Stephin Merritt explores another aesthetic conceit on his latest record, creating a characteristically self-aware play at a "folk" record.

Realism

In the 10 years since the Magnetic Fields released 69 Love Songs, Stephin Merritt's ornate orchestrations and wry, referential lyrics have gone from indie rock anomalies to NPR staples. And while countless artists have successfully tempered the emotional gratification of "rock" with self-aware sophistication, Merritt continues to defiantly withhold the former. Merritt embraces artifice where other musicians disavow it, willfully avoiding (or outright mocking) gestures at "sincerity" and presenting his songs as stylized works of fiction. Even Merritt's earliest work with the Magnetic Fields found its most devastating moments via lyrical irony and musical footnotes. The Magnetic Fields will never release an "arty indie rock" record, even though they were instrumental in making such records de rigeur.
For the second album in a row, Merritt is placing an aesthetic conceit front-and-center. While 2008's Distortion was a foray into Jesus and Mary Chain-style squalls of feedback, new LP Realism is Merritt's characteristically self-aware play at a "folk" record.  This approach is not entirely new territory for Merritt; 2004's i casts a broadly similar sonic footprint to Realism. The difference largely comes down to arrangement; on i, the Magnetic Fields often sounded like a small ensemble playing together in a room. Here, Merritt's approach is more wide-ranging; gang vocals abound, as do bevies of non-traditional string instruments. Of course, Merritt would not be so gauche as to turn in an "acoustic guitar and vocals" record, and those hoping to find anything even remotely autobiographical or directly emotive on Realism will be sorely disappointed; if anything, Realism is Merritt's most cold and distant-sounding record to date.
This contrast, or course, is not lost on Merritt. Sure enough, Realism is not a "documentary" recording but rather a collection of elaborate, immaculately constructed songs, each encapsulating its own (distorted) "reality." There's even a note of operational irony here, as the compression necessary to bring Realism to a marketable volume makes it as loud as Distortion. But while Distortion saw Merritt gleefully twisting streams of feedback into palp [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| able melancholy, Realism comes off just a little too dry, too straightforward. Merritt's formalism paired excellently with unexpected genres like synth-pop and distorted rock, but such a stately approach to such a stately sound yields frustratingly sterile results.
Opener "You Must Be Out of Your Mind" is both promising and portentous. Within 10 seconds, Merritt's songwriting strengths are on full display: strong melodies given room to breathe, thoughtful and funny lyrics, concise and elegant structure. But "You Must Be Out of Your Mind" sounds suspiciously like a drum-less rehash of i standout "I Don't Believe You". The "Interlude" that follows all but derails the album mere minutes in, and cries out for a more flattering context; it's a narrative song sans narrative, cultivating a flighty and groundless mood (hence the title) with no real lead-up or comedown. The opening bars of "I Don't Know What to Say" constitute the loveliest moment on the record, but like far too much of Realism, the song seems frozen in suspended animation and put behind glass.
This heightened sense of artifice is not accidental; on songs like "The Dolls' Tea Party" and "Painted Flower", Merritt is more or less explicitly painting still-lifes. These, along with "We Are Having a Hootenanny" and the surprisingly re-listenable "The Dada Polka" fall broadly under the "kitsch/novelty" category of Merritt's work, but these songs are really no better or worse then the rest of Realism. The variety show approach Merritt takes to his records is part and parcel of the Magnetic Fields' M.O.; I'm not even sure what it would sound like if Merritt attempted to create a "masterpiece" in the traditional sense. As a result, even the weakest songs on Realism aren't simple throwaways. "Always Already Gone" will be right at home on the next mix you send to your favorite critical theory major (alongside "The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure" from 69 Love Songs). Looking for some music to play at your next holiday party?  Allow me to recommend "Everything Is One Big Christmas Tree".
As rock music listeners, we are generally given to degrading music that seems so rooted in a specific theme or purpose. Realism is not a sit-down-and-listen-to-it-all-the-way-through record, but neither is any Magnetic Fields release. The problem with Realism isn't that it is too clever or too campy, but rather that these qualities are merely reflected in its finely polished exterior. At his best and at his worst, Merritt is smart, thorough, and unerringly precise; the distinction lies in which songs simply display these qualities, and which songs channel them into moving, memorable and/or hilarious works of art. Here, Merritt's songs are as delicate and meticulous as porcelain miniatures. Unfortunately, Realism holds more tchotchkes than museum pieces.


Mastodon follow the amazing Leviathan/Blood Mountain 1-2 with a Brendan O'Brien-produced LP that mixes more rock and prog into their metal core.

Crack the Skye

First off: Mastodon's album concepts are officially out of control. It's one thing to base an entire album on Herman Melville's Moby Dick, as the Atlanta band did on 2004's amazing Leviathan. But when you're making a record about a kid who experiments with astral travel and then goes through a wormhole and meets Rasputin and Rasputin enters his body to escape assassination, or something, you've pushed this whole thing way, way further than it needed to be pushed. I interviewed guitarist Bill Kelliher a couple of weeks back, and he sighed deeply before delving into the story, and it took him a good five minutes or so just to get through the thing. That's a bit much.
But it doesn't particularly matter how wound-up and excruciating the band's album concepts might be as long as their music kicks as hard as it does. Mastodon's music never really settles into a locked-in groove. Instead, it skips and dives and wanders. When the band switches up time-signatures, something it does often, it's not to show off math-rock chops; it's to rip the rug out from under you, to keep you uncomfortable. Crack the Skye, the band's fourth album, stays in weirdly soft midtempo churn mode more than their previous albums do, but it never lingers. Instead, it delays the gratification of the band's gigantic sunward-screaming choruses just long enough to make you wonder if they're ever coming, which makes the release that much more overwhelming when it finally arrives. "The Czar", a four-part, 11-minute epic that's still only the second-longest song on the album, gargles and fumes and lurches for nearly three minutes before launching into its first glorious steamroller riffs. This band is playing with you.
The seven songs on Crack the Skye stretch over about 50 minutes, an indulgent track-length average for any band not named Opeth. But Mastodon's odysseys never feel forced or pretentious. Even on 13-minute closer "The Last Baron", I never really notice the track length. Every riff and roar flows organically into the next until I'm totally lost in it; hard to imagine checking the time remaining on your iPod when things get like that. In a way, Mastodon operates something like prime-era Metallica, unleashing these huge, blistering tracks that journey over peaks and valleys and ditches and oceans before leaving you spinning. It's just that Mastodon's arsenal of weapons is different; instead of demi-classical guitar interludes and blazing twin-guitar leads and thuggish hey-hey-heys, they've got soupy quasi-jazz trundles and pigfuck distortion-explosions and quick bursts of time-honored Southern-rock melody.
First single "Divinations" ranks among the best things the band's ever done, a quick banjo intro into a juddering riff that whips and soars through a serious full-speed attack of a song with one of the biggest, most cathartic choruses in the band's career, then dissolves into a space-surf solo before ending in a deeply satisfying thud. I just wish the band could've maintained that level of breathless intensity over the course of the full album, the way they did on Leviathan, still probably their best. On this one, they've broken with Leviathan/Blood Mountain producer Matt Bayles for Springsteen/Pearl Jam collaborator Brendan O'Brien. O'Brien doesn't drag them kicking and screaming onto active-rock radio or anything; this is still very much a Mastodon album, with all the blistering roar that phrase has come to imply. But this one doesn't have the expansive, suffusing grime of the previous two, and the band's churn can feel a bit stretched-thin for minutes at a time. Also, Troy Sanders and Brent Hinds are singing more than ever before, rather than delivering their mythologies in vein-popped grunts the way they once did. That's not a problem in itself, but Sanders and Hinds both sing in gurgly, nauseous whines that shoot for Ozzy territory but never quite get there. When they're harmonizing eerily deep in the mix, it works. When they get closer to the top, it sometimes doesn't.
And so the most powerful moments on Crack the Skye are almost always the most direct. On the title track, Neurosis' Scott Kelly shows up for a lung-busting guest-vocal, bellowing over the din of the band's complex thunder-crunch while a demonic vocodered thing screeches out a counterpoint. And near the end, Kelly growls out the most serious lyric on the whole record: "Momma, don't let them drag her down/ Please tell Lucifer he can't have this one." And you remember something else the band has been saying in interviews. This isn't really the band's opus about astral travel or Rasputin or whatever; it's drummer and primary lyricist Brann Dailor's attempt to wrestle with his sister Skye's way-too-early death. If he has to conjure alternate universes to get there, it's easy to see why. And even at its most prog-tastic heights of absurdity, this band's wriggling thunder never falls apart. It just punches deeper when Mastodon drop their defenses.


The Tuareg guitarist and his bandmates deliver the fullest picture of his gifts yet. Recorded piecemeal during tour breaks, the album captures the group’s easy chemistry and explosive energy.

