The Brooklyn dance-pop duo Holy Ghost!'s second album, Dynamics, pulls at all the strings its title implies. The bright disco/house tendencies and deep emotional highs of their earlier work are offset here with an introspective melancholy.

Dynamics

As the progenitors of last decade's indie-dance boom hit their “Now what?” years, the definition for musical maturation stands to get a bit confused. Music that nods to a previous generation's styles also faces the pitfall of knowing how those styles ossified when their listenership aged-- a combination of more self-awareness and more conscious grabs for half-comfortable adaptation-- and artists are trying even more stringently to avoid it. Holy Ghost! appeared on the scene near the end of the DFA-dominated indie-house movement's first peak, and managed to capture their stake in that scene with a couple fantastic releases (2007's “Hold On”; 2010's “Static on the Wire” EP) and an ensuing album that, though slightly uneven, pointed towards a promising future. Too bad that future was contingent on the party going on forever-- nowadays listeners who cut their teeth on that sometimes overamped mid-00s heyday would sooner prop up their feet than get up and move them.
Naturally, Holy Ghost!'s second album, Dynamics, addresses that condition by pulling at all the strings its title implies. Their brightest disco/house tendencies, and the deep emotional highs that came with them, are heavily offset with an introspective melancholy or ruminative ambivalence that asks instead of urges. Holy Ghost! put their heart deep in their grooves, where it could be drawn out after repeated listens; feelings that came across as insinuations at first gradually moved inescapably to the forefront. The songs here, meanwhile, lay it all out in detail from the start: late-night phone calls that feel like cheap stage productions in an attempt to scramble back to reconciliation (“Okay”), the summer-haze energy drain that keeps aspirations from going anywhere until anxiety sets in (“Dumb Disco Ideas”), the Bloomberg-era NYC party grind that's turned the Manhattan/outer borough clubhopper circuit into a two-way route (“Bridge and Tunnel”). This is a record that sounds like it's meant to express little more than what a drag it is to try and maintain that youthful energy in the danceclub world-- including from the music-wonk side, if “Dance a Little Closer” is any indication (“And there'll be no big changes/ there'll be no asinine punchlines/ OK, one's fine”).
The obviousness of the lyrics isn't a huge problem. Cheap words sound like a million bucks with enough vision behind them, but Holy Ghost!'s unfocused attention is so divided between a bunch of new musical ideas that getting something to click on all fronts is a rare occurrence. As singles-and-filler as Holy Ghost! seemed, it did all fit together, one or two tricks done appealingly rather than half a dozen that scatter across a wide-grouped target. Emerging out of the old Brooklynite neo-disco wheelhouse of six years ago into something transitional shouldn't have to mean Zeliging one's way through Aspartame Fleetwood Mac (“I Wanna Be Your Hand”), a strip-mall suburb of Phoenix (“Changing of the Guard”), or the overblown beach-cruiser bombast of late 80s AOR-pop ballads (“It Must Be the Weather”).
So after throwing every kind of stylistic detour into the year-and-a-half recording process that eventually gave us Dynamics, it's the stay-the-course dancefloor material that proves the most rewarding. It's definitely not as of a type as their previous synthpop-skewing material was-- “Bridge and Tunnel” is big-budget Italo a'la Kano, the intricate armada of synthesizers on “Cheap Shots” draws a clear line from mid-80s Manchester electro back through the Berlin School of progressive electronics, and “Dance a Little Closer” and “Dumb Disco Ideas” are ür-DFA in IMAX. Nick Millhiser and Alex Frankel can still crank out the heavy jams if they want to, and while half of the album feels overstuffed and overproduced, that hugeness does them a favor when it's applied to the pure dance cuts. Frankel's voice is still distinct, too-- clipped, sawed-off, and cool without being lifelessly aloof. (It helps when you can bring in Nancy Whang to push up the oomph on nearly half the tracks.) Unfortunately it's still too scattershot, proof that too many ideas can be even more of a detriment than not enough. That latter scenario held back their early work a little, but that's excusable; their first singles and the album that followed were the work of a band that was trying to figure out who they were. It's just a bit of a letdown to hear them, more than five years into their career, not having entirely answered that question.


The debut EP by Brazilian producer Superfície uses morphing club sounds to soundtrack a politically-charged sci-fi narrative of his country’s past, present, and future.

Hélices EP

When traditional measures to fight the mosquito-borne Zika virus in Brazil proved unsuccessful, the country eventually turned to bioengineered mosquitos in order to crowd out the fatal virus’ rapidly spawning host lineage. The debut EP from Brazilian producer Superfície prominently features descendants of these cyborgian arthropods: its artwork depicts a digitally-rendered mosquito, and their buzzing sound effects appear directly on three of the four tracks. On Hélices, the producer weaves a fantastic science-fiction narrative that intertwines digital entomology with Afro-Brazilian baile funk rhythms.
In the process, Superfície draws inspiration from his native country, particularly the history of the indigenous Guaraní people, who the government of Brazil didn’t formally recognize as human beings until 1988. (And leaders say their genocide continues, along with their struggles against land dispossession and horrible youth suicide rates.) With that, Superfície also takes on technologized visions of the future and capitalism’s thirst for ecological devastation in the global south. The role of technology is decidedly ambivalent on Helíces, which simultaneously valorizes the potentialities of tech for resistance and highlights the ways it will reproduce existing relationships of domination.
While it’s impossible to grasp the whole backstory by just listening to this instrumental release, the EP’s compositional approach conveys a similar form of technological entanglement. This is evident in its approach to the baile funk rhythm, which, like most diasporic rhythms, has gone through multiple gene mutations in its lifetime. Here, it’s re-engineered through a process of syncopation that splices together its past, present, and imagined future. Initially inspired by Miami bass and freestyle records, the baile funk beat has melded at various points with Rocky horn samples, beatboxing, and a Diplo cooptation; these days, it finds itself commandeered by frolicking teen-boys like MC Pikachu and MC Brinquedo.
Hélices jams on the baile funk rhythm like a contagious, viral riff, stringing and restringing it through zones of pleasure and dread. “Febre Do Vale” subjects a slow march to this microbe-morphing approach, while “Dengue Drums” transmutes it into a kind of ecstatic restlessness. A fluid sound design, in-between musical phrasing and spurts of noise, glues it all together.
Like the swarming bioengineered insects let loose throughout Brazil, the baile funk rhythm moves through the world guided by these processes of emergence and network-oriented models of distribution. On the EP, it infects and is reciprocally infected by sounds from a disparate range of sources, enmeshed with ambient music motifs, samples of traditional percussion instruments, and a motif of Guaraní music on the track “Cerol.” The earworming, precise sound-forms on this release thus convey feelings of dispersion. The producer references another mosquito-borne illness on “Dengue Drums,” a track characterized by a gliding sense of polyrhythmic uncoiling. The EP’s accompanying remixes by Venezuelan-American producer umurmurum and Club Chai co-founder foozool further extend the contagion of the sounds at hand, reframing them in more straightforwardly dancefloor-friendly and eerily droning contexts, respectively.
In his theoretical writings, the Afrofuturist critic Kodwo Eshun has praised Black diasporic musics that use sonic technologies to break with the past and synthesize new ways of thinking about and feeling the future. We can see Superfície making related moves here. It’s unclear what kind of future the EP fights for exactly, but its urgency rages.


The immersive and warm-hearted comp from the Swedish label is filled with pop oddities and floor-filling house tracks from both big names and newcomers.

Studio Barnhus Volym 1

Eight years ago, Stockholm’s Studio Barnhus label got its start with Good Children Make Bad Grown Ups, a showcase for founders Axel Boman, Petter Nordkvist (aka Pedrodollar), and Kornél Kovács. The four-track sampler triangulated the nascent label’s sound at the intersection of deep house, impish disco, and 1960s pop, and as Studio Barnhus has grown up, the crew has retained its childlike spirit. Across the next 60-odd releases, the imprint has struck a careful balancing act between floor-filling hedonism and misty-eyed sentimentalism, offset by a subtle sense of humor. On Studio Barnhus Volym 1, the label’s first long-playing compilation, the Swedes continue to explore their affable aesthetic, and they’ve never made better company.
Studio Barnhus’ releases generally target club audiences—all three founders are DJs—but Volym 1 is often content to stray far from the dancefloor. The opening “Night Fantastic,” from Man Tear is a woozy pastiche of 1980s synth-pop that takes giddy pleasure in clever sound effects and cheekily portentous lyrics. Paradise Alley opt for toe-scuffing vibes on the downcast “What Road,” another sidelong take on synth pop. Whispers Beirut finally make the leap from SoundCloud to a more legitimate theater with “The Champion,” a slow, pneumatic take on their whimsical signature sound.
Recent signee Bella Boo’s “boyboy” drizzles bluesy sweet nothings over elliptical scrapes and squelches, suggesting Matthew Herbert remixing St Germain; in-house heartthrob Baba Stiltz doubles down on the blues conceit in a gravelly romantic plea that vacillates between sincerity and tomfoolery. And Pedrodollar’s bittersweet “Reality World” comes off like a sun-warped cassette, out-of-tune guitars glinting warm against a drunken synth solo. (Studio Barnhus’ sense of humor comes into play here with a single spoken word—“Orange”—that’s almost certainly a reference to Boards of Canada’s own habit of infusing their music with synesthetic cues.)
It’s easy to spot the influence of both Pampa and Kompakt on the Barnhus sound, so it’s fitting that figures from both labels turn up on Volym 1. Pampa papa DJ Koze delivers “Hawaiian Souldier,” a sticky-sweet tone poem that melts guitar strings into a puddle of ice cream, while Superpitcher bounces back from his sprawling The Golden Ravedays with one of the gentlest, most affecting songs he’s given us in years: His “La La Land” crystallizes the compilation’s easy-listening undercurrents in home-organ drums and a wordless, na-na-na chorus that sounds like it’s straight out of a ’70s Christmas special.
John Talabot, who DJs and records with Boman as Talaboman, also turns up with a crackerjack tune—“The Change,” a punchy house bubbler with detuned synth accents that trigger flashbacks of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92—but for the most part Volym 1 doesn’t rely on big names to make its case; some of its best work comes from newcomers. Atlanta’s Qaadir Howard—the YouTuber who popularized the phrase “No Tea, No Shade”—delivers a UK-flavored soulful house tune with a breakbeat undercurrent. Off the Meds, a Stockholm group fronted by the South African MC Kamohelo Khoaripe, drop a low-key hip-hop track fueled by acoustic bass and Ethio-jazz piano. And Sofia Kourtesis turns in another easy-listening house gem that cushions crisp hi-hats in airy vocal samples; along with Kovács’ much heavier house anthem “On Roofs,” it’s one of the album’s dancefloor highlights.
There was a fourth name credited on Barnhus 001, one only heard from one other time since then: Gino Bomino, whose fleeting appearance serves as a reminder of the label’s fondness for a well-played mystery. There are no secrets on Volym 1, exactly, but there is one major surprise: the comp’s absolute standout, Adrian Lux’s “Teenage Crime (Axel Boman Dub),” which first appeared in radically different form, in 2010, on Axtone—a label run by Axwell, of the Swedish House Mafia. The original version was a kind of winsome trance-pop, while the Axwell remix—not nearly as offensive as some of SHM’s later work, admittedly—added some main-stage oomph. There’s no mistaking the source of Boman’s edit, but the way he slows the tempo, dubs out the voice, and swaps in a weak-in-the-knees bounce laced with silvery acid streamers makes for an unexpectedly moving dancefloor moment. The Studio Barnhus crew has never been above indulging a pop sweet tooth, especially when it comes to sampling their Swedish brethren, but being able to hear the honey in a song  many underground heads might automatically have written off as cheese speaks to the open-mindedness—and the warm-heartedness—that lies behind Studio Barnhus’ irrepressible charm.


