Viet Cong's impressive full-length debut consists of dark, simmering post-punk. Their mission is not altogether different from that of Women, the short-lived and sorely missed indie deconstructionists in which half of Viet Cong previously served.

Viet Cong

Starting a band is easy; an actual career in indie rock is a much tougher proposition these days. Financial success seems harder and harder to come by and saying something new within the context of guitar based music might be even more difficult. Maybe you get to express yourself, but what if you think music should aspire to something other than being a vehicle for your feelings? You’ll probably just get compared to bands who ceased to exist two decades ago. Viet Cong have clearly thought about this a lot in their brief period of existence, most of which has been spent relentlessly touring in support of last year’s introductory EP "Cassette". But don’t let the deadpan song titles like "Pointless Experience" and "March of Progress" throw you: the Calgary band’s self-titled debut projects unbridled passion, creativity, and possibilities while speaking in a presumably dead language of post-punk.
Their mission is not altogether different from that of Women, the short-lived and sorely missed indie deconstructionists in which half of Viet Cong previously served. Women existed as a band that knew its impending expiration date, operating in secrecy and driven by entropy. Their albums felt like black boxes, reports of turbulence and panic captured on grimy tape in Chad VanGaalen’s basement. They were statues during live performances, with the exception of their final show, which ended in a violent fist fight. If not necessarily a pop band on "**Cassette", Viet Cong initially distinguished themselves with more extroverted, less intriguing impulses—there were snappy radio rock songs and Bauhaus covers amongst the typically stonefaced gestures, things that would lead you to believe that the death of guitarist Chris Reimer at 26 might have dissuaded them from trying to carry the same heft of Women.
A year later, Viet Cong are a cohesive and confident unit that goes even further into inaccessibility than Women, confrontational in a way that reaches out to an audience rather than turning inward. The sound that begins Viet Cong most closely resembles someone trying to punch their way out of a coffin. The record ends with an 11-minute song called "Death". It is also a self-titled debut from a band named Viet Cong. So whether you’re familiar with their past or you’re just here because you’ve been hearing things about this band, everyone is getting the same first impression: That of a very serious rock record that won’t offer too many cuddly points of self-disclosure. So, in the moments where Viet Cong do reveal themselves, you might want to pay attention.
Two important instances occur during "March of Progress", Viet Cong’s astonishing six-minute centerpiece. Matt Flegel could be mocking the speculative nature of music criticism and predictable, tiresome process of "proving" one’s self in dazed, layered harmony: "Your reputation is preceding you/ We’re all sufficiently impressed/ And this incessant march of progress/ Can guarantee our sure success." It proves Viet Cong are self-aware, have a subzero sense of humor to match their environs, and recognize those two qualities might combine to give the impression that this isn’t music that is meant to be enjoyed. That’s when the double-time beat kicks in, and Viet Cong make a sprightly, major-key sprint towards a dead halt. There’s mastery of form, instrumental prowess, and on a record that thrives on unpredictability, "March of Progress" elicits the most unexpected response—that was fun.
Viet Cong is full of knowing moments and reference points—the fact that it could pass for Guided by Voices ("Continental Shelf"), Wolf Parade ("Silhouettes"), and This Heat (take your pick) is enough of an accomplishment. It is not exactly a meta work, however. Viet Cong are just a band that’s unusually obsessed with the mechanics and process of their given trade. While their ashen sonics and rigid demeanor is liable to have them labeled as post-punk, they’re also industrial in a literal sense. Flegel’s vocals are those of a foreman, authoritative, commanding and prodding. Guitars often sound dissolved in caustic chemicals; instruments contort themselves and interlock to achieve forward momentum. It’s music that works very, very hard to express a perverse hometown pride you often see used to sell spring water or thermal outerwear —you might not want to brave Calgary’s bleak winters, but the way Viet Cong captures its forbidding chill and placid, sprawling beauty sure make it seem like a good place to be a post-punk band.
Most of all, this is a record of exertion, where the physical investment in live performance is meant to stimulate creativity, those demoralizing tours inspiring smarter use of the studio. Viet Cong’s favorite tactic of disorientation is inversion—laying high-register, melodic bass patterns over rhythmic, disassociated six string rubble, EQ’ing percussion so it sounds like a drum machine being run through a guitar amp. And Flegel’s most passionate vocal performances deliver his most disillusioned lyrics. Viet Cong has only seven tracks and more than half don’t pass the five minute mark. Yet all are heavy, ingenious contraptions.
This is also a record of conflict and contrast, in particular, a winter war. The sensations of Viet Cong are specific to being bundled up in the arctic, where one’s body feels suffocating warmth and blistering cold all at once. During "Newspaper Spoons", shrieking guitars morph into woozy synths, the effect is like watching a bloodied hand sink into a bucket of ice. There are many times when Viet Cong reveal psych-pop as their true north—clean guitars chime, harmonies are stacked in odd, almost madrigal-like forms, and Flegel’s lyrics favor surreal imagery of liquid gold, radiated primates and telepathically "bending newspaper spoons." But it’s psychedelia rendered in black and white; after three minutes of vertiginous percussion, a section of stereo-panned, autoharp-like riffs and stoned folk harmonies recall a grayscale Animal Collective ca. Feels. Meanwhile, "Continental Shelf" flips Echo and the Bunnymen’s "big music", attempting to have the sky crash down to earth rather than reaching for it.
These are the kind of pleasures of which Viet Cong is composed; its emotions are otherwise proprietary to Flegel. Viet Cong do not write love songs, their politics are a mystery. They have no commentary on what it means to be alive in 2015. But to hear this kind of commitment to craft, particularly rock music that maintains the vibrancy and tension of four musicians playing instruments in the same room while testing its boundaries, Viet Cong questions what it means to care about the creation of art, if not necessarily its effect on its audience. Most of Viet Cong was written during a brutal tour across what the band described as "shit earth" that tested their resolve and was liable to make the same old question the center of discussion—why do this, again?
Viet Cong is filled with moments that tap into the primal impulses of true post-punk—think of the first time someone puts together a couple of effects pedals and tries to make a guitar sound like something other than a guitar, of falling out with the sonic strictures of punk rock by embracing the philosophical freedom. Towards the end of "March of Progress", Flegel yelps, "What is the difference between love and hate?", and it can be taken as an allusion to the metaphysical conflict at its center; Viet Cong pits the romanticism of a newly enrolled philosophy major against the cynicism of the dropout who still hangs around the library to tell the fresh-faced youngsters it’s all bullshit. The album doesn't settle the argument, it's still as volatile and spirited as it was 30 years ago. The important thing is that people are still willing to have the conversation.


Diplo's globally-minded dancehall fusion project soliders on without Switch and Skerrit Bwoy. This time out, there's a very long list of guests including Ezra Koenig, Wyclef Jean, Santigold, Tyga, Shaggy, Amber Coffman, and many more.

Free the Universe

For the longest time, Diplo’s role as a producer has been steeped in importing, curating, and reconfiguring global dance sounds from favelas to shantytowns to the projects. That approach has been depicted as everything from transcendent, no-borders futurism to an exploitative colonialist ripoff, but most of his fans seem most interested in how much a given track bumps. The critical narrative shifted from Diplo as hipster scavenger to Diplo as arena-ready body-mover on the basis of a pop breakthrough that came through Major Lazer’s “Pon de Floor”. In its original context, it was the centerpiece of an album cross-examined for appropriating dancehall culture and West Indian identity for a dayglo cartoon caricature. Then Beyoncé got ahold of it for “Run the World (Girls)”, Diplo’s name started showing up in the credits of Chris Brown and Snoop Lion albums, the appropriation concerns shifted towards the trap scene, and the authenticity questions gradually quieted down.
There's still something at stake here, however, especially with the delayed, fine-tuned and much-awaited second Major Lazer album finally arriving. At this point, the project name is based more around the elaboration on one producer's vision than a group of familiar collaborators, as Switch and Skerrit Bwoy haven't made the transition from Guns Don't Kill People -- Lazers Do to Free the Universe for the respective reasons of creative differences and religious epiphany. So it's largely Diplo's statement, albeit with a new set of cohorts in Trinidad-born Jillionaire and Black Chiney's Miami-via-Jamaica sound system member Walshy Fire. So Major Lazer's fusion of club music scenes from both Europe and the Caribbean gains a couple new critical sources of firsthand input, and there's more of an opportunity for that sound to be directly informed by artists closer to the source.
The production's by far the strongest link on Free the Universe. Maybe it's not as up-front and audacious as it was on the all-stops overload of Guns Don't Kill People. But it's to-the-point and danceable when it's inclined to aim that way, and most of it's bound to sound commanding through massive stacks of amps. Percussion clatters through on jam-packed snare-clap-kick-hat drum patterns even before the ankle-breaking bass kicks in, while trilling digital chords inevitably steer towards all-caps siren blares. Not all of it's so energetic and frenetic; the foggy, calliope-and-guitar rocksteady underpinnings of "Get Free" and the sweet Studio One haze of "Jessica" calm the proceedings without killing momentum. A few moments feel like gratuitous, instantly-dated trend-grabs, like when the trance-jungle feints of Flux Pavilion collaboration "Jah No Partial" displaces the mood with pro forma arenastep and DROPS THE BASS directly into a puddle of sludge. Yet there's enough here to satisfy the who-cares-crank-that-shit impulse that aptly soundtracks good times with recreational substances.
But there's a different set of problems here -- just look at everybody who shows up with a "ft." attached. Fittingly enough, there are a bunch of tracks featuring dancehall icons ranging from Beenie Man to Shaggy to Johnny Osborne. But there are also sincere, zero-slackness ballads featuring indie stars like Ezra Koenig and Amber Coffman. There is also a guest spot from Peaches. And Wyclef. And a teamup that includes Bruno Mars and Tyga. The biggest digression from the dancehall-indebted singer/toaster lineup on Guns Don't Kill People was Santigold, far from a sore thumb considering her definition-ducking versatility as a singer. This time around, she's the closest there is to a direct link from that last album's indie-electro soundclash to this one's omnidirectional crossover bid. And her voice kicks off what turns out to be a sadly disjointed experience: there's an awkward fake patois on what seems like every other track, and the overstuffed lineup dislodges any hopes of a unified musical statement.
All that there's left to do is examine the components and try to figure out what went haywire. "Wind Up", "Watch Out for This", and "Mashup the Dance" deliver the goods when the likes of Elephant Man, Busy Signal or Ward 21 put in their work and keep the energy levels up. But splitting the difference between dancehall and moombahton doesn't always create a distinct new whole that plays up both genres' bounce-ready qualities. The indie names fare OK, even if they sometimes veer towards caricature -- Coffman's dippy Tarzan yells and Koenig's wobbly attempt at Junior Murvin-gone-lover's rock falsetto on the aforementioned "Get Free" and "Jessica" make them seem a little more arch than they actually mean to be. And a few cuts that stray away from either of those categories turn out laughable: Peaches undercutting an authoritatively cocky Timberlee on the new wavey "Scare Me" by dropping a twerp-twerk verse that tries to make a sex-fluids double-entendre based around WikiLeaks, Wyclef's motivational-poster platitudes trying to pass for a hook on (yes) "Reach for the Stars" (eesh), and Tyga chortling out maybe the most shut-the-fuck-up verse of the year on "Bubble Butt" ("Damn, bitch, talk much?/I don't want interviews/Ha! I'm tryin' ta get into you/then make you my enemy").
All those hitches, gaffes and odd little diversions add up. A no-brainer, easy-to-enjoy production slate gets knocked around by its flaws just enough that even the minor, acquired-taste touches seem like just another bad decision. (I don't know whether the filter that briefly makes Shaggy's voice sound like Meatwad on "Keep Cool" would sound iconoclastic and funny on a better album, rather than just a baffling flash of annoyance on this one, but there's no point wondering now.) If anybody actually expected this to stink before hearing it, even considering the odd assemblage of cameos here, they're probably more cynical than I am. But it's a bringdown that what should've been a more faithful yet adventurous transition into a new phase for Major Lazer winds up sounding like so much less than the sum of its parts.