Afrique Victime

If it were up to Mdou Moctar, the fiery, psychedelic rock music that has made him one of the most respected guitarists working today would be kept far away from professional recording studios. “With all due respect to all engineers,” the Tuareg virtuoso recently confessed to Reverb, “I find it much too square.” Late last year, the Nigerien musician gathered his bandmates outside a friend’s house in Niamey to test out material from Afrique Victime in a more comfortable environment. In the open air, the quartet quickly attracted an audience: adults dancing, children air-drumming, and others just watching in awe as Moctar’s songs ascended and burst in the desert sky like fireworks.
This communal atmosphere is the ideal setting for Moctar’s music, an adrenalizing take on assouf, or desert blues, that seems engineered to reach as many people as possible. His songs are often based on one- or two-chord riffs. The lyrics, sung primarily in Tamasheq, delve into political subject matter, like imperialism or women’s rights, or more romantic reflections, like young love or the natural world. The magic happens when he starts soloing: a silvery, fluttering sound that ricochets from each surface like a rubber ball thrown into a small room. While his vocals are delivered in group chants or anthemic call-and-response, his guitar playing is a searing, untameable thing, always the star of the show.
Before he assembled his electrifying band—with rhythm guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane, drummer Souleymane Ibrahim, and bassist Mikey Coltun—Moctar searched for a proper runway for these ascensions. A far cry from the blistering, live-band sound he favors now, Moctar’s first studio album proposed a kind of burbling sci-fi folk featuring his Auto-Tuned vocals over acoustic guitar and drum machines. He attributes this style to his primary influence, the Nigerien guitarist Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou, whose hypnotic songs of perseverance and rebellion inspired Moctar to build his own guitar when he was a child.
As Moctar’s recordings have evolved, the constant has been his distinctive playing. Left-handed and self-taught, Moctar developed a style of brushing the strings with his left index finger in furtive, constant motions while his right hand gallops along the fretboard, building melodies from nimble hammer-ons, often filtered through a series of pedals that creates the sound of a metallic, echoing siren. As evidenced by a charming interview with Dweezil Zappa, Moctar can easily mimic the style of Western guitarists he admires—like Jimi Hendrix, a common influence among Tuareg guitarists, or Eddie Van Halen, whose tapping style he only recently became familiar with. Like these guitar heroes, Moctar’s playing has become a recognizable voice no matter the context: whether he’s playing acoustic or electric, on a protest song about colonialist violence or a Bonnie “Prince” Billy track.
Afrique Victime is the fullest portrait of Moctar’s gifts that he has offered yet. To capture the explosive, uncontainable sound of the band’s performances, Coltun once again handled production duties, recording on breaks during a long tour behind 2019’s breakthrough Ilana (The Creator). The band’s only member not originally from Niger, Coltun spent his formative years in D.C. punk and attempted to sculpt the group’s long jam sessions into the tent poles of a rock record. Listening to opening track “Chismiten,” you can hear the tighter structure working in their favor: Pivoting around Moctar’s solos, the song constantly revs up, building speed and momentum, like a motorcycle racing up a mountain.
In longer songs, like the epic title track, the band settles into a groove: The colossal jam at the end puts a spotlight on drummer Ibrahim, whose filtered tom rolls add a sense of surreal world-building to their raw performance. Moctar’s climactic solo, meanwhile, veers into newly chaotic territory, as close to pure noise as he has ever come. To accompany these peaks in energy, the band experiments with quieter textures—the acoustic blues of “Layla,” the spacey ballad “Tala Tannam”—and scene-setting flourishes. A brief, untitled interlude separates the album’s two sides: a field recording that attempts to bring the outside world inside the studio, to better situate the material around it.
While these songs play like joyous surges of inspiration, Moctar has discussed the music with deep intensity, even melancholy. He spoke at length about the atrocities in Niger over the past year, adding to the urgency of his calls to action in the title track: “If we stay silent, it will be the end of us.” Moctar’s current focus is on building wells throughout local villages, for people who have been deprived of water and electricity. In its righteous, inventive way, his music is also part of his ongoing effort to aid people: “My wish is that the new generation of musicians will continue to flourish and develop,” he explained to Dazed Digital. You get the sense that when the lights go down and he looks out at the audience, he doesn’t just see his community: He sees the future.

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Anxiety swirls through these songs about non-normative relationships, the unease countered by a bucolic mix of pleasing melodies, soft guitars, and gentle vocals.

placeholder

On placeholder, the second album from Meg Duffy’s Hand Habits, the singer/songwriter orbits a stinging absence, ruminating on the ephemeral nature of emotional attachment. Characters pass through placeholder like silhouettes on the horizon; as Duffy watches them go, these songs weave narratives around the space they leave behind. What’s a love story with only half the cast? A plaintive consideration of the ways people shape each other, even in disappearance.
Alongside Big Thief and recent Deerhunter albums, Hand Habits are part of a strong contingent of contemporary acts staging queer stories against a wistful Americana backdrop. A guitarist in Kevin Morby’s band and a recent collaborator to William Tyler, Duffy hails from Los Angeles via upstate New York. For placeholder, Duffy returned to more rural lands, recording with producer Brad Cook at Justin Vernon’s Wisconsin studio. Duffy navigates the ambiguity of non-normative relationships against distant wails of slide guitar and sprays of open acoustic chords. “I start worrying/That you don’t know me anymore,” they sing over brushed drums and staccato bass. “Jessica/I forget/You shattered my reality.” The emptiness left by a faded relationship is like the emptiness of a desert plain: Both paralyze with their expanse.
Duffy’s unfailingly pleasant melodies smooth over the existential terror of their lyrics. On “can’t calm down,” they posit anxiety as familial inheritance: “What if I can’t calm down/And I don’t have that in my bloodline?” The song’s speaker can’t find peace, but the instrumentation offers it in abundance. A strummed guitar overlaps with a fingerpicked one, shaping a steady, soothing rhythm, as if Duffy were trying to play away their stress. They sound calm but insist they aren’t calm, carrying a minuscule but heavy granule of uncertainty like an invisible cross.
That anxiety swirls through placeholder, and Duffy seeks to counter it at every step—with pleasing melodies, soft guitars, and gentle vocals. They shoulder loss and dissonance with former loved ones and try to muscle on toward forgiveness. Even as they sing repeatedly about fires scorching the landscape, they sound as if nothing could fracture their sense of calm. “What’s the use if you’re not trying to forgive?” they ask at one point. A line like that suggests an impending flash of bared teeth, for the anger that presages acceptance. Yet placeholder rarely stirs from its placid foundation. Duffy’s voice never cracks, and this insistence on quiet benevolence starts to wear thin.
Still, amid more abstract verses, Duffy plants images of startling clarity. “Your heart beats hard/Like the pounding of the sparrow/On the window that faces the yard,” they sing on “yr heart [reprise],” a re-recording of a 2017 single. The original put the crisp vocals high in the mix; in this incarnation, Duffy’s voice diffuses gently across a sound field of blurred piano and strings. The soft glow here opens up the recording, making the song, already one of Duffy’s best, even more inviting.
This musical approachability belies a persistent bitterness, like Duffy were trying to keep cool while being eaten up inside. Wanting to seem OK while secretly falling apart is a tricky dance that placeholder deftly captures. But hearing about a riot is not the same as listening to one. Duffy excels at mapping resolution, which might make you want to hear about the conflict.


Plants and Animals may not have made their most original album with Waltzed in from the Rumbling, but they have definitely made their most beautiful one.

Plants and Animals: Waltzed in from the Rumbling

Waltzed in from the Rumbling

Plants and Animals singer/guitarist Warren Spicer has recorded and mixed his band's fourth full-length to near perfection. This cannot be overstated. Each instrument on Waltzed in from the Rumbling is so exactly in tune and at the optimum volume and placement in the speakers that it feels like each note is tangible. From the chop of the stereo-panned acoustic guitars to the gentle golf claps on last month's single, "No Worries Gonna Find Us," to the train-brakes flute on "So Many Nights," to the string and horn arrangements that bring so much texture to this album, everything is in its right place. If that sounds like I'm referencing a different band, this is because Plants and Animals sound like a different band, namely a combination of turn-of-the-century Radiohead and turn-of-the-century Flaming Lips.
It's another detour in a career made of them. Over the years, Plants and Animals' disinclination to stick with a signature sound has pretty much become their signature. Their first album favored folk rock arrangements and invited comparisons to Blitzen Trapper and Neil Young. Their second offered pared-down rock that ignored the precedent set by their debut. The third album was the proverbial “mature” outing. So now, after a four-year absence, Plants and Animals have made a collection of songs that sound gorgeous and will pop up on your Radiohead Pandora station, even though they likely wouldn't even pop up on your Plants and Animals Pandora station.
If the music falls between a soundtrack to dystopia and a technicolor symphony, Spicer's words also fall somewhere between Thom Yorke's sneering cynicism and Wayne Coyne's wide-eyed wonder. Both lyrical ends of the OK Bulletin spectrum—"love is the place that you're drawn to" on one end and "when I am king, you will be first against the wall" on the other—are highly effective, but the area Spicer chooses to inhabit is often a no man's land.  The first words he sings on the album are "all my time, my friend, I'll spend with you," which doesn't sound nearly epic enough for the music he's created with guitarist/bassist Nicolas Basque and drummer Woody Matthew Woodley.
The most rewarding surprises of the album occur when the influences aren't as apparent. The trio brought many guests into Montreal's Mixart Studios for the recording sessions, most notably vocalists Adéle Trottier-Rivard and Katie Moore, who add winning romanticism to the mix. They trade call-and-response vocals on lead single "Stay" and sing with Spicer on "Off the Water" that they won't always have the chance to "move with you like water when we dance." Although all of this is expertly orchestrated, it retains a loose feel, one brimming with the excitement of friends getting back together to collaborate on music again. In doing so, Plants and Animals have created something beautiful, even if it's not wholly original.


Famed Icelandic producer (Björk, Will Oldham) and Bedroom Community boss soundtracks an environmental doc. Sam Amidon, Nico Muhly, and Ben Frost guest.

Draumalandid

Northern European film soundtracks and dramatic scores don't get a lot of attention, but they could arguably be their own pop music subgenre at this point. From Jóhann Jóhannsson's Englabörn to Erik Enocksson's Man Tänker Sitt, they often contain similar ingredients-- gothic strings, terse pianos, haunting vocals, and a melancholy atmosphere. But due to the format and the potency of the style, you can actually get away with making some very slight music. At minimum, you have to write only one memorable, stirring theme. Record it in a string-led arrangement, and again in a piano-led one. Stash allusions to it in a bunch of filler drone you use to glue things together and, voila, you're done.
But on Draumalandid, a soundtrack for a new Icelandic environmental documentary, Valgeir Sigurðsson goes the extra mile to produce work that stands up against the best of its genre. He lays the requisite foundations in place, with a palette of classical instrumentation and severe electronics. The powerful title motif he concocts for strings on "Dreamland" is reprised on "Draumaland", now scored for mercurial pianos wrapped in wheezing pump organ. But Sigurðsson isn't content to let his themes just sit there; he works them through a variety of mutations, climaxes, false endings, and codas. A bevy of collaborators, culled from Sigurðsson's own Bedroom Community label, inject their personalities and prevent the album from being stylistically monolithic.
Sigurðsson has an illustrious career as a producer and engineer. He's worked with Björk on numerous albums, plus CocoRosie, Ben Frost, Sam Amidon, Will Oldham, and Nico Muhly. His first and only solo LP to date, 2007's Ekvílibríum, predicted the magisterial classical/electronic style he explores here. But as a producer first, he knows how to use his collaborators effectively. Amidon and Muhly appear on opener "Grylukvæði", the best and most distinct track here. Amidon has one of the most inviting voices around today, and his Icelandic folk song, flecked with banjo, sounds wonderful, glinting through a rich haze of strings and crackling with space-transmission interference. And Ben Frost threads subliminal disturbances through the Death Star strings of closer "Helter Smelter".
But most of the record's success stems from Sigurðsson's commitment to making the music a drama unto itself, not just a supplement for existing drama. In the final minute of "Dreamland", a simple 4/4 thwack appears, but it does wonders, turning the stately dirge into a desperate march. "Past Tundra" seems like it's going to be pleasant but nondescript, until the mighty bass chords kick in, the string section starts to cook, and the piece veers off on a warpath you'd have never predicted from its beginnings. There are other gradations of tone, some effective ("Beyond the Moss", where stripes of melody lick out of loose, jazzy clutter), some less so (a trio of brief, negligible interstitials in the middle of the album). But overall, Draumalandid is an excellent addition to my growing collection of music for movies and plays I'll probably never actually see.


