The underground hip-hop veteran’s new EP flirts with chess metaphors, but the mundane raps don’t help the thematic wallpaper hold up.

Chess Moves

Rap music is no stranger to the world of chess. RZA and GZA of Wu-Tang Clan are the most recognizable chess players in the movement and have crafted entire songs dedicated to the world’s most popular strategy game. But aside from countless references and several of the genre’s most iconic figures being avid competitors, chess and rap have shared themes too: Both historically pride themselves on being games of cunning that involve eyeing down an adversary. As RZA once told The New York Times, “Hip-hop is a battle game. Chess is a battle.”
It makes sense that a rapper as meticulous as Tha God Fahim would be drawn to the world of knights and queens. A veteran of rap’s current underground renaissance, Fahim approaches rapping and producing like building a Gundam model, subtly tinkering with and reassembling his brand of melancholy hip-hop. Lately, he’s been rhyming more and producing slightly less, as he does on Chess Moves, an EP helmed entirely by Venezuelan-Mexican beatmaker NicoJP. It’s a steady, workmanlike effort, one drip from an exhaustingly prolific stream of music. His consistency and the nasal twang of his voice have endeared him to several generations of rap purists, but here, that steadiness and a lack of variety make the project feel longer than it actually is.
Though his style befits someone who might be into chess—the boasts and business-minded mentality of his lyrics betray the reserved, even aloof tone of his voice—the actual game is often superficially invoked here. Outside of track titles and a handful of vocal samples, there’s very little mention of chess at all; just elegant window dressing for Fahim’s raps and Nico’s loops. As a producer, Nico is a student of the Alchemist and Nicholas Craven school of psychedelic sampling. Check the clean guitar licks zigzagging across the horizon of the humid “War Spear,” or the spindly piano keys and harp strings creeping in the background of “Tha Fog” and “New Alert,” respectively. Sometimes the instruments float by with no percussion; other times, the drums bludgeon everything in their path.
This approach leaves Fahim a decent amount of room to talk his shit, and he pulls directly from his trusty blueprint: raps about entrepreneurship, struggling to survive in the cold streets, small pieces of advice, and showy displays of his mic skills. On “Picking Bones,” he talks about staying on work calls for hours and being grateful to breathe in such harsh times, the subtle rhyme scheme helping the generic message land. Some of his bars are bland, stalling on the most basic descriptions, like, “My only choice was to be a rider like Ghost Rider” on “Tha Dark Saga.” Fahim raps both for inspiration and aspiration, pointing out the strategy in his climb and making sure we are aware of the 10,000 hours that earned him his prosperity. In that sense, chess does subtly manifest as a theme for Fahim and Nico’s ruminations. But it’s thin enough to swap out for any other thematic wallpaper about honor or strategy, mainly because Fahim’s descriptions are often so formulaic that his own perspective disappears.
Like many of today’s independent rappers, Fahim has worked tirelessly to establish himself in a crowded scene. He’s even done it with different alter egos: Dump Gawd, the Wolf on Wall Street, the Dark Shogunn Assassin. None of these are discrete personas in the MF DOOM sense—they just give Fahim more room to rap about getting ahead in life and money. Chess Moves doesn’t budge from this template much; if it weren’t for the atmospheric beats, most of these thoughts would blur together. It’s like Fahim’s pulling off a castle move—a transition that puts him in a better position to strike on his next turn.


Red Hot comp features Arcade Fire, Spoon, Feist, Decemberists, Cat Power, Antony, Bon Iver, members of Sigur Rós, and many others.

Dark Was the Night

Charity albums all start wonderfully-- with good intentions and noble causes. Alas, they frequently end poorly, entering the world as collections of outtakes, abandoned ideas, and uninspired covers. Whether that matters is another thing: If you share Natalie Portman's interest in the value of microcredit, or any number of executive producers' hope for more Darfur awareness or money for Doctors Without Borders, getting a decent Death Cab song or Afrobeat comp should simply be a bonus "thank you" for your minimal contribution.
For 20 years, the Red Hot Organization has been-- along with War Child, more on them in the upcoming days-- the gold standard for the charity album. Battling HIV and AIDS via pop culture, Red Hot came out of the gate with an eclectic winner, the Cole Porter covers record Red Hot + Blue (1990). Most of our readers are likely more familiar with their 1993 No Alternative disc, which collected tracks from Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Pavement, and others. Two decades later, they follow with Dark Was the Night, a collection of 31 new and exclusive songs from most of the heavy hitters of the NPR-friendly wing of indie music.
Produced by Red Hot, along with the National's Bryce and Aaron Dessner, the vast majority of the songs on this collection are worth owning regardless of where the money is going. The first of the two CDs, in particular, is full of gems. David Byrne and Dirty Projectors keep their vocal affectations on the right side of awesome on "Knotty Pine"; Feist adeptly teams with Death Cab's Ben Gibbard on a cover of Vashti Bunyan's "Train Song" and later slow burns through the outstanding Grizzly Bear collaboration "Service Bell"; and both Yeasayer's nimble "Tightrope" and My Brightest Diamond's smoky version of "Feeling Good" are eyebrow-raising lateral moves.
A few things that looked a bit too on-the-nose on paper turn out to work: Bon Iver, in the process of breaking away from the lazy "guy in a Wisconsin cabin" narrative, delivers a song about... a small town in Wisconsin; the Books, a half-cello, half-electronics duo, and José González, a Nick Drake-like singer-songwriter still best known for his covers, get together to do Nick Drake's "Cello Song"; Kronos Quartet boldly transform Blind Willie Johnson's gut-wrenching, crucifixion-inspired 1927 blues moan "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" (the track that gives the comp its name) into a chamber ensemble piece.
Not to be outdone by their invitees, the National shout-out Pavement on the languid "So Far Around the Bend", recalling Pavement doing the same to one of their favorite bands (R.E.M.) on No Alternative. Aaron Dessner pairs with Bon Iver for one of the record's several ghostly tracks, "Big Red Machine", while brother Bryce goes one better, teaming with Antony Hegarty to cover Bob Dylan's take of the traditional ballad "I Was Young When I Left Home". Antony in particular shines, giving it a somber matter-of-fact reading that lends the entire song, not just the purgatory of its final verse, a note of tragedy.
Disc One saves its best for last though: Sufjan Stevens breaks his relative silence with a cover of the Castanets' "You Are the Blood", scrapping his baroque preciousness for tactile avant-pop. Infusing the track with a twitchy, restless quality, Stevens re-imagines the song-- musically as well as lyrically-- as a tussle between the subject and his body, an appropriately haunting quality for this compilation. (Buck 65's remix, "Blood Pt. 2", isn't as successful.) Stevens teams a more cacophonous version of his traditional arsenal of horns and choral vocals with the sort of minimalist electronics he leaned more heavily on in the days before he earned indie-level fame.
Disc Two is more of a mixed bag. Spoon kick it off with a badly needed injection of rhythm; their "Well-Alright" feels like the jaunty bar-bandisms that used to soundtrack National Lampoon films-- think "I'm Alright" or "Holiday Road". Arcade Fire follow with a similar but less-interesting version of the same idea. From there things oscillate between meh and engaging, with quality contributions from the New Pornographers (covering one of their bandmate Dan Bejar's Destroyer songs), Yo La Tengo, Riceboy Sleeps (featuring members of Sigur Rós), and Conor Oberst with Gillian Welch.
Standing out even more positively, My Morning Jacket's laid-back "El Caporal" and Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings' swivel-hipped Shuggie Otis cover "Inspiration Information" bring warmth to the proceedings; Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch-- one of the few non-North Americans here-- adds lyrics to an old Scottish folk song, and the resulting "Another Saturday" is one more quiet triumph for him in a career full of them. Best in class on this disc, however, goes to TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, whose version of the Troggs' "With a Girl Like You" is like a Stephin Merritt pastiche with horns grafted onto it, but it's glorious because of, rather than despite, its obvious homage.
I confess though: My first reaction to listening to this all the way through was negative. When focusing on what's not here rather than what is, Dark Was the Night comes off as a gray, monotone look at the current indie landscape and, as a result, works best in small batches. It's missing not only rhythm and electronics-- more hip-hop, anything in the DFA axis, M.I.A., Animal Collective, etc.-- but volume and velocity as well. Sure, it's a charity record not a party soundtrack, but No Alternative was full of actual rock songs. On this evidence, today's guitar-based indie is primarily folkie tunefulness, baroque lines in which the guitar is subservient to other instruments, or, based on the original Simon Reynolds definition of the word, post-rock: "Using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures rather than riffs and power chords."
Dissecting the reasons for this and determining the consequences, if any, is another matter altogether, but it's a shame that the diversity of previously successful charity comps-- the Red Hot ones mentioned, War Child's The Help Album-- is missing here. Naturally these artists are more popular than their experimental, electronic, and rock brethren-- Gang Gang Dance, Air France, or No Age would sell fewer records than the Decemberists on any day of the week-- but the idea that rock is less central than folk music in underground North American music is not only really weird but a very new phenomenon. Again though, these songs are uniformally excellent, so it's a minor and possibly misplaced quibble. And, who knows, maybe-- hopefully!-- Red Hot is in the process of asking the Hold Steady or Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Hot Chip or the Knife, to help craft sequels.


The R&B legend's new album features collaborations with Disclosure as well as British pop figures like Sam Smith, Naughty Boy, and "Latch" songwriter Jimmy Napes. But the young producers are shown up by old heads Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins and UK garage forefather MJ Cole.

