The Sigur Rós frontman’s muddled attempt at a pop album is a cathedral of feelings without referents: beautiful, boring, generically uplifting, and deliberately meaningless.

Shiver

The first words that swim up from the dark, supple electronic void of “Exhale,” which opens Shiver, Sigur Rós visionary Jónsi’s striving but muddled attempt at a pop album: “Breathe in, breathe out.” They’re followed by a consoling mantra of assurances: Everyone’s alright and it’s just the way it is. It isn’t your fault and you can just let it go. It’s as if Bruce Horsby had been hired to write lyrics for Frozen.
It would be unfair to suggest that Jónsi is addressing these complacent platitudes to anything more specific than the solipsistic affirmation proven to forge positive associations with car commercials. But the disconnection of his words from our times is conspicuous, and it characterizes an album that appears cordoned off from any world beyond the self. Shiver is a cathedral of feelings without referents, almost without qualities beyond their enormous size. Its spasms of idiosyncrasy can’t entirely conceal what is basically an artsier, hookless Imagine Dragons—beautiful, boring, generically uplifting, and deliberately meaningless.
Of course, substance was never Sigur Rós’s strength, either; sweeping scale and emotional texture were. The popular Icelandic post-rock group dispersed orchestras into romantic mists and meaning into its own “Hopelandic” gibberish; on Shiver, Icelandic-language lyrics sometimes relieve the numbing banality of the English. Frequent Charli XCX producer A. G. Cook’s hectic Max Martin style is far from a natural fit for the dramatic, drawn-out singing Jónsi prefers, and without the dynamic presence or indestructible hooks of a pop artist, most of the alchemy he discovers with Cook is spinning gossamer into lead.
Jónsi still has a lovely voice capable of large-scale expressive effects, computerized or otherwise, but his monotonously slow and solemn register clashes with this busy, nervously worked-over production. The songs alternate between passages deconstructed to the point of formlessness and passages swarming with overcompensating activity, liberally dashed with pop clichés. Big tumbling ’80s drum hits, singalong nonsense earworms, and lustrous EDM plug-ins burst in and out, but a lugubrious mood steals back over all.
Almost every song has a good part mired somewhere in the longueurs and affectations. If the rest of “Wildeye” had more to do with its anthemic third minute, it might be a banger, but this moment of clarity is cramped by long ranks of noisy drums and a pitiful woo-woo hook that feels like a stem from another song. “Kórall” has a beating heart, though it’s hectored by IDM test patterns and balloon squeaks. “Sumarið sem aldrei kom” is a welcome choral respite, “Hold” shows signs of cohesion, and “Swill” is solid, forgiving some grating dubstep gestures.
But by then, the record may have already worn out all but the most dedicated listeners. Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser is wasted on the interminable “Cannibal,” which has a nice little climax that can’t quite shake off the preceding dream-pop slog. In “Salt Licorice,” poor Robyn has to grit her way through a sandstorm of bitcrushed synths before a warm Europop throb finally clears the air and gives her some room to maneuver. The parts of Shiver that strain to be fun and fresh can’t seem to break orbit from the grandiose mass of Sigur Rós, and the album leaves a sense of oppressive profundity in its bulky wake.

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The second album from the experimental Korean rap/production duo really starts to come together. They find a catchy, powerful zone to serve up their invective.

Second Language

Last month, a Korean underground rap song called “DDING” landed at No. 3 on the Gaon Digital Chart, the country’s equivalent to the Billboard Hot 100. Virtually all rap singles that debut near the top of the charts feature someone who’s associated with the K-pop industry, or are the product of a concurrent rap reality TV show. That “DDING” forged its path in a manner less corporatized revealed how musical ideas from young American rap had crept into Korea’s public consciousness. While the past few years have seen K-pop singles sprinkle in triplet flows and Travis Scott-indebted ad-libs, non-idol Korean rap was committing more fully: Dbo, a rapper whose admiration for Young Thug is obvious from his unhinged flow and the fact that one of his albums is called Arter 7; Jvcki Wai, the female rapper on “DDING,” who also made a remix of “XO Tour Llif3” and released music beholden to Lil Uzi Vert; and other rappers who attempted to recreate Playboi Carti’s “Magnolia.”
The influx of ATL and Soundcloud rap tropes only made Korean rapper/producer duo XXX stand out further. On last year’s Language, the beats of producer FRNK often had an industrial bent, heightening rapper Kim Ximya’s impassioned and caustic diatribes against a rapacious music industry and its complicit rappers. Second Language features the same fiery lyrics, but the production is less abrasive than before. Instead, there’s an added poignancy to the poppier tracks. “We Are,” for example, discusses the overwhelming dread of life, concluding with a simple decision: “We have to run.” The anxiety of just living is felt in its chipper, fidgeting beat.
One of the most noticeable differences between Second Language and its predecessor is how tightly coordinated Kim and FRNK have become. Previously, their music could seem like patchwork, FRNK’s warped instrumentation a mere backdrop to Kim’s steely flow. These songs are far more bracing because the two are fully in sync. Kim addresses other rappers on the braggadocious “Language,” asserting that “we do not speak the same language”—FRNK responds by cutting up the vocals to drive the point home. On “Bougie,” the lurching beat and bombastic horns act as martial theme music for Kim, his snarling tone only dramatizing it further. The instrumental coda sounds lively because Kim’s spent so much time imbuing it with grandiose energy. Ultimately, the two need each other to avoid sounding nondescript. The instrumental “Intro” is neon-lit and cozy, but a wordless album from FRNK would be far less exciting than what we’ve received. In 2017, Kim released a collaborative album with D. Sanders—the producer behind numerous Isaiah Rashad songs—and the results were stodgy. Across Second Language’s ten tracks, that problem never arises.
On Language, Kim lambasted institutions to proclaim how destructive they were. Here, he aims his vitriol at people in hopes of enacting change. “FAD” finds him curtly declaring “fuck fad madness” before detailing the absurdity of being fashion-obsessed. For him, submission to materialism is symptomatic of indifference toward the greater capitalistic machine at work. Through his music and lifestyle, Kim presents an alternative that he considers necessary for having self-respect. He highlights this on “Scale Model,” initially wondering why someone can’t become a “better man” with “better manners” before ending with assured self-aggrandizing: “nobody can ever touch my pride.” Physical copies of the album come with a note capturing this sentiment of non-conformity as rebellion: “I was invited to the party but I chose my own seat at the table.”
XXX aren’t the only Korean artists making experimental rap—TFO’s ㅂㅂ and Moldy’s Internet Kid are two albums in the same wheelhouse—but the duo’s two albums have an unwavering, identifiable purpose to all the clamor. On Korean streaming services, XXX have lyrics from their albums listed with all curse words self-censored. This allows them to circumvent the 19+ rating that their music would otherwise receive, ensuring that audiences of all ages can hear their work (the process to hear such music when you’re not of age is far more laborious than a simple button click). Because XXX think so highly of their messages, their desire for visibility isn’t just a ploy for increased popularity. On “Ooh Ah,” the album’s most outright catchy song, Kim repeatedly asks, “What about the legacy? Dog, what the fuck are you meant to be?” XXX know the answer, but they want you to be just as certain.


The Los Angeles-based producer retreats to the hills of Tuscany to further the vision of eclectic mix of woodwinds, synthesizers, and field recordings.

Tongue

Brian Allen Simon’s Anenon project has slowly grown out from the electronic beat-scene into the freewheeling modern classical universe, taking cues from every crevice of experimental music in the process. The bookends of this progression, 2012’s Inner Hue and 2016’s breakout Petrol, act as counterweights within Anenon’s discography. Petrol is a culmination, a study in the intersection of intelligent dance music and the melodic repetition of minimalist pioneers like Steve Reich. Anenon framed Petrol through the lens of Los Angeles, using freeway noise in the album’s waking moments to set up a quasi-concept album about the inspiration, claustrophobia, excitement, and dread that comes from living in the sprawling metropolis. On Tongue—Petrol’s follow-up—Simon trades in the sounds of bustling intersections and the beat scene experimentalism pioneered at Los Angeles’ avant-club and de facto Brainfeeder lair Low End Theory for the quiet hills of Tuscany, Italy, where he retreated to record this new LP. Tongue is a reflection of this temporary residence: a meditation on the fragile nature of history, a reverie that glides along in quiet, powerful contemplation.
On its surface, Tongue is a pensive, calming collection of songs—a thesis on the Tuscan landscape Simon decamped to in an attempt to distance himself from the incessant mania touching down in America. But like the archaeological studies that unearthed many of the treasures hidden beneath Italy, Tongue is littered with twists and bold accents that unfurl in his topsoil-mix of saxophone, synthesizers, and found sounds. It’s an album infused with history from its early moments of conception, recorded on the third floor of a 16th-century Tuscan home during April of last year.
“Two for C” begins with the sound of rain and a looping synthesizer that mimics the mechanization of a player piano, before Simon’s saxophone enters with layers of breathy notes. The track’s basic structure is all haze and atmosphere, assembling a cloud that eventually parts to reveal ascending synth flourishes and stark, powerful piano chords. “Two for C” is an outline of  Simon’s mission: an album untethered to traditional verse-chorus structure that unveils a larger sonic expansion within each song.
“Verso,” the album’s first single, develops in much the same way. Two piano parts interlock and move straight ahead, slowly allowing for the rise of a church choir to enter the mix. Voices and organ blend to move the tone from affirming to downcast, the re-emerging rain sample makes it sound like a dirge. Tongue is drenched in these moments of emotion, bringing humanity to a modern classical genre that can favor studiousness over the feeling of a great cathartic moment. Anenon combines the technical acuity of mid-century minimalist composers with the ecstatic highs of America’s modern experimental scene.
Tongue straddles the line between esoteric and accessible with ease and grace, a trait attributable to Simon’s self-taught style; he first picked up a saxophone at the age of 22. The dense layers of pianos, synthesizers, woodwinds, and field recordings help create a quiet, gorgeous meditation on the world an ocean away from his home and the city that shaped his style.  Tongue could read as a desire to separate his name from Petrol and the Los Angeles it reflects. Rather, the album is the perfect follow-up to Simon’s most successful release to date precisely because it’s so far from his previously inhabited world. The electronics are hushed entirely, instead spotlighting the producer’s arranging and songwriting chops. The album is a rigorous exercise, a whispered rumination, a city take on country life by an Angeleno in Italy. The album unfolds and reveals itself like the rolling hills of Tuscany, the outer-reaching moments tempered by Simon’s delicate touch and deft ear. Tongue creates a world built from the snug comfort of rain and the quiet joy that comes from solitude. There’s no place further from Los Angeles.