After the ascent of her electronic-pop duo Sylvan Esso, Amelia Meath reassembled her old vocal folk trio for a surprise second album—a charming reflection on age, friendship, and play.

Magic Ship

Where does a sense of quiet fit within indie folk these days? During the last decade, some of the genre’s new staples—Iron & Wine, Hiss Golden Messenger, Amanda Shires—have turned up the amplifiers as they’ve turned toward more elaborate production. But for Mountain Man—the hushed, harmony-drenched trio of Amelia Meath, Molly Erin Sarlé, and Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, rarely accompanied by more than six strings and a tapped foot—it’s less about finding a quiet place than forging one. They started carving out their space on their lovingly ramshackle debut, 2010’s Made the Harbor, but an unintentional eight-year hiatus halted the headway. They’ve now reemerged with Magic Ship, a capricious turn through Appalachian, American, and British folk. Quiet? Perhaps. Subdued? Never.
Success came fast for the group nearly as soon they formed at college in the Vermont mountains—online buzz, a lauded debut, a tour backing Feist. Rather than build on that momentum, though, the members relocated to separate lands—Meath to North Carolina, Sarlé to California, and Sauser-Monnig to Minnesota. New sounds followed, with Meath co-founding the ascendant electronic-pop duo Sylvan Esso and Sarlé and Sauser-Monnig focusing on respective solo music.
All three eventually settled in North Carolina, where they reunited first as friends and then as singers. They found little had changed when it came to their voices’ uncanny blend. “We all have this secret access to each other’s feelings, whether or not we’re singing,” Sarlé has confided. “That is what creates the alchemy when we are singing together.” It usually takes family members to achieve such intimate three-part harmonies with these round, warm tones. Recorded in winter, the temperature has less to do with kindled fireside moments than it does flaxen summer rays. Magic Ship glows. Yellow-gold sunbeams cast a different light on the traditions the group invoke—porch music, gathering music—even if the album’s themes aren’t always so sunny.
Magic Ship examines, in part, the tempestuous emotions inherent in the transition from your 20s to your 30s. Through vivid triads, Mountain Man remind us that growing pains never cease. “Guilt” captures the way regret can visit unbidden at any age, accidentally knocking against the present like a tender bruise. “You can think about it, and be mean to your insides/And forget that you were 10 or 12/Or even 25,” the group sing knowingly. “Or it can just be something that happened that way/That makes you who you are today/And it hurts/But that’s/Alright.” They emphasize the final three words, underscoring the hard-won wisdom of tough times.
Dance parties abound on Magic Ship, too. Meath, Sarlé, and Sauser-Monnig use their voices for simple fun during standouts like “Stella” and “Underwear.” They frame “AGT” with bright melodies and skipping cadences, situating it among the playful whimsy of the traditional classic “King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O” and Sylvan Esso’s own “Hey Mami.” While Mountain Man look back to folk traditions to find their footing, they’re delightfully undecided about how much reverence they must pay.
When Meath, Sarlé, and Sauser-Monnig do pay their respects, their voices are a collective bridge between past and present. Their interpretation of “Bright Morning Stars” recalls the resplendent partnership of Appalachian folk trailblazers Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard and the British folk singer Shirley Collins. Mountain Man leave no lingering space within the song’s central lament, their claustrophobic look at grief made more palpable by stark harmonies. A cover of the tender “Baby Where You Are,” by Michigan singer-songwriter Ted Lucas, takes a similar look at longing. The members’ voices exhale like one breath, the kind whispered across distances that never seem to shrink. Their tranquility resurfaces the original tune’s dull ache with a rosy sheen.
Magic Ship cuts a path between beauty and meaning. Though Mountain Man’s radiant harmonies are as pretty as they come, there’s still considerable weight to the shiny package. Quiet may seem like an outlier in this noisy present, but Mountain Man understand its power. Their clear-eyed presentation on this welcome return captures ideas of friendship and adulthood, of cherishing a sense of play even as we age.


On her hushed second album, the Chicago artist writes minimal, unpredictable songs that explore the in-between states of relationships with subtlety and grace.

Tell Me What You Miss the Most

Tasha shines brightest when everything has been stripped away. The Chicago musician’s dreamy, fragile songs about intimacy and reminiscence are often given color when she’s fronting her band, who can make her spellbinding voice sound even more so with just the smallest touches. She is also the type of songwriter whose talents are especially apparent when she’s working by herself: Performing solo, she plays guitar so softly that the instrument seems to reel in her voice with a gravitational pull. It’s a fitting atmosphere for an artist who writes so often about the very state of being alone: singing into a void that someone left behind and trying to whisper them back.
The hushed songs of Tasha’s second album, Tell Me What You Miss the Most, highlight the best of both modes. On the spare, acoustic “Bed Song 1,” she opens the album with six cycling notes and a lyric that rides a perfect line between funny and sad, self-deprecation and self-pity: “If I could, I would stay here in this bed all day long/But I quite like the way pretty girls sway to my songs.” On “Burton Island,” she pushes the complexity of her fingerpicking: It’s a gorgeous solo piece that thrives in solitude, moving nimbly yet at peace in a way that recalls Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. The feeling here, and at many points throughout Tell Me, is minimal but unpredictable, sweet but not cutesy, and familiarly structured but not exactly folk music.
On the standout track “History,” Tasha counters the album’s spare opener with an outstanding full-band arrangement. When she barely gets out the words “What’s left of touch?,” her voice seems to make a slight, brushing contact with the suspended chord that it hangs over, like a hand touching a knee under a table in a restaurant. That exact image happens to appear in “Sorry’s Not Enough,” where she uses delicate harmonies to illustrate the nerves at stake in these quiet interactions. Drummer Ashley Guerrero and bassist and co-producer Eric Littmann follow Tasha into subtle, sneaky swells and decrescendos. By the song’s end, they palpitate in between, winding down two steps then rising with a twitchy cymbal crash, ending things in an intriguing state of ambiguity (Tragically, the album is also a memorial to Littmann, who passed away earlier this year at 31.)
Embracing the in-between is a recurring theme for Tasha, in her music as well as the relationships that she writes about. Tell Me What You Miss the Most is a step forward mostly because it’s a step inward: While her debut album, 2018’s Alone at Last, featured a gently distorted electric guitar that sounded wavy and cool, at times recalling her English contemporary Nilüfer Yanya, it also added a sense of distance. On the cleaner Tell Me, she peels off that filter, reaching more often for her acoustic guitar and singing more directly. This quieter side amplifies her strengths, emboldening her vulnerability and her willingness to face uncertainty head-on.

Buy: Rough Trade
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The Hold Steady attempt to balance widespread appeal while remaining embedded in the scenes they've been chronicling for half a decade.

Heaven Is Whenever

The Hold Steady's latest album begins with "The Sweet Part of the City", a number about kids meeting up under theater marquees, drinking until they run out of booze, partying till the cops come, listening to music all night, and making runs for more liquor. The song is quintessential Craig Finn, especially when he reveals a twist ending in the final lines: "We were bored so we started a band," he admits. "We'd like to play for you." The line comes across like a stinging punchline, sad and self-aware: Kids start bands to tell their stories, yet their stories are often the same. They play music to feel transcendent, to feel larger than their mundane circumstances-- so why isn't the crowd paying attention?
Coming from a band so rooted in notions of community and classic rock, "The Sweet Part of the City" seems to acknowledge that the Hold Steady realize their function as a liaison between the underground and the mainstream. They're trying hard to achieve widespread appeal while remaining embedded in the scenes they've been chronicling for half a decade. Heaven Is Whenever loiters in the same dives, clubs, and party houses as their previous albums and chronicles the sagas of similar hoodrats, townies, gamblers, waitresses, and girlfriends. Meanwhile, the band has graduated to larger venues, festival appearances, and an avid fanbase that shouts along with every word. The distance between subject and band has never been greater than it is on this album, and these new songs just don't hit as hard.
Finn still writes street-level narratives with a large cast of characters all united by their dire circumstances, and on previous albums, he managed to insert himself into their stories as a hapless buyer, a reckless hook-up, an accidental witness, or a reluctant participant. His first-person involvement gave him first-hand access to the kids, and he built songs out of stray phrases and details that explained their lingo and motivations. But on Heaven Is Whenever, he sounds one or two steps removed, less active in their sagas and less concerned with the particulars of the characters. Now he's shooting for the bigger picture instead of collecting the persuasive details and the convincing slang, which leaves these songs sounding largely uninhabited. Finn sings in first person throughout the album, gesturing at character and point of view, but the perspective from which these songs are written is neither entirely convincing nor consistent.
The band tries to punch up these songs as much as possible, adding intrusive synths and backing vocals, but they don't always achieve the fervor necessary to make songs like "A Slight Discomfort" uplifting. Tad Kubler gets a few good riffs in on "The Weekenders" and "Rock Problems", but the lackluster production blunts their impact. Elsewhere, the music is strangely staid and anonymous, lacking the drama that Franz Nicolay-- the mustachioed keyboard player who proved surprisingly divisive among fans-- could add with a simple piano flourish. "Barely Breathing" breaks into an out-of-nowhere clarinet solo, but that element of surprise is the most notable thing about it.
Still, there are strong moments here: That languid slide guitar on "The Sweet Part of the City", the shout-along hook of "Rock Problems", and the hammering chorus of "Our Whole Lives". "The Weekenders" musters a moody, desperate urgency that makes it sound like the dark sequel to "Chips Ahoy", with its hints of clairvoyance. But hearing the band hit this sort of stride is nothing out of the ordinary; hearing them sound so directionless and tired not only sounds new, but suggests that the Hold Steady aren't holding steady. Despite the confidence of that opening track, Heaven Is Whenever sounds like a transitional album, hopefully paving the way for something stronger, more cohesive, more specific. In the meantime, this remains an uncharacteristically weak effort by a good band that may be in danger of running out of stories.


