Channeling new age spiritualism, the California synthesizer musician’s new album is a tender and warm-hearted offering, well-suited as an ointment for the dullness of life in isolation.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: The Mosaic of Transformation

The Mosaic of Transformation

For 12 months’ access to an app called Calm—MSRP $69.99, with a lifetime option available for $399.99—your desktop and mobile screens will purportedly become a balm against the captive and infinite present. There are featurettes meant to help you sleep, reach peak performance, and breathe more thoughtfully. In “7 days of Soothing Pain,” communication teacher Oren Jay Sofer coaches you—tidily, hospitably, efficiently—how to cope with awful news. Stars like Matthew McConaughey and Laura Dern contribute audiobooks and self-affirmations. Composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith—an elegant practitioner of the Buchla modular synthesizer, classical pianist, Yogi, and warm, benevolent spirit whose music has always been very much like a rainbow mist radiating out of the goblet of Earth—premiered her new album on the app a few weeks ago.
There is something of a new age awakening afoot. A yearning for holistic spiritual nourishment now lives prominently inside advertising copy, news segments, retail operations, and Twitter dispatches from humanoid brands, each tapping into a collective longing for a return (or brief holiday) to something resembling even partial wholeness. I have seen Deepak Chopra on television every week for the past four weeks. Cooking and gardening websites, which are experiencing an unprecedented boom in web traffic, have passages on mindfulness alongside voguish recipes for very umami noodles or how-tos on watering your indoor plants. “Are you operating from a place of fear and scarcity?” asked the chief content officer of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop in a recent conversation with Entrepreneur magazine. “Take the time to articulate this for your business, yourself, the universe, and the divine.” The captive psyche—and following suit, the market—is arching hurriedly toward high Zen.
The conch shell of serenity has been blown with steady pressure across the past 40 years in the fringe universe of East-meets-West experimental music. American new age’s spiritual crucible is roughly rooted in northern California, and, like most monasteries, the genre works somewhat like a family. Based in the small town of Bolinas, Smith’s own sonic relationship and serendipitous friendship with Suzanne Ciani—“America’s first female synth hero”—nurtured her practice with the Buchla world of synthesizers. The massive, water buffalo-sized Buchla 200 series, and Smith’s preferred Magic Easel model—which both work by tweedling the envelope and expression of tones into limitless configurations—were created by Ciani’s one-time boss Don Buchla, the former NASA engineer and close peer to the Grateful Dead’s sound tech, Owsley “King of LSD” Stanley. Like any computer or mind-altering psychedelic, the instrument is meant to mess with the texture of space and time to create an intergalactically exotic experience.
Smith’s Buchla music routinely resembles a glowworm of paradise writhing along the other side of the cosmic lane. Her collaboration with Ciani, on an album titled Sunergy, recreates the sensation of watching serene clouds float in miniature. EARS, Smith’s enormous 2016 release, has inspired me more than twice to lie on the ground in a dark room and consider my purpose. Her albums regularly feature the melty blue sounds of an orca’s bubble and squeak, then give way to a foamy bloom of tones that communicate in a language spelled out of mandalas. One of her recent EPs, The Electronic Series Volume 1: Abstractions, contains beautiful Buchla effervescence alongside “a short comic about two friends—a plant and a human being—having an existential conversation.” Each forthcoming volume is “intended to nourish inquisitiveness.’”
The Mosaic of Transformation, like Smith’s last album, Tides: Music for Meditation and Yoga, is also made for nourishing purposes. Here, she softly bangs the synthesized gong of a generous strain of spiritualism usually reserved for the discourse of Reiki classes or mindfulness retreats. It veers inescapably toward a place that—while technically inspiring—is unintentionally part of a larger system blanketed as what we need right now. By working earnestly, affectionately, and overtly in kneading the tensions of fear, it points, gently, at the conflicts it tries to abate.
By kind design, or by dint of years of yoga practice, nearly all of Smith’s vocals are instructional, inclusive, and meant to be chanted. “Remembering” has eight words of lyrics: “Be kind to one another,” she hymns, as if through syrup. “We’re calming together.” She loops these words through the song’s entirety in a polyphonic canon, rounding and rotating phrases in slow, loping drifts. “The Steady Heart”—equally wreathing, equally peace-inducing—grows like sea lather during a tide. “I believe,” she begins. “I trust. Open up your heart.” Crescendos build, layer, and are serenely laid to rest.
As with all chants—religious, political, or like those at the end of a core flow class—their goal is to unify the chanter with a greater whole. Psalms like Smith’s are more than acceptable at face value as restorative, pure-of-heart acts of grace, yet your threshold for bearing this attitude of exceeding amiability may vary. Often, I found myself at odds with her messages, though they are plain and pure as sun. Feel warmth. Feel gratitude. Heal, she patiently asks.
The Mosaic of Transformation implicitly states that the endpoint of immersing yourself in its music—wherever or however you may get it—is to care for yourself, which, in turn, will make your world brighter, more palatable, easier to surmount. It is a tender, munificent offering from an artist who has operated in these modes her entire career. But the very idea of wellness has been made curious under present circumstances. Self-care is now less about getting oneself optimized in time for work and more about being able to breathe normally on a Wednesday afternoon. Smith acknowledges that the world is wondrous, and asks us to navigate it more joyously and effectively by centering ourselves and finding our peace. But in the absence of what was once a center—fatigue a global given, the ego constantly under duress, even the notion of work itself under siege—the music unintentionally traces the contours of our great, communal bruise.
Smith notes that the album was created alongside a practice of “improvisatory movement”—which is to say, this is a work honoring the body in motion. The final track and melodious adieu, “Expanding Electricity,” swans across 10 minutes of arpeggiated, sprawling Buchla burblings, each whorling, compressing, and flowering like a big ballet born out of the inspirational “bubble of joy” Smith cites as the genesis for this project. This image is especially intriguing at a time when the body’s movements are bounded by isolation, and the extent of our physical freedoms is limited to what we can practice at a safe distance, bubbled in anything but joy. A lyric ribbons through, asking the audience a compelling question: “How can I help to serve you so you can do what you do?”
What is it that we do now? The sort of work Smith has devoted her life to is certainly worthy, and it feels good to listen to this album as part of its express utility: to find ways to feel thankful for being alive. What’s impossible to untangle from the album is its relationship to the present, the notion that this is meant to be massaged like an ointment into the mournful, hollow dullness of life in isolation. Hope is not gone, but it often feels like it. An international existential crisis has opened and widened space comfortably, fortuitously, even miraculously, for Smith’s—and new age’s—sensibilities. What that crisis also does is reveal how it finds ways to swallow them.

Buy: Rough Trade
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The Atlanta rapper’s latest album is monotonous, short on the quirks and out-of-body experiences of his better projects.

DS4Ever

Gunna likes to rap about fly shit, punched-up by spontaneous flow and melody switch-ups that seem minor the first time, until days later when they’re still on your mind. The Audemars Piguet watch and Fendi fur he boasts about on “Top Off” are memorable because he pivots from soulful wails to punchlines delivered like a freestyling R2-D2. The references to Versace boxers and Isabel Marant on “ARGENTINA” only matter because his flow zigs and zags like a car through an obstacle course.
But those small moments are an afterthought on Gunna’s latest album, DS4Ever. His breezy Atlanta sing-rap tracks—centered on foreign whips and more designer clothes than an episode of Real Housewives—have never sounded so dull. The record lacks the excitement of a project like last year’s Punk, by his closest collaborator Young Thug, who, instead of staying the course of his highest-selling album to date, So Much Fun, stripped down his sound to melancholy acoustics and dreary pianos. With DS4, Gunna is on autopilot.
This is not a plea for Gunna to blow up his sound—that’s not his style. But DS4 is monotonous, short on the quirks and out-of-body experiences of his better projects. If “alotta cake,” with its textbook Metro beat and Gunna’s mild singing, were to play on my Spotify account unexpectedly, I wouldn’t notice until it was over. The track “south to west” has a similar effect; his typically playful, rapid-fire delivery doesn’t sound as lively, and Gunna is way more interesting when he’s naming all his favorite luxury goods than when he’s just rapping about having lots of money to buy them.
Too many songs feel like items on a checklist. The mandatory back-and-forth with Lil Baby proves their chemistry hasn’t waned, but the formula to their joint tracks is due for an update. The Chris Brown collab “die alone” is predictably indistinguishable from the shit-ton of other Chris Brown-and-rapper collaborations that have radio DJs in a chokehold. There’ve been rumors that Gunna is dating Chlöe Bailey, so to capitalize on that, there’s a half-assed R&B duet.
The saving grace of DS4EVER is the all-star roster of producers who pop in and out. The Mike WiLL Made-It beat on “thought i was playing” could have lived on Dirty Sprite 2; it was made to soundtrack leaving the club as the sun rises. The 808s on Southside and Metro Boomin’s “poochie gown” pound like your heart after a triple espresso, punctuated by a Gunna diss of Freddie Gibbs that’s so bizarre it’s hilarious.
And as forced as Gunna’s new “pushin’ P” motto may be, the Wheezy instrumental it’s laid over is so ominous it’ll make the hairs stick up on the back of your neck. The middle section of the song, where Gunna raps gibberish for a moment, is the most fun he’s having on the entire album.
But fun shouldn’t feel like a rarity on a Gunna album. In the past, it sounded like he got a rush crooning about just how much plusher and more expensive his life is than ours. On DS4Ever, it feels like he’s doing it out of obligation.

Buy: Rough Trade
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The Toronto quintet's colorful new album is all MIDI sheen and New Age cheese, the product of classy musicians working with the chintziest materials possible.

