On his latest, guitarist Delicate Steve seems interested in animating rock’n’roll’s most outrageous qualities, using his studio savvy to make it do all the things it can’t in real life.

This Is Steve

Over the past six years, Steve Marion has become something you didn’t know you even needed in this day and age: a guitar hero. And just as contemporary superhero franchise reboots tend to focus less on their protagonists’ powers and more on their flaws, Marion wields his ample talent with the humility of a mortal. On the (mostly) instrumental albums he’s released as Delicate Steve, Marion’s guitar playing is always in the spotlight, but never hogging it—rather, his luminous leads form the emotional undercurrent around which everything else flows. What makes Marion a guitar hero isn’t his technical wizardry, but his music’s mission to help you through dark times.
The home-brewed Afro-psych soundscapes of Marion’s previous releases made him a natural collaborator with contemporaries mining similar terrain, like Yeasayer and Dirty Projectors. Last year, he received the ultimate endorsement when he was invited to play on the latest album from the patron saint of worldly pop experimentation, Paul Simon. Though he makes primarily instrumental music, Marion’s never been shy about using his titles to telegraph his aesthetic, be it the Stevie salute of 2011’s Wondervisions or the nod to Sly Stone’s lo-fi funk masterwork There’s a Riot Goin’ On in “Afria Talks to You” (from 2012’s Positive Force). The track list to his new album, This Is Steve, features no such obvious call-outs, but one song title suggests a doozy of a defining statement: “Cartoon Rock.” This time out, Marion is less interested in rendering his inner visions than in animating rock ‘n’ roll’s most outrageous qualities, using his studio savvy to make it do all the things it can’t in real life.
This Is Steve may share its predecessors’ hermetic, self-made M.O. (with Marion once again performing all the instruments himself), but it’s the first Delicate Steve album that feels like it was designed to be performed in front of a crowd—and an inebriated one at that. The pan-cultural influences and meditative quality that permeated his previous records have given way to more carefree kicks: southern-rock choogle, country-funk fusion, and new-wave spazziness. They’re the sort of hazardous materials that, in less capable hands, could easily degenerate into schticky cliché. But Marion handles them with the same craft and sensitivity he approached his previous, more contemplative records, translating the cheeky into the charming.
The aforementioned “Cartoon Rock” is a case in point: what begins as an exercise in Eliminator-era ZZ Top robo-boogie eventually gives way to a joyous synth-pop coda that sounds like it’s being performed through a CalecoVision. Likewise, on the opening “Animals,” Marion revs up a greasy slide refrain in anticipation of an explosive rock-out eruption; instead, at the expected moment of detonation, it dissolves into a celestial disco daydream. In essence, the song plays out like an alternate-universe version of the 1979 Disco Demolition in Comiskey Park, where instead of blowing up Saturday Night Fever LPs, the raging long-haired ruffians storming the field suddenly break into the hustle.
Marion’s previous records occasionally used vocals for textural effect, but here, he lets his guitar do all the singing. And in light of This Is Steve’s more irreverent approach, those George Harrison-styled leads play an ever more crucial role. They invest otherwise frivolous tunes—like the murky boombox reggae of “Nightlife” and the fidgety, synth-buzzed “Together”—with unexpected pangs of poignancy, while on centerpiece track “Help,” he fashions a “My Sweet Lord” for atheists, its chirpy, cloud-parting guitar melody grounded by a gritty acoustic groove.
But Marion is also conscious of not overusing his string-bending skills for emotionally manipulative effect: one of the album’s most moving moments comes during the nocturnal reverie “Driving,” where the chilly, piano-sculpted post-rock atmospherics give way to a flurry of sunrise-summoning acoustic oscillations. Though it clocks in at just 28 minutes, This Is Steve is generously overstuffed—with gorgeous melodies, compositional quirks, sonic details, goofy ideas, and messy feelings. But if there’s a message Marion is trying to convey through the album’s jammed frequencies, it’s that you’re welcome to have a laugh while his guitar gently weeps.


On their first commercially released album, Das Racist sound unimpressed by their own staggering ability, as if the actual process of making Relax didn't turn out to be as exciting as planning it.

Relax

Das Racist always come off as being at least two steps ahead of whomever they're addressing on or off record, which goes a long way toward explaining what made their 2010 mixtapes, Sit Down, Man and Shut Up, Dude, so inexhaustibly fresh and frankly pretty fucking intimidating to encounter as a critic. A style so reliant on self-reference and continuity doesn't appear to leave much to coincidence, so I'm wondering what to make of my suspicions regarding a line that appeared on both of their completely free mixtapes, but not their first commercially available release: "You should probably buy it." This isn't wholly unexpected-- Heems, Kool AD, and Dapwell can appear unimpressed to a fault, and Relax draws from a rich tradition of antisocial reactions to newfound fame: at times, it's a sour demystification that seeks to define its own backlash à la De La Soul Is Dead, at others a simplified CliffsNotes for people still playing catch up, and a lot of times it simply wants to be Bazooka Tooth. But even as jaded as they sound toward show promoters, industry types, your band, and white dudes on the internet, Relax is a frustrating, occasionally thrilling record that saves its most pervasive indifference for a far more troubling target: itself.
Though they've had plenty of laughs at backpacker indie rap's expense, Relax comes alive whenever it strives for an honorary Def Jux badge. El-P and Danny Brown are the most notable appearances, and what's initially jarring is how much the otherwise impermeable Das Racist universe accommodates a sound that caters more toward its guests' respective dystopian styles, forsaking the weeded-out levity of Sit Down and Shut Up for industrial grind fueled by cheap coke and battery acid. At the outset, they keep up as the brittle title track finds Heems adopting a rawer style to spit a bracing, strikingly plainspoken verse about his upbringing. Meanwhile, "Michael Jackson" pays homage to the Chinese fire drill productions of Heatmakerz and AraabMuzik, its brainwashing hook reminiscent of "Dipset (Santana's Town)"'s infamous "like Kurt Cobain was here!" in terms of chantable celebrity nonsense. When Relax revisits this sort of bludgeoning approach ("Selena", "Punjabi Song"), you sense the incomplete framework of a record meant to be aesthetically unified and audience-dividing: "Michael Jackson" and the other initially punishing tracks shuttle from "I absolutely cannot stand this song" to "I absolutely cannot get this song out of my head" in about the same amount of time "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" did.
While it would be fascinating to see how their style translates with a mainstream feature (a la Tyler, the Creator's guest spots with Pusha T and the Game), the retrenchment into their inner circle for inspiration rarely feels reactionary here: Yeasayer's Anand Wilder and Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij produce, but without credit, you'd have no idea which tracks are theirs. Likewise, their exercise in total lyrical abstraction with El-P comes more naturally than Sit Down, Man's title track, and "Power" is maybe the one track here that can stand up to jaw-dropping quote machines like "hahahaha jk?" or "Return to Innocence" thanks to show-stealing verses from Danny Brown and Despot.
And yet, it's the hook from "Power" that gets to the discomforting center of Relax: "It's too easy. Even if I told you about it, you probably wouldn't even believe me." Like many highly intelligent people who can succeed in any number of pursuits, Das Racist sound unimpressed by their own staggering ability (Heems' much-quoted "I'm fucking great at rapping!" from "Michael Jackson" notwithstanding), as if they got to this point just to see if they could do it, and all of a sudden the actual process of making Relax didn't turn out to be as exciting as planning it. Adopting the same over-it tone they've taken during any number of clueless "hey, these funny guys are really smart!" interviews, hooks like "give us all your money... love everybody" from "Brand New Dance" are the sound of their losing interest in real time. If they're kidding, it's an entry-level joke aimed at...I dunno, proactive behavior in hip-hop? But the disengaged tone starts to wear when it becomes unclear whether Kool AD and Heems are still interested in making rap music anymore as opposed to merely listening to it, rattling off disconnected thoughts not too different from the avalanche of their Twitter feeds-- stray jokes, pan-cultural namedrops, the occasional astute observation, and a slew of repurposed praise, but no real context to prove broader points. After delivering some of the sharpest cultural criticism in any field on Sit Down and Shut Up, when they swipe at low-hanging fruit like "rapgenius.com is white devil sophistry/ Urban Dictionary is for demons with college degrees," there's little insight, just the whiff of audience/performer codependence.
So then what's Shut Up, Dude's "Rainbow in the Dark" doing here? It's still a mindblowing piece of work and welcome in any form, but the fit couldn't be more strange-- both the beat and the lyrics have a generosity in spirit that sheds light on an issue that you can lose sight of while focusing on its attitude or production choices: they're hardly rapping at all here. And when they do, it's almost like 10th-season The Simpsons, where the sheer dropoff in quotability is actually uncomfortable to endure. It's understandable that they'd want to move beyond mere applause for being as handy with Marina Abramovic as they are with Rick Ross' "9 Piece", but they've thrown out their entirely unique point of view-- still their greatest resource-- with it.
While they've made great use of deconstructive syntax, repetition, gibberish, and in-jokes in the past, too much of Relax simply feels like dead air: the clock-watching countdown of "Happy Rappy", the last minute and a half of the title track that sounds like a cackling Autotune meeting its death in a food processor, "Celebration" and "The Trick"'s listless singing, and "Punjabi Song" tripping over its drunk reiteration all merely pass time during tracks already stripped to the bone on a very short record. And while I won't begrudge Das Racist for wanting to make straight-up dance tracks like "Girl" or "Booty in the Air", compared to "Shorty Said", "Irresponsible", or the many other songs they've made that worked as well in Gchat nerd-out sessions as they did in house parties, it's tough to give these one-note riffs the benefit of the doubt. They can do better, but do they even want to?
To this point, they've answered the question of "are they really serious?" in the affirmative or made it a moot point-- whether you just liked the Big Punisher quotes, casually accepted being called a white demon for the greater good, or both, their work could be enjoyed on any number of levels. But Relax feels like it's hovering over a more pernicious escape clause-- "you don't get it." Interpreted through telling lyrics like "when you see me on the streets, don't bother me," "I don't know why people think we give a fuck so often," or, as the closing argument in "Celebration" goes, "you could ask what it is, but I still wouldn't tell you," the title of Relax feels more like a statement of aggression, Das Racist shifting the blame to the listener for their own lack of commitment.


Some bands embrace consistency, others shy away, possibly fearing the alure of comfortability and the possible stagnation it might eventually ...