The Los Angeles rapper’s second album this year confronts the uncertainties of life with characteristically reflective rhymes and a steely new determination.

Debbie’s Son

Maxo’s music, especially as of late, has felt like those coming-of-age movie scenes where the frenzied young protagonist meets someone they aspire to become—picture Benny “the Jet” Rodriguez and Babe Ruth—and realizes that today’s stressors eventually build tomorrow’s character. The Los Angeles veteran’s output has long thrived through reflection, inhabiting soupy, hypnagogic production like a confessional booth of his own creation. For the cover art of his most recent record, February’s Even God Has a Sense of Humor, he took the uncomfortable measure of lifecasting: a process like getting a portrait painted, except that you’re slathered in guck, you can’t see anything, and the “painting” is a large, topographically accurate bust of your body. The songs on that project were disarmingly personal and deliberate, larger-than-life without being invincible. It’s hard to run when you’re stuck under a coat of alginate.
Where much of Maxo’s output has functioned like a living diary, Debbie’s Son sounds less like he’s taking inventory of his baggage than trying to cut through it with a knife. The record’s ethos is encapsulated in the opening verse to “Another. LAnd,” where contemplation is supercharged by acknowledgements of his right to self-interrogation. “I question the ways inside my being/I’m workin for change but present time speak,” he admits, before turning away from the mirror to lob an abrupt question: “Who is you to judge?” As much as his self-image has hardened, it remains too nuanced to feel impenetrable. On the track directly following “Another .LAnd,” he turns his back on the scornful “you,” and returns to the mirror. “Reminding myself I’m strong as what I’m faced with,” he says, in a sing-songy voice that borders on teasing. “But it’s hurting, aint it?” As much as you can hear the pain, there’s also a sense of triumph.
Debbie’s Son features an eclectic cast of producers, including lastnamedavid, Alexander Spit, The Alchemist, and Beat Butcha. They provide a compelling range of cinematic backdrops, against which an on-edge Maxo hurls mantras like graffiti on government buildings. His tone is careful yet unapologetic, self-confident without being reckless. While some tracks thump along to rhythms as precise as assembly lines (“PlayDis!”, “Another. LAnd,” “What Are You Looking For?”), others bask in his more characteristic jazz arrangements, reverb-heavy vocals cutting through haze like the sort of old-and-wise deity that Morgan Freeman could portray on camera. On the Ahwlee-produced “Boomerang,” a love song to “the old me,” lush guitar arpeggiations stumble into one another in a trance. There’s unresolved sentimentality to the instruments’ circular haze, complementing Maxo’s lyrical back-and-forth between past and future.
The record leans into the foundational elements of Maxo’s music—verses that meander more than they attack; roomy, coffee-shop-band auras; autobiographical honesty—but occasionally departs to give old tricks new vigor. Compared to the murky vocal mixes on his earliest releases, he’s coming through noticeably clearer now. And he’s more willing to be a prophet in places where he once was content being a proselyte. “No wonder why I been chasin’ unknown,” he echoes, with the knowing whisper-speak of a Black grandparent telling a story, over the jazzy title track. As he repeats these words, an upright bass stumbles along a riff that’s just as asymptotic. As meditative as his work has always been while foregrounding a new sense of fortitude, Debbie’s Son shines in the many moments when Maxo and the music are convincingly one.


The veteran producer and Cypress Hill alum reconnects with his New York roots on a fun, if not terribly challenging, revivalist romp surrounded by outer-borough icons and a few hungry upstarts.

Dia del Asesinato

DJ Muggs may forever be associated with California, thanks to his work with Cypress Hill, but recently he’s returned to his New York roots. Born in Flushing, the veteran producer has, several times over the past year, collaborated with an unlikely muse: the charismatic Queens rapper Meyhem Lauren. Lauren shows up on Muggs’ new album, Dia del Asesinato, another strong collection of outer-borough street rap. He’s joined by a trio of legendary MCs (MF Doom, Raekwon, and Kool G Rap) as well as Freddie Gibbs, Mach-Hommy, and others.
Muggs was a mentor to the Alchemist, and Dia del Asesinato is not unlike one of that producer’s showcase records from around the turn of the decade. It’s coherent by virtue of its smooth, hard-hitting production, which doesn’t flit from style to style or experiment with new approaches. Muggs’ beats are attention-seeking, with audacious, well-chosen loops; on songs like the early “Day of the Dead,” Kool G Rap doesn’t so much rhyme over the production as battle through it. “Black Snow Beach” is elegant and velvety, sounding like something Nino Rota might have made if he had a habit of playing around on Ableton. Muggs’ drums, in particular, are huge, heavy, commanding. They never sound programmed. On tracks as divergent as “Blue Horseshoes” and “Duck Sauce,” you can almost imagine a drummer beating the hell out of his instrument, working to the point that sweat drips down his forehead. And because few songs surpass the three-minute mark, nothing wears out its welcome.
The producer has chosen his collaborators well. No one falls down on the job, and some of the rappers sound sharper than they have in some time. Kool G. Rap bodies his back-to-back early-record appearances, dusting Doom, who’s not necessarily bad, but is rapping at a quarter of his top speed on “Assassination Day,” the stronger of his two features. (He does get a nice Maino reference in.) Almost all the marquee rappers have two features each, save Freddie Gibbs, who, along with Hus Kingpin and Eto, only gets one song. It’s a shame. Gibbs lights into “Death Wish” with vigor, sounding, appropriately, 15 years younger than the group of 50-year-old legends he bests here. His portrait of the gangster as a young man includes a particularly evocative image: “Ninja Turtles backpack/.38 next to my Lunchables.” Mach-Hommy also acquits himself well. The eccentric Newark rapper is particularly good on “Contagion Theory,” where he sings and raps casually, sounding great over horns.
What Dia del Asesinato does best is foster a welcoming environment. Muggs is a conservative producer: He picks an excellent loop, places it over the right drums, and lets things ride, with few surprises hidden around corners. That gives the rappers here, all of whom fetishize this sound, license to LARP freely as kingpins, street hustlers, alley backstabbers, whatever. It’s less ’90s boom-bap and more ’00s revivalism, which means that yes, the record is a revival of revivalism, something expertly recycled several times over. It doesn’t sound new, and that’s why everyone sounds so comfortable, so contented.
If there’s a downside: That’s it. The rappers are, for the most part, so relaxed that they don’t seem interested in competing. The flows are on point more often than not, but few of the lyrics are particularly memorable (or worth quoting). An environment of mutual support in the studio can make a record sound cozy, but also complacent. What Dia del Asesinato is missing is a sense of urgency. Thank Muggs for recruiting Gibbs and Hommy, younger rappers who still sound hungry. But, hey, the album is a brisk 12 tracks. The outro is pure instrumental, brash and filled with personality. Every time it ends, you wish that it would have gone on longer.


Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s debut album, a despairing and sweeping document of post-rock.

