criticisms of 808s was that West's ex had no forum to respond to the album. While it's obviously impossible to expect Nash to cede space on 1977 to Milian (or whomever), there is a critical difference between himself and West. Nash is a songwriter by trade who made his name writing from the perspective of people (mostly women) other than himself, including what may be the biggest female empowerment single of the past decade. When Nash does give the floor completely to a female voice, it's for the relatively unknown Casha to sing a cover of Deniece Williams' 1981 hit "Silly". As a tune, the song itself is fine, but framed by Nash's wrath it sadly comes off as pleading and passive. How great would it have been for Nash to use that spot on the album to turn the pen on himself, if only for one song?
Still, 1977 itself is a success, even if it doesn't stand up completely to his three previous releases. As a standalone depiction of a deteriorating relationship and miserable break up, it's engrossing and, even to a fault, extremely honest. As a piece of music, it eschews the richness and lushness of those albums, a sound that's felt on the verge of becoming stale. 1977 could be called a palate cleanser, but it's way too torn-up to be that. It's more like a shot (or three) of whisky. Sometimes that feels like exactly what you need. | 2011-09-08T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2011-09-08T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Rap | Radio Killa | September 8, 2011 | 7.9 | 0e2384a8-1972-4f2f-acf4-3f84b62071cd | Jordan Sargent | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jordan-sargent/ | null |
Fuck Buttons came together in 2004 to create pain-inducing noise music, but soon became curious about mixing in prettier sounds, adding structure and melody to their brutal tracks. As a result, their debut LP is surprisingly welcoming-- for noise, anyway-- with a mix of dreamy melody and abrasive climax that evokes strange stylistic bedfellows from the hypnotic drones of Spacemen 3 to the chiming dissonance of Black Dice. | Fuck Buttons came together in 2004 to create pain-inducing noise music, but soon became curious about mixing in prettier sounds, adding structure and melody to their brutal tracks. As a result, their debut LP is surprisingly welcoming-- for noise, anyway-- with a mix of dreamy melody and abrasive climax that evokes strange stylistic bedfellows from the hypnotic drones of Spacemen 3 to the chiming dissonance of Black Dice. | Fuck Buttons: Street Horrrsing | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11280-street-horrrsing/ | Street Horrrsing | Floating around the internet last fall before emerging on a 7" in November, Fuck Buttons' "Bright Tomorrow" proved surprisingly resilient. The duo's blunt repetition of simple elements-- metronomic drum-machine, chugging synth, blissful keyboard, and distorted screams-- seems like a formula for tedium. But the song somehow gets stronger with each replay. For a noise group, Fuck Buttons are surprisingly welcoming-- for noise music, anyway-- and their mix of dreamy melody and abrasive climax evokes strange stylistic bedfellows: Yo La Tengo and Ministry, My Bloody Valentine and Prurient, Spacemen 3 and Black Dice.
"Bright Tomorrow" wasn't the web's first glimpse of Fuck Buttons, or even of this album: Street Horrrsing was available for free from the band's website (under a since-forgotten alternate title) when Pitchfork first wrote about the duo in Forkcast more than a year ago. But with the record now seeing official release, anyone hoping for an LP-length version of "Bright Tomorrow" will not be disappointed. For 50 minutes spread across six tracks, Fuck Buttons craft hypnotic patterns with the same set of sonic tools (plus live-sounding drums, in tribal Boredoms-meets-Animal Collective mode). Long chords drift over oscillating tones and pounding beats. Simple figures build slowly into cresendos punctuated by fiery howls. Sounds and ideas repeat constantly, yet Street Horrrsing never feels redundant.
The key to how Fuck Buttons pull this off lies in their creative origins: Brits Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power formed the group in 2004 with the goal of creating pain-inducing noise music, but soon became curious about mixing in prettier sounds, and adding structure and melody to their brutal tracks. Still, they never lost the aggression and abstraction of their noise leanings: They're not afraid to let a beat pound forever, or let a drone wash slowly, or let a pedal loop endlessly. Where more traditional groups might worry that a part goes on too long, Fuck Buttons seem fascinated by what will happen if it does, riding it just past the point of expectation before hitting you with the next big switch-up. It's a trick that gives Street Horrrsing a sense of constant tension, with another surprise detonation always looming around the corner.
The album begins with "Sweet Love For Planet Earth", whose sparkly synths and pulsing drone bring to mind Gang Gang Dance's starry-eyed explorations. The patient power of that track courses through the rest of this seamless record. It's in the drum circles and chants of "Ribs Out", the chopping drift of "Okay, Let's Talk About Magic", and the blown-out metal vocals of "Race You To My Bedroom/Spirit Rise", which seem to make time melt away. Throughout, Fuck Buttons stick religiously to simple ideas, but mix them in surprising ways. When you expect a scream to burst forward, a synth figure slides in, or a bass rumbles up from the background. Still, the duo's signature is devout repetition. And by the time the loops of album closer "Colours Move" finally dissolve, Street Horrrsing has become one big loop itself-- an unbroken sonic circle. | 2008-03-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2008-03-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | ATP | March 17, 2008 | 8.6 | 0e319e7f-6c30-48f7-b956-5bf15962490b | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
The early buzz on Ashes & Fire said that this was Ryan Adams' best record since Heartbreaker. Translation: It's his first record that kind of sounds like Heartbreaker. | The early buzz on Ashes & Fire said that this was Ryan Adams' best record since Heartbreaker. Translation: It's his first record that kind of sounds like Heartbreaker. | Ryan Adams: Ashes & Fire | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15907-ashes-fire/ | Ashes & Fire | The early buzz on Ashes & Fire is that it's Ryan Adams' best record since Heartbreaker. If that made you check in for the first time in years, I'll translate: it's his first record that kinda sounds like Heartbreaker. Though his artistic daring over the past decade has been greatly exaggerated, this is truly a bold move for Adams. He can no longer claim to be a victim, whether it's a victim of an untamed creative streak, substances, tone-deaf record execs, or critics who have the nerve to judge him in light of his earlier work. You didn't have to hear "Come Pick Me Up" or "Houses on the Hill" first to see 29, Love Is Hell, Rock N Roll, or Easy Tiger as proof that prolific, self-destructive artists don't always make very interesting music. Above all else, there's the romantic ideal that he's a victim of himself, an implosive genius that could make Heartbreaker II if only his pride would let him belly up to the bar with his "abundance of inherited sadness" again and let the inevitably gorgeous and truthful songs simply take care of themselves.
So, yes, Ashes & Fire is Adams getting on his "I have no act" act. And while these boundaries help make it more effortless and enjoyable than his prior works of dilettantism, the strict adherence to a platonic ideal of a Rootsy Ryan Adams Album can't help but make it feel every bit as limited, a snapshot of him as an artist rather than a full portrait. While Ashes & Fire is somewhat one-dimensional, it at least picks one of his better dimensions. Above all else, it's a showcase for Adams' vocals, and they're uniformly excellent throughout. On the chorus of opener "Dirty Rain", he evokes Willie Nelson's jazzy, note-bending approach to C&W, and whether it's the rousing performance on the title track or the no-attack Neil Young tributes on Gold Rush-style folk ("Rocks"), he shows a great deal of range without reverting to his past predilections for smarmy playacting.
The equal billing suggested by the title of Ashes & Fire is a misnomer, though: There's more of the former than the latter, so don't expect the first-take intimacy of even his 2005 trilogy. Glyn Johns' production is spare and immaculate, and you can hear every bit of empty space between Adams and the other musicians, as well as the always tasteful organ and keyboard work of Tom Petty sideman Benmont Tench. But you can also hear that Johns has some very expensive microphones: it's a warm recording, but one that still has a glossy coating that never allows it to, well, catch fire. It does smolder a bit midway through with the modestly anthemic "Do I Wait" and "Invisible Riverside", which dabbles in psychedelic blues and establishes a lyrical link to "Dirty Rain" that gives the record a bit of conceptual heft. But immediately thereafter, "Chains of Love" gets a little too deep into the cushiony adult-contemporary of Easy Tiger and while it mostly evokes his own "Firecracker", it nicks the Erasure melody just enough to be kind of a distraction.
The aspect of "ashes" also designates this as a record obsessed with aftermath, searching for truth and permanence within the wreckage of the past. Though it lacks for autobiographical detail, it's easy enough to fill in the blanks when Adams gravely intones "I'm just looking through the rubble/ Trying to find out who we were" on "Dirty Rain", or more pointedly on first single "Lucky Now", "am I really who I was?" And Adams' lyrics are every bit as based in the elemental: shadows, stones, rivers, and way more rain than should be allowed for a record made in Los Angeles. And yet, Ashes & Fire's mixed and muddled use of big symbols too often result in ballads of big nothing. A literally rendered song called "I Love You But I Don't Know What to Say" should be a self-deprecating epigram to an album that sounds like it's got so much truth to share, but here it's an M.O. It's actually more of a political work than his Love Is Hell laugher "Political Scientist" in how it asserts that saying all the right things in light of a public admonishment is to say nothing that can be held against you. While the subtly devastating line, "and the night will break your heart but only if you're lucky now," appears to welcome the ability to acknowledge and appreciate pain in light of his well-documented battles with Ménièr's Disease and alcohol, elsewhere he invokes what he sang on Whiskeytown's "Sit and Listen to the Rain": "used to feel so much, now I just feel numb."
And it's not even the sort of impressionism he tried on 29 or Love Is Hell to feign depth. Given the right emotional context, the tremble of Adams' voice and words can level easy marks-- upon hearing the distorted guitars slowly bloom during the bridge of "Do I Wait", I was anticipating a returned text message that arrived a half hour later, and during the span of those three minutes, Adams could make it feel like the onset of an incapacitating loneliness. Problem is, after a couple of spins wash out Adams' vocal color, you're left with the almost Zen-like emptiness and portent of would-be truisms like, "Everything you are to me is bigger than the spaces/ Between us and the chains of love." As a singer, he does what he can to redeem "Save Me" and "Come Home", which are every bit as trite as their titles would suggest. But while the emotions are too legibly rendered to be completely unaffecting, Adams' words fail him. I won't begrudge a man his feelings, but is the central architecture metaphor ("you built those walls to keep your fears inside") the best he can do?
While discussing Ashes & Fire with a friend, the question was raised as to what sort of reception the record would merit had it come from any number of acoustic-toting songwriters who didn't happen to be the former lead singer of Whiskeytown. That's up for debate, but the bigger problem is that Ashes & Fire could have come from the likes of Matt Nathanson or Matthew Mayfield were it not for Adams' voice. While Heartbreaker is legendary as a drinking partner, calling it merely a break-up album doesn't do it justice. Adams could be funny, he could rock, he could be bitter, he could do that all in the span of one song, while Ashes & Fire is steeped in a sober contentment that feels limiting even though it shouldn't. Adams evokes the goodwill of his masterpiece as a singer, anyway, even if the songwriting doesn't come close. Rather than equal Heartbreaker, here he might have accomplished something more difficult: making it somehow seem underrated. | 2011-10-11T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2011-10-11T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Capitol / Pax-Am | October 11, 2011 | 6.5 | 0e343aae-7663-481e-ac14-d3735230fdb1 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
These two impossibly strange, expansive psych-pop records from 1996 and 1999 are worlds unto themselves. | These two impossibly strange, expansive psych-pop records from 1996 and 1999 are worlds unto themselves. | The Olivia Tremor Control: Music From the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle / Black Foliage: Animation Music Vol. 1 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16047-otc/ | Music From the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle / Black Foliage: Animation Music Vol. 1 | "Will Hart scored a guitar organ," Elf Power keyboardist Laura Carter recalled in an interview with PopMatters five years ago, "so of course there's a little wave where everyone's album has a guitar organ on it." A lovely idea, isn't it? Everyone always making an album, anything they'd need on hand. That-- and a profoundly abiding love of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson-- is the germ of the idea that became Elephant 6, four boyhood friends' loosely-knit Louisiana-born, Georgia-bred turn-of-the-century psychedelic society and recording concern. The sheer number of people involved in the creation of the two records Will Cullen Hart and childhood pal Bill Doss helmed under the elegant name of the Olivia Tremor Control counts in the dozens. And though other Elephant 6 records would eventually capture more imaginations, the music on 1996's Music From the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle and 1999's Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One-- impossibly strange, omnivorously eclectic psych-pop-- are worlds unto themselves, the finest realizations of whatever sonic utopia these guys spent much of the 90s etching into a canvas a million cassettes wide.
Hart, Doss, Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum, and Apples in Stereo frontman (and Dusk producer) Robert Schneider grew up filling up Tascams with four-track nonsense in and around their Ruston, Louisiana, home, exploring genres headlong and forging bands at will. An early project called Cranberry Lifecycle eventually coalesced into Hart, Doss, and Mangum's Synthetic Flying Machine; from there, Mangum forged Neutral Milk Hotel, while Hart and Doss set about mapping out the Olivias' all-encompassing sound, some unthinkable matchup of Revolver-era Beatles or Smile-era Beach Boys, the tornado-alley skronk of 1980s Flaming Lips and Butthole Surfers, and the surreal wooze of post-Reichian tape manipulation. The singularity of Mangum's peculiar vision for In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is what makes that record such a landmark; it's the multiplicity of the Olivias' music, though, that's their great legacy, their ever-changing, borderline egoless, all-together-now notion of what a psychedelic record could be. Veering wildly between sturdy sunshine-pop and sloppy ambient noise, calamitous hooks and conversations with the godhead, the Olivias' records are driven by an impossibly expansive vision. It's like Hart sings on "A Peculiar Noise Called 'Train Director'", a song about, among other things, moving in with a sound: "in the blink of an eye, you get several meanings."
In hindsight, the decidedly strange Dusk at Cubist Castle is the straight of the pair. Stately, sumptuous, and slightly otherworldly, Dusk is brimming with immaculate hooks and queries bound for the cosmos. Dusk's first half is certainly the most immediate stretch of songcraft OTC laid to tape, big, sinewy hooks brought to life in brilliant color. "The Opera House" is a blur of fuzz guitar and harmonica, leading off with the funny notion of going to the movies just to watch the actors move their mouths. The surreality of it all is certainly worth a mention: Catchy as they are, these songs are riddled with potholes, with weird left turns, with hooks that seem to bubble out of nowhere before receding into themselves. The one-two of "Jumping Fences" and "Define a Transparent Dream", joined at the hip by a gloriously gooey transition, are a triumph of taut pop proficiency. Littered as they are with references to the atmosphere breathing with life and a lonely psychonaut too caught up inside his head for speech, though, these tunes seek to transcend both consensus reality and the constraints of the straight-outta-1966 vibe of so many of their E6 contemporaries. Though clearly besotted with the freewheeling pop of the late-1960s-- Bill Doss' eternally impressive sideburns are testament enough to that-- they cut their songs with too many intersecting ideas to ever feel too fixed in one particular place for very long.
Black Foliage's pop moments are gnarlier, more restless, their hooks arriving at odd angles; all this they weave through a tapestry of orchestral bleats and backward-running loops, five seconds of scuzz enveloping four minutes of sheer bliss. Rather than relegate its sonic tinkering to its second act, Black Foliage dunks OTC's experimental tendencies directly into their popcraft. It's a magisterial vision, a whole world rendered in sound; it is also, at first, rather overwhelming, its constantly shifting sonics more than a little tough to settle into from moment to moment. Give yourself over to it, though, and Black Foliage is among the most satisfying psychedelic albums of any decade, a carefully controlled caterwauling chaos pushing along Hart and Doss' unanswerable questions and anthropomorphisms. You're aware of the Bardo, yeah? Black Foliage seems intimately acquainted with the thing, touting as it does both individuality ("don't hide away from your intricacies") and something more inexplicable; "I have been floated to this thought this hour," Hart, Schneider, and eventually Mangum sing, "on a series of events I cannot explain." Black Foliage is not some work of accidental genius, some acid-fueled inspiration point captured as it's being created; every wriggly second reveals painstaking craft, every hint of tape hiss seems to whisper of another good idea buried somewhere in the static. Still, it's pretty clear that the relationship these guys had with non-musical psychedelia was, at the time, fairly recent, and Black Foliage seems to carry hints of something a little beyond this world.
The large-scale sonic experiments-- swaths of silence, planes flying overhead, of alarm clocks and ambient drift-- that engulf much of the second half of both of these LPs are, even for longtime E6 devotees, something of a hurdle. Even in the midst of the woollier Black Foliage songs, their contrast with the pop-minded stuff that precedes them is so great, their tunefulness next to nil, the results are certainly self-indulgent and, for many, kinda boring; I had a friend in college who'd burned himself Cubist Castle with most of the eighth (and longest) "Green Typewriters" lobbed off so he wouldn't have to keep skipping it. Again, though, this seems to be the band's attempt at wrestling the psychedelic experience-- the initial flash, followed by the inward gaze-- into sound. They're not working through McKenna or the Tibetan Book of the Dead or anything here, but they bring the trip through all its stages; at the end, you're summarily exhausted and full of questions, your synapses having wriggled themselves awake one by one over the preceding quarter-hour. And, frankly, for guys who can bang out pop songs like they could, their experimental tendencies are very nearly as impressive; their noise is lush, their silence speaks volumes, and best of all, they're in on the joke. At the end of the extra-long "Green Typewriters", Hart jumps into another with a question-as-punchline: "how much longer can I wait?"
Though Cubist Castle appears untouched, Black Foliage has been remastered from the original tapes; the bass is a bit louder, the vocals a little fuller, and there's ever-so-slightly more clarity in certain patches. But the whirr of some dust-addled four-track still sits underneath these songs, which is as it should be. Either set comes with a download card good for hours upon hours of outtakes, alternates, radio sessions, and the like, much of it unreleased, out-of-print, or otherwise unheard. Taken together, the extra stuff's longer than the albums themselves; hey, nobody ever accused these guys of being especially judicious editors. I'm still working my way through the second disc of the Smile box myself, so all this seemed a little much at first, especially when they launch into their own stoned "Do You Like Worms" medley. But, listening to the extras, you realize just how much they were capable of, just how powerful their overarching vision for these records really was; four minutes from the very good "The Sky Is a Harpsichord Canvas" were excised from Black Foliage due to time constraints, and while it's fun to hear the expanded song itself in the spirit of excavation, knowing what didn't make the cut makes the remaining bits seem that much stronger. Flecks of the recurring instrumental themes that run through Cubist Castle and (especially) Black Foliage-- a little cohesion amidst all the cacophony-- speckle the edges of the bonus stuff as well, further testament to just how much lightning these guys were bottling. But it's the records themselves-- insistent, wise, daringly imperfect-- that are really the thing here. They remain the sound of a few old friends, a few more new acquaintances, and a thousand wasted sunny days spent carving out a couple mind-bendingly complex masterpieces. | 2011-11-17T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2011-11-17T01:00:00.000-05:00 | null | null | November 17, 2011 | 9.1 | 0e344317-403b-44ab-afb6-2abcbbd17238 | Paul Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-thompson/ | null |
The swole Chicago hardcore band’s latest album shows their raw strength while adding shades of industrial and groove metal for character. | The swole Chicago hardcore band’s latest album shows their raw strength while adding shades of industrial and groove metal for character. | Harm’s Way: Posthuman | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/harms-way-posthuman/ | Posthuman | The philosophy of Harm’s Way is the best offense is as much offense as possible. The Chicago band began as a hardcore group with some powerviolence thrown in, but soon juiced it all up with beefcake breakdowns and got ready to brawl. Isolation in 2011 and Blinded in 2013 injected that hardcore with Swedish death metal while never abandoning their roots. With 2015’s Rust, they swapped the death metal for more industrial and ’90s groove metal influences, essentially creating a hardcore version of Roadrunner Records’ heyday roster like Fear Factory and Roots-era Sepultura, and they continue on that path on their fourth record, Posthuman.
There’s a beauty to how Harm’s Way throw around such weight like boulders are pillows. It’s difficult to not be in awe of how “Human Carrying Capacity” and “Sink” dispatch punches with efficiency and brawn, where asserting might is the same as breathing, effortless and necessary. Vocalist James Pligge is an imposing figure on stage—he’s a weightlifter who could easily pass for a younger, bulked up John Joseph of the Cro-Mags—and he sounds even tougher and more assured here than before. Even if you have a distaste for competition, the band’s dedication to pure athleticism really pays off. “Become a Machine” is a string of pummeling breakdowns, an especially muscular performance from a band who defines swole. Even when there’s a lot of reexamining masculinity in hardcore, in music, and across all of culture and politics broadly, there still is value in raw strength.
While still a hardcore record, Posthuman does tip the balance towards Rust’s industrial flirtations. “Temptation” takes Godflesh’s rumbling, mechanical bass and sets it to a slinking Jesus Lizard groove, then charts a course that resembles if Deftones went further in on their dream pop influences. There’s a running joke that post-punk is something you get into once you age out of hardcore, ditching your Youth of Today crewneck for an ill-fitting Unknown Pleasures shirt. By “Temptation”’s end, though, Harm’s Way avoid falling into that trap by unleashing a blistering final attack, going harder than ever.
”Last Man” asks, “What if you made Hatebreed into a trip-hop band?” which sounds like it shouldn’t work, but sandwiches their usual thrashing between hallucinatory dirges. Harm’s Way still consider themselves a straight-edge band, yet they’ve crafted a tune that captures going the feeling of going and out of consciousness. “Call My Name” has all their natural tough-guy posture, yet it broods like Posthuman’s more industrial tendencies. There are bouncy riffs that recall some of Rust’s nu-metal forays, yet their gravity is brought down by a slight depression. This shows their growth as songwriters by seamlessly merging their two sides, even if the intro is Hollywood Male War Movie ambient until the drums come in.
For all of their positive qualities and evolution, Harm’s Way still grows in increments. Sure, tracks like “Last Man” and “Temptation,” skew expectations, yet they don’t feel like super radical departures. “Unreality,” an undisciplined track with a noisy intro dead on impact, hints at a bigger issue: The final edge of this sound might be closer than they think. Normally, a mere refinement wouldn't be a cause for concern. Code Orange, however, took a similar formula and got a Grammy nomination out of it, and they might open the floodgates for even paler imitators. Harm’s Way know how to play to their strengths, yet Posthuman may be a sign they might need more of a drastic shakeup. | 2018-02-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-02-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Metal | Metal Blade | February 10, 2018 | 6.8 | 0e351288-4529-4898-a8b6-8ef1437cec4c | Andy O'Connor | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-o'connor/ | |
The Belgian singer’s second album explores her gift for imbuing joyful, self-possessed dance pop with bittersweet emotion. | The Belgian singer’s second album explores her gift for imbuing joyful, self-possessed dance pop with bittersweet emotion. | Angèle: Nonante-Cinq | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/angele-nonante-cinq/ | Nonante-Cinq | Angèle was already one of the biggest Francophone pop stars, and then she made a song with Dua Lipa. First a bonus track on the deluxe edition of Future Nostalgia, then released as a single several months later, “Fever”—featuring Angèle—did more than bring the 26-year old Belgian singer-songwriter into the international spotlight; it encapsulated the emotional breadth possible within nu-disco. Dua Lipa’s voice dominates the track, delivering the first verse and chorus with confidence; this is her song. But the climax comes when the tropical house beat drops and Angèle whisper-sings the second verse in French. Her airy, sensitive voice provides a brief but necessary counterpoint to Dua Lipa’s boldness, driving home the anxiety-ridden love song.
This is Angèle’s superpower: imbuing the most self-possessed and otherwise joyful dance tracks with a bittersweet mood seemingly inherent to the timbre of her voice. Her second album, Nonante-Cinq, abandons some of the more superficial pop trappings of her debut, 2018’s Brol, in favor of melancholy, weaving heartbreak, nostalgia, and apprehension into house-inspired dance tracks and carefully produced piano ballads. The album oscillates between effervescent synth-pop and theatrical anguish, all with a singular emotional thread: Love hurts.
Lead single “Bruxelles je t’aime” is Angèle at her lightest and most sentimental, declaring her love for her hometown (Brussels, Belgium) atop a Daft Punk-esque disco-pop beat. But more often, she’s inconsolable. Closer “Mauvais rêves” is a nightmarish lullaby of dissonant string arrangements and ghostly synth lines, reminiscent of the grand production on Angel Olsen’s All Mirrors. And while the album has fun moments, there’s no triumphant “moving on from a breakup” anthem. Instead, there’s “Solo,” a minor-key Italo-disco cut whose driving synth line accompanies Angèle as she sings about giving up on love entirely.
“Solo” finds a perfect balance between danceable and cry-worthy, something Angèle came close to but never quite found on Brol. Whereas the singles off her debut felt buoyant, even optimistic, Nonante-Cinq’s catchiest moments pack new intensity. “Démons,” featuring Belgian-Congolese rapper Damso, sounds like Angèle mimicking something off Travis Scott’s Astroworld, with spooky, kaleidoscopic synths atop hard-hitting trap snares. Even if you don’t know a lick of French, you might find yourself pretend-singing along to “Comment faire pour tuer mes démons?” (“How do I kill my demons?”).
But she doesn’t always find that balance. “On s’habitue” and “Tempête” fall to either side of the spectrum, the former placid and uneventful, the latter melodramatic, like many of the deeper cuts from her debut. The weakest songs are as shallow lyrically as melodically, usually because Angèle is trying too hard to be either fun or dramatic, neglecting the complexity that lies between. If her emotional nuance can interrupt Dua Lipa, surely she can bridge the gap in her own music. Nonante-Cinq isn’t an improvement simply because it’s sad, but because Angèle is seeking a depth and respite that feels like hers alone.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2022-01-07T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-01-07T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Angèle VL | January 7, 2022 | 6.7 | 0e364b4d-bb7f-4eee-8d34-7b23270b4c46 | Edward Pomykaj | https://pitchfork.com/staff/edward-pomykaj/ | |
Mackenzie Scott’s latest is anthemic and euphoric, loaded with hooks and joyous reflections on love and self-discovery. | Mackenzie Scott’s latest is anthemic and euphoric, loaded with hooks and joyous reflections on love and self-discovery. | Torres: Thirstier | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/torres-thirstier/ | Thirstier | Six years ago, Mackenzie Scott sang, “I’m just trying to take this new skin for a spin.” Known by her stage name Torres, Scott was 24 then—beginning a new life in New York and still wrestling with the emotional residue of her Southern Baptist upbringing. Her music at the time flitted between a murmur and a scream, with fiercely observant songs that examined love, hate, and religious hypocrisy with unflinching intensity. Her most recent studio releases—2017’s Three Futures and last year’s Silver Tongue—were more brooding and restrained, but they still felt liable to explode if mixed with a drop of kerosene.
Her second album in 18 months, Thirstier is exuberant and unguarded—the kind of music you make when you’re no longer testing out a new skin and instead reveling in the fervent joy that it brings you. At their best, these songs ride the contact high of a love so consuming that it shifts your worldview and makes you write songs loaded with screamable choruses and conventional hooks: features that have rarely been hallmarks of Torres’ work. Scott has said she felt a desire to make energizing music at a time when life felt small. “I wanted it to sound as big as the biggest records I’ve ever heard,” the artist recently said. The result is the sleek grunge-pop album she has been inching towards, awash in opulent guitar tones and choruses that stretch out the myriad melodic possibilities of the word “bay-beee.”
Recorded last fall in England, Thirstier doesn’t dispense with the intensity of Torres’ previous work, but it channels it in a more anthemic and even euphoric direction. “Before my wild happiness, who was I if not yours?,” Scott sings on “Hug From a Dinosaur,” a mid-album highlight that augments its blissed-out fuzz-pop with call-and-response harmonies and buoyant synth lines. “Are You Sleepwalking?” toggles between a shoegaze roar and a twitchier synth-powered chorus, while “Drive Me” lights up the distortion-pedal pleasure center like a lost Breeders gem. The hooks are grand and the arrangements full of little pockets of exuberance, like the cheery handclaps in “Hug From a Dinosaur,” or the heavy guitars squealing Siamese Dream-style right before crashing into the mix on “Drive Me.” Scott sounds energized by a backing band that includes co-producers Rob Ellis and Peter Miles and Portishead member Adrian Utley.
It’s a flex to make such upbeat, joyous music during such an isolating and depressing year, but none of this lands with a smirk. In interviews circa Silver Tongue, Scott was outspoken about the romantic relationship that inspired her recent songwriting. Thirstier places this love front and center. In the video for “Don’t Go Puttin Wishes in my Head,” Scott and her partner, the visual artist Jenna Gribbon, laze around in a state of domestic bliss—cooking, laughing, brushing their teeth—while Scott sings about hoping that love lasts forever. She has described the song as her “shameless Tim McGraw cheeseball hit”; it glistens with a country-rock sheen that feels like a whole-hearted embrace of the country motif she’s flirted with since 2015’s “Cowboy Guilt.” The stadium-sized hooks and quiet-loud dynamics of the title track are even bolder. “The more of you I drink, the thirstier I get, baby,” Scott wails during the final chorus as a trilling trumpet heightens the most ecstatic chorus of her career.
Thirstier’s slicker production suits these oversized pop gestures, but it doesn’t always mesh with the more intimate moments. “Big Leap,” a muted ballad about a loved one’s near-fatal accident, could have fit on one of Torres’ early records, but its spare reflection is undermined by a cheesy pall of downcast synths and overzealous backing vocals. The electronic touches are more effective during the album’s final third, which includes the throbbing club workout “Kiss the Corners” and the wholly unexpected industrial eruptions of “Keep the Devil Out.”
With her piercing contralto voice and collaborative history with Rob Ellis, Scott has often been compared to PJ Harvey. Like Harvey, Torres delivered blistering catharsis in her first few records before pivoting to muted minimalism and icy synths. Along this trajectory, Thirstier recalls Harvey’s Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea: a lush, uncharacteristically happy set, aglow with self-discovery. Both songwriters approach the subject of love with sustained wonder that such happiness is even possible. “Things I once thought unbelievable/In my life/Have all taken place,” Harvey sang in “Good Fortune.” “What comprises all this joy I feel/And where was it before?,” Scott asks in “Hug From a Dinosaur.” It’s the question at the center of Thirstier, which vibrates with the thrill of this confusion, a rejoinder to the long-enduring myth that great songwriting only emerges from depression and torment.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-07-29T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-07-29T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | July 29, 2021 | 7.8 | 0e38bfa1-0696-4a78-824c-08bb18c04b08 | Zach Schonfeld | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zach-schonfeld/ | |
On their first album in five years, Odesza are at their most introspective, yet their production remains tailored to fill stadiums and trigger pyrotechnics. | On their first album in five years, Odesza are at their most introspective, yet their production remains tailored to fill stadiums and trigger pyrotechnics. | Odesza: The Last Goodbye | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/odesza-the-last-goodbye/ | The Last Goodbye | There was a time when Odesza were basically part of the post-J Dilla beat world. Their 2012 debut, Summer’s Gone, has all the hallmarks of late-millennial, hip-hop-literate stoner music: side-chained bass subductions, pretty harps, druggy vocal samples, percussion that drags like beaded curtains. The Seattle duo wasn’t exactly making subtle music even then, and its textures and rhythms weren’t as sophisticated as those of Flying Lotus or even Bonobo, but it seemed part of a markedly different tradition than what was then starting to cement itself as “EDM.” Then, as EDM grew gentler and Odesza’s shows grew bigger, they started to move towards each other. 10 years later, Odesza are more a stadium act than a soundtrack to a blunted bliss-out at the beach, with pyrotechnic shows and songs only occasionally perfumed by atmosphere.
The Last Goodbye is the first Odesza album in five years, though members Clayton Knight and Harrison Mills teamed with Australian producer Golden Features for a solid 2020 album as Bronson that’s much funkier and more relaxed than anything they’ve made in a while with their main project. The 27-date North American tour whose kickoff coincides with the new album’s release is a typically grandiose affair involving an estimated 11 semitrucks worth of gear and a crew of 100. Yet on record, fatigue tugs at the music from beneath: The Last Goodbye is as much a weary, COVID-era self-reflection album as a homecoming parade.
Dance music is often at its most powerful when it tells you to keep your head up high, which is why so many people find solace in the likes of “I Will Survive” and “Call Your Girlfriend.” The most encouraging sentiment we find here, though, is relegated to opener “This Version of You,” with a one-woman choir by Julianna Barwick. It plays like a Malickian voiceover—cue pale light shining through swaying branches as Mills’ therapist imagines a “version of you” “welcoming you” and “saying yes.” It’s the most assured presence on an album filled with lost and confused souls whose voices sound burdened with a great sadness. A lot of these songs are about fraying relationships (“Forgive Me,” “Equal”), attempting to heal (“Wide Awake”), or being satisfied with small victories rather than lasting happiness (“Better Now”). Two songs reference sleeplessness, and not the night-out kind.
This is the duo’s most inward-looking album, yet the music pumps out of the speakers to rattle the nosebleeds. Knight and Mills have found themselves at their most introspective just as they’re primed to make a bigger splash on the stage than ever before. The Last Goodbye visualizes the fight between pandemic weariness and the desire to seize the fruits of the reopened world, and there’s a cognitive dissonance between the vocalists’ introspective mind-loops and the massive beats beneath them. The constant malaise keeps these songs from generating the ridiculous, heart-swelling feeling of transcendence that the best big-room dance music can achieve, while the duo’s relentless approach keeps the music from feeling particularly intimate.
The best moments on The Last Goodbye most often come when Odesza dial down the bluster and give themselves room to breathe. “Better Now,” with Portuguese singer MARO, slows the tempo to a skip, and its sing-song melody echoes Alanis Morissette or 1989-era Taylor Swift: both great role models for brash but emotionally complicated pop. The Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds is a good match for Odesza’s starry-eyed sensibilities, and they create the album’s most sustained stretch of quietude on the concluding “Light of Day,” slathering the record’s final seven minutes in strings and building slowly and organically to a climax rather than rushing heedlessly towards it.
The album’s title track—also its centerpiece and highlight—works because the two have found a vocalist who can hold her own against their sound at its most overwhelming, albeit one beamed in from nearly six decades ago. Bettye LaVette is credited as a featured artist, but her voice is sampled from 1965’s “Let Me Down Easy,” and Knight and Mills set to work creating a throne for it, a grand and filigreed thing that acts as confirmation of the greatness of its sample’s source. Whenever the duo threatens to use LaVette as just another soulful house sample, they do something new and different with her voice, and the track picks up surprising emotional steam as it sprawls across six minutes.
It’s similar in form and sentiment to “Pick Up,” by the German producer DJ Koze, which likewise used Gladys Knight’s voice secondhand. Like Odesza, Koze makes melodic, sentimental music versed in both house and left-field hip-hop, often based on samples, features, and samples-as-features. But on Koze’s best productions, the music and the emotions expressed by his singers are inextricable. On “Pick Up,” the beat hangs in thin air, pumping madly towards nowhere, as Koze reveals the vocal sample a few words at a time. When Knight finishes her sentence, it never fails to move me, and that’s before the beat kicks in seconds later. It’s the kind of moment that creates fireworks in the brain. Too often, The Last Goodbye only evokes the onstage kind. | 2022-07-27T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-07-27T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Foreign Family Collective / Ninja Tune | July 27, 2022 | 5.8 | 0e38cbfa-8583-4f95-a863-6df2c14098c6 | Daniel Bromfield | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-bromfield/ | |
The Okkervil River frontman has long taken a sledgehammer to the fourth wall; on his self-aware solo debut, he takes stock of the troubled state of the industry and delivers a eulogy for his band. | The Okkervil River frontman has long taken a sledgehammer to the fourth wall; on his self-aware solo debut, he takes stock of the troubled state of the industry and delivers a eulogy for his band. | Will Sheff: Nothing Special | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/will-sheff-nothing-special/ | Nothing Special | R.I.P. Okkervil River. Maybe? Even if the band returns to making albums, it’s never too early to call time of death for one of the defining bands of late-2000s mid-level indie rock. Frontman Will Sheff did it himself on 2016’s Away, which opened with an obituary, even though two years later the band released another album. Metaphorical and literal death has always figured prominently in his lyrics, and he’s always been tortured in his self-awareness: an artist knowingly taking a sledgehammer to the fourth wall to directly address you, the listener and fan, whether that meant offering you a chance to add your own lyrics to “The Latest Toughs” or declaring the band had met its maker on a song called “R.I.P. Okkervil River.”
Okkervil River were always dying and Sheff was always writing their obituary, but Nothing Special, his first solo record, signals a very different, very real, and not especially meta kind of death. You can bet that the singer-songwriter who sang a song called “Singer Songwriter” knows the importance of releasing a solo album, especially this deep into his career. In that regard, it’s remarkable how easy and unforced Nothing Special sounds, both musically and lyrically, and it’s ironic how much it sounds like the work of a band, even more than his last few band albums. Working with a small crew he dubbed the Dirty Shitty Dirt Boys—including Will Graefe (Okkervil’s guitarist during its final years), Benjamin Lazar Davis, and Christian Lee Hutson—Sheff settles his voice a little deeper in the mix rather than keeping it out in front of the music.
As a result, it sounds live, even spontaneous, as though they’re not always sure where the song is taking them. Along the way they add careful flourishes to these downcast tunes, like the abrasive guitar solo on “Estrangement Zone” and the sympathetic piano chords on “The Spiral Season.” They build “Like the Last Time” to its immensely satisfying climax, but allow “Holy Man” to float and shimmer for eight long minutes. Nothing sounds belabored, nothing overthought. Sheff even allows himself to understate like never before. He sells the big, rousing moments with a cracked croon rather than a caterwaul. His voice sounds battered and weary, yet he remains charismatic, with new bits of Bowie in his delivery. He’s still singing about big ideas, but for the first time in a while, the songs don’t bend or buckle under the weight of them.
This is a solo album that knows it’s a solo album, by an artist taking stock of his more than 20 years in the industry and gesturing toward the dystopia that the current music scene has become. While it’s often dire and occasionally humorous, it’s always more than clever. That this solo album is so good, so immersive, and so thoughtful only makes Okkervil River seem even deader. Back in 2007 Sheff mockingly called the group a “mid-level band,” but in retrospect that lyric sounds like hollow self-denigration from an artist on an upward trajectory. Fifteen years later, however, his self-assessments sound truly bleak. “You give me a dollar, I’ll do some or all of my perfectly middlebrow blues,” he sings on “In the Thick of It”: “I’m painting my album in ivory hues.” It’s a sobering portrayal of the transactional relationship between artist and audience, but “middlebrow blues” hits especially hard, less like a moment of self-flagellation and more like he’s come to realize that indie rock is a promise unfulfilled, a paradise corrupted.
Okkervil River’s breakout album imagined a black-sheep boy’s picaresque through a knotted landscape, but Nothing Special doesn’t have to imagine anything. Instead, Sheff draws from experience: from triumphs as well as failures, arrogance as well as comeuppance. The title track is a remembrance of his friendship with Okkervil River’s late drummer Travis Nelsen, detailing how it turned the band, in its final years, into a folie à deux. (“We fed off each other with this self-deprecation thing,” he told Stereogum. “I gave him the sort of hoity-toity seal of approval I think he craved, he gave me ‘sweat of the brow.’”) The song is a sad, spectral waltz, as Sheff reflects on their relationship and tries to break free: “It’s time to say it’s done, I’m not getting what I want,” he sings. “When I’ve lost it, I’m finally free to be nothing special.” Nelsen died in 2020.
Lots of artists eulogize fallen friends and bandmates, but the song hits a little harder coming from such a self-reflexive songwriter. That’s part of what made Sheff such an interesting presence in the aughts: Just as the National reminded us we were new adults in the world, and the Decemberists urged us to make room for whimsy in our grown-up lives, Okkervil River showed us that we were all still music fans at heart. Sheff spoke to us in his role as a working musician, which affirmed our role as audience, and he spoke to us often in the language of pop songs. He knew we’d know all the songs he mentions on “Plus Ones” and he trusted us to catch the significance of “John Allyn Smith Sails” mutating into “Sloop John B.” This was a language worth speaking, he told us, but now he’s not so sure. He’s got his doubts, but rather than cynicism, Nothing Special finds reassurance in those uncertainties.
Nothing Special surveys all that’s come before—a long and fruitful career, but he’ll still lose money touring—and decides that “Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas” and “Westfall” and “No Hidden Track” and “Black” and “To Love Somebody” were nothing special. He’s nothing special, and neither are we. What’s remarkable is that Sheff makes that realization sound freeing. It’s a relief to shed those expectations, to escape the weight of great import, and these songs make relief sound like a legitimate creative engine. So when he closes the album by declaring, “When you do it all for free, it doesn’t feel like work,” he condemns an industry that’s dead set on bankrupting its artists. But maybe there’s a little hope in those lines, too, as we all let go of the way things were and try to imagine the way things might be. | 2022-10-19T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-10-19T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | ATO | October 19, 2022 | 7.4 | 0e3a5c2b-1c44-487d-bc21-c8e6d155514b | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | |
Detroit's Bonny Doon recline deep in the kind of alternative folk music that gives off its own warmth, wise enough to sit back with some guitars and watch the world crumble. | Detroit's Bonny Doon recline deep in the kind of alternative folk music that gives off its own warmth, wise enough to sit back with some guitars and watch the world crumble. | Bonny Doon: Bonny Doon | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22998-bonny-doon/ | Bonny Doon | With their debut self-titled full-length, Bonny Doon make it seem like Detroit is due for an alt-country revival. Bonny Doon is at once jagged and unfinished, languid and detail-oriented, restless and at peace. Perhaps songwriters Bill Lennox and Bobby Colombo, bassist Joshua Brooks, and drummer Jake Kmiecik’s time in local acts like Tyvek and Growwing Pains are to attribute for the streamlining of genres, though even that passes off the kismet their sound stirs up.
Bonny Doon recline deep in the kind of folk music that gives off its own warmth, where a drunken evening filled with texts from his mom on “I See You” offers a laugh or the confident piano chords in “Evening All Day Long” suggest resilience. But underneath their blues-tinged instrumentals is abject loneliness. “(Crowded)” is five minutes of Neil Young-style apathy. “Relieved” channels Smog and Kurt Vile shrugs. “What Time Is It in Portland?” sees Colombo pining after a lost love, detailing friendships he let dissolve and a willful ignorance of how to fix it all. Like any successful singer, he’s introspective even when he sings like there’s no point in carrying on.
A sliver of their punk roots slip into Bonny Doon to give their beezy country some rock bite, though it varies in form. There’s cuts like “Summertime Friends,” where half-spoken lyrics about mindless relationships recall the deadpan delivery of Parquet Courts. Elsewhere are distorted guitar chases speeding alongside lively drumming, like on “Lost My Way.” So when a song like “Never Been to California”—which employs a honky-tonk bass part and shaky organ—plays, the tone change feels like a payoff instead of a downshift.
Their best mode is when Bonny Doon take a step back, brush their hands, and accept a role as an observer. The only way to counter a crumbling world with their surroundings moving at full tilt is to create stability. Much of this tone comes from the album’s construction: each member passed the songs around to flesh out instrumentals. Part of Bonny Doon was recorded in Russell Industrial Center, one of the city’s biggest arts redevelopment projects, and over the three years it took to release the full-length, outsiders snatched up cheap real estate across the city, placing capitalism's ethics at the forefront of their minds. Bonny Doon aren’t singing about Detroit specifically, but they bear witness to the city’s evolution—or lack thereof—whether they want to or not, and the ways in which it sours their mood is evident. When Lennox sings “You’re right/Yeah, I gotta grow up,” on “You Can’t Hide,” it’s not charged with motivation or promise. It’s empty. He agrees to change but the energy to do so was long ago stripped, hence why he sees himself reflected in the bottom of a wine bottle and fading neon signs. They know change will happen, but they also know they have so little to do with the course it takes. Why not watch the madness unfold and shrug its worst parts off?
That hopeless undertone to their otherwise easygoing country rock gives them a distinguished voice. Should they continue to hone it, they can carve their own distinctions, stepping away from the Bill Callahan and David Berman similarities to become an RIYL descriptor themselves. An album of sunlit melodies with the shadows of Detroit looming over it delivers more than expected; it’s not easy creating a doleful aftertaste that never quite dampens spirits, but Bonny Doon pull it off. By the time that complexity in their songwriting reveals itself, you’re already on the next listen, fully aware of humanity’s cessation and the band’s decision to cozy up on the porch to watch. Nothing articulates the warmth of their nonchalant despair like the line: “I was staring at the setting sun and I realized my time had run out/And I was relieved.” Maybe we should be doing the same. | 2017-03-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-03-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Salinas | March 18, 2017 | 7.4 | 0e3e5648-cd3c-418a-b62e-8a18c14ca7eb | Nina Corcoran | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nina-corcoran/ | null |
Like Octavia Butler’s Afro-futurist science fiction, which inspired the piece, this experimental septet performance can seduce, challenge, and unnerve in the span of a few measures. | Like Octavia Butler’s Afro-futurist science fiction, which inspired the piece, this experimental septet performance can seduce, challenge, and unnerve in the span of a few measures. | Nicole Mitchell / Lisa E. Harris: EarthSeed | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nicole-mitchell-lisa-e-harris-earthseed/ | EarthSeed | Afro-futurist author Octavia Butler served as a touchstone for flautist and composer Nicole Mitchell well before she considered herself an artist. Found on her mother’s bookshelf when Mitchell was a teenager, Butler’s work “[was] equally fascinating and disturbing to me,” the composer told one interviewer. An African American woman who was the first science-fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, Butler tackled ecology, theology, racism, corporate greed, violence, empathy, and more in her novels and short stories. Works such as The EarthSeed Series could be apocalyptic and optimistic at once. The same dichotomy figures into Mitchell’s own compositions, which can seduce, challenge, and unnerve in the span of a few measures. Butler’s example has stayed with Mitchell, a former chair of Chicago’s vaunted jazz collective the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, in her own large-scale works. Soon after Butler’s death in 2006, Mitchell premiered her ambitious Xenogenesis Suite, scored for nonet and based on Butler’s trilogy of the same name, and she drew on the author’s writing again for 2014’s Intergalactic Beings.
Mitchell returns to Butler’s work once more—specifically, the 1993 novel Parable of the Sower and its sequel, 1998’s Parable of the Talents—with EarthSeed, a collaborative performance with the singer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Lisa E. Harris. The two women bonded over Butler at the New Quorum Composers’ Residency in New Orleans, and the Art Institute of Chicago commissioned the work for performance on June 22, 2017, Butler’s birthday. Mitchell and Harris collaborated on new lyrics based on concepts in the Parables, in which climate change has ravaged the planet. Arranged for a septet featuring Chicago luminaries like cellist Tomeka Reid and trumpeter Ben LaMar Gay, in conjunction with Harris’ theremin and Mitchell’s flute, EarthSeed tends towards that “disturbing” nature of Butler’s work, blurring the line between the present moment and an imaginary dystopian future. At times visceral and discordant, even agitating, the piece favors turbulence and accentuates the queasy timbres of its instruments.
Drawing on the fusion of improvisation and composition that marks the works of the AACM and Art Ensemble of Chicago (a long-lived collective that counts Reid and Mitchell as current participants), EarthSeed’s music is challenging and bracing, often deploying an array of small sounds that confront and befuddle. Opener “Evernascence / Evanescence” features Mitchell’s spare flute and Harris’ wordless exhales and whistles—a rare instance of the main participants in duet, and a brief oasis before the others enter. When the full ensembles emerge on “Whispering Flame,” Reid’s bowed cello and Gay’s queasy tones act as destabilizing forces. As Harris harmonizes with another vocalist, Julian Otis, her operatic training comes to the fore. But before you can be seduced by their interplay, it sours. Otis and Harris wring out guttural gasps and wretching noises, Gay’s muted trumpet screeches, and Reid’s cello strings squeak like sawed wood.
In “Moving Mirror,” which highlights Reid’s quicksilver work, her cello serves as bass, melodic lead, and frightening noise generator, veering between bow and pizzicato. She can be nuanced and hushed one moment, skin-prickling the next, accompanied by a battery of electronics from Mitchell, Harris, and Gay. “Whole Black Collision” juxtaposes white-noise rumbles with Harris’ sustained notes. She scales higher and higher until she’s at a piercing register where Gay’s shrill horn joins in. And the heights she hits on the climactic “Purify Me With the Power to Self Transform” are dizzying and awe-inspiring.
EarthSeed’s sometimes bewildering array of disassociated texts, ululations, and rhetorical questions (“If you become ‘other’ then who becomes the mirror?”) all play into notions of disturbance and disruption from Butler’s writing, but on record, it discomfits. The babbling and vocal noises that introduce “Phallus and Chalice” turn enervating after four very long minutes, wince-inducing rather than whimsical. In “Biotic Seeds,” which draws inspiration from Parable of the Sower’s theory of life force, their voices veer from exaggerated dramatic enunciation to matter-of-fact recitation, the accompaniment reduced to mere punctuation: “Crisis is our teacher. What is its message? Embrace crisis. Lean into chaos!” The same philosophy could be said to guide EarthSeed: The album itself often feels as uncomfortable as the chaotic world depicted in Butler’s books.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-07-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-07-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | FPE | July 3, 2020 | 6.6 | 0e49a9c6-998d-44ce-95ea-d85e8ce34ef5 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
The latest album from the oblique strategist of New York rap is an urgent attempt to give order, in small increments, to an orderless time. | The latest album from the oblique strategist of New York rap is an urgent attempt to give order, in small increments, to an orderless time. | Elucid: Shit Don’t Rhyme No More | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/elucid-shit-dont-rhyme-no-more/ | Shit Don’t Rhyme No More | The textures of Elucid’s music—the sandpaper grate, the demons groaning to life on the low end, the stabs at spiritualism, the stabs of Björk’s sampled voice—are more varied, and layered more densely, than those that bubble on rap radio today. In fact, you would probably have to go back nearly three decades to find a precedent in the genre’s mainstream for the New York rapper’s sound. The closest analog might be Fear of a Black Planet, one of Public Enemy’s twin masterpieces. That record, released in 1990, was manic, cacophonous. The Bomb Squad, who produced the album in its entirety, shifted moods and tempo with a striking clarity of vision; they also sampled nearly 150 songs, according to best estimates. In the years that followed, that labyrinthine style not only fell out of creative vogue, but became vastly more difficult after a New York district court ruled against Warner Bros. and Biz Markie, codifying new rules around sampling.