The Ownerz

Some bands embrace consistency, others shy away, possibly fearing the alure of comfortability and the possible stagnation it might eventually result in. For established artists, there's no more sleep-depriving quandry than whether to stick with a successful, proven formula or throw it all out the window in favor of a radical change. But even for a few of those lucky superstars, it just comes naturally, without any deep contemplation. Critically speaking, bands who gravitate toward change get high marks for their willingness to continually invent and to challenge convention; the water-treaders simply get fans. It's unfair on any number of levels, I suppose, but it's with that understanding that I declare Gang Starr among the most consistent acts in hip-hop.
Ever since Step in the Arena and Daily Operation laid down the law for East Coast hip-hop back in '91 and '92, Gang Starr have slowed their pace with an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" aesthetic, releasing albums every four or five years between Guru and DJ Premier's increasingly busy extracurricular schedules. And while they haven't broken any new ground since those early 90s classics, their records have been astoundingly solid in bearing the standards set by those canonical discs.
In the five years since Moment of Truth, Guru and Primo have watched as the face of mainstream hip-hop hardened into a countenance chiseled out with bling-bling braggadocio and self-hating diatribes. Fortunately, for a duo that's been hard from day one-- don't let that No More Mr. Nice Guy cover fool you-- there's a distinct possibility their credibility could translate into commercial success, almost as if the rap world has finally caught up with a group that was ten years ahead of its time. The combination of Guru's tough, streetwise lyrics and delivery and Premier's highly polished production fits in perfectly as an honest alternative to today's heavy rotation; it's a situation Gang Starr are well aware of, judging from several lyrical and interlude reminders that pop up throughout The Ownerz.
The record's first single, "Skills", is a prime example of its overall potential to launch Gang Starr into the mainstream with the respect they've enjoyed in the underground intact. Carried by the kind of popping bassline and sucka-challenging bravado that's powered all of their classic cuts, it's incredibly catchy without being overtly commercial. Throw in a couple of high-profile cameos-- most notably Jadakiss' firespitting verse on "Rite Where U Stand" and Snoop Dogg's right-at-home drawling over Premier's "In This Life..." beat (returning the favor of some beats Primo cooked up for his Paid tha Cost to Be da Bo$$ LP)-- and The Ownerz could accomplish that rarest of feats: commercial success that doesn't require a sacrifice of integrity.
Naturally, not all of the guest spots are wildly triumphant-- back-to-back appearances by Fat Joe, M.O.P., Big Shug and Freddie Foxx on "Who Got Gunz" and "Capture (Militia Pt. 3)" make for a thuggish lag right in the middle of the record, but the flow gets right back in line with the pair of cameo-free tracks that follow. As has been customary on Gang Starr records since Daily Operation, Guru steps aside for some young emcees to prove their worth on the mic: NYG'z and H. Stax contribute solid verses to "Same Team, No Games" and Smiley the Ghetto Child absolutely tears shit up-- like a young Nas or Jeru the Damaja-- on the brief "Werdz From The Ghetto Child". Still, even though the guest spots cover a wide range of hip-hop status levels, they all work to enforce Guru and Premier's aesthetic of consistency-- whether it's Jadakiss or NYG'z, the emcee has to make his style work with Gang Starr, not the other way around.
But all this talk of cameos distracts from all the unassisted cuts that prove Guru and Premier haven't lost an ounce of chemistry in their 14 years together. Primo's jazzy horn breaks underscore Guru's eloquent manifestos with assured refinement on every single track they turn on their own (which, impressively for a major-label hip-hop release, is over half the record), even redeeming what would've been the record's weakest cut with a bit of imagination: a reposession of Curtis Mayfield's "Kung Fu" that makes Guru's mack move narrative on "Nice Girl, Wrong Place" a little easier to stomach. For the record, Guru's candor and lack of romanticism are rather refreshing in this context-- just like hot pants, what you see is what you get.
The Ownerz will have to hold Gang Starr fans over while Premier contracts out beats for usually the only good cuts on otherwise sub-par rap records, and Guru releases another tepid Jazzmatazz or (God forbid) Baldhead Slick & da Click LP. We can't expect a new Gang Starr record until 2007 or 2008, but in the meantime, there's plenty here to celebrate for consistency's sake-- because for what they've lacked in evolution, Guru and Premier have more than repaid in reliability. And while it's probably too late in their career for a breakout hit record, more people are definitely going to know who they are, which will hopefully translate into the same veneration from the establishment they've enjoyed from their fans since back in the day.


Where the South Korean singer, songwriter, and producer’s deep house is laid-back and breezy, her rapping is quietly, coolly defiant.

Sail the Seven Seas

South Korean songwriter, singer, and producer 박혜진 Park Hye Jin’s style might be described as “casual confrontation.” Despite the smoothness of her burnished deep house, she is aggressively matter-of-fact about who she is and what she stands for. One of her earliest singles was called “I DON’T CARE,” after all. But her self-released new album, Sail the Seven Seas, suggests that she’s had a rough time of late. Life on the road—years of touring combined with moves from Seoul to Melbourne, London, and Los Angeles—heightened her self-reliance and intensified her loneliness. Despite its summery vibes, Sail the Seven Seas is often stormy going, venturing into choppy emotional waters that occasionally leave her adrift in her feelings.
Park’s best work has surfed between twinkling house melodies and ruthlessly intense drums. Her style is both distinctive and versatile, folding in disparate genre experiments while always highlighting her signature instrument: her voice. Park’s monotone can be inventive: singing, rapping, spitting, and sighing her lyrics to both dreamy and punishing effect. On a song like “Can you,” the interplay between the pulse of her infatuation and the undertow of her contempt felt panoramic, a portrait of a woman in deep romantic conflict.
So far, though, she hasn’t quite been able to hold a song together with her voice alone. Park falls into this trap at several points on Sail the Seven Seas, where scaled-back production leaves her already shaky vocals painfully front and center. The title track’s lyrics are emotionally naked, but the wistful piano is musically inert, failing to transport her wish-in-a-bottle longing anywhere at all. Her voice is better served when it’s employed as a percussive tool. She tears into her verses with gusto on “Bklyn Babe” and “Sex on the Beach,” which feature some of her best rapping to date. But she undercuts that versatility by too often falling back on blunt-force repetition. The annoyance and desperation implied in the hook of “Tryna Get to over You” doesn’t come through in her disaffected chant, and though “N.Y.C.” features some cool sonic detailing, her mantra-like loop (“New York City… New York City…”) falls flat.
After her previous forays into footwork, techno, and trap, Sail the Seven Seas folds chillwave into Park’s repertoire. Synths flare and fade like sunsets on “Foreigner,” while a dusky guitar riff opens up Park’s leapfrogging verses on “Bklyn Babe.” These tropical accents are a vehicle for some fraught emotions. Frustration is a major theme, and throughout the album, Park addresses a litany of slights and insults in funny, plainspoken language. On “Foreigner,” she recounts the indignities of the immigration process in a venomous deadpan: “Let me get a green card, I don’t want to marry you! I don’t need you for a green card! I’m fucking talented!” The stupidity of the hurdles that Park has to put up with calls for a sharp rebuke, and she delivers.
As satisfying as it can be to hear Park light into rude employees, border stooges, clueless suits, and racist assholes, one longs for the artist to find some sense of safety and security so that she’s not constantly on the defensive. Her greatest work reconciles hardness and softness, strength and vulnerability. The penultimate track, “California,” fuses a rollicking drum break with breezy G-funk synths, making full use of her talents as a rapper, and ends with a call-and-response in Korean that she answers for herself: “Who’s the one? I’m the one.” Whether this self-produced, self-released album is meant as a career reset or a way of marking time between bigger projects, Sail the Seven Seas is a reminder that Park doesn’t take directions from anyone.


Throughout the seven gorgeous, baroque-folk songs from Boston outfit Mutual Benefit’s proper debut LP Love’s Crushing Diamond, the music can be described in a number of simple ways: loving, patient, warmhearted, and unfailingly hopeful.

Love's Crushing Diamond

Mutual Benefit’s proper debut LP Love’s Crushing Diamond can be described in a number of simple ways: loving, patient, warmhearted, unfailingly hopeful. Pretty much the utmost qualities you’d want out of a human being, right? Those descriptors are certainly less trustworthy when applied to art, as they’re often considered the byproducts of complacency, or at least a warning sign. Whenever a band comes along that people tell you is “necessary," they’re probably ripping shit up, telling you what to think, espousing conflict against music and listeners that got a little too comfy. Mutual Benefit isn’t revolutionary and Love’s Crushing Diamond is not going to judge you. But in no way is Jordan Lee a complacent songwriter. In fact, throughout this collection of seven gorgeous, baroque-folk songs, he’s dealing in perhaps the most pervasive and difficult internal battle of all: how can you be a loving, patient, warmhearted and unfailingly hopeful person in an environment that makes it far easier to not give a shit?
A good start is to surround yourself with fellow warriors of the meek—Mutual Benefit brings to mind the “collective” format, “Animal” or otherwise, that played a large role in defining the tone of indie rock during the early 2000s. Think of Microphones, Sparklehorse, Danielson Famile, Akron/Family, early Sufjan Stevens and Devendra Banhart, where an open-ended “band” surrounds a central voice seeking to explore the ideas of what “folk” or roots music really means. Mutual Benefit certainly qualifies, though not in the way that equates “folk” with rusticity, an acoustic guitar and rigid verse-chorus structure. Songs invariably rise out of twenty or so seconds of everyone getting situated, tapping out piano riffs, trying to get the percussion in rhythm and determining who’s going to sing. From there on out, there’s often contain one central melody and a clearly elucidated mood that spools throughout, while the arrangements are surprising and intuitive, like everyone involved might be swapping instruments as it goes along.
The sound here is proudly analog, though not lo-fi, and Lee’s songs are thick, but not dense. Beginning with his lightly enunciated vocals, soft strands are collected and continuously bundled throughout and nuzzled by reverb without being smothered by it, a big ball of sonic yarn to fall into. Some curious threads peek through to add a shock of color: the banjo lacing Lee’s awestruck infatuation on “Advanced Falconry”, household percussion clacking throughout “‘Let’s Play’/Statue of a Man”, gentle, female harmonies and a steady drum machine tick lending comfort to a wayward drug addict on “That Light That's Blinding” and an indeterminate synthesized instrument playing the glowing riff that explains the title of “Golden Wake."
On that particular song, a riverside meditation leads Lee to quitting his job and realizing “we weren’t made to be afraid.” That’s a major part of the plot engine in cubicle revenge fantasy Office Spaceand a motivating thread throughout the majority of chillwave, another genre thought to be a reaction to an increasingly hostile and hopeless time for socioeconomics. But Love’s Crushing Diamond is not folk in the escapist sense either, though it was recorded during a “year of notable absences” in San Diego, Austin and Boston. Many of these songs take place in mundane, unglamorous locales—city trains, mining towns, cornfields, motel rooms. And in Lee's point of view, you need to discover a little space within those places that you can call your own and then invite some people to share it with. Yeah, it does skew kinda hippie, as Lee’s lyrics detail picking roses by the lake and how a river can’t help but keep on keepin’ on. That’s perfectly fine within the scheme of Love’s Crushing Diamond, which always sounds populated in a way that stresses its central themes of getting your own shit together so you’re better prepared to care for someone else.
This kind of perspective gives Mutual Benefit an unintended timeliness as well. As much as you want to consider music objectively, without some kind of sociological context, think of it this way: when Sufjan, Animal Collective and freak-folk came about, any afterglow of post-9/11 togetherness had given way to a terribly divisive and dirty presidential election, an escalating, vaguely defined war and a general sense that the country was being bullied into submission from the inside. This sort of music would inevitably be criticized for being apolitical and wimpy, but having seen where all this aggression got us, how could Sung Tongs or Cripple Crow not seem like the solution?
Love’s Crushing Diamond works in a similar way and opens itself up to some of the same criticisms, when being positive is the quickest way to have your sincerity questioned. Lee concedes these points without giving in, and makes the case that kindness is in no way a sign of weakness: Diamond’s seven-minute, closing reverie “Strong Swimmer” acknowledges that it takes an Olympian level of strength to swim against the tide of negativity, but it’s the only choice. During “‘Let’s Play/Statue of a Man,” Lee sings “There’s always love/when you think there’s none to give”, true whether it’s “tattered, strained or torn.” I can’t think of a statement that sounds more necessary.