The best songs on Katy B's new album show her caught up in the flow of something so overwhelming she can’t see the beginning or the end of it, time expanding and collapsing with her in its center.

Honey

Katy B’s songs tend to orbit people and relationships, but they’re just as often about rooms, and the way music sounds inside of those rooms, or the way that environmental combinations of music and desire can distort one’s sense of time. "Let history repeat / in parallel lines," she sang on Little Red’s "5 AM," describing not only the small infinities implied by dance music but the recursive structure of desire itself.
On her new album, Honey, Katy B seems to want to sublimate herself even further into the texture of her music, as if to emphasize the distinct rooms she finds herself in; each of the producers and singers she works with on the album receives equal credit with her, and most of them are located deep with the roster of Rinse FM, the radio station/label that’s released each of her records. She isn’t lost so easily. The album’s centerpiece is a collaboration with jackin’ house producer Chris Lorenzo called "I Wanna Be," the instrumental of the which has been floating around the internet since 2014. Katy B gives the diffuse beat gravity and narrative drama; it ceases to be a tightly-cropped brightness and unfolds and shimmers into a complete emotional landscape. "I wanna tell you / but anxiety’s a bitch babe," she sings, unlocking inner melodies and tensions from otherwise iridescent, smooth house.
Where Little Red saw Katy throwing herself into the occasional ballad, Honey is reduced to a pure set of dance music; within these aesthetic limits, though, it may be her most varied record stylistically. On "So Far Away," produced by Wilkinson, drum and bass production gathers and collides together, and Katy weaves through it in deliberate swerves. "Calm Down," written with Floating Points and Four Tet, features strings that saw crisply through the track and then rematerialize in ribbony masses. Only on "Lose Your Head," with grime MCs J Hus and D Double E, does Katy B feel like a hook singer on her own song, which causes it feels drawn from an entirely different order of work. Because of the wide range of producers, the songs on Honey can feel unrelated to each other, and often settle together indifferently.
Oddly enough Honey starts to snap into focus on a track originally released last year as a single by KDA, "Turn the Music Louder (Rumble)," itself a vocal rework of an earlier instrumental; on the album version, Tinie Tempeh is subtracted from the song, and Katy B draws the verses and chorus of the song into a subterranean gravity.  Songs like these show Katy B at her best, caught up in the flow of something so overwhelming she can’t see the beginning or the end of it, time expanding and collapsing with her in its center.
As with Little Red, the ideal way of hearing Honey is in its continuous mix, but where Little Red’s arranged all of its album and bonus tracks into a kind of diagram of a long, frustrating night out, Honey’s continuous mix merely places opaque tempo shifts between each song. Regardless, the album feels more connected and coherent when experienced in this way, when the listener is allowed to enter a portal before the next distinct context asserts itself, and where Katy herself feels like she’s stretching seamlessly from one dimension into another.


In the age of downloading and streaming, the L.A. alt-rock band still makes albums like it needs to take full advantage of a CD's storage capacity.

Neck of the Woods

On my local alt-rock station, Silversun Pickups' 2006 single "Lazy Eye" has rightfully become a playlist staple, and not just because the song fits comfortably alongside the repertoire of certain first-generation Lollapalooza veterans known for inflicting violence on large orange fruit. Though it lacks an actual chorus, "Lazy Eye" still packs a considerable emotional charge, thanks to the creeping tension between the song's cool precision and frontman Brian Aubert's efforts to destabilize it, through arrhythmic guitar scraping and an increasingly agitated vocal. Though the song's tone is subdued and serious, I always smirk during Aubert's climactic shriek of the line "everyone's so focused clearly on... such shine," as if he were single-handedly trying to destroy the fun-in-the-sun spirit that defines so much Californian pop music. Which is to say: "Lazy Eye" remains Silversun Pickups' biggest and best song because it's their most human, imperfect, irrational one.
But those endearing qualities have become increasingly difficult to glean from Silversun Pickups these days. The band's third album, Neck of the Woods, picks up where 2009's sophomore release, Swoon, left off, inheriting the task of blowing up Silversun Pickups' hazy-headed pop to more muscular, arena-ready proportions. Which is to be expected: This is, after all, a band whose two albums have sold over half a million copies to date combined, so there's a natural inclination to want to keep hitting the back rows even as they move ever further away. But there's an increasing disconnect between ambition and execution: While Neck of the Woods boasts all the hallmarks of a big-budget, radio-ready modern-rock record-- including a production credit for Jacknife Lee, a guy who knows a thing or two about polishing up once-scrappy indie-rock bands for KROQ contention-- Silversun Pickups have a way of making their most grandiose gestures sound passive and timid. The album's over-the-top but underwhelming nature is best summed up by a line from the aforementioned breakthrough single: "I've been waiting for this moment all my life/ But it's not quite right."
It doesn't help that Aubert's effete voice lacks the domineering, egomaniacal presence to convincingly command his band's bombast. Even those who have allergic reactions to Billy Corgan or Matt Bellamy's prog-rock histrionics would never doubt their sense of bravado, but Aubert has the tendency to pull back right when he should be going for broke. Just as the protracted intro of opener "Skin Graph" finally yields to a satisfyingly gnarly chorus at the three-minute mark, Aubert loses himself in a buzz-killing, ambient detour; when he returns for one final charge through the chorus, the feeling is less one of shock and surprise than "what the fuck took you so long?"
This kind of structural over-tinkering is endemic on Neck of the Woods, an album that Silversun Pickups claim was inspired by horror movies; if so, they're the kind of horror movies where you wait a long time for twists you can see coming a mile away, with the visceral impact all but diluted by a glossy CGI sheen. The album places a premium on foreboding synth atmospherics, dramatic pauses, extended build-ups and breakdowns, and 1998-vintage rock-tronic beats-- and, in doing so, stretches mid-tempo song after mid-tempo song to the five-minute mark and beyond, forsaking the sort of peaks-and-valleys sequencing necessary for maintaining dramatic momentum over the course of an hour-long sprawl. And the clinical, vacuum-sealed production renders even the most Rock Band-worthy moments (the machine-gunned fills on "Out of Breath", the Zeppelin-esque chorus riff of "Gun-Shy Sunshine", the robo-grunge thrust of "Mean Spirits") with a mechanized sterility that keeps the explosions contained.
Neck of the Woods does yield at least one bona-fide direct hit to ensure future Weenie Roast bookings: "Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings)", a gleaming, synth-swathed power ballad that's of a piece with the maximal digi-symphonies of M83's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming. But even as Silversun Pickups continue to dutily follow the Smashing Pumpkins' career trajectory by trading in shoegaze haze for Adore-inspired electro-pop, perhaps the most 90s thing about them is that, even in the age of downloading and streaming, they still make albums as if they need to take full advantage of a CD's storage capacity and give the Sam Goody customer their $22.98's worth. Appropriately enough, many of Aubert's lyrics here bristle with restlessness, fatigue and disappointment-- "I'm still waiting," "I'm already bored," "What am I aiming towards/ A fight that never ends," "Nothing's coming"-- all of which serve to make Neck of the Woods a concept album about the feeling you get listening to Neck of the Woods.


The third full-length from Richmond thrash metal crew Iron Reagan—featuring members of Municipal Waste, Darkest Hour, and Cannabis Corpse—is a compact vehicle for nihilistic escapism.

Crossover Ministry

Iron Reagan aren’t your typical political provocateurs. Forget fighting the two-party system: The Richmond crew, whose lineup comprises members from latter-day crossover thrash groups such as Municipal Waste, Darkest Hour, and Cannabis Corpse, would rather throw a party of their own, shotgunning beers and riffs while Main Street burns. Iron Reagan’s name may nod to punk’s longstanding war with conservatism, but their music hardly resembles a call to legislative action. It’s more of a drunken primal scream, the kind that issued forth from the throats of millions on Election Night as the Chyrons announced Donald Trump’s stunning victory. (Not that the band were rooting for his opponent: a simple glance at their merch offerings reveals a disdain for authority on both sides of the aisle, Clinton included.) Activism can wait; for now, it’s time to rage.
And that Iron Reagan do, on their new album Crossover Ministry. Like their first two records (2013’s Worse Than Dead and the following year’s The Tyranny Of Will), the band’s latest effort doubles as a vehicle for violent, nihilistic escapism. And it’s a compact one at that, clocking in at 18 tracks in 30 minutes. Songs like “A Dying World,” “Blatant Violence,” and “Bleed the Fifth” retain the same shoot-from-the-hip paradigms that fans have come to expect. Frontman Tony Foresta shouts himself hoarse over chugging chords and snare-heavy backbeats before yielding to his Municipal Waste comrade Phillip “Land Phil” Hall for a free-wheeling solo.
The single “Dead With My Friends” is an exception, then—an Anthrax-laced paean to whiling away humanity’s final moments with good friends and cheap beer. And a few friends take turns at the mic as well. Screaming Females’ Marissa Paternoster does some yelping on “Eat Or Be Eaten,” and David Wood of straight edge hardcore greats Down to Nothing presides over the bludgeoning, 14-second “No Sell.”
Is this approach formulaic? Certainly. Does Crossover Ministry challenge the mores of its genre? Absolutely not. Of course, such is the DNA of thrash metal itself, not only as a descendant of hardcore punk—a style similarly rooted in rudimentary parts—but as the booze-soaked musical equivalent of the reptile brain, which could give two shits about intricacy or subtext. The id manifests most thrillingly (and hilariously) on “Fuck the Neighbors,” which opens with the ring of a doorbell, followed by the entreatments of a dorky neighbor à la Ned Flanders, who asks the band to tone down the racket. Needless to say, Iron Reagan veto that request, eventually erupting in the song’s sophomoric titular chant. It’s the ideal anthem for left-wingers marooned in the Bible Belt, not to mention an apt sketch of our divided, pissed-off republic in the year 2016. But Iron Reagan’s revolution runs on ribaldry.


Low-key emotional intensity abounds in Elizabeth Powell’s stark, sketch-like reveries, and the new album’s few-frills production exposes just how gut-wrenching their songwriting can be.