The London Sessions

This past January, Mary J. Blige appeared on a remix of Disclosure’s "F For You"—an unexpected but instantly natural pairing that at the time seemed merely like a coronation of sorts for the legendary R&B singer. Instead it was a harbinger for both the individuals involved and the scenes they represent. As 2014 played out, the Lawrence brothers would see their breakthrough hit "Latch" become a surprise staple on rap and R&B radio stations, while Blige used her turn on "F For You" as the launching pad for a complete career digression—if not an overall reinvention.
Her new album The London Sessions features primary collaborations with Disclosure as well as fellow British pop superstars Sam Smith, Naughty Boy and "Latch" songwriter Jimmy Napes. That it stands as one of the final major releases of the calendar year is fitting as a summation of R&B in 2014. As the sound of pop mutated into dance music a few years back, R&B lost its footing in the American mainstream, leaving even its established superstars in the lurch. But R&B clawed back some of its relevance this year thanks to danceable, appealing songs that didn’t immolate the genre at the altar of pop radio. Chris Brown’s "Loyal", for instance, was a massive hit, but more instructive in the context of Blige’s new album were Kid Ink’s "Show Me" and Jeremih’s "Don’t Tell 'Em", two hugely popular DJ Mustard-produced songs that showed a younger generation how R&B could fuse with house beats in a way that feels completely natural.
All of this—from Mustard’s wizardry to R&B playlists finding room for "Latch" and Smith’s "Stay With Me"—has helped provide a soft landing spot for Blige, whose career has been floating aimlessly for a few years now. Blige is nothing less than a titan of R&B music, but she had fallen into a trap familiar to many popular musicians two decades into a career: by trying to cling to the zeitgeist she was making music that felt stale. Blige’s albums since 2007’s Growing Pains have been patchy, and she hasn’t had a true hit single since that album’s "Just Fine".
No single from The London Sessions has yet changed that latter issue, but as an album it certainly doesn’t feel stale. Instead, it’s a seamless and occasionally thrilling listen that establishes a fact many could have predicted: Blige’s throaty vocals, as passionate and emotional as ever, are an ideal fit for house music. Nonetheless the album doesn’t exactly play out how you might expect.
For instance, it opens with a quartet of ballads, only one of which—a classic Blige self-help anthem called "Doubt", co-written with Naughty Boy collaborator Sam Romans—rises to the level of the album’s better, later songs. Despite Blige stoking the album’s narrative with its name and by listing six songwriters on its cover, we are eased into the album slowly, as if we are wading into cold water. It’s like Blige couldn’t bear for her core fanbase to immediately hear a four-on-the-floor beat. The real meat of the album comes after these opening tracks—the album opens with a few wobbly steps, making the sequencing curious at best.
Then there is the matter of the big name collaborators. Disclosure and Sam Smith are the starry names here peeking out from behind the curtains, though they even get their moments in the spotlight in the form of spoken word interludes in which they gush openly about Blige. The thing is that, although these three might have been the inspiration for The London Sessions, their contributions don’t exactly stand out.
"Right Now", a Disclosure production with a Smith co-writing credit that was the first song released off the album, is not only one of the album’s most forgettable tracks, but it’s also so bland that it seems like Disclosure and Smith (along with Napes) were almost afraid to disturb Blige. Their reverence is clear in the clipped interludes—"To me she was this untouchable goddess," Smith says in one of them—but that too often translates to a sort of distance. "Follow", the other Disclosure track (though this time without Smith), is better, but with its simple skipping garage drums and rubbery bassline it still feels like a Disclosure starter kit.
The Lawrence brothers are actually shown up by a few old heads. The album’s best track is "My Loving", which was produced and co-written along with Blige and Romans by R&B god Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins. The track is a pure '90s house throwback, and it’s the first song on the album that really seems to electrify Blige. "I’m in heaven, every time you lay your body next to me," she sings early in the track, letting her vocals run just slightly. Blige is channeling dozens of great, and often anonymous, house divas here, and naturally she fits in their lineage perfectly.
That song kicks off a run of tracks that really stabilizes the album. "Long Hard Look", which sounds like a take on Sampha’s broken keyboard confessionals, is the album’s best slow number. It’s followed up by "Whole Damn Year", another vintage Blige ballad that features quietly arresting vocals: "It took a whole damn year to repair my body/ It’s been about five years." Following that is the second instance in which the young kids get taught old tricks: "Nobody But You", the album’s second-best uptempo track, allows Blige to really belt a devotional house chorus, and she delivers. It was produced by UK garage forefather MJ Cole, who shows Disclosure how to stay out of Blige’s way with some clicking drums and piano chords while still giving her a song she can really sink her teeth into.
The album ends with another ballad, one that suspends Blige’s voice over pounding, chunky piano chords and a blush of strings. It is a final reminder that even if the surroundings change, Blige can wring emotion out of her voice like very few people on Earth. That, 20-something years on, she found a new way of showcasing this is why she is who she is.


Equipped with whirlpooling guitars and a newfound supply of silvery electronics, the South London band chronicles anxiety and ennui in songs full of spine-tingling dissonance.

On All Fours

On the best song from Goat Girl’s 2018 self-titled debut, the South London band fantasized about smashing in a pervert’s head on a train. Yet the record mostly thrummed with the unsettling energy of a more otherworldly form of transport: the night bus, crisscrossing the capital at witching hour when normal senses, faculties, and decorum have slipped away. None of the awful creeps, shitheel politicians, or scuzzy encounters they sang about came from the realm of fantasy, but each bizarre story of the city whizzed past in a surreal blur, like warped William Hogarth street scenes glimpsed through a smeared window.
The lurid playfulness—set to a restless soundtrack of clattering post-punk and gothic country—suited a band you’d swear lifted their stage names from an old kids’ horror comic (singer Clottie Cream, guitarist L.E.D., drummer Rosy Bones, and bassist Holly Hole, who replaced Naima Jelly in 2019). But that dark, carnivalesque exuberance is in shorter supply on On All Fours. Where its predecessor crammed 19 songs into 40 minutes, these 13 stretch out languidly. Rather than lurching between styles, they mostly stick to whirlpooling guitars and a newfound supply of silvery electronics—sometimes pulsing, sometimes throbbing, sometimes seemingly on the brink of short-circuiting. Half mellifluous and half menacing, they often chronicle the draining toll of anxiety and depression. “Please don’t leave me alone/Staring out the window,” intones L.E.D. on “Anxiety Feels,” lost and listless in its woozy, downbeat swirl.
Ennui and disillusionment pervade the LP: The spacey, shimmering “Sad Cowboy” starts as a magical moonlit tour of Clottie’s neighborhood, but ends with her realizing that the pretty sights aren’t what they seem. Often, the songs juxtapose glimmering arrangements with more discordant sounds, similar to how Stereolab contrasted murky ideas with Laetitia Sadier’s sweet vocals. “Where Do We Go?,” a takedown of a lying, venomous blowhard, chimes like a nursery rhyme before introducing a synth as shrill as a dentist’s drill. “I’m sure it stinks under his skin/Where pores secrete all the hate from within,” Clottie murmurs. “Closing In,” meanwhile, chips away at its dreamy ice-cream truck melody with nagging synths, echoing the way treacherous thoughts poison her mind like “stagnant night soil.”
That sense of dissonance is even more effective when On All Fours switches focus to bigger horrors. Although opener “Pest” rages against the climate crisis, rank Western hypocrisy, and people smugly sleepwalking toward oblivion, it eschews abrasiveness for a gorgeous, celestial score. Later, Goat Girl chrip the refrain of the breezy “Babidaba” as if absentmindedly singing while doing the dishes, ignoring the electronics that wobble like a demented fairground ride. “Feels like we’re an infection,” deadpans L.E.D. “Carry on like we’re protected/As if we’re unaffected.” It plays out like the soundtrack to a nightmarish Twilight Zone episode where reality is collapsing but everyone insists nothing’s wrong.
More pedestrian bands would likely fashion something worthy and dull from such weighty themes, but On All Fours is too off-kilter to be preachy. “The Crack,” a rumbling, clanging song about humans fleeing a pollution-ravaged Earth for space, channels the spirit of a lost Arthur C. Clarke story; “They Bite on You” turns an account of having scabies into body horror. Most startling is “P.T.S.Tea,” a blackly comic farce which details yet another public transport run-in with an entitled jerk, this time a man on a ferry who burns Rosy with a cup of boiling hot tea. “Dumb man wouldn’t even look at me,” they seethe, but their voice keeps its sing-song sweetness while manic synths blurt like a Saturday morning cartoon theme, burying anger beneath forced cheerfulness. It’s a perfect encapsulation of how On All Fours refines Goat Girl’s sound: Whatever else changes, finding strange ways to tell grim truths is still what they do best.

Buy: Rough Trade
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Moebius’ friend Tim Story gathers loops and samples left behind by the late krautrock pioneer and reworks them with the assistance of Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Michael Rother, Sarah Davachi, and others.

Tim Story / Dieter Moebius: Moebius Strips

Moebius Strips

In 1969, Dieter Moebius played a 12-hour gig at an art space above a Berlin shopping mall. Behind the drumkit of newly formed improvisational trio Kluster, he had the markings of an artist most at home when embracing the unknown. As a member of two game-changing krautrock acts in the 1970s—Kluster, later Cluster, and Harmonia, a group that Brian Eno once dubbed “the world’s most important rock group”—the Swiss-German first threw caution to the wind, then made it an art form. Six years on from his passing, his close friend and collaborator Tim Story curates a release that sees the vast potential in loose ends.
Alongside Conrad Schnitzler and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Moebius—or “Moebi”—set the pace for a radical career by recording the first two Kluster albums with visionary krautrock producer Conny Plank in a single night. “The concept,” said Moebi in 2012, “was to not have a concept.” It may sound tame nowadays, but back in 1969, it was a bold plan of action. Schnitzler up and left in 1971, Kluster became Cluster, and Moebi and Roedelius honed their idea of non-conceptual music via the droning industrial hum of Cluster and Cluster II. On Moebius Strips, Story rekindles that adventurous spirit—which Moebi nurtured on many solo and collaborative releases—across 15 tracks assembled from a trove of loops and samples that he left behind.
That each piece—or “strip” or “segment”—feels like wandering into various rooms at a dimly lit art space is no fluke: Originally created as an immersive multi-channel audio installation, Moebius Strips has an almost tactile quality, a kind of three-dimensional sonic sculpture. In this drift space, which is filled out with arcs and interactions between Moebi and others, the urge to reach out feels natural. With synth stabs and squalling soprano sax, “Elbow 9b” evokes a loft of creaking doors and trapped ghosts. Melding piano plinks with disembodied chimes, “Riff 2G” sits well with “Roomtone Elbow” and its Doppler-effected frequencies and unknown spinning sounds.
A love of collaboration steered much of Moebi’s most luminous work (beyond Cluster and Harmonia, alongside Roedelius and Neu! founder Michael Rother, After the Heat, with Eno and Roedelius, is a high water mark). Here, Story renews that tradition by curating not just a document of Moebi’s diffuse influence, but a cross-generational collaboration that flips time and space. As well as making his own contributions, he invites an illustrious group of musicians to leave their own mark on the strips. “Segment A,” by Geoff Barrow (Portishead, Beak>), is a masterfully mangled effort bridging the tumbling rhythms of Can’s Jaki Liebezeit with the scorched drum sound of Portishead’s “Machine Gun.” Another peak, “Strip 11” finds Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh wrangling a mesh of agitated beats and fizzling kosmische that would fit snugly as a breather on Pitch Control, Moebi and Plank’s 1983 album with Guru Guru’s Mani Neumeier.
As a work created in no one place in particular, Moebius Strips brings inner spaces outwards. Like a light bouncing off a fog-covered lake at night, Sarah Davachi’s “Segment U,” with its dancing melody amid an organ swarm, evokes the gorgeous zero gravity of Cluster’s Sowiesoso. No less gossamer, “Segment X” by Japanese avant-garde vocalist Hiromi Moritani, aka Phew, channels the fraught but muted signals of an escape pod roving into infinite space. It weighs heavy here, but Moebi’s presence is more keenly felt in the hands of kindred spirits. While the modular back-and-forth on Roedelius’ “Strip 2” hits like a brief interaction between two old friends, Rother’s “Strip 30” takes the sentiment to its natural conclusion. Like a long-lost Neu! edit, slowed down to a near standstill of backwashed synth and glacial slithers of guitar, it speaks to an eternal connection in under five minutes.

