Currently in exile in England, DOOM teams with producer Jneiro Jarel for a collection featuring Damon Albarn and Portishead's Beth Gibbons, among others. The rapper's nothing if not adaptable, and his sense of humor is always present, even when there's good reason to be disillusioned.

Key to the Kuffs

Here's a cruel twist of fate for you: A few years after catching hell for sending doppelgangers to take his place onstage as some weird conceptual fuck-around during a 2008 North American tour, DOOM spent 2010 touring in Europe as the genuine article-- and then got stranded there, reportedly on visa issues. Eventually, he went from stranded to extradited, left to make his home back in the London birthplace he hadn't lived in since he was a kid. Whether this is what really put a potential crimp in every possible latter-day planning-stages project from Madvillainy 2 to Swift and Changeable is up in the air, it seems almost beside the point in this context: He's also been isolated from his family, most of his friends, and a significant amount of his own personal agency. It'd almost be a plot-thickening chapter in his outsized four-color supervillain persona if the real-world implications weren't so disheartening.
But DOOM is nothing if not adaptable, and his sense of humor is always present, even when there's good reason to be disillusioned. So after tuning in to the liberating potential of his new homebase-- he recently told The Guardian that he's able to live freely "incognito," ironically more likely to be recognized with the mask than without-- he put together a fractured but widescreen picture of a cult icon in exile. Key to the Kuffs hits all of DOOM's angles, from the well-documented (wise-ass shit-talker) to the underrated (political agitator) to the overlooked (sentimental romantic). And with the co-billed producer angle-- JJ being Jneiro Jarel, the Danger to his Doom and the Mad to his Villain this time around-- there's the added potential to see this as another case of a collaboration providing a new facet to an already ambiguous public face.
Key to the Kuffs has a persona that's a lot harder to pinpoint than Madvillainy's blunted Jack Kirby surrealism or the adult-cartoon goofiness of The Mouse and the Mask. Not that there's a shortage of either; here you get bloodshot pulp crime atmosphere and "Regular Show" clips rubbing elbows in the album's first five minutes. But aside from the loose DOOM-in-England motif, there's not enough of an overarching theme that Jarel's serviceable-but-indistinct production can pull together. Not that cohesion's the most important thing to preserve-- it doesn't take a lot to "get" DOOM at this point, and the blend of big-idea tracks about things like communicable diseases or Frankenfoods mixed in with rapping-for-its-own-sake is comfortably accessible without being all that bland. And there's precedent for Jarel and DOOM working well together-- Shape of Broad Minds' Craft of the Lost Art highlight "Let's Go" attests to that.
Things have changed in the ensuing years, though, and Jarel's restless style has shifted from a psychedelic proto-Brainfeeder fellow traveler of Flying Lotus to something a bit more matter-of-fact on this record. For the majority of Key to the Kuffs, or at least the majority that DOOM has a verse or two, the beats glide along in an unobtrusive way that's more easily nodded at than nodded to. Some moments bump, like the hissing new wave funk of "Rhymin' Slang" and "Wash Your Hands" or the xylophone boom-bap of "Retarded Fren". Others approach a subtly off-kilter weirdness, like the bloated, drunk-sounding tuba that serves as the bassline to "Borin' Convo". But they're usually the least attention-getting aspects of any given track and, as typified by instrumental "Viberian Sun II", not especially interesting isolated from vocals or sound clips. Even the two widely touted guest-spot moments feel low-key: Damon Albarn's presence on "Bite the Thong" is pared down to the point of almost sounding subliminal, like a dub of a tunnel-bound cell phone call to an AM radio station 50 miles away, while Beth Gibbons' appearance on "GMO" is too smothered in bass to register as much more than an unintelligible phantom melody. Khujo Goodie's 88-second Willie Isz reunion "STILL KAPS" leaves more of an impact.
It's just as well that the beats don't overstep; every time DOOM's voice appears it takes over so authoritatively that, sloppy or on-point, the flow becomes more prominent than the beat he rides over. Sometimes it's borderline detrimental, like the first few (well, OK, several) bars of his hobbled-sprint double-time turn on "Banished" that seem to scramble over the beat without entirely gaining his footing-- which almost works, since the hyperventilating analog bass grumble is one of the few productions on the album that could be properly described as "filthy." And there are some signs of apparent rust or performances that sound like first takes-- he's so mush-mouthed on "Guv'nor" that a line where he says "splurge" sounds more like "splshurghs"-- that threaten to sabotage the plainspoken-yet-crafty wordplay and abrupt turns into tight-packed internal rhymes that usually makes his voice so first-bar immediate.
And yet he's no less quotable than he was in '99-- the same track that has him slurring the word "splurge" has him seamlessly integrating the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption into a punchline, for fuck's sake ("Catch a throatful from the fire vocal/ Ash and molten glass like Eyjafjallajökull"). He's still missile-silo deep with vocabulary, and when his voice backs him up, he's untouchable; there's a stretch in "Rhymin' Slang"-- "Rarely, scarcely, scary glaring stare/ Let's be very clear, MCs is derriere/ As well as aware, wearily, just don't be nearly near, you hear me? Yeah"-- that's tailor-made for dropped-jaw rewinds. The thematic tracks are heavy on the diabolical brainiac grifter guise that's fueled his post-KMD creativity for some 15 years, balancing knowledge and absurdity like a master. "GMO" pulls out the bioengineering terminology, wraps it in conspiracy-theory allusions, and makes it both scatologically funny and unnerving all at once. And there's rarely been a hip-hop track like "Wash Your Hands" that's gotten more creative mileage out of how germ-filled the human body can be ("You like the way she shake her back area/ It's like a sex machine that make bacteria"). But the loose theme of DOOM's UK exile really hits in the homesick, lovesick "Winter Blues", one of the most heartfelt tracks of DOOM's career in a way that's funny and affecting; his line about how "I need a handful of melanin/ Feelin' like the lamb's wool beard on your tender skin" is disarmingly touching from a man usually considered to be an outsized cartoon alter-ego. He may have found a new creative space in his birthplace, but it'll be a relief when he finally gets back to a place he can call home.


Produced by Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner, the latest from the Toronto band accompanies manic, referential lyrics with neon-tinted, futurist power-pop.

Chopper

Kiwi Jr. like to work fast. That’s less a comment on their prodigious productivity, which has yielded three albums in four years, than their approach to songcraft. If not strict adherents of the “don’t bore us, get to the chorus” rule, the Toronto quartet are certainly believers in “be terse, get to the verse,” often doing away with any semblance of an intro to jump right into action. And in any given Kiwi Jr. song, the action is invariably happening at singer/guitarist Jeremy Gaudet’s microphone, where he dispenses an endlessly scrolling feed of pop-culture signposts, road stories, hyper-local scenery, social satire, sports reports, religious allegories, absurdist observations, drinking misadventures, and repurposed classic-rock lyrics—sometimes in the span of a single verse. On their 2019 debut Football Money, Kiwi Jr.’s jacked-up jangle-punk fit in a lineage that links 1980s fleet-fingered favorites like the Feelies with modern-day strummers like Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. But over time, it’s become clear this band’s runaway-train momentum is less a studied aesthetic choice than a practical measure to keep pace with their frontman’s rapid-fire rhetoric and ping-ponging melodies.
On Chopper, Gaudet’s Malkmusian cadences and crooked hooks continue to lead the way. As ever, he piles on his witticisms like sight gags in an Airplane! flick—if not every line hits the mark, there’s still more than enough clever one-liners to keep you thoroughly amused. But after leaning into a rootsier, piano-gilded sound on last year’s Cooler Returns, Kiwi Jr. slingshot into the opposite direction with producer Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade, whose integration of indie rock and carnivalesque keyboards provides Kiwi Jr. with a template for their own maximalist pursuits. While stopping short of a full-blown synth-pop makeover, Chopper slathers on enough neon-tinted textures to reorient Kiwi Jr. away from the jangle-rock canon and toward the futurist power-pop of the Cars, New Pornographers, and the Strokes circa Room on Fire.
At times, the synth injection simply serves to amplify the mania of an already manic band: “Parasite II” is “12:51” as conceived by Bong Joon-ho, with Gaudet cheekily invoking the Korean director’s class-warfare parable to interrogate his own excessive consumption (“There’s got to be another man in the house who’s drinking all my beer”) over a circular keyboard squelch that rings out like a police siren. But the thicker sound also accommodates a greater emotional depth. “Night Vision” has all the hallmarks of a textbook Kiwi Jr. tune, instantly transporting you into its tour-themed scenes of Dodge Caravans and Petro-Canada gas stations like you’re joining a TV show already in progress. But once its tensely jabbed guitar line gets submerged in an aquatic, synth-smeared breakdown, the song transforms into something much more melancholic and dramatic than we’re used to hearing from this normally carefree band.
While Gaudet is still the sort of writer who’ll base his most wistful chorus around a Julie Andrews shout-out (“The Sound of Music”) or name the album’s casually triumphant, “Heroes”-esque closer after The Masked Singer, his referential lyrics are often imbued with a sobering subtext. Kiwi Jr.’s records have served the tertiary function of documenting the Prince Edward Island-born Gaudet’s life in his adopted home of Toronto, as he name-dropped tourist attractions like the CN Tower and notorious neighborhood hubs like the Dufferin Mall with wide-eyed zeal. But on Chopper, he taps into less glamorous, more authentic local experiences. Amid the haunted-house ambiance of “Contract Killers,” Gaudet takes a stroll down Joe Shuster Way, a west-end street named after the Toronto-born co-creator of the original Superman comic, but one that’s hardly fit for a hero: It’s a thoroughly unremarkable, suburban-style roadway flanked by train tracks and condo towers, making it the ideal setting for Gaudet to reflect on his hopelessly Clark Kent life. (“Superman probably made more money than me,” he shrugs.)
For those not attuned to the poetic significance of insignificant Toronto streets, the album hits its peak on “The Extra Sees the Film,” which sounds like a Traveling Wilburys song blissfully floating in space, yet thrusts us into the most awkward of social situations. Standing around a conversation circle dominated by a pretty-boy babe magnet who’s like a “human scorpion jacket from Drive,” Gaudet spots an opportunity to ingratiate himself: “He talks about Los Angeles, that's a cue for you to jump in/‘Excuse me I couldn't help overhear you mention L.A./See, I was there for Kobe Bryant's last NBA game.’” It’s the sort of oddly morbid ice-breaker that lands with all the subtlety of a record scratch, and a dagger to the heart of anyone who’s ever tried too hard to make themselves seem more interesting in mixed company. But where Gaudet may have once regaled such awkward scenarios with tongue piercing his cheek, there’s a tenderness and grace to his delivery here that draws out the pathos of feeling like you’re always on the outside looking in. “The extra sees the film and totally collapses,” he sings on the crestfallen chorus. As Chopper reaffirms, Kiwi Jr. may never be the kind of band that deals in linear narratives or grand conceptual statements. But like the background bit actors that fill out the frames of a big-screen epic, their songs amass minor details to major effect.