Cruisin’

When did the cheesiest American sounds of the 1980s become the hippest Canadian music of the 2020s? When did smooth jazz become an underground concern? You might call it Kaputt-core: In the years since Destroyer’s landmark album—but especially during the past few years—a new wave of loosely connected Toronto indie musicians have experimented with and subverted the softest, smoothest styles of the Reagan era.
Saxophonist/composer Joseph Shabason, who played on Kaputt, has been at the forefront of this movement, toggling between New Age textures and clanging dissonance on his 2021 album The Fellowship and luxuriating in lite-jazz licks on last year’s supergroup project Fresh Pepper. Then there’s The Weather Station, who marshaled the whirling intensity of quiet storm on 2021’s Ignorance, and the Japanese composer Masahiro Takahashi, who melts the borders of ambient, exotica, and sighing smooth jazz on his recent album Humid Sun.
Several of those artists are associated with the vibrant Toronto label Telephone Explosion, which also became home to experimental pop group Bernice during the pandemic. (Notably, multiple members of Bernice play in Fresh Pepper.) So, it’s probably not a coincidence that Bernice’s fourth album, Cruisin’, flutters to life with an exuberant rush of crystalline synths and wordless ooohhs and ahhhs, as though the members of this eccentric quintet just returned from a yoga retreat in 1986.
The group’s last album, 2021’s Eau de Bonjourno, was steeped in supple grooves and off-kilter R&B murmurs. Cruisin’ is more colorful, a peculiar melange of artifice and sincerity. The gauzy, processed guitars summon Treasure-era Cocteau Twins; the joyfully hokey synth presets on friend-in-need crooner “Are You Breathing” and the Zen-like “No Effort to Exist” bring to mind the Yamaha DX7 reveries once favored by Beverly Glenn-Copeland, a prominent admirer of Bernice’s work. (Even more kitschy is the instrumental ditty “Little Miss Timmy,” which could be incidental music for a Game Boy Color game.) Yet the silky-smooth sweetness of Dann’s voice brings a human warmth to the compositions, whether she’s crooning sweet existential nothings about birds on “No Effort to Exist” or giving herself a goofy pep talk on the novelty-rap “I Am Brave,” one of several sub-minute fragments. On “Yoohoo,” she stretches out the titular phrase as if she’s delivering the world’s gentlest wolf howl.
It’s the tension between this retro artificiality and the intimacy of Bernice’s songwriting that makes Cruisin’ a thrilling experiment. Several songs emerged from a writing retreat in 2021, where the band explored an epistolary mode, checking in on friends or community members through song. “Underneath My Toe” opens like an emoji-filled text message (“Hi! I miss you all the time!”), with Dann cooing words of affection to a dearly missed friend; the music vacillates between pitter-patter jazz-pop and lurching funk. Elsewhere, Dann’s writing runs the gamut from vast and existential musings (“Dog Needs Love,” the rare clunker) to hyperspecific odes (“Barbara, It’s Your Tree,” a lovely letter-in-song to a nonagenarian loved one). Even when you don’t know who she’s singing about, you can sense a glow of affection and curiosity.
Cruisin’ is what happens when classy musicians work with the chintziest materials possible, all MIDI sheen and New Age cheese. Thirty-five years ago, people made music that sounded like this because it was just what was popular and commercial. Today, Bernice and their Toronto peers are exploring that aesthetic because they have something new to say.


The second, more adventurous album from the Texas soul singer bends toward the present while keeping the warmth of classic R&B in his melodies and songwriting.

Good Thing

Leon Bridges never set out to be a nostalgia act. Growing up in the ’90s, he was devoted to the R&B of Usher and Ginuwine and his earliest performances at open-mic nights in his native Fort Worth were of neo-soul songs sketched out over readymade beats. Though his debut album, 2015’s Coming Home, was a study of early ’60s soul music written at the altar of Sam Cooke, Bridges strives to be considered among his contemporaries as well as his forebears. He’s shared bills with One Direction expats, appeared on songs with Macklemore and ODESZA, and popped up in a music video with Portland rapper Aminé.
Perceived obligation pulled Bridges into the fold of traditional soul music, he’s said: As a young singer considering the profound legacy of black musicians like Cooke and his peers, Bridges felt compelled to pay them homage. If Coming Home was a remittance of dues, then, Bridges’ sophomore album, Good Thing, is a widening of horizons. His music remains broadly “retro” with a veil of analog fuzz built into the tracks, horn licks and references to the American South, and those buttery, laid-back vocal runs that drew a line from Bridges to his idol in the first place. But his temporal fixation has loosened, making room for a more elastic, eclectic approach to songwriting that feels perfectly contemporary.
This new adventurousness is most apparent in songs like “If It Feels Good (Then It Must Be)” and “You Don’t Know.” The former, a flirty, guitar-heavy funk number with a winsome opening line about being hotter than Texas, reveals its affinity for pop with plummy string synth and a bouncy four-count intro that tips its hat to Pharrell. Right on its heels, the equally upbeat “You Don’t Know” pairs Bridges’ dreamy falsetto with a boisterous disco track. These are the first entries in Bridges’ catalog that are, without question, meant for dancing, full of hints that he’s gunning for a spot in the same pop radio pantheon that he worshipped as a kid. In this pursuit, producer Ricky Reed—who in the past year has worked with Kesha, Maroon 5, and DNCE—is a worthy partner. It’s easy to point to Bridges’ major label credentials and call his crossover a commercial ploy, but with his upper-range theatrics and ineffable charisma, he makes a convincing pop vocalist.
The biggest payoffs on Good Thing aren’t born of its highest-energy moments, but of the tender touches in Bridges’ voice. Part of Coming Home’s charm was its leading man’s sweet, simple take on romance. Bridges wanted nothing more than to be a better man for his baby, to swim the Mississippi River to prove his love—heartwarming, if quaint-sounding, sentiments. On Good Thing, Bridges has kept his heart on his sleeve but updated his parlance to something a little less affected, a little more believable. On standout single “Beyond,” he gushes about seeing his partner’s face in the light of day, not just her body at night. On “Forgive You,” a stunning, sweeping offering of absolution, he captures the exquisitely affecting memory of sliding a pillow under his sleeping lover’s head. “Shy,” a lovely slow-burner, meets introversion with patience and compassion.
And notably, on this record, Bridges spares us the euphemisms when it comes to sex: “Sometimes I wonder what we’re holding on for/Then you climb on top of me and I remember,” he sings on “Mrs.” He remains the gentleman and doesn’t elaborate much further—but it’s clear that what he’s singing about here is real love, both the physical and the emotional of it, where before he was caught up in the idea of courtship. And while Bridges may still harbor old-school fantasies about wifing and child-rearing (“Will she have my kids/Will she be my wife?” he wonders aloud on “Beyond”), he’s speaking about them in language that feels like his own, instead of in words borrowed from generations past. That authenticity makes the difference between songs that are charming and songs that are genuinely moving. For Bridges, it’s the difference between being an act and being an artist.


Franz Ferdinand and cult band Sparks have toyed with making a collaborative album for years. The result, FFS, is not a meeting of equals: It's a marquee-name band throwing their weight behind a cult act that clearly inspired them, and the cult act showing who's really in charge.

FFS

Franz Ferdinand and Sparks initially floated the idea of working together in 2004, following the release of the former band's first album, which went platinum, and the latter band's 19th, which didn't chart. Sparks' Ron Mael responded by sending Franz Ferdinand a demo for a song called "Piss Off".
But Sparks are nothing if not ironists, and both bands are long-haulers, and at some point they finally got it together to make an album together, under a name you wouldn't guess would naturally occur to the sixty-something Mael brothers. Appropriately, the first public sign of their collaboration came when Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos joined Sparks for the latter's "When Do I Get to Sing 'My Way'" on stage a few months ago.
As much as FFS' members have been going on about how everyone made concessions to the partnership, in practice this is effectively a Sparks record with a particularly sharp, focused backing band. That's something they've needed for a long time, despite how much fun the Maels' unaccompanied "Two Hands, One Mouth" tour was. The central lyrical topic is Ron Mael's favorite subject, the gross stupidity of masculinity; the musical hooks are mostly Sparksian rather than Franzian. Every song is also, to one extent or another, a vocal duet between Russell Mael and Kapranos. The former's demi-operatic falsetto and pinpoint enunciation are the focal point of his band's arrangements, and the latter's crisp baritone has generally blended in with his group's sound, so their dynamic's not too even either.
"Even" isn't what's called for here, though, and they know it: the longest and most elaborate track is a suite called "Collaborations Don't Work". "Warhol didn't need to ask De Kooning 'bout art/ Frank Lloyd Wright always ate à la carte," Kapranos growls, before Russell Mael joins him with an ionospheric harmony: "Wish I'd been that smart". Indeed, FFS doesn't always work—the album's middle section keeps falling into the latter-day Sparks snare of hitting on some clever phrase ("the man without a tan," "the power couple's coming around") and repeating it until it's certain that everyone's gotten the point. And the chemistry between the two bands isn't so perfect that a second collaborative album would be preferable to whatever either of them has up its sleeve next.
When FFS does click, though, it's a little delight. That initial song Ron Mael contributed, "Piss Off", instantly earns its place on the next Sparks greatest-hits collection: it's a jaunty, lyrically withering rocker of the sort they used to crank out in the '70s. The airy, buzzing funk of "Call Girl" (hook: "why don't you call, girl") is the kind of thing Franz Ferdinand do exceptionally well, although lyrics like "I gave up blow and Adderall for you/ So I'd have dough and spend it all on you" have Sparks' fingerprints all over them. This is not a meeting of equals, and it doesn't have to be. It's a marquee-name band throwing their weight behind a cult act that clearly inspired them—and the cult act showing who's really in charge.


The former "new Radiohead" has their best moments-- most of them from their first two LPs-- packaged with other highlights, and the requisite new song.

Doves: The Places Between: The Best of Doves

The Places Between: The Best of Doves

About a decade ago, the word "angular" was rarely heard outside of a geometry class, and this was what Mercury Prize nominations sounded like. Doves did enough anthemic rafter-reaching to honor predecessors like Oasis and the Verve. They were also studio-centric and tech-savvy enough to satisfy an OK Computer jones, while having enough British classicism for people not ready to follow Radiohead down the rabbit hole. And there were many of them, to the point where "new Radiohead" (ironically sounding like the old Radiohead) became one of the early new century's most briskly populated UK indie subgenres.
With the possible exception of Elbow, none were better than Doves. So as The Places Between collects the best of the Doves (fortunately, it's not fooling anyone going by "Greatest Hits"), what's striking is how little it bears to the current landscape of rock music on either side of the Atlantic. As Stuart Berman pointed out in his review of Kingdom of Dust, former opening acts like the Strokes and the Rapture both pointed the way for sounds and, more importantly, images that would ultimately make Doves seem stodgy and unsexy by comparison.
Debut Lost Souls remains an enduringly consistent piece of shadowy, orchestral rock, and it could've been well represented here by any of its tracks. Despite being posed as the darkness before The Last Broadcast's light, Lost Souls gets cherrypicked for its most emphatic numbers. "Catch the Sun" remains the strongest melody Jimi Goodwin has ever written, while the harmonica and guitar peals of the misty "Sea Song" exude a low-key ecstacy. Even the stately, string-led waltz "Man Who Told Everything" is included as a truncated "summer" version.
Still, "There Goes The Fear" might stand as their crowning achievement: seven minutes, none of them wasted, rushing forth with an undeniable freewheeling brio and a percussive outro that still stuns (unfortunately, companion piece "Words" and its mawkish U2-isms is included over the luminous ballad "Satellites"). The grand, sweeping gestures of "Caught By the River" would be the most fittingly majestic closer of Doves' career if it weren't for the song that succeeds it on Places Between, which ends where Doves began, the "what if Second Coming went right?" drum barrage "The Cedar Room".
Though Some Cities features what might be Doves' closest thing to a stateside hit (the Motown-bound "Black and White Town"), the record itself lacked the juice of its predecessors, coinciding with a time when Coldplay loomed large and Keane broke. Kingdom of Rust was solid as well, but at this point, Doves were simply a band easy to take for granted, or even ignore. "Andalucia", a new song included here, tends to affirm the reasons Doves eventually opened up for Coldplay instead of the other way around-- Doves' looser rock numbers don't have enough oomph to cover for Goodwin's questionable vocal range and the band's general lack of charisma.
As much as you want to view The Places Between as a triumphant document of Doves' potency, I can't help but feel a somewhat depressing sense of finality-- especially when the tracklist is so stacked toward their first two albums (nine out of the 14 previously available songs. In a weird way, it actually honors the latter two by picking far and away their best songs and reintroducing them. More likely, The Places Between is all about reintroducing Doves as a band to people who initially, wrongly wrote them off.