Indistinct Conversations

Tucked away almost halfway through Land of Talk’s fourth album, Indistinct Conversations, is a question that’s also a revelation. Many songwriters try to grab listeners right away; Elizabeth Powell, the long-running Canadian band’s sole constant member, goes for the stream-of-consciousness, the gnomic, the curiously brambled. Emotions aren’t on Powell’s sleeve, they’re simmering under the skin. Or, as the Land of Talk singer and chief songwriter asks on “Love in 2 Stages,” a minor-key meditation on romantic vicissitudes heated up by syncopated stabs of keyboard, “I dig deep, why don’t you?”
Indistinct Conversations is a testament to the tattered ideal that digging deep—for its own sake, regardless of the short-term outlook—can be worthwhile in the long run. After a mostly forgotten alt-rock debut as ELE_K* in 2003, Powell began turning heads with Land of Talk’s first effort, 2006’s wiry and thrilling Applause Cheer Boo Hiss EP. A succession of generally strong albums followed, each with high-profile collaborators and sensitive personal backstories. 2008’s Some Are Lakes was produced by then-boyfriend Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. 2010’s Cloak and Cipher featured Arcade Fire’s Jeremy Gara and followed Powell’s vocal-cord struggles. After a long break, 2017’s Life After Youth, with guests Sharon Van Etten and Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, was a musical homecoming informed by Powell’s father suffering a stroke. Land of Talk never quite shone as brightly as those other acts. But they persisted.
With Indistinct Conversations, Powell’s private world is once again in flux, but this time there are no boldfaced names to dominate the narrative. Finally back in a Land of Talk groove after retreating from the music industry between Cloak and Cipher and Life After Youth, Powell has also begun identifying publicly as a non-binary femme, using the pronouns she/they. Aside from a few Montreal jazz-scene friends, the only collaborators here are Land of Talk drummer/keyboardist Mark “Bucky” Wheaton and bassist Christopher McCarron, who both co-produced the album with Powell at Wheaton’s home. Built mainly from Powell’s knotty acoustic guitar explorations and lyrical musings that feel like fragments from an exceptionally perceptive diary, it’s the most satisfying Land of Talk album yet.
The few-frills production exposes just how gut-wrenching Powell’s songwriting can be. Gaslighting is by now a familiar concept, but first single “The Weight of That Weekend” traces the contours of a toxic encounter with devastating aplomb. “Always come at me from a different angle/Make me think I don’t understand/How I’m feeling,” Powell begins, parceling out the words just so. The Americana-ish folk-rock backdrop is understated, enlivened by a smattering of French horn, but the emotional stakes are high enough for Powell to add later, “This is a prayer for love.”
Low-key emotional intensity abounds in these stark, sketch-like reveries. “I feel it like an empty hand,” Powell sings on the coyly titled “Compelled,” describing their lust for a lover who is with someone else—someone unworthy. In their cool deadpan, the evocative comparison sounds as old as time. On “Diaphanous,” the jolt comes with the playful opening rhyme (the title phrase with “half of us”) and then again with the dynamic shift as cascading drums join the gnarled electric guitar and fluttery saxophone. The album may be home-recorded, but the performers are road-tested. The last words we hear from Powell, on the penultimate, acoustic-strummed “Now You Want to Live in the Night,” are devastating in their plainspoken vulnerability: “Have I lost the feeling/What’s wrong with me?”
It’s always felt difficult for Land of Talk fans to explain why this particular relatively down-the-middle indie-rock project was so good. As singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Powell’s voice was always appealing, off-kilter, and expressive, but there was never an unmistakable calling card, like the singular yawp of Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan or the life-or-death majesty of Big Thief. Perhaps the unhurried, existential sighs of Kurt Vile were closer all along. And while this album’s interstitial speech fragments wind up sounding like the guys at the bar during a live solo set, and “Look to You (Intro)” and “Look to You” would’ve been better as a single, soaring opus, these are minor complaints. Indistinct Conversations finally burrows into Land of Talk’s dormant identity, as a band willing to wait out passing trends and realize its own promise. Another flash of psychological truth comes on “A/B Futures,” a rare fist-pumper on this preternaturally subdued record. “You need someone to care for,” Powell insists. “Hey, make that me.”

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Yaeji’s first full-length mixtape is a subtle, more insular turn for the producer. It plays like a self-issued challenge to strip away the fluorescence, to find what’s underneath pop catharsis.

What We Drew

To grow up in the Asian-American experience and still become an artist is an act of rebellion; it’s a demand to tell your own story despite society deeming you interchangeable and voiceless. It’s a dismissal of the “model minority” stereotype—a patronizing label conferred upon your people for your supposed diligence and submission—and a refusal to reckon with that reduction. To be an Asian American artist also requires an inherent concession: You know that even if you attempt to address the universals in the human experience, your face will always be part of the discussion. Yaeji, a bilingual Korean American producer living in Brooklyn, could not have known that her first full-length mixtape would be released into explosive social frictions, a spate of violence against Asian Americans that would prove the “model” myth a hollow gesture. And yet her music arrives as an openhearted counterpoint, making space for both anxiety and love, offering a timely reminder of the power in subverting expectations of others and appreciating community—the kind you’re born into and the kind you built yourself.
In her short, already thrilling career as a producer, singer, and rapper, Yaeji has toyed with ideas of communication and opacity: She initially sang in Korean instead of English to obscure her lyrics, and still plays the languages like instruments with different timbres and intonations. Her warm, sparkling beats usually nod to deep house, though she often adds a glaze of icy trap languor; when she covered pop hits by Drake and Robyn, she tempered the mania with misty distortion and falsetto chirps. Across her two EPs for Godmode records, Yaeji’s songs were effortlessly chill yet reliably euphoric. Her bass drops and feathery vocals have had such nimble balance and satisfying velocity, they’ve felt purifying as only the best dance music can: between “raingurl,” “drink i’m sippin on,” and that humid cover of “passionfruit,” her 2017 EP2 remains a stalwart DJ cheat code. Even teetotalers know: Any night out is instantly more seductive upon hearing Yaeji murmur, “Mother Russia in my cup.”
For What We Drew, Yaeji’s first release on the venerable UK label XL, the 26-year-old producer could have easily shipped out a full crate of stylish, bacchanal floor-fillers without breaking a sweat. Instead, What We Drew plays like a self-issued challenge to strip away the fluorescence, to find what’s underneath pop catharsis. As a result, it’s subtler yet more resonant, because its peaks have deeper valleys to climb back from; in the tradition of Frankie Knuckles, Sylvester, and other artists who used bright electronic music as conduits of pain, here Yaeji offers smaller, darker meditations on the paralysis of anxiety and the loneliness inside the revelry.
“Waking Up Down,” the tape’s first single, is the soft landing from Yaeji’s past. In a sleight-of-hand, it deploys several Yaeji staples immediately: a rippling, entrancing synth intro; a quick and satiating bass drop; lyrics so laid-back they slouch. But there is friction, too: As she flatly sings an index of minor daily achievements—“I got waking up down/I got cooking down/I got making a list and checking down”—her production feels crooked. Her voice clashes with the synths in dissonant patches; the drums feel pushy, the bass skittish. Soon the chorus, in Korean, confesses how much is truly awry: “It’s not easy/There’s no such thing as easy/If I’m lazy/They all say it’s my fault,” she sings more somberly. Her earlier feats weren’t brags so much as self-affirmations of her ability to function, and that insistently repeated “down” is a plaintive suggestion of where she’s been. Unlike Yaeji’s singles past, it languishes in this unease; the momentum builds but never crests, instead skittering to a halt with nervous, spotlit drums, channeling the lack of resolution in the low, daily thrum of worry.
The satisfying gloss of “Waking Up Down” makes it one of the heftiest dance tracks on What We Drew; elsewhere, Yaeji is even more insular. “In the Mirror” is a clubber’s lament amid the sea of bodies, accepted but alone; by the chorus, she sounds like she’s one tipple shy of following Sia aboard a chandelier. “Why doesn’t it feel the same when I’m in the air/When I look in the mirror/When I’m not a pair?” she sings dazedly over synths that seep outward like black puddles. “When I Grow Up” sounds like a K-pop anthem after a weekend in a Bushwick gutter; its pared-back, chipper synth beat stutters and feints as Yaeji sings in multiple guises—rapid chattering, wide-eyed lilt—about how she’s been “forgotten” and “exposed to the ones that shouldn’t know.”
Elsewhere, What We Drew has a diffused energy befitting of a mixtape—or outtakes, depending on your appetite for circuitous performance art and surreal posse cuts. “The Th1ng” is the former, a meandering spoken-word piece by the London artist Victoria Sin, with a glassy garage beat that nods greatly to FKA twigs’ “Glass & Patron.” “Free Interlude” is the latter and, despite the title, a full-length spasm of a track—a riff on jealousy and neuroses with blips of made-up, Seussian slang. Riding a stormy trap beat, Yaeji has never sounded so afield from pop-house, her voice wrung through processors into a thin, metallic wisp. “My envy/Ripping and biting/Try me and try me,” she raps in Korean, before admitting, “My life is in a weird place.” A series of equally distorted rappers—Lil Fayo, trenchcoat, and Sweet Pea—swoop in like Dadaist motivational speakers: The most insistent, Sweet Pea, proclaims, “I like pink/I like purple/You’re a Shirple.”
Some of her friends’ cameos are more elevating, though—and sincerely uplifting. “Money Can’t Buy,” with the rising Bay Area rapper Nappy Nina, is as satisfying as the quiet pleasures it extols: As Yaeji drawls in Korean, all she wants to do is “eat rice and soup” and then, secondly, “be friends with you,” as a rubbery, strutting beat cuts the cuteness with pure ego. On “Spell,” the Tokyo DJ/producer YonYon sings sweetly in Japanese of “you and I, the magic that binds us,” over a house beat that buzzes and flickers like streetlamps before dawn; Yaeji’s tone is brisker but no less awed as she revels in her life of performance, in being embraced in her purest form: “As if I cast a spell/I read out loud my diary/In front of people,” she marvels.
But while What We Drew is more internalized than past releases, it is not conflicted; rather, Yaeji finds clarity in vulnerability, in the pendulum swing of her humanity. Crucially, the mixtape doesn’t turn its back on one of Yaeji’s strongest traits as an artist: Her music has always been deeply social, and now it is more gregarious than ever in its gratitude for those around her. Some of the best tracks are valentines to the friends and artists who fill Yaeji’s world—and she has been proactive building scenes, from New York to Seoul—and her appreciation for this community feels all the sweeter balanced with her revelations of struggle. Throughout What We Drew, it is a thrill to hear Yaeji sound so proud and connected to the artistic company she keeps and to the heritage that gives her singing even more eloquence. It is sobering to know her struggles, to hear her persevere through them; hearing her shun easier paths, insistent on sharing her complicated truth, makes the party all the better when it arrives. Through the dark, Yaeji reminds us that our narratives are ours alone.