NTS’ latest compilation is a brain-frying rollercoaster of club maximalism, showcasing the Brazilian funk underworld’s endless creativity.

funk.BR - São Paulo

São Paulo’s funk scene is, in part, a product of the city’s extreme urban structure and social conditions. Often called a “concrete jungle,” the megacity holds Brazil’s largest population and one of its densest; it is heavily industrialized with imposing buildings spread over a monstrous size, all of which bleeds into a metallic, destructive take on Brazilian funk. NTS’ new compilation, funk.BR - São Paulo, crams the far-ranging styles of mandelão, bruxaria, and beyond into 22 exclusive tracks, providing a whistle-stop tour with which you can jump off and immerse yourself in this grippingly rebellious sound.
The network of genres that fall under the mandelão umbrella do not have the longer-standing history of the root Rio de Janeiro funk carioca scene, but they have evolved rapidly because of their spirit of one-upmanship. Lança-perfume, a drug that comes from ethyl chloride and produces hallucinogenic, sound-sensitive sensations, is a fixture at street parties, creating ear-ringing tones that are central to various styles of mandelão. Meanwhile, the funk automotivo culture of souped-up cars, with walls of rear-trunk speakers, have buffed the low-end. With over 1,700 registered favelas in the city, each more or less coming with their own flair, the sheer size and noise of the metropolis pushes artists to stand out and claim the loudest, the most unpredictable, the most original sound as their own. In doing so, they’re pushing far beyond the precipice of what we’ve come to expect—creating mixes that obscure and pronounce elements in experimental ways, folding the club music structure tightly for triple the amount of breakdowns, and upping the loudness to new levels of club maximalism. In addition to reflecting the genre’s continued popularity in underground electronic spaces in the Global North, funk.BR pushes these sounds  further still.
Funk mandelão tunes ring out like beacons to the underworld, wedding ear-dazzling techno pulses with the familiar falling funk rhythm and putting it in a vat of dense smoke. Toplines cross dull hits of bells and metal pans with rave synths (DJ Pikeno MPC & MC BF’s “Acende o Sinalizador”), whistling (DJ P7 & MC PR’s “Automotivo Destruidor, P7 Vai Te Destruir”), and bamboo flutes (DJ Lorrany’s “Mandela Cunt”). Hoarse male antiheroes yell a Rolodex of commands—“obedece” and “galopa,” which mean to “obey” and “ride”—and female MCs like MC Bibi Drak flirt like video vixens. But both are unfazed as they are caught and squeezed in a tempest of surreal abrasion in the breakdowns.
The tracks on funk.BR speed by with a bullish impatience that is disorienting, tossing and turning between intensely physical automotivo, eye-swirling ritmado, and ear-rending bruxaria. DJ Léo da 17 & DJ BIG ORIGINAL’s “Bruxaria de Extrema Periculosidade” takes just 14 seconds before the infectious “Bi-Bi-Big Original!” producer tag commences a flipbook-fast layering of shotgun kick drums. Blink and you’ll miss how “Best of Both Worlds from Brazil” by DJ Livea & iamlope$$ flies through marching trumpets over compressed tambor drums, a drill breakdown, horn-backed samba, and beat bolha (a style literally meaning “bubble beat”) in just over two minutes.
The most raucous tracks feel colossal, as though the MC and soundsystem are giants about to swallow you whole; you can only see their teeth and tweeters through obscuring fog. Human cannonball DJ Arana, famed for his blaring wall-of-noise breakdowns, contributes “Montagem Phonk Brasileiro,” where a smothering low-end burns through a pained electronic wail like a hot iron, leaving it to cavort about with the MCs barely audible. Funk artists have been creating textures and sounds at an inconceivable scale using video editing software, mobile phones, and iPad DJ apps for some time now, and this compilation is only further proof of that inventiveness.
The freakish anatomy of the most minimal songs function with a purposeful lack of elements. No bassline enters on DJ Blakes & MC GW’s “Beat das Galáxias,” which makes it feel naked—but why have one when a ballistic, laser gun-like siren can brute-force bodies to move? Nothing is sacrosanct, not even the kick drum, the universal thrust of dance music. When it’s absent, it doesn’t feel weightless. Instead, other rhythms kick in with a secondary supply of power, such as on DJ Caio Santos’ “Você Sabe,” whose knock! ting! wipe! pattern is left so bare that you start to register its echoes as a rhythmic flourish.
In what could have been a moment where the Global North snatches control of the Brazilian funk narrative, funk.BR - São Paulo benefits from enlisting authentic voices in the scene to compile it, including Pitchfork contributor Felipe Maia and artist manager Jonathan Kim. While the sequencing can sometimes take the wind out of its sails slightly (DJ Saze’s “Uq Tenho que Fazer” feels tame after so many heavy hitters), their ingrained knowledge helps to capture the vigorously competitive ethos of the scene across many micro-styles. Just as the sprawl of buildings in São Paulo often obstruct your view of the horizon, funk paulista’s creativity seems to have no end in sight.


Katie Crutchfield's first EP as Waxahatchee, originally released on cassette, unfolds like a pleasant secret on the brink of being passed around.

Early Recordings

There’s a box in every family home filled with dusty memories: binders of photos yellowing at the corners, VHS tapes rerecorded over as lives grow larger. Sifting through these ephemera of someone’s life can make you feel like an intruder, a stranger projecting yourself into the frame of a memory that isn't yours.
There's a similar feeling when listening to the reissue of Katie Crutchfield’s first EP as Waxahatchee. Five years ago, she recorded five songs, pressed them onto a limited-run split cassette (the B-side of the original belonged to the musician Chris Clavin), gave them mostly to friends and family, and forgot about them as her touring started to pick up speed. After some hesitation to release these tracks, nostalgia won out for Crutchfield and now she’s opened this archive to the public, retitled as Early Recordings.
Throughout the EP’s very short runtime (less than 15 minutes total), Crutchfield is able to fit microscopic narrative arcs in songs that often span less than 50 words and three minutes. The set opens with an extremely tactile moment: the sound of a body shuffling and a switch turning. Perhaps it’s Crutchfield firing up her recorder. This short pocket is almost like cinéma vérité, as the purposeful editing creates a natural feel; in less than five seconds, you’re transported into the room with her.
On the opener, “Black Candy,” she quickly displays her knack for writing lyrics that are simultaneously dramatic (“Moonlight pours in tonight and you are infinite”), wistful (“Fair weather friends forever and I just wait in line”), and realistically fatalist (“We sit back, watch it atrophy”). In “Home Games,” she paints a scene of youthful love with the pastoral imagery of a Willa Cather story: “Paris in the back of your mom’s Chevrolet/She pretends we're not there, she smells like yesterday/We live like the last two on Earth/And we’ll float on our backs 'til the whole sky goes black.”
Early Recordings’ best song, “Clumsy,” is a meditation on insecurity itself (“Lately I think about insecurity/How I’m not real sure I even know what it means”). It opens in her bedroom as she peers upon a lover’s underwear, realizing how swift this part of her life might be. She begins a series of tough self-criticisms, admits shortcomings, and extends forgiveness. Along the way, Crutchfield is alone with her thoughts in that bed, considering how pain might possibly be a pathway to self-care (“I'm learning about loneliness each night”). Here she combines all the best elements of her songwriting—sharp lyrical detail, conversational phrasing—into one place.
If there is one limitation to the EP, it’s the instrumentation. Crutchfield is only accompanied by a guitar, which can feel more like a metronome than an actual texture. What remains upfront is the twang of her voice and the strength of her writing; if her words were any weaker, her voice any less idiosyncratic, there might be nothing to glom onto and the record would be boring. But the evidence here is raw and puncturing; you hear the whisper of a pleasant secret on the brink of being passed around.


On his 17th solo album under the alias, Mike Paradinas looks fondly back upon IDM’s melodic golden age and finds sneaky ways to make familiar ideas sound fresh.

Grush

For a style ostensibly rooted in club culture, IDM has long felt like the concerned frown on the face of electronic music: a place where gnarled experimentation trumps whimsical adventure and fun is sacrificed on the altar of technique. Enter Mike Paradinas, a producer who was making leftfield dance music when Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was a new release, rather than a dusty classic. Grush, Paradinas’ 17th solo album as µ-Ziq, strives to put the “dance” back into IDM, inspired by the kind of melodic, oddball post-rave music that gave rise to the genre back in the 1990s: Aphex Twin, early Autechre, Black Dog Productions, and even Orbital.
Given that self-appointed mission, Grush could easily have been a nostalgic stroll through the glory days of the ’90s, when Paradinas was feted as one of the hottest names in electronic music. Anyone who loves Aphex Twin’s Hangable Auto Bulb EPs or Paradinas’ own 1997 album Lunatic Harness will find much to love in Grush’s vibrant melodies and intricately funky rhythms. “Fogou” is a glorious combination of driving, neo-classical synth and glitched-out drums; the pounding “Reticulum B” has the distinct air of Sabres of Paradise’s wobbly-lipped, cerebral techno classic “Smokebelch II”; and “Manscape” sounds like Orbital's “Belfast” being dissected by sharply angled breaks.
The difference here—and it can be subtle—is that the drums on Grush frequently sound like they were recorded live, which is unusual for the breaks- and drum-machine-heavy world of IDM. They weren’t, but the intention is there: The tambourine on “Fogou” and “Belvedere” consists of single hits, programmed slightly out of time to simulate real playing, while the shuffling snare and hi-hat pattern on “Hyper Daddy” bears a similarly human sense of flux. “Hyper Daddy,” which Paradinas created specifically to play live, is the song where the producer’s focus on dance is most obvious: Three different drum lines tease, fidget, and needle with the listener’s adrenal response.
Grush’s predictably excellent drums are the mark of a producer who has been cutting up breaks for decades. But perhaps the most purely enjoyable part of the record lies in its array of sumptuous melodies, which evoke the classical prog of Tangerine Dream, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, or even, gulp, Marillion. At least two of Grush’s 14 tracks, “Hyper Daddy” and “Hastings,” have artful key changes that lend a very prog-ish musicality to proceedings, and immaculately clean keyboard lines send the listener back to the hi-fi-enhanced stereoscopic sound of the ’70s.
If much of Grush feels like an ode to the golden years of IDM, a few more adventurous songs serve as a reminder of Paradinas’ enduring interest in mold-breaking sounds. (His label Planet Mu was one of the first to bring Chicago footwork to an international audience.) The dazzling “Metaphonk” smuggles a dembow beat into a stately, Orbital-esque post-rave workout, while the scuttling hi-hat patterns on “Imperial Crescent” point towards trap.
For all of Paradinas’ invention and melodic skills, Grush is unlikely to revolutionize IDM. The record’s innovations are modestly hidden in clever programming, while Paradinas himself is too level-headed to inspire Aphex Twin-style devotion. But he does make a compelling case for the genre as a living entity that’s open to new ideas, and not nearly as persnickety as its reputation suggests.