The Detroit rapper’s world is bleak and flashy in equal measure. On the followup to 2021’s Unfuckwitable, he’s getting better at balancing his opposing tendencies.

FACE

The opening song on Babyface Ray’s FACE starts out traditionally but ends with a curveball. The first half of “My Thoughts 3 / Pops’ Prayer” is a continuation of the song series the Detroit rapper has been producing since his 2017 mixtape Trillest—a combination of life advice, flashy status updates, and bittersweet memories of life in the streets, delivered in his trademark slur of a voice. What makes this iteration different is the prayer from Ray’s father that closes the song. The music stops and his billowing voice offers a plea for protection against malevolent forces: “I come asking Your choice blessings on my baby boy Ray… That you might wrap him up with Your love, Your grace, and Your mercy/Giving him protection, prosperity, and peace in a dark and dying world.” It’s an isolated moment within Ray’s catalog of steely Detroit street rap, but it looms over the entirety of FACE: Every designer-clothes flex and moment spent reveling could be his last.
Ray’s father’s opening prayer also complements FACE’s epic scope, and not just in surface-level references (“I know heaven real, man/I done been to hell and back,” he says on the excellent single “Sincerely Face”). He’s been in the game for over a decade, and after the mainstream breakthrough of his 2021 EP Unfuckwitable, Ray is ready to show his growing range. At 20 tracks and nearly an hour in length, FACE often scans as The Essential Babyface Ray, a variety pack of beats from different subsets of hip-hop from Michigan and beyond. But unlike Unfuckwitable, most of Ray’s experiments here feel natural, and he’s given himself more time to spend in the comfort zone that endeared him to fans on earlier projects like 2019’s MIA Season 2. The balance between his street-rap origins and more conventional fare still isn’t perfect, but Ray is closer to finding his sense of equilibrium.
The same mismatch between beats that plagued Unfuckwitable lingers slightly here as well. That’s ironic, considering that Ray’s writing has a sharp sense of symmetry. He likes to stack good and bad thoughts one after the other in his verses, revealing an intimacy to his words that’s at odds with his tough-guy persona. At the end of his verse on “Overtime,” within four short bars, he darts from protecting his nephew on the cold streets of Detroit to touring the world and wearing clothes from the Japanese streetwear brand Human Made. He moves similarly through mid-album highlight “Me, Wife & Kids,” stuffing money into a blue Goyard bag while questioning what’s really driving his ambition (“Could be the paper or the percs, I been fucking itching”). Moods shift on a dime, from celebratory to paranoid to reflective—especially on songs like the heartfelt closer “Motown Music”—with Ray’s flat affect linking his non-sequiturs together like zip ties on a designer sneaker.
Ray’s world is bleak and flashy in equal measure, and an all-star team of guests and producers steps up to further flesh it out. FACE features more Michigan names in the credits than last time, and every feature from the Great Lake State plays to Ray’s strengths. He reunites with Icewear Vezzo on “6 Mile Show,” passing the baton like a hot potato over 808 Mafia and Southside’s wailing sirens. Producer Pooh Beatz decorates “Me, Wife & Kids” with a deep low end and whirring synths, creating a menacing swing for Ray to demolish. Flint mainstay Carlo teams up with Swedish producer and Sad Boy member Yung Gud on the standout track “Overtime,” the drums and piano meshing with the spacey instrumental underlay to create a vibe that’s weird and enticing.
“Overtime” is far and away the strangest song on FACE, but it isn’t the only moment where Ray navigates relatively new territory. Atlanta producer DJ Esco’s four placements mostly match the nervy energy of Ray’s best beat choices—“Tunnel Vision” and “Motown Music,” in particular, manage to be expansive without overwhelming Ray’s voice. Some of the album’s stabs at more mainstream-friendly production barely register. 808 Mafia and Southside’s menacing beat on the first half of “6 Mile Show” is undercut by an unnecessary ATL Jacob beat change that ruins the song’s atmosphere. “Blood, Sweat, & Tears” is more indistinct, and boring, than its twin verses from Ray and guest G Herbo deserved. A serviceable but completely unrelated Pusha T guest verse and Wiz Khalifa’s one-man weed nostalgia act waste the interesting beats and otherwise good verses on “Dancing With the Devil” and “Kush & Codeine,” respectively. These moments distract from Ray’s presence and feel less like songs than naked grabs at specific markets.
Thankfully, the handful of stumbles have little to do with Ray or his raps. Beneath his cold resolve, he shows a yearning to move to the next level of stardom, and the mix of regional styles never dilutes the essence of what makes Ray’s music great. FACE’s variety and grit put the album in conversation with his father’s prayer from the beginning: Ray is on the right track, and his legacy is slowly beginning to take shape.

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They came on the scene with online novelty hit "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell", but there's a lot more to this New York rap outfit on their new mixtape.

Sit Down, Man

"These zooted brown weirdos is wildin' but they can really rap/ Saw the cover of the tape, figured it's pretty wack/ Later on eventually admitted that it's pretty crack." That's one of the most pedestrian lyrics on the dense, witty, complex Sit Down, Man but it's a good summary of the 180-degree turn Das Racist have pulled in 2010. Sure, plenty of people liked "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell", but when you lead with a presumed novelty song, the bar for your career tends to be set pretty low. But the trio followed that with the slept-on Shut Up, Dude mixtape and all of a sudden lowbrow humor gives way to subversive social commentary and a culturally literate wit that was too hilarious to immediately draw attention to how really fucking smart it was.
Judging by *Sit Down, Man'*s impressive production roster, a lot of fellow artists embraced the Shut Up mixtape. The sheer variety and quality of those producers aren't just important co-signs, however; they provide a context for Das Racist to bring their best. It also opens them up to the fruits of collaboration and, over 80 minutes, diversifies their sound. Despite the range of collaborators, Das Racist never have to break character, whether going abstract and abrasive with El-P, bareknuckle street brawling with Roc Marciano, counting major label young money with Boi-1da, or canoodling to Teengirl Fantasy's wobbly R&B.
The stars of the show though are clearly MCs Kool A.D. and Heems, who here blow their previous work out of the water. Heems told The Village Voice he chooses beats "so Talib Kweli fans wouldn't like it," but while Das Racist go great lengths to separate themselves from the pejorative connotations of "lyrical hip-hop," the main draw are the lyrics. Das Racist turn rap into Calvinball, making and breaking the ground rules with no warning whatsoever: One moment, they'll be calling Mobb Deep's Prodigy "more Picasso than Schnabel," and the next they'll be doing cold-rock-a-party Q&A-- "you puff herb?" "Dog, I smoke weed too!" Or, in what I guess could be a one-line summary of Das Racist's mindset: "I'm counting Jacksons with black friends/ I'm counting tens in Benzes with white friends/ Wonderin' if suicide's a largely white trend/ Google it later and confirm that, aight then."
There's precedent in the hyper-referential raps of Beastie Boys and MF Doom as well as the abstract-gone-mainstream wordplay of Dipset and Lil Wayne, but Das Racist are a singular act. Google and Wikipedia get several shoutouts, and it makes sense since everything under the sun is fair game for these guys, but they never rhyme for the sake of riddlin'. The lyrics themselves have an orderly and logical nature about them, pop culture crosswords that draw connections between completely unrelated objects. Listening to their music doesn't require deep cultural or musical knowledge to enjoy it-- it's pretty damn enjoyable purely as pop-- but you'll get more of a charge from it the more often you decode it. In that sense, Das Racist's music feels closer to Girl Talk's than any other current rapper.
Das Racist could stand accused of sinking into trivia as a means of obscuring a certain sort of modern emptiness, but in between all the proper nouns are some disarmingly humane moments. The Brooklyn group Keepaway lends "Amazing" a sparkly, champagne-spilling luxury as Heems gives a tender, relatable treatise on the effects of soft substance abuse. Though he notes that fan interaction tends to be way friendlier when you rap about weed, he reminisces about a youth of "Yo! MTV Raps" cards and Nautica sweatshirts and realizes "we used to play basketball, then we started drinking." Meanwhile, on the Diplo-produced "You Can Sell Anything", A.D. bemusedly imagines a record exec thinking, "maybe we can cake off the weirdos," while Heems kicks a bravely honest and timely verse where he "celebrate[s] the fact I moved back into my mom's basement," seeing the bright side of having no rent and the freedom to "sell old books for new ones," do shows, and hang with guys like Diplo.
And yet, although the upgrade in production and increased confidence in their lyrics are certainly a big part of Sit Down, Man, the most important growth for Das Racist is that they're learning how to write songs instead of just rap for four minutes at a time. Most people who've enjoyed Das Racist to this point probably wouldn't mind if they stuck with the latter, but for people who don't share their encyclopedic knowledge of turn-of-the-century mainstream rap, the sheer density of that would understandably be exhausting. Sit Down, Man works every bit as well in a house party as it does for a solitary geek-out session: the coked-out couture-rap of "Fashion Party" shows surprisingly easy chemistry with indie mystics Chairlift and should be appreciated by anyone who's ever felt odd at a gallery event but enjoyed the free booze.  And while there's plenty of recognizable interpolations (Jay-Z's "Run This Town", "Days of Our Lives", the Very Best's "Julia", "We Are Family", "People Are Strange", "Addams Groove"), perhaps the best is where they feed Enigma a couple of Irish car bombs and turn "Return to Innocence" into a drunken singalong.
Some may still resist embracing Das Racist, but I imagine it's not so much a matter of race or privilege, though they do have a lot of fun playing with those two issues. It's more reflected in their hook from "hahahaha jk?"-- "we're not joking, just joking, we are joking, just joking, we're not joking." It's always difficult to convince someone that a rapper's the real deal with "they're really funny" as the selling point, since it gives the impression that neither you nor the artist appreciates the daunting cultural import of hip-hop. It's the same reason a lot of us would reserve a circle of hell for "comedy rappers," who figure that the mere medium of rapping is funny and let that do the heavy lifting. That's not how Das Racist roll: They kid because they are deeply and madly in love with hip-hop, and Sit Down, Man is an infinitely entertaining result of extreme reverence toward rap and irreverence toward everything else, themselves included.