Buy: Rough Trade
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The cult singer-songwriter's first proper album in 40 years proves that his beloved early recordings were no fluke. Jeff Tweedy guests on this expert singer-songwriter album, which is as dependent upon keen insight as it is upon meticulous arrangement.

Life Is People

You don't need a history lesson to love Life Is People, the third proper album by British singer-songwriter Bill Fay. If you've ever enjoyed the records of Pink Floyd or Randy Newman, Spiritualized or Wilco, the dozen gems here move between similar poles of spartan grace and outsized grandeur. The organ-abetted lilt of "The Healing Day" suggests Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett turning the page toward happiness a decade ago, while the gospel choir delivering the mantra of "Be at Peace with Yourself" might make you scan the credits for a J. Spaceman acknowledgment. The flinty "Empires" is a piano-led political tune written from a distance and with a dark, Newman-like wit, where the world's biggest timbers eventually yield to the teeming underbrush beneath. Its warped tones and terse delivery suggest Roger Waters coming back to Earth. Beautiful, patient and poignant, Life Is People is an expert singer-songwriter album, as dependent upon keen insight as it is upon meticulous arrangement.
But a history lesson makes Life Is People that much more meaningful. Bill Fay is 69 years old, and he hasn't released a proper studio album since his second, 1971's brilliant and acerbic Time of the Last Persecution. He'd stumbled into a recording contract with the Decca Nova/Deram imprint. As he admitted to WFMU in an interview last year, labels at that point scooped up an abundance of acts, hoping that at least something would turn into a best seller. "Somebody told me at the time," he said, "that their policy was to throw as many pieces of mud as possible at the wall, and hope that some would stick." Fay's records didn't stick, however, and neither did he. Deram dropped Fay and, in the 41 years since Persecution, he's recorded new material and consistently written new songs but never finished a complete record. Music, as he also told WFMU, was a private family affair for him as a child, with his aunts and uncles playing together and his mom occasionally sitting down at the family piano; he performed several times, but largely it seemed that, after stumbling toward fame through music, he wanted to keep the stuff to himself.
It was too late, though. Based only on the strength of those first two records and reissues, sporadic batches of leaked demos, and a terribly teasing collection called Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, issued 30 years after it was recorded, Fay's cult standing grew. Wilco covered "Be Not So Fearful", the gorgeous affirmation from his debut, and convinced Fay to join them onstage in 2007 and later during a 2010 Tweedy solo set. Then, last summer, Fay returned to a London studio for the first time in three decades with American producer Joshua Henry, a lifelong Fay fan who'd barely been alive for 30 years. With a band comprised of younger studio players and Ray Russell and Alan Rushton, who'd joined Fay for Persecution so long ago, they recorded the bulk of Life Is People in a little less than a month.
And now, back to the present: Life Is People doesn't feel at all like a late-life afterthought from a cult hero. Pointed and urgent but never pushy, Fay's songs offer pleas for redemption in a world drunk on its promise, coupled with a reassuring contentment for simply having lived this life. Fay chastises the way generations have refused to learn from their history, even as we stare into devices that allegedly offer all the answers we'd ever need. On the other hand, "Be at Peace With Yourself" extends existential reassurance-- that is, as Fay offers behind a tabernacle-sized mix of organ and choir arrangements, whoever you are is probably good enough. That's a thought echoed on "The Healing Day", a tender Revelation hymn that depends upon the belief that some cosmic help is always on the horizon. "Every battleground/ Is a place for sheep to graze," Fay sings during one his most eloquent bits ever. "When it all comes tumbling down/ All the palaces and parades."
But the record's two key songs, "The Never Ending Happening" and "This World", provide a crucial bridge between Fay's indignation and optimism. On the former, Fay's voice hang's worn but resilient above a simple, elliptical piano line; in these perfect four minutes, he considers death, God, birth, bird song, and war cries as one continuum. He's happy to have been involved, he admits, to have his tiny narrative shape a much bigger story: "Just to be part of it/ Is astonishing to me." The record's pop standout, "This World" springs from the somber end of "The Never Ending Happening" as if to offer the message that, appreciative as he may be, Fay isn't done quite yet. He and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy trade the verses and share the chorus, their simpatico voices both showing the signs and struggles of survival. (Fay also lands a wrenching solo cover of "Jesus, Etc." here, his voice turning Tweedy's resignation into observational candor.) As they dole out experiences with blue-collar worries and dismiss the corner drug dealer who offers "an easy way out," they sound enthused, as if overcoming the worries of the world is its own substantive reward for living. Though he's a quarter-century older, Fay temporarily lends Tweedy an energy that recalls the transition from Uncle Tupelo to Wilco. They're having fun.
In the past decade, a number of serpentine stories and bittersweet circumstances have revitalized the careers of musicians who, for whatever reason, were swallowed by the record industry and largely ignored by the world. To varying degrees, soul singers like Bettye LaVette, Solomon Burke, and Charles Bradley found ways to turn long flirtations with fame (or abject failure) into real or revived careers with new records on indie imprints. Thanks to collaborations with young producer Kieran Hebden, drummer Steve Reid finally became more than a footnote of rock and jazz history; when Bert Jansch linked with Drag City and Devendra Banhart, the inspiration to Led Zeppelin and what had become New Weird America met a fresh generation of listeners. Life Is People and the tale that accompany it are strong enough to do the same for Fay, to at last make his reputation among many match his legacy among few. "There are miracles in the strangest of places," Fay sings at the start of the title track's seven-minute ascent, setting the scene for the string of tiny triumphs he sweetly lists. At the risk of overstating the case, Life Is People—the work of a 69-year-old family man, and the work of a lifetime—confirms its maker's own thesis.


17 years since their last effort, Swervedriver return with a record that wisely plays to the shoegaze band’s most formidable strengths.

I Wasn't Born to Lose You

Swervedriver inhabit a funny spot within the pantheon of classic shoegazer bands. They were always slightly out of step with their 90’s Creation-era peers, most of whom appeared content to disappear behind a veil of tastefully shimmering feedback and lyrical obtuseness. Swervedriver, on the other hand, were more interested in ripping. Their guitars may have fed back through the requisite number of effects pedals—classic Swervedriver tshirts actually featured a connected bank of effects pedals rather than the band members—but rather than shrink into the feedback, Swervedriver married their guitar haze with nods to poppy psychedelia, American film noir, and songs about fast cars. They had more in common with bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Soundgarden (with whom they toured) than the more ethereal English bands (Ride, Lush, My Bloody Valentine) with whom they were forever lumped. Despite releasing four excellent records between 1991 and 1998, Swervedriver—plagued by label woes, lineup shifts, and bad timing—somehow never quite got their due.
Now, some 17 years since their last effort, (1998’s 99th Dream), Swervedriver return with a record that wisely plays up to the band’s most formidable strengths. Reunion albums can be a tricky and sometimes disastrous business (just ask the Pixies), but I Wasn’t Born To Lose You manages the rare trick of actually enhancing the band’s legacy rather than tarnishing it. Hewing most closely to their most beloved releases (1991’s Raise and 1993’s Mezcal Head), Born is a remarkably unfussy collection of songs that could easily pass—for better or worse—as a kind of lost album from the early 90’s.
Swervedriver’s strength always stemmed from the melodic interplay of guitarists Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge—a collaboration that, at its best, felt like watching a rocket take off at close range and having it subsequently blow up in your face. It’s hard not to use firework metaphors when describing the band’s music, which seems to function best as a series of blinding explosions and brilliant fade-outs. Tracks like “Last Rites” and “Everso” are not-so-distant cousins to the band’s early “Sandblasted”-era singles—overdriven riffs reign supreme and songs build with mantra-like power before collapsing into long passages of looping, blissed-out guitar lines. Lead single “Setting Sun” proves to be an accurate barometer of the record’s overall vibe—a sustained mid-tempo reverie pushed along by Franklin’s characteristically low-key vocals: “Pure solid gold, you’re not alone, hearing unseen sounds from the depths below…”
If there’s a complaint to be had with I Wasn’t Born To Lose You it’s that the record too often errs on the side of restraint. The furious, breakneck quality of classic Swervedriver tracks like "Son of Mustang Ford” and “For Seeking Heat” is largely absent here, eschewed in favor of tracks that aspire to a kind of majestic dreaminess. With the exception of the propulsive “Deep Wound” and scuzz-rocking “Red Queen Arms Race” the record plays like a kind of sustained trance, everything buoyed by a sense of unwavering melody wrung out of guitars that—even when played gently—always seem to be turned up past eleven. “Behold this rhythmic creation, it’s beautiful and true” Franklin sings on “I Wonder?”—a nearly six-minute bit of gorgeously rendered guitar squall that closes the album. It’s a fitting description for the record itself—a collection of songs that may not necessarily venture into any new sonic territory for the venerable band, but ultimately doesn’t really need to.


Patrick Wolf's 10th-anniversary collection is a double album containing new acoustic versions of previously released songs. It isn't quite a greatest-hits compilation, though it's mostly singles and fan favorites.

