With frank lyricism and clean production, the Australian songwriter and guitarist channels the confidence and immediacy of 2000s pop-rock.

Hello, I’m Doing My Best

Though happily married and sober, Melbourne songwriter and guitarist Ali Barter wouldn’t dare write about anything so peaceful. Barter’s muse is the thrilling turbulence of young adulthood, and the lasting resonance of the bad decisions one makes in their early 20s. On her new record Hello, I’m Doing My Best, these themes coalesce with the confidence and immediacy of 2000s pop-rock. The result is an emotionally nuanced album that never takes itself too seriously.
Barter’s debut, 2017’s A Suitable Girl, was a lovably slapdash collection of, in the words of one beloved teen film, “angry girl music of the indie-rock persuasion”—feminist pop-rock that angled for everywoman relatability. That formula worked well for Barter, with the singles “Girlie Bits” and “Cigarette” achieving modest success in her home country. Many of the songs on A Suitable Girl, though, suffered from a certain anonymity. Her bid for universality resulted in lines like “What’s a woman made of?/Something glorious”—well-intentioned but nevertheless a little hackneyed.
Hello, I’m Doing My Best makes no such attempts, instead leaning full-tilt into Barter’s loose-cannon instincts. She draws herself as an indie rock Fleabag, a self-deprecating and hard-drinking flirt who texts her crushes at 3 a.m. and listens to “Malibu” to get through the hangover the next morning. From its earliest moments—the Hole reference comes in the very first line—Hello, I’m Doing My Best is appealingly frank. “Ur a Piece of Shit,” the second track, is a bombastic love letter to a friend in crisis: “You got your daddy issues,” Barter sings. “It made you real suspicious/That’s why you hacked in his account.” She wastes no time with poetics, and while it’s a risky move—she ends up rhyming “drugs” with “drugs”—it displays a kind of gonzo commitment to the album’s messy, diaristic heart.
With loud and unadorned production, Hello, I’m Doing My Best taps into a current of emotive, candid pop-rock typified by the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack and currently practiced by the likes of Charly Bliss and Bully. There’s not an ounce of crunch or grit here, just clean, sanded-down edges and lacquered finishes. The production—handled by Barter’s husband, Oscar Dawson of the band Holy Holy—adds an early-2000s patina, giving the record the pleasing accessibility of teen classics like Avril Lavigne’s Let Go.
Hello, I’m Doing My Best often reads as a guidebook for young adults learning to navigate the world, and in that light, Barter’s no-bullshit lyricism is punkish and endearing. On “Ur a Piece of Shit,” for example, she gleefully calls on listeners to “put your hands up” for various messed-up teenage experiences, like “eating disorders,” “if a doctor touched you,” and “if it felt good to cut yourself.” In moments like these, Barter resembles a young Liz Phair, writing with a shamelessness that few songwriters since have really relished. Lines like, “I heard you like Tool, yeah/And you got really cool hair/And I think that you should be my boyfriend” feel directly indebted to Phair, and the chorus of “History of Boys” (“I used to get drunk and blackout/I used to get drunk and tell you I need you”), while hewing closer to pop than anything Phair wrote in her early days, owes its gutsiness to her.
It helps that Barter never lets a linear personal narrative define these songs. The only time she writes about her now-husband, on “Backseat,” she revisits a time before they met, hinting at the future by declaring that “we’d be perrrrrfect” alongside a grandiose Guitar Hero-style solo. “January,” a dejected highlight on an otherwise frenetic album, stops in at one of life’s Sisyphean checkpoints: the hope of magically becoming a better person come New Year’s Day. “I made it through the year again with Diet Coke and cigarettes,” she sings. It could be any year; life, Barter seems to say, runs on a loop, and despite all we think we’ve learned, no amount of personal growth is certain to prevent mistakes. Even hindsight rarely makes everything clear. At least Hello, I’m Doing My Best makes it sound like a blast.

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Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the lo-fi acoustic recordings of Roky Erickson, a rare glimpse at his stark and fragile songwriting.

Never Say Goodbye

The 13th Floor Elevators viewed their music as a healing force. If you weren’t consuming vast quantities of LSD, as the pioneering Texas band frequently did, their hallucinatory rock’n’roll, and Roky Erickson’s masterful performances still conspired to take the listener to a higher plane. A kind of spirituality existed in their music—escapist but communal. “We were known as the first psychedelic band, the first one to be able to play music that would make you see things if you wanted to, and then lay back and envision things like Dylan does,” Erickson said in 1975. “We were responsible for loosening up a lot of people.” His remarks were offered in one of the most lucid interviews of his lifetime, the first after his release from the Rusk Hospital for the Criminally Insane (since renamed Rusk State Hospital) in East Texas.
In 1969, near the end of the band’s brief but monumental run, Erickson was arrested atop Mount Bonnell in Austin for felony possession of a marijuana joint. To avoid 10 years in prison under Texas’ draconian drug laws, Erickson would later say he had feigned insanity. He was institutionalized for three years. “There’s injustice in justice,” Erickson said of his time in Rusk Hospital. “By the end of one day, you’ve already thought up ages of thinking. You’ve thought everything you could think in a million years.”
In his Elevators years, Erickson believed dropping acid was an art, a way to surround yourself with positivity. At Rusk, he was embedded in a world of the negative, given electroshock therapy and heavy sedatives. His fellow patients included convicted murderers; he started a band, the Missing Links, with some of them, and tried to overcome the daily nightmare of his situation. “Most of the time, Roky would have a yellow legal pad, and he’d be sitting in the hallway somewhere writing music, real weak and slumped down,” Rusk psychiatrist Bob Priest remembers in the 2005 documentary You’re Gonna Miss Me.
Erickson’s wife Dana brought him cigarettes, a television, and a 12-string guitar. At Rusk, he later reckoned, he’d written close to a hundred new songs. “It seems like I’ve broken through that,” he said when asked whether it was possible to surpass the Elevators in their prime. “I have 85 songs written, and as I write, I find out that I’m getting better instead of just writing something.” His mother, Evelyn, a talented singer who’d given her oldest son his first guitar lessons, pressed play on the recorder. Sitting across from her, he played her quiet, hymnlike compositions and some of the starkest, purest love songs he’d ever written, songs that would for the most part go unheard for nearly 30 more years, until the 1999 release of a lesser-known collection, called Never Say Goodbye, resurrected from these tapes and other home recordings from 1971 to 1985.
For Erickson, whose diagnosis of schizophrenia and early affinity for psychedelics too often overshadows readings of his songs, the question of where his music comes from tends to shortchange what it is. Dwell instead on what his art can do—the Elevators offered escapism, at Rusk music offered survival, and in the mid-’70s through the mid-’80s, it would be a catharsis. But in periods when music was not at the center of Erickson’s daily living, and when his schizophrenia went untreated, particularly during the late-’80s and ’90s, it became painfully clear to close friends and family that his well-being was in trouble. Over the course of his lifetime, which ended May 31 at the age of 71, the songs he wrote summoned equal parts deliverance and salvation, something he enacted in his music, perhaps more so for his listeners than he did for himself.
After Rusk, Doug Sahm got Erickson into the studio to record a single, “Starry Eyes,” a perfect jangling love song where Roky’s “you-hoo-hoo-hoo” echoes Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue-ooh-ooh.” “The very best ones are sent from heaven by Buddy Holly,” Erickson once said of his songs. “The rest take the better part of an afternoon to rip off.”
Sahm’s recording injected renewed vitality into Erickson’s career with his band the Aliens, with whom he recorded The Evil One in 1981, and two solo albums Don’t Slander Me, and Gremlins Have Pictures, both released in 1986. He called it his “horror rock” era—the period that yielded his great rockers of monsters and ghosts—“Night of the Vampires,” “I Walked With a Zombie,” “Creature with the Atom Brain.” Throughout the ’80s, he continued to write other new songs whose only recordings remained on the cassettes he made at home to remember them.
But by the early ’90s, when Casey Monahan—who later directed the Texas Music Office, a state-run agency to promote the industry—found his way into Roky’s orbit, Erickson was in poor health and bad financial straits. Through a series of raw deals typical of the recording industry for musicians of his generation, he was earning little to no money from his music. Monahan chanced to photograph Erickson in 1987 for The Austin-American Statesman in one of his last performances for some time. “My first encounter with him was oblique,” he emphasized to me recently. Sometime after, he became one of a series of people who helped resuscitate Erickson financially and spiritually, and became a key figure in the making of Never Say Goodbye.
By the mid-’90s, Roky was living on disability checks doled out in $20 increments by Evelyn and taking up residence in a partially subsidized apartment 10 miles south of Austin among a dozen radios and TVs tuned to various and conflicting stations and channels set to piercing volume. It was as if he’d recreated the cacophony of Rusk, minus the salve of music at its core. Covering the floor were more electronics and impulse purchases from home-shopping channels. The stillest point in the midst of this storm of noise was Roky.
One day, driving around town, Monahan asked Erickson if he might like to go back in the studio again. Roky was game. “Sure!” Erickson said genuinely, in what Monahan describes as a “high-pitched, nasally, not-yet-a-scream-yet-still-heard-three-aisles-over voice.” “Long as it’s fun!” Monahan gathered musicians Speedy Sparks, Paul Leary, Lou Ann Barton, and Charlie Sexton for the stellar 1995 album All That May Do My Rhyme, released by King Coffey’s Trance Syndicate label, which also put out another acoustic Erickson demo, the B-side “Please Judge.” “He was why I was even in this position in the first place,” Coffey, longtime drummer of the Butthole Surfers, wrote on Facebook, the night of Erickson’s death. “He invented Texas punk.”
In another effort to help restore Roky’s songwriting credits, Monahan gathered dozens of tapes and handwritten pages that had accumulated over Roky’s career, transcribing all of his lyrics for a collection eventually published, by Henry Rollins, as Openers II. Evelyn Erickson delivered some 40 songs, including her own recordings of her eldest son at Rusk.
For Monahan, these were a revelation, and they inspired the making of Never Say Goodbye. “I had a little cassette recorder with pitch control, and I hit play and I stopped, and played it again, and again, slowing it down, listening,” Monahan told me. He played the cassettes for Coffey’s longtime partner, now husband, Craig Stewart, who ran the label Emperor Jones. It was Stewart who heard an album in Roky’s rough cuts and lo-fi, deteriorating tapes. These artifacts were scattered over Stewart’s kitchen table for months, and with the help of Monahan, he pored over the music and assembled a collection of 14 songs recorded in the years 1971 to 1985—just Erickson and a guitar in a room, quiet and stirring and haunting and deceptively plain constructions.
What emerges as Never Say Goodbye feels like the record of a vast and deep wandering, a pilgrim embarking on a meandering search for connection. Erickson repeats and wrangles emotion out of the simplest lyrics (“I’ve never known this till now”) and turns out extraordinary phrases—a desire for “unforced peace,” what a concept. “The crescent silver moon is mine,” he sings on the title song, playing so tenderly you hear the guitar as rippling dark water. All his songs harbor gnomic, vivid truths, but “Be and Bring Me Home” is the album’s apex, with lyrics both enigmatic (“Her jewelry drops all its grime”) and weirdly astute (“I won’t jump on you though we are all rubber”) organized around a heartbreaking plea:

Suddenly my fireplace is friendly
Bringing me home
Suddenly I may control
Take little things meaning big so’s I’m not alone
Suddenly I’m not sick
Won’t you be and bring me home

“Someone is missing love,” Erickson sings, “and now that someone is going home.”
Absent on Never Say Goodbye is Erickson’s incandescent wolverine scream, the one he perfected on “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” the Elevators’ lone entry onto the pop charts. You could imagine a scream emerging on another version of say, his song “Birds’d Crashed,” in its driving and resolute affirmation: “We’re here, I’m here,” but it’s a gift to hear these in their original expression. The songs on Never Say Goodbye possess a faraway sound that feels deliberately metaphoric, as if they were issued from deep inside a tunnel, amplifying the loner quality of the seeker at the heart of it all. When tape hiss enters it feels like a welcome presence too, perhaps a validation of one of Erickson’s other indelible lyrics: “When you have ghosts, you have everything.”
On Scott Newton’s cover photograph of Erickson, he’s winsome and scruffy, wearing a corduroy jacket with a dog wandering at his heels and a guitar in hand. But the Roky Erickson who recorded most of these songs at Rusk was newly shorn and lost: “They cut my hair completely bald, just as mean as they could, and they put me in khakis,” he recalled after his release. “When I got there it was like, ‘Here comes this guy with long hair and a top hat.’ And they said, ‘Oh, boy. We got him. If I had been wearing a tuxedo it would have been just as bad.’” Listening, you envision a person not just piecing himself back together again, but shoring himself up against the world that would always tend to view his lyrics as outlandish. He knew he was an alien.
Never Say Goodbye’s impact was felt in tiny waves, reviewed by a handful of writers, including a much younger me, writing for a tiny zine in North Carolina, where a core of friends replayed “Pushing and Pulling” and “You’re an Unidentified Flying Object” and “Be and Bring Me Home” incessantly. When I moved to Austin not long after its release, it still felt to me like a city small enough where you might encounter your heroes. Idly, I paged through the phone book, looking up names. To my surprise, Roky Erickson was listed. Now I wish I’d torn out the page. I drove past the address, curious but too shy to call or to attempt to knock on the door.
The album itself is a survivor of strange and remarkable accidents. “The fact that he could make art like this—these beautiful, vulnerable love songs—when he’s inside a psychiatric hospital, to me that’s incredible,” Coffey told me recently. The fact the songs were recorded at all is a feat, too; that they were saved for years and salvaged and made known at all makes it even more impossible and rare. The fact that the youthfulness and the fragility of Roky’s voice is preserved here is astonishing. “Ten years later, when he had more management and was thinking about recording again, I don’t know if a record like this would have happened,” Coffey said. “At the time it was released, we thought he might never record again.”
For at least a decade, Erickson steadfastly refused to see a doctor or dentist. Eventually, in 2001, his youngest brother Sumner, managed to intervene and get him into medical care for the first time in at least a decade. Henry Rollins paid for Erickson’s new teeth. In the decade of Erickson’s final renaissance, he recorded an album with Okkervil River, including new versions of “Be and Bring Me Home,” “Think Of As One,” and “Birds’d Crash” from Never Say Goodbye.
“He was a pioneer,” Monahan told me, as if dictating an epitaph over the phone. “He stayed true to his music. He never compromised. He survived.” More importantly, he emphasized, Erickson was far more self-aware than people realized. “People projected their insanity onto him. A lot of people lived through Roky. They could feel a little less crazy because Roky was there.” And they could, one surmises, draw calmness from the visionary music of a person who wandered the edges of the world they didn’t dare explore themselves.
People close to Erickson do speak of how hard it was to help him when he was at his most troubled, but mainly of the innate goodheartedness he transmitted. “He occasionally seemed psychic, attuned to some dimension of the present that the rest of us weren’t seeing,” Will Sheff of Okkervil River wrote recently. Perhaps that is the condition of being truly psychedelic. “Special and magical music,” Erickson sings on “Be and Bring Me Home,” “these are feelings from one to another.”
In the ’90s, Monahan and other friends were part of a de-facto Roky Erickson supper club, taking him out to eat twice a week. One evening, when Monahan showed up, Erickson waved him away. “He was cheerful about it,” Monahan said. “He told us, ‘You know what, I’m not gonna go today, you guys go on without me. I’ll just be here relaxing for you!’ I mean, right? What a sweetheart, Roky. ‘I’ll be relaxing for you.’”


When Sigur R\xF3s' second full-length record, Agetis Byrjun, landed stateside in 2001, its extraterrestrial oozing was so unfamiliar (and ...

Takk

When Sigur Rós' second full-length record, Agetis Byrjun, landed stateside in 2001, its extraterrestrial oozing was so unfamiliar (and, subsequently, unnerving) to American ears that it managed to finagle a staggering number of meticulously rendered comparisons to glaciers and fjords and icebergs: By year-end, it seemed oddly plausible to presume that Sigur Rós' songs were actually being mouthed by giant mounds of snow. Something about Agetis Byrjun-- its celestial groping, its shimmers, its weird vastness-- seemed handcuffed to the landscape from which it was born. Thus, the mythology of Iceland-- of staggering literacy and longevity, of Björk, of Reykjavik, of volcanoes and fisheries and giant slabs of ice-- became the mythology of Sigur Rós. Unsurprisingly, domestic intrigue peaked almost immediately: The record's liner notes and cover-- a silver alien-baby hybrid boasting angel wings-- revealed precious little about its creation, and vocalist Jonsi Birgisson openly admitted to howling in an entirely self-fabricated language. In 2001, Sigur Rós were deliciously strange, the only sensible soundtrack to post-millennial comedowns, all future and faith, bones and blood and ice and sun, culled gently from an island far, far away.
In the years that followed, Sigur Rós released three EPs, reissued their debut, and popped out another full-length, the ever-contentious, unspeakable ( ). With each new record, the band dutifully maintained their trademark swells, bowing consistently before the altar of ebb and flow, until Sigur Rós began to sound less like an icecap melting and more like Sigur Rós. The mystery melted, the fascination faltered, and the animated, barstool retellings of The Sigur Rós Story died down. Still, Sigur Rós are more than just a conversation piece, meatier than their reputation, better than the otherworldly blubbers they're so casually accused of: With Takk, the songcraft that once made Agetis Byrjun everyone's favorite sunrise record re-emerges intact. Melodies stick, songs coalesce, and Sigur Rós lay off the grim theatrics, reminding listeners everywhere that they intend to play theaters, not funeral homes.
Ultimately, Takk is a warmer, more orchestral take on the band's defining sound, and easily their most instantly accessible record to date (shockingly, over a third of the album's songs clock in at under five minutes each.) The cheerless drones of ( ) are replaced by more bass, drums, piano, horns, and samples, strings are more prominent than ever before, and Birgisson's lyrics are especially incidental, all barely-audible squeals and sighs. Mostly, Takk is ecstatic, constantly erupting in funny little waves of joy. Dissenters who rejected Sigur Rós as the soundtrack to wrist-slittings everywhere might be temporarily perplexed by the band's new, wide-eyed giggles-- but mostly, Takk just sounds like Sunday morning Sigur Rós, all yawns and sleepy grins and quick yanks at the curtains.
"Glosoli" is the record's shining center, a rapturous, tinkling swirl, with Birgisson's high, squeaky howls (sounding perfectly thin and kitten-y) shooting through a thick, stomping mess of chimes and echoing guitar. The song builds slowly, finally bursting in a deafening explosion of heavily-distorted guitar slams (think, oddly, of Coldplay-- particularly the end of A Rush of Blood to the Head's "Politik"). "Glosoli" manages to be both ethereal and concrete at the same time, which is Sigur Rós most effective trick: "Glosoli" tempers its fRóst with curls of hot human breath, a tongue on an icicle, frozen and warm all at once. "Gong" is all antsy drums and careering guitar, while the steamy "Saeglopur" tiptoes from piano and tinny glockenspiel to a breathtaking vocal harmony, and, finally, an ominous swell of full-band noise, just deep enough to inspire some vicious head-nods, if not full-hip dancing. Elsewhere, the band falters. "Se Lest" and "Milano", the record's longest cuts, are both vaguely hollow-- "Se Lest" is too preoccupied with its own atmospherics, while "Milano" meanders without meaning.
Takk proves that Sigur Rós can, in fact, transcend their own legend: The tendency to descend into new age goo is still present, and Takk, like all of Sigur Rós' discography, is not for the viscerally-minded. Regardless, the record is more than just meaningless wisps. Crank it in the late summer heat and see if it melts.


The latest from prolific Danish producer Natal Zaks is a short album of blissed-out, ambient textures, but is no less immersive thanks to his deft sense of world-building.