While the band’s new live-in-studio album doesn’t radically reinvent any songs, trimming some of their more frivolous elements grants new clarity and focus.

Sing the Melody

Dave Longstreth and his Dirty Projectors are best known as purveyors of fussy, technically demanding art-pop: songs that leap between genres and time signatures, riffs and vocal arrangements that slice and pirouette around each other, verses in which “unimpressed” and “Archimedes Palimpsest” are rhymed with a wink and a grin. It’s amusing, then, that the Projectors are at their friendliest and most engaging when they strip Longstreth’s compositions down, tapping into the loose, raw energy that comes with playing live or working fast.
If 2009’s towering Bitte Orca remains the band’s masterpiece, follow-up Swing Lo Magellan is their easiest album to love, in large part because its quirks—the shaggy handclaps on “Dance for You,” the giggled backing vocals on “Unto Caesar”—puncture the illusion of perfection. You’re compelled to remember that humans had to come together in a room to make this music, which in turn makes their virtuosity all the more thrilling.
That’s the appeal of Sing the Melody, a new live-in-studio album released unceremoniously last week as part of Domino’s Documents series. Last November, near the tail end of months spent touring, the Projectors went into Manhattan’s Power Station to play highlights from their gleeful full-band comeback Lamp Lit Prose and a few gems from their back catalog. None of these songs are radically reinvented, but at a minimum they’re rendered with an impressive urgency. “That’s a Lifestyle” is a good example: It may have already been the most electric, familiar cut on Lamp Lit Prose, but it’s enlivened here by sharper, earthier harmonies from the trio of Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman, and Kristin Slipp.
Other songs benefit from addition by subtraction; trimming their more frivolous elements for a live lineup has granted them new clarity and focus. Opener “Right Now” loses a programmed beat, piano part, and vocal manipulation, and its skronking horns are replaced with crisp chords. The final product is a pure and galvanizing call to action, one that would’ve fit in nicely alongside the more reflective material on Swing Lo Magellan. It isn’t the only song to find a more natural home within the Projectors’ larger discography here: Longstreth & co. rip up the floorboards of the bubbly Off the Wall homage “I Feel Energy,” revealing the sort of riffs and cool, clean space heard all the way back on Rise Above.
Most of Sing the Melody’s second half is devoted to older oddities, including a rendition of Dirty Projectors highlight “Cool Your Heart” that’s remarkably faithful to the glitchy, cluttered studio version. Tenured fans who remember how weird and thrilling it felt to see Longstreth pop up with a writing credit on a hit for Kanye West, Rihanna, and Paul McCartney will surely enjoy hearing him repatriate the bridge of “FourFiveSeconds,” and the 2009 David Byrne collaboration “Knotty Pine” retains its punchy, brainy energy. Where the cuts on the album’s first half threaten the supremacy of their “official” counterparts, these ones are enjoyable but ultimately inessential.
“Enjoyable but ultimately inessential” doubles as a frank assessment of Dirty Projectors’ current place in the world around them. The band has felt at odds with the prevailing mood in recent years, for reasons both musical—even after tasting major pop success, Longstreth has continued to let his freak flag fly—and cultural; this isn’t the most hospitable climate, in relative terms, for exacting auteurs. Sing the Melody makes a good argument for the Projectors’ continued relevance by shifting the emphasis from Longstreth’s creative leadership to the band’s power as a collective. In that way, it recalls Bon Iver’s i,i, another album that crackles with interpersonal energy. Both releases encourage you to think of the men at their center as reliant on the communities that bring their ideas to life.


The band’s new LP is a rosily optimistic record that showcases Bethany Cosentino’s expanding range as a vocalist and songwriter.

Always Tomorrow

The Best Coast narrative was simple—cats, California, crushes, weed, all sung over sun-drenched guitars. But a closer read of the band’s output can be disconcerting: “Look to the future, nothing’s there,” Bethany Cosentino sang over tambourine hits on 2012’s The Only Place. On her 2015 follow-up California Nights, her tone was similarly ebullient as she sang, “I have no reason to be sad/But I find a way/Almost every day.” The song was titled “When Will I Change.” Fuzz pedals and spacious vocal reverb cast a warm sepia tone, but on their own, some of her words sooner evoked dead-end depression than playful slacktivism. Cosentino’s work met plenty of criticism, much of it openly sexist, but the troubling emotional undercurrents were dismissed as growing pains, if they were mentioned at all. Sameness, both sonically and lyrically, was treated as an artistic block, rather than a psychological one.
Always Tomorrow—Best Coast’s first LP in five years, setting aside their 2018 children’s album—is a dispatch from a better place. In that span of time, Cosentino made a number of moves toward personal growth. She’s become one of the most prominent figures to speak out about sexual misconduct in the music industry, finding a new way of using her voice and platform to inspire change. And crucially, she began to pursue sobriety. She took inspiration in part from Jennifer Clavin of Bleached, another SoCal band that turned a new leaf after years of hard partying.
The idea of public sobriety is relatively new; only a decade ago, stints in rehab and admissions of struggles with substance abuse might, at best, warrant a mawkish tour of the talk show circuit. But in the era of confessional media, musicians like Cosentino, Clavin, and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, as well as higher-profile celebrities like Ben Affleck and Courtney Love, are speaking openly about getting clean. With the newfound visibility comes a breadth of approaches to creating art while sober. For Crutchfield, sobriety has meant a return “to my roots, musically,” a pared-back, folk-inspired approach to songwriting that feels like a refresh. Bleached’s post-sobriety album Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough took a more direct approach, while still keeping sobriety itself at arm’s length.
Cosentino’s preferred songwriting mode is more explicit. “Took away substances, that’s the only change I see,” she sings on “Rollercoaster.” “Different Light” makes no direct reference to drugs or alcohol, but emphatically encourages its subject to embark on a similar journey. “Who am I to judge if you still see things in a different light?” she sings, her lack of judgement slightly unconvincing. Even when ruminating on anxiety, she holds fast to a positive outlook: “Finally I’ve seen the light/Finally I’m the master of my own mind,” she sings on “Master of My Own Mind.”
It’s not a surprise to hear direct inspiration from Cosentino’s personal life—she’s never been one to take poetic license when it’s just as easy to say, “I’m crying.” Where previous records translated that candidness into empathy, here her singular focus comes across as self-satisfied. It’s not that sobriety itself is boring or smug; it’s that Cosentino has seemingly started at the finish line. “I guess this is what they mean when they say, ‘people can change,’” she sings on “For the First Time.” She is even more straightforward on “Everything Has Changed,” recounting old insecurities and bad habits before belting the chorus’ affirmation: “Everything has changed, and I like it this way.” If it sounds like a motivational after-school special, it might be because Cosentino wrote the lyrics a year prior to kicking substances, imagining an ideal world before she began to occupy it. That’s a testament to the power of self-actualization—but it can also scan as superficial, treating sobriety as a silver bullet.
While the songwriting can be simplistic, Always Tomorrow also showcases Cosentino’s expanding range as a vocalist and songwriter. There’s a chiming richness to her voice; bright, and clean, it cuts above the thick reverb of the instrumentation without turning to syrup. Working with producers Carlos de la Garza and Justin Meldal-Johnsen, who’ve elevated powerhouse vocalists for bands like Paramore, Charly Bliss, and Cherry Glazerr, Cosentino uses her voice to set the moods to match the album’s more adventurous compositional modes. There’s a clear effort to differentiate Best Coast’s songs from their presumed mold of surf rock and hazy power-pop. Small flourishes, like the synths that introduce “Seeing Red” or the soaring chords on “Used to Be,” help to break away from uniformity. On “True,” an uncharacteristically slow and twangy love song, her elongated vowels exude a lonesome sweetness that recalls Roy Orbison. As easy as it might be to discard Cosentino’s platitudes about personal growth, it’s tough to ignore the obvious strides she’s made as a vocalist.
Best Coast spent years chasing highs and documenting the lows with impressive, if often prosaic, frankness. And though they’ve finally found the optimism to match their sun-washed disposition, it’s Cosentino’s musicianship and knack for melody that prevents these songs from turning to fluff. Still, the record often slips into performative positivity; worthy ideas about overcoming challenges are subsumed by her rosy outlook. Despite the sheen of self-reflection, Always Tomorrow feels designed to convince everyone else as much as herself.

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The pairing of Scott Walker and Sunn O)))  is real, and yes, it is a touch ridiculous. Their collaborative LP Soused feels more like an event and an experience than a vital, persevering record for either party involved. It’s good and, at times, completely absorbing, especially when Walker and the amplifiers seem to be fighting on the same side of a great battle.