The songs on M.C. Taylor's fourth album as Hiss Golden Messenger pose questions about spiritual doubt rather than offer the easy reassurances familiar to rousing, populist folk rock. He draws from traditional Piedmont music as well as AM Gold country, jazz, rock, and pop.

Haw

“Sufferer (Love My Conqueror)”, a standout on Hiss Golden Messenger’s fourth album, Haw, is ostensibly a folk rock song, but instead of the expected fiddle playing the solo, there’s an disarmingly baroque string section. On the bridge it swoops and bends dramatically, but as the song winds down, the strings split in two, flowing against each other in strange currents and eddies-- not unlike the North Carolina river that gives the album its title. It’s a powerful moment, one that imbues some real drama into a song that functions as a kind of spiritual interrogation. Is God a liberator or a conqueror? Does man rejoice or despair in His dominion? That ornate string section doesn't skirt the question.
Over the last few years, young folk revivalists have turned to traditional American music as a vehicle for spiritual catharsis: Mumford and Sons tick off rousing anthems like they’re punching a clock, the Lumineers engineer pre-industrial sing-alongs, and Old Crow Medicine Show soldier on as a jam-band comprised of historical re-enactors. At its best, this trend imagines pop music as a potentially communal thing, intended for public experience rather than headphones isolation. In less thoughtful incarnations, the nuances of craft are often jettisoned in favor of fervency. Based out of Durham, North Carolina, Hiss Golden Messenger offers a fine corrective to the recent rash of folk anthems: The songs on Haw pose questions rather than offer easy reassurances, and head Messenger M.C. Taylor is more concerned with spiritual doubt than any kind of comforting certainty.
After nearly a decade with the San Francisco Americana act the Court and Spark, Taylor moved from his native California about as far east as he could, settling in the Tarheel State in the late 2000s. With a degree in folklore from UNC, Taylor has a deep knowledge of Southern folk music, especially that of the Piedmont region of North Carolina. But Hiss Golden Messenger is never beholden to tradition. There are shades of Charlie Poole and Charley Patton in these songs, but also tinges of AM Gold country, jazz, rock, and singer-songwriter pop. So “Sufferer (Love My Conqueror)” includes not only that odd string section, but also gentle bursts of rural psychedelia and backing vocals tinged with both gospel and the Gospel. “Cheerwine Easter”, named for a regional soft drink, is gentle country soul with a sturdy beat and, out of nowhere, a low and lovely sax solo courtesy of Bobby Crow.
Haw is fuller and more adventurous even than 2011’s Poor Moon, with a broader musical palette. It feels more rooted in the Piedmont, thanks to a band that includes Megafaun’s Phil Cook, Black Twig Picker Nathan Bowles, and William Tyler. Notwithstanding the album’s spiritual crisis, the best moments on Haw are also some of the most upbeat and celebratory. “I've Got a Name for the Newborn Child” bounces along on Scott Hirsch’s buoyant bassline; in the promise of a new family, the band channels an excitement that most artists reserve for romance. Likewise, Terry Lonergan’s scissoring high-hat beat lends some joyful pomp to “Sweet as John Hurt”, a tribute to the Mississippi bluesman. But Hiss Golden Messenger remains Taylor’s project, and he exhibits a folksy charisma in this central role. His voice flattens out the hard consonants and savors the softer vowels, suggesting a regional dialect from some dark Tarheel holler. He summons immense gravity for the dark “Devotion” just as easily as he conveys a sense of unburdening on “Busted Note”. Rarely does dark doubt sound quite so inviting. Taylor understands that faith-- in God, in music, in the flow of the Haw-- is more about the struggle than the resolution.


The ambient composer goes back to raiding his decades-deep personal archives for vintage tape to revive with new perspective and fresh feeling.

Lamentations

Though he deals in abstract sound, William Basinski in many ways resembles a visual artist. It was a picture—the diagram of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp’s tape-delay system on the cover of Discreet Music—that catalyzed his interest in that style of composition. His most famous creation, The Disintegration Loops, is as strongly associated with an image—the smoldering New York skyline after the 9/11 attacks—as it is with magnetic tape shedding its last oxides. And there is something sculptor-like about his intimacy with plastic loops, more attuned to the transient truth of the medium than the immortal dream of recorded sound. All of this fits with his great theme of mortal decline.
The best description of Basinski’s music, including his latest album, Lamentations, is found in art rather than music theory. Mise en abyme, which literally means “put into the abyss,” describes an infinite sequence nested in different levels of reality: a story within a story, a picture within a picture, a reflection trapped between mirrors. By playing with loops as vivid as human lives—a wisp of piano, a speck of opera, a ripple of radio static—against one another, Basinski produces feedback loops that repeat until they become vanishingly small, not so much ending as slipping beyond our ken.
Last year, Basinski released On Time Out of Time, for which he worked with scientists to capture the sound of two black holes merging more than a billion years ago. He called it a love story. While the high-tech collaboration was unusual for him, the personal touch wasn’t, and on Lamentations, he’s back to raiding his decades-deep personal archives for vintage tape to revive with new perspective and fresh feeling. If the beauty and dread of Lamentations plays out on a less dwarfing scale, the galactic rumble of the first song, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” sounds as much like a black hole as anything on Time did, and the album’s theme has a sort of self-swallowing gravity.
Lamentations shares a title with the biblical poem of exile and loss (“How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!”) and, to drive the point home, adds a whiff of Miltonic damnation with a track called “Paradise Lost.” “O, My Daughter, O, My Sorrow,” a study Basinski made for Robert Wilson’s opera The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, is a haunting centerpiece. It integrates a passage of Svetlana Spajic singing an old Balkan song, a mother-daughter dialogue that doubles as one’s lament and the other’s celebration of the so-called loss of innocence. Focusing on a line that translates as “Out of joy, I could not fall asleep,” the track is exhilarating, and choked human emotion somehow rises through the mechanical phrasings of the loops. Other operatic samples appear in “All These Too, I, I Love”—chopped into mellifluous vowels for a moment of brilliant simplicity recalling Gas’s Pop—and “Please, This Shit Has Got to Stop.”
That frank colloquial title breaks the elevated register, but there’s room for all in Basinski’s quiet threnody for one. If “Fin” is a doomsaying ending, where remnants of life flicker through vast, buzzing machinery, his great sorrow also allows kinder prophecies glint through, as on “Transfiguration,” which sounds like a string quartet casting a hesitant, hopeful theme into the abyss of the unknown. Paradise may forever be lost, but this elegant elegy is worth many returns.

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The Scottish power-pop band keeps things light on an album distinguished by subtle touches and twilight grooves.

Nothing Lasts Forever

Nothing Lasts Forever may seem like a peculiar choice of an album title for Teenage Fanclub, a group devoted to preserving the sound and sensibility of the guitar-pop explosion of the mid-1960s. Six-string traditionalists even when they drowned their melodies in fuzz, the band assimilated the innovations of the Byrds and the Beach Boys, becoming one of the most enduring practitioners of power-pop—a catch-all term encompassing any rock group bearing an undisguised debt to the bright, punchy sounds of the Beatles and their disciples. Their steadfast adherence to the jangle, chime, and sigh of harmonies and hooks suggested Teenage Fanclub was suspended in time, untouched by either shifting fashions or the weathering of age.
Once wielding guitars gnarly enough to make them peers of Nirvana, Teenage Fanclub abandoned any pretext of sounding contemporary at the moment Britpop popularized the very aesthetic they championed. At the height of Cool Britannia, they turned to the American West Coast—their 1997 album Songs from Northern Britain suggested the UK was located somewhere in Laurel Canyon—adding softer vocal harmonies and steady strums, elements that became foundational to Teenage Fanclub. These qualities give the band a gentle touch that feels welcoming even when they’re singing about disquieting subjects, as they often did on 2021’s Endless Arcade, where they learned how to proceed without founding bassist Gerard Love and as their chief singer/songwriter Norman Blake came to terms with the end of his marriage.
Despite its title, Nothing Lasts Forever feels settled, as if the group has accepted the transient nature of the seasons. They introduce this theme immediately with “Foreign Land,” a tranquil tune that opens with Blake declaring “It’s time to move along/And leave the past behind me.” The forward motion echoes throughout Nothing Lasts Forever. In “I Left a Light On,” Blake clings to the notion that there’s a way to emerge from the darkness, a wish that’s later fulfilled in the amiable ramble “Back to the Light.” Raymond McGinley, Blake’s lieutenant songwriter in Teenage Fanclub, is on the same wavelength, declaring that he’s “Tired of Being Alone” and surmising that “everyone feels better lovered.”
The warmth emanating from the lyrics flows throughout Nothing Lasts Forever. Teenage Fanclub never quickens the pace or belabors the melodies, choosing to luxuriate in their twilight grooves. The contained chemistry isn’t insular or monochromatic: They balance the tempered Beach Boys bounce of “Self-Sedation” with the extended exhale of the shimmering closer “I Will Love You.” Such subtle shifts in tone underscore how Teenage Fanclub now specializes in nuance, eschewing production frills in favor of unadorned, subtle colorings. Vocal harmonies glide in and out of the mix, keyboardist Euros Childs adds empathetic texture, and the steady sway of strummed guitars anchor the band more than the backbeat. Instead of driving down on the crystalline hook that powers “See the Light,” the band lets it drift and linger; it sounds as if they’re marveling at its contours. The songcraft matters but so does the interplay, and that’s why Teenage Fanclub’s power-pop still resonates. They’re not interested in crafting the platonic ideal of an AM pop song—they’re using pop music as a lifeline.