Spearheaded by the Edge, this collection of stripped-down, re-imagined U2 songs is a frustrating missed opportunity.

Songs of Surrender

After 50 years as one of the biggest bands in the world, there’s something charming in the way that U2 keeps acting like they have something to prove. We all watched how actors, artists, and musicians handled the pandemic and its lockdown, whether it was Toyah Willcox and husband Robert Fripp staging elaborate dance numbers in their kitchen or St. Vincent drinking martinis and calling random fans live on Instagram. If you’re the Edge, apparently what you do is look at your band’s entire body of work and decide that it’s time to re-record it.
The result is Songs of Surrender, released on St. Patrick’s Day, in 16-track standard and 40-track deluxe versions with at least half a dozen different colored vinyl versions. Although this release is being marketed as a U2 record, it’s truly an Edge solo project that he invited Bono to sing on. Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and bassist Adam Clayton are on the cover and credited on each track, but it’s been made clear that Adam just recorded a bunch of basslines and left it to Edge to sort through and take what he wanted, while Larry’s participation mostly came via old tape scraps from previous sessions.
In the liner notes and in the press, Edge makes the point, repeatedly, that they recorded a lot of these songs when they were “very young men” and that Bono’s voice is much richer now, so why not re-evaluate them as men in their 60s, with a more refined vocal instrument? There’s also a general narrative voiced by multiple band members that the songs “weren’t finished” and here, now, he finally had the chance to finish them. (That these songs were somehow unfinished will be news to the millions of fans who have sung along to them at the top of their lungs, gotten them tattooed on their arms, or otherwise made them part of their lives for decades.)
Yes, it is true that 1980’s “Stories for Boys” was written when U2 themselves were boys. But that is a valuable perspective: The original is scattershot and impressionistic, more about feeling than precision. The Songs of Surrender version is stripped down to piano with the Edge on vocals, and the lyrics have perhaps more specificity than the original. That subversion, however, does not improve the song at all. In contrast, Pete Townshend wrote “My Generation” when he was 20, and the Who are still out there singing “Hope I die before I get old.”
Likewise, the exercise of switching “Bad”—the band’s 1984 song written about a friend’s struggles with drug abuse—from third person to first person disrespects the song’s original intent. What made that song—about watching friends go through literal life and death situations—one of U2’s best was how well it emotionally communicated the bleakness people felt, the loss and regret and sorrow that Bono manifested in the performance. Altering the lyrics now to put himself in the story doesn’t help it or clarify it or improve it, because he was already there. The fact that he still feels genuinely lucky despite all of the years that have passed doesn’t mean that he should rewrite “Bad.” It just means he should write some new songs.
These types of unnecessary alterations affect pretty much everything else on the record. None of these “re-imaginings” on Songs of Surrender fundamentally transform any of the 40 tracks. The great songs are still great, the re-written lines are interesting suggestions but in most cases, are no more than jarring distractions, and the less-than-great songs (some of which the band only released in the past decade, like “Every Breaking Wave” or “Invisible”) are still exactly what they were before this project.
Then there is the case of “Walk On,” an anthem from 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Upon release, the band dedicated it to Aung San Suu Kyi, who at the time was a political prisoner in Myanmar. Earlier this year, Bono spoke about being “let down” by her alleged human rights violations, and decided to give the song to someone else. On Songs of Surrender, they’ve taken the song back, retitled it “Walk On (Ukraine),” and rewritten it with references to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (The song now opens with the line, “If the comic takes the stage and no one laughs.”) But “Walk On” was already an inspiring, uplifting anthem about hope and perseverance that exists independent of the association they gave it. They could have dedicated it to the people of Ukraine without changing one word of it.
The more delightful moments on the record start with the Edge’s stunning falsetto take on “Desire,” which turns it into a futuristic, Motown-tinged romp that wouldn’t have been out of place on Achtung Baby. “Dirty Day,” an underrated track from 1993’s Zooropa, subtracts the original’s electronics for cello and a Waits-ian vocal delivery that doesn’t update it so much as make it fit in better with the context of the record. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” cements its reputation as eternally unbreakable, “Until the End of the World” turns into a well-suited country gospel tune, and both “All I Want Is You” and “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)” are still heartrending even in their refashioned states. Elsewhere, Bono gives some phenomenal performances, pushing his voice to its limits, like he does as he soars through “Beautiful Day” and “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own.”
But all of these highlights could have been manifested in a concert or other live performance and issued as a B-side or fan club single; nothing here is unforgettable or in danger of replacing its original. The arrangements are formulaic, regressing back to the stripped-down candlelit era of the original MTV’s Unplugged. At worst, Songs of Surrender is an overindulgence. At best, it’s a pleasant interlude. But it isn’t something that’s going to alter their legacy or the trajectory of their art in any direction, and U2 has always made it clear that we should expect more from them than that.


The Toronto-based trio Metz have incorporated harmony into their heavy sound on their third full-length. They shift away from all-out abrasion, adding color to their eruptions.

Strange Peace

Back in 1966, in a segment filmed for Dick Clark’s TV show “Where the Action Is,” the Who’s Pete Townshend equated volume with power, saying that the benefit of playing “fantastically loud” is that it gets people who would otherwise “turn a deaf ear” to pay attention. Fair enough, but what Townshend left out is that volume by itself doesn’t accomplish much other than make people numb. These days, sometimes less volume cuts through all the noise better. On their third full-length Strange Peace, Metz prove as much by dialing-down the jackhammer attack of their first two albums.
Which is not to say that the Toronto-based trio has ditched repetition as its primary mode of expression. But the main lyric on “Escalator Teeth” offers a clue that Metz are quite aware of pushing against their limits, as guitarist/singer Alex Edkins sings, “Machine-like repetition flows/Obscures my line of vision/And it takes hold/It goes on and on and on” before the song abruptly cuts off. It’s also apparent that the band sounded loud as fuck in the room where these tracks were recorded. In fact, most of the guitars, drums, and bass you hear on the album do break up a little, as if pushing past the maximum threshold the recording equipment would allow.
In 2012, on release of the band’s self-titled debut, guitarist/singer Alex Edkins said in an interview, “We try to take everything we do and make it redline.” The difference this time is that the album’s spacial ambience allows listeners some distance from the roar, which proves to be crucial. Ironically, this shift away from all-out abrasion comes in spite of the presence of Steve Albini. Of course, Metz have always worn their affinity for Albini’s work with the likes of the Jesus Lizard and his own band Big Black right on their sleeves. As it turns out, previous albums Metz and II were more faithful to Albini’s trademark cinema-verité production style without him.
Imagine the difference between a high-resolution photo print of an explosion versus being close enough to the explosion that you start coughing-up dust. Strange Peace, with its slicker mix and mastering finish, invites you to savor its details, unlike previous work. The change couldn’t have come at a better time, as Metz aren’t any less explosive than they were, but they’ve clearly added color to their eruptions. It would have been a mistake to smother the brilliance of those new colors with brute force.
On “Cellophane,” for instance, the band shows the utmost patience as it unveils its newfound affinity for melody in stages. At first, the song presents itself via the relentless repetition the band built its name on, a kind of fixation with pointed, blunt musical phrases. The jangle and thrum is ever so slightly sweetened, almost but not quite hummable—that is, until the song opens up unexpectedly onto an anthemic chorus. It is in this element of surprise, not volume, that Metz discover their true power as Strange Peace bounds from one mood to the next.
To be clear, Metz haven’t turned into a pop band. They’ve actually done the opposite, incorporating harmony without going soft. The fact that so few heavy bands have been able to pull that off attests to how difficult it is. With Strange Peace, Metz make it sound easy.


On their 13th album, the Japanese rock’n’rollers reaffirm what they do best: making the once-rebellious sounds of surf, rockabilly, and CBGB punk seem dangerous again.

LOVE&JETT

There are garage-rock bands, and then there’s Tokyo terrors Guitar Wolf, whose sound couldn’t possibly be contained by a mere cinder-block carport. This band’s style of rock’n’roll demands more imposing prefixes, like “jet,” “hurricane,” and “Kawasaki ZII 750.” Much as 1960s British Invasion groups bastardized the blues and sold it back to American teens, Guitar Wolf have spent the past 30 years making once-rebellious Stateside sounds—surf, rockabilly, Nuggets, CBGB punk—seem dangerous again, forsaking retro purism for monomania. Your typical garage band might make your ears ring; this one kills zombies.
Barring the occasional fidelity upgrade and periodic willingness to jam out past the three-minute mark, Guitar Wolf albums are more or less interchangeable—their commitment to rusty-chainsaw rock’n’roll is so absolute, it can make the Ramones look like Radiohead. Each release subjects you to a blaze of in-the-red riffs, song titles that appear torn from a B-movie poster, and screamed Japanese verses that even a native speaker might be hard-pressed to decipher. But for all their wild abandon and biker-gang aggression, Guitar Wolf have always had a soft spot for the melodic charms of ’50s rock’n’roll. As the title of their 13th album suggests, this time they’ve added a little romance to their roar.
LOVE&JETT is being issued by Jack White’s Third Man, making it Guitar Wolf’s first release for a high-profile U.S. label since they were part of Matador’s run of Japanese signings in the mid-’90s. And with its skin-tight 10-song, 26-minute format, the album seems primed to engage a wider audience—the opening title track may come crashing in on a hardcore stomp, but frontman Seiji’s unabashedly tuneful vocal practically renders it power-pop. The band also take extra measures to ensure the language barrier is a non-issue: Everything you need to know about the ravenous “Sex Jaguar” is right there in the wild-cat growls. And while Guitar Wolf are no stranger to murderous covers of snotty garage-band staples, their jackhammered rendition of the Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’” retains the original’s congenial, soulful spirit despite the half-remembered lyrics.
But the most perceptible change on LOVE&JETT can be felt beneath its surface squall. This is the first Guitar Wolf album to feature new bassist Gotz, the third person to fill out the band’s bottom end since original member Billy died of a heart attack in 2005. Gotz brings a touch of polyrhythmic finesse to the band’s bull-headed assault, investing “Bowling in Takada-No-Baba” with a Motown-like swing and laying down a throbbing bassline to power the gritty hi-hat groove of “Australopithecus Spark” (the closest Guitar Wolf have ever come to disco). But though LOVE&JETT teases at new directions, it ultimately reaffirms what this band does best. The album climaxes with an updated version of the berserker 2002 rave-up “Fire Ball Red” (rebranded here as “Fireball Red Legend”), providing new fans with a crash course on an essential Guitar Wolf maxim: When you hear Seiji count in with a 1-2-3-4, it’s a warning to get the fuck out of the way.