The haphazard numbering of Moebius Strips’ tracks suggests the existence of many more snippets that didn’t make the final cut. This refusal to be precious or exhaustive feels like an extension of Moebius’ own philosophy. Besides, the bigger picture tells a more interesting story. By smudging what constitutes beginnings and endings, along with preconceptions about authorship, Moebius Strips is—just like Moebi was—many things at once. It feels here and there, past and present, his and theirs. Ours, too. With a confidante like Story at the helm, it honors the legacy of a friend and pioneer whose enviable status as the godfather of electronic krautrock is beginning to feel like a case of underselling.

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The 1978 double-LP live set At Budokan gets a remixed, remastered release of its source recordings, becoming the next maligned Dylan album ripe for critical revision.

The Complete Budokan 1978

Given enough time, every one of Bob Dylan’s transgressions in taste is bound for reappraisal. Self Portrait, the double LP that Greil Marcus infamously dismissed upon its release with “What is this shit?,” had its reputation restored through The Bootleg Series, Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971). Dylan’s misunderstood Christian phase sounded fiery and invigorating on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979-1981. It would seem at least possible that The Complete Budokan 1978 could perform a similar feat, challenging conventional notions about a Dylan album that critic Dave Marsh claimed was “his worst record by such a wide margin it’s hard to fathom it.” The 1978 double-LP live set At Budokan, one of the beloved artist’s least beloved releases, is the next maligned Dylan album ripe for critical revision thanks to this new 4xCD box containing all of the source recordings for the original LP.
The Complete Budokan 1978 comprises two concerts, held February 28 and March 1 in Tokyo, at the beginning of the tour Dylan launched in 1978 with the express intent of raking in badly needed cash. Fresh off a divorce and tapped out from making Renaldo and Clara—his rambling four-hour half-fiction, half-documentary film about his touring extravaganza Rolling Thunder Revue—Dylan turned to Jerry Weintraub, the manager who’d greased the wheels for Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra’s transitions into stadium-conquering touring juggernauts in the 1970s.
Bassist Rob Stoner, who played on the Rolling Thunder Revue and stayed on through the 1978 world tour, remembered that “Weintraub told Bob, ‘If you want to take it to the bank, you gotta do one of these slick, money-making tours. Just go out for a year, bust your ass, then you can go back to doing whatever you want.” Dylan heeded his manager’s advice. He expanded a basic band retained from Rolling Thunder with a trio of backing vocalists and saxophonist/flutist Steve Douglas, dressing the entire ensemble in matching stage outfits. When he received word that the Japanese promoter insisted he haul out his greatest hits for the tour’s opening stretch at Budokan, Dylan responded by reworking the tunes to showcase the full range of his band’s skills.
Aware of the shifting tides of the business and the culture, Dylan aimed these rearrangements at an audience that was maturing toward the middle of the road, partially inspired by witnessing a Las Vegas spectacle by Neil Diamond—another Weintraub client—in 1977. “Vegas” became a common buzzword in the reviews that greeted both At Budokan and the tour once it arrived Stateside later in 1978, an intended pejorative surely stoked by the spectacles staged by Weintraub. Time may have softened those Vegas associations, yet a listen to The Complete Budokan 1978 shows they’re warranted. A galloping soft-rock instrumental rendition of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”—a hoedown performed as a show tune—sets a suitably loungey tone, one sustained by the snazzy flourishes scattered throughout the concerts. “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” punctuates each verse with stabs of horns; the blues of “Maggie’s Farm” is reduced to a glitzy stomp; “I Shall Be Released” gets consumed by swaths of saxophones. Hints of modern radio drift into the arrangements: The tropical gale blowing through “Shelter From the Storm” evokes Jimmy Buffett and the island vibes intensify on the reggae bounce of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” As telling as the specific arrangements are the straightlaced performances of Dylan and the band: They’re dutifully hitting their marks, playing the songs the same way both evenings.
Dylan was still in the process of road-testing his band and these arrangements, which could explain some of the restraint heard throughout The Complete Budokan 1978. The North Carolina show from December 1978, captured on the bootleg Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, showcases a band playing with energy and verve absent from the Budokan concerts. Compared to the original At Budokan release, the expanded length does offer glimmers of a livelier set, primarily in a pair of blues covers performed early each show to help loosen up the band: from the first night, “Repossession Blues” by Roland James, and from the second, Tampa Red’s “[You’ve Got to] Love Her With a Feeling,” both played with a raucous vigor that makes the rest of the record feel straightlaced.
Those two blues covers vaguely hint at the roadhouse ramble that came to characterize Dylan's Never Ending Tour a decade later, as do the startling rearrangements of familiar songs. A case can be made that the 1978 world tour is the genesis of Dylan’s latter-day incarnation as a restless and mercurial road warrior. That knowledge doesn’t change that, as an album, The Complete Budokan 1978 isn’t just a drag, it’s often dorky, too. Hearing the band galumph through an attempt to turn “All I Really Want to Do” into a cheerful shuffle crystallizes how Dylan’s attempt to entertain just winds up as enervation.


Rabit is the producer Eric Burton. His work bears traces of grime and industrial, but has developed its own bleak vision. Communion is violent music, and it plays out like a kind of fever dream in which there are only brief moments of respite. It is thrilling even when it leaves a sick pit in your stomach.

Communion

Rabit (Eric Burton) is from Texas, and though his music has generally maintained a loose dialogue with UK grime, it has also increasingly nurtured its own identity. His early work found an uneasy midpoint between violence and grace: On 2013's Sun Showers EP, misty synths crept on cat feet, surrounded by jabbing, staccato rhythms. This year's Baptizm EP, his first for Tri Angle, amped up both his tendencies in equal measure, but on Communion the truce has broken, and all hell breaks loose.
Communion is definitely not grime, even with the genre's telltale signifiers—bruised 808 kicks, broken-glass and gun-cock samples, lurching 140-BPM tempos. It's definitely not industrial, either, though it draws inspiration from the queasy frequencies of acts like Throbbing Gristle and Coil. It is violent music, and even though part of living in the 21st century entails being desensitized to all kinds of mediated awfulness, Communion feels genuinely unsettling: You emerge even after just a few minutes' worth of the album's unrelenting barrage of beats and palette of sampled shrapnel feeling dazed and punch-drunk. Needless to say, it is also thrilling, even when it leaves a sick pit in your stomach.
The sullen melodies are studiously minor key, and with the exception of the occasional desolate spoken-word fragment ("The flesh covers the bone"; "There aren't any people") there are no vocals, just yelps of distress. In "Fetal", the listener swings to and fro as though lashed to a pendulum above a riot, between machine-gun rhythms and gibbering voices and a whinnying horse. These juxtapositions offer their own kind of enjoyment, but he's not afraid to fight against pleasure, either: "Pandemic" is plodding and heavy-footed, and its climactic machine-gun volley is so intense that it is no fun, but you suspect that's the point.
It's not all brutal, exactly. The opening "Advent" features a sad synth melody reminiscent of the Cure's "A Forest", and "Artemis" toys with tentative vocal samples reminiscent of Laurie Anderson's "O Superman". "Burnerz" and "Black Gates" feel almost like traditional grime tunes, with their concussive kicks and synth stabs, and "Trapped in This Body" might be deconstructed drum'n'bass, with pitched-down sirens and beaten-up tech-step framed by radiophonic bleeps. These are welcome respites; if the album has a drawback, it's that the grim consistency of its palette and techniques leads many songs to blur together in your memory. Still, I'm guessing that is by design. Communion plays out like a kind of fever dream, a delirium of cold sweat and disturbing visions in which there are only brief moments of daylight before you're plunged back into the maelstrom once more.


Between post-punk and shoegaze live Chastity Belt, whose latest album displays a new kind of aggressiveness and gravity. Their songs relay the psychological slog of trying really hard just to be OK.

Chastity Belt: I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone

I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone

Emo might be a safe haven for the sad kids, but it doesn’t often reflect the day-to-day drudgery of mind-crushing depression, which sounds less like screaming and more like the final whimper you emit before finally becoming part of the floor. Leave that to shoegaze or post-punk, or to the tuneful mark between the two that Seattle rock band Chastity Belt hits on their third album.
Though it’s buffered with slices of relative optimism—opener “Different Now” lays out a few answers to what band wrestles with for the rest of the album—I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone curls into dark corners, exploring the depths of desperation and self-loathing that Chastity Belt only hinted at on their last two albums. Instead of belting out smirking shoutalongs like “Cool Slut” (about the joys of sleeping around) or “Pussy Weed Beer” (self-explanatory), lead singer Julia Shapiro enters a headspace with new gravity, where the word “pussy” isn’t funny anymore and sleeping with someone—or otherwise—is out of the question. The album sheds Chastity Belt’s former tongue-in-cheek bubbliness for the kind of world-weariness that only sets in with time and only time can ease.
“Fucked up, anxious, full of fear/How did I get here?” Shapiro hollers on “This Time of Night,” playing her own antagonist in a song about curling up in bed and shutting out the world: “Pull the sheets over my eyes.” It’s the most aggressive Chastity Belt has ever sounded, thanks to the full-bodied attack Gretchen Grimm hammers out on drums during the verses. While that song still offers the guitar curlicues that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Real Estate album, “Stuck” is smeared with Slowdive reverb, “Something Else” borrows its octave-jumping trebles from Joy Division, and the lovesick rumble “It’s Obvious” could have been snatched from the B-sides to Hum’s 1995 LP You’d Prefer an Astronaut.
The varied taxonomy of the band gels together as they relay the psychological slog of trying really hard to just be OK. Rhythm guitars fall like thick curtains behind the meandering leads, while Grimm and bassist Annie Truscott weight each song down like a lead apron. Their playing grounds Shapiro’s thorny subject matter, which against lighter dressing might come off flippant or mean. Instead, her sarcasm sounds like the final weapon she’s got left in her arsenal against the totalizing blankness of twentysomething ennui.
There’s a word Shapiro keeps using while muscling her way through the clouds over her head. “I just fall on my face when I’m trying to have fun/Do you ever dream about what it’s like to give up?” she sings on “Complain.” “Dream” isn’t the first word most lyricists would use on the lead-in to “give up,” but Shapiro neutralizes its positive connotations over and over again. On “Caught in a Lie,” she’s “caught in someone else’s dream,” a prison of expectation where she tries to play a role someone else has thought up for her. "Is this what you want?/Is this who you want me to be?”
Maybe it’s in tribute to depression’s cyclical nature that Alone’s opener also plays like it’s conclusion. Instead of sounding haggard and beleaguered, Shapiro sings from a place of calm on “Different Now.” It’s as if she’s figured out how to save herself from her worst moments and wrote the song as an instruction manual. “Take away your pride and take away your grief/And you'll finally be right where you need to be,” she advises. But it’s only track one, the eye of the storm, and before long, the clouds roll right back in.