One of the 20th century's greatest singer/songwriters makes his annual comeback-- this time with two albums, released simultaneously. The Delivery Man is a Southern barnburner with backing band The Imposters; Il Sogno is a classical work based on A Midsummer Night's Dream, performed by The London Symphony Orchestra.

Elvis Costello / The Imposters: The Delivery Man / Il Sogno

The Delivery Man / Il Sogno

Over the past decade and a half, the man who calls himself Elvis Costello has proudly displayed a musical restlessness that borders on promiscuity: In between "proper" albums like Brutal Youth and When I Was Cruel, he has collaborated with an array of musicians whose own releases are rarely shelved in the rock section of your local record store. Often these pairings are one-album stands, as with The Brodsky Quartet (The Juliet Letters), Anne Sofie Von Otter (For the Stars), or smoky barroom jazz (North). Only occasionally has Costello allowed a collaboration to blossom into a creative relationship. He's recorded two records with Burt Bacharach (Painted from Memory and The Sweetest Punch, with Bill Frisell), and laid a foundation for continued collaborative songwriting with his wife, Diana Krall.
There is, admittedly, an integrity to this ambitious quest: After more than 25 years, Costello's still trying to rouse some rabble, albeit through different means and towards different ends than on early albums like My Aim Is True and This Year's Model. On one hand, he's obviously following his own muse as he avoids the inevitable standards album that always seems to signals the creative death of aging stars like Rod Stewart and Cyndi Lauper (though he did cover Cole Porter earlier this year on the DeLovely soundtrack), and aside from a few missteps, he's succeeded in crafting a very diverse catalog. On the other, there's a hint of insecurity in Costello's ramblin' ways-- what, in relationship-speak, might be called a fear of commitment.
The Delivery Man presents itself as a proper follow-up to 2002's When I Was Cruel (and its odds-and-ends companion Cruel Smile), as an album in the vein of Almost Blue or King of America. Regardless of its rock sound and the presence of his band, The Imposters, The Delivery Man is more or less just another collaboration-- the particulars of its creation are emphasized over its music. This time, however, Costello's collaborator is a place rather than a person. For The Delivery Man, he and The Imposters traveled to Sweet Tea Studios in Oxford, Mississippi-- not just the middle of the Delta but also directly between the birthplace and deathplace of Costello's namesake: Tupelo and Memphis. And though the disc began life as a concept album about a Southern delivery man seducing his female customers, Costello willfully worked away from that idea as the project progressed, and little of those origins remain in the final product, save the album title and the dilapidated truck on the album cover.
Not that Costello has made an album of Delta blues or Sun Studio rockabilly: The Delivery Man is his idea of Southern music, a blend of pedal steel-drenched country and Dusty in Memphis professionalism. But it sounds best when it's at its most casual. The Imposters flex their muscles on barnburners like "Bedlam" and "Needle Time", proving themselves a dynamic band-- fierce but always controlled, musically inventive but never slick. While bassist Davey Faragher and drummer Pete Thomas kick up dust on the opener, "Button My Lip", Steve Nieve sneaks in a piano line from West Side Story, offsetting the rock rhythms with a self-consciously referential melody. Likewise, Costello's guest musicians add a distinctly Southern flair to the proceedings. Emmylou Harris sings on "Nothing Clings Like Ivy" and "Heart-Shaped Bruise", but Costello's best foil is Lucinda Williams, whose throaty, punkish snarl on "There's a Story in Your Voice" is a dynamic match for The Imposters' barroom ruckus, which only underscores how smooth and rehearsed Costello's own vocals sound.
It's clear what The Imposters got out of this sojourn down South-- they sound like they're truly enjoying themselves-- but less so what Costello did. For starters, it sounds like he overpacked for the trip, toting along the polished lyrics and pristine melodies that sound so much more at home in New York. This can make for some dramatic juxtapositions of traditions, as on "Country Darkness", but often, Costello just sounds prissy and uptight in these more relaxed environs. Even his stuttering delivery on "Button My Lip" feels rehearsed and academic, as though he hasn't fully committed himself to the spirit of the endeavor.
If The Delivery Man isn't enough of a departure for Costello, the classical Il Sogno, released simultaneously, at first sounds like perhaps too much of one: It's the score to a ballet adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, commissioned by the Italian troupe Aterballetto and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. With such a highfalutin' pedigree, it could be a parody of rock-star respectability, right down to the self-serious, auratic Deutsche Grammophon album cover and the "Mystery Dance" joke that's hidden in there somewhere. While there's something potentially zany about someone like Costello scoring a ballet, it seems too easy to decry a rock musician's pretensions to serious art. On some level, it makes sense to allow seasoned, adventurous rockers this kind of opportunity.
So maybe it's Costello who's having the last laugh at rock critics who find themselves suddenly out of their element reviewing a "classical" album and who must struggle to form some sort of opinion that reads as more informed than "it sounds like the hunchbacked love child of Copeland and Bernstein robbing Puccini's grave for leftover libretti," or, "It put me to sleep." However, Costello is still Costello (or at least still Declan MacManus), so there are passages that sound more rock- and jazz-informed, like "Oberon and Titania" and "Puck 2". The saxophones and drum sets create a jazzy, North-ern tone that sits comfortably among the more traditional orchestration. While this approach does break the score's airiness with some earthier sounds, it's still a risky decision that doesn't entirely pay off, and sometimes carries a whiff of novelty. Ultimately, on Il Sogno-- as on The Delivery Man-- Costello seems like a musical tourist, sending out snapshot postcards from exotic locales but never making his home there.


On his latest project, the Chicago MC deftly explores self-affirmation and paper-chasing without really finding the tension between the two.

Be Yourself EP

Thanks to the gene pool, Taylor Bennett shares the same sort of amiable brogue and sing-song lyrical style as his brother, Chance the Rapper. But the Chicago MC seems intent on furrowing his own independent path rather than riding on Chance’s now very long coattails. Bennett runs his own label, Tay Bennett Entertainment, which hosts his new six-song EP, Be Yourself—an album, incidentally, about finding your own way. Bennett’s coming out as bisexual directly influenced the concept behind the project, as he explained during an interview with Time: “Something that I want for not just children but all my listeners—no matter if you’re gay, straight, white, black, rich or poor—is understanding the power of being yourself. As children, very early we’re pressured into automatically being a part of groups.”
The cover art to Be Yourself reinforces this way of thinking. The photograph shows the rapper slouched on a stool wearing nothing more than a pair of tight rainbow-patterned swimming trunks, a party hat, and a morose look on his face. Its message echoes that of the title track: Be happy in your own body and at peace with your own soul. Over poppy, piano-based production that just about avoids coming off as twee, Bennett raps about growing up in a poor environment, embracing a spirited work ethic, and succeeding in music to the point where he’s comfortable enough to present his true self and sexuality to the world.
“It’s Taylor Bennett your superhero!/The answer’s been spoken/I told ’em be yourself fast/You gotta scream to the masses,” he proclaims jubilantly. Then comes the punchline: “And niggas still call me faggot/But bitch my shit looking fabulous.” It’s a philosophy Bennett repeats a few lines later: “I’m an outstanding Afro-American bisexual having shit/Change your dreams if they average.” Striking back against prejudice is a righteous move, but the way Bennett does it champions the same pursuit of fame and capitalism as cure-alls that we’ve heard within hip-hop for decades. Making money and buying material possessions—“having shit”—will gloss over your flaws and insecurities. It’s a conformist idea that betrays the grander notions of embracing your true self.
This tension between the Taylor Bennett who wants to be naked and honest and the Taylor Bennett who endorses paper-chasing should be the central conflict of Be Yourself. Instead, the next three tracks largely forget about exploring any duality in favor of rolling out underwhelming get-the-girl tracks. “Baby girl you looking bad as fuck/But your friends want me,” he spits on “Better Than You Ever Been,” which features a showed-up Young Thug. By this point, the EP’s production has committed to a slick and saccharine funk style that plays it safe when a little sonic grit and dirt would go a long way towards deepening the impact of these songs.
The most revealing moment—“Everything I Can’t Handle”—comes closest to exploring the contradiction at the heart of Be Yourself. The song begins as a shopping list of fanciful desires: skyscrapers, mink sweaters, a personal Gucci connection. Switching up the tone of his voice, Bennett begins to question his desires, rooting their value back to a single-parent upbringing on Chicago’s South Side. He even has flashbacks where he wonders if he’d still be alive had a stray bullet “found its way.”
But out of this soul-searching emerges the same familiar conservative hip-hop life stance: “I want everything that’s granted/I want money, I want cameras.” It’s a longer-winded way of saying what JAY-Z told us all those years ago: “The streets school us to spend our money foolish.” Life’s ups and downs, hits and near-misses, acceptances and rejections all come down to having things. This infuses Be Yourself with an unsatisfying aftertaste: Despite seeming to urge us to embrace our individuality, it ultimately wants to be part of a similar group after all.