The absurdly detailed new album from the Chicago rapper delves into the compulsions of its titular sneakerhead character over rich production from Kenny Segal.

Ajai

For almost 20 years now, Nike has asked young patients at the OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland to design shoes. Jordans, Foamposites, what have you. These are snatched up by sneaker collectors across the world, including at an unveiling auction where one-of-one versions yield millions of dollars for the hospital. AirMax Zeros, VaporMaxs. They’re commodities, like anything else, but they turn the kids, many of them gravely ill, into spokespeople.
About halfway through Ajai, the absurdly detailed new album from the Chicago rapper Serengeti, the titular character is making small talk at a Congressional Black Caucus dinner. He’s there with his wife, a prominent medical professional, and so he’s seated next to doctors; one explains “the reduction of drug costs making it mandatory for federally qualified health centers to accept Medicaid.” Ajai doesn’t respond directly. He unlocks his phone, scrolls over to a photo of the Doernbecher 8s, and asks a simple question: “Have you ever won a shoe lottery?”
Over the last 20 years—roughly the same span as the Doernbecher program—Serengeti has made some of the most exhilaratingly strange records in rap’s underground. He’s like a ventriloquist with a deep Rolodex and deeper depression, a web of grand declarations and muttered asides sprawled across dozens of albums and EPs. Ajai is one of his most sharply drawn figures yet: a young Indian man obsessed with exclusive drops and merch collabs, who sets multiple alarms to wade through webpages or go stand in line and cop multiples if they have them.
From the beginning, Ajai makes plain his rationale: “Clothes is just clothes, I like the way that I look/I like the people in line, I like the effort it took.” But a dark undercurrent runs underneath. When he and his wife go on vacation (“Walking down the streets in Paris/It’s autumn here, and I’m in Supreme”), Ajai leaves her at a table so he can flee the restaurant and offer a passerby cold hard Euros for his stained sneakers; he returns during dessert and asks if she’d like to go shop for enzyme cleaners. At other points, Ajai’s wife cries from the other side of a bathroom door as her husband risks missing their flight to Cleveland (“You look fine, Ajai”); she begs him not to wear a certain suit to a work function; she drives him wordlessly home from a company softball game, where he has embarrassed both of them, Ajai “deeply nodding his head” to SWV while he bares his gold teeth––surely expensive.
Ajai’s story is confined to the record’s front half. This enforced brevity is an excuse to showcase Serengeti’s masterful storytelling: The fourth song is called, simply, “Summary,” and chronicles Ajai’s short-lived stint as a tutor to four Chinese boys, who are enamored with his tales of street life (Ajai “once did an overnight stay at a jail due to a clerical error”) and whose angry father soon forbids the relationship. He challenges Ajai to a fight, only for Ajai’s neighbor, a fireman, to step in as a proxy and be “savagely and entertainingly beaten” on camera, and lose his “beautiful wife, the Estonian” to the Chinese father. In the middle of all this, Ajai goes to therapy; he asks his therapist about the first time she saw the Balenciaga Triple S trainer. “She starts talking about self-esteem,” Serengeti raps, “but he’s distracted by her boring chair.”
On the B-side of Ajai, Serengeti returns to his most famous character, a semi-retired white rapper named Kenny Dennis, who’s beefed with Shaq, vehemently defended Steve Bartman, fallen in love with the late actor Brian Dennehy’s work, pined after a wife he believes was stolen by Tom Selleck, and suffered at least one psychotic break. When we re-meet Kenny during Ajai, he’s moved to Minneapolis and is working at a breakfast truck near an I-94 overpass. The album moves inevitably toward the point where Kenny has something Ajai wants to buy, but the transactional specifics are far less important than the baggage each man brings to the bargaining emails. As Kenny Dennis, Serengeti raps in a thick Chicagoland accent; the Ajai half serves as a counterpoint, revealing just how dexterous a rapper and vocalist Geti can be.
These halves are stitched together by the veteran Los Angeles producer Kenny Segal. After a formative period working with esteemed Angeleno rappers, including members of Freestyle Fellowship, Segal has of late taken to crafting full albums for some of rap’s most distinct voices. Over the last year alone, he’s helmed growling, stuttering LPs for R.A.P. Ferreira and billy woods. His beats here skitter from playful piano loops to claustrophobic fits: see “Don’t Wear That Suit Ajai,” which feels, unnervingly, like early RZA on less dust and more coffee.
The point here is not that “consumerism is bad,” or that you might get scammed trying to buy the Virgil/IKEA collab rug (“about six and a half feet,” Geti notes, recommending it for concrete or marble floors). Ajai is done in by his compulsions, his tunnel vision––not a ruinous Supreme drop. To hear him tell it, each long line or digital waiting room is its own Everest, and that rapid, dizzying ascent is worth the thousands of dollars and crying wives left in its wake.
The world rendered on Ajai can seem silly: exclusive honey to buy in bulk, Travis Scott socks on auction blocks, “rich Kuwaiti kids” who might drop so much money on your work uniform that you can retire early, American kids running up to middle-aged men promising thousands of dollars if they’ll sell their shoes off on the spot, the Grey Poupon ads as an emotional touchstone, the word “Balenciaga” as an ancient, guttural chant, the promise that branded goods shuffled by UPS from point to point can save us all. This world, of course, is our own.


While Colleen Green's first LP for Hardly Art, Sock It to Me, was a slice of breezy, self-aware stoner bubblegum that insisted on a shallow read, its follow-up, I Want to Grow Up, is weed paralysis and paranoia in a sugary glaze.

I Want to Grow Up

While Colleen Green's first LP for Hardly Art, Sock It to Me, was a slice of breezy, self-aware stoner bubblegum that insisted on a shallow read—perhaps to force us to turn away from deeper truths—its follow-up, I Want to Grow Up, is weed paralysis and paranoia in a sugary glaze. (In keeping with her first record, Milo Goes to Compton, Green named I Want To Grow Up after another Descendents album.) On this record, Green has managed to capture in very real and human terms the existential terror that everything is futile and that our lives will never amount to much: no small feat. She is keenly aware of her own limitations and has turned her reflection on those limitations into strengths.
Green’s got a knack for songwriting. While the Ramones taught us all that we only need a few chords to make an endless number of perfect pop songs, most bands that have followed that model to the letter don’t have the ear for hooks, structure, or wordplay that their heroes did. Green does. She is also extremely effective at manipulating the studio to get the hidden depths of her seemingly simple songs—the sharks, jellyfish and other prehistoric monsters beneath the sunny surface of the beach waves—to become evident.
"Deeper Than Love", for instance, is an existential meditation on the human capacity for connection and disconnection. Driven by heavily processed bass, a metronomic drum machine, and a twinkling, haunting guitar melody, Green’s soft voice, doubled, asks persistently: "Will I find a love that lasts as long as my life or will I die before ever becoming a wife? And I’m wondering if I’m even the marrying kind. How can I give you my life when I know you’re just gonna die?" It is intensely claustrophobic, the kind of stream of mundane self-reflective horror that we all run away from by tapping at our phones or flipping channels. Then it turns in on itself, Green’s voice nearly a whisper as she recounts the reasons she holds potential partners at arm’s length: "'Cause I’m shitty and I’m lame and I’m dumb and I’m a bore/ And once you get to know me you won’t like me anymore." The coda, repeated, a shiver in the spine, guitar and synth spiraling around it: "Further than fantasy, deeper than love ever could be." The fear of intimacy triumphs over the fear of death.
Green isn’t complacent to just identify her problems and stare them calmly in the face, though. On the title track and the twin stars that are "Things That Are Bad For Me (Part 1)" and "Things That Are Bad For Me (Part 2)", she rhetorically kicks herself in the butt to take responsibility for her actions, whether that be getting on a proper schedule or getting away from a boyfriend who brings out the worst in her, despite her acknowledgment that her anxiety drives her bad behavior. She doesn’t just want to grow up—she is growing up, and she’s doing it in elegantly wry, acerbic, hooky pop style. Her blasé delivery might seem impenetrable at first, but there is warmth and wit to her work that rewards those who are patient enough to hear its message.


On their full-length debut together, the UK techno producer and the Italian synth guru conjure a mood of pulsing electronic grandeur.

Daniel Avery / Alessandro Cortini: Illusion of Time

Illusion of Time

Apparently Song for Alpha wasn’t a fluke. Released in 2018, Daniel Avery’s second album sharply diverged from his rave-ready debut, Drone Logic, showcasing his more pensive, ambient side. At the time, it felt like a reaction, a document of Avery’s desire to linger in what quiet moments he could find in a life of endless touring and main-room DJ gigs. But Illusion of Time suggests that perhaps a more fundamental shift has taken place.
On this album, Avery is working alongside Alessandro Cortini, an Italian synth guru who’s also a member of Nine Inch Nails. It’s not the first time the two have joined forces; in 2017, working remotely, they produced a limited-edition 7" called Sun Draw Water. That record’s two songs both appear on Illusion of Time; the rest of the album was completed in 2018, when the two artists finally linked up in person while Avery was supporting Nine Inch Nails on tour.
Avery may be the bigger name here, but the record has Cortini’s fingerprints all over it, especially when the album delves into the synth-gaze territory of his excellent Volume Massimo LP from last year. Although Illusion of Time lacks that album’s bright colors and wall-of-sound dimensions, there is a similar sense of synth-driven grandeur at work, albeit less polished and occasionally darker in tone. The menacing “Inside the Ruins” feels like something out of Ben Frost’s playbook, its glowering tones churning and crashing amid a thick soup of tape hiss and distorted ambience. Another epic is LP opener “Sun,” which unfurls towering waves of fuzz-laden drone while tapping into an almost devotional vibe; it sounds like something you’d hear at a yoga retreat scored by Stephen O’Malley.
Despite Avery’s DJ pedigree, Illusion of Time has no real relationship with the club. There are no beats on the album, and though it’s not exactly ambient, the music does tend to drift and float along. Like Song for Alpha, it’s introspective, yet not nearly as insular. There isn’t a concrete narrative to speak of, but Avery and Cortini have clearly cast their gaze skyward; it’s a beautiful record that takes wonder as its defining characteristic.
The crunchy “Enter Exit” feels like a luxuriously undulating sound bath, while “Water” offers an updated, albeit unvarnished take on shoegaze, with jagged melodies reminiscent of majestic post-rock outfits like Explosions in the Sky. More powerful still is “At First Sight,” a wide-angle track powered by the kind of guitar squall that would make the Jesus and Mary Chain proud; the song conjures the awe-struck sensation of  gazing down from the edge of a high cliff.
That feeling of rapture also holds firm during the album’s quieter moments. “Space Channel” and “Interrupted by the Cloud of Light” are essentially interludes, but their dreamy atmospheres could have been crafted by the Cocteau Twins. The title track is one of the LP’s most low-key selections—and one of its obvious highlights—featuring a playful melody that sits somewhere between kosmische pioneers Neu! and Selected Ambient Works Volume II-era Aphex Twin. Illusion of Time may be doused in varying layers of crackle and distortion, but there’s no obscuring the tranquil elegance of “CC Pad” or the cinematic bloom of album closer “Stills."
Illusion of Time is a confidently relaxed listen: Created in a pressure-free situation by two artists with no road map and nothing in particular to prove, it is expansive in scope, charmingly rough around the edges, and brimming with possibility. Its hazy synth explorations may fit more naturally into Cortini’s catalog, but Avery’s role in Illusion of Time shouldn’t be overlooked; in the wake of Song for Alpha, he’s taken another step away from the confines of the dancefloor, and he’s done it without wobbling.