Universel

With his debut album as DJ Sports, Milán Zaks was the first in Aarhus, Denmark’s Regelbau collective to make a splash beyond the crew’s homegrown network of DIY labels. But his brother Natal Zaks, best known as DJ Central, is right behind him. Together, the two producers have smudged Regelbau’s odd footprint while teasing out the intricacies of their 1990s house fixation, and on his own, Natal has been even more active than his brother. In addition to three EPs on Amsterdam’s influential Dekmantel label, he’s also been responsible for three of the best records to come from the collective to date, including the dreamy Basil EP for Help Recordings and the ambient breakbeats of “Drive,” with the Danish singer Erika Casier, on Regelbau itself—and that’s just a smattering of what he’s been up to.
With a new record for Jonny Nash’s Melody as Truth label, this time under his Palta alias, Natal Zaks reveals yet another side to his sound. Until now, his music has tended to be rooted in ’90s dance dialects like West Coast deep house or flickering electro/freestyle hybrids, but here he moves away from the dancefloor entirely, putting pulse over rhythm and atmosphere over melody. Just five tracks and 31 minutes long, Universel is essentially a mini-LP (a favorite format of Melody as Truth’s founder), but it’s still immersive and enveloping despite its brevity.
Universel’s opener is as far out as Zaks has ventured yet. With his synth tuned to an organ-like patch, a fistful of chords provides the watery backdrop to free-flowing drumming on deep, boomy toms; raindrop-like synth blips and the flicker of a ticking sprinkler lend to the misty air. There’s no discernible meter or tempo, just a wide arc of glistening pitter-patter scattered through the track. The freeform approach calls to mind the New York group Georgia’s “Ama Yes Uzume”; shorn of context, it would be easy to imagine it as something off a no-name new-age cassette thrifted from some remote town in the California redwoods.
With “Tabt Optagelse” (“Lost Recording”), Zaks locks into a steady, mid-tempo groove, loosely weaving shakers and hand percussion into a rippling approximation of a barefoot drum circle. This is as driving as the record will get, yet it still feels ambient: The synths are drifting and diffuse, and there’s no real separation between foreground and background. The percussion stretches out across the stereo field in such a way that it feels like you’re standing in the middle of a forest clearing, ringed by crickets and birdsong and gentle rainfall.
“På Gensyn” (“See You Again”) veers off piste once again, with brushed cymbals and bubbling arpeggios churning away while gravelly bass tones dive almost too low to register as actual notes. There’s no evidence of MIDI clock or any other kind of electronic timekeeping; in its accidental rumbling, it sounds like the collision of a weather system and a drum closet. “At Ville,” a gelatinous moiré of pulse and ping, is more rhythmic but similarly abstract; it sounds a little like a dubbed-out take on the ambient house Zaks records as Olo, with all the beats muted and the analog delay unit submerged in a bucket of soap bubbles. Only with the closing “Optagelse 16A” does Zaks return to the land of groove. It doesn’t take long for it to say pretty much everything it has to say, yet it keeps on rolling for nine and a half minutes, dubby and deeply tranquil; it’s less a song than an invitation to dissolve into Zaks’ fantasy world-building. He’s made other records that are more complex, more tuneful, and even more immediately satisfying, but when it comes to blissed-out, absent-minded reverie, Universel marks the sweet spot.


The rap supergroup meditates on the passage of time on their new LP. It possesses all the intimacy and nostalgia of a ’90s parking lot cypher between friends.

Previous Industries: Service Merchandise

Service Merchandise

One day, you’ll wake up aching for some undefined reason, perhaps a little hungover from the one glass of wine you had with dinner, and solemnly think to yourself, “Fuck, I’m old.” There is new stiffness in your hips from standing too long in less-than-sensible shoes, or driving around town and pointing out that a new business used to be a different one. Aging is weird and often painful, but it’s also fascinating, even hilarious. The years speed up exponentially until months pass in a blink, the time between sunrise and sunset shrinking down to nothing.
Open Mike Eagle, Video Dave, and STILL RIFT feel the passage of time in their bones. The Los Angeles via Chicago emcees who make up the new trio Previous Industries named their debut after a retail catalog that went bankrupt in 1999. Thumbing through it provided a specific kind of dopamine rush now lost to the ages. References to it abound throughout Service Merchandise—“I would not feel sad at all/If I could buy everything in the catalog,” sings Video Dave during the chorus of “Roebuck.” Most of the songs bear the name of a store you’d see in every mall in the United States before they became sad ghost towns, air conditioning and smooth jazz blasting in the emptied, echoing caverns of capitalism. But this isn’t just an album about how Gen Xers and elder millennials get misty-eyed when they think about Blockbuster. The trio uses nostalgia as a tool of examination, ruminating on the not-too-distant past in order to process the funny and sometimes heartbreaking process of getting older together.
The three rappers have such effortless chemistry that it’s hard to believe that Service Merchandise is their first group outing. They’ve been in each other’s orbit for a lifetime: Eagle and RIFT (originally Rift Napalm) met at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, forming the group PDX with fellow Chicago rapper Psalm One, which eventually absorbed into the legendary Nacrobats crew. Video Dave and Eagle first met in college at Southern Illinois University, forging a friendship and artistic bond that led to many collaborations and tours together (including work on Eagle’s TV series The New Negroes). During the pandemic lockdown, the three would gather at Eagle’s apartment for whiskey-fueled gaming and recording sessions, eventually compiling what would become Service Merchandise.
The album doesn’t stray too far from the hazy, inviting sound Eagle has mined for his last couple of releases. There’s a focus on street corner battle-tested rapping, the kind that places emphasis on the malleability of language and construction of unexpected wordplay; you can easily imagine them in a semi-circle, bobbing along to the beat, jumping in when it feels natural. Kenny Segal’s mixing keeps the vocals up front and mostly dry, giving the songs an immediate, inner monologue intimacy.
The rappers are all in top form, operating in specific but complementary lanes. All three rap with a singsongy lilt, channeling the thoughtful whimsy you’d find on early De La Soul or Jungle Brothers records. Eagle is a master of unpredictable, multisyllabic rhyme schemes, peppered with sly, offbeat humor; RIFT deconstructs concepts and rearranges them into a series of interconnected reference points (his four-bar riff about Wesley Snipes on “White Hen” is especially dazzling). Video Dave exudes a happy melancholy, his verses often digging through his memories to excavate personal truths. Most songs forgo hooks in favor of mic-passing, making the album feel like a loving homage to the nearly lost art of parking lot cyphers after the rap show.
Despite the deep influence of ’90s hip-hop culture, Service Merchandise isn’t hollow or throwback pastiche. Frequent OME collaborator Child Actor provides the lion’s share of the lush, trippy production, but Quelle Chris and Smoke Bonito’s beats are just as blurry. It’s as though they’re trying to recreate golden-era sounds armed with only the fog of memory and a faulty four-track. That loose, shaggy comfort allows the rappers to stumble upon moments of profound honesty and self-reflection. On the vaporous psychedelia of “Pliers,” RIFT issues a quick, devastating line about his drinking habits: “My vices love it when I grip them, and I know because they hold me back.” Dave gets wistful over a minor-key flute loop on “Fotomat,” turning a story of lying to his mother into a sober look at his conflict-avoidant tendencies. Eagle spends most of his closing verse on “White Hen”—an airy but lumbering boom-bap jam—questioning reality through a serpentine flow before declaring that he’s “the captain of a ship about to run in the ground.”
Listening to Service Merchandise often feels like being let in on a fast-moving group chat, the kind where inside jokes and grinning shit talk sit comfortably next to heartfelt vulnerability. Previous Industries is a group forged from genuine camaraderie; these guys really trust each other, letting their shared memories of campy ’80s movies and afternoons spent watching Nickelodeon lead into deep conversations about the nature of existence. It’s a record shaped by the joy of rapping with your friends, spitting lines that evoke some good-natured jealousy. But most of all, this music could only be made after acknowledging there are fewer years in front of you than behind.


J Dilla’s younger brother, Illa J, follows his 2008 Yancey Boys collection with Sunset Blvd., a record that features old Dilla associate Frank Nitt, a whole gang of Dilla-ites (Common, Talib Kweli), and another bumper crop of previously unreleased Dilla beats. It's the most joyous record we’ve seen from Dilla’s disciples since the producer’s death in 2006.

Sunset Blvd.

There’s a real irony in J Dilla’s legacy as a musician. The multitudes of producers influenced by the Detroit beatmaker’s sample chopping, drum-slicing ways have gone on to make some of the more progressive music out right now, to the point where Donuts, in its influence, can be seen as a beat record analogue to the influence of The Velvet Underground & Nico.  At the same time, those who have control over the Detroit producer’s actual trove of beats have burrowed further into themselves, making, for the most part, conservative, reactionary rap music.  The majority of posthumous releases featuring Dilla’s name have been stuffy at best, and at worst, stunted by a paralysis-inducing reverence that makes it impossible for the featured rappers to explore new territory.
One of the exceptions to that rule was the album Yancey Boys from Dilla’s younger brother, who goes by the name Illa J. The album worked, mostly because it was powered by a primo selection of early Dilla beats, but also due to Illa’s understated approach to lyrics. The key to the success of the Slum Village records that Dilla produced was T3 and Baatin’s willingness to let the beats carry the weight, keeping their rhymes light and fluffy. Illa J with typical younger sibling reverence, adhered to the same philosophy in 2008, and does so again on his new release Sunset Blvd., this time with old Dilla associate Frank Nitt representing as another member of the Yancey Boys and a whole gang of Dilla-ites along for the ride.
That the record features another bumper crop of previously unreleased Dilla beats goes a long way towards explaining its success. “Fisherman”, the first song on the album, is a wonderful example, turning on a beautiful loop which finds Dilla operating in California soul-tinged boom-bap. The beats here are mostly in that mold, warm counterpoints to the Fantastic-era Detroit beats, on which Dilla is subtly breaking out of the rigid boom-bap template in ways that hint at his unique ability to maintain control while working with a vast array of dynamic sounds. (Check, for instance, the way that the sampled cover of “Let the Sun Shine Is” is melded into different beats on “Jeep Volume.”)
Backpack rap like that featured on Sunset Blvd. is often stigmatized as rappity-rap, lyricism for lyricism’s sake that is often exhausting in its density. To the contrary, most of the verses featured on the record are golden-age throwbacks, the raps serving as little more than additional structure through which the loops reverberate. Dilla’s beats need space: the rappers here, most prominently Illa J (a much better rhymer than his brother was) are aware of that.
Then too, there are star turns from veterans sometimes thought to be over the hill: Talib Kweli has a beautiful feature on “Flowers”, and even in self-aggrandizing mode, Common delivers a verse that’s a reminder of the rapper he once was. The worst part of the record though comes from a third veteran, albeit one without the resume of those first two. Frank Nitt has trouble even blending into the background, so cringe-worthy are some of his rhymes and because he's an honorific Yancey Boy, he gets plenty screen time here. The worst attempt at simile on the record belongs to him (“spot you like you Spotify”) but there are plenty of candidates to choose from, and his instincts are still to pile on Dilla beatification which most of the other featured rappers thankfully avoid. The beats, after all, say everything that needs to be said.
Illa J has shown a penchant for straightforward soul in the past, and the slower tracks on the album sparkle. The handclap-happy “Rock My World” has the energy of early aughts B. Rich while Eric Roberson’s turn on the early cut “Lovin’ U” is an early indication of this project’s ambition in comparison to other recent Dilla projects. We get so used to hearing Dilla’s rap beats (there was a five-year time period when every rapper on the come-up would freestyle over “Lightworks”) that we sometimes take for granted the immensity of the musician we lost. Hearing how good his beats sound when turned to soul and R&B makes for a fresh reminder of Dilla’s immense talent, and the ways that it could have been shaped to all kinds of genres, how much he had to contribute to the wider world of music.
But Sunset Blvd. refuses to let itself be colored by regret. This is the most joyous record that we’ve seen from Dilla’s disciples since the producer’s death in 2006. By avoiding the tendency to wallow in the past or to define itself in opposition to contemporary rap, it joins the ranks of albums from Camp Lo and Black Milk, two other former backpack acts who updated their formula successfully this year, breaking free of the cliches that had held them back and making genuinely engaging hip-hop music.