Soused

You won’t need to pinch yourself awake: As if to ensure listeners that Soused isn’t some fantastic nightmare or haunted daydream, Scott Walker and Sunn O))) begin their five-track, 50-minute collaboration with a brief series of exclamation marks. Walker’s voice sweeps in with extreme operatic gusto, delivering a set of simple, sliding phrases over sparkling synthesizers. Dual classic rock riffs trail those hails, like “Paradise City” abutting a scrap of “Heartbreaker”. And as it all fades toward silence, Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley shatter the creeping calm with their expected amplifier army. To emphasize the madness, the sound of an American bullwhip slaps at the back of the din. Yes, Scott O))) is real, and yes, it is a touch ridiculous.
In the wake of Lulu, the intriguing but errant byproduct of a more famous elder leading a more famous metal act, such a partnership felt like a joke someone might have made on a message board in 2011. Gabriel and Mastodon? Jagger and Down? Walker and Sunn O)))? Sure, line them up, but don’t assume that they will all net Lulu’s Warner Brothers deal. At least there was stylistic precedent for this hypothetical pairing. Though Walker was once a pop star, his work later in life has been experimentally ambitious, adding webs of dissonance to song cycles that explored discontent in dozens of guises. Even now, his 1995 LP, Tilt, seems diabolically heavy and jarring, employing unease as compositional exigency. Released only seven months apart, his 2006 album, The Drift, and Sunn O)))’s Black One, feel now like complementary surveys of the same seismic divide. Walker originally wrote “Lullaby,” Soused’s jarring and arching climax, in 1999. His music doesn’t fear the dark.
As legend has it, Sunn O))) approached Walker a half-decade ago with a blind call for collaboration. He’d never heard them, but they hoped he’d pen something to sing for “Alice”, the orchestra-gilded finale of their 2009 LP, Monoliths & Dimensions. He didn’t, but he did become a convert to the band’s maximum-volume, minimum-movement metal. He began writing new material with Anderson, O’Malley and, it seems, both their instrumental and thematic tones in mind. Together, they recorded those pieces earlier this year in London, with several of Walker’s more customary contributors adding drums, horns, keyboards and electronics.
Soused is billed to “Scott Walker + Sunn O))),” an ostensible meeting of equals. On T-shirts, the project is even playfully dubbed Scott O))), written in the same lower-cased, bold-faced font that the electronics company and drone duo have long used. And as is his wont, O’Malley designed the packaging for Soused, an austere grayscale colossus guided by a system of holistic organization.
But the music itself never tries to sell the conspiracy of equal and reciprocal collaboration. Sure, Sunn O))) made the first move here, but any real work required Walker’s acceptance and effort. This is, then, a Scott Walker album, where Sunn O)))—Anderson, O’Malley and longtime multi-instrumentalist and collaborator TOS Nieuwenhuizen—serve as a very large, potent instrument within Walker’s band, or maybe a set of them, like a rack of guitars pulled from a closet. During “Brando”, they follow him, saturating the background but almost always ceding the spotlight. When he sings “A beating would do me a world of good,” Anderson and O’Malley bend inside his shadow, taking the riff’s next step down.
Anderson and O’Malley even flash back to their high-school days in Thorr’s Hammer, or their subsequent separate bands, for “Fetish”, the album’s singular and brilliant flashpoint. Just before the song’s halfway point, they’ve traced Walker’s voice only with ominous noise and tracked him with mid-range melodies. “He imagines he feels it, tugging and clinching, hears it rustling and rising,” Walker yells, pausing suddenly as if to summon help. Sunn O))) answers, matching the beat of drummer Ian Thomas with loaded guitar and low-lying bass, like they’re an insurgent young doom band again, racing toward a crossover crescendo. Later in the track, they sprawl out beneath him, their amps and instruments harmonizing obediently alongside screeching trumpet, stuttering drums and stabbing static. They are, perhaps for the first time, part of a force greater than their own.
Sunn O)))’s career has been defined by their search for ways to augment their riffs, to make them bigger than simply big; but after 15 years and a half-dozen full-lengths, they’ve yet to take the routes through which Walker pulls them here. The only prototypically Sunn O))) moment arrives during the back half of “Bull,” when they cycle a slow set of notes across occasional percussion and over scrambled field recordings. But it’s mostly a mid-record volume respite, a break in the command of Walker’s stentorian elegance.
Soused documents depravity and wanton desire, or needing something—pain or the absence of it, protection or the illusion of it, privacy or the desecration of it—so bad it’s ripping your worldview into pieces. Walker empties volumes of data into those ideas, pinballing between 17th century painting debates, New Testament infanticide and Iroquois lullabies within the course of the shape-shifting “Herod 2014”. In less than a minute of “Bull”, he moves from a string of screamed Latin imprecations to a recited text message, reprinted in the liner notes as an iChat bubble. During “Brando”, he details successive episodes in which the named actor was beaten, shouting the elliptical list with an urgency that gives the sadomasochism a private power.
Though Walker was once a sort of balladeer icon, his lyrics trend toward the obtuse and ponderous. The words on Soused don’t forsake those qualities, necessarily, but there is a certain relatability and readability here, as if this return to rock ’n’ roll has pulled him back toward earth. Despite the macabre battle between the innocent and the hunter of “Herod 2014,” Walker delights in the language, using alliteration and end-rhyme to fashion what could pass for old-fashioned folklore. “The deer fly, the sand fly, the tsetse can’t find them,” he offers, his voice cold but comforting, like that of a wolf in disguise. “The goon from the Stasi
 is left far behind them.
Their delicate derma
won’t witness a ray.” In this new relationship, Walker seems to have rediscovered a sometimes-hidden element of his own work—its playfulness and its perversity, the coexistence of the smile and the frown.
Is it selfish, then, to hope that this might be only the start, the unlikely origin of a partnership that extends beyond a one-off album? Walker is, of course, infamously reluctant to talk about his future in making music, and he can be rather chelonian with his output; much the same applies for Sunn O))), at its core a duo of dudes involved in a dozen other things. That’s one reason Soused feels more like an event and an experience than a vital, persevering record for either party. It’s good and, at times, completely absorbing, especially when Walker and the amplifiers seem to be fighting on the same side of a great battle. Soused is compelling, almost inherently so, but it’s not a classic. What if they gave this time to be more than a mere oddity, so as to feel no rush to launch from the gates and exclaim that this is, in fact, real? We’ll probably never find out, but we never thought we’d hear Scott O))), anyway.


Borrowing from disco, electro-soul, boogie, and 1980s R&B, vibe commissioner Calvin Harris’ second volume of frictionless summer jams has the staying power of vape smoke at Coachella.

Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2

In the five years between Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 and its sequel, Calvin Harris, once a vegan, began eating liver and bone marrow. “I lost the fuck-you juice for a couple years,” he said in a recent interview. “It all came rushing back as soon as I had those bones and got those amazing fats in my body.” Of his new album Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2, he added: “This is the product of that.”
Since 2017, Harris has had UK top 10 hits with Rag’n’Bone Man and Tom Grennan, remixed SZA and Halsey, and starred in a Vegas residency reportedly worth some $1.3 million per night. In 2020 he started a side project under the alias Love Regenerator, which spans ravey techno to this year’s “Lonely,” an irresistible ’90s piano house homage led by a gorgeous vocal from Sananda Maitreya, aka Terence Trent D’Arby. It would be the best track on Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2, had it been included.
The throwback funk sound that Harris mines on Vol. 2 is all over the charts recently, with fresh perspectives from Beyoncé and Steve Lacy, as well as faithful era-reviving from Silk Sonic and Lizzo. Unfortunately no amount of beef offal can bring Harris to the level of his peers. When he borrows from disco, electro-soul, boogie, and ’80s R&B, the music is so wispy and unobtrusive it has the staying power of vape smoke at Coachella.
In the early ’10s, Harris productions like “We Found Love” and “Bounce” brightened the sound of radio pop. Here, he dulls it. Synths glide frictionlessly; vivid colors become pastel-toned playlist fodder. Lead single “Potion,” the weakest of Dua Lipa’s underwhelming post-Future Nostalgia singles, underserves her and Young Thug on a beat that feels like a yacht rock keyboard preset; Pharrell’s cloying ode to friendship on “Day One” has the complexity of a unicorn pool float. Harris cribs DNCE’s profoundly irritating disco pastiche “Cake by the Ocean” for a 6LACK and Donae’o collaboration called, ahem, “Nothing More to Say.”
“Lean on Me,” led by Swae Lee, shoots for the swooniness of “Sunflower” but lands at bland bedroom pop. The “Uptown Funk” type beat of “Stay With Me” would have felt dated a half-decade ago and despite the best efforts of co-features from Pharrell and Justin Timberlake, the song is just about saved by a seductive Halsey hook. “Hey, it’s a mess out there,” they sing, our hero swooping in to save the day.
Many of Vol. 2’s collaborations are thrilling to consider in the abstract. You can imagine a fabulously fun summer anthem with Harris and Latto, but her silky verse on the meandering “Live My Best Life” is cut short for a hook from Snoop Dogg, whose Bootsy Collins thing was better back when he was Snoopzilla. Harris once elevated his collaborators; many of them still shine despite insipid production. Busta Rhymes comes on “Ready or Not” mad as hell, flipping between double-time raps and flamboyant ad-libs; Stefflon Don’s lilting hook on “Woman of the Year” radiates blithe charisma. And a lovesick Charlie Puth is amusingly dogwalked by dancehall star Shenseea on the boogie-inspired “Obsessed,” his romantic entreaties countered by her brilliantly unbothered verse.
Harris’ best songs were works of high-voltage audacity, with brazen EDM donks that demanded you surrender to heedless joy, but could be oddly emotional too. In place of his previous music’s vision, Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2 simply demonstrates competence. Harris may say that this album is powered by fuck-you juice; it is as threatening as an Erewhon smoothie.


Quick-hit satisfaction is what makes the Atlanta rapper 2 Chainz a sought-after artist for guest verses, the medium in which he has carried out a world-conquering campaign over the past two years. His new B.O.A.T.S. II can be clumsy but the low stakes also yield some surprises.