Buy: Rough Trade
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The new M83 album almost makes you wonder: How much can you mine vintage sounds without them finally falling apart?

Junk

If the last decade in pop music has taught us anything, it’s that nostalgia can be a double-edged sword. When it goes wrong, it’s about as satisfying as swallowing a mouthful of processed spray cheese. When done right, revisiting the tropes and aesthetics of decades past can go down nicely. M83’s 2011 double album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, fell into the latter camp and—bolstered by its ubiquitous single “Midnight City”—transformed Anthony Gonzalez’s curious 15-year-old project into a soundtrack for Victoria’s Secret commercials and Tom Cruise sci-fi flicks. Surely this shift explains something about the new M83 album, the fascinating and somewhat flummoxing Junk.
Based on Junk’s downright goofy first single, “Do It Try It,” there was some indication that Gonzalez might be pulling the classic move in which a musician takes a hard left in reacting against the thing that made them famous. Since Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming was essentially the widescreen distillation of Gonzalez’s ’80s neon dreams, it would make sense if a defiant about-face toward all things synthed and saxophoned might be in store. But Junk is not that. Instead, it’s as if Gonzalez is doggedly determined to mine those same nostalgic influences all over again, just in much more arcane ways. As a result, Junk is arguably the weirdest record he’s ever made, but it’s far from the best.
Those familiar with M83’s back catalog will hear familiar touchstones on Junk—lush synthscapes, collaged narratives, insouciantly spoken French—but anyone looking for another “Kim and Jessie” or “Teen Angst” will be at a loss. The big pop moments here are centered around massive synth lines that could have been lifted off a Pointer Sisters record (“Laser Gun,” “Road Blaster”), or in the case of “Go!,” a gloriously wanky guitar solo courtesy of '80s axe god Steve Vai. Drafting Vai for a song that sounds like a tribute to songs that Vai actually played on gives the record a meta quality not unlike when Lady Gaga enlisted Clarence Clemons for a sax solo on her Springsteen-worshipping “The Edge of Glory.” So although it’s an undeniable fist-pump of an anthem in a similar lane as “Midnight City,” “Go!” treads so close to total irony that it becomes difficult to swallow, in the process revealing one of Junk’s most consistent flaws.
This kind of pure homage to slick ’70s and ’80s FM ephemera is so exacting in places, it almost makes you wonder: What is the point of remaking this into something new? That small voice grows louder when you hear the album’s instrumental tracks (“Moon Crystal,” “Tension,” “The Wizard”), where Gonzalez proves he can perfectly replicate the kind of incidental muzak that played in JCPenney dressing rooms circa 1983, or as the opening score of a “Too Close For Comfort” episode.
That is not to say that Junk is without its charms. “Road Blaster” is a pristine ’80s mega-single that never was—a slick hybrid of synthesized horns and Chic guitars that sounds as if it were made specifically to soundtrack a late-night joy ride around Hollywood in an old sports car. “For The Kids” is a saxophone-soaked ballad featuring Norwegian singer Susanne Sundfør, and it’s thoroughly gorgeous—until a voice-over from what sounds to be a ghost-child kicks in.
Gonzalez largely farms out vocal duties on Junk—like to Beck on “Time Wind,” a gently funky highlight from an imagined movie soundtrack—but the album’s best tracks feature his own voice. “Atlantique Sud” is a duet with Mai Lan Chapiron in which she and Gonzalez purr at each other in French, while “Solitude” features Gonzalez singing against a backdrop of strings that swell dramatically before eventually overpowering the song completely. The album closes with “Sunday Night 1987”—a song that serves as a tribute to the late Julia Brightly, a sound engineer with whom M83 had a long and devoted working relationship. Building on a somber piano melody reminiscent of Harold Budd and Cocteau Twin’s The Moon and the Melodies, “Sunday Night 1987” is Junk’s most stunning song, and the one that most resembles early M83 albums. It’s also the only track on Junk that doesn’t sound like a showy exercise in a defunct style, though ending with a Stevie Wonder-esque harmonica solo would come close if it didn’t provide an appropriately mournful final note.
It seems impossible that, seven albums in, Gonzalez doesn’t appreciate the possibly divisive nature of this album. You don’t call a record Junk and grace its cover with a couple of googly-eyed 21st-century Fry Kids without having some inkling that you are taking the piss. In the album’s press materials, Gonzalez is quoted as saying, “I wanted to make what I call an ‘organized mess’—a collection of songs that aren’t made to live with each other, yet somehow work together.” It’s a commendable idea and one that almost works—collecting these various bits of cultural detritus and refashioning them into something that is at once compelling and potentially disposable. In the end, though, it’s that feeling of disposability that makes the album’s title resonate more pointedly in the wrong way.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming was released in 2014. It came out in 2011.


Are you ready to admit the Peter Gabriel factor? Or, even more frightening, the Yes and Rush\n\ factor? Not ...

The Rising Tide

Are you ready to admit the Peter Gabriel factor? Or, even more frightening, the Yes and Rush factor? Not only does The Rising Tide dip its toes into sucking whirlpools of late 70s arena prog, but it stands as one of those albums that forces listeners to ponder the inevitable third act of even their most fond bands, wherein Our Hero finds his fate in a bloody climax of vocal effects, drums solos, eco-conscience, last-flash valiance, and fatal flubs. And while this specific Hamlet hasn't yet expired from the poison tip, his muse Ophelia is long gone, and the audience knows all about the venomed chalice. So what course brought Sunny Day Real Estate to this misfortune? The largest finger-pointing targets are producer Lou Giordano and the paring of the band into a trio.
Giordano, most widely known for his work with Live, dunks Sunny Day in a vat of liquid and covers them in chrome. The reflective surface serves only to magnify and spotlight the occasional songwriting errors. On past efforts, frontman Jeremy Enigk's passionate bleating benefited from indecipherability. The mystic and emotional force stemmed from his foreign throat. With greater control and pronunciation, Enigk now recalls a piping Jon Anderson-- specifically "We Have Heaven" from Fragile. Giordano floats crystalline vocal layers above a flat silver landscape of swooning, fervent arena rock. With this highlighted clarity, Enigk can derail a track with one jutting word.
On "Rain Song" (there's that pesky, generic, Rainforest Café-brand environmentalism), Enigk drops his voice to repeat, "And it's candy," which isn't completely terrible until juxtaposed to the surrounding, fluttering castrato sighs. The real rub is how Enigk enunciates the bulging word like "khaan-DEE." It sticks out like a bellybutton on a supermodel. Similarly, "Snibe" becomes the fist-pumping "Mah-KET-place!" and "Gov-UN-ment!" song (aka "that vocoder song") and "Television" is remembered at best as the "Tell-eh-vhiz-sheun-eoooo-ooo-yeoooo-ooooo-uooo" song (aka "that digital didgeridoo song"), if at all. To further frustrate, Giordano laminates the uncountable layers of strings, pianos, plucked acoustics, and synths with tacky corn syrup. The obvious signifiers scream, "Hey! Lookee! I'm pretty!" as much as do slow-motion, auburn lighting and slow dissolves in a John Woo film.
Occasionally, the drama and props pay off. "The Ocean" slowly drops rippling pearls into molten quartz with sweeping effect. It's the loveliest the band have ever sounded. The closing title track shimmers like vintage Cure sloshing around inside a glass goblet. And Sunny Day must have been lucky band #1,000,000 to name a song "One", as it tugs, dances, and punches with seductive pomp. Otherwise, The Rising Tide sits awash in new age imagery-- the ocean, rain, angels, the ocean again. How It Feels to Be Something On mesmerized intimacy, introspection, and Eastern textures. Here, that's all been discarded for Big Themes and Big Guitars-- alright for a Saturn drive through suburbia, but not the silk blanket you want to snuggle under.
After their temporary break-up, Sunny Day Real Estate regrouped with fresh spirit. The resulting album sounded like a band rediscovering itself over a batch of superb Enigk solo tracks. Yet Enigk has gone from exhaling, "If I break down all that I am," to preaching: "Snibe is a monster. He is willing to hurt others to retire rich and ugly. He kills the innocent to protect his control. Snibe is the greed of money and power. Snibe is in all of us." Somebody's been subscribing to The Nation. The best justification for the extended metaphor of "television" as "women" is, "She's in my head/ Like television," and, "She's cool and she's free/ Like television." Well, at least she's not cable, then.
The songwriting here feels wrung from "jams". Splashes and driving rhythms replace intricacy and mood. Drummer William Goldsmith devotes the album to his hi-hat. "Pish pish pish pish pish," go the little cymbals, as our British readers giggle. As Enigk wobbles his fingers over newly acquired bass strings and belts lines like, "Disappear into the sun!", it's hard to avoid Rush comparisons. The power-trio-with-socially-conscious-singer/bassist equation also recalls The Police. But time transplants Mercury Rising-era Sting into Zenyatta Mondatta. Meanwhile, "Faces in Disguise" mimics the soft, slow ooze of Peter Gabriel's rainstick ballads. So, essentially, this is the pop record 70s prog bands would make in the 80s-- Big Generator and Power Windows for a new generation. Aside from two major blunders, nothing is overtly offensive, but simply lachrymose and lactose. Sunny Day habitat needs candlelight and rugs, not spotlight riggings and Astroturf.
Is this a certain progression for rock bands of this ilk? Chalk some of the scars up to Enigk's vocals being thrown into focus. But what makes maturing singers spit political slogans and earth-friendly spiritualism? Cash and hi-hats are easy culprits. For the benefit of audiences, songwriters in emotional bands are best left in states of emotional turmoil. Sadly, Enigk seems to be pretty comfortable with himself. That's no fun.


Huerco S.’ second album under his atmospheric alter ego is eerie and unsettling: Rhythms are frayed, harmonies are buried, and the usual reassurances of ambient music no longer apply.