On his latest project, the Atlanta rapper struggles to break the mold while searching for vulnerability with middling results.

Vol. 5

As the rap vanguard bleeds into its rock and new-wave era, the rockstar persona has become the go-to mode. One glance at Yung Bans’ David Bowie-inspired artwork for Vol. 5 and there’s no doubt the Atlanta rapper is digging for gold in the same vein. The experimentation is encouraging, but it’s hard to tell which artists use these reference points as conduits for genre-bending as opposed to some ornamental aesthetic. Bans seems to be stuck in the middle.
Like many of his contemporaries, the work of the 19-year-old is consequently more radio-ready than the early output of his de facto mentor Future, or Young Thug, or Chief Keef. He operates at a lower vocal register than Thug, without Future’s trademark warbling or songcraft, and doesn’t experiment with flows as much as either. Now that audiences are used to their vocal templates, Bans’ less eccentric style makes the music more easily accessible, especially with unsung producers like MexikoDro and Danny Wolf in his corner.
Over the course of nine tracks and 23 minutes, Bans searches for some semblance of vulnerability to middling results. The high points on the album—much like those of his predecessors—come when he tinkers with vocal malleability and sonic landscape, or turns the studio booth into a confession booth. Unfortunately, those moments are few and far between. To his credit, Bans is considerably younger than Future was when he reached the national conscious, with an open murder case hanging over his head that could limit non-confidential subject matter.
His circumstances are unfortunate—the autobiographical points on Vol. 5 are more aligned with the emotive nature of the rockstars Bans strives to emulate. By the second verse of “Wish I Had,” he’s confessing growing pains with himself, his mother and incarcerated father, and the subsequent men in her life: “He ain’t even show up to court, but I’m a bigger sport/Still love that lil bitty whore/I’m still your second little boy/I mean no disrespect but mama, this just how I feel/Why you out here lookin’ for love? I heard that love kills.”
“Ridin” is a clear party standout, as Bans’ melodies mesh well with the infectious ukulele and steelpan, lulling the listener into a scene-stealing verse from YBN Nahmir. The most sobering moment, however, comes on the closing track, the XXXTentacion tribute “So Long My Friend.” In the wake of the murders of young rappers like X, Da Real Gee Money, Lil Snupe and others, it’s distressing to ponder the legacy of America’s youngest musical genre as it moves into its fourth decade. Even with knowledge of X’s abusive past, “Pushin’ up, we want revenge, we don’t do no grieving” is a jarring but familiar response to cyclical violence, one that doesn’t inspire hope for reconciliation.
On Die Lit, Playboi Carti broke out of a creative slump by tweaking his vocal inflections to a comical degree (see “Flatbed Freestyle”) and it would serve Bans well to do the same. If not, opting for more unorthodox trap production could elevate his otherwise flat tone across Vol 5. Rap narratives have reached critical mass and autobiographical or conceptual content are the most effective ways to bring something new to the table. It’s obvious Yung Bans has a working knowledge of Atlanta’s sonic tendencies. But he hasn’t tapped into the city’s upper echelon or their willingness to break the molds placed before them.


Gathering inspiration from Maltese folk and ’70s psych-rock, the UK-based band makes complex, ambitious post-punk with the chaotic energy of an informal jam.

Unum

The sound of art-punk quartet ĠENN reflects their collective experience: tenacious drum lines from UK post-punk, sinuous vocal melodies inspired by Maltese folk music, and the heavy guitars of modern psych-rock or even nu-metal. Formed in Malta before moving to Brighton, the quartet has played together for a decade, releasing an album titled Titty Monster under the name Cryptic Street in 2018. On Unum, their debut as ĠENN, the group balances their uneasy search for identity with a confident presentation. It’s an ambitious record that still leaves room for mischief.
Leading the charge is songwriter and vocalist Leona Farrugia, who draws on the alienation that comes with being an outsider to examine the search for identity. “Rohmeresse” begins on a deadpan group chorus (“I wanna stay in all day, I wanna sleep in all day, all day!”), then shifts into wordless, exploratory prog rock. On the chorus of “Heloise,” Janelle Borg incorporates downtuned nu-metal guitar, drummer Sofia Rose Cooper borrows from math rock, and bassist Leanne Zammit leans into ’70s prog, while Farrugia’s howls of romantic obsession channel Karen O and Sue Tompkins simultaneously. Unexpected touches like the clave accent on “A Muse (In Limbo)” or the birdbrained zoneout “Le Saut du Pigeon” play like endearing inside jokes, relieving the musical tension. It’s undoubtedly a studio record, but one with the chaotic energy of an informal jam.
On less dense songs, there’s less to hide behind, and the straightforward approach produces more mixed results. “Days and Nights,” led by Zammit’s snaking bassline, is an old-fashioned rocker about contemporary uncertainty, with a great line about “strolling aimlessly with a heightened desire to survive.” “A Reprise (That Girl)” is all-out dance-punk complete with handclaps and deadpan sprechgesang, where satirical judgements about social-media influencers give way to a larger proclamation: “Death upon the mundane!” But while “Rohmeresse” invokes French New Wave director Éric Rohmer by name, the lyrics could fit any filmmaker known for depicting modern ennui.
ĠENN’s frenetic, jagged riffs and discursive arrangements are as arresting as those of any band working in the same space. Great as the bluster sounds, though, its purpose is not always clear. There are moments of deeper insight (about the way capitalism bleeds over into relationships on “The Merchant Of,” or the solace to be found in peeling potatoes on “Rohmeresse”), but it’s never revelatory in the same way as the band’s best arrangements. Unum still covers an impressive amount of ground in 40 minutes: ĠENN have a knack for embedding accessible hooks and silly musical details within complex and unconventional structures. There are worse foundations to build upon.


Blending psychedelic sensory overload with riotous club bangers, the shape-shifting electronic duo’s ninth album is their most entertaining in years.

No Geography

The molecular structure of the Chemical Brothers’ various albums has typically taken one of two forms: brash, psychedelic odysseys in retro rave, or scattered forays into pop-rock and hip-hop assisted by aging rappers, wispy folkies, and Brit-rock flavors of the month from back when NME was still in print. The pros and cons of both approaches are evident in Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons’ three-decade career. The Revolver-esque end-of-a-century blowout Surrender aside, the boombastic rocktronica of the duo’s early output now smacks of a certain aggressive staleness; as for the Chem Bros’ dismal, collab-heavy 2000s run—which included songs about Osama Bin Laden and dancing like a salmon, as well as an aptly titled slice of miserabilia called “No Path to Follow”—the less said, the better.
One of this decade’s most pleasant surprises, then, has been watching Rowlands and Simons achieve the type of critical redemption that’s proven all too rare for survivors of the big-beat and electronica fads that presaged EDM. (The duo’s proximity to such fleeting trends has often overshadowed their deeper relationship to dance-music history; legend has it that Daft Punk’s “Da Funk” only took off as a single after Rowlands and Simons started airing it out in DJ sets.) Further, from 2010, effectively reconfirmed the pair as masters of beat-based transcendence—it might be the Chem Bros’ best album to date—while 2015’s Born in the Echoes threw indie and indie-adjacent heroes like Beck, St. Vincent, and Cate Le Bon into a trance-inducing spin cycle, the resulting wash possessing a satisfyingly spotless sheen.
So where do you go when you finally prove that you’ve mastered both of your established creative approaches? To throw yourself a proper rager, of course. No Geography, the duo’s ninth full-length, is their most party-hardy album since the millennium-flattening swarm of Surrender. They’re back in full-on psychedelia territory again, with Norwegian synth-pop singer AURORA their main collaborator here, but despite being a studio production, No Geography also recalls their 2012 live album and concert film Don’t Think, as good a reproduction of their overwhelming stage show as couch-surfers could ask for. There’s crowd noise all over the new album’s 47-minute runtime, bursts of laughter and distant cheering that crest and swell amid the punchy synths and roiling percussive attacks.
It’s not too far-fetched to claim that No Geography is the most fun the pair have sounded this decade; Further’s pleasures were of the brainy variety, while Born in the Echoes mainly alternated between sinister and solemn sonic motifs. The shape that No Geography takes, comparatively, is often reminiscent of the Avalanches’ cut-and-paste approach to blissful beat music—the seamless, bongo-driven transition from opener “Eve of Destruction” to the disco-stabbed “Bango” is a dead ringer for the easy slide between Since I Left You’s title track and “Stay Another Season.” At their best, the Avalanches make every unearthed sound shine like a freshly opened toy on Christmas morning, and a similar sense of sampledelic discovery is streaked across No Geography’s funhouse framework.
While Chem Bros have long been known for memorable pop-leaning singles, the last 15 years have seen them coming up short in that department—a room-for-improvement category in which No Geography provides ample course-correction. “Got to Keep On” may be a streamlined riff on their indelible Come With Us single “Star Guitar,” but what a gorgeous riff it is, with cotton-candy vocal sighs and chiming bells that could loop for hours without growing stale. The rowdy “We’ve Got to Try” is one of the most satisfying club bangers Rowlands and Simons have dreamed up in ages, with a serpentine acid squelch delivering the type of buzzsaw drop that French brutalist Gesaffelstein failed to provide on his latest; paired with its sentimental courageous-canine video treatment, it’s the rare Chem Bros crowd-pleaser that stands to trigger the tear ducts.
Still, despite featuring some of the strongest and most straightforward singles of their surprisingly successful last decade, No Geography is best consumed as a front-to-back experience. Most of its 10 songs flow into each other as separate suites, the opening trio forming a perpetual build not unlike Boredoms’ Vision Creation Newsun before blasting off with the splashy drums and Drive-redolent synths of the title track. The centerpiece and closer—respectively, the lovely yawns of “Gravity Drops” and the squiggly comedown “Catch Me I’m Falling”—exist as breathers amid No Geography’s perpetual exhilaration.
Even given song titles like “Mad as Hell” and “Free Yourself,” this is not a political album by any means, but No Geography’s cartoon cover art—a tank facing off against pink clouds assembling in the shape of a face, at once goofy and menacing—feels timely nevertheless. Thirty years in, the Chemical Brothers are still digging their own purely escapist sonic rabbit holes. At a time of great cultural and global insecurity, there's never been a more tempting time to get lost in their sensory overload.