Continuing the straightforward synthetic soul of So This Is Goodbye, Junior Boys' third LP is lush-- sometimes to the point of textural overload.

Begone Dull Care

Five years ago, Junior Boys-- Canadians with an eye on London's turn-of-the-millennium dancefloor innovations-- merged UK garage's sugary micro-programming with winsome synth-pop hooks and melancholy vocals on their debut album, Last Exit. The record made electronically attuned critics gush, but unlike a lot of supposed crossovers, you could also imagine the Boys reaching a wider indie audience: Frontman/mastermind Jeremy Greenspan and then-partner Johnny Dark learned well from their white-label heroes, while Greenspan's voice oozed a familiar strain of bedridden heartbreak.
Yet Greenspan hesitantly distanced himself from comparisons to indie heartthrobs-- perhaps that's one reason why Last Exit failed to find the mass collegiate audience that turned the Postal Service into the 21st-century's indie-pop/electronic hybrid of choice. Junior Boys' sophomore LP, So This Is Goodbye, dropped two years later with a more traditional sound rooted in classy 1980s electro-funk, trading Last Exit's pinprick jolts of joy for the languid sadness of guys in sharp suits. Commercially, it seems to have been a canny move; a Carl Craig remix of "Like a Child" even brought an improbable Grammy nod. While So This Is Goodbye hardly troubled the Billboard Hot 100, it (deservedly) received some of the attention denied the acclaimed but under-heard Last Exit.
Listening to the new Begone Dull Care, it seems the more straightforward synthetic soul of So This Is Goodbye will remain the Boys' template for the foreseeable future. Lush, sometimes to the point of textural overload, Begone is audibly the work of band that's now been honing its chops for a decade. Whatever its budget, the album definitely sounds like the product of million-dollar multi-tracking. That's helpful when you're referencing an era where even cheap keyboards could put a dent in the fattest bankroll. And listeners might also need to cash-in their pocket change for some swank studio gear if they want to fully enjoy Greenspan and partner Matt Didemus' delicately fussed-over handclaps and scissored vox and lugubrious call-and-response synths.
That's not to totally discount the duo's talent as tunesmiths-- even if "Hazel" is the only thing here that might survive being thrown to the wolves of pop radio-- but sometimes Greenspan and Didemus' attention to detail is the only thing that redeems the album's occasionally sketchy songwriting. At Begone's weakest, the tracks could be easily dismissed as slickly assembled bouts of pre- and post-rave deja vu. The Tangerine-ian arpeggiated bass-synth pattern on "Work" is played-out, almost shtick-y, though the bell-like melody adds an eerie touch. But this slightly unexpected nod to old-school bleep techno bleakness, and Greenspan's latest turn as breathy dude-diva, isn't quite enough to sell a six-minute song to anyone but über-fans or audiophiles. Since I'm not much of an audiophile, but did consider myself an über-fan, I kept waiting for "Work" (and several other songs) to punch something other than my nostalgia switch. In vain, as it turned out.
So what's Begone's draw, especially for those of us who fell in love with the affecting future-funk experiments of the Boys' early work? Well as mentioned above, it is hard not to marvel at how assured the Boys have grown as producers. The album's best tunes, like "Bits and Pieces", retain the mix of ennui and ebullience that marked early singles like "Birthday", but with minimalist restraint traded for so many perfectly placed period touches that you may have trouble picking out your favorite bit: Maybe it's the little glitch-hiccup breakdown? Or the saxophone that slides in mid-track from soft-rock central casting? If Begone is repeat-play worthy, and I'd argue it is, it might be down to the Boys' ever-growing skill as arrangers. ("Bits and Pieces" combines maybe a dozen compositional elements without coming off like a claustrophobic cut-and-paste exercise.) And they're not averse to the occasional sonic curveball. (Is that a banjo on the whimsical "Dull To Pause"?) Plus for all my grousing, it's hard to deny that the album's high-gloss shine can occasionally be seductive in its own right, at least if you've got love for a certain brand of glitz.
Which leads to my nagging worry about the trajectory the Boys seem to be following. The weaker tunes on Last Exit were carried by the incongruity of their component parts; you overlooked an undercooked melody, say, because the band had come up with such a compelling and unexpected hybrid. As Greenspan and Didemus have settled into a classicist groove, they're running a risk well-known to their mid-80s influences. It was a short trip from well-produced woe into camp sterility, and well-regarded uptown aesthetes like the Blue Nile were always only a mixing board misstep from guys peddling digitized woodwinds for cocktail loungers. So when I call Begone Dull Care a "mature" album, know it skirts both the positive and negative connotations of one of the most divisive adjectives in pop's lexicon.


Drink More Water 5 is the first tape iLoveMakonnen has released since "Tuesday" rocketed him to minor fame, and so it's unsurprising that it's starrier and more polished than anything else in the series. He's a powerful complementary force, whether he's singing hooks or delivering verses alongside rappers who are tonally different.

Drink More Water 5

"Millennial" is one of those terms whose definition was nebulous even before it reached a supersaturation point in the culture—feel free to file it alongside "indie" and "hipster" in that regard—but if there’s any one artist who grasps its spirit, it’s Makonnen Sheran, the singer and rapper who records as iLoveMakonnen. His label boss Drake is more successful and more readily meme-able, and there are plenty of rappers who are younger and/or more stereotypically "youthful," but no one can match Makonnen’s omnivorousness, his openness, his sense of possibility. He’s a product of the Internet and incredible tragedy: A witness to the accidental death of his best friend at age 18, he spent seven years bouncing between jail, house arrest, and probationary purgatory. The online world served as a safe haven, a place for therapy and creative expression. He posted songs on Myspace, interviewed musicians and businesspeople on his personal blog, wrote and sang and drew and designed. His probation finally ended in May 2014; three months later, the most popular rapper in the world had hopped onto one of his songs.
Perhaps it’s easy for young people to see themselves in Makonnen because many of them grew up spending their nights the same way: devouring every bit of culture in sight whether it’s the Killers’ greatest hits or old episodes of "Dragon Ball Z", drowning themselves in tabs they never get around to reading. A few clicks away from some kind of fame, whether it’s 15 minutes on Twitter or a top 15 hit on the Billboard charts: that’s life if you came of age on the Internet, and Makonnen’s no different.
That’s not to suggest that "Tuesday" was a fluke, or a product of sheer coincidence rather than talent or hard work. It became a hit because of Makonnen’s genial nature, his oddball charisma, and his ability to craft a perfect, simple hook, something that stood out even when he was churning out Bandcamp tapes of basement pop that sounded more like Ariel Pink than anything out of OVO’s shadowy, hyper-lean catalogue. You can hear it in the early versions of songs like "I Don’t Sell Molly No More" and "Whip It", in arrangements that are raw but ooze melody. Self-produced until 2013, his work took an immediate leap forward when he began working with outside producers on 2014 mixtape Drink More Water 4. Played against strange, vaguely gothic beats with real momentum and heft rather than the plinky, tinny sounds of his keyboard, Makonnen's own strangeness and versatility was amplified: his workmanlike relationship with drugs and alcohol, his wobbly vocal takes, the way he doodles arrhythmically like a kid coloring with the wrong hand. The iLoveMakonnen EP, released later that year (and again, with a slightly adjusted tracklist, a little later still), took that new formula and refined it further.
Drink More Water 5 is the first tape he's released since "Tuesday" rocketed him to minor fame, and so it's unsurprising that it's starrier and more polished than anything else in the series. But it also serves to illustrate a point you could've made at any point in the last few years: Makonnen songs are inherently risky propositions, destined to become impossibly sticky earworms or blatant failures with no intermediate outcomes in sight. Put another way, he's not interested in hitting singles or doubles: every swing is either a home run or a flagrant, wild strikeout. In "Tuesday" and "I Don't Sell Molly No More"—and his verse on Father's louche breakout single "Look at Wrist", a sing-song transmission from another dimension—he managed the former, and DMW5 has a few of its own, particularly the songs that feature other, more conventional rappers.
In the same way Makonnen took a step forward when he emerged from his DIY cocoon to work with other producers, he's a powerful complementary force, whether he's singing hooks or delivering verses alongside rappers who are tonally different. On the remixed version of "Whip It", he's a welcome burst of color against the hyperkinetic human fireworks of Migos; on "No Ma'am" and the remix of his earlier "Dodging 12", his melancholy spills over the edges of harder-edged, more aggressive drug rapping.
Songs like this are exceptions to the rule on DMW5. Much of the tape's remainder—and the solo Makonnen tracks in particular—are almost tuneless, sketches that are shroomy and distant rather than focused and catchy. Some, like the dewy "Super Clean" or "Other Guys", sound like they bubbled up from the minds of producers like James Ferraro or Daniel Lopatin c. Replica; others still, like stark confessional "Get Loose With Me", are an inch away from the blue, piano-pounding work of Spencer Krug's Moonface. Makonnen is not a particularly skillful singer or lyricist, so these songs are dependent on qualities that are a little more unpredictable or intangible: emotional rawness, amateurish intimacy, a stray line or melodic phrase happening to click into place.
Beyond its value as a standalone release, DMW5 invites larger questions about Makonnen's future as a mainstream star and the cap on his commercial potential. He's planning to release his major label debut later this year, and as the first member of OVO to come from outside of Drake's Toronto cabal, there's a lot of hope being placed on his ability to keep cobbling hooks together, like someone taking handfuls of spare parts and building capable sedans out of them. Can he crack down and deliver an album chock-full of heat rocks like "Tuesday"? It's within the realm of possibility.
But it seems much more likely that he'll follow in the footsteps of his greatest influence, the BasedGod: operating from the periphery, prolific and defiant, largely unconcerned with structure or melody or convention, opening doors for contemporaries who are more focused and/or traditionally skilled. (These doors don't have to be musical, either; consider Makonnen's fluid, nuanced response to questions about his sexuality in this New York Times profile.) In the meantime we're left with tapes like this, floating in the ether, being asked to accomplish things their creator doesn't seem all that interested in pursuing.