Sundark and Riverlight

Nobody does maximalism like Patrick Wolf. Calling his music theatrical is accurate but only just; if the stage is the metaphor, Wolf's albums call for massive prosceniums, with hundred-strong casts, meticulous set pieces, and props flung in from the wings. The aesthetics may vary, from Lycanthropy's assemble-at-home crafting to The Bachelor's repurposed metalwork to Lupercalia's lavish polish, but the scope is always titanic. If you're a fan, this is likely why: Wolf spares no sound, vocal gnash, or string flourish if there's emotional or narrative payoff to be had. If you're not, there's probably nothing more Wolf could be doing to change your mind. Maybe that's why the main decision he made on his 10th-anniversary album, Sundark and Riverlight, was to do so much less.
Sundark and Riverlight is a double album containing re-recorded versions of Wolf's songs. One disc designated for troubled songs and one for happier ones. In practice, this sorts The Bachelor to the front and Lupercalia to the sunny back porch. It isn't quite a greatest-hits compilation, though it's mostly singles and fan favorites. Nor is it precisely an acoustic album, though that's mostly how these songs differ. It's more like a retcon, or as Wolf calls it, a make-under: stripping the old material of its frippery to reveal how, Wolf has said, it was meant to sound. "There was a conscious rebellion on this album against the digital age of auto-tune and mass produced electronic landfill music," Wolf wrote to accompany the album's release*,* echoing comments he'd made around the release of Lupercalia. It's a curious statement from an artist who's never much relied on or even acknowledged Auto-Tune and one whose music has been thickly electronic (if not exactly mass-produced) since album one. But it's benign. Wolf's hardly the first to anchor this rationale to an unplugged album, nor is he even alone this month. (Tori Amos's Gold Dust, the same idea in the same broad genre, came out within the week.) There's a certain cachet to baroque recordings that New Romantic synthpop doesn't have; it's a play to redefine oneself not as a singer-songwriter but a singer-composer.
If only more composing went on. If this is how Wolf's songs truly look, Sundark and Riverlight is like the thumbnail version: everything compressed, details lost. What might sound cavernous with the right acoustics sounds merely pleasant on recording, taking angst-wracked songs and turning them into something more suited to catches of melodies you'd hear passing a storefront. In these thinner arrangements, Wolf's voice-- among his greatest assets-- sounds overegged, and he knows it; his howls and growls are mostly subdued, as if he's trying to keep it down for the very nice PA lady who just told everyone to turn off their cell phones.
This works when the songs were orchestral ballads already ("London"), or when the details lost cluttered what might as well have been orchestral ballads ("Teignmouth", "Wind in the Wires"). It works for much of the Lycanthropy material, because if you forget Wolf's statements, it's easy enough to imagine this really is how these songs sounded inside his head as a teenager. And it works when Wolf's composing at his normal scale, like "Bluebells", which gets darker when written for cello and piano, or "The Libertine", whose startled-orchestra arrangement is the only unquestionable improvement here.
What's less successful is when Wolf takes exuberant songs and tranquilizes them. If you played the Sundark version of "Oblivion" for someone uninitiated, then the original, they'd think the first was the demo. A lone guitar picks through the bones of The Bachelor's original arrangement; you'd expect the violins at least might have stayed, being both rustic and frantic, but no. And Wolf's vocals, though not tentative, come off like laying guide marks for where the full version would insert guttering or conviction or Tilda Swinton. "Vulture", another Bachelor track, replaces the gnashing percussion, panting strings, and general masochistic frenzy of the original with sedate piano pleasantries; there's no blood left in its dead meat. Lupercalia fares little better. "Together" takes two ideas from the original (the seconds-long classical guitar flourish at the beginning and the curtsying strings at the end) and deflates everything else. "House" excises all the rejoicing strings and most of the joy of the original; it's like a midday nap the day after a besotted honeymoon, which is fair enough as an interpretative choice but far less interesting.
Sometimes the changes are just baffling. "Bermondsey Street" takes a song that worked because of its simplicity, its word-precise juxtaposition of two affairs, and smothers it with noodling spoken-word interludes; it's the exact opposite of what Wolf said he was trying to do. If the goal of Sundark and Riverlight was to prove Wolf's repertoire has songwriting merit beyond the layers of mythology and biography and reinventions, it's an unqualified success; on its own, every arrangement is entirely thoughtful and praiseworthy. It just wasn't necessary. These songs can make it alone, but they could be-- and have been-- so much better.


As Jamaica stood at a political crossroads in 1980, the Wailing Souls worked with famed engineer Scientist on a magical blend of unearthly dub and traditional songcraft.

Wailing

Jamaica had two realities then: a tropical paradise of sandy beaches, crystal blue seas, and feel-good music; the other, a nation overrun by violent drug posses, permanently scarred by a recent history of CIA intervention and subversion, and a deeper historical legacy of slavery and colonization. The question of which reality would prevail seemed to hang heavy in the air in 1980, as the Wailing Souls recorded their album Wailing—an album shaped by its earthly means and sung to the angelic spheres.
At the turn of the new decade, the post-independence euphoria that had defined Jamaica in the 1960s and the strident self-determination that defined the ’70s gave way to a new era of garrison politics, an unprecedented level of political violence (over 800 people killed in Kingston in the months leading up to the October elections), and the bloody consequences of Jamaica’s increasing role in the regional cocaine trade. The utopian vision of Rastafari—the Afro-Jamaican religion that preached a return to nature and repatriation to the ancestral African homeland—was being rapidly eclipsed by the hard local realities of the country’s position as a regional pawn in the Cold War and the effects of global free trade policies.
The music scene could not help but be affected by these shifts. If the ascension of Bob Marley and the influence of Rastafari on roots reggae were dramatic developments of the 1970s, the next dramatic turning point occurred in 1984 when producers abandoned the recording of live bands altogether, in favor of the stripped-down, pre-programmed rhythms of cheap Casio keyboards. These producers initially attempted to replicate the old reggae dancehall sound, but once the music went digital, it rapidly evolved into a radically different animal. Of course, the mechanization of Jamaican music followed a pattern that was already well underway in the United States and other parts of the world. But for those who had listened to reggae for its spiritual or political qualities or its earthy, organic sensibility, something seemed irretrievably lost.
The pre-digital early 1980s were a period of transition between these two dramatic eras of Jamaican music, an interregnum that symbolically began with the death of Bob Marley in May of 1981. Although many groups of the roots reggae era adapted to the new era and continued to make great music, the new style was largely defined by a younger generation of dancehall deejays with names like Yellowman, Charlie Chaplin, Josey Wales, Eek-A-Mouse, Tiger and others whose “slackness” lyrics of sex, ghetto violence, braggadocio and bling helped set the more aggressive tone of the new decade.
This new form of reggae, generally called “dancehall,” was associated with a number of emerging producers including Sugar Minott, Nkrumah Jah Thomas, Linval Thompson and Thompson’s protégé, Henry “Junjo” Lawes. Lawes in particular was on a hot streak during these years, best-known for the string of hits he produced with Yellowman. His unique sound was partially crafted by using the Roots Radics as his session band. The Radics were built around the rhythm section nucleus of Errol “Flabba” Holt, drummer Lincoln “Style” Scott, and guitarist Eric “Bingy Bunny” Lamont (augmented by a number of keyboardists including Winston Wright and Gladstone Anderson), and their sound was stripped-down and stark. Unlike the older, polyrhythmic roots reggae which had developed out of rock steady, the new rhythms tended to be minimalist in construction—at times martially tight and at other times heavy and lumbering—with Scott’s Syndrums garnishing the music with electronic beeps, buzzes and other quirky, futuristic sounds.
But the unique vibe of Lawes’ productions was also a result of them being mixed by Hopeton “Scientist” Brown, a young protégé of King Tubby, the acknowledged master of dub music. Scientist had initially been a mere apprentice at Tubby’s studio, only infrequently mixing until Thompson and Junjo started to use him on a regular basis. But his skills and reputation grew quickly and by 1980, he was mixing most of Junjo’s tunes and dub versions, compiling them on to the series of sci-fi and video game-themed albums that still form the core of his reputation today: Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires, Scientist Wins the World Cup, Heavyweight Dub Champion, Big Showdown, Scientist Meets the Space Invaders and Scientist Encounters Pac-Man. Unlike the warmer, more tropical sound of King Tubby’s dub mixing which had dominated the 1970s, Scientist’s treatment of the Roots Radics’ sounded as if he were suspended in the cold, stark spaces between planets, its emptiness only occasionally animated by the fleeting movements of comets, asteroids, and space debris.
Although dub music developed out of reggae as the latter music’s experimental impulse, the two approaches have generally tended to appeal to different constituencies. Inside of Jamaica, dub was most typically used in the dancehalls as a backdrop for the tale-spinning of the sound system deejays. Outside of Jamaica, it tended to appeal to listeners whose ears had been primed by the spacey soundscapes of psychedelic rock. And producers generally encouraged this bifurcation, placing vocal songs on the A-sides of singles and dub versions on the B-sides. But there were occasions when the idea of the song and the dub mix were not necessarily mutually exclusive, and there is a select group of exalted reggae recordings that unite the sonic experimentation of dub with more traditional conceptions of songcraft. The best-known example of this is probably the Congos’ 1977 album Heart of the Congos, a collection of songs gorgeously performed by the Congos and given an equally gorgeous, dubwise production by Lee “Scratch” Perry at the height of his Black Ark studio.
A lesser-known album in the same category is the Wailing Souls album Wailing. The core of the Wailing Souls is the duo of Winston “Pipe” Matthews and Lloyd “Bread” McDonald, generally augmented by one or two additional vocalists as the occasion demands. Friends of Bob Marley & the Wailers since their early days singing together in Trench Town, they were—along with the Abyssinians, the Gladiators, and Burning Spear—one of a number of roots vocal groups that began to record for Coxsone Dodd at Studio One in the early 1970s. The Wailing Souls brought a poignant, yearning sound associated on one hand with musical traditions of the Jamaican countryside and on the other, with African-American soul outfits like the Impressions and the Temptations, who inspired the formation of scores of Jamaican vocal groups. Many of the latter had perfected their gentle harmonizing singing rock steady—the romantic, soul-inspired Jamaican music that, for two or three intense years, set the stage for roots reggae. But by the early 1970s, they had abandoned the smooth crooning of rock steady for a raw, less affected vocal quality, typified by the rough voices of Pipe, Bob Marley, and Burning Spear’s Winston Rodney.
Like the other groups, the Wailing Souls typically sung themes of Rastafarian devotion alongside philosophically-tinged love songs. They cut two albums for Coxsone before moving on to Channel One studio, where they cut a string of excellent records for the Hoo-Kim brothers. Their career took a major step forward in 1979 when they recorded the celebrated Wild Suspense album for Island Records. By the time they began to record for Junjo in 1980, their experience enabled them to blend the romanticism of rock steady and the mysticism and militancy of roots reggae with the new, minimalist dub sound Scientist was crafting for Junjo’s productions. Teaming up with Junjo and Scientist when both were at the peak of their creativity, Pipe’s voice has arguably never been showcased to better effect, and Wailing was to be one of the most special albums of the Souls’ long career.
In fact, the group was initially reluctant to work with Junjo, wary of the gangster element in the producer’s business, not to mention quality control issues. Junjo was one of the producers that made extensive use of versioning—recycling a rhythm track by overdubbing a succession of deejays on it—but the Souls preferred their music to stand alone so that the messages in their song lyrics remained accessible. Furthermore, while the rhythms that Junjo was cutting with Roots Radics undoubtedly hit hard in the dancehall, they sometimes lacked the inventiveness of the rhythms produced by earlier drum & bass teams like Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (with Peter Tosh and Black Uhuru), Carlton & Aston Barrett (with Bob Marley & the Wailers) and “Santa” Davis and Fully Fulwood (with Soul Syndicate). But the Souls’ warm four-part harmonies and Rasta themes (filled out on this album by Garth Dennis and George “Buddy” Haye) brought a sonic and philosophical depth to those rhythms that Junjo’s usual deejays never could.
From Scott’s opening drum roll, the entire album is suffused with a feeling of the otherworldly, with the pensive chorus of Bread, Haye, and Dennis mixed like phantoms behind Pipe’s lead vocals, juxtaposed against the stark, hard rhythms of the Roots Radics and spaced-out by Scientist in a haze of echo and reverberation. The lyrics are generally understated, tending toward the poetic, the oblique, and the evocative. The album’s centerpiece is “Who No Waan Come Cyan Stay” (Who Didn’t Want to Come Can’t Stay), a languid, spacey paean of Rasta repatriation. Anyone doubting the emotional power of dub need only let themselves be transported by Scott’s snare chopping up the soundscape like gunshots, his bass drum kicking up thick clouds of reverberation, and Flabba Holt’s bass ringing out with analog delay like a buoy on the sea while Pipe beckons to non-believers one last time as he departs for a heavenly African Zion:
“Oh give us a home
Where the butterflies roam
and the birds sing so sweet…
Who no waan come cyan stay
You can stay, for I am going
It’s so long, so long
I’ve been warning you
Yet you’re trying hard not to accept my word
But when the master’s calling
You will find yourself stumbling
I’ll be waiting by the wayside
Who no waan come cyan stay
You can stay for I am going…”
The other songs continue in the same vein with wistful melodies of love, mystery, foreboding, and Rastafarian devotion. The opener “Penny I Love You” is poetic and philosophical, with the Souls professing their love into the echo chamber and setting the stage for the rest of the album. “Don’t Be Down Hearted” is a jaunty, spiritual exhortation for the Rasta faithful. “Rudy Say Him Bad” is a plea to the gun-toting “rude boys” of Kingston to heed the advice of their elders and renounce their violent ways, lest they “lay down to stay.” “Face the Devil” is rooted in the Biblical book of Revelation, warning of divine retribution and apocalyptic horrors to come. The album closes with the steady, plaintive “Mr. Big More,” with Pipe and the Souls calling out the wealthy for their greed while bemoaning the plight of suffering masses. In true “showcase album” fashion almost all of the songs here are followed by their dub versions, with the vocals entirely removed and Scientist kicking around in the echo chamber, using reverberation and dropping out parts to explore every nook, cranny, and cavern of the soundscape.
The juxtaposition of the Roots Radics’ dancehall rhythms and the rhapsodic voices of the Wailing Souls seemed to encapsulate Jamaica’s arrival at the crossroads of 1980, a moment when the violent changing of the political guard foreshadowed a new era for the island as a whole. In a tense and uncertain season when the smooth harmonizing of vocal groups was giving way to the raucous chanting of the dancehall deejays, the team of Junjo, Scientist, and the Wailing Souls managed to carve an exalted dub cathedral out of the hard rhythms of early dancehall. Casting the group as voices in the proverbial wilderness, Wailing sings the glories of love, while bemoaning the violence engulfing their society and the world, an angelically-voiced clarion call as society gradually arcs toward the dark side.
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Michael E. Veal is the author of Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae (Wesleyan University Press, 2007).