The band’s third full-length is an easier and more melodic entry into their spindly post-punk. Here, their defeatism takes on a new tenor: battle-worn, sincere, and not quite so antagonistic.

New Material

Preoccupations walk a high wire. On the one hand, the Canadian post-punk quartet, who originally took their name from the brutal insurgent group the Viet Cong and only changed it three years into their career after extended protests, tend to come off casually apolitical. “We’re just playing music,” frontman Matt Flegel said regarding the name’s backlash in a 2016 interview. On the other hand, their music often concerns the political sphere and the toll it takes on the psyche. They’ve written songs about the deadening effects of mass media and songs satirizing capitalism’s ethos of progress at any cost. Theirs is dark, paranoid music; Flegel sings as if he’s keeping one eye trained over his shoulder while the world around him drops deeper into chaos.
The contrast between the hapless stance they take in interviews and the tough subjects they tackle sincerely in their lyrics can make Preoccupations feel like two bands at once: one that doesn’t want to be taken too seriously, and one that does. That paradox has lent them an aura of poisoned irony, an air they manage to shake off, somewhat, with their third album, New Material. In a statement, Flegel called the LP an “ode [to] depression and self-sabotage, and looking inward at yourself with extreme hatred.” All of the above are states in which contradictory statements can simultaneously seem true (you have friends but not real friends; drugs are both killing you and keeping you alive), and could also explain how wounded, serious art that urgently wants to be heard comes wrapped up in a name like New Material.
Written collaboratively in the studio, the record furthers the band’s dual focus on moody, industrial atmospheres, and warmly melodic vocal lines. While on their first two albums—2015’s Viet Cong and 2016’s Preoccupations—Flegel often sang against the grain of each song, as if he were competing with the clamor of the instruments, he opts instead to settle into their flow here. On “Doubt” and “Disarray,” his voice sways along with his bandmate Scott Munro’s synth chords, like he’s being carried by a slow, hot breeze. Even as he continues to sing about hopelessness and disillusionment (”It’s easy to see why everything you’ve ever been told is a lie,” he murmurs on “Disarray”), the new arrangements supply an easier entry point into Preoccupations’ music than their earlier works. The band’s defeatism takes on a new tenor: battle-worn, sincere, and not quite so antagonistic. That may mean that New Material lacks the punch of their feisty debut, but it also lends these songs a soothing quality. They’re so heavy they’ve curled up in a ball on the ground.
In addition to adopting a new melodic strategy, Flegel also seems to have narrowed the focus of his lyrics. While Viet Cong and Preoccupations saddled their songs with abstract, worldly woes, *New Material’*s angst is more interpersonal; the lyric sheet is dotted with the word “you” and one of the record’s high points, “Manipulation,” even sees Flegel crying out in romantic torment: “Please don’t remember me like I’ll always remember you,” he sings. The plea comes at the song’s energetic climax, after a towering drum roll, which only deepens its abjection. Instead of asking to be held fondly in someone’s memory, Flegel begs to be forgotten, an artful rendering of the depressive desire to disappear completely.
By staging the album on the battleground of the self, and the self’s relationship to other people instead of society writ large, Preoccupations have made their most intimate album to date. Flegel still goes into a few word-salad tailspins—the “information overdose” and “uneven ratios under a microscope” at the end of “Antidote” sound like someone obliquely complaining about Twitter—but the soft production of his voice, and its holistic integration into the rest of the band’s sound, makes him sound more earnest than before. With New Material, Preoccupations wrestle with a conundrum that’s plagued many denizens of this data-numbed era: how to let yourself be vulnerable when all you want to do is make a joke of your suffering.


After the critical and commercial disappointment of the adventurous Beautiful Garbage, Shirley Manson and co. return to their more basic, early template.

Bleed Like Me

On the band's first three albums, Garbage snuck an enlivened libertinism into the mainstream through surprisingly melodic dance-rock songs that referenced, among other things, bondage and unisex bathrooms to comment on larger issues of control, desire, love, and even personal freedoms. Alongside Polly Jean Harvey, Garbage singer Shirley Manson was one of the most complicated and charismatic women in 90s mainstream rock, balancing power and pliability, mercurial sexuality and fears and emotions.
After the commercial disappointment of the musically adventurous Beautiful Garbage, they sound like they're trying very hard to reassert themselves into our collective consciousness. Despite being billed as a guitar album, Bleed Like Me more or less reworks their successful Version 2.0 template, combining slick studio elements with ostensibly live-band instrumentation. This is, however, no comeback: The album is full of big rock guitars anchored to big rock effects, but it somehow never manages either to sound big enough or to rock hard enough.
Part of the problem is the band itself, which consists of producers Butch Vig, Doug "Duke" Erikson, and Steve Marker. Vig's drums are, as usual, pretty much redundant, buried with the bass beneath layers of programmed beats. And all the guitars are so fastidiously sculpted that they don't even sound like guitars anymore. In the past, those previous two sentences would have been mere descriptions rather than complaints, but on Bleed Like Me, the rhythms rarely lock into a formidable groove and too often the guitars-that-don't-sound-like-guitars don't sound like anything else very interesting either.
Despite its hammering riffs, "Bad Boyfriend", about a boyfriend who's bad but in a good way, is a surprisingly timid opener, and even Dave Grohl's drums can't liven up it up. Singing ostensibly in character, the most moxie Manson can muster is "I've got something special for my bad boyfriend." "Why Don't You Come Over" and "Right Between the Eyes" take shots at haters and critics, sounding defensive and distant even as Manson belts "Stay alive my love" Bono-style over a strangled guitar line. Whatever conflict she's describing remains merely an abstract notion, never an immediate reality.
That sonic blandness makes Manson the focus of Bleed Like Me, and while her vocals retain their forceful determination, her lyrics sound uninspired and awkward. "True love is like gold/ There's not enough to go around," she sings on "Sex Is Not the Enemy", a generic post-Janetgate call to arms. "But then there's god and doesn't god love everyone?" It's doubtful even the chorus-- "A revolution is the solution"-- will change anyone's mind or even preach to the perverted. The album's nadir, "Sex Is Not the Enemy" is a surprisingly naïve track, unimaginative and silly, and it works better as a parody of a protest song than as an actual protest song.
The disappointments color even some of the album's better moments. The first single, "Why Do You Love Me", is heavy and frenetic with a feverishly stomping chorus, but the verses and the whispered bridge recall Tragic Kingdom-era "Just a Girl" power and the song, despite its undeniable energy, ends up sounding dated. Likewise, Manson's catchy chorus and dancing-queen delivery on "Boys Wanna Fight" are marred by the song's predictable gender roles; with a little of the androgyny of "Androgyny", the song could easily fade into Franz Ferdinand's "Michael" on any dancefloor mix.
The saving grace of Bleed Like Me may be the band's deep knowledge of rock history, which they have gleefully plundered in the past and which gives the album its only subversive spark. "Bad Boyfriend" cribs Foreignor's "Hot Blooded" almost note for note, twisting its words into a new meaning. And the propulsive "Run Baby Run"-- the album's best track-- builds off the Crystals' "Da Do Ron Ron", adding an almost playful edge to Manson's dark lyrics.
But it's just not enough. Despite attempts at audacity, Bleed Like Me sounds overly willing to please, which is all the more damning because it so rarely does.


Stephan Jenkins puts a modern-rock spin on Bon Iver, Chastity Belt, “Song to the Siren,” and more on this intentionally earnest but unintentionally tragic covers album.

Thanks for Everything

Third Eye Blind reserve their rendition of Bon Iver’s “Blood Bank” until the end of Thanks for Everything, their intentionally earnest but unintentionally tragic set of seven covers. Justin Vernon’s most exquisite song, the original was a readymade finale, with the arching guitars and mewling vocals of its climax igniting the narrator’s lovesick innocence to fill the sky with phosphorescence. For their faithful take, Third Eye Blind charge from its ruminative core into the coda with cranked amplifiers and walloped drums, turning Vernon’s wistful haze into a melodramatic fit. It’s certainly a conclusive exit. But its position on the tracklist is an implicit acknowledgement of listeners’ morbid curiosity: If you’re going to listen to Thanks for Everything simply to hear what the “Semi-Charmed Life” dude does with a song by the “Skinny Love” guy, Third Eye Blind are going to make you wait, as if you’re sticking around till the end of their set just to hear “Jumper” in the encore. Except the “Blood Bank” cover isn’t worth it.
Thanks for Everything is, at the very least, a noble endeavor. Recorded at scattered tour-stop sessions over the last year, it collects the band’s interpretations of “mostly little-known” songs (as a press release describes them) by the likes of Santigold, Tim Buckley, Chastity Belt, and Queens of the Stone Age. These are songs that inspire singer Stephan Jenkins. What’s more, proceeds go to Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, a band favorite; the EP’s cover is a cover, if you will, of Warhol’s iconic Skulls, splashed with graffiti by stencil-and-spray-paint artist Uncutt. “It’s a visual version of what we’re doing with these artists’ songs... In both cases, I hope it will yield renewed interest in the originals,” Jenkins has said, both aspirationally and condescendingly.
Without exception, Third Eye Blind are out of their league here, trying to render sophisticated and involved songs through the big, blundering vernacular of modern rock. Jenkins’ voice—a brusque, inflexible instrument better suited to declarations and exclamations than to deep questions—is the heart of the problem. During “Blood Bank,” he enunciates each word as if he’s reading from a teleprompter, stripping the song of its wintry intrigue. He can’t play it cool like Chastity Belt’s Julia Shapiro or maintain the mystery Santigold embodies on her recording of “This Isn’t Our Parade.” Happy Diving frontman Matt Berry often sounds lost amid and overpowered by his raging rock band, but Third Eye Blind’s take on “10,” which epitomizes Happy Diving’s aesthetic, always pushes Jenkins above the surface to float inside his own rock halo.
The same curse afflicts his bandmates, who move with the confidence and decisiveness of a polished, professional rock machine. With their surging guitars and meticulous rhythm section, one might say that Third Eye Blind in 2018 have real chops. But they’re tackling idiosyncratic music on Thanks for Everything, and they seem hidebound to 20 years of precedent dictating what their band should be and which standards of production it should uphold. Their quality-control mechanism strips these songs of the character that makes them interesting.
Take Third Eye Blind’s cover of the Babyshambles single “Fuck Forever.” Pete Doherty’s belligerent reflection on the choice between rock’n’roll martyrdom and real-life contentment. The original is an anthem in, well, shambles, with slurred vocals and skeletal drums and a closing kiss-off to the DJs who will “never play this on the radio.” But Third Eye Blind’s slick delivery feels custom made for the FM dial. It’s as if Jenkins is making a case for Doherty the songwriter as something more than a madman. But “Fuck Forever” is Doherty’s gleeful assertion that he doesn’t care; in his quest to sound gigantic, Jenkins gets the meaning all wrong.
These missed messages sound most embarrassing in a cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren,” a gentle rush of vexing questions. (At the risk of nitpicking, Third Eye Blind even insist it’s called “Song of the Siren.”) The centerpiece of Buckley’s audacious 1970 folk-and-electronics fusion experiment, Starsailor, “Siren” wonders about the doom and destiny inherent in love, about turning yourself over to something that may destroy you. But above a simple acoustic guitar arrangement that imparts none of the original’s oddness, Jenkins sings like he knows the answers, as though he’s solved humanity’s riddles of life and love.
He does the same with “In the Fade,” an irascible Queens of the Stone Age creeper about life’s seemingly endless mix of sadness and madness—a fate that cannot be fought, only endured. When Mark Lanegan delivered the song during one of his sporadic stints in QOTSA, the former Screaming Trees singer seemed to push against that burden with his hulking baritone. But Jenkins and his band sound as though they delight in it, as though misery were a gift. Rather than digging into Lanegan’s soul blues, they dig out until the song’s colossal weight is diminished to a mere wisp.
Jenkins has spent the last quarter-century striving to be more than a hitmaker—to be a misfit making weird but weirdly popular rock. He’s never gotten there. Still, Third Eye Blind’s earliest albums betray genuine art-rock ambitions, with intricate structures and flourishes of dub, post-rock, and even IDM. In more recent years, Jenkins has written candid tunes about the price of fame, his personal failures, and America’s ruinous inequality. (To wit, Third Eye Blind even released a somewhat endearing Black Lives Matter ode in 2016.) On Thanks for Everything, he is shoehorning his voice into the kind of music he wishes he could have made, daydreaming about his career had the major-label system not drained him of his best ideas and then ejected him, like so many of his peers, when his band no longer made financial sense. It is a little heartbreaking, hearing this successful 53-year-old man striving to be anything besides what he has become but getting pinned yet again inside a structure of his own design, unable to make a musical break. At least he has excellent taste.