Pendant: To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands

Something insinuating and unsettling thrums beneath all of Brian Leeds’ work: a paranoid, minor-key mystery, as if leering pairs of eyes were emerging from the digital crackles and sub-bass swells that define his brand of ambient. His music as Huerco S. throws us enough swooning pads and symmetrical kick drums to maintain at least some connection, however abstract, to the reassuring pulse of the club. His work as Pendant gets that out of the way in order to smear black paint across the canvas. Anything rhythmic is inevitably frayed, anything harmonic is buried in layers of digital wind, and the usual reassurances of ambient music no longer apply.
To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands, the Kansas producer’s second album under the Pendant name, was made mere weeks after 2018’s Make Me Know You Sweet. Sweet was full of chattering, insectoid sounds that seemed to slither up the listener’s ear, but the impression on To All Sides is of an eerie, remote stillness. The first three tracks average about 10 minutes in length, and none of them end up far from where they started, least of all opener “Dream Song of the Woman,” 11 minutes of the kind of billowing wind-tunnel noise Windy & Carl usually reserve for the depths of their own albums. This is ambient at its most horizontal, and you may wonder if Leeds hasn’t abandoned his usual curlicues to make something to sit back and float away on.
No chance. “The Story of My Ancestor the River” crashes through the middle of the album like the rotting floorboards of an attic suddenly giving way. This is a turbulent, violent track, each individual clatter and squeak jostling for space, everything clad in a thick armor of distortion. It sounds a little like Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Nil Admirari,” but Daniel Lopatin at least had the good grace to put that onslaught at the beginning of Returnal as a trial by fire before the listener could get to the ambient goodies. “The Story of My Ancestor the River”' is sequenced smack-dab in the middle of the album, so anyone who dares doze off to “Dream Song” is in for a nasty shock.
“The Story of My Ancestor the River” readies our ears for the album’s second half, where a lot more happens minute to minute. “The Poor Boy and the Mud Ponies” is the most Huerco-like track here, with the faintest ghost of a beat skittering in and out of the mix. “Sometimes I Go About Pitying Myself While I Am Carried by the Wind Across the Sky” at first gives the impression of an impenetrable blankness, but listen closely and you’ll hear revving motorcycles, perturbed baby-like cries, and all sorts of weird and wet sounds moving in and out of spasms of echo. Nothing happens again at the same pitch of intensity as “The Story of My Ancestor the River,” but once we’ve learned what this album’s capable of, we prick up our ears like prey animals looking for movement—and we can go back to those earlier tracks and feel tension rather than calm.
It seems like a frustrating way to sequence an album, letting us float downstream on the first three tracks before abruptly casting us into the rapids. But it preempts the possibility that any of this music will simply drift to the edges of consciousness, and you may find yourself paying attention even when nothing seems to be happening. When ambient music trades in suspense, we don’t necessarily expect a payoff; sustaining an ominous mood is usually more than good enough. On To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands, Leeds tempts us with the possibility that something will happen—and then when something does happen, we come to the delighted realization that on a Pendant album, just about anything can.

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The preeminent crate-digging producer teams up with his younger brother, the rapper Oh No, for a soulful, topical, but reserved project that simmers just below the surface.

The Professionals

Since sauntering onto the hip-hop scene in the mid-’90s as part of the underrated Lootpack troupe, California-based producer Madlib has risen to cult status by pledging a zealous devotion to the art of crate-digging. Over the ensuing decades, Madlib’s reclusive public persona has been complemented by a hyper-prolific discography that showcases his knack for repurposing fragments of other artists’ songs into warped and off-kilter compositions. Madlib’s also become renowned for tailoring entire albums to fit a single MC’s voice—most notably his projects with Freddie Gibbs—and it’s this setup that forms the backbone of The Professionals, the first full-length team-up with his younger sibling, Oh No.
Smartly, there’s a reserved quality to Madlib’s beats across the album. Chunky, soulful loops and boxy drum patterns become a sturdy platform for Oh No’s rapping. The bulk of the album showcases the MC’s conceptual chops and ability to pen topical issue-based tracks, but a few more cliché lyrical outings nestled in the mix give the project a naggingly uneven feel—and leaves you wishing The Professionals prodded just a little deeper into the increasingly fractured modern world that Oh No proves so adept at commenting on.
The album’s most affecting moment comes courtesy of its final song, “Dishonored Valor.” Oh No hones in on the struggles military personnel experience when attempting to reintegrate into modern civilian life—including PTSD and the ensuing reliance on pharmaceuticals—along with the power dynamics that cause them to enlist in the first place. “I got a gang of brothers that was in the military that was dishonorably discharged/Really wasn’t cut like Rambo when the shit starts,” he raps over a gnarly backdrop of scuzzy guitar and rolling clusters of snares. “I don’t blame ’em, I would have been right there smoking weed, too/Fuck flying up in sky, diving out of B-2.”
This heavyweight moment is supported by the uplifting “Made Due,” which sounds like Oh No riffing on a wonky line from Nas’s “Life’s a Bitch” logic—“That buck that bought a bottle could have struck the lotto”—by imploring people to put faith in goals and ideas rather than scant lottery odds. “Tired Atlas” is fueled by brooding piano and musings on presidents, police brutality and identity fraud; the golden-hued loops and metronomic ticking through “Timeless Treasure” prompt commentary on a capitalist country where hospital costs cause some to simply shrug and figure, “Fuck it then/I’ll just die in the crib with this cheeseburger—McLovin’ it.”
Frustratingly, the power and pull of these songs is vitiated by moments like the title track—whose braggadocio simmers but never boils—and the lighter, more amorous outings “I Jus Wanna” and “Give N Take,” especially when the latter’s candy-funk backdrop is punctured by a humdrum booty-call tale. The Professionals winds up being akin to a high-quality, well-reported news special that keeps being interrupted by lighter-hearted segments—both have their own merits, but oftentimes close proximity only tempers potency.

Buy: Rough Trade
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Singer-songwriter Ben Collins joins the Woodsist camp with a light, loose collection of songs built for placid and rudderless afternoons.

Glacial Pace

Woods singer Jeremy Earl launched the Woodsist label in 2006, creating a vehicle to self-release his records and those by likeminded psychedelic-folk explorers: guitarist Cian Nugent, former Woods bassist Kevin Morby, and singer-songwriter Anna St. Louis. A friends-forward approach to a label usually brings together a similar cloth of musicians; there’s sometimes a fine line between Woodsist and Woods-ish.
Glacial Pace, the debut album by singer-songwriter Brian Collins as Hurt Valley, is the latest to emerge from Earl’s glen. The record is far less leaden than its title indicates, toeing the Woodsist line more closely than most of his peers. The many instrumental layers belie the fact that Collins self-recorded the project at his home in Los Angeles. His songs are light and loose, built for placid and rudderless afternoons.
But Collins’ self-contained efforts sometimes leave little to latch on to as one song slides into the next. The distinguishing factors between folk-adjacent, psychedelically inclined acts tend to lie in what its unique members bring to the fold—the way a bassist and drummer lock together into a groove, the way guitarists interject and weave around each other. By that measure, Collins plays it relatively straight across Glacial Pace, and absent a collaborator’s input, he ends up limiting his own potential.
Overdubbed guitar solos complement each other at the end of “No Meaning,” but Collins never reaches for a daring finale—they approach a crescendo and shy away within seconds. Even when he sings about feeling “stuck at a glacial pace” on “Geology Dreamer,” he sounds like he’s unmoved about his predicament in any sense of the word. “Del Amo” is Glacial Pace’s strongest, carried by quiet guitar interludes that make for a curling foil against a hazier backdrop of more guitars. The glimmer on “I’ve Been Everywhere” is a similarly rewarding treat for the ears.
Despite the album’s pervasive nonchalance, closing track “Immaterial Worlds” is resolutely un-chill as Collins sneaks in a few final barbs. “You don’t know what it means to speak face to face/You only castigate anonymously,” he sings. “Don’t be afraid to say/I should apologize, when it is right.” He asks to be told when he needs to apologize rather than recognizing when he needs to do it on his own. It’s these moments that feel lasting and impressionable and give his debut a boost: Glacial Pace doesn’t feel destined for cult status or dollar bins, but Collins gives himself plenty of room to explore his sound—and himself—more deeply.

Buy: Rough Trade
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A carefully curated set of reworks filters last year’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately through synth pop, techno, and other electronic lenses, giving Mike Hadreas’ grit a blast of glitter.

Immediately Remixes

On last year’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, Perfume Genius assembled his most textural, captivating music to date. Contrasting the lo-fi dissonance of past records with blown-out power chords and synths, Mike Hadreas’ fifth LP addressed themes of isolation and corporeal anxiety with an agile, heart-wrenching touch. Less than a year later comes the first full-length Perfume Genius remix album, a carefully curated set that filters Set My Heart on Fire Immediately through synth pop, techno, and other electronic lenses, giving his grit a blast of glitter.
The high-speed reworks on IMMEDIATELY Remixes are the most immediately gratifying. Planningtorock dresses up “Jason” with ping-ponging synths and breakbeats, plunging Hadreas directly into a late-night dancefloor and morphing the song’s awkward one-night stand into something altogether more feverishly desperate. For the sparse “Moonbend,” Hadreas enlists Nídia, who stacks it with jittery, dynamic drum patterns and loops Hadreas’ mournful backing vocals. The Portuguese producer maintains the song’s spectral luster but then amplifies it with heart-racing energy; it’s easily one of the album’s most daring rearrangements. Danny L Harle’s “Harlecore” version of “Just a Touch,” meanwhile, refracts it through a convex mirror: Hadreas’ voice is pitched up to a whine, while a swarm of trance synths and pummeling drums fuse to form the album’s most euphoric moment.
When the remixes gesture toward more straightforward pop, things get a little shakier. Westerman adds muted, spacious details to “Nothing at All,” one of the original album’s most gutting tracks, including chirping cicadas, flutes and horns, and handclaps; the combined effect washes out the song in drab colors. Tokyo-based producer Initial Talk takes the opposite tack, setting Hadreas against swathes of bright, chintzy synths. It’s a fun pastiche (and suggests that Hadreas’ voice is malleable enough to cosplay any era’s sound), but it also veers dangerously close to hackneyed “’80s remix” YouTube territory.
The album’s stranger moments fare better. Jenny Hval’s experimental spin on “Leave” distends the original synth line and layers on Hadreas’ reverbed vocals until her own voice suddenly enters, speaking about using reverb as a way of traveling through space. It’s a meta moment that adds depth to the project, carving out a sense of genuine humanity in touch with Hadreas. Other off-kilter producers succeed by tapping into a similarly meandering vein: Katie Dey blends a metronomic beat and Hadreas’ spliced and delayed voice on “Borrowed Light,” uplifting it with airy, fine-tuned delicacy, and the twangy guitar and arcing melodies from “One More Try” become grainy textures for UK producer Actress, who ratchets up the song’s wistful romance tenfold.
That IMMEDIATELY Remixes’ varying reworks interweave so well is a testament to Hadreas’ distinctive voice and songwriting. Following the same tracklisting as the original, the album flows as through a dreamlike alternate vision. The set also nicely complements the sense of freedom Hadreas has described performing modern dance while writing Set My Heart on Fire Immediately—you can easily picture him writhing and twisting in a group performance to the album’s club-oriented moments. No matter the stage dressing, it’s hard to lose sight of Hadreas’ particularly captivating form of surrender.