The vocal-heavy No Answer is  the clearest and most detailed record in Wolf Eyes' vast catalogue. There’s little in the way of buried elements or blurred dissonance; in fact, much of the album could be accurately described as minimal.

No Answer : Lower Floors

Dig up descriptions of Michigan trio Wolf Eyes from any time during their 16-year existence, and I doubt you'll see much use of the word “precision.” But their music has always had this quality-- even if it’s sometimes been covered in whirring distortion, brittle cacophony, or psychotic howls. Go back as far as “Half Animal, Half Insane”, from 2002’s Dread, and you can hear them picking and placing their sounds meticulously. Even though the results could feel abrasive or abstract, the attack has never been messy or careless. Most of the time, it’s a precise rendering of Wolf Eyes’ horror-movie visions and hard-edged sonic obsessions.
This knack for precision has reached a new level on No Answer: Lower Floors, Wolf Eyes’ first widely-released album since 2009’s Always Wrong. It’s the clearest, most detailed record in their vast catalogue. There’s little in the way of buried elements or blurred dissonance; in fact, much of the album could be accurately described as minimal. The best example is the longest, a 12-minute dirge called “Confession of the Informer”. Sparse and desolate, it contains only a few sounds at any given moment-- and most of them are distant and fade quickly, like the after-images of a light flash disappearing inside your eyelids.
Why is “Confession of the Informer” more gripping than a standard blast of rising noise? The secret lies in Wolf Eyes’ ability to cook up thick tension with the simplest sonic ingredients. It’s a skill they’ve had for a while, but lately they’ve focused it to a point of perfection. It helps that Nate Young and John Olson-- the group’s only consistent members since 2000-- have worked diligently on this aspect of their music outside of Wolf Eyes, in the sparse sketches of their duo Stare Case, the rangy experiments of Young’s Regression, and the reggae-influenced rhythms of Olson’s Hazel and Henry Slaughter. It also helps that new member Jim Baljo adds a further layer of laser-like clarity in his dexterous guitar playing. (Baljo replaced Mike Connelly last fall, though Connelly and the other former Wolf Eye, Aaron Dilloway, both contributed to No Answer: Lower Floors). All these factors have pushed Wolf Eyes to a peak of efficient power, where a single sound can ripple tension through the rest of a song.
The most powerful of those sounds are Young’s simple yet maniacally exacting beats. It’s fitting that No Answer: Lower Floors begins with one, tearing open the stereo space before other sounds can move in. His beats are the spine of the music, the compass around which all the other noises align. So while droning chords spark the slow-swinging “Chattering Lead”, the beat pushes them and Young’s deadened moans forward. It’s also what gives the song visceral impact, more so than the band’s tactile sheen. That sheen might make you woozy, but it’s Young’s beats that punch you in the gut.
What they don’t do, though, is push the music toward crashing climaxes. Young has recently talked about keeping the Wolf Eyes sound “realistic,” and resisting the temptation to jump from zero to ten at every opportunity. The result of this outlook on No Answer: Lower Floors is momentum that’s primarily implicit. Swells are tenuous and elusive, lurking in shadows without ever jolting into the frame. While Wolf Eyes have often used words and images that suggest the shock of slasher films, it’s this haunting aspect of their music that truly evokes scary movies.
Not that No Answer: Lower Floors is all about negative space. The album’s busy soundscape is much more diverse and rounded than that. In places it offers full-on noise-- take the fire-bomb opening of “Born Liar”, or the siren-like wail of “Warning Sign”, not coincidentally the sole track on the album without vocals. But the fact that Wolf Eyes can do both quiet and loud, fast and slow, or frantic and subdued, is no big deal on its own. What matters is the way they make those polar modes seem united and even indistinguishable. Which is yet another reason why something as subdued as “Confession of the Informer” can feel so vital and active.
This ability to connect opposites explains why, even though they’re often associated with the wave of American Noise that rose last decade, Wolf Eyes have always seemed to occupy their own self-made world. Part of that comes from the way they’re constantly generating releases, both as Wolf Eyes proper and under an endless array of side projects and solo ventures. But it’s also because no one else has swung between extremes so deftly, in a way that makes outer edges meet on a curving continuum rather than sitting on far ends of a spectrum. On No Answer: Lower Floors, this fact, like the music itself, is clearer than ever before.


The debut from this 27-year-old artist-turned-“living meme” chases shock and bombast but winds up surprisingly tame.

Ugly Is Beautiful

Feel sorry for Oliver Tree. For a crumb of our attention, the 27-year-old artist-turned-“living meme” has bathed in a tub of Flaming Hot Cheetos, “smoked” out of giant joints lit by flamethrower, and hung a wrinkly ball sack on his chin for a music video. On some occasions, he sports a sweatsuit patterned like a ’90s Solo Jazz disposable cup. But most of the time, he dresses in his standard uniform. On his head: red sunglasses and an atrociously ugly bowl cut reminiscent of Vector from Despicable Me. On his body: a pink and purple ’80s windbreaker, socks and sandals, and uber-wide JNCO jeans. His persona is dense and unappetizing, like a Twinkie squashed under hot car cushions for weeks. He might strive for iconoclasm, but his aims are very ordinary: He is the umpteenth artist lobbing outrageousness at crowds to provoke a reaction, to sell us something.
For his gimmicks, Tree has been heralded as the “trickster laureate of pop’s viral era” and cast as a Warholian insider skewering the music industry. Of course, the suits love it. “You can’t win unless you polarize people right now,” proclaims Atlantic A&R rep Jeff Levin, who signed Tree in 2017.  In interviews, the artist delivers winning jokes like mispronouncing “COVID” as “Coviod”; he threatens to retire, it seems, every other week. In March, Tree declared that his debut, Ugly Is Beautiful, was officially canceled due to the pandemic, and apologized with the arena-sized “Let Me Down,” on which he howls from the perspective of a fan who’s grown tired of his shit. But he returned in May, when a “mysterious hacker” took over his socials and demanded one million Instagram comments in exchange for the album art and release date. He finally dropped Ugly Is Beautiful last week, and like clockwork, announced that he was quitting music to focus on filmmaking.
To a generation that’s been bludgeoned senseless by the 24-hour news cycle, a dude with a bad haircut in a silly outfit might seem unbelievably dull. Anyone who’s seen two seconds of a Jake Paul vlog will yawn through Tree’s monster trucks and burning cars; nothing this novice troll does can obliterate brain cells like “They COVERED My LAMBORGHINI IN PEANUT BUTTER!! (prank).” Still, for an artist chasing shock and bombast, Oliver Tree’s music is surprisingly tame. Ugly Is Beautiful is an amalgam of genres like alternative rock, hip-hop, and electro-pop, with most of the tracks not straying far from what lands on the Hot Rock & Alternative chart. The catchy electro pop-punk opener, “Me, Myself & I,” recalls early 2010s radio favorite Neon Trees, as does keep-your-head-up jam “Again & Again.” Billie Joe Armstrong’s congested groan haunts songs like “Introspective” and “Jerk.”
Ugly Is Beautiful is bloated at 14 tracks, with several recycled singles in the mix. Tree’s voice—always a little shouty, a little whiny—is riddled with distortion, casting a fuzzed-out sameness over even the more left-field selections, like the runway thumper “1993.” After a while, you wonder why he doesn’t hurry up and join Twenty One Pilots. More aligned with his provocateur image is the ominous, bizarre rap “Joke’s on You!” “My whole life was just a joke/But I’m still not laughing,” he moans, channeling a familiar crimson-lipped antihero before leaping into Eminem-style rapping. The reggae-influenced “Bury Me Alive” pivots quickly to West Coast hip-hop. Inspired by the time he took too much acid at Burning Man—“I ended up running naked through the desert for about six hours and nearly died that night,” Tree elaborates—it warns about the dangers of drug abuse, colored with stock tropes about bargaining with the devil.
If you’re lucky as a performer, you can bait listeners with screwy antics, and pray they’ll stick around long enough to discover the Real You. The lyrics on Ugly Is Beautiful indicate deeper struggle behind Tree’s ludicrous facade, touching on the same themes of being an outsider, fucking up, and dealing with negativity, although in the vaguest possible terms. “When is it enough/How bad do you need that stuff?” our modern Marx wonders on “Cash Machine,” a grungy pop-rock lament about materialism. Still, it seems heartfelt. In a recent interview with music personality Anthony Fantano, Tree criticized his label for imposing more and more regulations on his music—demanding first one million social media followers, then two million, stalling Ugly Is Beautiful’s release long past its finish line. “I can’t spend 90 percent of my life dedicated to promoting some fucking shit I made three years ago,” he yelled. The album contains glimmers of a better artist—the way he scoots through genres is interesting, at least—but Tree and his team seem to have internalized the message of a 2018 Vice profile with a URL reading, “Nobody Paid Attention to Oliver Tree’s Music Until He Became a Living Meme.” It’s unclear, as his performance stretches on, how much of it is still of his own volition. The label heads may slobber over how Tree leverages meme culture as “the next credible and viable source of communication,” but they forget how quickly these fads run their expiration date. For every Oliver Tree, there are dozens of others who can take his place.