On their latest release, which is two whole albums long, Deer Tick offer an acoustic set and an electric one. The discs both contain a more settled outlook from bandleader John McCauley than usual.

Deer Tick: Deer Tick Vol. 1 / Deer Tick Vol. 2

Deer Tick Vol. 1 / Deer Tick Vol. 2

In spirit, Deer Tick aren’t much removed from the perennial weekend warrior bands you can always find at frat parties and local bars in college towns across the country. In fact, that’s always been part of Deer Tick’s charm. For better or worse, the Providence, R.I. quartet has remained about as unpretentious as rock bands come, even as it’s gotten tighter and more seasoned. Over the years, under the leadership of bandleader John McCauley, Deer Tick have been able to delve into acoustic stylings (as well as feedback- and beer-drenched Nirvana covers under the name Deervana) without sacrificing their straightforwardness or their scruff.
There’s something to be said for not trying to be anything other than what you are. But it’s still pretty gutsy of McCauley and company to try and hold an audience’s attention for two whole albums in one shot. With Deer Tick Vol. 1 and Deer Tick Vol. 2, the band releases its first new material in four years via two separate companion discs that differ stylistically but are meant to go together, as their album artwork depicts, like ketchup and mustard. They intended to make a third album (would that have been the relish?), but the fact that they visualize their music as a condiment rack lets you know off the bat that they didn’t get carried away trying to do too much.
At 10 songs apiece, the albums are sorted so that you can easily identify them as “the acoustic one” (Vol. 1) or “the electric one” (Vol. 2). That decision comes as no surprise given that Deer Tick have spent much of their career dumbing themselves down on several levels. And while it makes sense to group the songs that way for the sake of the individual listener’s preference, keeping the two modes separate prevents Deer Tick from delivering what could have been their answer to Wilco’s Being There. To be clear, Deer Tick don’t aspire to the same grandeur as Wilco, but taken as a whole this new body of work certainly isn’t lacking in texture.
Both albums include songs that lean in the direction of the other album. It’s easy to imagine the acoustic number “Card House,” for example, as a blustering electric guitar stomp, its boozy cadence balanced precariously between swagger and stagger—that crucial hinge point, perhaps, where the evening tips over into one drink too many. With its mandolin part locked in a kind of tango with an acoustic guitar on the other side of the stereo field, “Card House” reveals that somewhere along the way Deer Tick crossed over from a millennial version of the Replacements to something far more nimble in spite of themselves.
On the flipside, the electric instrumental “Pulse” features departed keyboard player Robbie Crowell, whose bittersweet piano, organ, and saxophone lines fill the song with a tenderness so complete it requires no vocal to get its feeling across. In the past, Deer Tick extolled the virtues of drinking and drugging to the point where they came across as caricatures, but there was always a sad-clown’s kind of sorrow in McCauley’s voice—even before real life hit him like a ton of bricks, a set of personal woes he channeled into song on the band’s last album, Negativity.
Since then, McCauley cleaned up, got married, and became a father—life changes that actually zapped his motivation to be in a band. Thankfully, he still has a lot to say, and his outlook, though more settled, still exudes the same uncertainty and fragility that, in a sense, rescued Deer Tick from themselves. If he’d never shown us who he really was, Deer Tick’s party schtick would’ve gotten old (if it wasn’t already old from day one). But with Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, McCauley solidifies his status as a modern-day barstool poet. “Somewhere in a fog/Of a million pleasantries/I kept my secret safe inside,” he sings on the acoustic ballad “Sea of Clouds.”
McCauley’s raspy crow often overwhelms the more delicate material, but throughout both albums, the band varies its rhythms and arrangements with surprising agility. “Sloppy,” for instance, re-imagines Nirvana as Southern-fried blues rock, while “Hope Is Big” allows us to picture what Billy Joel might have sounded like had he been born south of the Mason-Dixon line. Which is not to say that Deer Tick pretend to play country. Their music is, in fact, refreshingly devoid of twangy affectation. Apparently, Deer Tick still know who they are as they gently push against their limits. In the face of those limits, Deer Tick Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 never fail to be engaging.


Nick Cave has always played with death. Now, he confronts it.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Skeleton Tree

Skeleton Tree

People die in Nick Cave songs. They get wiped out in floods, zapped in electric chairs, and mowed down en masse in saloon shoot-outs. For Cave, death serves as both a dramatic and rhetorical device—it’s great theater, but it’s also swift justice for those who have done wrong, be it in the eyes of a lover or the Lord. As I once heard him quip in concert: “This next one’s a morality tale… they’re all morality tales, really. It’s what I do.”
But despite amassing a songbook that needs its own morgue, on their 16th album together, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds must contend with something that is not so easily depicted: the sound of mourning. In July 2015, Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur—one of his twin sons with wife Susie Bick—died when he accidentally fell from a cliff near the family’s current home in Brighton, England. The writing and recording of Skeleton Tree had commenced before the tragic incident, but the album was completed in its aftermath, and its specter hangs over it like a black fog.
This is a record that exists in the headspace and guts of someone who’s endured an unspeakable, inconsolable trauma. And though the songs are not explicitly about Arthur they are uncannily about coming to terms with loss and the realization that things will never be the same again. As if to reinforce Skeleton Tree’s therapeutic quality, the notoriously taciturn Cave opened the studio door to director Andrew Dominik, who documented the album’s completion—in 3D, no less—for the companion film One More Time With Feeling. It’s almost as if by thrusting himself into the spotlight during his darkest hour, Cave was issuing a form of karmic payback, penance for the pain and reckoning he’s inflicted on so many characters in his songs.
If you try to listen to Skeleton Tree removed from its somber context, the album feels very much like a natural step from 2013’s Push the Sky Away, whose premium on disquieting, ambient textures and wandering-mind lyricism now seems like less like a momentary detour than the gateway into an intriguing new phase for the Bad Seeds. But where that record rallied for show-stopping epics like “Jubilee Street” and “Higgs Boson Blues,” Skeleton Tree’s drones and jitters offer no such moments of release. The skies, seas, and mermaids that previously dominated Cave’s thoughts are still very much present here. But on the opening “Jesus Alone,” he’s wading deeper into the chop, the safety of the shoreline fading further out of view as he gets swept up by pattering drum drifts, humming organs, and swelling orchestration. The song was among the first Cave wrote for the record, yet its opening image—“You fell from the sky, crash-landed in a field near the River Adur”—feels unbearably prescient. It isn’t so much about the finality of death as the ambiguity of the afterlife: Cave’s orator welcomes a litany of souls into purgatory, but his stern proclamation—“With my voice, I am calling you”—makes it unclear whether they’ll be redeemed in heaven or damned to hell.
This great unknowing serves as the album’s guiding principle. In Cave’s wounded voice, you hear him grapple in real-time with the incidental prophecies of his lyrics and his need to get the job done. In one of the album’s most harrowing moments, he closes the bleak, grief-stricken ballad “Girl in Amber” by repeating the words, “Don’t touch me,” as if a consoling hug would only exacerbate the pain. Not every song is infused with such omens, but their restlessness is emblematic of the album’s fraught recording process. By Bad Seeds’ standards, “Rings of Saturn” is practically a chillwave song, its dusty drum loop smothered in a soft-focus synth gauze. But Cave’s numbed, sing-speak delivery is laid bare above the smooth texture—not even a cooing chorus of millennial whoops can rouse him. And as surprising as it is to hear a dogged non-conformist like Cave embrace some au courant pop device, here it functions as a faded reminder of a more carefree time—like how, in our most helpless moments, a sentimental song can turn you into a mess.
“Rings of Saturn” is one of several tracks on Skeleton Tree where Cave sings about or through an enigmatic female character. Like one of those “Sopranos” episodes where Tony is trapped in his dreams, nothing makes sense on the surface, but every hallucinatory image and mysterious gesture is loaded with circuitous significance. The “woman in a yellow dress surrounded by a charm of hummingbirds” awaiting her call to the pearly gates in “Jesus Alone” could very well be the one at the center of “Magneto,” whose quivering atmospherics and panting delivery suggest a goth Astral Weeks. “It was the year I officially became the bride of Jesus,” Cave intones, before blithely revealing, “The urge to kill somebody was basically overwhelming/I had such hard blues down there in the supermarket queues.” But that prosaic setting is revisited from a different vantage in the parched-throat synth-pop serenade “I Need You,” where the crestfallen narrator sings, “I saw you standing there in the supermarket with your red dress, falling, and your eyes are to the ground,” as if observing a woman he once loved but no longer recognizes in her current distressed state.
And yet even the relentless ache of “I Need You”—the closest Cave has come to actually crying on record—hardly prepares you for a pair of closing tracks that will reduce the most hardened hearts to puddles. “Distant Sky” may initially come on like a simple invitation to escape (“Let us go now, my one true love/Call the gasman, cut the power off!”), but once the divine Danish vocalist Else Torp emerges, the song elevates to a form of secular last rites. Musically, “Distant Sky” is all soothing organ tones and celestial orchestration, but the song’s weightlessness is utterly crushing, as Cave crystallizes the mood of Skeleton Tree in one trembling, devastating line: “They told us our gods would outlive us/But they lied.”
By contrast, the lilting gospel sway of the final title track feels more earthbound. It’s an attempt to step out of the void and reconnect with the waking world while recognizing that grieving doesn’t happen on a standard timeline—you don’t just hole yourself up for three months of weeping and then emerge fully recovered. Grief is a wraith of love that haunts your soul, emerging when you least expect it from the most mundane triggers and surroundings. “I call out, right across the sea,” Cave sings, “but the echo comes back empty.” However, the darkness has at least acquired enough definition for Cave to make out a path forward. The last line Cave sings on the album is “It’s all right now,” less a declaration of closure than an acceptance it may never come.