B.O.A.T.S II: Me Time

Quick-hit satisfaction is what makes Atlanta rapper 2 Chainz such a sought-after artist for guest verses, the medium in which he truly shines and in which he has carried out a world-conquering campaign over the past two years. For rap fans and casual radio listeners alike, the deeply accented “Tru!” ad lib or the equally joyous “2 Chaiiiinz” have taken on a Pavlovian quality, signalling the immediate thrill of 16 bars of pure absurdity and dirty jokes. Even when the punchlines don't land quite right, it's impossible to turn away. There's a certain exuberant commitment to the delivery, and that voice, which sounds pinched yet fully possessed. Listening to 2 Chainz is a compulsive act.
Leading up to the release of the first 2 Chainz album, Based on a T.R.U. Story, these qualities seemed like telling indicators of a new rap superstar on the rise. Accordingly, that album was an event, the product of the rapper formerly known as Tity Boi’s unlikely decade-plus career finally coming together in one release. In contrast, the follow-up, B.O.A.T.S. II: Me Time, arrived with almost no buzz, each of its promotional singles seeming to generate less excitement than the one before.
Yet B.O.A.T.S. II in many ways gets closer to the essential 2 Chainz appeal, perhaps unsurprisingly for an album focused on “me time.” It trades in the attempts at being a blockbuster project for a laundry list of "whoa, cool" moments, which begin in earnest as soon as 2 Chainz shouts out his stove by yelling "what up stove!" on opener "Forks". There's something refreshingly traditional about what a non-event the album is. It's as if 2 Chainz decided that his approach to 90s nostalgia would be not to make an album that sounded like that decade but rather one that applied the high-budget, slapped-together vibe of a minor Bad Boy-era release to the sounds of modern Atlanta. There's even a verse from Ma$e, and it's fantastic.
Much of the album's first half is what has become formulaic 2 Chainz at this point: Massive, booming beat, shouted short phrase for a hook, and non sequitur punchlines that sound like he's reading a list of one-liners out of a notebook. At its best, as on "Where You Been", this approach yields disjointed brilliance like "If you wrote an autobiography you'd have to sue yourself/ Your lyin' ass/ Codeine in my wine glass." 2 Chainz going at full tilt-- purposefully butchering the pronunciation of clothing brand Comme Des Garcons, for instance-- finds himself a riot and forces us to agree. At the same time, his approach can veer toward the latter-day Lil Wayne tendency to rattle off punchlines like Mad Libs.
Also like Wayne, who drops by for a lively verse within Drake's verse on fun, douchey highlight "I Do It", 2 Chainz's bars can skirt the border between WTF and tasteless. On the grandiose, cinematic "U Da Realest", for instance, he delivers a heartfelt series of RIPs before undercutting them with the line "I died in her cervix." There are two pretty terrible songs that are both about uploading sex tapes to the Internet, the better of which, “Netflix”, is partly redeemed by Fergie, of all people, stopping by to rap. Elsewhere, the loose approach yields duds like 90-second cocaine measurement tutorial "36", which is exactly the half-baked fragment its runtime promises it will be, and a misplaced spoken word intro on "Black Unicorn".
B.O.A.T.S. II can be clumsy, but the low stakes also yield some great surprises in the album's second half. The plinking synths and rumbling guitars of Wonder Arillo's beat on "Extra" push 2 Chainz into a fantastically deliberate half-time flow until current Atlanta wunderkind Rich Homie Quan swoops in for a thrilling half-sung verse. "Mainstream Ratchet" takes full advantage of  DJ Montay and Big Korey beat with dubstep-grade amounts of low end, while "So We Can Live" matches T-Pain to a boom-bap beat complete with record scratches, to great effect. It's here, where 2 Chainz furthers the throwback East Coast vibe with a rare stab at storytelling, and on "Outroduction", which offers an unusually clear-eyed look at the rapper's career arc, that the reason 2 Chainz is so fun to listen to becomes most apparent.
On "Outroduction," he shares an anecdote that starts off wistful about a partner in jail calling to wish a Happy New Year. Then 2 Chainz gets the audible equivalent of a glint in his eye and shouts out-- not rhyming, just thrilled at the absurdity of it all-- "I had to tell him: nigga it's March!" B.O.A.T.S. II is an album that feels happy just to exist, a rejection of the modern idea that album releases are serious events and all the tracks that sound like they were fun to make get relegated to bonus cuts or mixtapes. The belief in the album as an entertaining product is similarly captured by the decision to include a cookbook of 2 Chainz's favorite tour recipes with the deluxe edition. 2 Chainz entertains us because he understands the wackiness of what he's doing, and he performs with a wink. He's a unique form of the American dream: The tru story of the guy who worked hard and, after a long career that could leave anyone jaded, emerged successful and seemingly less jaded than ever.


Focusing on songs recorded and released between 1957 and 1982, this follow-up to the revelatory Fire in My Bones box is a deeply compelling document of the range and power of gospel music.

Various Artists: This May Be My Last Time Singing

This May Be My Last Time Singing

In 2009, YETI publisher (and Pitchfork contributor) Mike McGonigal assembled a compilation of "raw, rare, and otherworldly African-American gospel" that showcased his penchant for wild, devil-fearing church songs. As far as gospel collections go, Fire in My Bones felt revelatory, crucial: those three discs of evangelical missives reconfigured religious music as unpredictable, sonically challenging material. McGongial's next project, This May Be My Last Time Singing, focuses specifically on gospel songs recorded and released between 1957 and 1982. Like its predecessor, it's a deeply compelling document of the various ways human beings talk to God.
There's urgency to all good art, but gospel music, in particular, is fueled by desperation: Transmit your message of gratitude to Heaven before you lose the chance entirely (and end up somewhere else). The mission is massive, but in many cases, the material legacy is humble; at least a third of the songs included on This May Be My Last Time Singing were self-released and pressed, in small batches, onto 7", 45-rpm discs, a process paid for by church congregations or the singers themselves. Decades later, McGonigal tugged those little records out of cardboard boxes and milk crates, trawling record shops (this might be the only compilation in recent memory that thanks at least a dozen), online auctions, and flea markets for lost prayers. That these songs were released commercially (even if they sold only a few dozen copies for local or vanity labels) feels paramount to any real understanding of the performers' intent-- these aren't field recordings. They're solicitations: holler along, fall to your knees, pray with me. Believe.
McGonigal's finds are spread across three discs, each loosely organized around a state of faith ("The Devil's Trying to Steal My Joy", "Perfect Like the Angels", and "All Wrap Up in One"), and while they range dramatically in style-- from funk to rhythm and blues to drum machine psychedelia-- they're linked by an industriousness that feels unique to the genre. No matter how rowdy these tracks get, their creators are still doing selfless work.
This May Be My Last Time Singing focuses specifically on post-war gospel, but most of it feels oddly timeless. Rev. J.W. Neely and Family's "Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around" was self-released in 1980 but sounds divorced from the era altogether; it's disorienting to consider that this rendition was born into the same pop landscape as Pink Floyd and Blondie. An a cappella, handclap-heavy ode to solidarity in the face of temptation-- "Don't you let nobody turn you around/ You just keep on together," Neely and family shout, their voices warm-- it's encouraging, never threatening. Same goes for the Exciting Traveling Four's "O Lord I Have No Friend", which was released by the National Recording Label in 1982. Save a wonky electric organ intro (which sounds as if it were being piped up from the deep end of a swimming pool), "O Lord I Have No Friend" is quaint and earnest in a way that defies its age. You can practically see the matching bow ties, the four faces crowded around a single mic.
The collection's longest track, the seven-and-a-half minute "He Walks With Me (Parts 1 and 2)", is also its most exhilarating. Calvin Leavy, a singer and guitarist from Arkansas, scored a modest hit in 1970 with "Cummins Prison Farm", a scrappy electric blues that decried conditions at Cummins Prison, the Arkansas penitentiary infamous for its abuse (torture and inmate rape were common, and in 1968, three skeletons, one decapitated, one with a crushed skull, and a third with both legs broken back were discovered in shallow graves on the prison grounds). In 1976, Leavy-- who, in a particularly cruel twist, would be shipped off to Cummins himself for drug charges in 1992-- recorded "He Walks With Me (Parts 1 and 2)" with the Cummins Prison Farm Singers for the aptly named Messenger Records. The song contains a bogus fade out three and a half minutes in, but Leavy's really just warming up, his raspy voice growing higher, wilder. The music-- loose, rudimentary rock-- gently revs back up, providing a steady, rhythmic canvas for Leavy to scribble all over. His message is determined, redemptive: we are not alone, not ever. By the time the track actually fades out, it feels like there's a full army of believers crammed into the room.
Plenty of new, privately sourced anthologies have inadvertently positioned the record collector as curator, savior, interpreter. But unlike many maniacal stockpilers of vinyl and shellac, McGonigal doesn't fetishize these songs as hard-sought rarities. This May Be My Last Time Singing contains plenty of oddball finds, but, as McGonigal explains, these are just the tracks he loves the most-- which is exactly what renders him such a reliable guide. As his brief liner notes state, "these are the songs I'm most obsessed with, that if you dropped by my house I'd say 'You have to hear this.'"
Which, as any music fan knows, is the very best way to hear anything.


Lo-fi and languid, these 4-track demos for 2020’s Sundowner offer an illuminating window into the songwriter’s creative process.

Kevin Morby: A Night at the Little Los Angeles

A Night at the Little Los Angeles

A Night at the Little Los Angeles is more than a series of sketches. This collection of 4-track demos recorded at Kevin Morby’s home in Kansas City offers a warm, fulsome window into the genesis of the music he would later sculpt with producer Brad Cook on 2020’s Sundowner. These aren’t dregs from the cutting room floor but rather distillations, 10 pared-back recordings that often outshine the later iterations. It’s a well-suited format for such inward-facing folk music, twilight ballads that focus on loss and longing.
Morby isn’t the first troubadour to escape the city and dig up roots, abandoning the metropolises that colored past releases like 2013’s Harlem River (New York) and 2016’s Singing Saw (Los Angeles) in favor of a Midwestern home with a hot tub and garden. An easy comparison is Bob Dylan and the Band’s classic The Basement Tapes, recorded in Saugerties, New York, and released at a similar remove after years on the road. But where their retreat felt like a rollicking group hang, Little Los Angeles is a largely solo affair, spartan in sound and provenance. Still, both records share a melancholy evocation of geography (Dylan’s “Goin’ to Acapulco,” Morby’s “U.S. Mail”), and they demonstrate the pleasure in the artistic process, as close as you can get to being in the room when the lightbulb goes off.
Lo-fi and languid, Little Los Angeles feels like being taken into someone’s confidence, although that intimacy works best when considered alongside the fuller renditions on Sundowner. This album forgoes any noodling or experiments and gets straight to the essence, so that several songs feel more arresting than their polished, studio counterparts.  The meandering guitar on opener “Campfire” is warm and beckoning, and Morby’s unadorned vocals have never sounded so winsome. “Don’t Underestimate the Midwest American Sun” is another standout, with its peripatetic piano keys and unexpected shifts: The lyrics transition from a pleading tone to a more defiant one, like we are alongside Morby, mustering our conviction in real time. The album version, which was accompanied by a drum machine, anticipated the build, whereas the Little Los Angeles version maintains the illusion of spontaneity, recalling the moments of tension-and-release that he and his collaborators build so well onstage.
This release invites us closer to Morby’s performances, trading spacious production for the immediacy of creation, so that we can almost hear him putting pen to paper. Perfection is hardly the goal, but there are moments that drag no matter how interested you are in the craft. “Sundowner” feels lethargic without the honeyed thrum of bass and melodic trills, and “Brother, Sister” is corny by nature, trying desperately to evoke the mood of a Morricone Western. Still, no matter the disruptions, the hissing tape and abrupt cut-offs, Little Los Angeles illuminates the same pursuit that Morby sought on more fleshed-out albums like 2017’s City Music and 2019’s Oh My God: These are postcards that magnify the ephemeral, loving transmissions from a particular place and time.