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The R&B singer JMSN is devoted to the sound of late 1990s neo soul, but on his new album, he lacks a unique approach to it.

Whatever Makes U Happy

The singer Christian Berishaj, who performs as JMSN, is devoted to the sound of late-1990s neo soul. On his new album Whatever Makes U Happy, the bass is poised, expressive, and brimming with energy; the drums are sharp. Most importantly, JMSN’s voice is always caught in a viscous web of groove.
A few years ago, these arrangements sounded rebellious. It seemed that an R&B singer with hopes of radio play had to live by rap’s rules, and even D’Angelo—whose Voodoo album remains neo soul’s sacred document—could not crack the Top 20 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart when he returned with “Really Love” in 2014. But the climate has changed. Earlier this month, Kevin Ross’ “Long Song Away” climbed to No. 12 on the same chart that stymied D’Angelo without making any concessions to the sounds of contemporary hip-hop. And Childish Gambino reached No. 11 with “Redbone,” showing that funk with blatant Bootsy Collins references could occupy the same space as Future and Travis Scott. These days, artists with a comprehensive understanding of R&B from the 1970s, 1980s, and ’90s are less like separatists and more like members of a thriving loyal opposition.
In this context, JMSN’s new album is a modest success; he hits his marks, if nothing more. There’s not much grip in his voice, but at a time when male R&B singers tend to overuse their falsetto, JMSN reserves his high notes, setting himself apart by focusing on a cooled-out, conversational mid-range. He also sprinkles his songs with curses to shatter their smooth veneer, and he can arrange a pretty backing vocal. Whatever Makes U Happy is best when it’s busy—as on “Slowly,” where JMSN aligns the clipped, controlled percussion with a doleful, front-porch guitar line and clumps of piano. “Slowly” summons the spirit of the under-appreciated Jon B, who scored a few R&B hits between 1995 and 2001.
But JMSN is often content to set up a traditional song structure and let it play out without adding any distinguishing touches. He loves the soul mainstay of the ballad in 6/8 time: Whatever Makes U Happy opens with “Drinkin,’” which uses this dependable form to spin a sort of booze-happy guide to self-help. “Always Somethin’” reaches to a different tradition, tracing a bluesy arc close to Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason.” JMSN builds up the despair with his declarative final phrase: “Wish someone would tell me why I waste my time working day and night.”
JMSN gets the forms right, but there’s a hollowness to his performance. He doesn’t have enough command in his voice to put his songs over with authority, or enough reticence to be seductively absent from them. If JMSN has an extensive knowledge of R&B tradition, he has yet to make it his own.


The second album by San Francisco's the Mantles sustains an intruiguing tension between lyrics that resonate with a sense of detachment and open, outward-looking melodies that evoke R.E.M., Real Estate, and Television, without sounding like mere clones.

Long Enough to Leave

“This isn't me,” sings Michael Olivares. “This is happening to someone else.” That line comes in the middle of the Mantles’ second full-length album, Long Enough to Leave, but the sense of detachment resonates throughout the record. It’s right there in the title, taken from another lyric: “You’re home/ Long enough to leave/ Always coming back to see / How far off you’ve gone.” The feeling of absence is constant-- everyone in these songs seems to disappear.
That effect gives Long Enough to Leave an intriguing tension, because musically it’s nowhere near distant or detached. It’s an open, outward-looking set of tunes, especially compared to the Mantles’ previous full-length, their 2009 self-titled debut. That record had a hermetic feel that was a big part of its charm. The blurry chords and closeted sound-- a kind of rawer, denser take on the Byrds and their Paisley Underground descendents the Dream Syndicate and the Rain Parade-- were a lot of fun to get lost in.
Here, by contrast, we get a wider variety of melodies, an airier sonic space, and a broader array of reference points. The familiar ones persist: opener “Marbled Birds” starts with a wiry hook that sounds exactly like marbled Byrds. But the acoustic-heavy title track evokes the melancholy pop of the Clean’s David Kilgour; the jangly “Don’t Cross Town” and winding “More That I Pay” approximate lo-fi R.E.M.; and the wistful chords of “Raspberry Thighs” conjure Real Estate’s sun-baked lilt. None of these tunes are clones; all are distinguished by Olivares’ deceptively-rough singing and the interplay of swirling guitars. But together all the echoes-- I’m also hearing the Kinks, Television, and the Feelies-- show the Mantles have expanded their palette.
The result is catchy, consistent material that’s welcoming sonically but mysterious thematically. Take “Hello”, a bouncy jam which is ostensibly pretty communicative; it’s about making a phone call, after all. But eventually you realize the caller-- who wants someone to “help me get out of here... help me disappear”-- never quite gets through. Even better is the enthralling “Reason’s Run”, whose coiled hooks become barbed wire when paired with distancing admonishments like, “When you saw me ahead, you should’ve crossed the street… you must be more careful about who you meet."
All this poetic exploration of distance and disconnect can also just be seen as cake-icing. The Mantles could mumble through these tunes and the infectious force of their woven melodies would remain intact. But the extra thematic layer gives the music a depth that bodes well for this band’s future (and justifies their rate of output, which is glacial compared to their super-prolific garage peers in San Francisco). Because they take their time, what exactly that future holds is, like the best parts of Long Enough to Leave, compellingly elusive.


On Pool, Aaron Maine has shed the murky folk of previous recordings for a homespun electronic sound that consciously pulls away from the "rock" elements. Greta Kline, who fronts Frankie Cosmos, loans backing vocals or basslines to many of the best songs. You can imagine the shy kids dance parties the album will soundtrack, but Pool is also an introspective record, tailormade for lonesome nights.

Pool

In the music video for Porches’ "Be Apart," Aaron Maine and his band wear black turtlenecks as they mope around an apartment decorated like a dollhouse. They bounce basketballs, play ping-pong, strip down to share a bubble bath, activities that might take place at a party thrown for the very idle rich. Near the halfway mark, they stare into the camera like the Children of the Corn, barely mouthing along to words in a way that will make you suspect they have either an awful or incredible sense of humor. The song is about whether Maine wants to be apart or a part of it all—and the sight of five hip youngs looking sad at a social event leads you to think he’s stuck in between.
Mopey New Yorkers are endlessly renewable in independent music, but here’s the thing: You can sort of dance to "Be Apart." On Pool, his newest record and first for Domino, Maine has shed the murky folk of previous recordings for a homespun electronic sound that consciously pulls away from the "rock" elements. (Call him another indie kid who sold his guitars and bought turntables.) Fittingly for a record titled Pool, it sounds like it was recorded with one in the room. Oceanic synths, wobbly basslines, and precise snare drums cohere into a crisp pop sound, while his high, expressive voice bobs brightly above the surface.
Also fittingly: Water is a recurring theme throughout the LP. Maine watches people slip into swimming pools ("Underwater," "Pool"), envisions black water surrounding him as he weighs depression against the need to go out ("Be Apart"), and fantasizes about washing his car ("Car," which is the closest thing here to a rock song). Getting stoned is a theme, too. Sometimes, he lights one up and hangs out by the metaphorical pool, as on "Hour," whose dark electronics evoke the dinginess of a locker room at the Y.
In an interview on Pitchfork Radio, Maine said he wanted to make something "more positive" that could be energetically performed live, and that he wants people to dance to his music. The shimmering groove on "Braid" and "Mood" will make you believe in his ambitions—people will at least be swaying—as does the boogie that breaks out at the end of the title track. The singer Greta Kline, who fronts Frankie Cosmos and is also Maine’s girlfriend, loans backing vocals or basslines to the half-dozen best songs. Her plucky strumming on "Mood" and "Glow" creates the record’s most genuinely funky moments, when you can imagine the shy kids thrusting hips in their living rooms.
Maine isn’t an involved lyricist, but his melodic instincts connect the gap between intent and outcome. He has an alien-yet-captivating way of phrasing syllables that recalls the unblinking stoicism of Majical Cloudz’ Devon Welsh, or the weirdo brooding of Arthur Russell. The melodramatic sigh in the chorus of "Be Apart"—"And I-I-I-I want to be apart"—reminds me of Morrissey, as does the lyrical preoccupation with whether or not to go out that night.
You could also observe that Morrissey had the gumption to rhyme "rusty spanner" with "play piano," and that some of that spirit might be missing here. The piercing clarity of Maine’s voice imbues his relatively simplistic lyrics with profundity, but you might wonder how much is going on in his brain at times. At least one Pitchfork co-worker gasped when I suggested Pool sounded like a chillwave record, but it does remind me of how that micro-genre enabled listeners most likely to get lost in a K-Mart to wade through shallow depths.
But a wading pool can be a perfect meditative space. Pool is an introspective record, tailormade for lonesome nights. It was made in Maine’s apartment, and while the record has a noticeably professional pop sheen, there are still vestigial hints of amateurism (such as the sound of fingers squeaking against the strings on album opener "Underwater") that convince me of its ideal setting. Anyone who lives in a city knows how easy it is to be pulled between lonely apartments and lonelier dance floors. By the end, the appeal of water becomes clear. You immerse yourself in it, disappearing from the rest of the world, but you’re still close to land.


The Japanese trumpeter’s dense and cosmic sixth album blends jazz with Afrobeat, hip-hop, neo-soul, and funk.