Steve Gunn and John Truscinski’s third album of low-key, abstract jams is their most varied and narratively absorbing to date.

Bay Head

The instrumentals that guitarist Steve Gunn and drummer John Truscinski make together usually start with pretty simple ideas: a couple of chords, a small hook, a solid 4/4 beat. As their music progresses, they play with casual, unhurried confidence. Yet eventually, each song becomes rich and dense, encompassing moods and ideas far more complex than a few string plucks or drum slaps normally can muster.
The duo’s ways of moving from simplicity to complexity are often pretty simple, too. Sometimes it’s a matter of repetition, as Gunn replays his initial notes with increasing intensity and Truscinski ramps up his sturdy rhythm. A few of the tracks on their third album, Bay Head, are masterful exercises in single-minded devotion. Take the one-eyed hypnotism of “Flood and Fire,” which opens with Gunn jangling two chords and Truscinski pounding out a matching beat. As the duo swerves into excited tangents, they never lose sight of their launching points.
There are times, too, when Bay Head’s depth comes from actual musical complexity. Gunn is capable of thick note clusters and nimble runs, especially when he plays acoustic, and Truscinski can reel off polyrhythmic swirls. The pair often intertwines many reference points (damaged blues, modal jazz, Eastern melody, classic rock riffs) so tightly that it’s tough to isolate each strand. This time around, they’re also more interested in abstraction—take the sparkling drone of opener “Road Bells,” or the slow feedback cloud in “EIP”—prioritizing texture over structure.
That sonic variety makes Bay Head the duo’s most narratively interesting record so far. Moving at varied levels of speed and intensity, they concoct a kind of wordless road trip, driving a sonic highway whose surface and surroundings slowly change as the album progresses. On “Seagull for Chuck Berry,” the ride is smooth and gently curvy, with the pair gliding as if caught up in a dream. Bumps appear during “Sugar,” which is slashed with chopped riffs and puncturing beats. The acoustic curls of “Shell” kick up desert dust, while the subtle strains of “Coral” suggest a pit stop at a campfire.
Bay Head’s road journey climbs highest near the end, during the seven-and-a-half minute “Gunter.” Starting with Gunn’s tick-tock strums and escalating notes, the tune constantly ascends, gathering momentum with every bar and beat. At last, his playing expands from raindrops into an ocean, as he spends the last minute-plus of the song swimming in his own feedback. In other hands, this kind of musical star-chasing might sound indulgent, but the simple foundations of Bay Head warrant such diversions. It’s grounded music that’s pointed toward the sky.


Using their dance music alter ego, former Ava Luna vocalist Becca Kauffman gets more personal and philosophical while maintaining their whimsical sense of humor.

Castle in the Sky

As a vocalist for the cult-favorite Brooklyn group Ava Luna, Becca Kauffman always reveled in their kookiness. From their whoops in “Sears Roebuck M&Ms” to the whimsical spoken-word of “Steve Polyester,” Kauffman’s unpredictable personality helped push the group’s wildest songs over the finish line. Kauffman has further explored this potential under the alter ego Jennifer Vanilla, an alias under which they have made tongue-in-cheek electronic music that parodies the campy advertisements and fitness classes that once dominated pop culture.
On their 2017 compilation This Is Jennifer, the music itself reflected this time period: disco, house, a track built almost entirely from a slo-mo “Heart of Glass” sample. If that collection was a comic pastiche, then 2019’s J.E.N.N.I.F.E.R. EP showed a more serious reverence for dance music—and now their debut album, Castle in the Sky, picks up where the EP left off. “Dancing is an expression of emotion/Often a kind of aspiration/Toward complete physical wellbeing and fulfillment,” they recite breathlessly over a piano-house beat in “Body Music.” With production from longtime collaborator Brian Abelson, who co-produced and co-wrote the album, they push beyond their comfort zone, experimenting with jazzy saxophone solos and genres like dance-punk and R&B.
When Castle in the Sky brings the fun, it’s largely due to Kauffman’s production choices and their vocal inflections. Instead of sanding over the rough edges, they leave these songs just a tad herky-jerky. Synth pads echo lopsidedly; drum machines thwack goofily. They never take anything too seriously, even when they sound like they’re reciting mantras. When they exclaim “We’re going down in the wrong direction!” atop the midnight dancefloor throb of “Take Me for a Ride,” they snarl and over-emphasize their words. “Consider this an invitation/I’ll be your guide,” they sing in a nasal trill before a repeated chorus of “on and on” distorts and bends in every direction.
Over Castle in the Sky’s four-year genesis, Kauffman came to realize they are gender-fluid and nonbinary, and that Jennifer Vanilla has always been an outlet to explore their queer identity. Castle in the Sky’s personal moments feel tethered to this journey, albeit indirectly. “Humility’s Disease,” a janky venture into dance-punk, explores internalized shame and the difficult process of outgrowing it: “Was I built with a born sense of wrongness?” they ask. “Are you rigid, are you open to learning?” On the R&B ballad “Cool Loneliness,” they navigate the dissonance between how they feel on and off stage. In these songs, you can hear Kauffman letting their guard down as the trappings of their persona mostly recede to the background. It’s a compelling glimpse into the internal strife beneath the glossy veneer of the music.
Castle in the Sky is at once Kauffman’s most vulnerable project and their most confident. This self-assurance is clearest on “Jennifer Pastoral,” a track so slapstick that, in lesser hands, it might have been a mess. Instead, Kauffman structures it as a grasp toward utopia, its tropics-infused, brass-flanked shuffle never dimming in catchiness over its five-minute runtime. “I’m a sandman/I’m a night butterfly,” they sing sweetly during the chorus, and sure, it sounds ludicrous. But you just know they mean it.


Ghost Stories is unmistakably Coldplay's "breakup album," a subdued work that finds Chris Martin and his band crisply moping through mid-tempo soundscapes and fuzzy electronic touches that have the visceral impact of a down comforter tumbling down a flight of stairs.