Buy: Rough Trade
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With chirping guitars and prismatic synths, the Baltimore band’s mellow, filigreed psych-pop has a beguiling appeal.

Tomato Flower: Gold Arc EP / Construction EP

Gold Arc EP / Construction EP

On “Red Machine,” the opening track from Baltimore-via-Atlanta psych-pop band Tomato Flower’s debut EP, Gold Arc, vocalist Austyn Wohlers paints a vibrant but vague scene. “Red machine/Red all across the world/Red arena/Red the provincial girl,” she sings in her Laetitia-Sadier-meets-Greta-Kline voice, and it could mean just about anything. But Wohlers’ steady, comforting delivery and the band’s sun-dappled guitars and synths—a sound only a few steps off from soon-to-be tourmates Animal Collective—produce a sense of wonder that erases any questions.
“Red Machine” is a prime example of what Tomato Flower does well. Gold Arc, released in February 2022, and Construction, its August 2022 companion, are most effective when the music is catchy enough to make up for head-scratching lyrics. Wohlers takes a more direct approach on Construction’s “Blue” as she recites a financial wishlist: money, vacations, stocks, dividends. She gives each item a whole line in the stanza, leaving ample space for her requests to sink in as chirping guitars and prismatic synths present a contrasting bliss. It’s as specific and memorable as Tomato Flower get on these EPs.
When the melodies are strong, what they’re saying matters less than how they’re saying it. On Construction’s “Aparecida,” whistling synths and nonchalant guitars back vocalist Jamison Murphy’s full-throated but gentle performance. Though tuneful, it lacks lucid, memorable lyrics: “In dreams, I saw/But does it change a thing for me/This visitation?” It’s not the only time the strength of the music allows Tomato Flower to get away with lyrics that seem only partially thought out. Gold Arc’s “Shying” showcases guitar arpeggios and overdriven riffage that make for a strong EP closer even as the band’s imagery—“Oh, rectify me/No one’s ever gonna find you/In my pocket”—doesn’t reveal much.
Construction and Gold Arc falter when Tomato Flower hold back both lyrically and musically. “Take me to that place, the other side/Take me to where they are glorified,” Wohlers sings on the slow, arid Construction cut “Fancy.” She seems to be describing some fading paradise and a magical ascent to heaven—yet the vocal performances, guitar lines, and synths sound exhausting, not inspiring. Of the two EPs, Construction is more lyrically direct and musically sharp; had the band opted to replace “Fancy” with highlights from Gold Arc, the combined record might have better hit the mark. At their catchiest, Tomato Flower strike a fusion of twee pop and psychedelia that invites you into their inexplicably beguiling world, even if they’re still in the process of building it.


Though Japanese names in Pitchfork pages most often point to experimental Powerbook artists or psych-rock freakouts, Shugo Tokumaru offers a wonderfully structured indie pop record, dense and infinitely considered: No note seems unnecessary, and everything is in its right place.

Night Piece

There's not much information available about Shugo Tokumaru. Music Related, the small Japan-via-NYC label responsible for the release, says Shugo is from Tokyo and in his twenties and, perhaps inadvertently, suggests that the Beach Boys are his only influence. If anything, the two artists do share an affinity for bright, beautiful melodies: Shugo's hushed tenor and sparse acoustic guitar arrangements will also remind American indie-pop audiences of Sufjan Stevens, and the songs' unintrusive electronic embellishments recall Nobukazu Takemura and recent Fly Records releases from OMB and Tatsuya Yamada.
Beyond that, there's not much of a gimmick to the songs on his debut album, Night Piece. Shugo doesn't seem to fit into the glut of bedroom IDMers and their sound-alike electro-acoustic alchemy, and in addition to an obvious geographical contradiction, Shugo is just way too melodic for the stateside free-folk scene. Really, Night Piece is "just" a pop album, short but dense and infinitely considered: No note seems unnecessary, and everything is in its right place.
Fittingly, Night Piece starts at dusk. A million crickets drown out the night of "Such a Color" with sex-charged bug-buzz, when a sheepish Shugo begins to pluck out an equally fragile melody. The melody bursts. Shugo strums in resignation, and turns to a distant accordion for last-ditch support. The song congeals unexpectedly but beautifully, and Shugo quickly reclaims the melody for his voice, buttressing it with stringed confidence and, by the song's outro, a little bit of bravado.
Other songs on Night Piece bear the same high degree of craftsmanship, but as the album presses on, we learn that Shugo has aspirations much larger than a string of catchy ditties. Through his prudent use of electronics, he begins to develop a strikingly unified worldview that Night Piece ultimately wills upon its listener. On "Light Chair", Shugo's guitar plucking stomps to a contrasting, docile woodblock melody before losing itself in winding arpeggios. "Lantern on the Water" shimmers as broad cello strokes are fed through a lo-fi sampler and percussive bell sounds try their best to harness the spectacle's majesty with an incidental beat.
Shugo's sense of humor rears its head midway through Night Piece: The songs, which at times border on pastiche, somehow never undermine the album's cohesion. Taken together, these highly stylized compositions form something of a dream sequence: "Sleet" throws us into an 8-bit Dragon Warrior village, while the goofy "The Mop" drags our sudden spurs through the golden dust of the American West. Then, a chase scene: "Paparazzi" is Shugo's virtuosic take on the theme from "The Benny Hill Show", a cartoonish one-man mummer's parade that doesn't strut so much as run for its life, with an unexpected hammock-swaying break here and there between the ensuing fretted mischief.
After covering so much musical terrain in only 23 minutes, Shugo finishes slowly and quietly with his unadorned lullaby, "A Kite of Night". The song doesn't take part in the world of Night Piece so much as consider it in retrospect-- it's the least evocative track on the album, but its most tender for that very reason. From its nakedness we realize just how rich a world Shugo has designed with Night Piece, and just how subtle his musical gestures are. So Night Piece is "just" pop music, but it manages to point well beyond itself, and regardless of who didn't influence it or what scenes it doesn't fit into, albums like this are always relevant, and always welcome.


Rick Ross' most intriguing protégé is young Philadelphia street rapper Meek Mill. Coming after the relative success of singles "Tupac Back" and "Ima Boss", Dreamchasers is easily the biggest solo release of his promising career.

Dreamchasers

Here's the biggest surprise in rap this year: Its preeminent tastemaker is Rick Ross. Imagine that being true in 2009, when, after being outed as an ex-corrections officer, Ross got roped into a childish feud with 50 Cent, who rediscovered his ability to ruffle the feathers of his overly serious peers, while blogs and commenters gleefully cackled along. That Ross emerged from the embarrassing fracas to become one of the few larger-than-life stars in the game was shocking enough, but now his stamp of approval alone is enough to make, or salvage, careers. Wale, who was left for dead by the major label system following his disastrous first album, was scooped up by Ross after a rather pedestrian appearance on Waka Flocka Flame's smash hit "No Hands" and is now poised to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of his upcoming album. But Ross' most intriguing protégé is the young (though by no means rookie) Philadelphia street rapper Meek Mill, a fact not lost on Ross, who saw fit to include himself on both of Meek's radio singles from this year.
Being from Philly, it's easy to see the lineage of ex-Roc-A-Fella underlings State Property in Meek's excitable, eager shout. But we're a long way from 2002, and there's a distinctly Southern bent to his rapping that has helped him rise to prominence during the reign of Lex Luger. Meek still carries an air of detached cool that is no doubt filtered down from Jay-Z, but the rapper that he often resembles is the currently imprisoned Lil' Boosie. Though his music isn't as emotionally raw as Boosie's, both rappers engage the listener on a purely visceral level, primarily through deliveries that seem on the verge of careening off the rails. The ability to connect in this manner is something that can't be taught, or even really developed. An untold number of rappers have tried to get over on energy and the sheer force of their charisma alone, but certain guys-- DMX, Waka, Boosie-- have an innate ability to connect with their audiences in a way that can leave non-believers, especially ones who privilege lyricism, baffled. Sometimes pro scouts will watch an athlete and say that the player has "it"-- well, Meek Mill, at least in this regard, has "it."
Dreamchasers -- coming after the relative success of singles "Tupac Back" and "Ima Boss", and with DJ Drama on foghorn duties-- is easily the biggest solo release of Meek's career, and it ends up serving a dual purpose. On the one hand, it easily showcases how deep his talent runs and how versatile an artist he can be. On the other, it functions as a blueprint for exactly what kind of rap music he should and should not be focused on making as his career moves forward. Let's start with the disappointing stuff. The tape is littered with beats either produced by Lex Luger or by people copying Lex Luger, and while that sound is now minted and unavoidable, Meek Mill isn't a rapper that needs to be working off the template. "Ima Boss", which is also included on the tape, is evidence enough that Meek can bark his way onto the radio without having to fall back on Luger's lurching productions.
Meek doesn't sound bad on those songs, per say, but the highlights of the tape prove just how unnecessary the generics are. For someone who doesn't try and dazzle with his lyrics, he possesses an exceptional eye for telling stories on both a macro and micro level. "Middle of Da Summer", for instance, finds Meek using the season as a frame for sketching a portrait of how his city revolved around him as he grew into a life of crime. "Tony Story" is not only one of the most vivid story raps in recent memory, but its plot and development are so engrossing on a cinematic level that it should give David Simon pause. And then there's the title track, with a beat straight out of the Clams Casino school of "soulful" and featuring a particularly devastating guest shot from Beanie Sigel, which transcends the trappings of rote inspirational ploys via Meek's sober and realistic rendering of the life of a struggling rapper.
Meek is being groomed for rap stardom, and the genre would be better off if he were able to get there. But while his proximity to Rick Ross has accelerated his career and will continue to open doors for his art, it's important for him to remember that he's not Ross and doesn't need to be. There are plenty of mid-tier rappers willing to merely ride out Lex Luger's wave, but Meek has enough dimensions to be in it for the long haul.