Braiding together searching raps, fizzy beats, and charming pop hooks, the underground Atlanta rapper’s new album is a swirl of conflicting emotions animated by near-constant ad-libs.

I Love You Say It Back

Key! has never made a straightforward love song. The underground Atlanta rapper lives in a swirl of conflicting emotions, a frenzy of dread and jealousy and pleasure. The best song on his last album catalogued his paranoia over a girlfriend’s frequent trips to Miami. “If I lose you, I lose my damn mind,” he moaned, and then paused: “Psych, baby, I was just gassing.” Nearly every confession he blurts gets an inevitable retraction; the insults Key! lobs at his lovers turn into indictments of himself. Any declaration of love or grief or pain seems only as real as the joke or bit that follows it. His new album, the winkingly titled I Love You Say It Back, braids his raps together with dazzling pop hooks and choruses, but gloom is never far from Key!’s writing. Every bouncy synth and fizzy beat is equally ready to soundtrack disses and disdain.
What differentiates Key! from other rappers stitching together anguished hits out of past relationships is the sense of eavesdropping on an internal dialogue. He animates his music with near-constant ad-libs; they seem to literalize a conversation he’s having with himself, particularly when he carves choruses out of questions. “Who do you think you, who do you think you are?” he moans and sighs over a slick, flute-heavy 14Golds beat on “Let’s Go,” pleading with a woman to cut the small talk. “How’d that go? Wait, what you mean?” he demands on “Sugar & Rice,” a sunny-sounding standout about a breakup. The interrogation pierces through the gooey, AutoTuned verses, and after a few repetitions he arrives at a stark, quintessentially Key! admission: “I’m lying to myself, I’m coming over.”
Key! can also sing, which sets him apart. On last year’s So Emotional, his occasional croons anchored the album’s catchy pop hooks; this time around, they help take his sound in new directions. “Boys Don’t Cry” is a standard Key! song in content—“Who am I kidding, I’ve been kidding myself,” he wails—but the sound approaches emo rap, layering chanted chorus vocals over a muted, throbbing drum as he sing-shouts about self-medication and surviving trauma. On “Bottom of the Bottle,” producer TrapMoneyBenny smears Key!’s howls in AutoTune, softening and smoothing the grit in his voice. “I can love you if you let me,” Key! sings. “Oops, that’s just the bottom of the Henny.”
The incessant asides might grow tiring if Key! weren’t so obviously, infectiously charming.  Listening to him take digs at his exes, you’re not concerned about growth or maturity; you’re caught in the propulsive glimmer, in FKi 1st’s high-velocity drum patterns, in the way the layers of Key!’s voice pack into every corner of a song. There are no duds on the compact, 24-minute album, but the tracks that fail to sparkle stand out. The smooth, Kenny Beats-produced “Vibin” is relatively forgettable compared to their thrashing, frenetic collaborations on Key!’s breakout album, 777. Blown-out speaker effects and urgent, twitching drums push “Anakin” towards cartoonish darkness, but the song is more menacing in tone than in lyrics: “Don’t get on my bad side,” Key! growls, “But if you do, it’s okay, alright.” Then, for nearly a full minute, his voice is conspicuously absent—not bragging about rebounding from a breakup, not admitting that his ex is still on his mind, not pleading for his date to put down her phone. That’s when Key! accomplishes what he seems to crave most: That you miss him when he’s gone.


After four LPs that pushed the boundaries of what's expected from a rock band, Radiohead internalized leftfield electronics yet embraced straightforward rock.

Radiohead: Hail to the Thief: Special Collectors Edition

By 2003, Radiohead were trapped in a musical era they helped invent. By that time, they had essentially completed the ideal life cycle of a rock band, rising from an intermittently promising debut to become one of the world's biggest bands, creators of twin masterpieces that captured the fear, exhaustion, alienation, and anxiety of modern life in near-perfect musical settings. There is no rock record that did more to set the tone and establish the parameters for rock music in this still-young century than Kid A, an intentional masterpiece so brimming with creativity it spawned a sequel in Amnesiac.
How does a band follow that up? Well, for one thing, it doesn't try to make another masterpiece. The record Radiohead did make, Hail to the Thief, is almost an anti-masterpiece, a well-sequenced collection of songs that finds them internalizing the blend of experimental electronics and straightforward rock they wore so far out on their sleeves just a few years earlier. They basically started over, and on the record, the band sounds aware that it's peaked in a way, and perhaps less sure of where it wants to go. I hear the tension between a band that started to make the back-to-basics album guitarist Ed O'Brien so frequently mentions in interviews and a band that self-consciously want to do something new each time out and perhaps even feels guilt when it fails to innovate. They'd pushed their horizons so far already that they didn't have much exploring left to do.
Confusion and apprehension are written all over the album. Just look at the tracklist: "Scatterbrain". "A Wolf at the Door". "Sit Down. Stand Up". "2+2=5". "Backdrifts". They couldn't even decide what to call the songs, giving each one an obtuse parenthetical co-title. When Thom Yorke sings, "I don't know why I feel so tongue-tied," on "Myxomatosis", he sounds as though he's talking himself out of a creative eddy, and what better way to do it than over a crazed, fuzzed-out odd-metered groove? At 14 tracks and 56 minutes, Hail to the Thief is easily the longest Radiohead album, and it doesn't seem accidental that two-thirds of the way through lies a song called "There There", as if the band is consoling itself, recognizing that there are worse challenges than carrying forward in a successful rock band.
"There There" has one of the album's many ambiguous refrains in its "just cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there" turnaround, which could be taken as a brief rebuke to the anxieties expressed earlier. But what's even more striking about the song is how unremittingly gorgeous it is. It has a melody fitting for a jazz standard, but just as important is the rhythmic undercarriage. Drummer Phil Selway hardly plays a conventional rock beat anywhere on the album, here using kettle drums to give the song a distinctive buoyancy, while Colin Greenwood's bass part constitutes a second melody. Selway and Greenwood run away with "Where I End and You Begin", creating a rushing current to carry along the queasy synths and understated vocal.
It's one of the album's few vocals that could reasonably be called understated. Thom Yorke uses his full range across the record to give voice to anger, defeat, affection, frustration, and longing. He's a fantastic singer in general, but his real strength is in the way he can latch onto a simple phrase like "over my dead body" and twist and pull it to mean whatever he wants it to. His most virtuoso performance on the album comes on its breathtaking closer, "A Wolf at the Door", where he balances a frantically paced, paranoid verse with a towering chorus. It's on songs like this where you realize that this album, more than any of their LPs since The Bends, simply lets you concentrate on a what a good band Radiohead is without distracting you with thematic concerns, conscious innovation, or attempts to force a bend in the band's artistic arc.
Hail has a few low points and could probably be edited to make it that much more digestible-- apart from its tumbling bridge, "We Suck Young Blood" is a momentum-killer between the sinuous groove of "Where I End and You Begin" and the tangled loops of "The Gloaming" (it's also somewhat similar to the superior "Sail to the Moon"), while the brief "I Will" is pretty distracting from the album's overall flow. I would've been happier with it as a B-side. "A Punchup at a Wedding" has a disappointingly flat refrain, but makes up for it with the funky swagger of its rhythm track. Even the lowest points have their considerable merits, though, to the point where it even bears wondering whether Radiohead can even make a bad album at this point.
The tracks they did relegate to B-sides, now included on the second disc of Capitol's reissue, were certainly well-suited to their release format. "Paperbag Writer" is an interesting, even worthy experiment with programmed beats, a whacked-out bass line and creepy strings courtesy of Jonny Greenwood that at first sounds like an update on Martin Denny's version of "Quiet Village". Its counterparts sound for all the word like odds and ends. Even the title of "I Am Citizen Insane" sounds forced, "Where Bluebirds Fly" is an exercise in creating texture with almost no content, and three of the four remixes and alternate versions that backed "2+2=5" aren't especially interesting (Four Tet's take on "Scatterbrain" is the squirming exception). Yorke's piano sketch "Fog (Again)" is nice, and the quiet, acoustic "Gagging Order" is practically a throwback to the stuff they were putting on B-sides in the mid-90s, which is to say it's by far the best B-side included in the bonus material.
Even if it is a cash-grab by Capitol (and who can blame them the way things are going?), the bonus disc is a convenient aggregator for the band's fans. The video content on the third disc, meanwhile, offers little you can't experience easily on the Internet. The reissue also offers a chance to re-assess an album that's oddly failed to develop a solid reputation over the years since its release-- I've heard it described as everything from a disappointment to "their best album" to "too long" to "I don't remember what it sounds like" by fans of the band. For a while, I identified most with the last statement-- there's no denying that Hail to the Thief took longer to settle for me than any of their four preceding albums. Time and persistence have been kind to it, though. Hail to the Thief isn't Radiohead's best album, but it doesn't need to be, either. There are other albums for that. It did, however, prove that there can be life for a band after its landmark statement, and that life sounds pretty damn good.


Chromeo have made it a decade without a widely beloved full-length—instead, they're known more for a few great singles and their winking revivalist aesthetic. But in 2014, this works in their favor: with no classic hanging over their heads and no true expectations, it's easy to be seduced by their quietly fantastic fourth album White Women.