Ghost Stories

"If you could see it, then you'd understand." That glistening anti-koan punctuates the chorus of Coldplay's skyscraping 2005 single "Speed of Sound", and the lyric's profound meaninglessness has doubled as a mission statement for the mega-band's career thus far. They've established a reputation as mainstream rock's koi pond architects, designing music that's deceptively shallow but, if caught at the right moment, shimmeringly beautiful, to the point that you could focus on it for hours.
Impossibly indulgent on a sonic level while retaining the intellectual depth of a cell phone commercial, Coldplay's catalog is largely experiential—a reflecting pool for the hopes, dreams, and heartaches that listeners wish to apply to the music. This pliability has meant that Coldplay can come off as impersonal, a gaseous giant of anonymity in rock music's solar system; nearly 10 years ago, the stultifyingly dense third album X&Y threatened to swallow the band completely, as Coldplay refined the post-post-punk affectations of 2002's A Rush of Blood to the Head until they were left with an immobile monolith.
On the verge of overreaching, Coldplay doubled down with 2008's Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, a world-beating document of giddy experimentation and costume-rock bathos that stands as their most thrilling, impressionistic work. Mylo Xyloto followed three years later, which took its predecessor's widescreen template and enlarged it to IMAX-size, indulging in rave-y piano stabs and night-flight flourishes with the color-filled exuberance of a child that can't stop eating crayons.
Mylo Xyloto was further proof that Coldplay are at their best when they embrace their corniest impulses; their sixth album, Ghost Stories, finds them taking a sharp left turn. Preceded by the non-single "Midnight", a watery electro-folk Bon Iver facsimile accompanied with a video reminiscent of an iTunes visualizer, nearly everything about the arrival of Ghost Stories has seemed small: the nine-song tracklist, the spartan, deep-blue angel's-wings cover, the disappointing lack of costumes. The absence of grandiosity signaled to eager fans and sneering bystanders alike that, this time around, something might be a little off.
That something can be traced to Martin's marriage to actress and $600-hand-cream guru Gwyneth Paltrow, which quietly imploded in March of this year. More a separation than an outright divorce, recent court documents revealed that the couple are still living together, and in a 2008 SPIN profile, the only subject that the otherwise affable Martin bristled against discussing was his personal life with Paltrow. As long as the world's known him, Chris Martin has also proved impossible to truly know, so whether his recent familial troubles would seep into his band's latest was anyone's guess.
And yet, Ghost Stories is unmistakably Coldplay's "breakup album," a subdued work that finds Martin and his band crisply moping through mid-tempo soundscapes and fuzzy electronic touches that have the visceral impact of a down comforter tumbling down a flight of stairs. Featuring production from longtime collaborators Daniel Green and Rik Simpson, along with behind-the-boards pro Paul Epworth, drone-techno auteur Jon Hopkins, and Kanye West collaborator Mike Dean, the record is serene and weightless to a fault. Coldplay abandon the musical tourism and extroverted strides of their last few albums and find themselves adrift.
The closest the record comes to a bona fide anthem is the moderately enjoyable "A Sky Full of Stars", a rocket-fueled single on the level of "Clocks" and "Speed of Sound" tainted by Swedish dance producer AVICII's cheap-sounding drum presets and boilerplate synth motifs. "I don't care/ If you tear me apart," Martin wails at the peak of the song's endless chorus, a passionate exclamation that doubles one of the most nakedly personal admissions he's made on record.
Ghost Stories certainly sounds like the product of someone working out their private pain in public; unfortunately, the results are less Blood on the Tracks and more "Can I Borrow a Feeling?". Coldplay's catalog has plenty of examples where Martin's words have failed him, but his diaristic reflections on Ghost Stories are abnormally painful. "Tell me you love me/ If you don't, then lie," he coos on the Spandau Ballet-gone-Disney ballad "True Love"; during the plodding "Another's Arms", he ruminates on lost domestic bliss watching TV with a loved one, "Your body on my body." If the expression of carnal closeness-via-TiVo makes you cringe, imagine how he feels.
"Ink" is the album's most indefensible moment, musically and lyrically, and the song handily snatches the title of Worst Coldplay Song from X&Y's impossibly leaden, fuckin'-magnets stinker "What If". "Got a tattoo/ And the pain's alright," Martin cries while running through a series of love-as-permanence metaphors, over rippling guitar and burbling atmospherics ripped from Phil Collins' Tarzan soundtrack. The last time Coldplay indulged in "rainforest rock," it was Viva La Vida's transcendent, gorgeous "Strawberry Swing", which featured Martin exclaiming beatifically, "It's such a perfect day"; on "Ink", he moves from vine to vine until swinging in solitude at the track's end, exclaiming with a sigh, "All I know is that I love you so/ So much that it hurts."
Fittingly, "Ink" is one of the few tracks on Ghost Stories that leaves a mark, and that's partially due to Martin's lovely-as-ever vocals; when not chronicling his own pain, he occasionally breaks into appealing birdsong, a wordless pitter-patter that marks the chorus of the record's pleasant-enough lead single, "Magic". Otherwise, Ghost Stories is a collection of unmemorable songs from a band that's made enough memories to last a lifetime. Everything sounds pristine—this is a Coldplay album, and instrumentally the band is as exacting as ever—but by the dreary piano-led closer "O", you're left with a series of songs that are fragile, plain, and forgettable.
Conventional wisdom says X&Y is Coldplay's worst album, but amidst that record's shiftless bloat, there were real-deal highlights that hit with blunt impact and have since stood the test of time. Ghost Stories contains no such moments, and thus threatens to rob X&Y of its dubious title. Its intimate nature shares the most kinship with Coldplay's first album, 2000's peerless Parachutes. Twelve years later, that album sounds like the work of a different band, and that's because it is; Coldplay have become one of the biggest acts in the world since their comparatively modest debut, and as a result Ghost Stories' attempts to return to close-mic'd intimacy come across as out-of-touch as Lucille Bluth asking how much a banana costs.
The callback to Parachutes' hushed whispers also means that Ghost Stories is the first time Coldplay has sounded explicitly self-referential. They're a band that's withstood enough comparisons to U2 over the years, and the warmed-over leftovers that have marked Bono and Co.'s last decade as a creative entity are enough to suggest that, if Coldplay continue to head down the path of addressing their own legacy, their best moments are truly behind them.


This 28-track collection of lo-fi home recordings-- many of which have been available on bootlegs for years-- was produced on a reel-to-reel at Drake's parent's estate, recorded on cassette while Drake was studying in Aix En Provence, France, or made in conjunction with other members of the late singer-songwriter's family.

Family Tree

In a 1994 interview with Mojo magazine, Nick Drake's longtime producer, Joe Boyd, assured fans that "Everything releasable has been released." Boyd's pledge seems almost laughable now: As Drake's tombstone famously, presciently reads, "Now we rise and we are everywhere."
The bulk of the material on the 28-track Family Tree-- a new collection of lo-fi home recordings produced on a reel-to-reel at Drake's parent's estate, Far Leys, plus eight tracks recorded on cassette while Drake was studying in Aix En Provence, France, one duet with his sister, Gabrielle, and two songs written and performed by his mother, Molly-- has already circulated widely on bootlegs, traded, and cherished by Drake completists, many of whom acquired the cuts by making a pilgrimage to Far Leys and requesting music from Drake's parents, who once welcomed their son's grieving fans.
Even though some of these tracks have been around for years, posthumously publicizing Drake's private home recordings still feels a bit like an ethical landmine-- already, a glut of releases (compilations, unreleased recordings, greatest hits) is marring an otherwise-pristine three LP legacy, and dipping into something as personal and unfinished as home demos can seem a bit opportunistic, vaguely unnecessary, and maybe even a tiny bit cruel: Although his music is eerily ubiquitous in 2007, Nick Drake was a commercial failure in his lifetime, selling only a middling number of records before overdosing in 1974, at age 26.
Still: Compiled by Drake's sister, Gabrielle, produced by his estate manager, Cally, and mixed by beloved engineer John Wood (who also produced Pink Moon, and recorded Drake's first two records), it seems likely that Family Tree was created and realized with the very best intentions. In the liner notes, Gabrielle, addressing her brother in an open-ended letter, is cautious, apologetic: "Up till now, every decision I have taken-- I have been allowed to take-- on your behalf about your music has been guided by what I believe might have met with your approval...But now, I am endorsing the publication of an album that I am not at all sure you would have sanctioned."
Most cuts feel unfinished-- four are clearly sketches, clocking in at under one minute – and nothing here is particularly revelatory, but Family Tree is still worth snatching up if you're interested in hearing how Drake's patented coo-and-strum developed: All tracks pre-date Drake's 1969 debut, Five Leaves Left (early versions of "Way to Blue" and "Day Is Done" both appear here), and it's not difficult to hear the budding folksinger's style build and expand.
Nick and Gabrielle pair up for a cover of traditional cut "All My Trials"; based on a Bahamian lullaby, the cut was an omnipresent protest song in the early 1960s, and its closing couplet-- "All my trials, Lord/ Soon be over"-- is typically read as optimistic, but given the gruesome ending of Nick Drake's story, the line (and Drake's muted delivery) suddenly seems ominous, foreboding. "All My Trials" is arguably the most riveting track here: Drake strums gently, and he and his sister harmonize (in the otherworldly way only siblings can), their voices naturally congruent, curling together, building on shared DNA.
Drake covers a handful of Jackson C. Frank songs ("Here Come The Blues", "Blues Run the Game", "Milk and Honey"), Robin Frederick's "Been Smoking Too Long" (which also appears on Time of No Reply), the traditional "My Baby's So Sweet", Bert Jansch's "Strolling Down the Highway", and Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow is a Long Time", but it's ultimately his own work that shines brightest-- now and, in all likelihood, forever.


Stephen "Thundercat" Bruner's densely layered debut (co-produced with Flying Lotus) mixes the future shock of electronics, the tightly edited pleasures of pop, the love-sick opulence of quiet-storm soul, and the show-stopper instrumental breaks of jazz

Thundercat: The Golden Age of Apocalypse

The Golden Age of Apocalypse

As far as debut albums go, the The Golden Age of Apocalypse is definitely a head-spinner, precisely the sort of improbable hybrid from an almost-unknown artist that the Brainfeeder crew has come to specialize in over the last couple years. After all, it's not every day that you find a record that simultaneously recalls the laid-back sprawl of Erykah Badu's Return of the Ankh and the bustling mania of Mouse on Mars' Iaora Tahiti, the slick jazz futurism of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters and the gentle homespun soul of Bill Withers' Just As I Am. This is the sort of densely layered, expertly played, genre-crossing marvel that could easily turn bloated or excessive, or come off like a display of pure skill with little heart behind it. But Stephen "Thundercat" Bruner seems more interested in using his well-honed chops to turn out sunny (if bogglingly detailed) ear-candy than he is in crafting big statements (despite the album's portentous title).
Co-produced with Brainfeeder major domo (and Thundercat pal) Flying Lotus, Apocalypse has the digital sheen of many FlyLo productions. But Bruner’s experience as an in-demand rock and soul bassist gives the album a live band's freedom of movement, one that's closer to the fusion records that reared him than the sequenced rhythms that have come to define dance music, even at its most out-there. After a silly and nostalgia-inducing sample from the 1980s cartoon that gave Bruner his pseudonym, "Daylight" is the album's true opener, another in Brainfeeder’s line of shouldn't-work-but-does experimental beat confections. It merges the bustling energy of 21st-century left-field electronic music (crunchy mutant techno rhythms, a mix saturated with whimsical sound effects) with the floating-on-a-cloud airiness of 1970s soul (vaporous falsetto vocals, bright-but-wistful melodies). It really does feel like a long lost Mouse on Mars track, as if that most playful of German electronic acts had called up a member of the Soulquarians camp at the same time that Common decided to collaborate with Stereolab.
That's all a bit of bait-and-switch, though. There's no doubt plenty of Brainfeeder's psychedelic and IDM-like attention to sonic detail at various points on Apocalypse, along with nods to the fractured rhythms of London's broken beat scene and the earlier West Coast post-rap experimentation of Stones Throw. But like the latter L.A. pioneers, Thundercat takes avant electronic music's futuristic sound-sculpting and reconnects it with the history of African-American pop. He's particularly smitten with that moment in the 70s when soul music got looser and smoother and more electronic, and electric jazz started taming the wildness of improvisation with the slickness and structure of the pop song. Bruner's not beholden to the days of fusion past, of course. He takes detours into smoothly gliding 80s synth-funk ("Walkin'") and queasy prog ambience ("Mystery Machine [The Golden Age of Apocalypse]"). But still, know that this is more of a jazz album than an electronic music album, and more of a soul album than either.
And it's on the third track, "Fleer Ultra", that Bruner's true loves finally leaps to the fore, because that's the first time the bass really goes bananas. Bruner is undoubtedly what was once called a "musician's musician," a practice-space hound who reveres good playing. He's unashamed of his talent, but he also knows it's better put to use making hooks. And throughout Apocalypse it's Bruner’s exceptionally fluid bass work that ties together the new millennium computer madness and the cuts that feel like they could have been laid down in the analog days of 1974. Even the drowsiest songs here pop with super-animated basslines. His already justly lauded cover of George Duke’s "For Love I Come" turns the tempo of the original down a few notches, letting most the of song play out as an amorphous but silky swirl of electric keyboard and his echo-warped voice-- he makes sure to bring out those bass chops for the climax. As a singer, Bruner is much better than he has to be, considering his musical inventiveness is already plenty attention-grabbing, but while his fluttery, heartsick vocals lend Apocalypse much of its charm and memorability, it's those basslines that are the real earworms.
So this isn't really a song album, at least not in the sense that it’ll give rock or even R&B fans looking for verse-chorus-verse much to chew on. As with FlyLo, it's still best to approach Apocalypse as instrumental head-trip, albeit one that's occasionally got tunes you can hum. But like his fusion heroes, Bruner wants it all: the future shock of electronics, the tightly edited pleasures of pop, the love-sick opulence of quiet-storm soul, and the show-stopper instrumental breaks of jazz. The fact that he's mostly pulled it off, with a record that's serious in intent while playful in execution, is pretty astounding.