The Los Angeles producer sticks to his habitual turf, crafting lo-fi drum workouts rooted in vintage house.

Slap Happy

Brandon Perlman is one of dance music’s most enigmatic characters. With an attitude that’s equal parts punk rock and gangster rap, the L.A. lo-fi producer better known as Delroy Edwards has often proven to be a cagey (and occasionally combative) figure, happy to take public potshots at his doubters. His aesthetics are heavily informed by classic Chicago house and vintage rap tropes; his alias’ namesake may or may not be a notorious Brooklyn gangster. That he is the son of veteran Hollywood actor Ron Perlman—a fact he didn’t publicly acknowledge until 2016—has only deepened the sense of mystery. His music hasn’t typically been much more forthcoming: Running from chopped-and-screwed rap to murky house and techno, it wears its tape hiss like a defensive shield.
Slap Happy doesn’t shed any new light on the Delroy Edwards persona. At its core, it’s a showcase of Perlman doing what he does best: making raw, stripped-down house tracks that strongly recall late-’80s/early-’90s Chicago house. For fans of his early output, such as his 2012 debut EP, 4 Club Use Only—a record that still stands as one of the defining releases of the L.I.E.S. label’s decade-long run—this will be fantastic news. Slap Happy incorporates a bit more R&B swing than we’ve come to expect from Perlman, but its eight tracks are linear, functional dancefloor cuts that lean heavily on vintage drum machines and classic house formulas. It’s easily  one of the most functional and DJ-focused records he’s ever done.
But Slap Happy is also one of Perlman’s least innovative releases in quite some time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—DJs need their tools—but it does represent a change for Perlman, who’s done all sorts of stylistic zig-zagging in recent years. Back in 2016, he released his long-awaited debut album, Hangin’ at the Beach, an ambitious 30-track odyssey through lo-fi rhythms and West Coast psychedelia. Since then, he’s dropped two more solo full-lengths (Rio Grande and Aftershock) and a couple of EPs, plus a desert-inspired experimental synth album with Dean Blunt, a collaborative EP of breezily funky house with fellow Angeleno Benedek (under the name Trackstars) and another collaborative record, Earth to Mickey, where he crafted synth pop alongside vocalist Mickey van Seenus.
Slap Happy doesn’t offer any intriguing collaborations, and half of its songs are essentially just drum tracks, yet the album has its charms. “Nitemare House” lives up to its title, its spooky synth line rising and falling over a sturdy (if unpolished) house rhythm as an ominous vocal sample (“You die”) repeatedly pops in and out of the mix. Much bubblier is “Rock This Beat,” a jaunty piano-house cut with a strutting bassline and enough canned horn and string sounds to give the whole thing a little symphonic flair. Album closer “I Am the One” might be one of Perlman’s goofiest tracks yet, although its rubbery, almost cartoonish bassline is held in check by the song’s insistently stamping beat.
If Slap Happy has one defining trait, it’s that the rhythms feel noticeably loose. While Perlman has never been the sort of producer who rigidly adheres to the grid, a lot of his past work has been strident, even aggressive. Here, however, the music feels more relaxed; even when the drums are hitting, there’s a laid-back sense of cool at work, most notably on the LP’s title track. On “Slap Happy,” Perlman does his best Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis impression, nodding to Janet Jackson’s 1986 hit “When I Think of You.” It’s still a house cut, but those silky synths and sweeping horn stabs just might constitute Perlman’s most pop moment yet.
Like many Delroy Edwards releases, Slap Happy is light on narrative, which likely limits its potential appeal, at least for those who don’t have a keen interest in gritty drum workouts. Depending on your perspective, it might be a slapped-together collection of underdeveloped sketches or an unedited creative burst from an artist ruled by instinct. What’s clear is that Perlman is in the midst of arguably the most prolific streak of his entire career, and seems content to simply follow his muse. For the rest of us, there’s pleasure to be found in sitting back and watching him work.


The much-loved Liverpool band has its brief career stretched to four CDs by including singles, B-sides, demos, radio sessions, and live stuff.

Callin' All

Do the La's really need a box set? This is a band that produced one self-titled LP in 1990 before their melodically gifted but cantankerous leader Lee Mavers declared he'd never release another record. Nevertheless, a few La's reunite live every couple of years, sparking rumors about new material...that never materializes. If nothing else, the optimistically titled and lavishly packaged Callin' All suggests that their record company has finally accepted what fans realized at least a decade ago: The cow’s run dry.
Supposedly, Mavers has squirreled away songs in the intervening years, but he doesn't share his stash here. In fact, the band didn't cooperate in any way on Callin' All. How then does Polydor/Universal fill four CDs? There's about a disc and a half worth of material fans might legitimately want, including all of the band's singles and B-sides and some decent demos that never made it into the studio. Then there are six versions of the La's one big cross-border hit. With its hooks, jangle, and now-iconic guitar intro, "There She Goes" is an undeniable classic. The La's render it with such gentle, genuine wonder (about a girl or smack, to name the best-supported theories), that 20 years on the song still gets play whenever an evocation of non-specific longing is needed. And, admittedly, the overproduced album track has aged badly, making a demo or two welcome. But six? "Timeless Melody", the band's truest statement of purpose, appears eight times, "Son of a Gun" six, "I.O.U." four, and so on.
The La's were a superb live act, and two of the set's discs round up concert and radio recordings. This might be cool if the same or similar material hadn't been available online for years for free or if the record company hadn't already released the definitive La's live collection, BBC in Session, in 2006. "Never before or since the La's has there been so much fascination and reverence for a band with so slender an output," journalist Will Hodgkinson opines hyperbolically in a glossy booklet  padded with oversized photos and a month-by-month timeline of the band's active run. If this sounds like the bottom of the barrel being scraped, it is.
But even a disingenuous cash-grab can provide an opportunity for historical reflection. The La's one album is a near-perfect synthesis of scouse skiffle, early American rock'n'roll, and British Invasion sounds. Mavers had a genuine talent for earworms and economical song construction, and if he'd tried harder to play well with others instead of pissing them off, bassist John Power might have contributed more like the exceptional jangle-stomper "Alright" (two live versions of which make the box set).
Great art, the prevailing theory on the subject goes, forces the artists who follow it to think differently. By that definition, the La's aren't great, or even very good; Britpop, for example, would have happened regardless, in much the same way. For record companies, of course, great=profitable, and Universal would have consumers believe that the short-lived La's were the greatest band that never really was if it means they can sell the same material over and over. But you know what? Fuck greatness. It never adequately quantifies the intense relationship fans have with certain songs or the way they make them feel. On these terms, the La's own a small, glorious pop legacy. Bypass the bloated $60 set and buy their $12 album.


It's rare that a pop history footnote looms as large as the figures she's meant to support, but then again, Betty Davis is one hell of a footnote.

Malcolm Gladwell groupies can tell you all about "connectors," roaming person-to-person hubs that link disparate corners of society. Well, in the late 1960s, Betty Davis-- then Betty Mabry-- was the link connecting such luminaries as Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and Miles Davis, the latter ultimately contributing his last name through a relatively short but tumultuous marriage. His 1968 album *Filles de Kilimanjaro* features then-model Betty on the cover; the track "Mademoiselle Mabry" was

Betty Davis: Betty Davis / They Say I'm Different

Betty Davis / They Say I'm Different

It's rare that a pop history footnote looms as large as the figures she's meant to support, but then again, Betty Davis is one hell of a footnote.
Malcolm Gladwell groupies can tell you all about "connectors," roaming person-to-person hubs that link disparate corners of society. Well, in the late 1960s, Betty Davis-- then Betty Mabry-- was the link connecting such luminaries as Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and Miles Davis, the latter ultimately contributing his last name through a relatively short but tumultuous marriage. His 1968 album Filles de Kilimanjaro features then-model Betty on the cover; the track "Mademoiselle Mabry" was inspired by her.
As legend has it, Miles grew jealous of Betty's friendship with Hendrix (which Miles allegedly suspected may have been more than that), but Betty's place in the middle of this intersection of geniuses apparently resulted in more than just divorce filings. By popular account, it was Betty who turned Miles on to Sly and Jimi, which in turn may have been the catalyst for Miles' most radical musical evolution: the still awe-inspiring Bitches Brew, released in 1970, a year after his separation from Betty.
Betty Davis' own response was her self-titled 1973 debut, a groundbreaking slab of funk that featured a huge hunk of the Family Stone (it was produced by drummer Greg Errico) and fused soul, sex, and hard rock like the best Sly or Funkadelic disc, albeit from a female perspective. But if George Clinton waved his freak flag proudly, Betty Davis wore it as underwear then rubbed your face in it. An oft-quoted passage in Miles Davis' autobiography gets it just right: "If Betty were singing today she be something like Madonna, something like Prince, only as a woman," wrote Davis back in 1989. "She was the beginning of all that when she was singing as Betty Davis."
No doubt. Betty Davis never gives up in its aim to seduce and destroy; songs like "If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up", "Ooh Yeah", and "Game is My Middle Name" are raw and relentless in their intent. Then-Afrophile nympho Brian Eno might have called it Music for Fucking, though the semi-classic "Anti Love Song" is music for fucking with, specifically fucking with a former lover many suspect is Miles, but who might as well be any man stupid enough to do Betty wrong (in every sense).
Davis' part banshee/part Amazon shriek isn't the smoothest delivery system for seduction, but it does get the point across. Supposedly it was Marc Bolan who encouraged Davis to write her own songs, and there's no question Davis understood the best way for her to perform them was to wail like she was about to bite someone's head off.
As underscored by Oliver Wang's informative liner notes (drawn in part from one of the only interviews Davis has consented to in the last several decades), Davis' ever-growing sense of empowerment played a part in her decision to self-produce her 1974 record, They Say I'm Different. While the self-titled disc's band (which also included Neal Schon on guitar and future disco queen Sylvester on backing vocals) was dissolved, the sound remained mostly the same, and Davis' outré sexuality just as out there.
On "He Was a Big Freak", she essentially spars with a lover over who is freakier: the whipped or the whip-wielder. "Git In There" is house party in progress. The defensive title track finds Davis casting herself against her grandfather's more traditional blues favorites, while "Don't Call Her No Tramp" makes a distinction between an "elegant hustler" and a hooker (according to Wang, the song drew the ire of the NAACP for its "demeaning" depiction of black women). It's a slightly slicker album than its predecessor, but no less unreserved.
Yet despite the fact that these albums drip with personality, Betty Davis remains something of an enigma. Her catalog (including a short but confusing and uneven string of follow-ups to They Say I'm Different) have gone in and out of print over the years, while the singer herself is reportedly living in Pittsburgh, broke, bemused but largely ignoring the attention her brief career continues to garner.
And no wonder: Light in the Attic claims Davis never received any royalties from previous releases. Without steady checks coming in, what's cult fame even worth? Better to just keep on keeping on and let other folks parse out the legacy, but hopefully these reissues will remedy the situation. Anyone whose albums sound as electric as ever over 30 years late deserves more than Davis has received.