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The indie band’s 12th album uses a moodier, more subdued palette to get to the heart of some fun topics like fear and ambivalence in the face of environmental and societal ruin.

Wild Loneliness

You are probably having a bad time right now. You have been stuck at home in fits and starts for so long that it’s increasingly difficult to remember what that didn’t feel like. A bad situation that seemed like it was going to end soon didn’t, and now you’re not sure if it ever will—or if it does, it will surely be superseded by something even worse. Maybe you have some sense of what that even worse thing might be, maybe you don’t, but you’re feeling it hovering regardless. Even if you’re the type to find ways to remain hopeful—and God bless you whoever you are—you may concede that the search is getting a little more fraught each day.
Here’s some welcome good news: “If You’re Not Dark,” the last song on Superchunk’s 12th album Wild Loneliness, is the validating feel-bad anthem you didn’t know you needed. It’s a slow-burn climax dedicated to expressing dismay towards anyone who wouldn’t be having a bad time right now. Mac McCaughan sings with Sharon Van Etten, “If you’re not dark/At least in some little part/What are you on?/Can I have some?” They aren’t mad at you for being oblivious or immune to the inherent confusion or existential angst of the times, they’re just jealous.
The righteous fury of 2018’s What a Time to Be Alive channeled the DIY punk of Superchunk’s early days into some real oh-we’ll-give-you-something-to-be-angry-about-all-right circumstances; being pissed about your boss was merely training wheels for being pissed about institutionalized inequality and white supremacy and the fact that your children are doomed. The album felt of the moment in a way none of their work had been asked to be before; Wild Loneliness somehow one-ups it by doing the same with a far more complicated moment.
Wild Loneliness is a deep sigh after their Trump-era primal howl—an admission that if you can’t change the things you’re rightfully mad about, you should channel what’s left of your energy into hanging out while you can with the people who make you feel less bad. It’s bunker-bedroom pop, salve and comfort for the apocalypse we know we’re already in and can’t really stop no matter how loud we’ve tried to yell. Anger is easy to identify and vent; fear and ambivalence in the face of environmental and societal ruin are harder to pogo to.
It is only natural that the overarching theme for an album largely self-recorded by band members in their own North Carolina homes is the idea of home itself, reveling in the mundane as a lifeboat. With string flourishes courtesy of Owen Pallett, opener “City of the Dead” makes a line like “I’ll still make the coffee/And we still make the beds” feel defiant and jubilant, fighting for the right to feel normal for five fucking minutes. “This Night” is an unfairly catchy late-career peak that turns the potentially numbing familiarity of domesticity into the most romantic thing in the world (“This night is like so many/But I still get a thrill when you ring me”) and an end refrain (“Take me/Take me out tonight”) that makes a night away from the kids sound like high adventure.
The equally hooky “Endless Summer” is the most explicitly doomsday-oriented song on the album, a walk in the woods spent contemplating the looming specter of climate disaster that also happens to be an outright bop despite the circumstances. Navigating between despair and delight within the confines of a fuzzy pop song is obviously nothing new; what does feel new is how often we are caught experiencing and processing both at the same time and the relief in recognizing that as a way forward.
The musical tone across the album is closer to Superchunk 1.0’s 2001 swan song Here’s to Shutting Up and its presciently titled predecessor Indoor Living, making the most of mandated isolation to nurture a moodier, more subdued palette than What a Time to Be Alive’s determined racket, and to rope in a bigger cast of outside (and remote) contributors, including Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley, Mike Mills, Wye Oak’s Andy Stack, and Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell. At the time, HTSU’s slower pace and emphasis of keyboards over guitars felt marked by both possibility and frustration—a band chafing against the yoke of expectations, grappling with how to gracefully entwine the culture and chaos of living in a scrappy rock band in the face of late-onset adulthood.
Half a long career later, strings and horns and acoustic ballads don’t feel like a reaction to or deviation from an established style of clatter, they feel like part of the living room. Superchunk have continually applied the lessons and practices of their youth to less youthful endeavors and in the process turned themselves from a great and admirable and well-loved band into a generationally capital-I Important one. And Wild Loneliness is the natural endpoint of this long interrogation—the product of a band whose confidence in their own reason for being feels like a beacon.

Buy: Rough Trade


Rachel's pioneered a blend of modern classical music and post-rock that you can hear in current practitioners Jóhann Jóhannsson and Max Richter. Their 2003 album Systems/Layers is their masterpiece.

Systems/Layers

When Systems/Layers, the fifth album by Louisville stalwarts Rachel’s, dropped in 2003, it seemed they’d broken through. Elevating their compositions from lovely postmodern takes on classical music to a unique strain of orchestral post-rock, Systems/Layers featured a truly synthesized mesh of chamber music and electronics that sounded like little else. Alas, as Rachel’s had always been more project than band, a period of inactivity followed the record while members worked on other things, and then cofounder Jason Noble fell ill to cancer, dying in 2012. As a result, Systems/Layers remains their final statement, whether or not they’d intended it as such.
In the thirteen years that have passed since that record came out, the little nook of a genre which Rachel’s helped birth—classical sounds with indie sensibilities, film-music moodiness and digital experimentation—has grown into a more easily identifiable vein of music couched under the umbrella term “post-classical” (a term that used to refer to minimalists like Steve Reich and Philip Glass, who modern audiences might likely just see as “20th-century classical”). Promoted by labels like 130701 and Erased Tapes and typified by the commercially successful and recognized soundtrack work of Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max Richter, and Ólafur Arnalds, as well as up-and-coming artists like Resina or Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, post-classical is now a small but thriving world. And Systems/Layers’ status as a godfather record to the nascent genre is undeniable.
Now the band and their label Quarterstick have finally seen fit to capitalize on these recent trends by issuing the beloved Systems/Layers for the first time on vinyl, their only record not to have had such a release. Though it isn’t common for thirteen-year-old records by small bands to be reissued without a label change, the CD-only Systems/Layers had entered a kind of a quasi out-of-print status as listeners move to a vinyl-and-streaming binary. Thankfully, the small label Quarterstick has leapt in to rectify the situation.
It’s also a fitting tribute to the departed Noble, whose sensibility rings out of Systems/Layers. Each of the five Rachel’s records has a unique voice, guided mostly by which members of the collective had greater hands in the songwriting. Handwriting and Sea and Bells were cowritten by all three core principals—Rachel Grimes, Jason Noble and Christian Frederickson—while Egon Schiele was entirely written by Grimes and Noble’s role was reduced to production. Systems/Layers, with its postmodern merger of music and technology, sounds closer to Noble’s later solo work as Per Mission than anything else in Rachel’s catalog.
Fans who haven’t listened to Systems/Layers in years may be pleased to learn that like all Rachel’s records, it doesn’t sound like it’s aged a day and could just as easily be taken as a new release from 130701. Part of this is due to the engineering and mixing talents of Shellac’s Bob Weston, who guides the band toward a sound that is naturalistic and in-the-hall. On tracks like “Esperanza” or “Packet Switching,” the violins swell and soar so high it feels as if you're looking up at the ceiling from the orchestra level of a concert hall.
Which, to be fair, may have actually been where the sounds were recorded, as much of the album was recorded live with the SITI Company dance troupe in places like Skidmore College and Indiana University Southeast for a performance piece sharing the same name. The exact nature of the compositional relationship with SITI is unclear, but all of Systems/Layers has a blended, ephemeral feel that feels more like a 60-minute sound experiment than the collection of discrete compositions that made up previous records. Many of the cuts—even the more traditional Satie-esque solo piano of “Anytime Soon” or the darting “Arterial”—end or begin with crossfading segues from adjacent tracks. And many of them depart standard structures entirely, such as “where_have_all_my_files_gone?,” which would sound completely at home on Jóhannsson’s latest Orphee, threading an encircling wall of strings into a throbbing synth burble before transitioning into “Reflective Surfaces,” which blends gamelan and voice samples into a cacophonous churn. And on “Last Things Last” the band finally incorporates actual singing (with a guest appearance from Shannon Wright) in a track that in context feels like an intriguing change of pace despite its relative slightness as a stand-alone track.
Best of all are “Water from the Same Source” and “Air Conditioning.” The former offers a stately six-minute representation of Rachel’s formula: gently circulating strings, piano, bass and rock(ish) drumming. It has been featured already in such films as Hancock and La Grande Bellezza and it’s easy to imagine it finding a permanent life soundtracking moments of contemplative emotional transition in film. “Air Conditioning” follows a similar script but is even more condensed: three minutes of nagging, heart-tugging strings via a repeated droning viola riff and soaring violin and cello, before melting away into a hazy fog of samples and found sounds.
One thing that distinguishes Systems/Layers from its modern peers is its unpretentious woolliness, which stands in stark contrast to the grandeur-seeking impulses of Jóhannsson and Richter. There’s a charming innocence and gentle defiance that imbues their music with a modest magic, one that also makes it more comprehensible why the band has remained on the margins.
The reissue wraps by including the band’s final release from 2005, the eighteen-minute outtake collage “Technology Is Killing Music,” which is slotted neatly as the whole of Side 4. Made up entirely of bits of song and sound from the recording of Systems/Layers, it serves as a nice companion to that record and a perfect endpoint for the band, framing a true blueprint for late 2000s and 2010s post-classical. Additionally, the decision to add it rather than stretch out a sixty-minute record onto four LP sides is a generous and welcome choice, allowing listeners to avoid the subtly annoying problem of “2XLP vinyl reissues” requiring an overabundance of record flipping.
It’s uncertain if Rachel’s will ever receive the broad recognition they deserve as forebearers of a vibrant and essential new genre of 21st century music, but it may be that Noble, their easy-going and dearly departed leader, may not have cared either way. For a group who knowingly produced expensive, hand-crafted vinyl packaging for records they knew only a small group of people would buy, sharing their music was always a labor of care and love and provided a kind of satisfaction in and of itself. At least now, it’s all out there.