F♯ A♯ ∞

The grizzled voice could be that of God. “The car’s on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel,” he begins over a ground-shaking rumble of drone, before surveying the horrifying landscape: The government is corrupt, buildings are imploding, the skyline is ablaze while a populace hides indoors, numbed by chemicals and drowning out the screams with the radio. The voice continues as mournful strings enter, playing a theme wracked by sadness and loss, the sound of the band on the deck as the ship goes down. Do we hear hope as a fragile guitar enters and repeats those lines? I think so. And once we sense that feeling of being crushed by despair while seeing a flicker of possibility, we’re fully inside of the universe of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s 1997 debut, F♯ A♯ ∞.
The piece, which came to be called “Dead Flag Blues,” is a career-defining debut album-opener to rival Patti Smith’s “Gloria: In Excelsis Deo,” the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey,” and Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath.” Everything you need to know about Godspeed was foretold by the words and music of this first track, which occupies the album’s entire first side. They would eventually become one of the key bands in what we’d call post-rock. Through the first decade of the 21st century, more than a few groups would copy their soft/loud crashing orchestral style. All of their music takes place in the world described by that voice, a place where those buried by calamity are on the verge of breaking free.
The words on “Dead Flag Blues” were written by Efrim Menuck, who was born in Montreal and grew up in Toronto before returning to the city of his birth in his early 20s. They came from a script for an unfinished film called “Incomplete Movie About Jail” and were read by an unidentified friend. Menuck, like many in his circle, had grown up listening to punk and hardcore, but after moving to Montreal he started making music of his own in a very different style. In 1994, he and his friend Mauro Pezzente, who played bass, recorded a tape they called All Lights Fucked On The Hairy Amp Drooling and made 33 copies, giving them to friends. The project’s name, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, came from the title of a Japanese documentary about a motorcycle gang. (The band would relocate the exclamation point in 2002.) Twenty-five years later, All Lights remains a rumor—there have been no confirmed leaks of the music, not even a photo of the cassette. But after recording it and playing a few live shows, the band, joined by guitarist Mike Moya, began to take shape.
Pezzente moved into a warehouse space near the train tracks in Montreal’s Mile End neighborhood, and it became a place to practice, to hang out, and to scheme. When Menuck took over the lease, they called the space Hotel2Tango, translating part of the local postal code—H2T—to its military call sign. Soon they were hosting shows, and Godspeed became a kind of collective, with a swelling lineup that changed from one gig to the next. Cellist Norsola Johnson was another early member, and years later she’d articulate the ethos at work. “I think a lot of that just came from punk rock backgrounds,” she told Lucinda Catchlove in a 2016 interview. “You want to make something happen, you have to do it yourself.”
For Montreal art kids in the 1990s, there was no other way. Godspeed’s dark and foreboding sound suggests civilization heading toward collapse, and conjuring such a world wasn’t an act of imagination. They could see it around them. In April 1996, right around the time things were heating up at Hotel2Tango, an article appeared in the International Herald Tribune called “Montreal’s Deep Malaise,” in which reporter Anne Swardsoa described a city on the brink. On the ballot the previous year was a referendum on Quebec’s independence, and it was defeated by less than a single percentage point. Conflict and uncertainty were rife, and many English-speaking Montreal residents fled the city during the campaign. “The city that once was Canada’s financial and cultural center is in serious trouble,” Swardsoa wrote. “Its tax base is eroding, poverty is increasing, roads are deteriorating and, most important, citizens are leaving.”
As 1996 turned into 1997, a community was growing in these grim surroundings. Hotel2Tango, where a number of musicians lived and played, was a hub of activity, and a new label, Constellation, was on hand to document it. Constellation cofounder Ian Ilavsky played guitar with Sofa, a local band that made grimy post-punk—a 7" and album by the group were the first two releases by the imprint. F♯ A♯ ∞, on vinyl only, was the third.
Godspeed recorded the album in Hotel2Tango, with a group of musicians that had more or less solidified into a band. No single element in Godspeed was new, but their particular fusion of sounds didn’t sound like much else. For string-led drama over loose, stumbling rhythms, you could look to Australia’s Dirty Three, particularly their 1996 album Horse Stories. The twangy guitars, sometimes played with slide, brought to mind the high-plains drama of Ennio Morricone’s scores and the lonesome tumbleweeds of Ry Cooder’s soundtrack for Paris, Texas, a vein the more ambient-leaning Richmond band Labradford was exploring around the same time. And the gradual builds to crushing climaxes that brought the whole history of rock to bear were something Mogwai were exploring in Scotland, on their 1997 debut Young Team.
It wasn’t hard to draw lines connecting these sounds and scenes, but Godspeed were operating in a world of their own. Perhaps owing to Menuck’s interest in film, the album feels like a product of editing as much as playing, stitching together composed ensemble sections, field recordings, samples, and more abstract sound design. Over time, Godspeed would perfect the kind of pieces that go from soft opening to gradual build to thundering crescendo. But F♯ A♯ ∞ is a different beast, one more fragile and less tied to idiom.
So after the opening monologue concludes, “Dead Flag Blues” drifts—first come the screeching wheels and chugging motor of a steam train, and then gossamer slide guitar tones so quiet you begin to notice the ambient noise in the room you’re hearing them in. These are the album’s two essential features. The vibrating string sound—whether made by guitar, violin, or cello—evokes cables snaking down brick buildings, power lines framing the horizon as the sun sets, flaccid balloons snagged in barren trees. And the train sounds remind us of what the machines carry away, whether it’s a product of industry or the people who worked to create it.
The edits keep coming, as the band stitches together fragments, only some of which sound as if they were initially designed to fit together. After a middle section of “Dead Flag Blues” that’s as close as F♯ A♯ ∞ comes to a spaghetti western soundtrack, the piece shifts back to hammered guitar strings, like the sounds you get when you strike a cable that keeps a telephone pole upright. The first side then shifts to a tuneful vignette led by glockenspiel, a jaunty melody you might find in a music box, the sort that people decades ago put on to forget their problems. And then it concludes with what sounds like an improvised piece for voice and banjo, where the player asks “What’s my motivation?” as if speaking to a director as the camera is about to roll.
It turned out that the elaborate structure of the original LP was only one possibility among many. After the Constellation release of  F♯ A♯ ∞, Godspeed contacted the Chicago label Kranky because they were playing shows in the U.S. for the first time. The Chicago imprint—home to Labradford, Stars of the Lid, and several other bands whose music was situated in the same general universe—wanted to put the record out on CD, and for a wider audience than Constellation’s limited distribution allowed. But rather than reissuing the LP as is, the band made a new version of the record to take advantage of the CD’s longer runtime. They re-edited and re-configured the material, shuffling the sections and adding music, a large chunk of which wound up on a new, third track, called “Providence.”
The album, released in multiple formats with different tracklists, broken with long overarching suites divided into sub-titled sections, can be difficult to parse on paper. It’s an unusual situation for such a defining record—two competing versions, quite different from one another, on two different formats, put out by two different labels. The additional material is excellent, but for my money, the definitive version of the record is the Constellation vinyl LP. Regardless, “East Hastings,” from the CD version, would contain the most-heard piece of music in Godspeed’s oeuvre, after Danny Boyle used the section titled “The Sad Mafioso” in his 2002 post-apocalyptic zombie film 28 Days Later. The side opens with a man’s voice yelling on the street, and then a bagpipe plays the theme from “Dead Flag Blues,” easing us back into landscape established by the first side. From its desolate opening section, “The Sad Mafioso” builds piece by piece into the sort of wall of sound that Godspeed would later become famous for.
In Boyle’s film, the opening section of “The Sad Mafioso” plays as the main character, Jim, leaves the hospital and discovers a deserted London. “For me, the soundtrack to 28 Days Later was Godspeed,” the director told The Guardian. “The whole film was cut to Godspeed in my head.” It’s easy to understand why: Boyle had the means to create a film with a scene—gazing out over desolation, feeling completely alone—that was familiar to those who listened to F♯ A♯ ∞ and dreamt up their own pictures.
Besides the quintessential Godspeed builder, the second side of the LP has several abstract sections, some built from manipulated samples. The final movement of the album proper, called “String Loop Manufactured During Downpour...,” begins with a warped recording of a haunting voice sourced from the early-’70s musical Godspell. The voice floats into a whining drone that whines and hisses and quakes, until, on the vinyl version, it slides into a locked groove and plays for as long as you want it to.
Godspeed had good timing. As the 20th century was winding down, there was an uneasiness in the air that sometimes became outright paranoia. Any calendar change this significant will bring with it people who think the end of the world is nigh. In this case, there was the Y2k bug, which suggested that the computers that now powered so much of the world’s infrastructure might stop working properly when the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve 1999. “Dead Flag Blues” describes being trapped inside the belly of a horrible machine that’s bleeding to death. At the end of the millennium, in more despairing moments, it seemed as though a simple programming glitch might open that vein.
Godspeed’s avoidance of the trappings of the music industry only enhanced their prophetic aura in the year after the release of F♯ A♯ ∞. They issued no photos, sold no t-shirts, and gave very few interviews. Given all the mysteries surrounding the record itself, and the openness to interpretation of the mostly instrumental music, that contextual void left a lot of room for the imagination.
The band did provide a few clues. Within each LP copy is a print showing a train with a tribute to the Reverend Gary Davis, a show flyer, a small envelope that contains an intricate blueprint called “Faulty Schematics of a Ruined Machine,” and, most famously, a single Canadian penny that has been crushed by a train. The coin is a potent symbol that connects so many of the album’s threads—the proximity of violence to money, the surprising endurance of supposedly obsolete technology, the intensely local nature of the entire enterprise, and, above all, the simple childlike joy of knowing a giant machine turned such a common object into a copper pancake.
The vinyl version of F♯ A♯ ∞ has to rank with the greatest packages in the history of the LP, but not because it’s especially elaborate. Its ultimate triumph is that each copy still comes with its own sleeve of goodies, including the penny, while the record itself is still comparatively inexpensive. Where most labels create special editions that become valuable because of scarcity, Constellation, 23 years and almost 50 pressings later (some runs numbered in the thousands), makes this one available to all for a modest price.
Which brings us back to community, and that dirty loft by the railroad tracks, and a word that crops up a lot with Godspeed: hope—you don’t start a long-term project with people you care about unless you’re driven by it. As dark as this band’s music gets and as deeply fucked as the world it portrays may be, it always contains a glimmer of catharsis, some moment that suggests there’s a future worth struggling for. “When you live in the city, railway tracks are the most open space you can find,” Menuck told the Montreal publication AMAZEzine in 1998. “There’s usually no high buildings around and it’s the place where you can see the most sky.” That’s what those massive major-key resolutions point to—they suggest that if we’re creative, we might band together with others and find possibility in what surrounds us, even in places the rest of the world has abandoned.


The former Yeasayer member returns with a refreshingly uninhibited, occasionally undercooked set of 1970s-style singer-songwriter music.

I Don’t Know My Words

Brooklyn indie-rock trio Yeasayer called it quits in late 2019, and going it alone clearly suits Anand Wilder, who’d shared singing and songwriting duties in the band since its founding more than a decade earlier. Wilder’s first solo album since the split, I Don’t Know My Words, begins with homespun instrumentation, lofty vocals, and catty lyrics worthy of one of the Beatles’ post-breakup albums. “Cheap hooks can’t sell if there’s no honesty,” Wilder sings over rudimentary piano toward the start of album opener “Beginning Again,” later sniping that “I can’t help your shitty attitude.” The arrangement swells but the song is over in less than two minutes, sounding less like a statement of intent than a late-night sketch.
It’s a relief hearing Wilder in such a relaxed setting. Yeasayer could channel bits of Animal Collective’s psych-folk whimsy and TV on the Radio’s synth-rock grandeur, but they always had a festival-ready professionalism that, by the last couple of albums, seemed to have lost its ability to charm. This 10-song, half-hour set of 1970s-style singer-songwriter music might not signal some bold new way forward, but Wilder’s high, lilting melodies and sun-dappled production sound refreshingly uninhibited. After years of having to please crowds, bandmates, and industry suits, Wilder, a married father of two, sounds here like he has spent the pandemic focusing on himself and his family.
Recording alone in his home studio and accompanying himself on all instruments, Wilder infuses I Don’t Know My Words with an easygoing surface appeal. I’m not sure what the first single “Delirium Passes,” with a title borrowed from James Joyce, is supposed to be about, but it’s overwhelmingly pleasant, with whirring organs, mountain-dew harmonies, and merry-go-round verses. “Fever Seizure,” which hints at a child’s real-life health scare, unfolds with the leisurely elegance of Air or Beach House at their most indebted to Serge Gainsbourg’s 1971 landmark Histoire De Melody Nelson. The raga-like drone that infuses “Get More Than My Share“ offers another intriguing wrinkle.
I Don’t Know My Words doesn’t work as well when it comes to the words. Wilder’s songwriting is sometimes heavy-handed, sometimes undercooked.  The title of “I Don’t Want Our Love to Become Routine” must be relatable for any couple in a long-term relationship, but when Paul McCartney wanted to keep the fires of domestic bliss alive, he didn’t sing about falling asleep on the couch—he wrote “Maybe I’m Amazed.” (OK, also the great, goofy Ram, but still.) Elsewhere, a couple of songs comment directly on COVID-19 a bit clumsily. “I’m waiting for a second wave/To fill another mass grave,” Wilder sings, inhabiting the perspective of a Rikers Island inmate, on “Hart Island,” named for the site of New York City’s potter’s field. It’s a well-meaning experiment, but on such a light-textured album, it’s also a lot.
For anyone who has been following along with Yeasayer this far, I Don’t Know My Words has enough unshowy craft to suggest a promising solo career for Wilder. At the very least, it’s light years ahead of the previous album he released under his own name, 2014’s unfortunate Break Line the Musical. Wilder recently mentioned that he has been listening to Cate Le Bon and Aldous Harding, and at times the DIY deftness signals a kinship with those two leading lights of contemporary art-pop; more often, I Don’t Know My Words merely brings to mind other solo albums by tied-down indie rock vets looking to relight their spark. Not every breakup leads to All Things Must Pass, but Wilder’s return is welcome, especially because he sounds so free.