This dynamic, captivating 1972 performance featuring Rhys Chatham and Laurie Spiegel is the most important shot in the arm to the composer and violinist’s legacy in over a decade.

Tony Conrad: Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain

Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain

For half a century, Tony Conrad was anonymous by association. The composer, violinist, filmmaker, mathematician, teacher, and playful provocateur at large made essential contributions to half-dozen vital American art movements. Conrad, who died last year, helped organize the principals of the Velvet Underground, a band he named but then declined to join. He made experimental films that challenged the technical and textural boundaries of the form and inspired Andy Warhol, but his diverse enthusiasms and staunch anti-authoritarian ideals virtually sealed his status as a mere cinematic footnote. And as a musician and theorist, he made records and played in projects that helped to jumpstart American musical minimalism, harsh noise, and homespun drone, though his reputation still pales in comparison to those of contemporaries such as La Monte Young and Steve Reich or descendants like Thurston Moore. As many of Conrad’s interests moved from the edge toward the center, he remained for decades on the fringes, an avuncular professor with a wit as sharp as his violin tone and an intriguing past.
But during the last quarter-century, several batches of archival releases, reissues, and performances slowly pulled Conrad from the wings, putting him in front of new audiences and extending the influence of both his sound and spirit. In the early ’90s, Table of the Elements—a sorely missed bastion of avant garde Americana—made a case study of sorts with Conrad, releasing old and new recordings to help launch a revisionist history of experimental music. Table of the Elements smartly positioned Conrad at an intersection of classical music’s high-mindedness and indie rock’s DIY spirit.
This new currency established him as a countercultural antidote, an iconoclast who connected with a new generation in order to pull minimalism out of the concert hall or classroom and into the rock club. He opened for Sunn O))), palled around with Jim O’Rourke, and collaborated on the stage and in the studio with abandon and intensity. Since Conrad’s death after a prolonged battle with prostate cancer, his esteem has grown. He got a Rolling Stone listicle, a long-in-the-works documentary, and even the bold New York Times headline “Tony Conrad Was Such a Good Minimalist, He Was Almost Forgotten.” But the music isn’t finished just yet.
A newly unearthed recording of an audacious but somewhat overlooked Conrad masterwork for a small droning ensemble and black-and-white film, Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain, is the most important shot in the arm to Conrad’s legacy to arrive in more than a decade. Recorded at the seminal New York art space the Kitchen in 1972, *Ten Years Alive *backs Conrad’s microtonal arcs of precise violin with a rhythm section of sorts. Laurie Spiegel plunks along on a bass, keeping a barely there beat, while Rhys Chatham plucks a one-stringed instrument Conrad built in a kind of countrified counterpoint. As they played for nearly 90 minutes, projections of vertical lines converged and diverged, creating a visual corollary to an entirely absorbing and rapturous listen. In 1972, Steve Reich had just finished Drumming, and Philip Glass was in the midst of composing Music in Twelve Parts. *Ten Years Alive *is another overdue reminder that Conrad’s music belongs in the canon. For someone who extolled prolificacy while occasionally sneering at publicity, its complete release is more meaningful than any newspaper’s breathless reappraisal.
With rare exceptions, Conrad’s most captivating music is at once magnetic and repellent. He privately lamented that his fabled recordings with Faust, Outside the Dream Syndicate, were too soft, the dampened sound of hippies who didn’t quite get the ecstatic astringency of his tone. His brilliant Four Violins, an early document of his explorations with just intonation and layers of looped sound, unspools across a tormented, tantalizing half-hour. When it ends, you’re torn between feelings of relief and mercy and the masochism of instantly wanting to hear it again. His wobbly solo organ score for Joan of Arc is at once vertiginous and comforting. Likewise, his canonical strobe-like experimental film, the Flicker, is devilishly disorienting and yet somehow hard to turn off.
Ten Years Alive, though, is oddly accessible, with moments of Conrad’s razor-sharp playing sheathed in more gentle passages. The tiny harmonies of his tuning system are clear, so you can trace the lines of thought much more readily than on the more aggressive Four Violins. Together, Chatham and Spiegel provide simpatico support, their barely prepared accompaniment adding a touch of exotica to Conrad’s fixed aesthetic. They listen closely but play casually, their every move emboldening the violin without distracting from it. Ten Years Alive is academic, to an extent, but it feels deeply psychedelic, too, a cosmic vamp built around an eternal groove.
The presence of Chatham and Spiegel, who arguably achieved levels of attention Conrad is attaining only posthumously, is an obvious selling point, a built-in marketing hook for an esoteric archival release. Still, Conrad is clearly at the center of Ten Years Alive, his mesmerizing but sometimes hairsplitting violin bleat pulled taut from one end to the other, just as it animated and connected the ends of his fifty-year career.
To listen to it is to get lost in it, to enter a slipstream of sound where notes seem to self-replicate as if they were always there and will forever remain. It’s like watching an army of tossed stones create so many ripples on a pond that the commotion becomes the accepted state of being, or like meeting a new friend who instantly feels as if he or she has been a lifelong companion. Twenty minutes in, you stop caring about personnel or context or even revisionist histories and simply notice the minuscule variations in sound, the way a fraction of a musical interval can make your hair stand on end. Conrad, then, becomes anonymous yet again—this time, by design of his art, not association of his friends.


The rapper and former Edmonton poet laureate’s first album in six years unpacks his history as a hip-hop advocate and explores the inner workings of Canadian beat communities.

Cadence Weapon

As Cadence Weapon, the former Edmonton, Alta., poet laureate and ex-Pitchfork contributor Rollie Pemberton helped bring the Canadian rap underground to light, and in the process, he was twice shortlisted for the Polaris Prize. His new, self-titled album, and first since 2012’s Hope in Dirt City, is his most dynamic since his 2005 debut, Breaking Kayfabe, and his most well-written to date: an electro-rap record that, in part, explores the inner workings of Canadian beat communities. The album is full of the brainy dance rap he made his name on. But more than any other Cadence Weapon album, this record unpacks his rap persona and his history as a hip-hop advocate in a rap-averse country that begrudgingly came to embrace the form, thus forcing him to reevaluate his place in the culture. By extension, it weighs his ambitions against his reality.
Cadence Weapon has always been an ambitious project. Coming up on the Canadian rap scene in its infancy years before Drake, it could be a downright subversive act, intent on producing the “freakiest” dance-infused songs Pemberton could come up with. This time around, decisions are made more purposefully. That doesn’t mean the music isn’t still way out in left field. Pemberton has said he was influenced by both Harry Nilsson and Future, and the album is awash in overdubbed vocals and woozy, half-croaked melodies. His singing and his songcraft have noticeably improved since his last record. Progress is a focus on the album (as evidenced on songs like “Destination” and “Don’t Talk to Me”), and his growth as an MC and song maker is palpable.
Despite his credentials as a writer and poet, Pemberton’s raps can be mechanical and long-winded, and they’re sometimes rickety in their construction. Occasionally his delivery is so dry he comes off as impassive. But he is also capable of eloquence and even virtuosity. Cadence Weapon is his most fluid and revealing work. It’s full of detail-oriented portraiture, like the wannabe DJ sketched out in “The Host” who doesn’t know how to work his gear (and thinks that makes it “sound sicker”). Then there are spells of deft wordplay: “Tinted windows, seats filled with leather/Scented incense, eucalyptus pepper/Got a crew of bad bitches like this was Heathers/I’m Rollie, homie, my wrist is metal/Got a mean strap and a vicious bezel,” he raps on “My Crew (Woooo).” It’s sharp and visual but, more importantly, it’s fun to listen to. He adjusts his flows to fit production shifts in songs like “Destination” and “Five Roses,” exhibiting his dexterity and finesse. His choruses are often still underdeveloped, but his workaround is to get other artists to sing some for him. Where the hooks once actively impeded the enjoyment of his songs, they’re now mostly workable segues into verses.
Not only are the lyrics better executed on Cadence Weapon, they have more to say. Aside from stringing together personal digressions, on macro and micro scales, that reveal his dreams and anxieties, he entertains a wider variety of perspectives. “High Rise” tackles classism and gentrification through a winding series of fragmenting ideas (“More consumption, mass defection/Soul disrupted, disconnected/Cast reduction/Ask them why, get interrupted/More distractions, low production/More corruption”). “System” addresses racism and sexism, patriarchy and the gig economy, using two separate third-person accounts; both subjects find themselves trying to get “saved by the rhythm” but feeling “trapped in the system.” The verses on these songs are less dense than on albums past yet they carry in them more information and better storytelling, even when those stories aren’t particularly engaging on their own.
Cadence Weapon builds to its closer, “The Afterparty,” where Pemberton can’t get into a venue despite being on the guest list. Caught in an awkward position, he threads together ideas that loosely fit—musings about the escapism of partying and theories about nihilism and mortality, all while retracing his path as an artist. In the end, he still can’t get in. “Might be under my artist name/Can you check another page?” he asks reluctantly, bringing the album to a close. It’s some of the smartest writing of his career, heady and self-aware, summing up a lifetime spent thanklessly searching for the perfect words. These are the moments that make him a hip-hop force. Even as the Canadian rap scene has become crowded with upstarts and his sound has been picked over for parts, Cadence Weapon remains one of its most crucial voices.


Backed by a prodigious jazz combo, the poet’s debut album possesses a profound and forceful clarity.