White Women

The tenth anniversary of Chromeo's debut album She's in Control happened a few months ago, and the fact that there were no essays or oral histories commemorating the occasion is a reminder that Dave 1 and P-Thugg have made it a decade without a widely beloved full-length—instead, they're known more for a few great singles and their winking revivalist aesthetic. But in 2014, this works in their favor: with no classic hanging over their heads and no true expectations, it's easy to be seduced by their quietly fantastic fourth album White Women.
One reason why the two have endured (and still kicking on a major label, no less) is the strength of their songwriting. No Chromeo album has ever quite struck the perfect balance between playing it straight and letting irony seep to the surface, but the bedrock of this group is its chops: the ability to write tunes good enough to justify the shtick. Yet, as the shtick has become less important—no longer a selling or conversation point, it is what it is—the songs have gotten stronger, which is clear from White Women opener "Jealous (I Ain't With It)", a song powered by chunky, ringing guitar chords.
In an interview, P-Thugg said Chromeo rejected the riff (written by the production duo Oliver) for being "too Katy Perry", but pop looks good on Chromeo: the guitar-powered first verse slides right into a soaring chorus that's immediately one of the most obviously catchy hooks the band has ever written. Elsewhere, the Toro y Moi collaboration "Come Alive" quickly returns to Chromeo's electrofunk roots. Still, it's not just a classic Chromeo song, but a classic Chromeo song, with rippling guitar lines and plucked bass that give way to a slick, multi-layered chorus.
Though White Women starts in an uptempo mindset, the album's strength lies in its softer, more vulnerable moments. There's always been a humanity behind Chromeo's carefully constructed facade—a sweet, almost fumbling, open-heartedness that allows you to connect with the guys behind the characters—and earnestness has never worked better for them than it does here. "Lost on the Way Home" is a crystalline duet with Solange about always having your partner's back that features a perfect, aching outro; "Ezra's Interlude", named for and featuring Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig, is a fluttering trifle that's nonetheless a powerful hit of straight pathos. "Old 45s" is about dancing to a jukebox, and it has a slowly cascading chorus that tugs at your heartstrings along with a guitar solo that pokes you in the side.
White Women is the closest Chromeo have come yet to fully realizing their sound, but it's also far from perfect. Lead single "Sexy Socialite" is retrograde on a number of levels—from composition to worldview, it feels like a leftover from that She's In Control—and its final third needlessly drags. Still, even though closer "Fall Back 2U" rubs up against the six-minute mark, it's still a great song with slicing disco strings and a tricky chorus melody. It also serves as a reminder that Chromeo, even on its most emotionally resonant album, are jokesters, too: the track ends with a sax solo, a vocoder solo and a choir. It shouldn't work so well, but it does—which, in Chromeo's tenth year of existence, also applies to the band's approach.


Helmed by Jack Antonoff, the ’70s-themed soundtrack for the children’s film features covers and collaborations from Phoebe Bridgers, St. Vincent, Diana Ross, Tame Impala, and more.

Various Artists: Minions: The Rise of Gru (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Minions are—in so many words—Twinkie-shaped henchmen who love bananas, speak in gibberish, and have names like Bob and Kevin. In goggles and form-fitting overalls, they embody a childlike impishness while also possessing an unquenchable thirst for servitude, turning the many Bobs and Kevins into tragic figures if you think about it too hard and for too long. While the Minions and their soft-hearted supervillain leader, Gru, always make a mess of world domination, in reality, the Despicable Me franchise has had no trouble conquering every sector it desires, from films to theme parks to the entire meme industry.
This is to say that there’s money in Minions—just ask Pharrell Williams, whose soundtrack for 2013’s Despicable Me 2 brought us the flashmob-irritant “Happy.” Another Producer of the Year winner, Jack Antonoff, helms the soundtrack of the franchise’s latest installation, Minions: The Rise of Gru. (A quick plot summary for those who have yet to suit up for a screening: In the 1970s, a pre-teen Gru gets revenge on a league of flamboyant villains by swiping their powerful stone, which one of the Minions—a scene-stealing newcomer named Otto—misplaces after mistaking it for a pet rock and falling in love. Classic Minions stuff.) Antonoff’s soundtrack is a fever dream of a lineup featuring a handful of artists who were actually present in the ’70s, a wide survey of this generation’s rising artists who take influence from the era, and some truly out-of-left-field recruits whose presence only highlights the unmoored absurdity of the project.
Like any decent soundtrack full of covers, The Rise of Gru has a few winners. Weyes Blood’s take on Linda Ronstadt’s No. 1 hit “You’re No Good” is a showstopper. Likewise, pairing Phoebe Bridgers with the Carpenters’ power ballad “Goodbye to Love” works well as her bittersweet delivery elevates the track’s inherent melancholy. Thundercat’s rendition of the Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like an Eagle” is the picture of space-funk heaven, while Brittany Howard conjures up soulful bliss on a version of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Shining Star” that features original bassist Verdine White. Gary Clark Jr.’s spin on the Ides of March’s “Vehicle” is another faithful rendition that never veers too far from the source material’s tenacious infatuation and souped-up horns.
In spite of its stacked roster and hypothetically enjoyable concept, intriguing pairings are undermined by heavy-handed production choices. For some reason, Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” is covered twice, once by Caroline Polachek and then again by the Hong Kong singer G.E.M. Both versions reject the original’s ominous stillness in favor of slinky horn flourishes and lackluster vocal performances that erase any sense of drama. And then there’s the cover of “Instant Karma!” by Antonoff’s own band, Bleachers, which romanticizes his cosplay of John Lennon’s yelping vocals—as well as the saxophone as an instrument—at the expense of the track’s incisive commentary on ego. The irony is not lost.
The two worst offenders are reason enough to avoid The Rise of Gru entirely. If Kool & the Gang’s “Hollywood Swinging” sold Los Angeles as a promised land full of “stars, movies, women, and cars,” Brockhampton’s rewrite of the 1974 classic makes the Sunset Strip seem like a boulevard of broken dreams. Interspersing the song with rapped verses of their own original lyrics—“Came a real long way to make it here/Ain’t no thing you could do to change it here”—conveys a profound sense of exhaustion. (According to Kevin Abstract, the song has been completed for two years, but “Hollywood Swinging” makes you wonder if the group decided to disband midway through recording.) Removing the joy from songs about big city dreams is a recurring theme: St. Vincent’s version of Lipps Inc.’s “Funkytown” is soul-suckingly stiff with her vocals obliterated by a vocoder, a curse which also befalls Tierra Whack’s “Black Magic Woman.”
The soundtrack’s only moment of true glee is the Minions’ own rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia”—if your brain is full of holes, this will burrow right in like a worm to an apple. Representing the more tasteful side of the soundtrack is Diana Ross and Tame Impala’s “Turn Up the Sunshine,” an attempt at disco whose forced-fun vibes will likely earn its place on a few wedding playlists for the next three or four years. It’s a reminder that this soundtrack never needed to be an artistic triumph for any of the involved parties. On the Minions’ path toward world domination, all it needed was a hit.


Sabrina Teitelbaum’s self-titled debut is a candid snapshot of early adulthood, a cruel rotation of bad substances, scummy men, and friendship anxieties.

Blondshell

The world according to Sabrina Teitelbaum can be brutal. It is populated by dirtbag men, wayward friends, and the constant lure of mind-numbing substances. “Ur just doing ur best and life is like ‘hehe I’m gonna present u with the biggest challenges ever,’” the 25-year-old songwriter, who records as Blondshell, says. Across the nine songs on her self-titled debut, she sifts through the muck of early adulthood, searching for intimacy in a dreary loop of partying and bad sex, but her revivalist alt-rock and stadium hooks offer a bracing release from the hangover.
Blondshell is a tale of two cities. Teitelbaum was raised in Midtown, Manhattan and graduated from the prestigious Dalton School, which boasts distinguished alumni like Anderson Cooper and Wallace Shawn. She then relocated to Los Angeles to study at USC’s Thornton School of Music, dropping out after two years to focus on her solo pop project BAUM and releasing “Fuckboy,” a Chainsmokers-lite track that went viral. But working as Blondshell, she succumbs to her childhood love of ’90s alternative rock acts like Hole, Liz Phair, and the Cranberries, leveraging lean drums and loud, jagged guitar to capture faded days in flashback: the stink of vodka, a heap of crushed cans, frequent blackouts, drugs seeping out of the pores.
Teitelbaum, who is now sober, traces her coast-to-coast voyage with a shaky red line, examining the teenage antics that mutated into addiction over the years. On the spacious, heat-warped “Sober Together,” she confronts a friend who’s sliding off the wagon. “Not in a position to judge,” she sings in a glassy falsetto, “I know with drugs/There’s never enough.” She is skeptical of the friend’s urge to resolve things by fleeing to New York, knowing that her own cross-country move failed to erase any problems.
People are included on her list of potential toxins. On “Tarmac” and glimmering closer “Dangerous,” she admits to fearing her own friends, a troubled but magnetic bunch that recalls the venomous cliques of Mean Girls and Heathers. And then of course there’s love, a chemical dependency Teitelbaum explores on the shadowy grunge ballad “Olympus.” “I’d still kill for you/I’d die to spend the night at your belonging,” she drawls over scratchy acoustic and skeletal drums. It’s a pitiable confession that most of us can relate to—contorting every cell of your being to make a lover stick around. Sometimes the dude is not worth the risk. On the clever “Sepsis,” she growls about a pathetic boyfriend—“He wears a front-facing cap/The sex is almost always bad”—before a swell of distorted guitar slams back in with the damning chorus: “It should take a whole lot less/To turn me off.” Teitelbaum doesn’t offer many specifics on Blondshell, but her lyrics are stronger and more relatable when she scrawls down a few dirty details like this.
For all of her self-flagellation, Teitelbaum is far more potent when she’s pissed off. On the revenge scorcher “Salad,” she plans the murder of a friend’s assailant. “She took him to the courthouse/And somehow he got off,” she grumbles over muted power chords. “Then I saw him laughing with his lawyer in the parking lot.” In the chorus, Teitelbaum’s band kicks into full-blown arena rock, dissonant, high-pitched piano keys clanging amid brassy guitars. Her voice pitches up into a pained cry as she lands a chilling line: “It doesn’t happen to women I know.”
Teitelbaum doesn’t write happy endings, but Blondshell’s best song is its most hopeful. The blistering “Kiss City” finds the artist belting about the desire for healthy, unapologetic love. “Palm in palm/It turns me on/When you tell me you’re not going away,” she sings, her voice fraying a little at the edges. For Teitelbaum, security is foreplay—the calm that precedes the crescendo. But she stands just outside of the romance, “adjacent to a lot of love,” as she puts it. In its closing minute, “Kiss City” cracks open; Teitelbaum switches to a megaphone holler, as a searing guitar solo cuts through like a symphony of bottle rockets. Tangled in the noise, she is vulnerable, imperfect, and rapturous.


If you first heard this 9th Wonder-produced album from the hottest-spitting woman in rap when it was leaked back in 2004, its commercial release will hopefully remind you how damn good it is.