Drukqs. Druck-kyoos. Drug use? Or just another one of the Twin's\n\ cryptic pranks? Your guess is as good ...

Drukqs

Drukqs. Druck-kyoos. Drug use? Or just another one of the Twin's cryptic pranks? Your guess is as good as mine.
After two years of public silence and what many had judged to be his final exit from the world of corporate music, the original IDM iconoclast has returned with another puzzle. The problem with Drukqs, a two-disc, 30-track medley that allegedly wraps up Richard D. James' contract with Warp Records, is that there's really no puzzle at all.
This album charts familiar Aphex territory, surveying styles he's plied on previous records, rather than suggesting new directions. It says something that Aphex enthusiasts expect James to reinvent himself with every record, and that the general reaction to this album (which has been trading hands over online piracy channels for months) has been somewhat unenthusiastic. From a man who has made a career staying a step ahead of his fans, an album as conventional as Drukqs comes as a sad surprise.
The stylistic pastiche here mirrors many different points of James' career. Most of the tracks are brief melodic exercises conducted on piano and harpsichord, styled after "Nannou" from the Windowlicker EP. There are several purely electro-acoustic excursions, some in the cacophonous vein of the "equation" song on Windowlicker, others more reminiscent of the lysergic drone of Selected Ambient Works II. "Bbydhyonchord" and "Orban Eq Trx4" emulate the rhythmic, sensual sounds of Analogue Bubblebath 4, or the softer facets of I Care Because You Do. Abrasive electro pieces like "Omgyjya Switch7" and "54 Cymru Beats" steal the show, grafting drill-n-bass beats onto stark mechanical backdrops that recall James' early Joyrex releases.
But Drukqs showcases Aphex's crude instrumental contemplations to a fault. His production talents have their bounds, and they wear a little thin when he dons the mantle of artistic maturity, attempting to imitate Erik Satie. "Father," "Avril 14th," "Strotha Tynhe" and "Jynweythek Ylow" rove dangerously close to the Windham Hill new age aesthetic of the 80s.\t"Prep Gwarlek 3b" and "Kladfvgbung Micshk" take the formula to a more sophisticated, brooding level, but fail to bring anything exciting to a sound that Philip Glass pioneered more boldly 25 years ago. These languid noodlings comprise over half of the album; take them away and the cracks begin to show in Drukqs' monumental 30-song promise. In the end, with all the filler, this monster packs a lot less punch than some of Aphex's shorter releases, like the legendary Selected Ambient Works 85-92, or the Hangable Auto Bulb EPs.
James fares better in other arenas. A muffled, throbbing pulse propels "Gwely Mernans" through a macabre tableau of disembodied strings and white noise. Though not on par with the best ambient work in Aphex Twin's canon, this song weaves a compelling web of mood and texture. "Hy a Scullys Lyf a Dhagrow" takes ambient music to the other extreme with a disjointed demonstration of ear-shattering sonic sleight. "Gwarek2," one of the most chilling additions yet to James' demented repertoire, sounds like a stripped down take on \xB5-Ziq's "Mr. Angry." Tortured screams resonate through an abandoned foundry, joined by the unsettling clamor of clashing metal and screeching vermin.
"Meltphace 6" delivers in signature Aphex style, with brisk snares trading fire over a wash of solemn synthesizers, thick squelches and warbling, high-pitched flourishes. "Mt. Saint Michel Mix+St. Michael's Mount" carries the torch, matching its relentless drill-n-bass torrents with simple, innocent refrains. In its final minutes, the song frays into a stuttering swarm of dissected, time-spaced samples-- certainly one of Drukqs' finer moments.
Other honorable mentions include "Vordhosbn," whose wistful and occasionally dissonant timbre is offset by the biting ring of blistering drums. Imagine "IZ-US" with Venetian Snares operating the drum kit, and you'll get the general picture. The protean "Ziggomatic v17" runs through several movements-- frenzied electro breakcore and anthemic 4/4 warehouse techno, interspersed with lush melodic passages-- before tapering off with a soft refrain.
"Taking Control" is concentrated Aphex acid. The scathing electro breaks and spliced, vocoded samples evoke memories of "Humanoid Must Not Escape" from Joyrex J9. But the absence of engaging melody and firm structure keep "Taking Control" and a several other songs ("Cock/Ver10," "Afx237 v7") from really enveloping the listener. The sterile, clinical feel and limited palette of the heavier electro numbers renders them grating, one-dimensional and sometimes entirely unlistenable.
Even the successful drill-n-bass pieces offer only shallow satisfaction. They sound like throwbacks to the past rather than prospects on the future; and for all of their compositional strength, there's an element of the Aphex Twin mystique missing.
This record simply doesn't inspire the same degree of astonishment and awe as its predecessors-- seminal works like I Care Because You Do, Selected Ambient Works II and his last proper full-length, 1997's The Richard D. James Album, which not only struck fans on a personal level, but often reshaped the way they listened to music. Drukqs speaks a familiar tongue, instead of inviting us to learn new languages; it gives us the answers before asking the riddles. In this sense, it defies every expectation we had of Richard D. James. But in hindsight, it seems to show that some conventions are worth following.


Jon Langford, frontman for the legendary punk band the Mekons, has explored Americana both with his main group and in a series of side projects, one of which is the Waco Brothers. Going Down in History is their first studio LP since 2005’s Freedom and Weep and a tight set of aggressive heartland rock.

Going Down in History

The Mekons could have easily ridden out an entire career off the energy of their grimy start in the Leeds art-school scene. Instead, when they started anew following a brief hiatus in the early '80s, frontman and co-founder Jon Langford chose to train their gaze across the pond, led by the spirit guides of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. Their next album, 1985’s Fear and Whiskey, didn’t just execute a brilliant and unlikely-seeming stylistic merger, it ushered in a whole new generation of imitators, acolytes, and even icons.
Langford's continued interest in Americana has produced several Chicago-based side projects, as well: There's Pine Valley Cosmonauts, a revolving door of tributes covers for artists like Cash and Bob Wills, and then there's the Waco Brothers, a heavier group with a more deliberate populist pulse. Following a decade of dalliances—a covers album and B-sides collection here, a collaboration with songwriter Paul Burch there—the latter band’s returned with Going Down in History, their first studio LP since 2005’s Freedom and Weep and a tight (if occasionally underwhelming) set of aggressive heartland rock.
Twenty years on, the Bros’ grizzled sonics are set. Opener "DIYBYOB," set off by Dean "Deano" Schlabowske's throaty twang and clattering axe, immediately brings us back into familiar territory. Therein lies the genius of Schlabowske's first line: "This is the first track from the last album/ No one knows which way this ship will head." Depending on your interpretation, the lyric could be a knowing wink to the same ol’-same ol’ of the band’s chosen style, a masochistic joke, or even a tongue-in-cheek resignation—either way, it adds a crucial twist to an otherwise straightforward bit of songcraft.
Indeed, playfulness abounds on Going Down in History. For a reflection on the dead-end determinism of the status quo, "Building Our Own Prison" proves downright chipper, with an onomatopoeiac, syncopated hook (a spirited "Click clack clackety-clack," right on the beat of the jagged fretwork). Meanwhile, "We Know It" offers an all-purpose anthem for, well, anything; Langford’s croons of "We know it when we see it/ We know it by its name" could stand in for God, the Devil, or the mold beneath your kitchen tiles.
It’s not all fun and games, though—political disillusionment and hand-wringing reflections of the working class remain a perennial concern for the Waco Brothers, and the pervading outsider’s perspective resonates strongly in a tumultuous campaign season. Going Down in History may not mark a sea change for Langford and company, but between the humor, the honky-tonk, and the affable, full-bodied sound, it’s an awesome chance to catch up.


Despite featuring two of the band’s most enduring hits, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ debut is best remembered as a sketchpad for ideas that came together better later.