It's that moment every indie kid irrationally fears: your favorite band gets the call-up to the majors.\n\ Now ...

It Still Moves

It's that moment every indie kid irrationally fears: your favorite band gets the call-up to the majors. Now that they've come to prominence via the California-based indie Darla Records, it's My Morning Jacket's turn to risk their careers and financial stability for a shot at recording a real statement album backed by a serious budget. But something's not right here, or maybe something's too right: Jim James' high, lonesome croon is still recorded in a grain silo, and the band's sound is still a cathedral of reverb, but where you might expect grandiose 40-piece orchestras, bombastic gospel choirs and glossy, state-of-the-art digital effects, you will find only the vast, empty space that has always accompanied the band's instrumentation, allowing each note to resonate indefinitely, unhampered by unnecessary density. Rest assured, the faithful will have no problem kneeling here.
Last year's exploratory Chocolate & Ice EP left quite a few open questions about the band's future direction, many signals of which could be found in the 24-minute electro-funk centerpiece "Cobra". But It Still Moves almost immediately confirms that the spacy Southern psych that My Morning Jacket built their name on remains their bread and butter. "Mahgeetah" is full of the long, drawn-out vocals that made "Can You See the Hard Helmet on My Head?" such an affecting and seemingly meaningful question; it also carries over the texture of that song, building a small epic out of the same elements. The band reacts to each verse differently-- once with explosions of glimmering arpeggios, later with Johnny Quaid's beautiful, understated guitar solo-- before bringing the whole thing to one of those thunderous conclusions that makes classic rock live albums such a guilty pleasure.
"Golden" trots through a glowing haze of reverb on Patrick Hallahan's steadily brushed beat, its lilting finger-picking and ghostly harmonies falling somewhere between The Band's stately Canadicana and The Byrds' "Ballad of Easy Rider". "One Big Holiday" doesn't look like much from the lyrics in the liners, but when James grabs hold of the opening line, "Wakin' up feeling good and limber," and draws it out in his singular way, it feels about a million times more weighty than it probably should. Near the album's midpoint, the reverb reaches such titanic proportions that James' drifting vocals begin to rival Sigur Rós' Jon Thor Birgisson for shear ethereality, particularly on a track like "I Will Sing You Songs". It's like listening in the throes of a lucid dream.
"Easy Morning Rebel" puts your feet back on the ground with its swinging arrangement and Memphis horns (actually played by veteran Stax session men-- one of the rare frills here made available by major label dollars). And then, finally, the band leaves James alone in his silo to close the album with the searching, desperate "One in the Same", a song that finds him seemingly trying to sort fragmented memories into coherent thoughts. When he hits the lines, "It wasn't till I woke up/ That I could hold down a joke or a job or a dream/ But then all three are one in the same," it should put a lump in your throat.
And with that, It Still Moves strums to a close, an album by turns beautiful and possessed, by others raucous and fiery. If you're standing by the record racks trying to choose between this and the band's other major achievement, At Dawn, flip a coin; either way, you win. My Morning Jacket have made the move to the bigs in tremendous style, and as far as I can tell they haven't compromised a thing to be there. If there's one major flaw I could point to here, it'd be the album's length-- 74 minutes is a long runtime for any record, and as a result, the album is usually better off listened to in chunks-- but that's a small concern considering the riches that await inside.


The New Zealand sister duo offer a self-contained suite of dream pop, folk, and cosmic jazz that’s far more evocative than the few words they sing.

Perfumed Earth

Purple Pilgrims evoke familiarity with a distant world—specifically, the woods of Tapu, the scenic coastal locality on the North Island of New Zealand where siblings Clementine and Valentine Nixon record their music. On Perfumed Earth, the pair spin their songs into myth, offering a self-contained suite of dream pop, folk, and cosmic jazz that’s far more evocative than the few words they sing. The album’s real triumph is in its lush melodies, strands that wind and splay like a carpet of vines. What the Nixon sisters sing is secondary to their rich harmonic brocade.
As on their 2016 debut, Eternal Delight, Purple Pilgrims’ music conveys the region’s misty, fantastical appearance: fluorescent green sulfur pools, spouting waterfalls, and mossy cliffs. Though electric guitars and synthesizers appear throughout, many of these songs elicit an almost mystic appeal. The Nixons seem to inhabit another era; both women wear their hair long, with wardrobes worthy of Stevie Nicks. As they glide between a breathy middle range and unblemished soprano on “How Long Is Too Long,” their voices gently braid with filaments of synthesizer and pillowy bass. It’s hard not to dream up lofty, folkloric imagery to accompany titles like “Ancestors Watching,” a simple dirge that finds the sisters swapping lines of verse.
Purple Pilgrims’ vocals provide more texture than context, but perhaps unintelligible lyrics are to their advantage. On “Sensing Me,” they sing of a man “as smooth as avocado” and ask him: “Where are you from and what’s your sign?/And do you think you could guess mine?”—the type of pick-up line likely to break the spell of even the most pristine beach. One of Perfumed Earth’s best songs has no words at all: On the five-minute astral jazz interlude “Delphiniums in Harmony/Two Worlds Away,” spare guitar frames a lean saxophone, and they trail off together like ripples across a pond. The drifting “Ruinous Splendour” allows experimental composer Roy Montgomery’s de-tuned guitar plucks to balance the Nixons’ coos with a necessary tartness.
This modest collection of songs allows ample time to wander a strange and beautiful place, if only in the imagination. Purple Pilgrims may have no particular destination in mind, but their incantatory voices have the power to transport.

Buy: Rough Trade
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The debut album from the late Oakland pastor is a powerful showcase for his guitar work, his singing, and his ministry.

Pastor Champion: I Just Want to Be a Good Man

I Just Want to Be a Good Man

Halfway through his debut album, right before he launches into the soulful “To Be Used, By You (I Just Want to Be a Good Man),” Pastor Wiley Champion takes a moment to teach the song to the small band backing him at the 37th Street Baptist Church in Oakland. He runs through the chord progressions, explains the chorus repetitions, and demonstrates the foundational riff before leading them through a song he had performed many times throughout his life. It’s exactly the kind of material that would be excised from a typical live album, but after two nights of sessions, he declined to put any more music to tape. And yet, this bit of filler is revealing, as Champion emerges as a gentle, encouraging instructor who passes along his wisdom humbly. “It’s all simple,” he assures them. “Ain’t nothin’ complicated about it.” It brings you right into the church, where Pastor Champion made music as a vehicle for a higher message.
He’s something of a mystery. While Champion refused to speak about the details of his life, we do have a broad outline of his upbringing in the Deep South and all the horrors that might imply. We know he migrated to California, was involved in street gangs and possibly prostitution, got saved, devoted his life to Jesus, and raised a family. He worked as a carpenter, but also toured extensively as an itinerant preacher in churches and homes. In the late 2010s, he worked with the label Luaka Bop to make a solo album, although it’s unclear how committed he was to documenting his ministry on tape. The producers set up an analog recorder and invited members of the small congregation to attend; it’s not a Sunday morning recording, in other words, but a staged reenactment, which means it can feel staged at times, even a little stiff.
Still, it’s a powerful showcase for his guitar work, his singing, and his ministry. Champion plays rhythm guitar rather than lead and only rarely takes a solo—as though that might draw too much attention to himself and away from God. His chugging, repetitive rhythms are based in secular blues, not dissimilar from the hill country strains in Mississippi or the electrified riffs that blasted out of northern factory cities. He strums and finger-picks like he’s been collecting these songs all his life, learning a new trick here or a technique there, and he matches it with a throaty, soulful baritone that’s surprisingly forceful for a man in his seventies.
And that band, which hadn’t played together until they assembled for these sessions, follows him closely and churns up a joyful noise that makes “Who Do Men Say I Am” and “Storm of Life (Stand by Me)” sound especially volatile. His greatest collaborator, however, might be the congregation itself. “Talk to God” offers a lesson on how to energize a docile crowd, as Champion encourages the audience to sing along and shout back at him. They do so hesitantly at first, but grow more animated as the song progresses, clapping and singing and punctuating his proclamations with hearty affirmations. By the time he winds the song down, that small audience sounds many times bigger.
Champion had a term for listeners who might feel suspicion toward organized Christianity and who might be skeptical of gospel in 2022: “I know you’ve been wounded, you’re calling it ‘church hurt.’” It’s a couplet that he sings in several of these songs, and while he didn’t invent the term, he invested it with deep compassion. He never makes it explicit, but his ministry seems to acknowledge that institutions can damage people, that religion has historically been used as a bludgeon against minorities in America. That only makes his music sound all the more extroverted and his empathy all the more radical. I Just Want to Be a Good Man prizes humility and understanding over shame and scolding: The church should serve the people rather than the other way around. Sadly, Champion died in December 2021, leaving behind this humble album as his final testament. It’s not perfect, but it’s all we have from him. In that regard, it sounds like a small miracle.