The Atlanta producer returns with a guest-filled album that builds on and creates a bigger version of the dark, hard-hitting production that has turned him into rap’s definitive producer.

Not All Heroes Wear Capes

Fake retirements are hip-hop. Can an artist even be considered a rap icon if they have never bowed out of the game, and then come back months later with a new album? Metro Boomin, aware that it was time for this rite of passage, called it quits in April after remaining mostly silent since December’s Double or Nothing with Big Sean. But the rap world knew Metro would return, they just didn’t know how or when. Would it be on a new Future project? Would he hit the swerve button and release an album with a pop artist? Maybe a Perfect Timing 2, one could only hope? Instead, Metro dropped Not All Heroes Wear Capes, a high-profile guest-filled album that builds on and creates a bigger version of the dark, hard-hitting production that has turned Metro into rap’s definitive producer of the last five years.
Since 2013, when Metro established himself with 19 & Boomin, the St. Louis-bred producer flew through the beat-making ranks. From the jump, he impacted the genre with his, “Metro Boomin want some more, nigga” tag, all but making the producer tag a necessity. But where Metro really shined was an ability to elevate the artists he collaborated with—like so many of the beat-making legends. Metro’s beats would become the key in unleashing the creativity in some of rap’s greatest talents: He helped Future tap into his lean-drenched emotions on DS2, transformed Travis Scott into our Auto-Tune overlord on Days Before Rodeo, and managed to scratch one of the last great musical moments out of Kanye West on “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1.” Not All Heroes Wear Capes doesn’t just broaden Metro’s sound, it’s a showcase for artists relieved to be working with Metro again, because that’s when they are at their most creative.
Right now, there is no better case for Metro bringing the most out of an artist than 21 Savage. The East Atlanta rapper finds himself on three of the album’s tracks with the first “Don’t Come Out the House,” using a sinister half-whisper flow to reciprocate the horror score energy felt by Metro’s piano keys and the drums of Memphis’ Tay Keith. The track feels like a pump of adrenaline as the melody cuts out leaving only the rumbling bass of Tay Keith and 21’s villainous whisper. But 21 smartly doesn’t overuse the flow, returning to his standard creaky-voice when Metro’s keys kick back in. He then spits a hurtful bar that will crush the hearts of all of his denim-wearing supporters, “Levi jeans, low self-esteem, he on BlackPeopleMeet.”
Then, on “10 Freaky Girls,” Metro shows off how he refined his sampling skills during his hiatus, flipping an ’80s R&B song into a two-stepper spearheaded by 21. He manages to be both comedic and chilling, as his personality feels free, flexing his Ubereats account and using the song’s harmonica outro to speak about the pleasant experience he had when he ran into a guy he robbed from way back.
Metro extends his life-giving to guests throughout the album. “Up to Something” with Young Thug and Travis Scott is an instrumental that could fit into an older era of Metro, and Thug and Travis comfortably let their vocal quirks loose. On “Space Cadet,” Metro ushers Gunna into “The Twilight Zone” with a twinkling instrumental, and Gunna responds with one of the album’s bounciest hooks. The “Space Cadet” instrumental, like so much of the album’s production, feels cinematic but thankfully not far removed from his Atlanta-built sound.
Metro stumbles a bit when he deviates from that Atlanta sound. “Only You” is a desperate swing from Metro, aimed for the thriving Afrobeats and reggaeton markets, handcuffing WizKid and J Balvin to a beat. Metro remedies that slip up with “Borrowed Love,” a crossover attempt that creates a muddy dance track for the calming vocals of Swae Lee to levitate and WizKid to show why he has become the must-know name in Afrobeats.
When rappers hear that Metro Boomin tag, it’s like they’re possessed. It’s why Not All Heroes Wear Capes doesn’t feel like the typical producer album, filled with mixtape leftovers and owed favors. This is Metro Boomin laying the groundwork for his next phase, which at times feels like it could be film scores. When you’ve done it all at 25 years old, some may lose the motivation, but Metro seems ready to keep going, continuing to define the new sound of hip-hop.


The veteran California band reconstructs some of its earliest material for an unusual sort of lost album that captures an ephemeral moment in punk history.

9th & Walnut

Tony Lombardo was in his 30s when he first met Frank Navetta and Bill Stevenson, two teenage outcasts playing punk rock in Navetta’s sister’s garage at 9th Street and Walnut Avenue in Long Beach, California. They played together for a few years, but by the time Stevenson insisted the nascent band hit the road and start expanding its profile, Lombardo had a job, a mortgage, and a fiancée. He took a pass on touring, and left the group soon after. He came to regret that decision, recently telling Rolling Stone that “it was the biggest mistake I ever made.”
9th & Walnut, the eighth studio album from the Descendents, represents a do-over of sorts for the now-76-year-old Lombardo, looking back at those early days in the garage with nostalgic fondness and more than a tinge of wistfulness. Its songs were written in the late 1970s, before singer Milo Aukerman joined the group, and recorded by his bandmates in the early aughts. During last year’s pandemic lockdown, Stevenson returned to the tracks and added Aukerman’s newly recorded vocals, thus marking a kind of reunion. The unusual process manages to capture an ephemeral formative moment in the history of one of the most influential bands in punk.
The lineup here represents the spiritual core of a band that’s long been in flux, pulled apart over the years by various obligations: Aukerman’s career in biochemistry, Stevenson’s work with Black Flag, Lombardo’s suburban dreams, and the late Navetta’s mental and physical health. By the time Aukerman joined the band in 1979, after the release of their first 7" (“Ride the Wild/It’s a Hectic World”), they had already begun to evolve. Many of the songs that appear on 9th & Walnut had been dropped from their live sets, and they wouldn’t be recorded until 2002, when drummer Stevenson assembled guitarist Navetta and bassist Lombardo to finally put them to tape. When Stevenson sent Aukerman the tracks from those 2002 sessions last year, Aukerman was hearing many of them for the first time.
Since the bulk of this material was tracked years after it was written, and after decades of experience, there’s a technical proficiency and polish that would have been unachievable for the kids in that garage. Still, the Descendents’ back catalog has always had a juvenile bent, and the songs on 9th & Walnut are especially unrefined—Navetta wrote some of them when he was just 14. “Baby Doncha Know” excoriates an older woman for not acting her age from a predictably misguided youthful POV; “Yore Disgusting” and “Grudge” are indignant rants against people he hates. But these recordings also reveal some of the secret sauce that made early Descendents records so transcendent—namely, Lombardo’s distinctive downstroke strumming, an aggressive style that pushed the basslines out front, adding both heft and nuance to seemingly simple compositions.
Most of the record wouldn’t rank among the band’s best work, but there are gems. “Nightage,” Lombardo’s ode to a downward romantic spiral, joins the cadre of classic Descendents “-age” songs, and sounds the most fully formed of any of the album’s 18 tracks. And it’s more than a little cool to hear Aukerman’s vocals on the two Descendents songs released before he joined the group (“Ride the Wild,” “It’s a Hectic World”). If nothing else, it demonstrates just how transformative his presence was in shaping the band’s sound.
As much as anything, 9th & Walnut is a historical fiction, a reinterpretation of the brief moment before Stevenson became the de facto bandleader and took on most of the songwriting responsibilities, before Navetta burned his gear and fled north to become a fisherman, before the bespectacled Aukerman was the literal and figurative face of the band, when Descendents made raw, bitter punk rock rooted in Navetta’s angst and Lombardo’s reverence for the ’60s. There’s a significant gap between the jangly new wave guitars on that first 7" and the taut, melodic hardcore roots of 1982’s Milo Goes to College, the record that would birth pop-punk. In context, it is slightly bizarre to hear aging punks perform the songs of their youth, music that would become foundational to scenes that produced the likes of Blink-182 and Weezer. But as the missing link that connects Descendents’ humble beginnings to their most iconic sounds, it’s essential.

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Erika M. Anderson scores the debut feature film by the actress, fashion designer, and socialite Tara Subkoff. Recording with long-time collaborator Leif Shackelford, Anderson again explores the boundary line between the real and the virtual, taking up vocals, strings, and electronics to soundtrack a sinister online realm unrolling its tendrils into our own.