Elucid does not exist in rap’s mainstream. He’s also not sanding down his messaging for megaphones the way Chuck D often did. His writing is full of cryptic asides and rhetorical double-backs, closed loops and dead ends. In 1990, the idea of rap as reportage was novel to much of white America; in 2018, Elucid is making music that seems to have internalized and processed not only hundreds of years of American history and racism, but the collapse of both into bad-faith, contextless internet squabbles.
His music isn’t about the internet in any obvious way, but it could only be the product of a world where East New York real estate and Nazi recruiters and lupus fundraisers slip past you, one after another on an infinite scroll. On a song called “Obama Incense,” from his remarkable 2016 LP Save Yourself, he details a yard littered with “crack stems and scratch-off tickets,” blows dust off a kalimba, watches pimps kill time by writing Yelp reviews of diners, sees “babies wave guns out in plain view,” then gets to the vein: “You want it all, but it can’t save you.” Where that album took aim at the small- and capital-G Gods who claimed to see through that postmodern fog, his latest, Shit Don’t Rhyme No More, comes across as an urgent attempt to give order, in small increments, to an orderless time. It often addresses its subjects obliquely, but that’s when Elucid, as a writer, is at his best; as he raps on “RZA Taught Me”: “If I can make you really feel it, I won’t have to explain shit.”
Mostly self-produced (with assists from Messiah Musik, August Fanon, and Ohbliv), Shit Don’t Rhyme No More is at turns languid (“RZA”) or fevered (“1010 Wins”). In his rhymes, Elucid similarly flits back and forth between things you can touch, taste and smell, and the vaguely metaphysical—the pronunciation tics his elders might have had, the shoes that speak Cantonese. The songwriting eludes most conventional structure, and is rich with style and detail. Take “Bad Credit Is Better Than No Credit,” where he throws you into a scene on I-95 South; he’s the “so-called poet negro motorist” who’s “lifted up in spirit by praying black mothers.” Or see the sex scene on “Lambskin”: “You could ride my face with your bonnet on/I wanna fuck you in a durag, let the cape fly/I want my scalp greased while the fish fry.” The song itself, though, sounds like a nightmare, like hell is just below a frameless mattress somewhere.
In addition to his solo work, Elucid raps with Billy Woods as Armand Hammer. Last year, the duo put out an excellent record called ROME, which functions largely as an examination of how power works at the tiniest and most macro levels, from police investigations to parking garage shootouts to white nationalist Facebook groups. By contrast, Shit Don’t Rhyme No More skews slightly more internal: “Rick Ross Moonwalk,” for example, plays like a prayer, a humble request for support and loyalty. It’s a shrewd way to round out the record—poise is one of Elucid’s defining traits, and a lapse into such vulnerability gives the I-95 trips different stakes. And so you can loop back, like Elucid does so fluidly in his writing, and take another look at Fear of a Black Planet. There’s nothing on Shit Don’t Rhyme as plain as, say, “Day to day, America eats its young.” What there is instead is that same idea refracted in a thousand different directions. | 2018-03-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-03-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | self-released | March 8, 2018 | 7.7 | 0e49b898-809b-4fe8-add3-870ae03a64af | Paul A. Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/ | |
Oozing Wound capture the energy of classic Slayer, Entombed, and punk-metal like Suicidal Tendencies, but it's hard to escape the feeling they are making fun of these guys as much as celebrating them. | Oozing Wound capture the energy of classic Slayer, Entombed, and punk-metal like Suicidal Tendencies, but it's hard to escape the feeling they are making fun of these guys as much as celebrating them. | Oozing Wound: Whatever Forever | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22436-whatever-forever/ | Whatever Forever | The third album from Chicago trio Oozing Wound begins with a backwards guitar wail that puts a fresh twist on the technique Metallica used in the iconic intro to their ...And Justice for All leadoff track “Blackened.” True to form, of course, the prelude gives way to a muscular, uptempo chug as the song, “Rambo 5 (Pre-Emptive Strike)” achieves liftoff, announcing that “okay, now we’re really getting shit started” in stereotypical metal fashion. More importantly, on “Rambo 5” Oozing Wound manage to recapture the energy of classic Slayer, Left Hand Path-era Entombed, and skate punk-rooted metal like Suicidal Tendencies and Excel all in the same riff.
In purely musical terms, Whatever Forever is bound to attract thrash, stoner rock, doom, and punk loyalists as well as people arriving at those particular strains of heaviness for the first time. Metalheads will no doubt recognize how frontman/guitarist Zack Weil howls like a cross between Exodus vocalist Steve “Zetro” Souza and Kreator’s Mille Petrozza. Likewise, now-departed drummer Kyle Reynolds’ fills and thumpa-thumpa-thumpa beats recall genre luminaries like Dave Lombardo and Charlie Benante. By the same token, though, Oozing Wound exude an attitude that immediately distinguishes them from the music they reference—and update—with such convincing skill.
Oozing Wound play with undeniable passion. They also shift gears between tempos with uncanny ease, and their ability to incorporate slower sections gives the faster material an explosiveness it wouldn't otherwise have. As the lava-like churn of “Eruptor” bubbles to a boil and segues into “Tachycardia,” for example, Oozing Wound not only channel High on Fire at their most infernal but also manage to sustain the buildup over both songs. Additionally, engineer Matt Russell’s rendering of bassist Kevin Cribbin’s tone should serve as the ultimate reference for how to capture low end that’s Godzilla-huge—full and imposing, but most of all clear.
All that said, it’s hard to listen to this album and not get the feeling that these guys are making fun of their influences while also honoring them. Despondency, hopelessness, and even outright nihilism can certainly make for engaging music. But when those emotions are worn on the sleeve as affectations, they ring hollow. With Oozing Wound, it’s hard to tell. On their own, the lyrics on Whatever Forever contain vague but nevertheless thought-provoking undercurrents. When Weil sings that “peace is a lie” and that “tonight we will track, and identify spies” on “Rambo 5,” one gets the distinct sense he might be talking about more than the outward silliness that the song title lets on.
The same goes for Weil’s lyrics on “Mercury in Retrograde Virus,” where he sings “Conscious killing keeps the planet spinning.../Can’t fight that kind of breeding/The facts a mask revealing.” But Weil also plays up a fuck-it-all malaise that comes off as a posture and begs you not to care about what he’s saying. As he sneers his way through self-defeatist headbanger anthems like “Diver” and “Everything Sucks, and My Life Is a Lie,” the band’s raucous delivery sounds better suited for the upbeat mood of keg party. On paper, the contrast should make for rich juxtaposition. Instead, Weil and company end up looking like they lack the courage of their convictions.
Oozing Wound deserve credit for standing apart from purist thrash revivalists like Bonded by Blood and Mantic Ritual. Clearly, they intend for their music to serve as a beefier, decidedly modern take on classic forms. But by hiding behind detachment, the music's underlying power ends up getting smothered by its bluster. As engaging as that bluster is at first, over the course of ten songs Whatever Forever begins to grate not unlike a person who tries too hard to look nonchalant when they would hold your attention longer if they just opened up a bit more. | 2016-10-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Thrill Jockey | October 24, 2016 | 6.6 | 0e49d3b7-58c6-486d-b001-688981edc0ec | Saby Reyes-Kulkarni | https://pitchfork.com/staff/saby-reyes-kulkarni/ | null |
The cryptic compositions of California-born, Japan-based composer Carl Stone are collected on this hefty compilation. Its eight extended pieces showcase drastically different sides of his work. | The cryptic compositions of California-born, Japan-based composer Carl Stone are collected on this hefty compilation. Its eight extended pieces showcase drastically different sides of his work. | Carl Stone: Electronic Music From the Seventies and Eighties | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22388-electronic-music-from-the-seventies-and-eighties/ | Electronic Music From the Seventies and Eighties | To get an idea of the cryptic compositions made by California-born, now Japan-based composer Carl Stone, consider the three folks who give appreciations on this hefty compilation, Electronic Music From the Seventies and Eighties. One comes from respected world music critic Richard Gehr; another from the author of the 33 1/3 book on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol. II; a third from the guy who conveys ethnic dish profundity throughout Greater Los Angeles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold. Stone has had an equally un-slottable career since studying electronic music composition at CalArts with the likes of Morton Subotnick and James Tenney in the 1970s and performing with Japanese noisy improvisers like Otomo Yoshihide. Gold, for one, recalled seeing Stone perform around L.A. at upper-crust concert halls, nightclubs, punk venues, and art galleries.
By turns lovely, prickly, meditative, and maddening, these eight extended compositions (some two and a half hours of music) showcase drastically different sides of Stone’s work, which previously was relegated to small-batch cassette releases in the ’80s and early ’90s. An early adopter of the computer, which he used to create his pieces, Stone’s also worked with turntables and manically manipulated samples. He has electronically elongated source sounds until they take on entirely new topographies. These techniques anticipated later trends of all sorts, from the dense slivers of samples informing the Bomb Squad’s productions to Plunderphonic’s trash-compacting of pop music to Justin Bieber 800% Slower.
The earliest pieces here, “Lim” and “Chao Praya” date to the early ’70s when Stone was still a student at CalArts, utilizing a Buchla 200 series synthesizer to seek out the purest, most transportive of tones. These two pieces are stunning indeed, full of purring drones that at first appear to hardly be moving, only to have them slowly slide and reveal infinite amounts of overtones. It’s evocative of some of my favorite minimal music from this era, be it Charlemagne Palestine’s Four Manifestations on Six Elements or Folke Rabe’s Was??.
The stately “Sukothai” and ethereal “Shing Kee” come from 1977 and 1986, respectively, and both find Stone mincing a single musical ingredient into myriad dishes (the Gold connection becomes apparent in that Stone titled many of his pieces after his favorite L.A. restaurants). On “Sukothai,” he takes a sliver of harpsichord from Benjamin Britten’s already playful “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” and—in a process similar to Steve Reich’s Come Out—teases it into two loops and then four. Stone exponentially increases them across a dizzying 14 minutes, until that dainty harpsichord line turns into a canon of a hefty 1024 loops. A similar process informs “Shing Kee,” as a five-second snippet of Schubert’s “The Linden Tree” gets distended in two directions. Small slivers of Akiko Yano’s voice are stretched into abstract yowls, but ever so slowly it tightens until the syllables become audible and the fully-sung line becomes clear. Then the piece retreats, with Stone stretching everything back from word to clouds, these small filaments spun into a blanket of abstract sound once again.
By the ’80s, Stone’s methods and focus began to shift. “Dong Il Jang,” from 1982, starts off as if it will be a droning soundscape, only to have it strobe and fragment. A sample of “testing one, two, three” and snatches of Asian folk music get worried into a maddening hiccup. If only the resultant 21 minutes sounded like something other than simply holding the fast-forward button on a CD player.
The massive “Kuk Il Kwan” strikes a balance between the two poles of Stone’s sound, moving from droning to churning, while “Shibucho” is another long piece of a finely diced sample. This time, Stone renders one of the dreamiest Temptations’ songs into an irritant like a severely scratched disc stuck in a six-disc changer. In the years since, this sound has been taken up by the likes of Japanese artist Yasunao Tone’s Solo for Wounded CD and Oval. But there’s something about the immense serving portions of Stone’s glitching pieces that—unlike some of the stunning other work to be found here—ultimately makes them hard to swallow. | 2016-10-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Unseen Worlds | October 1, 2016 | 6.7 | 0e4ae8e5-4bb1-4d79-b75a-0976cf09c4a4 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
True Will, the debut album from White Widows Pact, allows us to imagine a world where the division between metal and hardcore never existed. While this isn't a new move, the band has a seamless approach that allows the two genres to darken and inflect the other. | True Will, the debut album from White Widows Pact, allows us to imagine a world where the division between metal and hardcore never existed. While this isn't a new move, the band has a seamless approach that allows the two genres to darken and inflect the other. | White Widows Pact: True Will | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21249-true-will/ | True Will | It's hard to imagine a time when hardcore and metal were separated by fierce, mutually exclusive tribal codes. At an early point in the development of hardcore, to have long hair and a leather jacket at certain shows came with a genuine risk of physical injury. But even hardcore flagships like Sick of It All, Agnostic Front, the Crumbsuckers, and the Cro-Mags put out albums that leaned towards metal, while other hardcore pioneers like D.R.I., Suicidal Tendencies, Corrosion of Conformity, and Prong all eventually transitioned fully into metal bands.
Despite these intertwined histories, though, it's easy to see why the division persists between these two camps: in general, metal encourages you to get carried away—be it by "Dungeons & Dragons" fantasy, exaggerated horror, Satan, or intellectual musing—while hardcore calls for you to keep your feet planted firmly on the ground. Hardcore bands also tend to fixate on their street credibility, to the point that their music functions as an incessant pledge of allegiance, which can be oppressive if you have no interest in relating to dogma of the lifestyle.
True Will, the debut album from White Widows Pact, allows us to imagine a world where this division never existed. Citing Madball, Obituary, and Crowbar as its three primary influences, the Brooklyn quintet consciously tips its cap to the mid-'80s/early-'90s heyday of three different scenes—New York hardcore, Florida death metal, and southern sludge, respectively. In so doing, White Widows Pact reminds us that metal and hardcore were always perfectly suited for mating with each other and that, in fact, the two forms share the same DNA.
Of course, it's not like this is revelation in 2015. It's been over 25 years since Brutal Truth strode into the same tangle of sub-genres, eventually taking an Edward Scissorhands approach and carving them into new shapes. Countless bands have done the same, with varying degrees of creative innovation. Take even a quick glance at the Victory Records or Century Media catalog and you'll never run out of mosh breakdowns from bands fusing death metal with hardcore. Listening to True Will, though, it's obvious that White Widows Pact isn't trying to invent anything new. It's more like the band took scoops of three different ice cream varieties, let them melt in the same dish for a bit, and stirred them up into one uniform flavor.
Toward the beginning of the track "Thirteen Years of War", for example, White Widows Pact is able to infuse a palm-muted, death metal-style chug with the intangible—but unmistakable—urban swagger of hardcore. It's a subtle coloration, and it's hard to pinpoint how White Widows Pact does it, but every musical element on this album bears the distinct mark of a contrasting style. On the other hand, White Widows Pact's guitar solos hint at an awareness of scales gleaned from listening to King Diamond records, a musicality that most hardcore bands shun.
In blending these styles together until the lumps are smoothed out, the band gives True Will a seamless quality. And because the album presents itself without pretense, frontman David Castillo's lyrics cut that much deeper. On opening track "Landlord", Castillo (the co-owner of Brooklyn venue Saint Vitus Bar) rails against the owner of his tenement-slum apartment—a conventional enough target for hardcore-grade retaliation, but Castillo adds considerable dimension by casting the villain of the song as a clergyman.
Where Castillo follows the aggrieved, me-against-the-world hardcore model, he leans towards ambiguity where the majority of his peers would spell things out in the most obvious ways. The veteran narrator of "Thirteen Years of War", for example, harbors anger at a man in a suit. Castillo never elaborates on who that man is, or how literal he's being when he sings that the man "lives next door." With the music clanging away at full force, the songs become that much more powerful for what Castillo doesn't say. | 2015-11-10T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2015-11-10T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Metal | New Damage | November 10, 2015 | 7 | 0e4c942a-a148-40c2-a9b0-ebc6f6d31d2f | Saby Reyes-Kulkarni | https://pitchfork.com/staff/saby-reyes-kulkarni/ | null |
Newly reissued on vinyl, Common’s 2002 album is a massive group effort: Prince, Erykah Badu, Pharrell, Jill Scott, and many more built a sound that helped change the limits of rap, soul, and R&B. | Newly reissued on vinyl, Common’s 2002 album is a massive group effort: Prince, Erykah Badu, Pharrell, Jill Scott, and many more built a sound that helped change the limits of rap, soul, and R&B. | Common: Electric Circus | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/common-electric-circus/ | Electric Circus | During a run of years in the mid-late ’90s and early ’00s, hip-hop found a comfortable recording home in the iconic Electric Lady studios. The Roots were there for Things Fall Apart, D’Angelo was there for Voodoo, Black Star’s album was mixed there, and Common had found his way there for part of 2000’s Like Water for Chocolate, and found his way back two years later to work on Electric Circus, an album that, even now, reads as an ambitious outlier, a classic that stands distant from all of Common’s classics that came before it and the couple that came after it.
The album cover of Electric Circus is—at least it would seem—an homage to the Beatles’ album art for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a work that was also, at the time, seen as a departure. Common’s face is front and center on the cover, but backed by the faces of those pivotal to the making of the album, in actual tangible work or in spirit. This list reads like a holy scroll of talent in several fields, spanning generations: Prince, Tye Tribbett, Louis Farrakhan, Jill Scott, Chris Webber, Larenz Tate, Big Daddy Kane, Richard Pryor, and of course Jimi Hendrix himself, just to name a few. It could be said that Electric Circus—newly reissued on vinyl for the first time—is an album concerned with chasing the aesthetics of risk, but there is a heavy payoff there: Common found a small freedom in the experiment of bringing people into a room and letting the sound build itself from there.
Because it isn’t necessarily a touchable album for its time—and because only one single, “Come Close,” was released—the album was poorly promoted and fell off of the charts. It is possible, though, to imagine this as a small sacrifice for Common, whose artistic clout in 2002 afforded him the ability to put out an album that didn’t need to use sales as a measure of success. The groundwork for what we see black popular music as now has a direct lineage that, of course, didn’t begin in the late ’90s and early ’00s, but was pushed forward by albums like Electric Circus, released at a time in rap that needed a dose of experimentation in the mainstream. It was another small permission in a sea of permissions granted to black artists who, perhaps, wanted to wrestle free from the constraints of the genres assigned to them.
There are moments in which the experiment feels uneasy, presenting mixed results, sometimes on the same song: “Star *69 (PS With Love)” has an infectious chorus and guest turns from both Bilal and Prince, but the song’s somewhat juvenile, clumsy and predictable phone sex narrative distracts from its brilliance, making the experience feel like adolescents walking into the Louvre with finger paint. The aforementioned “Come Close,” featuring Mary J. Blige, was definitely the album’s only radio-ready song, but it sounds as if it was trying intently to be radio-ready. It's a somewhat cheesy duet dripping in basic rap-r&b crossover tropes that plods slowly through an uninspiring Neptunes beat and half-asleep Blige chorus.
But the misses end there, which is notable considering not only the breadth of sound the album covers, but also how many guest spots Common makes room for on the album—playing nice with them on all but one of the album’s thirteen tracks. Jill Scott drops in on “I Am Music,” which is punctuated by small kisses of swelling horns nestled in between a retro-fitted juke joint piano melody. P.O.D. singer Sonny Sandoval lends background vocals to “Electric Wire Hustler Flower,” a song built on a distorted guitar and Common’s equally distorted vocals. The album closes with two songs spanning almost nineteen total minutes: “Jimi Was a Rock Star,” an ambitious tribute to Jimi Hendrix that is sonically messy in a delightful way, with heavy drums that sound as if they are being hit by eager hands and Common finding a pocket to mesh with Erykah Badu’s vocals, waxing poetic about the mythology of Hendrix, as if they lived through it with him (“Jimi lives in a purple haze/In a psychedelic maze/Play the streets like an instrument”).
The final song is the ten-minute epic “Heaven Somewhere” which brings back Badu, Blige, Scott, and Bilal, adds Cee-Lo Green, Omar Lye-Fook, and Common’s father, Lonnie “Pops” Lynn, known for contributing spoken outros to Common’s album. The song is a winding mini-suite that—at least seemingly—attempts to get all of the album’s sounds condensed into one moment. There is the slow-dripping electric guitar, the rush of rapid-heartbeat percussion, the juke joint keys, and the funk horns whispering underneath vocals. It serves as a flawed but perfect ending to a flawed but classic album, one that finds its hero reaching backwards and trying to find enough soul to keep an entire generation unafraid to take risks. | 2017-10-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-10-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Vinyl Me Please | October 7, 2017 | 8.4 | 0e4d5052-acd8-49de-aa16-22950ea388f7 | Hanif Abdurraqib | https://pitchfork.com/staff/hanif-abdurraqib/ | |
North Carolina songwriter Benji Hughes has penned annoyingly infectious jingles for brands like Honey Nut Cheerios, and much of his new double album sounds exactly like the work of somebody who once ghostwrote a jam for a cartoon bee. | North Carolina songwriter Benji Hughes has penned annoyingly infectious jingles for brands like Honey Nut Cheerios, and much of his new double album sounds exactly like the work of somebody who once ghostwrote a jam for a cartoon bee. | Benji Hughes: Songs in the Key of Animals | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21382-songs-in-the-key-of-animals/ | Songs in the Key of Animals | Benji Hughes has a knack for making the kinds of songs that people don’t want in their heads. As a jingle writer, the North Carolina musician set Captain Morgan’s skeezy "Got a Little Captain in You" slogan to music, penned tunes for Verizon and GE, and assisted in giving Nelly’s "Ride Wit Me" a cereal-themed makeover for a Honey Nut Cheerios commercial ("ay, must be the honey!"). For some artists, this advertising work might serve as an interesting bit of trivia—no more relevant to their music than any other day job. But Hughes’ frequently silly Songs in the Key of Animals really does sound like the work of somebody who ghostwrote a jam for a cartoon bee.
Animals is Hughes’ follow-up to 2008’s A Love Extreme, a double album packed tight with Beck-esque party rock, wry AM pop, and piano-based love songs of varying degrees of sincerity. That record was a labor of love, and for those who could get on board with Hughes’ detached sense of humor—a big qualifier, to be sure—it was generous with its charms, proof that beyond his bearded-goofball shtick, this guy could actually write a song. Animals doesn't have nearly so much to prove, and it shows. Hughes wrote the album on the spot in the studio, and he makes no qualms about the fact he’s just fucking around for much of it.
A parade of animal puns, "Peacockin' Party" starts the record with a *Midnite Vultures-*on-a-budget strut and introduces some of the many giggly backup singers who shadow Hughes throughout the record. "Why are we here?" they sing, before answering their own question: "For a good time." Especially in its opening stretch, the record is paced like an episode of vintage sketch show "Laugh-In"—a succession of zany conversational snippets and surrealist injections that often seem to amuse the performers more than the audience. It's fun if you're on its wavelength and obnoxious if you aren't.
On the electro-pop farce "Girls Love Shoes," Hughes’ chorus of women offer the preface that they aren’t only into shoes—they’re also into boys, yoga, dancing, and the beach—but the track mostly just riffs off its title. And like a lot of Hughes’ songs, it’s hard to pinpoint precisely what the joke is. Is he mocking women for their vanity? Presumably not, because Meshell Ndegeocello is one of the women singing on the track, and that's not something she would get behind. Yet for listeners less privy to Hughes’ intentions, it’s easy to walk away with that impression. In general, the women that populate Hughes’ world aren’t very complicated. "Sometimes I just want a cupcake," one professes on "Fall Me in Love." "I'm always looking for a good time," another responds dryly. So, yes, Animals technically passes the Bechdel test—but it takes some shortcuts.
Though the album runs just 41 minutes, Hughes split it into two CDs for its physical release. On its mellower second half, Hughes dials down the funk, reins in his backing singers, and starts crooning in a low, Stephin Merritt register as he turns toward matters of the heart. Even in this less jocular mode, though, the songs feel more like early sketches than finished works. The instrumental "Song for Nancy" is six minutes of pleasant piano and not much else, a solid foundation for a track that’s never built on. The old cliché about double albums is that most could be greatly improved if edited down to one disc, but that doesn’t hold true here. Animals is an anomaly: a two-disc set without enough solid material for even a single LP. | 2016-01-29T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2016-01-29T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Rock | Merge | January 29, 2016 | 4.8 | 0e4f68c3-10da-4e50-9fc5-22be336ea040 | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | null |
U2 have aligned with their old friends Apple to insert Songs of Innocence into all of our libraries without consent. This indisputably queasy approach to the "surprise release" gambit might be the most interesting element about the band's latest album. | U2 have aligned with their old friends Apple to insert Songs of Innocence into all of our libraries without consent. This indisputably queasy approach to the "surprise release" gambit might be the most interesting element about the band's latest album. | U2: Songs of Innocence | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19816-u2-songs-of-innocence/ | Songs of Innocence | Time was, the recipe for a superstar artist to create a Big Event Album was well known—a few teaser ads in the music mags, a lead single for radio, some late-night talk show appearances, then sit back and watch the fans line up at the record store on release day. But now that basically every entity in that sentence has been culturally marginalized, and the propeller churn of social media refuses to tolerate slow-burn marketing, the best—and, perhaps, only—way to get everyone talking about your record at once is to release it with no warning. U2 being U2, they’ve taken that strategy one step over the line into indisputably queasy territory, aligning with their old friends Apple to insert their new album, Songs of Innocence, into all of our libraries without consent. By updating the old Columbia House Record Club scam to the digital age, U2 and their Cupertino buddies have created a new avenue of opt-out cultural transmission, removing even the miniscule effort it takes to go to a website and click “Download.”
That U2 would willingly play corporate house band at a watch announcement to achieve this rollout in 2014 surprises exactly nobody; the album release was even framed by Bono himself as the 10th-anniversary celebration of a commercial. But the insistent mode of distribution says a lot about the band’s addiction to attention in their 38th year. “Part of the DNA of this band has always been the desire to get our music to as many people as possible,” Bono wrote, and after the commercial squib of 2009’s gloomy No Line on the Horizon, everything about Songs of Innocence seems desperate to be the global, cultural “experience” fix U2 needs to survive, even if it means giving away the album for “free.”
Accordingly, the music itself aims for a one-size-fits-all, vaguely inspirational tone, with a lean approach to details despite the press kit assertion that it’s all “very, very personal.” So a song about Bono meeting his wife is given the non-committal title of “Song for Someone”, and a song called “The Troubles” isn’t a callback to the prolonged Northern Ireland conflict that inspired their first great song, but a bunch of self-pitying platitudes (which uses guest Lykke Li to mimic adult-contempo Duran Duran hit “Come Undone”). Even Bono’s opening love letter to Joey Ramone is only given specificity by the title’s parenthetical, a generic “last night a [fill-in-the-blank] changed my life” tale that could be adapted to the idol of your choosing. It’s all emotional content left intentionally formless, vaingloriously hoping to fit around the experiences of millions.
Songs of Innocence also continues a decade-long trend of U2 showing little interest in re-examining themselves as a band or as pop stars, the approach that sustained them artistically throughout the '90s. Despite jettisoning their Eno/Lanois/Lillywhite comfort zone in favor of Danger Mouse, Paul Epworth, and a host of other moderately intriguing producers, Songs of Innocence is perhaps the album where U2 most self-consciously plays itself—or more distressingly, risk causing a temporal paradox by swiping moves from mantle-carriers Arcade Fire and Coldplay, akin to time traveling to the future and sleeping with your own grandchild.
A few promisingly weird moments, such as the eerily synthetic Beach Boys chant at the start of “California (There Is No End to Love)” or the breathy rhythms of “Raised By Wolves”, are quickly diluted by stock verse/chorus structures. The watery disco-punk beats of “This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now” and “Volcano” are thin gruel for a band that once seemed aware of current pop trends, however ill-advised the attempts were to engage with them. Only “Sleep Like a Baby Tonight” manages to feel fresh from start to finish, with burbling synths and pillowy strings occasionally disrupted by the Edge at his fuzziest-sounding. Elsewhere, there seems to be barely any resistance to the gravity of doing what a U2 song is supposed to do and little else.
That gravity has a name, and it’s four letters long, and at this point even those letters are wearing sunglasses. The two brief moments where Bono drops his global-rock-ambassador persona—the deranged, filtered first note of the “Raised by Wolves” chorus, the brief return of the “Lemon” falsetto on “Sleep Like a Baby Tonight”—are jarring enough to expose just how overblown his crooning is on Songs of Innocence. While the album’s liner notes contain a moving, train-of-thought reflection on a childhood made up of witnessing car bombings and sneaking into Ramones shows, almost none of that insight makes it into the actual songs, which are a celebration of self-absorption: “You are rock and roll” quickly amended to “You and I are rock and roll.”
Perhaps the upcoming companion album, inevitably named Songs of Experience, will contain all the darker, cynical stuff from these sessions. Regardless, U2 have already squandered any remaining integrity to invent this needy, invasive breed of the Big Event Album, an Album that lacks any kind of artistic statement to deter from the overwhelming Brandiness. Where Beyoncé used her iTunes sneak attack late last year to make a bold pop proclamation of sexuality and feminism, U2 have used an even more audacious release platform to wave their arms and simply say, “Hey! Everybody! We’re still here!” Bono may have self-deprecatingly described Songs of Innocence as “the blood, sweat and tears of some Irish guys...in your junk mail,” but it’s not even that interesting—it’s just a blank message. | 2014-09-12T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2014-09-12T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Island | September 12, 2014 | 4.6 | 0e5206e1-80d6-444d-a610-03afbae943a7 | Rob Mitchum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rob- mitchum/ | null |
The Estonian composer's ecclesiastical music is masterfully produced, bolstered by a powerful interpretation from the vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis. | The Estonian composer's ecclesiastical music is masterfully produced, bolstered by a powerful interpretation from the vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis. | Vox Clamantis: Arvo Pärt: The Deer's Cry | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22345-arvo-part-the-deers-cry/ | Arvo Pärt: The Deer's Cry | Producer Manfred Eicher first heard the music of Arvo Pärt on the radio, while driving down the highway. The dramatic string writing and bell-like piano of Tabula Rasa made him pull over and think about expanding his offerings. Until then, Eicher’s ECM imprint had focused mostly on jazz. While his label’s discography included a few modern classical composers like Steve Reich, it didn’t feature a wide range of contemporary notated music. But after Eicher’s conversion on the Autobahn, ECM’s “New Series” was born.
The first release from Eicher’s expanded classical lineup was a collection of Pärt’s instrumental works, issued in 1984. That album assumed a delicate profile during quieter passages and projected resonant lushness in its more grave sections. Those interpretations have never been bested, and Pärt has worked closely with ECM ever since. While Eicher’s airy production can occasionally tread close to a “new age” aesthetic, this has served Pärt well. After a youthful run that saw the composer mixing religious music with wild-eyed modernism, Pärt’s mature writing tends to employ a blend of centuries-old chant styles and contemplative, minimalist orchestration.
This lower-key approach to experimentalism benefits from the clarity of Eicher’s mastering. In the early going of The Deer’s Cry , “the ECM sound” allows Pärt’s strangeness to hit with a paradoxical serenity. The opening moments of “Von Angesicht zu Angesicht”—a setting of the “through a glass, darkly” portion of 1 Corinthians—are pensive but also gorgeous, as string lines and a doleful clarinet wind around supple choral writing. During the soprano vocalist’s solo, however, a soft dissonance is held at the end of one line. What once seemed an attractive bauble now appears more unsettling (and in tune with its source text).
It’s these moves that keep Pärt’s attractive music from relaxing into any “easy listening” format. The desperate nature of his search for the beautiful is rarely far from view. The title track’s words attest to the presence of Christ on all sides of the singers. But the lamentation of Pärt’s harmonies is so extreme, it’s natural to wonder about our ease of access to the divine. Because he turned to Christianity during the Soviet era, Pärt suffered censure for his choice of devotional texts—and it’s difficult to miss the hard-won toughness that resides in his spiritual music.
The Estonian vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis displays admirable command of the composer’s art. The pieces are mostly miniatures, drawn from multiple decades of Pärt’s output. Several have been recorded before. But the takes by Vox Clamantis always tease out something new. In the finale from Kanon Pokajanen, they offer a brighter sound than previously heard on ECM. And their renditions of more popular Pärt fare (such as “Da pacem Domine”) are dependably excellent.
Fans of the composer may have heard as much as half of this program in other interpretations. Yet the performances and engineering here argue persuasively for new experiences of this music. The same way that Eicher’s first album of Pärt’s music offered a sampling of his instrumental pieces, The Deer’s Cry is a useful entry point to the composer’s vocal music. Its overall effect is not quite as potent as those of long-form compositions such as Miserere or Litany, but there are still plenty of moments that can stop you in your tracks. | 2016-09-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | ECM New Series | September 12, 2016 | 7.4 | 0e58dd73-3287-463f-8f3c-b6cf56ee3ba3 | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | null |
Another album of shattering breakbeats and post-Aphex Twin poetics from Aaron Funk. | Another album of shattering breakbeats and post-Aphex Twin poetics from Aaron Funk. | Venetian Snares: Rossz Csillag Alatt Született | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8445-rossz-csillag-alatt-szuletett/ | Rossz Csillag Alatt Született | Composer Reszo Seress is blamed for at least 17 suicides, as urban legend has it. His 1933 ballad, "Öngyilkos Vasárnap" or "Gloomy Sunday"-- written after he made up with an ex-fiancée, but before she poisoned herself--- had been banned in the United States and his native Hungary. "The Hungarian Suicide Song", it was later called. Suicide notes allegedly hint to the tune's lyrics, and one tale says a delivery boy jumped off a bridge after overhearing a man whistling the song's melody.
Billie Holiday, an angel who lost her wings with $750 strapped to her leg and heroin found in her apartment, later recorded an English version of Seress's song. "Little white flowers will never awaken you/Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you/ Angels have no thought of ever returning you/ Would they be angry if I thought of joining you?/ Gloomy Sunday," she sang to a moon cloaked under bleary streetlight. Cynics can call that melodramatic, but the way the horns moan along with her to punctuate the end of her verses, her treatment sounds utterly convincing.
Aaron Funk (Venetian Snares) appropriately covered Seress and sampled Holiday's dread on Rossz Csillag Alatt Született, his 223rd album of shattering breakbeats and post-Aphex Twin poetics in the past five years. It's also his sharpest left turn to date, although Funk's juxtaposition of drill'n'bass beats with chamber orchestral sounds has been done by others for more than a decade, most notably on Aphex Twin's I Care Because You Do. But to his credit, Funk takes a chipped, charcoal pencil and illustrates a forest of leafless trees filled with the pigeons that he daydreamt of while watching the birds at Budapest's Royal Palace. Even better, his beats work with the orchestration instead of pulverizing it for an ironic counterpoint. Funk's baroque strings fittingly strike the air, while just about every melody is played with grinded teeth and bloodshot eyes.
The album title (translated "Born Under a Bad Star"), and its songs have Hungarian titles. "Sikertelenség" has Funk opening a body bag to show a disbelieving piano its deceased lover. "Szerencsétlen" walks a rickety plank with stacco violin stabs and a grinding "Amen" jungle breakbeat. "Második Galamb" indulges in more breakcore delirium and nearly sacrifices the visceral impact of the melodies struggling to pull through. The brooding string piece "Felbomlasztott Mentökocsi" and the chase-sequence dramatics of "Hajnal" are deftest songs that Funk ever recorded.
While Funk's percussive palate could have ventured beyond the standard-issued "Amen" breakbeats, Rossz's totality still possesses nerves that can cast shadows that never dissipate away from the mind in hours both sleeping and waking. | 2005-04-10T01:00:01.000-04:00 | 2005-04-10T01:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic | Planet µ | April 10, 2005 | 7.5 | 0e5b649e-91fe-4c01-b374-46b4cd0d3652 | Cameron Macdonald | https://pitchfork.com/staff/cameron-macdonald/ | null |
After first gaining attention for representational acoustic beauties, the guitarist digs deeper into abstraction, until the physical trappings of her instrument largely melt away. | After first gaining attention for representational acoustic beauties, the guitarist digs deeper into abstraction, until the physical trappings of her instrument largely melt away. | Sarah Louise: Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sarah-louise-nighttime-birds-and-morning-stars/ | Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars | The Georgia-born, North Carolina-based musician Sarah Louise Henson is often associated with the American primitive style of guitar, and for good reason. Her fingerstyle playing, frequently on 12-string, runs through Appalachian folk music and John Fahey to the grassroots minimalism of Henry Flynt and Terry Riley. She plays regional folk music in the duo House and Land and remains in the Appalachian Mountains, living in a rural area an hour outside of North Carolina’s western hub, Asheville. The main recreational activities, she has said, include hiking, foraging, and gardening; she only got internet access within the past five years.
Henson displays the careful attention to craft typical of any great student of deeply rooted traditions, albeit tempered by an unconventional streak. She typically utilizes tunings of her own invention, and she is a synthesist of disparate worlds. Henson has gradually moved past the live-to-tape naturalism of her earlier recordings to explore the magic of studio artifice. “The 12-string is so orchestral that it felt like a natural leap to multi-track,” she explained of the decisions that led to last year’s Deeper Woods, in which her own layered vocals soared over acoustic and electric guitars, electric bass, drums, electric piano, and the occasional synthesizer.
Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars, her second album for Thrill Jockey, marks an even greater leap, even if it looks like a step backward on paper. Composed primarily with six-string electric guitar in standard tuning, these songs are multi-tracked and electronically manipulated, fleshed out with the judicious use of voice, synthesizer, or a processed 12-string. But it is instead her most experimental album yet, a meditative foray into swirling loops and pure drone. The physical trappings of her primary instrument largely melt away.
Henson ranges widely here, testing new techniques with every song. “R Mountain,” where guitars of varying timbres are overdubbed in parallel, cuts a sneaky path between major and minor moods. The cool, wide-open harmonies suggest something of an Appalachian take on the Durutti Column’s clean-toned meditations. In “Ancient Intelligence,” a bright, unnervingly electronic pinging chirps like insects, or a hail of tinkling glass, before strummed or fingerpicked phrases take the lead, searching and melodic. Echoing 12-string tones are stretched into a seamless, shimmering drone during “Rime,” electronic delay lapping like choppy water.
The album builds toward its spiritual peak with a closing trio of raga-like pieces, all held aloft by wordless singing and peals of feedback; their almost devotional intensity (the title “Late Night Healing Choir” seems literal) is the mirror image of the album’s opener, which borrows lyrics from the Appalachian traditional “Bright Morning Stars” to turn a standard into something more like an invocation.
That opener, “Daybreak,” is accompanied by a field recording of birds—spring peepers and wood thrush, it turns out. As always in Henson’s work, nature isn’t merely window-dressing; she has something more essential in mind. The liner notes explain that wood thrush “have a double voice box called a syrinx which allows them to voice more than one note at a time”—a pertinent metaphor, perhaps, for Henson’s own explorations in overdubbing. Even at her most technologically experimental, the natural world remains her primary inspiration, and the results are as deeply felt as they are deeply moving. | 2019-01-29T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-01-29T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Thrill Jockey | January 29, 2019 | 7.9 | 0e5cb82d-b8f1-4df4-b95f-4182e94a6b7a | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
The trio’s latest album proposes a distinctly South African brand of sophistipop, folding elements of amapiano, mbaqanga, and house into a breezy, wistful blend. | The trio’s latest album proposes a distinctly South African brand of sophistipop, folding elements of amapiano, mbaqanga, and house into a breezy, wistful blend. | Beatenberg: The Great Fire of Beatenberg | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/beatenberg-the-great-fire-of-beatenberg/ | The Great Fire of Beatenberg | There was an admission implicit in the title of the South African trio Beatenberg’s 2022 EP On the way to Beatenberg: The group had yet to arrive at a sound. Over 19 minutes, they experimented with baroque guitar and Auto-Tune; they flirted with EDM uplift and Balearic haze. But Beatenberg’s core remained indie pop, refracted through guitarist and lead singer Matthew Field’s lifelong love of maskandi and mbaqanga. Their serene rumbas can make the group’s music feel out of time, not just in America (where a dusty mental shelf might hold them alongside Dirty Projectors, Paul Simon, and Vampire Weekend) but also at home, where amapiano and its many varieties are the hot pop export. When Beatenberg dabble in dance, it’s generally to add Zulu folk flavor to someone else’s production. A decade ago, they collaborated with fellow countryman DJ Clock on the tropical-house smash “Pluto (I Remember You).” In 2021, Beatenburg popped up on RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE—the continent-spanning collaboration between producers Scorpion Kings and Tresor—to get pensive on the Afropiano song “Dust in the Wind.”
“Dust in the Wind” appears, in reworked form and now titled “Worth More,” on The Great Fire of Beatenberg. Field’s guitars are pushed to the fore; the bass follows the chord changes instead of dictating them. It’s less a capeside DJ set than an afternoon party in a walled garden. The details are exquisitely rendered; the conversation is intimate but ends abruptly; outside noise wafts in but never threatens the proceedings. The result is a distinctly South African sophistipop, a guitar-centric companion piece to Nostalgia, the 2019 bubblegum-revival album from Tresor, the Congolese-born producer—and erstwhile Drake collaborator—who’s also an old friend of Field’s. (“Aphrodite,” Beatenberg’s Nostalgia contribution, is a typically cool affair, all electric piano slink and lilting devotion.)
At the moment, the way to Beatenberg cuts through Field, whose playing is more central than ever. On the restless “Chorus of May,” he’s skipping between staves, chasing wholeness with blithe resignation. His diagonal solo powers down like a dying robot. On “Eau de Toilette,” he effortlessly interlocks with Beatenberg’s rhythm section—first bassist Ross Dorkin, then drummer Robin Brink—like a bike chain jumping between sprockets. “You sweat the right kind of sweat/Mixed with your eau de toilette/Impossible to forget,” he pants before unfurling a solo that sounds like a baying dog. Field’s timbral exercises prove infectious: The peacocking “Wheelbarrow” sways and bumps like its titular vehicle, as the band deploys percussive clangs and trapdoor echo. If Beatenberg doesn’t match the exuberance of prime mbaqanga here, they at least nail its strut.
Like any good hosts, Beatenberg are at their liveliest around their friends. “Wheelbarrow,” “Eau De Toilette,” and “Worth More” are all Tresor co-writes, and the opening “Branches on a Tree” gets a Balearic backdrop from the versatile house producer Sun-El Musician, who submerges Dorkin’s bass until the modest uplift of the chorus. It’s a lovely slice of yearning dance pop, even if the text (“Dancing in a hurricane/’Til we break free”) gets a bit Real World at times. But that’s the drawback to Beatenberg’s brand of pop: If you’re not careful, the ebullient picking and deft rhythms can turn idle musings into sentimentality.
If there truly is a great fire here, it’s held in deep reserve. “The deeper I dig, the less that I find,” Field sings on the despairing waltz “Gold Mine.” On “Night Bus,” he’s overcaffeinated and underfed, perpetually deciding whether to leave town. A light application of Auto-Tune lends an Afrobeats feel to his sighs. The album closes with the paddling melancholia of “Green Bird,” which depicts depression as a monkish pursuit: Field’s acoustic guitar peals like a belltower; his wordless tenor gazes reverently skyward; Brink seems to be tapping a tabla. “Try again tomorrow,” Field advises a would-be visitor, “try again today,” holding the last syllable like a dangling promise. Having cleared their pandemic-era song queue with the On the way EP, Beatenberg enter their second era as a guitar-pop act that’s somehow both warm and hermetic, offering a tender goodbye before the garden gate closes. | 2024-04-09T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-04-09T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Leafy Outlook | April 9, 2024 | 7.2 | 0e5deaa7-7bf4-4412-9afd-0e8ae9305fe0 | Brad Shoup | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brad-shoup/ | |
The Australian songwriter’s intermittently funny and mournful folk-pop confronts the improbable task of commercial success and decides that art is worth making anyway. | The Australian songwriter’s intermittently funny and mournful folk-pop confronts the improbable task of commercial success and decides that art is worth making anyway. | Laura Jean: *Amateurs * | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/laura-jean-amateurs/ | Amateurs | The cover of Laura Jean’s Amateurs features a portrait of the songwriter. It doesn’t stand out for any particular sense of style or grace; it’s a decent likeness, and that’s it—a painting that aspires to greatness but lands closer to alright-ness. On Amateurs, Jean seeks to understand why certain artists are deemed masters and others, such as the characters she sings about—cast members in small-town musicals and girls performing Crowded House covers at outdoor markets—amateurs. The painting on the cover captures every question Jean asks on the record: If the painter was paid for that portrait, does that make it good? Would it still be good if its artist was paid in nothing but the spiritual thrill of creation?
Jean has been releasing music under her own name for nearly 20 years but, for the most part, hasn’t found footing outside of her home country of Australia. Many of her albums are revered in music circles—in particular 2011’s swaggering, discordant folk-rock record A fool who’ll and the 2018 synth-pop turn Devotion—and she’s been nominated for a handful of regional awards. Lorde gushed about the Devotion single “Touchstone” on Twitter; Jenny Hval sang on Jean’s 2014 self-titled album and Jean returned the favor on The Practice of Love. Conceptually, Amateurs resides on a similar plane as Hval’s Menneskekollektivit, another record that inquires into the nature of art as a devotional practice.
But indie-rock stardom is notoriously illusory in Australia; there is no workhorse touring circuit to speak of, just small, wonderful, self-sustaining scenes held together by day jobs, government grants, and duct tape. Acclaim rarely reaches enough people to translate into record sales. Touring overseas is prohibitively expensive. So an artist like Jean, who has plaudits to spare, is stuck in a strange middle ground—established but still pursuing a second career (she's studying to be a lawyer), well-known but not well-paid, working in the shadow of an ideal of success that’s further out of reach even than it is to her most ambitious U.S.- or UK-based peers.
Amateurs attempts to contend with this cowed legacy of artmaking in Australia: the idea that anyone engaged in serious art may be doomed to do it for love alone. Musically, Jean is returning to folk—not exactly the spare, quiet kind on Laura Jean or the drunken howl of A fool who’ll, but a style that suggests the blushing, diaristic songs of Devotion redone with more organic materials. Amateurs is unwieldy but graceful and often quite formally challenging, even as it foregrounds open-mic night staples like upright piano and heavily strummed acoustic.
The album has a crisp, airy atmosphere—in part because of Erkki Veltheim’s rich string arrangements, which receive as much space as Jean’s own voice, as well as lush backing vocals by Aldous Harding and Marlon Williams—but it’s one of Jean’s densest records, almost totally eschewing traditional song structure. Throughout the record, she writes in lengthy, unspooling verses filled with run-on sentences and sharp line breaks. On the lyrics sheet, an entire verse of “Pauly” appears in parentheses; many tracks veer between plainspoken and poetic in a way that evokes a more informal Joanna Newsom. On a song like “Rock’n’Roll Holiday,” about a youthful relationship with someone far wealthier, it feels as if Jean is trying to cram words into invisible confinements (“I love your pointed nose and your sad blue eyes”). “Something to Look Forward to Forever” is casual but painfully revealing, its lyrics reading like secrets spilled to a stranger after last call: “Just before I was Laura Jean/I’d do sit ups in my room/Trying to look good for the lead singer.”
Much of Amateurs feels like a set of short stories unified by the common theme of art’s relationship with commerce. “Rock’n’Roll Holiday” seems to be about the sometimes funny, sometimes sad class tensions between its two central characters until, in the final verse, Jean zooms out to critique the idea of legacy as something only the rich can afford. “Folk Festival” is a paean to the regional, community-minded music festivals that are so common in Australia, and which often represent young people’s first serious engagement with non-pop music. On the album’s saddest song, “Market on the Sand,” Jean turns a well-meaning loved one’s offhand remark—“That thing you do darling, for fun/Why don’t you turn it into a second income?”—into something painful and elegiac. It feels as if she is mourning the idea of art for art’s sake, lamenting the expectation that she strive for commercial success knowing the chances aren’t very high.
These ideas coalesce on “Something to Look Forward to Forever,” the album’s final track. Over spacious, chilly keys, Jean reveals the thing that keeps her making music even as all signs suggest she should quit: “I want something to look forward to forever/That’s what magic is/Something to look forward to forever/And never ever getting it.” She’s not singing about money or fame, necessarily. She means to say there’s something spiritually fulfilling about making art outside the usual constraints of commerce and competition—that all that striving is as good a reason as any to live. | 2022-11-11T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-11-11T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Chapter Music | November 11, 2022 | 7.1 | 0e6293eb-f453-48c9-a981-946db0bb67d9 | Shaad D’Souza | https://pitchfork.com/staff/shaad-d’souza/ | |
The debut album from New York producer Mark Hurst, aka A Pleasure, takes the names of some of his favorite producers and groups and numerically transposes the spelling of their names into drum patterns. That might sound dry or overly complex, but Jream House doesn't let its big ideas get in the way of immediate dancefloor gratification. | The debut album from New York producer Mark Hurst, aka A Pleasure, takes the names of some of his favorite producers and groups and numerically transposes the spelling of their names into drum patterns. That might sound dry or overly complex, but Jream House doesn't let its big ideas get in the way of immediate dancefloor gratification. | A Pleasure: Jream House | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21519-jream-house/ | Jream House | The debut album by New York producer Mark Hurst, aka A Pleasure, was made using "a process of numerical transposition" to turn the names of some of his favorite composers and groups into drum patterns. This may sound like the sort of high-concept postmodern hook that only a brainiac seeking to liberate dance music from the oppression of the dance floor would employ. But Jream House doesn't sound like that at all; it turns out to be a euphoric trip that doesn’t shy away from more direct types of gratification.
The name of the opener, "Durutti Gottsching," suggests that the beat was possibly generated from the names of the British post-punk band the Durutti Column and Ash Ra Tempel leader Manuel Göttsching. It follows the conventions of Detroit techno, down to the cavernous reverb on the handclaps, except for the way that the hi hat, synthesizer arpeggios, and bassline abandon its straight 4/4 time signature in favor of interlocking complex rhythms. This might sound overcomplicated, but it's kept grounded by an extremely funky bassline—a busy, warm-toned lead that nods at the more organic-sounding end of the krautrock spectrum.