No one does baroque filth like Ty Dolla $ign. Free TC is an R&B epic of wanton bedroom jams, filled to the brim with charming grossness, actual prayers, and E-40. If you've been wondering what kind of sex music to play while you hump in your driverless car, this is it.

Free TC

There is a song on Ty Dolla $ign's first mixtape, Hou$e on the Hill, that wouldn't be out of place in a Los Angeles Philharmonic pops concert. On the track, an orchestral sample dances under the near-onomatopoeic effect of Ty's "up and down, up and down, up and down-down-down" chant. The song's title? "Stripper Pole".
Ty has honed this musically refined yet lyrically raunchy aesthetic for years, from his Raw & Bangin*'* tapes to his breakout single "My Cabana", to the louche Beach House series to last month's made-in-a-day Airplane Mode. It's a balancing act very few have mastered—and Ty bows to or has recruited anyone who has here—but he does it on a hoverboard while texting two or 10 girls.
To be sure, it helps that his musical gifts are many: he writes hooks that lodge in your head for weeks and he arranges four-part harmonies like an R&B George Martin. His molasses-dipped voice never misses a note even when it darts up into falsetto. He's stoked about sweeping orchestrations, '80s smooth jazz sax solos, and acoustic songs with Babyface. His confidence is why he flies when he swings for the fences on his new album, Free TC. On its dazzling highlight, "Miracle/Wherever", TC, the album's incarcerated namesake and Ty's younger brother, sings a vibrato-heavy hymn of perseverance over a prison phone. Midway through, Ty joins in. After putting God first and damning the haters with the conviction of a newly born-again Christian, he begins to pray. Musically, the shift is exquisite. But what's truly special is Ty's porcelain, Prince-like falsetto. Over dirty 808s and a stirring chord progression, his pristine voice pops out of the ether singing about—what else?—lying with a woman in the, uh, biblical sense. Ty said he spent $60,000 of his own money on the Benjamin Wright Orchestra. If all that bought was the final 20 seconds of "Wherever", he should consider it money well spent.
Predecessors who've climbed that Lucite-heel littered stairway to heaven before Ty are thanked outright. On "Blasé", the best song currently in radio rotation, Ty sings, "I think I'm Nate Dogg." Obviously. Love notes like "When I See Ya" sound ripped right from Nate's notebook. Another standout, "Credit", features Sevyn Streeter and recalls "Be Careful", R. Kelly's collaboration with Sparkle. Kellz actually makes an appearance on the sleek and glittery "Actress", which sounds far more like Hollywood than the Valley. "Straight Up", the album's sexiest song, samples Patrice Rushen's quiet storm classic, "Settle for My Love" and finds Jagged Edge downgrading their classic proposal from the altar to the bar.
Ty's up to his old "how many hoes?" tricks on Free TC, too, even if a woman is responsible for writing "Horses in the Stable". You can credit both his fireside manner and his forthright delivery—there is no fine print in a Ty Dolla $ign song—for the fact that plenty of women will still slip into his silk sheet-covered waterbed despite his warnings.


Long lost folk legend who counts Devendra Banhart among her fans (yes, another one) has her sophomore album, originally released in 1971, reissued by Light in the Attic.

In My Own Time

To hear Karen Dalton sing "How Sweet It Is" or "When a Man Loves a Woman" is to hear the song completely transformed. The Oklahoma-bred, New York City-based singer sustains what were previously just grace notes, moves the accents around, inverts the rhythms, and plays hide-and-seek with meter. Dalton even changes the lyrics at the end of "When a Man Loves a Woman", fitting them to her female perspective. Her talent isn't merely interpretive, but imperialistic: She takes these songs over completely, bending their melodies and meanings to fit her specific mood. And In My Own Time, her second and final album, has a very specific mood: These songs exalt love, but acknowledge its transitory nature. Dalton gives herself over to its joys on "How Sweet It Is", notes its passing on her majestic take on Richard Manuel's "In a Station", then sounds resigned on closer "Are You Leaving for the Country?" The album contains just the slightest hint of a narrative-- a struggle between love and loss, the city and the country, joy and sorrow-- but she sounds honestly conflicted, a jaded romantic trying to find her way.
So that phrase "in my own time" fairly neatly sums up her life. She arrived in New York City with her daughter Abra in the early 1960s and became a fixture on the budding East Village folk scene-- even sharing the stage with Bob Dylan. But Dalton moved around compulsively, played rarely and begrudgingly, drank and did drugs heavily, and recorded almost never. She enjoyed playing privately with friends and hated the Billie Holliday comparison that dogged her throughout her entire life. Producer Nick Venet reportedly had to trick her into recording songs for her first album, It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You Best, released in 1969 and reissued by Koch in 1997, four years after her death. Dalton casts a subtle but powerful spell as she sings songs by Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, and Duke Ellington with minimal accompaniment. In My Own Time was released in 1971 on producer Harvey Brooks' Just Sunshine label and has since been a collector's treasure on vinyl. Admirers Nick Cave and Devendra Banhart (who is turning folkie resurrection into a cottage industry) extol her talents in the liner notes for this affectionate reissue.
Compared to It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You Best, In My Own Time sounds a little more adventurous and lively with its full band and free-wheeling performances, seamlessly and playfully blending folk, country, rock, jazz, and soul. More than a dozen musicians coalesce into a loose, loopy backing band that knows exactly when to push forward ("In a Station"), exactly when to back off ("Take Me"), and exactly when to let Dalton take front and center (pretty much always). In My Own Time has the laidback, lackadaisical vibe of a close-knit group of friends doing single takes around an inspired singer. They play up the jazzy breeziness of "Take Me" and "Satisfied" and soak "In a Station" with multiple organs and Richard Bell's rambling piano, giving the song a majestic push ideally showcasing Dalton's dramatic range. They tackle the tripping rhythms of "How Sweet It Is" as Dalton sings almost independent of the familiar melody.
With such a clear dynamic between all these musicians, it's ironic that two of the album's most moving tracks are also its most naked: the bleakly existential "Katie Cruel" and the supremely lonely-sounding "Same Old Man" showcase her elastic vocals and piercing banjo with only minimal accompaniment. You could easily spill a thousand words on her pronunciation of "mackintosh." Like her debut, In My Own Time reveals a demanding, intuitive, eccentric singer and arranger who never sang her own words but clearly and confidently expressed herself with others'. She was a free spirit who sounds freest on these ten tracks. So "Are You Leaving for the Country?", with its swooning melody and laidback vibe, closes the album on a poignant note: this is her final take, her last number ever. It makes you wish there was just one more record to reissue and even more music to pore over obsessively.


On their phenomenal fifth album, the post-hardcore band work with famed producer Ross Robinson and come away with their most affecting and resonant work yet.