#HORROR OST

Horror has always been deeply embedded into Erika M. Anderson’s music—not the lurid B-movie scares of lurking bogeymen or masked slashers, but a trauma more rooted in the quotidian and everyday, of neuroses roaming in a fog of prescription medication and of self-inflicted scars hidden beneath long sleeves. First as part of Los Angeles group Gowns, and now in her solo incarnation as EMA, Anderson has pursued a raw, husky lo-fi music that feels intensely personal, the sort that you either feel and empathize with on a deep and profound level, or listen to uncomfortably, like an intruder. On #HORROR, though, we find Anderson not airing personal demons, but writing to commission, as she scores the debut feature film by the actress, fashion designer, and socialite Tara Subkoff.
As the hashtag implies, this is a calculatedly millennial take on the genre, a tale of pre-teen girls, inherited privilege, and cyberbullying that takes an inevitable dark twist. On paper, Anderson is a good fit for the subject matter—not just for the fraught emotions that crackle in her music, but for her digital nativity. While EMA’s early output was firmly rooted in a DIY punk idiom, Anderson’s work has increasingly expanded into virtual and connected spaces, from the song-portraits of technological malaise found on her 2014 LP T**he Future’s Void to her recent exhibition "I Wanna Destroy (Sacred Objects From Suburban Homes)" at New York's MoMA PS1 and London’s Barbican, which employed Oculus Rift virtual reality technology to memorialize or consecrate banal or defunct artefacts of consumer culture. Now on *#HORROR—*recorded with long-time collaborator Leif Shackelford—we find Anderson again working at the boundary line between the real and the virtual, taking up vocals, strings, and electronics to soundtrack a sinister online realm unrolling its tendrils into our own.
Certainly, Anderson and Shackelford have done their homework. These 18 tracks add up to an hour of music, gesturing out to horror score landmarks past and present. "Running Danger" and "Dr White in the House" channel the analogue synth work of John Carpenter, unfurling throbbing electronic tones around which Shackelford twines long, melancholy violin strokes. "Locust Strings" recalls the sinister orchestral clamor of György Ligeti—or, if you want a more contemporary antecedent, the wasp’s nest hum of strings Mica Levi wove throughout Under the Skin. And while many of the album’s tracks feel fleeting, working with shadowy atmospherics, one fully-fledged song emerges in the shape of "Amnesia Haze". Taking its cues from the soundtrack to Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, it’s a diaphanous synthpop confection of twinkling arpeggios and soft-strummed guitar that recalls Chromatics in its minor-key yearning and opiated pacing. "You were just a child," repeats Anderson, and the results are striking, if a touch more pristine than the raw angst with which EMA made her name.
#HORROR often feels like a slick thing, with few of the rough edges that have defined Anderson’s work. But the above zig-zag of reference points here perhaps gestures at the real reason #HORROR doesn’t entirely come off. It feels a little too surface and referential, lost amidst legacies. You might argue a horror film soundtrack can never be anything other than a genre exercise: the process, after all, comes with certain demands and strictures—the tension of suspense, the release of the scare. But such is the genre-skipping on show that it’s hard to grasp what dark truth about Subkoff’s film #HORROR is trying to express.
Perhaps we get closest on a handful of tracks that feel like they play off the aesthetics of the web itself: "Horror #2", with its coldly impassive choral voices and buzzing tones that evoke jagged waveforms; or "Harshmallow World", a twinkly fantasia of pizzicato strings and tolling bells recalling the sumptuous, exotic darkness of Italian maestros like Bruno Nicolai, but presented with a bright, hyperreal glaze. With John Carpenter off on tour and labels like Death Waltz and Waxwork Records resurrecting dusty old scores as luxury consumer products, the vintage horror soundtrack has never been more sung. But at times like this we need someone to advance the form, and #HORROR doesn’t quite have the strength of conviction. Next time, perhaps, more guts.


The 17-minute EP is a fun but somewhat predictable placeholder until the West Coast gunslinger’s next proper project.

Guess What? EP

”Shit goin’ better than ever,” G Perico barks giddily on the a cappella intro before running down all the ways they are. It’s an oddly inelegant way for a G Perico project to begin, considering how his music typically speaks for itself. He’s usually a bristling, unflappable OG who answers to no one. Yet after a prolific 2017 that saw him release three stellar projects, including two solo records and the collaborative tape G-Worthy, Perico has kept a low profile this year, delivering a few guest verses and keeping mostly to himself. Guess What? is a fun update on how his year has been (spoiler: it’s been great) and a somewhat predictable placeholder until the West Coast gunslinger’s next proper project.
Across Guess What?’s 17 minutes, Perico covers his usual territory—Crippin, ladies, homies, life in Los Angeles—with the verve and color we’ve come to expect. “Bitch I’m a player, gangster, pimp, mack/Had a 40 squeezed on me and I lived through that!” he boasts on the infectious “Mo Power,” his nasally vocals nestling in between producer Dupri’s ominous, beehive synths. Perico’s elastic voice sounds good over pretty much anything, especially the Daz Dillinger-indebted instrumentals he’s so drawn to, and the songs on Guess What? are no exception. He switches flows with the nimbleness of a point guard weaving through traffic for a finger roll—he’s smooth, crafty, and full of humor. He interpolates Forrest Gump on “Mo Power”’s chorus (”Go for it, go for it, go!”) and on “Play Wit It” vows to “spoil my daughter and take the hate out my baby mama” while boasting about eating Japanese BBQ.
The first half of Guess What? covers familiar Perico sounds that were nonetheless more refined on last year’s All Blue or 2016’s Shit Don’t Stop. The tracks here pack the expected bounce, menace, and detail, but without the usual urgency or thematic coherence. Still, the album’s only real misfire is “How U Want It,” a strip club-ready free-for-all with a thundering, if nondescript, beat from Mike WiLL Made It-affiliate 30 Roc. It sounds nothing like Perico’s typical work, which is fine, except that it replaces his flair with a run-of-the-mill trap sound that brings out Perico’s laziest rhymes: “Slap it/smack it/shake it/down/drop it/lift it/throw it/round,” he commands. As the EP’s closer, it unfortunately feels like an attempt to set Perico up for a more traditional debut album, which raises the question of what a (presumably) major label project from Perico would even sound like.
An optimistic answer could be Guess What?’s “Play Wit It,” which features an instantly singable chorus from the buzzing LA MC Kalan.frfr. With the help of Kalan’s Auto-Tune’d hook, it adds a melodic softness to counterbalance Perico’s snarl while priming the song for Power 106. It’s a perfectly executed addition to Perico’s skillset, a contemporary tweak on a ’90s-indebted sound that, in less experienced hands, could become repetitive.
Guess What? plays like a collection of Perico B-sides, but works as a low-stakes refresher on one of LA’s best spitters and an occasional testing ground for new directions. Perico’s next big project, assuming it’s not another EP, will have to prove that he’s capable of transcending, or at least building upon, the regionalism that has defined his music until now. Until then, though, even if he’s starting to get bored, he’s more than capable of illuminating the stark dichotomies of his everyday life: “On my waist, baby, that’s another gun case” he raps on “Wit the Gangstas.” “Shoot first, you gon’ see another day.”


Rhino compiles an impressive collection of the oft-maligned and misunderstood genre of goth-rock, which includes selections from a wide variety of artists, among them Joy Division, the Cure, Bauhaus, Siouxsie & the Banshees, the Misfits, Sisters of Mercy, Throbbing Gristle, Ministry, Mission UK, and Einstürzende Neubauten.

Various Artists: A Life Less Lived: The Gothic Box

A Life Less Lived: The Gothic Box

There's not much to criticize about A Life Less Lived, apart from the obvious occupational hazards of memorializing a genre quite so gleefully ludicrous as goth-rock. Unfazed by the Misfits having beat them to the "our box set comes in a tiny coffin" trick, Rhino have wrapped this 3xCD/DVD set in something the average goth is more likely to have actually been inside-- lace-up faux leather-- and slipped in a 58-page book full of some pretty entertaining stuff: pictures, song-by-song notes, essays, some cheeky "How to Dance Goth" instructions, and quotes from musicians either reminiscing about the 1980s or complaining about being included because they were NOT GOTH dammit SHUT UP. (The Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie: "I was way too fat to be a fucking goth!") No one will get very far into this music without a pretty intuitive sense of that tone-- the mix of devotion and affectionate parody, the ability to laugh over something's absurdity and still be (ahem) dead serious about it.
Because no matter how many Florida teenagers thought they were actually vampires, the fact is that goth-- a form of dance music-- has always been more fun than scary. Case in point, maybe: Alien Sex Fiend's "Now I'm Feeling Zombified". Forget capes and corsets-- this little legend is nine minutes of chintzy, acidic squelching, motoring angrily along with a frontman who makes Marilyn Manson look like Tony Bennett. The wonder of the thing is that it's a treat no matter which way you come at it: On one level, it's grim, cathartic, and a blast for dancing; on another, it's just fun to sing along in ridiculous cretinous-monster voices. And oddly enough, it's that same appreciation of the ridiculous that can get you through some of the bands that took their drama seriously-- the stadium goth-rock bands scattered through these discs, bands whose punk-meets-glam drama finds its next of kin in... well, hair metal, another 1980s genre that's dated pretty strangely. (If you don't believe me-- or the Cult-- just watch the Mission (UK) video on the DVD, which looks and sounds like psychedelic bikers have taken over Def Leppard.) Even the worst of the music here tends to be fascinatingly novel: No matter how many preening goth-influenced bands make their way onto modern-day radio, this stuff feels a world away from us.
Why? Because while we all give "goth" credit as an abstract notion-- a quality and style that's become one of the main pillars of the rock world-- we tend not to think much about the bands that really codified it, and even less about how its musical influence has worked out. Twenty years later, the compilers of this set have actually done a terrific job of tracing those things, especially considering how vague and malleable the word "goth" has gotten over the years. And while no one's pretending the world hasn't seen a lot of goth bands with, in Bauhaus guitarist Daniel Ash's words, "too much makeup and no talent," the selections in this box wind up making a great case for two things: The damned high quality of a lot of forgotten first-wave goth, and the sheer verve, insanity, and creativity of some of its musicians.
They start with familiar classics from the bands who turned out to be goth's godfathers-- Joy Division, the Cure, Bauhaus, Siouxsie & the Banshees-- but the heart of the thing remains England's 1980s goth heyday, where the urge to dance comes out in grim, grinding, relentless music for the fake undead: Look to the Sisters of Mercy's steamroller "Temple of Love", or Tones on Tail's "Christian Says". They sprinkle in darker tracks from the pop bands who filled out goths' record collections: Echo & the Bunnymen, the Cocteau Twins, the Jesus & Mary Chain. They follow the aesthetic as it comes to North America (Christian Death), reunites with punk (the Misfits), meets up with electronic dance music (Skinny Puppy), and starts to become "industrial" (Ministry), and then they glance back at the acts who were the godfathers of that (Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten). They stop in on the kind of arty, spooky goth that was more likely to have women singing (Dead Can Dance, Miranda Sex Garden), and close off with a nice past-meets-future moment: Modern-day band AFI covering the Cure's "The Hanging Garden".
Within all that is a rich vein of terrific pop music, from bands whose more over-the-top impulses seem-- 20 years down the road-- less silly and more brilliantly daring. Between the steady, clanging beat and the dark energy they're working to summon, the best of them genuinely shred: See Red Lorry Yellow Lorry's "Walking on Your Hands", which channels Joy Division for people who wish they'd rocked steadier. It's just as striking to sort through how much these bands contributed to the sound of modern music, with their cavernous, trebly productions helping pioneer the whole use of hard, ugly sound-- every time you love a track for how happily brutal it is, some small credit is owed in goth's direction. (Some acts here take that to bold extremes; the most notable example comes from 1991: Daniel Ash's "Coming Down" is 12-bar blues, only tinny and echoing and with the most curdled vocal treatment possible.) There are also plenty of reminders of goth's other side, the atmospheric, psychedelic spook that descended from Joy Division and the Cure.
Spend enough time with this box, and it just might turn you into a closet goth. The timing is perfect, too, and not just because My Chemical Romance sell lots of records. Some songs have a nervy energy that reflects against today's dance-rock; some have a ludicrous screech that reflects against today's noise bands. And all of it-- the spooky atmospheres, metallic productions, keening voices, dark drama-- has more than a little in common with this site's favorite record of last year, the Knife's Silent Shout. Best of all, it's the rare box set a person can buy to sink into a world that-- unless you've been a serious goth all along-- feels alien and new: These acts have been stuck in the goth ghetto so long that you might be amazed how much they have in common with their better-remembered peers.