J**ream House shifts from "Durutti Gottsching"’s jubilant funk to the otherworldly house of "Arthur Russel" (another track that does justice to its namesake), to the densely composed, deeply blissed-out flurry of noise on "The Order of Things," a track that might make you wonder why "Balearic shoegaze" isn’t a genre already. "Grace" uses cascading, jazzlike breakbeats to ride "The Order of Things"’s energy close to the edge of sensory overload.
After that cacophonous peak, Hurst lets the album drift gently back to Earth, through clouds of Balearic mood. ("Slow Channel" sounds like it was made to watch the sun rise to, with waves of atonal metallic sound washing over it.) By the time "Am Me Evol Eye" drifts off into ambience, the album’s energy has returned to the same near-resting state that the intro to "Durutti Gottsching" opens it with, giving Jream House an elegant overall symmetry, not to mention a subtle but powerful hypnotic effect. For someone so interested in playing conceptual name games, Hurst’s choice of pseudonyms, like the most gratifying aspects of Jream House, is surprisingly straightforward. | 2016-02-02T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2016-02-02T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Electronic | Other People | February 2, 2016 | 6.7 | 0e66eabd-5860-4b9c-832e-a28f9d535224 | Miles Raymer | https://pitchfork.com/staff/miles-raymer/ | null |
The third album from the impressionistic New Zealand singer-songwriter eludes easy classification, which makes her delicately built and beautifully rendered songs all the more alluring. | The third album from the impressionistic New Zealand singer-songwriter eludes easy classification, which makes her delicately built and beautifully rendered songs all the more alluring. | Aldous Harding: Designer | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aldous-harding-designer/ | Designer | With Aldous Harding, there are no easy answers. Since releasing her self-titled debut in 2014, the New Zealand singer-songwriter has dodged those who would try to put a finger on her elusive appeal. Critics tend to describe her work as “gothic folk”—a label that misses the idiosyncrasies of her ambitious, largely acoustic songs, muting their pockets of color. Harding’s many voices, cycling through octaves and timbres, add another layer of mystique. And then there’s her abiding lack of interest in discussing the meaning behind her music. “We’re expected to be able to explain ourselves,” she said in an interview with NPR earlier this year, “…and have purpose in a little bag that you carry around everywhere, but I don’t necessarily have that in me.”
About the closest Harding has come to interpreting her own work is to note that her eponymous record “was very much about fear” and its follow-up, 2017’s Party, centered on “love and strength.” It could be said that her third album, Designer, operates somewhere in the intersection of all three. Close reading of Harding’s songs is, to some extent, a futile exercise; the artist has admitted that sometimes their significance escapes even her. But that very fact—paradoxically, maybe—makes the act of untangling them all the more vital. They are a bit like pages in a coloring book: Harding sketches out motifs and delineates contours, but the ultimate effect depends on whichever shades happen to be handy on your personal palette.
Loosely drawn across Designer’s nine songs are images of delight teetering on the verge of anxiety. Harding ruminates on the innocence of youth and sings of chatting with her “inner child” on long car rides, but she also entertains corollary doubts about child-rearing. On “Heaven Is Empty,” one of the album’s most surreal passages involves the appearance of an alien, baby-bearing stork; Harding’s narrator climbs onto his back and kisses his neck to dissuade him from delivering his parcel. A line from “The Barrel” suggests a similar sentiment, in less jarring terms: “When you have a child, so begins the braiding,” Harding cautions in a smooth alto, “and in that braid you stay.”
The concept of braiding is significant: It taps into a totalizing fear of making life choices that might ensnare you, as plaits tamp down flyaways. This worry surfaces repeatedly throughout the album. On “The Barrel,” it accompanies uneasy intimations of domesticity—both the mention of having kids and references to a date being set (for nuptials, perhaps). “I feel your love,” she sings, but it sounds a little like “I fear your love.” The feeling escalates on the subsequent track, where Harding sings about wearing chains that jangle when she tries to jump, and on “Weight of the Planets,” which hints at an abruptly terminated relationship. None of this is to suggest that Designer’s songs are the mere lamentations of a commitment-phobe. On the contrary, they feel exuberant, buoyed by their rigorously, and delightfully, exploratory production. So often, fear of commitment is counterbalanced by faith in life’s infinite possibilities—why stick to a single path when there is so much to see? Tracks like “The Barrel,” with its bold baritone sax blasts and chipper percussion (in the song’s video, Harding plays shakers while dancing around in her underwear), transcend their anxieties, proposing experimentation and play as the way forward.
Harding’s partner in this effort is producer John Parish, a collaborator she shares with Perfume Genius and the folk-pop singer (and fellow Kiwi) Laura Jean. With this release, the pair continue the project they began on Party, lifting sounds from outside of a traditional folk vernacular: Harding’s springily plucked acoustic guitar is, at various moments, accompanied by saxophones and drum loops, xylophones and synths. Choral backup adds texture to Harding’s already chameleonic vocals. Such unexpected flourishes can add drama or levity, or sometimes both in the space of a single song (“Weight of the Planets” is furnished with both grandiose string lilts and sampled whoop!s); they act as critical markers of tone in the moments when Harding’s lyrics bridge the gap between ambiguous and straight-up unintelligible.
Even where her imagery is cryptic, Harding’s lyrics can resonate on a purely sensory level. She manipulates details with the delicacy of someone threading a needle: “You slide like a bangle down the day’s arm,” she muses on the elegantly impressionistic closer, “Pilot.” Singing, “In the corner in blue is my name,” on “Fixture Picture,” she might as well cast herself in a Picasso painting. The best moments on this record arrive when Harding’s playful approach to words syncs up with her playful approach to sound. The logic driving the end result may remain hidden, but its allure is undeniable. | 2019-04-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-04-26T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | 4AD | April 26, 2019 | 8 | 0e693ea4-1971-4d76-8129-b48fe7344083 | Olivia Horn | https://pitchfork.com/staff/olivia-horn / | |
Meg Baird's third album is the closest she has come in her solo work to reclaiming the cosmic turf once occupied by her former group, Espers. Charlie Saufley, formerly of San Francisco acid rock heavyweights the Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, joins her throughout. | Meg Baird's third album is the closest she has come in her solo work to reclaiming the cosmic turf once occupied by her former group, Espers. Charlie Saufley, formerly of San Francisco acid rock heavyweights the Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, joins her throughout. | Meg Baird: Don't Weigh Down the Light | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20632-dont-weigh-down-the-light/ | Don't Weigh Down the Light | Meg Baird's career has seldom lacked for action or variety; she co-founded the highly esteemed Philly psych-folk group Espers, has performed with her sister Laura as the Baird Sisters, played drums with noisy punk combo Watery Love, and sung alongside the likes of Kurt Vile, Will Oldham, and Sharon Van Etten. If she so chose, she surely has the skills and connections to make an expansive, cross-genre album studded with guest appearances, but she hasn't seemed interested in that. She has always kept her solo albums streamlined and direct, focusing her songs almost exclusively on her finger-picked guitar and radiant voice. Likewise, her thematic approach has never been panoramic; instead her albums tend to feel like private journals, wherein a particular mood is set and then sustained and refined.
The same holds true, with a few subtle but important variations, for Baird's third solo album, Don't Weigh Down the Light. Her past albums have featured several interpretations of traditional folk standards and well-wrought covers of such obscurities as House of Love's "Beatles and the Stones". In fact her style is so steeped in British and Appalachian folk forms that at times even her original songs have sounded as if they had been written in a previous century. On Don't Weigh Down the Light, however, all of the tracks are Baird originals, and are less reliant on traditional folk idioms.
Where her previous album, 2011's Seasons on Earth, was ornamented with pedal steel and other subtle country touches, Baird is here joined throughout by Charlie Saufley, formerly of SF acid rock heavyweights the Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound. On several tracks here the duo of Baird and Saufley masquerade as a full band, with each playing multiple instruments and filling the songs' ample open spaces with gentle ripples of organ, 12-string guitar, and percussion. As a result Don't Weigh Down the Light is the closest Baird has come in her solo work to reclaiming the cosmic turf once occupied by Espers.
In the time since the release of Seasons on Earth, Baird moved from her longtime base of Philadelphia to San Francisco, and it doesn't feel too outlandish to suggest that Baird's move has had a substantial influence on Don't Weigh Down the Light. There is a general feel of transition and displacement permeating such tracks as "Past Houses" or "Even the Walls Don't Want You to Go". Midway through the album is a short track simply entitled "Leaving Song", featuring nothing but Baird's multi-tracked vocals, wordlessly cascading down in a manner that can sound alternately melancholic or prayer-like, depending on the listener's current frame of mind.
Brief though the track is, its placement seems noteworthy, almost as though it is the hinge upon which the rest of the album is meant to pivot. Curiously, the vocal melody of "Leaving Song" returns a few songs later as a background track on "Even the Walls Don't Want You to Go". This echoing, especially when coupled with the following reprise of the song "Past Houses", gives the album a circular feel, as though Baird's songs are doubling back upon themselves in a continuous loop of departures and arrivals.
Baird's voice sounds as potent and icy-clear as ever. As evidenced by her work with Espers and the Baird Sisters, her voice is well-suited to close-harmony singing, and here she makes frequent use of vocal multi-tracking, adding whispery harmonies at what sounds like the upper limits of her register. In combination with the casual jammy vibe on some of the instrumental passages, these airy harmonies recall some of the folkier aspects of Popol Vuh. In recent months Baird and Saufley have joined forces with Comets on Fire's Ethan Miller to form the West Coast psych outfit Heron Oblivion, and if their work together on Don't Weigh Down the Light is any indication, that might herald even further fruitful departures. | 2015-06-19T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2015-06-19T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Drag City / Wichita | June 19, 2015 | 7.1 | 0e6e2823-81f1-42fc-a1b5-b49d455d96cb | Matthew Murphy | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-murphy/ | null |
The Pink Floyd frontman teamed with producer Nigel Godrich for his new album. They don’t take many risks, but Roger Waters presents some of his most focused songs since the mid-’70s. | The Pink Floyd frontman teamed with producer Nigel Godrich for his new album. They don’t take many risks, but Roger Waters presents some of his most focused songs since the mid-’70s. | Roger Waters: Is This the Life We Really Want? | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23266-is-this-the-life-we-really-want/ | Is This the Life We Really Want? | It’s been abundantly well documented that by the time Pink Floyd set out to record their sprawling 1979 double album The Wall, internal friction over bassist/frontman Roger Waters’ push for creative control had reached a breaking point. In a sense, The Wall crushed the classic lineup of Pink Floyd, but it’s been Waters who’s had the hardest time getting out from under its weight. For much of his solo career—1987’s Radio K.A.O.S. and 1992’s Amused to Death in particular—he has more or less repeated The Wall’s musical style and conceptual grandiosity, at times appearing both stuck and ungrounded without his former bandmates. Waters has even staged his own productions of The Wall and released two different live recordings of it.
On paper, his decision to work with famed producer Nigel Godrich for Is This the Life We Really Want? looks like a much-needed injection of new blood. After all, Godrich’s signature sound has been a cornerstone in the legacies of Radiohead and Beck. His touch is immediately apparent from the outset, as Is This the Life opens with a ticking clock, bass played in the pulse of a heartbeat, and muffled voices—like Radiohead’s OK Computer interlude “Fitter Happier” meets the iconic intro to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon cut “Time.” Before you can make out what the voices are saying, their cadence and tones suggest a broadcast of some kind—a motif that runs through both Radio K.A.O.S. and Amused to Death.
As the voices come into focus, you realize you’re hearing multiple tracks of Waters himself. At first, the words come tumbling down in a heap of unrelated gibberish. “Where are you now?” asks one of the voices. Then, after a slight pause: “Don’t answer that.” Another: “I’m still ugly; you’re still fat.” Eventually, a train of thought begins to form: “Our parents made us who we are. Or was it God? Who gives a fuck; it’s never really over.” Now craggy and deep, Waters’ speaking voice could probably give the late Orson Welles a run for his money. Without question, he would excel at doing radio theatre. And though Waters’ singing voice was already sounding nicely age-worn in ’92, here he switches with great agility between his usual confidence and a newfound frailty that recalls Johnny Cash’s final output.
Is This the Life leaves little doubt that Waters has seasoned in the 25 years since Amused to Death. But aside from his 2005 opera Ça Ira, he’s still hung up on the same themes. Depending on your perspective, this will either strike you as reassuringly familiar or maddeningly one-track minded—maybe even both. To be fair, Waters was ahead of the curve in lamenting our attachment to media saturation on *Amused to Death—*modern life has basically become what that album anticipated. So it makes sense that Is This the Life answers back with a plea for sanity. And to his credit, much of it comes across as both sincere and necessary—albeit draped in Waters’ habit of being preachy and pedantic. (Two years ago, he described the new material as his way of sending humanity a mediocre report card.)
Yes, the radio-style announcements at the top of “The Last Refugee” would indicate that Waters hasn’t stretched much beyond his now-predictable arsenal of sound effects. The same goes for its languid drumbeat. The album even calls Godrich into question—tunes like “The Last Refugee” and “Is This the Life We Really Want?” are sometimes hard to tell apart from Sea Change-era Beck. Godrich and Waters didn’t push each other to break new ground as much as one might have hoped. But “The Last Refugee,” with its images of lovers lying “Under lemon tree skies” and “Dreams/Up to our knees/In warm ocean swells,” also shows that Waters has grown into an evocative poet—that is, when he isn’t spelling out his message on songs like “Picture That.” “Picture your kid with his hand on the trigger,” he sings, “Picture prosthetics in Afghanistan.” Then again, it’s hard to argue with a verse like “Picture a shithouse, with no fucking drains/Picture a leader, with no fucking brains.”
Waters’ predictability doesn’t diminish his effortless songwriting, and Is This the Life We Really Want? presents his tightest, most focused songs since the mid-’70s. “Wish You Were Here in Guantanamo Bay,” he sings on “Picture That.” The first letters of the phrase are capitalized in the lyric sheet, a sly nod to both the popular tourist postcard and, of course, to the Pink Floyd song and album of the same name. Even casual fans will spot Waters’ hint of the old melody right away. Is This the Life’s myriad sonic references to his work with Pink Floyd suggest that Waters is comfortable with his past. The more you accept how much his past reflects in his present, the more receptive you’ll be to this album’s charms. | 2017-05-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Columbia | May 27, 2017 | 6.9 | 0e6e4563-8765-4f69-b5a0-373b66df7f04 | Saby Reyes-Kulkarni | https://pitchfork.com/staff/saby-reyes-kulkarni/ | null |
Romantic “mood music” isn’t what most listeners expect from Nels Cline, but on his Blue Note debut, the Wilco guitarist delivers a chamber-orchestra set that visits some American songbook standards. | Romantic “mood music” isn’t what most listeners expect from Nels Cline, but on his Blue Note debut, the Wilco guitarist delivers a chamber-orchestra set that visits some American songbook standards. | Nels Cline: Lovers | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22188-lovers/ | Lovers | Fans of Nels Cline are accustomed to his adaptability. After starting his career in jazz’s progressive currents—and playing alongside saxophonist Julius Hemphill—the guitarist later became a member of Wilco, starting with Sky Blue Sky. He’s also maintained a feverish schedule as a solo artist: participating in improv-noise summits with Thurston Moore and recording an album with the fusionists in Medeski, Martin & Wood.
Still, ardent followers of this guitarist may be unprepared for his latest reinvention. Romantic “mood music” isn’t what most listeners expect from him—even if refined, soft-touch playing has long been one aspect of his overall sound. On his 2xCD debut for the Blue Note label, Cline has delivered a chamber-orchestra set that’s notable for relying on some “Great American Songbook” standards by the likes of Jerome Kern and Rodgers & Hammerstein.
This isn’t a setup for some punkish deconstruction, either. The album starts off with a quarter-hour that sounds surprisingly straight-ahead. (Even the adventurous touches in the early going can be traced back to Gil Evans, Miles Davis’ sometime big-band arranger). Cline and his talented supporting musicians play “Glad to Be Unhappy” without any hint of camp—instead endeavoring to treat familiar themes with tenderness. Outside of those performances, the album offers some pensive Cline originals, as well as covers that wouldn’t normally be assigned to a “standards” group.
It’s this final batch of songs that gives Lovers an edge. The inclusion of pieces by experimentalist Arto Lindsay and Third Stream saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre honors Cline’s diverse fascinations, yet what's more interesting is the way that Cline makes these compositions seem like natural extensions of a program that also includes music by Henry Mancini. After Cline and his band have moved on from Tin Pan Alley in order to visit No Wave New York, the “for lovers only” feel is maintained. The orchestra’s performances may briefly include rougher attacks, though not to such a degree that the album’s conceit is ever risked.
Much credit for this unusual achievement is due to conductor and arranger Michael Leonhart—as well as to the cast of contemporary-music ringers that Cline has assembled for his backing ensemble. Harpist Zeena Parkins, cellist Erik Friedlander, and keyboardist Yuka Honda are all familiar to frequenters of America’s experimental music venues, though you’ve rarely heard them as restrained as they are on Lovers.
Initially, this can feel like a waste of good avant power. But over the course of the album, the benefits become clear. Leonhart’s arrangement of the melody to Sonic Youth’s “Snare, Girl,” goes well with the mournful lyricism of Rodgers’s “I Have Dreamed.” And a droning, exploratory version of Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo’s “Lady Gabor” winds up sharing a sound-world with Lindsay’s Ambitious Lovers track “It Only Has To Happen Once.”
Cline’s guitar playing delights in this parade of upset expectations, too—sounding dirtier in Kern’s “Why Was I Born?” than during the various resettings of modernist rock. He plays lap steel during “Dreamed,” and swings amiably on other vintage cuts like “Beautiful Love” and “Secret Love.” The only task he doesn’t quite pull off is the composition of original themes that stand with the classics he’s selected. Almost half of the first CD is made up of Cline originals, and these pale a bit in comparison with the surrounding material. Though thanks to its sly and measured embrace of the experimental, Lovers still has all the originality it needs to endear. | 2016-08-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-08-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Jazz | Blue Note | August 6, 2016 | 7.6 | 0e747ee9-99d6-4b4b-bf92-ecc8bfbae5be | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | null |
The Mancunian saxophonist and poet’s warm and wise album is a balm of spoken word and spiritual jazz, both strangely uncomfortable and strangely comforting. | The Mancunian saxophonist and poet’s warm and wise album is a balm of spoken word and spiritual jazz, both strangely uncomfortable and strangely comforting. | Alabaster DePlume: Gold - Go Forward in the Courage of Your Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/alabaster-deplume-gold-go-forward-in-the-courage-of-your-love/ | Gold - Go Forward in the Courage of Your Love | Alabaster DePlume is a lot of things—a saxophonist, a poet, an arranger, a social node in London’s jazz scene—but above all, he’s a person who wants you to treat yourself with more kindness, gentleness, and self-respect. On GOLD, his second album for International Anthem, he applies self-love like an exfoliant, scraping off the old skin of cynicism and exposing the clean and vulnerable surface below. He is, as he says multiple times on this record, “brazen, like a baby,” and while that means the Mancunian musician born Gus Fairbairn is often agog at the fresh beauty of the world, it also means he’s uniquely attuned to its difficulties. Even when it’s comforting, GOLD is not comfortable.
GOLD follows 2020’s To Cy and Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1, an astounding collection of songs DePlume developed from melodies he made up with the titular pair, two men with learning disabilities he met while working for a Manchester non-profit. The same mutual care is at work throughout GOLD. The album was recorded over a couple of weeks in long, improvised sessions DePlume later stitched together into songs. None of the players were given the music beforehand, and no one was allowed to listen to playback. The entire ensemble was forced to feel their way through the sessions, an extramusical effect that could be maddeningly twee if the results weren’t so consistently breathtaking.
Despite its evangelical spirit and its benedictory subtitle, Go Forward in the Courage of Your Love, GOLD is aimed primarily at its creator. In “Don’t Forget You’re Precious,” DePlume turns the song toward himself, running through the trivial things he calls to mind more easily than his self-worth: PINs, old email addresses, Instagram. As a saxophonist, he plays in series of short phrases that ripple with the soft wind of a bedsheet being fluffed, but his vocals carry a hint of decadence, and he takes an evident pleasure in the feeling of the words, especially when he makes his way to an emotional punchline. “I remember my shame,” he finally sings in “Precious,” exhaling the song’s key like it’s the final winning phrase of an incantation.
In “I’m Good at Not Crying,” he rolls through all the ways he makes his personality disappear—he’s “not needing,” “not demanding,” “not making a scene”—in a soft deadpan. Girl-group harmonies swirl around him, their phrases going in and out of legibility, while a guitar pinches its way to the top of a melody and slackens back down again. The mix dips DePlume into a slow-moving spree, its lack of center mirroring the evasiveness of the lyrics. “I don’t know, you know?” he warily repeats as a drumbeat tries to shake him out of it. In the ensuing song, “Now (Stars Are Lit),” he wails freely on his sax, finally letting out the frustrations he couldn’t work his way toward in the prior song.
DePlume’s guiding idea on GOLD is to alchemize fear into courage and love. It’s difficult work—there’s a soft patience to this music that suggests he knows he could be burned at any moment. That caution tempers the exuberance of a song like “Fucking Let Them,” in which a spoken-word manifesto gives way to a waxy jam from the ensemble. There’s a tacit acknowledgment of pain in nearly every track here, a subtle reminder that people don’t tend to search for peace unless they’re experiencing its opposite. Part of the album’s genius comes from its construction—because the structure was applied after the fact, and because the individual players were so attuned to one another, the songs are rich with possibility. Plenty of quiet music feels this way, of course, but the ensemble never seems to be straining toward the next movement; their stillness wouldn’t rattle crepe paper.
You can hear it in the deliberate pace of the opener “A Gente Acaba (Vento Em Rosa),” how even as it builds to a rolling climax, DePlume never overblows his sax. The band, too, stays together, despite the song urging them to burst apart in ecstasy. It’s as if they recognize the music’s role as a grounding rod and are wary of knocking it over. Restraint, patience, trust: time and again they make GOLD sound like an incredibly wise record.
It comes in handy later in the album, when the ambiguity DePlume has cultivated nearly overtakes him. On “Visitors YT15 - Krupp Steel Condition Pivot,” pips of wordless vocals surround him on every side. His sax slowly finds its way among the voices, like he’s testing the acoustics in a series of smaller and smaller rooms to see how well they reflect the sound back to him. On the penultimate song “Broken Like,” he returns to the words of the manifesto he laid out in “Fucking Let Them,” his voice nearly shot and his manner worn thin; he can’t even bring himself to say the word “love” as he repeats the album’s subtitle.
And yet, we know it’s there. As closer “Now (Pink Triangle, Blue Valley)” stumbles mournfully back through the sympathetic chords of “A Gente Acaba,” with sax and slide guitar trading whimpers and a piano winding its way toward indignation, DePlume’s exhausted, depleted singing in “Broken Like” lingers in the atmosphere. The mood has changed. The work has become difficult, nearly too much to bear. But the message remains the same. | 2022-04-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-04-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | International Anthem | April 1, 2022 | 8.4 | 0e781d74-b614-436c-9e93-fc2b65584000 | Sadie Sartini Garner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sadie-sartini garner/ | |
Marco del Rio’s songs are full of riffs that become more nauseating the longer you listen. It all sounds wrong, in the most menacing possible way. | Marco del Rio’s songs are full of riffs that become more nauseating the longer you listen. It all sounds wrong, in the most menacing possible way. | Raspberry Bulbs: Before the Age of Mirrors | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/raspberry-bulbs-before-the-age-of-mirrors/ | Before the Age of Mirrors | Even after a long career making creeping heavy music in projects like Bone Awl and He Who Crushes Teeth, the music that Marco del Rio has made over the past decade as Raspberry Bulbs is uniquely unsettling. First on his own and then with a shifting cast of collaborators, he’s mined the most curdled corners of punk and metal to make both tortured no-fi efforts and more recent full-band recordings that feel cosmically off-balance. His songs are full of riffs that become more nauseating the longer you listen to them. At their best, the songs are autostereograms in reverse: They start out looking like something you’ve encountered before, then dissolve into unparsable, overwhelming noise.
Before the Age of Mirrors is the first Raspberry Bulbs full-length since 2014, but it picks up these threads right where the last, Privacy, left off. Across eight proper tracks and four shorter interludes, del Rio and his band—guitarist Nick Forte and drummer Jim Ning Nong—lead listeners to a world of sharp edges, sudden pitfalls, and hidden dangers. As devotees of raw punk and deathrock, they sometimes channel those familiar shuddering sounds, but there’s something even more sinister in pieces like “They’re After Me,” a burst of paranoid desperation scoured by feedback. As ever, del Rio tops the track with his distinctive vocals—which, scraped by distortion and noise, are the sort of sounds you might hear echoing from behind a dumpster in a David Lynch film. It all sounds wrong, in the most menacing possible way.
Because of del Rio’s caustic bark and the general haze of Raspberry Bulbs’ self-engineered recordings, their lyrics have traditionally been tough to decipher. The specifics still sometimes get garbled in the fuzz, but on Before the Age of Mirrors, you can make out a little more about the otherworldly spaces these songs explore. Del Rio’s characters are overwhelmed and at the brink, doing whatever they can to outrun the mysterious forces clawing at their heels. “Doggerel” blurs together military commands and the violence of the natural world, meditating on the grim image of a dog torn to shreds by a wild boar. Elsewhere del Rio’s characters contemplate eternity, confront old gods, and strain in pursuit of truth that’s always just out of reach. He occasionally comes off as a harried street preacher, offering small wisdoms and impressionistic proverbs, like the one that closes “Reclaimed Church”: “The man who appears as a dog/Has the blood of a dog.”
If you don’t know exactly what he’s going on about, that’s probably the point. Del Rio has often spoken about his music’s adherence to the ideals of the speculative, surreal genre of prose called “weird fiction.” That term is a broad umbrella, linking literature across eras and continents, but its most famous practitioners create worlds both monstrous and mysterious, full of shadowy corners and distressing symbology. Writing in The Atlantic about an anthology of the genre that he co-edited a few years ago, the author Jeff VanderMeer theorized that its appeal stems from the way the real world often feels just as upsetting and unknowable as the ones in the stories. Weird fiction, he wrote, has a way of “showing us as we truly are. Unruly. Unruled. Superstitious. Absurd.” Before the Age of Mirrors does the same. Unhinged as it is, it’s a cathartic expression of the way the world is: messy, ugly, and real.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-02-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-02-24T01:00:00.000-05:00 | null | Relapse | February 24, 2020 | 7.1 | 0e798e51-b483-4efc-9dd4-4ce9ec6c38f3 | Colin Joyce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-joyce/ | |
The restless avant-folk songwriter Ben Chasny returns with a record that distills his obessions into a coherent whole. | The restless avant-folk songwriter Ben Chasny returns with a record that distills his obessions into a coherent whole. | Six Organs of Admittance: Asleep on the Floodplain | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15185-asleep-on-the-floodplain/ | Asleep on the Floodplain | As selfish as it seems, I sometimes wish that Ben Chasny-- for more than a decade now, the architect of one of America's best-ever psychedelic syndicates, Six Organs of Admittance-- would sit still. Across more than a dozen albums and even more collaborations, Chasny has proven the restless sort who bounces between sounds, structures, and ideas with the curiosity of a precocious teenager. Scrappy meditations for acoustic guitar, epic drone escapades for ensembles, breezy folk-rock ruminations for a full band: Chasny has played it all, sometimes on the same album and oftentimes with mixed results. Some of his most riveting work brushes against some of his most rote, with some of his most inspired pieces settling alongside his most insipid. The discography of the unquestionably talented Chasny, then, has been a fascinating if frustrating listen, where the attempt has always seemed more important than the execution.
Asleep on the Floodplain, Chasny's fifth for Drag City since 2005, again finds the Six Organs mastermind eager to roam. "S/word and Leviathan", for instance, builds for 10 minutes through layers of dulcimer melodies, electronic rumbles, and harmonium sustains before arriving, in its final three minutes, at a mantra inspired by theology pioneer Catherine Keller. The tunes around it, though, don't even cross the three-minute mark. "Poppies" is a kinetic 61-second adventure for acoustic guitar, built on a theme that lends itself to repetition and long variations that come to a sudden stop. The marathon's other bookend, "A New Name on an Old Cement Bridge", is another instrumental, but this one's a concentric beauty, where the acoustic melody moves with graceful deliberation over a harmonium drone.
Three more tracks on Asleep are instrumentals-- the cresting opener "Above A Desert I've Never Seen" the glowing "Brilliant Blue Sea Between Us", and the curling "Saint of Fishermen". But Chasny turns in one of his best pop songs to date, too, "Light of the Light," a hummable little hymn to impermanence. As on 2009's Luminous Night, Asleep on the Floodplain again attempts to corral Chasny's range; this time, it actually works, gathering all of his impulses into one of his more accessible, endearing albums to date. On "Brilliant Blue Sea Between Us", electric guitar chords drift through another harmonium haze. Chasny's winding acoustic improvisations eventually goad its slow roll forward. Majestic and lumbering, the tune suggests drone wizard Tom Carter collaborating with young British guitarist James Blackshaw. Mostly, though, it feels like a strong synthesis of Chasny's interests: Despite its variability, Asleep on the Floodplain is like a cohesive record not because Chasny favors any one style over another (he doesn't) but because he feels confident and comfortable with each look. It's as though he's roved enough that he finally knows how to finesse each of his interests into something seamles.
About six years ago, Six Organs of Admittance was something like a buzz band, swept into the rising tide of what was called freak-folk or New Weird America. Devendra Banhart placed Chasny alongside Joanna Newsom, Iron & Wine, Jack Rose, Antony and more than a dozen others for Arthur Magazine's compilation, The Golden Apples of the Sun, he got a Drag City deal, and his rock band, Comets on Fire, was signed to Sub Pop. But as freak-folk as a fad has faded, Chasny's star has suffered due less to a lack of musical quality and more to a lack of stylistic consistency. He's been difficult to label. Has it been folk rock or freak folk, free folk or just plain folk? Asleep on the Floodplain triumphantly answers back none of those. Rather, Chasny has distilled all of his impulses and obsessions-- slow drones and brisk picking, solemn mumbles and cheery riffs, ponderous lyrics, and ruminative instrumentals-- into 43 muted, marvelous minutes. It's the sort of record that finds the workmanlike Chasny doing what he does better than most, all at once but never too quickly. | 2011-03-09T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2011-03-09T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Experimental | Drag City | March 9, 2011 | 7.8 | 0e7e617b-c444-4948-a63b-3d60adbb9b49 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
With the help of Phoebe Bridgers, Conor Oberst, and others, this career collaborator steps into the spotlight with a stunningly empathetic study of human frailties. | With the help of Phoebe Bridgers, Conor Oberst, and others, this career collaborator steps into the spotlight with a stunningly empathetic study of human frailties. | Christian Lee Hutson: Beginners | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/christian-lee-hutson-beginners/ | Beginners | We’ll begin with the strangest song on the record: “Get the Old Band Back Together,” a jocular sing-a-long, replete with harmonica and hand claps, on a record otherwise composed of finger-picked dirges. “Let’s get the old band back together again!” Hutson sings, fronting a gleeful chorus. “Let’s get in the room and let the magic happen!” Though something very special does happen on this album, credit is due not to magic, but to Hutson’s extraordinarily talented ensemble. That’s Conor Oberst you hear on that harmonica, and Lucy Dacus and Meg Duffy in the mix, and Phoebe Bridgers at the boards. With friends like these, who needs sorcery?
Christian Lee Hutson is presently best known for his collaborations with Bridgers, having co-written songs on both boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Center. Traces of his career prior to their link-up are scarce. He recorded two solo albums in the early 2010s, neither of which appears to be currently available on streaming services. In the absence of any earlier trajectory to trace, a few key questions—who this guy is, where the hell he came from, how he got so goddamn good at this—will have to go unanswered. Hutson does not seek to reinvent the wheel on “Beginners.” He offers nothing you’ve not heard before. Even his voice sounds familiar on first listen, a dead ringer in many places for the delicate timbre of Paul Simon. But Hutson’s particular variation on finger-picked folk is as refined and masterfully crafted as you’ll find anywhere.
What distinguishes Beginners from any number of other, lesser albums are Hutson’s unflinching probes into human fallibility. On opener “Atheist,” Hutson shrugs at a Sunday School hymn: “It went like, ‘Angels watching over us, all our little lives’/I don’t know if I buy it, but it does sound kinda nice.” This moment sets the stage for a record which turns away from grand metaphysical questions and toward mundane manmade struggle. Whether he’s singing about outpatient rehabilitation (“Seven Lakes”), a hostile high school (“Northsiders”), or the deterioration of an intimate relationship (every other track, just about), Hutson’s focus remains the ways in which human beings can’t help but hurt one another.
He’s even brave enough to cast himself as the scoundrel on a few tracks. On “Unforgivable,” when he dismisses a partner with, “I just can’t fucking do it anymore,” he slows and stresses the cruelest word, earning it like a television writer allotted only one per season. His delivery of the downright-malevolent “Keep You Down” is just as indelible. When he winces on the chorus’ high harmonies, it’s as though he feels the very pain his narrator inflicts. There is something refreshing in seeing a songwriter so mindful of his capacity for betrayal, and so effortfully working to fix the damage he’s done. “Lose This Number” is especially moving, the haughty fuck-off of its title phrase becoming a yearning plea for connection as he fondly reminisces with someone he once loved. “You don’t have to forgive me,” he sings. “Hell, you probably shouldn’t.”
Hutson is at his very best when he’s not showing off. He occasionally rivals Hemingway for the amount of sheer devastation he can pack into six words. On “Talk,” taking a neglectful parent to task, he sings, “I was raised over the phone”—a damning indictment, no pretty poetry necessary. He stumbles only when he doesn’t give these moments room to breathe, as with the shocking climax of “Northsiders,” a gut-punch too quickly swallowed up by the song’s breezy schoolyard rhyme scheme. Some of his darlings, too, would be better off killed. “It’s like I was born on the back of a bullet/With your name written on it” is a lovely lyric, but out of place in the intimate late-night conversation of “Lose This Number.” This sort of adornment only distracts from the great strength of his simple language and imagery.
Hutson’s musical style finds a perfect complement in Bridgers’ subtle production. She carefully seasons Hutson’s acoustic finger-picking with other instrumental layers—a tart keyboard line on “Twin Soul,” a crisp cymbal on “Lose This Number,” and buttery strings throughout—to bring out the flavor of his playing, but never overwhelm its delicacy. Another collaborator, Nathaniel Walcott of Bright Eyes, is responsible for the marvel of Beginners’ string arrangements. This record was made with friends in the room, and those friends were invariably extraordinarily talented. The starry group of back-up singers from “Get the Old Band Back Together” make a welcome return on the final number, “Single for the Summer.” There, they all repeat a single line—“It’s gonna happen any day now”—with an air of rebellious optimism and so much conviction you can’t help but believe them. We may not be guarded by angels, but human beings can make for a pretty fine choir in a pinch.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-06-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-06-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Anti- | June 1, 2020 | 7.8 | 0e82a09e-ceac-4cc7-8e0d-140b88afd78e | Peyton Thomas | https://pitchfork.com/staff/peyton-thomas/ | |
The London singer-songwriter’s debut LP frames big themes—the heaviness of life and death, the duality in ecstasy and pain—in skeletal, atmospheric indie rock. | The London singer-songwriter’s debut LP frames big themes—the heaviness of life and death, the duality in ecstasy and pain—in skeletal, atmospheric indie rock. | mark william lewis: Living | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mark-william-lewis-living/ | Living | mark william lewis often seems to be lost in thought. Over the past couple of years, the London singer-songwriter has established himself as one of the most pensive and probing artists in the constellation of experimenters loosely orbiting Dean Blunt and his World Music Group label. Like some of the elusive artists in that foggy scene, lewis hasn’t shared much biographical information publicly. Still, his songs reveal enough: a fixation on the heaviness of life and death, the intertwined nature of intimacy and disconnect, and the duality of ecstasy and pain. In a low, creaky voice that feels like it was made to carry the weight of these heavy thematic concerns, he mulls and meanders, finding joy, most often, in the searching.
Living, lewis’ first full-length, begins deep within one of these meditations. Opener “Coming” joins echoey, yearning guitar lines with floating double bass and lewis’ rumbling whisper, which offers a series of foreboding thoughts that culminate in a grim proclamation: “There’s so much violence/So much fucking stress.” The exact source of his turmoil is never made entirely clear; nor does he ever sound too bent out of shape about it.
This mood—downcast but not defeated—continues throughout. On “Enough,” lewis considers the toll of interpersonal turmoil, describing emotional suffering over a trudging, languid arrangement. Elsewhere, on the sparse, dreamy “The Heat,” he mutters about natural forces in a way that feels opaque and threatening. Still, no matter how ominous his subject matter, he trudges onward, with a sigh, because what else is there to do? His voice sounds burdened at points, but he mostly seems at ease—describing the weight of the world while knowing he has little choice but to keep shouldering it.
Across the record, the production holds a mirror to his muddled headspace in a way that feels moving and vulnerable. On previous projects, lewis traded in tightly wound percussion and desperate, distressed guitars that recalled tense indie-rock acts like Duster or Alex G, but on Living, he spaces out a bit more. On the dreary, wordless “Romantic Horror,” he begins with mangled arpeggios that coalesce into an elliptical instrumental that’s heavy on repetition and suggestion. Guitars are clouded in stuttering delay, basslines feel like they’ll drift off, unmoored, into the ether. Melodies relapse and recur, in a way that evokes Bark Psychosis’ hazy post-rock refractions or Vini Reilly’s celestial guitar explorations. These moments make the times that lewis sings his gruff-voiced koans all the more affecting—they paint him as a figure emerging suddenly from the mist, carrying wisdom deeper than even he knows.
As much as lewis reveals where his head’s at, he never really fully offers any answers to the biggest questions he asks, and the ambiguity invites listeners to obsess alongside him. That quality is exhibited most clearly on the closing title track, where he fixates on a person he can’t get out of his mind before pausing briefly to offer a stray question: “How good can it get?” Judging from the title, he’s talking about life itself. But it’s not entirely clear whether he’s asking from a place of abundance or dissatisfaction—whether he thinks that things can and will improve, or if he’ll be stuck feeling the way he’s feeling forever. The thought repeats throughout the song, never getting any clearer. And yet he still perseveres—the only way to find out the answers, he seems to suggest, is to just keep on living. | 2023-02-02T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2023-02-02T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rock | self-released | February 2, 2023 | 7.6 | 0e857ab6-31f2-4d3e-aa05-1d53aec6f8bd | Colin Joyce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-joyce/ | |
With the second album from his Slaughter Beach, Dog project, Jake Ewald of Modern Baseball has found his voice as a musician, though he’s still searching as a writer. | With the second album from his Slaughter Beach, Dog project, Jake Ewald of Modern Baseball has found his voice as a musician, though he’s still searching as a writer. | Slaughter Beach, Dog: Birdie | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/slaughter-beach-dog-birdie/ | Birdie | Modern Baseball were a band of the people: total transparency was a major factor in their success and perhaps the biggest in their recent decision to take a break. On 2016’s Holy Ghost and in its making-of documentary, Brendan Lukens and Jake Ewald were as upfront about their struggles with substance abuse, mental illness, and exhaustion as they were about the nuances of social media and high school heartbreak. But unlike before, airing it out on stage every night was a problem, not a solution. And so in September of 2016—with the first album from his project Slaughter Beach, Dog—Ewald began distancing himself from Modern Baseball by writing about someone other than himself. While he constructed the fictional “Slaughter Beach” to combat writer’s block within his main gig, with MoBo now on hiatus, Ewald allows himself to play the lead role again.
If Ewald isn’t the narrator on Birdie, these guys sure have a lot in common with him. Ewald returns to reality in familiar settings—bonding over gin in apartments, nodding off while traveling to and from Philadelphia, Maryland, and Delaware (vis a vis a lyrical homage to the Promise Ring). “I love looking at your pictures, but I still wish that I’d brought more,” Ewald sings on “Bad Beer,” a tour diary and presumptive companion track to Holy Ghost’s long-distance love letter “Mass.” Compared to his past work, Ewald’s sonic and emotional palette are rendered in cooler shades, mostly amber and sepia. Birdie is a point on a familiar trajectory, literal post-punk in the manner of John K. Samson’s solo projects or Tim Kasher’s the Good Life. It’s a means for verbose songwriters to transition towards a more sustainable format, maintaining a sardonic edge to what might otherwise threaten to become cloying indie-folk.
In that regard, the chipper backup vocals and beaming geniality of “Pretty O.K.” test Ewald’s boundaries—yet it’s the shrugging sentiment of the chorus itself that becomes the most substantial, if unintended indictment of Birdie. The spare arrangements and easy tempos ensure that Ewald’s storytelling remains the focal point. But there’s a disappointing lack of conflict, or stakes, or sense that outcomes aren’t predestined to be pretty OK.
Ewald remains adept at cutting dialogue and creating characters with dimension: at the outset of “Pretty O.K.,” a formative friend named Luis is given a familiar outline (“his darkened room all full of porn and ICP CDs”), before Ewald gets to the core of his blasé outlook on life outside his father’s double-wide (“he had no middle name and no desire to go to college”). Meanwhile, in “Phoenix,” Ewald imagines a partner’s “strung-out” mother “making all the world her ashtray,” calling out modeling commands while taking photos—a powerful image that only serves as a digression, a character actor given an underwritten role. Without these cameos, Birdie’s midsection breezes by, both as pleasant and memorable as small talk with a friend.
Ewald seems quite capable of one day making a real statement as Slaughter Beach, Dog, and Birdie makes a case for the staying power of the project. He sounds just as comfortable in scratchy, one-take, four-track folk (“Phoenix”) as he does in easy country rock or spare slowcore. He’s found his voice as a musician, but he’s still searching as a writer, trying to find the sweet spot between autobiographer and novelist. It’s no slight to say that Ewald is still best at his most transparent, singing to the person right in front of him. Birdie is framed by “Acolyte” and “Gold and Green,” love songs that see Ewald accessing both a world-weary wisdom and earned serenity that was out of reach even two years ago. “Man, it cuts like a dull knife/When you’re young and you’re told/‘It makes sense when you’re older’/Darling let’s get old,” he sings towards the end of “Acolyte,” welcoming maturity in a most transparent way. | 2017-11-14T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-11-14T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Lame-O | November 14, 2017 | 6.8 | 0e8d326e-8790-49ee-89fb-0da831657251 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
Crafted at home in a period of unusual focus, the Italian synthesist’s latest album feels like a reflection of a world gone haywire: one part prayer, one part screaming at the void. | Crafted at home in a period of unusual focus, the Italian synthesist’s latest album feels like a reflection of a world gone haywire: one part prayer, one part screaming at the void. | Caterina Barbieri: Spirit Exit | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/caterina-barbieri-spirit-exit/ | Spirit Exit | Holiness has a way of creeping into unexpected spaces. Caterina Barbieri’s Spirit Exit, her first foray on light-years, the label she founded after 2017’s lauded Patterns of Consciousness, is proof that the same spirit that takes hold of you in a basement club can also reach inside the walls of a locked apartment while a virus ravages the city outside. In Barbieri’s case, the space was Milan, the time 2020, and the synth virtuoso’s latest project is an aptly named portal between chaos and transcendence.
Uncertainty lets the light in, and the Italian composer’s music, created on a custom modular synth that she thinks of “more like a mechanical fortune teller,” is incandescent with discovery. The songs are an unexpected but faithful reflection of a world gone haywire: one part prayer, one part screaming at the void. Layer by layer, Spirit Exit unfolds odd-couple pairings of electronica with elements inspired by minimalism, classical guitar, and machine learning. Her influences are as bracing as the songs themselves: St. Teresa d’Avila’s 16th-century mysticism, post-humanist philosophy, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Listening to these sprawling, ecstatic compositions feels like pulling back an endless series of curtains—particularly on standout “Canticle of Cryo,” a seven-and-a-half-minute odyssey of high, plaintive vocals and arpeggios stabbed with rumbling bass notes.
As on previous compositions (like 2017’s excellent “TCCTF”), Spirit Exit is rich in slow builds and intense, polyphonic soundscapes that feel intimate despite their eeriness. But here, Barbieri trades length for depth, crafting eight arresting tracks that are more pointed and purposeful than in the past. “Broken Melody” is the shortest, at 4:26, and proves a visceral, fanged testament to how quickly these compositions can seduce. At its center is a melody that might’ve been borrowed from a medieval canticle, but it’s the texture she drapes over this foundation that imbues the song with its uncanny power—layers of fuzz and Auto-Tuned harmonies, mechanical notes pinging in the background. “Even if you’re gone, I will hold you,” she opens, high and reverberating, like a voice emanating from a cave.
Spirit Exit reflects subtle but important changes to Barbieri’s songwriting process, which she amended to fit the constraints of the pandemic. Where previous tracks took shape in concert halls and across tours, iterated and refined in community, she created this record in her home studio over a two-month period. The resulting album is taut and heightened, as captivating as her previous work but more condensed. The songs are an engaging intellectual puzzle, but they’re also incantatory and beautiful in their simplicity.
Barbieri’s dualities—holy and profane, ancient and newfangled, ecstatic and doomed—give Spirit Exit its potency. In pinging arpeggios and harpsichord-like tones, she finds a middle ground between a hymnal and a Wendy Carlos song, and in her eerily processed vocals, she nestles newfound emotional resonance inside electronic pulses. For music that evokes empty clubs and shuttered churches, built on patterns dictated by a “mechanical fortune teller,” its humanity is its most haunting quality. | 2022-07-08T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2022-07-08T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Light-Years | July 8, 2022 | 7.6 | 0e8deecc-a5aa-4b44-aa55-7cde18b0aa1f | Linnie Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/linnie-greene/ | |
The Indian composer and vocalist blends Hindustani classical music with new age synth on her dreamy, meditative debut. | The Indian composer and vocalist blends Hindustani classical music with new age synth on her dreamy, meditative debut. | Arushi Jain: Under the Lilac Sky | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/arushi-jain-under-the-lilac-sky/ | Under the Lilac Sky | Poets and artists have long looked at the dusk sky and seen glimpses of the ineffable. Composer and vocalist Arushi Jain channels this rich tradition on her debut, Under the Lilac Sky, a suite of floating synths and Indian classical melodies that evokes the moods and emotions of the evening hours. The diverse strands that come together in this dreamy, experimental sound reflect Jain’s own diasporic journey. There’s the Hindustani classical tradition that she grew up with in New Delhi, the modular synthesis and DIY spirit that she picked up while studying engineering and coding at Stanford, and the third-culture genre bending that brings to mind fellow South Asian diaspora artists like Sunny Jain, Arooj Aftab, Priya Darshini, and Brooklyn Raga Massive.
Largely composed for a sunset performance at the opulent Alsisar Mahal palace in Rajasthan, the six tracks on Under the Lilac Sky are all rooted in Hindustani classical ragas. The building blocks of Indian classical music, ragas are melodic structures that incorporate a limited number of notes but allow for almost infinite improvisations and interpretations within that framework. Individual ragas are traditionally associated with specific moods and times of day. The four that Jain calls on for this record—des, khamaj, kafi, and durga—are evening ragas, meant to be performed between the hours of sunset and midnight and intended to evoke calm, melancholy, and contemplation.
While there is precedent for blending synths and ragas—Charanjit Singh’s Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat seems like a precursor—Jain takes a more experimental approach. Where Singh chose faithful reconstruction, Jain prefers deconstruction and recontextualization. She takes centuries-old Hindustani classical melodies and lovingly transforms them—altering the rhythm, stretching out the vocals—and bringing them in conversation with the new age synth tradition of Terry Riley and Suzanne Ciani, whom Jain has opened for. The result is an impressionist landscape of brooding drones and richly hued synth lines, anchored by Jain’s hypnotic vocals. (Not coincidentally, raga is literally translated as “coloring” or “dyeing.”)
Distant drones grumble and jitter on opener “Richer Than Blood,” a grey mechanical canvas transmuted into color by Jain’s gently rising vocals. Melodies evoking a sitar twinkle like prematurely visible stars, as Jain paints broad auburn brush strokes with sweeping, washed-out synths. More shades appear on the nine-minute “Look How Far We Have Come”—the subtle gradients of Jain’s partially submerged vocals, the glistening cascades of brightly colored synths, the modulated pulse of the bass drone. Like the other tracks, “Look How Far We Have Come” has no percussion, driven instead by the momentum of Jain’s repeated, mutating synth patterns. And yet the performance never seems to meander or lose momentum; it reels you into a calm, meditative world.
The sun has all but disappeared by the foreboding “My People Have Deep Roots,” with its throbbing bass and inky swirls of clouds. This is the pre-Edison night reconfigured as sound, an all-encompassing presence snuffing out all shape and color. The only light comes from Jain’s voice, dripping with loss and melancholy, a lonely candle trying to keep the darkness—and the demons that lurk in it—at bay. The bright keys and exuberant synth melodies return on “Cultivating Self Love” and the sprawling closer “Under the Lilac Sky.” The latter track, in particular, mimics the manic energy of night in urban India, its playful synth lines and chopped-up arpeggios rubbing against each other like roving bands of midnight revelers on a New Delhi street. The monsters of the dark—both internal and external—have been vanquished, replaced by a heady intoxication that slowly gives way to cozy bliss, at least until the next sunset.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-07-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-07-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Leaving | July 28, 2021 | 7.6 | 0e8eb7a8-76d6-466d-918c-5f1e7f9730e2 | Bhanuj Kappal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/bhanuj-kappal/ | |
The Danish trio’s daring album takes a fluid approach to arrangement and song structure, balancing their industrial, noisier tendencies by engaging with the broader realm of pop music. | The Danish trio’s daring album takes a fluid approach to arrangement and song structure, balancing their industrial, noisier tendencies by engaging with the broader realm of pop music. | Khalil: The Water We Drink | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/khalil-the-water-we-drink/ | The Water We Drink | Nikolaj Vonsild is best known as the frontman of electropop group When Saints Go Machine, whose second album Konkylie made a splash in their native Denmark on its release back in 2011. His new trio Khalil retains some of his main group’s hallmarks. This is bright, synthetic music drawn in digital textures, with Vonsild’s yearning falsetto pushed right to the fore. Yet Khalil feels harder to categorize than his parent band. Released on the underground Danish imprint Posh Isolation, their debut album The Water We Drink takes a fluid approach to arrangement and song structure, its electronic washes and hyper-processed vocals right at the verge of dissolving into abstraction.