Lament

Jeremy Bolm has spent the past decade striving to live up to the example set by his own words. The music he makes with his band, Touché Amoré, compels guys with neck tattoos to spend a half hour irresponsibly slamming into fellow fans before they corner Bolm after the show and reveal how they felt truly seen by “And Now It’s Happening In Mine.” He’ll be the first to tell you about the ways he falls short: 2013’s Is Survived By explored Bolm’s struggles with the pressures of being in a profoundly impactful (but not famous) hardcore band, which brought even greater success and demands. Bolm missed his mother’s dying day because he was “on stage living the dream” at Fest in Florida. He atoned by making an entire album about her passing from stage 4 breast cancer. This entire history is summarized on “I’ll Be Your Host,” the second single from their phenomenal fifth album Lament, wherein Bolm recognizes the privilege of his platform and the common misconception that he can singlehandedly walk people through their grieving process because he made a great hardcore record about not knowing how to grieve. It’s a long overdue revelation that he alone can’t be there for everyone at all times, which makes Lament their capstone—a Touché Amoré album that can reach the most people as possible from the greatest distance.
To hear Touché Amoré tell it, they had no choice but to work with famed heavy metal producer Ross Robinson if they were going to make this kind of record. Infamously intense and hands-on, Robinson’s anti-Rick Rubin approach irrevocably changed the course of popular metal by enabling chaotic and highly unconventional acts like Korn, Slipknot, and Limp Bizkit to focus their live intensity without compromising to reach suburban adolescents like Bolm—“I saw the ‘Blind’ music video on a local music video channel,” he recently recalled. “And my fucking brain fell out of my head.”
More germane to Touché Amoré, Robinson was also behind the boards for Blood Brothers’ Burn, Piano Island, Burn, Glassjaw’s Worship and Tribute, and the motherlode, Relationship of Command, all wildly ambitious records that pushed already revered post-hardcore bands dangerously close to mainstream success and shortly thereafter, their demise. “Ross is known for two things, getting a drummer replaced or kicked out and making the singer cry,” Bolm joked.
Opener “Come Heroine” does a lot of things that are familiar to Touché Amoré—Bolm begins screaming off-mic; the band launches into a bucking, double-time thrash; they pull back during the verse and rev up the circle pit again. Every single second of “Come Heroine” does these things more emphatically than previous Touché Amoré songs, the intended result of a band with enough time, enough confidence, and enough resources to push everything by 10-20 percent more. The tempo slows noticeably between the verse and the bridge; the time signature shifts subtly; the guitars are newly textured to variously evoke shoegaze and Morricone. As an instrumental alone, “Come Heroine” would feel like a song about interrogating familiar patterns and being open to unexpected inspiration, but then Bolm’s lyrics confirm it’s definitely about that—“When I thought I saw everything,” he intones before returning to his howl, “I SAW YOU!”
Touché Amoré albums usually reserve one or two songs that push their reliably cathartic and anthemic melodic post-hardcore towards something as outright accessible as, say, the National. Lament asks, why not make that every song? “A Broadcast” lingers in a Leonard Cohen afterworld, averting a typically bellowing chorus for an ’00-indie chorale. On album closer “A Forecast,” Bolm sings bravely and rhymes bluntly over twinkling piano chords, which isn’t even the most shocking part of the song. “The funniest Touché Amoré song” doesn’t evoke a lot of competition, but “the most uncomfortably revealing Touché Amoré song” does, and “A Forecast” somehow manages to be both as Bolm airs out resentments over the way he felt abandoned by family, friends, bandmates and even Epitaph Records after Stage Four—“It’s not like I wrote some lyrics/Detailing the exact events/Some profit off the album/Most I just consider friends”; “I’ve lost more family members/Not to cancer but the GOP/What’s the difference I’m not for certain/They all end up dead to me.”
If Lament had come out in 2000, “Reminders” could have been their “One Armed Scissor” or “Pretty Lush,” a Trojan horse of a single that landed them on MTV2 and late-night shows. There’s no Touché Amoré song quite like it, a straight-up pop-punk singalong that’s just as goofy enough to be convincing and lyrically devastating enough to be what it really is: an otherwise prototypical Touché Amoré song about trying to find simple pleasures in friendship (human or otherwise) when nihilism feels far more appealing.
Touché Amoré’s influences on Lament are not obscure—they made a “What’s Inspiring Album Five” Spotify playlist that included the softest Deftones song, the heaviest Real Estate one, and soft-rock staples from Orleans and Mike and the Mechanics. None of these reference points are illogical—country music shares hardcore’s proclivity for lyrical directness, while contemplative indie rock adds some silver accents to their blackened bleakness. Lament even makes a sensible kinship with Counting Crows, another metropolitan, California band whose existential yearning can pass for humble heartland rock. “Suffering has no purpose, ‘Round Here’ is an almost perfect song,” Bolm yells on “Exit Row,” and we’re all poorer for missing out on the opportunity to hear a crowd repeat “ALMOST!” like Bolm does a second later.
In the midst of all of this atypical Touché Amoré music, the very atypical lead single “Limelight” now feels at home. At 5:03, it’s by far the longest song they’ve ever made—over the previous 12 years, exactly one Touché Amoré song has surpassed four minutes. The handclaps and backup shouts on the chorus sound like they’re being pumped from a Jumbotron. At a point where most Touché Amoré songs would stop cold, Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull comes in with his instantly recognizable twang, an apt segue to a coda showing off Nick Steinhardt’s newly acquired pedal steel skills. It’s a sequel of sorts to Is Survived By’s “To Write Content,” where Bolm recalled a conversation he had with Hull about whether their personal happiness would eventually become a liability for their bands.
Seven years later, Hull’s music pops up in Hollywood films and Whole Foods, his commercial breakthrough coming on an album inspired by the birth of his first child. Touché Amoré have played Coachella, they created custom guitar pedals, and got signed to Roc Nation. Maybe the ceiling isn’t that much higher for a post-hardcore band in 2020. Bolm takes a hard look at everything he once romanticized on “Limelight”—“saying no just for the thrill,” public adulation—mourns his recently deceased dogs, and reflects on nights that go by without him and his partner sharing a kiss. But rather than being a self-pitying dirge for washed hardcore guys, it’s empowerment for anyone who’s feeling a little burnt out by anything that used to mean everything. A call to find new fires that will blaze slower and longer. For a band spooked by their status as role models, Touché Amoré still can’t help but lead by example.

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This live document from 2016 gathers members of Swans, Sonic Youth, and other underground vets to pay tribute to Martin Bisi, the iconic producer whose touch defined the sound of New York noise.

Various Artists: BC35: The 35 Year Anniversary of BC Studio

In New York, a city where arts spaces are perpetually shuttering, lasting 35 years as a recording studio suggests no small potatoes. Hell, SoHo’s legendary Magic Shop saw just 28 birthdays, closing in 2016 with Bowie’s Blackstar among the final albums tracked there. Not to say real estate on Crosby Street equates to Gowanus, Brooklyn, the neighborhood where Martin Bisi started running BC Studios in 1981, before he even turned 20. Surely, the disparity related to the nearby Gowanus Canal, a waste-filled commercial thoroughfare so repulsive it once earned the nickname Lavender Lake. Rumors swirled like oil slicks that the canal was a last stop for mafia victims. Once called the Gashouse District, Gowanus had become a post-war wasteland, complete with feral dogs and roving gangs, by the time the Manhattan-raised Bisi arrived.
Thirty-five years later, the pollution remains (the canal was named an EPA Superfund site in 2010) but Gowanus suffers the predacious developmental fate of many New York neighborhoods. It wasn’t until 2015, well into the neighborhood’s gentrification—you could by then see a Whole Foods from the studio roof—that Bisi lost some teeth to muggers on the block. The fact that friends of the humble producer found it necessary to organize a Kickstarter to cover his medical expenses speaks to the demise of a thriving creative class in the city.
BC35 emerged as a result of that fundraiser for Bisi’s medical bills: a compilation of live takes (and a few overdubs) spanning one weekend in January 2016. The credits read like a who’s who of New York’s experimental underground: members of Swans, Sonic Youth, Pop. 1280, Parlor Walls, Live Skull, Cop Shoot Cop, Foetus, and many, many more gathered for a two-day session and show, with an audience present and participating (namely as a choir on the gorgeous J.G. Thirlwell track “Downhill”). Mostly improvised, with a handful of pre-composed songs thrown in, it’s a sonic embodiment of risk-taking, rule-breaking, and antithesis that celebrates the endurance of a man and a space tied directly to New York’s noise, art-rock, punk, free jazz, hip-hop, and alternative movements.
Across 13 tracks, Bisi demonstrates—as a producer, engineer, and general facilitator of the avant-garde—what’s made his name familiar to liner-notes obsessives and New York noise nerds for three and a half decades. Showcasing the opaque, roaring, visceral sound he’s come to epitomize, BC35 acts as a totem to his enduring role in NYC’s rock mythos. If it’s not Michael Gira living on a couch above the studio or the entire Zulu Nation crammed into the control room, it’s the very formation of the space that makes Bisi more than a footnote.
In the late ’70s, a 17-year-old Bisi answered a Village Voice ad from bassist Bill Laswell, becoming a peripheral member of the bassist’s project Material. Laswell, meanwhile, bumped into Brian Eno in their common East Village neighborhood, goading him to check out the group. Eno—who came to New York to produce the second Talking Heads album—eventually caught a Material gig and brought Laswell into his fold. As Eno geared up to finish Ambient 4: On Land, Bisi and Material sought a studio and living space. After another Village Voice ad, they landed at 232 3rd Street in Gowanus, an old factory building where Bisi still lives and works. Eno financed its recording gear. Bisi’s first real task as engineer, at what was then called OAO Studios, became sessions for Ambient 4.
There are gorgeous flashes of ambience on BC35, but a stronger common thread emerges via the 1978 Eno-produced compilation No New York, which came to define the Dada-esque no wave aesthetic and featured James Chance and the Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Mars, and DNA. Bisi went on to record or perform with all those acts under various permutations, from Arto Lindsay’s collaboration with Peter Scherer to Lydia Lunch’s work with Sonic Youth. The Sonic Youth records Bad Moon Rising and EVOL, made at BC studios with Bisi credited as producer, marked a breakthrough for the space. (Sonic Youth credited the rooms as Before Christ.) Bob Bert, Sonic Youth’s drummer for Bad Moon Rising, appears on “Nowhere Near the Rainbow,” the opening track of BC35, alongside Stu Spasm, Skeleton Boy, Alyse Lamb, and Bisi himself. It is a disorienting melange of wonked-out electronics, pummeling, unpredictable percussion, feverish guitars, and disembodied vocals.
It was the studio’s early experience with Afrika Bambaataa, Fab Five Freddy, and other hip-hop musicians that initially drew the interest of Sonic Youth. The recording of Herbie Hancock’s landmark 1983 Future Shock (the massive single “Rockit” using turntablist techniques) left Material and Bisi at a crossroads: Continue with the pop pedigree, or push further into the underground? Laswell left the space in the hands of Bisi, who dug deeper. It’s notable that Bisi’s mother, a concert pianist who specialized in the technically demanding compositions of Chopin and Liszt, represented “bourgeois aesthetics” and “bourgeois values,” as Bisi once put it. The rejection of virtuosity stands as a core value of much of Bisi’s recorded output, if not the New York underground itself. On BC35, the establishment resentment rings clear throughout and notably on “What a Jerk,” performed by EXCOP, an ensemble made up of Swans and Cop Shoot Cop alums: It’s a thundering, tom-driven song that chronicles the assault of a police officer and might be the strongest statement on the record.
By 1990, Gowanus hit its nadir, seeing its population at its lowest in a century. Yet Bisi verged on another summit. In the wake of Nirvana’s major-label deal (thanks to the very A&R brokerage of Sonic Youth with Geffen) bands that gestated in storied New York dives like CBGB, Pyramid Club, Danceteria, Mudd Club, and Sin Club landed on majors. Improbably, Cop Shoot Cop released an EP, Suck City, and an LP, Ask Questions Later, on Interscope, both engineered by Bisi. New York alt-metal heroes Helmet reportedly scored a $1 million advance with the same label and brought Bisi in (alongside Butch Vig) to track guitars on their third LP, Betty. In 1999, Bisi contributed engineering to Cibo Matto’s second LP, Stereo * Type A, for Warner Brothers.
At the turn of the century, his visibility at an all-time high, Bisi reaffirmed his commitment to the underground as a new wave of no wave and noise swept North Brooklyn. He worked on records for burgeoning labels such as Northern Spy and Sacred Bones while also finding credits on more established indies like Matador, Drag City, and Thrill Jockey. The bulk of his work with the latter label comes with White Hills, the New York psych-rock band formed in 2005. They contributed a stirring, wailing guitar drone to BC35, “End of the Line,” a truly puzzling mix of beauty and pain.
That is to say: There are few hooks across BC35. As is so often the case with music of this stripe, the energy and vitality shine through all the darkness and violence present. The severity of the gesture means as much as the sound. Aside from all the Melvins and Swans worship, as a survey of Bisi’s journey, BC35 gives an incomplete—how could it be anything else—but satisfying look. Though the lore often precedes him, Bisi and BC have made an indelible mark with the distinct sounds of his MCI mixing board and cavernous recording rooms. That’s no bad standing, especially for a scrappy New Yorker constantly rethinking his approach. Let’s hope he survives in Gowanus for another 35.