Fly Moon Die Soon

Takuya Kuroda hails from Kobe, Japan, a nation that to a dedicated strand of Western jazz obsessive serves as a sacred tomb of rare riches. You can place the trumpeter next to 20th-century Japanese virtuosos such as Toshiko Akiyoshi, Masabumi Kikuchi, Ryo Fukui, and Koichi Matsukaze, and he looks extremely comfortable in the lineage: All respected the core tenets of jazz while offering their own unique interpretations. Kuroda, after all, is a guy who has name-dropped Lee Morgan as an inspiration while playing in DJ Premier’s touring outfit, the Badder band.
Having relocated to New York to study jazz and contemporary music at The New School in the mid-2000s, Kuroda has since traversed the city as a recording artist—he notably spent some time on Blue Note Records—and musician for hire. Sixth album Fly Moon Die Soon is the work of a man who has undertaken his own musical Gulliver’s Travels. The album’s nine cuts are united by Kuroda’s determination to branch out from jazz and into hip-hop, funk, Afrobeat, electronica, and neo soul. But Kuroda isn’t simply quoting corners of his own record collection; he skillfully synthesizes his influences, hitting sweet spots that feel purely of his own creation.
Most apparent is the music of 1970s West Africa (Kuroda has previously collaborated with a group of similar interest in New York’s Akoya Afrobeat). The horns, guitar stabs, and rattling percussion of “ABC” gesture heavily toward Fela Kuti, while the driving rhythms of “Moody” recalls 1970s Afro-funk bands like the Funkees and Monomono. The brass instruments throughout Fly Moon Die Soon are often used to deploy catchy riffs, Kuroda’s trumpet frequently amalgamating with Corey King’s trombone. The title track shows a more experimental side, with programmed beats and a Moog bassline that swirls like a Thundercat jam. It’s the kind of dense and cosmic jazz hybrid that would blow minds over at Brainfeeder.
Kuroda allows his collaborators significant space. King’s singing voice comes in and out of the album with mixed results—his textured tones skip satisfyingly through opener “Fade,” but “Change,” the least impressive tune on the album, features a hiccuping melody that goes nowhere in a hurry. Much better is the cover of the Ohio Players’ “Sweet Sticky Thing,” featuring Russia-born singer Alina Engibaryan. Retaining the sensual melody and cranking up the heat until it’s balmy, it’s the kind of track you can put on a playlist that might grab a non-jazz fan’s attention.
Then there’s the Herbie Hancock composition “Tell Me a Bedtime Story,” which pushes Hiroshima pianist Takeshi Ohbayashi front and center as he plays over the softly bumping backdrop. Kuroda, meanwhile, unleashes a flugelhorn solo that evokes some vintage urban-noir vision of Manhattan. Coming late on Fly Moon Die Soon, it returns the ever-journeying artist to the city that has proved his fulcrum, and asserts that Kuroda’s skill is not drawing influence from so many different forms, it’s radiating joy in doing so.

Buy: Rough Trade
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Blood Ceremony's longtime fixation on 70s rock, Sabbathian riffage, and 60s psych is well-documented and undeniable. The third album from the Canadian collective is their strongest yet, and clear proof that while yes, everything old is new again, there are a scant few armed with the passion and power to craft something as worth revisiting.

The Eldritch Dark

As Aldous Huxley once wrote, "The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different." Though our dystopian visionary surely meant to slyly reference far more sinister puppet masters with his damning and oh-so-quotable bon mot, the unruly hellions pulling rock’n’roll’s nylon strings are less inclined to read between the lines. They prefer to go back to basics but slap a few fresh coats of paint on there to keep things sparkling. The song remains the same, and on The Eldritch Dark, Blood Ceremony follows that axiom with near-religious fervor.
Every chord and whisper harkens back to an earlier Aquarian age, when paisley and peyote ruled supreme and leather fringe wasn’t just for your dad’s musty old biker jacket. Their longtime fixation on 70s rock, Sabbathian riffage, and 60s psych is well-documented and undeniable, and an enduring fascination with dark legend and wild lore charts their pagan’s progress from harvest moon to Midsummer’s night eve. The third album from this Canadian collective is their strongest yet, and clear proof that while yes, everything old is new again, there are a scant few armed with the passion and power to craft something worth revisiting. Blood Ceremony just make it look easy.
“Witchwood” begins with a howling lead and hauls out the Hammond organ, vamping and swaying along beneath Alia O’Brien’s husky croon. This down-to-earth high priestess has got her hands full wielding the microphone, manipulating the vintage organ keys, and trilling away like Jethro Tull with her signature flute whilst conducting the band’s blackest of masses. The Satanic element one has come to expect from the recent glut of “occult rock” bands is absent, and in its stead lie mysteries far more titillating and obscure. The old gods hold court amongst the evils and enchantments that populate Blood Ceremony’s world. Capering fauns, weird sisters, astrological signs, and bewitched souls creep in and out of earshot, imbuing tracks like “Ballad of the Weird Sisters” with a certain otherworldly feel even as they build upon standard 70s hard rock song structures.
Guitarist Sean Kennedy weaves his riffs over and under the flue’s driving force, stealing the spotlight when it suits but generally content to serve as the stage upon which O’Brien’s finery flashes. Michael Carrillo’s drums are understated, slung low in the mix but never far from the action; his militant rat-a-tat in the titular “The Eldritch Dark” serves as a steady anchor for the song’s psychedelic meanderings, and gels perfectly with the burly basslines. “Drawing Down the Moon” is the most vintage-inspired of a host of backward-glancing tracks. Kennedy’s note-perfect Iommi riff wails away while O’Brien channels Marianne Faithfull and Jethro Tull like some heathen love child and pounds that Hammond organ for all of its considerable worth. It’s hip-shaking, head-nodding, sideways-glance-throwing nighttime music. If the Devil were really listening, he’d have booked these guys as his house band long ago.
The hymn-like “Lord Summerisle” is quiet and contemplative, recalling the quietest moments of Black Sabbath’s “Planet Caravan” and guided by a particularly haunting flute melody. It’s the only song to feature a male vocalist, as bassist Lucas Gadke (who wrote the tune in homage to the eerie atmosphere of cult film ‘The Wicker Man’) adds his plaintive voice to O’Brien’s backing harmonies, and also the strangest. Blood Ceremony hit upon their alchemical formula years ago, but it’s still refreshing to see them experiment, just a little. Too much, and their spell would break; just enough, and they prove once again why they are the most vital band of the “occult rock” renaissance. Trends come and go, but a band like Blood Ceremony, with their bewitching tunes and dark secrets, are above such petty mortal trifles. We’re coming with them, whether we like it or not.


On his new EP, Noel Gallagher breaks free—a little—from his six-string to embrace the Big Beat of his youth.

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds: Black Star Dancing EP

Black Star Dancing EP

For a guy whose rock’n’roll values skew so traditional his name is practically a synonym for Dad Rock, Noel Gallagher has long harbored a desire to break free from his six-string. Black Star Dancing—an EP named after a single he released in early May—arrives accompanied by a self-generated torrent of hype that climaxed with Noel claiming Nile Rodgers “literally danced in the studio” when he heard the song.
These proclamations suggest the EP offers something new, but the truth is Gallagher has always dabbled in dance culture. He came of age during the glory days of Baggy, the heady time when rock, dance, and electronica came together as one during the paisley-pulsating fever dream dubbed the second summer of love. The earliest Oasis records were smothered in loud guitars, but Gallagher’s magpie songwriting wasn’t far removed from the sampledelica of hip-hop and acid house at the dawn of the ’90s. Once he became a superstar, he happily collaborated with the Chemical Brothers for “Setting Sun,” a 1997 hit that pulverized the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” through a Big Beat filter.
From there, Gallagher tentatively threaded drum loops and extraneous electronica onto Oasis albums, a process he continued with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, the group he formed in 2011 once he finally had his fill of navigating the id of his brother Liam. Until 2017’s Who Built the Moon?, Noel generally kept these diversions reserved for remixes, B-sides and bonus tracks, but that record leaned into colorful cacophony constructed in equal parts from psychedelia and memories of late club nights long gone.
Black Star Dancing doesn’t depart from the previous High Flying Birds records so much as pick up threads left dangling from Who Built the Moon? while pushing ideas Gallagher usually left in the shadows right into the spotlight. It’s a canny reframing that helps banish lingering memories of High Flying Birds’ tastefully somnolent first few records, but it's hard to call “Black Star Dancing”—either in its original incarnation or its two extended remixes or its accompanying pair of B-sides—“fresh.”
All three versions groove to retro rhythms that are throwbacks to throwbacks: the spangly ’70s filtered through the ecstasy of the early ’90s. The two variations—a succinct 12" mix and a “Reflex Revision” that sprawls amiably for 10 minutes—expand upon ideas already fully formed on the original single. Perhaps “Rattling Rose” and “Sail On”—the former a breezy bit of good vibes with a vaguely spacey undercurrent, the latter an ornate campfire sing along—don’t burst as brightly as “Black Star Dancing,” but by using the dance rhythms and electronics as accents, Gallagher winds up showcasing his melodic craft more appealingly than when he’s dolefully strumming an acoustic guitar.
Granted, every bit of Black Star Dancing telegraphs how Noel Gallagher isn’t in step with his times. It’s psychedelic music made by a rocker who straightened out ages ago, dance music made by a musician who hasn't set foot in a club in at least 20 years. But that flaw is also ingratiating: Gallagher retains his ear for sturdy melodies and his instinct for swiping ear-catching sounds and conscripting them to his humble purposes. As he always does, Gallagher stitches these elements into familiar and comfortable tapestries.


The New York City psych-rock quartet’s debut full-length beckons the listener with dreamy keyboards, twinkling guitar, and a recognizable buzz of stoic anxiety.

Jinx

Obituaries and biographies often give the illusion that lives unfold along ever-advancing, if wandering, timelines. In fact, those forward trajectories are made up of millions of tiny spirals—routines followed, patterns performed, habits fallen into. Most days are slightly deviating copies of one another, with periodic breaths of novelty. On their debut full-length, Jinx, New York City psych-rock band Crumb give shape to the ambivalence and hypnosis of those lulling spirals, bending indie rock and jazz influences to shape a clear-eyed perspective tinted amber with dirt. Beckoning the listener with dreamy keyboards, twinkling guitar, and a recognizable buzz of stoic anxiety, Jinx rewards with the promise that within the dizzying haze are moments, turns in direction, worth waking up to.
Crumb formed in 2015 while the group’s members attended university in Boston, and their first, self-titled EP realized songs that guitarist, vocalist, and lead songwriter Lila Ramani began writing as far back as high school. Crumb and 2017 follow-up Locket, both misty and meandering, cast the four-part group as the new kid on today’s jazz-influenced psych block, among bands like Tame Impala and King Krule. On Jinx, those free-jazz influences and arrangements—an affinity Ramani also flexes as a member of New York City experimental collective Standing on the Corner—remain, but there’s something decidedly murkier afoot. Embracing the analog-suffused production they dabbled in on past projects, Crumb’s debut offers a warm, hazy snapshot of banal existence from the inside out.
Concealed emotion, strained facades, and the desire to break free from the numbness underlying both are recurring themes, but Jinx is no dense, depressing slog. Languid love song “Ghostride” sets a scene of passive action as Ramani, voice wavering at a dispassionate hum, observes her subjects moving through the world on autopilot. A moment of hope emerges as guitar and drums break to a higher register and she breathily sings, “Come on now/Don’t let this go/Don’t let the light fade away/People come/And people go/But I—.” With a shade of hesitancy, she cuts off the sentiment, not finishing until the chorus repeats with the final word, almost a pronouncement: “stay.” That longing for cloud-parting connection and devotion peek out through the album’s rises and falls.
Crumb have a knack for entrancing the listener, only to then displace them with airy, twinkling release. Flashes of silence—abruptly muted guitar strums, complete rests—and Ramani’s penchant for spell-like repetition can warp time, one hallucinatory spiral suddenly interrupted by another, more promising one. The album’s hypnotic quality grows ever more romantic and tense with repeat listens, a prescient-feeling experience that matches a zeitgeist: strung-out maintaining in the face of impending doom. “This city is dense/And it makes me tense/And it makes me tense/And it never ends/And it never ends,” Ramani sings, her voice recessed by a gauzy filter, on “And It Never Ends.” How do we get off the eye-glazing treadmill of the day-to-day? In lieu of tidy answers, Jinx offers a sympathetic fellow witness to the mystery.