In places, The Water We Drink recalls the so-called “bubblegum industrial” music of label co-founder Loke Rahbek’s Croatian Amor, for instance. Khalil, though, balance their experimental tendencies by engaging with the broader realm of pop music. Production comes courtesy Vonsild, Villads Klint, and Simon Formann the latter of whom played in the Copenhagen post-punk group Lower, and whose current solo project Yen Towers prefigures Khalil’s tensile club rhythms and skittery sound design. But all that stands secondary to Vonsild’s voice. His vocal is placed front and center, drenched in Auto-Tune, lending it an alien vibrato or freezing it into unnatural leaps and pirouettes. The first time you hear it you think of Drake or the Kanye of 808s & Heartbreak, and what at first feels like an impulsive comparison slowly gains weight as the album unfolds. “Rest My Head Against a Wall of Water” and “Sculpture No Solid” are possessed of that distinctly Drakeian confection of preening vanity, romantic angst, and sad-boy rapture.
This sense of permeable boundaries is a hallmark of the project. On the cover, a plastic water bottle drains its contents into a pair of cupped hands—a juxtaposition of the natural and the man-made that feels heavy with meaning. The branding of bottled water implies cleanliness and purity, but the reality is heaving landfills and oceans choked with plastic, environmental apocalypse smuggled in under the benign corporate language of hygiene, health, and well-being.
This conflicted spirit finds its way into the very fabric of The Water We Drink; even as its artificial textures convey an effervescent euphoria, something darker and more damaged drifts just beneath the surface. “Submit So Deep” and “Estate Straight Line” recall the mutant bass experiments of Rabit, or the more eerie recesses of vaporwave; on the latter, shuddering sub bass and glitching vocal samples coalesce into a disorientating sonic fog. Elsewhere, Khalil reach for moments of febrile intensity. On the closing “The White Hoodie I Wear Because I Love You,” the electronics recede into the background and Vonsild’s voice is left to spin and whirl madly, as if being eaten up by the intensity of its own emotion. Here, in particular, I’m reminded of the glossy trauma of ANOHNI’s HOPELESSNESS, another album on which beauty and horror are closely entwined.
A few years back, Posh Isolation’s stock in trade was dour post-punk and arty power electronics. The idea of the label releasing a record drawing on contemporary hip-hop modes would have been, to put it mildly, unlikely. But The Water We Drink is a porous record for an increasingly porous age, one in which lines of influence or provenance mean little, so long as you’ve got engaging sounds and smart concepts to tie everything together. Khalil certainly bring both to the table on a record that feels like soul music for our times. | 2017-08-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-08-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Posh Isolation | August 22, 2017 | 7.2 | 0e8f212d-0812-4924-9bce-fca41feedf42 | Louis Pattison | https://pitchfork.com/staff/louis-pattison/ | null |
An old Zen koan comes to mind; delivered through the lesser hands of seekers and compilers, beats and\n\ Deadheads ... | An old Zen koan comes to mind; delivered through the lesser hands of seekers and compilers, beats and\n\ Deadheads ... | Tony Conrad / Faust: Outside the Dream Syndicate | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/1582-outside-the-dream-syndicate/ | Outside the Dream Syndicate | An old Zen koan comes to mind; delivered through the lesser hands of seekers and compilers, beats and Deadheads, the New Age-- but surely, I imagine, of wise and noble provenance somewhere back. A flag flapping in the gale sparks an argument between two monks on the nature of things. The first declares that the flag is surely moving. The flag is still, counters the other, it is the wind that is moving. Sure enough, where an insoluble paradox appears, the wandering master is not far behind. Which is it, ask the monks, is the flag moving or is the wind moving? Neither, replies the master; mind is moving.
Fair enough. Take it, like any wisdom, with a grain of salt, but it springs to mind. Not because Tony Conrad sees still air and a flapping flag, or because Faust occupy a world of volatile weather, but just because, for a moment in Outside the Dream Syndicate, one forgets what exactly is moving and what is standing still.
Here's what we know: in October 1972, at a hippie commune in Wümme in southwestern Hamburg, a German art-rock collective bred on the stringent drone and skag-pop of the Velvet Underground hooked up with the young composer who gave that band its name-- or rather, who handed Lou Reed the sadomasochism exposé whence the band derived its name. Tony Conrad and the members of Faust collaborated for three days on an album that would be released the following year in England and would tank immediately thereafter. The musicians did not communicate or collaborate throughout the following two decades.
Minimalism is unquestionably the wrong word; I prefer asceticism. Anyone familiar with the Zappa-like hysteria of Faust's first album or the searing kosmische of IV must imagine the sheer force of self-denial at work in implementing Conrad's vision: to have a deep base note tuned to the tonic on Conrad's violin and to have the drummer "tuned" to a rhythm that corresponded to the vibrations. Minimal in design, I suppose, but catastrophically huge in execution.
"From the Side of Man and Womankind" opens in dead motorik, the usually nimble percussive battery of bass guitarist Jean-Hervé Peron and drummer "Zappi" Diermaier, stalled out to a hollow thud-- like the heartbeat of a machine. Conrad's violin bleats mournfully, endlessly; rising, breathing, sighing, screaming, but without ceasing: relentless. Faust resisted. Peron's second bass note, inserted against Conrad's wishes, adds a spring and thrust to the proceedings. Zappi's odd cymbal crash shatters like punctuation in a prayer. Faust producer Uwe Nettelbeck dulled the serrated violence of Conrad's violin, somehow rendering slow murder into long caresses. "The Side of Man and Womankind" runs like a conveyor belt through fog: going without moving, advancing, standing still.
"From the Side of the Machine" is oddly less mechanical than its counterpart. A half-hour in length, like "Man and Womankind", the "Machine" side ruminates with muted psychedelia: serpentine bass, ceremonial percussion, the purr and roar of Rudolf Sosna's humming synthesizer, Conrad's violin passing high above like an electrical storm in the upper air. There is a predatory quality to the "Side of the Machine": an encircling peril, a certain restlessness above and behind. Mind moves, as if hunted.
The Thirtieth Anniversary Edition of Outside the Dream Syndicate adds a second disc of material. Two brief tracks-- both named with the young death of former Dream Syndicate comrade Angus Maclise in mind-- offer the remaining fragments of those three days at the abandoned schoolhouse studio at Wümme. Both the slow burning "The Pyre of Angus was in Kathmandu" and the tremulous "The Death of the Composer Was in 1962" reveal a looser agenda in the sessions. In the latter piece, Conrad abandons the impassive drone of the first disc for an almost celebratory psych-rock. The second disc is rounded out by an alternate production of "From the Side of Man and Womankind", lacking the overdubbed violin lines of the album version.
So perhaps a little Zen, perhaps a little cataclysm. After all, as Lou Reed said, "It's the beginning of the New Age." And a few decades before that, a poet ended his long flirtation with Buddhism by joining the Church of England. In his conversion poem, however, he continued to pray with eastern paradoxes. "Teach us to care and not to care," T.S. Eliot intoned, "teach us to sit still." And this album finally begins to show us how. | 2002-12-12T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2002-12-12T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Experimental / Rock | EG | December 12, 2002 | 9 | 0e921973-8dd7-4a11-96bd-11af04d346b2 | Brent S. Sirota | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brent-s. sirota/ | null |
Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse team for a loose, off-the-cuff record about madness, depression, monsters, visionaries, and being yourself. | Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse team for a loose, off-the-cuff record about madness, depression, monsters, visionaries, and being yourself. | Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3693-st-elsewhere/ | St. Elsewhere | After the sound of a film projector whirring to life and a little hip-hop fanfare, this album starts with "Go Go Gadget Gospel" glee: soul horns kicking, hand-clapping breakbeats with the speed and stutter of jungle, and Cee-Lo Green shouting, "I'm free" like he's up in church. It's the most exciting thing I've heard this year. At the tail end of the disc, there's "The Last Time", where the beat splits the difference between disco-era funk and roller-skating jam, and Cee-Lo sings like he borrowed some time-traveling platform shoes from the Delfonics' closet and wound up on mid-1970s Soul Train. You shouldn't fixate on those details-- I may be exaggerating-- but the main thing about those two tracks are that they sound awfully fresh. Play this when people are over and they'll almost certainly ask the question: "So who is this, anyway?"
I don't mean to spin any big theories on you-- this isn't that kind of record-- but let's stop for a second and notice the context. Now that hip-hop has nearly three decades under its belt, every major genre of American pop music is more or less "mature." You know how rock geeks, after nine or 10 years immersed in the genre, start looking elsewhere for surprises-- hip-hop, dance, bluegrass, anything they haven't already figured out? Well, these days we can read Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee telling Tape Op that rap is all repetitive big business now, and claiming that alternative rock is where the innovation is-- in other words, sounding not unlike an old rock guy wondering why bands still sound like the Velvet Underground. This kind of uneasiness isn't new, of course, but it's interesting: It seems like there's a big itch out there right now, everyone looking for ways to make the music feel as new and free as it did when they first came across it.
Two guys interested in scratching that itch, hip-hop-wise, are both associates in Atlanta's Dungeon Family. Andre 3000, of Outkast: It might seem like he's just trying to be weird, but the guy has spent the last decade visibly searching for some new way to be-- not just new music, but a whole new model of identity for the black male musician. (Avenues he's tried include futurism, mysticism, Baduism, sincerity, dandified couture, genre-less chart hits, and close study of Aphex Twin.) The same goes for Cee-Lo, one half of the Gnarls Barkley duo-- a Goodie Mob rapper turned funk freak and soul-shouting faux preacherman.
Who does Gnarls Barkley pair him with, the two of them dressed up like Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange droogs, or Wayne and Garth? DJ Danger Mouse, a guy known by undie-rap geeks for his own beats but read-about-in-Entertainment Weekly for mashing up Jay-Z and the Beatles. The two of them: They're trying something new here, you know. Even the lyrical themes of this album-- madness, depression, monsters, visionaries, being yourself-- seem like conscious attempts to be arty. And that's before you get to the tossed-off Violent Femmes cover. Which is only track four.
Don't get me wrong: This is not some grand genre-busting mission statement. For the most part, it sounds like two guys playing around and having fun, sometimes more fun than the listener. DM's production aesthetic-- "if it's enjoyable for more than 2 minutes and 10 seconds, then that's the song to me"-- means the beats come out like candies in a box, a line of little treats and mini-ideas. (Pick some samples, make them bump a little, move on.) Cee-Lo sounds like he's writing in the vocal booth, just hopping in and singing his takes until something good develops. But as scattershot and weirdly limp as parts of this are-- two guys just knocking things together, seeing what happens-- well, it feels better to hear someone trying.
And the treats are real treats. The single, "Crazy", has been found atop UK charts (and on U.S. television dramas), for all the same reasons that Outkast's "Hey Ya" hit big-- it's a big, brash pop song that sounds retro and modern at the same time. "Transformer" is a tweaked-out jumble with the pace and clatter of English grime, plus flutes. There's traditional r&b; bump, "cinematic" darkness for the monster stories, DM's dusty-sample boom-bap. "Just a Thought" has Cee-Lo experiencing crisis over classical guitar and bursts of overdriven drums: "I've tried/ Everything but suicide/ And it's crossed my mind/ But I'm fine."
Imagine: Two guys fooling around with whatever sticks, musically, and yet here's Cee-Lo, sounding as convincing as possible in his best reverend soul-voice, writing serious and sincere about life. It's a joy, and in this context, where unselfconscious freshness can feel strangely hard to come by, it'll charm the hell out of a whole lot of people-- whether or not it'll really stand up to more than a season's listening. | 2006-05-07T02:00:25.000-04:00 | 2006-05-07T02:00:25.000-04:00 | Rap / Rock | Downtown | May 7, 2006 | 7.7 | 0e92be79-fa0b-46db-b8e6-4e0474851364 | Nitsuh Abebe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nitsuh-abebe/ | null |
This collection of dance tracks produced by Caribou's Dan Snaith under his Daphni alias is the excitable product of an artist who could no longer watch a scene from the sidelines. A sense of abandon and exploration keeps Jiaolong from sounding like the work of a dilettante. | This collection of dance tracks produced by Caribou's Dan Snaith under his Daphni alias is the excitable product of an artist who could no longer watch a scene from the sidelines. A sense of abandon and exploration keeps Jiaolong from sounding like the work of a dilettante. | Daphni: Jiaolong | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17183-jiaolong/ | Jiaolong | If you listen to enough dance music, you'll come to treasure concrete ideas. You know them when you hear them, because dance music at its most rote and workaday is often more about execution, about DJs having conversations with other DJs, about having enough material to fill a marathon set and yet another podcast. Dan Snaith has been dipping his toes in these waters. He plays long sets at clubs around Europe when his main vehicle, Caribou, isn't opening for Radiohead. He releases tough-to-snag 12"s of material he admittedly remixed solely for the purpose of DJing. Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes: The most invigorating thing about Jiaolong, a collection of dance tracks produced by Snaith under his Daphni alias, is that it's packed with ideas. It's the excitable product of an artist who could no longer watch a scene from the sidelines, who had to jump in before his brain, or his MPC's memory card, burst from abundance.
More than anything, it's this sense of abandon and exploration that keeps Jiaolong from sounding like the work of a dilettante. It's easy to draw parallels between Snaith's work and that of his longtime friend Four Tet-- who himself released a collection of dance tracks this year after a decade of varied, homebody psychedelia-- but Snaith's work, for better and worse, is looser and more varied, not as indebted to the flourishing UK bass scene both veterans became enamored with. Snaith chases steepled, peak-time anthems before diving into bustling, jazzy house, and fearless techno melancholia.
Jiaolong's first track, "Yes, I Know", shares space with the grimy edits of Theo Parrish and the all-smiles filter disco of Tiger & Woods, reminding us that the hoarse refrains of 1970s R&B and the corroded drum machines of the 1980s make great bedfellows. Snaith, though, isn't satisfied with a killer loop and an ass-shaking beat: As the track progresses, he papers it with peals of noisy synths and burly, strongman bass. It's busy but not excessive, from an artist used to having a lot of balls in the air on any given track.
Jiaolong is front-loaded. Snaith follows "Yes, I Know" with a remix of an absurdly rare African 7" (it couldn't be licensed; the musicians couldn't be found) and "Ye Ye", the pulsing, earworm techno banger that shared a side with Four Tet's "Pinnacles". After these three tracks you'll be convinced that you're watching security footage of a kid in a candy shop, reaching and grasping for anything he can get his hands on, everyone a little guilty and a little geeked. The remainder of Jiaolong, though, is far more scattered, as Snaith moves from frantic sequencer battlegrounds ("Springs", "Light") to chin-stroking beat science ("Ahora") and back again. The porous, call-and-response refrain of "Pairs" and the acid-soaked improvisations of "Jiao" come closest to matching the sheer giddiness of the opening tracks.
In the interview above, Snaith admitted that the Daphni project-- which purportedly includes still-unreleased material earmarked for Snaith's DJ appearances-- has freed him from the constraints of Caribou, which at this point is closer to a standard rock democracy. Caribou is a band used to juggling multiple melodic ideas, a band that has to place a premium on organization and concision. Daphni's less focused moments sound like Snaith taking a toy off the shelf, Slinky-style, bending and prodding it at his leisure. That image doesn't do justice to Snaith's best moments, though. The point is not Snaith's juvenilia, or inexperience; it is that Snaith's fascination shines, taking him places that po-faced peers are blind to. | 2012-10-16T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-10-16T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Jiaolong | October 16, 2012 | 7.5 | 0e92c247-96d5-49b8-955e-fc2ffbc38d88 | Andrew Gaerig | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andrew-gaerig/ | null |
Former Bad Seeds sideman Mick Harvey revisits the songbook of Serge Gainbourg for the third time, moving past the salacious icon’s signature songs into his oddities. | Former Bad Seeds sideman Mick Harvey revisits the songbook of Serge Gainbourg for the third time, moving past the salacious icon’s signature songs into his oddities. | Mick Harvey: Delirium Tremens | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22084-delirium-tremens/ | Delirium Tremens | Throughout his four-decade career, Mick Harvey has served as rock’s most reliable sidekick. For much of that time, he was the set designer who built the pedestal upon which Nick Cave has pranced and prowled; currently, he’s okay with being the second-most famous Harvey onstage. Even as a solo artist, he’s been most himself when singing the songs of others. Of the six albums released under his own name to date, only one has featured original material. Compared to his long-time former foil, Harvey is a cool, calm, plainspoken singer; his true voice has always come through his sense of arrangement, and his ability to render exquisite beauty and apocalyptic clamor with the same brushstroke.
On Delirium Tremens, Harvey returns to the songbook of Serge Gainsbourg, whose balance of salaciousness and sophistication was foundational to the Bad Seeds’ sound. Delirium Tremens is the third entry in a Serge-centric series that began 21 years ago with the release of Intoxicated Man and its 1997 companion Pink Elephants (the recent reissues of which inspired this new entry). For decades now, Gainsbourg has had an outsized influence on underground Anglophone musicians unlike any other Francophone performer, and it’s no mystery why: whether engaging in flirtatious pillow talk or seditious satire, his work oozes an incomparable cool and subversive spirit that obliterates any language barrier. For a sharply dressed pop star who was a fixture on the French talk-show circuit, Gainsbourg epitomized punk long before the term had been defined. He was an inappropriate fart joke dropped in the middle of a high-society party, the unshaven sleazebag who could nonetheless sweet talk the prettiest woman in the room into going home with him.
Back in the ’90s, Harvey’s Gainbourg project served a practical function: as Gainsbourg’s influence was starting to seep into the indie-rock world through bands like Stereolab, Luna, and Belle and Sebastian, Harvey’s Anglicized interpretations of his work brought a greater clarity and dimension to music that most English listeners had initially been drawn to through vibe and mystique alone. Now that Gainsbourg has been thoroughly canonized in North America and Histoire de Melody Nelson box sets can be had at Urban Outfitters, Delirium Tremens is an opportunity for Harvey to dig even deeper into Gainsbourg’s labyrinthine catalogue. Between Pink Elephants and Intoxicated Man, Harvey had already tackled Gainsbourg’s signature songs and then some. But, fitting for a collection that opens with an amped-up, psychedelized take on the 1976 art-rock oddity “The Man With the Cabbage Head” (“L’homme à Tête De Chou”), Delirium Tremens suggests there are still more layers to unpeel.
Harvey remains mostly reverential to his sacrilegious source, but Delirium Tremens is much more than just Gainsbourg fed through Google Translate. Rather, it amplifies the unsettling undercurrents that always stewed beneath Gainsbourg’s impeccable arrangements: The jazzy swing of late ’50s serenade “Deadly Tedium” (“Ce Mortel Ennui”) becomes a queasy cabaret of wobbly vibraphones; the busker-folk shuffle of “The Convict Song” (“Chanson de Forçat”) is horsewhipped into a cowpunk charge that proves, while Harvey is no longer a Bad Seed, he still has a firm grasp of their reins. But naturally, the most outrageous reinterpretation is reserved for a track from Gainsbourg’s madcap Nazi-themed send-up Rock Around the Bunker: not only does Harvey’s translation of “Est-ce Est-ce Si Bon” magnify its titular pun into “SS C’est Bon,” he delivers the song in faux-Germanic patter atop a grinding, sludge-metal goose-step. “I Envisage,” meanwhile, takes equal liberties with a song Gainsbourg originally penned for French rocker Alain Baschung, transforming its combustible post-punk rockabilly into an engrossing, cigarette-smoky set piece infused with a suffocating drone and dread.
Delirium Tremens’ second act is given over to a cluster of songs originally featured in the 1967 Anna Karina musical comedy, Anna, their thematic rumination on desire forming almost a separate album within an album. Most of these contrast Harvey with the beautifully dazed vocals of fellow Australian Xanthe Waite (of the Total Control offshoot act Terry), and their duet dynamic encourages more typical orchestral-pop and trad-rock renditions compared to the more eccentric interpretations that comprise the album’s first half. But then, such extremes are crucial to capturing Gainsbourg’s essence. As Harvey sings on “A Violent Poison (That’s What Love Is),” life is but a journey “from desire to disgust, and from disgust back to desire.” And Delirium Tremens carries out those marching orders with aplomb. | 2016-07-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-07-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Mute | July 5, 2016 | 7.3 | 0e95fc5a-b9f7-4bff-a553-4de958bc94f5 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
Love him or hate him, the divisive NOLA rapper's latest mixtape-- a sprawling 29-track, 100-plus minute behemoth-- ups the ante of last year's DJ Drama-produced Dedication 2 in every way possible. | Love him or hate him, the divisive NOLA rapper's latest mixtape-- a sprawling 29-track, 100-plus minute behemoth-- ups the ante of last year's DJ Drama-produced Dedication 2 in every way possible. | Lil Wayne: Da Drought 3 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10229-da-drought-3/ | Da Drought 3 | "Everybody in this fuckin' game got the game fucked up. Work, man, work. I feel you, Nas, the new rappers today, they act like R&B singers. Man, what is you done?! Go into the studio with clips-- ammo: positive subjects, bitches, niggas, fake niggas, club song, ho's that shake their... Who am I shootin' at? I got bullets for days." -- Lil Wayne rant on YouTube
It's no secret: Nowadays, most mainstream rappers aren’t rappers. The majority just throw a few bars together around Christmastime before getting back to their real hustle, whether it be acting, designing clothes, or thinking about how to make Rick Ross the next Biggie Smalls while sitting behind a desk in a sharp suit. So when Lil Wayne calls himself the "best rapper alive," the claim isn't that controversial-- it increasingly seems like he's one of the only rappers alive. And he's pissed (see above).
With Hip-Hop Is Dead, Nas tried to resuscitate the culture with a hit-and-miss jumble of grumpy nostalgia and over-the-hill soul-searching; it was a far cry from indie-rap's nagging grandmother pose, but the album didn't hold much hope or promise for the future. With its free-associative, intangible, postmodern pull, Da Drought 3, by contrast, sounds a lot like the future. Released on the internet for free, the 29-track, 100-plus minute, DJ-less behemoth finds Lil Wayne sidestepping the music industry-- and the mixtape industry-- while delivering similes, jokes, and flows by the ton. After last year's stunning Dedication 2 tape with DJ Drama, Da Drought 3 ups the ante in almost every way possible.
To use a distinctly Wayne-ian analogy-- that is, part '80s baby trivia, part ridiculous, all true-- the New Orleans native is akin to one-time "American Gladiators" champion Wesley "Two Scoops" Berry. Like Berry, Wayne goes headlong into an inherently absurd competitive atmosphere (i.e. modern hip-hop) and dominates. He scoots around giants, making the most of his nimble, versatile patter. No longer satisfied with being a southern rap ambassador, Wayne emphasizes his range with a cross-country, cross-generational, cross-genre beat selection here, from the Southern R&B of Ciara's "Promise" to the neo-soul of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" to the moody New York bap of Jay-Z's "Dead Presidents II." It's effortlessly encompassing. Then there's the quicksilver flow and morphing subject matter, from the West Coast gangsta-isms of "I'm Blooded" to the off-the-wall Cam'ron-esque abstractions of "Live from 504" to the MF Doom-style kitchen talk. No assembly required-- everything to everybody.
It's fitting, then, for the MC to start the album off rhyming over a snap music smash ("This Is Why I'm Hot") originally made by a New York rapper (MIMS) trying to pander to a nationwide audience. As if to underline his alien mystique ("I am just a Martian, ain't nobody else on this planet"), Wayne goes international on the track, working a Jamaican flow simply because he can. Later, while introducing his revamp of T.I.'s "Top Back", Wayne clarifies, "T.I. is the king-- don’t get that shit twisted/ And me? I am the best rapper alive." The difference-- divine right vs. tireless politicking-- is spelled out through Wayne's regional-poaching as high-art stumping. Work, man, work.
At one point, Wayne poses the question, "I'm crazy for bein' Wayne or is Wayne just crazy?" And while that chicken/egg query may be unanswerable, there's no doubt Wayne makes several insane decisions on Da Drought 3-- choices no other rapper would ever consider. Take "My Daddy", Wayne's spirited defense of his close relationship with surrogate father Brian "Baby" Williams over Danjahandz's untouchable "We Takin' Over" beat. Instead of just ignoring the hubbub, Wayne calls attention to it with one of the set's most jaw-dropping tracks. When he says, "Damn right, I kissed my daddy," it's not a confession as much as a chest-pumping pronouncement, i.e. why don't you kiss your daddy? Then, the heartfelt justification: "Who was there when no one wasn’t? Just my daddy." Finally, Wayne goes into light-speed, forgoing typical syntax for a trail of breathless keywords: "Beef, yes, chest, feet, tag, bag, blood, sheets, yikes, yeeks, great, Scott, Storch, can I borrow your yacht?" And just like that, a winning defense turns into a staggering offense.
More zaniness as Wayne gets all MySpace stalker over Ciara's "Promise" with a love letter to the Atlanta R&B singer that's at once nebbish, cartoony, hilarious, and sweet. "I know that this is pretty awkward for me," he mumbles, his typical playboy routine neutered by a celebrity crush. Even after countless, detailed blowjob verses and rhymes about slipping women pills to get them into bed, the rapper's crazy-in-love yammering ("Nasty as I wanna be or nasty as you like me to be/ I hope you like me too now you know I like you too") somehow still comes off as earnest. It's a rare moment when Wayne comes down from his interplanetary star-search and joins every other guy who's fallen for Ciara's "Promise" video. "That chair or stool move was cool," he gushes. Yeah, it was.
Along with its bounty of blog-worthy one-liners (Wayne can be heard imitating Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Bernie Mac and Bobcat Goldthwait across the record) and its fascinating internal weed/food cycle (which you can read about in Julianne Shepherd's recent column), this latest opus from Lil Wayne is marked with a beguiling sense of infatuation. The rapper is in love with language, left-field references to Gremlins and Harry and the Hendersons, the man who helped raise him, his hometown, Ciara and-- even after more than 10 years of professional experience-- hip-hop itself: "I just love music, I love to rap, I love what I do," he says. That much is clear. | 2007-05-16T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2007-05-16T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Young Money Entertainment | May 16, 2007 | 8.5 | 0e969d33-8052-418e-b1a1-fa1020a02b1a | Ryan Dombal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/ | null |
Polo G blends pop and drill with ease and delivers a standout Chicago street rap debut that is meticulously crafted and honestly told. | Polo G blends pop and drill with ease and delivers a standout Chicago street rap debut that is meticulously crafted and honestly told. | Polo G: Die a Legend | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/polo-g-die-a-legend/ | Die a Legend | Chicago rapper Polo G is a writer in a world full of freestylers. In the data-dump era, where artists churn out as much music as they can, he makes two songs in the time it might take others to make 20. He is careful and meticulous, malleable and introspective. His sound totters between drill and pop, sometimes hard, sometimes smooth. Eventually, he blurs the lines between them.
All of this is on full display on his brutal, powerful debut, Die a Legend. The title sounds like an epic fate, the kind that befalls a mythical hero. But for Polo G, it’s more of a cautionary tale. In his estimation, there’s no praise until you’re gone, and by then, it’s too late. He wants to leave a legacy, but he also knows you have to survive long enough to create one. The album art features photos of eight people in the clouds, like the ones you see tacked onto posterboards at funerals. Die a Legend honors their stories, their memories, their legends, with a painstaking account of the kind of violence that cost them their lives. It is one of the finest rap debuts of the year.
What draws you even closer to Polo G is the heartfelt essence of his raps. He can dive into the nooks and crannies of his life story or take an eagle-eye perspective, but he does both with a hypnotic, penetrating conviction. His songs are deeply meditative, and, in turn, revealing. “My mind keep racing, I been overthinking, I don’t get no sleep,” he raps. It’s that penchant for overthinking that’s led him to anatomize his own pain so carefully and so potently. His verses are so smooth and vivid it’s like you are a breath away from him at all times.
Polo G allows his songs to be jointless. With hardly another guest on this album (save for Lil Tjay on the sullen party hit “Pop Out”), his hooks feed directly into verses, like a snake swallowing its tail. They are simple but well-rendered, each distinctive but of a kind. Sometimes he’ll rap an entire verse in the same rhyme scheme (“Last Strike”), something he likely picked up listening to Gucci Mane. Maintaining the same end rhyme throughout sounds less involved than untangling knotty wordplay, and many purists see doing so as less complex. But it takes a talented rapper to ride out a single current for an entire 16 bars, especially when each of its lines runs right into the next, as on “A King’s Nightmare”: “Spittin’ verses, I’m desperate, I need a mansion and a coupe/You done signed over your life and now you slavin’ in the booth/Now we hang ourself with chains, they used to make us rock a noose/Shorties hoppin’ off the porch ’cause it ain’t shit else to do.” That’s the difference between a wave-rider and a wave-maker.
The stakes on Die a Legend are often thrillingly high. The gut-wrenching storytelling of songs like “Dyin’ Breed” and “BST” humanizes revenge killers and reluctant criminals. Even as he parks the Benz at his new Calabasas home on “Picture This”—a lifestyle he didn’t know existed, let alone know that he could live it—he reflects on the bloodsoaked path he narrowly avoided to get there, on how he beat long odds with his rap lottery ticket. He sizes his life and his city up from all angles with acute perspective. The imagery is raw: blood-stained corners, “homicide puddles,” Securus call transfers, face-eating hollow-points. He calls the streets a scam. He compares retaliatory violence to reimbursement. He still gets depressed in his mansion.
Both the despair of his past and the optimism of his future are, in part, conveyed by his intoxicating singsong melodies, which bend into any required shape and are ripe with emotional complexity. Through minimal, subtly elegant, and largely keyboard-powered beats, he bares all, nearly stripping himself raw. For 40 minutes, he is so tender and exposed that listening can seem like an invasion of privacy. But he never turns hopeless. “I come from a dark place,” he raps, “I’ll never be there again.” | 2019-06-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-06-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Columbia | June 12, 2019 | 8.3 | 0e978d35-cf29-4e01-b58a-44dac3cedfee | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | |
Would you know greatness if you saw it? This is the eternal question for people like me, posting their supposedly ... | Would you know greatness if you saw it? This is the eternal question for people like me, posting their supposedly ... | Miles Davis: Live at the Fillmore East (March 7, 1970): It's About That Time | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2197-live-at-the-fillmore-east-march-7-1970-its-about-that-time/ | Live at the Fillmore East (March 7, 1970): It's About That Time | Would you know greatness if you saw it? This is the eternal question for people like me, posting their supposedly well thought-out pontifications for anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to read. The issue of being able to distinguish what's good from what isn't seems like a job ill-suited for anyone who doesn't have the power of omniscience, or at least a good track record with uncovering genius. And yet, this is a request made by artists all the time-- that of acceptance, or some kind of recognition of what they've produced.
Maybe it's not really a matter of taste, but closer to keen perception and foresight. But while some folks may pride themselves in their ability to find interesting art, it takes popular consensus to brand a piece or work "great" or "revolutionary." Herein lies the dilemma: if you aren't able to recognize the inherent greatness of a particular piece of art, how can you appreciate any art at all? Or, if you do think you see genius somewhere, how do you communicate this to somebody else? These are the kinds of questions I have for the audience assembled for the Miles Davis Quintet performance at the Fillmore East in New York City on March 7th, 1970.
Live at the Fillmore East (March 7, 1970): It's About That Time is the official release of an oft-bootlegged performance of Davis' "lost quintet." His cohorts were Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette and Airto Moreira. Not a bad lineup for a band that never existed, save a few fiery performances in 1969 and 1970. In fact, at the time, the status of Davis' proper quintet (featuring Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams and Shorter) was a little hazy. Williams had left to run his own show with Lifetime, but Hancock and Carter would continue to play with the trumpeter on and off for a couple of years. Also, the issue of the new quintet actually being a sextet added to the confusion of just who, exactly, was a part of Davis' band.
One other oddity confronted the lucky few who were able to witness these guys live: almost all the music being played was unreleased, and unlike anything ever produced by jazz musicians. Most of the tunes performed at this Fillmore date (not to be confused with another release, Miles Davis at Fillmore: Live at the Fillmore East, recorded in June of the same year) were from the landmark Bitches Brew LP. Although Bitches Brew had been recorded the previous summer, it wouldn't be released until a few weeks after this performance. And as any of that album's millions of fans will tell you, its music isn't really the kind that sinks in on the first listen.
The Davis Quin/Sextet was opening for Steve Miller and Neil Young for these sets. But if the jazz community was bitterly divided over the notion of Miles Davis playing "rock" music, I can only imagine what was going through the heads of people accustomed to hearing "Cinnamon Girl," rather than "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down," for an encore. Judging by the audience response here, they probably didn't really know what to think. The applause is polite, but hesitant, and the two or three guys who wanted more at the end may have been anomalies, because it was pretty obvious the band had left it all onstage after the last number. To recognize greatness: it is elusive, and most likely, beyond the sensibilities of most hippies and/or mere mortals.
The first set begins as Holland, DeJohnette and Corea vamp to a furious funk groove. Heavy bass and some well-placed exotic percussion (supplied by the redoubtable Moreira, whose playing receives the ultimate dis by being labeled "superfluous" in the liner notes) kick things off, and by the time Davis enters, the brew is already quite hot. The tune is "Directions," and apparently, it refers to many at once. Miles seems to be aiming straight for the jugular while Holland takes the straight and steady, and when Shorter comes in, he leads DeJohnette and Corea on a path so ridden with turbulence and strife, it derails the entire tune. About five minutes in, it becomes impossible to remember that most of these same musicians had produced something like In a Silent Way, only a year earlier.
Afterwards, the band segues into "Spanish Key," one of the more straightforward pieces on Bitches Brew, but here already transformed into a three-headed monster by a band that obviously couldn't sit still on a bet. The three heads in question: a rhythm section which never actually came down from the highs of the previous rave, Davis, who was playing more aggressively and with more muscle than he ever had, and Wayne Shorter, who was playing like he never would again.
Of course, he wouldn't, at least with Davis. After this date, Shorter would leave the group to form the seminal fusion outfit Weather Report. When he first performed with Davis in the early 60s, he'd received the rap of being a Coltrane disciple (not a criticism, really), but had always possessed a natural calm that his spiritual mentor would discard in favor of pure expression and, often, fury. On this date, Shorter meets his maker, full of fire and machine gun lines on soprano and tenor sax that had only been hinted at on the great releases by the second Davis Quintet.
During the second set, whatever jazz history had not been rewritten got its due and then some. "Directions" (it appears twice, since these two discs document both an early and a late show) starts off innocently enough, with a low, humming growl from Holland, but quickly develops into the Apocalypse. There are moments when the music seems to cross over into the avant-garde and free jazz realms, especially whenever Shorter is playing a solo. Reportedly, Davis never considered himself a part of those camps, but it's clear he wasn't afraid to let his band steer the ship in that general direction, so long as they kept the groove alive. Corea brings it down a little with a few choruses of comparatively traditional playing, even if it isn't less intense than the others'.
The tune segues into "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down"; very different, far greasier and Fatter (with a capital 'F,' as you can see) than the studio version on Bitches Brew. It could almost pass for hard blues-rock, if not for DeJohnette's relentless cymbal attack and Davis' distorted howling. Here, though, it seems to serve as a kind of breather so the band can rev up for "Bitches Brew," arguably in its finest version anywhere on this CD. It begins with ominous, woozy percussion, and some agitated horn punches from the leader. Then, out of nowhere, everything gets funky. Holland lays down some serious dirty pimp low end, filtered through that infamous "ring modulation" to give it the extra ass-mangling quality so desired in serious jazz performance. After a bit, Shorter drops another trip-bop bomb, and then the quiet comes back. Davis takes it out with a few quick, muted jabs, while the beat simmers below. And if I never heard another track by that band again, I'd still rank them alongside Davis' other classic groups.
The set ends with a version of "It's About That Time" (from In a Silent Way), spliced with something called "Willie Nelson." The first part takes the original and applies the underlying aggression of this set to its once peaceful groove. The second half takes the bottom out, and showcases at once the band's penchant for repetitive riffing and complete irreverence towards the way jazz solos were supposed to be played (I'm not sure there's a straight chord progression on the entire record).
When the track is over, the audience, who probably weren't sure of what had just happened, offers cautious appreciation via some very polite applause. The emcee announces the group again (Miles never spoke during performances), and there are a couple of calls for an encore. Moreira lets everyone know it's over by blowing his whistle, and I surmise that many of the people there were letting out sighs of relief. There's no way to know if they were aware of the jazz revolution starting right under their noses. Over thirty years later, I'm not sure I understand what the preceding hour-and-a-half was all about, except what I consider exceptional musicians taking exceptional chances. It's undoubtedly pointless trying to reduce music to levels of "genius," so from now on, I'll take whatever those guys had to say without much inclination of trying to put it into words. | 2001-10-10T01:00:01.000-04:00 | 2001-10-10T01:00:01.000-04:00 | Jazz | Columbia | October 10, 2001 | 9.5 | 0e98cdef-4b11-4b0e-b87a-5d69b5e0ba5e | Dominique Leone | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dominique-leone/ | null |
The Fiery Furnaces singer's solo debut feels like a throwback to idiosyncratic, solidly crafted singer-songwriter LPs from the 1970s. | The Fiery Furnaces singer's solo debut feels like a throwback to idiosyncratic, solidly crafted singer-songwriter LPs from the 1970s. | Eleanor Friedberger: Last Summer | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15623-last-summer/ | Last Summer | The Fiery Furnaces' 2003 debut album, Gallowsbird's Bark, introduced a band that was utterly, irresistibly restless, from its frequent stylistic and tempo shifts to the ceaselessly discursive patter of frontwoman Eleanor Friedberger. This M.O. of ambitious itchiness was one Eleanor and her brother Matthew would only intensify with albums to come, including the sprawling landmark Blueberry Boat, the conceptually brave family affair Rehearsing My Choir, and the Frankensteinian live document Remember.
But a funny thing happened with the female Friedberger on the Furnaces' manifold zigzagging journeys from point A to point Z. Instead of just yelping or intoning strings of verbiage, Eleanor started to inform her delivery with nuance, irony, and wisdom. By 2007's terrific Widow City, the precocious hepcat of the group's early efforts was achieving real pathos on songs like "My Egyptian Grammar". The maturation deepened with 2009's I'm Going Away, which found Friedberger not only displaying increased subtlety as a singer but also taking a greater hand in crafting lyrics and melodies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the Furnaces' most polished and measured work to date.
Friedberger's debut solo album thoroughly carries over this relatively nascent understanding of her as an artist who can deliver sturdily professional, affecting pop. In fact, Last Summer practically makes I'm Going Away sound like one of the Furnaces' more madcap offerings by comparison. Simple but lovely piano melodies and richly mellow bass shepherd most of the tracks here, though Friedberger has paid lots of attention to filling the album's ample breathing spaces with guitar fills and percussive coloring. The warmly recorded, light-treading effort feels like a throwback to idiosyncratic but solidly crafted albums made in the 1970s by piano-driven popsmiths like Harry Nilsson, Todd Rundgren, and Joni Mitchell.
"Idiosyncratic" is an important qualifier. The success of Last Summer hinges on Friedberger's ability to put across a vocal and lyrical persona that excuses the fact that her tunes, while finely wrought, are hardly groundbreaking. As a vocalist she ably blends tough-minded forthrightness with a capacity for empathy and vulnerability. That's part of the reason why she can flirt overtly with girl-group sounds ("Heaven"), Motown ("I Won't Fall Apart on You Tonight"), and funk ("Roosevelt Island") without seeming like an empty-vessel revivalist. It's what really good artists do-- they get away with occasional genre exercise and pastiche because the force of their own personality overrides any potential slavishness in the songwriting.
Nor has Friedberger sacrificed any of the serpentine panache of her lyrics. The strict sense of her stories may not always be easy to parse, but their logical slipperiness only strengthens the shifting feelings of longing, loss, estrangement, or nostalgia they convey. Friedberger keeps to the Furnaces' longstanding preoccupation with geography but narrows her scope in a way that heightens the album's sense of intimacy. Aside from "Inn of the Seventh Ray", which refers to an acclaimed California locale, Last Summer is all about New York, particularly Brooklyn. But Friedberger isn't interested in name-dropping Williamsburg's hippest bars, preferring to mention old neighborhoods and recreational attractions. Especially given the album's general 70s vibe, Last Summer feels much more like one of Woody Allen's classic cinematic love letters to the Big Apple than the work of any 21st-century scenester. From an artist whose mind and appetites have always ranged so freely, such a cohesive, uncluttered document is doubly revealing. | 2011-07-12T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2011-07-12T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | July 12, 2011 | 7.9 | 0e9a39fe-dca8-48ff-b92d-985475c4ce4f | Joshua Love | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joshua-love/ | null |
Compton rapper YG's follow up to 2014's My Krazy Life parts with DJ Mustard's snaps and dips into rich, classic g-funk, while YG grapples with the contradictions of being a celebrity gangster. | Compton rapper YG's follow up to 2014's My Krazy Life parts with DJ Mustard's snaps and dips into rich, classic g-funk, while YG grapples with the contradictions of being a celebrity gangster. | YG: Still Brazy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21988-yg-still-brazy/ | Still Brazy | YG’s debut My Krazy Life was a hardcore gangsta rap album, but the Compton rapper didn't present himself like a kingpin: On songs like “Sorry Momma,” he self-identified as a small-time house raider and set-claimer, a cog in a much bigger machine just looking to survive (and party in the meantime). But YG’s life has gotten crazier since then: Last year, he was shot by an unknown assailant at his Los Angeles recording studio. Since then he’s mostly used the attack to self-mythologize, boasting that he’s “hard to kill” and claiming that he left the hospital that night and continued working on his album the next day. Last month, shots interrupted the video shoot for his single “Thug” with rapper AD. Police believed the shooting to be gang related. “Gang-related” shootings in Compton are sadly routine; when near the set of a YG video, they can be a coincidence or a coordinated assassination attempt. How do you tell the difference?
These are the subjects that plague him on *Still Brazy. *The album is mostly a status update, examining how the collision between YG the gangster and YG the semi-famous millionaire disrupts his life in Compton. He uses his economical rap style, which boils every concept down to its root, to swat away an ongoing barrage of assaults, some brought on both his new life, others by his old one (on the title track, he shouts, “Why everybody want a piece of my pie?!”) Aside from being a finely crafted personal statement, Still Brazy studies the psychology behind being a celebrity gangster, the ever-present fear of retaliatory violence, or the risk inherent in simply getting caught at the stop light on the wrong side of town sporting the wrong colors.
“Who Shot Me?”, the song that reflects on the incident that left him hospitalized last June, is easily the emotional centerpiece of Still Brazy; its meticulous recounting of potential perpetrators shows off the sharpness of YG’s writing: “Having nightmares of me coming for dude/Having a hard time putting together two and two/They was in a brand-new truck, somebody sent them dudes.” The rest of the album spirals out from this incident, finding him consumed by paranoia, ducking foes both real and perceived, questioning friendships, and watching his pockets.
He also flashes a nascent social consciousness. In its replacement of feel-good party jams with protest music about race and sexual politics, S**till Brazy occasionally scans as My Krazy Life Goes Woke. “Blacks & Browns” weighs the “but what about black on black crime?” question against the impacts of classism and racism. Then there's his flagrant political statement “FDT,” an anti-Trump anthem that seems designed specifically to be chanted defiantly at rallies. Outside of the awful “She Wish She Was,” which plays like a cringey thread of meninist tweets, these moments deliver big, particularly the closer “Police Get Away Wit Murder,” which addresses the long history of police antagonism in Los Angeles (and by extension, all urban centers) over foreboding synths and a steadying drum kick. He’s a very efficient rapper who writes clearly and forcefully, but he isn’t out to offer solutions, just to ask questions and pose hypotheticals.
Still Brazy is his first departure from the isolated synth riffs of longtime collaborator DJ Mustard, but there isn’t much drop-off in chemistry. He is replaced on the boards by DJ Swish, Heartbreak Gang co-founder P-Lo, 1500 or Nothin’, and jazz rap maestro Terrace Martin. Alongside Iamsu!, P-Lo has been at the forefront of HBK’s hyphy revivalism movement. Martin has been a fixture on the west coast scene for over a decade now, working on albums for Snoop Dogg, Warren G, DJ Quik, Kurupt, Murs and, more recently, every member of Black Hippy.
Along with Swish, who handles the majority of the production, they create a palette spanning several generations of west coast rap music; these are some of the richest shades of g-funk, p-funk, and hyphy, reimaged in 1080p, a collage of retro sound packages reformatted into something new. It isn’t sequenced quite as carefully as My Krazy Life, which segued flawlessly from track to track, but it remains remarkably even. YG is as committed to the album format as someone like J. Cole, who has made a career out of trying (and failing) to replicate the “classic rap album.” YG, on the other hand, is merely focused on making a cohesive project that is more than the sum of its parts.
Still Brazy solidifies YG as a torch-bearer for west coast gangster rap. “I’m the only one who made it out the west without Dre/I’m the only one that's about what he say,” he raps on “Twist My Fingaz,” beating his chest in conquest. But Still Brazy is as much a cautionary tale as it is a triumph. Making it is having a million dollars to put on the head of the man who tried to kill you at your studio, but if someone is still trying to kill you after you make it, did you really get out? | 2016-06-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Def Jam | June 21, 2016 | 8 | 0e9fc3f0-f7c3-4b88-97f5-5f999218aea6 | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | null |
Toronto-based Polyvinyl band mines music from the most extreme intersection of beauty and melancholy. Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart and ex-member Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy guest. | Toronto-based Polyvinyl band mines music from the most extreme intersection of beauty and melancholy. Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart and ex-member Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy guest. | Picastro: Whore Luck | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10657-whore-luck/ | Whore Luck | Here's Polyvinyl's cute lil' gift-wrapped, consumer-friendly tagline for Picastro's third album: "Whore Luck is an album of somber reflection and uneasy resolve." Gee, you think so? Polyvinyl might as well sell shotguns and say "this product, when pointed at the face and fired, may cause slight dizziness and nausea." You see, this Torontonian group isn't just bummed; their sickly, sparse acoustic/string arrangements are where sappy ballads and uplifting paeans go to die. They mine music from the most extreme intersection of beauty and melancholy.
Thanks to some auspicious festival slots and favorable internet buzz, Whore Luck finds Picastro getting called up from the rookie leagues to indie's AA level. Fittingly, their third album features chic cameos from Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart and ex-member Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy fame, along with covers of Roky Erickson and the Fall tunes. However, frontwoman Liz Hysen hardly curbs her fragile dementia in the face of this newfound exposure, instead sounding just as terrified of the world as ever. Thanks to the additions of cellist Nick Storring and drummer Brandon Valdivia, Hysen's dark ballads can explore even deeper and more labyrinthine caverns, and Whore Luck often finds itself, for better or worse, getting lost in these sonic regions.
Early on Whore Luck, the difference is marginal. As opening tracks "Hortur" and "Car Sleep" demonstrate, creepy acoustic strumming still drives Picastro's songs, with timely cymbal crashes and moaning strings picking up the dramatic slack for Hysen's signature listless vocals. Not to be confused with My Brightest Diamond or Cat Power though, the lush arrangements quickly vaporize into a paranormal haze, Hysen's zombie-like delivery eschewing melodic delicacy in favor of soulless experimentation and-- for all we know-- feasting on human brains. Her take on Roky Erickson's "If You Have Ghosts" sucks out the song's flower power, replacing Erickson's pysch framework with a pump organ-led haunted house ambiance that very literally interprets the track's title. Brief ditties "Towtruck" and "Stair Keeper" follow, relying on the same pizzicato plucking and tape hissing used to frighten trick-or-treaters approaching your front porch.
Despite these bells and whistles, the band gels enough here to produce its most syncretic material yet. When Picastro co-opt the Fall's early gem "An Older Lover Etc." (titled "Older Lover" on Whore Luck), Hysen boils the song's melody down to a ritualistic chant, fading in and out of the spotlight amidst Stewart's trembling croons and Storring's schizo arrangements. Although Picastro still struggle to justify their maddening paucity as a stylistic choice versus their paucity as cover for lack of ideas, Whore Luck's growing pains appear as proof that the band still has room to grow and is headed in the right direction. | 2007-09-18T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2007-09-18T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Polyvinyl | September 18, 2007 | 7 | 0ea47d4f-6c6b-465e-a071-03be13586d44 | Adam Moerder | https://pitchfork.com/staff/adam-moerder/ | null |
The New York band’s alluring new EP of cocktail-lounge house packs a seven-and-a-half-minute dancefloor heater like a magnum of champagne. | The New York band’s alluring new EP of cocktail-lounge house packs a seven-and-a-half-minute dancefloor heater like a magnum of champagne. | Mr Twin Sister: Upright and Even EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mr-twin-sister-upright-and-even-ep/ | Upright and Even EP | Mr Twin Sister are a remedy for prudish pop not because they deliberately sing about sex, but because their muscular dance music is sexy. Sexy like a man wearing a satin button-up with only one of the buttons buttoned—like Picasso. Sexy like leaving red lipstick on the rim of a martini glass (and then realizing the lipstick has migrated to your chin). Mr Twin Sister’s latest Upright and Even EP—a slim four songs following a run of decadent albums—flourishes in this macho-but-not-sensual realm of cocktail-lounge house.