The West Virginia native found fame on YouTube, but she descends from a long tradition of American roots music. Though assisted by Nashville greats, her debut retains her essential wildness.

Long Time Coming

The rambling hobo is a central figure in American folk iconography. Jimmie Rodgers left home at 13 to ride the rails and create his Singing Brakeman persona. Woody Guthrie toured Dust Bowl migrant camps, honing his plainspoken folk music and trenchant socialist politics. Bob Dylan canonized Guthrie with his “Song to Woody” and helped mythologize the traveling folkie with songs like “I Am a Lonesome Hobo.” The broad strokes of Sierra Ferrell’s story place her in the same lineage, with a distinctly modern twist: She got her break by going viral on YouTube.
Ferrell left her West Virginia trailer in her early twenties, after a performance by a troupe of itinerant musicians blew her mind. She hit the busking circuit, performing old standards and her own songs on the streets of New Orleans and Seattle, singing in boxcars and truck stops along the way. In 2017, the Americana tastemaker channel GemsOnVHS started posting videos of Ferrell playing some of her originals, and before long, they were racking up millions of views. The lifestyle that tied her to a century-old folk tradition had suddenly made her famous on the internet. Two of the songs that blew up on YouTube, “In Dreams” and “Jeremiah,” help form the backbone of Long Time Coming, Ferrell’s stunning studio debut. The album versions pay homage to the glittering, big-budget country music of the ’70s, but they retain the essential wildness of Ferrell’s pre-Nashville years.
The most striking element of Long Time Coming is the one that made Ferrell go viral in the first place—her voice. In those YouTube videos, a septum-pierced, face-tatted, cowboy-hatted Ferrell opens her mouth, and a sonorous, stuck-out-of-time drawl comes tumbling out. The contrast may have been the initial hook, but it was that voice that gave the songs their staying power. Ferrell’s singing has clear antecedents—Loretta Lynn’s holler-raised twang, Dolly Parton’s effortless melodiousness, Bessie Smith’s confident rasp—but her nods to those legends always feel heartfelt, never academic. Already, she’s learned to sound only like herself.
Like her classic country forebears, Ferrell’s lyrics weave tales of love found and lost, bonds formed and broken. Even while exploring such well-trodden territory, her honesty shines through. “Whispering Waltz” sees Ferrell betrayed by a lover who talks about another woman in his sleep. She’s heartbroken, until the song’s refrain grants her a hard-won acceptance of the situation: “Now you don’t have to whisper/I know.” The album’s most powerful moments come when Ferrell, now more than a decade removed from her departure from West Virginia, feels the tug of home on her heart. In “West Virginia Waltz,” she returns to her birthplace after years away to try to rekindle a former flame, only to learn that he’s died. “Made Like That” feels more directly autobiographical, with Ferrell apologizing to her mother before tweaking John Denver’s famous lyric about her home state: “West Virginia, country roads/West Virginia, all I know/West Virginia, I’m leaving you today.”
Long Time Coming dips into a range of 20th century musical traditions to help flesh out Ferrell’s songs. “The Sea” sounds like it could be pouring out of a smoky New Orleans jazz club during Prohibition. “Jeremiah” and “Bells of Every Chapel” are agile bluegrass workouts, while “Far Away Across the Sea” and “Why’d Ya Do It” add calypso accents to their sultry acoustic blues. That versatility is thanks in part to the murderer’s row of Nashville session musicians who flank Ferrell on the album. It’s still her show, but the presence of veteran players like Jerry Douglas (Alison Krauss and Union Station) and Dennis Crouch (Johnny Cash) help her material reach its full potential. For someone whose career started in railroad cars and alleyways, the luxuries of a Nashville studio sound great on her.

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With their latest full-length, and a minor name change, John Dwyer’s garage-punk band continues to travel further toward rock’s outer limits.

Orc

This year, John Dwyer is celebrating 20 years of Thee Oh Sees by going back to the project’s roots—albeit not in any musical sense. Rather, Dwyer has revived his bygone tradition of randomly tweaking the group’s name on a whim. For their 19th full-length album, the band formerly known as Thee Oh Sees (and The Oh Sees and OCS and Orinoka Crash Suite and Orange County Sound) are now just plain ol’ Oh Sees, a move that doesn’t so much herald a new phase as retroactively rebrand the one they’ve been establishing for the past two years. When Dwyer dissolved the long-running Petey Dammit/Brigid Dawson/Mike Shoun iteration of the band in 2013, he seemed to pick up right where he left off. But on a recent string of releases with a double-drummer formation, Dwyer and co. have gradually drifted further and further away from Thee Oh Sees’ garage-punk and psych-pop tent poles into more ephemeral spaces.
With Orc, the band consolidate the strengths of their joint 2016 releases, A Weird Exits and An Odd Entrances, streamlining their grab-bag experimentation into a more fluid flow and quasi-conceptual framework (well, at least as much as we can assume its fantastical references to castles, warriors, and beasts are somehow connected). Here, the shred-ready opener “The Static God” isn’t just another case of Oh Sees doing their motorik-maniac act, but rather a last-blast rocket ride to parts unknown, its stratosphere-breaching velocity eventually cooled by a cloud-parting organ drone that hints at the more patiently paced music to come.
The song also sees Dwyer adopt a campier, glam-kissed vocal tone. Throughout the record, he sounds as eager to mess around with his singing as the music: the glorious, steamrolling sludge of “Animated Violence” is the closest Oh Sees have ever gotten to metal, with Dwyer dropping comically Gene Simmons-esque growls in between gleaming Thin Lizzy arpeggios. But there is perhaps no better gauge of Oh Sees’ recent evolution than the mid-album colossus “Keys to the Castle.” From the outset, it follows the familiar Oh Sees battle plan of pitting a propulsive rhythm and mischievous melody against shocks of guitar fuzz that double as de facto choruses. Then, two minutes in, it dissolves into a mesmerizing extended coda of cloudy organ tones and snake-charming strings that gradually lull the song to a blissful rest past the eight-minute mark.
In fact, “Keys to the Castle” is such an entrancing set piece that it effectively casts a hazy-headed spell over the rest of the album. At 50 minutes, Orc is a good 15 minutes longer than the average Oh Sees record. And in the album’s second act, you can start to feel the extra weight, particularly when they slip into the drowsy, slow-motion prog of “Cadaver Dog” and “Drowned Beast.” Both boast the sort of madcap, theatrically rendered narratives that Dwyer’s protégés in King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are currently executing with more delirious energy.
But Orc also blows open some intriguing new paths forward: “Cooling Tower” recasts Can’s “Mushroom” as some bizarre-world children’s TV show theme, its doomy groove brightened by sundazed Stereolab-style hums, while “Paranoise” is a jittery Afrobeat jam further destabilized by buzzing synth frequencies and Dwyer’s spookily hiccupped vocals. And with the closing instrumental “Raw Optics,” Oh Sees prove that aforementioned Afro-funk excursion is no random one-off experiment, but a reliable rhythmic foundation that can fuse seamlessly with their signature garage-psych sound. By the time Orc winds down with the most chilled dueling drum solo ever, Oh Sees’ random name change starts to make more sense—as this band continues to travel further toward rock’s outer limits, definite articles just seem like unnecessary baggage.


The likable Detroit rapper's debut on Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music features West, The-Dream, Lupe Fiasco, Wiz Khalifa, Pusha T, and more.

Finally Famous

Rapping about the pressures of being famous is pretty popular right now. Kanye West and Drake, in their best moments, can make that weight feel like something that could apply to our jobs and relationships, and Big Sean's debut album on West's G.O.O.D. Music imprint takes a similar approach. The idea seems to be that with a deal and a record in stores, the Detroit MC has earned the right to complain with the best of them.
While Finally Famous isn't especially nuanced, Sean is an often extremely entertaining rapper. He's able to fit his elastic, smooth voice in the cracks of No I.D.'s lush soul samples just as easily as he slides right over heavier, more radio-friendly tracks like "Marvin & Chardonnay", which features a verse from West. Sean often runs circles around beats, speeding up his voice so that his words cram into a pileup in the end. His appeal is more in the way he plays with language than in his lyrics, which go so far as to make an unfortunate "Family Guy" reference.
On individual tracks, Sean's style works well. Even the blandest lyrics are worth a rewind based purely on delivery and enthusiasm. Who knew that "Fuck, I hate to say I told you so/ So buying rounds is my way of saying I told you hos" could sound so believably triumphant? But it's when the guests show up-- a high-profile list including not only West, but also The-Dream, Lupe Fiasco, Pharrell, John Legend, Wiz Khalifa, and Chris Brown-- Sean appears out of place on his own album. Clipse's Pusha T has a particularly strong verse on deluxe-edition album closer "100 Keys", while Sean sounds helium-light by comparison.
Ultimately, Sean's a likable character. Still, a line on "100 Keys" encapsulates his faults: "Keys open doors, but bricks open windows," he raps, recalling Clipse's "Keys Open Doors" except lacking their sharp wit and heavy delivery. We can only hope that for album two, Sean will step out from the herculean shadows of the artists he surrounds himself with and learn the art of subtlety.


On his wounded fifth album, Mac Miller sings deftly about heartbreak and his mental state, capturing his resignation without turning sadness into a performative spectacle.