The Ghanaian American singer’s dazzling second album is a confident and unconventional record that flows, saunters, and boasts its way to one of the best pop albums of the year.

Fountain Baby

Amaarae is sounding expensive these days. Not necessarily in a material sense, though there is mention of vintage Impalas, box-fresh Mowalolas, and copious Dior drip. Rather her voice is extra luxurious, her music lavish with instrumentation: violins and cellos, a Japanese koto, ethereal harps, West African dounoun and kora, steel pan drums, an authoritative horn section. It flows, it saunters, it boasts, connected by Amaarae’s sweet soprano, lilting to the gods. The fountain in question here is pussy, but it’s also so much more. It’s Fountain Baby, the fascinating tale of a woman who wants the world, but who is also wise enough to accept that serpents follow glory. Unlike many of her pop contemporaries, Amaarae has an innate sense of consequences; balling and boning is not an escapist lifestyle, nor an empty canvas on which to craft cliché party bops for buying apple-scented body wash at CVS. There are some stakes to being rich, sexy, and messy.
Before Amaarae reckons with the dark side of abundance, she’s simply out here having too much fun. On Fountain Baby’s single, “Co-Star,” she and executive producers KZ DidIt and Kyu Steed adorn the syncopated rhythm with crystalline synths and Amaarae’s playful needling about astrological signs, somewhere between a meme (“Them Libra bitches horrible”) and a sardonic document of her dating life. By the second song, the dreamy baile funk-inspired reverie “Angels in Tibet,” she’s singing, “I want to fuck a puddle” with an almost diaphanous euphoria, like she’s high on sex and nitrous, floating through the night.
Her themes of desire and fuckery are vivid and emotionally complex. Even her flex meditations generally avoid tropes: On “Reckless and Sweet,” she gently chronicles a lover who’s interested “’cause my money just too long/The thought of me spending gives you goosebumps,” a golddigger lullaby that self-indicts, too—the downside of love and money, it seems, is having too much of the latter. Women want to use her, though she seems to return the favor: “Fuck you and give you away,” she sings breathlessly on “Disguise,” “You know I just wanted to play.” It’s a heartbreak song disguised as pillow talk, synths simmering as submerged bass titters courtesy KZ, Kyu, Glaswegian producer S-Type, and Yves Tumor collaborator Yves Rothman.
Amaarae has always stated her intent to make futurist Afropop. Her itinerant upbringing—born in the Bronx, raised in Atlanta and Accra—informs her creative ambitions, as do some of the musical inspirations she’s namechecked in a press release: Missy, Janet, Britney, though their more outré jams are better touchstones for pop gems like “Sociopathic Dance Queen” and “Princess Going Digital.” “Counterfeit” opens with a live-instrumentation cover of Clipse’s “Wamp Wamp (What It Do),” a fire nod to one of Pharrell’s more genius productions (he gets a writing credit). Amaarae keeps within the Hell Hath No Fury rubric, too, rapping about printing money and riding around shining, though somewhere in the generational shift, communal joy seeped into Push and Malice’s characteristic nihilism: “Thirty bitches in the crib,” Amaarae raps, “And they all getting paid!” The track’s urgency dissipates a bit from the sing-songy chorus, but it doesn’t really matter: This shit’s going to smash TikTok’s cakes to smithereens.
Though she never acknowledges it outright, pending anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Ghana, which would ostensibly outlaw Amaarae’s music, looms in the background of her vision of sex and danger. On “Wasted Eyes,” a midtempo burner with a 13-piece orchestra and a percussive glock, she nearly whispers, “Hottie million with a milli on me/I wanna ménage with the blicky on me.” Flirting with sexual danger is one thing, but our gal is still clear-eyed, with a punchline designed to cut the trifling at the knees: “You love me with no honor.” On “Sociopathic Dance Queen,” a candy pop gem about a doomed hookup at a bad party, the “acid pussy” is just too dangerous. On “Sex, Violence, Suicide” a watery, stream-of-consciousness acoustic guitar lament for a toxic relationship, she zags into a raucous, snotty guitar punk, à la her first album’s “D*A*N*G*E*R*O*U*S.”
Whether she’s enjoying the complicated life of a baller or indulging in the fantasy of it, her cool ease is dreamy and comely; her frustrated desire transforms into beauty by the velvety way she sings it, even as she reflects on louche situationships and the pain of lovers with ulterior motives. By the final track, when she sings a distorted guitar anthem about how her girl works the pole and then comes home to god—and the god happens to be “Alimony Ama,” her own nickname—no one’s more aware of the irony than Amaarae herself, as she looks to a higher power for a sign she won’t heed. “Shawty say she love me like she love the lord,” she intones breathily. “When I’m in that pussy I’m above the law/If I had the world I still would end it all/A thousand and one reasons not to get involved.” No doubt she’ll do it anyway.


In a case of well-honed troubleshooting after the startlingly bland X&Y, Coldplay's fourth LP is a diluted version of U2's Achtung Baby or Radiohead's Kid A, the "experimental" mid-career maneuvers of their peers. Brian Eno produces.

Coldplay: Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends

Earlier this year, Britons voted Coldplay as The Band Most Likely to Put You to Sleep. The poll, conducted by hotel chain Travelodge, had Chris Martin & Co. beating out aural Ambien including James Blunt and Norah Jones. Even for a band known to take solace in their overarching pleasantness, the drowsy coronation doubled as a harsh insult. After all, Coldplay is a rock band. A grandma-friendly, Radiohead-normalizing, disarmingly polite rock band led by a man who sounds like he's still yearning for puberty perhaps...but a rock band nonetheless. After proving their stadium bona fides with 2002's bristling A Rush of Blood to the Head, these wuss messiahs fattened up with X&Y, a startlingly bland affair that even forced eternally level-headed New York Times critic Jon Pareles to dub them "the most insufferable band of the decade." The Travelodge survey indicated this considerate foursome wasn't even keeping people awake long enough to piss them off anymore. So Coldplay did what any U2 acolytes worth a chiming guitar chord would do-- they went off to "rip it up and start again." But Viva isn't a complete overhaul á la Achtung Baby or Kid A; just as they dull the sharp corners of their legendary influences musically, Coldplay offer a diluted version of the "experimental" mid-career maneuver with their fourth LP. It's a case of well-honed troubleshooting that should keep the faithful conscious enough to appreciate its subtle improvements.
Ever self-deprecating, Martin offered his band's thesis to MTV a couple weeks ago: "We look at what other people are doing and try and steal all the good bits," he said. "We steal from so many different places that hopefully it becomes untraceable." That last bit is probably wishful thinking. For their "new direction" album, Coldplay hired the egghead responsible for more new direction albums than any other producer over the past 35 years, Brian Eno. The move isn't original, but it's smart. A self-described "sculptor" with a tendency to chip away rather than augment, Eno helps Coldplay reverse their bloat in favor of a slimmer sound; the anthems remain but they're no longer bogged down by incessant refrains and overdubs.
Thanks to a bubbling bit of exotic percussion that wouldn't sound out of place on Peter Gabriel's latter-day LPs, "Lost!" is transformed from Just Another Coldplay Song into a uniquely alluring smash and live staple for years to come. The Gabriel connection is also apparent on the spectacular, wide-eyed "Strawberry Swing", which floats light tribal drums above circular guitars and Martin's idyllic musings. Think "In Your Eyes": The Next Generation. More welcomed semi-surprises: Ballsy first single "Violet Hill" pulls off some honest-to-God Scary Monsters mutant funk while "Chinese Sleep Chant" is a shoegaze excursion as traceable as it is passable. Arcade Fire producer Markus Dravs' touch can be heard on the strung-out anthem "Viva la Vida", its "woah oh oh!" refrain already responsible for untold iPod sales. Apart from a few brief lulls into somnolent twinkle-pop, the music is purposeful, svelte, and modern. If only Martin could inject some pathos into his often-embarrassing universal scripture.
There's a thin line between lyrics that speak to everyone and lyrics that suck-up to everyone (see: Bono's steady devolution over the last couple decades). Even on Coldplay's best songs, Martin sometimes has trouble reconciling his inner hack with his better judgment. On Viva, he backs away from the wallowing self-pity that tanked X&Y, instead going for black-and-white extremes-- life and death, love and lust, dreams and reality-- with little regard for any shades of gray. His supposedly ominous headstone obsession on "Cemeteries of London" is about as creepy as a midday graveyard stroll. And "Lost!" is nearly done in by a cringeworthy verse featuring big fish and a small pond. But there are moments when Martin's band mates push his wide-open words toward more specific meaning. Blissful nostalgia permeates "Strawberry Swing" so thoroughly it's impossible to deny its "perfect day," and the hook to Viva's closer relishes its immortal rush: "I don’t want to follow death and all of his friends!" He may be a pointed critic of his own broadness-- as seen in his guest appearance on "Extras" and in countless humble interviews-- but Martin is still a hopeless sap. He's clearly aware of Thom Yorke's apocalyptic verve and Bono's most cunning reflexive confessionals, but thus far he's incapable of matching either one.
"Lights will guide you home/ And ignite your bones/ And I will try to fix you," sang Martin on X&Y's "Fix You", a gag-inducing bit of motivational flotsam that came off like self-parody. Viva offers a more believable fix to the current Coldplay dilemma, i.e., how does a pop band with artful aspirations please everyone while satisfying themselves at the same time? Because while they ape their forebears without mercy, there's no mistaking a Coldplay song from a U2 or Radiohead song. The new album expands their individuality in tiny, effective ways while maintaining their world-beating gifts. The record's violent, revolution-themed artwork is misleading. Viva is more like a bloodless coup-- shrewd and inconspicuous in its progressive impulses.