The group’s excellent self-titled 2014 album presented moments of hedonistic self-discovery as dapper, urbane grooves. Last year’s Al Mundo Azul was a pleasant if slightly less gratifying offering of late-night disco pop. Upright and Even exists in a similar universe of evenings where everything feels easy. You look great, you feel even better; you’re wearing a pair of slacks made out of a material that will surely catch fire if you’re not careful. Saxophone bleeds into strobing synth on the brief opener “Tommie,” a swirl of ’90s house and disco with flickers of trip-hop, as if the DJ is about to play Crystal Waters and chase it with some Gilberto Gil. On the unvarnished and slightly underproduced “Me Contuviste,” frontwoman Andrea Estella sings in Spanish over a meaty line of bass, sounding like she has a smirk tattooed on her face.
The EP’s centerpiece is “Resort,” a propulsive seven and a half minutes that go by in an instant. It’s a song for people who go to the club to dance, not to waste time: “They’re gonna fade/I’m gonna be here all night!” Estella sings. Think of it like Simian Mobile Disco’s sleazy naughties jam “Hustler,” but for lotharios who love French touch. Instead of stealing records, Estella is trying to get another club patron to buy all her drinks on their Amex, a lyric so specific that you can almost see the card’s hologram sparkling beneath a disco ball. The instrumentation sharpens around Estella’s words. Synths dip far into the low end, a drum machine chirps, a saxophone materializes like a heavy exhale before speeding ahead, rushing deep into blacklit club floors and crowds of people clown car-ing their way into a bathroom stall.
Upright and Even exists to be danced to: As an EP, it’s more in step with West End maxi singles than the compendiums of leftover songs some bands might release between studio albums. Mr Twin Sister aren’t new to this strategy—they did something similar in 2018 on Power of Two / Echo Arms, which was more candy froth than robust dance music. Upright and Even is the more successful of the two. It demonstrates a real sense of economy: Nothing feels like a leftover. Each song is a morsel, fully realized. It’s self aware, mature—in a word, sexy. | 2022-12-03T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-12-03T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Twin Group | December 3, 2022 | 7.5 | 0ea57cd3-8577-4d80-b016-6459c81e5703 | Sophie Kemp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sophie-kemp/ | |
On his first new album since 2018, the Canadian songwriter with the gentle country lilt laments almost everything. | On his first new album since 2018, the Canadian songwriter with the gentle country lilt laments almost everything. | Doug Paisley: Say What You Like | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/doug-paisley-say-what-you-like/ | Say What You Like | Doug Paisley’s records have always evoked big, broad rivers, drifting across the Earth without hurry. His smooth country songs are doing ancient work, asking questions of love and death and doubt; these are not fleeting topical concerns or minor peccadillos but, instead, issues of epochs, worries that won’t be solved no matter how urgently the music moves. But just beneath that placid surface, where sighing pedal steels and trotting drums are more eddy than rapid, hidden dangers lurk. In almost every Paisley song, there is at least one line so loaded it can—like sharp driftwood or chiseled stones, swept inside the current—mangle or, at the very least, reorient. “I count the years off on a phantom limb,” Paisley sang on 2014’s Strong Feelings, his gentleness a wicked feint. “I finally hold a hand I know can win.”
The hazards hidden inside Paisley’s calm have never been as dense and potentially devastating as they are during Say What You Like, his fifth album and first since 2018’s incisive Starter Home. The contrast between his sound and substance has never been more striking, either. Backed on these 11 tracks by versatile Toronto band Bahamas, Paisley is cool above the country funk of “Say What You Like” and “Make It a Double,” collected over the spartan “Holy Roller” and “Rewrite History.” These songs, though, are a liturgy of grievance and disappointment, Paisley taking aim at old flames and distant friends, his own vaulting ambition or lack thereof. He shrugs his shoulders at sadness, then wallows in it, his only pal left in town. “We’re always somewhere between forever and walking away,” he sings during “You Turn My Life Around,” a kneecapping kind of love song. Say What You Like puts a pin in several of those somewheres.
A decade ago, Paisley—happily partnered, soon to be a father—spoke about how songs tended to get him in trouble. Lovers would wonder if a new batch of breakup songs were prescient or wishful, even when he protested they were about the past. Culled from a cache of more than 250 demos, Say What You Like feels newly bound to the present, back-of-the-napkin scribbles that capture the domestic realities of things you might say mid-spat or silently wonder when you’re low. “Almost” is the crux. With its lap-steel guitars, soft-breeze harmonies, and swaying drums, the modest quintet winks at bygone days of Hawaiian exotica, especially as it melted into country. But there is nothing ersatz about the lyrics: eight devastating lines about the Sisyphean effort of feeling good enough for yourself, let alone someone else. “Almost was somebody to someone who loved me,” Paisley sings twice, more curse than wish. His voice catches between the adverb’s syllables the second time around, stuck as though it were some snaggletooth mountaintop.
This fatalist sense of insufficiency—of having everything just less than right, forever and always—permeates Say What You Like, no matter the subject. “It’s the same old story in each new catastrophe,” he puts it in one instant, his voice blooming with the unexpected surliness of Richard Buckner. He is put out by the way people from his past perceive him during opener “Say What You Like,” by the way the place of his past can no longer hold him during closer “Old Hometown.” “Sometimes It’s So Easy” first seems a cocksure anthem for traveling on, sporting a restrained strain of the gusto that made George Jones great for so long. “Worst of all don’t stay home, pick up the phone, or be alone,” Paisley warns from experience when he reaches the second verse, tone now drooping. Even breaking up is an almighty struggle, just another way to fail.
Paisley’s even, steady countenance breaks more than ever before on record during “I Wanted It Too Much,” a stately ballad that shifts suddenly into an emotional torrent when Felicity Williams joins for a duet. As she chases him from verse to chorus, he speeds up until his voice starts to quiver, rushing into a wind of chilly uncertainty. “Don’t it look like everybody’s coming up when you’re on the way down?” they ask together, voices barely threaded. “I wanted it too much. I couldn’t stand up and take it.” The troubles beneath Paisley’s pretty songs breach for one of the first few times here. Line up every Paisley album, start to finish, and they can twinkle sadly in the background, like dusty country cassettes salvaged from a thrift-store bin. “I Wanted It Too Much,” though, is entirely arresting, his anxiety complete and unmistakable. It underlines what makes Paisley so good by subverting it. And then, of course, he eases back into something James Taylor might’ve crooned.
In another era of country music (admittedly, the one that serves as a primary muse), Paisley’s voice might have made him a superstar. It curls and keens, nasally but broad—Conway Twitty raised more on the Palace Brothers than the Louvin Brothers. These days, though, the biggest country singers can feel like anonymous conduits for a good time. There’s something else happening around the edges, with folks like Paisley, H.C. McEntire, Joy Oladokun, or Adeem the Artist offering very specific perspectives as both writers and singers. Their stories, turns out, have a sound. On Say What You Like, they take the shape of self-doubt so enduring that the songs can sometimes slip into the middle distance. Just maybe their presence, coming up from underneath, is enough to capsize a system that would never make space for Paisley’s bygone heroes. | 2023-03-20T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-03-20T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Outside Music | March 20, 2023 | 7.8 | 0ea759c7-6f50-4ca1-8490-e53cbbc4dd1f | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
The veteran West Coast rapper toggles between kickback anthems and pertinent reflections on his life and growth, but he’s missing the hunger and innovation of his best work. | The veteran West Coast rapper toggles between kickback anthems and pertinent reflections on his life and growth, but he’s missing the hunger and innovation of his best work. | YG: I Got Issues | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yg-i-got-issues/ | I Got Issues | If you poll 100 rap fans to name the first living West Coast rapper that comes to mind, there’s a good chance that a significant number will name YG. It makes sense. The Compton-raised rapper’s ethos and image, drenched in blood-red and paisley paraphernalia while loosely adhering to the tenets of gangsta rap, have remained remarkably stable over the last decade. Since his stellar major label debut, 2014’s My Krazy Life, he’s balanced salient criticism and self-exploration with a true aptitude for hitmaking, letting crisp songwriting and infectious energy carry him onward. He’s delved into political protest (“FDT,” “Blacks and Browns”), the nihilism that accompanies a brush with death (“Who Shot Me?”), and loss of loved ones (4Real 4Real, a tribute tape to the late Nipsey Hussle).
On I Got Issues, the equilibrium is thrown off. Over the record’s 48-minute runtime, YG oscillates between kickback anthems and pertinent reflections on his career progress and emotional growth. By his own account, he created this project while “having the same approach” as he did on My Krazy Life and Still Brazy. But what’s missing is the hunger and innovation from those records; while he’s able to shoehorn in moments of legitimate lyrical quality, too often he leans on generic production decisions and vapid proclamations that ring hollow.
You can’t accuse YG of running away from himself: “Issues,” the album opener, has him confront his interpersonal conflicts, including his creative fallout with his close friend Mustard (conspicuously missing from this project) and his sustained grief over the deaths of his friends. “What’s up with your brother? Shit, I ain’t talk to Mustard/I just fell back, can’t let a nigga treat me likе a sucker,” he raps starkly, cryptically alluding to the reasons behind their frayed relationship. The curtain falls before we glimpse more than a peek, as he retreats towards more reliable subject matter: paranoia about his safety and freedom in his gangster-tinted lifestyle. On “Alone,” with its soothing flip of Delegation’s 1978 track “Oh Honey,” YG broods about the shelf life of his existence in the streets: “How many more contributions I gotta make?/How many more bullet wounds I gotta take?” he raps, a sobering acknowledgment of how confronting mortality doesn’t get any easier with age.
But it’s when he shifts away from his own emotions that the quality dips considerably. There’s not enough vocal variation or excitement to make some of his vulgar exhibitions interesting or even fun. The infusion of beautiful acoustic guitars on the DJ Swish-led production of “I Dance” aren’t enough to distract from his phoned-in Spanglish and juvenile, sex-obsessed raps; the cookie-cutter, Facebook-esque misogyny of “Baby Momma” is too on-the-nose to feel satirical or playful. When YG yells the chorus—“I hate my baby mama”—it feels as though he just had to get some things off his chest, which does not make for compelling art. Even when he tries to spice up a track’s composition, like singing the melodies himself on “Toxic,” the lyrics about gold-digging and modern-day entanglements feel empty, wasting a nice Mary J. Blige sample along the way.
A YG album should have a higher success rate, which just isn’t the case on I Got Issues. It’s frustrating because the worthwhile moments are obvious: the clock tolling and knocking bass of the Hit-Boy-produced “Maniac” is one of the few times that the rapper sounds at home, rattling off materialistic boasts with a chilling disposition over a groovy bounce beat; “How to Rob a Rapper” is a great California connection with Mozzy and Los Angeles rapper D3SZN, as each man efficiently finds the pockets amid stock rhythmic claps and hi-hats. But an attempt like the pop-leaning, Roddy Ricch and Post Malone-assisted “Sober” registers as soulless and out-of-place. The closer “Killa Cali” is a neat encapsulation of the incongruence damning I Got Issues: YG espouses a list of music legends who died in California and muses about his own guilt, as he raps, “Bullets done put my homies in wheelchairs/Got survivor’s guilt ’cause I’m still here.” He embarks upon an earnest tribute to those who have departed in his hometown—but with its sentimental and heartbreaking nature, it almost feels out of place among the numerous vapid missteps that precede it. | 2022-10-06T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2022-10-06T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Def Jam | October 6, 2022 | 5.8 | 0eac226a-649d-4980-ab8e-90f30229cff7 | Matthew Ritchie | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ritchie/ | |
Recorded across four nights of longform improv at L.A.’s Enfield Tennis Academy, then cut up and remixed, the quintet’s debut marks an exciting milestone in the city’s emerging jazz scene. | Recorded across four nights of longform improv at L.A.’s Enfield Tennis Academy, then cut up and remixed, the quintet’s debut marks an exciting milestone in the city’s emerging jazz scene. | SML: Small Medium Large | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sml-small-medium-large/ | Small Medium Large | There were no rules at Enfield Tennis Academy. The tiny Los Angeles cocktail bar, with its specialty in avant-garde jazz and a name that winked at David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, dodged any accusations of snobbishness by cutting out the usual strictures: no two-drink minimum, no ban on talking or cell phones, and for a while at least, no cover charge. ETA became a destination for the new jazz scene’s westward migration from Chicago to L.A.; a weekly improv session led by Tortoise and Isotope 217 guitarist Jeff Parker was the highlight of the schedule, and a phenomenal recording of those shows, 2022’s Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, finally let the world know what was happening in the cramped back space of that long, narrow club. But despite its momentum, ETA officially shut down at the end of 2023, closing another chapter in the history of West Coast jazz.
It will take a long time to uncover the full extent of ETA’s influence on the L.A. scene. So let’s start now, with SML, a new quintet who recorded their debut album, Small Medium Large, across four nights of longform improvisation at the venue. The group represents the next wave of jazz artists to hit the western shore: saxophonist Josh Johnson, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann are all Windy City transplants. Bassist Anna Butterss arrived in L.A. from Australia via Indiana, while percussionist Booker Stardrum was drawn there from his native New York. (Butterss and Johnson also happen to appear on Mondays at the ETA). They take their cue from an important record on Chicago’s International Anthem imprint, Makaya McCraven’s 2015 album In the Moment, on which he cut up and remixed live improvisations to create a fusion between jazz and hip-hop. SML shares McCraven’s method but not his style; rearranging their concert recordings in their home studios, the group crafted a set of songs that drives like Afrobeat and drifts like kosmische.
The post-production technique is sometimes identifiable—the ultra-fast loops of “Switchboard Operations,” for example, belong on a classic Oval track—but the fervent energy of the live performance shines throughout. “Three Over Steel” begins with nine or 10 seconds of a reverse tape effect and then plows ahead with an undeniable groove. This is either live jazz or a facsimile too good to spot, right down to the way Uhlmann’s guitar solo picks its way through delicate one-note stretches while the audience holds their breath. At other times, the degree of editing is irrelevant. “Dolphin Language” is a new-age wash of ambient synthesis more remarkable for its calm, aquatic atmosphere than for any display of chops, whether on an instrument or a DAW.
Of course, McCraven didn’t invent the cut-and-paste approach. In 1969, producer Teo Macero edited Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way by cutting down 40-odd reels of 2-inch tape into a sleek 38 minutes, combining live performance with studio manipulations for the first time in a jazz context. SML are intimately familiar with this history, as they prove on “Industry,” a funky number in the vein of Davis’ Macero-produced On the Corner. Over Butterss’ and Stardrum’s chugging rhythm, Johnson plays his sax in short bursts and then solos with himself, either through deft editing or impossible dexterity. Later in the track, Chiu’s synth takes off like a rocket in homage to Herbie Hancock’s spacier voyages. Herbie is there too on “Feed the Birds,” a synth-led interstellar journey (the birds are fed, presumably, on the way up). The band soars through clouds of the starstuff that Chiu’s keyboard emits, with Uhlmann’s guitar spiraling out in fractal patterns over the NASA-precise rhythm section.
Referring to the post-genre turn that McCraven and Parker initiated, McCraven has called the word “jazz” “insufficient, at best, to describe the phenomenon we’re dealing with.” Small Medium Large might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter. At the very least, it represents the thrilling next phase of a vibrant L.A. community that, for a decade now, has only moved from strength to strength. ETA may be gone, but SML is here, and hopefully to stay.
Correction: An earlier version of this review stated that the venue was named Enfield Tennis Academy; the actual name was simply ETA. | 2024-07-10T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-07-10T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | International Anthem | July 10, 2024 | 7.8 | 0eac405c-0546-4d0d-b895-19515e3ee6be | Matthew Blackwell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-blackwell/ | |
The soul singer's second album for Daptone finds him in a more optimistic mood, channeling the sound of 1970s greats like Al Green and Curtis Mayfield, and the sheer power of his voice is undiminished. | The soul singer's second album for Daptone finds him in a more optimistic mood, channeling the sound of 1970s greats like Al Green and Curtis Mayfield, and the sheer power of his voice is undiminished. | Charles Bradley: Victim of Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17936-charles-bradley-victim-of-love/ | Victim of Love | With a roster that has boasted singers like Sharon Jones, Lee Fields, Naomi Shelton and the sadly departed Joseph Henry, Brooklyn-based label Daptone Records have forged their retro soul ethos for a decade now with a very calculated method: correcting history’s mistakes by signing aging soul starlets who have fallen through the cracks of time. So how label co-founder Gabriel Roth must have fussed when he came across Charles Bradley, a James Brown impersonator with a harrowing backstory. Enduring homelessness, extreme illness and the murder of his brother (all of which are outlined in the festival circuit documentary Charles Bradley: Soul of America), Bradley came with a marketable narrative and a dynamic stage presence. Most importantly, his voice gives Daptone’s house musicians a leading man who can channel not just Brown, but Otis Redding, Al Green, and Teddy Pendergrass to boot.
To both Bradley and Daptone’s credit, the singer’s first album, No Time for Dreaming, didn't cash in on his distressing life story, but world-weariness did seep into his songwriting. It was as though harsh life lessons had taught Bradley not to expect a great deal from his apparent "big break." The love songs weren’t so much passionate romantic odes as they were desperate declarations of reliance, while the record’s marquee song, “Why Is It So Hard”, offered a cold flipside to the American dream. But what a voice. This wasn’t revivalism for revivalisms sake (a sneer sometimes made at Daptone), but a collection of songs sung with earnestness and authority that it trumped any such criticism.
Two years on, Victim of Love is a more optimistic record, from the Motown-inspired catchy pop-soul number “You Put the Flame on It” to the gorgeous “Through the Storm”, a quiet elegy to bury his past traumas. But these fuzzy moments are offset by new forays into more coarse instrumentation. “You Put the Fame on It” aside, producer Thomas Brenneck pushes his artist from the 1960s into more 70s R&B than he’s previously been accustomed to. Think Curtis Mayfield’s transition from the swinging doo-wop of the Impressions to his solo, psychedelic blues of the early 70s. “Hurricane” trods much the same path as “Freddy’s Dead”, albeit replacing Mayfield’s drugged out nightmare with an environmental warning, while his handprint is all over the sizzling funk workout “Confusion”. Elsewhere, “Strictly Reserved For You” could easily slide into Al Green’s golden 1972-1975 run, and the chipped guitar lines that recall his great collaborator “Teenie” Hodges are matched with some fuzzy Sly Stone-esque axe.
But Victim of Love is ultimately a less successful record than No Time for Dreaming. For one, Bradley seems less connected with this set. “Love Bug Blues” offers him some blaxplotiation-style cool to ride on-- all nasty guitar lines, fluttering jazz flutes, and forceful horn stabs-- but the lyrics uncomfortably cast him as a horny singleton who has caught glimpse of a potential new conquest. His major flaw, however, has been and continues to be his lack of ability to interact with his band. At times, like on overwrought ballad “Let Love Stand a Chance", he sounds completely detached from what’s going on around him, as if he cut his vocal a capella in studio far away from his collaborators. This isn’t helped by Brenneck, who turns Bradley’s voice way up in the mix. Considering the singer’s sheer power it’s sometimes an imbalance. For example, the title track is a bare acoustic jam only backed up with some soft background “oohs” and “ahs”, yet Bradley attacks the arrangement with full speed gusto and his potent voice begins to overwhelm.
These blemishes underline that Bradley is still something of a novice to professional recording and requires guidance to funnel his talents onto wax. That’s the job of Brenneck and the Daptone hierarchy, who are probably calling the shots when it comes to his evolving sound. But Bradley has a rare gift of being a singer worth hearing regardless of the material, and this alone is worth the price of admission. | 2013-04-05T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2013-04-05T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Dunham | April 5, 2013 | 6.8 | 0eadb1ec-d157-4be8-80c3-2b8703e03667 | Dean Van Nguyen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dean-van nguyen/ | null |
The gravel-voiced Nashville rapper’s writing is all tension with just enough release to ensure he doesn’t explode. | The gravel-voiced Nashville rapper’s writing is all tension with just enough release to ensure he doesn’t explode. | Starlito: Love Drug | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/starlito-love-drug/ | Love Drug | For over 20 years, Starlito has been rapping about how stressful it is to be a rapper. Years on the independent mixtape grind in his native Nashville put his slippery monotone within earshot of Cash Money in the mid-2000s, and the artist formerly known as All $tar used his growing platform to grapple with the increasingly high costs of fame. He can shit talk and flex with the best of them—he and Memphis rapper Don Trip’s Step Brothers series is a masterclass in affable and thoughtful bully rap—but he won’t pretend the strain of real life and the rap industry hasn’t put him on the verge of quitting altogether. Fearing his biggest hit, 2005’s oft-remixed “Grey Goose,” would box him into a corner as an alcohol rapper, he’s made sure to split time between partying and pain rap, channeling the tact and entrepreneurial savvy of a Young Dolph or Key Glock without the outsized persona.
On Love Drug, his first solo project since 2020’s Paternity Leave, his raps still cut to the bone, but his outlook has metastasized into something even darker. Starlito’s knack for standing firm in the middle of the storm gives every story lethal urgency, whether it’s about a shootout or just a dead phone battery. But this time, there’s no lighthearted hijinks to dilute the soul-crushingly heavy thoughts. Opener “Writer’s Block” bleeds from various losses—dead friends he should be sharing oysters with, love affairs barely remembered through the haze of a Xanax addiction. Even brief moments of respite (“I celebrate breakin’ even”) are immediately followed by more strife (“I ain’t say it was easy”). Throughout Love Drug, Starlito’s writing is all tension with just enough release to ensure he doesn’t explode.
That sorrow is the album’s lifeblood, the harrowing byproduct of systems that suck the profit and vitality out of the Black bodies not being set up to fail on street corners. On highlight “Put the Gun Down Craig,” a plot beat from the 1995 comedy classic Friday inspires intense reflections on the ripple effect of gun violence, from familial paranoia to snitch culture. “I hate we had to shoot guns, can’t lie; I don’t want no new smoke,” he says plainly, as producer DTdaKidd’s bass and drums pop like shots. Compare that to “iH8RAP,” the album’s only stumble, where good points about media literacy and false rapper personae are drowned out by preachy soapboxing and a guest appearance from YouTube shock jock Charleston White. Lito doesn’t need the help to make his messages any more powerful: “‘Feed your mind, starve your ego,’ I got that from Starlito/This part from Jermaine, align your heart with your brain.”
Otherwise, his blunt thoughtfulness continues to carry his rumbling voice far. He stands tall next to guests like Alabama’s bluesy bard NoCap (“Don’t Cry,” “Pocket Full of Pain”) and punches through the beats, whether a somber groove from producer ZIPS (“Wanna Be There”) or an earthshaker by Memphis heavy hitter Tay Keith (“Bipolar Bear”). Lito stays 10 toes through it all, outwardly unmoored but desperately trying to maintain from within. His quiet devastation comes to a head on closer “Retire My Jersey,” which mixes in autobiography and lessons from Gucci Mane and former labelmate Lil Wayne with the bloodletting. “In the airport, they call me the GOAT/When I’m in the mirror, feel like I’m seeing ghosts,” he says, flow harsh and direct as a mug of black coffee. Starlito may never outrun his demons, but he’s more than content to let the work speak for itself. | 2024-01-16T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2024-01-16T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Grind Hard | January 16, 2024 | 7.4 | 0eadb5f4-76b5-4a7c-b169-da90283d5736 | Dylan Green | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/ | |
The last time I was lost in the Enchanted Forest, stomping through the snarls of black branches, snapping sticks and ... | The last time I was lost in the Enchanted Forest, stomping through the snarls of black branches, snapping sticks and ... | Animal Collective: Here Comes the Indian | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/190-here-comes-the-indian/ | Here Comes the Indian | The last time I was lost in the Enchanted Forest, stomping through the snarls of black branches, snapping sticks and rustling the leaves, I came across a bent hag. She whispered a few words, scattered some herbs to the wind, and shrunk my hands into little one-inch nubs at the end of my full-grown arms. Helpless, and with nightfall hastily approaching, I stumbled across a campfire that had been built by the friendly furry creatures of the Animal Collective.
I could hear noises coming through the trees as I approached: They were making feral cries in the darkness, beginning "Native Belle" and startling me for just a second. After a full day of jamborees and playing Indian in the woods, Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deaken were dancing like children around the crackling fire among the pines. Their voices were twisted electronically to the point that they were hardly distinguishable, swirling around as though just loosed from the Ark. I felt feeble in my attempt to join in, my hands cursed as they were, but the Animal Collective made me comfortable in my new body, showing me that even with such undersized tools-- and scarcely more than drums, voices, effect-laden guitars and keyboards-- infinite sounds were possible.
Holding my hands up into my ears, all the sounds flickered like primitive wah-wah pedals along a cave wall. Even with these hands, I could still clap, and did so right in the middle of the Gibby-tronic slurs and screams of "Hey Light". The wolf-howled bursts quieted into snapping pattycakes and chanted rounds around the dying embers. These communal murmurs were far removed from their first spastic sounds. Panda Bear showed that by tightening my hands into balled fists, my very arms could become drumsticks, conveying endless energy, every surface a percussive experiment. Even as I tap out this recollection, they clack against the keys rhythmically, moving with the rounds of distorted campfire singing; not as a regular beat, but as something stumbled upon and followed into the wild.
The thinly veiled vocal menace of Sonic Youth's Bad Moon Rising is laid out on "Infant Dressing Table" with much clanking, wailing and gurgled regurgitation. Seemingly innocent as a newborn babe, "Two Sails on a Sound" mutates the dark forest into the wood panels of Whitley Strieber's downstairs den, suggesting the presence of silvery aliens. As a piano sampled from Cluster II plinks out "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", the twelve-minute abduction transcends glory-glory hallelujah altogether. "Slippi" is a lost Missa Luba ritual disguised as basement hardcore, an ecclesiastical outburst of joyfully chanted heart patters. "Too Soon" creaks as near to the ground as cricket tremors, interrupted by the shrapnel of the exploding frogs that fall from the trees. Our hands also tremble with inevitable release. It is a natural death for such forest-dwelling creatures as us, slowly losing hold, rising and falling.
The odd pop traces from Avey Tare and Panda Bear's much-beloved Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished have become discernable at certain moments on this day, but only echoed distantly in the woods, not so much lost as Gone. The music was stripped down to that ecstatic skin of mouth, hands, and feet, invoking a rhythmic rapture I had previously only associated with Boredoms and certain tribal recordings. While it's hard to grasp exactly what the Animal Collective was up to here that day in the forest, I have fumbled for hours tonight with my withered paws to gain some kind of understanding, and to hope for just one more glimpse of the ghosts with whom I was so sure I'd danced.
Editor’s Note: This review previously contained a phrase that did not meet our current editorial standards and has been removed. | 2003-06-17T01:00:01.000-04:00 | 2003-06-17T01:00:01.000-04:00 | Experimental | Paw Tracks | June 17, 2003 | 8.6 | 0eae5cca-edaa-4555-aa1b-134555725631 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
The producer born Archy Marshall crafted The OOZ to be alien and timeless. It is the richest and most immersive album the London singer-songwriter has made yet, under any name. | The producer born Archy Marshall crafted The OOZ to be alien and timeless. It is the richest and most immersive album the London singer-songwriter has made yet, under any name. | King Krule: The OOZ | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/king-krule-the-ooz/ | The OOZ | Archy Marshall doesn’t star in his own music—he wanders through it. You might find him spotlit and center stage, foregrounding his violent voice like a fist denting chrome. Or you might find him muttering quietly to himself in the margins, barely audible. He might fail to show up entirely, letting the thickly painted sounds of his productions do all the talking for him. Listening to the London singer-songwriter’s music sometimes feels like waiting for a sea creature to surface: We only ever catch furtive glimpses of him before he disappears again.
He’s recorded as Zoo Kid, as King Krule, and under his own name. There might be some internal logic at work in the different aliases, or it might just be the natural behavior of a hermit crab scuttling between temporary homes. In any case, his magnetic and midnight-black new album The OOZ is his first release as “King Krule” since 2013’s 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, which was his breakthrough and his first release for XL Recordings. Why the return of Krule is probably a secret only the grim-faced Marshall knows; perhaps the moniker is reserved for the music he makes with his vocals front and center, the guise where he plays at being a frontman. Or perhaps the name is a statement of purpose, of newfound confidence. Whatever the case, The OOZ is the richest and most immersive album he’s made yet, under any name, by some distance.
On 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, he was still raw and only 19 years old, working uneasily under the guiding hand of producer Rodaidh McDonald. Since then, he has wrested control of nearly every knob dictating his sound, and The OOZ feels like a piloted journey deep, deep into suffocating loneliness. The sound is tarry, warm, wet: Overwhelming bass lines, the kind that make you aware of the screws in your subwoofers, lurk beneath trebly keyboard chords with flecks of jazz harmonies embedded in them, like glass shards in a carpet. Down here, genre boundaries blur or disappear, so depending on the angle you approach The OOZ, you will find yourself listening to a trip-hop record, a dub record, to punk rock, to tender jazz balladry, or watery R&B. The guitars, slightly out of tune strummed hard and imperfectly, are back in the mix for the first time since 6 Feet Beneath the Moon. But everything is hard to make out on its own, so each listen sprouts rich new suggestions: When he barks the title of “Dum Surfer” over fat saxophones, it sounds for all the world like “don’t suffer.”
In his mouth, words create distance as often as they communicate an idea. Over and over again, he tells us how far we are from him, speaking both plainly and in riddles to keep us at arm’s length. “He left the crime scene without the Motorola/Still had dreams of being Gianfranco Zola,” he mumbles on “Biscuit Town,” a decontextualized scene like a piece of aircraft fell to earth. Other people, when they appear, are usually fallen and unhelpful—“Yeah, she scatters just like one of the people,” he screams on “Vidual,” a howl of bitter scorn and betrayal. On “Logos,” he offers us the chilling image: “I caught my mum, she stumbles home/Through open ground, back to broken homes,” hinting at the sort of necessities that might have led to the development of his wild-eyed, insistent solitude.
Marshall’s music is one of overwhelming nausea but also overwhelming determination, an iron will and a sickened heart working in tandem. “Half man with the body of a shark” he repeats 21 times on, well, “Half Man Half Shark,” a freakish vision of a hybrid creature with no resting state. Later in that same song, he yelps, “Twisted raw adrenaline/Racing through my bones, racing through my body,” sounding electrocuted by his own nervous system. Elsewhere, he refers to insomnia, nights haunted by memories, and pills that don’t work.
But beneath all this desperation, as usual, are luxurious moods and textures, ones that make self-loathing sound so visceral, so tactile, he almost confuses you into wanting it. He makes some of the most gorgeous sounds of any working producer: There is a faintly out-of-tune guitar swelling like buckling linoleum behind him on “The Locomotive,” a disoriented sound sent spinning into deep space by a distant alarm. Your ears want to follow it, to track it until the second it disappears. The diffused piano that waters through “Cadet Limbo,” or the snare knock and high whine of “Biscuit Town,” or the wash of eroding synths that disintegrate one Hz at a time over four minutes of “The Cadet Leaps”—a life spent tormented and alone has few comforts, but Marshall girds himself with gloriously odd sounds, each as piercingly memorable as a lost lover.
He’s long played the bridge troll underneath human civilization, a creature with a fearsome bark and a lonesome heart, but on The OOZ he luxuriates in the role with newfound comfort. “I wish I was people,” he mumbles on “The Locomotive,” and there’s something almost funny about it. The spot where disgust turns seductive, where rot becomes ferment—this is his home. Everything we find truly sexy as adults, after all, repulses us as children, and the sour atmosphere of the music seems to come from this place: the realization that maybe some revolting experiences have subsidiary benefits. “Slipping into filth/Lonely but surrounded/A new place to drown/Six feet beneath the moon,” he has his dad recite on “Bermondsey Bosom (Right).” He sounds peaceful, even gentle. The world is a filthy, utterly debased place, his music suggests, but there are rewards of sorts for those determined to survive it. In this spirit, The OOZ drops at our feet like a piece of poisoned fruit, a masterpiece of jaundiced vision from one of the most compelling artists alive. | 2017-10-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-10-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | True Panther / XL | October 13, 2017 | 9 | 0eb04284-2a70-4198-904a-803df5646507 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | |
Short Movie is Laura Marling's most open and airy album yet, though it remains enigmatic. It is her first album written on electric guitar, and she clutches every guitar fill like it’s a long-lost piece of her identity, luxuriating in space and writing bigger and hazier songs to match. | Short Movie is Laura Marling's most open and airy album yet, though it remains enigmatic. It is her first album written on electric guitar, and she clutches every guitar fill like it’s a long-lost piece of her identity, luxuriating in space and writing bigger and hazier songs to match. | Laura Marling: Short Movie | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20377-short-movie/ | Short Movie | Laura Marling is a particularly standoffish singer/songwriter, reserved in interviews and tauntingly prickly in song; a typical line, from A Creature I Don’t Know standout "Sophia", is "I never did say whatever it was you did that day." As she’s grown, she’s moved farther in this direction, away from the plain-spoken vulnerability of Alas, I Cannot Swim into vocals that curl words into secretive murmurs, and lyrics that tiptoe up to confessions then stop just short. Mythology and formal allusions swirl around even her candid moments, assuring that any autobiography is lost in the fog.
So it’s a mild shock to hear Marling sing "We shared an apartment on the Upper West Side" toward the beginning of her fifth record Short Movie. The lyric is rooted to a specific place, a specific happening in her life. It’s even a precise moment—2012’s post-Hurricane Sandy blackout, which left most of lower Manhattan without power and "dark, as if no one lives there," as she says on "False Hope". In interviews, Marling acknowledges Short Movie is more unguarded, though characteristically only to a point: "The arm’s distance was getting closer with this record for sure, but then I stopped," she told The Guardian, declining to elaborate.
In part, the new sense of openness comes from the sound. Short Movie is her first album written on electric guitar—specifically, her father’s old Gibson 335. It’s not a drastic change, as Marling’s uptempo tracks have always had muscle, but it’s palpable nevertheless. Marling toured Once I Was an Eagle with longtime cellist Ruth de Turberville (who contributes lovely arrangements on Short Movie) but little else in the way of a band or instrumentation, and on Short Movie, she clutches every guitar fill like it’s a long-lost piece of her identity, luxuriating in space and writing bigger and hazier songs to match.
The arrangement on "Warrior", for instance, is stranded atop a canyon of echo and given an arrangement so vast and dusty that Marling almost gets away with the America rip (yes, that one). "Warrior" is hauntingly serious, but elsewhere you can hear here loosening up: "Strange," a near-spoken disembowelment of a hapless cheating man, wouldn’t work without the cruelest hitch of a laugh in Marling’s voice as she informs him, "I don’t love you… I’m pretty sure that you know." It’s easily the standout: every syllable delivered like acid, and lyrics that continually walk up to the line and cross it—right up to "No, I do not believe we were born equally."
Short Movie has been called Marling’s "quarterlife crisis" album, but the crises she's grappling here are the same ones she's confronted her entire career: love as a threat to autonomy, suitors as perpetual disappointments, wariness of intimacy but also of the alternatives. Album opener "Warrior" is a mythological conceit typical of Marling—men as warriors, women as the steeds they misuse. Marling is the sort of artist to deliver "I feel your love" like it’s synonymous with fear, or choking gas; "Walk Alone" is the sound of a woman who’s sat with herself long enough to realize, horrified, that what she hears inside is a lonely-morning dirge.
This turns out to be Short Movie’s main, minor downfall: Most of these themes were explored, in more eviscerating detail, in Once I Was an Eagle, and the album meanders in the second half. Without an overarching conceit like Once I Was an Eagle, Short Movie comes off sounding like a transition record, a short movie in the sense that it’s a prelude to something bigger. But Marling’s career is remarkable in part because album after album she not only delivers on those bigger things, but delivers them in her idiosyncratic voice. She’s spent her entire career dodging comparisons, but by now she has earned the right to be compared only to herself. | 2015-03-27T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2015-03-27T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Ribbon Music / Virgin EMI | March 27, 2015 | 7.4 | 0eb562a7-969d-4a67-a716-1e2e8e940868 | Katherine St. Asaph | https://pitchfork.com/staff/katherine-st. asaph/ | null |
Six months after his Passed Me By EP advanced like a scorched-earth campaign over the ruins of dance music, Manchester-based DJ and producer Andy Stott is back with another six tracks of charred, crawling techno. | Six months after his Passed Me By EP advanced like a scorched-earth campaign over the ruins of dance music, Manchester-based DJ and producer Andy Stott is back with another six tracks of charred, crawling techno. | Andy Stott: We Stay Together | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15971-we-stay-together/ | We Stay Together | Six months after his Passed Me By EP advanced like a scorched-earth campaign over the ruins of dance music, Andy Stott is back with another six tracks of charred techno. You can bet that in the fast-zombies-versus-slow-zombies debate, Stott sides with the groaners and stumblers: As was his previous record, We Stay Together is a Frankenstein's monster pieced together from scraps of club tracks pitched down to an agonizing crawl. Funny things happen at this speed: The beats lurch violently, kicking up clouds of ash with every impact; every syncopation becomes a hesitant shudder. Sampled vocals, looming in the background, turn to a jellied groan.
The record begins rather demurely with "Submission", five minutes of choral samples and ambient flutter that suggests the sound of a thousand pigeons ruffling their feathers in a catacomb. "Posers", which follows, sets up the idea that will maintain across the rest of the record, with a slowed-down railroad chug, tri-tone strings, and dissonant washes of synthesizer; distant horns sound the mournful call of a failed hunt. Despite the leaden drowsiness, it still moves: There's an infectious sense of groove in its shuffling percussion and echoing finger snaps.
After "Posers", the record's fastest track-- around the same tempo as many of the slow-motion house and disco records being produced by artists like John Talabot, Kassem Mosse, and Blondes; it only feels slower, thanks to its blasted, narcotic production-- things get really torpid. Not just sluggish, but also nasty and mean, degraded and depraved, with more of that death-gurgle bass that led me to compare Stott's last record to Sunn O))). If anything, We Stay Together sounds even more like it could have been released by Southern Lord.
On vinyl, We Stay Together serves a two-for-one purpose: It's meant to be played at 33, but if you speed it up to 45, most of the record's tracks actually become punishing, industrial-strength techno, the kind of sledgehammers associated with Berlin's famously intense Berghain club. Even played like this, though, they don't sound like "normal" techno: they're warped, muted, blown out-- they sound wrong. "Bad Wires" becomes like Surgeon being run through a cubic meter of boiled wool; the clanging "Cracked" comes to sound like several dub techno tracks being played in parallel, with rhythms so disorienting you may wonder if Stott simply sampled a particularly hairy passage from an old DJ mix and slowed it down by 30%.
There's another reason to get this record on vinyl: It sounds way, way better. That might seem odd, given that so much of Stott's sound has to do with using compression, distortion, and other effects to make his music not just strange but even ugly. But, on wax, his swollen low end growls in a way that's almost sensual. (If you must buy digital, pay the extra bucks for the FLAC version; the difference between the high-bitrate version and a compressed MP3 is very real.)
Despite the surface similarities between We Stay Together and Passed Me By, it doesn't feel like Stott is repeating himself. Both records may seem like hellish vultures picking over the carcass of dance music, but every track on the new record yields fresh morsels. Fans of Stott's labelmates Demdike Stare, and all the other goth-n-screw artists out there at the moment, will be happy to gnaw on these bones. | 2011-10-27T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2011-10-27T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic | Modern Love | October 27, 2011 | 8.2 | 0ebb0939-323d-4c48-ba1d-4b4905bd24e3 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | null |
The grime producer's latest LP play simmers down the tension to hint at more meditative things lurking below, trying to blend wild movement with more contemplative ambience. | The grime producer's latest LP play simmers down the tension to hint at more meditative things lurking below, trying to blend wild movement with more contemplative ambience. | Slackk: A Little Light | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23121-a-little-light/ | A Little Light | Slackk’s taken a wild route from grime mixtape archivist to R&S Records signee. It’s a discography that made his influences easily acknowledged—grime dons like Wiley and D Double E on his two-year stint on the Local Action label, or Chicago ghettotech and footwork via his releases under the alias of Patrice & Friends—but makes his next move unpredictable. Anyone willing to work out those influences alongside nods to house and ambient is willing to go anywhere, but getting it all properly focused is harder than letting that eclecticism take you wherever you feel like going.
Like last year’s Aviary EP, A Little Light takes the promise of his 2015 R&S debut EP Backwards Light and simmers down the tension to hint at more meditative things lurking below. But while Aviary was packed with a joyful bombast with earlier nu-grime and ramped up the mood to something giddy without making it feel empty, there’s not much on A Little Light that fits in either mode. The scattered chord progressions and nerve-jostling drum patterns that laced Aviary with all that promise are diluted enough that Slackk’s musical ideas feel in transition. The moments of crushing bass stand out just as often as the moments where more delicate ambience takes over, but they hardly work together.
When they do, it’s because they lay down a strong mood, which it’s pretty hard not to do when you’re oscillating somewhere between Terror Danjah bass and Aphex Twin twitchiness. Two standout cuts, the chunky jaw-clenching dub lurch of “Desert Eagle” and the halogen-and-laser glow of “Deluxe Night Edition,” hit that sweet spot between momentum and reflection by juxtaposing the kind of beats that show you just how to move with melodic hooks. It’s not complicated stuff, but the freedom to let a track either propel you or wash around you is at the core of some of Slackk’s best music.
And splitting those tendencies does a lot to sap the emotion from songs until they’re just a little ambient puzzle to tinker with or a straightforward beat to absentmindedly nod to. Opener “Spring Mist” has its own problems—a crowd-pleasing rattle of post-Neptunes drum pattern is smothered in a sort of weightless digital ocarina of twee, too precious to wild out over and too heavy on the kicks to relax to—but at least it’s a contrast. There’s a twofer in the middle of the album that points out the weaknesses of him just letting a glimmering shard of near-beatless ambient noodling ride (“So Far, the Sea”) or laying down a solid-enough beat without much of a shot to build much further over it than a distracted-sounding synth wriggle. They might stir up some attention, but there’s not much mood or feeling behind it, just a bit of churning forward motion that feels propelled by the passage of time and not much else. As pure instrumentals, a good portion of A Little Light risks feeling like a piece of eye-catching scenery in search of some occupants.
Not that Slackk’s said everything he needs to say on those first two R&S EPs. He still shows new ways for him to manipulate mood and tone without really finding a lazy comfort zone, much less falling into one. Some of the weirder little sketch-interludes he drops in an early hint at weirder ideas. “Maze” looms like some sort of space cathedral and lets off a few inside-out arpeggios and is more melodically staggering than anything else on the record, and the simple loop of groans that makes all 27 seconds of “Sefton Park West” feels simultaneously melancholy and creepy. And even when his sound’s a little more recognizable and easy to compare to his peers, it at least comes with the sense that he’s doing more than escaping into his own headspace. It’s a start—or better yet, a restart. | 2017-05-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-05-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | R&S | May 13, 2017 | 6.3 | 0ec14ef6-524b-4da7-93a9-3a670f2459e5 | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
These Australians have crafted an assured and accomplished album that integrates an array of psych rock references into a powerful whole. | These Australians have crafted an assured and accomplished album that integrates an array of psych rock references into a powerful whole. | Tame Impala: Innerspeaker | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14279-innerspeaker/ | Innerspeaker | From the Vines to Wolfmother to Jet, recent Aussie rock exports have been painfully indebted to arena rock-- quick to recycle a sound but rarely succeeding in revitalizing it. Perth three-piece Tame Impala play with some of the ingredients of arena rock as well but do so in aid of more leftfield, organic sounds and interesting excursions. The result is a cleanly executed and frequently dazzling debut: Innerspeaker is a psychedelia-heavy outing that toys with paisley pop, stoner vibes, and an expansive array of swirling guitars.
On first listen, Innerspeaker provides a lot of dots to connect: There are patches of late-60s American psychedelia, buzzy Motor City riffage, and decades of British pop, ranging from the pastoral pop of the Kinks to the vivid expansiveness of the Verve to the narcotic warmth of the Stone Roses. Frontman Kevin Parker shares an eerie vocal similarity with John Lennon, both in tone and in the way he allows his voice to soar with each melodic turn or rhythmic surge. Though most of the album is a little restrained lyrically, Parker's rapturous phrasing conveys the meaning. Mixed by Flaming Lips collaborator Dave Fridmann, each component here is set on an even plane, allowing bass lines and delay-swept guitar bursts to melt into one another, cultivating a uniform feel that's vintage, far-out, and irrepressibly cool.
By all accounts, fixing their gaze so intently on established influences should play as either disingenuous or forced. It's difficult to be so plugged-in to a vintage feel without the music seeming time-capsuled, but the band's vibrance help these songs sound very much alive. Tame Impala aren't taking a purely revisionist approach-- you aren't left with a feeling that their intention was recreate some lost Love demo or an Jimi Hendrix Experience deep cut. If anything, their record points to some of the same roads traveled recently by bands like Animal Collective or Liars, but dials back the eccentricities and difficulty level, leaning on the guitar rather than electronics, and focusing their efforts through more traditional pysch-rock prisms. They aren't as adventurous as their more offbeat peers, but because of their lazer-guided hooks and tangible pleasures, they might wind up reaching more people.
This is very much an album's album-- it sounds best as a piece, where you can get lost in its heady expanse. With the kaleidoscopic stereo-panning on "Why Won't You Make Up Your Mind?" or the maddening stomp on "Bold Arrow of Time", Innerspeaker demonstrates a subtle yet encompassing sense of control, never obstructing the grander motifs while still offering a variety of odd details that guide you back to the album's hooks. There aren't any standout singles on Innerspeaker in the sense that it's unlikely that people are going to be asking you to throw on certain tracks by name (though if in a pinch, "Expectation" and "Why Won't You Make Up Your Mind?" should suffice nicely). But when an album is able to tinker with and update familiar textures and moods without blurring the lines too much or just plain overdoing it, you can believe that psych fans will be asking for it to be thrown on regardless. If you're smart, you'll oblige them. | 2010-05-28T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2010-05-28T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Modular | May 28, 2010 | 8.5 | 0ec4d32b-128b-4afe-904f-cc9a6eeac192 | Zach Kelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zach-kelly/ | null |
Slim Twig comes over like an intriguing cultural cross between John Waters, Vincent Price, and Gene Pitney—high-minded, campy, and playful enough to draw us into his surreal world of rockabilly blues and horror. His latest, originally released in a small run on his own imprint and now picked up by DFA, has been framed as a bizarro interpretation of Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson. | Slim Twig comes over like an intriguing cultural cross between John Waters, Vincent Price, and Gene Pitney—high-minded, campy, and playful enough to draw us into his surreal world of rockabilly blues and horror. His latest, originally released in a small run on his own imprint and now picked up by DFA, has been framed as a bizarro interpretation of Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson. | Slim Twig: A Hound at the Hem | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19979-slim-twig-a-hound-at-the-hem/ | A Hound at the Hem | Slim Twig is a young man from Toronto named Max Turnbull and, among other things, his work makes the case that Bobby Pickett’s "Monster Mash" might well be a cultural high-water mark. He's by no means a novelty act, however; Turnbull takes underground art seriously and literally, releasing spooky, risen-from-the-grave albums like A Hound at the Hem that feature multi-layered, sophisticated pop songs mired in misdirection and haunted-house trickery.
When he was the toast of Toronto a few years ago, Slim Twig was an intriguing cultural cross between John Waters, Vincent Price, and Gene Pitney—high-minded, campy, and playful enough to draw us into his surreal world of rockabilly blues and horror. A precocious theatre kid at the time (his parents are filmmakers Ross Turnbull and Jennifer Hazel; he himself played Ellen Page’s love interest in The Tracey Fragments), he took as much care of his visual persona—a nattily dressed, pompadour-sporting crypt-keeper—as he did his music. However divisive, he was Canada’s great grey hope for an unlikely moment, shielding us from the restless, driving spirt within.
His work has drawn comparisons to wily shape-shifters like David Bowie, Suicide, Nick Cave/The Birthday Party, and David Lynch, all of whom have certainly drawn power from the same hair-raising darkness that feeds Slim Twig. He recorded A Hound at the Hem in 2010 but shelved it in favor of a more palatable album called Sof’ Sike. Apparently Hound’s edgy, mind-altering textures were a bit much for anyone accustomed to the comparably direct, accessible releases he'd dispatched up to this point. For all of his slick grit, nothing seemed to spook him and his business associates as much as the enigmatic A Hound at the Hem, which, after a small self-released run in 2012, is finally reaching a wider audience via DFA.
The record starts so beautifully with "Heavy Splendour"'s soothing string arrangement by Owen Pallett and executed by St. Kitt’s string quartet. But the progression deliberately goes awry. Turnbull’s penchant for dramatically off-kilter musical flourishes and gestures means that an infectious pop progression is often perverted and unsettled; some kind of howling, dissatisfied specter possesses each song’s eerie soundscape.
A Hound at the Hem has been framed as a call-back to Serge Gainsbourg and Jean-Claude Vannier's 1971 masterpiece Histoire de Melody Nelson, which is a loose but orchestral concept record inspired by Vladmir Nabokov’s Lolita. Turnbull’s adaptation of his source material is distorted and murky, barely articulating notions of ill-advised romance before reflecting them in a funhouse mirror. He adopts different voices, calling and responding with himself, as he utters mostly indecipherable lyrics. Rather than firm intent, he primarily conveys foreboding attitude and an outsider’s cold-as-ice swagger. On "Clerical Collar", he sounds like Jim Morrison fronting a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, strains of "L.A. Woman" seeping through with a creepy choir of low and high voices emerging during every chorus.