Swimming

When Ariana Grande left Mac Miller this spring, he lost a relationship, a collaborator, and muse. Miller’s 2016 effort The Divine Feminine was recorded closely with Grande and doubled as a love letter to the woman he’d hitched his star to. He’s gone from “you and me against the world” to just “me against the world,” and as much as he tries to convince himself that’s almost as good on his warm but wounded fifth album, Swimming, he knows it’s not.
At its lightest, Swimming plays a little like Mac Miller’s own Forgetting Sarah Marshall, an amiable account of involuntary bachelorhood. “I know I probably need to do better, fuck whoever, keep my shit together,” he ambles over an aloof beat on “Smaller Worlds.” On “What’s the Use,” he shrugs off his foibles over some buoyant roller-disco, accompanied by low-key vocal assists from Snoop Dogg and Thundercat. Miller’s flow is limber and self-deprecating; he tries any pattern of singing or rapping that might lift his spirits for a few seconds. He’s doing his best to find the humor in a situation that isn’t really funny, as his arrest for a DUI and hit and run this May made all too clear.
Miller has long been open about his struggles with addiction, which Grande cited in her decision to end what she called a “toxic relationship.” But those looking for any dirt-dishing or ax-grinding on Swimming will be disappointed. “Everybody want a headline, I don’t got nothin’ to say,” he rapped on “Programs,” a loose track from May with more of a chip on its shoulder than any that made the album. Even at Swimming’s bleakest—“Self Care/Oblivion,” a dispiriting account of his pain-numbing regime, or “Hurt Feelings,” which shines some light on his mental state during that DUI—Miller resists the suggestion that anybody in particular is to blame for him bottoming out. The furthest he’ll go is acknowledging life was a lot easier with Grande than without her. “She put me back together when I was out of order,” he admits on “Perfecto.”
This sort of heartsick longing is not exactly something new—in 2018, you can’t toss a stone without it landing in some chart-topping sad rapper’s styrofoam cup. But Miller explores his headspace with considerably more focus than Drake, Future, or Post Malone, artists who sometimes cut emotional corners in their rush to the next banger. An album with nothing but time on its hands and an understanding that healing is a slow, tedious process, Swimming is most engaging when it details the simple things Miller tells himself to keep his spirits up. “Every day I wake up and breathe/I don’t have it all but that’s all right with me,” he sighs on “2009,” even though he only sounds half-convinced.
He’s come a long way since his overbearing kid brother act of his early Blue Slide Park days. Where he used to mug over his music relentlessly, on Swimming he mostly lets the beats breathe, clearing ample space for the record’s peaceful orchestral swells and blushing keyboards. He’s also singing more than ever, and he sounds better than ever doing it. Modest as it is, his voice is expressive in ways his plainspoken prose could never be, capturing his resignation without turning sadness into a performative spectacle.
As always, Miller remains a step behind the prestige artists he emulates—Chance the Rapper, Anderson.Paak, and, increasingly, Frank Ocean, whose nonchalant songcraft looms large here. Swimming is less virtuosic than those artists’ recent works, but no less heartfelt, and the album’s wistful soul and warm funk fits Miller like his oldest, coziest hoodie. He may be unable to escape his own head, as he laments on the opener “Come Back to Earth,” but he’s decided to make himself as comfortable as possible while he’s trapped there.


After the long-awaited, triumphant official release of Smile, the former Beach Boy returns-- along with co-writers Scott Bennett and Van Dyke Parks-- creating an amazing portrait of L.A. and his own place within it.

That Lucky Old Sun

In 2004, Brian Wilson finally climbed one of the biggest artistic mountains of his life, recording and releasing a complete version of Smile, which since 1966 had been perhaps the most legendary unfinished album ever. It was a triumph that returned Wilson to the spotlight, crowning an extremely spotty solo career with a true jewel. In fact, Wilson had already released the now nearly forgotten Gettin' in Over My Head earlier in 2004, to virtually no fanfare. Smile, though, was different. We knew it was brilliant before we even heard it, and though I still prefer my own bootleg of the original 60s recordings, it was something of a relief to hear Wilson finally purge the project that derailed him so long ago.
If Smile finally cleared out Wilson's closet, That Lucky Old Sun neatly closes the circle he began drawing in 1961 with the single "Surfin'", returning him to an idealized Southern California after Smile brought him across the country and through its history. Musically and lyrically, That Lucky Old Sun is as cohesive as its predecessor, though more modest in scale and ambition. Wilson and co-writers Scott Bennett and Van Dyke Parks have created an amazing portrait of L.A. and Wilson's place within it, blending nostalgia with hope for the future and honest biographical detail. The title track is an appropriately chosen oldie, written in 1949 by Beasley Smith and Haven Gillespie with lyrics that contrast the toil of life with the easy indifference of nature to our travails. In the past, it's been a hit for Frankie Laine, Louis Armstrong, and Frank Sinatra, but here, Wilson uses it as a musical thread to tie his album together, reprising it three times after opening the album with it.
Also aiding the album's suite-like feel are four spoken interludes written by Parks that paint images of L.A. life with the writer's characteristic sense of wordplay and rhythm. From a listening standpoint, these are the low points of the album, as Wilson's narration isn't very compelling, especially when he's asked to wield a series of Spanish phrases after "Mexican Girl". The narratives do, however, flesh out the album's geographical portrait. The lyrics to the songs themselves are often just as vivid, such as the opening verse of "Morning Beat", which borrows its rhythmic feel from the Beach Boys' early singles. "The sun burns a hole through the 6 a.m. haze/ Turns up the volume and shows off its rays/ Another Dodger blue sky is crowning L.A." perfectly captures a sunny day in the city Wilson still loves. References to star-studded concrete, the Capitol Building, the Hollywood Bowl, the Hollywood Hills, and even smog are sprinkled throughout the album and complete the picture.
Wilson's backing band, largely similar to the crew that worked on Smile and he has been touring with, is versatile, handling both old-school rock'n'roll and big, pretty ballads with ease. Members even do their best to approximate the harmonies of the Beach Boys when necessary-- especially since, with Wilson's falsetto gone, it's up to his mates to hit the high notes. Though it's just as orchestrated and complex as some of Wilson's classic work, the record doesn't capture that sparkling, big-room sound; as a result, it can occasionally feel a little hermetically sealed, especially with the way the background vocals are mixed and compressed.
As interesting as the portrait of Southern California the album paints can be, it's the self-portrait Wilson embeds in his wider narrative that carries the majority of the album's emotional weight. "Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl" is clear self-referential nostalgia, but he digs deeper elsewhere. "I am a diver, a long line survivor," he sings on "Live Let Live", a line knowingly provided by Parks. "Oxygen to the Brain" and "Midnight's Another Day" are direct attempts to put Wilson's past mental and substance troubles to bed. "I laid around this old place/ I hardly ever washed my face," he signs on the former, following it up on the latter with, "Swept away in a brainstorm/ Chapters missing, pages torn."
Wilson washes his hands of those missing pages on two celebratory numbers, "California Role", which uses its title's nearly unforgivable pun to actual good effect. But it's "Going Home" that most firmly validates his renewed artistic currency: "At 25 I turned out the light/ Couldn't handle the glare in my tired eyes/ But now I'm back." And he is, with his finest non-Smile album since the golden age of the Beach Boys. Lucky us.


On the follow-up to 2018’s Skulls Example, the Portland group delivers pointed late-capitalist critiques, using coarser melodies and more vivid lyrics to express gnawing existential anxiety.

human futures

When Portland, Oregon’s Dear Nora reissued their second album, 2004’s Mountain Rock, in 2017, they went from being an obscure regional band to indie-folk cult heroes. The group’s frontperson, Katy Davidson, sang about searching for place and meaning in a crumbling world; the hollow guitars and wistful vocals sounded as if they were recorded deep in a cave. The reissue’s success galvanized Davidson to revive the group after an almost decade-long hiatus. In 2018 they released Skulls Example, a haunting follow-up to Mountain Rock. Like its predecessor, Skulls Example was minimal and moving, Davidson’s lyrics juxtaposing snapshots of the natural world—full moons, heat waves, birds sailing through the sky—with a looming sense of techno-deterministic dread. They documented without comment, noticing how each car they passed on a road trip brandished a GPS display, or how even small-town bars now boasted walls of flat-screen TVs. On Dear Nora’s latest album, human futures, Davidson delivers their late-capitalist critiques more pointedly, using coarser melodies and more vivid lyrics to express gnawing existential anxiety.
In an essay written in advance of human futures, Davidson called the new album the “culmination” of Dear Nora’s work so far. Thematically, they continue to contrast sublime naturalism with the mundane horrors of modern life: a purple beetle buzzing beside a bolo-tie-wearing content-mongerer; a narrator walking through mountainous fog while shaking off a dream of Lady Gaga; a speaker unable to admire the moon’s reflection on the water because they’re contemplating the death of democracy. But human futures is more than a series of off-kilter still lifes—it’s a record about gratitude, about small pleasures, about mourning humanity’s expanding disassociation from, and active destruction of, the Earth. Davidson swerves between awe and terror, attempting to soak in what’s left of the natural world before it’s gone.
So who’s to blame for this mess? Davidson has some ideas, taking aim at several contemptible archetypes. On “scrolls of doom,” they inhabit a persona who “makes billions in seconds flat” and wears a big honking cowboy hat, the sort of person who believes their money can be used to colonize other planets. There’s no reprieve from this claustrophobic ego; the only time the narrator connects with the outside world is when they give an almost erotic description of plastic stretching infinitely into the horizon. Similarly, on “airbnb cowboy”—which scans as a sort of spiritual cousin to Kim Gordon’s electrifying noise-rock anthem “Air BnB”—Davidson inhabits the voice of a post-truth, Joe Rogan-listening real-estate enthusiast who’s “got nothing to say… so content in every way.” Satiric and shrewd, these songs constitute the most overt political statements in Dear Nora’s oeuvre.
Even when Davidson attends to autobiography, human futures’ melodies and textures remain stolid and occasionally harsh, with a curtness rarely heard in their earlier recordings. The writing on “flowers fading” is understated yet memorable, but the grating synth lead and plain vocal cadence scrub away some of the emotional intrigue that undergirds Davidson’s prose. “sinaloan restaurant” similarly struggles to attach compelling melodies to otherwise poignant lines like, “My dad died many times years ago/Now on the table, staring at the light/I move from grief to joy.” It’s clear that Davidson wanted to experiment with different styles and sounds on human futures, to make a project unbound from any prior constraints or expectations. While it’s gratifying to listen to Dear Nora enter more adventurous territory, the band never fully finds their sonic footing here, too often putting concept before melody.
human futures blooms brightest when the band offers a modern take on its vintage sound. On the title track, Davidson soars over smog-laden cities and overstuffed landfills, placid as they recount the demise of humanity. “When the memories get blurry/We trade human futures in our portfolios,” they sing. Even the memory of shimmering rivers, colorful autumns, and California rain is not enough to soothe them—how could it, when these gifts will soon vanish from our lives altogether? It’s a helpless, agonizing fact that feels too big to think about—so don’t think, Davidson seems to be saying, just walk with me and treasure what remains.