The Perth punks are more interested in recording immediate, energetic punk rock than becoming experimentalists, and they’ve certainly nailed the former.

Hot and Flustered

The short catalog of Australian punks Cold Meat reads like a series of dirty little jokes. There’s the band name, which brings to mind damp bologna slices; their equally unappetizing 2018 EP Pork Sword Fever; and their 2016 7" Jimmy’s Lipstick—Jimmy being drummer Charlotte Thorne’s dog, and his lipstick being… well, you can probably figure that out. But the Perth four-piece are advocates of rage as much as lewd humor. The band’s debut LP Hot and Flustered is 23 caustic minutes of punk rock so corrosive it threatens to melt your AirPods.
Across 10 clipped tracks, lead screamer Ashley Ramsey takes aim at star signs, ZZ Top, and music industry execs—perhaps the kind that self-isolate on their superyachts. Backed by a simple triad of guitar, bass, and drums, Ramsey spares none of them. On “Women’s Work,” she weaponizes the fed-up housewife: “Morning tea and lunch is packed/Her husband is a lazy prat,” she shouts, spitting in his food for good measure. “She’s got better things to do than cook and clean up after you!” It’s as if Betty Draper had bulldozed her house and recorded a punk song standing atop the rubble.
Ramsey has many bones to pick throughout Hot and Flustered, but on opening track “Piscies Crisies” her beef is with the astrology revival. She recalls being “lost in a fog” and weeping at the supermarket, wishing she had answers. When she cries “blame it on Mercury!/blame it on Jupiter!” she’s being sarcastic, mocking those who do put faith in the stars—yet she seems envious, too, of the calm that faith might offer. You just can picture her kicking over an entire rack of Cosmo in frustration.
Cold Meat’s sense of humor is what saves them from the trappings of self-serious street punk, but it’s Ramsey’s outrage that keeps their blood pumping. Her voice—sometimes shrill and squeaky, otherwise coarse and phlegm-flecked—sets Cold Meat apart from the swarm of punk revivalists. It’s not that she’s pioneered a new style of singing (we might credit Ari Up and Crass’ Eve Libertine), but her fierce conviction makes it fresh. Cold Meat’s musical arrangement, however, doesn’t do much to rejuvenate the genre. Guitarist Kyle Gleadell and bassist Tim Guthrie deliver the requisite distortion and feedback in a capacity that doesn’t outshine Ramsey, but doesn’t exactly push the envelope, either. Cold Meat appear more interested in recording immediate, energetic punk rock than becoming experimentalists, and they’ve certainly nailed the former.
Oddly enough, Hot and Flustered’s standout track is its most melodic and least expected. “Beach Photography” drags climate deniers and their bogus evidence: “If you have some time to browse my beach photography you’ll see the water levels aren’t on the rise,” Ramsey shouts, as if unveiling Exhibit A, her Instagram account. We’ve all met these people, whether online or at Thanksgiving, and Ramsey’s ability to personify an opposing political standpoint helps her steer clear of cheesy punk protest territory. It’s a surprising display of restraint from the band who recorded “Meat Joy”—but Cold Meat have much more than shock value on their mind.


The pop survivor shows off her powerhouse voice, dabbles in try-hard slang, and takes tentative steps toward creative rebirth on her first album since 2012.

Liberation

The 2010s have been an uncertain decade for Christina Aguilera. The first ten years of her career saw her shapeshift from Delia’s catalog realness to her provocative “Xtina” persona to drama-club queen bee and back. But she kicked off the current decade by covering Marilyn Monroe and reinterpreting Marilyn Manson for Burlesque, one of the campiest pop-star vehicles this side of Glitter. Her most recent album, 2012’s Lotus, was a non-starter featuring two of her fellow coaches of “The Voice,” Cee-Lo Green (pre-date rape allegations) and Blake Shelton. (She’d already reached No. 1 with the fourth member of their inaugural cohort, Adam Levine, thanks to her guest appearance on Maroon 5’s 2010 hit “Moves Like Jagger.”) Lotus was supposed to be a rebirth, but it faltered. Entertainment Weekly called its first-week sales “the sad trombone at the end of [Aguilera’s] comeback.”
The rollout of her eighth album, Liberation, suggests she’s done selling anything that doesn’t fit into her true vision of herself: She posed without makeup on the cover of Paper magazine, and her cover art is similarly stripped down. And the album is, at the very least, a reminder that—holy shit—she can sing. As contemporary radio continues to favor lighter vocal performances from artists like Halsey and Charlie Puth, Aguilera’s powerhouse voice remains the nucleus of her sound, even when she’s tinkering with trap tropes and try-hard slang.
Are those moments a total bummer? Absolutely. “Pipe” includes lyrics like, “I just left a lituation popping by the High Line/Walked in, no list, fuck a go sign,” and, “Got a couple secrets that I'd really love to see if you could keep/Damn, boy, you remind me of my Jeep.” In 2018, “lituation” is a word for children and the cast of “Jersey Shore,” and R. Kelly references belong only in a trash compactor. The album’s Kanye West-produced lead single, “Accelerate,” is equally unconvincing; crackly vocals from the usually hefty-voiced Ty Dolla $ign do it no favors.
Aguilera’s 2010 album, Bionic, featured cutting-edge singles like “Woohoo”—an ode to oral sex featuring Nicki Minaj—and “Elastic Love,” which was co-written by guest vocalist M.I.A. (And this was nearly two years before Madonna enlisted both Minaj and Maya for “Gimme All Your Luvin’.”) The sound of Bionic was perhaps too forward-thinking, a risk that could have reaped the rewards of poptimism if the album had only been released a few years later. Liberation isn’t completely devoid of progressive moments: “Like I Do” is one spot where contemporary pop fare suits Aguilera. D.C. rapper GoldLink, who had his first real crossover hit with last year’s “Crew,” delivers a verse that confirms her continued relevance in hip-hop; his reference to her 1999 debut single, “Genie in a Bottle,” is a tidy hat-tip to the double meaning of Aguilera singing a can’t-do-it-like-me track.
And most people can’t. The ballad “Deserve” is confessional and explicit—“Sometimes I don't think I deserve you/So I say some fucked-up shit just to hurt you,” she sings—resulting in one of her strongest showings on the album. Early interlude “Searching for Maria” finds Aguilera singing operatic a cappella while invoking “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” from The Sound of Music, followed by a full track called “Maria” (produced by West and Hudson Mohawke) that Aguilera says is about finding her true self. “[It’s] about feeling as if I've gotten really far removed from myself and unable to feel good about looking in the mirror, because I don't feel like I'm connected with my truth,” she told Paper.
“Maria” also marks the beginning of a triptych of album highlights. “Sick of Sittin’” has writing and production credits from Anderson .Paak and wouldn’t be out of place in his personal catalog (save for the lyric, “It’s good pay, but it’s slavery,” which sounds a little tone-deaf in context). “Fall in Line,” a duet with Demi Lovato, is a confidence booster without melodrama. The singers proclaim their refusal to be silenced while screwed chants from an ersatz drill sergeant instruct them, “Left two, three, right, two, three/Shut your mouth, stick your ass out for me.” These are sturdy moments on an album that feels less like an end in itself than a promising first step toward a genuine pop rebirth—moments that are strong enough to inspire hope for Aguilera’s own The Velvet Rope or, at least, My Love Is Your Love. She has certainly still got the range.


Another relatively stripped-down album featuring the titanic voice of Florence Welch is troubled by its overwhelmingly beige production.

High as Hope

In 2011, The Guardian coined the phrase “the New Boring” to describe the creeping malaise the UK charts led by Adele and Ed Sheeran and their ballads and sales. Like quicksand, the New Boring devoured promising vocalists like Jessie Ware, post-“Latch” Sam Smith, and Katy B into the adult-contemporary drears. By then, Florence and the Machine had released one album (2009’s Lungs) and were gearing up for another (Ceremonials). But despite working with Britain’s finest purveyors of boring, such as “Rolling in the Deep”’s Paul Epworth, they seemed immune.
Say what you will about the gale-force drama of Lungs or the Pre-Raphaelite witching of Ceremonials: they were never boring. Florence Welch’s vocals—the oft-maligned but best part of her band—make that difficult. In Welch’s voice, “Shake It Out” or “Drumming Song” really do sound like cosmic destruction is afoot due to, respectively, a hangover or a crush shifting his feet slightly. Hers is a massively influential voice, too; almost all the so-called “indie voice” affectations of today’s pop stars either come from Sia or Florence Welch at small scale. Even her dance phase with Calvin Harris worked: Who better to convey EDM’s big, unsubtle emotions than the high priestess of big, unsubtle emotions herself?
Where there’s EDM excess, there’ll probably be a sedate comedown one album later—or, in Florence and the Machine’s case, two of them. High as Hope, like predecessor How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful and the group’s MTV Unplugged stint, is supposed to be Welch’s requisite stripped-down, personal album. Unlike How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, it actually has a claim. She’s credited as a producer for the first time. The rafter-shaking anthems still exist, but they’re less often belted but delivered conversationally, like a frank chat with a friend who just happens to chat at top decibel. A couple songs attempt to be piano ballads before the big gospel choruses claw their way out of the arrangements. It’s a Florence and the Machine album with a track called “No Choir,” which says it all.
It’s also a Florence and the Machine album with every song produced with Emile Haynie, which also says it all. Like Jeff Bhasker or Alex da Kid, Haynie has a signature style: enormous ballads made of dusty air, like the dregs of Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die or multiple Eminem ballads. It’s boring as bombast. Some artists can make that work, like FKA twigs, who knows how to work with space, or Kanye West’s “Runaway,” which is meant to sound empty. But Florence and the Machine are a terrible fit.
“South London Forever” shows how the two producers are at odds. Welch is relatively sprightly for someone with her vocal heft, surveying her old drinking grounds with the wry eye of early Laura Marling. Haynie, characteristically, tries to turn the track into an anthem, piano and percussion chugging along as if on uphill roller-coaster rails. Nobody wins: Welch provides no anthem while Haynie unendingly hurries her along toward one.
Attempted anthems abound. “Grace,” an apology for the mess Welch left her little sister, begins with the Rachel Getting Married-esque “I’m sorry I ruined your birthday” and reflects amid jazzy restraint—but then, in come the choirs, because of course they do. The same for Patti Smith tribute “Patricia;” the same for “100 Years,” or “June,” a glum song about a high. Even when the swells work, they feel overly familiar and formulaic—particularly on an album with a smaller lyrical scale. Welch’s songwriting falls from the clouds of heady, sumptuous myth to the mundanities of being a big-name musician: performing (it’s lonely), fame (it’s hollow), and, too frequently, songwriting itself (it’s hard). But for every bracing moment like, “At 17, I started to starve myself”—the opening line of single “Hunger,” which Welch considered deleting for too much candor—there’s an abstraction like, “I felt nervous in a way that can’t be named” or a faux-profundity like, “I don’t know anything except that green is so green.”
The less allegorical Welch gets, the less she gets away with airiness. And while her subject matter is more direct, her melodies are more meandering, unmoored from structure. This wandering works for a memory piece like “South London Forever,” but elsewhere, verses stumble aimlessly around choruses to the point where three-and-a-half-minute songs like “Hunger” feel twice their length. At times they don’t seem like songs, perhaps since some weren’t supposed to be: “Hunger,” according to Welch, was conceived as a poem, perhaps one meant for her forthcoming Useless Magic collection. This explains a lot.
There are tracks to like here. The first half of “Grace” is coolly understated and could be affecting if only it continued in this vein. “Big God” brings in Jamie xx on writing, and the difference is immediately obvious. The song’s ominous piano line, storm-cloud strings, and smoldering sax from Kamasi Washington (who plays throughout) provide tumult worthy of Florence and the Machine’s highest drama. The track sounds like it comes from a more ambitious album, where Florence and the Machine still do what they still do best: blowing little everyday feelings to the scale of the Book of Revelation. More often, though, Welch sounds content and resigned, recollecting the stormy Saturdays of the past with a Sunday-morning penitent’s shrug and a born-again sigh. How small, how beige, how disappointing.