A Hound at the Hem is a twilight zone of madness and provocation. As the album unfolds, Slim Twig rarely ever sounds like the same guy, each song (hell, each verse) presenting multiple personalities and tones of expression. Its hard-psych is ugly, alluring carnival music that warps and melts before us just as we begin to trust it. Through it all though, there’s an undercurrent of humor and fun; Turnbull’s active imagination stretches out for miles and he comes across as a twisted visionary on his most accomplished album yet. | 2014-11-19T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2014-11-19T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Rock | DFA | November 19, 2014 | 7.7 | 0ecc607f-c691-4125-a742-7e48a4fe6495 | Vish Khanna | https://pitchfork.com/staff/vish-khanna/ | null |
With Spoon producer Mike McCarthy behind the boards, this blues-rock band from Dayton, Ohio, aims for a slightly cleaner sound to accompany songs that are a touch more introspective. | With Spoon producer Mike McCarthy behind the boards, this blues-rock band from Dayton, Ohio, aims for a slightly cleaner sound to accompany songs that are a touch more introspective. | Heartless Bastards: The Mountain | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12697-the-mountain/ | The Mountain | Since 2005, Heartless Bastards have been writing traditional blues-rock that they record in a simple and more or less lo-fi manner, which means they bleed authenticity from both ends. So the cleaner and more carefully arranged sound of their latest album, The Mountain, is a new step for them. From the opening title track, it sounds like a confident one. A muffled guitar introduces the simple minor-key progression, but then the whole band kicks in, stretching the sound from pan-and-scan to widescreen, while a soaring electric slide guitar adds to the song's understated majesty. Producer Mike McCarthy has done a fine job of making the band sound clean without being antiseptic, but the focus is very much on the dirty guitars and the voice of frontwoman Erika Wennerstrom. Her voice is distinctive, powerful, and exudes an easy lived-in authority; it's the kind of voice any band playing this kind of straightforward rock would die to have fronting them.
Heartless Bastards seem like their trying to grow and diversify without losing sight of themselves or their sound-- a tricky undertaking since they've made it thus far on bare-bones rock. But even with the added touches, The Mountain still a pretty austere affair. The most ostentatious moments are the record's softer ones. "Wide Awake" is one example, with its reserved strum augmented by mandolins, a martial drumbeat, and Wennerstrom singing an ambitious, vaguely Eastern-sounding vocal melody (Led Zeppelin III seems seems like the band's North star on how to add depth). "Early in the Morning" and "Out at Sea" are more typical plugged-in mid-tempo stompers, the latter having a few overdubs and incidental noise that slyly suggest a psychedelic touch. "Nothing Seems the Same" is that song's simmering cousin, gradually building and receding without ever bursting through, with some of the same production touches.
If anything drags The Mountain down, it's tempo. The title track is immediately deflated by the acoustic campfire strum of the following "Could Be So Happy", though the simple ascending chorus promises that it'll linger in listeners' minds once it's over. . "Hold Your Head High", however, is maudlin world-weary, little-help-from-my-friends tripe that even Wennerstrom's voice, hammering every brassy high note within reach, can't save. "So Quiet" is another folky detour, with a string chart that screams starched collars in comparison to the band's blue ones, and they follow that right up with "Had to Go", more acoustic fun with added banjo and fiddle. Compared with the record's earlier slow songs, "Had to Go"'s languid tempo seems purposeful and patient, with Wennerstrom in total control of the melody-- but most arresting is the open space that they've allowed into the song. The last two songs signal a return to volume and normalcy, but while closing track "Sway" is a perky step sideways from the record's somber tone, "Witchypoo" is not nearly sublime enough to sustain its sluggish pace. With The Mountain, Heartless Bastards have shown that they have the tools and the talent to take at least tentative steps forward into a more ambitious and diverse sound. But it's surprising that they sound so introspective here when they could, and occasionally do, sound world-beating. | 2009-02-23T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2009-02-23T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Rock | Fat Possum | February 23, 2009 | 6.5 | 0ecdc1ac-6f48-4e96-b17f-c6fc803469ab | Jason Crock | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jason-crock/ | null |
On their 12th full-length album, the Swedish metal institution have never sounded more comfortable with their full-on prog transition, which works both for and against them. | On their 12th full-length album, the Swedish metal institution have never sounded more comfortable with their full-on prog transition, which works both for and against them. | Opeth: Sorceress | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22466-sorceress/ | Sorceress | Around the time when Opeth were recording their second album Morningrise, they formed Steel, a tribute to the ’80s speed metal they grew up with. They only released one EP, Heavy Metal Machine, and its cheekiness and obvious nostalgic air (that stuff was already ancient in 1996!) did not obscure the fact that Mikael Åkerfeldt is a legit shredder. Dan Swanö, Opeth’s producer at the time and former mastermind of Edge of Sanity, sounded legit charming, like Brian Johnson trying his hand at AOR. Steel felt like dudes just kicking it, which is something you would never say about Opeth. Åkerfeldt has moved away from metal and fully embraced progressive rock with Opeth’s more recent albums, but their 12th full-length, Sorceress brings to mind Steel’s carefree attitude as much as Genesis and King Crimson. They’ve never sounded more comfortable with their full-on prog transition, which works both for and against them.
Heritage signaled their shift into progressive rock five years ago, and 2014’s Pale Communion further solidified the transition, but Opeth is still largely thought of as a progressive metal band. Åkerfeldt's growls don’t appear here, and even though five years have gone by, it still takes some getting used to. It’s one of the challenges of considering modern-day Opeth: for all of their merits, the first time we heard “Demon of the Fall” (one of the few ’90s songs they still play live) is hard to block out. Sorceress’ strongest moments are when the metal creeps back in ever so slightly. Even with the death metal gone, they can’t put away their Deep Purple records. The title track begins with an electric piano boogie that gives way into a chugging rhythm. Chug? On an Opeth record? By restraining the crunch to give space for Åkerfeldt's vocals, it actually works. “Sorceress” acts as a nod to American progressive metal bands who took from Opeth’s more metal moments.
In the dueling organ and guitars of “Chrysalis,” you could be tricked into thinking they’re moving back towards metal for a minute. “Era” recalls Rush’s earlier hard rock days, with Åkerfeldt’s croon more soothing than Geddy Lee’s wail. While he’s no Neal Peart, Martin Axenrot’s business gives that song a metal life while not being explicitly such. Hell, acoustic intro “Persephone” wouldn’t be too out of place on an At the Gates record. Opeth need not cater to those who tuned out after Heritage; still, those glimpses of familiarity account for most of the record’s real highlights.
Opeth’s contrasts between death metal and clean refrains were a hallmark of their sound, but frankly, some of their transitions from death metal to clean refrains were clunky, to say the least. Their new direction has largely solved that issue in terms of inter-song dynamics, but, as with Heritage and Communion, they still struggle with maintaining momentum. Right after “Chrysalis,” “Sorceress 2” and “The Seventh Sojourn” bog the record down. Indulgence is not the crime; Sorceress proves Åkerfeldt has embraced control, and there’s nothing like the 20-minute “Black Rose Immortal” from Morningrise again. But “Sorceress 2” is a pointless acoustic interlude that doesn’t really serve as a continuation of “Sorceress.” It’s adrift, whereas “Sorceress” is assured and steady. “Sojourn” is the bigger offender, with its vaguely Middle Eastern percussion and acoustic guitars. If Opeth took pieces of “Sojourn” apart, they could make some really strong songs out of them—the drums would go great with the crunch of the title track, and the strings might not even so bad if there were some other active force competing against it.
Even more shameful is that they’re followed by “Strange Brew,” the most convincing argument for Opeth abandoning metal. “Sojourn” awkwardly attempted to go psychedelic; “Strange Brew” does it effortlessly. There’s enough guitar flash and bombast characteristic of modern prog bands, yet Åkerfeldt knows how to hold back, cutting in with his somber voice just as he and Fredrik Åkesson start to get hyperactive. The soft piano that leads it off syncs better with “Chrysalis”’ ending, so it’s clear those two tracks work together side by side—it’s as if they forgot to remove all the rough sketches in between. Opeth have gotten better at self-editing with Sorceress; still, their jammier tendencies fail them in the album’s lackadaisical middle, showing they may just be a little too cool. Giving Steel another go just might inspire them to find the right balance of looseness and rigor. | 2016-10-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Nuclear Blast | October 8, 2016 | 6.7 | 0ece12dd-8999-4acf-88c5-19738990e1c4 | Andy O'Connor | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-o'connor/ | null |
GoldLink’s second album stretches far beyond his home in the DMV. It is a confluence of black music; hip-hop tracing its way back to the universal sounds of Africa. | GoldLink’s second album stretches far beyond his home in the DMV. It is a confluence of black music; hip-hop tracing its way back to the universal sounds of Africa. | GoldLink: Diaspora | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/goldlink-diaspora/ | Diaspora | GoldLink’s 2017 album At What Cost was a monument to the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. It was a valiant attempt to capture the unwanted (read: gentrified) remnants of a lost city before it changed for good. But it wasn’t bitter about what was lost; it was hopeful about what it found. His second album, Diaspora, stretches outward. It pulls not just from across the music of the many displaced black communities the world over, as you might expect from the title, but follows the tendrils of influence back to Latin America and China. It is daring to follow your most local album with something so international, which just happens to be the best music of his career.
Because this is a GoldLink album, the center of his diaspora is still D.C., and he can’t help but sneak in DMV locals from Gaithersburg (Bibi Bourelly), Capitol Heights (Lil Nei), and Woodbridge (WaveIQ), along with Virginia Beach’s Pusha T. But the album follows throughlines from D.C. to Los Angeles to London, then to Nigeria, closing the gaps between rap, R&B, Afrobeats, reggae fusion, and pop music in the process. GoldLink proudly stands in the middle of a tremendous musical legacy, honoring its many corners and the many people who represent them. “GoldLink,” as he says on the song “Yard,” “is a black work of art.”
As such, Diaspora is first and foremost a confluence of black music; hip-hop tracing its way back to the universal sounds of Africa. The album doesn’t make rap feel global; this isn’t an attempt to unpack the sham “world music” genre. By connecting dots, it makes the world feel smaller. It’s another illustration of how the realm of black music is interconnected. With producers hailing from London, Los Angeles, Ghana, and Kenya, Diaspora is ambitious, expansive yet intimate, dutty wine-worthy, and slick.
As the diaspora converges around GoldLink, he performs a heightened version of his patented stoicism. “Sold weed, sold pills, sold D, sold this, sold that/Look, I don’t wanna talk about it all/Seen fiends, seen death, seen shots, seen this, seen that/Look, I don’t wanna talk about it all,” he raps on “Maniac,” and his verses largely stick to that withholding pattern. There aren’t any metaphors. He isn’t setting up punchlines. It’d be inaccurate to call him a storyteller. He mostly raps in narrative told through epigrams and personal proverbs.
The chronicles, which are all anecdotal, have lessons or tidbits baked into them. “Couple months ago, I was in the city on a date with a single ting/You’d prolly know her, and I never show, and she told me how she get security/But I always tell her, ‘I’m a hood nigga and this famous shit is new to me’,” he raps on “No Lie.” Some info is imparted as exposition; some the listener obtains second hand through dialogue. He’s never quite forthcoming, always concealing something, which is fitting for someone who kept his face hidden through much of his breakthrough. But his raps are bracing, and he is in complete command.
Whether navigating the “Future Bounce” of his debut mixtape, Soulection’s “lo-fi beats to chill to” aesthetic, or the more intensely rhythmic music of the black diaspora, GoldLink nestles so deeply into the groove it’s as if he’s been sucked into a riptide. His flows are so painless they’re almost leisurely. That natural almost easygoing sense can be quite a juxtaposition with his hard knocks raps (“Turned 13, had my first stick/Ride around the city with the stolen whips/Fought niggas ’fore I had a first kiss”). He is a brass tacks rapper whose verses are nearly spartan in their presentations of his ever-changing life (“I done seen so many come, I done seen so many go/Pistol packing, then I started trapping, then I started rapping, then I blowed”), but his cadences are always poised, precise, and fluid. He’s swift when he has some margin but he’s even better in tight spaces, as on “U Say,” where he twirls between the polyrhythms like he’s jumping double dutch. Diaspora is simply further proof that there isn’t any beat he can’t zip his way through.
It’s GoldLink’s ability to seem at home in any space that makes Diaspora so coherent, and so specific to him, despite pulling music from all over. He is the anchor. He is as snug next to Wizkid as he is with Khalid. He has Bibi Bourelly singing in Lingala on a song with British-Nigerian Afro-fusionist Maleek Berry. As “Coke White / Moscow” and “No Lie” rev up to bigger and sleeker second acts, he simply adjusts his default setting like he’s shifting into another gear. On “Rumble,” he is the bridge between his DMV roots and rap’s global impact: He brings together the extremely local Lil Nei and Got7 rapper Jackson Wang, a Hong Kong native working in the K-pop industry. These two wouldn’t be rapping together under any other circumstance. Working that unlikely pairing is undeniable proof of Diaspora’s ambition to harness rap’s power to integrate. | 2019-06-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-06-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Squaaash Club / RCA | June 19, 2019 | 8 | 0ece229a-b149-4ec7-a5f7-8686b20cd1a0 | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | |
On the vaporwave producer and label boss’ new album, smeary synths and boyband-inspired vocals feel less like a biting subversion of nostalgia than a straight-up “remember when.” | On the vaporwave producer and label boss’ new album, smeary synths and boyband-inspired vocals feel less like a biting subversion of nostalgia than a straight-up “remember when.” | George Clanton : Ooh Rap I Ya | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/george-clanton-ooh-rap-i-ya/ | Ooh Rap I Ya | What happens when a genre inspired by the hollowness of branding itself becomes a brand? Over the last few years, George Clanton’s 100% Electronica label has carried forward the momentum of a decade of vaporwave, taking the genre offline, launching festivals and merchandise, and minting an overall more consumer-friendly presentation of a sound once confined to the most baffling corridors of the internet. Though he’s remained a constant ringleader, Clanton himself has been relatively quiet in terms of output, only dropping the occasional loose single and a collaborative album with the frontman of 311. As his profile continued to rise, it remained to be seen how he would eventually follow up his invigorating 2018 debut, Slide.
After five years, the questionably titled Ooh Rap I Ya reveals that not much has changed: ’90s big beat drums reign supreme, shoegazey guitars provide some modern polish, and Clanton’s voice is still swinging for Tears for Fears levels of anthemic cheese. Where Slide deftly blended Clanton’s various projects together—melding his smudged electro-pop as Mirror Kisses and more traditionally vaporwave collages as ESPRIT 空想 into one body-thrashing rockstar entity—Ooh Rap I Ya struggles to find new or better ways to make the pieces fit. The longer it goes on, the more its densely smeared synths start to feel confused rather than euphoric.
The songs on Ooh Rap I Ya can be roughly split into two categories, each attempting to unveil a deeper layer to Clanton’s persona. On one hand are songs like “Justify Your Life,” “I Been Young,” and “F.U.M.L.,” which take the charged-up Y2K pop of Slide and refract it through a wearier lens, casting Clanton as a hungover partygoer who’s getting older and coming to terms with past mistakes. The remaining tracks (concentrated in the back half of the album) showcase Clanton the psychedelic soundscaper, favoring his slo-mo production and largely relegating vocals to the background. Each half has its moments and misses, but taken together, they suggest an artist without a particularly strong commitment to either direction.
When Clanton does hit the target, the results are nectar-sweet: “Justify Your Life” cultivates a vintage downbeat haze, its trip-hoppy drums and fretless bassline rolling in like waves. It feels like something you’d find on a VHS compilation of forgotten MTV-era breakup jams (you can practically see the overdone blue filters and piped-in rain). Nostalgia figures heavily into Clanton’s chillwave boyband playbook, and he knows how to have fun with these tropes, even if it’s only skin deep. “I Been Young” is a best-case scenario, its slamming Breakfast Club piano chords conjuring a sense of time passing by—a sentimental slow-rider served with a wink. Some of Clanton’s impressions are better than others though; getting to the song’s arms-in-the-air chorus requires wading through a verse where Clanton hisses in a limp staccato somewhere between Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake, undercutting any emotional catharsis. At a certain point, ironically embracing corniness just circles back to being corny again.
“You Hold the Key and I Found It” kicks off the album’s more instrumental stretch by digging into a deep groove of looping drum breaks and syrupy synths that hit a pleasingly stoned stride. “Vapor King / SubReal” achieves a similar effect, but as the tracks keep coming, the limits of Clanton’s beatmaking toolbox become increasingly apparent. Songs breeze past the five-minute mark without evolving much, and by the fourth time he’s wheeled out a drum sample that sounds like it was pulled from a folder of Screamadelica outtakes, it’s hard not to tune out. This might be for the best, as the album’s final songs begin to incorporate a kind of sing-songy chanting that recalls the sounds of old “world music” dollar-bin fodder. And if there’s some deeper meaning to the gibberish mantra of the title track, Clanton doesn’t illuminate it.
Vaporwave has taken on its share of regrettable baggage over the years, but in spite of its complicated reputation, the genre really did predict a sea change in the way popular music would be created, consumed, and understood in a post-internet world. Clanton has made it his goal to take that legacy into the future, but Ooh Rap I Ya plays it entirely too safe, feeling less like a biting subversion of nostalgia than a straight-up “remember when.” This could have been saved by meatier hooks, a more realized emotional arc, or production choices that didn’t feel as if they were well and fully covered by Neon Indian and Washed Out over a decade ago. As is, these tracks are neither heady enough to coast purely on vibes, nor consistently catchy enough to work as pop, leaving one with the impression that Clanton’s strengths might lie more in branding than songwriting. | 2023-07-31T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-07-31T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | 100% Electronica | July 31, 2023 | 6.6 | 0ed10baf-19db-4384-a459-08e7aa22a448 | Sam Goldner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-goldner/ | |
This collaboration between the junkshop-pop group and a London orchestral ensemble is conceptually fascinating but sporadically engaging. | This collaboration between the junkshop-pop group and a London orchestral ensemble is conceptually fascinating but sporadically engaging. | Micachu and the Shapes: Chopped & Screwed | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15274-chopped-screwed/ | Chopped & Screwed | With their terrifically engaging 2009 deubt album, Jewellery, London-based Micachu and the Shapes superficially came off as a trio of gleefully amateurish kids bashing out a noisily tuneful brand of junkshop-pop, breaking rules because they didn't know any better. In truth, the group's lead singer and mastermind, Mica Levi, studied violin from a young age (her mother is a cellist) and received a classical indoctrination at music school. As you spend more time with Jewellery, you begin to realize that even its roughest-hewn, seemingly random elements carry such a concentrated punch that they could only be the product of an artist who was extremely focused and in control of her materials.
Given her history, it makes perfect sense that Levi would gravitate toward a project like Chopped & Screwed, a one-off collaboration (performed in May 2010 at Kings Place in London) between the Shapes and the London Sinfonietta, an orchestral ensemble made up of strings and woodwinds. It also makes sense, knowing the breadth of Levi's sonic interests and her hunger for experimentation, that sooner or later she'd bite off a bit more than she could readily chew. And so it is with Chopped & Screwed, which is conceptually fascinating and occasionally hits on something really compelling and fresh, but is also only sporadically engaging. Of course, even when things feel aimless, it's still intriguing to hear Levi and the other musicans working through their ideas.
As its title suggets, Chopped & Screwed draws inspiration from the Houston-born hip-hop practice of manipulating beats and slowing down tempos to mimic (and cultivate) a drugged, disoriented sensation in the listener. Don't expect to hear molasses-thick male voices drawling about candy paint over slow beat claps here, however. The Shapes' and Sinfonietta's kinship with the likes of DJ Screw is all about aiming for that same feel of dislocation. The way they go about attempting to achieve it is certainly creative-- basically, the ensemble saws or trills away on their instruments while the Shapes pluck and hammer at homemade stringed or percussive contraptions (the rotating doohickey Levi plays is particularly nifty), alternating between frantic and syrupy-slow tempos seemingly at a whim. Above the maelstrom, Levi slowly and lowly intones lyrics that are frequently incomprehensible.
More important are her melodies, which make "Everything" and "Low Dogg" the album's standouts, as Levi's arty appetites contend with the razor-sharp pop sense she displayed throughout Jewellery and that I hope she always retains. The likes of "Unlucky", "Fall", and "Not So Sure" aren't as immediately riveting but do the best job of replicating screw's woozy allure. That said, there's an awful lot of connective tissue here-- fairly lengthy passages (especially for such a short album) bridging the more immediate moments. If the performance had been longer, such sequences would be acceptable interludes. As it is, it feels like dead patches make up almost half of Chopped & Screwed. Shelve it next to the Knife's Tomorrow, in a Year as an effort that hearteningly shows an inspired artist staking out bold terrain, but one that only fitfully delivers the impact of the artist's previous, pop-focused work. | 2011-04-01T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2011-04-01T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Electronic / Pop/R&B | Rough Trade | April 1, 2011 | 6.3 | 0ed1fa45-c001-4a43-8337-bca5c6163b01 | Joshua Love | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joshua-love/ | null |
The new vinyl reissue from Milan Records highlights the “sonic architecture” of Dr. Shoji Yamashiro’s intense and immersive suite of music. | The new vinyl reissue from Milan Records highlights the “sonic architecture” of Dr. Shoji Yamashiro’s intense and immersive suite of music. | Geinoh Yamashirogumi: Akira (Symphonic Suite) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/geinoh-yamashirogumi-akira-symphonic-suite/ | Akira (Symphonic Suite) | Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 animated film Akira is, by and large, considered to be among the greatest animated films ever made. Set in the year 2019, in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo populated by marauding motorcycle gangs, shadowy paramilitary organizations, student protesters, and corpulent oligarchs, the film was immediately hailed as a narrative and visual masterwork.
But before a single frame of the film was drawn, Katsuhiro Otomo wanted to make sure the music, or as he and the score’s composer Dr. Shoji Yamashiro called it, the “sonic architecture,” was in place. For Akira, the visual material was built around the sonic components, and not the other way around. The film as we know could not exist without the score. Now, after a new vinyl reissue by Milan Records, one of the most important suites of filmic music in Japanese cinema history is available for the first time in 29 years.
Yamashiro was the leader of a Japanese music collective called Geinoh Yamashirogumi, and the group was comprised of a rotating crew of hundreds of amateur musicians, academics, college students, and other non-music professionals. Trained as a molecular biologist, Yamashiro considered Geinoh Yamashirogumi to be more of a think tank, and the score for Akira, specifically, was a testing ground for some of the collective’s most far-fetched and ludicrously ambitious ideas.
For one thing, the score was most often referred to as a “Symphonic Suite,” and Yamashiro specifically cites symphonic choral works like Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Beethoven's “Ode to Joy,” and Shostakovich’s “Song of the Forests” as close antecedents. Though, he also drew inspiration from Noh (a form of Japanese theatrical music), Indonesian folk traditions, prog rock, and more. The reissue also features remastered audio (taken from a DVD re-release of the film), which punches up the sonic frequency of the recorded material to 48khz as opposed to the original 22khz threshold, in order to create what Yamashiro called the “Hypersonic Effect.” In the 26-page liner notes, Yamashiro goes on at length describing the neurological studies he conducted to prove that sound at the 48khz level could elicit more vivid psychological and physiological responses in a listener. Indeed, the sound on the reissue is rich and at times terrifying. (Though, the science behind the Hypersonic Effect has since been contested.)
Otomo only asked Yamashiro to follow very loose conceptual “pillars” for composing the score: one-half should correspond to the idea of “festival” to represent the bacchanalia and violence of the film’s opening acts, and the second-half should be a “requiem” that is the complete opposite of that chaos. This afforded Yamashiro an immense amount of freedom to dictate the film’s pace and feel. This is immediately clear in the first scenes of the film.
The score begins in earnest, when one of the film’s protagonists, Kaneda, the leader of a teenage motorcycle gang, enters a song into the jukebox of an underground dive bar. He and his crew, the Capsules, are gathered right before they are set to meet a rival gang called the Clowns, to engage in a bloody street fight. Right as they rev up their motorcycle engines in a seedy alleyway, the needle of a record player hits a vinyl disc in the bar, and the first moments of music enter the film. This moment is boisterous, deafening, and unforgettable, courtesy of a melody of the Balinese Jegog, a percussion instrument formed from an array of bamboo trunks “aligned in a manner similar to a battery of bazookas.” The Jegog was one of the compositions’ consistent leitmotifs, and its power was brutal and immediate.
This first song “Kaneda” makes clear the fastidiously designed aspects of the film’s score. The thunderclap from its opening seconds was lifted from a field recording taken at the Golden Triangle in Thailand, and the motorcycle rumble was sourced from a 1929 Harley-Davidson engine. A chorus of festival chanters that come towards the back-half of the song is frightening and celebratory all at once. As Kaneda and his gang speed through the streets of the decaying city, Otomo’s dystopian vision is given life by the highly precise, yet emotional compositions Geinoh Yamashirogumi provided.
This feeling of pitched intensity and churning disorientation is something Geinoh Yamashirogumi achieves time and time again. In the following song, “Battle Against Clown” blasts of guttural chants and polyrhythms could likely cause vertigo if listened to loudly enough. The choral work is especially skillful, and the way the members of Geinoh Yamashirogumi manipulate and make magical and alien the human voice is a highlight of the score. On “Dolls’ Polyphony,” they create a sense of nightmarish weirdness using only a mix of childlike voices and baritone grunts. In the score’s grand finale, “Requiem” they perfectly create a sense of megachurch rapture with angelic hums and a pipe organ.
As the product of an unlimited budget and six-months of composition and recording, the score for Akira was never meant to be utilitarian or incidental. It aspired to greater heights, to immerse the listener in the world of Neo-Tokyo and stir the emotions without once dropping you out of the film. But on its own, the craft, care, and technology that went into the 70 minutes of the soundtrack are intense enough to place you right beside Kaneda without ever opening your eyes. | 2017-09-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-09-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Milan | September 16, 2017 | 8.4 | 0ed4e3ba-d052-4646-8e74-0b3f7cdda331 | Kevin Lozano | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kevin-lozano/ | |
On his full-length debut, the versatile Queens producer Brian Piñeyro adopts his serpentine alias to make the most of the dembow riddim’s slippery extremes. | On his full-length debut, the versatile Queens producer Brian Piñeyro adopts his serpentine alias to make the most of the dembow riddim’s slippery extremes. | DJ Python : Dulce Compañia | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dj-python-dulce-compania/ | Dulce Compañia | The Ridgewood, Queens, producer Brian Piñeyro seemingly has a different DJ handle for every mood, which can make keeping up with his productions tricky. “I don’t want to forcefully be anonymous,” Piñeyro said in an interview earlier this year. “But I also don’t want to forcefully fit into one cool package.” So you may have encountered Piñeyro’s productions as DJ Wey, Luis, Deejay Xanax, or DJ Python. The latter alias takes as its jump-off point the skipping dembow riddim, that telltale boom-ch-boom-chick that is the foundation of everything from Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” to El Alfa el Jefe’s “Banda De Camion.” Underpinning dancehall and reggaeton since the early 2000s, it’s a sound that Piñeyro heard booming out of every car and club during a stint living in Miami. “I knew that I wanted to make music like this and recontextualize it,” he said of this particular beat, and dembow has led Piñeyro’s first full-length to heady, sweaty results.
Just don’t call Dulce Compañia moombahton. While Piñeyro does slow down the beat to a near crawl, he also suffuses it with a hazy sensibility quite unlike the crisp contours of moombahton’s 110-BPM snap. During the album’s most sublimely smoky moments, DJ Python brings to bear shoegaze’s gauziness, new age music’s interiority, and deep house’s sense of time suspended. Take the opening track, “Las Palmas,” which reveals each aspect of Piñeyro’s concerns. It opens with chime-like tones that verge on the vertiginous, their metallic edges slipping out of focus. A stuttering drum figure comes in, making everything feel coherent and grounded, but even that is a transitory state: Piñeyro soon loops small snippets of bells again, loosening them from the grid and allowing them to ripple outward and overtake the rhythm. Every component feels slippery as riverbed rocks.
Dulce Compañia standout “Cuál” best exemplifies Piñeyro’s penchant for in-between states, striking a balance of tropical rhythm and ambient wooziness. The dembow rhythm gets pushed into the red, with echoing hand percussion dribbled across it. But between the beats, one can just make out small ambient sounds, like crickets and frogs, suggesting a swampy locale. A synth line bubbles up two minutes in, which Piñeyro then dubs out, and as the track’s arpeggios gurgle along, that once-heavy dembow beat now seems to float and bob atop the surface.
The track that might hew closest to its reggaeton forbears, “q.e.p.d.,” foregrounds that boom-ch-boom-chick meter. But as quickly as it’s established, Piñeyro starts to pull at its edges, allowing all manner of wooden clacks, rattles, and mechanical whirrs to fall in between the cracks, and a wafting synth line makes the track feel light and airy. A similar sense of drift infuses “Esteban,” in which tick-tocking percussion just barely keeps the track tethered.
The walloping thump of “Acostados” moves towards synchronizing with house’s kick, but with the rattles that wriggle around it, DJ Python more than lives up to his serpentine namesake. Drums get dubbed out, a voice mewls wordlessly, a synth line fidgets and twitches; Piñeyro keeps every component shifting, never letting the tracks follow a predetermined pattern. While the dembow riddim arises throughout Dulce Compañia, it’s never left as-is. In Piñeyro’s hands, it proves to be just as slippery and versatile as it is booming out of cars every summer. “I like DJ Python being one thing, slithering around, letting itself be known eventually,” Piñeyro said of his low-key approach. With this debut, it proves to be a sound well worth knowing. | 2017-09-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-09-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Incienso | September 25, 2017 | 7.6 | 0ed5763e-5987-4bb9-a473-5c4148c6771b | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
Chromatics' first album since 2007's stunning Night Drive is a 90-minute tour-de-force that gives their nocturnal foreboding a new sense of grandeur. Though long, Kill for Love is lushly atmospheric and replayable, with expansive interstitial tracks balancing its impressive clutch of gorgeous synth-pop singles. | Chromatics' first album since 2007's stunning Night Drive is a 90-minute tour-de-force that gives their nocturnal foreboding a new sense of grandeur. Though long, Kill for Love is lushly atmospheric and replayable, with expansive interstitial tracks balancing its impressive clutch of gorgeous synth-pop singles. | Chromatics: Kill for Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16452-kill-for-love/ | Kill for Love | Chromatics formed in the Pacific Northwest as a rickety no-wave band more than a decade ago, but re-emerged in the mid-2000s with a revamped lineup and a new sound that nicely coincided with a resurgence of interest in the slow, dreamy, not-always-Italian dance-pop subgenre known as Italo disco. As with other acts on New Jersey-based Italians Do It Better, a label co-founded by group mastermind Johnny Jewel, Chromatics didn't just incorporate the vocoders and vintage synth arpeggios of the turn-of-the-1980s originals, they added the brittle guitars, dubby reverb, and urban dread of post-punk.
In the years since, the label's emphasis on grainy synths, smokey ambience, and analog-fetishizing textures became the M.O. of an entire class of artists. And the band's 2007 Night Drive set the blueprint for last year's Nicolas Winding Refn-directed thriller Drive; featuring two Jewel-assisted tracks, the film's soundtrack exposed this music to a wider audience. Earlier this year, Jewel built on that momentum by releasing a two-hour epic created with fellow Chromatics member Nat Walker. Titled Symmetry, Themes for an Imaginary Film, the set culled material from a full score that the duo were said to have composed for Drive.
Kill for Love, Chromatics' first album since Night Drive, finally gives this loosely associated, prematurely decayed musical aesthetic its magnum opus-- and brilliantly transcends it. The moonlit vibe of previous highlights like street-skulking stunner "In the City" or haunting Kate Bush cover "Running Up That Hill" recurs, and various tracks still crackle and pop with the all-too-mortal degradation of vinyl. And despite the unfinished-seeming recording quality of the music videos that preceded the album's release, the completed product also boasts some of the most engrossing synth-pop songs so far this year.
The 90-minute Kill for Love signals its tour-de-force ambitions from the opening track, a synth-draped cover of Neil Young's "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)". As with their past brooding renditions of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire" or Dark Day's "Hands in the Dark", it's a thoroughly rewarding pop deconstruction, setting one of singer Ruth Radelet's most affecting performances against an evocatively restrained backdrop. "There's more to the picture than meets the eye," Radelet coos, in what emerges here as a key lyric. There's more to Kill for Love than the sum of its best songs.
That said, Kill for Love's clearest improvement over Night Drive comes in its impressive clutch of left-field synth-pop standouts. The pill-dropping insomniac rush of the title track is the most likely to propel Chromatics onto the kinds of late-night TV stages and festival billings lately seized by M83, but the existential ache of "Back From the Grave" is no less gorgeously catchy. The bleakly yearning "Lady" returns to the group's signature Italo glide but wisely ditches the robotic vocal effects of a previously released late-2005 recording. When Jewel suggested in a recent Pitchfork interview that he was more influenced by Madonna than by crate-digging Eurodisco rarities, it was logical to wonder if he was being falsely modest. That is, until hearing "These Streets Will Never Look the Same", which stretches "Eye of the Tiger"-like guitar tension into an eight-minute treatise on loneliness and includes the album's first male lead vocal, rendered cyborg-like by a vocal harmonizer. Or take the vampire-pallid lament "Running From the Sun", another male-led track, based on piano chords reminiscent of those found on Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time". Fans who discovered Chromatics through Drive will find plenty of easy entry points here.
Still, just as the pop songs on Kill for Love are more direct than on Night Drive, the interstitial tracks are also more expansive and abstract. "Time is stretching on/ And it keeps repeating/ As the beat goes on," Radelet sings, on the deceptively uptempo last-ditch plea "At Your Door", and those words could just as easily apply to the album's instrumentals (and near-instrumentals). Nevertheless, even the record's most ephemeral moments are more deeply engaging than their equivalents on the last album, livened up by disembodied vocals and orchestral touches. Though there appear to be as many references to walking and riding trains as to driving, the album is at least as cinematic as Themes for an Imaginary Film. In fact, the languorous "There's a Light Out on the Horizon" goes so far as to revive Night Drive's phone-call conceit, though with results that are more beautifully agonizing.
After a front-loaded opening and sprawling, bewitching midsection, Kill for Love resurfaces with two tracks that encapsulate what Chromatics do, in an uncompromising way that's sure to confound as many people as it awes. "The River" reprises the Symmetry album's nearly a cappella closing track as glacial synth-pop, with finger snaps and artificial strings lending emotional support to Radelet's stiff-lipped vocal performance as a woman left behind. And then there's a sparsely forbidding 14-minute instrumental finale, available on the digital versions of the album, which is appropriate of Jewel's recent tendency to talk up 20th-century classical composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage rather than film scorers like John Carpenter.
If Kill for Love had been a 10-track LP, with its most immediately striking songs each edited down to around 3 minutes, it would've still been impressive. In fact, as recently as an interview posted last month by Self-Titled, Jewel hadn't yet made up his mind about whether to put out one or two discs. Ultimately, he made the right choice. Closer "No Escape" may not be as immediate as the title track when heard in isolation, but luckily, we don't have to listen to it in isolation. Just as on albums by the War on Drugs, Deerhunter, and countless others, the experimental interludes here help create a context that makes the pop songs that much more effective; by including so many mood-oriented parts, Kill for Love paradoxically rises above hazy synth-pop's occupational hazard of dissolving into a blur of mood and mood alone. It's not just a collection of hits; it's an album, one that gives the project's familiar nocturnal foreboding a new sense of grandeur. | 2012-04-03T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-04-03T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Italians Do It Better | April 3, 2012 | 8.7 | 0ed5b2ec-c909-4802-8f11-e436d5ed3430 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | null |
The 15-disc box set of puns and polka is a monument to pop music’s once symbiotic relationship with parody—a linkage that has dissolved in the wake of the monoculture’s demise. | The 15-disc box set of puns and polka is a monument to pop music’s once symbiotic relationship with parody—a linkage that has dissolved in the wake of the monoculture’s demise. | “Weird Al” Yankovic: Squeeze Box: The Complete Works of “Weird Al” Yankovic | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/weird-al-yankovic-squeeze-box-the-complete-works-of-weird-al-yankovic/ | Squeeze Box: The Complete Works of “Weird Al” Yankovic | Listening to the complete recorded works of “Weird Al” Yankovic—which is now easy to do, thanks to the release of the 15-disc Squeeze Box, which contains all 14 of his studio albums along with a disc of rarities, housed in a replica of his signature accordion—provides a graduate course in the junk culture of the 20th century. Sure, the songs he sent up are pillars of pop music—whether it was “Beat It,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Ridin’,” or “Blurred Lines”—but hearing Yankovic’s parodies provided a sense of their deep, lasting impact. It wasn’t simply that these familiar tunes were mocked; his send-ups underscored the ways that hits become part of the fabric of daily life. Joke songs are a tricky idiom even for clever musicians, but “Weird Al” finagled a robust career out of novelties. Chalk it up to smarts or good timing, but “Weird Al” Yankovic arrived at a time where the counterculture met the monoculture, beginning his career as an outsider and winding up as a beloved institution.
A nerd by birthright, “Weird Al” was always a step ahead of the curve. He started kindergarten a year too early and skipped second grade; growing up in the southern Los Angeles suburb of Lynwood, he was always the runt of the litter. To make matters worse, when he was six, his parents gave him an accordion, not a guitar, and he embraced the anachronistic instrument. Rock‘n’roll wasn’t really his thing; Al’s personal Elvis was Dr. Demento.
Operating out of the darkest reaches of Pasadena, Dr. Demento—born Barret Hansen, so who could blame him adopting a nom de plume–specialized in airing the weirdest records he could find, a task suited for an ethnomusicology major masquerading as a ringmaster. Novelties were his métier, but he didn’t limit himself to old Nervous Norvous 45s he had excavated. He’d play new oddities, which is why Yankovic made it a mission to get himself onto the Dr. Demento show. Al passed along a tape to Demento in 1976, which got on the air but didn’t spark much attention. Things got going a few years later when Yankovic was studying architecture at Cal Poly, where he spent his spare time recording himself in the men’s bathroom, which had just enough echo to round out his sound.
”Weird Al” sent one of these bathroom recordings to Dr. Demento: a version of the Knack’s “My Sharona,” which he spun into “My Bologna.” Demento wasn’t the only one who liked it. Doug Fieger, the author of “My Sharona,” loved it and tipped off his record label, which released it as a single. (They assumed it was a one-shot novelty, though, and dispensed with Al after a single 45.) Almost immediately, he topped it with “Another One Rides the Bus,” a pumping parody of Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” that landed Yankovic on national television, including a spot on Tom Snyder in 1981.
Listening to these early singles now—along with various oddities on the bonus disc Medium Rarities, one of which is a frenetic “Pac-Man” set to the Beatles’ “Taxman”—what’s striking is Yankovic’s qualities. He’s not a polished performer; there’s a fevered desperation that gives the music a kinetic edge. Some of this nervous energy was dampened when he signed to Scotti Bros. and teamed with Rick Derringer, the guitarist who had a smash with “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” in 1973. Derringer didn’t produce “Weird Al” as if he was a freak. He made sure the albums worked as pop records—a novelty within novelties, since the format usually placed jokes above hooks. Even with this polish, Al’s eponymous 1983 debut is ragged, almost confrontational in its jokes. While Yankovic’s instincts aren’t wrong, he’s too anxious to sell his premises, and the album relies on goofy original numbers that don’t bear the mark of a savvy pop stylist.
Almost immediately, Al sharpened his pop instincts. Credit confidence or craft, but 1984's “Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D is where Yankovic hits his stride, maybe because he discovered his muse: Michael Jackson. “Eat It,” Yankovic’s parody of Jackson’s hungry, fevered “Beat It,” became a sensation, because his concept was clean and its accompanying video arrived just when MTV was starved for content. It’s impossible to extricate Yankovic’s rise from MTV and vice versa, which only reveals how they needed each other. The very existence of “Weird Al” parodies validated the network as something worthy of sending up, while “Weird Al” needed the boost into the mainstream because he was no longer singing about reruns and strange scenes from the Valley.
In 3-D also established the blueprint he’d follow for the next 30 years: It was anchored by spoofs of current hits, interspersed with originals styled after vaguely familiar tunes and precisely one polka medley. Dare to Be Stupid, the record that swiftly followed In 3-D, in 1985, was distinguished by his affection for trash culture detritus—he covered the theme song for “George of the Jungle” and wrote an ode to “Slime Creatures from Outer Space,” the kind of 1950s B-movie that would’ve been on constant rotation on local TV in the ‘70s—but what was more noteworthy is how the silly single “Like a Surgeon” was overshadowed by Yankovic’s title track, which could easily be mistaken for a Devo original. Polka Party!, delivered just a year later, saw Al continue to improve as a songwriter—“Don’t Wear Those Shoes” is a nice slice of pure pop, while “Christmas at Ground Zero” peddles its pitch-black humor with a smile—but the record stalled his chart momentum, which could be attributed to his pop parodies being somewhat subpar: Just the titles “Living With a Hernia” and “Addicted to Spuds” suggests he was grasping at straws.
“Weird Al” bounced back with Even Worse, a 1988 album that found him reconnecting with Michael Jackson for a hit, but the more interesting elements lay elsewhere. It took savage wit to turn “Mony Mony” into “Alimony,” and the Beastie Boys spoof on “Twister” worked because it concentrated on the sound, not the words. The album amounted to a considerable commercial comeback, but Yankovic allowed himself to be distracted by Hollywood, releasing the muddled film UHF and its messier soundtrack in 1989. Arriving too late to be a sensation, UHF disappeared, and while the film has its cult, the soundtrack feels like an afterthought, as if “Weird Al” didn’t have the time to polish his compositions. Its failure helped to position Off the Deep End as a genuine comeback in 1992. The first album Yankovic produced on his own—he severed ties with Derringer after UHF—Off the Deep End clicked due to its “Smells Like Teen Spirit” parody, but it was also a richer album than its predecessors, thanks to satires delivered with a light touch, originals that weren’t tied to a specific style, and production that was more precise than Derringer’s, and also more colorful.
Alapalooza, released in the fall of 1993, slowed his momentum slightly, because none of its big songs was tied to the times. Its lead single, “Jurassic Park,” revived Jimmy Webb’s florid 1960s standard “MacArthur Park,” the polka was grounded on “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and spoofing the Red Hot Chili Peppers via the Flintstones seemed too conscious of corporate synergy. Al soon bounced back. After a year of compilations, “Weird Al” took his first stab at hip-hop with “Amish Paradise,” the first single off of Bad Hair Day, and scored another MTV hit. Unlike its predecessor, Bad Hair Day seemed to understand the currents of culture, particularly the nonsense kicked up in the wake of Nirvana: The Presidents of the United States parody “Gump” was dead on, and “The Alternative Polka” lent zest to a familiar trope.
Running With Scissors, from 1999, is where the mature “Weird Al” Yankovic arrives. Less eager to please and more confident in his craft, he doesn’t go for easy jokes; he picks the right modern hits to mock (the Offspring’s “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)” gets spun into “Pretty Fly for a Rabbi”). There’s evident care given to the originals, and when he digs into the past, there’s a context: An ode to the Star Wars prequels, “The Saga Begins,” benefits from its association with Don McLean’s “American Pie,” since both are artifacts of the ‘70s. From this point on, Yankovic’s records are clean, polished, and assured, capitalizing on formula instead of being beholden to it. While “Weird Al” remained a prisoner of pop—his hits would come when there was a song that was undeniable—he made better, smoother records. Poodle Hat (2003) has no classics, but it goes down easily. Straight Outta Lynwood blew up in 2006 because “White & Nerdy” (a parody of Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’”) became his first Top 10 single, its success disguising his increasing musical ambition: He’s as comfortable with the florid stylings of the Beach Boys (“Pancreas”) as he is with modern R&B (“Confessions Part III,” “Trapped in the Drive-Thru”). Despite a pair of Lady Gaga parodies, Alpocalypse (2011) found Yankovic retreating from the modern world slightly, reworking the Doors, Meat Loaf, and Queen for his originals—a subtle sign that Yankovic was entering his middle age. Mandatory Fun received a big boost in 2014 when “Weird Al”’s fans rallied to get the album to No. 1, but it also was a worthy chart-topper, as it was executed about as perfectly as a “Weird Al” album can be. The parodies “Handy,” “Foil,” and “Word Crimes” were sharp, and the originals were robust.
Mandatory Fun was the last album Yankovic owed RCA, which may be what precipitated the release of Squeeze Box, but “Weird Al” has also been hinting that he’s not eager to cut another record at any point in the future. Maybe this is due to the state of the record industry, but the pop world since 2014 hasn’t kicked up many singles ripe for his kind of satire: hits so big, they feel like wallpaper. That time is passing. Squeeze Box feels like a testament not just to Yankovic’s career, but to an entire era in American popular culture: a time where a guy as strange and nerdy as him could wind up chronicling all the nation’s odd undercurrents in song—songs that catapulted this one-time outsider into the epicenter of pop culture, where he became as iconic as the stars he mocked. | 2017-12-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-12-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | null | December 7, 2017 | 8.2 | 0ed63dae-14a1-4e1b-8f00-cc9cece6ec58 | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
After two volumes of heavy, straight-up motherland funk, DJ/label curator John Bryan culled Africa Airways 3 from only the sleekest and fastest-burning cuts from mid-’70s West Africa. | After two volumes of heavy, straight-up motherland funk, DJ/label curator John Bryan culled Africa Airways 3 from only the sleekest and fastest-burning cuts from mid-’70s West Africa. | Various Artists: Africa Airways Three: The Afro-Psych Excursion 1972-1984 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22798-africa-airways-three-the-afro-psych-excursion-1972-1984/ | Africa Airways Three: The Afro-Psych Excursion 1972-1984 | After two volumes of heavy, straight-up motherland funk, DJ/label curator John Bryan culled Africa Airways 3 from thousands of warehouse records from West Africa, paring down to only the sleekest and fast-burning cuts. Coming from a time when West Africa was full of military rulers and one-party states fueled by oil money, the compilation provides sneaky testimony that the region flourished culturally all the same. Some collectors might grumble that there’s a few overlaps with Stone Throw’s excellent 2005 comp World Psychedelic Classics 3. AA3 has no big names except for Manu Dibango (“Soul Makossa”), with a number of groups only existing for a few singles or an album. The tunes are mostly instrumentals, sprinkled with occasional vocals (many times in English) scattered in the lo-fi mixes, leaning more towards guitar freak-outs and tropicalia itself. And even though many of AA3 songs are complex, multi-part journeys, most of them still confine themselves to the classic under-five-minutes single format.
What’s extraordinary about these otherwise forgotten, barely existent singles isn’t just their dynamic, insistent groove but also how each piece giddily slices across traditions and styles as much as it honors them. Since the lilting poly-rhythms of Nigerian juju were also coming up in the early ’70s, it’s no surprise to hear them in cuts like Afro National’s “Push Am Forward” and Bunzu Soundz’s “Zinabu.” You can hear Santana-like modal guitar flights in the Bunzu as well as in Ofo & the Black Company’s “Allah Wakbarr,” which also adds chants and thunderous percussion over flailing guitar stabs. Just as with other classic dance records, we get boogie instructional guides here too, including Afro National’s directive to “push am forward, to the left, to the right” and theatrical Indonesian outliers Aka’s “Shake ” which offers up James Brown tributes surf music drum rolls, and a shout-out to Mickey Mouse over a halting groove.
Cultural clashes abound too, with Sory Bamba’s “Kanaga 78” pitting Chic-like guitar riffing over an insistent art-rock synth, followed by African Black’s “Nzango” with guitars/keys fighting for lead, resolved by ambient atmospherics. Even for psych music, there’s some real oddities here— try Dibango’s soundtrack-culled “Ceddo” (from a flick ironically about corrupting foreign influences) with xylophone/synth interplay that could be a Frank Zappa piece or Damas Swing Orchestra’s “Odylife,” with solitary piano and taped crowd noises that sound like they crept out of an early Pere Ubu session.
With all these little-heard wonders creeping out of Bryan and friends’ warehouse, we can only wonder what other hidden treasures are buried there, waiting to come out and illuminate us about other barely known slices of ’70s/’80s African musical history. | 2017-02-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-02-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | null | Africa Seven | February 13, 2017 | 7.8 | 0ed97213-beaa-4e24-ad2f-da2ceb383180 | Jason Gross | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jason-gross/ | null |
The subversively sleazy Stockholm post-punk band walks a delicate satirical line between provocation and trolling. | The subversively sleazy Stockholm post-punk band walks a delicate satirical line between provocation and trolling. | Viagra Boys: Welfare Jazz | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/viagra-boys-welfare-jazz/ | Welfare Jazz | Punk bands are a lot more careful with their satire than they used to be. Decades ago artists like The Fall or Nick Cave could get a pass for dropping racial slurs on the assumption of good intentions, but these days even punk’s most subversive acts respect some basic sensitivities, at least the ones looking for play outside of edgelord circles and 4chan. For bands like Stockholm’s Viagra Boys, whose values are basically progressive but whose presentation is brutalist and debauched, those shifting mores pose a challenge: how to provoke without offending or trolling. Theirs is a delicate satirical walk; everything about the band is an exercise in insinuating bad taste without crossing the line into it.
They’ve certainly perfected their visual presentation. Frontman Sebastian Murphy has one of rock’s all-time great bad postures, an antagonistically dismissive slouch he put to memorable use in the band’s breakout video for “Sports.” On stage you’re likely to find him shirtless, wearing the dark sunglasses of the permanently hungover, shimmying his hips in a mockery of sexual suggestion or pouring beer over his protruding, tattooed belly. In the studio, Viagra Boys conjure that sleaze even without the visuals, thanks in part to Murphy’s slovenly growl—he’s got the wanton vocal presence of a man who’s never flossed. The band’s post-punk rhythms are also embellished with cartoonish lasciviousness, slow and gnarly, scribbled with unruly saxophones that overrun portions of songs where horns usually don’t belong.