Jeanius

Jean Grae has always been a fascinating if somewhat perplexing presence in underground hip-hop; as an artist and lyricist, she's capable of both traumatic vivid  imagery and lighthearted just-fuckin'-around comedy, quick-witted tongue-twisting and conversational observation, send-you-home-crying battle raps and gripping narrative storytelling. Unfortunately, every time she's seemed on the brink of some major breakthrough, something somewhere gets thrown off the rails. Jean has every right and reason to be as well-known as, at the very least, the Roots and Talib Kweli (who she's collaborated with successfully over the last few years). But for whatever reason-- bootleggers, disillusionment, label jerk-around moves, the industry's inability to properly market a female artist who operates more as a superhuman MC than as a sex symbol-- she's wound up operating closer to the fringes than someone with her experience and skill deserves, wavering between contemplations of retirement and selling 16-bar guest appearances on Craigslist.
So it's easy to wonder what things'd be like for her if Jeanius came out as scheduled, way back in 2004, rather than earlier this summer. That's because it's the kind of album you pull out when you want to convince a friend that this rapper he hasn't heard can do all this incredible shit, a potential career-definer that people can turn to when they want to quickly and definitively sum up the qualities of an artist with one easily-recommendable release. Longtime heads have known this for a while now; when the album leaked four years back and subsequently got shelved, it became one of those cause-celebre great lost albums like the Ghostface/MF DOOM Swift & Changeable collab or Q-Tip's original 2006 draft of Live at the Renaissance. When Jeanius finally did drop legit on Kweli's Blacksmith label with little changed but some of the track titles, the familiarity had already set in-- which means this album's had a presidential term's worth of time to establish itself as a contemporary classic.
Jean the battler is in top form, and the half of the album where she goes about the business of shit-talking is superb: "You don't like the way I flow/ 'She needs more emotion, though'/ I'll give you emotion, it's you, holdin' your broken nose"; "controversy works, and plus I got a pussy/ But even with that, people scared to push me/ Who's a pussy first?"; "Fuck the hearsay, please, Jean's superior/ Y'all yellow, same color of your bladder's interiors." But her ability to convincingly go from supreme self-confidence to moments of doubt and personal tragedy reveal what a complete, relatable and human MC she is-- whether it's something like the self-aware battles with her own hard-headed personality traits on "Don't Rush Me", or "My Story"'s harrowing confessional of her post-abortion experiences-- or on "Desperada", where she pledges to overcome it all and come out stronger on the other end. Jean's been accused of sounding cold and monotone by dudes who apparently forgot what made slick, collected cats like Guru and Erick Sermon great, but to these ears her flow sounds like a laser-focused, clear-spoken declaration of strength and perseverance.
All these emotional facets need a solid, consistent sound to keep them tied all together, and 9th Wonder is at the top of his game here, providing the bulk of Jeanius' production (with a couple tracks from fellow North Carolinians Khrysis and Fatin). At their best, 9th's beats do a good job of carrying tracks without making themselves the center of attention, but here they stand as some of his finest work because of how well he balances between heart-pulsing, head-nod beats and moody, grey-skied atmosphere: the piano/choir loop in "Don't Rush Me" sticks with you because it somehow pulls off the trick of sounding triumphant and mournful at the same time, and the way the "Top Billin'"-in-a-straitjacket drums complement the recurring dubbed-out mournful vocal snippet from the Marvelettes' "Uptown" gives "Billy Killer" a strong, chilling undercurrent of jealous fury that Jean's lyrics etch into stone. Word has it Jean Grae and 9th are working on a grip of tracks for an upcoming release, Phoenix, and if that album's anywhere near as good as this one, we should finally stop having to ask "what if" and move on to "how far."


Another fantastic Georgia metal band, Baroness offers a fully realized record that is more ambitious, more accomplished, and simply bigger than anything they've done before.

Red Album

Like prophets, Savannah, Ga., metal quartet Baroness named its earliest releases First and Second. Their third-- and first for Relapse Records-- is called Red Album, and it's seven minutes longer than its predecessors combined. It's also more ambitious, more accomplished, simply bigger: Here, the ideas Baroness have offered since 2003-- a colossal, airtight rhythm section backing sludge-of-the-South vocals and guitars-- are realized with purpose and aim.
Of the four current genuinely unorthodox metal bands from Georgia-- Mastodon, Harvey Milk, Kylesa (whose Phillip Cope produced Red Album), and Baroness-- it's Baroness that are perhaps the most comely. The band shares some of the most appealing traits of its fellow statesmen-- Mastodon's steaming guitar trips, Harvey Milk's teasing maneuvers and crushing payoffs, Kylesa's generally crusty countenance. But on Red Album, those qualities culminate into a dynamic, moving landscape, full of unexpected pitfalls, lifts, and classic bait-and-switches. The album's most energetic coda, for instance, collapses into a contemplative piece for finger-picked acoustic guitar, and its most ferocious pocket of thrash has winding instrumentals for bookends.
Baroness juggle motifs and ideas, making patterns only to toss them and catch them later. Ascendant, spectral guitar phrases ease the album in, supplying the sort of radiant hum that shaped Brian Eno's Music for Airports. Cymbal splashes and aberrant notes tease that flow, obliterating it when the guitar finds its theme and the drums land their mid-tempo, kick-and-tom gallop. But the next 15 minutes are pure power. Intervening tracks "Rays on Pinion" and "Isak" turn laptop speakers into arsenals of cannons and automatic weapons. John Baizley's voice is dually capable of shouting down a spirit or etching melody from the same monolithic growl, and his guitar interplay with Brian Blickle is all energy. But four tracks in, those introductory ebbs wash back, slightly less predictable and graceful. Before they seemed pure, but now-- as drummer Allen Blickle pounds away in the encroaching distance-- things are panicked. Tongue-and-groove guitarmonies sometimes lift the band's reins, letting the rhythm section flip tempos just beneath. On "Aleph", Baroness even inverts that pattern, killing the rhythm to let the piercing, lock-and-key guitars diverge and cobweb into silence through long, corroding riffs.
As replete as it is with changes, Red Album's relation to prog runs the risk of being overstated at the sake of Southern rock, the Georgia bone-and-blood genre that, at its best, challenged prog as a dynamic equal and emotional master. When Baroness are swiveling through intertwining, fast-fingered melodies like those of "The Birthing" or letting the big, bouncy groove of "Pinion" stand alone, they're channeling a local lineage that began in Macon with the Allmans. And on the acoustic "Cockroach en Fleur", Baroness nod more to the mountain music one state up and to the humid blues two states over than to trans-Atlantic psychedelia or prog-minded folk. The source of those sidetrips-- Southern steam over proggy smarts-- has two consequences: Red Album, full of Baizley lyrics about bearing the world's load and "resign[ing] ourselves to soar home," is a workhorse. Most importantly, though, is Baroness' consistent return to a comfortable, languid groove after every excursion. The album roars and creeps, but it's best when it's somewhere in between, riding a slightly above-mid-tempo pace.
Red Album stands to lose Baroness a clutch of longtime devotees, wont to damn these simmering textures and time-lapse payoffs in favor of First and Second's maul and fervor. But it's the type of album that can help a band begin to gain a Mastodon-sized legion. The double-guitar chug and dirty-bass thrum of "The Birthing"-- juxtaposed as they are with Baizley's distended, growling melody-- are readymade for today's dominant mixed metal crowd, where half of a room loses its mind near the stage as the other more stoic half nods at the pit's perimeter. And, in Baroness' case, that's perfectly fine: Purity's never been a concern. It's just that, on Red Album, the band's disparate cores finally have more space and more effect. The textures have become holistic atmospheres, the peaks anthemic strongholds, and the clashes unavoidable cataclysms. When they intersect in the middle, Red Album is hard to doubt.


Atticus Ross (Trent Reznor's film-scoring partner) and Bobby Krlic, aka The Haxan Cloak, soundtrack this documentary about a priest who rescues drug-addicted youths from the streets of the Ukraine.

Atticus Ross / Leopold Ross / Bobby Krlic: Almost Holy OST

Almost Holy OST

On the surface, Steve Hoover’s documentary Almost Holy could be a feel-good story. Its protagonist, altruistic Russian priest Gennadiy Mokhnenko, rescues and rehabilitates homeless, drug-addicted youths from the streets of the Ukraine. Judging solely by the soundtrack, though, it sounds like a horror movie. With half its songs made by brothers Leopold and Atticus Ross (the latter a partner with Trent Reznor in scoring David Fincher films) and the other half by Bobby Krlic (aka the Haxan Cloak), Almost Holy’s music is heavy, pounding, and at times purely bombastic.
It turns out that Mokhnenko himself has a dark side—some reviews of *Almost Holy *suggest his savior tactics verge on abduction—that dovetails with all these ominous sounds. But regardless of their role in the accompanying film, the songs on *Almost Holy *work as worlds of their own. The producers craft dense environments with reverberating drones, soaring synths, and heartbeat-like rhythms. A few approach the melodramatic foreboding of John Carpenter. But the music of *Almost Holy *is less about narrative than atmosphere.
That’s in keeping with both the recent soundtrack work of the Rosses and Krlic’s last effort as Haxan Cloak, which Pitchfork’s Nick Neyland called “more soundtrack than regular album.” Nobody here delivers anything unexpected, but all three play well to their strengths, which overlap significantly. The echoing, apparitional tones of Krlic’s cavernous “Pharmacies” and the brittle “Coursing” show his knack for turning alien abstractions and discordant textures into moving music. The Rosses’ contributions are more conventional but just as effective, especially “Punching Bag,” which morphs from metallic sheen into a grinding pulse, and the harrowing dissonance of “Distance.”
*Almost Holy *only falters when it drifts toward the generic. That’s a danger with any soundtrack, since music that has to serve multiple purposes can easily get reduced to a common denominator. In opener “One Block Further,” the Rosses’ rote piano chords and default beat resemble library music filed under “dramatic techno.” But more often, conventional tropes work in the producers’ favor. Take Krlic’s closer “The End,” which plays like an obvious denouement, as rising, choir-like tones cascade into a bombed-out climax—and yet, every moment is tense and gripping. Like the rest of Almost Holy, the idea may be familiar, but the execution is compelling.


Breakin’ Point, PB&J's sixth album, enlists big-name producers like Paul Epworth, Greg Kurstin, and Emile Haynie. The result is the big pop album they've always seemed on the verge of making.