On his latest, the drill legend stays true to his core: tales of trauma and paranoia that feel like watching him argue with a therapist through a crack in the door.

PTSD

G Herbo lives two lives. To some, the 24-year-old is simply a famous ex-boyfriend, an inescapable figure in the culture surrounding the Instagram-based rumor mill The Shade Room, which has closely documented his messy and complicated relationship with the IG-famous influencer Ari Fletcher (he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery earlier this year). At this point, I’m sure VH1’s Love & Hip-Hop would write Herb a blank check to let cameras into his life. But G Herbo doesn’t need reality television—at least, not right now—because he also happens to be a rapper that has helped shape the last decade of hip-hop.
In 2012, a 16-year-old Herb released “Kill Shit” alongside Lil Bibby, a breathless marathon about trauma, pain, and Chicago life that helped lay the foundation for drill, arguably rap’s premier subgenre of the 2010s. By the time Herb was 18 years old, he had a classic Chicago mixtape and multiple street-level hits—his 2012 single “Gangway” has become timeless, so much so that Lil Uzi Vert flipped it into his comeback track “Free Uzi” last year. If Herb didn’t release another song past his teenage years, his legacy would remain, but his transition into the major-label rap cycle has been seamless.
PTSD, G Herbo’s latest album, is proof that of his two lives, his rap half still takes precedent. Over glossier, high-budget production than usual and alongside a handful of rap’s biggest names, PTSD stays true to Herb’s core: first-hand tales of living with trauma and paranoia and failing to overcome that trauma and paranoia with drugs and success. He tells his stories in a fiery, deep voice, emphasized by a chilling album cover, which replaces the American flag’s 50 stars with faces of friends that he’s lost.
From the Don Cannon-produced intro, which samples JAY-Z’s classic (and basement freestyle standard) intro to The Dynasty, Herb learns that the hardest battle is with himself. “Ain’t no lil bitty pill just gon’ heal a man/He can’t chill, he need a pill, guess he too militant/Oh, you just like us, they robbed you of your innocence, huh?” he raps, in a rapid-fire delivery that could be air-dropped into ’00s Harlem. Listening to Herb on the intro (and for much of the album) is like watching him argue with a therapist through a crack in the door.
But Herb’s stories come to life when he has a partner to bounce off of. On “Party in Heaven,” alongside fellow former drill staple Lil Durk, the pair reflect over a beat chilly enough for a Drake time-and-location track. On “Lawyer Fees,” his rapping is so passionate he begins to swerve offbeat, interrupted only by Polo G’s grim hook: “Demons in my head, and I trip every time them voices speak.” Eeriest of all is the Juice WRLD-assisted “PTSD”: “I made it on my own, they said I’d be in jail or dead/I’ve seen my brothers fall over and over again/Don’t stand too close to me, I got PTSD,” wails Juice. It’s a bleak song made even more so by Juice WRLD’s recent death, but there’s still a world where you can imagine it being catchy enough to fit within Hot 97’s daily rotation.
PTSD’s missteps arrive when the album jettisons Herb’s rawness and begins to feel like any other album with access to major-label pockets. “Shooter” doesn’t sound like a G Herbo song; it’s like a record executive pieced together his vocals and tacked on a Jacquees chorus without Herb’s knowledge. The same could be said for the BJ the Chicago Kid-featuring “Gangstas Cry,” which is sappy, a tone Herb normally avoids.
“Feelings” feels like the unification of Herb’s two worlds. He balances his demons (“I got diagnosed but I don’t want no crazy pills,” he admits) with reflections on his highly publicized relationship. “Talked to my kid mom today, that was kinda hard/Sick of all the drama in my life, we ain’t gotta start,” says Herb. It’s the type of honest and thoughtful song that directly connects PTSD to his early raps like “Kill Shit,” as Herb refuses to become yet another artist known more for headlines than their music.


On his latest album, the Massachusetts rapper recognizes the value of sticking to a formula and gently retooling what works instead of drawing attention to what doesn’t.

Just for You

Cousin Stizz can hardly believe he’s made it this far. The Massachusetts rapper’s songs exist within a strict binary, bouncing between party anthems and clear-eyed reflections on his scrappy Dorchester upbringing. No matter what story he’s telling, it’s sold with a preternatural cool, like that fun-loving relative you spend an extra half-hour smoking gas with before Thanksgiving dinner. “Shoutout,” the breakout single from Stizz’s 2015 debut Suffolk County, helped him land a deal with RCA Records in 2016. And though he’s never produced a chart-topping single, his unassuming demeanor has cemented his status as a hometown hero for one of rap’s most underrepresented regions.
Stizz has since parted ways with RCA and reclaimed his independence. Just for You could’ve been an excuse for him to push boundaries as a result. But after some ill-advised experiments on 2017’s One Night Only, he’s self-aware enough to recognize the value in gently retooling what works instead of drawing attention to what doesn’t. So the formula goes unchanged here. “When shit get real, from the pavement to roof/Summer showers, winter snows; count fans at the shows,” he raps on opener “Save the Day,” his disbelief shining just bright enough to briefly betray his slick persona.
At their best, Stizz’s raps create the illusion of intimacy without giving the plot away. On early single “Blessings,” he raps a quick aside about moving drugs to buy cars before the story ends abruptly. He can get specific—namedropping Boston streets like Talbot Avenue on “Save the Day” and neighborhoods like Savin Hill on “Guts & Glory”—while also establishing boundaries on what he’s willing to reveal: the subjects and tales of brothers-in-arms songs like “Look Both Ways” and “RIP Bro” remain nameless. These moments are very “if you know, you know,” amplifying the intrigue of his story but being just removed enough for a listener to graft their own experiences onto it.
This calculated remove backfires when there’s less personality in the writing. Bars like “I came from nothin’, I mean that/I got their neck where my feet at/That shit was all for the mean bag,” from “After the Buzzer,” land because of their choppy delivery, not for their clever wordplay. “Stone” and “MIA” are full of bland flexing that could’ve come from any rapper with a YouTube account, the lyrics outshined by the Kal Banx beats that propel them. Stizz’s charisma—his sheer commitment to gliding over all others with a diamond-encrusted Dreamworks smirk— saves these songs, which is a testament to his skills as a performer.
Stizz’s production ear keeps Just for You bouncing along. He’s comfortable over a range of beats, including the shimmering drums and vocal sample on “Blessings,” produced by Tee-WaTT and M. Ali, and the gloomy sonics of “LBS,” co-produced by Stizz’s longtime collaborator Snapz. Boston rapper-producer Latrell James bends ticking 808s around neon-drenched synths that give the rags-to-riches tale of “Guts & Glory” a sleek nightlife glamour. Stizz’s toasts to the homies and career aspirations hit harder thanks to the album’s handsome production.
Though he has yet to break through the industry’s glass ceiling, Stizz has built himself a respectable independent career. He’s philosophically aligned with a kindred spirit like New Orleans stalwart Curren$y, who happens to be Just for You’s only guest. On closing track “Star Power,” they address paranoia and sudden failure from opposing perspectives, with Stizz’s fears temporarily getting the best of his good fortune: “The glass ain’t half-full here, it’s half-broken.” He’s used to good things disappearing suddenly and refuses to rest on his laurels, but that doesn’t mean he’s above giving his base exactly what they want.


Efficient and impersonal, the rock band’s latest album is filled with sunny-side platitudes and peppy tempos that scan as forced fun.

Keep On Smiling

Two Door Cinema Club haven’t been shy about changing with the times. On their 2010 debut, Tourist History, the Northern Ireland trio embodied a transitional era of indie rock, packaging the youthful pluck of Vampire Weekend and Arctic Monkeys with the tightly wound post-punk guitars that ran through so much UK indie during the ’00s. Over subsequent albums, however, their sound has evolved in tandem with the tastes of alt-rock radio programmers. They’ve ironed away the rumpled edges of their debut in favor of polished dance-rock, following in the footsteps of acts like Glass Animals by leaning into synthesizers and putting a slick, contemporized spin on ’80s pop influences. Consider them, if you will, farm-system indie: a band that presents as indie while positioning themselves for something greater, in hopes that with the right break or a licensable-enough song they might get called up to the alt-rock majors.
So far that hasn’t happened for Two Door Cinema Club—the group’s steady streams have never translated into real radio support—but they’re close enough to the piñata that you understand why they keep swinging. Recorded with assistance from the Killers/Bloc Party producer Jacknife Lee, a studio pro as synced to alt-radio’s wavelength as any, the band’s fifth album, Keep On Smiling, revels in the sounds of the moment, even as it ostensibly calls back to the New Wave funk of Talking Heads and INXS. It’s a record as efficient and impersonal as a frozen yogurt shop on the street level of a mixed-use condo development.
True to its title, Keep On Smiling keeps its chin up, with songs about the good old times and the even better ones that lay ahead. “We say it all of the time, the time is now, it’s now or never,” singer Alex Trimble cheers on “Wonderful Life.” The Portugal. The Man-flavored bounce of “Lucky” is similarly fit for pool playlists. But as fixated as these songs are on the bright side, they’re never all that convincing. While the group comes through as usual with hooks, Keep On Smiling’s sunny-side platitudes and peppy tempos scan as forced fun.