On the band’s 2018 debut Street Worms they lampooned toxic masculinity and classism, both of which remain targets on their chaotically jubilant sophomore album Welfare Jazz. But increasingly, Murphy directs his aim at the mirror, too, calling himself out for his own dickish behavior. Over the album’s nastiest groove on opener “Ain’t Nice,” he plays the role of the shitty boyfriend, negging his partner while using their pad as his personal storage unit. A few songs detail his quest to be a better person, often in lyrics cribbed from hoary old songwriting tropes. He saves the most contrived of them all for “Into the Sun,” where Murphy apologizes to the love he’s wronged, vowing to end his rambling ways and win back their heart. Even without the cliches, his pledge is transparently unconvincing.
As always, the band brushes against the boundaries of good taste. On “Toad,” Murphy bellows like an old bluesman—or an exaggerated impression of white rockers imitating old bluesmen—about how he don’t need no woman. He adopts a similarly racially loaded impression for the spoken-word snippet “This Old Dog.” On “Creatures,” a glowering slab of synth-pop, he details the squalid existence of unemployed addicts surviving on scrap metal and stolen copper. His portrayal isn’t without empathy—Murphy has been there, he sings—but it plays into the most parasitic stereotypes of society’s have-nots. There’s an air of exploitation to it.
And for a band that so deftly mocked bourgeois interests like dog shows on their debut, there’s a sense that sometimes the band is punching down on a handful of tracks that take the piss out of country music, traditionally the music of the lower working class. Amyl and the Sniffers’ Amy Taylor joins the band for a looney cover of the late John Prine’s “In Spite of Ourselves” that splits the difference between tribute and mockery, with Murphy and Taylor competing to throw down the loopiest, most exaggerated Southern accents.
Is the cover satire, or, like the absurdist death-disco banger “Girls & Boys,” is it just silliness for the sake of silliness? As with much of Welfare Jazz, it’s not always clear, but Viagra Boys are a better band because they give themselves the freedom to do both, and between Murphy’s big-bad-wolf bellow and those untamed horns, even the band’s most corrosive material whizzes by with the invigorating loopiness of a cartoon. Viagra Boys have a gift for making listeners wrestle with choices that might be deal breakers if the music weren’t all so ludicrously entertaining.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-01-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-01-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Year0001 | January 12, 2021 | 7.2 | 0eda60ed-fd9c-431d-b8a9-dddf08fa2dc2 | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | |
Latest from the band led by Boredoms drummer Yoshimi P-We is their broadest, busiest, and furthest reaching album to date, which oddly enough leads to some problems. | Latest from the band led by Boredoms drummer Yoshimi P-We is their broadest, busiest, and furthest reaching album to date, which oddly enough leads to some problems. | OOIOO: Taiga | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9773-taiga/ | Taiga | It's not saying much that, 13 minutes into a 58-minute album, it feels like things are already over. Indeed, it takes only the first two tracks of OOIOO's fifth album, Taiga, to completely comprehend the record. Everything is readily apparent: These are four dexterous, imaginative musicians playing difficult music. And, if Yoshimi P-We's vocals aren't a giveaway, the colorful and percussive nature of almost everything here should be: This is an album from the same school of Japanese polyglots that gave us Boredoms. Taiga is OOIOO's broadest, busiest, and furthest reaching album to date. Strangely, those same characteristics ruin it.
Once again, consider those first two tracks, "UMA" and "KMS", two cuts obsessed with the difference between on and off. "UMA" is a spree of ecstasy, four minutes of forward charge rattling on tribal drums and Yoshimi's antiphonal cheerleader shouts. At one point, a shrill synthesizer dots the phrases. It gives way to a gym whistle, playing in tune and in time before bleeding into "KMS", a nine-minute, slow-or-speeding dance through rocking-chair bass lines, horn whole notes, fragmented guitar melodies, and cymbal splatters. With two minutes left, the band hits their improvisational stride, and the album reaches its pinnacle: A synthesizer squeals, feeding off of drum rattles and a peak-riding guitar.
But then it all falls to a lazy, closing guitar chord, epitomizing a bold build to absolutely nothing. That's exactly how far Taiga goes: It's like watching someone make a truckload of taffy. Once you know how it's done, it's about combining the core ingredients with different flavors and molding the brew into slightly different shapes. In its current four-piece set-up, OOIOO uses much the same substrate as before: Yoshimi's elastic voice commands the band above a cavalcade of drums, which either drive frenetic Afro-beat passages or ride Sunny Murray-inspired cymbal-and-skin splashes. For flavoring, synthesizers, oscillators, razor-thin guitars, trumpets, electronics, glockenspiel and the occasional gym whistle are the rage.
Taken in small doses, Taigia is still inspired and moving, sweet even: The referents-- Sonic Youth, Don Cherry, Fela Kuti, Patty Waters, Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Neu!-- are so wide-ranging, it's hard not to enjoy it in portions. When they grapple Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime" and pin it to house-music polyrhythms and counterpoint synthesizers on the closing track, it's hard to resist. But, over 58 minutes, you not only watch the taffy get made, you get sick sampling chunks from two-dozen flavors.
This is largely disappointing since OOIOO-- Yoshimi, especially-- has done better. On Gold and Green, recorded in 2000 but not released domestically until last year, the band was capable of excitement and restraint. The same was true of Yoshimi's 2003 collaboration with Yuka Honda, Flower With No Color. And, though it's not proper form to dismiss a side project in favor of its wellspring, Boredoms get something right that OOIOO hasn't mastered: They announce ideas and give them space, building through notions instead of building on top of them. And, while such an aesthetic may not be part of OOIOO's binary, on/off domain, it makes for a better band, or at least a band capable of making records a bit more, well, nourishing. | 2007-01-23T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2007-01-23T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Experimental / Rock | Thrill Jockey | January 23, 2007 | 4.8 | 0ee2405f-7fb1-44c0-98c4-3242414644ce | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
On their latest album, Brooklyn's Men put their own spin on the raw and ragged sound of noisy 1980s indie rock to delirious effect. | On their latest album, Brooklyn's Men put their own spin on the raw and ragged sound of noisy 1980s indie rock to delirious effect. | The Men: Leave Home | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15629-leave-home/ | Leave Home | Nothing is sacred to the Men. For one, this Brooklyn quartet's name is pretty much identical to that of fellow New Yorker JD Samson's active post-Le Tigre project, MEN. Their 2010 sophomore release, Immaculada, featured a caterwauling noise-punk thrasher called "Oh Yoko" that had absolutely nothing to do with the classic John Lennon song, or Ms. Ono herself, for that matter. Their new album swipes its title from a legendary record by New York's most famous punk band, the Ramones. And part way through the obliquely titled mid-album track "( )", when the band realize they're ripping off the fuzz-bomb riff to Spacemen 3's "Revolution", they just go ahead and swipe a line from the song too, and cap it with another quote from Spacemen's "Take Me to the Other Side" for good measure. And yet: For all the cheeky references and inside jokes at play on the Men's Leave Home, you'd be hard-pressed to find a purer, no-bullshit, serious-as-a-heart-attack rock record released this year.
Listening to Leave Home feels a lot like living inside of Michael Azerrad's 1980s indie-rock tome Our Band Could Be Your Life, variously bringing to mind Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr.'s SST stints, Sub Pop-vintage Mudhoney, and Touch and Go-era Butthole Surfers (who surely would approve of a song title like "Shittin' With the Shah"). Tellingly, Azerrad's book ties up its narratives the moment its subjects signed to majors-- partly because, technically speaking, they ceased to be indie rock at that point but, more importantly, because those artists produced their most enduring, groundbreaking music while recording for independent labels. Leave Home is likewise a frozen tableau of that tipping point, imagining a parallel universe in which your favorite first-wave indie-rock bands never had to sign on corporate letterhead, never got anywhere near MTV, never toned down their act, and never got old-- they just kept on blowing minds at the peak of their powers in perpetuity.
Where the discographies of those aforementioned influences can more or less be plotted on a straight line from chaos to control, the Men's modest catalogue thus far presents no such linear evolutionary trajectory. Immaculada may have introduced folky acoustic guitar passages and extended doom-metal instrumentals to their post-hardcore attack, but rather than continue to explore those stylistic detours, Leave Home sees the Men return to the full-torque distorto-rock of their 2009 debut EP, but blow it up on a grander scale with a more intense batch of songs. And rather than try to upgrade the fidelity to accommodate the more epic execution, the unapologetic corrosiveness of the sound is ultimately what gives it its power and heft.
So that means Leave Home's boldest gesture-- the seven-minute opener "If You Leave..."-- is also its least typical, not just for its tsunami-sized shoegaze haze, but for its open-hearted candor, as its lone, repeated lyric ("I would die") provides a surprisingly affecting answer to the title's open-ended suggestion. The song is every bit as surprising coming from these guys as the similarly miasmic "Farewell" was on Boris' 2006 album Pink, showcasing the respective bands' abilities to be as blissful as they are bludgeoning. But where "Farewell" anticipated the Japanese doom demigods' eventual drift toward melodic accessibility, "If You Leave..." is a calm-before-the-storm misdirection. By the time Leave Home's side one winds down with the grueling, hoarse-throat howls and torturous, slow-motion squall of "L.A.D.O.C.H.", you'll be wondering if you're still listening to the same band.
But on Leave Home's second half, the Men's dual affinities for brute punk-rock force and bad-trip psychedelia fuse together to brilliant effect, with a searing series of songs that refuse to relent even as they encroach on the five-minute mark-- in particular, the storming "Bataille" suggests Sonic Youth's "Hey Joni" as recorded by Funhouse-era Stooges, while the closing "Night Landing" effectively blurs the line between krautrock and punk in fine Neu! '75-style. Of course, with a name like the Men-- and reference points like these-- it's all too fitting that this album will undoubtedly appeal to a certain subset of record-collecting dudes. But the Men's treatment of their well-curated influences is less akin to that of fan-boys playing in a tribute act and a lot more like an irreverent hip-hop producer's approach to breaks-- key in on your sources' coolest moments, change the context, and ride that perfect sound forever. | 2011-07-18T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2011-07-18T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sacred Bones | July 18, 2011 | 8.2 | 0ee497db-8187-4d78-b2a2-9fcabed689c9 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
Neil Young's latest studio record, his first with Crazy Horse in nine years, isn't so much a covers collection as it is a concept album in the vein of Nick Cave's Murder Ballads. | Neil Young's latest studio record, his first with Crazy Horse in nine years, isn't so much a covers collection as it is a concept album in the vein of Nick Cave's Murder Ballads. | Neil Young / Crazy Horse: Americana | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16684-americana/ | Americana | Neil Young's legend has essentially been built through obfuscation; he's accumulated one of the most celebrated yet byzantine songbooks in rock by impulsively shifting course album to album, whether it means periodically alienating fans, band mates, and record labels alike. But when it comes to covering other people's songs, he's an unabashed populist. "Blowin' in the Wind", "All Along the Watchtower", "A Day in the Life", "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay", "On Broadway", "Four Strong Winds"-- Young is obviously not the sort of artist who selects covers to reveal something new about himself, or to prove how cool his record collection is. Instead, true to his utilitarian ethos, he's more interested in transforming the mythical into the practical, reclaiming once-vital songs that have essentially been overplayed into Muzak and investing them with a new sense of purpose. In Young's hands, the most totemic songs in pop history become more flawed and, as a result, more down to Earth.
For this latest studio album-- the first with Crazy Horse in nine years-- Young applies that logic across an entire record. Americana joins Paul McCartney's Kisses on the Bottom and Iggy Pop's Après in this year's aging-rocker covers-album sweepstakes, though it's less about digging into personal favorites as reclaiming some of the most popular songs ever written. And we're not talking about mere golden oldies here, but ancient public-domain standards that predate the existence of pop radio and the music industry entirely: "Clementine", "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain", "Oh Susannah", and the like. These aren't songs anyone really listens to anymore, because we don't need to. They're practically part of our collective DNA: songs that you whistle while you work or use to sing your baby to sleep or to entertain impatient kids sitting around a campfire. Invariably, they're also songs whose simple, sing-along melodies obscure the real-life maladies-- poverty, unemployment, lost love, murder, crises of faith-- that originally inspired them over a century ago. As such, Americana isn't so much a covers collection as a concept album in the vein of Nick Cave's Murder Ballads: new variations on age-old themes that still resonate loud and clear today.
Alas, it's also the sort of album where you pretty much know what it's going to sound like just by reading the record's spine and tracklist. What you see is what you you get: old-timey tunes subjected to Crazy Horse's desecrating grungy grind. And given the over-familiarity and brevity of the source material, it's a novelty that wears itself out quickly. While Young and the Horse effectively tease out the unpleasant undercurrents in songs like "Oh Susanna", "Wayfaring Stranger", and "Clementine" (which reinstates the oft-omitted line about macking on the deceased title subject's sister), Americana doesn't so much amount to a caustic commentary on the modern-day American condition as capture a bunch of old pals trying to rediscover their chemistry by sloppily jamming on some standards-- and in some cases, like the repetitious eight-minute trudge through true-crime tale "Tom Dula", driving them into the ground. Compared to his previous state-of-the-nation addresses, Young doesn't so much attack the material as playfully mess around with it; nearly every track here concludes with some cheerful studio chatter that suggests what we just heard was the Horse's first-ever pass at the song. This slackness defines Americana more so than its political intent; as the tracklist moves forward to relatively more recent fare like Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" and the Silhouttes' late-1950s standard "Get a Job", you might as well be listening to the Shocking Pinks.
But just as the aforementioned Murder Ballads capped off its orgy of carnage with a surprisingly redemptive cover of Bob Dylan's "Death Is Not the End", Americana boasts a similarly high-concept denouement: Only Young would deign to close out a tribute to the American folkoric tradition with a cover of the British national anthem. Whether it's a backhanded salute to the country that incited the American Revolution in the first place, or simply a sly nod to his own roots in the Commonwealth, Young's "God Save the Queen"-- with its drunken drummber-boy beat, squealing electric-guitar fanfare, and cheeky choral vocal--proves to be just as blasphemous to Britain's most sacred song as the namesake number by his one-time muse Johnny Rotten. It ain't exactly Hendrix doing "The Star-Spangled Banner", but then that's precisely the point: It's Young's way of saying that-- even when you're dealing with another country's intellectual property-- this song is your song, this song is my song. | 2012-06-01T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-06-01T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Reprise | June 1, 2012 | 6.1 | 0ee4cae1-77d5-48fb-984f-f0f37aaec85d | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
The late UGK rapper, one of the foundations of Southern rap, has another record posthumously released. | The late UGK rapper, one of the foundations of Southern rap, has another record posthumously released. | Pimp C: The Naked Soul of Sweet Jones | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14787-the-naked-soul-of-sweet-jones/ | The Naked Soul of Sweet Jones | "Talkin' bout my first solo album, bitch," says Pimp C at the outset of The Naked Soul of Sweet Jones. "I ain't never had one before." He's sort of right. Sweet James Jones Stories, his official debut, was a cobbled-together collection released while Pimp served out a prison sentence. Pimpalation, the follow-up, actually came out while Pimp was alive and free, but, obviously enough, the man conceived it as a compilation-- a way for Pimp to showcase himself among all the artists and producers in his expanded circle, rather than a stand-alone statement. And sadly enough, it's impossible to tell how much of The Naked Soul is the real solo debut that Pimp wanted to release.
Pimp's been dead for nearly three years, a casualty of some combination of unprescribed prescription cough syrup and sleep apnea. Plenty of the material on the album sounds like it dates back to the era just before Pimp died, as his duo UGK roared back to life with the triumphant double album Underground Kingz. Other tracks could've been finished only later-- after Pimp's death. One of the album's guests, the onetime Pimp protégé Lil Boosie, has been in prison, facing murder charges, for about a year now. Another, Drake, has really had a career only in the years following Pimp's death; even though Drake calls himself "an honorary resident of UGK-town," I'm not even sure the two ever met. (And given Pimp's outspoken views on sensitive R&B types like Ne-Yo, it's easy to imagine Pimp mercilessly mocking Drake in public if their careers had had a chance to overlap.) Parts of the record, like the regrettable Jazze Pha collab "Fly Lady", feel like chintzy time-capsule artifacts from a forgotten 2007. Others have the sad air of a posthumous Tupac album-- left-behind sketches of freestyle verses, given new music and preserved only because the man isn't still around to improve on them. Like every other Pimp C solo album, this isn't really an album; it's just a bunch of tracks thrown together.
That's a lost opportunity because Pimp C knew how to put albums together. As half of UGK, he produced some truly dazzling Southern rap full-lengths-- giving plenty of room to his blues and soul and swamp-funk influences without ever letting them overwhelm his thunderous low-end thump, helping to establish the blueprint for 90s Southern rap in the process. As a vocalist, he was also the duo's emotional core, singing choruses in a strutting, pinched falsetto and sneering his verses in a thick, arrogant twang while partner Bun B played the wise and precise elder to his unreformed knucklehead character. Pimp himself didn't produce a single track on The Naked Soul, so we only get to hear a part of what made him great. But that overwhelming swagger remains very much on display here.
Pimp's rapping here covers a pretty narrow spectrum; he spends most of his time talking about either sex or jewelry. And if you're not into the idea of a song in which Pimp and Too $hort explain to you, at some length, why you have a vagina, you should probably stay away. But Pimp played up his player archetype perfectly, and it's still fun to hear him lay out juicy, borderline-disgusting come-ons in that elongated leer of his. More than any rapper this side of Ol' Dirty Bastard, Pimp took absurd delight in the squelchy, squeaky details of sex, and he was absolutely unafraid to sound gross. So: "We got to the beach, the ground was so sandy/ Bitches on my dick like ants on candy." Or: "Suck ya toes, I'm gonna shrimp tonight/ My dick make you weak like kryptonite." Objectionable as it may be, this stuff is always fun to hear.
But fun or no, the album mostly just makes me sad. There can be only so many unreleased Pimp tracks, so many chances to hear that voice on a new song. And only a few tracks here belong anywhere near Pimp's pantheon. "Since the 90s" features cheap, twinkling horror-movie keyboards; Pimp didn't rap on tracks like that too often, but he always sounded great on them, and an on-fire E-40 guest verse only seals the deal. "Hit the Parking Lot" is a rumbling slick-talk session with little buddies Webbie and Lil Boosie both operating at peak capacity and Pimp schooling them both. And "Massacre" is just a dinky instrumental, no chorus, Pimp issuing guttural threats for five minutes. Really, that was all he ever needed to do. An hour of that would work a lot better than the patched-together succession of guest-verses and lost verses we get here. | 2010-10-26T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2010-10-26T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rap | Rap-A-Lot | October 26, 2010 | 6.4 | 0ee5de18-5aaf-4080-876d-439d03da99b1 | Tom Breihan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/tom-breihan/ | null |
Recorded in 1972, this largely unreleased “lost” album is a fascinating glimpse into what one of the great 20th-century artists strategically allowed the culture to see. | Recorded in 1972, this largely unreleased “lost” album is a fascinating glimpse into what one of the great 20th-century artists strategically allowed the culture to see. | Marvin Gaye: You’re the Man | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/marvin-gaye-youre-the-man/ | You’re the Man | Morally right-on, emotionally vulnerable, and still musically avant-garde, Marvin Gaye’s previously unreleased 1972 album You’re the Man is the timeless sound of a combustible rhythm and blues. Just from the title track’s first few seconds of wah-wah guitar, the album beams us directly into the heart of what a Jet magazine writer in 1972 once called “the new Black sound”—that rising tide of politically urgent, progressive Top 40 soul music like the O’Jays’ “Backstabbers,” the Staples Singers’ “This World,” the Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” and Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly soundtrack extravaganza “Freddie’s Dead.”
Here’s the thing: You’re the Man is still the New Black Sound of today. It’s no less pressing and cutting-edge than Donald Glover’s racial satire “This is America” and it’s no less warmly interior or black community-minded than Solange’s proggy When I Get Home. Gaye’s 1972 anti-Nixon clapbacks on You’re the Man —such as “demagogues and admitted minority haters should never be president”—could just as easily apply to the ghastly failings of today’s crooked Trump administration.
In the 1970s, Gaye emerged as a seer, digging for deep grooves in the effort to realize an all-inclusive, democratic world that still seems beyond our reach. Troubled by imperial war, hypocritical governments, exclusionary racial policies, and looming ecological disasters, Marvin Gaye was the musician-as-dissident, striving for liberation that he himself never personally managed to achieve during his lifetime. Along the way, he demonstrated immense range. Within the course of a single album, Gaye could come off as conscious, pensive, concerned, driven, committed, topical, tough, sexy, urbane, hypnotic, tortured, troubled, hip, religious, defiant, disillusioned, high-flying, defiant, blunted, and compassionate.
You’re the Man captures those wide-ranging precincts, punctuating them with mesmerizing flights into black power era funk and soul by way of conga-tinged grooves. It’s not a concise, perfectly constructed concept album like Gaye’s 1971 What’s Going On, his erotic 1973 Let’s Get It On or his 1976 intimate masterpiece I Want You. There was, after all, a reason Gaye chose to shelve You’re the Man. And an essential question lingers: Is You’re the Man really a finished record that Gaye would have wanted released? But hearing it 47 years after it was abandoned, You’re the Man throws time itself into relief, offering us revisionist insight into how Gaye managed his creativity in the immediate aftermath of his runaway early ’70s success.
Just one year before the release of “You’re the Man,” in 1971, Gaye shed his crooner-cabaret Mr. Perfectionist image and forced short-sighted Motown CEO Berry Gordy to release his agitprop masterpiece What’s Going On. An operatic protest album, What’s Going On produced three commercial juggernauts, the anthemic title track, “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology),” and “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler”)”. Gaye carried the message music torch of Motown artists like The Temptations, Edwin Starr, Martha Reeves, and Steve Wonder to inaugurate the early 1970s FM-radio era of the black protest record. And alongside figures like Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield, Gaye helped turned 1971 into the year where black albums mattered as much or more than singles.
By all accounts, however, Gaye privately struggled with how to follow up What’s Going On. In 1972, Gaye was in and out of studios in Detroit and L.A., working with producers like Willie Hutch and Hal Davis. Nearing the close of a troubling relationship with partner Anna Gordy, and resisting the idea of relocating to L.A. to be near Motown’s new headquarters, Gaye nervously abandoned plans to release all those other songs he’d been working on for a year, pursuing instead other options like his duet album with Diana Ross, and an original score to the film Trouble Man. A year later, in 1973, Gaye released the commercial smash Let’s Get It On, his official studio follow-up to What’s Going On, controversially leaving behind his excursion into political subject matter in favor of boudoir sex.
Co-written by his What’s Going On collaborator Kenneth Stover, and one of the last tracks he ever recorded at Motown in Detroit, You’re the Man’s scorching title tune remains an astonishing synthesis of the queasy, tricky state of American electoral politics in the early 1970s—it’s an orphaned masterpiece about hollow campaign promises disconnected from political action have imperiled American democracy. Released on April 26 in 1972 as his first single after What’s Going On, “You’re the Man” climbed the charts only a few weeks after American airplanes dropped more bombs over North Vietnam than any time since 1968. As the War disturbingly ramped up, the acidic presidential election campaign season kicked off, too. When Gaye blurts out in the title song “busing is the issue” (on the alternate version of the track, he downgrades the concern to “busing is just one issue”) he’s specifically referring to the way segregationist candidate George Wallace had turned court-ordered busing—a liberal move meant to speed up the integration of public schools— into a contentious issue every democratic hopeful had to address to stay in the race.
In that tumultuous election year, black folks’ interest in reconstructing society to ensure full participation for all was upended by more pragmatic concerns related to winning electoral seats. The passing of Civil Rights legislation in the mid 1960s, in tandem with Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty, had failed to transform the everyday reality of harsh life for many black working class and poor people, particularly given national economic underdevelopment, the dissolution of city services, reduced federal spending, and widespread attacks on affirmative action programs. In March 1972, black leaders gathered in Gary, Indiana to launch the National Black Political Assembly—a clear sign of surging political momentum in democratic circles. Unfortunately, many black politicians—newly arriving in elected offices in and out Washington—hadn’t exactly been able to revolutionize the system, more just reform or work within its limitations. Some black politicians even became guilty of the same abuses and community neglect as their white counterparts. Both elated by the opportunity to participate in electoral politics and skeptical of the result, “You’re the Man” moves in both directions at once, full of political disgust and hopeful optimism at the same time.
“You’re the Man” takes sarcastic aim at ineffective elected officials, both black and white. Gaye serves up holler-worthy lyrics like “I believe America’s at stake,” “Politics and hypocrites are turning us all into lunatics,” and “Don’t you understand/There’s misery in the land” over a simmering rhythm track marked by his signature minor sevenths and suspended chords. “You’re the Man”’s musical DNA makes it a close cousin of “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler).” The track also features Gaye’s trademark vocal stylings (he’d incorporate multiple tracks of lead vocal; he essentially sings in counterpoint to himself) along with a full array of inhalations, blurted-out whoos, whelps and squelches, as if to suggest that words themselves can’t convey the sheer emotionality and toll of the subject matter.
Besides the title track and the transcendent ballad “Piece of Clay,” a handful of other tracks on You’re the Man tracks also diagnose the national condition. “The World Is Rated X” is a Bobby Womack-esque funk song that aims to convince us that “the world is in a grave situation,” “not only in the movie show” but we have to “take a look outside, it’s where the truth is really told.” Over chugging guitar and dramatically arranged strings, we learn the solution to the world’s taboo MPAA rating is to spread love and peace all over the land.
“The World Is Rated X” is a screed against sin that appears to want to suppress ’70s libertarian permissiveness in favor of conservative respectability politics (especially when Gaye croons “God is watching, he knows where you’re at,” as the track fades). But Gaye recorded “The World is Rated X” at a moment marked by the growing popularity of blaxploitation films like Superfly. Even Black Panther Party revolutionary Huey Newton lambasted these films as “counter-revolutionary,” admonishing the way that children and teens replaced their late ’60s prideful black power afros and dashikis for Superfly’s degradingly stereotypical fashion of coke-spoon necklaces and pimp fedoras. In that void, black musicians like Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Bill Withers, and Stevie Wonder emerged as quasi-Messianistic, ethical figures in the community. In recording “The World Is Rated X,” Gaye posits himself as a hero, saving us from our own communal descent into retrograde behavior.
Gaye’s boho-hippie, Afro-Christian, universalist love ethic also extends to secular, more romantic concerns on the album, too. The seductive “I’m Gonna Give You Respect” blazes with horns, blaring tom-toms and Pips/Chi-Lites style harmonies; it spins a story about how Gaye’s insecurity that his girl might leave him makes him want to be a more respectful man. “You’re That Special One,” “We Can Make It Baby,” “I’d Give My Life for You” and “Symphony (the latter two newly mixed by Salaam Remi) are so-so romantic tunes, at least in the grand context of the Gaye musical canon. But romantic, sax-heavy “My Last Chance” lets Gaye show off his featherine, supple tenor: “May I have this last dance/his is my chance to get close to you” he sings, as he confesses “I’m just a shy guy/I’m so nervous/Girl, but I got to try.”
Gaye’s yearning intimacy extended to family situations, as well. “I Want to Come Home for Christmas,” replete with a 6/8 beat and a spoken word monologue, delivers its punchline nearly a minute into the song – that’s when we learn the song is really a profoundly empathetic lament about a prisoner of war, inspired by his brother Frankie, who served in the Vietnam war and whose plight previously inspired What’s Going On. “Christmas in the City,” on the other hand, is a wordless, electric piano doodle; its ho-hum jazz is both spooky and forgettable.
You’re the Man includes a fascinating, relaxed alternate version of the title track featuring the lyric “maybe what this country needs is a lady president.” It’s worth remembering that “You’re the Man” was composed and recorded in April 1972, just one month before the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. In February 1972, activist Angela Davis was released from jail on bail; in January of that same year, unflappable congresswoman Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman to run for president. As Gaye chimed on about a woman president, numerous black women musicians—from Roberta Flack and Nina Simone to Mavis Staples and Aretha Franklin—made equally profound artistic statements, combining race, gender, politics, and pleasure in intersectional ways their male counterparts usually failed to do.
The way in which black women were both politically active in the early 1970s and yet suppressed by sexist and racist establishment glass ceilings is also what makes “Woman of the World” You’re the Man’s most boneheaded cut. The song refers to a “liberated lady of today” who has “come a long way baby” (echoing the Virginia Slims slogan). Gaye pleads with this newly free and emancipated lady who has caught his eye to remember their childhood days. Given that the new legislation has “put him down” in favor of her independence, he asks her if this is really where she wants to be. Basically the sentiment of the song is: Now that you’re running the show, lady, what about us dudes?
Less a vile anti-feminist tract than a profoundly confused and naive mess that prioritizes male panic over the new feminism, “Woman of the World” is a song only men could have written. It pales compared to Curtis Mayfield’s loving 1970 “Miss Black America” or the vision of mutuality between men and women that later informed Gaye’s 1976 Leon Ware co-composed album I Want You. Coupled with what we now know of Gaye’s history of troubling emotional and physical violence (ex-wife Jan Gaye alleges in her 2015 biography, co-authored with David Ritz, that he abused her), the singer-songwriter may have been prophetic with regards to race and class, but not so much when it came to feminism and women’s rights.
In its highs and lows, You’re the Man—a self-canceled/lost Marvin Gaye album that has now arrived 47 years later in the midst of cancel culture—is a fascinating glimpse into what one of the great pop music artists of the 20th century strategically allowed the culture to see—and what he didn’t. Just as the title track reminds us that charismatic political leaders often fail us, the album as a whole inadvertently reminds us that the culture doesn’t rise and fall on charismatic male music icons like Marvin Gaye and John Lennon—and others with questionable behavior or rap sheets—in the way it did when they seemed like singular, indispensable revolutionary heroes. You’re the Man reveals Marvin Gaye as a multidimensional, complicated human being who deserves our respect, but not necessarily our unchecked worship—no more so than the political figures he so rightly critiques. In 2019, movements like #blacklivesmatter have taught us that we can strive to be “‘leaderful”’ in embracing collective models of governance rather than pin our hopes and futures on any one single charismatic individual. Marvin Gaye was a single charismatic musician whose iconic genius was interlaced with the continuous trouble in the water that informed it. A profound musical gift from the past that remarkably has a lot to say about our present condition, You’re the Man presents us with the unequivocal truth that because we’re all fallible, nobody should be the man. | 2019-04-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-04-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | UMG | April 3, 2019 | 7.8 | 0ee5fc7b-f0e4-4309-b9a6-4ba97c253fc4 | Jason King | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jason-king/ | |
Following January's Let's Go Eat the Factory, GBV's second reunion LP is shorter, punchier, and livelier than its predecessor. Last time, Tobin Sprout's input felt especially triumphant. Here, it's Robert Pollard's show. | Following January's Let's Go Eat the Factory, GBV's second reunion LP is shorter, punchier, and livelier than its predecessor. Last time, Tobin Sprout's input felt especially triumphant. Here, it's Robert Pollard's show. | Guided by Voices: Class Clown Spots a UFO | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16740-class-clown-spots-a-ufo/ | Class Clown Spots a UFO | Deep into Guided by Voices' second reunion LP, Class Clown Spots a UFO, Bob Pollard makes an out-of-character suggestion: "be impeccable." Whoever he's talking to, it's not himself. Pollard, long prone to spiking even his most gloriously imperfect songs with out-there choruses, waves of static, and commercial prospect-shattering titles like "Game of Pricks", is not our foremost expert in matters of the immaculate. January's Let's Go Eat the Factory, the strange, spotty comeback album from GBV's "classic era" lineup, could've doubled down on Bob's back-bleacher arena-rockers or Tobin Sprout's tucked-in power-poppers, possibly earning them some new fans. But Factory wore its flaws proudly, sidestepping any and all easy "hey, we're back!" triumphalism and overeager "look how we've grown!" progressivism for a show-up-and-plug-in casualness that couldn't have come from any other GBV. So it goes with Class Clown Spots a UFO, their second LP on the year. Class Clown is shorter, punchier, and a lot livelier than Factory, but impeccable? Nothing doing there.
Tobin Sprout's age-defying voice and surplus of solid songs helped his return to the fold on Factory seem especially triumphant. This time around, it's Bob's show all the way. Class Clown's title track, a resurrected gem plucked from the outtakes collections Suitcase 3, deserves to stand as the resurrected GBV's new rallying cry. It's one of those dizzyingly catchy Pollard songs that seems to sew two or three viable hooks together, its criss-crossing chorus the product of some serious craftsmanship on Pollard's part. Next to Factory, his rockers are leaner and less fraught, while his ballads are more straightforward and more plainly gorgeous. Still, beyond "Class Clown" and "Keep It In Motion", Pollard seems the looser dude here, providing Class Clown with nearly all of its gnarlier rockers and oddball overtures.
Though Pollard is warmed up, Sprout's a bit stiffer. Long the classicist of the pair, Sprout's stately pop songs, at their best, play off Pollard's woolier mammoths in a way that does both sides favors. Here, though, his songs are too tame, seeming beamed in from another record. The especially bland "Starfire" finds Toby singing "worlds are falling down like raindrops" over an uninspired, starched-shirt string arrangement. The stripped-bare, minute-long "Lost in Space" is a good showcase for his striking voice, but it feels like a retread of Factory's similarly spare, Sprout-sung blip "Who Invented the Sun". Sprout's never been the font his buddy Pollard is, but after gracing Factory with some striking shiners, this pace of output seems to be stretching his songbook a bit thin.
Factory might've nailed that rickety old GBV feel, but the songs often seemed secondary to the sound. On Class Clown, a window's opened in Factory's dank back-basement and the songs make their way closer to the light. The production's brighter, the melodies more generous, and the songs themselves more fully formed. Still, as on Factory, pains have been taken to approximate the oversaturated, unpredictable feel of the classic-era LPs; writhing highlight "Tyson's High School" lets one of the set's best hooks-- standing "Be True to Your School" on its head-- ooze out of a psych-jam sludge, "Blue Babbleships Bay" goofily thrashes for 90 seconds before pulling the plug on itself, and "Worm w/ 7 Broken Hearts" ends quickly enough you'll wonder whether they actually got around to the "7 Broken Hearts" bit. This stuff gives the eclectic, at-all-angles Class Clown at least a spot of cohesion. But at times, the only thing holding the album together is its constant forward motion. A bit more of the title track's immediacy couldn't hurt matters; the best of the rest are growers, and they make you work for them. They've been peppering their recent sets with tunes from the new LPs, but as much as there is to like about the sputtering "Roll of the Dice" or the flat-out stunning "Chain to the Moon", they haven't earned the right to bump "Choking Tara" off the setlist just yet.
Being a Guided by Voices fan means adjusting your expectations for what makes a good record; when even Bee Thousand has its "Kicker of Elves", there's always the threat that things could get silly or stilted. Guided by Voices' 2012 output feels especially volatile in this way; Class Clown is full of left-turns and detours, willing to spike some of its better hooks simply to keep things interesting. Upon their return, a lesser band might've jettisoned the mess and noise of those classic records, leaving little but pure pop. But GBV Mark II have thus far proven way too ornery for that, and despite an uptick in catchiness, Class Clown's odd-angled pop and jittery arena rock keeps the weirdness on par with its predecessor. Granted, the sneakily tuneful Class Clown is still a few miles from impeccable. But that's what makes it a Guided by Voices album. | 2012-06-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2012-06-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Fire | June 27, 2012 | 7 | 0ee69fb9-a06a-4932-ab44-586b8713db20 | Paul Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-thompson/ | null |
Ending their 15-year run on Tommy Boy, De La Soul's first Sanctuary release features an all-star lineup of underground beatmakers-- including Madlib, 9th Wonder, Jay Dee, and mainstay Supa Dave West-- expertly backing the trio's usual cagy, confident lyrics. | Ending their 15-year run on Tommy Boy, De La Soul's first Sanctuary release features an all-star lineup of underground beatmakers-- including Madlib, 9th Wonder, Jay Dee, and mainstay Supa Dave West-- expertly backing the trio's usual cagy, confident lyrics. | De La Soul: The Grind Date | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2208-the-grind-date/ | The Grind Date | De La Soul, hip-hop's perennial ugly ducklings, have often forsaken the genre's style du jour in favor of musical contrarianism. When N.W.A. and West Coast gangster nihilism hit the charts, the trio battled E and Cube's thuggery with flowers and hi-top fades. When Bad Boy had a chokehold on the industry, De La Soul countered with their Stakes Is High manifesto. Now, with bear-knit sweaters and white tees on fire-- and after Tommy Boy dropped the trio's Spitkickin' asses for lacking a thirst for commercialism-- Posdnuos, Trugoy, and Maceo explore The Grind Date.
After 15 years, many observers wondered when their DiMaggio-like fresh streak would die. The triumvirate averages three years between albums-- stemming and refitting their dark horse costumes is hardly an overnight project-- but the results are frequently worth the wait, and The Grind Date is the group's best payoff in ages.
Let's be honest: Anything Matthew Knowles (responsible for his booty-hopping progeny Beyonce and owner of De La's new home Sanctuary Union) touches, is vinyl dynamite. Moreover, any album that kicks off with Jermaine Jackson's handiwork has genius written all over it. But frequent De La collaborator Supa Dave West's opening volley only serves as the jumpoff for a producer home run derby, and De La Soul wisely allow their all-county beatmaking team (Madlib, 9th Wonder, Jay Dee, and the aforementioned Supa Dave, among others) to craft a vehicle on which the trio can again revamp their style.
The third installment of the Art Official Intelligence series was envisioned as a DJ album before Tommy Boy canned it. The Grind Date inherits that project's propensity for organic production, as De La often wisely let the beats steep. On "Verbal Clap", Jay Dee pushes a sparse, apocalyptic swirl that lacks his trademark sound but buzzes with intensity. The ghostly keys and muted snare so effectively captivate the listener that Pos, Maceo, and Dave are willingly obscured. Even Ghostface displays a moment of weakness when he struggles to match the triumphant brass on Supa Dave West's "He Comes" (although Tony Sparks does manage to reclaim his stature with shoutouts to Uday and Qusay).
Of course, De La delivers their lyrical goods via FreshDirect with the comfort and ease of well-seasoned veterans. The title track serves as the album's centerpiece as Pos and Dave command the mic with authority and finesse. Dave spits, "Meat grind, street grind, whatever the beast/ I'ma take it at the horns til the pinky toe calls." Pos and Maceo's flexibility is uncanny as they retrofit their cadences to swing tracks into coalescence. Madlib's disjointed vibes and tinkling glass on "Shopping Bags" blend seamlessly with Pos' stuttering memo re: the perils of gold-diggers: "She say jump/ You scream, 'Okay, I'm reloaded!'/ Nigga, you shooting blanks." They even manage to draw the otherwise irrelevant Carl Thomas into the den of smoothness.
As Yummy croons "I never can say goodbye" on "No", De La Soul echoes the sentiment. The Grind Date brings together an unimaginable team of the underground's hottest producers and meshes their idiosyncrasies without dissidence. But more importantly, if this turns out to be the trio's final record, they'll have gone out proud, with unshakeable confidence and determination. | 2004-10-07T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2004-10-07T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Sanctuary | October 7, 2004 | 8.2 | 0eeabc8a-42e3-4765-8b62-479944d72086 | Jamin Warren | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jamin-warren/ | null |
Merchandise aren't the first band to draw inspiration from 80s mope rock, but the Tampa, Fla., group's background in the hardcore and DIY community has given them an edge on your average gang of 20-something miserablists. On their latest LP*,* they tighten up their blend of weirdo tones and emo conviction. | Merchandise aren't the first band to draw inspiration from 80s mope rock, but the Tampa, Fla., group's background in the hardcore and DIY community has given them an edge on your average gang of 20-something miserablists. On their latest LP*,* they tighten up their blend of weirdo tones and emo conviction. | Merchandise: Totale Nite | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17895-merchandise-totale-nite/ | Totale Nite | Merchandise aren't the first band to draw inspiration from 1980s mope rock, but their background in the Tampa, Fla., hardcore and DIY community has given them an edge on your average gang of 20-something miserablists. The trio’s debut album, (Strange Songs) In the Dark, and its follow-up, Children of Desire, reproduced sounds of melancholy mainstays like the Cure and New Order on a basement punk’s budget. Cheeseball drum machines battered out metronomic rhythms and shimmering guitar hooks blurred into swampy, dub-inspired textures. But even though the music was dense and trippy, the vocals were clear and urgent. Singer Carson Cox delivered his lyrics in a naked, unschooled croon that was more than a little reminiscent of Morrissey during the early days of the Smiths, minus the zeal for wordplay and Victorian poetry.
On their latest LP, Totale Nite-- which arrives via Night People, a go-to outlet for acts that split the difference between spooky and psychedelic, including early efforts by Peaking Lights, Dirty Beaches, and Pocahaunted-- the band tighten up their blend of weirdo tones and emo conviction. Merchandise songs can skew long and most of the tracks on Totale Nite find the band stretching out. These aren’t noodle-heavy excursions, though. The songs are long for the same reason that Swans' songs are long-- they’re meant to envelope and overtake the listener through repetition.
The album’s best tune, “Anxiety’s Door”, flows along a programmed dance rhythm for upwards of seven minutes, swapping in swatches of acoustic and electric guitars between Cox’s plaintive hoots. The song is memorable, in part, because its arrangement is eerily familiar, an echo of the Smiths' “The Headmaster Ritual”, embellished with heaps of psychic jewelry. The title track is looser, weirder, and longer, with Cox competing against blaring saxophones and washes of white noise for sonic real estate. The shrill sounds and long duration (10-minutes) make the song a more demanding listen than “Anxiety's Door”, but it's also a more complete display of the band's weird chemistry. Merchandise's take on pop works with extremes-- tweaking out hardcore kids with fey vocals and ethereal audio gook and then blasting the tamer ears with hi-frequency screeching.
It's only when the tempos start to slow down, like on the ambient ballad "I'll Be Gone", that the LP drags a little. There are still plenty of places for Cox to hide in Merchandise's music-- delay swells, blasts of noise, bottomless reservoirs of reverb-- he just never takes the opportunity. However, when the music gears down, he could stand to step a little further into the background.
In interviews, the members of Merchandise-- Cox and guitarist Dave Vassalotti in particular-- have laid out an earnest, if sometimes convoluted, series of principles that guide their music making. When they can, they prefer to play non-traditional venues. They are heavily devoted to their local music community and suspicious of the business practices of larger independent labels. Children of Desire was a well-loved record and, had the band been interested, a more mainstream-minded imprint might have stepped up to release Totale Nite. But so far, they've made good on their ambitions to stay off of the indie-rock cowpath.
Though Merchandise’s music is sonically distant from the band's hardcore pedigree, it places a similar premium on the projection of honesty and unguarded emotions. On Totale Nite, they manage to use small-scale elements-- jangling guitars, cheapo drum machines, toy keyboards-- to project the urgency of bands with louder screams and bigger amps. | 2013-04-05T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2013-04-05T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Night People | April 5, 2013 | 8 | 0eeb06fa-48f7-4a7b-8123-82474559ff39 | Aaron Leitko | https://pitchfork.com/staff/aaron-leitko/ | null |
After the late-career smash “Down in the DM,” Yo Gotti reinvigorates his long-running Cocaine Muzik series, serving his usual street fare with a bit more polish. It is a snapshot of Gotti in stride. | After the late-career smash “Down in the DM,” Yo Gotti reinvigorates his long-running Cocaine Muzik series, serving his usual street fare with a bit more polish. It is a snapshot of Gotti in stride. | Yo Gotti: White Friday (CM9) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22761-white-friday-cm9/ | White Friday (CM9) | Yo Gotti has long been Memphis’ biggest rap star, but he’s also spent his 30s on the cusp of something more, idling through several underperforming major-label releases while nurturing the mixtape cred that built his name. And then suddenly, in early 2016, Gotti scored big with “Down in the DM,” a late-career social media smash that had propped up his fifth album in 2015 and wedged his name into new conversations, like the one that must have precipitated his appearance on a Meghan Trainor breakup single called “Better” last year. It wasn’t until 2016 that Gotti was the type to get a crossover call like that. So, how does a late bloomer mixtape rapper seize his moment to sidle into the spotlight? Smartly, he’s back on the circuit. Kind of.
Gotti’s latest seems to be billed as an album first, White Friday, and mixtape second, CM9, but he’s clearly folding his long-running *Cocaine Muzik *mixtape series into a newfound industry prominence, serving up his usual street fare with a bit more polish. To be sure, Gotti has a better track record as a mixtape slinger than he does as a major-label rap album artist, and *CM9 *benefits from a low-stakes formula that’s less concerned with stringing together a narrative than it is with song-by-song quality control. The Art of Hustle, Gotti’s last album, saw him overextended, trying to frame himself in with a single statement-worthy piece of work; *CM9 *instead is a snapshot of Gotti in stride.
This new project’s bookends are the most explicitly self-referential of the rapper’s big 2016, and he grapples aloud with his come up. He isn’t known for clever lyricism, but Gotti can make a straightforward phrase sound agile. “Biggest year of my career and I could feel the pressure, gotta follow-up,” he snips on “81,” a slapper of an intro and fine microcosm of Gotti’s honed simplicity. Tracks like “Off da Top (3am)” don’t fare as well, and scan instead like generically manufactured trap.
On “Blah Blah Blah” Gotti casts himself as a petty asshole over an eerie banger, taunting an ex while turning his attention elsewhere. He sounds utterly unlikeable through it all. But the tease—“All I heard is ‘blah blah blah blah blah’”—spills throughout the song with enough charisma to worm into your ear like a bully’s “neener neener.” On the last track, Gotti endears instead, dropping his guard to memorialize his former manager, Mel Carter, who passed away less than a month before this mixtape was released. Gotti narrates as much as he raps, thanking an old friend for an overdue come-up they’ll never see through together. “If I knew talkin’ to you was my last time/The other night, it wouldn’t have been about no CM9,” Gotti promises.
Sometimes Gotti turns in a better chorus himself than the mixtape’s guests designated for the job. Kodak Black is the exception that steals the show on “Weatherman,” hawking a fresh-out-of-jail hook about coming up and needing more, ad-libbing it all in his stylish whine. Gotti has taken a mixtape-like approach to sharing space with his featured emcees, but he’s nearly overstocked the tracklist’s obvious centerpiece. “Castro” is a star-studded blunder that packages some of the mixtape’s best and worst rapping hand-in-hand. Big Sean and Kanye West are here mostly in spirit, crashing the party with unforgivably clunking punch-ins like “Spanish chick—J. Lo” and “Astronaut—takeoff.” Quavo and 2 Chainz save the day with full-length verses of their own, injecting a bit of zany character into an otherwise tepid group project. Several months after the same troupe of emcees gathered for a Kanye West single called “Champions,” “Castro” feels a bit like the party’s stale leftovers. But it’s still a coup for Gotti, and he holds his own confidently. Last year, he plucked “Down in the DM” from its original mixtape tracklist and built a year and bonafide album around its success. Gotti’s chipped away and crammed at least a couple more single-worthy tracks into White Friday, enough maybe to keep himself afloat through 2017. Either way, the guy doesn’t let up. | 2017-01-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-01-11T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Epic | January 11, 2017 | 6.8 | 0eece457-f301-4891-ae44-62d5e4f755d3 | Jay Balfour | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jay-balfour/ | null |
This Melbourne trio's effusive, empathic, and emphatic indie-rock debut examines shame the way 69 Love Songs x-rays love. | This Melbourne trio's effusive, empathic, and emphatic indie-rock debut examines shame the way 69 Love Songs x-rays love. | Camp Cope: Camp Cope | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22116-camp-cope/ | Camp Cope | In the same way Benji was about “death” and 69 Love Songs was about “love,” Camp Cope’s enthralling debut is an album about “shame.” There are dozens of times where Georgia Maq, leader of this Melbourne trio, recognizes the subtle way shame has goes viral in real time, tinting and tainting almost every one of her interactions: The discomfort and depression she feels after passing by a homeless man in the park, getting catcalled at a construction yard or busking in the streets. Each encounter is processed as a projection of her emotional state or payback for the original sin of having been born. Maq’s emotional intelligence is off the charts here, but in that aspect, she might admit she’s too smart for her own good.
On “Flesh & Electricity,” Maq exhales, “I’ve been desensitized to the human body/I could look at you naked and all I’d see would be anatomy,” like she just might sink so far into her couch that she disappears. When she modulates the chorus a few steps higher, she sounds even wearier; the effect is like watching someone force a smile in a crushingly repetitive job. It’s perhaps the saddest of Camp Cope’s eight songs because it was inspired by her actually trying to do good in the world; Maq worked as a nurse during the writing process of Camp Cope, but her altruism might have just been shame management: “My father says it’s atonement for my reckless years,” she says in “Flesh & Electricity.”
Camp Cope’s sound is, increasingly, the sound of indie rock today: a divergence from the too-cool VU-the Fall-Pavement lineage that embraces the effusive, empathic and emphatic qualities of emo, with some pop-punk (Tigers Jaw and UV Race are namedropped in “Stove Lighter,” WHY? is paraphrased in “West Side Story”) and a social awareness that negates any of the aforementioned’s previously questionable politics. You can tell from the stock chord progressions and loudly projected vocals that Camp Cope used to be Maq’s solo project, but if it’s folky at all, it resembles the superlyrical the Front Bottoms or the Mountain Goats rather than any roots music.