Breakin’ Point

An indie band’s commercial breakthrough, when and if it comes, is a tricky landmark to pass unscathed. If the follow-up doesn’t catch, the band tends to go one of three ways: They can call it quits, accepting their commercial decrepitude; wind things down over a couple of albums, continuing to tour the hits as a glorified karaoke act; or, as a last resort, enlist some decorated pop producers who will, in theory, affix makeshift wings and propel them into the stratosphere. So it is with Peter Bjorn and John, a Swedish trio inseparably wed to a pretty whistling melody from 2006, whose songwriting smarts always promised an elusive second wind.
Breakin’ Point, their sixth album and first in five years, attempts to reclaim unpaid dues: written as the trio studied ABBA’s greatest hits, recorded in that band’s old studio, and completed with Paul Epworth, Greg Kurstin, Emile Haynie, and other major producers with considerable résumés. (The band's Björn Yttling, a notable producer in his own right, worked alongside Kurstin on Lykke Li's recent albums.) They return a new band: edges planed, eccentricities jettisoned, with a strict emphasis on the effortless hooks that made Writer's Block click. Song to song, they apply the formula with some success. But three albums on from that breakout LP, Breakin’ Point seems an optimistic title—in 2016, the record arrives almost a decade too late.
That’d be by-the-by if the songs served a purpose beyond mainstream expansion, which they sometimes do. Highlight “Hard Sleep” is convincingly euphoric, full of jubilant falsetto and carnival bombast. Its winning formula—lyrics of waning romance, choruses determined to bounce and soar regardless—is capably reproduced throughout the record. But the song stands out as a rare home-run on an album too blandly ambitious to stick in the memory.
Interestingly, PB&J have history folding their musical ennui into the songs themselves: Gimme Some’s “Second Chance” scans as a commentary on the struggle to replicate “Young Folks”’ success, while “It Don’t Move Me,” from Living Thing, juxtaposes post-relationship blues with self-referential allusions to a creative impasse. Into that lineage step the title track, with its throwback whistling melody, and “Pretty Dumb Pretty Lame,” a cautionary tale of ballooning egos and one-night-stands—“getting hooked on all the strangers barking your name.” It’s hard to tell whether the latter is a reprimand to industry prima donnas or a jab at the band itself. “If you enjoy what you do, don’t let it ruin you,” is the lyrical conclusion, before an ambiguously apathetic chorus: “Hey, don’t let it get to your head/Hey, others could do it instead.” Along with the decorated producers, the abandoned sonic trademarks, it makes you wonder if Breakin’ Point isn’t a vague experiment in which PB&J try, with maximum self-awareness, to “sell out.”
If that is the case—and fair play to them if so, they just haven’t quite pulled it off—you might’ve expected a finer focus on why great pop resonates. The songs are skilful constructions: dynamic, propellant, with jingly verses and big, punctual choruses. But PB&J are prone to fluffing the details—take “Dominos”’ unconscionably irritating chorus, or “Nostalgic Intellect”’s make-you-think lyrics: “What’s the point with a phone that smart/If you don’t have a flexible heart?” Clunky words aside, the songs, while uncluttered, suffer a particular kind of too-muchness. “We treated the album like 12 singles, rather than an album,” Peter Morén said recently, “which of course makes a very good album.” While there’s nothing wrong with that notion, the problem is that when a song’s drama simply exists—when every line throbs with urgency, yet the characters feel less like conflicted people than vessels for indie-pop intensity—the stakes feel low, the conflict superficial. For all its rousing clap-alongs, Breakin’ Point sounds like the lonely work of a band who’ve forgotten how to love their own music.


The D.C. rapper’s major label debut is made of loose, richly textured hip-hop that weaves a colorful tapestry from his city’s musical history featuring Wale, the Internet, and Kaytranada.

At What Cost

In recent years, Washington, D.C. has become an unlikely incubator for worldly, adventurous dance music: the mutant grooves of Future Times, the Ethiopian house of 1432 R, Peoples Potential Unlimited’s retro-futuristic funk. More than any of his contemporaries, DMV rapper GoldLink has drawn up these sounds like a sponge. On mixtapes like The God Complex and last year’s collection of And After That, We Didn’t Talk remixes, he presented an aesthetic he called “future bounce”: a fluorescent, kinetic sound that’s as indebted to house music as to hip-hop. For his major label debut, At What Cost, GoldLink digs deeper into his city’s musical history, pushing the elastic rhythms of go-go and funk to the fore while keeping a foot firmly planted in the current moment. It helps that he’s found a few kindred spirits to help him refine his sound, postmodern traditionalists like Montreal producer Kaytranada and Matt Martians and Steve Lacy of the Internet. Still, the sound of At What Cost is quintessentially that of GoldLink’s hometown: loose, organic, as humid as a D.C. summer.
The album’s opening third establishes a strong sense of place. “Hands on Your Knees” is a straight-up go-go number produced by Kaytranada; rather than rapping, the track is overlaid with D.C. lifer Kokayi emceeing a party over crowd noise. The end result is a song that captures the atmosphere of a go-go as much as the music. “Have You Seen That Girl?” sputters like a jalopy crawling down U Street on a hot day, its Casiotone beat just barely pushing the song forward. On “Meditation,” Kaytranada builds an entire track around the closing minute of his own “TRACK UNO”: decaying synths, a four-on-the-floor beat, a bassline that’s almost dubstep-sized. “Shake, shake, shake/Shake the nerves off/In the name of dancehall, shake the nerves off,” Jazmine Sullivan instructs on the hook. The song ends with the sound of gunfire erupting outside of a party, a not unfamiliar scene in the world of go-go.
Elsewhere, At What Cost looks outward, drawing in sounds from far outside of the District. “Herside Story,” a remix of Irish group Hare Squead’s song of the same title, feels almost impossibly buoyant, Jessy Rose’s braying hook floating atop the track’s harp melody like Kirby in Dreamland. The way he makes the word “down” vibrate in his throat is near magical. GoldLink wrestles the soaring track back down to earth: “Pop a nigga like we pop a wheelie, niggas going crazy in the city.” Lead single “Crew” stands out for its gleaming, Atlanta sound, but it’s also just a straight-up stunning rap song. Baltimore crooner Brent Faiyaz lays down a silky hook that’s confident yet conflicted, while fellow Washingtonian Shy Glizzy contributes a verse that practically leaps out of the speakers (one particularly acrobatic stretch: “Stop that madness, I’m a savage, in traffic with MAC 11’s/Baddest bitch and she Spanish, I fly her to Calabasas”). GoldLink, meanwhile, remains characteristically collected, even as he races to cram every last syllable into his bars. Just like on the rest of these tracks, he sounds right at home.
In its attempt to deliver a promising D.C. rapper onto the national stage, At What Cost recalls the last great major label rap debut to come out of the city: Wale’s Attention Deficit. Like that record, At What Cost is ambitious, slickly-produced, and relies a great deal on live instrumentation. However, where Attention Deficit’s jumbled tracklist smacked of design-by-committee compromise, At What Cost is clearly guided by GoldLink’s vision from start to finish. He’s leveraging the music that shaped him, working with producers with whom he has real chemistry, and putting on as many DMV artists as he can, ranging from the unknown (Ciscero) to the obligatory (Wale) to the surprising (where has Mýa been, anyway?). In its ability to move fluidly between artists, styles, and ideas, At What Cost also recalls a more recent hip-hop album: Drake’s “playlist” More Life. Though while Drake restlessly roams the globe in search of new sounds, GoldLink is largely content to bask in the richness of his hometown's music. It’s for this reason that At What Cost feels like an album that only GoldLink could make, one that’s forward-looking yet firmly rooted in D.C. tradition.


On his second album inspired by journeys in the Arctic wilderness, Finnish electronic musician Sasu Ripatti makes even the most hostile environment feel homey.

Rakka II

Sasu Ripatti knows that few things will humble you like time spent in the wilderness. “You learn to face your own limits and fears,” he’s said of his Arctic hiking experiences. His latest solo albums as Vladislav Delay take inspiration from these trips, the kind where you’re confronted with terrifying, awe-inducing grandeur. The title of the pair of LPs, Rakka, refers to the rocky terrain he traverses outside his home in Finland. The covers depict these spaces as spectacles in their own right, with pink and green smears that recall Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s gargantuan land art. And the music is some of the most outrightly turbulent of his decades-long career. But despite the rapturous sonics, Ripatti is doing what he’s always done best: crafting detailed soundscapes that make you feel small, forever at the mercy of his intricate productions.
Recorded during the same sessions as Rakka, Rakka II aims again to overwhelm with wind-tunnel drones, electrifying noise, industrial crunch—anything to get you bracing for dear life. Ripatti finalized the material for this second installment only recently, and he says that his time away from the music led to a more hopeful, optimistic album. Such positivity isn’t immediately audible: “Rakkn” drops you into whooshing sirens and mechanical whirring, opening the album in a state of panic. Stuttering beats creep ominously underneath, but then everything fizzles out, and all that’s left is vapor.
Much of Rakka II is about this process of diving headfirst into chaos and finding serenity therein. “Ranno” begins with sputtering static atop a constant kick drum, and its progression is decidedly linear—a stark contrast to the cacophonous start-stop rhythms of Rakka. As the track’s first half feels like anxious preparation for something larger, it transforms the same elements into blissful ambience, ending like one of the Field’s looping reveries. Even “Raaa,” responsible for the most whip-lashing structure here, has reason for its riotousness: Its sudden shifts provide for on-the-fly recalibration. After a mid-song passage of cool, airy drones, the return of a pounding beat reads more meditative than oppressive.
Beauty is the defining feature of this record. “Rakas,” which translates to “beloved,” is misty and thalassic, its synths tranquilizing in their intimacy, and “Rapaa,” with its high-pitched beeps and bristly drone, arrives like a tender massage rather than a relentless skull-battering. Ripatti’s vision of beauty is one of abundance, and Rakka II presents a never-ending flurry of sounds: Synth pads ebb and flow, beats erupt in scattershot patterns, and tracks are adorned with a bevy of atonal noises. While his early works, like Entain or Anima, may have felt like looking into a microscope to find countless squiggling organisms, Rakka II offers a more life-sized experience: It feels like Arctic winds are rushing straight at you, and these songs’ constant, surprising shifts make the immensity of it all feel invigorating.
Ripatti’s entire career has been built on ping-ponging between disorientation and close engagement: His dubbiest records are relaxing and richly textured, his footwork endeavors are always atmospheric, and his Rakka albums make hostile environments feel homey. Even “Raaha,” defined by its massive, lumbering beats, is supremely pretty: It’s rhythm distilled into its purest form, bearing the raw danceability of Esplendor Geométrico’s proto-industrial techno. “Raato,” which means “carcass,” sums up the album: it’s a power-ambient epic that quietly grows in intensity before dissolving into soft textures and stumbling drums. It’s moody, poignant, euphoric. One can imagine an expanse of Arctic tundra, of bones dotting craggy rock—a vision of death couched in acceptance. Rakka II suggests that severe conditions make you check your ego, and that doing so—while appreciating one’s single, fragile life—is a nourishing, wonderful thing.

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