This mix doesn’t do these songs any favors, either. They’re imbalanced, too heavy on chirping guitars and reedy synthesizers, which along with Trimble’s falsetto tips them toward the shrill side. They beg for some thicker low end to cut through the treacle, and maybe just a hint of darkness to temper their artificial sweetness. Trimble’s cadence, meanwhile, borrows heavily from David Byrne, especially on the “Burning Down the House”-esque “Everybody’s Cool.” But those echoes of Talking Heads only underscore how desperately he lacks Byrne’s wild edge or cutting view of the world. If anything, these songs tout living the very unexamined life that Byrne’s used to mock. Keep On Smiling’s glossy veneer never disguises its particle-board center.


A composer and singer/songwriter who joined Dirty Projectors for the tour behind 2012's Swing Lo Magellan, Bell moved to Alaska from the Soviet Union when she was younger. Край (Krai) is a dizzy collision of her past and her present, occupying a middle ground between Russian folk song, chamber music, and avant-garde rock music.

Край (Krai)

Край (Krai) is Olga Bell's fond tribute to backwaters, to half-forgotten towns.  In Russian, the album title means "edge" or "limit", referring to the areas away from cities and cultural centers where you can walk into a kitchen and find your grandparents' culture still very much alive. Bell's album, written entirely in Russian, evokes crowded rooms where the air is thick with unfamiliar food smells, where heated conversations you can't quite follow take place in a language you no longer quite remember.
A composer and singer/songwriter who joined the ranks of Dirty Projectors for the tour behind 2012's Swing Lo Magellan, Bell moved to Alaska from the Soviet Union when she was younger. Край (Krai) is a dizzy collision of her past and her present, a meeting space where the oldest sounds she knows haunt the music she makes now. The result occupies some gnarly middle ground between Russian folk song, chamber music, and avant-garde rock music.
The album is a stirring collection of strange, thrilling noises where it's difficult to know, exactly, what is going on at any given moment. Vibraphones and glockenspiel melt into synthesizers, and Bell's vocals dip, moan, and smear into lower registers with the help of pitch-shifting software. You can imagine you're hearing some of the Knife's last album in the blur, Holly Herndon's work with the sound of human breath caught in a digital blender, or an artfully curdled, Cubist take on Bell's current band.
Bell scored the album for a colorful menagerie of instruments; cello, mallet percussion, guitar, electric bass, and more sample and more crawl across its surface. The instruments sound suspended on some steep dunking line between past and present that Bell's located—new sounds plunge into the deep and come up old, and old sounds become freshly strange. The synth on "Stavropol Krai" strongly resembles a wailing clarinet; on "Krasnoyarsk Krai", the vibes and glockenspiel tinkle in a minor key above a throbbing cello and Bell's ghostly, pitched-down vocals. A chiming electric guitar picks up the figure the vibes were playing and carries them around, dropping them all over the surface of the music like pulverized glass.
Bell's voice, spread across in various octaves, plays the role of every single townsperson of every krai in her memory. Her multitracked vocals spread out to every corner of the mix. Many of the lyrics, translated into English, probe the feeling of being forgotten or left behind: "God's too high for us/Moscow's far too distant," she laments on "Primorsky Krai". "Kransnador Krai" tells the story of a Cossack warrior riding home on an old path: "Ancestral glory is gone/ New people are here/ Not a pleasant thought." The "blinking township lights" on "Krasnoyarsk Krai" are, implicitly, seen from a distance—and distance is what Bell is working to close on Край (Krai). Her mesmerizing, eventful, and strange album brings these remote voices close enough to feel their breath in our ears.


On his Polow Da Don-produced King of Hearts, the endearlngly romantic vocalist makes a bid for a higher level of R&B-world recognition.

King of Hearts

No contemporary R&B singers approximate the elusive stomach-butterfly rush of infatuation as consistently as Lloyd. "Lay It Down", King of Hearts' peak moment and a lead single that predates the record by nearly a year, is an exemplar: Its innocent, almost naïve earnestness is married to a preternatural sense for R&B vocal acrobatics, giving dimension and believability to his devotion. A distinctive talent, Lloyd often let his vocals dance around the periphery of a song, giving his best tracks a spacey, removed quality. As a whole, the LP takes a major step toward streamlining his sound, pushing Lloyd's voice to the center and making a bid for a higher level of recognition in the R&B world. Despite a few missteps, it is a major success, in large part due to the chemistry of Lloyd with producer Polow Da Don.
Lloyd's knack for endearing romanticism is a vehicle for great music, and when the record falters, it feels like a misunderstanding of how his talent operates. The superfluous intro track can be forgiven thanks to its brevity and a surprisingly clunker-free verse from the Game. But "Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)", the first full song on the album, is bizarre and clumsy. The generic, faux-Motown beat frames the track as a joke, along the lines of Cee Lo's "Fuck You". Perhaps the right performance could have saved lyrics that fetishize the vagina as a relationship's vestigial remnant, but it's hard to buy the tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation of a line like "I'm about to kill this bitch!" from an artist typically so wrapped up in enthusiastic sincerity. Aside from this misstep and a platitudinous track aptly titled "World Cry", King of Hearts seems perfectly matched to fit Lloyd's strengths.
Polow clearly understands those strengths. Outside the occasional producer's flourish-- like the grinding bass break that opens Young Jeezy's verse on "Be the One"-- his work is primarily devoted to underlining Lloyd's vocals for maximum impact. On "Naked", Lloyd's performance has a dreamy distance from the physical reality of sexuality; instead, his vocals are draped in softly descending washes of guitar and muted trumpet lines, giving a sensuous texture to this awestruck ode to beauty. Single "Cupid"'s exuberant chorus baits cynical listeners: It works so well as a radio single because, through mild repetition, the hook's infectious idealism overwhelms any resistance.
The heart of the record, though, are tracks like the euphoric headrush "Jigsaw", where Lloyd's sense of rhythm lets his vocals dance confidently in the subdivisions of the groove, balancing sugary enthusiasm with deft physicality. Many of the album's best songs seem to inspire comparisons with dancing: There is a connection to the idea of dance as liberation here, as Lloyd's blushing sincerity builds up potential energy, the nimble performance acts as a release valve. In an echo of Aaliyah's "Loose Rap", album highlight "Shake It 4 Daddy" finds Lloyd dancing atop a vocal shadow; somehow, in his hands, even strip club storytelling comes across as boyish flirtation. Although the lyrics imply he's in the audience, the song's excitement suggests Lloyd is the one performing.


Led by singer-songwriter Blair Howerton, the debut from the sun-baked indie band sounds cozy but yearns for open spaces.

90 in November

Nothing underscored the value of space like the pandemic. This must have been tough for recent city transplants like Blair Howerton of the indie rock quartet Why Bonnie, who’d left Texas for New York City right before the pandemic. The world’s cultural capital loses much of its allure when suddenly the world has shrunk to the size of your modest walk-up.

It’s no wonder why so much of Why Bonnie’s debut album 90 in November, which Howerton wrote in her Brooklyn apartment, pines for blues skies, blanketing heat, and aimless road trips of her youth in Texas. On “Galveston,” she revisits a childhood vacation attraction barely touched by time: “Candyland beaches/Water too salty to swim/Passed all of the dance halls and dive-ins/Looks just the same as it did back then.” On the sun-baked title track, she recalls cruising, “pressing my luck with a $2 fill up.” That same luck runs out on “Nowhere LA,” where a road trip goes awry: “Louisiana in a broken car,” she narrates, “at the whim of a kind stranger with a crowbar.” The relationship she documents in that song doesn’t fare any better than the car.

Howerton’s an economical lyricist who can paint vivid scenes with just a few strokes, and the melancholy pangs of her voice cut through the music’s dreamy haze just enough without disrupting the bliss. With their fractured guitars, bleary vocals, and on-and-off twang, Why Bonnie join the growing cluster of bands fusing the raggedy guitars of ‘90s indie rock with the dusky sensibilities of country. There are shades of the lilac-gilded grace of Waxahatchee’s Saint Cloud in the sweetly understated roots of quieter tracks like “Silsbee” and “Superhero,” while the guitar fits of “Sharp Turn” and “Lot’s Wife” conjure the more turbulent stretches of Wednesday’s Twin Plagues, an album that similarly picks at childhood memories through the weary lens of adulthood.

To the extent they do differentiate themselves from every other band that’s somehow landed on the once-improbable combination of Sheryl Crow by way of Pavement, it’s through sheer warmth: Why Bonnie bank on easy vibes over originality. Guitarist Sam Houdek and keyboardist Kendall Powell blanket these tracks in soft, pillowy tones. The album’s mellow mix, meanwhile, tempers the intensity of these songs’ loud/soft fluctuations. Any harsh edges are more implied than felt.

Despite the pensive lean of Howerton’s lyrics, 90 in November is decidedly a pleasure listen. Why Bonnie recorded it in a small town just off the Gulf Coast, which probably helped lend to its spacious but cozy feel. These songs were born of yearning for the open expanses and leisurely pace of rural Texas. It’s only fitting, then, that Why Bonnie turned them into a record that satiates that craving.


On his first album in nearly a decade, the absurdist rapper uses his enormous vocabulary to riff on race, class, and becoming a parent—but he still hasn’t outgrown of fart jokes.