Aja Monet: When the Poems Do What They Do

When the Poems Do What They Do

In her 1977 essay “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” the feminist poet and essayist Audre Lorde provided a profound reinterpretation of the literary form. “I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience,” she writes, “not the sterile wordplay that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word ‘poetry’ to mean.” Here, Lorde argues that a poem is not necessarily impressive for its clever construction, or its adherence to age-old conventions, but rather for the emotional honesty and power it conveys. On her debut album, when the poems do what they do, poet Aja Monet gloriously inhabits Lorde’s vision as she reflects on the scars of social injustice, the strength of love, and her own multiplicity.
In her previous collections, such as My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter and The Black Unicorn Sings, Monet explored themes of childhood, race, and the rhythms of New York City with a rare gentleness and precise eye. Her new record expands upon these subjects, taking us through storm-battered homes and jump rope competitions as she explores Black joy and the blight of capitalism. The unhurried and gentle arrangements that accompany her words—provided by Grammy-winning trumpeter Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, drummer Marcus Gilmore, and other acclaimed musicians—only add to the gravitas and wonder.
On opening track “I Am,” tapped rhythms land like errant raindrops on a windowpane; Monet begins describing herself in all her contradictions and complexities, painting herself as, simultaneously, “a kiss that quivers, a machete that bleeds … a brown liquor flirt.” The drumming then ramps up to a crescendo, loud and erratic like a  stampede as she pivots to recognize the role others have played in her life. When Monet cries, “I am because of you, we are here together, there’s no me without you” at the end of the song, the percussion sounds like a chorus of affirmation.
When Monet speaks her work aloud alongside curls of percussion and jazzy instrumentation, she creates a unique kind of musical intimacy. “Weathering” begins with a long, languid jazz intro consisting mainly of a muted trumpet over brushed drums and piano. It’s slow and sensual, underscoring Monet’s rapturous lyrics about a lover who “kisses wounds and sets free tornadoes down my spine.” While she frequently invokes the grandeur of the natural world in her writing, she can also inhabit a more colloquial mode; on “Why My Love,” Monet describes an affection for her community that is “Indigenous, ocean-wide, sky-deep” and then “ass-whooping, accountable.” An airy flute flies gracefully overhead, serving as a reminder of the lightness love can provide even in times of darkness.
The record’s highlight is “Black Joy,” which tenderly describes the beauty and vibrancy of Monet’s locale, even when it’s struggling with violence. She notices “twerks and taps, jooks and jives, Harlem shakes, electric slides” as well as neighbors rocking on their porch and barbecuing in their backyards. In the background, there is the echo of street chatter: faint sounds of laughter, a “whoop!” When Monet states that “joy is righteous and ratchet,” we don’t have to wonder what she means; instead we experience it along with her. Here is a glimpse into her desires, fears, and dreams, offered with unflinching honesty.


The D.C. native takes a chip on his shoulder into the catchiest music of his career. In every Glizzy rap boast, you can hear in his voice all that was sacrificed to achieve it.

Fully Loaded

Shy Glizzy enthusiastically (and formally) introduced himself to the world outside the nation’s capital on GoldLink’s unlikely 2016 smash “Crew.” His show-stealing verse, performed with a carefree springiness, seemed to be the moment he’d been waiting for, the bridge he constantly searched for in his verses from street soldier to celebrity rap phenom. A platinum plaque and a Grammy nomination later and Glizzy is still seeking that breakthrough.
In the opening seconds of Fully Loaded, his sweeping debut album, he reaffirms that he is still being overlooked, and toward the end, he’s still in his hood. “They think I made it out, bitch, I ain’t famous,” he snaps on “Don’t Talk to Strangers.” “Just came from my cousin’s house, still eating ramens.” The album finds the D.C. native taking his snub in stride and turning a chip on his shoulder into the catchiest music of his career. Shy Glizzy zeroes in on what makes his songs so captivating: their balance. His war stories are recalled from the lap of luxury, but he’s never more than a few blocks away from the action.
Of course, that doesn’t mean these songs don’t grapple with shootouts and the toll violence takes on one’s mental health. The best Glizzy songs always do. These are tales of a hustler whose triumphs were born from lessons learned through struggle. And now that the struggle is reaping rewards, he has secured a better future for his next generation. “Damn look at me, I blowed up, I done had a fuckin’ son/He’s a trust fund baby, he don’t gotta hold a gun,” he raps on “Gimme A Hit.” It’s a redistribution of power—trap babies ending a cycle of poverty and violence by leaving their kids a nest egg—but at what cost? In every Glizzy rap boast, you can hear in his voice all that was sacrificed to achieve it; his unshakable resolve is occasionally betrayed by his bittersweet tone. He remembers those nights trappin’ hard, when he had to rob, when he used to starve. But those same experiences give breadth to his remarkable trap sagas. As he puts it: “I’m a real fuckin’ trapper and I carry that shit with pride.”
Glizzy raps about pain and promise through a taut whine that can flatten out or float away. His flows are easygoing but deliberate in where and how they move. He can convey profound grief and extreme comfort over the course of only a few bars. Raps about swimming in newfound wealth slot in almost seamlessly with vows to rain down vengeance upon killers who’ve taken close friends from him. He relishes the numbing power of ice (“Diamonds”) and the security his gun affords him (“Rich Shooters”), but he is never truly at ease and his relentless pursuit of relief amid chaos is tension-filled and stirring.
His last mixtape, 2017’s Quiet Storm, an unofficial homage to DC DJ Melvin Lindsey’s pacifying R&B radio format, shifted away from the exhilarated energy of his “Crew” verse and into a hushed trap style of soft synths and eased melodies. While Fully Loaded does deepen that sound in spots, on songs like “Mafia” and “Live Up to the Hype,” Glizzy also drifts out into NBA YoungBoy’s country rap blues (“Where We Come From”) and spaced-out 808 Mafia-esque chimes (“Super Freak”). With “Do You Understand?,” a team-up with Gunna and Tory Lanez, he delivers a pop rap bauble that is more pleasing to the ear than large swathes of what has dominated Top 40 radio this year. Throughout Fully Loaded, Shy Glizzy once again turns his underdog story into a triumph.


Occam XXV sustains a single organ drone for nearly 45 minutes, tracing a long, gradual arc of fluttering harmonics and microtonal pulses, sounding as alien as the French composer’s synthesizer work.

Éliane Radigue / Frédéric Blondy: Occam XXV

Occam XXV

“We live in a universe filled with waves” says Éliane Radigue, the revered French composer. “Not only between the Earth and the Sun but all the way down to the tiniest microwaves, and inside… is the minuscule band that our ears turn into sound. We… come into contact with [them] physically, mentally and spiritually.”
She should know. An early apprenticeship in the mid-1950s with composers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry led to her induction into their nascent Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète, an organization deeply invested in the role of sound in everyday life. But Radigue soon went her own way. Throughout the 1960s, she began to experiment with extended feedback drones and microtunings, to the disapproval of her former mentors. An encounter with the ARP 2500—the customizable modular synthesizer whose stable tuning and rich timbral possibilities set it apart from the competition at Moog—set her on a path that would continue for the next 25 years, exploring the potential the instrument afforded to sculpt sound.
Radigue released only a handful of LPs in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, but a younger generation began championing her works around the turn of the millennium. The three-plus-hour Adnos I, II y III, composed at Mills College in the early 1980s and considered one of her landmark works, didn’t hit shelves until Table of the Elements put it out in 2002. Since then, her catalog has grown by a degree or two. This slow build matches the unwavering patience of her music; today, Radigue is hailed as a landmark artist whose pieces set a high-water mark for the evocative and sensual potential of drones. To engage with her work requires close engagement with what her contemporary Pauline Oliveros termed “deep listening.” Her music is dynamically flat but endlessly supple, and one submits to the gentle force of the oscillations and the mesmerizing undulations of waves within waves.
If Radigue had stuck with the ARP, she could have enjoyed a much-deserved victory lap in the 2000s as a synth pioneer. Instead, as the world caught up with her vast archive, she made a hard pivot to composing for acoustic instruments, from solo harp to full orchestra. The Occam series is a body of work made in close collaboration with select players—her “knights of the Occam.” Just as Radigue doubled down on the ARP for a quarter century, these musicians’ technical input and ongoing relationship with the composer mean the pieces are theirs alone to play. Named after the 14th century Franciscan friar William of Ockham, whose rule of simplicity is today known as Occam’s Razor, the series prizes reduction and clarity. What can be illuminating when encountering these works is how alien the traditional instruments can sound. Radigue strips away the classical signifiers of expressiveness and musicality to tap into raw sound. Where her works for synthesizer never felt synth-y, her works for soloists, ensembles, and orchestras could convincingly stand in for her beloved ARP.
Occam XXV was commissioned by Organ Reframed, the festival founded and curated by Claire M. Singer devoted exclusively to organ works. Performed by Frédéric Blondy, Occam XXV is quintessential Radigue, with a single long drone gradually accumulating mass before it falls away, bit by bit, into silence. Clocking in at a sprightly 44:30, it’s manageable enough that a more casual listener can take it out for a spin without feeling overburdened.
Radigue never rushes—one of the most common descriptions of her music is that its changes come so slowly they are imperceptible in the moment, and only registered in hindsight. Occam XXV doesn’t quite get there; across the span of the piece, it’s easy to track the development from elemental sub frequencies through a magisterial, full-spectrum sound to the thin, ethereal outro. This is an asset. The joy of the music is hearing this gradual arc unfold and basking in the richly entwined moments along the way.
A major component of the sound is the psychoacoustic beating that results from Radigue and Blondy’s careful mixing of frequencies. Tones flutter and vibrate, shimmering with a gentle vibrato that comes from layering slightly detuned adjacent pitches. It’s a sound familiar to us—we hear it when tuning a guitar, but also as airplane engines are readied on the tarmac, or in the glistening harmonics of a singing bowl. These pulsations retain a surprising gravity, focusing the ear and the mind. The shifting drones seem both utterly still and yet in constant motion. This dual nature gently facilitates a state of meditative stillness.
Such gentleness is one of the key qualities that makes Radigue’s music so timeless. Overlooked for the better part of her career, she committed fully to her esoteric practice and brokered zero compromises along the way. On the surface, her works can seem impenetrable and severe, lacking any hint of new-age warmth or ambient chill, despite her deep devotion to Tibetan Buddhism. Yet Occam XXV is a testament to the generosity at the heart of Radigue’s practice. The single drone that extends throughout could go twice as long—or more. It feels like breathing, sounds radiant, and leaves the attentive listener in a space of attuned grace.