Tom Petty / The Heartbreakers: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

On November 9, 1976, an album containing two of the most widely beloved and unavoidable rock radio staples ever recorded was released, and nearly a year went by before anyone noticed. It’s not that the music was difficult or short on power-pop hooks or songs about rockin’—all the elements that later made Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers one of America’s most agreeable and enduring music institutions were clear and present on the band’s self-titled debut. But the album and the band were square pegs culturally—neither downtown cool nor Southern-rock sprawl, too dirtbag to be sex symbols, too nice to be dirtbags. “There’s an eccentricity to the first album,” Petty told biographer and former Del Fuegos guitarist Warren Zanes. “It doesn’t sound like anything else from the time.”
Eclectic might be a better word than eccentric. There was nothing particularly weird or inaccessible about the album’s 10 tracks in 30 brisk minutes; if anything, arriving in the heyday of punk and glam and new wave, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers weren’t weird enough to grab immediate attention. Petty’s cover pose, heavy-lidded smirking while sporting a black leather jacket and bandolier in front of a cloud of smoke and a logo with a flying-v, promised something snottier than the music delivered, trademark adenoidal whelp notwithstanding. The punchy drum beat and bassline of opener “Rockin’ Around (With You)” quickly gave way to the great wide open of “Breakdown,” a change of pace that hardly seems jarring now but may have been just a left enough turn to defy easy categorization at a moment when easy categorization was essential for launching a career.
In 1974, Tom Petty moved from Gainesville, Florida, to Hollywood with his new wife Jane and his band Mudcrutch, who were signed to esteemed British producer Denny Cordell’s Shelter Records and then dropped before an album was even made. Shelter kept Petty on as a solo artist but he brought along Mudcrutch’s guitarist Mike Campbell—Petty’s closest collaborator for the entirety of his career—and keyboardist Benmont Tench, and added fellow Gainesville transplants, bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch to start from scratch under the new name. In between, Petty had an apprenticeship of sorts with Cordell’s Shelter partner Leon Russell and spent time with idols like Brian Wilson and future bandmate George Harrison. He’d gotten a close look at what success looked like, but so closely on the heels of Mudcrutch’s disheartening failure—and with a newborn daughter to take care of—he knew he didn’t have all the time in the world to find his own.
Under Cordell’s watch, much of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers consisted of amiable but forgettable trifles like “Mystery Man,” and “Hometown Blues,” as well as parallel-universe classics that foreshadowed bigger, better hits to come. “The Wild One, Forever” is the kind of cinematic power ballad that found its final form in “Nightwatchman” five years later while the simmering, mid-tempo “Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It)” scans now like a dry run for “Refugee.” It’s a band figuring out how to be a band in real time—familiar with one another but still adjusting to a new dynamic in which their onetime hometown pal and bandmate was now unequivocally their boss. The luxurious groove of “Breakdown” was the ideal showcase to sell Petty’s subtropical homesick alien voice (“your eyes give you ay-whey”), always unique even when the songs themselves weren’t, necessarily. Throughout, they fade out abruptly rather than properly end, as if the album has somewhere to be in a half-hour.
Stylistically, the biggest gambit is “Luna,” an atmospheric, vaguely proggy ballad that nods to Cordell’s background producing the likes of Procol Harum and the Moody Blues. Petty sings in a higher register, ironing out the wrinkles of his most distinctive vocal tics, and even as the album’s longest song at just under four minutes, it feels like an incomplete thought and drifts away before ever getting to anything like a hook. “I mean, you can tell we’re discovering things, that we’re happy to be there, you know?” Campbell told Warren Zanes. “Tom and I were probably more curious about the recording studio than the other guys. We wanted to figure out how to make records.” Even with the benefit of generous hindsight, the album as a whole is mostly significant today as a sketchpad and a respectable starting point from which the band sought to, and did, improve.
And yet: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers also contains what by now has to be on a very short list of the most perfect rock songs ever written. The musical equivalent of a starter’s pistol or a struck match, “American Girl” is, somewhat counterintuitively, the album’s final track; had it been the opener, it might not even have mattered what came after. From that clarion opening chord and snare crack to the jittery guitar solo outro and all beats in between, the song is a master class in economy and a snapshot of a newish band that’s found its footing. The archetypal story of the girl from nowhere—or more specifically, from somewhere overlooking Highway 441 in central Florida—dreaming of somewhere else, is what eventually helped vault Petty into the sub-Springsteen league of capital-A American songwriters. It feels like the very blueprint of a hit, even though it never cracked the Billboard Hot 100 (but did peak at 40 in the UK).
In the aftermath of the album’s release, radio stations were uniformly ambivalent, and opening for KISS went about as badly for Petty and his band as that sounds. Twenty-five years before Kings of Leon accepted this playbook like sacred scrolls from atop a Waffle House, five fresh-faced good ol’ boys found their first real acceptance by going to London.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers opened a UK tour for Nils Lofgren in spring 1977 and “Anything That’s Rock N’ Roll,” a perfectly generic stickin’-it-to-the-man anthem that is unlikely to reside on even diehard Petty fans’ deep-cuts playlists, hit the UK charts (it was never released as a single in the U.S. at all). They stuck around, played “Top of the Pops,” wound up on the covers of NME, Sounds, and Melody Maker, and got their first taste of the rock-star trappings that they would soon grow accustomed to over the next four decades. But by the end of that summer, the debut album—eight months after its release—had still only sold 12,000 copies in America.
ABC Records, which distributed Shelter, continued to badger radio stations into playing “Breakdown,” which finally hit the top 40 just over a year after it first came out. But by then, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were back in the studio at work on an album, 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It!, that hit all the strengths their debut did, just a little bit harder.


The Live in Concert studio collaboration between Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y was held up for some time because of sample clearance issues; in that respect it was worth the wait, as the jazzy production has much to recommend.

Live in Concert

Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y’s collaborative project Live in Concert (not an actual live album) was supposed to come out last summer as a free mixtape but it wound up being delayed. Following a lawsuit against Mac Miller for an unapproved Lord Finesse sample, rappers became more conscious of what they were sampling on mixtapes. Fearing copycat lawsuits, Khalifa and Curren$y held onto the sample-heavy Live in Concert, waiting for the legal dust to settle, and now they've released it as an EP, one that costs money.
These rappers have some history. Back in 2009, Khalifa and Curren$y released a collaborative mixtape, How Fly, just at the point where both were carving out their respective niches. Khalifa found mainstream success with his single "Black and Yellow" and Curren$y found critical and underground appreciation by releasing a constant stream of quality music. Both make long records that grow more enticing with repeated listens, after one has tuned in to their respective off-color jokes and personal ticks. Though Khalifa has never been able to match Curren$y’s sheer rapping skill, his nasally voice has a more welcoming tone next to Curren$y's weary snarl.
Imagery is where Curren$y excels (“Motion sensors all over my house/ For investigative-ass hoes/ That’s waiting on me to pass out/ So they can tip-toe all over my home”, from "Landing"), and Khalifa will never be able to equal him there. Instead, his verses feel weightless, as he raps  about much money he’s made and many places he has been. Where Curren$y’s attention to detail takes you to those places, Khalifa’s never achieves that kind of tangibility.
The duo share a penchant for jazzy and relaxed funk production (see: Curren$y’s Pilot Talk series) and production is the EP's strength. The excellent flute work from Bobbi Humphrey’s Fancy Dancer is heard all over this EP-- Curren$y and Khalifa can write strong hooks on their own but here they're content to let Humphrey take over. Take “Revenge and Cake”, which lifts its lovely refrain of “Sweeter than sugar/ Sweeter than love” from Fancy Dancer. The samples aren't really mixed or chopped, and since with every track gets an extended intro or outro, it almost feels like the two rappers were in the studio with Humphrey.
Still, Live in Concert is not a mixtape and it isn't free. In a post-Datpiff world, it's reasonable to wonder if anyone will pay for it. But  even free mixtapes require studio space, someone to do mixing, cover art and especially here properly cleared samples, all of which cost money. So while Live in Concert might not justify the money a listener might spend, you can understand why they would try to recoup.


A sequel to his 2017 tape shows the one-time rising star of Chicago drill again offering a sobering depiction of life outside of rap myths.

Love Songs 4 the Streets 2

Lil Durk’s music offers a sobering depiction of life outside of rap myths. He writes like someone keeping his head above water, hustling paycheck to paycheck, with dwindling hopes that a career in music will provide all promised riches.
Durk Banks knows what it’s like to brush with rap superstardom. A prominent player in the early-2010s Chicago drill surge, he leveraged interest in the scene to cut a deal with Def Jam. But Durk never seemed comfortable breaking bread with the majors, and has since retreated into the cold embrace of his hometown. Last year’s Signed to the Streets 3 was released in partnership with Interscope, representing another—perhaps final—throw of the dice in Durk’s pursuit of mainstream acceptance. But the album just kind of came and went, and so he returns with Love Songs 4 the Streets 2, a follow up to a 2017 tape that offered hymns for the Chicago neighborhoods he’ll forever orbit, and an antidote to some of his label struggles.
At its best, Love Songs 4 the Streets 2 evokes similar sentiments. “I thought my life was supposed to change when I got that deal,” Durk sighs on “Rebellious” as he details the need to pay his grandmother’s bills and mourns fallen cousins. Assertions like “even though I’m still rich” feel perfunctory, with Durk’s half-sung, Auto-Tune-doused croons deflating like a punctured basketball. On “Locked Up,” he appears to talk directly to a jailed friend about the thoughtlessness and pain that led the pair to this point in their lives—a song that hits just weeks after it was revealed that a Georgia judge has found probable cause to charge Banks, as well as fellow rapper King Von, with criminal attempt to commit murder. There’s no American Dream success story here. Durk makes being a rapper sound like a hard slog.
At a full seven songs longer than its preceding volume, Love Songs 4 the Streets 2 has time to run the full gamut of Durk’s styles. “Green Light” is a hardboiled trap thriller; “Die Slow” slides into guest 21 Savage’s haunted lane. As if to underline Durk’s mainstream struggles, cracks appear on the tracks ostensibly cut for radio appeal. The Durk-Meek Mill team-up “Bougie” lacks chemistry. Sleazy sex jam “Extravagant” comes close, but it’s held back by Nicki Minaj’s ill-suited bombastic verse and a few laughable Durk one-liners.
Culling these missteps would have helped the tape’s batting average, but they can’t mask Durk’s undeniable strengths. Looking back on drill, nobody really cashed in on the promised riches. Very young stars had the keys to the kingdom but couldn’t find their way through the gates. But in the case of Lil Durk, something special happened: He kept making great music, evolving out of a hard-boiled subgenre towards something more meditative and essential.


The third studio album from Coupler lays out ambient music that is hyper-specific, detailed, and undemanding.