On his latest standout EP, the young Midwestern rapper isn’t looking for his voice so much as finding out exactly what he can do with it.

Grey EP

Up to this point, Kweku Collins has subsisted in shades of grey. His music slides between abstract poetry and melodic rap over production that extracts elements from several genres; he’s biracial, and he’s from Evanston, Ill., a town that almost lets you say you’re from Chicago. His latest project, the self-produced and aptly titled Grey EP, is actually more metallic, reflecting back an artist on the precipice of something great.
In the year since the release of 2016 standout Nat Love, Collins has been on a steady ascent. He’s traveled the world touring, soundtracked an episode of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Black Panther” and, perhaps, found that backup plans are overrated. In nine tracks, Grey examines the life of a 20-year-old just about ready to break into something big. Collins isn’t looking for his voice so much as finding out exactly what he can do with it—it distorts and groans, speeds up and slows down, plays the background and commands the spotlight. He achieves a strikingly cohesive result considering the assortment of subjects and sounds Collins broaches throughout.
”International Business Trip,” the EP’s lead single, is a woozy journey to the faraway places his success has taken him. “I’m just a 20-something thinking ’bout my early years/Thinking how two years ago I couldn’t buy a 20 sack,” he raps, nodding to “Niggas in Paris” as his own fulfilled prophecy. Like his travels, Collins’ brand of rap is borderless. Kid Cudi’s and OutKast’s aesthetic influences are revealed in the melodies, hums and artistically offbeat flows that highlight Grey, but the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are also here. The ethereal “Oasis2: Maps” reimagines the band’s “Maps,” replacing the guitars with sparkling piano. Collins’ voice feels made for this; the layered echoes and bittersweet lyrics create their own drama as he sings “maybe this time will be different/ain’t that what they always say.” Elsewhere, Sylvie Grace’s cello threatens to unseat the flute as rap’s instrument of the moment, as she transforms “Youaintshit (Shine On)” into a majestic minimalist dream.
The Afro-Latin percussive styles he learned from his father and the spoken word of his past seem to inform much of Collins’ style. The drums have a calming, almost tribal feel on “Aya,” which features fellow Midwestern rhymer Allan Kingdom. The sublime combination of background vocalizations and airy synths on “Jump.i” have a similar effect. The song is sonically dense; the verse is colorful and indefinite, demanding several listens as Collins claims his own light and encourages others to find their own.
“While things crumble around us/We build again” are Collins’ final words on the EP—a reminder, perhaps, of the ongoing work to be done and the opportunities that rebuilding affords. It’s the kind of awareness that comes with existing on the fringes, and while Collins’ story has been underscored by the notion of outsiderism, there’s so much freedom to be found there. Adhering to expectations is optional, and the power of definition lies in the hands of the individual who has found a comfortable space as an outlier. Grey is rap on its own terms, its name an acknowledgment of Collins’ own self-awareness and further evidence that the misfits can be some of the most liberated among us.


On his bleak new album, woods doubles down on the misery that snakes through all his music.

Terror Management

Terror Management begins with a clip of Kurt Vonnegut explaining narrative arcs. The most common story structure, he argues, is “man in a hole,” which he breaks down as “somebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again.” Vonnegut’s audience laughs, but in billy woods’ world, holes tend to be bottomless. His last album was March’s hiding places, a record set in crawl spaces and crags where men in holes settle into the sediment instead of plotting escape. Terror Management, written immediately after hiding places, doubles down on that fatalism, sinking into the darkness at the bottom of the well.
The album’s cover is a jagged ice plain with a fleck of a sun in the distant horizon, and woods channels that sense of chilled abandonment throughout the record, finding misery everywhere he looks: cancelled Christmases, dead spiders stuck in webs, splintered glaciers. The imagery is crisp but plotless; instead of characters, woods offers landscapes. “The sky empty, trees like widows huddled/The bore muzzle nuzzle, iridescent black truffle/Black snow in the forest,” he raps on “Shepherd’s Tone” He sounds like he’s narrating satellite footage.
That sense of dreadful stillness is amplified by the production, which is often tenuously connected to the writing. On “Gas Leak” a blast wave of distortion detonates in the middle of the song, presumably dramatizing the title but also disrupting the momentum. On “Blood Thinner,” hisses and crackles sizzle in the foreground at a steady clip. woods is clearly trying to evoke tension and paranoia, but the result too often feels cluttered and airless.
The record catches steam around the midway point, where woods taps into the sentiments behind his obsession with bleakness. His freeform, street-preacher flow works wonders on “Birdsong,” winding into volleys of gut punches. “First time he saw the word nigga in a book/How it danced on the page/Back in the day/It’s what the family didn't say/How you knew it was AIDS,” he raps. “Trivial Pursuit” turns Open Mike Eagle’s album Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes into a funny conspiracy: “Rappers dying in they sleep/I’m watching Mike Eagle on TV/It ain’t just luck, chief.” Moments like these are reminders that the miseries and absurdities of the late capitalist hellscape are sensory and personal. The abyss is an experience, not just a setting.
Album highlight “Great Fires” centers on the permanence of a breakup, presumably woods’ divorce. woods is oblique throughout, never citing a decisive scene of rupture, but never disputing that the relationship was doomed. “Sleep a steep fall, wake up like a stray dog/You wonder where she found the strength not to call/You’re proud of her, you know what it cost,” he laments, stuck in the aftermath. Built around a tinny horn loop and dusty drums, the song swells to a despondent utterance of the former lover’s name that’s jaggedly overdubbed with the word “love.” The insertion sucks the wind out of woods and lays bare the kinds of losses he sees in the desolation he’s so intent on cataloging.
In 2013 billy woods described himself as the bridge between late Zimbabwean novelist Dambudzo Marechera and Earl Sweatshirt. There was a defiant pride in that claim, a conviction that despite Marechera’s death from AIDS in the ’80s, and woods’ obscurity, the lineage of artful African perspectives on Western terrors would persist. In 2019 Marechera is still dead, the Klan is active in Kurt Vonnegut’s native Indiana, and Earl regularly tweets billy woods lyrics. The world is absolutely the shitshow woods knows it to be, but even the apocalypse has its charms.


On her third album, the magnetic D.C. multi-instrumentalist pushes from post-punk toward a new clutch of electronic influences, seemingly sorting them as she goes.

Highway Hypnosis

Eva Moolchan’s first two albums as Sneaks sound fearless. They move at high velocities and seem to orbit imaginary worlds, weaving through conversational fragments in less than 20 minutes. Those records positioned the Washington, D.C., singer and multi-instrumentalist as a kind of post-punk Sappho, with brief songs that were deeply personal but endlessly open to interpretation. Between releasing 2017’s It’s a Myth and recording the new Highway Hypnosis, Moolchan toured extensively, new experiences soundtracked by a fresh set of influences and interests. She gravitated from the chintzy post-punk that animated her earlier work toward hip-hop and electronic music. Highway Hypnosis attempts to articulate those two years as a listener and artist, but Moolchan now sounds untethered, plunging into these new forms and ideas but often losing what once seemed to be sure footing.
Moolchan recorded Highway Hypnosis at Brooklyn’s now-defunct Silent Barn, playing and singing nearly everything, from her customary bass to samples and synths. On introductory spins, Highway Hypnosis sounds cocky and sharp—hearing Moolchan blabber in a made-up language to a dub beat during “Addis,” for instance, is goofy but captivating. But it soon becomes stale, the underdeveloped songs leaving a numbing aftertaste. That dub beat begins to sway like a dinghy on choppy water during a rainstorm—unsure of itself, splintering at the center.
In the past, angular sparsity served Moolchan well, but this just feels bloated. At just less than 30 minutes, Highway Hypnosis is in fact her longest record, and it feels longer still. Even the opening title track, where a pitch-shifted vocal loop serves as the song’s backbone, seems to stretch far beyond its meager two minutes, the pastiche more suffocating than hypnotic. Centered around a grating frog-croak of a synth, “Cinnamon” moves like a bibber slogging through a muddied field or a wet snow after the bar has closed. “Yamaha chang in the ring yeah/Oh my god, Lionel Richie’s dead, yeah,” she deadpans blithely, the nonsense enhancing the stupor. Worse still, “The Way It Goes” plays out like a half-hearted SoundCloud demo; the Princess Nokia-indebted beat might tempt you to move. But it is listless and recycled, the kind of thing that prompts you to step outside of the party in search of fresh air.
There is one moment of brilliance near the end, at least. “A Lil Close” opens with an assault of pulsating, seedy, late-night synths and sequencers that boil over like kettles in an otherwise silent house. A frantic, dissonant bassline emerges, evoking the skeletal freakiness of Suburban Lawns and the ice-cold chill of Sonic Youth. The song exists at a truly joyous, unexpected saddle between post-punk and hip-hop. The gears shift with the energy of a skateboarder’s perfectly executed ollie or a figure skater’s combination jump. But then the album’s presiding smog cuts back in, and you’re left clouded out by it, stuck to wander disappointedly through Moolchan’s unsorted new influences.


Once again taking up the mantle of the genre and social movement he calls “noirwave,” South Africa’s Yannick Ilunga finds new strength in personal expression and political engagement.