It’s a testament to Camp Cope’s unique magnetism that they never cheat towards the catharsis typically expected to balance out such heavy subject matter. They often use deadpan humor instead: “Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams” references nutball 9/11 conspiracy theories, but uses it as part of a pattern where any authority condescends to you, whether it comes from the NRA (“the only thing that can stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun”) or the victim-blaming inherent in most sexual assault investigations.
The most powerful moments on Camp Cope come when Maq shows a willingness to take some kind of power back after being talked down to her entire life, by parents, by teachers, by partners (“Hey, I was looking for a reason to leave and it’s you”), friends and peers in the punk community. There are no revelatory epiphanies for Maq, just valuable growth spurts that feel like acceptance. In “West Side Story,” Maq gets closest to the “survive and advance” thesis statement of Camp Cope: “It all comes down to the knowledge that we’re gonna die/find comfort in that or be scared for the rest of your life.” | 2016-07-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-07-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Poison City | July 18, 2016 | 8 | 0eedb26e-d0ac-49fd-b142-8797a16bb190 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
After a run of dates warming up for the xx, playing “obtuse, strange” music for crowds of 20,000, Sam Shepherd translates that energy to an album of mischievous yet melodic electronic experiments. | After a run of dates warming up for the xx, playing “obtuse, strange” music for crowds of 20,000, Sam Shepherd translates that energy to an album of mischievous yet melodic electronic experiments. | Floating Points: Crush | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/floating-points-crush/ | Crush | Sam Shepherd is a meticulous fellow. Whether he’s tracking down a rare piece of vinyl for his voluminous record collection, wiring up an arcane modular synthesizer, or putting together the latest iteration of his audiovisual live show, there’s an attention to detail at work that’s practically unrivaled in electronic music. (Shepherd also managed to complete a PhD in neuroscience a few years back, so he’s clearly no slouch in his other endeavors, either.) The London producer exudes a nerdy yet winning enthusiasm, and each step in his decade-long career has felt carefully considered. Even his impeccable 2015 debut album, Elaenia, which surprised many people by skirting the dancefloor almost entirely, turned out to be a natural evolution of his sound and craft.
Knowing this, it’s genuinely surprising that he created the latest Floating Points full-length, Crush, in only five weeks. The album was born in the aftermath of a 2017 tour opening for the xx. After touring Elaenia for a couple of years with a full live ensemble, Shepherd suddenly found himself alone onstage—in 20,000-capacity venues, no less—improvising with just a Roland drum machine and a Buchla synth. While he initially planned to keep things mellow, he quickly threw that plan out the window, choosing instead to embrace a more “chaotic” vibe and warm the crowd up with what he describes as “some of the most obtuse, strange, difficult music of my life.” It was a risky choice, but the shows left Shepherd feeling invigorated, and he was determined to continue these focused machine experiments once he returned to the studio.
Knowing that, you might expect Crush to be an intense, frenzied effort, but in Shepherd’s case, economy doesn’t preclude elegance. While certain elements—a distorted rhythm here, a shuddering synth there—can be traced back to those rough-and-tumble live shows with the xx, the LP as a whole is strikingly melodic and often beautiful, even in its most frantic moments. Take “Bias,” one of the LP’s strongest offerings: The track opens with subdued, almost pensive synth tendrils and brooding baritone, which intermingle and creep slowly skyward before a vibrant breakbeat sneaks in and eventually erupts, yanking the entire production onto the dancefloor.
Crush is not hurting for club-ready material. “Last Bloom” is another dancefloor cut with a cinematic streak, with a swinging, slightly off-kilter drum pattern nodding to UK garage as the song’s jaunty melodies bubble along. You could be forgiven for mistaking it for the work of Four Tet or Caribou, two of Shepherd’s closest friends. There’s also no missing “LesAlpx,” the album’s soaring, proggy first single. The track has a lot in common with 2014’s “Nuits Sonores,” arguably Floating Points’ most forceful tune to date, although “LesAlpx” actually goes much harder, veering into proper techno territory as Shepherd layers an array of crunchy modular melodies and technicolor synth blooms atop its sturdily galloping rhythm.
Shepherd has spoken often about his early clubbing experiences and their profound impact on his musical outlook, and Crush shows just how much his work carries on the legacy of London’s fertile club scene during the latter half of the 2000s. Those years saw early dubstep dancing alongside underground house, techno, garage, and a variety of leftfield rhythms, most notably in venues like Plastic People, which played host to all-night sessions from artists like Four Tet and Theo Parrish, along with groundbreaking dubstep nights like FWD>>. Experimentation and cross-pollination were paramount, and although this genre-melding moment was ultimately fleeting, it revitalized the UK scene and introduced a new generation of young producers, including Shepherd, whose initial flurry of releases began in 2009.
While Crush isn’t an explicit homage to Plastic People (which sadly closed in early 2015), the album does embody the club’s open-minded, music-first spirit. Although the scene that birthed him has long since devolved, Shepherd—a jazz-loving, vinyl-hunting, ensemble-building, classically trained outsider who only occasionally makes what could be described as proper dance music—has nevertheless become a prominent torchbearer for the ideals of that crucial era in UK electronic music. Crush is something of a return to Floating Points’ more dancefloor-oriented material from the first half of this decade, particularly in comparison to Elaenia and 2017’s jammy, rock-influenced Reflections - Mojave Desert, but the LP is also a sonically diverse effort with extended forays into modular synthesis, baroque new age, hyperactive IDM, and more.
The quieter passages are some of the album’s best. The stunning “Falaise” opens the record with a simmering cauldron of trembling synths and strings, the sense of drama building as the music gradually swells into an orchestral crescendo. More delicate is “Sea-Watch,” a gentle sketch that sounds like a melancholy lullaby constructed with a lightly buzzing modular set-up. “Requiem for CS70 and Strings” is another symphonic gem, its combination of classical sensibilities and Buchla-generated new-age wanderlust recalling the magic of Suzanne Ciani’s first solo albums.
Crush has its more experimental flourishes too, and it’s in these moments that you can best imagine Floating Points holed up in his studio, tinkering with his machines. The closing couplet of “Apoptose Pt. 1” and “Apoptose Pt. 2” is built atop a foundation of burbling Buchla rhythms, although Shepherd infuses both tracks with a twitchy energy that channels the percussive ping-pong of 1990s IDM. He takes things even further on “Anasickmodular,” where ethereal melodies and a sturdy garage beat are suddenly swept aside as the track disintegrates into a flurry of whirring synths and gnarled drum sounds. The element of chaos is something new for Floating Points, and while disorder may seem antithetical to his generally thoughtful approach, Crush offers proof that Shepherd has quickly learned to harness its noise and power. In a live setting, this material might have the potential to blossom into something unruly, but on the LP it comes across as more mischievous than deranged.
Perhaps a little bit of mischief is exactly what Shepherd needed. An album like Elaenia may have impressively distilled Shepherd’s influences into a single, long-form statement, but it also took him five years to finish and largely sidelined his dancefloor impulses. Crush, on the other hand, provides a more complete picture of his artistic outlook, bringing his club sensibilities back into the mix while also feeling like the most relaxed and confident Floating Points effort to date. Shepherd will likely always be someone who dotes on the details, but this time around, he was smart enough to realize that the five weeks he’d spent on Crush were enough. He’d done all he needed to do, and more importantly, he was happy with the result. Sometimes, the most important decision is knowing when to stop.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-10-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-10-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Ninja Tune | October 21, 2019 | 8.3 | 0eeebe44-1e4a-4b7d-8640-ca1c9bca7af2 | Shawn Reynaldo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/shawn-reynaldo/ | |
With the joy and wit all but absent from his songwriting, Jack White’s third solo album becomes a long, bewildering slog. | With the joy and wit all but absent from his songwriting, Jack White’s third solo album becomes a long, bewildering slog. | Jack White: Boarding House Reach | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/boarding-house-reach/ | Boarding House Reach | I remember when I first suspected Jack White was ridiculous. It was the trailer for the 2009 rock documentary It Might Get Loud.
Yes, a guy in peppermint-striped clothes covering Marlene Dietrich alongside a drummer pretending to be his sister had always been a bit ridiculous. But it was good ridiculous, inspiring and even instructive. Play-acting, dress-up, making up fake blues songs: These were ingenious, even courageous ways of engaging with the big, terrifying world on your own terms. But then I watched White gaze out a limo, en route to a summit with fellow guitarist millionaires The Edge and Jimmy Page, and gravely prophesy a “fist fight.” This, I thought, was bad ridiculous— pointless, embarrassing, self-serving.
I revisit this moment of doubt now because I have heard Jack White rap. If you listen to his third solo album Boarding House Reach, you will have crossed this Rubicon with me. It happens on a song called “Ice Station Zebra.” After pounding a saloon piano for a minute, he turns his fedora backwards, stoops to the camera, and offers this:
If Joe Blow says, ‘Yo, you paint like Caravaggio’
You respond, ‘No, that’s an insult, Joe
I live in a vacuum, I ain’t copping no one’
Listen up, son: Everyone creating is a member of the family
Passin’ down genes and ideas in harmony
The players and the cynics probably thinking it’s odd
But if you rewind the tape, we’re all copying God
Now, quoting someone’s lyrics to make them look silly probably isn’t nice. It might even be disingenuous: Plenty of sharp-sounding couplets wither in the harsh light of the printed page. But White’s delivery, if possible, is even worse than the words; the painful “yo” and “Joe Blow,” the coup de grace of “we’re all copying God”—which White repeats, eager to rub it in—is a thumb in the eye. What does he think he’s doing? What does he want us to think he’s doing? All is mystery, except your overwhelming desire to turn away.
Boarding House Reach is a long, bewildering slog studded with these moments, which seem to be directly antagonizing you. Deep in the eccentric-hermit stage of his career, with his own successful label and a devoted clutch of fans who will come to see his concerts until their children are in college, White is now free to record and release whatever he pleases. And judging by Boarding House Reach, he wants to noodle to himself in the studio, record spoken-word reminiscences about the first time he played piano in a song titled “Get in the Mind Shaft,” and make the kind of Cheeto-dusted funk instrumentals that the Beastie Boys would have left off of The In Sound From Way Out! What he doesn’t want to do: write any songs at all.
The worst part is that he doesn’t even sound like he’s having fun. The few rock songs here, like the lead-off “Connected by Love,” are blowsy, water-logged things, devoid of wit or snap or fire. Usually a good guitar solo will rouse White’s blood, but he doesn’t have many of those up his sleeve here either. Instead, he swamps himself with gospel choirs and organ and even more bongos, and boy, does he ever sound miserable. “Why Walk a Dog” would be a hilarious parody of a mawkish blues ballad—“Are you their master?/Did you buy them at the store?/Did they know they were a cure for you to stop being bored?”—if the sob in White’s voice didn’t convince me he believes every word. What I wouldn’t give for a flash of bright red, something with the verve or conviction of even his slightest Stripes material.
On the last two tracks, White finally tips his hand. “What’s Done Is Done” is a goofy country tune that he sings with the right amount of hambone. And “Humoresque” sets to words a scrappy old tune by the 19th-century Czech composer Dvořák, one that generations of little children studying Suzuki violin have scratched out in front of the forced grins of their parents. It’s the only hint of White’s lively mind at work.
Sadly, the years have steadily whittled the playfulness from White’s material. His work is now too lumbering and unmoored for anyone to take much pleasure in it. After the Stripes broke up, and as he began to dress more and more like Johnny Depp in a Tim Burton film, he started to carry himself like Depp too: A former boy-genius soured into a man, an iconoclast trapped in an icon’s body. His brief reminiscence on Boarding House Reach about learning to play piano (“I sat there for hours, trying to understand how to construct a melody”) is swathed in fluttering-curtain synths, almost as if the moment is too painfully unreal for White to recall clearly. Listening to Boarding House Reach, it is hard not to feel a pang for what he might have lost: alone in his little room, working on something good. | 2018-03-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-03-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Third Man | March 23, 2018 | 4.7 | 0eefabfa-5734-4bef-96b9-cfee20fd4cf3 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | |
After a shaky debut project, the 18-year-old Atlanta rapper gives her punk spirit more space to breathe on her latest mixtape. | After a shaky debut project, the 18-year-old Atlanta rapper gives her punk spirit more space to breathe on her latest mixtape. | Bktherula: Nirvana | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bktherula-nirvana/ | Nirvana | Bktherula’s 2019 breakout single “Tweakin’ Together” is like a fairy tale made to backdrop a day in the life of the most Instagrammable couples you can imagine. (Maybe the ones who film each other doing tricks at the skatepark. Maybe the ones where both are so fashionable, it physically makes you sick. Or the ones who seem so inseparable that they must have never had a disagreement.) Her music can range from fluttery and lovestruck to songs delivered with the angst of someone who would stomp on the human body that fell to the ground during a mosh pit. “Tweakin’ Together” is so good because it’s a mix of both. “I know these niggas mad as fuck,” she raps on the opening line, so softly it’s like she’s flipping off her critics with a smile on her face. Yes, it’s an unrealistically cool love song. There's no tears, indecisiveness, or paranoia. This mythical perfection is the track’s flaw, but also part of the appeal.
Though the absence of more subtle emotions didn’t affect “Tweakin’ Together,” it is a glaring issue on the 18-year-old’s debut mixtape, Love Santana. The project feels like unfinished and shallow scatterbrained sketches were rushed out to help extend the life of her breakthrough single. Admirably, though, the record has plenty of ideas; she attempts to package her punk spirit with an endless bag of Atlanta-rooted melodies, the loose improvisation of punched-in PG County, Maryland rap, and the whimsy of SoundCloud’s melodic crooners. A couple more months of allowing the concepts to bake would have helped, as it does on her newest mixtape, Nirvana.
Prior to Nirvana, the most memorable Bktherula songs were the ones where her vocals were as light and airy as hotel pillows. That’s not true anymore; on the tape, Bk is most captivating when she sounds ready to stuff trifling dudes in lockers for not reciprocating her feelings. “All these fuck niggas is fake!/Say they love you to your face!/Really they just playing games!/Bitch, I hope you say your grace!” she screams on “Mind Fuck,” prepared to headbang, and maybe even set a car on fire like Angela Bassett in Waiting to Exhale. “Welcome” is just as good, too. Bk chants as if she’s leading a seance, and the noisy Digital Nas beat will resonate with anyone who has spent too much time listening to the Pro Skater soundtrack.
When Bk slightly reels in the JNCO jeans energy, it’s still successful but less striking. On “Admit It,” the spacey instrumental is reminiscent of the far-out C4 and Dun Deal beats you could find on early Young Thug mixtapes, and Bk’s soft-served melody makes the words sound sweet leaving her mouth—despite how aggressive they are: “Yo’ nigga wanna fight, better tell him, ‘Come with it,’” she raps.
Similar to Carti and Uzi, Bk is a rapper who always chooses swag over substance. To pull that off across an entire project, the production has to be so tight and imaginative that you hardly notice or care about punchlines that are duds. Nirvana’s defects are because the executive producer Digital Nas—best known for his early work with Lil Yachty—can’t quite build worlds like more fantastical beatmakers such as Pi’erre Bourne, Richie Souf, and Oogie Mane. Sometimes Digital Nas’ celestial sounds leave Bk out to dry, specifically on “More” and “okok/depressing,” both of which feel like off-brand versions of the beats on recent Carti leaks.
When it’s all clicking, Bktherula and Digital Nas make fun records together. Notably, “ILoveUBack<3,” is a dreamy love song with a gentle flow and feathery Bk vocals. Unlike the great but unrelatable “Tweakin’ Together,” Bk’s emotions are complex here. She goes through unease and a fear of commitment, as well as joy and euphoria at seemingly inconsequential moments like a late-night back rub. It’s vulnerable in a way that seemed to be hard for her just 10 months ago. But Bktherula is blooming fast, and her music is coming along with it.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-10-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-10-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Warner | October 29, 2020 | 7.2 | 0ef735df-d9e9-4d94-8ded-a003f2268ad5 | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
Badass instrumental rock group follow 2006's outstanding Surface to Air, a record that matched looming dread with body-rocking thunder. | Badass instrumental rock group follow 2006's outstanding Surface to Air, a record that matched looming dread with body-rocking thunder. | Zombi: Spirit Animal | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13046-spirit-animal/ | Spirit Animal | Zombi(e)s? Badass. One peeved-looking elephant brandishing its tusks towards your fleshy bits as it stampedes through the space-fog? Mega badass. Monolithic, lazer-show ready instrumental prog rawk? Well, that can pass or play, but in combination with the aforementioned twofer, you'd probably go with "badass" again, huh? You'd think!
When the mood strikes, few bands do bong-rips-in-your-Dodge-Dart badass quite like Pittsburgh's Zombi. The sound Steve Moore and Anthony Paterra make-- equal parts Italo-funkers Goblin, Can's lockstep whirl, intro music to educational filmstrips of the 1970s, and Edgar Winter's undead "Frankenstein"-- can be almost impossibly epic. When it works, as it did over and over again on 2006's Surface to Air, it feels like a vision quest through the bowels of hell. But whereas Surface found myriad ways to match looming dread with body-rocking thunder (they are on Relapse, after all), Spirit Animal plays the extremes. The heights can be towering, the lows crushing, but the relative lack of middle ground keeps Spirit Animal off balance and a few shades shy of truly badass.
Instrumental rock of this sort requires a certain ratio of tension and release; the tunes range in length from a lean six minutes and change to the comfortably numbing 17-plus minutes of closer "Through Time", and too much time spent at either end of the spectrum can be stultifying when you get into the lengthier numbers. Often Spirit Animal gets so caught up in its own grooves it almost seems to forget there's anybody listening; where a constant dynamism bubbled under the comparably hefty Surface to Air, Spirit Anim**al too often finds Zombi settling into one mode or the other-- spacey, or spooky, but mostly skull-smashing-- and letting it ride just a touch too long. Individual moments can crush or creep, but far too many riffs get turned every which way but out, and far too few of those are quite badass enough to justify the time they spend with 'em.
Spirit Animal is almost certainly the band's loudest effort; half-Zombi Steve Moore even sneaks a little electric guitar in there, a first for the band on wax. If you'd told me either of those things before I heard the record, I would've pegged it as their best based on that alone; it's not that Zombi really needed to get louder or introduce new elements into the mix, but that'd certainly be a direction you'd think they'd revel in. They do, but as a listener, it's hard not to feel bludgeoned by the oft-endless riffage that characterizes much of Spirit Animal. Given their relatively small arsenal of instruments and an apparent unwillingness to shed the ghosts of their influences, I suppose there's only so many things they can do without going way way out, and Spirit Animal finds them doing just that. But unlike Surface to Air-- or even the terrific "Infinity" from their recent split with Maserati-- the sprawl becomes a crawl, and the rift between the parts that kick your butt and the parts that get you primed for said butt kicking is just a bit too great for Spirit Animal to achieve the kind of balance Zombi have been so adept at in the past. In the end, Spirit Animal becomes less like the badass elephant on its front and more like just another pachyderm; heavy, yes, but lumbering. | 2009-06-04T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2009-06-04T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Rock | Relapse | June 4, 2009 | 5.3 | 0ef76cdb-0dc6-4226-85fe-de282a7b89e6 | Paul Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-thompson/ | null |
The pieces on this reissued 2006 album blend techno’s forward motion with the swirl of ambient. | The pieces on this reissued 2006 album blend techno’s forward motion with the swirl of ambient. | Move D / Benjamin Brunn: Let’s Call It a Day | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/move-d-and-benjamin-brunn-lets-call-it-a-day/ | Let’s Call It a Day | One afternoon in 2007, the electronic musicians David Moufang (aka Move D) and Benjamin Brunn walked into the Smallville Records shop in Hamburg and heard their own music playing over the speakers. The record in question was Let’s Call It a Day, a one-off set of dubby ambient-techno improvisations that had been released the year before and then disappeared without much trace. In town for a rare duo performance together, they told the shop attendants that there was a bounty of unreleased material from the same sessions sitting on their hard drives, at which point the storekeepers pricked up their ears. The following year, some of those tracks would be released as Songs From the Beehive, the inaugural album on the fledgling Smallville label.
Specializing in moody, minimalist house, Smallville was inspired by Dial Records, a Hamburg dance-music institution, even tapping Dial co-founder Peter Kersten for one of Smallville’s early singles. But after its early run of singles, Songs From the Beehive marked a turning point for the label. Instead of the crisp beats and clean lines of the minimal scene, these recordings were shrouded in gaseous abstraction, like architectural photographs shot on fogged film. The dancefloor tracks invoked heady dub-techno pioneers like Porter Ricks; the rest of the album slowed the tempos or eliminated beats altogether, sinking into a state of weightless bliss. There was nothing else like it around at the time, and it established Smallville’s reputation as an electronic music hub of uncommon depth.
This reissue of Let’s Call It a Day marks the first time the 2006 album has ever appeared on vinyl or streaming services. It’s opportune timing; ambient music is enjoying a renaissance right now, and Move D and Brunn’s album, with its careful mix of pulse and atmosphere, still sounds unique. Even more than Songs From the Beehive, Let’s Call It a Day achieves an unusual balance between techno’s forward motion and ambient’s amniotic swirl.
The album begins with its most sharply defined track. A listener hearing “On the Magic Bus” in 2006 wouldn’t have been completely befuddled; its steady kick drum and answering bursts of white noise approximate dance music’s familiar boom-tick rhythm, while rounded bass tones invoke deep-house pioneer Mr. Fingers. But the whole thing seems suspended in liquid, like the flakes of a snow globe. From there the duo leaves all semblance of the club behind. “Grains” is stirred by a buried dub-techno pulse and a hint of a ticking clock; the rest of the track is just a shimmering field of randomized rattle and squeal, as though a transistor radio had suddenly developed a keen interest in free jazz while the two musicians went on their lunch break. “A” and “Ω” are variations upon a single theme, hypnotically drawing out murky, burbling chords over rustling rhythms.
Like Songs From the Beehive, all seven tracks were improvised across four days in Moufang’s studio, but the album’s two highlights show what different forms those freeform sessions could take. “Let’s Call It a Day” is the album’s most ethereal cut, with faint synth chords slowly morphing atop a soft bed of clicks, purrs, and sighs. Trying to trace its creators’ movements is like looking for a guiding hand behind the movements of a lava lamp; it feels like it could bubble along like that for eternity, generating infinite permutations of the same basic pattern. “Magnetically Levitated Train,” on the other hand, constitutes the record’s big emotional payoff: a patient series of jazz-indebted chord changes drawn out across 17 soothing minutes, played with unusual delicacy and imbued with an unmistakably human touch. At the end of a record that feels almost a self-regulating system—some fantastical Rube Goldberg contraption made from an aquarium pump, marbles, and Q-tips—this sweet, sentimental song finally reveals a glimpse of the two men behind the curtain, gently pulling strings. | 2020-03-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-03-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Smallville | March 23, 2020 | 8 | 0ef78137-18c5-4cda-ae5a-b7ab6b3d8df9 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
Purgatory/Paradise, Throwing Muses’ first album in 10 years, is an ambitious collection that was also devised as a book with essays by Kristin Hersh and art by drummer Dave Narcizo. Half of the 31 tracks barely make it over two minutes: some are reprises, sometimes the reprises come first, and some tracks are lopped-off bridges or choruses. | Purgatory/Paradise, Throwing Muses’ first album in 10 years, is an ambitious collection that was also devised as a book with essays by Kristin Hersh and art by drummer Dave Narcizo. Half of the 31 tracks barely make it over two minutes: some are reprises, sometimes the reprises come first, and some tracks are lopped-off bridges or choruses. | Throwing Muses: Purgatory/Paradise | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18660-throwing-muses-purgatoryparadise/ | Purgatory/Paradise | There’s a moment during the commentary packaged with Throwing Muses new album Purgatory/Paradise, after drummer Dave Narcizo offers up a particularly ribald interpretation of “Slippershell”, where Kristin Hersh stops and laughs away the credit: “Sure. God wrote it.” From almost anyone else, that would come off ridiculous, a megalomaniac’s humblebrag, but from Hersh it’s part of the origin story, the one that’s been repeated in everything written about Throwing Muses from the 80s onward. Hersh has always held that she’s not a songwriter so much as a woman accosted by songs; her role, she says, is more like a transcriptionist, or a vessel. Anything an outside audience might hear in them, the story goes, is coincidental. But Throwing Muses’ music never sounded like it sprung from any outside source so much as one that’s deeply personal. The chords lurch like feelings would; and the lyrics make internal sense. A track like “Fish” becomes far less surreal when you know that it’s referring to an actual fish nailed to an actual cross on Hersh’s actual apartment wall, but even then it’s like listening in on a few minutes of monologue, raw and untranslated, where the bits of dialogue, snippets of images, and the rest of the stuff of someone else’s inner life may well be a foreign language. There are plenty of Throwing Muses tracks that are oblique—and a lot more than the band gets credit for that are needle-direct—but few that explain themselves.
If this sounds at odds with finding a large audience, it’s because it is. Throwing Muses’ time on Warner in the 90s was neither pleasant nor lucrative. Hersh gave the label the rights to Hips and Makers to get out of her contract before releasing 1996’s Limbo, a title that now seems either prescient or biting. The Muses went on hiatus—or “disbanded,” which is both farther from the truth and closer to the practical reality. Hersh released solo albums on a fairly steady schedule, but Throwing Muses released only one more record: the triumphant Throwing Muses. That was in 2003. Hersh formed another project, 50 Foot Wave, around this time, but their last two EPs were released for free and quietly—as quietly, that is, as is possible for a band whose founding principle was “Throwing Muses, if they were faster, meaner and also swore a lot.” Hersh’s last solo album, Crooked, was self-released in 2009 nearly as quietly, supported mostly by house shows and smallish acoustic concerts. And though demos of Purgatory/Paradise existed online as early as 2007 (a few were meant for Crooked), the audience they found was largely the same fans who crowdfunded the record. (Hersh was among the first to adopt the pay-what-you-want and subscription models Kickstarter and its ilk would later make inescapable.) While Throwing Muses did tour behind 2011’s Anthology compilation, it would have taken close attention to think new material was forthcoming.
Purgatory/Paradise, as it turns out, is the Muses’ first album in 10 years, and “the work [the band] can die after releasing,” as Hersh jokes early in the commentary. (“We’re really looking forward to death. We work so hard to be allowed to die!”) But while 2003’s Throwing Muses was a comeback album in the familiar sense, roaring and tearing at all expectations from the first count-off, Purgatory/Paradise is more reserved. Of the Muses’ albums, it most resembles Red Heaven or Limbo, the forcefully aloof deep cuts of the Muses’ discography—but a shattered version, “like someone reached over our heads with a Looney Tunes mallet and slammed it into our record before we could stop him,” Hersh wrote. (Like Crooked, Purgatory/Paradise was devised both as a record and as a book, with essays by Hersh and art by Narcizo. It’s both a gorgeous standalone object—particularly the writing, considering 2010’s Rat Girl proved Hersh one of the best music writers around—and a sort of decoder for the album’s tracks.) Half of the album’s 32 tracks barely make it over two minutes. Some of them are reprises; sometimes the reprises come first. Some tracks are lopped-off bridges or choruses, or thoughts beginning with “and.” It’s even more disorienting for cuts like “Static” whose uncut versions have been around long enough to memorize. This doesn’t necessarily seem odd for a band whose songs tend to skitter into loping girl-group choruses halfway or careen through dozens of chords that wouldn’t normally touch or scare-quote the entirety of some kid’s anarchy pamphlet as an intro, but Purgatory/Paradise really is unlike anything I’ve heard this year; it’s a little like someone read an old Muses review that talked about their songs switching gears, recorded what they thought that sounded like, then lost half the data to a defragmenting snafu.
Not that Purgatory/Paradise is difficult or inaccessible. The beginning fakes you out with the almost stately folk of “Smoky Hands”, but it’s just scene-setting before a song accosts you: a crash, then “Morning Birds”, an onslaught of shredding then pathos that’s as wrenching as anything on the first Muses record. “Sunray Venus”, the single, comes shortly after, and it’s as joyous as “Morning Birds” is visceral. Like Wild Flag’s “Romance”, it’s an exuberant ode to band chemistry that plays out like the Muses rediscovering all their hits (“leaving, that is limbo—hey, I remember you!”) and comes with a splashy video full of wordplay and intertextual Easter eggs. Later on is “Sleepwalking”, a college-rock throwback where everything from the guitar lines to the glaze of the vocal processing seems imported from 1992. It’d be shameless if it weren’t so huge (and self-aware; the band calls it their “RC Cola song”), and it’s easy to imagine it on Doolittle or Last Splash—or for that matter Throwing Muses again; you can even trace out where Tanya Donelly’s harmonies would go.
But that’s the second version of “Sleepwalking” you hear: the first version is what would ordinarily be end of the song, a one-minute acoustic hangover. Songs come and go like this, or more specifically moments: bassist Bernard Georges’ sly lead on “Cherry Candy”, the spy riff and ballroom pirouette of a drum fill that introduces “Film” or the piano waltz it becomes halfway, the panflutes of “Folding Fire” (if any instrument’s unexpected on a Throwing Muses album, that would be it), certain melodies that recur or slip into the wrong tracks. The album, to its credit, rarely feels indulgent—only the two aimless “Curtains” stand out as possible edits—and the more you listen, the more a method emerges from the muddle.
Purgatory/Paradise, more than any of Hersh’s records to date, is an album about loss, which might account for its fracturing. The closest thing to a traditionally built song is the bitterly determined “Milan”, about a neighborhood in New Orleans where Hersh's house was destroyed after Hurricane Katrina. Everything else is tentative: memories listed in order of disapperance. Sometimes the loss is literal, as in “Static”, written for a close friend who died; the arrangement tiptoes at first, then plunges straight into denial. Sometimes it’s almost funny: “Terra Nova”, about the Muses’ first breakup, is aimless and resigned, melodies delivered like shrugs, until it breaks out the “Bittersweet Symphony” strings. Sometimes it’s not funny at all, as on “Quick,” a song built uneasily atop a cello dirge, or “Bluff,” which is a curious lilting minute at first until its essay turns hazy into heartbreaking: “If you watch your friends carefully, sometimes you'll notice their features beginning to change: curling up into themselves, looking within rather than without, their senses dulled.” (The more I listen, the more it seems like a direct companion to “Flooding”, the saddest song Hersh has ever recorded.)
Purgatory/Paradise isn’t an easy listen—expected enough from a band that’s repeatedly referred to the recording process as being “on a [desert] island". If Throwing Muses didn’t explain themselves before, they’re certainly not doing so now, and for a comeback album, it’s so willfully at odds with any music consumption trend in 2013. Even as you imagine what these songs used to sound like, it’s hard to imagine actually listening to them that way, let alone shuffled in with anything else; its pieces are simply too small and elusive to listen to individually. They’d sound out of place on playlists, maybe bewildered in setlists. But as Hersh wrote to accompany “Swollen,” an album offcut (though the essay did become the introduction to the book), “It is not un-beautiful to be in pieces, as long as those pieces are fully realized.” It may be impossible for Throwing Muses to write anything that isn’t. | 2013-11-15T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2013-11-15T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | It Books | November 15, 2013 | 8 | 0f027127-8cc0-4809-96d0-c5807ae5e537 | Katherine St. Asaph | https://pitchfork.com/staff/katherine-st. asaph/ | null |
Manchester Orchestra’s new album is their most confounding and thrilling work yet, with the most grandiose narrative concepts, production, and arrangements of their career. | Manchester Orchestra’s new album is their most confounding and thrilling work yet, with the most grandiose narrative concepts, production, and arrangements of their career. | Manchester Orchestra: A Black Mile to the Surface | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/manchester-orchestra-a-black-mile-to-the-surface/ | A Black Mile to the Surface | Manchester Orchestra frontman Andy Hull promised a scaled down version of his band on A Black Mile to the Surface, a course correction after the overproduced thud of their previous album. If this sounds familiar, it’s because he promised pretty much the same thing three years ago on Cope. The guy can’t not overdo it. As a prolific, teenaged old soul in the gilded age of MySpace emo, he wanted to be Conor Oberst, Sufjan Stevens, and Jeff Mangum at the same time, finding no personal, religious, sexual, or societal crisis too melodramatic to face head on. But while his extreme emoting has remained in the new decade, Simple Math and Cope dulled its impact with plodding, nuance-free nu-grunge, lowering the bar to something closer to, say, a more meaningful Silversun Pickups. So, no surprise that the narrative concepts, the production, and arrangements of A Black Mile to the Surface are the most grandiose of his career. The result is Manchester Orchestra’s most confounding, thrilling, and unintentionally loopy album yet.
Hull’s been given some serious source material, namely the birth of his daughter and co-writing the mostly a cappella soundtrack for the farcical body comedy Swiss Army Man. One might think exposure to that much real and cinematic flatulence might lighten Hull’s mood a little. He has a Coloring Book moment with “The Maze”, a gospel-powered tribute to his daughter Mayzie that would be unbearably cloying were it about literally anything else. But this is Andy Hull. If anything, reaching 30 as a healthy and happily married father with an increasingly influential band has made him even more skeptical as to whether he deserves any of it. “Little girl you are cursed by my ancestry/There is nothing but darkness and agony,” he sings on closer “The Silence,” and any gift has a curse on the receipt: “You lift that burden off of me” and “Let me hold you above all the misery” are from the relatively happy songs that bookend A Black Mile.
The more overtly personal material sits awkwardly among the familial drama that served as the original concept of A Black Mile to the Surface. “Lead, SD” sets up Hull’s scuttled story—that of a pair of brothers feuding over a mining empire. Or something. Hull is extra like that: lines like “Buried with metonymy, decide for me” and “I want to reach above the paradox where nobody can see/Want to hold a light to paradigm and strip it to its feet” are used for choruses. There’s also a lyric that goes, “There are parts of me just stuck inside the grocery/In the produce aisle with the dead beats/Rustling trying to look busy but they’re high like me,” but it’s not in the song called “The Grocery.”
Even if his Hollywood experience didn’t give Hull the ability to pen a coherent screenplay, the soundtrack mostly kicks ass. Hull’s mantra for A Black Mile to the Surface was, “intensity without the volume,” a wise decision after Cope, a record produced with such concussive loudness that they had to do an acoustic remake months later. Yet A Black Mile to the Surface still has the appearance of a big-budget blockbuster and should absolutely plaster its production and guest vocal credits right on the front of the CD like it was a hip-hop record: Nate Ruess from fun. and Grouplove’s Christian Zucconi keep the band rooted in their Clear Channel ambitions. As for producers, getting either Catherine Marks, John Congleton, or Jonathan Wilson involved is a big deal; Manchester Orchestra have all three.
They work best in that fertile terrain between commercial emo and adult contemporary indie: “The Moth” is their self-actualization, throwing ca. 2006 Band of Horses and Brand New in a The Fly-type teleportation machine, coming out 11 years later with dazzling arena-ready emo with biblical overtones and a southern accent but zero twang. Even with its rock-em, sock-em percussion, “The Wolf” is not all that far off from the Mumford & Sons song of the same name.
But there is so much production here—more vocal processing and overdubs than just about any chart pop album you can name. And for the most part, it’s awesome to behold; lord knows how they’ll perform the Pixies-gone-Megatron arrangement of “Lead, SD,” or the 12-sided harmonies that lunge out of “The Moth.” But when A Black Mile should be intimate, the same CGI leaves Hull as an overmatched lead in a Marvel Universe flick, drowned out by the sound effects and saddled with dialogue that’s too mordantly literal or subject to unconscious humor. There’s no way of proving Hull actually cribbed the melody from “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” almost verbatim in “The Mistake”, but there’s also no way to unhear it.
Younger acts like Sorority Noise and Julien Baker have been vocal about Hull’s influence on their work, but this new record reveals something more. There’s a hole in the “rock is dead” argument that can’t be filled by merely rattling off the buzziest indie bands of the moment, or reclassifying pop acts like One Direction or Twenty One Pilots. The dream of the ’90s lives when Manchester Orchestra is on—a time when the Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam lorded over MTV and radio with emotionally conflicted, undeniably hooky, and loud rock. If Manchester Orchestra haven’t quite reached that level after A Black Mile to the Surface, it’s not for lack of trying. | 2017-08-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-08-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Loma Vista | August 7, 2017 | 7 | 0f02e7ae-6694-4f6e-9b96-6795ffbb071c | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
Prefuse 73's latest diverges from the glitch-hop pattern of One Word Extinguisher to incorporate vocals from Zola Jesus and the late Trish Keenan. | Prefuse 73's latest diverges from the glitch-hop pattern of One Word Extinguisher to incorporate vocals from Zola Jesus and the late Trish Keenan. | Prefuse 73: The Only She Chapters | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15356-the-only-she-chapers/ | The Only She Chapters | Considering Guillermo Scott Herren may have about five side projects at any given time, perhaps the most surprising thing about The Only She Chapters is that it comes under the Prefuse 73 brand. Previous Prefuse records highlighted the glitch-hop production style that Herren pretty much perfected on 2003's One Word Extinguisher; here though, Herren hews closer to the psychedelia of his recent collaborations with Zola Jesus.
Prefuse's works are often inward-focused and clipped, with melodic ideas constantly shooting off in different directions-- usually in the same song. Vocals and guest raps are cut up too, with Herren employing them as rhythmic elements within his productions. The guest vocals on The Only She Chapters are all female, and instead of being chopped-up, Herren allows them to stretch and play out, obscuring them with layers rather than edits.
"The Only Trial of 9000 Suns" features the late Broadcast singer Trish Keenan, a wonderfully distinctive vocalist, but Herren's production buries her voice in a psychedelic swirl, moving in and out of focus. Minor-key textures clash against each other, and with no space for anything to rise out of the haze and anchor the movement, the song ends up feeling aimless.
"The Only Hand to Hold" has more clarity, with My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden contributing a gorgeous vocal over restrained bursts of hiss and faraway guitars. It sounds a little esoteric, but Worden spins sweet harmonies and offers the record's most accessible and haunting few minutes. The track is one of the only moments that works in isolation on a record that otherwise seamlessly folds into itself, as Herren rings out any empty spaces. It's an approach that can make for an exhausting, sometimes daunting listen.
Zola Jesus contributes on "The Only Direction in Concrete", and while she is heavily clipped, her vocal character shines through, as her lurching, bellow-y tone punctures layers of digital swarm. Her usual darkly gothic guise is transformed into something earthier, which works well within Herren's framework. Late album highlight "The Only Serenidad" feels like a welcome relief from the scale of Herren's labyrinthine production, inserting glitchy rhythms into a morphing vocal sample above waves of gliding static. It's one of the few moments where Herren's strong ear for melody filters through unobstructed and easily captures a sense of melancholy.
The Only She Chapters feels more expansive than Herren's often miniature-scale productions, meditating on small ideas for long periods, recalling motifs and melodies throughout. Too often, though, these ideas aren't strong enough to sustain the stretching, and the melodic elements aren't as involving as previous Prefuse 73 material. It's dense and impressive production work, but not as listenable as Herren at his best. | 2011-04-29T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2011-04-29T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Electronic | Warp | April 29, 2011 | 6.4 | 0f04064e-24fe-4e6d-be62-8d65b93443c3 | Hari Ashurst | https://pitchfork.com/staff/hari-ashurst/ | null |
Godspeed You! Black Emperor/Thee Silver Mt. Zionist's solo debut recalls John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. | Godspeed You! Black Emperor/Thee Silver Mt. Zionist's solo debut recalls John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. | Efrim Manuel Menuck: Plays "High Gospel" | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15703-plays-high-gospel/ | Plays "High Gospel" | There were a lot of peculiar things about the recent Godspeed You! Black Emperor reunion: the unexpected, out-of-nowhere timing of it; the uncannily ageless, I-can't-believe-it's-not-2000 quality of the band's performances; the inclusion of "Weird" Al Yankovic on their curated All Tomorrow's Parties bill. But perhaps the strangest thing was seeing Efrim Menuck recede back into the role of silent, anonymous, ensemble player. More than any other member associated with the Montreal orchestro-rock collective, Menuck has spent much of the past decade deconstructing the mythology and challenging the assumptions surrounding Godspeed (take your pick: they're anarchists; anti-social; humorless; Luddites; squat-dwellers; etc.). Not only has Menuck's offshoot band Thee Silver Mt. Zion emerged over the past decade as a lyrically direct, increasingly aggressive rock band, Menuck has both made himself more readily available to the press and, in concert, become a rather hilarious stage banterist.
So perhaps it's no mere coincidence that Menuck's re-immersion into the Godspeed regimen coincides with the appearance of his first solo album, Plays "High Gospel", a record that, in spirit if not sound, recalls another solo album released in the shadow of a monolith: John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Both albums are consumed by matters of love, loss, abandonment by maternal figures, and spirituality; both showcase the respective artists at their somberly tender and uncompromisingly abrasive extremes; and both are emotionally raw, deeply personal works greatly distinguished from the bands that earned their makers renown. (And, come to think of it, Menuck's wiry wail of a voice is pitched about halfway between Lennon's elocution and Yoko's anarchic shriek.)
If Plastic Ono Band's psychic terrain was mapped out by the death of Lennon's mother and his blossoming romance with Yoko, on "High Gospel", the emotional goal posts are set by the birth of Menuck's son and the 2009 suicide of his friend/collaborator Vic Chesnutt. And as to be expected from a record recorded over two years in (according to Menuck) "scraps and hiccups," the song-to-song shifts in mood can be disarmingly severe, moving from the churchly organ tones, defiantly celebratory choral vocal, and synth starbursts of opener "Our Lady of Parc Extension and Her Munificent Sorrows" to the frosty, electronic chill of "A 12 Pt. Program For Keep on Keepin' On", which sounds like a séance conducted via shortwave radio, with a cacophonous, click-tracked surge of percussion intensifying the feel of impending doom.
However, as "High Gospel" plays out, such jarring transitions seem to be less the result of random, grab-bag sequencing and more a manifestation of the album's central theme: that moments of joy and sorrow often come without warning and, in some cases, are triggered by one another. The beautifully desolate piano ballad "Heavy Calls & Hospital Blues" presents a peaceful portrait of a sleeping child that's shattered by an ominous late-night call from the infirmary, while the mantric, ecstatic closer "I Am No Longer a Motherless Child" works the other way, as Menuck comes to terms with the pain of losing a parent by becoming one himself.
But it's the seven-minute centerpiece "Kaddish for Chesnutt" that best exemplifies "High Gospel"'s attempt to reconcile happiness and sadness, confusion and comfort, living and dying. Menuck has obliquely referenced his Jewish roots in the past, from the "Mt. Zion" in his band's name to the Hebrew script that graced the cover of Godspeed's Slow Riot for Zero Kanada EP. But here, his invocation of the Kaddish-- a prayer chanted during Jewish funeral services-- proves quite literal, as a mournful electric-guitar soundscape yields to a solemn, repeated group vocal (courtesy of Menuck and some Silver Mt. Zion mates), not unlike that of a temple congregation praying in unison. Though traditionally recited to commemorate those who have passed, the Kaddish makes no explicit mention of death, and likewise, "Kaddish for Chesnutt" makes no direct allusion to Vic Chesnutt. Rather, its repeated, increasingly impassioned invocation of the Old Testament's "tree of life" is Menuck's means of elevating the late singer to the realm of the eternal, lifting his skinny fists like antennas to heaven. | 2011-08-05T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2011-08-05T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Experimental | Constellation | August 5, 2011 | 7.6 | 0f0755f7-ba1f-4ce3-ae4f-63618100961f | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | null |
Featuring former Jay Reatard collaborator Ryan Rousseau, Arizona's Destruction Unit create an uneasy haze of dark psychedelics with Void's sprawling kraut rock and muscular punk. | Featuring former Jay Reatard collaborator Ryan Rousseau, Arizona's Destruction Unit create an uneasy haze of dark psychedelics with Void's sprawling kraut rock and muscular punk. | Destruction Unit: Void | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17745-destruction-unit-void/ | Void | The mythology behind Destruction Unit is that they were born from the deserts of Arizona. But that hasn't always been the case: They began in the early 2000s when frontman (and former Reatard) Ryan Rousseau joined forces with two Memphis residents and members of the Lost Sounds: Alicja Trout and Jay Reatard. Since then, the band's lineup has completely changed. On Void, it's Rousseau on guitar and vocals, his brother Rusty on bass, N. Nappa on guitar, J. Aurelius on guitar, and J. Keefer on drums. (Count 'em: three guitars.) They're affiliated with Arizona's Ascetic House collective, and if the sound they offer on Void is any indication, they've planted some deep, firm roots in the desert.
Here's an album where the guitar sound merits descriptors like "expansive, swirling, echoing," and maybe most notably, "chaotic." Their krautrock grooves are given menace with Rousseau's screams and the overpowering low-end of Rusty's bass. Each song is laced with sonic tinges that invoke an uneasy, dark haze of psychedelics (see titles "Druglore", "Smoke Dreams"). In their delivery, there's an undercurrent of hostility and snarling anger (see titles "Evil Man", "Exterminate", Void). Nearly every song offers the aural equivalent of walking into a bar full of stereotypical biker toughs-- everything's muscular, intimidating, mean. Now might be a good time for a reminder: This band's name is "Destruction Unit."
Void's strengths are in the band's song structuring. On "Evil Man", the formula of "simmering lead-in" to "drum crash" to "simmering verse" to "wall of sound," all backed by a melody marked by catchiness, is foolproof. In general, they've got "the drop" pretty well figured out. For a track that's eight minutes long, "Smoke Dreams" is consistently riveting. Their well-established sprawling kraut echo hangs above their more muscular leanings, continuously morphing over Flores' drum attack. And when a track features vocals, Rousseau's darkwave-tinted voice is perfectly suited to this sort of material. The strongest song by a mile, though, is "Exterminate"-- three minutes of punk rock bite washed in synths and the band's signature kraut sonics.
But in its six tracks, the title Void proves to be an unfortunate one-- there's an unmistakable emptiness to the album. There are interesting guitar flourishes in the almost eight minutes of "Druglore", but mostly, it just sits there simmering while not really going anywhere. Even a song like "Blame", which benefits from bellowing vocals and crashing percussion at the midpoint, is made less interesting by its too-long simmer and overly repetitive elements.
With the complementary sounds they implement-- the ones that brings to mind the desert-- it's understandable that there's some desolation here. But that doesn't mean the album itself has to sag. Structurally speaking, Void is fairly similar to a recent LP from the other end of the United States: Deep Thuds by the Philadelphia band Spacin'. Both feature lengthier atmospheric songs punctuated by tracks with firmer melodies. Here, the spaciness is just too spacey and the hooks aren't quite there. Even when you disregard "hooks" or "catchiness" and stack this album next to the recent work of Moon Duo/Wooden Shjips mastermind Ripley Johnson, Void feels thin by comparison. There are strong songs and moments, absolutely-- just not enough. | 2013-02-26T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2013-02-26T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Rock | Jolly Dream | February 26, 2013 | 6.4 | 0f09c41e-2654-4e9b-af9d-b3fb471ed673 | Evan Minsker | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-minsker/ | null |
King Buzzo and Dale Crover team with the members of bass/drums duo Big Business and return to the Melvins' classic stoner metal sound. | King Buzzo and Dale Crover team with the members of bass/drums duo Big Business and return to the Melvins' classic stoner metal sound. | Melvins: (A) Senile Animal | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9656-a-senile-animal/ | (A) Senile Animal | For the last decade, the Melvins have absolutely shat on their seminal status. Their antics have ranged from gimmicky (releasing a single for every month in 1996) to kitschy (kicking off 1999's Crybaby with Leif Garrett belting out a cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit") to just plain wimpy (2005's limp-wristed live recording of Houdini in its entirety). Due to these bloopers, there was much head-shaking and sighing to be had when the band, now reduced to a putative duo consisting of King Buzzo and drummer Dale Crover, announced their merger with L.A. drums/bass metal band Big Business earlier this year. That's right, as if the band's recent tomfoolery hadn't marred their first proper release in four years, they now sport two drummers, the pinnacle of rock absurdity.
What a pleasant surprise then that (A) Senile Animal stands as the band's most no-frills, accessible, and flat-out best album since Stoner Witch. Hostile Ambient Takeover from 2002 didn't testify to it, but you can find the Melvins's legendary sound speckled all over today's metal bands. Animal reclaims the stoner rock the Melvins ruled before Kyuss and Queens of the Stone age co-opted it, and Boris owes much of their recent hipster metal success (not to mention moniker) to the band's early sound, reincarnated here on tracks like "Rat-Faced" and "You've Never Been Right".
That said, Animal is less a blast from the past than a retooling of the Melvins' strongest albums following a more conservative mindset. The opening of "Civilized Worm" doffs its cap to catchy 70s arena rock, pounding out the chords to Cheap Trick's "Need Your Love" over a bare bones blues beat straight off of Machine Head. "A History of Drunks" follows suit, propping up King Buzzo's singsong melody with multi-tracked vocals and a middle section replete with handclaps and a surprisingly tender new wave guitar line.
These nuanced exceptions aside, the Melvins churn out their signature straightforward metal sludge by the barrelful on Animal, and no one's complaining about that. Three six-plus minute tracks grind the album to a close, each harkening back to classic slow burners like "Night Goat" and "Hag Me". Even the twin assault on drums comes together nicely as Crover and Big Business mercenary Coady Willis place their intersecting fills at loggerheads for our amusement on "A History of Bad Men". For all their recent boners and elbow-rubbing with Ipecac's weirdest, this newfangled Melvins outfit has sobered up to concoct a return-to-roots album, one that simultaneously cements their monolithic mark on metal while promising there's more gas left in the tank to keep on thrashin'. | 2006-12-12T01:00:05.000-05:00 | 2006-12-12T01:00:05.000-05:00 | Metal / Rock | Ipecac | December 12, 2006 | 7.3 | 0f0a8455-5d45-4d97-b520-1747863618cd | Adam Moerder | https://pitchfork.com/staff/adam-moerder/ | null |
Subsets and Splits