Gifts From the Ebb Tide

Ryan Norris, the founder and guiding force behind Coupler, describes the electronic project’s output as “deliberate ambient music.” He is apparently keen to distinguish his work from music that doesn't require your full attention and is in fact designed to communicate from the margins of your awareness. According to Norris (who also supplies keys and programming in Lambchop), Coupler’s art is a different animal altogether. It may have the same soft focus but it’s going to come into the room and plop itself down in the middle of whatever you’re doing. Norris might be disappointed to know that Coupler’s third studio album Gifts From the Ebb Tide doesn’t entirely support his assertion. It doesn’t actually demand your attention. Its greatest achievement is that it doesn’t demand anything all.
Like so many ambient titles, Gifts From the Ebb Tide lends itself to casual listening. Its four electro-acoustic tracks—the first to expand the project to include other musicians—are as easy to get comfortable with. Norris and his collaborators are so subtle that you have to lean-in and even snap yourself out of the pleasant lull their music induces in order to appreciate its detail. Once you realize how much intention went into crafting their meshwork of keys, programming, and saxophone, the sharper focus doesn’t compromise the ease of the experience. There is no single detail that dominates the soundscape, which is a testament to how all the parts here work in unison.
This is all the more remarkable considering that Gifts From the Ebb Tide covers quite a bit of stylistic ground. Take, for example, the transition between the picturesque melancholy of “Invention 1: Dreams of Strange Continents” and the motorik insistence of “Invention 2: Pattern Recognition.” Stereolab may have navigated the same course decades ago on the same record (sometimes even on the same song), but Coupler execution is undeniably smooth. Meanwhile, as obviously as “Pattern Recognition” borrows from Kraftwerk and Can, the track doesn’t take us down the Autobahn as much as conjures sensations of a leisurely, soft-pedaling bike ride along a canal.
There are moments when the album gets slyly subversive, most notably on “Invention 4: Silenzio (or Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion),” where Norris aimed to meld the structures of acid house 12-inches with the sprawling “Shhh/Peaceful” suite that takes up a whole side on Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way. Think of all the acts who would have honed-in on the shiniest, most audacious aspects of those two influences. With Gifts From the Ebb Tide, Coupler goes in the opposite direction, sustaining a level of reserve that takes discipline and yet asks little in return. A gift, indeed.


Depeche Mode: Speak & Spell / Music for the Masses / Violator

These reissues-- of arguably the three most beloved records in Depeche Mode’s catalog-- come in a slightly baffling format. Each package contains one CD, for the remastered album, and one DVD, featuring a pointless 5.1 Surround Sound mix, a small handful of bonus tracks (playable only via DVD), and a 20-minute talking-head documentary on the making of the album and the corresponding period in the band’s career. The decision to include those documentaries seems telling, and it seems like a struggle to get at the one thing that reissues-- no matter how many B-sides or demos they throw at you-- can rarely capture: How and why a band in question seemed so very cool at the time.
That turns out to be a big issue with Depeche Mode. These days, the sound of their older records seems less like a revelation and more like a given: The band’s vibe has evaporated out into America to the point where you can spot it in anything you want, whether it’s Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson, or Britney Spears. (Rather incredible, for a British group.) These days, their carefully crafted look has them resembling a failed Hungarian metal band and their reputation is just that of a big, respectable, slightly drama-queeny pop act-- idiosyncratic, maybe, but hardly that unusual. New listeners cannot expect to hear these albums quite the way their fans did at the time.
What’s funny is how that affects each of these records differently. With 1990’s Violator, the band’s pop-crossover classic, it makes hardly any difference at all; the way most people think about and imagine Depeche Mode was built largely on this record. Interview subjects in the documentary have much to say about how “perfect” the album is, how neatly and naturally it matches the sounds and synths of “progressive technopop” with the kind of grand songwriting that can play to massive stadiums. And they’re right. Like any good crossover, this record needs no particular context to appreciate, and listening back through, one gets a sense of why: The battle they’re winning here, of giving electronic music the human feel of teenage anthems and power ballads, is the same one still being fought by any number of Germans; it’s not constrained by time. The dark and slinky soul of the record-- the sex or drama-queen poses, the mix of domineering threats and extreme tenderness-- don’t hurt either.
But in carrying its context with it-- and in being somewhat critical to today’s pop-- Violator just stands as a moving, solid, record, a classic for the archives of popular music; it doesn’t so much carry a lot of the things that made Depeche Mode feel so much themselves. With 1987’s Music for the Masses, that stuff is all there-- which makes the music both harder to “get,” from today’s perspective, and also more interesting. The Depeche Mode of this album is the one that brought together a rabid audience of trendy coastal kids and middle-American teens who got beat up over stuff like this-- all of whom saw them not only as the peak of style, but as something positively revelatory, something speaking only to them (even in a crowded stadium), something alien and cool, disorientingly kinky, and entrancingly strange. For many, this was probably one of the first dance-pop acts they’d heard that didn’t seem to be entirely about being cool and having a good time; their music had been dark, clattery, and full of S&M hints and blasphemy, and on this record it reached a level of Baroque pseudo-classical grandness (see depressed-teenager shout-out “Little Fifteen”) that lived up to those kids’ inflated visions of the group.
At the same time, though, this Depeche Mode could be fun, even in its minor keys: The go-to radio pick for this album was the version of “Behind the Wheel” that segued into a cover of “Route 66”. And it’s somewhere around that fact that we might recognize how far we are from the mainstream “alternative” audience of the late-80s, a scene we see in passing between the chatter of the documentary. Anyone looking to understand that context, or just infatuated by the guy in the front row of Depeche Mode’s Rose Bowl concert wearing a Fishbone t-shirt, would do well to look to Depeche Mode 101, D.A. Pennebaker’s tour film-- which, in a canny pre-"Real World" move, spends time following a group of fans who’ve won a chance to follow the band on tour.
With the band’s 1981 debut, the increasingly adorable Speak & Spell, our distance from the original context actually makes things better. Of course, this is not the Depeche Mode we know: The songs on this album were written by Vince Clarke, who would shortly after leave the group and find fame with Yaz and Erasure. And these, of course, are the early days of synth-pop: These songs are building-block simple, bleepy and discoid, and the band sounds as gawky and adolescent as Dave Gahan looked. There’s something terrific in hearing this from a distance, not as stylish futurism (not anymore) but as the happy noises of teenagers who believed it to be stylish futurism-- and with a charming earnestness. “Happy” because of, well, Vince Clarke, whose work with Erasure is a testament to both his love of joyous disco-pop and his ability to pack it full to bursting with emotion. The best tracks here (like the Kraftwerk-y “New Life” and the dancefloor standard “Just Can’t Get Enough”) are classics, and even the lesser ones-- packed as they are with hooks and verve-- can charm you giddy, in the same way it can charm you giddy to see Dave Gahan prancing around in a bow tie on "Top of the Pops" in the documentary: He looks so young! And shy! And they haven’t even started dressing like leather men yet!
What’s funny is that these three records, despite being the obvious standouts for reissue, are some of the most vexed by this whole issue of context and aging. Violator can sound like a solid but not particularly interesting pop record; Music for the Masses seems to be reveling in an audience that’s less comprehensible now; and Speak & Spell is a lovely "historical" gem. Here’s hoping Rhino’s reissue series will be able to make its way further down into the catalog, to those records that aren’t so weirdly situated-- first-rate synth-pop like the songs on Construction Time Again and Some Great Reward, the ones that first developed that American cult around something that didn’t need much social explanation, and probably still doesn’t.


Unlike his bandmates’ forays in electronica or contemporary classical, Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien’s solo debut looks fondly back at the kind of British rock his own group abandoned.

Earth

For all of the radical reinventions Radiohead have undergone over the past 30-odd years—the shift to experimental electronica, the redrafting of instrumental roles, Thom Yorke’s ponytail—guitarist Ed O’Brien has always remained guitarist Ed O’Brien. Amid the flurry of instrument swapping and machine tweaking that occurs at a typical Radiohead concert, O’Brien is rarely without his six-string and trusty bank of effects pedals, while his backing vocals often provide a crucial melodic underpinning for Yorke’s flights of fancy. That grounding principle carries over to his first proper solo album. Where Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have used their extracurricular projects to further explore dissonant techno and avant-garde orchestration, O’Brien’s debut as EOB revisits the late-’80s/early-’90s student-disco sounds that gave rise to his main gig. While his bandmates are going on about Flying Lotus and Oliver Messiaen, O’Brien is preaching the life-changing effects of Screamadelia.
That said, Earth isn’t your typical guitar-based rock record. Inspired in part by O’Brien’s year-long stint living in Brazil in 2012, the album was initially conceived as a solo electronic effort before exposure to the country’s famed Carnival festivals prompted a more communal, celebratory approach. While he stopped short of making a batucada album, he did rally an all-star cast—including producer Flood, Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood, Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley, and Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche—to infuse the songs with a more physical spirit. The opening “Shangri-La” was actually written after an all-nighter at the eponymous Glastonbury DJ stage, and though this wiry rocker is more Blur than PLUR (thanks to O’Brien’s uncannily Coxon-esque chorus), the track exudes a playfully scrappy energy and hedonic swagger that greatly distinguish it from any other Radiohead-related product. The record eventually achieves its true peak-hour potential on “Olympik,” which sounds like an Achtung Baby-era U2 song stretched out into a sweaty, !!!-style punk-funk workout.
Between those high points, Earth can feel less like a dance-festival communion and more like the lonely, meandering trek back to your pup tent in the dark. The album’s more robust rhythmic exercises are counterbalanced by mellow meditations, and while these yield some affecting moments (like “Cloak of the Night,” a sort of coffeehouse “Dear Prudence” duet with Laura Marling), the songwriting isn’t captivating enough to sustain momentum during Earth’s simmered-down stretches. “Deep Days” comes on with bald, brow-raising expressions of desire but neuters them in a foot-dragging acoustic-soul lurch, while the atmospheric textures that envelop folk sketches like “Mess” and “Sail On” aren’t enough to compensate for their slight, vaporous melodies. Even when O’Brien suddenly detours from campfire tropicalia into Hacienda bacchanalia partway through “Brasil,” the track plateaus when it should soar, as if the mere novelty of flipping the switch was enough to justify riding out its mid-tempo Madchester groove past the eight-minute mark.
For an album rooted in the idea of connectedness, Earth feels more like a mood board of ideas in search of a through line. Nowhere is the record’s jumbled quality more pronounced than on “Banksters,” a song O’Brien wrote in response to the 2008 financial crash. Hating on the 1 percent has hardly gone out of style since then, but the song’s vitriol and strident topicality feel out of place on an album otherwise occupied with more personal and spiritual concerns. And while the fact that “Banksters” sounds like a bossa-nova “Paranoid Android” may appeal to that faction of old-school Radiohead fans who still rue the day Thom Yorke bought his first Aphex Twin record, it ultimately seals Earth’s fate as the sort of tasteful, tentatively adventurous post-Britpop record that would’ve gotten sandwiched between Elbow and South on a “next Radiohead” listicle 20 years ago.