The New York and Seoul-based Kathy Yaeji Lee is one of the most fascinating vocalists to appear in house music of late. Her languid debut EP is full of elliptical earworms.

Yaeji EP

When you think of house vocalists, you might recall the larger-than-life pipes and jaunty delivery of ’90s-era singers—like Barbara Tucker, Kathy Sledge, or Meli’sa Morgan—who channel the genre’s primordial disco and R&B roots. In recent years, Disclosure and their coterie of singers have mimicked those booming pop-house styles. But a wave of underground house singers are doing something different—something whispered, sleepy, and sparse. Galcher Lustwerk pioneered a new way forward for house vocalists, an unadorned simplicity.
Enter Kathy Yaeji Lee, the 23-year-old New York and Seoul-based DJ behind the electronic project Yaeji—one of the most fascinating vocalists to appear in house music of late. Musically, she shares in the foggy and dazed deep house of Galcher, DJ Richard, or Florian Kupfer. But unlike her forebears, she presents a singing voice that doesn’t have any immediate comparisons. She is equally lackadaisical, but the pure quality of her voice is a true curiosity. On her self-titled EP, Lee displays all the modalities her voice has to offer.
Across Yaeji’s five tracks, Lee’s voice is at once present and just barely there. Singing in Korean and English, she sounds both smoky and bubbly—languid in mood, but fast-paced in her inflection. She shifts between a relaxed whisper and endearing spoken word, maintaining a melancholy register throughout. Her voice slinks and slithers across the relatively barebone beats she made alongside GODMODE’s Nick Sylvester (a former Pitchfork contributor). Hiding in plain sight are evocative, often personal or political lyrics that give Lee’s songs an unexpected emotional texture.
Opener “Noonside” is about waiting in line at border patrol, and “New York 93” reflects on her childhood memories of the city. On both, she’s aided by a very minimal set of tools: There’s often just a slippery synth line, quiet drums, and then slight but ominous vocal processing. The messages are not necessarily clear on a first listen; as Lee quickly repeats her phrases, it’s hard to grab onto her words. The effect, though, is undeniably catchy. She hammers away at elliptical, enigmatic phrases until they are lodged in your brain. But then again, some of her songs only gain extra weight once you’ve gleaned a lyric sheet; whatever feeling of seriousness they are supposed to connote can be lost in the shuffle.
Alongside these private songs, Lee shows a knack for writing both silly and more straightforward dance music. On the album’s highlight, “Guap”—a cover of a song by Australian house producer Mall Grab—Lee sings about counting cash in her “German whip” and a long night of clubbing with a deadpan monotone. It’s hard to know if she’s joking or serious, and it might not even matter, because “Guap” is an earworm through and through. This same quality carries towards the album’s closer “Full of It,” which is moody, effective house music. Standing at little under 20 minutes, this EP finds Lee flitting between more emotional pop and by-the-book dance music, not necessarily choosing one or the other. Yaeji feels like a sampler of what Lee can do, or a brief sketch of who she might become.


These synth-pop goofs attempt to translate the fun of their intoxicating stage show into their debut record, but they mostly make effortlessness seem insincere.

Grapetooth

No other band on the planet may be having more fun right now than Grapetooth, the duo of Twin Peaks guitarist Clay Frankel and producer Chris Bailoni, or Home-Sick. During the last year, the Chicago synth-pop goofs have waved katanas out of convertibles, misused a moped, and played sold-out shows that often resemble stampedes and sometimes involve haircuts. But you know what’s not so fun? Scrapping a bad song idea, making a good song even better, or questioning what songs are strong enough for a livewire concert but may not work so well on an album. Grapetooth’s ostensible reluctance to do just that means that their self-titled debut for Polyvinyl is actually not so fun to hear.
In Twin Peaks, Frankel helps push rowdy rock into overdrive, even one-upping his bandmates’ unhinged energy. In Grapetooth, his slightly sawtoothed voice scuffs and scrapes the warped but smooth synthesizer bop of Bailoni, who sings some here, too. Synth-and-mic duos have been using small setups to convey big feelings for years, of course, from their proclaimed inspirators Suicide to the epiphany sculptors of Majical Cloudz. But Grapetooth—the band’s term for someone who drinks a lot of wine—are the Two-Buck Chuck version of the more sophisticated stuff. They trade in cheap fun, not deep reflection. They try on ill-fitting vocal styles like wacky hats, as when they drawl together on the kazoo’d-up campfire closer “Together” or try to steal back Len’s sunshine on “Trouble.” Grapetooth’s low-effort operation is part and parcel of their overall charm, but effortlessness doesn’t have to mean insincerity. During these 10 tracks, those feelings often seem inseparable.
When Grapetooth fully inhabit their happy-drunk energy to sell a gigantic proclamation like, “They will come for us one day/I will fight them off for you,” as they do during “Violent,” it works, because it seems to come with a Future Islands-sized sense of conviction. With its cascading synths and stacked harmonies, the music here is better built than the Cheez Whiz construction of “Trouble” or the lazy Depeche Mode imitation “Death.” They start promisingly with their sweetest groove on “Hangover Sq.,” shaping a Smiths-like foundation with a high bassline and breezy hi-hats. They even ditch their two-man method, adding a rhythm section. But they barely bother writing lyrics, instead singing the words to “Why So Pale and Wan Fond Lover?” by the 17th-century English poet John Suckling and adding a ridiculous kicker about going “down to hangover square.” They keep their words brief, as if trying to hide the fact that they’re short on compelling ideas and honest effort.
Grapetooth are masters of their own wine-fueled zone—a place where all that matters is polishing off a cheap bottle or two, turning down the lights, firing up the keyboards, hitting ‘Record,’ and going for broke on the first melody and words that happen. Join them in person, and Grapetooth the band will take you to that space and time. But as an album, Grapetooth feels like pressing ‘Play’ on those same recordings the morning after and realizing that maybe it all wasn’t quite as fun as you thought last night.


Whine of the Mystic is a necessarily dense title for a band like Nap Eyes. This is a drinker’s album, for the kind of drinker who does so alone, publicly, poring over popular 11th-century tomes.

Whine of the Mystic

Nigel Chapman is not the first guy to play on the rich homophony between "wine" and "whine"— both can help people loosen up a bit, but they’re also physically intolerable in excess. In all likelihood, Chapman is the first guy to use it in the context of an Omar Khayyam text. Whine of the Mystic is a necessarily dense title for a band like Nap Eyes, its multitudes containing additional multitudes. This is a drinker’s album, for the kind of drinker who does so alone, publicly, poring over popular 11th-century tomes. And like most other musicians you’d associate with this pastime, Chapman speak-sings dense lyrics in a nasal, weary bray tinted with sarcasm—the content portrays him as a wise man, the delivery as one someone who isn't 100% trustworthy.
It’s no surprise then that Chapman, ruminative dude he is, has thought through this image of himself and what it says about him and what he wants it to say about him. While Nap Eyes works up a Kiwi-rock rollick on "No Man Needs to Care", Chapman struggles to get to the revelation contained in the title—"Well, I was reading in my book/ Just so that everyone would come take a look/ Nobody even dares." Chapman doesn’t seek companionship at the moment, it’s the noticing that gives him pleasure. Meanwhile, on "Delirium and Persecution Paranoia" he analyzes the meaning behind every gesture—"What am I trying to say by way of/ Eat with my door in a closed position?/ What am I trying to say to you/ When I sleep with my door in ajar position?"
Still, Whine of the Mystic is musically plainspoken and direct. There’s enough rhythmic jangle and lead twang to have it scan as "rootsy" or "folksy" even though Nap Eyes don’t actually appear to be a folk or roots band. Perhaps they are if you consider the G0-Betweens or the Velvet Underground as their respective nation’s folk music. Whine of the Mystic was recorded live with no overdubs, and they sound limber enough to let loose, but capable of keeping it together. As untraceable feedback leeches through the mix, Seamus Dalton’s constant kick drum stays just enough within the grid during "Dark Creedence", while "Delirium and Persecution Paranoia" and "No Fear of Hellfire" emulate Chapman’s mental cycling by vamping out for over seven minutes; they're all highlights and all come off like impromptu, extended live versions of songs originally planned to clock in at half their length.
Chapman’s a biochemical researcher by trade, a career that presumably requires so much focus and passion that there’s no off-switch. The same could be said for being a musician, so naturally songs about Nap Eyes ("Night of the First Show") mingle with ones that incorporate Chapman’s day job. "Make Something" could certainly be about the drudgery that accompanies both—"By and large, my only success comes from the things I do begrudgingly." It also has him complaining of, "One sickness of brain protein aggregation/ One of upregulated oncogene"—rifle through your old biochem notes and Chapman’s referencing the growth of cancer cells to explain a hangover or heartbreak. Granted, the vocabulary interrupts the flow of the music like tiny cork pieces in your wine glass, but they’re necessary for Chapman to establish his personal P.O.V. within music that deals in very familiar tones and ideas—at any given point, he could be mistaken for Dan Bejar, Adam Granduciel, Cass McCombs, and of course, Dylan or Van Morrison.
It won’t be long before we find out the degree to which Nap Eyes developed their own voice—Whine of the Mystic was a short-run 2014 release in their native Halifax, reissued by Paradise of Bachelors in anticipation of an LP due next year. For the time being, Chapman is more inclined to question his own inner monlogue. On "Dark Creedence", he finds himself at mass on Christmas Eve, drinking sacramental wine even though he can’t understand the reasoning behind it. At least until he recognizes how the ritual parallels with his voluntary usage of wine as a spiritual guide and mental lubricant rather than a blotter. He sighs, "Just get my drinking under control/ And I will live again," but note he doesn’t plan on quitting, just finding the right balance.


The often inscrutable Friedberger siblings make a welcome comeback on this, their most accessible record in years.