(((echo chamber)))

MC Paul Barman is back—and, yes, he still raps like that. It’s been more than 15 years since the esoteric New York rapper worked his way into the Napster download folders (if not always the hearts) of alternative hip-hop fans with his wry pileups of five-dollar words and cameos on Masta Ace and Deltron records. “It’s abundantly clear there’s profundity here,” he bragged on his 2002 album Paullelujah!, though that profundity was in the eye of the beholder. His shtick was virtuosic in certain respects—he’s probably never met a crossword puzzle he couldn’t solve—and stupid in others. Critics grew tired of him pretty quickly, but among a certain subset of hip-hop fans who use the word “quotable” as a noun, he remains a cult favorite.
Now 43, Barman is a relic of a far sillier alternative hip-hop era, the days of Dr. Octagon, Quasimoto, and Handsome Boy Modeling School. A few stray singles and features aside, he retreated from music after his 2009 album Thought Balloon Mushroom Cloud, in part to focus on raising a family that he raps about quite often on his comeback effort, (((echo chamber)))—a significantly more grown-up outing than his early-’00s records. He continues to smash words together for the sheer absurdity of it, but he’s also rapping about what a picky eater his kid is and the toll having a three-year-old takes on your sex life.
Although Barman is further removed from the hip-hop vanguard than ever, “the crested bird of nested words” still has some tastemakers in his corner. Questlove produced a good chunk of the record, and his minimalist beats and distinctive drums cleverly play on the lighthearted spirit of ’80s rap. MF DOOM provides a pair of beats, including the wonderfully loony “(((believe that)))”—one of two songs featuring Open Mike Eagle, who is perhaps Barman’s most relevant kindred spirit at the moment. Mark Ronson offers a knowingly obnoxious interpolation of the Christmas standard “Sleigh Ride” on “(((happy holidays))),” while Barman’s onetime mentor Prince Paul produces “YOUNGMAN Speaks on (((race))).”
That track, which is the album’s centerpiece, finds Barman attempting a feat at which few white rappers have ever succeeded: He tries to say something insightful about whiteness. And he comes closer than most, even if the song sometimes feels like a flood of loosely connected thoughts in search of a thesis. “Race is a lie/It just makes poor whites never taste of the pie,” he raps. “‘I’m not white, I’m Italian’ harkens back to when swarthy was almost as unworthy as black men.” Reflecting on his own heritage, he points out that, “Jews speak the language of both privilege and genocide/We've only recently been invited to dress up in their tennis whites.” Messy as they are, Barman’s musings on race, class, and parental responsibility give the record some weight and structure. His M.O. is no longer just wordplay for wordplay’s sake; he’s finally trying to mine meaningful ideas from his enormous vocabulary.
Too often, though, he stops short when it counts. Asked to explain the provocative title (((echo chamber))) in a recent interview, Barman gave a vague answer about how echo chambers represent the groupthink that’s “pushing us backwards towards tribalism and false divisions.” That response doesn’t remotely pass the smell test. As any Jew with an online presence—including Barman, surely—is aware, those triple parentheses are an anti-Semitic symbol used by white supremacists to single out Jews for harassment. (“It’s closed captioning for the Jew-blind,” as one since-suspended Twitter account put it.)
If you’re going to co-opt such a loaded symbol, you’ve got to at least explain your rationale or demonstrate how you (like some Jews on Twitter) are trying to reclaim it. But Barman ducks that responsibility, and that evasiveness is part of a pattern on (((echo chamber))). Whenever he begins to touch on anything too personal, controversial, or difficult, Barman retreats, defaulting to his usual irreverent word salad. “With each heartbeat repeated and fart meat excreted, I spark offense against the dark arts’ heat, neat!” he raps on the title track. Promising as the maturity he shows elsewhere on the album may be, it’s probably for the best that this guy never tried to pass himself off as the voice of a generation.


The Irish musician’s solo debut draws on the aesthetics of field recordings for understated, slow-burning experimental pop that prompts its own meditation on the creative process.

Elaine Howley: The Distance Between Heart and Mouth

The Distance Between Heart and Mouth

As a founding member of Cork band the Altered Hours and a collaborator in projects like Crevice, Howlbux, and Morning Veils, Elaine Howley has spanned impressive territory in the Irish musical underground. On her solo debut, The Distance Between Heart and Mouth, the singer and musician turns to twilit experimental pop as she muses on closeness and in-between worlds. Recorded on a 4-track cassette machine and released by Belfast label Touch Sensitive, it’s an ad hoc collection of songs that draw their muted power from everyday ritual—a testament to the magic of not making plans.
The idea for the album originated with a 2018 series on Cosmosis, Howley’s fortnightly show on Dublin Digital Radio, where she invited listeners to submit unfinished material for broadcast and aired her own spacey moodboard of field recordings and drone. With this, a door swung open. Relinquishing end goals and self-judgment, the Tipperary artist committed to recording each day in the spare room of her Cork home. Across nine lamp-lit tracks, she casts a shadow play that feels like a spiritual sequel to the lo-fi avant-pop of Crevice’s 2017 debut In Heart. Opener “Silent Talk” packs a thrifty glow via cozy Omnichord shapes and widescreen analog synth; “Autumn Speak” builds on the almost diaristic energy. Beneath a web of whirling ambience, overdubbed toms, and scorched lead guitar, elliptical refrains (“I won’t ever be nice again/You won’t ever ask twice again”) zig-zag between transfixing and foreboding.
Howley’s songwriting voice has long felt autonomous to the point of defiance. A refrain in the Altered Hours’ song “Thistle” doubles as a warning: “I’m not your snowdrop/I’m a thistle.” Here, that spirit is pared down to a cosmic swoon that plays with closeness and distance in the realm of revelation. Originally featured on Touch Sensitive’s 2019 compilation Wacker That, “Song for Mary Black” is a looped paean to the eponymous Irish folk singer that holds space for the overlap between womanhood and childhood memory. A soulful peak driven by a submerged Latin shuffle, “To the Test” feels more akin to a cosmic tête-à-tête than an open letter. “Silent Talk” is more transparent: “It took me 16 weeks to look you in the eye,” Howley murmurs. The subtle tension between specificity and obscurity feels like a real payoff.
For all their dusky charm, these songs were not born of the night. In a recent interview, Howley cited the example of Irish novelist Kevin Barry, who treats writing as “a first-thing-in-the-morning practice.” Likewise, Howley said, she made it her daily mission to “play a little bit, even if it’s a small bit.” It accounts for the album’s heavy hypnopompic glow, a mood that’s astral to the point of being analgesic. Like a dream half-sketched upon waking, the pitched-down vocals and spliced drum machines of “Archeological Longing” dovetail with “Buried Way Out,” where arachnoid guitar shapes and Julia Holter-like spoken word summon a sphere far beyond Howley’s spare room. Conjuring Leslie Winer, the skeletal dub of “See Saw Seen” goes further yet, oscillating tape delay until it stretches into a trance. Summoned each morning before the world had any chance of weighing in, The Distance Between Heart and Mouth is a spectral slow burn that refuses to trip over itself to get anywhere in particular. By absorbing the wisdom of the process, Howley permits her craft to resound deeper than ever.


The name of this Austin trio has changed, but their delayed-gratification summer vibes have only become more refined and elemental on this welcome debut LP.

Pleasure

After a few scattered 7"s, Pure Ecstasy decided to up and change their name to Pure X for their debut full-length. But Pure X are hardly suffering from a personality crisis-- a San Francisco cover band already had the former handle copyrighted, so the abbreviation occurred out of necessity. For those of us who heard something special in loose, wandering tracks like 2009 B-side "You're in It Now" or "Voices" a year later, nearly everything on Pleasure will feel like a welcome distillation of the elements that made those songs sound promising. In turn, the band's new moniker should seem completely fitting: No longer just a kick-around project from three Austin dudes, Pure X have become the refined and elemental version of their former selves.
Fans of those early singles don't need to worry too much. Pure X remain very much attached to their singular style. Jesse Jenkins' bass still sounds peanut-butter sticky, while Nate Grace's guitars showcase pond-ripple textures and Mideast-tinged tones one moment and hemorrhage syrupy feedback the next. Like grunge for beachcombers or shoegaze for people happy to be alive, Pleasure is all about texture and patience, stretched to ensure maximum zoneage. Anything MDMA-related about the moniker is a total misnomer-- this sounds like music made by people who mainline Benadryl.
Sure, the album's blown-out guitars, dusky shoreline vibes, and drug-sick crawl can seem awfully familiar. But Pure X aren't just coasting on shaggy fumes. For one, this is a terrific-sounding record, built for headphones and high volume. Recorded live with no overdubs, everything emulsifies beatifically while a disorienting quality still looms, like riding in a four-door on the freeway with only the back left window down.
Pure X also set themselves apart by both honoring their influences and recombining them in interesting ways. Opener "Heavy Air" sounds like a chopped 'n' screwed Real Estate, while the new version of "Voices" suggests My Bloody Valentine channeling the Everly Brothers. After all, these songs owe a lot to the starry-eyed romantic ballads of the late 1950s and early 60s. Instead of harnessing the rebel cool of that era, Pure X get lost in the simplicity and slow-burn daydreaminess, stoking these characteristics with uniquely visceral reverb and a zonked tunefulness that impart a vaporous sensuality.
But the most defining and pleasurable thing about Pleasure is the guitars-- impressive for a record that doesn't care about show-off guitar shit at all. Grace lets his pedals do most of the talking, gracefully sussing out emotional detail with subtle melody while still creating memorable moments, like the cheap firework burnout at the end of "Half Here". Pure X may not be breaking new ground, but as far as deadbeat summer vibes done right go, Pleasure is one killer drag.


The California producer/singer Anderson .Paak worked extensively with Dr. Dre on Compton, but has achieved only marginal success as a solo artist. His new EP arrives shortly after his work with Dre, to capitalize. His raspy, sensuous voice recalls Bilal, and the songs explore mostly light fare—blowing weed, the highs of personal freedom, the captivating first moments of new love.

The Anderson .Paak EP

Read the liner notes of Dr. Dre’s Compton and you’ll see the name Anderson .Paak appear six times: He produced or sang on songs "All in a Day’s Work", "Issues", "Deep Water", "For the Love of Money", "Animals", and "Medicine Man". It's the biggest look of Anderson’s career so far by a million miles, one that seemingly came from a chance encounter with the iconic producer. According to Mass Appeal, Anderson attended a studio session when his recent song, "Suede", caught Dre’s attention. "He comes in, and I’m just sitting in the room, and I saw him play it over and over again," Anderson told the publication. "At the third time, he was ready to work."
Until now, though, the California singer/producer had achieved marginal success: Following his 2012 debut under the name Breezy Lovejoy, Anderson’s follow-up—Venice—showed his promise as a storyteller, but the album was largely undercooked and whizzed by without much impact. Anderson has released a few singles and projects on Bandcamp, and he’s the vocal half of NxWorries with producer Knxwledge, a prolific composer who landed this great beat on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly.
The Anderson .Paak EP is the artist’s first release since Venice, and it's appearance is timely. Running just four tracks and less than 20 minutes, The Anderson .Paak EP is a quick listen, but it demonstrates Anderson’s talent and charisma. His raspy inflection evokes Bilal’s sensuous tenor and the lyrics explore mostly light fare—blowing weed, the highs of personal freedom ("Drifter II"), the captivating first moments of new love ("Make it Work").
Even when he discusses serious topics, like on the two-part "Cheap Whiskey.70’s Reisling", Anderson does so in the smoothest way possible. "Wish I had a chance to write ya," he croons, presumably talking about an absent father figure. "I wish I didn’t look just like ya." Produced entirely by Los Angeles/Chicago duo Blended Babies, who have worked with the Cool Kids and Ab-Soul and credit OutKast and Eric Clapton as influences, the music is laidback, spacious funk polished in a bright, psychedelic sheen. A longer release would've been ideal, but it's a worthy precursor to something greater.