La Maison Noir

As music discovery has been outsourced to search and recommendation engines, artists have become adept at gaming algorithms to their advantage, taking bets on wacky genre tags that shoot them to the top of search results and lend an air of novelty. This arms race has produced “genres” like soul trap, catwave, coastgoth, and spaceghostqueef, among many others. These labels are often a flagrant vehicle for self-promotion or trolling, and noirwave, the genre coined by South African artist Yannick Ilunga for his act Petite Noir, has historically been easy to doubt. “Noirwave is more than just a sound,” he explained in 2015, “it’s a progressive social movement that's rapidly breaking out of the pan-African underground, emerging in the creative output of inspiring minds from across the globe.” Sure. On La Maison Noir, however, something has clicked into place. Sleeker and more militant, the genre emerges as a symbol of spirited personal and political investment.
Ilunga’s past work as Petite Noir drew its strength from its gleaming opacity. Like an ocean, his songs, built from elements of post-punk, kwaito, and pop, teemed with life under the surface, and they were just as dazzling on their face. The way songs like “The Fall” and “Chess” smoothly shifted and flowed made genre and style an afterthought. Ilunga was such an acute communicator of mood and pathos that the means of communication felt self-evident; his music came from within him. As a descriptor “noirwave” felt like a protruding tag placed on the collar of an otherwise comfy t-shirt.
On La Maison Noir the term functions less as a logo and more as a medium for Ilunga’s ideas about diaspora and identity. On “Blame Fire” Ilunga opens up about his family’s history as Congolese expats and uses their forced migration to foreground his own forward movement. The song is fleet yet loaded; as wisps of guitar and synths pulse around him, Ilunga evokes images of war and violence but also growth and renewal. “So blame fire, blame fire, blame fire, blame fire,” he chants with both pride and gravitas. “We need to realize that our skin is a blessing. Fuck a curse,” he announces during the bridge, his message clear.
This swing from the personal to the political, the specific to the allegorical, is a consistent source of whiplash. Ilunga works like a trickster throughout the record, injecting levity into images of violence and channeling desperation during moments of joy. The refrain of “F.F.Y.F. (POW),” a song about self-determination, is cartoonish and catchy. As Ilunga and collaborator Rha! Rha! cheer, “Pow pow pow pow,” it feels like they’re mowing down enemies with a Bugs Bunny flag gun. It’s a tad cheeky but the sentiment is real. As the drums and cheers briefly give way to a dancing marimba and Ilunga declares, “This is noirwave, this is it,” it feels like self-affirmation.
“R E S P E C T” is just as double-edged. Demanding recognition, Ilunga spells out “respect” in a pleading, cloying way. As the polyrhythmic percussion pounds beneath his voice like beggar’s cup of coins, the strength of his baritone feels poignantly diminished. It’s as if the louder he shouts, the more invisible he feels. The fact that the song could be about being an underground artist, or black, or a migrant only heightens its potency.
In these moments, the collapsing of distance that noirwave is supposed to embody goes beyond fusionism or self-promotion and feels more like something of a worldview. On the standout “Blowing Up the Congo,” guest Saul Williams weaves the record’s ideas together deftly: “Master-slave binary, Cobalt rubber refinery/Colonial mentality, fed into machines/Dissect the engines and devices/Not just the precious stones that make them run.”
The Congo evoked here is a nexus of history, dystopia, and potential, overdetermined yet unscripted. Whether or not you’re Congolese or African or black, hearing this litany tethers you to how that future unfurls. Music has a way of conjuring a sense of intimacy between listener and artist, and La Maison Noir weaponizes that rapport without dismissing it. Noirwave may not be a movement but it is a force.


The Brooklyn electro-pop duo’s fifth album breaks into two mirror-image halves of a guided tour of heartbreak, hope, and longing. They’re still making cryptic indie pop that hits like a sugar rush.

Structure

For Brooklyn electro-pop duo Water From Your Eyes, the path to clarity is paved with playful misdirection. On a pair of spoken-word interludes on their fifth album, Structure, frenzied dance punk careens into silence, suddenly replaced by the sort of dry, dead-air ambience you’d expect from a podcast. Within these hushed eye-of-the-storm moments, one smack in the middle of each side of the record, vocalist Rachel Brown plays a kind of word-game version of Exquisite Corpse. Repurposing the lyrics from album centerpiece “Quotations,” they pluck out nouns and adjectives and glue them to one another, seemingly at random, until they resemble the mutterings of a person talking in their sleep: “You’re the embers go sunlight/A line fake feel matching colors/Myth a revealing another constantly now.” Even at their quietest, Water From Your Eyes can’t resist cracking a surrealist joke, dragging you down a rabbit hole of “memories down of in sounds.”
A gambit like this is fully in character. After all, this is a band whose first release of 2021 was an album of covers that began with a stone-faced rendition of Eminem’s Academy Award-winning docu-single “Lose Yourself.” What is shocking is not only how brilliantly the diversion pays off, but that it works not just once, but twice. Structure follows a double-helix layout wherein the two cut-up poetry interludes lead into two marvelously distinct versions of “Quotations”: one an abrasive romp through gurgling synthesizers and whirls of processed guitar, the other (“‘Quotations’,” complete with scare quotes in the title) an ambient collage of Brown’s voice, pulsing in meditative harmony before erupting quietly into IDM breakbeats. But these puzzles aren’t just art-rock pranks; Structure is Water From Your Eyes’ most rewarding album to date. It holds your gaze long after the mystery fades, channeling a powerful sense of empathy to mesmerizing effect.
Structure is far from being a complete about-face for the band; they’re still making cryptic indie pop that hits like a sugar rush. Their most intriguing and satisfying departure is architectural. Compared to the disorienting way that Somebody Else’s Song swung from raging electro punk to acoustic indie pop and back again, their latest record is a carefully tended garden of ideas that reveals Brown and bandmate Nate Amos’ songwriting partnership blossoming in full flower. Structure opts for controlled chaos, unfolding over two mirror-image halves on a guided tour of heartbreak, hope, and longing. Each begins with a slower, psychedelic ballad, moves through blistering post-punk, and closes on one of two versions of “Quotations,” making it tempting to view the album as a pair of EPs, asking the same questions and receiving the same answer in different languages.
As they chart out these parallel journeys, Water From Your Eyes take care to circle back to their roots. Live and on record, they’re experts at using extended jams as a tool to purify the overwhelming emotions of a moment, breaking them down in magnificent detail as they filter through circular dance rhythms and spiraling melodies. “My Love’s” and “Track Five,” the two that hew closest to their origins attempting to ape New Order, capture the infectious melancholy of the ’80s new-wave titans while sounding uniquely of their time.
Water From Your Eyes are at their most unhinged on “My Love’s,” a fiery take on disappearing into the wild momentum of a night spent racing against last call. Brown’s voice, filtered and doubled until it drips with venom, bites through layers of seasick drones: “My love is lost somewhere under the ground/They know their own way out.” Violins stab against blasts of white noise, raising the stakes with a spy-thriller theme before the track blacks out, unconsciousness hitting like a brick wall. These cinematic flourishes are a welcome addition, expanding the scope of their crying-on-the-dance-floor antics by giving them a clear narrative, carving grooves to guide the tears down your face.
Beyond these steady refinements, album opener “When You’re Around” marks Structure’s cleanest break with Water From Your Eyes’ past, and the clearest indication of how far their irreverence for genre and form has carried them. At first listen, the disarmingly straightforward psychedelic pop tune could be mistaken for a test of how subtly they can troll a crowd with a hammed-up pastiche. A single piano chord stutters to life before surf-rock crooning glides in, swimming over a light, shuffling beat. Gentle horns, courtesy of New York DIY mainstay Matt Norman, guide you around a coy self-reference (“There is water in my eyes and I'm alive”) and into a swooning chorus. “I hear your voice and save it for later,” Brown sings, allowing the slightest crack to enter their typically cool delivery. It’s the kind of windswept, golden-hour confession that melts your heart in the moment and haunts you forever when love turns cold. For a band who have coyly dismissed their own work as “weed music,” it’s frightening how sharply they can make a ballad cut when they drop the act and go for broke. Emerging from the haze and snapping into focus, Water From Your Eyes allow nonsense to run its course, even if it ultimately means embracing sincerity.

Buy: Rough Trade
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The West Coast beatmaker returns with a new album on Brainfeeder and he adds a new wrinkle to the dusted thump of his productions: his voice, both singing and rapping on proper songs.

In My World

Matthew McQueen’s music as Matthewdavid started attracting attention at the top of this decade, and the California-via-Florida-via-Atlanta beatmaker benefited from excellent timing. After a few years of bouncing around Los Angeles’ burgeoning electronic music scene—an exploratory period that included the founding of his initially cassette-focused label Leaving—he caught the discerning ear of Flying Lotus, who signed McQueen to his own Brainfeeder imprint. His proper debut LP, Outmind, was released in 2011, which, depending on how you look at it, was either a very fertile or very tough period for bedroom producers who drew influence from hip-hop. At that time, musicians of questionable talent emerged constantly in this sphere, and many of them directly ripped off FlyLo’s sidechained, fusion-focused sound. McQueen's aesthetic bore a clear debt to his label head, but Outmind stood apart from the pack, a static-riddled document that infused its more straightforward moments with dense thickets of obscured noise.
McQueen’s latest full-length, In My World, could be considered Outmind’s proper follow-up after a few low-profile releases, but the album represents a move away from earlier style. The shift is immediately apparent in the opening title track, which pairs a decaying AM-radio sample with a pulsing rhythmic framework and, most notably, McQueen’s voice. “In my world, it’s paradise for you,” he sing-raps, before stating plainly, “Outer space is where I want to know you.”
This latest detour could owe something to significant life events—McQueen recently married and had a child—and In My World certainly seems more personal than his previous work. Regardless, his choice to sing, rap, and sing-rap throughout In My World is obviously risky; his vocals tend to distract from what surrounds them, and his skill on the mic is, at best, rudimentary. McQueen’s turn here brings to mind fellow West Coast hip-hop-influenced oddball James Pants, another polyglot artist who had a brief moment of increased visibility earlier this decade; at times, In My World’s fixation on R&B-abused frameworks and dub-influenced sonics comes across as similarly dated.
In My World’s back half briefly ditches McQueen’s voice and is more engaging for it—”West Coast Jungle Juke”, in particular, heads back to Outmind’s foggy swarm before quietly erupting in an ‘ardcore break near its end. And when he takes the mic again on the closing cut “Birds in Flight” it’s his strongest vocal on the album: he simmers and whines over a bed of rainforest sonics and distant flute, a soothing and somewhat affecting creation reminiscent of Animal Collective member Avey Tare’s solo work. Even at its best, though, In My World resembles a less-engaging version of someone else, the sound of an artist regressing instead of stepping forward into new territory.