I'm Going Away

The Fiery Furnaces have a well-deserved reputation for being difficult and willfully perverse both in concert and on record, so it may be easy to forget that the band started off fairly simple. Gallowsbird's Bark, their first and (to my mind, finest) album, is a free-wheeling blues-rock romp ideally suited to drunken sing-alongs in rowdy bars, albeit the old-timey kind that primarily exist in the fanciful imaginations of Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger. This sort of low-key, lowbrow tunefulness has always been a central component of the Friedbergers' aesthetic, even when they're off on proggy rock opera tangents, splicing their live shows into deliberately jarring sound collages, or roping their grandmother in to sing her own surreal, heavily fictionalized biography. After a half decade of booby-trapping many of their most charming melodies, the Furnaces have come full circle with I'm Going Away, a set of clean, straightforward tunes that, like those on Gallowbird's, would sound terrific playing on a pub jukebox.
Cultish fans may find themselves disappointed by how well-behaved the band sounds on I'm Going Away, but anyone who has been paying attention each step of the way would note this is not a sudden departure or artistic retreat-- it's part of a steady progression. Matthew Friedberger may have jettisoned his impulse to overstuff his compositions with unnecessary leads, but his melodic sensibility remains intact and boldened by streamlined arrangements emphasizing acoustic piano and the crisp, groovy percussion of drummer Robert D'Amico. The difference in this album isn't simply a matter of scaling back and dialing down eccentricities, but in the way the quartet embraces their rhythmic strengths, and subtly integrate elements from old school R&B in tracks like "The End Is Near", "Drive to Dallas", and "Keep Me in Dark" without resorting to pastiche or going against the grain of their established style. Compared to the weirder tracks on Widow City or Bitter Tea, these songs may sound relatively "normal," but there's no confusing this music with anyone else-- the tunes follow familiar Friedbergian patterns, and Eleanor's vocal cadences are as distinct and unmistakable as anyone in contemporary pop this side of Snoop Dogg and Lil' Wayne.
As on Gallowsbird's Bark, Eleanor Friedberger is the primary author of the lyrics on I'm Going Away, and the contrast with her brother's words on their four previous efforts is immediately noticeable. Though both siblings have a taste for packing their verses with tongue-twisters and obscure references, Eleanor's lyrics are far more emotionally direct, revealing, and confrontational. Whereas Matthew's songs lean heavily on skewed fictional narratives that are brilliantly crafted yet emotionally unengaging, the lyrics here are mostly autobiographical first-person accounts of romantic dissolution. Eleanor's words cut deep, but only to a point-- there is sorrow and regret, for sure, but there is also a slight aloofness, implying a character willing to speak her mind but not quite let her guard down.
In some cases, this comes off like a Dylan-esque pose, particularly on the Highway 61 Revisited-ish "Cut the Cake", but for the most part, the reserved approach to personal revelation is entirely appropriate. This isn't "confessional" music, at least not in the way that we often understand that mode of songwriting to be about venting pain and anxiety. This is more about reflection on the past, or even a reconfiguration of memory to make sense of the present tense. This is certainly the case for "Lost at Sea", a gorgeous ballad near the end of the sequence that finds Eleanor struggling to understand her reasons for ending a relationship. It's easily one of the Friedbergers' best compositions to date, but also one of the most atypical, as its majestic piano parts recall Elton John's work in the early 70s, and Eleanor's lyrics have an unadorned candor generally lacking in their older work. After six years of songs about everything from cell phone salesmen in the Middle East to being kidnapped by sinister Mormons, there is something refreshing in hearing her sing something as relatable and unpretentious as "Baby I'm... maybe I'm not me."
Not every song is so nakedly emotional. A solid third of I'm Going Away sticks to the band's thematic comfort zone, i.e., romanticizing seemingly lost cultural moments from the not-too-distant past. The record starts with the title track, a traditional number arranged by the duo to sound convincingly like one of their originals, and it bows out with "Take Me Round Again", a rollicking chorus in rounds that name checks popular songs from the early 20th century, including "When a Fellow's on the Level With a Girl That's on the Square", "The Merry Widow Waltz", and "See Saw Margery Daw". Like most of the duo's body of work, the latter practically demands annotation, and it certainly gains something from a bit of research. Ultimately, it's unnecessary-- the pleasures of "Take Me Round Again", like the rest of I'm Going Away, are immediate and unforced. The Fiery Furnaces will always be arty and precious, but they definitely know their way around a good tune. Have a drink and sing along.


Like it says on the tin: This 3xCD box collects the best of the Bad Seeds' non-LP work.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: B-Sides and Rarities

B-Sides and Rarities

Most rarities compilations are chockablock with inferior alternate takes, half-assed covers, one-off soundtrack contributions, dead-end experiments, and tracks that were left off proper albums for good reason. Compiled by Bad Seed Mick Harvey, B-Sides and Rarities contains all of those things from every dark corner of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' 20-plus year career, but it still proves a better retrospective than the equally matter-of-factly titled The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
This discrepancy might be surprising, but coming from the Aussie boogeyman and his henchmen, it seems perfectly fitting, perhaps even inevitable. Since his days with the Birthday Party, Cave has nurtured an almost academic obsession with the underbelly of society and the basest of human urges, populating his songs with murderers, rapists, and rogues doing their God-appointed jobs and arguing moral issues as justification. So it's wholly appropriate that the underbelly of Cave's own career should itself be so fascinating.
Those characters stake their claim to the first two disks, especially the tracks culled from the eras of The First Born Is Dead and Murder Ballads. "Scum" is a kiss-off to a "fuckin' traitor, chronic masturbator, shitlicker, user, self-abuser" who apparently had the temerity to give Cave a bad review. Cave revives the beauty-inspired killer of "Where the Wild Roses Grow", with Bad Seed Blixa Bargeld singing Kylie Minogue's part, and there are four installments of the ultraviolent "O'Malley's Bar". But the best murder ballad (even if it is a stretch to consider it as such) is "(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World" from the 1991 Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World. Cave's not a lunatic on a killing spree; he's a lovelorn bombmaker, and he caps this cinematic story of devotion with a spirited sing-along.
As a writer and especially as a vocalist, Cave understands and appreciates the power of overstatement, and these seldom-heard rarities strike a resonant chord because they make no virtue of subtlety. Singing like he's Jesse Garon Presley, Cave writes the messages of "God's Hotel" and "Jack the Ripper" in all caps, bolded, underlined...in blood. As a result, the violence of his songs-- physical, moral, and emotional-- is all the more grotesque and haunting, and the three-disk format of B-Sides and Rarities gives him an enormous canvas for his scrawled screeds.
It would be negligent, if not outright criminal, not to mention the Bad Seeds, who could very well be the focus of B-Sides and Rarities. Over the years they have proved themselves a remarkable and reliable backing band-- perhaps one of the best in rock history-- possessed of a dynamic range and intuitive sophistication without which Cave could not possibly achieve his lofty ambitions. The diversity of styles and moods they master over the course of these three disks is truly impressive, from the Sun Studio minimalism of the first three tracks to the lurching menace of "Black Betty" and "King Kong Kitchee Kitchee Ki-Mi-O", from the sinister soundtrack flourishes of "Cocks and Asses" and "Red Right Hand (Scream 3 version)" to the gentle restraint of Boatman's Call-era tracks like "Black Hair (Band Version)". In culling material for this compilation, Harvey consciously excluded any of Cave's solo work from the tracklist (only one song, the baroque "Time Jesum Traseuntum Et Non Riverentum" from the X-Files compilation, does not feature the Bad Seeds, although it does feature sometime Bad Seed Warren Ellis' band the Dirty Three). As a result, B-Sides and Rarities is as much the band's show as it is Cave's, which may be the key to this collection's dark sense of adventure.


The New York rapper’s third studio album is an unbothered mission statement that displays his gifts as a bar-for-bar rapper and thrilling genre collagist.

Black Sheep

Three months after Beyoncé’s Renaissance—and the ensuing conversations about dance music’s mainstream resurgence and its origins in queer, Black spaces—Cakes da Killa released his second album, Svengali. For a technically masterful rapper who has long been celebrated for, and pigeonholed by, his queer, Black identity, it was almost too easy to frame that album’s release as a reaction to the current moment. At the time, Cakes, who was revered for his fusion of ballroom and house influences way before those terms became familiar to the rest of the world, released his most personal and subdued album to date, his trademark made-for-the-catwalk bangers sizzling into more mellow, jazz-influenced musings. But Svengali wasn’t a middle finger to widespread co-optation of his sound; it was simply the album Cakes wanted to, and had to, make. It’s the eternal bind of any trailblazer: You’re either going against the grain or you’re overlooked when your style finally goes big. Lost in this discourse, though, was the simple fact that Cakes da Killa is a really fucking good rapper.
Black Sheep, Cakes’ third studio album, acknowledges that lonely position of belonging to no single tribe: too queer for hetero bar-for-bar New York rappers, too much of a rapper for mainstream queer pop. But the album is a confident compendium of breathless performances, bombastic personality, and thrilling genre collages. It is more akin to a victory lap, an unbothered mission statement from someone who knows what he deserves, and who’s going to laugh in your face as he tells you.
Born in New Jersey but long claiming New York, Cakes raps with an unmistakable prolonged drawl on his vowels and spits with the confrontational sensibility of early Lil’ Kim. On Black Sheep, he’s wearing those influences clearer than ever, interpolating Wu-Tang Clan and name-dropping Kangols and Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones, Part II” on closer “Ain’t Shit Sweet.” He channels 1995 hits by LL Cool J and Foxy Brown on standout single “Do Dat Baby,” which features a resplendent Dawn Richard cameo. What separates Cakes from his forebears is, inevitably, who he’s rapping for. “Bump in the cut no K for me/Know a couple they/thems wanna bang my beat,” he opens on “Mind Reader,” a dexterous, soulful cut that is as indebted to Crystal Waters as it is to Remy Ma. The rapping is hard enough for any Hot 97 freestyle: punchlines served one after the other like haymakers; a flow that goes from a speedy whisper to a syncopated bellow in a matter of seconds; and snarling boasts that, even at their most playful, are delivered with ferocious determination and a veteran’s ear for internal rhyme schemes. Who else but Cakes could rap “Shoot your shot while I sip my Riesling/Time to show the girls how to eat in every season”? Who else would admit he’s “too grown to be crushing on a thug” before allowing that he still might let the man top him?
On “It’s a Luv Thang,” Cakes sounds as comfortable over jazz hi-hats as he does over a samba rhythm thick with Pino Palladino-like bass on “FourPlay.” Longtime collaborator Sam Katz, who produced the entire record, is a wizard of unpredictability and versatility, imbuing even the most straightforward house/rap fusions with unexpected clangs and packed-club heat. Nowhere is this clearer than on “Cakewalk,” which begins with a Honey Dijon-like vocal chop, descends into an early 2010s concoction of 808s and irreverent noise, and moves finally into a pensive spoken word interlude, all within the song’s first minute.
If Svengali wore its message on its sleeve, Black Sheep is a statement by example: a sweaty, aesthetically attuned collection of back-to-basics bangers that finds its creator squarely in his comfort zone. Cakes has never sounded happier, which isn’t in spite of his years of in-betweenness, but because of it; this is a long-gestating embrace of that very liminality. Black Sheep is a thesis on standing apart from the crowd, but it’s far from a treatise on isolation. It’s a beckoning toward freedom by way of strutting and self-celebration, delivered by a musician who sounds at peace with his place.