Buy: Rough Trade
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The Welsh songwriter’s fifth album flits between whimsical psych-pop levity and candid expressions of grief. At its best, it brings the two together.

Milk for Flowers

In the learned vocabulary of pop music, staccato means happy and languorous, sustained notes signify sad. It’s the “Getting Better” vs. “She’s Leaving Home” binary established long ago by McCartney and co. But to wilfully defy this shorthand—to write melancholy songs at an upbeat clip? That’s where things get interesting.
It’s a challenge that’s been accepted by generations of songwriting legends, from Harry Nilsson, whose early gems, like “One” and “Daddy’s Song,” made heartbreak sound bright and effervescent, to Robyn, whose 2010 classic “Dancing on My Own” helped popularize the “sad banger.” It’s also an M.O. of sorts for the Welsh singer-songwriter H. Hawkline (born Huw Evans), who recently mused that “setting sad lyrics to something more upbeat is more jarring and impactful.” Hawkline’s latest album, Milk for Flowers, flits between whimsical psych-pop and candid grief, and is most affecting when it finds a way to bring those two poles together.
Hawkline began his career with fingerpicking folk on 2010’s A Cup of Salt, but in recent years, he’s steered towards an ornate art-pop sound that draws influence from his fellow countryman Gruff Rhys, who’s brought him on tour, as well as longtime collaborator Cate Le Bon, who produced Milk for Flowers. Even when the songs are steeped in sadness, there’s a McCartney-esque bounce to them: a pitter-patter levity to the piano arrangements in “Milk for Flowers” and “Denver,” a perpetual forward motion to the playful thump of “Plastic Man.”
That cognitive dissonance is a meaningful ingredient of an album that’s explicitly concerned with how loss is camouflaged and concealed in the theater of daily life. Hawkline’s mother died of cancer in 2018; do these songs reckon with the surreal side of grief or is grief an inherently surreal state of mind? The answer floats just out of reach. The title track flits from a chorus that highlights Hawkline’s knack for oddball imagery (“I feel like a nun picking roses”) to a bridge that cuts right to the heart of the matter: “And I miss you/So much,” he sings in a quivering croon.
“Suppression Street” brings us to an avenue that will be as familiar as Fascination Street or Respectable Street. With the poetic care and inventiveness typical of his work, Hawkline satirizes the daily ritual of suppressing one’s heartache and pretending all is fine: “I buy my makeup on Suppression Street/I paint my face for everyone I meet/With the elegance of Nero.” Later, on the record’s tenderer second half, he lets the facade slip away, addressing his mother directly on the plaintive “Like You Do”: “As the evening plays us out/And I want to let you know/All the ways I’ll need you.” Like grief itself, the song is a one-sided conversation, never silenced, never resolved.
With his peculiar sensibility, jaunty piano-and-horn style, and fondness for playfully enigmatic wordplay (a standout: “Peace comes for dinner/But I’m forever eating lunch”), Hawkline is operating on a similar plane as collaborator Aldous Harding. (The two have been musically and romantically linked; Hawkline both opened for and performed in the New Zealand songwriter’s band on her 2022 tour.) But Hawkline is not quite as expressive or eccentric a vocalist as Harding, and these songs’ arrangements sometimes feel too fussy, too polite, to summon the emotions they promise. “Denver” drags on for six relatively static minutes, while the limp synth pop of “Athens at Night” never quite matches the wooziness of its imagery.
Fortunately, Milk for Flowers’ third act is its richest. “It’s a Living” strikes that rare balance between piano-pop whimsy and melancholy. Its singalong chorus, a mantra of appreciation for “old women” and “young children,” is stirring and rendered without any hint of condescension. “Empty Room,” the closer, is drifting and elegiac, reminiscent of the heady, countryfied ballads Super Furry Animals used to put near the end of their records. Hawkline drowns his sorrows in pedal-steel Americana as he reckons with the physical absence grief leaves behind: “Take the lock off the door/All will be as before in that/Empty room.” Some fill that empty space with photos or shrines. H. Hawkline seems to be filling it with songs.


On his latest project, the Brooklyn rapper realizes his vision. His forceful and focused bars are just one aspect of the highly skilled emcee’s community-focused and spiritually rewarding music.

Cold Water

Medhane raps a lot about where he’s going and how he’s getting there. So many of his songs are about forward momentum: taking strides, chasing truth, setting his own pace. But movement without direction is simply wasted energy, and where his previous projects occasionally resembled lyrical exercises that developed a philosophy and a worldview in real time, his new album, Cold Water, feels like putting long-held plans into motion.
Scars and trauma have been markers of Medhane’s raps, but he’s no longer bound by those wounds, he’s empowered by them. “I ain’t show it but I’ve been through the most/Took a minute just to get in my glow,” he says on “Na Fr.” While he’s no clearer about the origins of his injuries, he bears down on the lessons he can extract from them. The result: His most present and clear-eyed project. These songs aren’t just about perseverance anymore; they’re about taking action—using experience as a teacher and a guide.
On 2018’s Ba Sub, Ak Jaam, Medhane explained that his father told him “always choose your words,” guidance he internalized. As he put it, he was speaking with his chest while others stumbled over what to say. On Cold Water, there is even more force and focus behind his bars. The verses on songs like “Late” and “I’m Deadass” are painlessly tricky, never sacrificing their immediacy in their pursuit of uncluttering his mind. “No Cap” and “All Facts” feel like chapters ripped from a hidden, hand-written manifesto. The rapping on Full Circle, the mixtape he released earlier this year, was economical at the expense of impact, but here, Medhane pairs concision with power.
Medhane cites New York City stalwarts Roc Marciano and Ka as influences—you can hear them in his measured, unembellished delivery and in his bare-bones production. After producing all of Full Circle himself under the moniker AFB, he takes a step back on Cold Water. Duties are shared with Ohbliv, Alexander Spit, Chuck Strangers, Navy Blue, and frequent collaborators Bori, iblss, and Stoney. This is, without question, the best-produced project of his career so far. His production on Full Circle was intrusive, and the loops enveloped him like tidal waves crashing ashore. Cold Water, by comparison, is more understated and invigorating. The beats are gorgeously gritty, warped yet whole; he remolds jazz and soul samples as if from particles of sand, which brings the clarity of the raps into sharper relief.
There’s a lot of rapping about mazes, and Medhane usually sounds like he’s writing his way out of them. But his rhymes have never been more direct than they are on “New Drip” and “Truth & Soul.” He unlocks each song with probing flows, finds his way to its center, and then he retraces his steps outward. Relationships often serve as his compass. By now, that posse of musicians has begun to formalize: MIKE, Navy Blue, Jasper Marsalis, Maassai, Gio Escobar, Caleb Giles, and Akai Solo. All have had some impact on the way he thinks about rapping, producing, and improving. “Love my brothers but I seen ’em change/For the better,” he raps on “Live,” an affirmation of collective growth.
In addition to finding refuge in his little tribe, he’s now maneuvering on its behalf. These songs aren’t just bound by all the shared wisdom of his insulated hip-hop commune, they expand the movement and stand for those in it. “Working while they talking/Ball in my court/My little sister growing so you know who it’s for,” he raps on “No Cap.” A self-sufficient rap co-op is only as strong as its weakest link. “On a mission since the sandbox/I ain’t winning if my man lost,” he adds on “Full Hands.” There are still plenty of unanswered questions on Cold Water, but you get the sense that all the things left unsaid are stoking Medhane’s quiet resolve.

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With playful marimbas and chintzy MIDI instruments, the Polish ambient experimentalist’s tribute to urban exploration sits somewhere between reality and reimagining.

Przygody

Walking around Warsaw has an uncanniness unique among European cities. Its very architecture creates a sort of illusion; after the city’s old town burned to the ground in World War II, its citizens came together to reconstruct many of its historic sites, even reusing rubble from buildings that had been lost. Paintings by the Italian landscape artist Bernardo Bellotto were used as a reference point, his use of camera obscura offering highly detailed depictions of structures that had been reduced to ash. But this same method resulted in slight inaccuracies, causing dissonance for those who remember the city as it actually stood before the war. Seeing these centuries-old buildings constructed from memory in person, one encounters a strange sensation: Is this really how it felt to stand next to, say, the city’s Royal Castle when its paint was still fresh? Or is this closer to a reimagining of that feeling?
Staś Czekalski’s debut likewise sees Warsaw through a surreally half-simulated lens. Recorded upon moving to the city from Poznań, the album documents the Polish composer’s explorations of Warsaw, uncovering new wonders around every corner. Czekalski’s music has a lullaby lilt—his marimbas playfully bob up and down like tadpoles, while dinky MIDI guitars strum as if plucked from a daydream. Czekalski colors his music with a similar restrained touch as Mondoj labelmates Piotr Kurek and G.S. Sultan, calling to mind the meditative grooves of Andras Fox crossed with Kate NV’s silly-brained exercises. Gently carving sparse shapes from silence, Czekalski lets each sound bounce off the others like floating objects in an old desktop screensaver.
Przygody translates to “Adventures” in Polish, and Czekalski imbues his music with this wide-eyed sense of searching, fixating over every small sound like a child turning over pebbles. On “Pogoda ducha,” he jams out on a simple pizzicato motif, layering one click-clocking woodblock after another over its delightfully cartoonish echo. Czekalski relishes in the smooth surfaces of his MIDI instruments, whether it’s the nylon spa guitars that waft through “Koniec lata,” or the Casio-like keys of “Dim Lounge,” which putter along over amateur drum machines straight from the GameCube era of Animal Crossing. The further the album goes along, the greater the empty space becomes: the pan pipes of “Mini Farmer” and “Muzeum Ewolucji” seem to call out into silence, their unnaturally breathy tone taking on an absurd psychedelic tinge.
Though Przygody doesn’t exactly fit in the new-age bin, Czekalski’s approach to texture doesn’t feel far off from the pitch-shifting wooziness of modern zoners like Cole Pulice and Lynn Avery. His toylike sounds play almost like an heir to the Mark Mothersbaugh school of electronic whimsy (the arpeggiating synthesizers of “Pogoda ducha” and “Zamek” wouldn’t sound out of place on the Rugrats soundtrack). At points, Przygody can become comfy to the point of sameness—its biggest shakeup comes on the distorted “zegarek,” whose looped bongo groove and warping synth samples disrupt the album’s cutesy calm. In moments like these when Czekalski journeys deeper into his own chintzy sonics, he uncovers a peculiar resonance within their artifice.